LIFE MANAGEMENT: Kicking Bad Habits and forming Good Habits

Human is a creature of habits. We all unknowingly develop habits, some good and some bad. Sometimes we try to justify that its ok to have some bad habits. If that bad habit does not cause any damage to your daily life, den it is ok. But some bad habits can go out of control and create havoc to your life. For example, gambling. Its ok if you gamble occasionally with small bets like 4D or TOTO. But when you start to borrow heavily from loansharks or friends and have problem paying back, then that is considered damaging. If you can one of those person and wish to get out of this downward spiral, den this article is for you. Please read on.



According to experts, a habit approximately takes 30 days to form or kick away. So if you want to kick a bad habit, you also need 30 days to kick it away. Each time you can only FOCUS on 1 habit. You can't have too many habits to change because it will only works if you focus or entire mental energy on the habit you want to change.



I have successfully kick away SMOKING for 10 yrs since 20 DEC 1999. I also also successfully kick away the bad habit of drinking CAFFEINATED BEVERAGES since 24 JULY 2010. I picked up a good habit EXERCISING 3x/WEEK since MAR 2002, and taking COLD SHOWER DAILY since 1 JUN 2010. And the list goes on. I thought that it will be good to share my techniques to people out there who may need them.



First, you need to draw out a list of all your bad habits and good habits that you want to kick or form. You will list them in order of difficulty. Do the easy one first so that when you succeed, you will feel more confident and in control to tackle the next one.



For example, on the month of OCT, i have decided to stop being late for work and appointments. After that, write down what are the remedy actions you need to do to make sure you won't be late.



Month: OCT Habit: LATE
Remedy Actions:

1) Target to reach the place 15mins early.
2) Leave house early.

3) Pack your bag the night before, so you won't panick in the morning.

4) Plan ahead what you want to do for the next day, so you won't need to rush and end up late for appointments. Give yourself sufficient time between appointments, so you won't be stuck at one appointment and get late for the next one.

5) Do not procrastinate. There is a time for everything. Time for work, time for play, and time for rest. Let go of what you are working on when its time to rest, let go of play when its time to work. Be in the present moment.

6) Print this out in a form and paste on it the wall or office cubicle, so you will get to see it and always be reminded of it.

7) Declare this target to the people that matters to you. Eg. Friends, family, colleagues. When there are people to monitor and remind you, you will have less chance to give up or forget about it!

8) Lastly, reward yourself at the end of the month when you have succeeded!



By end of OCT, if you have maintain the good habit of being punctual, then you can move on the the next habit on NOV. But in the month of NOV, you still have to be consistent in being punctual, not that you can go back to your usual ways. But you will find that by NOV, it will be much easier to be punctual, den it is in the beginning of OCT.



I wish you the best of luck kicking bad habits!!! Cheers!

Life Management: How can we become someone great?

All of us wanted to be someone great once in our lifetime. Sometimes we will dream about doing this, or doing that. Maybe? Some of us wish to be a champion golfer, a prized F1 driver, a sensational superstar, or a millionaire businessman. Somehow as we grow up, some will achieve, some will not. WHat is it that really set apart this difference in the level of success? Now this article would tell you in clear simple language about how to achieve success and be someone great.

First of all, how do we define success? According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, it is defined as "To achieve a favourable or desired outcome." That means success differ from person to person. Its about achieving what we have planned from the beginning. Success is achieving your own target you have set for yourself. Success is individual. Success is about what makes you happy after achieving it.

So how do we achieve success? Experts and books have told us that we need FOCUS, HARDWORK, DISCIPLINE, ENERGY, NETWORK, and so on.... All these we already know. But knowing is different from doing. What we know, we may not do them. WHY? Why don't we all do what is good for us? Some of us may have this problem. The purpose of this article will address this issue about how we can do everything good for us without losing focus and confidence.

My great Yoga Master once told me this. "ONE MAN; ONE MISSION." All the people who achieve great things can only have one mission in his life. He will dedicate all his time, life energy and focus into this mission and therefore excel in it. So the word is FOCUS. But we all have this same problem. We always tend to lose interest after a while and end up doing something else. For example, a student knows he have to study hard to excel in his exams. But an interesting TV program can easily capture his attention for the whole night. Or it could be a interesting PS3 game. Or hanging out with friends at shopping mall. Whatever is interesting and makes him happy for the moment. So its not surprising the exam result is not ideal. The student who achieve the best result is often the one that is more focus on his studies.

