Here's how to make networking support your goals

We may not deny the benefits of networking but it can be tricky if we only love the idea of networking instead of actually turning networking activities into results.

Here are 3 steps to turn networking into results:

1. Choose the right networking events 

You may think 'right' means people who have same interests or goals. However, it can be a network of people who have total different interests. 

• Networks of people having same interests as you create a safe comfortable environment for you to express yourself and share ideas because they have tolerance and maybe same frequency as you. That's great.
• Networks of people having different interests challenge you to accept different ways of thinking and perspectives. People may not have same level of interests in your interests compared to people in the above networks. Hence, it gives you the chance to get out of your comfort zones. However, making sure that these networks are networks of people who have growth service mindset and certain levels of success in life. These people could uplift you to the next level of frequency of success. 

For example, if you are a student who wants to improve your speaking skills. You may go to speaking club of students. It is great. However, you can challenge yourself to go to business meeting that you may learn from different successful business owners who may go a further step in life compared to you.

2. Setting intention before any networking events 

• What can you give to the networks (e.g., your black book of contacts, your passion)
• What are 3 outcomes you want to learn from the events 

3. Taking action 

Going to networking events is a great bold move if you are not a networking person yet. However, it is usefulness without any further action. 

• Record these people whom you meet in a database (e.g., excel file with name, email, phone, etc)
• Contact at least 3 people to go for a coffee or Skype call 
• Follow up, share ideas, add values and maintain relationships with people are matter to your goals 
• Find at least 1 person you think you can support and offer to support them to achieve their goals 

And yes, don't forget to bring the JOY to the networking events.

Nonstop love, live, give

Authentic power

This week I shared a story about my second oldest sister in a speaking event. After the event finished, some people came and asked me whether the story was true or not as it was interesting to them. I feel thankful to have my sister who has been my 'unlimited resources' of stories for my speeches. People love my sister's stories. She is brilliant. 

She does not read a lot of books. She does not travel a lot. However, she is the most authentic 'book' that I have read. She is my icon for the authentic power. Although having an accident that broke her one leg, she took it as the second chance to live fully with her authentic self. She always smiles. She always sees things with opportunities. She has a courage to do what she loves. She makes people around her happy. She gives unconditionally. She inspires my first book 'Nonstop loving, living, and giving'. 

Anyway today I am not sharing about my sister's stories but about the authentic power.  You may know about different benefits of having authentic power such as having deeper love for yourself and others or enhancing real courage. Society somehow conditions us that dilutes our authentic power.
However, we can unleash or free it through daily action:

• Expand your emotional awareness: Keep checking your emotions 

• Create conscious intentions: Always set intention for each day, each meeting and each event in life

• Make empowered choices: Be fully responsible for your choice. Make a choice based on what your soul truly wants

• Access the wisdom of your Intuition: Have you ever known that something was going to happen before it happened? This is your intuition bursting through your rational thinking. Learn to recognize and trust intuition by daily connecting with your purpose, your goal and take immediate action 

• Cultivate spiritual partnerships: Practice meditation, yoga or mindfulness. Go to the nature more often and keep your journal

To make good decisions

Lack of decisions is a major reason of our procrastination and bad outcomes. We can train our decision-making muscle.  

1. Decide to make a decision sooner

Although there are some decisions may take longer time than others, the sooner we make a decision, the better it is. For example, if we decide to move to other country to live for a while, it may take longer time than deciding to go to a meeting or not. No matter what, over analysing paralysing often leads to procrastination. Hence, we can refer to other following points to make decisions sooner.

2. Do research to make a good decision

• Identify the decision to be made as well as the objectives or outcome you want to achieve
• Brainstorm and come up with several possible choices by gaining different perspectives, gathering as many facts and as much information you can to assess your options (people you trust, people who are successful)
• If you don't have some different perspectives to make sure you have a good choice not in a hurry. Avoiding using the same patterns of your past to make a decision for your future if in the past you didn't make any good decisions

3. Determine if the options are compatible with your values, interests, abilities, purpose, and your best self (your future self in 5 years)

• Weigh the probabilities or possible outcomes. In other words, what's the worst that can happen? What will happen if I do A, B or C and can I live with the consequences
• Make a list of the pros and cons. Prioritize which considerations are very important to you, and which are less so. Sometimes when you match the pros against the cons you may find them dramatically lopsided.

