stacysin’s blog

I’ve been working in the current company more than 10 years.  Over the years, I served different bosses as a secretary.  Every two to four years, I changed new bosses.  Most of these men are nice, kind with “small hearts” (they used to acknowledged each other).  At work, no hangy-panky but outside the office they are really fun-loving people.  Most importantly, there are very lovely husbands and fathers. 

Almost four years in another post.  Life is really a challenge.  Meeting datelines, running and analysing data.  Work more than 16 hours that including skipping lunch breaks and sacrificing sleeps.  I realised that life can’t move on in such way anymore.  Sometimes, it’s feeling a drag to go to the office.  Knowing that tons of works ahead never can be finished.

Taking holiday breaks is so impossible.  Because my boss doesn’t believe that the annual leave is my entitlement.  It’s under his “mercy” to approve before I could go.  Seriously, at one point I feel like throw in that damn resignation letter. 

After consideration, I think I should change the way I handle my office works and my relationship with my boss.  Afterall, the company gives good benefits, nice learning environment and many other fine souls around.  Why not just give a try to change my thinkings, lowering down my expectations, see things in a different prospective and communicate my feelings as much as I could to my peers and boss.  I speak up my mind and my dissatisfactions, improve the way of doing things.  I consider that many things are in shape, although it is still a tough job.

Here I came across an article on the newspaper to share with iLand friends to ponder over when that question “shall I quit?” flashing…

TIME TO MOVE ON?!  Five signs tell you that it’s time to seek greener pastures.

“When is it time to look for a new job?” is a question career coaching clients ask me.  I always tell tem that whatever they do, they should not remain miserable.

Everyone has their ups and downs at work.  Some weeks you are super-productive.  other weeks, not so much.  But how do you know when it’s time to really make a move — updating your portfolio and beginning the official job search?

Here are five signs that should point you in the right direction:

(1)  YOU DREAD GETTING OUT OF BED
Do you repeatedly hit the snooze button?  Do you have an overwhelming desire to remain buried under the covers, far from demands, deadlines and clamouring co-workers?  One of the biggest red flags of job dissatisfaction is an unwillingness to face the day - not just some mornings, but every morning.  What is your body trying to tell you?

(2)  YOUR WORK RELATIONSHIPS AND PERFORMANCE SUFFER
Remember when group projects were productive, water-cooler chat was a pleasant repose and happy hour truly was happy?  If lately you find yourself avoiding certain people and tasks, slacking on your reviews or dreading the annual company picnic, chances are you’ve lost that loving feeling for your jobs.

(3) YOU BECOME “SOMEONE ELSE”
If you feel like you can’t be yourself at work and have become a “pretender”, don’t shrug it off and don’t blame yourself.  Every company’s culture is different.  Yours may not be aligned with who you are as a person.  Be aware that there are professional people out there who embrace the same goals and values as you do.  It may be time to seek them out.

(4)  YOUR JOB DOESN’T MAKE USE OF YOUR TALENTS
Perhaps you’re an advertising executive who has always wanted to be a chef.  Perhaps your job title is “co-ordinator”, but you feel more like the creative type.  It’s never too late to look in a new direction in terms of your career and future happiness.

(5) YOU SPEND MOST OF YOUR TIME GRUMBLING
People may love to commiserate over frustrating aspects of our jobs.  But if most of our hours at work are spent feeding negative thoughts and generally complaining,
that’s a huge sign it may be time to pack it in.  Find a new career in an environment that feels more rewarding and in line with your talents.  You can do it.

If you have done all you can to improve things, but your job still makes you miserable, do something about it.  Take a few steps forward each week.  Compile your portfolio, and update your resume.  Seach the career websites to see what’s out there.  Take a few personality tests to help you identify your strengths. 

When we feel unhappy or unsatisfied about things, it’s safe to say it’s time to find something out there that’s better suited to us.  Where do you want to go next?  All the best for a rewarding and fulfilling career doing what you love!

– article by Hallie Crawford visit her blog at www.halliecrawford.typepad.com.

Nowadays, it is so difficult for me to trust anyone around me.  Perhaps I betrayed by many people.  It is tough for me to stay positive and gain confident anymore.  Sometimes, I even feel tired staying on guard against people around me.  The safer place is on my bed, the smell of my polster, my pillows my quit-cover, my bedsheet, nonetheless the shrill chirping sound of crickets repeatingly within me.

In the Bible, Jesus said to love my neighbour as I love myself.  Sometimes, it is so hard to practice as such. HELP ME LORD, GIVE ME THE STRENGTH TO LIVE IN CONFIDENCE again?!

