The ability to make quick decisions is an important key to success. According to Napoleon Hill, famous author who wrote the bestseller non-fiction titled “Think and Grow Rich”, the Declaration of Independence, the beginning of this free country, originated from the swift and courageous decisions made by 56 men. If they didn’t decide to make this country independent, there wouldn’t be July 4 holiday any more!

Do you struggle at making decisions? And I’m not even talking about important decisions that would change your life dramatically such as becoming an entrepreneur, getting married, and having a kid. I’m referring to the daily decisions that you have to make, such as choosing which clothes to wear in the morning, whether you would say good morning to strangers, things like that.

I have a very good example to illustrate the benefits of advance decision-making (ADM). I take the train to work in the morning, and while I’m walking to the station I usually see the janitor lady with her whole cart of cleaning tools, getting ready to start the day. I’d say good morning to her no matter how I feel that morning. I might be tired, I might be in a good mood, I might be having sore throat. But I’ve made the decision in advance that I’d smile and greet her “Good Morning!” every time I see her. It’s a simple gesture, but if I didn’t make that decision, I might just pass by her without looking if I’m not “feeling it”. I’d feel a little guilty after that because she’d expect a “Good Morning!” from me, and I struggle emotionally for a little early in the morning. Not that it’s a big deal if it happens once in a while, you and I have those kind of the days when you don’t feel like talking to anybody. But if that accumulates day by day, it’d grow into a big emotional hustle in your mind, and that’s not very effective and might even ruin your morning ride to work.

Taking it to the next level, after I hop on the train, I will start looking for seats so I can sit down and begin my commute reading (I usually read during my commute time, it’s a great way to utilize the time). Know that the Metronorth train is rather crowded in the morning, especially after 8 am. And the struggle comes when you have to start looking for empty seats, because some people would sit on aisle seat with their bags put on the window seat. Sometimes, I’d think, “Should I ask him to put away the bag so I can have a seat?” The answer usually comes in different forms: “Maybe I’ll just look for another empty seat down the aisle.” But based on experience, sometimes I’d just have the same thought over and over again and eventually reach the end of the train and just stand (but I’d still read while standing!). Or when I’m feeling great, I’d say, “Excuse me, sir, do you mind?” It’s a mental hassle, and makes me feel ineffective. So one day, I made up my mind to just ask for the empty seat whenever I see them, and sit down to enjoy my reading.

Some may have doubts, “Isn’t that inconsiderate?” But really, every single seat is supposed to be filled, and nobody has the privilege to occupy 2 seats since we all paid for it. And if you haven’t taken the Metronorth train before, there’s an overhead compartment where you could put your bags, or you could put the bag below your seat, so that solves the space problem. Of course, there’s always exception, so I’d sometimes stand if the space is really tight. The point I’m trying to make here is that decisions you make in advance will help you automate the daily thought process and actions, backed by your principles and values. It saves you so many headaches if you just have enough decisions made well before something happens, as you won’t even have to think about what to do.

Some suggested applications for you:

1) I’ll never drink alcohol again. Next time someone asks you to drink, if you’re struggling, you would tell yourself, “I’ve made the decision not to drink. I’m going to stick to my commitment.” Note that I do drink occasionally, but that’s my decision. It’s yours to decide the “what”.

2) I’ll never swear again.

3) I’ll always be patient to my spouse no matter how I feel.

4) I’ll always greet strangers whom I make eye contact with.

There are millions of things you can apply ADM on. I’ll leave it to your imagination. Hope this will help you the next time you feel frustrated at an annoying decision-making process that could have been solved in advance. Remember, the less you have to think about unimportant things, the more time you have to think about the important matters.

My post on “5 Steps to Building Confidence in Yourself!” generated so many views that I decided to write a short series of posts on building confidence and conquering fears. They will be rolled out this week and the next, so remember to subscribe to the RSS/Email on the right side of the page!

Let’s talk about fears. What do you fear the most? Spiders, snakes, death? According to many professional counselors such as Shannon Stephens from the Augusta State University, the No.1 fear in the United States is public speaking (death is probably No. 2). Yeah, public speaking – the opportunity to get embarrassed and make a fool out of yourself  by standing in front of an audience and talk. But, it’s also the opportunity to share with the world your ideas and dreams, the chance to get recognized by others for you efforts and knowledge. So, how do you conquer the fear of public speaking?

Speak MORE!

