John Singh

How I plan to live the best year of my life

Welcome 2010, I have waited 30 years for this. As I walk into the 30th year of my life, my goal this year is to live the best year of my life so far.

Following are the 8 things I will do this year to make sure that 2010 the best year of my life so far:

1.       Live every day to my highest potential.

2.       Maintain a super fit Health by exercising daily.

3.       Spoil my family and loved ones every day.

4.       Grow Macquarie IT to 50,000 registered customers.

5.       4 new online business additions to Macquarie Ventures.

6.       Maintain Adventure Sundays with activities such as Sailing, playing polo, flying, etc..

7.       2 Trips. Italy & Everest Base Camp trek.

8.       Maintain my daily journal - ‘Seeking Remarkable’.


John Singh
1/01/10 

Tap into your creative genius.

People often talk about creativity as if it were some mysterious, spiritual commodity, the result of being touched by the hand of God (or at least blessed by genetics). Creative geniuses tend to be portrayed as if they had sprung into existence fully formed, doing advanced physics or penning operas before they could walk.

But when you ask a profoundly creative person how the creative process actually works, divine inspiration rarely comes up. Choreographer Twyla Tharp rises at 5:30 each morning and takes a taxi to her New York City gym for a two-hour workout, and says this simple ritual— waking, taxi, gym—is the foundation on which her prolific talent rests. Beethoven went for a walk every day with notepad in hand to jot down the music that streamed through his mind.

Physical rituals like these can cue creativity, clearing the mind and activating subconscious wells of thought. But if there is one habit of mind that creative souls share, it’s probably the rigorous (and sometimes unrelenting) practice of their chosen vocation. Frank Gehry says the daily grind of designing shopping malls laid a foundation of technical skill that served as scaffolding for loftier flights of inspiration. “You learn from everything,” he says. Tharp, in her book The Creative Habit, notes that even the consummate prodigy Mozart didn’t stint on his scales. “By the time he was 28 years old,” she writes, “his hands were deformed because of all the hours he had spent practicing.”

“One thing most creative geniuses have in common is quantity,” says Michael Michalko, author ofThinker Toys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques and other best-selling books on creativity. “They create great quantities of ideas, and most of these are bad.” Michalko suggests that anyone waiting for a lightning bolt of inspiration should instead give himself an “idea quota” of, say, 140 ideas, writing down even the dumb ones. “You’ll find that the last third are the most complex,” he says.

Another quality of the creative mind, Michalko says, is the embrace of crazy notions and the ability to learn even from abject failure. “When Thomas Edison failed 5,000 times to come up with a fi lament for his light bulb, an assistant asked, ‘When are you going to quit?’ ” he says. “Edison said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—I’ve discovered 5,000 things that don’t work.’ ” To cultivate an Edisonian outlook, Michalko recommends the exercise of generating the most absurd ideas possible to solve a problem, making each one crazier than the last.

All of this is to say that cultivating creativity is largely about recapturing a childlike openness, fearlessness and ability to see ordinary things from novel angles—qualities that original thinkers like Einstein, who approached his work as a form of joyous play, relied on. 

Jeannine McGlade and Andrew Pek, the authors of Stimulated! Habits to Spark Your Creative Genius at Work, offer the following tips for opening up and getting out of the grown-up mental ruts that kill creativity:

Shake things up. Pick up a magazine that you would never read normally or drive to work a new way. Your brain needs to see and experience new things to stimulate fresh perspectives.

Visit different spaces and places to find inspiration—a park, a cafe, a library, a theater, a museum. Different environments help you to attract different “spark moments.”

Take a nap or meditate every day. Thomas Edison was famous for tackling his biggest challenges after a power snooze.

Keep your “eyes wide open.” The real voyage of creativity consists of not seeing new things but of gaining fresh perspectives.

Thank God its Monday...

If you do what you love, you really look forward to your Mondays. I don’t mean to say that my weekends are not enjoyable, nothing makes me happier than spending quality time with the family, cooking our Sunday lunch or enjoying a good bottle of red wine and connecting with friends, but come Sunday evening when I sit down at my desk at home to prepare my coming week, I always get butterflies in my stomach. It happens every single time, just like it did the night before my 1^st date or the morning before our first school excursion. I do become a child that I once was and perhaps still am and I am sure that the child that I once was would be proud of the man that I have become today.