Till I watch the movie, AVATAR, recently. A science friction movie written and directed by James Cameron.  It gave me another perspective in life.  Looking at Jake Sully, a paraplegic former marine replaced his late twin brother, a scientist trained to be an avator operator, to go to a strange Earth-like-Moon planet known as Polyphemus.

With his inability he was able to overcome many obstacles, although people around him, included the Na’vi (the tall blue-skinned species in Polyphemus), called him “Moron”.  He never gave up himself, his believes, goals and destiny. 

Maybe God want me to see this perspective through the movie.  My husband and some friends also watched the same movie, however, they didn’t grasp and share the same punch-line of the story as that I did.  Just don’t understand why….

In the movie, the Na’vi have the wormy thingy on their “pony-tails” that connect to the animals, trees and even the ground.  This way they could communicate their emotions and their thinkings with the animals, trees and the ground.  And vice-versa.  The nature in Polyphemus helped Jake to become wiser, to lead a proper life and how to love.

There’s a saying “looking at the stars in the sky and feet the ground”.  Standing on earth with my bare-foot and feel the grounding to gain my confident to face and trust the world.

REMINDER for myself, HOW TO LEARN TO TRUST AGAIN:

(1) Recognize the need to trust again. Some people fool themselves into believing that they do not need to have close relationships in their lives. However, human beings are social creatures, and need one another. Without trust, you cannot have a close relationship. Without a close relationship, life can seem empty.

(2) Acknowledge areas in which you already trust. Many people, especially those who experienced deep betrayal in childhood through abuse, believe that they are unable to trust anyone in any fashion. But this is simply untrue. Even the most jaded person generally trusts the waiter to bring him food in a restaurant, or the mail carrier to deliver the mail to his mailbox.

(3) Understand that one person does not have to meet all of your needs. Many people search for that one person with whom they can share their entire heart. This is not necessary in order to learn to trust again. What matters is that all of your needs are met. You can accomplish this by trusting different people with different needs.

(4) Look for people who are trustworthy. The way a person treats others is a good indicator of how she might treat you. If she tells you the intimate details of another person’s life, she is likely to betray your confidence as well. However, if she never says an unkind word about another person, she is unlikely to speak poorly of you to others, either.

(5) Ease into a new relationship slowly. Start by sharing small confidences and see what happens. If the person breaches a small confidence, you do not want to trust him with a larger one. However, as the person shows he is trustworthy in the smaller things, you can feel more confident about trusting him with the bigger things.

(6) Trust yourself to be okay if you are betrayed. In many cases, the fear of trusting another person is more about your own fear of not being able to handle a betrayal. If you fear you will fall apart if the other person breaks your trust, you will be less likely to trust again. However, if you are confident you are going to be okay even if the other person lets you down, it will be much easier for you to learn to trust again.

(7) Be patient with your progress. After you have been betrayed, it can be a challenge to learn to trust again. Give yourself the time and space you need to ease back into trusting another person again.

Dear all,

Here is my first time blogging on the new “rediff blogs” platform. 

While clearing up the old newspapers and found an interesting article about “Do the right thing”.  The title of this article caught my attention, because I always think that I am not doing the right things perhaps.  Often receive comments and habour inside.  I felt so unhealthy.  My boss commented about women in general as they always habours negative remarks in them.  He is right!  I remind myself as frequent as possible to “let go” negativities, breath them out as much as I could.  Below is an article wrote by Alan Fairweather, an international business speaker, best-selling author and sales growth expert.  Hope you can find some insights in his writing and change the way of your thinking to manage your business and private lives.

Successful Managers Focus on Strengths Not Weaknesses.
By Alan Fairweather

Let me ask you a simple question - what do you believe a manager’s job is all about? What is it that managers do on a day to day basis?

Now, if you’re a manager, or you probably work for one, then you’d almost certainly be able to list a whole range of actions and activities. They might include - interviewing, solving problems, dealing with customers, planning, report writing, analysing data, dealing with complaints and hopefully, leading and motivating the people who report to them.

Many managers seem to believe that, over and above these activities, the prime function of their job is to identify weaknesses in members of their team, and resolve them. In other words, they relentlessly focus on the ‘negative aspects’ of an employee’s job.

They do this, at worst, by criticising, and reprimanding or, at best, by coaching or training. I am aware of managers that spend a great deal of their time exploring an employee’s performance looking for some perceived fault or aspect that could be improved. Parents often focus on the negative aspects of a child’s school report rather than the positive.

Too many managers are spending too much time trying to change people.

