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	Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Keeping Things to Heart  ( on life) Since I have been blogging, I have also been reading more and more of other people's blogs. While many blogs share experiences, and tips, I also noted that some people use the blog to ear out their frustrations.  I don't mean to belittle the traumatic or sad experience that they did, but obviously I feel that there is no value to keep stirring up something that happened 10 years ago, or even 2 months ago. I once went to a trip with a businessman, and we were both inconvenienced by a hotel reservations officer.  After a few days, I still kept mouthing to anybody that wanted to hear what an inconsiderate person he was, while my companion have already put it behind him, even recalling it with humor.  It makes me suddenly realize that was the reason he was a happier businessman than me --  he looked forward, while I continue to emphasize backwards. What is done is done.  There is nothing you can do about it, except one -- don't let something that happened in the past continue to make you miserable! One of the most enduring anecdote I heard was told to me when I was in high school.  It was told by our school principal who emphasized the importance of being yourself, and pleasing yourself. "A person happened to meet somebody whom he previously had a bad encounter.  The person cheerfully greeted the person good morning, which the other person promptly snobbed him.  His friend asked him, "Don't you feel slighted that you were snobbed?  Then why do you continue to greet him knowing that he has done you wrong and would snob you anyway?" The person said, "well, I feel that I do the things I think is right.  Greeting him certainly is certainly the right thing to do.  That he snobbed me and choose to be discourteous should be his problem, not mine!"  " It is now Christmas.  It is the season to rejoice.  It should be also a season to forgive -- and forget.  Don't keep those things to heart!   10:18:51 AM     comment []   trackback []

	Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Taking Stock at 39 ( on life) It is my birthday today, and I am all of 39.  One more strike, and I will enter that magic age, 40, when they say life really begins or in other words, when your living parts really begin to ache.  Give or take a few years, and this is the time when you find out you cannot go the distance as you once easily could, and that endless horizon called LIFE which you thought you could travel forever is starting to show visibility.  I always joked that there are 2 stages in a person's life.  The first stage is when you want to look and sound older than you really are.  I am now entering the second stage.  That is when you  want to look and sound younger than you really are. When you have a birthday, you are bound to see your life flash in front of you.  As the years passed, the flash has become longer and longer.  Now i have lived 14,235 days ( approximately), and that is  a loooonnnng memory to remember.  When you put on years, you also start to count how many of these were HAPPY days, and NOT WASTED days. A few days ago, a famous politician here passed away, quite unexpectedly.  When events like this happens, it always bring to us a reminder of our own mortality, and we could go anyday.  Why am I talking about morbid things on a birthday ? -- because when we take stock of our life, we inevitably bring to the picture our legacy -- which is really the only thing you can leave behind after you are gone ...  And planning that have to take into account that you may not have all the time you need to accomplish that thing you really want. What do I really want?  20 years ago, I was sure. I wanted to be the richest man in the world.  Now, I still want to, but I am also intelligent enough now to know i will never make it -- not by a wide margin.  Maybe I love life too much, or maybe I care or think too much about other life's riches ( reputation, relationships, family, learning, arts, music, cultures, wildlife etc) to make it big time.  Or maybe I am just giving an excuse , and I really could not do it even if I wanted to.  Age has a bad way of reminding you you really are no SUPERMAN, or invincible being you once believed you were. But for those that aspire to be richer materially, you can give it a try.  I always believe money will not make you happy, but at least it will help in not making you miserable..., supposedly.  I still believe the person in the movie CITIZEN KANE, who said, " If you really want to be rich, it is not difficult as long as that IS the only thing you want."  But many of us want more than just money.  We also want many things besides.  How you balance that and work towards accomplishing that is not my decision to make, but yours to decide for your own life. Maybe not having enough dollars to  ( buy? ) make a difference in this world ( which I think deep down is what we all want to do), I will just do it by making a difference in other ways, maybe through teaching , writing,  and living the good life. But then life goes on, and I like to quote Mahatma Gandhi who said, Live as if it is the last day of your life.  Learn as if you will live forever. 2:11:54 PM     comment []   trackback []

	Saturday, December 04, 2004

A Person's or a CEO's Greatest Success and Challenge    ( on life ) In one of the webboards, we got into talking as to what is the American dream.  Then somebody came in and said what was the European dream.  Being Asian, I talked a little bit about the Asian dream. This might be too generalizing a bit, and hardly accurate, but the American dream is usually meant to be understood as having great wealth and power.  The European dream is normally about self fulfillment, education and  respect from peers.  I am more Asian, and has always been made to believe that the Asian dream is about leaving a good name, and making your children successful.  In fact, a lot of Asian Entrepreneurship is about owning a small business that you can give to your children.  The greatest accolade an Asian businessman can get is to be the founder, the honorary chairman, or the PATRIARCH of the numerously successful business of the next generation.  I have been fortunate to be influenced by many cultures, and I always say that I want the best of 3 worlds -- so if you note my motto, "to be a learned scholar, a successful businessman, and a good father"  it is really a global dream, a meeting of the east and west mentality. I hope that I am not alone in this, about wanting my next generation, my children to succeed because I think that is the acid test of a man's ( or woman's)  success.  I remember a while back somebody did comment in one of my post that success outside cannot compensate for failure in the home, and I agree.  More recently, this has also received a lot of attention, and winning companies, like GE and Intel make it a point that the greatest success criteria of a CEO is actually how well you groom the next CEO and how well he does after you have left.  Having to go outside the company to get a CEO is normally looked at as a desperation move, and hardly a sign of management excellence. To be successful, and passing on the success to others would be my goal, and hopefully yours too.  Training the next in line or the next CEO thus becomes my greatest success factor and challenge.  People might think this is too early ( my eldest is still barely going 11, but I figured I have 5 more years.  After that, if I don't have his trust, I'm a goner.).  What do you think? By the way, if you have not read, this is a similar theme to "focus on things that lasts" I wrote a few posts earlier. I myself have been spending a lot of time now not only in the various aspects of business, but in doing some amount of reflective thinking ( while my kids are still young), on how I can help shape some of their attitudes in life without necessarily railroading their character or inclination. Most recently, my kids just got their report cards, and I wrote myself some notes on how I analyzed their progress so far.  This might be of little interest to others ( after all, this is my kid!), but if you are interested to see how I work out with my kids performance evaluation scorecard, please drop a note, and I will do my best to share it here without boring you. 4:06:57 PM     comment []   trackback []