The power of Intention

Have you felt like after a week or a day or a conversation, you didn't feel you did know what did you do?

Yesterday, we practiced the solution for that situation through the technique 'setting an intention'.

Setting intention about the feeling we want to experience and the outcomes we want to achieve help to direct our energy and behaviours then results.

A new week is a great chance to practice that together!

Your prop for setting an intention for the next week:

Your 3 outcomes of your new week are...

3 feelings you want to experience next week are...

3 ways you can do to achieve the outcomes are...

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jenvuhuong.com/theyoujournal

Plan

Don’t start a journey until it planned

There is one thing from different trips that I notice is it is always planned in advance. The reason everyone feels planning in advance as it is a trip. A trip is a trigger to make people plan. And the reason we do it because we can save our resources for going around and being confused of what to do due to lack of information. If we can apply it into everything we do – a day or an hour – plan in advanced we will also maximise our resources.  

There are some important things of a plan:

·         Outcomes and purposes

·         How-to achieve the outcomes

o   Resources (budget, human resources, partnership, transport,…)

o   Timeline

o   Places

Let’s break-it down together:

·         Outcomes act as the most important of a plan – it is like a rope through the event connecting all the things together – everything is to move the trip toward to the outcomes. Any activity needs to be judged whether adding values to the outcomes. Purposes act as spirit of the outcomes/the trip – why do we want to achieve the outcomes? Purposes guide our spirit –state of mind

·         How- to achieve the outcomes: We need to identify our resources then knowing which resources are capable of helping us to achieve the outcomes, which ones need to be improved or complimented by outsources or partnership. For example, the embassy in the trip found that they need one trainer sharing about environment topic so they asked me join in the trip.

I believe any trip needs to have elements of work and entertainment. Combining activities to highlight these aspects important. Last days, we went to 4 different provinces (Thai Nguyen – Bac Kan – Cao Bang – Lang Son) and in each province, we did event and went to different natural places to learn about the culture and food.

The most important lesson that I always learn is to be grateful for the trip – reflection after each day and feel grateful that we have a chance to experience it and having chance to spend time with others.

Renew Your Life

I have experienced a great course of my mentor Brendon on renewing your life and here are some takeaway that we can practice together:

• Bring back the ambition to be a better you

Have greater emotional connection with your best. Feeling doesn't generate itself, we generate it by focusing on it. 

(1) What is a feeling that you want to have more of in your life?

(2) How can you generate that feeling on purpose?

For example, for me one time was 'peace' so I decided to add yoga into my daily practice. 

(3) Raise the standard in your relationship 

What is the one thing that you can do to charge your relationship?

For example, to improve the relationship with my family, I visit my family every week.

• Prime your day

Get your morning started on the right food by creating your own personalised routine such as going to do exercise right away when you wake up or maybe you can practice affirmation 'reading out loud thing that makes you feel excited' such as your goal

• Witness Beauty 

Write down what you love and you feel grateful for. Being intentional in reinforcing beautiful things happened around us. It can be something that is really simple like you see a beautiful flower. 

What did you see that it was beautiful?

What did you say that was beautiful?

What did you hear that was beautiful?

• Bring the joy 

Decide to bring joy, positive energy, vibrancy 

What do you need to do to show up with positive energy?

• Remove non-essentials 

Check the following list:

Need: Do you need to do it?

Ownership: Is it your problem?

Passion: Is it your passion?

Growth: Does it make you grow?

Challenge: Cspeaking Gym Week 9

Challenge: 'Something that needs great mental or physical effort in order to be done successfully and therefore tests a person's ability' _Cambridge dictionary.

Since I was a student, I started deeply engaging into personal development books and I found the word 'challenge' is one of a really common words that most authors shared in their books. They said 'Challenges make us grow'. And one of my favourite authors Tim shared his Ted talk about 'creating a fear list' (not to-do list or goal list). He suggested to do a thing that we felt fearful - a challenge every day to develop ourself to another level. That stuck me! It has been a really favourite practices for me anytime I feel I don't grow I know I need my 'fear list' or 'challenge list'.

