Just how fun work can be when you do it right.

When I talk to my friends about my entrepreneurial aspirations, sometimes they tell me that they want to start their own businesses too. However, most of the time, I hear that response with one short caveat – that they’ll only do so after a few years of working experience in some large multinational company, supposedly to gain experience and to be more financially stable.

I never quite agreed with that line of thought and by beliefs were further confirmed when my supervising professor for my professional attachment paid me a visit at the Jipaban office. My supervising professor had been involved in dot coms since way back before the turn of the millennium, before the dot-com crash, and was extremely eager to hear all about the Jipaban.com.

Somewhere in our conversation, he mentioned this – that he had many students who also similarly told him that they wanted start their own businesses. When he asked them how they were working towards their aspirations, they told him that they’ll go start out working for a large, stable firm, gain experience and finally come out, 10 years later and start out a business of their own.

His reply was simple. It was – why do you think that the experience you gain at working for a large firm would be the most relevant to your future entrepreneurial exploits in the future? Really, would experience in spending your day focused on solving someone else’s problems and working on making that person rich be the best teacher at teaching how to make yourself rich? I really don’t think so.

Why I don’t believe that this is the way to go.

When you work for someone, it’s your job to make your boss rich, not the other way around. Always remember that.

When you spend the majority of your time thinking about how to maximize someone else’s profit and not your own, I believe that it’s easy to get caught up constantly focusing on that issue and not on what’s efficient – increasing your personal wealth and working towards financial freedom. Working to make others rich is vastly different from working for yourself.

When you work for yourself, you make all the decisions, but you reap all the benefits (and losses) incurred by your actions; when you work for others, an artificial safety net is put under you. When you work for yourself, it’s so much easier to be motivated to understand every aspect of your business – you try to understand it from a macroeconomic point of view, you analyze customer feedback, you check the data religiously; when you work for others, that kind of intense motivation to master the business just isn’t there.

I believe that the only way to really teach yourself business is to immerse yourself inside a business that you really care about, and experience the pure joy of working hard to make it all come together. That’s just something I don’t see happening much if you decide to work at a large firm where the red tape just ties you down.

The red tape, politics, and artificial safety net does more than limits your potential to shine, but I also believe that it is one more additional barrier that stands in the way of you learning good business habits. Getting used to the wrong level of thinking, a totally different level of decision making, would not only hold you back but may go on further to negatively affect the business decisions you make! You may have been better off starting with a blank slate as you might have incorrect perceptions and habits you may have acquired about business by immersing yourself inside an employee culture!

Money ties you down.

Another reason I don’t want to apply for a job in a big multinational the moment I graduate is because money just ties you down. Holding a high paying, “stable” job is quite a bit like giving in to the urge to just lie down in an extremely comfortable sofa – it’s really comfortable to get into it, and very hard to get out.

I have always believed that the worst thing that can happen to someone is to get too comfortable. When you’re too comfortable, there’s nothing forcing you to get faster, smarter and better – you just take it easy. As a result, you just end up sloppy, lazy and inefficient.

Life’s short – you gotta be efficient.

All in all, I strongly feel that working for someone else just happens to be the roundabout way of doing things should you want to start your own business in the future. I believe that it’s not only inefficient, but also that being trained to be a good employee might not make you a good boss. I guess that’s exactly why I’m so happy during my internship over the past 10 weeks at Jipaban – I’m right on track to getting to where I want to be.

Now I’ve just got to apply those lessons I’ve learnt with diligence and focus!

Nobody likes to be bored, and everybody can benefit from having just a little bit more fun and excitement in their lives! The exciting thing is that injecting fun and excitement into the mundane does not have to be difficult and hard. Having fun isn’t exactly rocket science. All it takes is some creativity and thinking out of that damn box.

Just watch how Volkswagen started this initiative to make mundane things that we take for granted in life just a little bit more fun and exciting!

Don’t you just feel inspired to just go out there and to do something really awesome and fun right now? I sure do! Come to think of it, great ideas like Foursquare were also probably born out of a question like “how can I make visiting places more fun and engaging”. An answer was then born out of making a social networking game out of just going about your business in life!

What’s the next innovation that’s going to make the mundane exciting again? Who knows what will come next!

Sometimes, a rock is just a rock.

I was really thinking about the choices that I’ve made in life, and then I serendipitously chanced upon this quote by Confucius on the Positivity Blog:

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

And that is so true.