Make a decision and stick to it

Leadership Identity

The most recent research consider leadership development as ‘identity development’ (first introduced by Strauss and Corbin, 1998).

Identity here refers to the processes of making meaning associated with particular situations or roles that influence the way individuals perceive themselves or others as leaders.

(Adopted from Komives et al., 2005)

The influences on identity development includes: adult influences, peer influences, meaningful involvement, and reflective learning (they change across the stages of the central category):

• • • adult influences,
      • (adults were particularly influential as role models)
      • Later, adults continued as models and became actively engaged mentors
      • In college, adults continued as models and mentors, but also become meaning-makers and even evolved into friends
    • peer influences,
      • same ages served as friends, old ages served as role models
    • meaningful involvement,
      • clarify personal values and interests
      • learn about self, and develop new skills
      • Team-based involvements such as sports, theater, and band taught students to do their personal best while concurrently supporting others.
    • and reflective learning
      • Structured opportunities for critical reflection to uncover their passions,integrity, and commitment to continual selfassessment and learning

5 ways to beat Procrastination

If you have a tendency to put things off, here are 5 things you can do to beat procrastination and enjoy a happier, more fulfilling life:

1. Make a decision

Just like right and left, up and down, hot and cold, there’s procrastinate and decide.

2. Identify the patterns

• On one sheet: elaborate on how you procrastinate—what you do, when you do it, etc.

One of the common symptom of it is you always say to yourself "you will do it better the next day"

• On the other sheet: What would be the exact opposite of that?”
• Read and rewrite what you wrote on the second sheet every day until you notice that you’re no longer procrastinating.

3. Break it down

Sometimes we procrastinate because we don’t know where to begin. Break large projects into milestones, and then into small, actionable steps

4. Stop trying to be perfect.

Perfectionism is an illusion that slows you down and prevents you from reaching your goal. Act quickly, doing the best you can.

5. Celebrate small wins and keep gratitude journey

When you accomplish something you want to put off, reward yourself. Take a coffee or tea break, go to a movie, or eat at a restaurant you’ve been wanting to check out. Do whatever will make you feel good about overcoming the procrastination.

You see, expressing gratitude isn’t only for things that have already happened. Being grateful for things that you want and expect to happen raises your vibration, and thereby helps you get the results you want.

LEAD

How many of you here who believe you are a leader? Why not?

“I never call myself as a leader. I just have that willingness to take responsibilities to be the best that I can be and help other people’

That’s the answer of a leader that I interviewed recently, she owned 3 companies and has been CEO of 4 international organisations; quite an achievement…I thought how many more companies you need to own and lead then you call yourself as a leader? Even 1000 companies …I would answer the same…but I would have that attitude to take responsibilities to make things happen…

…I winded out the clock, when I was a little kid, 5 years old, I always saw myself as a leader, at least of my life, no companies I owned at that time yet, no people I helped yet, actually just made noise and made my parents worried…but the one day changed my entire life, the day I decided to be a leader of my own life, after my mum punished me because I didn’t do my homework, I knew I had to take responsibility for my own life, be a leader of my life…

So my friends, it is not about whether you call yourself as a leader or not, I BELIEVE and I KNOW that everyone of us can be a leader to some extent, either to our own life, to our family, our circles of friends or to society. Even if you hate the title LEADER, don’t call yourself that but do the action as a leader does…leading to making a difference either in your life or people life...because it is not about the title, it is about what do you do as a leader instead of being led by social norm, negativity or things that do not help you to be the best you can be and contribute the best as you can.

…having that mindset…you are the one who take responsibility for your life, not anyone else…you take control of situations, not the situations….you take control of the news, not the news take control you…and never stop learning…LEAD

Every moment stories - Weekly podcast

How to avoid being overwhelmed

To avoid overwhelming

1. Stop saying YES to everyone, everyone, using the rule 80/20 (focusing on things that matter to your life)

2. Take control of your morning to take control of your day 

Using the rule 5W to identify the specific information of each project everyday and put them in your calendar- where, when, what, why, with whom you will work with

3. Block time between different important tasks

For example, take a break (e.g., nap, go for a walk) between writing an email and meeting someone 

4. Reflection after each day and after each week

For example: spend 30 minutes everyday to evaluate your day and plan your day before going to sleep 

Spend 30 minutes every weekend to plan the next week

And don't forget to include what do you feel thankful for.