What is your challenge list?

I believe you have the ability to overcome challenges and you have done it. Each time we overcome a challenge, our competence muscle gets stronger and stronger. If you found speaking in front of public challenging then just allow yourself to take one step forward to speak then the time after that you will feel easier to speak. And if you don't like what have you performed, it is ok as you are developing, the more you know the more you may feel you don't know.

There are 3 practical steps to tackle a challenge that I found working well for me and my clients:

• Re-frame the challenge: Re-frame by the word itself, instead of saying 'challenge' we say 'opportunity'. Think about the challenge as an importunity to grow.
• Re-frame our role: Imagine in 10 year time, we will be more mature and better. Think about one thing that future self will tell us to do in the current situation to deal with the challenge.
• Change our state of mind: Just do one thing to change our state of mind to become a good state of mind (either going to do exercise or going to meet our mastermind group or doing one thing to feel we grow) then from that point, re-think about the one step to tackle with the challenge. 

This Tuesday  in Cspeaking gym we will create a challenge list to tackle together so we can develop as a more confident person/speaker/teamplayer/leader.

Looking forward to seeing you!

Love live give,

Jen,

Clarity - CSpeaking gym Week 8

Have you ever used GPS to find the way to go to somewhere? I bet you have or at least you know about the way it works! We need to know the starting point and the ending point. And if we don't know one of the points or none of them, it would be a challenge. If we don't have that clarity, it would be a challenge. 

It is similar to our life, we need to have a CLARITY about who we want to be and what we want to do - the THERE we want to get to and where we are now - our current beliefs and behaviours then we can get from HERE to THERE. 

I remember when I changed my career from being an engineer to a writer and a speaker I had a strong belief that I could do that even I didn't know how. But as I had that clarity of my feeling and who I wanted to become, I found the way to make it happen. 

I found my mentor who is an international speaker and trainer as well as a best selling author and I have learned from him the 'how' since then. And the one lesson and first and foremost lesson he always taught me was 'clarity'. Although my journey has just started and there several challenges and things to learn but I know the clarity of becoming a great writer and trainer to empower the best from people will guide me and assure my fulfillment during the journey. 

If you have a dream or a feeling that you want to do something but you may don't feel it clear enough or strong enough, you may want to work on the clarity. If you want to be a great public speaker but you still feel that you lack of clarity whether you can do it or not, you need to identify the 'great' definition - what does it mean to you? Knowing that, you always can work to achieve that 'great' level. For example, you may define 'great' to you mean 'inspiring, passionate, authentic' or 'confident, authentic, humurous'. From having that clarity you will define what do you need to work on the achieve these characteristics. 

A framework to increase 'Clarity':

Three words that describe my best self are…

…..                                                     

….

….

Three words that could define how I want to treat other people are…

…

…

…

The main feelings I want to cultivate in my life are…

Congruence - CSpeaking Gym Week 7

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” – C.G. Jung

Have you ever felt that you are not truly you that make you don't have the feeling the authentic confidence? Have you ever felt that you have to change you in each context to satisfy others? You don't feel the alignment between the person you want to become or what you do. You don't feel you have the congruence!

• Why it is hard to be congruent 

Different parts of us are engaged at different times. Depending on different contexts, we may change our identity, personalty, states and behaviors. We might be a great team player at work but a bad partner at home. We may be really talkative when being with others but silent when being with ourselves. It is natural for us to be different in different contexts. 

However, to feel more congruent, we need to be more conscious about who we are, who we want to be and what we want to do. We have to intentionally create the identity we want. 

• There are some practices to be more congruence: 

Be honest and vulnerable to share our dreams/weaknesses/difficulties

Let your emotions out: If you feel something, just express them but not let them make you behave in not a good way

Share your dreams with your mentors or the people you believe and have succeed

Be responsible and live fully

Celebrate you: celebrate even small wins, give yourself credits when you complete something and then continue trying more!

