Something New A Week #48 - Bro's Convo Photoshoot!

Time past so fast. This once cute chubby little boy has grown up and graduated! The boy who once cried over candies that I took away from, now scolds me over drumsticks that I took an extra bite from! I can't imagine that time really flew by so fast! I'm so proud of him, and always so inspired by him! And I love him so much. I'm grateful that God has blessed me with such a wonderful brother to walk through this life together through thick and thin :) Let's keep striving together!

What's new to me:

You need not work too hard to make people smile, just say happy words, do happy things, and smile and laugh along - they'll smile :)

Something New A Week #47 - Happy Lantern Day!

It's more known as Mid-Autumn festival but to me I call it Lantern Day! Well to be honest I'm not a fan of lanterns (I dislike Green Lantern too) and I don't think I've lit one at all last year. This year, uncle was so cute to prepare traditional old paper lanterns for us, in our twenties, to play with - all for the sake of reliving childhood memories haha!

So we decorated the garden just as above! Isn't it beautiful? It is. And the most beautiful part of it is we did it together as a family :) Nothing beats great extended family bonding times, feel so blessed!

What's new to me:

Lighting up so many paper lanterns. Seriously, when I was younger I prefer those animal shape lanterns so I rarely lit up paper lanterns, the most only 1 or 2. But tonight I lit up more than 5 lol.

Something New A Week #46 - Chill Out@Verve Suites Mont Kiara

Met new friends who stays at this pretty place at Mont Kiara! One of the nicest service suites I've ever visited. Sweet peas. The roof top was a good place to chill over good food and great talk. Able to grab KL skyline too. No need to burn my pockets to get such feel at Luna Bar or Skybar. :)

What's new to me:

Verve Suites itself!

Something New A Week #45 - Alpha Workplace Course @ DUMC

The Alpha Course at church was indeed another reminder that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Thankful to be reminded again that we are all instruments of God and work is worship. So give your best at work because you are not working for your boss, nor yourself - but for the Almighty God :) Be an instrument at the workplace, be the change you want to see. :)

What's new to me:

Meeting new friends throughout the course!

7 Key Reminders About Time

Have you watched the movie In Time by Justin Timberlake? Yes, he's the guy in the picture above. I like how he emphasized that "You can do so much in ONE day!" The movie's concept in reminding how time can make a difference in a person's life is amazing. Time is precious, it's irreversible and every time past without being well invested, might be a time well wasted. 

I believe time management is actually not managing the time itself; but managing yourself. Because everything stems out from you. You decide your thoughts, your attitude, your behaviour - and all these will lead to what you want to achieve in the end. You decide to laze, or to be hardworking; and you decide to be driven; or to slack; and you decide to prioritise or to do whatever it comes. The trick is, your willpower comes from how strong your desire is - to do whatever it takes to reach what you want.

My company organized a Time Management workshop today and I really can resonate to what the speakers (Linnet Tan & Kenny Ong) said! It was quite a lot of knowledge but guessed I echoed best to some parts which act as important reminders to me.

7 KEY REMINDERS ABOUT TIME (and some of my thoughts)

1. Prioritization is key

The ability to prioritize will help you to yield desirable results instead just feeling busy yet not achieving, after a whole day of work. If you can't prioritize naturally (which is perfectly fine), 1 simple mindtool you can use is the Urgent/Important matrix. I personally have been using it for about 3 years and it really helped me and some people in my team is using it too! Another great management mindset is to know how to delegate, this is well illustrated by one of the great management concept: "Who's got the Monkey".

2. Make sure you are always achieving, not always busy

Many people tend to end up busy doing a lot of things but achieving nothing, because they did not prioritize the important tasks that leads to the end goal. So keep track on number 1, and you'll be on track on number 2.

3. Maximize your time

How much can you do with the time you have at this very moment? Are you investing in something - knowledge, people, finances, change etc? Are you making sure all gaps are filled up with works of valuable results? 

4. Time investments compound

How we invest in our time determines our happiness in life and also financial success. For money to grow it has to be invested, same goes to time. If you invest your time to improve in certain skills, or to become more efficient - you will slowly find that that skill you invested would bring you more money; the efficiency you had will give you more time to make more money, to meet more people and spend time with people who matters. When you have more time, you can invest them back and benefit from the compounding interest to gain more time and money which are valuable factors to make sure you have time to spend with those who truly matters and do things that you really want!

5. Save time by effective communication

Sometimes communication breakdown burns out time to fix the mess. To be effective at work, communicate clear goals, identify resources together, set expectations and timelines together - when everyone's aligned, things move fast - and you get more effective and you have more time to invest in other things than just work.

6. Desire for success is important. Successful people  = Effective people

Everything boils down to a person's decision. The desire to be successful will drive you to find all ways to achieve it. Automatically you will want to accomplish things that matters effectively and efficiently. What is your burning desire that you will put down everything and focus on it and deliver it? 

7. Objective of time management is to achieve things in life, not just at work

I cannot agree more to this statement. We are living to live to enjoy the abundance in this world and to make a difference in this world, not living just to work and get by day by day. Being efficient at work helps us to have more time to achieve more things outside of work. It's making sure we have time to spend with those who matters and to live a fulfilling life where we reach our dreams and we influence other people!

I guessed these are the 7 key reminders I had from the session. Honestly, everyone knows this deep in our hearts - we know it. But sometimes we just need people to knock us at our heads to remind us how important it is again if we aren't able to focus on it. Again, I believe the inner desire is the best driver to succeed in life. Like I said:

"Your willpower comes from how strong your desire is - to do whatever it takes to reach what you want."

May you be inspired!

Something New A Week #44 - Dance Training@Vessel

The posted date was the first day I started learning. But this is written after a month.
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I loved dancing. I entered competitions and did performances. But that day was my very first dance class in Church. It's a programme to prepare us for future productions.

It opened up my eyes to the real dance world. 
Previously I was focusing on techniques, and just going hip hop and free style. But it was such an honor to be able to be mentored by Michael aka MXV. He is a great dance teacher. He taught us the importance of the journey of dancing. He stressed how important it is to make your mind, your heart, your body and your soul to be all in one to perform a great dance, to perform not for fame, not for the glory, but for the Lord. We call it pray-formance instead of performance.

Understanding ourselves
We didn't go into awesome dance moves or copied choreos like how normal dance class used to do. Instead, we went through the basics of understanding our own bodies and feeling ourselves and being in the present. We went through the history of dance and tried out different moves as well to grasp a gist of how dance evolved - Chelston, Waltz, Cha Cha, Twist, Jive, Disco etc. Our warm ups were always ballet-style, lots of plies which made my thigh screamed like mad but am used to it now. We did all kinds of mirroring exercise where we practise emotions, speed, levels etc which made me realised how such simple activity can pull me into a focused zone and to try to understand what the other is thinking, feeling, or trying to tell me.

Putting the pieces together
The favourite part is how MXV empowered us to choreo our own dance moves for 1 same song and helped compiled it to make up a dance for that whole song. It's amazing to see how every single pieces of the jigsaw will in the end fit in nicely to form a nice picture :)

It's the journey that matters
I believe throughout this whole journey one important thing I learned is that everything takes great hard work, laser-like focus, and strong passion to pull you through the journey and grow as you reach destination by destination. Be it in the business world or in the arts world, these same rules apply as it's the core foundation in life if you want to succeed in anything. :)

"One important thing I learned is that everything takes great hard work, laser-like focus, and strong passion to pull you through the journey and grow as you reach destination by destination"