It’s that simple. Do more of what you fear and you’ll conquer the fear. Notice that I said ’simple’, instead of easy, because it’s NOT easy. You need to have a very clear purpose of why you want to conquer the fear, otherwise it’s just a waste of your time. The easiest way is to just relax and go on a cruise around a beautiful beach. If you want to conquer the fear, you’d better have a strong reason to do it, or it will sound like too much work.

Okay, so you’ve identified your fear and made up your mind to conquer it, that’s the first step. Next, even though you’ve conquered your deepest fear, you need to realize that the fear will still be there. It won’t go away completely. But instead of overpowering you, it will empower you to do great things. You need the adrenaline from fear to keep you going in a speech otherwise you’d look like a robot.

Therefore, the most important thing in conquering fear and building confidence is to take action. The more you wait and postpone, the more afraid you’ll become. You’ll be paralyzed by the thoughts of fear and fail to do anything. Your confidence will take a nose dive and you’ll feel inferior to your own emotions. Every thought of that negative nature is a mind poison. The more poison you take, the less likely you’ll be able to act on your fear and you’ll be a slave to your fears (but remember if the fear is unimportant, don’t sweat it!).

Imagine that you’ve succeeded in acting on your fear. You’ll feel more confident the next time you face the same kind of fear because you’ve done it before, why not the 2nd time? And the 3rd, the 4th, the 5th..you get the idea. And that’s how you’ll boost your confidence, day by day. It’s gonna take some time before you can notice the effect, but if you’re persistent you’ll see the results. I used to fear speaking in public (who isn’t?!) but I think I’m feeling more comfortable now that I’ve chosen to take up the challenge of speaking to an audience whenever possible. Taken out from the book “The Magic of Thinking Big”, I’ve also listed below actions you could take to conquer some of the more common types of fear:

1) Embarrassment because of personal appearance -> Improve it. Go to a barbershop or beauty salon. Shine your shoes. Get your clothes cleaned and pressed. In general, practice better grooming. It doesn’t always take new clothes.

2) Fear of failing an exam -> Convert worry time into study time.

3) Fear of what other people may think and say -> Make sure that what you plan to do is right. Then do it. No one ever does anything worthwhile for which he is not criticized.

This actually relates to myself when I planned to start this blog. I began thinking about what others may think or say if I write about stuffs like these. Eventually I decided to just plunge in, and you know it’s all worth it! I’m enjoying the blogging process and the opportunity to help readers like you to improve your life. Now I don’t really care about what others say any more, because I know this is what I want to do and it’s the right thing to do!

4) Fear of people -> Put them in proper perspective. It’s so important that I will touch more on conquering the fear of people in the next post.

Meanwhile, there’s a 2-step procedure here that you should take away:

First, pin down your fear and determine exactly what you’re afraid of and what you want to accomplish by conquering it.

Second, Take the appropriate action. Think hard about what you can do, there will definitely be an action for your fear.

Act or be acted upon by your fear!

I recently reread this book by Dr. David Schwartz called the “The Magic of Thinking Big”, and found this 5-step method to building confidence. I thought I should share it with you guys over here. This book changed my mindset about life 5 years ago and now it’s still helping me to grow and learn, a true reading gem. I didn’t think that I’d be who I am today if I didn’t get enlightened by this book when I finished high school in year 2003, it’s a great book on how to think big, and take actions on the success ideas. If you don’t read any other books that’s fine, but grab this one!

OK, so here comes the 5-step method to building confidence that you can start doing right away. If you want to think confidently, act confidently. Confident actions will lead to confident thinking, and so you have to act the way you want to feel. Practice them and build your confidence like there’s no tomorrow! I’m breaking down according to the level of difficulty in my humble opinion, it could be different for you so adjust accordingly:

1) Walk 25% faster

This one is easy. Just walk at least 25% faster and you’ll have more confidence in yourself. How? Psychologists say that you can change your attitudes by changing your posture and speed of movement. Intuitively, when you see someone dragging their feet walking to work on the street, you’d think they have a miserable life, or to say the least they hate their job. However, when you see someone sprinting through the crowd, you’d naturally think that the person’s got someplace important to go, something important to do. They’re proud of themselves and the things they do, and they want to succeed in the shortest period of time.

As Dr. Schwartz suggested, next time you walk out the door, throw your shoulders back, lift up your head, move ahead just a little faster, and feel your self-confidence grow!

2) Smile big

Do this -> Smile BIG at this moment. Can you feel bad and smile big at the same time? No! A big smile kills all the negative emotions and fears in yourself and help you to relax and be more friendly. It’s the best way to win more friends. It’s the best way to make yourself happy again. Heck it’s even the best way to banish your fears!