Nonstop love live give

FREE you

Have ever felt trapped because of your work, because of your relationship or because of your health condition?

If you have, do you want to FREE yourself from that?

It is just the state of your mind so you can change it. To change the state of mind, you need to change your thoughts.

Following the following steps:

1. Write down 3 common disempowering thoughts that you have experienced during the last wee

2. Identify the patterns of that, the stories around the thoughts

3. Change the stories to re-direct the thoughts to make it empowering

4. Take action to reinforce the thoughts

5. Mediation, yoga, gratitude, reflection

The MAP

Each of us has many maps in our hea, which can be divided into two main categories:

• maps of the way things are or realities
• maps of the way things should be or values

We interpret everything we experience through these mental maps. We seldom question their accuracy, we's usually even unaware that we have them. We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be.

And our attitudes and behaviours grow out of those assumptions. The way we see things is the source of the way we think and the way we act.

Example: same thing, diffrent views; the picture of the old and young lady

This perception demonstration also shows how powerfully our paradigms affect the way we interact with other people. As clearly and objectively as we think we see things, we begin to realise that others see them differently from their own apparently equally clear and objective point of view.

Each os us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. Wee see the world, not as it is, but as we are - or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. When other people disagree with us, we immediately think something is wrong with them. But, as the demonstration shows, sincere, clearheaded people see things differently, each looking through the unique lens of experience.

This does not mean that there are no facts. In the demonstration, two individuals who initially now both looking at the same identical facts, black lines and white spaces - they would both ACK these as facts.

Lanmark book: The structure of science revolutions

How to sustain self-discipline

Rule 1: Associate discipline with positive emotions because it helps you to better your life (e.g., if you want to lose weight, you want to discipline eating green, associate it with your image of being fit and the feeling of feeling energetic)

Associate discipline with fun by giving yourself a reward once a week for your discipline achievement (e.g., if you have eaten fast food and want to go green, you can discipline to eat green 6 days and allow yourself to eat a small amount of fast food once a week if you like).

Rule 2: Set up reminders (e.g., your phone alarms, stickers, mail) to remind yourself about sustaining the habits or having accountable partners (e.g., running partners).

Create the environment for your habits by removing temptations (e.g., remove all unhealthy food and replace with healthy food).

Rule 3: Schedule and have break between different projects during the day to refocus to re-energize and refresh your brain.

Rule 4: Allow yourself to move on by thinking there is a bad moment; there will be a great moment so you just change your focus to the empowering side of the situation. Reward yourself to make your brain understand what is good, what is bad; call your friends go out for a chat, go for a walk, buy some books you like.

The gap from HERE to THERE

How to get from HERE to THERE?

How to close the GAP? 

1. Make the THERE appealing (Goal) 

2. Let go the HERE by observing and learning (Action)

3. Dedication and persitention

How to stop worrying and start doing

You have a dream, a goal, or a desire that you really want to achieve but you often keep thinking but not taking action yet.

4 ideas for you to start taking action:

(1) Shift your focus from you to service

Stop focusing on what do you feel because of doing it, start focusing on how can you serve people better.

If you are a writer, stop focusing on people will judge you, start focusing on somebody will get inspired by reading your message.

(2) Clarify your mission and create an action plan

If you have a desire, you want to make it clear and explicit. You want to travel to your goal your desire with your mind, work backward to the current now. Identify what do you want to do monthly, weekly, daily to achieve the goal

(3) Daily action/habits to gain momentum

You want to take daily action to gain the momentum, complete at least 3 things to move closer to your goal.

If you want to be a writer, writing, meeting your writing group, reading would be 3 things to move closer to your goal

(4) Accountability

Have a group of people who work toward the same goal. Keep accountability with them.

How to wake up early

You know that morning routine helps you increase your productivity, but you just have difficult to wake up early or wake up on the time you want to.

You want to make a decision that you really want to change it and there are 4 tips for you to get it done:

1. Stories

Tell yourself empowering stories to wake up in the morning to make your brain excited about it.

