- Something has breached the 'threshold'
- Something needs to be urgently 'corrected'
- Something can go from worse to worst 'soon'
- RED FLAGS equate to something 'actionable'
- RED FLAGS could mean a 'MAKE or BREAK'
- RED FLAGS can literally 'burn you down soon'
- RED FLAGS is a final alarm before IT'S OVER
No one size fits all. That explains why we're here, to share my 2-cents where it's worth it.
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Why Wait For 'RED FLAGS'??? When There Is An 'AMBER FLAG'!!!
Monday, June 23, 2025
What's In Your WHEELHOUSE?
What's In Your WHEELHOUSE?
For alignment, the WHEELHOUSE is where you steer the boat. In another perspective, one's professional WHEELHOUSE steers his career forward. Until it became a buzzword in today's daily grinding. In the commercial space, it refers to the very core business of an enterprise and a typical scenario is WHEN an upstart entrepreneur wants to keep pace with his momentum such that he then contemplates to outsource some of the areas he's best doing, all for the sole reason that he wants to scale-up and jumpstart another commercial initiative. BUT hold on. There are parameters to guide us in our decision-making because one misguided move can spell failure. So, What's In Your WHEELHOUSE???
Word of caution. Some of us become too aware of WHEELHOUSES until we reach a point WHEN we [wrongly] thought that every foray we initiate results in a 'Midas Touch' success story. NO sirrrs it DOESN'T shape up that way. Because you got to earn your spurs. Because you got to prove your worth. Because numbers DON'T matter even if you purportedly claim to have 999 skill sets. Because WHAT matters most is if you did legitimately earn this and that capabilityπ₯π₯π₯
BUT researches showed that this is NOT a black OR white stuff because leaving your WHEELHOUSE behind behooves an informed decision that factors in key variables such as:
- The skill may not be the task [or vice versa] WHEREIN to get the most value out of a given task, you may need to offload it to people worth their salt
- WHEN the task DOESN'T need you anymore. Quite a no-brainer WHEN there's NO challenge left for you
- OR a task is huge enough you need to collaborate
The More You Talk, The More You FUEL It!!!
The More You Talk, The More You FUEL It!!!
In any life, any environment, RUMORS become louder and louder especially WHEN you ignore it. BUT WHO wants to add fuel to a brewing fire anyway? In the NBA world WHERE the trade deadline looms again, the rumors just get louder and louder. To douse cold water on it, Pat Riley, Miami Heat's top honco, spoke and no mean terms, stated that they DON'T have even an iota of a plan to trade Jimmy Butler, the colorful 6-time all-start. SO, why did Pat Riley stomp his foot down. He said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH of those rumors WHICH were no less distractions to the players and coaches. Indeed, very true, The More You Talk, The More You FUEL It!!!
The past years, with various organizations, in an attempt to fill a hole that would otherwise sit there and gobble up time and money, sometimes in a burst of inspiration, I'd take charge and propose an idea, perhaps NOT a perfect one at that point in time BUT more as a starting point. I'll toss around my proposal, discussing with others WHO eventually I would need their buy-in, if NOT consensus. And brace yourself, once you propose something, the more you vociferously push for it, the worse my idea seemed to be because the more I heard a NO after a NO, all reasons WHY my proposal was NOT good enough. YES, obstacles will ALWAYS stand in the way, dudeπ₯π₯π₯
WHAT happened next? As my proposal got battered black and blue, left and right, I had to tweak and re-tweak it until I had to retable a new idea if only to keep moving, lest it dies right then and there. With each 'NO', my proposal would get watered down UNTIL it became that unrecognizable and at the end it was hardly a shadow of what I originally proposed. Think of it though, coming up with ideas is FUN. As we have NO shortage of problems, everywhere we look at there are holes to be filled. BUT c'mon, if you have an idea to be tossed in good faith, even a mediocre one OR even an outlandish one, share that idea, toss it out for consideration and let it 'talked out' until it gets more forceful enough✅✅✅
WHY are ideas deserving to be 'talked about'? Because as the discourse progresses, the crappy parts [if any], gets stripped away and in the end, it gets shinier and shinier as it gains momentum. And before you know it, it becomes real. In practical terms, if you want to make progress, be innovative, beat the competition and keep your customers happy, you want your idea to be a 'FUELER' rather than a DILUTER'. A common competitive scenario is getting locked-in in a 'crowded' room or at least within a tightly-knit group WHERE you will go through the wringer for your idea to ever prosper and come into fruition. So, HOW come many are enjoying that winning streak of having things their way, their proposals being embraced over and over again? The most popular catalyst for those success stories are those WHO are so obsessively driven to have the last say, the last laugh in the room, NOT settling until they gain the upper handπππ
