Summary – Habit forming tips

It’s been 3 days of no updates here in LessonInLife and you know what, I actually felt like I lost something the entire time. I guess that’s how much I now enjoy blogging and your company. Thanx to all friends visitting.

With that I must admit that there is some truth to the phrase “Anything you did consistentlly for 40 days will become a habit.” Have you ever heard of such phrase? For example when I started blogging, I’ve gone through all the procrastination phase and fatigue. but I manage to follow my schedule of blogging and alhamdulillah, things are now getting easier and forgotting to blog is already an impossible things to do.

So can I ask, do you have anything to be made a habit? Maybe cycling, jogging or even solat? Well these tips may help a bit

• Choose one habit to work on.. Just one
• Write down the advantage of having it as a habit. The aim is to be a motivation for you to keep doing the habit. So try every methods you’re comfortable with, maybe motivational pictures or cycling partner.
• Schedule a specific time to do the habit. The reason we often forget, is because we don’t know when to actually do the habit. I personally will take about 30 minutes before I go to bed to post an article here. So whenever I’m going to bed, I will instantly remember to blog
• Just do it for 40 days.
• Keep track of how many days you have been following your plan. Remember, we aim to do it for 40 days

Secret tips

• #1 – Don’t be hard on yourself. If you miss a day, Don’t be stressed about it. Just continue the next day.
• #2 – There are only two things that will corrupt a habit and if you know these two, the better the chances you will succeed – Procrastination and Fatigue

– I wonder –
Have you ever succeeded maintaining a habit? Care to share your success story?

———— Personal Note ————
Why there isn’t any update in this blog for the past three days? Well to tell you the truth, I’ve bought my dream laptop last Friday and I’ve been very busy setting it up and transfering all files from my former pc.

I consider it a dream laptop not because of its specification. It is just a cheap low end one. It is because owning a laptop has always been a dream to me. InsyaAllah now I will be able to blog everyday… YEY!!!

Summary – The key to conquering fear

So how many of us is actually afraid of public speaking? Let me be the first to raise my hand.. I have to admit, however prepared, or confident, I will still feel that feeling of a particular insect flying around in my stomach.

However I do have one good news. Fear not.. everyone is experiencing the same thing. Everyone will have that shaky feeling especially during the beginning of the speech. Alhamdulillah, so far, after the first 30 second of the speech, I tend to forget those feeling entirely and started having fun 🙂

I have this theory. Everyone has their own fear right? And people will often want to throw this fear away from his life. If he is afraid of height, he wanted to be all brave and confident at high places.

It is in my opinion however that to rid our fear away is IMPOSSIBLE. Plain impossible. We can never rid of our fear, irregardless of any treatment. The fear will always be there. We just need to learn to overcome it, to learn how to have that fear but have it under control.

The mistake we always did when we want to conquer our fear is that we try our hardest to get rid of it. We want to be free from the fear. Referring to my previous article that every emotion is there for a reason, I definitely think that the fear will always be there, however you do. We just need to control it better. Not letting it affect our judgement.

For example, conquering fear of cockroaches doesn’t mean that you will have to step on any cockroaches you see. You just need to know that when a cockroach is on your body, you will be able to take a deep breath and find that little turn-off and swipe it away. (I can’t remember the english word for jentik.. help?)

And that’s my friend is how you conquer fear.. Not by eliminating the fear, but to live comfortably with the fear in check 🙂

—- I wonder —-
Do you have any phobia? How do you overcome them? 🙂

——— Personal Note ———–
hm I asked if you have any phobia, when I myself cannot come up with my own phobia. Hm I used to have this “geli” feeling if a cockroach is on me. But not to the extend of panickly screaming. Maybe snake and centipede, but that’s very obvious. Who would want to handle those two right?

So can I just ask… what do you think the best way to overcome any fear? 🙂

p.s. By the way.. I will be going to KL today insyaAllah, for the pc fair 🙂 Anybody’s going there on Friday?

Summary – Public speaking tips for students

So where do these scammers learn speaking-persuasively skill? They didn’t go through any course of public speaking. Actually the skill is learnt from experience, lots of experience each complemented with a lot of unsuccessful experiment.

Well let me share with you my very own tips on public speaking. I can assure you it did not come from any books, if it does.. it is purely coincidental 🙂

1) Know your stuff
How can you talk about something you don’t have any idea about? you need to know everything there is to know about the topic you are going to speak. Try this…

You’re a blogger. Can you describe to me how to start a blog? I’m very sure you can talk about that for hours, complete with an explanation on how to install a cbox, importance of labels and even on how to kill your blog. You don’t know everything, but the thing that you know now is enough for you to confidently discuss them. And this is the first and the most important thing to do to be better at public speaking… Know your stuff head to toe, and toe to head.. and maybe from your bellybutton going up or down 🙂

2) Memorize then forget technique
Whenever I want to do presentation or speech, I will usually know exactly what I’m going to say. Call it a script if you want to. I will memorize it from start to finish. I see a slide, I will know exactly what my first line is going to be.