People often ask me what my secret is. Why do I love to work so much and how do I maintain the level of passion and enthusiasm for my work. My answer is simple; I really do love what I do. I really love to work hard and see my customers succeed online and I really love to lead all my projects and clients in a direction which only could have been dreamt of, I do believe in living a life where your dreams come to a reality and every week I work passionately to make my dreams and my team’s dreams and my client’s dreams and my organisation’s dreams come to a living and breathing reality.

I always ask myself the question, “Who do I have to be to create the change I need to lead and make my goals and dreams a reality”, and I always work on improving myself first and growing into that person that I have to be to become remarkable. I always work on improving things around me and incrementally, day by day, week by week, month by month work towards those dreams and goals and see them come to reality. Working hard and seeing the results (triumphs or failures) and learning and growing from them gives me the motivation and inspiration that you see in me in my every interaction with you and I feel in my every interaction with the world. Success is not an accident, it’s a choice and so is being remarkable and my belief is that you are either average or you are remarkable and quite frankly, average is for losers. We are all hard wired to play our best game and give it our best in everything that we do and so we should.

Today, I challenge you to have a dream and live a life filled with inspiration and passion. I challenge you to learn from your failures and lead with courage and give it your 100% at everything you do every day and I promise that I and my organisation will do so too.

Thank you for being so beautiful and thank you life for inspiring me to always be my best.

Regards

John Singh.

What Leads to Success...

Hi Guys

7 years and 500 interviews later, one leading expert on the topic success shares what really leads to success, I have summarised them here:

1. PASSION (Successful people do it for LOVE not Money).

2. HARD WORK (Successful people have FUN in what they do and therefore do a lot of it).

3. BE GOOD (To be successful at something you need to be GOOD at it).

4. PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE .

5.FOCUS (Successful people put all their focus on ONE thing and get dam good at it).

6. PUSH (Successful people push themselves mentally and physically).

7. SERVE (Successful people devote their life to Serving others things of value ).

8.IDEAS (Successful people have great IDEAS and know how to listen and observe, they are curious, they ask questions, they make connections and they make their Ideas come to Reality

John Singh

How To Build and Achieve A Dream

Lots of people feel inferior about making great dreams as they think they are less capable compared to other people in regard to: low education, poor intelligence, financial inability, unfavorable environment, etc, but Napoleon Hill said:

“Whatever you think of and believe in, you will get it for sure”.

If you think you CAN, then indeed you CAN, in spite of whatever bad condition you are in at this moment. Make your dream a most attractive one so you are driven to make it happen, and you must have faith that God loves you as this child and he will see that the whole universe help you in reaching your dream.

Tips : If you are still discouraged to make any dream, try to read books or articles on motivation or stories of success, to listen to cassettes on motivation, to attend seminar held by motivators and make friend with positive thinking people.

Write down your dream as clearly as possible and imagine that the dream comes true and how good it feels. Make sure of some picture or photo if necessary. For example if you want to possess a luxurious car, get its picture, look at it and imagine you drive it to your fullest enjoyment. Get a brochure and you may even visit the car’s showroom and do some test drive.

Your dream must meet the criteria of SMART

SMART stands for :

- Specific : your dream should be able to be describe in details.
- Measurable : it should be able to precisely measured on basis of time, money, etc.
- Achievable : it should be something possible to achieve.
- Realistic : it should be of real nature, not pure imaginary.
- Time bound : it should be able to determined about the length of time it will take to achieve.

If your dream is already SMART, convince yourself through your sub consciousness, your bloodstream, your whole body cells, that you will definitely get what you dream of. You may apply affirmations on the strength of law of attraction.

Make a “Road Map”

Arrange small steps must take and interval targets you must achieve in every stage you must go through. If all those steps and targets have been properly arranged, it will form a “road-map” leading to your dream.

Decide what device or system or way you will employ to follow your “road-map”. Make sure it guarantees to carry you through each stage along the “road-map” and finally brings you to your dream’s fulfillment.

Change yourself attitude

Starting now, focus all your behavior, actions and thoughts on the scenario of following the “road-map” leading to your dream. Evaluate each action you are going to take : “Is it in accordance to the scenario?” If it is not, don’t do it. If it is, act at once. Make no compromise to any delay.

On your way to your goal, very likely you will suffer from lots of failures and disappointments, but in spite of them, you must manage to fulfill all that have been planned. Remember, no matter which sky-level you hang your dream on, you will undoubtly reach it. Lots of successful people all over the world have proved that. It needs one more person to affirm, and that person is YOU.