For example, I will wake up tomorrow and I will go for a walk and feel energetic for the whole day.

2. Trigger

You can use music to trigger you. And you also can try to write a card for yourself in the morning and put it next to your pillow that when you wake up, you read them that make you feel excited.

3. Cost

What are the costs of waking up late (feel disappointed, behind the schedule, reduce productivity, reduce performance, etc)

4. 1 Must

Just tell yourself one thing, just one simple thing that you MUST do.

When you do that one simple thing, that one thing, you gain the momentum for the whole day.

Podcast: www.podcastgarden.com/podcast/jenvuhuong

How to be happier

How many times during the last week that you have felt unhappy or experienced negative feelings? The answer maybe many?

Do you want to be happier? The answer would be absolute YES.

Can you see the contradictory, you want to be happier but you often choose to not be.

You probably argue that it is because of the external factors. Just imagine, you are an orange, no matter who squeeze you, you have orange juice. You may get the idea now, what inside you creates the outside! 

I remember when I was third year student, I felt lost and felt no progressing, studying just studying and feeling long time to go till I could finish it then work on my desire of helping people to make a difference in life.

I decided to cycle to HaiDuong to see my sister...

where my second sister, Tomorrow, was working; it was 70 km away from Hanoi, where I was studying. Friends told me “don’t be crazy ... but you are crazy anyway.” To most Vietnamese people, it was a crazy thing to do – cycle alone a great distance on a cruiser bicycle on a sunny day on a Vietnamese highway without a cycling track in 37 degree heat. Yes, I was crazy.

The hot weather could not keep me awake the whole way. I was sleeping while pedaling the bike. I woke up each time I heard the sound of the horns of vehicles on the road or the shouting of people on motorbikes or car drivers.

Finally, I arrived at my sister’s place, safe and sound. My sister was standing in front of the restaurant with a big smile waiting for me. When she came over and pulled my hands and dragged me to the kitchen to water and feed me, I knew that I was still alive.

I then asked my sister to see her living room. That moment became my biggest wake-up call, mentally and physically.

…the wake up call…

I couldn’t utter a single word when entering the room … it should not be called a room.

A tiny bed in a tiny dark dorm room with twelve beds with almost no way to walk through and where the sun could never shine in.

On one side of the room, my sister, Tomorrow, was standing. She had devoted her life to my family by working far from her own home at her early age. She had been through a serious accident, breaking one leg. But she brightened up the corner of the room with her cheerful smile.

And, there I was: with a good education, the support and love of my family, so many more options than I had and yet I had lost my self and the joy from my life.

On the side, where I was standing, I was doubtful, losing the joy of life, while having a good education and being supported by and the hope of my family.

*********I realised there was nothing missing but the grateful attitude for life*******my internal feeling that I create for myself 

Think about the public speaking, who told you public speaking is fearful - people told you - where the ideas come from - from people who told the people ---- 

We create the own prison for ourselves - what if I told you public speaking is exciting since the day you were born - you would feel excited to do it...

...You may not be able to change external factors - you can create the meaning for that --

You can always create and grow the orange if you want orange juice ....

How to sleep well

Why it is important? Your physical, mental health, your performance, your emotions, your relationships, all aspects of life.

What influence your sleeping quality?

Remember your sleeping quality comes from DAILY RITUALS (EATING, DRINKING, WORKING, RESTING) + THOUGHTS + EMOTIONS especially the habits before you go to bed. This means you have 100% control over that.

 How to sleep well:

1. Discipline

Your eating, drinking, working habits during the days

2. Transition from daily activities to sleeping

After coming back from work, doing yoga, going for a nice walk, reading a book

3. No social media, screens one hour before sleeping

4. Gratitude journal

5. Create environment for your sleeping well: light dim, candles, relaxing music,  let your worries rest as you also go to rest

How to raise your standards

We all know that we can live a better for a better quality of life and we know we have potential to do so, we just wonder how and where to start.

You can think about 5 areas that you want to raise to other levels that you feel better that can lead to any other areas better.

1. Joy

Associate the joy with the process of raising standards and in daily activities.

2. Health

When you are healthy, you feel energetic, you are more focused, you are more productive. You know if you have everything but not health, it is not meaningful.