They seem to believe that if they train people, tell them what to do or even threaten them with disciplinary action or the sack, then they can get them to change.

The successful manager concentrates on developing the strengths of their team members - not trying to correct their weaknesses. Sometimes you have to manage around a weakness, but you can’t make people what they’re not.

When I was a teenager, my father sent me for piano lessons for about three years. He was determined that I would learn to play the piano. To this day I can not play a note. I realise now, as an adult, that I am just not musical. Strange as it may seem, I’m not particularly interested in music. My CD collection consists of about 6 CD’s which I rarely listen to. If I had attended piano lessons for even more years then I’m sure I could have become competent, however, I would never be any good at playing the piano.

It’s a waste of time trying to correct weaknesses that can’t be sorted. Some people just can’t build relationships with customers, others can’t work as fast as you need them to, others can’t write a report to save their life, (and ‘certain other people’ will never be able to play the piano)

Your most productive time as a manager will be spent focussing on strengths and how to develop these further. If you give people feedback on what they do well; then it is often the case that there is an improvement in what they don’t do so well. By focussing on the positives, they feel more motivated to improve the negative aspects of their performance.

So there you have it; whether in your business or personal life, focus on the positive aspects of other people, not on the negatives.

Remember: People have one thing in common; they are all different.

I could not get over something that happened last week. I have to vet it out by writing .

Last Friday, I received a sms text from a friend, let`s name her J-gal, who organized a birthday dinner for another friend, let`s name him N-boy, on Sun (6 Dec). His birthday is 3 weeks later, and the reason she arranged it last Sunday because his wife would give birth anytime the next few weeks.

6 Dec is my husband`s birthday. We planned to celebrate on Saturday though because I would be participating in a 10-km run in the morning. Knowing me, I might need the Sunday to recover, he suggested to do lunch on Saturday.

When I received that sms from my friend, I rejected her, knowing the coming events on Sunday. I'd rather celebrate with my husband than my friend if I could recover from my run in the evening. My replied was: 'Sunday is H birthday, so I cannot join' and her replied was 'wow so coincident, last round was your anniversary and now your hubby`s birthday ."

This is absurd to me even though she does not have a husband, I assume she would not join if her mother or father is having birthday on the same day?!!!!

I didn`t reply her after a long while later, and informed her that I'd contribute for the gift but not joining.

Sometimes, I find that Women are so touchy over things, and that include myself. I just couldn't get over this issue. Just don`t know why.

I spoke to another colleague, and showed him the sms. He advised me to take it like a flow of water over a rock. Let it splashed over a rock (that`s me). The rock still remains calm and serene over the continuous splash of water in the river. Arggghh.. perhaps God really put me into tests with this group of friends.

A few of them (40 to 50 year old women) complaints a lot. Complaints over gifts I presented. Then gossips and so on. I just wonder if I am involved in the right group of people. Or most people at this age group are complainers, gossipers always pain in their necks. Phew!!!!

Basically, I just want to understand WHY some people just behave in such way . :p

A Chinese man walks into a bank in New York City and asks for the loan officer. He tells the loan officer that he is going to China on business

for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000.

The bank officer tells him that the bank will need some form of security for the loan, so the Chinese man hands over the keys to a new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He produces the title and everything checks out. The Loan officer agrees to accept the car as collateral for the loan.

The bank’s president and its officers all enjoy a good laugh at the Chinese for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral against a $5,000 loan. An employee of the bank then drives the Ferrari into the bank’s underground garage and parks it there.

Two weeks later, the Chinese returns, repays the $5,000 and the interest, which comes to $15.41. The loan officer says, “Sir, we are very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we checked you out and found that you are a multi-millionaire. What puzzles us is why you would bother to borrow $5,000.

The Chinese replies: “Where else in New York City can I park my car for two weeks for only $15.41 and expect it to be there SAFELY when I return.”

We the unfortunate;

Trained by the uneducated. 

To do the unnecessary for the ungrateful….

…what kind of world I am living in

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And - which is more - you’ll be a Man, my son!

Author - unknown.

I read an inspiring article was written by Gary Hayden published on The Straits Times on 4 Jun 2009 would like to share with my iLand friends.  The statement I remember the most is ‘Men do not suffer anyone to seize their estates, yet they allow others to trepass upon their time’.  Hopefully you may find some insights and help you to see life in a different perspective.

Gary wrote:

‘It takes a great man, and one who has risen far above human weakness, not allow any of his time to be filched from him.’ — quoted by Seneca, Roman philosopher.

Last week, I celebrated my 45th birthday.  I found myself reflecting, not for the first time, on just how quickly life flashes by.  My teenage years are still fresh in my mind, yet they have now receded 30 years into the past.  Statistcially speaking, my death is closer than my birth.