I don’t know why – it could be our human arrogance at having mastered the environment around us, or our capacity for higher thinking functions – but the fact is that we people like to overthink things.

You could be perfectly happy going out with someone you have wonderful chemistry with, but no, you have to carefully evaluate if you guys happen to be that million-in-one, perfect match for each other.

You could be perfectly happy buying a dress you like, but no, you just have to spend the entire day, searching the mall, just to make sure that you’re getting a good deal.

The fact of the matter is this: sometimes life’s just that simple and going on and on and thinking about things just gives you additional frustration in your life that you don’t have to put up with.

I feel that the general rule of thumb is that it’s a matter of weighing the benefits and the costs of thinking something through. If excessive thinking and worrying about something isn’t going to bring you any closer to understanding a situation, like when you’re constantly wondering if he’s the perfect one or not, it’s so much simpler to just enjoy the moment and see where life takes you.

If more thinking’s not going to take you anywhere, why let it bog you down and frustrate you? You might as well just take time to smell the roses.

Sometimes life’s just that simple.

Chasing shadows.

I read these few paragraphs off a beautiful blog I follow, Marc and Angel Hack Life, and these words really made a very strong impact on me.

Amazing how serendipity manages to creep in every facet of my life. It always feels like a miracle, when you really think about how everything falls into place, to make those words appear to me at that right moment, right place and right time.

Here’s the article, and along with it, my earnest wish that our light drowns out the shadows.

Every Light Cast A Shadow, Marc and Angel Hack Life

One of the greatest lessons we get to learn in life is that we are often attracted to a bright light in another person.  Initially, this light is all we see.  It’s so bright and beautiful.  But after awhile, as our eyes adjust, we notice that this light is accompanied by a shadow – and usually a fairly large one.

When we see this shadow, we have two choices: We can either shine our own light on the shadow or we can run from it and continue searching for a shadowless light.

If we decide to run from the shadow, we must also run from the light that created it.  And we soon find out that our light is the only light illuminating the space around us.  Then, at some point, as we look closer at our own light, we notice something out of the ordinary.  Our light is casting a shadow too.  And our shadow is a bigger and darker than some of the other shadows we’ve seen.

If, on the other hand, instead of running from the shadow, we decide to walk towards it, something amazing happens.  We inadvertently cast our own light on the shadow, and likewise, the light that created this shadow casts its light on ours.  Suddenly, both shadows begin to disappear.  Not completely, of course, but every the part of the two shadows that are touched by the other person’s light illuminate and disappear.

And as a result, we each find more of that bright beautiful light in the other person – which is precisely what we have been searching for all along.

Read the full post here.

What do you do about your problems?

Life can be hard, and no living person can claim to have gone through life without facing problems.

What really matters however, is the way that we treat our problems. Do we treat our problems as something that frustrate us, piss us off and cause us to hurt emotionally, or is there a more empowering way of looking at problems?

Yes there is.

Problems can be immensely empowering when you look at them the right way. Instead of letting them piss you off, ask yourself this simple question – how can I help others solve this problem that I now face in an easy and efficient manner?

The fact of the matter is that if you’re facing a problem, it is highly unlikely that you’re the only person out there hurting because of that particular problem. Think about it, almost every problem that you face in your daily life has been encountered by countless other people before. The reality is that the problem persists because no one out there has taken the initiative to solve it in a creative and effective manner.

So go solve it! The greatest thinkers, the greatest entrepreneurs, the greatest contributors to society are men who felt that they could not accept the status quo and took it upon themselves to do something about mankind’s problems! Solving a previously unsolved problem is a sure-fire way of adding great value into the lives of others and is in fact a fundamental part of entrepreneurship.

Find a problem, apply a generous helping of creativity and thought to it, and who knows, maybe it’ll be your next big business idea!

The next time you start to feel frustrated when something goes wrong with your life, know that you have the power to turn it around and convert that problem into a gift, a resource of new insight and value that you can use to improve your current circumstance.

That new girl you hired just suddenly quit on you? Do you get all hot and bothered about it, or do you think about how you can create a system that reduces the probability of hiring such irresponsible people?

Another irritating person flaming you and your business on Facebook? Do you start whining about how irritating such immature people are, or do you think about how you can go about converting that vocal dissenter into your most ardent fan?

Don’t let that treasure trove of great ideas go to waste. Keep a record of the different problems you face every day and spend some time thinking about how to solve them and improve the overall human condition.