Our takeaway: Living in today's world is very competitive BUT if there's a thing that's going in our favor, it's the fact that the field has been more levelled than anytime in the past WHEN the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs would lord it over. Even at the sprawling Silicon Valley, they have a penchant for zeroing-in on the newbies, the startups, the never-heard ones. BTW, the top 10,000 companies at Silicon Valley have employees numbering no more than 50. It's because they want to gobble up the 'cream of the crop'. And when ideas are floated, rather than dilute it, even for the supposed crazy and crappy ones, it's given a fair chance to be validated because THE MORE YOU TALK, THE MORE YOU FUEL up things dude❗❗❗
Sunday, June 22, 2025
When The World Seems OUT OF CONTROL
When The World Seems OUT OF CONTROL
Still raw from our collective experiences from that harrowing Covid-19 pandemic, many of us [Ukraine, Palestine, even the hotly contested West Philippine Sea] to name a few countries] seem to be helplessly watching WHAT may be brewing and leading towards a Third World War, God forbid with the current ISRAEL-IRAN War. And WHILE NOT of this magnitude, inflation is raging, causing and triggering everything from food prices to gasoline pump prices rapidly going up. When The World Seems OUT OF CONTROLπππ
Even the stock markets are down. Nasdaq, Dow Jones, even the Malaysia Bursa are all eating dusts as the stock markets have been plunging and people are worrying that the out-of-control inflation could severely impact their economies, a huge spoiler after everyone's efforts in rebuilding from the depths and abyss of that recent virus outbreak. And that uncertainty CERTAINLY LOOKS CERTAIN as it seems to last for the foreseeable future, God forbid, Insyaallah. SO WHAT'S NEXT for us???
BUT hold on dude, at the very least, we got two options on the table. Obviously, the first option is for us to let all the unpleasantness overwhelm us, whew!@#$%? With that, we'll spend the day doomscrolling through social media, feeling that lethargy and depressed over the state of the world and how unfair everything could be to us given that most of us have given it our best shot as we grind day-in day-out✅✅✅
BUT hold your breath though. Let's flip the coin and we got on hand an alternative which we can find to be practical and ease things up as we cope up with the harsh realities surrounding us. And to deal with and conquer such fears, anxiety and stress, let's dip deeply into our arsenal to pluck out that resilience within us, that process of adapting and overcoming obstacles in the face of adversity. It involves getting KNOCKED DOWN [surely] BUT we should never miss out that we do possess that INNER POWER to get up again, pick up the pieces and grow from that experience, hard and harrowing it may be at times. NO sirrrrrs, it's NOT just about the war between Russia and Ukraine, OR between Israel and Hamas. We need that skill WHEN we get laid off, WHEN we are forced to return to work [against our will], OR WHEN we feel that intense pressure [whether at home OR at work] having to contend WHEN the stars are NOT aligned in our favorπππ
Saturday, June 21, 2025
Conquering Anxiety: Everything Starts With ONE SMALL STEP
Conquering Anxiety: Everything Starts With ONE SMALL STEP
Oh Oh Oh, not too long ago, we'll just shrug off our shoulders WHEN we hear ANXIETY. BUT today, WHO can ignore ANXIETY even as the latest statistics I saw was way back 2019 when 301 million [or 4% of the world population] have various forms of anxiety disorder. ANXIETY per se is NOT the 'end of the world' but the fact that that number increased by 55% since the 1990s, and that it is linked to other health conditions such as depression, and even substance use disorders, when conquering ANXIETY, Everything Starts With ONE SMALL STEPπππ
If there's a BIG MISS by most of us, it is the fact that we start to confront ANXIETY only WHEN it's right there staring in our face. BUT WHERE were we before ANXIETY did hit us? And to piggy-back on those researches, WHAT was going on before ANXIETY did hit us? Did we feel like being trapped in that vicious cycle before it gets to hit us? Those constant worries, fears and the endless "WHAT IFs" and 'I CAN'T' escape, reminds me of the movie ' The Matrixπ₯π₯π₯
Without reinventing things, experts counsel us to quickly identify TRIGGERS & PATTERNS. As ANXIETY is deeply rooted in thoughts that are triggered by situations, events OR even experiences that set off painful feelings, for us to pinpoint [OR at least attempt to pinpoint] those TRIGGERS, we should have a head start to figure out even smaller solutions to 'DISARM' those TRIGGERS. Basic interrogatives could be: WHAT WAS I LOOKING AT? WHO WAS I TALKING TO? WHAT WAS THE TOPIC THEN???
