Archive for March, 2005
12 Mar, 2005
The Sleeping Volcano
“F*ck!” I shout at the top of my voice as I punched the cupboard with my closed fist. Adrenaline rushes through my body as my mind says “stop this rage! stop this rage! The others are not going to like what they see… you are not like this! You are normally the picture of calm, or tolerance. You are the cheerful one, the one that people know doesn’t get mad… the one that people turn to when things get mad!”
But my mind also says, at the very same time, “I have already started off on a rage. Stopping now wouldn’t help the situation. In fact, stopping now might put you in a bad light and not put the point across to these people that you cannot stand their behaviour. Since these people probably already know that you can lose your temper, you might as well go the whole way and make sure this situation doesn’t repeat itself.”
Have you experienced similar situations? When your mind cannot stop your own actions?
6 Mar, 2005
The Freedom of Choice
Freedom of choice. All of us have that. Everything we do, we can choose.
W asked, “take for example our birth. Did we have a choice whether or not we wanted to come into this world?”
The thing our parents gave us is called “life”. We can choose to live or die by the time we are able to move freely. Most of us choose to live.
“But how about our choice of coming into this world?”
When we were brought into this world, we were given the chance to make choices. The most basic one of which is life or death.
No birth, no life, no choice.
If we were never born, would we have a choice as to live or die?
Choice is like energy: always changing, but never destroyed.
1 Mar, 2005
The Millionaire Spouse
I read a wonderful chapter in the book The Millionaire Mind today on spouses and their relationship to millionaire-ism. The essence boils down to this:
The typical millionaire couple in America has been married for twenty-eight years. One in four have been married for thirty-eight or more years…
…There is a highly significant negative correlation between divorce and wealth, and, conversely, there is significant relationship between years of uninterrupted marriage and net worth…
…Future millionaires seem to be able to judge potential partners with respect to traits like sinceirty, cheerfulness, reliability, and affection.
One of the most important aspects of school and college that influenced millionaires in becoming economically productive adults? Learning how to make accurate judgements about people — and that is how they pick their spouses too.
Intelligence Clouding the Mind
Then I came across another paragraph that also struck me as a very interesting observation — that on intelligence and its effect on choosing your spouse.
Not all the intelligent people one meets in college have all the other important qualities. In fact, the quality of high intelligence can often act as camouflage. Some people are so taken with a suitor’s high level of intellect that the suitor’s deficiencies are concealed or overlooked, just as others are blinded by physical attractiveness. If one places to much emphasis on a quality like intelligence, then he may be insensitive to variations in sincerity, cheerfulness, reliability, and virtue, for example.
War and Business
This book features interviews of quite a number of millionaires. Several of the millionaires interviewed mentioned that experience in the military was vital to their economic successes later on — one of them even required that his son join the military for a couple of years before agreeing to hand over his business.
That has really bolstered my confidence in believing that the army hasn’t been such a waste of time after all. Sure, the amount of humble pie I have had to eat daily since conscripting has been considerable. But values such as discipline, humility, as well as experience of being away from home has been quite invaluable, especially if I plan to go overseas to study.
The Colours of the Wind
Most importantly though, has been the amount of interaction I have had to go through with people from all walks of life. Living in close spaces with people different from you and sharing completely different values has been difficult.
But over time, you realise that this — especially for me, as a business student — has been extremely helpful in helping me develop a knack of judging people more accurately, something mentioned by millionaires to be highly influential in helping them attain their millionaire status. It also teaches and condition’s one to keep one’s emotions in check, something essential in the fast-paced, and emotionally-draining business world.