Everyday your decision of what you eat, drink, sleep influence on your health. 

Remind yourself when you choose the apples or the fast food; cocacola or water; use the staircase or elevator; exercise in the morning or sleeping longer; yoga and going to the gym or going to party to drink

3. Focus 

Focus on one thing at a time, do not let the phones and laptops work against you, let them become your weapon, use them to set alarm to remind yourself to take a rest after each hour of intensively working.

Forget about multi tasking that does not advance your life. Work intensively for one task and take a break to get back focus.

4. Kindness 

Be kind to others, challenge yourself today to go out to:

·         Say 'Hi' and smile at a person you meet on the road

·         Give a compliment to your loved one and a stranger

·         Give a compliment to a person in a coffee shop or restaurant that you normally go to

·         Share the cake you make with your neighbor

·         Write a thanks card to your co-workers

5. Courage

Enable to raise your standards in any area, you want to be more courageous, even you may feel scared, but you will do it any way.

The more you do it, the more courageous you become. You will make the muscle of courage stronger each time you overcome the fear and the doubts to do things that advance your life, to be more joyful, to more healthy, to be more focused, to be more kind.

With that you nonstop taking action to advance your life, to nonstop loving living and giving.

Thanks for being couragoeous and kind to stay until this last word and the video.

The power of habits: how to sustain your daily habits - HOOK tool

Your daily HABITS are the vehicles to success
********************************************
'HOOK' tool is to help you MAINTAIN your daily habits.
********************************************
mp3: http://podcastgarden.com/jenvuhuong

If you have goals, you need good habits to achieve the goals. For example, if you want to be a writer, you want to have a habit of writing everyday. 

You want to maintain the habits everyday. You know if you can maintain, you can achieve them. 
HOOK moments will help you with maintaining the habits:
1. Intangible HOOK: create a happy image to associate with the goal that you have. For example, if you want to be a writer, you want to have an image of the moment you write everyday and finally the book finished, you can touch the book and smell it.

2. Tangible HOOK:
Set up alarm on your phone 3 times per day to remind your self to keep the habits.

For example, if you are a writer, you want to set up the alarm every morning that you need to write at 7am maybe 1000 words.

You also can set up the alarm for your intention when you write, for example 'focus'

If you trigger your brain enough, it will run automatically later on.

3. HOOK for each activity

You can create the HOOK moment for each actitivity you do to just remind yourself to be like you want. For example, if you go to meet a friend, you dont want to get distracted by phones, you create that alarm before the meeting happens, you see the reminder 'focus, be present' when meeting your friend.

Or if you enter a meeting, you want to bring joy, you create trigger to remind you about that. You can associate good feelings you want to experience with each activity, when you keep reminding yourself long enough, it will run automatically for you.

If you keep doing it, you nonstop love live give to achieve your goals.

How to turn defeat to success

We all have big dreams, goals, purpose and we may sometimes do not get the results as we desire. For example, if we write a blog, nobody reads it. If we just program an application, nobody uses it. We feel like we failed. No matter what you call the experience, the idea is how to move on and let it motivate you.

1. Choose empowering meanings for the experience 

Ask yourself the question - What can I learn from the experience? What can I learn from people? What can I do it differently? 

You immediately change your focus to move toward. At the end of the day, you want to move forward, you need to train your brain to have that habit. You may argue it is not easy to do. Yes, that is why you need to do it more often. When you create that rule for your brain and practice it often enough, it will automatically run anytime anything happen. 

You always fall forward.

2. Gain momentum

You don't want to just feel down and stuck in the circumstances. You want to take immediate 3 actions. Why 3? Not so many and not so little so your brain will easily accept it!

For example, you can just send an email to your friend to ask for feedback. Or simply just go for a walk and enjoy the sun. Or just go to a coffee shop and write down your journal. Or just simply go to a meeting to meetup with people.

When you feel that you connect again with life and you are not alone, you release the feeling of failure.

3. Serve more 

You want to ask yourself - how can I serve better today!

How can I contribute more to life!

If you change your focus to people, you become bigger than your circumstances, you see things from more empowering perspective.

You nonstop taking action and live a nonstop loving living and giving life!

How to heal your trauma