Summary - You can read, talk, learn but nothing beats experiencing it yourself
It’s been very tiring these few days. I am in charged of commissioning a new boiler for the mill. And as always, commissioning is where you will find more problem than solution.

I’m sure you know how negative we can be after solving one problem, only to find a few hundreds more revealed to you. You may become very negative and words like this start to come to mind.

• This is all not worth it.
• The project is cursed.
• Why is this happening to me?

Do you really know why negativity is bad?
Now, we have been told repeatedly that “negativity is bad”. “Positive thinking is the way”. But do we really know what negative thinking will do to us?

Just like being sleepy behind the wheel is a dangerous thing. We know it’s dangerous and we should avoid it by taking regular rest. But we will never actually know how dangerous it is unless we have been involved in such accident and live to tell the story.

The same goes to negativity. We can read 100 books on avoiding negativity but we will never know the harm it cause unless we have experience it.

The experiment
I propose an experiment to experience how positive thinking helps. Set one hour every day for positive thinking. In this one hour, you must brush aside any negative thinking in your mind. Which means, you must be focus and aware of what you’re thinking at all time (within the one hour frame of course)

All you need to do is rejecting every negative thinking and replace it with positive ones. Reject and replace. For example -

• Reject “This is just not worth it”. Replace it with “The joy of success after all this will be worth every second spent :)” (don’t forget to smile)
• Reject “The project is cursed”. Replace it with “Now this is what I call challenging :)”
• Reject “Why is this happening to me”. Replace it with “I was chosen which means I am the only one they actually believe to make this happen :)”

Again, for just one hour.. all you need to do is reject and replace. It will be very hard at first. You may not actually believe the words that you replaced, and you will be bombarded with a machine-gun shot of negativity. Expect and survive this.

After you have done the experiment for a week. Please tell me how it goes? I would love to hear it. More importantly, you write your own conclusion to the experiment. It can be positive wins, or negativity wins. Which ever side wins, you will now understand positive and negative thinking so much more than any other person

- I wonder -
How many of us like to experiment with our mind?

——— Personal Note ———-
I am still doing the experiment. One hour every day with no negative thinking. It’s a very hard work. That much I can assure you. With every negative thought rejected, comes another two. And sometimes it goes the other way around, rejecting positive thought and replacing it with negative ones.

So guys, expect some resistance and hard work in this experiment I’m going to publish the result of my experiment when I can see some actual result.

To be continued

Photo credit - JasonRogers

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Summary - Defining our features
Once upon a time, people send letters to each other just to say hi. Then Mr Alexander decided to come up with a mean for people talking to each other via a wire. Voila! we have telephone.

Not long after that, we are introduced to cellphone. And I am proud to announce that at the time this is written, we are now using a phone that can surf the net, take pictures, record voices, watch television, do office work, play games etc.

Did I mention it is also a phone?

One morning, I actually talked to a colleague of mine about his high tech cellphone which do almost everything you can think of except accepting call. A call just can’t get through. Ironic isn’t it?

However this concept is not new. There is actually a name for it - Feature Creep. Generally defined as the condition where too many features being installed to a product or a project that in the end the product doesn’t serve its purpose.

Just like a watch, it was supposed to tell time. But with all the additional features installed such as all the many tiny hands, stopwatch, games,pulse detector etc, how many can actually tell the time immediately when asked? Its main purpose of telling time is neglected and thus the product is now useless.

Aren’t all these sound familiar?

How It Applies To Us?
We too have our own purpose and responsibilities. We are born and immediately we become a son/daughter, also a family, Later we learn things and we become a student, We also become friends to some. And after graduated we become an employee. Fall in love and married, we are promoted to being parent. Of course among other things.

No, don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking you to drop all your responsibilities and go back being a baby. All these define who we are.

What I’m merely saying is that we must know that a watch should always tell time. All others are just additional features that are not as important.

