Birds of the Same Feather Flock Together

 Birds of the Same Feather Flock Together

This could be one of the oldest and most recycled proverb within the modern times, i.e. 
 Birds of the Same Feather Flock Together.  Question is, how can it continue to endure and get requoted a zillion times till now ?  It's because it has been proven true over and over again over time across all the strata of society and cutting across ages and generations.  Is this still worth talking today ?  Absolutely YES because there are many insightful lessons we can pick up from this old proverb, albeit heavily recycled.  

DONT get me wrong.  We're NOT shying away from this proverb.  We're NOT shooting this down and peppering with bullets.  If it's NOT detrimental to us and if it's NOT inimical to us, let's go for it.  I'm all for it.  BUT here's all the BUTs.  If you round up with losers, you'll end up with losers.  And when you're with losers, unconsciously you'll pick up their habits and attitude in life.  If you're with negative and cynical people all the time, you'll become cynical and negative.  In the end, you will end up living the lives of other people.  

 What's the fix for all these? Align yourself with positive and powerful people.  People who can encourage and empower you.  People you can learn from.  Align yourself with people LIKE YOU, people who dream LIKE YOU, people who want more in life, people who keep stretching and searching and seeking the HIGHER GROUND in life as opposed to the majority out there.  Always strive to get on top in life because it's the bottom that's OVERCROWDED.  Why is it OVERCROWDED there?  Because it doesn't take any effort to be there.

But hey, you DON'T want to be at the bottom because it doesn't take any motivation in order to stay down there on a lower level.  Harness yourself and tell yourself that you're going to challenge yourself.  Many times, things that we shouldn't do, we do.  And this tells us that the biggest enemy we gotta deal with is ?  OURSELF, whew !  As that old African proverb goes, 'IF THERE'S NO ENEMY WITHIN THE ENEMY OUTSIDE WILL DO US NO HARM'.  So what is it you're doing now that will be a liability to you ?  

Look towards the future, take an inventory of yourself and ask yourself, what is it about you that you should leave behind because it NO LONGER FITS ?  Unless you change your behavior and pattern, you're going to continue to produce the same results in 
  

your life.  When you reassess yourself, you would know whether you got a SMASH or a FLOP.  Worst, when you say 'NO' to yourself, by then you have taken yourself out of things.  And here's a VERIFIED FACT:  87% of our SELF-TALK is NEGATIVE. So we gotta take a conscious and deliberate effort to extricate ourselves from this deep morass.  And remember that whatever you have done in the past is not a reflection of your possibilities but instead, it's just a reflection of your consciousness.  Final word ?  let's TRUST OURSELF by building up the very foundation of our self-confidence. As the French say, 'TU PEUX LE FAIRE" [YOU CAN DO IT]. 📌📌📌

Recency Bias

 Recency Bias

Being bias is not good per se but what makes this matter worse is when we get hit with RECENCY BIAS.  Multifarious events or results tend to be influenced and/or shaped up RECENCY BIAS.  It's the PAST that dictates the results, instead of the the very PRESENT moment, that very moment itself.

And how do we define RECENCY BIAS.  Either it's a premature assumption that something will happen again because it did happen recently or simply giving that heavy weight on something simply because it did happen recently.

Unfortunately, the cognitive part of us seem to be illuminated by those bulbs such that when one bulb gets busted, the cognitive part in us can vividly remember that it was the second bulb from the left that got busted.  On the other hand, if the RECENCY you could recall are successes or milestone achievements, that may [LIKELY] lead you to succeed and succeed more.  That's the streak most bemedaled competitors are motivated to the hilt.

Too bad, till now the market innovators have yet to invent 'eraserheads', tools that can erase out those RECENCIES in our cognitive part.  Either way, we should have heard of streaks.  Winning streaks. Losing streaks.  Those streaks of 'bad luck' when in fact and in truth, what dictated those losing streaks is RECENCY BIAS.