These sobering thoughts prompted me to read something that was recommended some time ago by an MYB reader: Seneca’s essay, ON THE SHORTNESS OF LIFE.  It has inspired me.

Seneca was a Roman politician and philosopher who lived from 4BC to 65AD.  In his essay, perhaps his most celebrated work, he hammers home a simple yet profound truth: that life is plenty long enough provided we use it wisely.

The trouble, of course, is that very few of us do use it wisely.  We treat time, our most precious commodity, as though it were of little value.

• HOW WE SQUANDER TIME
  Peopl often bemoan the shortnes of life, said Seneca.  In fact, time is not short; we make it so because we waste it.

‘Princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner,’ he wrote.  In the same way, our allotted time, though quite sufficient if managed properly, is all too often squandered.

Much of his essay is taken up describing the many ways in which men and women fritter away their time.  Space permits me to mention only a few, but I hope they will be sufficient to illustrate his point. 

One of the biggest time-wasters is the pursuit of riches.  We all must work to earn money to live, of course.  We have little choice in that.  But many people become, in Seneca’s words, ‘possessed by greed that is insatiable’.  The acquisition of wealth comes to dominate their lives.

Often, these people are fully aware of their loss.  ‘You will hear many of those who are burdened by great prosperity cry out.. `I have no chance to live`’, said Seneca.  Yet their greed drives them on and on.

It is not only our working hours that can preoccupy us and filch away our time.  Our leisure activities can be just as unrewarding.  ‘Would you say that man is at leisure’, at Seneca, ‘who arranges with [OBSESSIVE] care his Corinthian bronzes.. and spends the greater part of each day upon bits of rusty copper?‘

I myself learnt this lesson the hard way some years ago, when I played competitive chess.  At first, I played simply for the joy of the game.  As time went on, I became obsesed with improving and began to spend many irksome hours studying strategy, tactics, openings and end-games.  What started out as a pleasure became a burden and a self-imposed one at that.

Another only-too-common way of squandering time is to sacrifice it to the whims of others. ‘Men do not suffer anyone to seize their estates,’ wrote Seneca, ‘yet they allow others to trepass upon their time’.

These words strike a very deep chord in me.  I can look back on many occassions when I have wasted precious hours, days and weeks on activities that hold no value for me. Why?  Simply because someone else roped me into them.

‘All those who summon you to themselves turn you away from your own self,’ wrote Seneca.  This is not to say that we should never offer our time to others.  But we should do so only when we feel that the time is well spent.

• CLOSING THOUGHTS
  In his essay, Seneca identified a host of other ways in which we fritter away the time of our lives.  Interested readers can read all of them at: www.forumroma-num.org/literature/seneca_younger/brev_e.html.

‘Look back in memory,’ he urged, ‘and consder when you ever had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you had intended, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural ex-pression, when your mind was ever unperturbed, what work you have achieved in so long a life…’

Live life to the fullest, Value the Time God give us, make good use of it.  Share with the most needy and precious people you love.

Not sure if any one read any article similar to the one I posted below, HOW TO USE POWER OF MIND.  It is quite amazing and scary. 

To use the power of the mind, the first essential is to direct every mental action toward the goal in view, and this direction must not be occasional, but constant. Most minds, however, do not apply this law. They think about a certain thing one moment, and about something else the next moment. At a certain hour their mental actions work along a certain line, and at the next hour those actions work along a different line. Sometimes the goal in view is one thing, and sometimes another, so the actions of the mind do not move constantly toward a certain definite goal, but are mostly scattered.

The full power of mind is turned upon that object, and as mind is the ruling power, the full power of all their other forces will tend to work for the same object. In using the power of mind as well as all the other forces we possess, the first question to answer is what we really want, or what we really want to accomplish; and when this question is answered, the one thing that is wanted should be fixed so clearly in thought that it can be seen by the mind’s eye every minute. But the majorities do not know what they really want. They may have some vague desire, but they have not determined clearly, definitely and positively what they really want, and this is one of the principal causes of failure.

So long as we do not know definitely what we want, our forces will be scattered, and so long as our forces are scattered, we will accomplish but little, or fail entirely. When we know what we want, however, and proceed to work for it with all the power and ability that is in us, we may rest assured that we will get it. When we direct the power of thinking, the power of will, the power of mental action, the power of desire, the power of ambition, in fact, all the power we possess on the one thing we want, on the one goal we desire to reach, it is not difficult to understand why success in a greater and greater measure must be realized.