Real Life Example
A real life example is myself. I am a muslim, a son, a family, a husband, a father, an employee. One year ago, I decided to become a blogger. This is just another additional feature of my life. Being a blogger can never be more important than me being a husband. So when I have to choose between spending quality time with the mrs or blogging, I will always choose the mrs.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love blogging, and I’m not stopping any time soon. This is where I publish and share every ideas I may have. And I’m very thankful for the opportunity.

At first, it was quite tough to balance the two. I was very new and need to work hard to establish the blog. Luckily the mrs had been very supportive. I owe it all to her. Now, I am better at managing the blog. It’s still a work in progress, but at least I know which is the more important.

Conclusion - Even so, the great thing about life IS its feature. We need to enrich ourselves with new experience and responsibility to life life at its fullest. Be a dancer if you want, or a traveller and travel the world.

But first we must know what we actually are before all these feature. As long as we keep that in mind, we will never go wrong.

- I wonder -
What’s your most recent feature?

——— Personal Note ———–
Sometimes I stumbled across some great tunes in my head. I don’t know about others, but I find them catchy. So what I did is record it into my phone to avoid forgetting it.

Maybe my other features in few years time is writing songs. Who knows..

Photo Credit - Liewcf

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Summary - Persuade your mind to want to remember

A few days back, one reader by the nick SilentReader had asked me one question to be discussed here - How to improve long term memory. Shall we?

First of all, allow me to interest you with some articles I’ve actually written on the subject.

• How SpongeBob Improves Memory
• The Secret To Reread The Thickest Book In 5 Minutes

To tell you the truth, I actually did quite a lot of thinking on the matter. And at the end of the day, I’ve concluded that there is only one way to be able to memorize something and remember it for the rest of your life.

You must want to remember.

Seriously, I can list down every technique known to mankind - Chinese One Syllable Technique, Association, Repetition, Funny Images, House Mapping etc. But they will prove ineffective if you just don’t want to remember.

However trying to make yourself want something is not an easy thing to do. Why? It’s because the mind is always behaving like a child.

What will happen if you ask a child to work instead of playing? He will first disapprove and will try to wiggle his way out of the task. If that didn’t work, he will do the job lazily, hoping that you will give up impatiently. What would you do?

The same goes to the mind. It will goes exactly through the same phase as the child, disapprove, wiggle and lastly do the job lazily.

How to negotiate with the mind? Well treat it like a child of course.

1) Always slow talk
Never raise your voice to your mind. The more you force yourself, the more reluctant the mind will work for you.

2) Visualize what will be achieved.
Just like a child, you must describe how they will benefit visually. Maybe draw a car that they will be able to buy if the child gets good grade and be successful. For the child, the word successful doesn’t mean much.. but if he knows that with good grade, he will get to be a pilot and buy a car. That will push him in the right direction.

Research where your graduated seniors are working now. And how much are their salary. Imagine your dream laptop that can be bought easily with your one month salary should you follow their foot steps. In short, motivate yourself (visually)

3) Join in to do the hard work.
If you put a child to work under the hot sun while you sip cold drink under the shade, the child will immediately realize he is being bullied and may stop working altogether. If you work with him under the hot sun, he will do the work more willingly.

Work together with your mind. How? for a start, when you read, you read. Don’t read with your mouth while you are thinking about how hot your girlfriend is.

4) Reward
Every child demand some reward if they do a good job. They may not say it out loud, but they really want it. Some would settle with a pat on the back, some may want cash.

Figure out the reward for your mind. It can be as simple as a 30 minutes nap or $50 to be spent on anything.

5) Make it fun
Cleaning up the house is never fun for children. But if you assigned each child to a room and whoever can clean up the fastest will win one week of no work, I’m sure the work will be done in no time.

In the case of your mind, make it fun by maybe substituting the character described in the history book with your real life friends and family. Of course don’t let yourself be the hero. Hero always get killed in history books

6) Don’t plan too far ahead.
Children hate it when you gave them 20 things to do. Most probably they will just drag the first task to avoid doing the other 19.

