Author: Life Coach

Feb 8

7 Days of Gratitude: Day 1

On the 7 Days of Gratitude Challenge, I wonder if I could cheat a little and start yesterday, because I had such a wonderful day.

My friends and I were meeting at the beach for a nice group dinner, but a couple decided to meet earlier for a seaside jog. I’m not that keen into running, but I love cycling, and volunteered to carry their bags on my bike.

The weather was beautiful. All perfect for an afternoon jog. As the sun went down, I cycled onto a pier and watched the sea, and felt the cool breeze against my skin. I breathed in deep, and felt good to be alive.

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Feb 7

7 days of Gratitude: Intro

Everyone will agree that a positive attitude is one that is essential for peak performance living. One of the key parts to a positive attitude that I outlined in 9 Keys to Overcoming Difficult Times is an attitude that allows us to acknowledge what is already going well in our lives and appreciate them for their value. I’m talking of course, about the attitude of gratitude.

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Feb 4

9 Keys to Overcoming Difficult Times

Lately, I’ve had to deal with a lot of changes happening in my personal life. At first, describing them to my friends, I kept calling them endings, but afterward I began to feel as if it was a process of renewal. There is a Chinese saying that goes ‘if the old doesn’t go, the new cannot come’. Keeping that in mind, I’ve begun to view these difficult events as a shedding of things for me to grow forward, and so I’ve come to call them ‘changes’ instead of ‘endings’.

Difficult as it may, I know a friend who is also going through some tough changes of his own. This post is really for him because I want to share with him some tools I’ve found to be useful for me in managing my emotional state to navigate through the difficult times. I’m prone to worry and depression myself so I’ve had to learn how to pull myself through, and the beliefs and techniques from NLP and Solutions Focused Brief Therapy have helped tremendously.

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Jan 28

A Smile can bring you further than a Mile

It’s been a month since I came back from my Cambodia expedition. But I can still see the smiles of the children vividly and hear them laughing heartily in my ears. Oh gosh, I do miss them a lot.

The smiles they wear on their faces are so different from what I see back here where I lived. It’s not the kind of smile you see from a colleague from another department along the corridor nor is it the kind of smile you get from a distant relative at a family gathering. They are smiles that warm your heart, smiles that brighten your days and smiles that you want to see again and again. (more…)

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Jan 13

A PONDering Moment in Evolution

When was the last time you decide that you have to change something about or around you? How did you decide to change?

There were something that you decided at a certain point that you want to do more of, to have less of, to move away from, to go towards to…you decided that you deserve more, you are going to stay away from…you are sick of it, you are tired, fed up, irritated, frustrated, peeved, and what else not!?

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Jan 10

The Most Important Thing to Do: Stretch

The single most important principle I’ve learnt that has changed my life more than anything else is the principle of stretching:

Stretching is the act of doing something that you know is good for you and/or good for others and it scares you.

Imagine yourself at the centre of a circle. The edge of the circle is the edge of your comfort zone. It is everything that you know and are comfortable dealing with. Once in a while you might encounter an anomaly that hits the edge of your comfort zone, if it’s a little thing you expand to include it. (more…)

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Dec 31

Directions vs Goals

Since we’re nearing the new year I’m sure many of us will be taking this chance to reflect on the year past and renew on the year ahead. I thought this would be a nice time to make a distinction between setting goals, and setting directions.

What is a goal? Simply put, a goal is a target you set that is:

Specific

Measurable

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Dec 30

How has it been a great year?

After reading on somebody’s blog that she had a great year, I started thinking to myself, ‘Did I have a great year?’

Being a somewhat critical person, I realized this was the wrong question to ask because it could only have a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, and my critical voice said ‘no’.

Ok. Restart.

I knew if I wanted a more quality answer I needed to ask a better quality question.

So I applied the ‘What if’ frame and asked myself, ‘What if this has been a great year? What would have made it great?’ Following Paiboon’s post, I came up with 3 highlights for myself: (more…)

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Dec 30

How has it been a great year?

After reading on somebody’s blog that she had a great year, I started thinking to myself, ‘Did I have a great year?’

Being a somewhat critical person, I realized this was the wrong question to ask because it could only have a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, and my critical voice said ‘no’.

Ok. Restart.

I knew if I wanted a more quality answer I needed to ask a better quality question.

So I applied the ‘What if’ frame and asked myself, ‘What if this has been a great year (more…)

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Dec 22

Don’t Say What You Mean!

What do I mean when I said “Don’t say what you mean”
What I mean is “Say What You Want!!!”
One of my friends made major purchase as a present for himself (e.g. new shirts, watches, etc.) after series of hard work to achieve certain goals. Listen to how my friend response to his friend comment’s
His friend comment: “Wohh.. You got a lot of money and really rich Huh.” (With sarcastic tonality)
He responded: “Oh… no no no lah… I just …” (With shy tonality) (more…)

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Dec 19

The Hand Pump Story

I visit China regularly, and my recent trip teach me something that I would like to share with you, it’s a “Hand Pump”

Hand Pump

Have you use such the pump before? “I have never seen one in Singapore”. You might say. Yes, because this type of pump is only constructed in the location where drought is common. And Singapore is not known for drought area, anyway there is pipe water in Singapore. …

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Dec 19

3 Things To Do Before End of 2005

Before you start wearing your holiday hat, there are few things you could do before X’Mas eve.

Pull out your journal right now and complete these 3 activities within next 10 mins.

1) List down your 3 highlights of 2005.

Something that worth remembering, something that makes yourself proud, something that happens because you’ve put that effort in, something that makes you smile.

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Dec 19

Why the Ads?

