Merry Christmas, Papa

We went to Cathedral Church at Central Jakarta attending the 6am mass as I and my family also wanted after the mass to visit my parents who live near by. It was not part of the Christmas celebration as my parents are Buddhist but we make it a habit to regularly visiting them.

We were on the way back home after visiting them when my daughter showed me a picture on her blackberry and asked me whether it is a picture of a tomb or not . That picture is used by one of her office colleague. “Merry Christmas, Papa” was shown beside the picture. That sentence is of course seemed usual as today is Christmas anyway but I suddenly thought that it could be that the person is remembering her father who has passed away and she still wants to send the greeting to her beloved father.

I do not mean at all to make the readers of this story to be blue at Christmas and my sympathy especially to those of you, if any, who might have similar situation as what I described. Family and Home, one of the six areas of life as defined by Paul J. Meyer in his Total Person - Wheel of Life ® - is often than not getting very little attention from us the these days due to the challenging and demanding business situation. Hopefully this short story would serve as a gentle reminder for all of us to always remember to treat our parents to our best effort and give our loving attention while they are still alive. We can feel their happiness when they have us visiting them, when they meet their grand children or maybe for some people who is lucky enough to be able to see their great grand children.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it and may the magic of Christmas fills the world with peace and love.

25/12/2010

Husen Suprawinata

e-mail to hwinata@success-motivation.com

or follow my twitter: @hswinata

Ming Cu Thing - A True Story About One Amazing Mother

No one ever wanted a misfortune in life, even though it is a slight one. All of us want normal, happy and successful life. A life filled with many symbols of success is apparently what all of us are pursuing. This is a short story about an amazing mother who keeps her faith despite challenges and obstacles.

I came to know this amazing lady about six years ago when my colleague introduced her to me as the owner of a company from Pekanbaru, at the first agents’ meeting I attended shortly after I joined American Standard Indonesia.

One day during a regular business visit to the city, after business discussion with her and her management staff, she took me to the other floor and there I first met her son, a young boy with down-syndrome. On Tuesday evening two weeks ago, on her stopover at Jakarta on the way to the United States for the wedding of her daughter there, this extraordinary mother took her son when they visited my residence that evening.

Ever since her son was born, she has dedicated most of her life taking care of him. Life for her as you readers could imagine, full of unusual challenges and obstacles in raising her son. Even for meals, she has to carry with her everywhere, slow cooker and blender to grind the food for her son. She has also experienced moments of truth where she kept fighting for her son’s life no matter how difficult and seemed impossible the situations were. More than a dozen times her son has to be admitted to the emergency room.

So, is her entire time, day-in and day-out, just for him? Not really and this is the story that I wanted to share with you, using the Wheel of Life® ,the six areas of life as defined by Paul J. Meyer.

The Family and Home, definitely without any doubt have been remarkably walked through by her with so much love and attention to her son, to her other children, and to her husband. On Financial and Career, this lady amidst the extraordinary time needed to take care of the son herself, manages the day-to-day operational of the company with her staff. She arranges her time in such a way so that she has fixed schedules in taking care of the boy whilst at the same time can run the business together with her husband. On Physical and Health, she understands the need to have her health under good control despites the stresses caused by both the business and/or from her son condition. She knows that relaxation of both the body and mind is a must for her. In the areas of Spiritual and Ethical, she always makes time available to the place of worship to pray every time she visited Jakarta for business meetings. Many of her friends asked how she can live the misfortune so far and she always told them that God has given the boy for her to love and care. She also has so many good friends and participates in the Social and Cultural activities although time is for sure very limited for her to do so. In the areas of Mental and Education, she learns by asking questions on matters she wants to know. When asked about her goals in life, she always simply says that with the will power and with the blessings from God, raising her son is one most important goal among other goals.

With the above short story and considering what researches said about the fact that most people used only 15% of their potentials, hopefully you readers would do a thorough review of your goals in all the six areas of life so that you will be motivated to use your full potentials to achieve all your goals and have a more meaningful life. Last but not least, the title Ming Cu Thing above is actually a pronounced Chinese sentence that means Pre-destined Life - the principle this amazing lady uses in her Walk of Life.

19/12/2010

Husen Suprawinata

e-mail to hwinata@success-motivation.com

or follow my twitter: @hswinata

Young Children Minds

Smokers nowadays can not just light their cigarettes in public places such as restaurants, shopping malls, office buildings, etc. Because of the health related problems that even a non-smokers or passive smokers can pick up when they are in the same room with the smokers, many governments including in Indonesia set regulation that ban smoking in public places. Some airports, office buildings, restaurants, and shopping malls provide glass insulated corners for smokers to continue having their smoking needs.

I am neither going to talk about the danger and health consequences of cigarettes smoking nor to elaborate on how to prevent people from it because so many publications are available for us to read. I just want to share a short discussion that took place at one McDonald’s outlet - Alam Sutera – under a bit cloudy sky on Sunday morning directly from Church we went there for breakfast.