Too bad if we ourselves are stuck with RECENCY BIAS.  Those moments of turmoil when you can hardly literally move on because you were so damn frustrated with the turn of events such that things seem to have driven you many wedges deeper.  How to get over this dilemma?  Clear. Initialize. Reboot.  Restart things even if you need to start coldly.

Where and when you get trapped between headwinds and tailwinds, go for the latter.  Never get trapped by headwinds  Remember your life is your responsibility.  If you DONT hold yourself accountable enough, you will come up with the tons and tons of reasons why you can't do this and that.  Take that game-changing step dude.✅✅✅

Never Burn Bridges

Never Burn Bridges

That path in our life, land mines are planted all over the place, leaving you very little room left to wiggle out.  Arguments, disagreements, duels, skirmishes, tiff and really bloody fights are all part of our life stories.  And expectedly, we would end up bruised, scarred and even injured, sometimes, when the stars don't align, things could have a fatal end. But if there is a basic NO-NO, NEVER BURN BRIDGES.

Work environments are a very learning experience.  Decades back, you can spew fire at your ex-boss out of sheer frustration exacerbated by emotions.  And you just won't give a damn because you were almost cocksure that you have seen the last shadow of your ex-boss.  Fast forward in today's  connected and digitized world, gone were those silos, those trenches.  

You would never know really.  In your next job hop, were filling up an online form unaware that your ex-boss is in that organization.  Or, you may have finally hurdled all interviews and all that's waiting for you to sign the job offer on the dotted line is a required reference check with your ex-boss, and that's all.  But WHAT IF you burned your bridges ?  Where does that leave you ?  Probably in a deep deep trench you just can't extricate because by that time, much as you want to mend fences with your ex-boss, how can you have the temerity to reach out when that rickety bridge is all in tatters and just beyond repair.

This poster says it all.  If there's anything you got to protect every step of the way is your integrity.  There could be huge gaps and disconnects with your previous bosses but both of you can agree to disagree, that's all [and nothing more than that].  Things can still end up amicably, civilly.  And that runs true even to your friendships.  God knows, a decade or two later, you would need to leverage on a helpline where your former bff is at the other end.  I've witnessed these scenarios quite a few times wherein a decade later, your friend from way back is already a successful litigation lawyer and you're in a legal tussle  where he's the realistic option in your community.  

You and I may easily give a cold shoulder those people now pulling the strings, those straddling the corridors of power.  But they should never be looked beyond their shoulders because you'll never know that you need to initiate a courtesy call to a friend way back in school simply because you need HELP.  And when we need HELP, remember we would even cling to the sharp edges of the sword simply because we needed HELP.  So please, NEVER BURN BRIDGES.📌📌📌

End That Pity Party

 End That Pity Party

Everyone of us do have our UPs and DOWNs in life and probably for some of us, there could have been more DOWNs than UPs.  And when we're down, it's fine self-pity will creep in.  But when things go down our way, we need to focus on finding the light.  With no vision, we could drift away.  In brief, we gotta fix our life then.  But saying it is better than done so let us translate our words into action via steps proven to be effective over and over again based on clinical studies.

Sulking would be fine but again we can only get so far into that.  Eventually, we need to allow ourselves to consider the expanse where we exist at that moment. And it really depends on how we conceive the limits of our being.  And if there are issues recurring repeatedly, we gotta fix the things that repeat 

everyday because people might think of it as trivial.  Things we do everyday may seem trivial as it comprises approximately 50% of what we need to do for the day but those are just NOT mundane.  The things we do everyday are, in fact, the most important things we do.  And if probably you initiate a hundred adjustments to your being means there's a lot less rubbish around with you and in the end, that would mean there will be likely fewer traps for you to step into.  So how do we take the next step ?  Stay within your domain of competence.  You just DONT walk up to repair a helicopter and start tinkering on it.  The phoenix is a classic example of transformation.  The thing is, the importance of what you learn is proportionate to just how wretched it is to learn it.