Remember though, to smile BIG, really BIG. Smile until your teeth show. You don’t have to show everyone your gum but smile in a way that make you look friendly and confident. It’ll make your day.

3) Make eye contact

Eye contact is probably one of the most important things in communication. If someone doesn’t look you in the eye and look at everything in the room but you, you’d think, “What’s he got to hide? He’s probably afraid.” When you fail to make eye contacts, you tell the whole world that you feel inferior, you feel afraid. Or maybe you feel guilty, you’ve done something wrong to the person you’re talking to. That’s why when you say “I love you” you should look the other person in the eye!

If you can look the other person in the eye comfortably, it sends a positive message: “I’m honest and I’m confident. I have nothing to hide and you can believe what I have to tell you.” So, when you go to work tomorrow, look your boss in the eyes when you talk. It will give you confidence, and win your confidence!

4) Be a front-seater

This is a good one. Most people could probably relate to this. Notice in meetings, any kinds of meetings, the crowd tends to fill up the back seats first? You’d see few people taking the front seats because it’s “too conspicuous”, according to Dr. Schwartz. It builds confidence. Students tend to avoid the front rows because they think they’d get picked by the professor, that’s because they’re not prepared for the class! If you’re prepared and confident, why not get picked and practice speaking up (which is the next thing I’m gonna talk about)?

Yeah, you’d be noticed, but why not? After all, you have nothing to hide and there’s nothing wrong with showing the world that you want to succeed.

5) Speak up

This probably doesn’t come naturally to most people. There are many people who have great knowledge and ideas that fail to speak up in a discussion. It’s simply because they lack the confidence to make their voice heard. They’re thinking,” I don’t want to say something that might make me look stupid. If I keep quiet, they won’t think highly of me, but at least they won’t think that I’m ignorant.” This is a negative thinking and the effect compounds as time goes. Each time a person fails to speak up, the harder it’ll be for the person to speak up the next time. But it holds true for the opposite too. The more you speak up, the easier it’ll be for you to speak up the next time.

Don’t worry if the other person doesn’t agree with you, chances are someone else will. And even if nobody agrees, they’d appreciate your willingness to contribute to the discussion to make it more engaging. Few things you can do are commenting, making a suggestion, and asking a question. If you can master this, your confidence will skyrocket!

So, I’ve listed the 5 confidence-building exercises and I hope you find them useful. There are a lot more great ideas from “The Magic of Thinking Big” so be sure to grab a copy of it. Caveat: It’s good to KNOW these ideas, but if you don’t ACT on them, it’s useless knowledge. If you don’t think you can implement all 5 of them at the same time, start by walking 25% faster. It’s the easiest thing to do, especially if you’re in big cities like NYC (everybody walks fast anyway!). I’m practicing these 5 exercises myself, so let’s work hard together!

Do you have messes in your life? That desk you’ve been trying to clean up, the closet full of clothes you don’t want, the to-do lists you’ve kept adding but not ticking off!

If you’re one of those people that have messes all over the place, be it your house or your workplace or even your mind, you should keep reading.

Everyone mess makes you feel small, demeans you. When your stuffs are going all over the house, office (or your body!), don’t you think it’s time to spruce up and make yourself feel good? It’s the least you could do for yourself. After all, you’ve been spending all your time and energy at work, why not give some to yourself? Start appreciating yourself!

In addition, you feel uncomfortable if everywhere you go is messy. Don’t you feel bad when your laundry is scattered all over the house? Don’t you resent yourself when you’ve been procrastinating on getting the messes cleaned up? You’ll feel much, much better about yourself, and will have more energy to focus on the things that are important to achieving your goals.

Okay, so you’ve decided to stop putting up with something mediocre? Let’s see what you can do:

First step is to come up with a complete list of the “get-rid-of-mess” goals you want to achieve. It could be just a simple list with all the messes you want to tackle today. It’s important to focus on things that you could start doing right away, otherwise you’d most likely procrastinate again!

Next, attack the easiest one that you’re confident you can sweep off right now. Don’t go for the tough one because you’ll most likely get defeated in the first try and stop trying. For instance, don’t go around cleaning the entire house – kitchen, bathroom, desk, bedroom, closet etc, when you can just easily clean up only your kitchen today! Combine this along with the MTO goal-setting method and it should not be such a daunting task after all. Now that I’ve written about this, I think it’s time to clean up my rather messy desk! Do let me know how it goes through email/facebook/twitter!

The idea of cleaning up your messes come from Raymond Aaron’s Blog and his book, “Double Your Income Doing What You Love”.

