The power of intention and "butterfly effect"

I was reading online news that recently Yahoo Singapore is launching this Purple Hope program to support the Children's Cancer Foundation (CCF).

While reading the news and update, looking through the featured article and the well intention of the Yahoo employee. Suddenly, something struck me.

I just realised the power of intention and the "butterfly effect" I read from One Minute Millionaire.

In 2007, my friends, business associates and I organised an event and we donated part of our proceed to the Children's Cancer Foundation. It wasn't a big amount, but all of us who involved were very happy, that time, we called ourselves Beacon Angels.

Subsequently, in 2010, when I was running my own business, I decided to help raise fund for the needy. Some how, one of the charitable group responded well was CCF. Unfortunately, the procedures were too complicated for a small setup like my company.
Nevertheless, some how, we were involved with CCF at the area we are expert at. Soon, we provide therapeutic massage service to the parents and caregivers on a monthly basis until now and the parents love it.

In 2010 July, I shaved my hair in support for the Hair For Hope organised by Children's Cancer Foundation.  At that time, one of my friends, who is much more successful then I was, met me after I became shavee. After seeing my "new hairless style", he explored option to organise an event to help CCF raise fund. He was later  was diagnosed with kidney cancer shortly after that and luckily he is well now.  Probably that was one of the factor that make him rallied his contacts to organise fund raising event for CCF.

Some times end of year 2010, one of my workshop participants liked our idea of giving back to society and told us that her company has resource to do annual charitable events. Naturally, I linked her up with CCF and nothing much seems to happen.

Since then, life goes on as usual. We provide our massage service twice a month to the parents and caregivers.  I rallied my friends to join the Hair For Hope 2011  and we did raise some fund for CCF and my friend love his new "hairstyle".  There were many kind souls (many are my workshop participants) who responded to my donation pledge and I am really grateful for that.  Then, everything seems back to normal again.

Last month, when we provided our regular massage service to parents and caregivers, there were people walking outside the makeshift massage room.  Later, we were told that Yahoo staff was visiting CCF to understand the CCF operation. Now, you can find a few featured stories about the strong heart and fighting spirit about CCF, the children cancer patients and the caregivers at Yahoo homepage. As I were reading those articles, I spotted the familiar face that we see monthly.

Suddenly, something crossed my mind and struck me just now. I've just realised this Yahoo Purple Hope project could be just a thought that leads to many ripple effect.  Now it has translated into online project that has already raised more than $35,000.

I realised that everything happened for a reason. I call this the power of intention and butterfly effect.

Looking back from now to 2007, I realised that there is a pattern. All this happened just because it started with a simple but purposeful intention in 2007.

In 2007, a budding entrepreneur who was still struggling and finding his path to business success, just set an intention to make a difference to society despite his own challenges.

Now, through his and his partners regular effort of "doingness", the effect has become bigger.

Just like a butterfly flipping it's wings, that eventually can translate to a strong wind at the other part of the world.

Recalling what Steve Job's mentioned in his speech at Stanford University - connecting the dots.
When I connect the dots, I realise the power of intention and we cannot underestimate the  butterfly effects.


If we want to do something good for the society, don't worry how small the effect it is now. Many a times, we may not know what will be the outcome. We just need to have faith and trust the power of intention and the butterfly effects.


On of my favorite quote from Mother Teresa, "In this life, we cannot do great things, we can only do small things with great love" has been always a reminder to me to do whatever we feel is right to do, no matter how small.   We just need to be butterfly, keep flipping our wings.

Lesson drawn from Dallas Mavericks NBA first title

It is always good to learn from sports even though one may not be a sport lover.

I've stopped following NBA since the retirement of Michael Jordan.
However, occasionally I do peep into the news finding out what is happening around.

This year NBA is another typical success story to learn.

Dallas Maverick has not been having any NBA Championship title in the franchise's 31-year history. The closest they got into was year 2006 NBA Finals, which happened that Miami Heat ended Maverick dreams with the title.

This year, the Maverick faced off with the Heat again.

The Heat "seems" to be superior than Maverick. The Heat has the power house trio, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh which led the team to 72 wins in the playoff seems to have far more advantages than the Maverick.

Dallas Maverick who had only 2 players remaining from the 2006 teams, started off the season with average result.  However, it has shown that it is beyond skills and being a star player when something is at stake.

The Maverick led by Dirk Nowitzki, together with Jason Terry has shown that when something matters to us most, it no longer how good you are but how much you want it.

The Maverick didn't start of the season with favorable results. However, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. When the odds are against us, we just got to show the universe how much we want it.