Let's celebrate you in CSpeaking gym on 28th Aug!

Nonstop love live give,

Jen,

Connection - Cspeaking gym 21st Aug

We talked about 'connection' and most importantly we demonstrated the 'connection' between each other. I felt so loved and connected with everyone today despite their ages and professions. 

Thanks to everyone. Here are some lessons that I learned today about connection:

A framework of connection that helps us to connect with others better then we can feel more comfortable and confident.

Connection = Be curious + Be present + Be supportive + Be thankful + Be true

• Be curious

Always being a learner to learn new things;

always consider everyone is a good teacher;

being genuinely interested in knowing others

• Be present:

Fully concentrating on being with others, be in the here and the now, not being held by the past or hanged by the future

• Be supportive 

Respect and support other dreams;

Provide support either emotional support or information or contact support to help others realise their dreams 

• Be thankful 

Gratitude helps us to focus on positivity and happiness; being thankful toward others make others feel appreciated so they will feel more open to connecting with us

• Be true 

Be true to ourselves can help us to connect with the true self of others, the connection will be more authentic and deep and sustainable 

We also learned a lot from the five teams today:

• Teamwork, making everyone being heard and being able to speak 
• Share supportive feedback to help others improve 
• Listen to understand and appreciate others 
• You have one idea, I have one idea, we share, we have two ideas 

Cannot wait to see everyone next week with the topic 'Congruence' 

Connection

Have you ever felt you lost the connection with others?

I have since I was a kid.

I was a silent kid. I would not talk to my friends much. I would not talk with my neighborhood much. You may think that I was a shy kid. 

No. I was not. I was just a kid who wanted to protect my goal of going abroad with a full scholarship and help people around me - the goal was laughed by many people when hearing my sharing. 

People often gave up on telling me to be realistic because of my silent without much argument. Thanks to the silence, I wholeheartedly focused on my goal, studying hard everyday. And yes, I made it. I got scholarships for working in an International company and later on 2 top world scholarships to study 2 Masters and being the best performance in each Master program,

I also changed from a silent person to become a non-stop speaking person that what my friends often call me. After high school, I started speaking non-stop to get out all the things built up over the years of being in silent. And the silent years taught me to speak well we need to listen well. 

I thought I spoke well as I nonstop did it everyday. I would go to public speaking club and nonstop gave speech. I felt I developed into a great speaker and trainer identity. However, I still felt something missing. I felt there was an empty part not filled yet inside me. Anytime I spoke, I was full of me. But after that, I always felt the disconnection between me and the audience. The feeling was built up day by day. 

One day, my mentor told me that frankly people didn't really get what I said in general except for the energy. I was so confused. I didn't know what happening. Despite my consistency of speaking, it didn't lead to anywhere. 
Thankfully, my mentor read my mind. He helped me to connect with my purpose of speaking to empower people instead of focusing on the doubts. He made me realised the 'silent stubborn kid' part was the block wall between me and the audience. 

I realised that the invisible wall built between me and the outside since I was a kid make me speak in my head instead of the audience's head. I realised the unconscious fear of being not understood deep inside me built since I was a kid.

That was a powerful realisation. Since then, I slowly took down a 'brick' in the wall by connecting with the audience from my heart instead of only with my head. I started sharing my truth. I started sharing my ambition. I trust in the connection with others. I trust in the connection with the world. I felt connected more than ever with people around me. That's powerful. I feel my journey of speaking to empower people has just started, everyday. I feel without connection with people, my life journey is a no purpose journey. No matter the silent part of speaking part in me appears, they both look for the connection with people, with you my friends.

Thanks for connecting with me by reading these words. If you have felt a lonely time - lacking of connection with the world, this is the time to connect with people again.

