Enjoy the Journey

Good Afternoon readers, The weekend is here, have a break, refuel, you know you need it, but also, don’t waste the weekend. The weekend is a time where you can create new moments & memories to add colour to your life. For most the work week was probably dull and full of well, work, is that how you want to remember your life when you look back? Yes we have to work, but they doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create spectacular memories with the people you love. Hilary Cooper said it well when she said, “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away”.

Would you rather live a longer, duller life or a shorter, more memorable one? There really is no overall correct answer, just the correct answer to you.

But go out and do something this weekend, it doesn’t have to be something like sky diving or parasailing. Go meet loved ones and play some board games (check out Meeples Cafe in SS15 Subang Jaya), take your kids to the park this evening, gather the family and cuddle in front of the tv, take a short road trip to Melaka or Port Dickson, or maybe even a weekend away somewhere else. The Journey of Life is going to be full of potholes, so enjoy & experience as many Moments, without losing focus of what you want to achieve. Find they slender balance between work & play, otherwise known as the Work-Life Balance. It won’t always be in balance but keep trying, over time you can “average” it out.

So don’t waste this weekend, I understand that you need to rest the body, trust me I do, but also make sure you enjoy your Journey with the people you Love.

Straight From The Heart

Being Grateful

Good Morning dear readers, I’m at my usual spot with my Café Mocha, thinking of gratitude and life, but before all that…

It’s the end of the workweek, time to look forward to the weekend! Hope you guys had a good week, if you did, enjoy the weekend, if you didn’t, enjoy the weekend. Take a break, crack open a Kit Kat, go get a massage and on Sunday night get a good nights sleep to prep yourself for the following week.

So back to the point, today’s post is about gratitude, about being grateful for my life. There are two ways you can live life, be grateful for what you have, appreciate it and if you want, work for more, or you can compare your life to others, complain about what you don’t have and be miserable. Above all else, happiness is a state of mind.

Why am I writing about this? Well last week I was in Penang and my dad got us great rooms at G Hotel, and once we were inside, I looked at my sister and told her, “we live damn good life’s.” I am grateful to my parents for all they have done, for providing me with whatever they can manage, for always taking care of us, for giving us a very comfortable life. When I was down and out, they were all over the place, looking for anything that could help me. I have a great family, i have a fantastic team of friends, I’m blessed with a pretty decent mind and so many other things.

However, I could go the other way and say that my health has been a problem from before I cod remember, I could say that in terms of education I’m behind my peers, I could say that my love life hasn’t been great, I could say so many things… In the end, it’s all about whether you see the glass as half-empty or half-full. I choose to look at the things I have going for me and appreciate them, and no, I’m not going to ignore the ‘not-so-good’ stuff, I will keep them in mind simply because I would like to work on them. I want to one day live a life, pain, fog and fatigue free, live a life where my peers look up to me in my field, live a life with someone special, live as good a life as I can.

We all have problems, our problems are relative to our own life’s. Some may be bigger than others, but to our own eyes, it is still a problem. But don’t let your problems and difficulties cloud the good in your life, I let that happen for a long time and you know what, I was not a very happy person then. All you can do in life, is your best, watch the piece fall in place and either celebrate & Keep Moving Forward or move on and Keep Moving Forward. (Onward Ho! as the pirates would have said)

Life will be filled with moments, some good and some bad, it’s entirely up to you which you want to make matter more in your life.

My health has been a pain for as long as I can remember, it hasn’t been easy but it doesn’t mean that my life isn’t awesome. Read the quit below by W. Mitchell and I think you’ll get a better picture of what I’m trying to say.

Before I was paralyzed, there were 10,000 things I could do. Now there are 9,000. I can either dwell on the 1000 I lost or on the 9000 I have left.” W. Mitchell

Be grateful for the life you live, cause it could be a lot worse.

Straight From The Heart

Why is Materialism a dirty word?

Good Morning all!
Feeling really good this morning, managed to achieve a few small goals of mine this morning and that has pumped me up. Woke up at 6, had my holy hour, swam for a bit, and was in Monash by 8. Grabbed a Café Mocha from a barista who has just more back from a break, really friendly guy, made a mistake with my billing and took accountability and responsibility for it, how many of us do that nowadays? Anyway, that’s a topic for another day.

So I was thinking this morning, while using the Bose QC15, and thought, what’s wrong with materialism?

So yea, today I’m going to write about Materialism.

Now I know there are many definitions of materialism, so for the sake of clarity, this is what I’m referring to: the love and pursuit for material possessions.

Now I have absolutely nothing against materialism, he’ll I’m majorly guilty of it. I love my toys, my gadgets, my things, but not as much as I love my family and that’s the most important thing when it comes to materialism. Go ahead, get the car you love, buy that gadget you want, treasure them, but never, in any circumstance let an object come between you and your family and team.