Dirk Nowitzki who had a torn tendon in his finger and 39 deg C fever had led the team to their first NBA Championship title.

"In a lot of games we kept fighting back," Nowitzki said. "All the wins we got in the fourth quarter, at some point we were down and we kept plugging", Nowitzki

Nowitzki and the team just shown that they want the title badly than others. And most of the time, it is driven by a strong emotion (as I always mention in Ultimate Slimming Intensive workshop)

"And if you lose, you're going to get hammered. I got hammered the last 13 years. So hopefully this year I hope I can make the hammering go away for one year.", said Nowitzki when they are just one game away to clinch the title. He sure had a strong reason to do it.  No wonder he is the MVP of the finals.

Nowitzki does not have many super star players in the team but he had the best team.  A team that support each other no matter what it takes.

Nowitzki said, "You want to be a part of the best and so hopefully we can fulfill that and everything else is kind of a side note to me."

"(Jason Terry) got going early. That one timeout he said to me 'Keep pushing. Remember 2006'. I kept plugging and kept fighting.

In what ever games we play in life, it is important to surround ourselves with good team. The team that asks the best out from us and the people that keep reminding what we really want.

Many a times, it is not how good we are, it is how much we want it.

I watch Glory Road time after time, another basketball movie based on real story where the Texas Miners not only win the title but changing the history of basketball.

There are many lessons we can draw from the movie as well. An inspiration movie to remind us not to let reality affect us, but craft out our reality.

The winning is sweet because we put our heart and soul into it.
Mavs celebrate first NBA title with downtown parade

Successful Slimming starts from something easy.

Is slimming equals to success?

I have been conducting a number of trainings for corporate team bonding as well as personal health & wellness program.  I always enjoy training because it allows me to share my practical experience as well as learn the experience of the participants.

Many a times, the questions from the participants are good reminder for myself to the important principles that I am teaching.

Yesterday, I was conducting the third session of Ultimate Slimming Intensive workshop for Civil Service Club. It was the last session.

Although, this is not a big group, interestingly, it has lots of learning if the participants really allow themselves to listen and internalize the sharing session.

The uniqueness of Ultimate Slimming Intensive workshop is that it teaches the participants to REALLY enjoy food and stay slim at the same time.  It does not require participants to put on jogging shoe and workout hard 3~4 times a week.  This workshop also discourage participants to spend money on expensive health supplement on slimming pills.

The intent of the workshop is to empower participants to use their natural ability to stay slim or lose weight, a truly mind, body and emotion balance approach.

One of the module of the class is to set the participants perspective right to their successful slimming journey.  Interestingly, as we were sharing an important, scientific proven health information to the participants, there is a strong mental & emotional resistance from one of the participants.

It requires the participants to gradually changing their sleeping pattern.  Not instantaneously, but gradually.
However, from the questions asked by the participants, I knew that she has many "little voice" that may stop  her from achieving the goals she wanted in life, including having a slimmer and fit body.

Through out a short question and answering sessions, she kept finding stories, reasons (or excuses?) & evidence that stopping her to make a small little changes in her lifestyle.

The fact is, if her lifestyle is supporting her goal to be slim and fit, she wouldn't be in the classroom at the first place.

As Albert Einstein said, "Repeating the same thing and hoping to achieve different results, is called insanity".

For this participant, she probably have to re-examine her reason why she need to slim down.
Is slimming a strong intent for her?
Is it strong emotionally driven reason or just a wish or want, good to have goal?
My good guess would be, slimming is not her top 3 priority at all.

If successful slimming within 2 months is her top priority and she truly wants it, then she would have to understand her thinking pattern that is holding her back at her comfort zone.

Probably, there is Fear of changes.
During our coaching session, we work specifically with individual to understand their "little voice" by increasing their mind power.
At times, it would requires a slight modification of lifestyle to coach the participants to achieve autopilot slimming.

For this participants, she probably can start to repeat to herself that "I am willing to let go the good things in order to receive a better one" and thinking deeply what is the meaning of that statement to her.

In short, successful slimming start from something easy, what we tell ourselves everyday and thinking deeply what successful slimming really means to us.

Back to my questions at the start of this article, is slimming equals to success?
Yes, it means a lot to many. If we have habit of overcome our non-supporting beliefs in achieving goals, we have habit of being successful.

Where does success start first? - Part 2

With the previous posting regarding where does success start first.  There were some questions on how to have the "heart and mind".

There are a few aspects we have to look into first.

1) We need to see the reason or reasons WHY we want to achieve certain things.