Digging deep to uncover the underlying beliefs and assumptions that somehow secretly fuel our ANXIETIES, it may lead us then to objectively challenge NEGATIVITIES, critical OR even irrational thoughts that may contribute to our distress. Replacing them with healthy and empowering thoughts that counteract those ANXIETY triggers may enable us to regain that elusive control over our thoughts, life and even emotions. Experts also encourage us to make explicit declarations to counter ANXIETY, like: "RIGHT NOW, I CHOOSE TO CHALLENGE ANY SICK OR NEGATIVE BELIEFS TO EMPOWER ME AND FUEL MY RESILIENCE TO REGAIN MY PEACE OF MIND'πππ
Our takeaway: Much as there have been countless success stories WHO did overcome ANXIETY disorders, it is NOT that obvious that there is a bigger number of 'horror stories' in fighting off ANXIETY. To pick the brains of the experts:
- Design a small blueprint and plan to fight ANXIETY
- Set realistic timelines. You can't overcome it so soon
- Prioritize, to determine the SMALL STEPS you'll take
Friday, June 20, 2025
Often, The HARDEST Times Lead Us To The GREATEST Moments
Often, The HARDEST Times Lead Us To The GREATEST Moments. Frankly, this is one of the most oft-quoted one-liners BUT allow me to re-quote it because sometimes, this gets lost in translation. Trials, travails and tribulations are never new to us all BUT the huge miss I have been witnessing over and over again is that, when we get hit with that hard fall, sometimes, we would think that the whole world is crumbling down to our feeble feet, WHAT happens next is that panic and pressure would surface all over the place BUT we're all missing out the fact that we become stronger coming out of the adversities in life. True, WHEN faced with a crisis, it can be difficult in that moment to think how far you can goπππ
This is WHERE RESILIENCE starts to surface as that becomes our ability to bounce back from those adversities and grow from the challenges we grappled with. NOT just psychologists but all studies and researches show that past adversities can help us persevere in the face of a current stress. And those past struggles help us become more RESILIENT with that increased empathy. And leading and living with empathy has never been more important in our world than right now. Because empathy is that ability for us to identify with the challenges that other people face and to see those challenges from their perspective. You can run into an 'empathy roadblock' WHEN you think you have to fix another person's situation or respond with an answerπ§π§π§RESILIENCE will also help us find the 'GOOD'. Through the years, WHENEVER the clouds hovering me get gloomier and darker, I would do my darn best to find that silver lining in the midst of those challenges. And a lot of WHAT's going on feels outside of my control during those times BUT I endeavored to keep some perspective so that I DON'T get off-tracked. Finding the UPSIDE to adversities change the way we copeπππ
YES, one realization I have had through the years is that those adversities in life helped me reframe stress as a challenge. How we think about stress matters enormously in terms of HOW we process it. Some people even view stress as a threat [ouch!!!] WHILE others are able to view it as a challenge. With that challenge response, we end up getting that additional energy, and suddenly our heart's beat gets to be pulsating in an increasing crescendo and before you know it, your adrenaline shoots upπ₯π₯π₯
Our takeaway: Without painting a rosy picture, if your world feels out of control right now and your stress levels are shooting up at an all-time high, go back and recall your past struggles, even those small ones, because at the end of the day, it should have 'hardened' you enough to have a much better ability to manage your current struggles, even if it DOESN'T feel that way in the very moment. RESILIENCE DOESN'T always look pretty, because in some days it could look like that it's just about middling through as best you can. Thing is, WHATEVER you're doing now is enough. That said, leverage on the strengths you gained through the past adversities and ask yourself these basic questions:
- WHERE do I have control, influence OR leverage?
- WHAT is a [proven] specific action plan I can take?
- WHAT are my strengths which fixed those 'chinks in my armor'?
