Fish! Omnibus

August is not yet over but i am done with my August book! Yey!

The book for the month is Fish Omnibus by Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christensen. This book is actually three books in one. The original Fish! followed by its sequels Fish Tales and Fish Sticks.

The book Fish! introduces the Fish! Philosophy while Fish Tales is about sample stories applying Fish! Philosophy. The last book is how to continue applying the Fish! Philosophy.

After reading several self-help books for the year, the stories starts to become a touchy-feelly Rah! Rah! Rah! kind of a thing. You know the idea. Same feeling you get when you join a team building and you get all hyped up a few days after attending it. Nevertheless, the first book is a good read. It talks about how to make work a fun thing to do.

Fish Philosophy

Here are the four principles as defined in the book

Be There: When people need you, they need all of you. Setting aside distractions and judgments to be mentally and emotionally present is a sign of respect. It improves communication and strengthens relationships.

Play: You can be serious about your work without taking yourself so seriously. Play is a mindset more than a specific activity. It allows you to throw yourself with enthusiasm and creativity into whatever you are doing, in a way that is natural, not forced. "Playing” with ideas helps you find solutions to everyday challenges.

Make Their Day: Simple gestures of thoughtfulness, thanks and recognition make people feel appreciated and valued. When you make someone else feel good, you feel good too.

Choose Your Attitude: To actually choose how you respond to life, not just react, you must be intentional. When you get up, decide who you want to "be" today. Moment-to-moment awareness is key. Ask yourself throughout the day, "What is my attitude right now? Is it helping the people who depend on me? Is it helping me to be most effective?"

All the principles are true and doable. Among the principles, i want to work on Make Their Day! attitude. Looking back on my current activity, i have not put so much effort in attending to my clients that they will be in a position to say that i made their day. Sure, i deliver a quality work. However, i need to push more in the level of delivering beyond expectations.

So that's it. This will be a short post as the book is short as well. Technically, i am done with my September and October book since the book is really 3 in 1. Nevertheless, i want to read more so will search for books for the Ber months.

"Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out" - Anonymous

Eat that Frog! Quotes

I love quotes! I love the feeling they generate especially the good ones. 

Yeah! I know all of us relate to this comic

Nevertheless, here i am sharing the quotable quotes i got from the book

One of the simplest and yet most powerful ways to get yourself started is to repeat the words, "Do it now! Do it now! Do it now! over and over to yourself

You concentrate on the things you can do right now to get the results you want and achieve the goals you desire

“Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along”

You take action rather than talking continually about what you are going to do.

It is not what happens to you but the way that you interpret the things that are happening to you that determines how you feel.

Optimists

• First, optimists look for the good in every situation.
• Second, optimists always seek the valuable lesson in every setback or difficulty.
• Third, optimists always look for the solution to every problem.

Successful people continually put the pressure on themselves to perform at high levels. Unsuccessful people have to be instructed and supervised and pressured by others.

The first requisite for success is to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.

One of the great ways for you to overcome procrastination is by working as though you only had one day to get all your most important jobs done before you left for a month or went on vacation.

A great life, a great career is built by performing one task at a time…

…"By the yard it's hard; but inch by inch, anything's a cinch!"

One of your great responsibilities in life is for you to decide what it is that you really love to do and then to throw your whole heart into doing that special thing very, very well.

…Do your work. Not just your work and no more, but a little more for the lavishings sake – that little more that is worth all the rest.”

The sad fact is that "almost done" probably meant "not yet started."

Time and Money

One of the profound nugget of wisdom I heard from my professor back in graduate school "whoever has the budget is the priority". He is talking about corporate world on the area of how management allocates the company's resources to meet its goals and objectives. He adds that wherever the resources goes, thatnis the company's priority without the need of words. A good example is on training. Even if a manager consistentlty talks about how he values the importance of training and development for his employees yet no budget is being made for this expenditure, then it is all crap.

This time, I wanted to extend the concept in our daily life. In the concept of time. All of us are in equal footing. All of us are given 24 hours in a given day. No distinction. Whether you are rich or you are poor, we all have 24 hours to spend in a day.

Now, go back and see where you are spending your time. If you constantly say you will get healthy, how much time did you spend yesterday in ways that will make you healthy? If not much then I am telling you that getting healthy was not your priority. If you say, getting this project in front of you is your topmost priority but you end up spending more time updating your facebook status or checking your twitter timeline then that project was never really your priority.

This is also true for projects that require collaboration. For a month of so, I had some trouble finding a common time for several executives to be in the same room at yhe same time to address an issue that on my end is a priority. I struggled coz every now and then, one of them will have an excuse about going to another important meeting. That's when i realized that while it is a priority on my end, itnever was on their end. So i have to find something that will make the issue a priority on their plate. Make them realize that this tadpole is a priority. And i did. I escalated and true enough, i was able to find a common time and get them to discuss and plan an action.

I want to close this by asking you to go back and see where you are spending your time. I am now making this a habit in addition to reviewing where my money goes. What do you think?

Your time is your life. Period. How you spend it ends up being what your life is.

Decisions

Are you fond of making decisions? I was not.