If this isn’t the first time you’ve visited our site (thank you!) you might notice a few more changes besides the adorable Boogie Santa (our Christmas mascot!) mentioned in the last post.

If this is the first time you’re visiting, I’m talking about the increase in the number of ads that are currently showing on-site. Making money from online advertising is something I’ve been wondering about since I started reading about pro-blogging and the amounts that the bigger professional blogger sites can pull in…how do they do it? Starting and running the Life Coaches Blog is part of the test and measure to find out how this model works. (more…)

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Dec 19

Another $10 to the Million Dollar Experiment

This just happened: as I was walking back from lunch, I stepped off the walkway and walked on the road, and there, nestled in a small drain unnoticable to anyone on the walkway, was a $10 note.

Whoa! Nice! Woo hoo extra motivation to continue with the Million Dollar Experiment.

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Dec 18

Give Someone a Magical Christmas

Season’s Greetings! It’s the festive time of year again for (more) good will and good cheer.

I’ve always felt more reflective near the end of the year, it seems a time for me to reflect and review on the year before and plan ahead for the year to come.

And when it comes to buying gifts for friends and family, I prefer to eschew buying widgets. I like to take advantage of the season to give something a little more personal to the people dear to me.

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Dec 18

$106 today from the Million Dollar Experiment

Yay! Sold off 2 batches of the old books I’ve been clearing out and made $106 SGD over the weekend. Like the earlier $35 I made from the 1st batch, I attribute this deal to the Million Dollar Experiment, as it was the intention that made me insist on auctioning them off instead of simply thrashing them or even giving them away.

So that brings my running total to $141 SGD ($84.63 USD) in 42 days of the Million Dollar Experiment. Not bad!

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Dec 14

Thinking Negative

David Seah has a hilarious post over at his blog, ‘Thinking Negative’ that’s giving me some ideas on how to write my future posts:

“No no no, that’s not how it works.” the ghost said impatiently. “If you’d had any real talent, it would have manifested itself—at the latest—by your 21st birthday. Too bad you didn’t do more work in high school and college…that might have made up for your dearth of talent, and you could have gone to a really good grad school. Then you might have had a shot. But no…I want to find my passion…” The ghost minced around in a circle, hands waving in mock panic. “I need to know my purpose in life! I’m a maverick! I’m a lone wolf!” (more…)

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Dec 11

Try: Being in Limbo

In some LGAT (Large Group Awareness Training) and indeed in many coaching methodology, the word TRY is somewhat like a banned word. Many like to quote the green guru of 800 years old of the Star Wars fame:

“Do, or do not. There is no TRY!”
Yoda said it right.

The argument is that TRY presupposes the possibility of failing. Many organizations have already dropped “trial and error” to put in place “test and measure” for the same reason.

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Dec 7

My little amendment to The Million Dollar Intention

Yesterday morning as I was heading out I felt uneasy doing the Million Dollar Intention. I think the stress I had been feeling from work had worked itself into my morning and interfered with the usual feeling of relaxed focus I get into while doing the intention*.

I was wondering what was missing, and it hit me. The last couple of days before I had been brooding over what I wanted more of in my life, and I realized it was love and happiness. Was this uneasy feeling a message from my unconscious that my intention for manifesting was incomplete? So in the Million Dollar Intention I slotted in an extra intention (in bold):

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Dec 7

30 Days of The Million Dollar Experiment

Yesterday came and went, and without realizing it in yesterday’s ‘My little amendment to the Million Dollar Experiment’ post, it was also the 30th day goal of our unofficial local chapter of The Million Dollar Experiment!

For those who have publicly joined us, Pete, Brenda, Yezhong (who is overseas on a volunteer mission), June, Mikki, Bernie, Adrian and Janet, how has the last 30 days (less for some of you) been? For myself, as I wrote earlier, I’ve made a total of SGD$35 (USD$20.72) so far from the Million Dollar Experiment from an unexpected impulse to sell my old books. (more…)

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Nov 29

Prognosticating Procrastination

I wanted to write about Procrastination. You know, the big P word that people have blamed for everything and anything. So many people have written about it…the personal effectiveness people, the Getting-Things-Done camp, the procrastination busters and it makes me wonder if I can offer anything different. So I joined the union.

The Procrastinator United couldn’t take off as a collective force coz I saw the sign when I arrive:

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Nov 21

Update on The Million Dollar Experiment

Today is the 15th day since the launch of our own local Million Dollar Experiment chapter based on Steve Pavlina‘s Million Dollar Experiment.

So, for those who publicly joined on our blog, Pete, Brenda, Yezhong, June, Mikki, and Bernie, how has it been working out for you guys so far?

Me, personally, I’m proud to report that it has brought me a grand amount of zero dollars. Yep. Zero. Nada. Nothing. Zilch. (more…)

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Nov 18

Postponing Your Worries

These last couple of weeks have been very difficult for me, I’ve had to deal with work stress from long hours and tight deadlines, coupled with some personal issues that cropped up at the same time. Like the saying goes, it doesn’t seem to just rain, it pours!

To keep myself going, I kept using an old and simple technique of mine. Whenever I felt a negative emotion welling up, I just told myself:

“Not now, later.”

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emotional-labour-vs-emotional-exhaustion
Nov 12

Emotional Labour vs Emotional Exhaustion

I wanted to share what I read about emotional exhaustion in this post. But I realize I had to explain one important concept ie emotional labor before that. Labour requires putting in effort and from my readings, the performance of emotional labor can be executed mainly in the three following ways as proposed by Ashworth and Humphrey:

1) We fake the emotions that are required at the moment and we can do this by displaying behaviors that are correspondent with these emotions. Such behaviors include verbal and no verbal cues like regulation of our tonality and body language.

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