Becoming Remarkable - We all want to, but....

Throughout the life a person is pushed by the society to fit in any specific category, you are either STAND OUT or BORING, REMARKABLE or INVISIBLE.

Lots of preaching is showered on you for your betterment from your parents, your gurus or teachers, from your well wishers, from your partners, from your managers. Altogether, you get tired of it, here, is 10 easy step-to-step guides to make a change get noticed and become remarkable:

1. Remember, half-knowledge is dangerous. It takes you no where! At times, it may be beneficial but in a long run it will always prove to be disastrous. So, first tip is – be hundred percent committed towards your goal.

2. Becoming remarkable doesn’t mean what you feel about yourself. In fact, what others feel about you? If people are not passing comments, it means you are an average, and average is for losers.

3. There is a wide gap between being noticed and remarkable. An individual can get noticed by wearing hunky funky dresses; loud earring etc., but it won’t make him/her remarkable. 

4. Radicalism in the quest of becoming remarkable is not a crime. In fact, “passion for success” is intrinsic, world has several examples of “odd man out” people – only those individuals succeed or becomes remarkable who has zeal to be “face of the crowd” and not the crowd itself. Celebrities have fans, not because of their good look, but they are masterpiece. 

5. “When going gets tough, the tough gets going”, means remarkability lies in the character of a person. Those who are brave-hearted, determined, indomitable….they never give-up their mission incomplete, be whatsoever the consequences. In contrary, they spring into action against the challenges. 

6. Remember! Change is resisted by the society. Don’t get stuck by others behavior, even Copernicus was penalised for uttering unconventional concept on the solar system. It is inherent tendency of the people to accept changes, but after some time-gap. Nobody in this world can please everybody, so just get focused to your goal. Achievement is the only route that makes you remarkable.

7. Ever wondered! What actually remarkability mean? There were and are some great people who were pioneer of certain things, they were remarkable. They were pioneers of their field. Millions of people later on followed them, some even faired better. Becoming remarkable means - to be best in one’s field, set examples for others, create new milestones.
  
8. “There is always a silver lining even in a dark cloud”. Victory and defeat are two aspects of the same coin. In fact, the person who wins the battle of nerves is remarkable and self-controlled. Such people are not afraid of anything as they are more focused about their passion and dreams rather than problems. 

9. When you achieve the status of a remarkable person. Your life changes! People throng around you. Wants to know about you! Get affected by your opinion! But remember, they are short-lived, don’t let the wine soar-up to your head. It’s good to have a handful of devotees than large mild supporters.   

10. Incessant change is the law of nature, fame and fad passes with the time. So, don’t brood over the spilt milk, strive to achieve another. Constant achievement is the only way to maintain one’s status of being remarkable. Hit harder, all the time!             

Hey! Are you ready to become remarkable? What? Not ready yet!

Believe it or not! But it’s true. Almost everybody wants to make it big in life, but in reality few posses the guts to sail in the boat of constant fuss. If you want to achieve the pinnacle ….don‘t look for scapegoats…. Walk when others are tired. Just toil when other sleeps! Very few people have such indomitable features and that’s what makes them successful.

Think the best, leave the rest! Why is there a fear factor of failure in your mind? Muster all your energy and go for it. Mull on your areas of interest, work out a strategy and endeavor towards it. If you succeed its good, and if not - don’t worry, still there are people around you who will appreciate your efforts.

Now! Don’t wait for the time. Just get started, not today… but the moment you finish reading this article. Remember, procrastination is the biggest hurdle in becoming remarkable.

Tomorrow never comes.

Signing out.

John Singh.

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

You have superpowers - it is absolutely true!

You have the power to do things so far beyond what you can even imagine right now. In fact, you are capable of things that you would probably consider bizarre or even maybe supernatural. Your mind is a vast, largely unexplained source of energy and power. In fact, your thoughts even have the power to alter reality.

Unfortunately, because we don’t understand how these powers work, most people dismiss them. In so doing, we limit ourselves and our success in life. I will reveal here how you can tap into these superpowers and take advantage of them to make drastic improvements in your life.

Stay with me here. I know the tendency of many will be to immediately dismiss this as just a bunch of nutty ideas. But let me submit to you that many very successful people have believed in these powers and used them to create incredible fortunes and success. Also, if you just look at the facts, it is easy to conclude that there must be some truth to this. Where there is smoke, there is usually fire. These powers have been written about for centuries. They have been researched and acknowledged by very notable people. They are mentioned in most of the classic wisdom literature. They exist whether you are willing to admit it and use it to your benefit or not. If you don’t, then you are missing out on getting the very most out of your life.