Some practices for us to feel connected with others then ourselves:

1. Be our true self: If we are not our true self, others may not be themselves when interacting with you. We loose the true connection

2. Be curious to learn about others 

3. Respect and support others

4. Be present in any conversation with others

5. Be grateful for others 

Courage

Fear,

Doubts,

Struggles,

Have you ever 'been' friends with them? I believe we all have sometimes, either in a short moment or long time. These things - fear, obstacles, struggles - often come when we try new things such as learn a new skill especially the skill that people often tell us that 'it is terrifying' like public speaking; or when we decide to pursue a challenging goal such as going abroad or start our own business. 

We often think these things are our 'unwanted friends' but we still give them lots of time, energy to think about them that somehow makes us feel demotivated to achieve what we want to do.

The reality is that these 'unwanted friends' are our long-life friends, they will be always there everywhere every time we do something that is worthy. They actually send us signals that the things we do are something challenging that we can grow and get out of our comfort zone. If we never speak in front of public before, when we want to do the first time, we may feel fear and that fear tells us that is a challenge and prepare for that. And when we have the courage to just do it anyway, these 'unwanted friends' vanish into the air.

I remember the first time I spoke in front of hundreds people, all the 'unwanted friends' in my head told me 'what if others will laugh at me? what if they don't like what I say? what if I don't remember?' All the what if came, but when I just did it, it disappeared. 

I believe you have the courage to do whatever it take, and when you do it all unwanted friends vanish into the air.

Lets gather together to speak up, demonstrate our courage.

P/S:

To increase the 'muscle' of courage, we can do some practices everyday:
- One thing that I can do to honor my struggle is...
- One person that I can share my ambition today is...
- One thing that I am scared of but I will do today to grow is...

In this video, how demonstrating more courage can help us do things differently to get better results

Summary CSpeaking Gym week 4 7th Aug- Consistency

If you were given a choice between taking $3 Million in cash this very instant and and a single penny that doubles in value every day for 31 days, which would you choose? And why? (an example from the book 'The Compound effect'). 

If you have done this exercise before, you may know you should choose the penny. With the compound effect, at the day 31 you get $10,737,418.24 which is almost 3 time more than $3 Million. 

Or just take an example of your reading habit. One scenario is you consistently read one page every day and double the page after each week. Other scenario is you read 10pages/one time/per week. After one week, it seems the first scenario does not bring much payoff, you only finish 7 pages while the second scenario makes you feel you complete more with 10 pages. However, after 1 month, the first scenario makes you read around 56 pages while the first scenario make you read 40 pages.

With consistent action everyday and compound effect, you achieve your goal in the long run. The small choice you make everyday with the consistency over time create habits then lead to results in the long run. 

In the week 4 of CSpeaking Gym, we discovered another 'C' topic - Consistency especially its role in our life formula: 

Your Choices (decisions) + Consistency (often seen in your Habits) + Compound Effect (Time) = Goals.”  

• Small choices

Choice is a door opening the next steps you take leading to results either good or bad. For example, your everyday choice of what to eat, what to drink influences your health. If you choose to eat apples instead of candy, you give your body healthy inputs resulting in better health of you. If you choose to use staircase instead of elevator, you consume more kcal resulting in a healthier body or losing weight. 

The choice you made to come to CSpeaking gym instead of staying at home led to your speaking performance in the group resulting in a better improvement in your speaking and personal development journal. 

• Consistency

What you consistently do every day decide who you become. When you make a choice, you take action. If you consistently make the choice and take the action, it becomes a habit then influences the results you get in life. 

If you keep making the choice of eating chocolate instead of apples, you eat the chocolates and it becomes a habit resulting in your unhealthy body. 

If you make a choice to practice a speech everyday, you finish 7 speeches after 1 week, 365 speeches after a year; you master your speaking journey. 

• Time - Compound effect

When to start staying consistent in doing something such as speaking?