There is just so many examples. Successful sportsman such as Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong, Pele, Diego Maradona, Michael Schumacher, and Mohd Ali spends their entire lifetime polishing their skills. They put in extra time in their training to make sure they surpass their competitors. Successful artistes like Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Elvis Presley all spent their entire lifetime just doing what they do best. That is how they become good at what they do. SInce we all know FOCUS is so important, than what is holding us back? Why are the rest of us not as successsful as them?

This bring us to the concept of HEART vs MIND. I realise all of us are capable of becoming great. Deep in our HEART, we all know what is good for us and the environment. But somehow there is often a voice in our head that tells us to do otherwise. This voice will tell you to do something that makes YOU FEEL SO GOOD for the moment. This voice most often will succeed in changing your original course of action. This voice is your MIND. These conflicting thoughts will harm you in the long run although it can give you instant gratification. For example, a diabetes patient was told by his doctor to stay away from CAKES and SOFT DRINKS, and deep in his HEART, he knows and fully understands the consequences. But somehow when he goes to a birthday party, there is so much temptation. Even his friends will offer him. He starts to salivate and his mind will tell him that " A little bit of soft drinks is ok. Life is so boring to just eat plain and tasteless stuffs. Once a while should be ok..." In the end, he unknowing took a few sips of it and soon his condition starts deteriorating...and they day his leg is to be amputated, he crys in deep sorrow and regrets. In another example, a smoker knows that smoking is harmful for the body. But somehow, he just have to smoke. His MIND starts to justify that it is cool and macho. Its manly to smoke. The voice will say "Only real man smokes. A few sticks can't kill you. I know what I'm doing..." But is it really true?? If smoking is not healthy for him, then why can't he just stop it?

And there is many many more examples like Gambling, Sex... and many more bad habits that people do and just can't get out of them. Why are human so helpless when it comes to MIND v HEART. But what I do know is that successful people normally listen more to his HEART den his MIND. So the answer is "LISTEN TO YOUR HEART". But how do we make sure we always listen to our heart?

There must be many ways, but one of the way I know is Yoga, an ancient technique that originates from India with a history of around 5000 yrs. Yoga is a sanskrit word that means "To UNITE, to YOKE" It means to unite your MIND, BODY and SPIRIT. The asanas of yoga are postures that helps to limber up your physical body and enhance your awareness, so as to prepare you for MEDITATION. Meditation is a technique that quietens the MIND. To stop all those confilcting thoughts in the head. Meditation is to help you align your MIND with your HEART and your body. In deep meditaion, we learn to control our mind so as not to succumb to those temptations that is only good for the moment. DEEP SILENCE is a blissful state where you are at peace with yourself, and where great inspirations comes from.

So listen to your HEART, not your MIND if you wish to become someone great. Before you do something you will regret, always ask yourself this, "Is the person making this choice, or the choice making the person?" Finally, I wish you all the best in your pursue of success. Namaste.

Health Management: Mac Ritchie Trail Run

This is my All-Time Favourite! I always do this run at least once a week, on my off days or Sundays! Its very tough because the course is hilly and uneven. Very nice scenery and clean fresh air!

Facilities there is great as the park have just renovated its canteen. You can get nice cheap breakfast there before your run, or buy 100-plus to replenish yourself after the run. Now they finally provide very clean shower facilities! Lockers are big and safe also.

Have not been there for a month! Really miss the place there! Hope to run this course soon. :)

Health Mangement: Map my run @ Clementi (7.77km)

Will do this run in the morning at 6am before going off to work! Cheers! :)

Life Management: Secret of Success- Aptitude or Attitude?