The beginning of our life was never our decision. Somebody has to make that decisions for us. Our parents. I am into the impression that we are not designed to decide.

No one was born with decision making skill. It is something learned. As we grow up and gain knowledge, we start learning how to make decisions.

I spent my formative years in a seminary where everything is structured. We have time for everything. There is a set time for wakingup. Time to hear mass. Time for prayer. Time for eating. Time for resting. From an outside perspective, it was not freedom. At that time, i also felt it restrictive. Only after getting out that i realized how much  i miss that structured organized life.

On the book awaken the giant within by Anthony Robbins, the author encourages us to make more decisions to master the skill of decision making. And since i am also still on my mental diet, this was an exciting but challenging task for me.

If you are following me in facebook, you know that I had some problems with my son not wanting to go to school. We solved it by having a heart to heart talk to him and givng him structure. A step by step schedule from the waking up to getting to school. It worked! It was easier for him to follow that structure and we are all happy. Somehow, i inferred that until we master the skill of making decisions, we always long for someone making the decisions for us.

It was effective as long as the steps are followed. Hoever, it is a team effort. Part of the step is his mom giving him a bath. It was a non-negotiable for my son. If mommy is not giving him a bath then it is a no school day for him. The routine worked for awhile but it is not fail proof. More often than not, my wife has to render long hours of officework and she made the decision to wait for my 1pm - 10pm shift before going home rather than taking the long tiring commute.

At times, she really need to catch more sleep since our second son cries for milk at dawn. During that times, she is unable to wake up early. She will get cranky if she is forced to wake up. And if she does not wake up and does not help my son,  He too gets cranky and decides not to go to school. I will get frustrated too. I will feel bad. I am dissappointed with my wife and with my son. i will give in to the fact that my son ends up not going to school yet the feeling of frustration will haunt for me for the rest of the day.

Then came the mental diet. The challenge is to be positive all the time and to focus on the solutions. It is a very difficult but it somehow helps me to cope up. I have been waking up early since Tuesday despite my midshift schedule to be in LTO by 8 am. I have to work on renewing our car's registration and transferring the car title under my wife's name. 

I would not go into detail how it went but for sure you know the feeling of transacting with a government institutuion. Again, it helped that i am forcing myself to think positivie.

Now, going back to my son. His mom has to work longer hours this week. You know the drill. She needs to recharge and it would not be nice forcing her to wake up early. I changed my perspective and instead of nagging her and nagging my son, i decided to just go through the process as calmly as i can.

While his mom did not give him a bath, i diverted my son's attention into talking about our plans for the weekend and talking about school. It worked from tuesday to thursday but was not so effective today. What changed? My decision.

He woke up as scheduled. Earlier in fact. He's up 6:30. For the past three days, i forced myself to talk to him while he eat and prepare. Today,  i just let him be. And that was a bad decision on my part. By 7:30 i can hear his wailing and the mood has changed. My son is cranky and does not want to go to school anymore. His pattern was interrupted. Old me would immediately put the blame to my wife but this time i decided to take control. I  ignored the negative feeling knowing that what i focus on expands. One cry will ruin my day and it is unfair to myself. Took a heavy sigh and tried the whispering technique. Whispered the Saturday plan to my son and it worked. Told him that Saturday is a transportation day. (I'm visitng my dentist tomorrow and i am planning to commute.) He stopped  crying. I am sure he got excited about the prospect of riding the jeepney, bus tricycle and mrt all on the same day. 

I have completed my seventh book and would like to share pointers about decison making.

1 Harness the power of decidion making.

2 Remember the true power of making decisions

3 Realize that the hardest step in achieving anything is making a true commitment - a true decision

4 Make decisions often

5 Learn from your decisions

6 Stay committed to your decisions but stay flexible in your approach

7 Enjoy making decisions

Power of making decisions

If you look and assess oyour emotions, events and those that stresses you, do realize that it all happens because you made a decision.  An approaching deadline might be stressing you now and looking back, it might be stressing you now because you made a decision back then to procrastinate on it.

You might be feeling dissappointed  right now because the result you are expecting is not happening. Someone you expect to do something failed to deliver results. The author emphasizes that whatever happens, we have a control. We decide. We decide whether these events or things will stress us or not. We decide whether we are going to on panic mode or just calmly tackle the task at hand with the best of our abilities given the limited time. Awareness to decision making helps us remind ourselves that we are in control. It may be true that we do not control how people around us will act or the events that will happen but at the end of the day, we are in control of how we are going to react.

Make decisions often.

This is a learning for me. I hate decision making. Thismust be the reason why i hate grocery shopping. It entails a lot of decision making. :D Seriosuly though, i am one of those who rants "why do i have to make all these decisions" when i am so busy and bombarded by smaller tasks.

The author suggest to master the skill of decision making. Not just letting it flow but conscious decision making. How many of us make a decision just for the sake of making a decision? Cge yan na lang is a scary decision making skill. Take charge! That is what the author suggests.

Lastly, enjoy the processs of decision making. It is one of the greatest gift we have. Freedom to decide. Use it.

"Decide to build your own dreams or others will hire you to build theirs"