The earlier you start, the better it is.

Imagine if you start doing public speaking since you were 10 years old, everyday you give a speech. When you are 20 years old, you have given 3650 speeches. But if you start giving speech only when you are 20 years old, you may need to catch up the person who starts at their early age.

Having said that, it is never late as long as you make a decision and take action most importantly stay consistent. 

Joining our mastermind group - how to stay consistent by email to askjenteam@gmail.com

Life formula with 'Consistency'

The famous author Darren who wrote the book 'The compound effect' proposes a life model where consistency is one of the keys to achieve our life goal:

Your Choices (decisions) + Behavior (action) + Habit (repeated action) + Compound Effect (Time) = Goals.”  

I believe that chances we can agree easily on the formula but it seems not that easy to practice it, to stay consistent.

To stay consistent either in going to the gym or practice speaking every day, we need to:

- Regularly emotionally connect with our goal. If you want to be a better speaker, you need to find a reason why do you want to do it, maybe you want to inspire people, maybe you want to be a better teacher. You need to make the reason clear and emotionally connect with that. You want to wake up everyday to visualize you stay persistent then improve your speaking ability then be a better speaker or teacher. You can even see the audiences enjoy listening to you. When you are emotionally connect with that, you brain will activate your body to take action.

- Use block time. Each 50 minutes, you just focus on one task then take a break about 3 to 5 minutes. By doing it, your brain is refreshed and you don't feel burned out that you can be more persistent.

- Creating the triggers such as your alarms or some notes that remind you to stay consistent 

- Give yourself credit for each small win so you accumulate the momentum to stay persistent 

- Creating an accountable environment to keep you consistent, for example joining a group of people who have similar goals as you 

We have a CSpeaking gym happening every Tuesday to help you stay consistent in the journey of speaking. 

https://www.facebook.com/speakinggym/

Critical thinking - Summary of CSpeaking gym 31 Jul

How many of you here who like to eat fish?

How many of you who like to eat plastic?

You may think the two things –are separate but actually, they are the same.

Why?

Because the plastic cup we throw away normally goes to the ocean. As plastic cannot biodegrade, after some years it only can be broken down into smaller pieces. Fish also eats them and we eat fish. 

If you told me that 3 weeks ago, I would have looked at you as some of you look at me now and ran away. I now believe and know it is happening. 3 weeks ago, my friend refused to meet me in a coffee shop which uses a lot of plastic products. That made me think and reflect upon my use of plastic and the consequences caused by plastic.

Have you ever paused to reflect upon why do you do what you do? Have you ever critically thought about why do you do what you do? Do you often use critical thinking to analyse and evaluate things so you can do things more deliberately? 

To challenge everyone improve their critical thinking, yesterday, in our CSpeaking gym, we also discussed about this topic.  

Why critical thinking?

Critical thinking can be explained in a simple way - is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or believe. Critical thinking helps us to see the big picture of a situation. 

Hence, critical thinking brings different advantages:

• Save time: Critical Thinking teaches you how to prioritise your time and resources by analysing what is essential to the process. This also helps you to know that a decision is ultimately a good one.
• An appreciation of differing worldviews: Critical Thinking enables you to see beyond, not judge, cultural norms and learn how to understand other factors that can influence decision-making. This empathy and understanding is crucial to effective teamwork and leadership.
• Enhanced Communication: By teaching you to analyse and build your evidence for any given premise, Critical Thinking can make you a more effective communicator. Consistent and relevant points to support your theory are pivotal in communicating a proposal or idea proficiently. When you know your stuff, so will they.
• Decision-making abilities: You leave intuition or guesswork decision-making behind, and begin to work on a more analytical and considered basis, resulting in sounder decisions.

(Source: Regan, 2015)

Critical thinking levels: 

There are some levels of Critical thinking that is reflected well in the model named Bloom's Taxonomy: 

Hope you have a critical thinking day!