If what you're doing is working, you get what you want but there's no learning in that.  It's when you stumble across something difficult, then you recoil then you're down to the depths and you have to sort yourself out and you realize you're down in the dumps and you need some fixing.   That's where things get murkier because we human beings are strange

creatures because we're very malleable compared to animals, just like those grizzly bears now and grizzly bears a thousand years ago are the same, they do the same thing, there's NO transformation but we human beings have this massive brain so we pay a big price for it [as a challenge].  Finding out something you're doing is wrong, that sort of built into like a character, that element of character, a presumption of your perception or a deep habit really built into you and its a neural structure, it's alive and you gotta have to kill it.  

And if you need to go through a massive revision, it's like the person that comes out the other end might hardly be the same person just iike if you're trying to combat alcoholism which is a wretched thing to do, maybe because all of your friends are alcoholic.  In the end, it's NOT how addicted you are to the substance but it's how you live with it.  At the end of day, there is no such thing as a LOST CAUSE except when we feel we're lost in the maze of life.✅✅✅

Why 'Small' IRELAND can be 'Big'

 Why 'Small' IRELAND can be 'Big'

Most of us, including pundits and political analysts, equate size with power and prestige.  That's when the sheer sizes of China and Russia make them default members of the revered G-7.  But who cares about smallness ? Look at the smallness of Ireland and the tiny islands across the Pacific.  Have you heard them grabbing the headlines ?  No senor.  Why?  Hmmm, well i'd like to point fingers to the self-declared pundits and analysts who feel they pretty know the global community like the palm of their hands.  But let me play devil's advocate here.  Why do we hardly hear about Ireland?  About Kiribati Islands?  Or even about the Faukland Islands wherein the U.K. was drawn to real war skirmishes not too long ago.  Too nad, when any of the G-7 countries sneeze, the rest of the world catches cold faster than lightning.

Now, if I post the names of Robert de Niro, Liam Neeson and Colin Farrell, surely it will catch your attention, right?  Each of them have etched in stone their accomplishments to date, yet, are we aware enough of the commonality amongst them?  Yes, they're all of Irish descent, so that shouldn't make you surprise by now as to how far have they scaled the heights of being recognized and respected in their own craft.

Oh, which reminds me of my favorite boss long time back.  He being an Irish, we did had a taste of his temper but that's just a fly in the ointment because everyone simply loved and embraced him in our organization.  His personal charm and warmth was something almost everyone cherished in him.  Many years later, I realized that those traits were very Irish, so that makes me less surprised, albeit decades behind.

What's interesting to realize though is that you DONT need to be of Irish descent to manifest any of the most admired Irish traits.  Appreciating their traits of charm and warmth and 'walking the talk' can turn ourselves into token replicas of the admired Irish traits.  

Let's swing over to the United States.  Quite a long list of the most admired Americans are of Irish descent.  JFK decades back.  Fast forward today, we have President Joe Biden.  Regardless of political color, the lesson here is that we can bring forward our own cultures even when we migrate and your culture will never be lost as long as you manifest the traits that made you one.❗❗❗

Block Out the NOISE

 Block Out the NOISE

The world we live in is undeniably noisy.  The uncontrolled decibels of noise is just everywhere.  And ironically in life, noise should not be taken literally but it's inclusive of all the whispers that run through your ears  coming from all corners.  When we wanted to buy an item, isn't it there's noise from within us, playing devil's advocate and dissuading us from buying that item?  When we wanted to go driving out of town, something within us tells us to not go at all.  When we wanted to pour out all our efforts at work, something within us pulls us the other direction and tempts us just to call sick so you can go elsewhere !

Even our domesticated dogs could feel the brunt of all the cacophony in our noisy and nosy world.  If pet animals can feel this way, how can you expect the threshold of humans to be so high to control whatever decibels are aired out.  Much as we have to be pragmatic that noise is here to stay in our connected world, it is worth noting that a big chunk of our decisions in life end up at the other side of things because of the ill advice we would get from people around us.