Thursday, June 19, 2025
KISS [Keep It Simple, S__]
Wikipedia says that the KISS Principle is a design principle first noted by the U.S. Navy way back the 1960s. Over time, the KISS Principle was tweaked a zillion times BUT I'd like to relate it to our life for us to KISS [Keep It Simple, S__]. Firstly, we CAN'T have a simple life if we remain adamant and resistant and worst, unwilling to let go of WHAT we were used to. IF you were used to be a 'road warrior' [WHICH I used to be, WHEN I was literally 'living my life on a suitcase'] BUT if your pace in life today has significantly slackened, it's NOT sufficient to accept it BUT you got to embrace it, be thankful that you are in that situation WHERE you are now because that helps you to KEEP IT SIMPLEπππ
Reading The Room
In every gathering, whether formal OR informal, and even amongst those random kibitzers and hobnobbing, there's that explicit discussion happening [WHEN the words are spoken out lout] and the tacit ones as well. As long as you part and parcel of that discussion, it just makes sense that we understand the underlying conversations and reactions that people in the room are having. It's WHEN Reading The Room is a must-doπππ
BUT WHAT IF you are NOT picking up on those subtle cues, HOW can we learn to do so? WHAT signals should we be looking for? And most importantly, is there anything we can do to influence the unspoken dynamics? In concrete terms, this is NOT rocket science. SO HOW? The best way is to pay attention to the people in it. Even noting WHO is next to WHOM, WHO seems relaxed, WHO's seated, WHO's standing and even WHO seems to be fidgetyπππ
HOW's the mood in the room? Does it seem to be relaxed? OR is some tension brewing? BUT it DOESN'T stop there. We got to think about the possible reasons for the emotional states especially the 'outlier' ones. LIKE WHAT's happening in their lives and jobs? This can be tricky if you DON'T know well enough the people 'in the room' although you can still come up with your hypotheses. Then if needed, you can check and tactfully validate those hypotheses with the relevant personπ¦π¦π¦
LIKE, 'in the meeting, I saw you furrow your brow WHEN our discussion turned to that big project. HOW do you feel about it? Hold on, you might wonder WHY we're even talking about this today? It's because psychologists encourage us to improve our 'READING THE ROOM' skills because this is crucial for social-emotional learning. And this is something we CAN'T get away with, UNLESS we'd like to live in the confines of the cavernous caves at Balochistanπ₯π₯π₯
Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Oooops, DON'T Let Go Unless.....
Oooops, DON'T Let Go Unless.....
True, everyday day-in day-out, we meet people, some strangers, some friends, WHO bring out the best in us and splash a palette of colors in an otherwise black-and-white life. True, WHO we are and WHAT we become is NEVER a one-man effort. Everyone in our lives holds a stake in turning us into the person we are. Their thoughts, their outlook, on life and their passion burns beyond our own lives. Instead, they leave pieces of themselves in us just as we do in them. YES, they do leave pieces of themselves in us just as we do in them. And this poster I grabbed CAN'T be farther from the truth, that is, for us to keep people in our life based on those listed criteria. Oooops, DON'T Let Go Unless.....πππ
I might sound emotional BUT the real truth is that we are all the people we've met and all the people we've lost. We are all the exes that loved us and even all crushes that DIDN'T. We are all the people WHO are still in our lives and all the people WHO'VE left. True, it seems quite a tragedy that love DOESN'T reign every time all the time. BUT it is a much bigger tragedy WHEN we erase people from our lives and pretend like they DIDN'T exist anymore OR at all. We've always heard that we're supposed to let someone go totally. Oh Oh Oh, that we'll NEVER heal if they're still around. Heck, even if we said that WHEN something has run its full course, it's time for us to let it goπππ
BUT let's be reasonable and logical, all rolled into one, here: Letting go DOESN'T always mean forgetting a person OR erasing them because we just CANNOT. Maybe it's about preserving a place for them in our hearts. Will erasing them destroy every piece of them that resides within us? Will removing them make us forget about everything they've taught us? Will we stop doing something we love because they were the ones WHO got us into it???
NOT really. True, it's heartbreaking to either leave OR to be left. That aching feeling WHEN you learn that your love was unrequited love OR that a shared moment with another person could NOT amount to anything more, leaves you feeling somewhat empty and numb. One second you're head over heels with them as they sit across the dinner table. Next thing you know, you're wondering if that was the last moment you shared with them. If this was all there was to it, really? YES it could be hard, and harderπ§π§π§
Our takeaway: True, there are countless ideal WHAT IFs in life but that's WHAT idealism is all about. YES, this is a thought-provoking perspective that we rarely come across. BTW, admiring people DOESN'T always have to be a romantic relationship. There are multifarious ways to connect with each other and they are NOT less important. And YES, much as we are encouraged to embrace change, sometimes, we will stumble across that irresistible force and IF and WHEN that does occur, then as this Snoopy poster goes, LET IT GO. Ooooops, DON'T LET GO UNLESS.......... you have toπ₯π₯π₯
Keep Stacking Days!
Keep Stacking Days!
In the competitive and punishing world of the very competitive NBA in the United States, teams are allowed to have up to 15 regular players and up to 3 players on two-way deals [which means they are limited to play up to a max of 50 games and are excluded from any playoffs games. With a team that deep enough, in every game, the NBA coaches will rotate up to a max of 9 to 10 players. That leaves around 5 to 8 either on the bench or are tagged as 'DNP' [did not play']. YET, coaches keep encouraging the benchers to Keep Stacking Days! And more importantly, they are encouraged to be ready AS IN ready anytime their number is called by the coach to come into the game. And they're reminded to Keep Stacking Daysπππ
Straight from my thought processes...
Yes, Resilience Leads To Recovery
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