To illustrate this subject further, we will suppose that you have a certain ambition and continue to concentrate your thought and the power of your mind upon that ambition every minute for an indefinite period, with no cessation whatever. The result will be that you will gradually and surely train all the forces within you to work for the realization of that ambition, and in the course of time, the full capacity of your entire mental system will be applied in working for that particular thing.

On the other hand, suppose you do as most people do under average circumstances. Suppose, after you have given your ambition a certain amount of thought, you come to the conclusion that possibly you might succeed better along another line. Then you begin to direct the power of your mind along that other line. Later on, you come to the conclusion that there is still another channel through which you might succeed, and you proceed accordingly to direct your mind upon this third ambition.

Then what will happen? Simply this: You will make three good beginnings, but in every case you will stop before you have accomplished anything. There are thousands of capable men and women, however, who make this mistake every year of their lives. The full force of their mental system is directed upon a certain ambition only for a short time; then it is directed elsewhere. They never continue long enough along any particular line to secure results from their efforts, and therefore results are never secured.

The higher you aim, the greater will be your achievements, though that does not necessarily mean that you will realize your highest aims as fully as you have pictured them in your mind; but the fact is that those who have low aims, usually realize what is even below their aims, while those who have high aims usually realize very nearly, if not fully, what their original ambition calls for. The principle is to direct the power of mind upon the very highest, the very largest and the very greatest mental conception of that which we intend to achieve.

The first essential therefore, is to direct the full power of mind and thought upon the goal in view, and to continue to direct the mind in that manner every minute, regardless of circumstances or conditions.

The second essential is to make every mental action positive. When we desire certain things or when we think of certain things we wish to attain or achieve, the question should be if our mental attitudes at the time are positive or negative. To answer this we only have to remember that every positive action always goes toward that which receives its attention, while a negative action always retreats. A positive action is an action that you feel when you realize that every force in your entire system is pushed forward, so to speak, and that it is passing through what may be termed an expanding and enlarging state of feeling or consciousness.

The positive attitude of mind is also indicated by the feeling of a firm, determined fullness throughout the nervous system. When every nerve feels full, strong and determined, you are in the positive attitude, and whatever you may do at the time will produce results along the line of your desire or your ambition. When you are in a positive state of mind you are never nervous or disturbed, you are never agitated or strenuous; in fact, the more positive you are the deeper your calmness and the better your control over your entire system.

The positive man is not one who rushes helter-skelter here and there regardless of judgment or constructive action, but one who is absolutely calm and controlled under every circumstance, and yet so thoroughly full of energy that every atom in his being is ready, under every circumstance, to accomplish and achieve. This energy is not permitted to act, however, until the proper time arrives, and then its action goes directly to the goal in view.

The positive mind is always in harmony with itself, while the negative mind is always out of harmony, and thereby loses the greater part of its power. Positiveness always means strength stored up, power held in the system under perfect control, until the time of action; and during the time of action directed constructively under the same perfect control. In the positive mind, all the actions of the mental system are working in harmony and are being fully directed toward the object in view, while in the negative mind, those same actions are scattered, restless, nervous, disturbed, moving here and there, sometimes under direction, but most of the time not.

That the one should invariably succeed is therefore just as evident as that the other should invariably fail. Scattered energy cannot do otherwise but fail, while positively directed energy simply must succeed. A positive mind is like a powerful stream of water that is gathering volume and force from hundreds of tributaries all along its course. The further on it goes the greater its power, until when it reaches its goal, that power is simply immense.

A negative mind, however, would be something like a stream that the further it flows the more divisions it makes, until, when it reaches its goal, instead of being one powerful stream, it has become a hundred small, weak, shallow streams. To develop positiveness it is necessary to cultivate those qualities that constitute positiveness. Make it a point to give your whole attention to what you want to accomplish, and give that attention firmness, calmness and determination.

Try to give depth to every desire until you feel as if all the powers of your system were acting, not on the surface, but from the greater world within. As this attitude is cultivated, positiveness will become more and more distinct, until you can actually feel yourself gaining power and prestige. And the effect will not only be noticed in your own ability to better direct and apply your talents, but others will discover the change.

Accordingly, those who are looking for people of power, people who can do things, will look to you as the one to occupy the position that has to be filled. Positiveness therefore, not only gives you the ability to make a far better use of the forces you possess, but it also gives you personality that much admired something that will most surely cause you to be selected where people of power are needed.

Further information refer to website: http://www.abundance-and-happiness.com/mind-power.html

In most situations we have the choice to be passive, assertive, or aggressive.  Being assertive is often the best choice.