Please DONT get me wrong.  We're not shunning away from counselling and guidance which we will always need in life.  But instead, what we need to filter are the noises around that may end up to be detrimental to your decisions in life.  Remember our mindsets ?  It even emits both the positive and the negative noise.  The onus is on us to validate which NOISE is positive or not.  Where you end up picking up the wrong noise, down the drain you go.

So what's the trick then ?  Let's 'TUNE OUT the NOISE''.  DONT align with it.  At best, tear it down.  At worst, ignore it.  By tearing it down or at least ignoring it, you DONT give those unnecessary noises any chinaman's chance to gain any headway.  But it if does, shoot it down before it gains traction.  Nip things in the bud.  Cut and cut clean.

If we have missteps in life, often it is when we filter the stuff we love to come into our minds.  As many of us live in desperation, we tend to be running scared.  We even create 'false evidences' in our mind, appearing REAL.  Our piece of advice?  Start listening to positive stuff to recondition your mind.  Faith comes after hearing, hearing and hearing till it empowers us to a new reality for our self. 

That Coping Mechanism

That Coping Mechanism

Who doesn't need to have those coping skills?  Everyone needs it.  Everyone must have it, in fact.  See yourself devoid of that coping mechanism, those coping skills, it could lead you to another path that will misguide you down.  On the other hand, most of us tend to feel that we have it all, we know it all, there's just no need for us to re-tool and ramp up our soft skills.  That is the worst assumption we can ever have, that misguided notion that you don't need anything, that misplaced thinking not to fix if it ain't broke.  What are our most common pitfalls?  

Oh I DON'T want to commit mistakes.  Oh, I want everybody to like me.  Oh I want to be perfect.    How do we fight off these misguided premises ?  Start looking at adjustments to be better than what you do.  Indeed, it's a natural inclination to put ourselves down.  We were born negative with a negative consciousness because we were born in a negative world.  And this is where our coping skills will come into play.  You need countermeasures.  Can't standstill and lose by default.  

Be wary of the unhealthy coping mechanisms and beware, there are not just five of them but it's a mile-long list to boot.  Self-criticizing without pulling off the brakes, resorting to alcohol, smoking smoking and smoking, getting into a virulent anger that compounds to become violent, getting into the car and driving fast, these are NO-NOs to avoid.

Instead, here's what the doctor prescribed for you.  SOLVE your problem.  Be part of a PEER GROUP.  Coming up with a POSITIVE SPIN of criticism.  AVOID problems, where possible.  Do SELF-CRITICIZE.  SOCIAL withdrawal.  The last antidote?  Smoking and drinking are a NO-NOs.

Got a problem ?  Preparing coffee is fine.  Then start mapping your problem.  Figure out the path towards the solution.  You could end up in a maze but that's fine.  Re-map.  Re-draw because eventually you will figure out the solution.  Just DONT DONT DONT stop mapping your problem until you figure out the solution.  And once you got all figured out, translate it into concrete words and action on a timeline.

Where you're struggling because you tend to grind to a halt once you hit a wall, it points that your coping skills is not there.  Even your fundamentals seem to be a gaping hole.  So you got to cover all the potholes around you.  Never be exposes at various fronts because any problem will knock you off because you can't even do a counter-move on it.  Not to worry, I won't share you the A to Z for your coping skills, you can figure it out well for you.✅✅✅

Remember You Never Left

Remember You Never Left

In our toughest times in our life, how many times we felt giving up and just leaving everything behind ?  When you were teetering to just give up, when it was like the last straw that hit the camel's back, what made you decide to hang on ?

Indeed, those are the toughest times in our lives, when the easiest way out was to give up BUT, here's the BUT.  Did we realize all the efforts we have exerted to date ?  Did we remember all the hardships we had to go through ?  And how about those successive pains, frustr4ations and failure ?  And when we wanted to give up, did we remember our loved homes with whom we have committed our lives regardless as to what happens next to us.

