Tag: Life

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Be Visible To Sell Yourself

Intentionally or not, we all sell ourselves at some point in our lives. Whether it’s in a boardroom presenting our ideas to a group of executives or sitting in a meeting room being interviewed by a panel of hiring managers for a new job you really want or having an annual performance appraisal or bonus review with your boss, it’s inevitable we need to take the role of the salesperson and showcase what we’re good at. Ultimately, the goal is to persuade a decision maker to buy what we’re selling – ourselves.

Where do we begin? A good place to start is to ask ourselves this question: Are we visible enough to be counted for? I guess not everyone is comfortable with self-promoting or putting themselves forward but when the stakes are high, no one can afford to take a back seat or hide in a corner waiting to be discovered. The good news is: The world seems to have its own rewarding system. The bad news is: It rightfully operates outside our comfort zone.

Here’s an interesting example. The other day I was chatting with a café owner downstairs from the same building where I work, I noticed he had a box of friands (small almond cakes), uncovered, sitting on top of a food display cabinet instead of inside like the rest of patisseries. Not that he ran out of space. I was very curious so I went to ask him what it was all about. Wouldn’t they go stale very soon? I asked. He was very quick to respond: because they sell fast this way. I immediately got it. Yes, he had his point. Those friands looked fabulously delicious and mouth-watering. They were right in a prime position beside a cash register counter, perfectly on the eye level for any discerning customers. Who wouldn’t be tempted to grab a piece or two while there? Understanding the psychology behind it and marketing it in such a fashion, the café owner was indeed very clever at playing with visual effects which can work wonderfully like a hook that captures the consumer mind. It’s a lure that attracts buyers attention. The rest? It is a matter of letting the product speaking for itself: Hey! Look at me, I’m hot, I’m the best seller, buy me and eat me, now.

Although visibility doesn’t guarantee success, essentially, it’s a key ingredient to getting your foot in the door. Next time when you have an opportunity to sell yourself, how would you like to position yourself to increase your visibility? Think of those yummy friands. FYI, they were sold out…

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Broken Into But Not Broken

Gone are the days when burglars would smash a window or break a door to get into a house and take away people’s precious belongings. Nowadays, crimes in this nature are committed in cyberspace without even leaving a trace in the physical world. Cybercrime has become so sophisticated that cybercriminals like hackers can literally steal your hard-earned money or valuable personal data without showing up on your doorstep. They can just sit quietly behind a desk, tap away at a computer and watch your every move in secret. One click is all it takes for them to gain access to your network. The next thing you know, your security is in tatters and your privacy is in the hands of the wrong people.

The truth is no one is 100% immune from being a target for cybercriminals. As a blogger or a social media account user like Facebook, when you put yourself out there, the information posted online or shared in public can be collected and studied by cybercriminals. Their premeditated attacks are aimed at stealing your money and/or identity. The stakes are so high that we cannot afford to take chances and only deal with it when it happens.

The reason for writing this post is to educate and remind readers about the dangers of hacking and serious damage hackers can do to you once they gain an unlawful entry to your computer devices. Why do I care so much about this issue? Because it happened to me a couple of years ago. Knowing how bad it was, I don’t wish anyone to go through a similar experience like mine. So, how it started is one day I received an unsolicited email that looked seemingly legitimate. Although I remained a bit guarded and skeptical about it at first, I was fooled to click the malicious link that gave a hacker an indefinite remote access to the computer I was using. The following few days I began to notice something fishy was going on particularly when I was doing some online transactions. For example, my mouse wasn’t moving as freely as usual. By the time I reported this incident, damage had already been done. The length I had to go through to clean up the computer and repair the disease infected by hacking was astonishing. Because it was so badly damaged, at the end I had no choice but to give up the computer altogether.

What I learnt from this experience is:

  1. Hackers don’t just contact you out of blue, they do their homework and study your online behavioral patterns way before they send you an invitation.
  2. Hackers will lure you with a bait and ask you to click a link to view more details. That’s a red flag.