(Photo: General Wesc)

Stuck in your life?

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It feels frustrated, doesn’t it? Yet, what else can you do about it, right? Life is not fair because you were not born a rich genius. Right?

NO! You don’t have to stay in the same state as you are now, if you hate it. If you’re happy as you are, congratulations! For the rest who’s not there yet, know that there are many things you can do at this instant to get out of the rut. I’ve summarized them into 3 simple steps (not necessarily easy though):

1)      Assess where you are. What’s causing the frustration? How much control do you have over this situation – can you change it? If not, can you seek help from someone else to change it? Know where you are today so you can go somewhere you want to be tomorrow. As Zig Ziglar said, you can’t hit a target if you don’t have one. Taking it one step backward, you can’t have a target if you don’t know where you are!

2)      Think BIG! Don’t settle for less than your dream and spirit. Most people have much bigger dreams than they currently settle for, don’t you agree? They just simply settle for what they think they can achieve. Once you do that for a certain period of time, you will be stuck at that level. To change that, you HAVE to think BIG! (There’s a good book out there called “The Magic of Thinking Big” for which I’ve been an avid advocate for years.)

Stop listening to those failing stories from your friends or family, you’re aware of them already. Instead, choose to focus on the success stories from great leaders and revolutionaries. Life would be much better if the media would publish more positive news than negative ones, and that the weather forecasters would tell us today would be 60% sunny rather than 40% rainy!

3)      Take action. Actions always speak louder than words, you know it. Some people know what they need to do to get to where they want to be, but they often stop short of DOING it. But you’re different! You’re unique because you want to succeed. I know it because you’re reading this far in the post. So, I’d recommend reading this blog regularly and buying this book, “StrengthsFinder 2.0” by Tom Rath. Take the online assessment and find out what you top 5 strengths are. Align yourself with where your natural talents lie and keep building on them and live your passion. Now you’re doing something that would help you to “unstuck”. This book is good because it takes you less than 2 hours to get into what you want to know about your own strengths and what to do about them. The rest of the book is just about capitalizing on others’ strengths. If you think this won’t help you, just do something else that you think would help you. The primary key is to do something, since there’s no single formula for success anyway. At least if you move forward, you’ll be closer to living the life you’ve always wanted than if you stay still.

So, here you go: assess, think, and act. And let me know of your success!

(Photo: NIOSH )

Are you busy? I know I am! But it’s good to be busy. It keeps you doing things that will move you forward in life and you can also learn quite a bit from it, provided you’re doing something beneficial. However, are you sooooo busy that you can’t afford to even deal with the most important things in your life, such as your wealth and health?

I find myself guilty of that on the health side. I knew I should exercise at least 3 times a week to stay fit since ages ago, but I didn’t. I knew I should take good care of my own diet, but I didn’t. You know why?” I’m busy! I spend long hours at work and sometime work over the weekends, I don’t have time to exercise! I’m tired enough. But maybe I’ll get to it soon, very soon.” Sounds familiar? You’d probably hear many people saying it, or even yourself.

Fundamentally, we know that we should really do something about it (in my case, it is going to gym 3 times a week). Yet we stay busy at work. We stay busy doing something else like watching the TV, shopping, eating out. Don’t get me wrong though, if we love doing those things, we should continue to do so, but we should also deal with the other important things in our life.

Just face it: we are lazy. We want to stay busy so that we can avoid things that we don’t want to face, such as wealth and health management. This is exactly what Robert Kiyosaki was talking about in his book, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. Deep down inside, he said, we know it’s true that we’re living in denial. After all, who wants to break the comfortable habit and do something you do not have not much knowledge about? It’s just like learning how to walk all over again. Fall down, stand back up, fall down again – it’s just too much work.

Here are the common reactions to the following 2 subjects:

1) Personal investment – I have my money in the savings account. Investing is too troublesome and it’s too ‘risky’.

2) Exercise – Too much trouble, I want to enjoy life. Besides, I’m young so I can afford to procrastinate for a few more years!

Now that you read about this and understand the classic paradigm most of us have, it’s time to break the paradigm and do something about the important things you’ve been putting off for a long time. Let your desire for a better life drive you. Let your dream steer yourself out of the laziness zone. You can stay busy and do what you love to do, while at the same time allocate some time to deal with the important things like taking good care of your money and body. Robert Kiyosaki suggested, “be a little greedy”. Not greedy in bad terms, not that. It’s being a little greedy in the sense of yearning for exciting things and better quality in life. Keep that desire under control and you’ll break free from the trap of ”lazibusiness”.