Everyone loves a problem-solver because such people add immense value into our lives. So decide to stop being someone who complains about problems today and become a problem-solver instead. You’ll be a problem solving master in no time if you spent some time thinking creatively about solutions every time you face a problem. Now to start thinking creatively about how to pack for my trip back home later today…

It’s okay to let it out to a close friend, but it’s important to remember that your experience of life is a function of what you focus on in life – if you focus on what’s happy and good about your life, you will feel happy; but if you focus on the things in life that get you down, that’s just exactly how you’re going to feel.

Even though things do occasionally go wrong, it’s never an excuse to harp on the bad things in life. Life’s just too awesome for that.

According to the Boston Consulting Group, the two countries with the highest growth of millionaires over the last year are the two countries that I’m based in - Singapore with a 35% increase in millionaires from 2009 to 2010 and Malaysia with a 33% increase! Read the full article here.

This is amazing!

That millionaire dream is possible. Just gotta work at it one step at a time, building the necessary competencies to achieve my objective.

That’s all there is to it.

The thought of not having a room again kinda really sucked, but at my lowest point today I remembered that there were just two kinds of people in this world – those that complain, and those that make things happen.

It’s a pretty easy choice to decide between the two, I dare say.

I can either moan, whine and complain about my current situation and not get anywhere with it, or I could actively work towards solving my situation, and possibly learning and gaining so much more.

If there’s one quote from Dale Carnegie that I’ll always remember, it’s this – when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

When life give you lemons, make lemonade!

Every adversity, every setback you face is accompanied by an equivalent opportunity. It’s no wonder that the Chinese word for crisis, 危机, consists of two words – 危, which means danger; and 机 which means opportunity.

The Chinese word for crisis.

When I look back, this has really been a lesson that I’ve learnt time and time again. The toughest moments in my life – falling out of love, living a nomadic semester, disappointing my parents – have only served to make me stronger and wiser. There’s a lesson and a flipside to every event, you just have to see it.

Here, I’ve got one big lemon. The challenge is to make one gigantic pot of refreshing lemonade that will serve to refresh everyone. Doesn’t looking at adversity as an adventure make life so much more exciting?

Life’s an adventure, don’t waste it by looking at lemons as what they are – just lemons. Adversity can be so much more if you just let it be.

Conventional wisdom tells you that people react to tangible, material rewards. The bigger the carrot you dangle in front of a person, the harder they work. So is it true that the more money you put in front of a person, the harder they work?

Well, this very interesting video suggests otherwise.

Ain’t this presentation style just so awesome? I just couldn’t bring myself to stop watching it!

Anyway, the main takeaway for this video was this – what people really want isn’t money. It’s really things like autonomy over their work, a sense of mastery as well as being in a position to make a contribution.

I’m not saying that money isn’t important, it still is, but when people start getting sufficient money to meet their needs, it really isn’t what’s going to push them to run that extra mile.

Remember this, economists – human beings aren’t just profit maximizers, we’re purpose maximizers too.

Do what makes you happy!

I’ve realized that the days that I feel the most down are the days that I don’t really have anything to do or anyone to meet. Days like that can feel pretty darn depressing.

When I really thought about it, it occurred to me that most of what we call modern entertainment doesn’t really make you happy, but are just temporary distractions to life.

Really, just take a moment to think about it.

A movie in the cinema, partying the night away in a club, escaping the country for a holiday – yes these things can be fun, but it sometimes seems that we do these things as a form of escape from reality, and escape from our sometimes less than satisfying lives.

What really makes you happy? What are the keys to happiness then?

Victor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning that:

“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”

And I think that’s a very big hint to that big secret. Happiness usually requires action of some kind. I’ve realised that I’m the most happy when I am working on something that is important to me, and close to my heart.

I’m happy when I feel that I’m going somewhere with my work and achieving my purpose in life.

I’m happy when I feel that what I’m doing is positively impacting others.

I’m happy when I’m achieving goals that are important to me.

I’m happy when I’m cultivating a successful relationship with someone dear to me.

But I’m definitely not happy sitting around and doing nothing. Some people may say that it’s the best thing ever to not have anything to do, but sloth is a very real sin. Possibly the worst sin that you can commit against yourself.

Finding true joy and happiness in your life will never be about inaction. Hopefully, you’ll find your calling in life – that something that makes you wake up early in the morning just because you can’t wait to continue working on it, that one project that you can’t stop thinking about.

Don’t settle and spend your life doing anything less than that.