Inspire others to inspire themselves …

Nowadays I saw a lot of postings via Face book or emails sharing words of wisdom to inspire others. It is so exciting to know that a lot of us out there are trying their best to spread the vibe of inspiring others.

There is something different, in a larger scale, something grand that we could do. Inspire others to inspire themselves. You probably wondering what on earth I am talking about. For instance, in some of my blogs, I often bringing up the thought of the day without spilled out the answers or ways for us to carry out the action. The idea here is to ignite our thoughts so we could inspire ourselves.

Let’s take a closer look on how would we achieve the goal of inspiring others to inspire themselves. One way that I observed and turned out to be very effective is to lend our ears to others. For instance, when someone is trying to form an idea or in the middle of gathering his/her thoughts, he/she tends to talk it out. Listening to him/her attentively and occasionally asking questions, the right questions, without adding our opinions/advices/ideas. Frequently, we would hear him/her saying, “Aha! I got it! Thanks for listening; I know what to do now.” And we said, “Sure!” Did we insert our ideas/opinion/advices for them? Nope! What we did was nothing more or less, just listening and by asking the right questions. The key here is listening and asking the questions that could inspire them without them realizing that we have ignited the thoughts in their heads. Exactly how? I will leave this to all of us to figure it out. After all, this is all about inspire others to inspire themselves :-)

Courtesy of coachesplus.com

The moment you hear someone says “Aha!” “I got it!” or some sort of exciting exclamation, you know that you have inspired them to inspire themselves. And the reward is unbelievable. Not to mention the excitement, boosting their self esteem and sense of accomplishments.

One leader that I know from my previous job, he often inspired all of the people that reporting to him by doing so. He loved to listen and asking some questions and without them realizing, he has inspired them to inspire themselves. He passed on this tip to me and now I am passing on to all of you!

Let’s take another step toward our journeys and pause once in awhile to listen and ask the right questions so we could inspire others to inspire themselves. In return, we may inspire ourselves and pass on these incredible skills to our next generation. --As the US 6th president, John Quincy Adams, once said “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

Until next stop,
Journey of Life

Faith ...

During uncertainty we often have the tendency of losing our faiths. Is it because we are lacking the faith to begin with or we simply don’t have one to begin with. I dunno, but I do know one thing: without faith, we are circling our thoughts to endless worrisome.

We, as parents, worry about everything when come to our children. We worry if they don’t do well in school, we worry when they are sick, we worry when they have something in their minds, we worry when they are sad, we worry when they are somewhere away from us and we never stop worrying about them regardless of their age.

We live in this era where every corner we turn to have very disturbance news about everything that you could name. Leaving us, no choice but constantly worrying about our children’s whereabouts and well being.  Some of us go as far as losing our sleep or having sleep apnea.

One day, when I exchanged words with my younger brother and he happened to mention that we, human, should leave the unknown to the hands of God or simply have faith. There is no point for us to constantly worry about something that is uncertain, something that is not within our control, and something that is unknown. Simply leave them in the capable hands would suffice and lessen our burden.

Someone mentioned to me in the past that he should have faith in order to be able to trust someone. But, he had hard times to do so simply he doesn’t know how. I didn’t know what to suggest to him. To me, faith comes naturally, but still in some cases, I simply couldn’t let go of my worries in the name of the faith. I just kept them in my heart until it daunts on me what my younger brother has said.



  --courtesy of daphnetiong.blogspot.com

Often times, when others people are no longer reliable or appear not to, we inevitably lose our faiths on them. It is quite distressing; we simply lose our trust and feel like we are no longer able to trust that person anymore.

Hope this blog would inspire for those of us who have strong faiths to reach out our hands to people who need us. And perhaps the rest of us who need to strengthen our faiths would find ways to do so. Only that way our minds would be at ease and we may perhaps enjoy our journeys with our next generation instead of worrying about them.

Until next stop,
Journey of Life

The art behind negotiation ...

Whether we realize it or not, we are using our negotiation skills every moment of our lives. The wife does the cooking, the husband does the dishes. Sometimes negotiation is done implicitly, sometimes explicitly. Nevertheless, we are all negotiators.

At work, when we are assigned to do multiple assignments, we ask which is the priority. Indirectly, we have initiated the negotiation between us and the management here. Sometimes, we are engaged in a more explicit negotiation where a reward is at stake if we failed to negotiate. Ultimately, we are aiming to win. Sometimes with our hearts set on winning, we are no longer negotiating.

What is negotiation anyway? Let’s take a peek at what Google has to say, “Discussion aimed at reaching an agreement.” Hmmm... Interesting …

We often think negotiating is when we are able to pursue others to accept our opinions and our opinions only. When we win a better deal on the tables, when we are able to overpower the other party, or at the very least, talk the other person into accepting our terms...

Is that really the best way to negotiate? How about meeting others' needs without compromising ours? I thought the definition of negotiation is to reach an agreement based on discussion.

How many times we have found ourselves saying, "Do it because I said so," when our children won't agree to the terms that we put on the table. Perhaps it seems like there is not a right way to reach the agreement but still, none of us won't  budge. Just because we are enforcing our authorities on our children and they may reluctantly agree to our terms. Is this the right way of negotiating?

--courtesy of mlongleadershipebms.blogspot.com

If you think negotiation is reaching an agreement instead of an act of winning, then it would not be such an intimidating act after all. It is, in fact, one of the best skills to teach our next generation. It could be as simple as agreeing on what movie to watch, or perhaps which restaurant to dine at, or what time to go practice golf. If we could reach the agreement in a subtle way, we may be able to teach the art of negotiation skill to our next generation. And it may be a gratifying feeling to be able to meet everyone's needs while meeting ours.

Let's pause once in a while in our journeys and reinforce the right way of negotiating, the art behind the negotiation skills, to our next generation. So they, too, can enjoy negotiating without being intimidated. Indulging instead..

Until next stop,
Journey of Life