Nonstop love live give,

Jen,

CSpeaking gym every Tuesday: https://www.facebook.com/speakinggym/?

Competence - Speaking gym 24th Jul

We had another rocking day with great laughter and lot of lessons. 

1. Competence 

We talked about Competence. We know competence comes from the alignment of skills, attitude and behaviour development. The more we develop good patterns, the more competence we gain, the more confidence we have.

We know for the fact that skills/attitude/behaviour can be changed with practice although the level of difficulties will be varied skill by skill, attitude by attitude, behaviour by behaviour, person by person, context by context.

So the first step to gain competence is to decide we want to develop skills/attitude/behaviour. 

2. Pain and please 

Write down the reasons that make us want to develop these skills/attitude/behaviour.  List out the pain of not achieving them and pleasure of achieving them.

Keep an image with the pleasure to remind you everyday to engage with the things you want to learn.

3. Plan of action 

Make an action plan for every month, every week, every day to develop the skills/attitude/behaviour 

4. Reminder

Create a reminder on the phone or having a friend to remind you to stay on track

5. Reward 

Give yourself some credits after each day!

By learning these new skills/attitude/behaviour and practice them everyday, they will become habits and you can obtain conscious competence.

See everyone in the next event on Tuesday, 20 Nui truc, Lancaster building!

Competence: 4 stages to develop a new skill

4 stages to develop a skill become a habit (Martin Broadwell, Abraham Maslow) with an example of driving a car:

Stage 1:  Unconscious incompetence 

We dont know what we dont know 

Stage 2: Conscious incompetence

When we first drive a car. 

We go to the theory part of that we realise that 'We don't know what we don't know '

Stage 3: Conscious competence 

We now we get better, we gain competence 

Stage 4: Unconscious competence

It becomes a habit. 

For attitude and behavior, it takes more effort!

***

The key is to use the formation of a habit to develop a new skill/behaviour/attitude 

- You don't know that people don't feel comfortable with the way you speak 

- You realise people don't feel comfortable 

- You consciously decide to gain competence 

You adjust one by one time

- You do it automatically 

Hence, you want to get feedback from people and then compare these feedback to be aware of the issue. You then can set up the cue for the new behaviour. For example, I always use an image that there is a potential friend who is really looking forward to hearing my presentation about a particular topic. Or maybe  set an intention before you step on the state. Or maybe try to minimise the content to present. Just keep one question in your mind 'What is one thing I want people to receive when they listen to us.

We can also list out of the good things or bad things if we behave like that.

After that we need to make a clear plan and have reminders or accountable partners to stay consistent.

It becomes a habit. 

Summary of Empower You Seminar 22 Jul 'Habits'

5 high performance habits

1. Seek clarity

o   Setting a clear specific goal (e.g., I achieve Toiec 800 in Dec 2019)

o   Make an action plan using a tree diagram

Monthly action

Weekly action

Weekly action

Daily action

o   4S clarity

 Self – 3 words to reflect your best self …

Skills – 3 key skills to achieve your goal …

Social networks – 3 social networks can help you achieve your goal …

Sense – 3 feelings help me achieve your goal …

2. Raise necessity 

o   Purpose

§  3 reasons I want to achieve my goal …

§  3 people I will reach out to support me …

§  3 ways to remind me the important of the goal …

o   People

§  One awesome friend to add …

§  One volunteer job to do …

§  One sport to play …

§  A mentor to help you achieve your goal …

3.  Increase productivity

o   3 outputs that matter to achieve your goal …

o   5 moves to progress you to get closer to your goal …

§  Deadlines for the 5 moves …

4. Generate energy

o   3 things to eliminate to release my tension everyday …

o   3 ways to bring the joy to the journey …

o   3 ways to optimise my health …

5.  Demonstrate courage

o   3 ways to overcome difficulties …

o   3 ways to share my ambition and my truth …

o   3 things that I am scared of but I know it is good to do them …

§  The time I will do the 3 things ...