For your mind, try to implement this trick. Only plan to do two things at any time. It is a great Getting Things Done (GTD) tools.

- I wonder -
Any other resemblance between a child and the mind?

———- Personal Note ———–
I just love children. Just watching them play can make me smile. They have no idea what they’re playing, what’s the rule or the goal but they can still make the game looks insanely fun

I guess one of the price we have to pay growing up, is losing that sense of having fun. What do you think?

Photo Credit - Hamed Masoumi

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Summary - Do not judge rushingly

There was an old man in a village. He was very poor, but even the king of the country were jealous of him because he had a beautiful white horse. The King offered a lot of money in exchange for the horse, but the man would say, “This horse is very precious to me, and I will not sell it for whatever price”.

One morning, he found that the horse was not in the stable. The whole village gathered and they said, “You foolish old man! We knew that someday the horse would be stolen. It would have been better to sell it. What a misfortune!”

The old man said, “Don’t go so far as to say that. Simply say that the horse is not in the stable. This is the fact; everything else is a judgment. Whether it is a misfortune or a blessing who knows?” The whole villagers laughed at the old man.

But after fifteen days, suddenly one night the horse returned. And not only that, it brought along a dozen other wild horses with him. Again the people gathered and they said, “Old man, you were right. This was not a misfortune; it has indeed proved to be a blessing.”

The old man said, “Again you are going too far. Just say that the horse is back . . . Who knows whether it is a blessing or not? It is only a fragment. You read a single word in a sentence-how can you judge the whole book?”
This time the people could not say much, but inside they knew that he was wrong. Twelve beautiful horses had come, how can that be a misfortune.

The old man had an only son who started to train the wild horses. Just a week later he fell from a horse and his legs were broken. The people gathered again and again they judged. They said, “Again you proved right! It was a misfortune. Your only son has lost the use of his legs, and in your old age he was your only support. Now you are poorer than ever.”

The old man said, “You are obsessed with judgment. Don’t go that far. Say only that my son has broken his legs. Nobody knows whether this is a misfortune or a blessing. Life comes in fragments and more is never given to you.”

It happened that after a few weeks the country went to war, and all the young men of the town were forcibly taken for the military. Only the old man’s son was left, because he was crippled. The whole town was crying and weeping, because it was a losing fight and they knew most of the young people would never come back. They came to the old man and they said, “You were right, old man-this has proved a blessing. Maybe your son is crippled, but he is still with you. Our sons are gone forever.”

The old man said again, “You go on and on judging. Nobody knows! Only say this, that your sons have been forced to enter into the army and my son has not been forced. ”

Finally the villagers learn that important lesson

/end story

I’m sure you must have picked up the message behind the story. Whether or not you believe in God, things will always happen in your life. Some are good things, some are bad things.

What’s important is NOT how fortunate or unfortunate we are, it’s how we react to that incident. If for example, the old man immediately be depressed by the lost horse, and start selling all his valuable belongings just to avoid them being stolen, will that be a better solution?

In Islam, we were taught that our whole life is in fact a test. A test for us to be a better person with each test. If we suffer from misfortune like being robbed, we are expected to be patient and try to get back on our feet, start back our life. We are not doing ourselves any good if we blame everyone. We are still not getting back our stuff.

It’s however so much easier to pass the test when it’s a misfortune. It’s more difficult to pass a test when it is a good fortune. How many rich people we know who actually love to share their wealth with the poor people.

- I wonder -
What other lesson do you learn from this story? There are actually quite a few.

———– Personal Note ————
The story was forwarded to me by a friend. Thank you.

I’m quite busy these few days arranging for a ceremony for Zafirah. She is now 14 days old. The ceremony is to officiate the naming of the baby. A bit tired today. See you guys tomorrow

Photo Credit - Freeparking

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