As the common saying, when the WHY is big enough, the how would automatically come.
For the boy I mentioned in my previous post, he may be too young to really know WHY he wants to be successful in his academic.  Even if he knows the WHY, he would be probably distracted or thinks he does not want to be successful when facing difficulties.  This is not only happening to young children but adult as well.
Sometimes, adult may be even more well trained to give reasons or excuses that they no longer have "passion" into pursuing the things they thought they used to want it.

And it is no surprise, when facing adversity, we tend to rationalise, lay blame or even justify our actions, or lack of action, so that we feel good.

One way to give more clarity to WHY and WHAT we want to achieve is to visualize we already achieving that goal and make ourselves feeling that sense of achievement.  As we see and feel the goals we are achieving, if there is sense of excitement or fulfillment, we sure have the "heart" of wanting to be successful.

Some people call this visualization techniques while other call it focusing.   We might want to spend time with ourselves or the children to do this 5 to 10 mins a day.  It would probably, give us more clarity and we may discover new reasons why we want this goals.

2)  Another area is many a times, we are influenced by ours or somebody non-successful experience.  For example, the boy may have some experiences that he tried hard to be better but the results he had gotten is not favorable.

In that circumstances, he may attached a meaning (conclusion) to that non-successful experience.   For example, he may say these to himself, "I am not good enough in studying", "Study is hard", "I don't want to do better in my study because study is so hard" and etc.  I call this "crappy thought" and I liken this to the "bad crab" in our mind that want us to be mediocre.  I told the boy about the "crab story" so that he understand what is stopping him.   This is the "mind" portion.
Of course, it would be good to have his caregivers remind him from time to time about his "crab" in the mind.
It is all about having good habit of using supportive thought.  As an adult, having somebody holding us accountable is one good way to make sure we maintain and even raise our standards.

 I learnt this phrase from Anthony Robbin training, "nothing has a meaning until we attach the meaning to it".  The boy can use more empowering phrase to help me overcome that bad emotion.



3) Lastly, he probably has to start practicing self-talk that is empowering him.  He need to recognize that all of us are unique in our own way.  He can start to acknowledge the good things he had done and building his self-belief and confidence from there.  I call this "love thyself".  Celebration of every success, no matter how small, is the key to anchor our supportive self-beliefs.  Thus, success breeds success.

In fact, it is all about habit of practicing good thought and behavior.  It is the habit of doing it consistently everyday rather than do it sporadically huge amount that will produce the results.

Now we know a little more about "heart & mind" of being successful, it is about time to practise.

This is my recent reminder for myself and my friends, "Learning only starts when we are doing it, the experience we accumulate then is called knowledge".    Lets do it! Success to you!

Where does success start first?

Recently I had a chance to talk to a primary school boy.
He was a smart kids, street smart I would say.
He has very good memory and he can predict what you gonna tell him rather fast.
By right, he should be doing well in whatever he does, right?

Yes, if he choose to believe he can first.
Unfortunately, when he showed me his recent exam results, he is far from being happy on what he had gotten.
Even though he is smarter than his elder brother, however, the results he delivered is far behind from his elder brother.

In fact, this little boy has spent more effort for his study lately.

While I have to spend some time to console him. I found something vital for this kid and probably most children.

This boy has a self-image of not being good enough and some how develop the habit of giving up too early.

I may not be sure how exactly he developed this self-image or habit.
My good guess will be the environment he was brought up or somebody of authority probably has told him something "not good enough" in his younger day.

Of course, his habit of reinforcing the non-supporting belief is not doing him any good.  Naturally, whatever he  studies, he will think it is hard.  Even though he has good memory, he tends to forget the things he studied, especially the subject he doesn't like.

Consequently, he will reinforce his non-supporting beliefs, especially the subject he thinks is hard.
The vicious cycle continues.

Of course, I taught him a simple trick to break the habit of non-supporting beliefs. Initially he was reluctant to do it because it sounds stupid to him, but I persisted.
Within, 10 minutes, it showed result to him on his fearful subject instantaneously, Chinese Language.  His confidence went up significantly and his body language told me that he felt good about himself.  Of course, his learnt all the difficult words within 15min.

He may think that is some special learning techniques.
However, it is just my method to help him break the non-supportive beliefs, refocus his attention on his success.  (In my previous post, I mentioned about success breeds success)

From this short experience, I realized that success needs to come from the mind and heart first.

Many people was looking for "The Secret" or "keys" to success, whether in academic, career, relationship, health or weight management.  No doubt that the know-how is important. However, having a supportive self-beliefs is far more important.  It is what we say to ourselves daily that matters.

I call it having the "heart and mind" to be successful first.