We live in the digital age that there’s a tone of information coming to us from all different corners of the world at any give time. It’s natural that we don’t want to miss out on anything important or valuable. But not everything is as pure and innocent as they claim themselves to be. As we conduct more and more businesses on line and share our personal lives unreservedly in cyberspace, cybercriminals will always look for opportunities to launch their attacks. Make sure we exercise caution and stay vigilant. If need be, press “Delete” button first before hackers have a chance to press your buttons…

 

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Hello Smartphone, I’m The Boss

“Your fly is undone” – Finally I plucked up the courage to tell a fellow passenger standing next to me on the bus this morning. He, like most commuters in this city, had headphones on and was reading stuff on his smartphone. So where should I start? Seeing an intent look on his face, my initial thought was to leave him alone. Part of me though wanted to speak out and save his awkward moment. After weighing it up in my head, I decided to tell him like it is. Instead of saying it verbally, I managed to type down these few words on my smartphone and show the text message in his face. Luckily, my well meaning gentle gesture was subtle enough not to cause a scene on this crowded bus.

Well, it was just a spur of the moment decision. Where did it all stem from? It could’ve been genetically ingrained in my DNA a long while ago – when I see something, I have the urge to say something. It’s just me. Anyway, my surprised move was well-received, he smiled at me and said: “Thank You”, before he had a chance to put his hand down there and zipped it up in a flash.

Speaking of smartphones, a long list of uses can go as far as our imagination takes us to. In the above case, it helped me communicate effectively and discreetly with a stranger, without even speaking a word. However, other smartphone uses, if not watched carefully, can intensify and spiral out of control. They can steal our attention away from things around us. In some serious cases, they can even have accident-prone effects on our health and safety. Arguably, using a smartphone while walking whether it’s day or night and in any given situation is just not a smart thing to do. You can never know what’s around the corner when you aren’t aware of what’s in front of you or beside you. For example, it happened to me some weeks ago when I was scrolling through my smartphone while walking on a sidewalk at night, thinking I was safe on a footpath, not realizing a car from a road was steering towards me, trying to enter a garage right where I was standing – in the middle of the driveway. One big lesson learned and never again.

Smartphones obviously have revolutionized the way we communicate with each other today and how we receive, send and share information. The trend is not going to stop. The challenge for us is to be selective – choose what feeds into our brains and only look out for things that add values to our lives. But no matter how smart, useful and attractive our smartphones are, we need to show to these small devices that we’re the boss. Remember, there’s an I in iPhone and I comes before phone…

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A Thick Skin Starts With A Brave Face

It’s funny we often use the word “thick” to describe someone’s lack of intelligence or common sense in their ways of thinking, talking or behaving. Interestingly, when it comes to the skin – the largest organ in the human body, we refer “thick-skinned” to people who aren’t easily hurt, offended or embarrassed by criticism or people’s negative comments. The word “thick” in this context, isn’t too bad at all. Judging by its whole meaning, we can all agree on the positive connotations that come with it. Obviously, we’d rather be thick in the skin than in the head, wouldn’t we?

I wasn’t born with a thick skin. Throughout my life I often consider myself as a thin-skinned, introverted person. Wearing this inward label every day, has it been serving me well up to this point? The answer is I wish I could’ve been more thick-skinned in many cases. If you’re sick of sitting on the sidelines, perhaps it’s time to think about cultivating a thick skin mentality and incorporating it into your personality? Wouldn’t it be nice if we can call upon it only when a situation is required, other times we just relax and stay the way we are? The question is always the same. When facing a new challenge, the first thing that pops up is: Where should I start? What’s the first step I should be taking before I can hone the skill? What should I do to increase the chances of success? I don’t know if there’s a rule book I can follow but instead of searching far and wide, going above and beyond, a better place to start is where we’re right now. Read on and find out where I started.

A couple of weeks ago my CEO called me to his office. It turned out he wanted me take on an office project – refurbishing part of the workplace. He was very specific about what he wanted it to look like. My task was simply to find someone who can do just that. Because I already had a couple of contacts on file who specialized in this type of thing, I was very confident from the outset that I’d achieve a good outcome. Interestingly, right before I stepped out of his office, he looked at me with a grin on his face then left an unexpected remark – go out and spend the money! I wasn’t 100% sure if he was serious but I wasn’t going to treat it like a joke.