I think this passage by Robin Sharma will best illustrate what I’m trying to say:

“Contrary to popular belief, The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari isn’t a manifesto against making money and enjoying the good life. My main message there was simply “remember what’s most important to leading a great life.” drive a BMW, wear Prada, stay at the Four Seasons and make a ton of money if these are the things that make you happy. Life is certainly full of material pleasures that really do make the journey more delightful. No need to feel guilty about enjoying them. But please don’t forget about those basic but beautiful treasures to be loved along the way. Like deep human connections, realising your best through fulfilling work, exploring the arts and experiencing the glory of nature.”

I love my Apple products, my Ray Bans, my Starbucks Café Mocha, my (not really mine yet) Giselle, my beautiful posters, my shoes, my Polo Tees, my suit and etc. And I will not feel guilty for having them.

One day I want to have a beautiful house, a Mercedes SLS AMG and a Rolls Royce Phantom. I want to either have my own firm/company, run my own media empire or be a World Class Success Coach like Robin Sharma, or all of the above. I want to go on great vacations and stay at beautiful hotels. I want to be able to send my kids to whatever schools that will give them the best education and I want my wife to have the option of not working yet being able to live the her dream life as well. I want to have nice suits, a wardrobe of Ralph Lauren Polos, a membership at KLGCC, and an Eco friendly private jet. I want to play golf with top business people and top politicians on a regular basis. I want to be able to deck my house in whatever gadgets I want, to host glamorous parties yet be able to support my community, raise the standard of living and help those who need help to get to a level where they can help themselves. And no, I do not feel guilty for having these dreams.

I want a a lot of things, but nothing will ever be more important than my family and my team, than my future wife, than my future kids. I will do my best to achieve my material dreams, but my top priorities will always be the same, be the best son I can be, the best husband and most importantly, be the best god damn dad in the whole damn world, because nothing, and I repeat nothing, is more important than being a parent. And along the way, I’ll do the best I can at work and my career to realise my material dreams.

Yes this may sound may sound naive to some of you, it may sound farfetched to others, some may think that I’m being arrogant, and others may think that I’m not being a realist. But hey, this is what I’m going to aim for, and if I do not achieve it, I’ll deal with it. One of my heroes, John F. Kennedy once said, “only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly”. And if I’ve learned anything over the past 3 years, is that the biggest obstacle between me and my dreams, is me.

I want to live the good life, which to me means having a great family first, being the person i wish to be and being able to afford and sustain having lots of toys.

“only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” JFK

But I digress, remember that it is you who owns the object and not the object that owns you and your pursuit of material objects will be balanced and healthy.
Be wise, be smart, dream big and prepare for the worst.

Have a great day,

Straight From The Heart,

Arkay 6

My A-Team

Have you ever wondered whether the friends you have now will always be your friends. It so often happens that we consider friends that we’ve known for a couple of months to be “best friends”, “brothers” or “sisters” but really will it last? Well I think about it every so often cause there are people that I considered family to me but 2-3 years later, well it just doesn’t feel the same and that’s probably due to the distance. My parents told me that I’ll meet my friends-for-life (FFL) in uni, but I think may be that’s not entirely true anymore. Sure if you study in the same country but Now it’s so common for friends to leave the country after pre-u so that adds a new complication in the equation. it’s not the same now, we live in a “flat world” where we have friends and contacts all over the place, but I still believe that you need the actually physical contact at the foundation of a friendship to really be FFLs. Which brings me to my A-Team.

A crack commando unit that was separate by across the globe in efforts to get to the next level. They get together up to twice a year to rain terror on the pitches of FIFA and the maps of Halo in the PJ underground. Today, still chasing their education, they survive via Skype and Whatsapp. If any member has a problem, no matter rain or shine, as long as their phones are on ;), they will always have… The A-Team.

haha. It’s a first attempt, inspired by Vishal’s version, tell me what you think.

Anyway, this post is dedicated to these three gents, that probably know me the best on this planet. They’ve been in my life for the most part and they are more family to me than friends. Since we’ve had to go our separate ways it’s hasn’t been easy to keep in touch but once the we’re all together again it’s just like old times, as though P. Diddy told us to Pressed Play. I know they will always have my back and although they have their “driving me up the freaking wall” moments, I love em and I miss em.

I miss Vishal’s looniness.
I miss/missed Sidd’s bullshit.
I miss PG’s wit.
Among order things la.

This post doesn’t begin to scrape the surface of our brotherhood, ok maybe It does scrape the surface, and to link this with the first part of the post, I know you guys are definitely Friends For Life, I’d bet Giselle on it.

Signing off,
Col. John Hannibal Smith.

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