Examples of Extreme Mental Power

There are so many powers of the mind that are not fully explained or understood. Things like telepathy, psychokinesis, and extrasensory perception (ESP) fall into this category. J.B. Rhine, a researcher at Duke University back in the 1930s, did extensive and rigorous lab tests on subjects to evaluate the existence of ESP. He concluded that many people did seem to have powers beyond the five senses to detect the thoughts and feelings of others. His research led to the coining of the term parapsychology and the founding of a research center at Duke to explore this further. Of course, there are numerous critics and skeptics of Rhine’s conclusions and the results have never been repeated since. However, Rhine was not the only researcher that came to these conclusions and many people think ESP is the sixth sense. This is just one area that suggests the mind has power and emanates energy beyond our current understanding.

There are also numerous people that believe in the miracle of faith healing. Faith healing is the belief that people can be cured of diseases and abnormalities through prayer and divine or supernatural intervention. Of course, when you look objectively at prayer, it is focused thought or meditation which is directed outside ourselves to summon supernatural power to achieve an end we desire. If you plug “faith healing testimonies” into any popular Internet search engine, you will find countless stories of people that have been miraculously cured of things like cancer. It usually involves situations where no further hope was offered by medical science. The person had to believe. If they didn’t, then they had to accept the fate of their medical diagnosis.

I mention ESP and faith healing to stretch your thinking. If you are still reading (I’m sure many have probably given up by now because they are just incapable or unwilling to consider that our minds have power beyond our current understanding), then you are ready to grasp and use the superpowers of your mind. You are ready to tap into the source of energy that has propelled people like Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, and Oprah Winfrey to levels of extraordinary success. You can also reach these levels. No matter how you define success or what it is that you desire. You can achieve it!

Unleash Your Superpowers

So, what is it that will unleash the superpowers of your mind? It is belief. You have to believe without doubt in the deepest recesses of your heart and mind that you can and will fulfill your desires. You have to believe so deeply that it creates a level of intensity in your thinking so that your desire becomes a burning obsession. You have to be able to visualize it and emotionalize it vividly. It has to consume you. You have to believe at the level where you know that you can overcome any obstacles that may arise. That you will pay any price. You will give and do whatever it takes to achieve your goal. When you believe like this, you invoke the superpowers of your mind and you will alter reality.

Your intense thoughts and belief when focused in this manner will create in the physical world exactly what you desire. This concept is well documented and absolutely true. It is confirmed in every classic success book that I have read. It is the secret or magic that these writers speak of so frequently. This philosophy is thoroughly discussed in Chapters 13 and 14 of Think and Grow Rich, a very well-known success manual written by Napoleon Hill. In Chapter 14, Hill states the following:

“This much the author does know - that there is a power, or a First Cause, or an Intelligence, which permeates every atom of matter, and embraces every unit of energy perceptible to man…This Intelligence may, through the principles of this philosophy, be induced to aid in transmuting DESIRES into concrete, or material form. The author has this knowledge, because he has experimented with it - and has EXPERIENCED IT.”

Another confirmation that these powers exist is from As a Man Thinketh written by James Allen. Allen states:

“Nature helps every man to the gratification of the thoughts which he most encourages, and opportunities are presented which will most speedily bring to the surface both the good and evil thoughts.”

In other words, these authors confirm that whatever it is we most deeply believe will come to be in our lives and that outside super forces, in these instances called Intelligence and Nature, will assist us. Of course, as the quote above alludes to this principle works in both directions of thought. We must therefore focus our thoughts on the positive to move in the direction we want. We must eliminate all negative thinking and fear. These thoughts dilute the effectiveness of our superpowers and may even take us in the opposite direction. Use your powers for good and not evil!

I think W. Clement Stone says it most succinctly. He states:

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

Jesus even confirms this in the Bible when in Matthew 17:20, he states:

“I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

As you can see, this philosophy of belief is well documented. These men were not easily deceived. Napoleon Hill spent 20 years of his life researching the material in his book. These men knew the superpowers of the mind exist and they tried to document it so that others could use them too. Are you ready to believe? I could go on and on with more examples from many more books, but there is not room here to do so. You, however, can research this for yourself if you would like or you can take the leap of faith now and start benefiting immediately.