But the thing is.. whenever I speak tomorrow, I will purposely forget all the script. Instead I will come up with a new version to describe my point. Seriously… this will make you look like you are a proffesional speaker, casually describing all point without fail and missing anything (as if you don’t have a script at all).

When you know your stuff, and you know the sequence of your speech, you will be very confident. Trust me.. These two are the most important tips and by practising this, you will have no problem. I guarantee.

3) Know your fear
Exactly what is your fear of public speaking? Identify this and try to come up with ways on how to overcome it. For example, you are afraid that you will forget your speech. Then memorize them and write small notes to remind you of what the next topic will be. People don’t forget what they know. They forget the sequence of the speech and that what makes it a mess.

If you are afraid of the question people will ask you, and if you cannot answer. Then try this.. remind youself – you’re there to speak to the crowd, and the crowd is there to listen. They can ask.. and believe me, if you did not know the answer, just tell them you will check and get back to them on it. Nobody knows everything. In fact, if you do the first step.. which is to know your stuff, there’s no way you will not be able to answer them.

If I ask you the benefit of blogging, can you answer? Of course you can, even though you never actually think about it before. You can because you are very familiar with blogging and you can come up with the answer as soon as the question asked.

/end

A new category created.. “For Student” especially to my friends who is still studying. Hopefully I can be helpful to you guys 🙂 I will continue this topic tomorrow. same time tomorrow? 🙂

—- I wonder —-
I’m sure you must have your secret technique yourself.. Share share 🙂

———– Personal Note ————
My first public speaking in my life is when I was in standard 5 (11 years old). I was competing in a story telling competition. So there I was, representing my school. My English teacher thought that it would be a good practice if I can perform in front of the whole school first before the competition. So she made the arrangement.I was actually very confident then, telling the story, when suddenly I heard some voice from just in front of the stage. One boy actually point at me, and said “Eiii kuningnya gigi dia!” ahaha

And you know what, I forget my story altogether. And after a lot more critics from that Malaysian Idol Young Judges, I gave up and just walked away in the middle of the story. My teacher was very mad at me,

To cut things short, after a lot more practice, I won the District level competition. Yey! (but loses at the state level) hehe

Summary – Tips to avoid being “pau”ed

Have you ever experienced this? you were walking in KL (That’s Kuala Lumpur) when suddenly a stranger walked alongside with you and started to talk to you. After a quick talk he persuasively asked for money giving excuses and all.

Well, it happened to me quite often. I guess I had that look of a non-KL’ian. This is a story of one of them

It was about 6-7 years ago, I was actually walking to the KTM station to buy a ticket for the commuter. Suddenly a man with a bag came to me and said hi. According to him, he was supposed to go back to Klang, and he didn’t have enough money. Looking at him, somehow I felt like helping, so I asked him how much did he need? and surprisingly, he asked for a two way ticket.

I started to be suspicious with him. A man who is desperate will not ask for more money than he needed. Why would he need a two way ticket?

I however, said fine.. but I will buy him the ticket. Guess what? he said that there’s no need, just give him the money and he will buy it himself.

I then walked away…

/end story

Now that was a few years back, I wonder what scam they are doing right now. I unfortunately had quite a number of experience being “kena pau” (I believe that is the term used for the activity). One by a person claimed to be just released from prison with no money and wanting to go to Taiping. Another needed some money to go to clinic (He actually screamed at me cursing when I walked away) and the funniest is a man asking for money to watch a movie.

Tips that may help to avoid being “pau”

• Always travel in groups or in pairs
• Try to blend in with the crowd confidently
• These people actually target those with huge bags
• Be paranoid in anything that involve in you surrendering your money, what ever the cause.
• When somebody approach you suspiciously, start walking to the police or security guard, and ask him to help the person.
• There will be however a person that will really need our help, If a person ask me for money to buy bus ticket, and agreed if I can buy him the ticket.. I will definitely help him.

—- I wonder —-
Have you had any experience being “pau”ed? If yes, what do you do? If not, What will you do? 🙂

———- Personal Experience ————-
Life sure is interesting 🙂 Alhamdulillah… hm by the way, does anyone know the English word for this activity (pau)? It’s not mugged since you can choose not to give him any money..