Recently i read an article on the newpaper which inspired me to write this blog. A soccer player by the name of Ryan Giggs was featured. He had just scored the 150th goal for his club Man Utd during his 851th competitive match. Anybody who knows about soccer would know about him. At the age of 36 when most players have already retired with big beer belly and a battered body, he is still going strong. Currently he is at the top of the game by being a key player for the team that had just won the league title last season! Finally he revealed his secret: YOGA! He is unbelievable. Having played for his team since 17 years old, he is one of the most decorated player having won more than 10 league titles, 4 FA cups, 2 league cups, 2 champions league, and 1 world club cup. He had won numerous player of the year awards and stil counting!!! For all these years, he shy away from media and parties, prefering to have a good rest after matches. He focus his mind on his games and never allow anything to distract him. He take good care of his body, didnt have any major injuries. That's why at 36, he is stil scoring goals and creating goals for his team.



Soccer players are well known to be very poor in managing their life off the field. They are showered with tons of millions of dollars at a young tender age and most of the time they are not given proper advice about how to live their life n what to do with those obscent sum of money. They party, booze, and live the high life with woman, drugs and fast car. Many talented players such as Diego Maradona, George Best, Paul Gascoigne, become victimised by their own bad lifestyle. They ended their promising career prematurely and spiraled downwards in their life off-field. Diego Maradona captained his team in world cup and single handed won the world cup at the age of 26. However, 5 yrs later, he was caught positive for drugs twice and was banned from competitive soccer. He continued his drugs habits and he suffered massive heart attack that almost took his life. George Best is one of the best winger for Man Utd. Blessed with good looks and silky good skills, he won numerous awards. But partying life and alcoholism took a toll on his body and by the age of 30, he was struggling in his game and had to retire early. At the time of his death, he was bankrupt and died from liver cancer due to too much alcohol. Paul Gascoigne was another soccer prodigy that ended his otherwise promising career in a similar tragedy. He suffered from severe alochol addiction and would turn abusive whenever he is drunk. He is divorced and struggled in his life after he soccer playing days.

What I'm trying to illustrate is that while a person can be incredibly talented, he or she must be equally hardworking, disciplined and be humble at the same time, in order to be successful. Its not how successful you can be, but its how long you can stay successful. Success is not a past tense. It is a present tense. If success gets to your head, you will lose it all very quickly. So don't be a Diego Maradona, be a Ryan Giggs. He is the perfect example for all young people on how to live your life right :)

In conclusion, the secret of success is the application of both aptitude and attitude. Period.

Health Management: Running with ChiRunning Technique

To many of us, running is a no brainer thing to do. But how wrong can we be. There are about 24 million runners in the US, but 65% of all runners incur at least 1 injury a year. That means 15.6 million people will get injured this year from running! There is really something very wrong with the way we run. So what can we do about it? Just ask Danny Dreyer, the founder of ChiRunning, a company based in North Carolina, US. Chi Running is currently taking the world by storm, helping millions of runners to improve performance and reduce injury. Just how did he do it?

According to Danny as written in his book, "ChiRunning- A revolutionary approach to effortless, injury free running",



All of us have a very nice running style when we were toddlers. We land softly on midfoot and pick our feet to the back. But as adults, we start to land heavy on our heels and reaching forward with feet. That was when we start to get injured! If only we can all run like we are toddlers, then we will all be injury free!

So Danny did his research with a renowned Taichi master, together they invented a running technique that combined Taichi with running.



A correct running technique should look something like the picture below:



The whole body is aligned from head to ankle. Body is tilted forward from the ankle. Landing of feet is on the midfoot and the other feet picks up to the back. The core is engaged at all times, whie the rest of body is relaxed and joints loosened. This is the main technique of Chi Running. If we look at videos of how elite runners run, this is just exactly how they do it too!

It would take one whole book and several videos to talk about this technique. So for more details, I would encourage everyone to buy a copy of this book to read over and over again to really master the technique. As for me, this technique really works wonder for me. I just started this technique last week, by applying ChiRunning technique to a 6km run. Usually i would feel tired and panting after the run, but I came back feeling energized from it! I feel even more fresh than before the run! This is a feeling I have not had for several years, all thanks to Chi Running! If the above description is still not enough for you to get an idea what Chi Running is about, I stil have one video for you to watch. Cheers!

Health Management: Map My Run! What a great website for runners!

AMK MORNING RUN 4.91km



This great website can trace the route that you are planning to run, and it calculates your distance in km, amount of calories burnt too! Try it!

To (+) Zoom In Map: Double Left click mouse
To (-) Zoom Out Map: Double Right click mouse


AMK EVENING RUN 6.35km