Imagine you are jungle trekking with a little boy. This boy is holding the compass and only he knows where the north is. You are supposed to go north all the way.

After a few minutes walking, you ask the boy, “Where is the north?”

The boy shows you the direction, “This way sir.”

You see that there is a mountain in front of you. You then suggest to the boy, “We are going around this mountain.”

The boy starts wondering, “Maybe the direction is not important, it’s the destination.”

After another hour, you ask the boy for the direction. And when he showed you the direction, “It’s a 12 o’clock sir”.

Feeling a bit bored with all the trekking, you decide to have some fun. You said, “Instead of 12 o’clock, why not we walk in the 11 o’clock direction. What harm could that slight deviation do?”

From your answer, the boy conclude that a slight change of direction is acceptable as long as you know where you’re going.

Now guys, imagine keep dismissing his answer everytime he answers the whole trip. What will he become?

• He will no longer believe that he is right or that his opinion matters

• He doesn’t even bother to look at the compass when asked for direction

• He may make up his own direction just to have fun

Now imagine that the little boy is actually our conscience. Wouldn’t it be a disaster?

It often start with the smallest thing like a white lie. Also it is usually done with very good intention. We tell lies to protect our loved ones from getting hurt for example. We then tell more lies to cover the previous lies we told. After a while, lying to someone become as natural as everything else in our life. And we are starting to feel that lying is never wrong.

When it reached that level, it’s as if the little boy has totally given up on us.

Now if you would excuse me, I would like to go check on my compass boy and maybe have a look at the compass before going to bed. Hopefully they are repairable.

– I wonder –
Tell any white lies lately? 🙂

———– Personal Note ———–
I just came back from my long Aidilfitri holiday. And as usual, I never feel excited about working after a long holiday. It’s been a long day and drive so I will leave you with an Aidilfitri photograph of the family (Me, the mrs and Zafirah)

Have a happy Aidilfitri 🙂

Compass Photo Credit – Matti Mattila

Today is Aidilfitri here in Malaysia. I am now in Kedah with my family for the celebration. Again, Aidilfitri is all about celebrating the successful one-month fasting for muslims. In other words, we are celebrating for winning the battle against desire all month long.

I’m sure you too have your moment of being a winner in your own battle. It can be –

• Successfully finished up all your work for the week beating that procrastination to the floor

• Overcame your mental block to create and deliver one of the best presentation ever.

• Walked away from a shopping sale when your desire was screaming at you with 100 plus reasons why buying makes sense.

Everyone has their own battle to win. As long as there are choices to make, there will always be a battle in our head, between reason and logic, the greater good or the immediate result.

It is a nice thing to win a battle. However there are 3 facts that you should know about winning. And you may be surprise that you never realized these before.

1) The battle starts 10 seconds after you win.

Yes, you may be doing your victory dance, but the truth is immediately after about 10 second you have been declared a winner, the war restarts.

If you just won over that procrastination instinct and finished up all your work, rest assured that you will start procrastinating other work that comes after that. You may be given another assignment, and you’re putting that off to another time in the future since you just won that war. As a matter of fact, the war against procrastination just restarted with that decision. It is really a never ending battle.

2) The battle will be harder.

I’m sure you will agree with me. Once you become number one, you will see that the work to maintain being number one is usually harder than the work to get to number one. It may be due to the pressure, the expectation or maybe the higher standard you just raised.

The same goes to your recent success. If you manage to deliver powerful presentation and your boss loves it, he will expect better performance from you. Of course delivering creative presentation is a piece of cake for you, but when pressure and high expectation is involved, you may not be able to outdo your previous self.

Still, this doesn’t mean that you should only deliver moderate quality performance in your work. You just need to know the fact that success comes with the element of pressure and expectation. Knowing this beforehand will help you cope with it better.

3) The enemy might have learnt from their mistake.

Things that don’t kill you will only make you stronger. This applies just the same to the elements you just beat. Let say, you just walked away from the shopping sale with excuses like “I will buy them some other time”. The time will come when such excuse will no longer works. You just don’t feel the excuse as effective as previously used.

Conclusion – You may ask, how then can we make the next battle easier? Unfortunately, the next battle will always be harder, and all we can do is to realize this as early as possible. This way, we can be more prepared.

– I Wonder –
How do you celebrate your victory?

———– Personal Note ————-
I don’t know about you, but everytime I manage to achieve my small victory of the day, I will treat myself to a cup of hot chocolate. That is my luxury of the day. 🙂

Photo Credit – Notsogoodphotography