The power of 'Thank you'

THE POWER OF "THANK YOU" with a smile

I remember that was one of the very first days I was in Spain to study my first Masters degree. That day, my friends and I went to the enrollment office to register for our program.
We were so excited from the moment leaving the house because of thinking about studying in the new environment. As we arrived at the office, we approached the office staff and friendly said "Hi, how are you. We would like to register for our Masters program. Can you please help us?"
...1s...2s...3s...
We were met in silence.
The lady then said something in Spanish language that we didn't have capability to understand at that time.
As we didn't reply to her, she then made a sign that she couldn't help us and said "you don't speak Spanish, I cannot help you now". As she said, she called the next students queuing behind us.
We didn't know how to respond to it because our program was in English and we didn't expect that reaction.
I thought to myself - there would be at least a solution so I convinced her "We are sorry that we cannot speak Spanish yet, could you help us this time, could you ask your manager to allow to help us this time?"
The lady told us that she had to help students who could speak Spanish first and that I could ask her manager and her manager would say the same. She then pointed me to go to the manager room so she could continue serving other students.
I went to the manager's room, smiled and said "Hola. Gracias" (meaning Thank you), the manager's face turned to excitement and she said "Hola...(and many other sentences in Spanish)".
As she finished, I said "Gracias". She got excited and said "you could understand Spanish?" and she continued speaking. I nodded on the way and said "Gracias" on the way.

After some minutes, she paused and said "you only can say "Gracias?"".
I said "Si" (mean Yes), I smiled.

She then laughed "Yes, you can say Hola, Gracias and Si". "Anways, let me help you guys to register. Just because of your smiles and the "Gracias" for everything I said".

My friends couldn't stop laughing when hearing how did I say Gracias for everything the lady said but it worked, we got the support - thanks to Gracias - thanks to the power of THANK YOU.
Have you experienced a similar situation like this where a THANK YOU with a smile did a big help to you? And yes, making you feel happy and making others feel appreciated.

The University of Georgia recently conducted a survey on the subject of marital happiness and they found the benefits of saying 'Thank you':

The Thanker

· Produces positive emotional state

· Increases sense of well being

· Triggers ‘feel good’ hormones

The Thankee

· Feels higher levels of self worth

· Triggers greater desire to help Thanker

· Triggers helpful behaviors toward others

· Appreciate being needed

· Feel more socially valued

Who will you say THANK YOU to today? (and also don't forget to thank you to yourself as you are spending time to develop you)

Happy week forward my friends!

An act of kindness

I went to a seminar some days ago and met a lady in the toilet. While I was checking to make sure my face clean, she turned me around to face her and ask 'Do you want to be more beautiful?' I just smiled as I loved to see how enthusiasm she was in approaching a stranger like me.

As I smiled, she continued 'You only need to say yes, the rest I will take care'

She then did something with my hair and my face...I smiled the whole time because of the kindness of the stranger...

Stranger care...

Let's care about each other^^

This Sunday we will share more stories and techniques to create more interesting moments for our life

https://youtu.be/5HP40GSsJD0

You win I win We win - The power of Collaboration

I was so thrilled today to see our members in different levels of language, thinking and background effectively and creatively worked together.

One team made a scenario in which 2 people need to decorate a whiteboard. One person was short and other was tall. The short person easily drew in the bottom area of the whiteboard while the tall person easily did the same with the top of the whiteboard. They did not collaborate with each other so it turned out that they both got blamed by their managers because one did not do the painting in the top of the white board well and the other did not paint well in the bottom the whiteboard.

The manager gave them the 2nd chance and asked them to work together that when they realised they could make a great painting from the top to the bottom by working together.

 You have one idea, I have one idea, we share, we have 2 ideas.

If you win, I win we win!

Practice 'creativity' muscle

Creativity is a muscle that we can train it by creating a 'gym' for it.