As for myself, I’ll be moving to a new apartment with fitness center, so I won’t have the excuse of not going to gym because it’s too far away or it’s too expensive. Beginning from July 1 (specified time), I’ll go to gym 3 times per week (clear goal) – no more (be realistic), no less (be consistent).

Takeaways:

1) Busy = Lazy and avoiding important things you don’t want to face

2) Let your desire for a better life drive you to success

3) Start doing something about it TODAY!

Alright, the first lesson I learnt: Just do it! Well, what I really mean is to take action immediately. What have you been postponing lately that you know will make you a better and richer (both in wealth and lifestyle) person? Maybe it’s just, calling an old friend, or even taking out the garbage (who likes to do that? I wish I had someone doing that for me really…), or even starting a business that you’ve always wanted. Anyway, take out a piece of paper and a pen and write them down NOW! Stick it on the wall and get started. Repeat the same once you’ve accomplished the first just-do-it. If it’s something big, it doesn’t matter if you know how to do it, just get started by finding out more about it. And know this, “Believing is Seeing” (powerful words from Bob Proctor).

Don’t be lazy

My first just-do-it was going into personal investment. I knew we should start early to take advantage of the interest compounding effect, but I didn’t do it because I always had the excuse of being too busy, too tired, or the most evil of it all, too lazy. Excusitis, as Dr. David J. Schwartz wrote in “The Magic of Thinking Big”, always stands in between success and ourselves. So, just do it! And that’s why Nike is so successful!

To illustrate what I did, I got started investing in my employer’s 401k and also a Roth IRA on the side. In fact, I should’ve done that earlier when the stocks were really on sales (some time in March 09). But it doesn’t matter, as Warren Buffett said, we can never time the bottoms. Just buy a share of business when the price makes sense!

Alright! So you’re employed. You have a paycheck coming in monthly or biweekly. If your employer provides 401k program, just participate!

2 reasons to contribute to 401k

1) Some companies match your part of your contributions as soon as you get started, some later. So, how does it work? Let’s say your company offers 100% match up to 6%. You make $100,000 a year and contribute $6,000 (6%) each year, your company will match the $6,000, so it’s essentially $12,000 that goes into your investment account a year! Free money. Don’t waste it!

2) Tax advantages. If you contribute through traditional 401k, the contributions will be pre-tax and the withdrawals will be tax-deferred. If you go through Roth 401k, the contributions will be post-tax (from your after-tax paycheck) but the withdrawals will be tax free! For more details, check out this Wikipedia table.

Target Fund

Anyway, as to the funds that you should invest in, I went for the Target 2050 fund. It’s a simple and lazy way to invest your money if you have no idea which to pick. It automatically chooses the appropriate allocation based on your target retirement year. I would go for index funds later on when I get some time to adjust my asset allocation though. My current fund has 90% of stocks and 10% of bonds. And no, I’m not worried a single bit!

The current market is just experiencing temporary setback from its glory in the future. You see, even the stock market has setbacks, it’s just a part of life, and I have a long time horizon to ride it out. In fact, based on Peter Lynch’s book, “Beating the Street”, stocks historically return nearly 11% on average (3% from dividends + 8% from prices going up). If you seriously want to learn the art of investing, read that book (even Robert Kiyosaki, famous for his “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series, recommends it). So, don’t worry, be happy!

Roth IRA

Okay, your company doesn’t have a 401k program? Don’t worry, just set up a Roth IRA (It has a limit of $5,000 annual contribution). You can do this practically from any brokerage investment accounts. Ramit Sethi, founder and writer of I Will Teach You To Be Rich recommends the following 3:

1) Vanguard

2) T. Rowe Price

3) Schwab

Vanguard seems to have funds with the lowest expense ratio (% they charge for managing your fund), but it requires minimum $3,000 to open. If you want to start small, go for T. Rowe Price or Schwab ($50 and $100 automatic monthly contribution, respectively).

Automation

Now that you’ve set up your 401k and IRA, you don’t even have to think about them any more for a long time, because everything is done automatically. According to Peter Lynch though, you might want to invest more in the stock market when there’s like a 10% dip in the market, and in the long run you will be way better off than those who sold their investment out of fear. By the way, you might want to set up separate investment accounts to do that, since the IRA has limited annual contribution and 401k has to wait until your payroll deduction to take effect (and you have to change the contribution %, etc, which takes time).

Summary:

1) Take action immediately – write it down and do it now.

2) Invest in 401k and IRA – easy and automatic once you set it up!

I look forward to reading your comments, suggestions, and experiences!