Believe and Succeed or Doubt and Do Without

I know that some will be reluctant to accept these truths. To the skeptics and critics, I say that I hope they are happy in their circumstances. No matter how hard they work or how much effort they put forth without utilizing the principle of belief they will always be severely limited in their accomplishments. If you look further into this, you fill find that every person with a track record of super success has fully and whole-heartedly embraced this philosophy. Our minds do have superpowers that we can utilize to our benefit if we believe. The only question that remains is, will you believe?

John Singh

Personal Mission Statement

"Better three hours too soon, than one minute too late." 
— William Shakespeare: 16th-17th century English poet and playwright

When do many people start exercising? Immediately after their doctor tells them their health is in danger. Too late. When do many people start saving for retirement? When retirement looms just a few years away. Too late. When do people truly appreciate their marriage, their children, or their own lives? When they think they might lose them. Too late. Now you can do something to ensure that you aren’t one minute too late in 2008. Create your own personal Mission Statement. And start living for today.

Can a simple statement have the power to push you closer and closer to your goals with each passing day? It can if it’s your personalized Mission Statement. Change your life’s direction now by embarking on a 5-minute journey that begins with you defining your goals and ends with you achieving the success, wealth, and life fulfillment you’ve always wanted. Start creating your unique Mission Statement now...

"People with goals succeed because they know
where they are going. It's as simple as that."
- Earl Nightingale

Success or failure as a human being is not a matter of luck, circumstances, fate, or any of the other tiresome old clichés. Those are only excuses. The power to achieve the life of your dreams is in your hands—and the first step toward activating it is identifying the specific goals that will make your dreams real. After all, it’s much easier to get what you want out of life when you know where you’re going.

A mission statement is only a paragraph long, but it has specific, measurable outcomes and a deadline for accomplishing that outcome. It’s truly the best way to start your journey to success.

Jim Rohn said, “You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.” Creating a mission statement will help you change your direction. In just five minutes from now, you will have made the shift from an ordinary existence to an extraordinary existence.

My Mission Statement:

My purpose is to succeed in life and business by having clarity about my goals, clear understanding of my strengths and weaknesses, have a commitment to ongoing self development, add outrageous value to everything I do and every one I deal with, be positive and passionate, work hard, never stop innovating, become a masterful time manager, have strong relationships with people, be devoted to excellence, manage my business for long-term success and finish writing my book on Internet Marketing by 31/12/2008.

John Singh

Billionaire Minds...

Eighty years ago, a 14-year-old John R. Simplot ran away from home because he was sick of milking cows.

Eventually he built a fortune growing potatoes; he still supplies McDonald's with french fries. Sixty years later, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to run a small startup called Microsoft. Now, of course, he's the richest man in the world.

Gates and Simplot are two of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. To psychologists, their stories raise fascinating questions. In what ways are the two men, born generations apart and raised in completely different surroundings, alike? More importantly, what makes them different from the great majority of people who never started a business, watched it succeed and become incredibly rich?

After decades of what at first amounted to little more than guesswork, scientists are collecting data they think can answer those questions. Enticing clues indicate that telltale bits of psychology may spur people to start businesses and even help determine who succeeds and who fails. The venture capitalists of the future may use psychological profiles to pick entrepreneurs who are more likely to create winning companies.

The first steps psychologists took toward understanding entrepreneurs were based on anecdote, not experiment. Alexander Zelaznick, a professor emeritus of psychology at Harvard Business School, says years of interviewing entrepreneurs led him to the dramatic conclusion that they simply did not feel risk, or weigh consequences, in the same way as other people. "To understand the entrepreneur," Zelaznick told The New York Times in 1986, "you first have to understand the psychology of the juvenile delinquent."

"That's a great quote," responds Kelly Shaver, a professor of psychology at William & Mary College who is working in the field today. "But I think it's really not true."

Anecdotal evidence created a caricature of the typical entrepreneur: A young man with an appetite for risk and a persuasive personality, a gifted salesman with an independent streak. "I'd say the evidence that entrepreneurs have a particular personality 'type' is mostly unconvincing," says Shaver. However, he says, data collected over the last decade has allowed psychologists to confirm--or disprove--parts of this picture.

Take for instance, the notions that entrepreneurs are risk takers. Robert Baron, a psychologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has shown that entrepreneurs are more successful when they are persuasive and have strong social skills--in other words, that being a charismatic salesman is a big help. That would be no surprise to Apple Computer) CEO Steve Jobs, famed for being so convincing he seems to temporarily distort reality.

