I previously wrote an entry on the tips for first day at work. So many friends joined in and added additional ideas to it.

But what happens next? So for those that had already worked, are there any tips?

There’s one thing that may be worth sharing. It’s on how to free yourself from the zombie trap. These questions can determine whether or not you are already trapped.

1) What is it about the job that makes you happy? the freedom, the money, the colleague or the girl/guy you’re eyeing 🙂
2) When you go back this evening, can you predict what’s your work going to be like tomorrow?
3) How’s the boss? friendly? enemy? Do you even have any friends?
4) Did you improve when compared to yourself when you first started working? knowledge, experience, attitude, qualification wise?
5) If you are on leave for 1 months, can somebody else do your job?
6) We work to make money, do you have an emergency fund (at least 6 month of your salary)?

We go to work, work, go back home and collect money end of the month. This is very much like a zombie. It is a very soul-depleting process. We are supposed to gain more than just money in working such as friends, experience, knowledge etc

To summarize : A person free from the zombie trap will work for 5 years and by the end of the 5 years –

• He can resign from the job anytime, and the company will make an increased offer for him just to make him stay
• Other competitive companies had already proposed to him, and anytime he resigned they will take him
• He had a six month emergency fund.. maybe more.
• He make friends in the company (lots of friend)
• He is now an expert in what he do. Nobody can do what he does
• He now know what exactly he want from his life

– I wonder –
How do you think we can be free of this trap? maybe writing up a resignation letter dated 5 years in the future. It will remind us to be very secured when the time come. (The letter is just for reminder only, not to be submitted)

Any other tips?

———— Personal Note ————-
I have this dream of becoming self employed. But in order to do that, I must be very secured with my source of income. And the work must be something I enjoy doing.

Hopefully 2008 will be the year I started my very very small business, a lemonade stall perhaps.. 🙂 Amiin

A little boy was doing his math homework.
He said to himself, “Two plus five, that son of a b**** is seven. Three plus six, that son of a b**** is nine….”

His mother heard what he was saying and gasped, “What are you doing?”
The little boy answered, “I’m doing my math homework, Mom.”

“And this is how your teacher taught you to do it?” the mother asked. “Yes,” he answered.

Infuriated, the mother asked the teacher the next day, “What are you teaching my son in math?”
The teacher replied, “Right now, we are learning addition.” The mother asked, “And are you teaching them to say two plus two, that son of a b**** is four?”

After the teacher stopped laughing, she answered, “What I taught them was, two plus two, THE SUM OF WHICH, is four.”

/end

Lesson learnt

• Be very careful when you speak to children. They may look like ignoring you but that their sharp ears are picking it all up.
• Teacher teaches, parent checks 🙂

It has been a practice here in LessonInLife.com for a casual Sunday, which generally means no heavy topic on Sunday.

Have a great weekend everyone

Emotion is a very powerful tools given to us. Just look at the previous entry, the emotion is there, we forget about it, it will come to haunt us. Being that powerful, it is only right that we know exactly how to make use of them

These are a list of what I can come up on how to make use of emotion.

1) In love
A guy in love should use that emotion to motivate him to be a better person. If the girl doesn’t like a smoker, he should use that motivation to stop smoking.

He shouldn’t use his love to justify him stalking her, or harassing her.

2) Anger
A foreman of a factory should be easily be angry if someone’s tempering with his machine. If that machine is down, he will have to answer to the manager.

Imagine a foreman who doesn’t care if anyone damaging his machine simply because he doesn’t care

3) Happy
Nothing can go wrong with happiness. And the best way a person can make use of his happiness is to infect another person with it. This is usually done automatically. You see a person laughing out loud, the tendency is you will smile at least 🙂

4) Jealousy
A student and his roommate. The roommate is so clever, he’s always praised by lecturers. The student is now jealous of that. He should use that jealousy to strive and work harder, so as to get the same appreciation.

Never, and I mean never.. the student use his jealousy and start sabotaging the clever roommate ~ introduce him to clubbing maybe

5) Sad
A boy is so sad when his grandfather passed away. He is now living with his grandmother. He can cry all his want, but from his sadness, he should be thankful that he still has a grandmother. He will then appreciate her more ~ not hurting her feeling etc.

– I wonder –
What do you think? Can you guys come up with a scenario where we can make use of our other feeling? Maybe like greed, shy, hate, scared etc 🙂

———– Personal Note ———–
Emotion really is a funny thing. Sometime you are so in love, then something happen.. and he/she immediately become the one person you hate the most. Sometimes you are so nervous waiting to be interviewed, and when your time comes.. you are so nervous that you become oppositely brave. They ask and you answer… “whatever happen, so be it”

funny right?

Can I ask? Have you ever had this feeling? You go through your day as normal. You know you are alright emotionally when you woke up this morning, many things happened since then… and suddenly maybe during lunch, you have that feeling that something is wrong. You’re not feeling comfortable as if there’s something offending you or hurt your feeling, Or is it you’ve forgotten something? You are not sure what it is… but something is definitely wrong. You just don’t know what it is.

Familiar? Happens to me all the time… 🙂 So assuming you are having the same feeling from time to time, what do you do about it? Do you start to panic, or just completely ignore it.

In my case, it happens usually if I do something hurtful to somebody else. For example, if I accidentally hurt somebody else’s feeling. I would feel it right away. And the feeling will not stop unless I confront him/her and apologize or solve the problem with him/her. I guess I just want to live in harmony with everyone

The interesting part is sometimes, at the time I hurt that someone, I don’t feel a thing. Maybe due to the emotion or what. And after some time, I totally forget it. Then the feeling I described earlier came, and I just can’t ignore it, because I know I hurt someone, but I don’t know who. I will then trace back my exact feeling throughout the day. For example, “Was I feeling this way when I’m at work just now?”… I traced it until I reached the part where I hurt that someone just now. I realized immediately because I can sense the my emotional change at the time. Can you follow me up to now? heheh

The keyword here is tracing back our feeling throughout the time (Hm maybe a key”sentence”). Does anyone here ever do that? Please share, because seriously it helped. When we know where our devastation started, we can end it effectively. The problem with the majority of us, is we don’t want to dig deeper into ourselves when it comes to feeling and emotion. Some even think of it as weakness.

Conclusion – You feel something wrong precisely at 5pm… Trace it back, Remember your feeling at 4pm, 3pm, 2pm etc. Once you have identified where the change in the emotion take place, deal with them. If you hurt someone, go see him… and discuss, If you forgot to pray Zohor, go “Qadha”, If you forget to logout of your email… immediately go log it out. Please don’t check the newspaper for the evening movies 🙂

– I wonder –
Have you ever have this feeling? And how do you overcome it?

———– Personal Note ———–
I have a confession. I am not very good at being angry at people. I rarely shout or scream at people, even though some of the workers in my mill are really getting on my nerve. I guess, I don’t like the feeling that someone actually hates me.

Not that I never feel angry or suppressing the anger. When it’s needed, I will definitely do what I have to do. There is one quote – “Shouting at people out of anger is like spitting, never lick it back”