Adapting from the book of Tim Ferris, I found the following practice is useful. Let's join me to practice it everyday.

'Create a habit of writing own 10 ideas each morning'

- One old idea I can make new

- One ridiculous thing I would invent 

- One book I can write 

- One business idea for Google/Amazon/Twitter 

- One person I can send idea to 

- One podcast or video I can shoot

- One person I want to be friend with 

- One thing I learned yesterday

- One thing I can do differently today

- One way I try to solve a problem I have

Effective communication: Make your speech ISO

What I just did now was to express what I wanted to tell you using body language instead of words. Do you think it is powerful?

Words have power,

Action has much more power,

Words account for 5% the effective communication; the rest depends on the nonverbal communication. Nonverbal communication here includes body language, eye contacts. How can we make the best out of the use of both verbal and nonverbal communication? I have a formula for you to do so, the name is ISO. Make your speech ISO to achieve the effectiveness of communication.

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Let’s start with the first one – S – Smile.

Smile is the shortest distance between two people,  physically and mentally. I remember when I was at my first year university, I often sat on the first rows and sometimes turned back to see the class. I always saw a boy smiling at me whenever I turned back to see the class. There might be other boys but I noticed him the most because of his teeth – so white and bright. First time, second time and third time I felt so curious that I asked him ‘Why do you smile at me all the time, and your teeth is really white anyway’. Can you guess what did he answer?

‘smile’

I felt in love with his smile and somehow with him later on. Smile is powerful. It expresses our openness. Smiling is non-verbal communication and often it speaks louder than any word you can say. A smile says, “I like you. I am interested in you.”

If you say you are not a smiley person but you want to be. Then just smile. It is a practice. Sometimes we need to smile from outside then we can smile from inside. And if we can smile from inside, our face and body also smile and it creates a vibe that others can feel.

However, is it good if we smile all the time? Thinking about the case ‘I broke up with the boy, he got married with his long-term friend in his childhood even we loved each other?’ In this context, maybe smiling is not really appropriate. Or thinking about my speech last time, Therefore, need to organise our smile, we need to organise both verbal and nonverbal communication so we can communicate effectively.

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The next point is to make your speech O – Organisation

Organising words following a structure, organise nonverbal communication in the right context. Organisation helps audiences follow us easier. For this one we can use the power of number 3

- structure: 3 parts introduction, body, conclusion

For each point in the body, tell the idea, example and analyse

Tell people what you say, say it, and summary what you say

- eyes contact: look at each person less than 3s to avoid staring at them; looking at three parts of the rooms ‘right, middle, left’

- using stages: 3 areas ‘right, middle, left’

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Now we smile to create a friendly impression with the audience, we organise our speech, we want to master the most important key ‘I’ – Intention

I think smile and excitement for speaking helps me a lot during my speaking journey. I always feel excited anytime I have a chance to speak in front of others. Sometimes I felt so thrilled after speaking on stage, my mentor came to me and said ‘what is your purpose to speak?’ yes, everything seemed to be great but he didn’t know what is the one sentence to describe the purpose of my speech.

He told me ‘ask yourself over and over again until you get that one sentence’.  Think about it, before you enter a conversation or give a speech, what do you normally think?

-> how to not be nervous?

That’s why you tend to be more nervous, anytime the word comes to your mind, it appears as a signal to tell you that you are nervous. Our brain doesn’t know the ‘not’ only know the word ‘nervous’

-> your intention before entering a conversation should start with a question ‘what is the one message that I want to convey?’ ‘what is the feeling I want people to feel?’ ‘what is the feeling I want myself to feel?’

>>>>>>>>>>>>>it is when you choose to focus on the effectiveness of your speech for the benefits of the audiences

And obviously, set your intention to smile from your heart…

Before you get on stage, touch your head, heart > with an intention to serve > smile and organise your speech to let people follow – you just make your speech ISO (not standards of anyone but standards of your heart and head)