Here, though, another problem rears its head. Most studies of entrepreneurs look only at people who have been successful. That is, they pick out people who have already founded businesses. Instead of first finding entrepreneurs and then asking what makes them successful, researchers are left looking at a group of winners, at least relatively speaking.

To make matters worse, researchers often have asked these entrepreneurs to describe themselves at their career's beginning. This, it turns out, is almost impossible for anyone to do. We all craft stories about our lives that exaggerate some factors while leaving others out. Could Larry Ellison really give an accurate assessment of what was going through his mind when he founded Oracle even if he wanted to?


Shaver and some of his colleagues are trying to get around this through a survey called the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, which began in 1995; 64,622 American households were called at random, and, from this large group, the researchers found 800 entrepreneurs who had not been in business more than three months. They also assembled a representative sample of 400 people to use as a control group.

Each participant in the study answered a 15-page questionnaire. From this data, Shaver and others have already been able to draw some basic conclusions. For instance, entrepreneurs and normal people seem to worry equally about financial autonomy and/or a feeling of being motivated in their jobs. Neither a need for financial nor personal independence seems to have caused any of these people to start their own business.


Nor, says Shaver, do the entrepreneurs seem to be devil-may-care risk takers. Only a subtle difference in the way they appreciate risk emerged. The entrepreneurs are worse at coming up with reasons they might fail. "Being able to generate more unpleasant possibilities might be making non-entrepreneurs more afraid," Shaver says, but we don't know that.


So far there is one other big difference between those who go into business for themselves and those who don't, Shaver says. Entrepreneurs don't care what other people think about them. "They really don't care as much," Shaver says. "They're just happy to go ahead and do what they're doing."


Statistically speaking, then, Simplot and Gates would seem to have two things in common: They have trouble imagining failure, and they don't care what you think.


Thank you Forbes.

John Singh

Fighting Mediocrity in 2008

I don’t know about you, but one of the things I’m afraid most in life is mediocrity. For me, life is too precious to be lived in mediocrity. Life is a golden opportunity, and we should live it at our highest potential. Living in mediocrity means we do not use this opportunity to our ability.

Unfortunately, many people are trapped in mediocrity. I believe one of the main reasons is they do not dare to be different. You need to be different if you want to be above the average. The question is:

Do you dare to be different?

This question might not be easy to answer, but how you answer it will make the difference between excellence and mediocrity.

Here are some more specific questions to help you check yourself and take actions:

1. Do you have a dream?

This is the first question you should ask yourself. I believe one of the main reasons people just follow the herd is they don’t have a dream. If there is nothing to pursue then why bother being different?

But a dream is what sets you above the average. Not having a dream means going to mediocrity on autopilot.

If your answer for this first question is “no” then start searching. I’m sure you have a dream deep inside of you. It might be something from your childhood. Maybe for long time you have been too busy to let the little voice of your dream be heard. This is the right time to heed that little voice.

If you have found your dream, the next question is whether or not you have the courage to follow it. Questions two through five will deal with that.

2. Are you doing what you want or what you should?

There are often implicit “rules” about what someone should do in a particular situation. For example, when there are two job opportunities, the “rule” says that you should take the one with higher pay.

But is that what you want? I mean, does it help you achieve your dream? Maybe the job with less pay will help you achieve your dream while the one with higher pay doesn’t. Do you have the courage to be different and follow your dream?

3. Do you worry more about being loved than being what you love?

Another reason why we don’t dare to be different is because we are trying to meet other people’s expectations. We often worry more about what other people say than about what matters to us. But living someone else’s life is a bad way to live your life. Why should you lose opportunity just because of what other people say?

4. Do you choose what is safe rather than what is right?

Maybe you are not trying to meet other people’s expectation. Maybe you just don’t want to take risks and therefore you choose to play safe. But this is exactly what many old people regret. When they were asked in a study about what they regretted most and what they would do differently, most of them answered: “I wish I had risked more.” Don’t let the same regret happen to you.

5. If you had only six months left to live, would you do what you are doing now?

You can only answer “yes” to this question if what you are doing matters to you. Doing what matters to you is a sure way to excellence since you will do it with all your heart. But you need the courage to be different and follow your heart. Do you have it? I hope your answer is yes. Life is too precious to be lived in mediocrity.

I dare you to live to excellence and fight mediocrity in 2008.

Regards

John Singh
31/12/2007 11.35am