While I wasn’t given a budget to run this project, I was very careful about where the money would go. In other words, I didn’t want to spend it like there’s no tomorrow. Over a course of a week, the consultant came back to me with a quote that seemed a bit too dear. When I presented it to my CEO, he looked at it and approved it straight away. I thought, Gee that was fast. There was no point for me to stand there and argue with him. I was happy to leave it at that. But, part of me still believed there was a room for price negotiation. So, did I do anything about it?

It was a venture completely outside my comfort zone. A day after the quote was approved by my CEO, I turned around, put on a brave face and called the consultant. I could feel I was mumbling and my voice was shaky. My message was kind of subtle and blurry but he totally got it – I wanted to get the price down. He asked me how much. I paused, refused to give away my bottom line. Before I hung up, he knew it was a matter of “the ball is in his court”. A few hours later, he came back to me with a revised quote – way better than I expected, a total saving of AUD $600.00. I cheered inside. That’s enough to buy our team a plenty of pizzas. Thick crust or thin crust you may ask? I don’t care…

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Too Many Questions And No Answers

Have you checked the page titled “My Escape” on this website yet? Underneath the header image, I inserted some narratives to describe where the photo was taken and the beautiful features around it. I felt like I had something more to say about it. So for this post, it’s an extension of that page.

If you’ve been here before, you’d agree that the view is simply spectacular. I love being here, and so does my dog. When we come up here on a sunny day, I tend to settle into my spot: a comfortable shady area away from direct sunlight but still exposed enough to see what’s going on. I often sit or lie down with my arms and legs stretched as far as I can, then just watch the day go by. When I’m in a zone like this, I usually close my eyes and try to meditate. It never ceases to amaze me how slowly time can pass when I take a moment to quieten down.

Of course, it’s not all calm and peaceful. Within minutes, many unwanted thoughts can pop up, and even the smallest noises from anywhere can shift my attention away. This has always been a challenge for me. But my philosophy here is that I don’t need to be a meditation master, I’m just happy to be a doer.

Over the past several months, whenever I was in this place, I did what I used to do – look intently into the horizon, where the sky and the ocean meet. In a non-religious sense, I would ask nature a whole range of questions about things that weren’t going particularly well in my life – fears or anxieties I was experiencing, in the hope of getting some clue or hint in return.

Time after time, as it turned out, my efforts seemed in vain. It felt like I was barking up the wrong tree. With no exception, it was a case of too many questions, too many “whys,” and no answers. As I bore with this, my frustration started to grow and my patience began to run out. I couldn’t help but question the power of nature. What’s the point of it anyway?

So I stopped asking.

Then one day, I came to the realization that all those times I wondered why I never got a response, nature had done its part to inspire and give me all the answers, but I hadn’t been listening.

What was it then?

Silence…

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Ask Questions In Reverse

Just thought I’d say hi to a friend who hadn’t been around on Facebook for a while. His last post was as far as December 2017. So, I wanted to check on him and make sure he’s in a right place both mentally and physically. The first thing that popped up in my head was to ask him: How’s life treating you? A question like this wouldn’t have been anything out of ordinary, but we’re both creative people (he’s a singer and a song writer) and particularly myself a strong advocate in empowerment, I thought I’d better come up with something different or unconventional. I paused for a few seconds, then right at that moment the thought that crossed my mind was: why don’t I put the question in reverse? How are you treating life? a new powerful question was born from there.

It was amazing how quickly it transformed my mindset when I shifted gears. For the first time in a long while, it felt like I was in the driving seat, I was the one in charge of the life’s ups and downs. Funnily enough, I only meant to write a how are you, a short catch-up message to a friend, but unexpectedly it ended up an opportunity for me to review my attitude towards life, from an opposite angle.

I sent him a message shortly before this post and yes I did ask that question: How have you been treating life? and all that. Deep down I wouldn’t expect a fast response after all he did say he’s signing out a bit and keeping a low-profile on the social media front. In fact, it’d be entirely fine by me if I don’t hear from him for days or even weeks or months. The truth is I know he’s been busy treating life as it comes. I just wanted to say: Thank you for inspiring me my friend. Keep living your dreams…