But rather struggle on that misguided fear of going back, remember you can't be back if in the first place, you never left, right ?  That's the upside of not giving up.  Otherwise, going back is the worst thing we all dread.  Remember walking away ?  Because turning back becomes difficult.  Remember raising the white flag ?  And when you wanted to turnaround, it was tough.

And what's the biggest upside of not giving up and not leaving things behind ?  You would realize that you have enough time left, time unspent, enough reservoir of hope to cling on as you continue on your journey.  One of the most difficult and gruelling pains in life is picking up the pieces by starting [ALL OVER AGAIN] from square one, simply because you have given up too soon.  More often, misguided decisions [to GIVE UP] were made emotionally rather than giving it the thought process to decide in a logical or pragmatic manner.  Or worse, when 'whisperers' around you did influence you to reach those ill-advised decisions when you were at the lowest point in your life.

When you're struggling at your lowest point, ask yourself:  ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO DATE ?  IS THIS WHAT YOU REALLY WANT ?  OR DO YOU WANT THINGS TO BE BETTER THAN THIS ?  Or, are you just allowing yourself to get off the hook just like that ?  As this poster goes, PLACE YOUR HAND OVER YOUR HEART and once you feel it, that's called PURPOSE.  And that you're alive for a reason. JUST DON'T GIVE UP.✅✅✅

 

The Sky is NOT Falling

 The Sky is NOT Falling

For whatever reason, you may be unwell now.  Could be you're suffering from some symptoms of a possible illness.  Could be some faux pas at work.  Could be domestic arguments at home.  Could be finances.  Could be issues with your relatives.  Could be your business seems on a 'free fall' or it could be all because of this pandemic.  Nevertheless, trust me, "THE SKY IS NOT FALLING", not at all.  Setbacks happen here and there.  Life's a rough and tumble game [who says you'll walk on a paved road till you reach your destination ?

Not as a spiel but rather as a positive spin of things, when all these 'downy' moments happen, appreciate that it's happening now.  Imagine if that happened at a time when you were in a much worse situation? Can you imagine how can you handle multifarious crises all in a snap?  No one can't, and that's a fact.  So, the mere fact that you can endure now what you need to endure means you got what it takes to move forward.  Any weaker soul would have just given up and tagged as a hapless soul beyond resuscitation.  Remember that after the typhoon, the sun will eventually shine.  After the floods, things will dry up.

Key thing in life is DON'T PANIC.  Remember the tragic tsunamis that hit Japan a few years back ?  When even cars were floating like pieces of toys around Sendai City ?  The day after, Japanese were patiently queueing, with heads bowed.  We didn't see at all any situation where panic was all over the place.  What have we witnessed in countries got got hit with tragedies ?  There was pandemonium and total chaos, people running like headless chicken with no directions but simply pushing others who got into their way.  What was the end result ?  More casualties.  More lives lost.  Losses mounted.

There is no secret formula to contain a problem, to do a 'damage control' except to "KEEP CALM".  At the height of a tragedy, standstill, DON'T go against the tide.  DON'T push yourselves against an immovable wall.  Let that wall collapse before you make your move[s].  At the height of the typhoon, you DON'T go out there like Superman and go against the heavy downpours and the unabated floods.  Remember, THAT TOO SHALL PASS.  

What matters most is your attitude because everything else piggy-backs into it till you shape up to be resilient enough to withstand and endure any ordeal that comes into your way as along as you remember that THAT TOO SHALL PASS.  If your pessimism engulfs you till you end up in a state of stupor, you will be immobile and paralyzed, likely mentally, as your cognitive part will feel crippled to handle a situation that's damning to say the least. 

Remember, THAT TOO SHALL PASS.  And remember the community around you.  They will survive.  YOU will survive.  All it takes is, once the fury of the storm finally stops, thank GOD that you survived the ordeal then in the order of priority, BE CALM as you pick up the pieces and rebuild what was either damaged, ravaged or lost.  Remember, another day dawns and we got that chance to stand again.❗❗❗