Thought Instrument

Ever wonder why we are so unfazed by the people who often just stick to the status quo? It is because they choose to avoid failure by choosing not to start on it. These people treat failure as the end. In short, those who have it easy live an unfulfilling life.  Truth be told, we must always regard  Failure as a source of valuable revenue in life. Life is so short that we ought to regard the experiences we go through seriously. Let us stop looking failure as something that will pull us away from our ultimate goal but rather start seeing that failure is something we will all encounter along the road to our ultimate success. Nobody who was ever successful in this world had it easy. They all certainly had days when they doubted the outcome but what differentiates them from the rest is that they are not afraid of failures. They will come face to face with failures at times, but they are not hindered by them. This is because they know that  NOT starting on...

We often just let life happen to us even when the things in life start to go awry and fall out of pace. In essence, w e have the tendency to have the passenger mentality in life. We succumb to what life has on offer through actions of our own and nobody else.  There are three key points about life we ought to adhere to: Choice, Self-belief, and Determination. There is a short story I like to share: Once there was a girl from the rural part of Russia whose dream is to become a ballet dancer. In order to fulfil her dream, she practiced day and night. She eventually performed very well, and was placed well above the ballet dancers in her age group to succeed. However, as the dance moves got more complicated, she started to experience failures at a higher rate. As a result, her self-belief faltered and doubted her ability to perform at the highest level.  One day, a world renowned ballet dancer was invited to perform in her village where this girl was from. I...

You must always learn to be frugal in life. This is because saving up money is like piecing together a puzzle. You save up a little piece from here and a little piece from there just so that one day, you can finally piece your way up to achieving the freedom that you always long for. You should not be afraid of making financial mistakes, or any mistakes in life for that matter, because mistakes will eventually pass you by. What is left is that these mistakes will teach you the importance of proper financial management.  Never mind the returns may be low in the beginning because you can always learn to pick up higher returns along the way. More importantly, it is how frugal you can be. Without frugality, no amount of money in the world can satisfy your insatiable appetite for spending ever so more.  Lastly, never forget the little footsteps that you make at every step of the way. With patience, every step can let you finish the longest of roads, just...

Life is akin to climbing a mountain. The easy part is always the down slope. Whenever you are facing a problem in life, it means you are likely on your way up slope. Credit: sunrise666 It may feel like two steps forward and one step back many a times when we are going through life. As Martin Luther King Jr. put it: "...Whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward." We always face pressure from all around us and the first thing we do is we tend to find comfort in the things that we do. More often than not, these things that we fall back on do not help us move forward. The funny thing is about life is, although the pressure may vanish, it does not mean that they are completely gone from your life; and while money can always be replenished in many ways, the time and effort that we put in to earn it will forever be gone. In this one life that we live in, we must learn to handle pressure well. You must support yourself wholeheartedly no matter what because ...

I have learnt to live with the belief that all the things that each of us do in life are never in vain. Everything we have done in the past eventually led us to where we are now in the present. When we choose to accept or deny something in our lives, we are forming a frame on how we are living it. We get a college degree because we trust that it will  somehow  lead to a higher paying job thus increasing our standard of living. Choosing to help someone may fall into the frame of wanting to serve the people for the betterment of the community. We invest our money in hope that it will fund the things that we have always wanted to do. We may defy social conventions because we feel that the world should be free and not be bounded down. Fundamentally, all of us hope that everything that we do in the present will mould each of our future closer to where we feel is desirable. So, in order to find out what you want to do in life, take a snapshot of the life you ultimately d...

Have you ever asked yourself who are you outside of your day job? Have you realised that very likely the only time when you bother to pen down something about yourself, it is probably updating your résumé listing out your past experiences working in a job that you thought would add some worthiness in your life? Have you also realised that probably when you talked a stranger up to get to know him or her, the first thing that is brought up, more often than not, will be linked your role in a job and the salary that is being drawn? Summarily, most of us seem to be "exchanging our time for money"  doing a job for a company that does not define you as a person.  This is very aptly depicted by the cartoon strip by Cat and Girl. Credit: Cat and Girl  So, let us stop wasting our time on working for things that don't matter to us deep down inside and start building your own future by defining your self-worth that is unique to each and everyone of us. Start by asking y...

As I embark on my journey for the betterment of myself and the world, one of my plans is to get vested in what I call it as "My Freedom Fund".  Part of this journey is for me to share with everybody my frugal way of living as well as other ways to supplement my work income.  This Chinese Idiom, 開源節流, tells about opening new incoming source and reducing outflow. In order for me to optimally increase my wealth accumulation, I have to find ways to generate the wealth as well as reducing my personal expenditure. Hence, I started this personal fund, named "My Freedom Fund", at the start of 2015. I feel something is indeed missing with my life. I was not born with a silver spoon and certainly have no inheritance to take over from. When I graduated from a local university in 2013, I thought everything was all set in stone and  would be rosy . I was so wrong. At that moment, I was in debt with literally no savings in my bank account. I realise the need to hav...