At the corner, there is an open space with tables and chairs for smoking restaurant guests where glass partitions separate it with the inside air-conditioned dining room. Next to that outside smoking section is a children playground and I saw only two kids played there at that time. I said to my wife, how come they put the children playground next to the free smoking section. Isn’t it more considerate to choose other corner so that the children will not see the adults and some young adults smoking while having breakfast, I asserted as I think as adults that the situation could make children think that it is okay to smoke cigarettes as they become used to what they often see. To my surprise, our seventh grade eleven-year old daughter commented that children most probably do not observe the situation just described by me when they find a playing ground and the children will immediately just having fun there.

Taking the comment from my daughter, I think that there were so many similar situations like this where we as adults always push our own perspective in making decisions for our loved ones in so many other important things in life without considering the way our children think; the way so many years ago we as small kids thought as well. What do you think?

Hopefully this short article will inspire you readers to adopt a habit that in a way consider other people’s including young people point of view. It will help enrich our life in family and home as well as in the social and cultural, two areas that are equally important as the other four – physical and health, financial and career, mental and educational, spiritual and ethical, as defined by Paul J. Meyer, founder of Success Motivation International, Inc., in his amazing Total Person® and Wheel of Life® concepts. For more information about SMI, please visit www.success-motivation.com

7/12/2010

Husen Suprawinata

e-mail to hwinata@success-motivation.com

or follow my twitter: @hswinata

Coffee's Life

Just about lunch time today, one of my friends from high school time sent me a short message to have lunch together with some other friends at Lau’s Kopitiam. The name of the place reminds me about a subject that for some weeks ago has been in the back of my mind that I would like to write and share with you readers when I sat in another outlet of Lau’s Kopitiam waiting to give management coaching session; it’s about coffee and our life.

Coffee, just like many other agricultural commodities, has been traded in many different forms. We seldom realize that similar to coffee and other commodities, we have often just simply priced our life at the lowest value without a desire to make the best out of it. Coffee beans when made into instant coffee, its selling price would be up to 20 times the price of its original form, beans. At the farm like many other agricultural products, coffee is being sold in tons. At retail stores or supermarkets, it is being sold in kilograms. But when coffee is made into instant coffee, people buy it in many different bottle sizes or even in sachets which normally measured in grams. And at places like Lau’s Kopitiam or Starbucks where they sell coffee by cup, the price will even soar further.

Similar to coffee, steel increases in value as it is converted into different shapes. The same piece of steel converted into engine block of a car will have much higher value and when it is molded into parts of expensive watches then its price would escalate even higher.

 

Why people spend so much for a cup of coffee or even for having expensive watches? Like the value of coffee bean or iron after some processing steps escalates considerably, what can we learn as human being from these two examples? As employees we can just deliver the standard work required. As business people we can just provide the products and services similar to others. As a person, have we considered some processes that are required to make our presence indeed more meaningful to our loved ones and also the community in general? The value of our talents depends upon what you do with them. Let’s be prepared to go through some processes that would make us not just like the coffee bean but very much higher so that other people could sense really different experiences and values from either being our customers, clients or friends.

5/12/2010

Husen Suprawinata

hwinata@success-motivation.com

or follow my twitter: @hswinata

18-hour days

18-hour days

Several weeks ago, I was having an interesting discussion over dinner with two friends of mine and among other things - we talked about how many hours a day spent for activities related to business. I asked her last week whether she allows me to write this short article without of course mentioning her identity and she replied with a definite yes.

When asked about how they spent their time, one of them told me that on an average she spent 18 hours of the 24 hours available for thinking and doing business activities. I did not surprised with that honest statement as many of us unconsciously actually are doing the same pattern of life. Time is money, as many proclaims. I then explained briefly about the Total Person and Wheel of Life by Paul J. Meyer, about balance required in all the 6 areas of life.

Many people that I met said that live is more difficult or at least more challenging compared to 10 or 15 years ago. It is apparent from many discussions that I had, wealth and success in monetary terms including being well-known persons are not directly related to happiness and sometime behind the scene those achievements even brought sorrows to their life. In fact, friendship, spiritual conviction, gratefulness, social tolerances, and being able to give more to their communities, would bring true happiness and meaningful life to us.

The 18 hour days normally caused by the attitude of people towards what they believe as pillars of success, discipline, hard-work, relentless and always look for opportunities or making opportunities out of every thing. We need to realize that our life is about addition and subtraction. We all pursue things we desire but life is not just about taking, it is also about giving up. Discipline, hard-work and those other mentioned were indeed what have made many people achieved great success. However, what many of us forgot or tend to forget is that success also should mean that we live a balanced life - success in all six areas of life as defined by Paul J. Meyer, Financial and Career, Family and Home, Physical and Health, Mental and Education, Social and Cultural, Spiritual and Ethical.

No one can turn the time back so what we need to do to have a balanced life is simply to remember to have goals set in all the six areas of our life. You will be amazed with the changes in your daily schedule when you start having time to pursue goals in all areas of your life.

Change our mindset, be smart persons, do not torture ourselves with so many things we want to have. Don’t match our success with other people’s success. Start a new schedule, maybe we will still need 18 hours in a day but that should be fairly divided to achieve goals set in all the six areas of life.

28/11/2010 

Husen Suprawinata

hwinata@success-motivation.com

or follow my twitter: @hswinata