How do you manage changes for better conditions in 2012?

I can’t believe that I have been off writing my own blog for almost a year for many personal reasons. I am still alive in this planet!

Writing this blog is to share some of my thoughts on various subjects without any intention to make anyone or anything right or wrong. The truth of the matter is really subject to the choice of viewpoint from the universe of the individual himself. 

A lot of changes happened to me last year.  I personally run into a lot of randomities that I have never experienced, especially in terms of magnitudes in the past.  Yet, I can finally learn how to come out of it and have achieved peace of mind because of my own personal belief, value and integrity with some changes of  my operating basic and personal policies.  So they’re all boiled down to what personal value one really believe and let them be part of one’s life; that they are powerful enough to handle any stops and even opposition to bring peace for oneself.

If we look around our financial and business world, the understanding and grasp of change of paradigm and rules of the games determine the fate of one’s success or failure.  

A person and even a business if failed and as long as they’re smart, they could evaluate the previous stable data they had upheld for the failure to cause confusion, and know how to search better and workable stable data, they can come out of their own confusion and help themselves move into higher and better conditions. However, one can easily get stuck in one’s own success without paying any attention to change of paradigm especially in a fast paced technological change economy; that slowly undermine one’s success model.  For example, we can’t believe that a 124 years old company “Kodak” to seek bankruptcy financing this year.  Part of the reasons for its failure was due to its underestimation of the growth of digital camera while they’re the pioneer and the leader in the film camera industry as well as the first inventor of digital camera.  The strength of one’s business model soon turned into the weakness to be out-competed by its competitors. In other words, the business failed to manage “change”, and if continued to fail to do so, it could be out of business soon.

Why are some people afraid of change?  Change may in a way invalidate what one has been doing, especially if it has been successful. Change will also shake the stable data that one has been depending for its success.  We don’t like confusion but stability.  Change if not managed well can put oneself into moments or longer periods of confusion.  Yet, let’s face the reality that if one don’t handle “change” properly, his competitors will soon bring confusion to his door.

If one can separate oneself from his own stable data without any fixation, one can easily change and adopt new and workable stable data that can allow defeating one’s earlier stable data if needed sometimes.  One simply manages change to a better and higher condition.  Then one doesn’t need to wait until someone hit it in his face by enforcing a better stable data than his to lock him out of his game.  Who are we really?   Aren't we more senior than anything around us?   Aren't we more important than our compulsion to prove ourselves right at all times?  Don't forget that you are a very valuable being! 

I wish you all the best and prosperity for the coming dragon year.  Play your game with spirits of play without too much seriousness and enjoy your life!!

What are the purposes of your job and your company?

First I would like to express my apology for not updating my blog at least once a month. Though I have not written anything on my blog for more than two months (while being away from Hong Kong and busy with many different activities), I do have many new realizations about myself, life and the world that I would like to share with you.  Life is in fact interesting.

Recently, I have attended a six days executive seminar at a cruise, regarding the subject on “Leadership and Purposes” with lots of inspiring ideas from the speakers.  Success and prosperity can always be found from any company having positive purposes to be shared by the employees and customers under competent leadership.  It’s also applied to the individual success whether one is motivated from his own purposes in life and knows how to make things go right towards the accomplishment of his purposes.

Have you ever asked yourself about the purposes of your life?  You can also ask the same question to your friends, associates, colleagues, and family members to help you getting to know them better.

We may have different responses: “Well, I have never thought about it”, or “I really don’t know”, or “Just follow what other people are doing.”, or simply, “Buying a property”, “Security in life”, “Making a lot of money”,   etc… You may find only a few people could clearly state their purposes in life right away.   You can also watch their emotional responses towards their purposes. Are they excited about them? Are they bored about them? Do they feel grief as if they have almost lost their purposes? You can imagine the level of one’s motivation by examining his purposes in life; and his emotional response towards his purposes.  Those who are more excited about their purposes have a higher chance of success.  It will be interesting to find out the survey results with questions on the purposes and related emotional response of the majority of Hong Kong People; which can give us insights to determine the rate of our success and prosperity.

Now, let’s take a look of the purposes of the majority of companies in Hong Kong?   Profitability and viability are always expected to make the company stay in the market.   What does it really motivate any company to exist and continue to grow?  However, mission statement with visions or purposes are not always published or clearly stated in any public company documents of Hong Kong companies.   It may be a good research topic to find out how the corporate purposes of Hong Kong companies are related with their success.

For example, on the company brochure of Sun Hung Kai Property Company, a listed company in Hong Kong,  said “ The Group believes in “Building Homes with Heart’ and has grown with Hong Kong over the decades offering ideal residences for people. The company is also committed to corporate social responsibility; taking an active role in charity and environmental protection. It will continue aspiring to new heights with its well-established brand and contributing to better living in Hong Kong by building quality homes.” We have witnessed the quality homes built by this company and it’s also a preferred property developer when considering buying any property in Hong Kong.  So from what the company has produced, we can see that there is an alignment of its purposes and products.

70% of our time is related with work.  If one’s purposes are in alignment with the purposes of the company one is working for, you can imagine that he’s motivated and happy in what he’s doing.  Otherwise, one may feel unmotivated with unhappiness.

If you wish, you may review your own purposes of life, the purposes of your job and your company to see whether they’re in agreement in some regards, that can help to uplift your morale to build a better future of yourself, your company and the community at large.

So let’s build a better future of Hong Kong together!

How much are the government's intervention into the property market good enough for the benefits of all concerned?

Facing with the “hot money” in creating the inflated prices of properties in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong government has introduced a number of administrative measures recently to stop any short term speculators from speeding up to the unusual rate of property price increase.  Finally, the sudden addition of stamp duty up to 15% of the value of the property for any property transfer within six months after the purchase as introduced on Nov 12, 2010, had helped to cool down the property market with a sharp drop in the number of transaction, cancellation of the sales contracts with loss of deposits from the buyers, etc.   The government was happy to see the response of the market and felt that administrative measures being effective after a week.  But has it solved the problem of insufficient supply of affordable housing in Hong Kong? 

“Perfect competition” with the optimum equilibrium of demand and supply as learnt from the textbook of “economics” does not happen naturally in the market.  Most of the time, demand or supply is however manipulated by a number of small groups of people, but affecting the majority of us in the market.  High inflated prices are produced by making scarcity out of something including the control of the money supply.   Without releasing more supply of the property in the market, the demand will not simply be suppressed by the small curb of the property prices brought by administrative measures.

Money is a commodity back by confidence that goods and services can be exchanged with each other in a fair market condition. Money will flow into areas which can attract interest and attention. Money will not lose value only if without inflation or not flowing into unproductive areas that cannot be used for exchange with other people.  

To the majority of people who cannot control the demand and supply of the properties and commodities, we therefore need to face the problem to keep the value of money grow without losing value by inflation.  To the small group of people (sometimes including the government though it wants to play an impartial role), who have access to abundant money and resources to control the demand and supply of many commodities in the market, they may need to face the problem to keep the game going by including the majority of us without losing them in the games.

Life is a kind of game which poses problems with purposes, barriers and freedom.   It could be some kind of “games condition” whereby some parties playing “must have” versus others playing “can’t have”.   How well we play any game depend on whether we are at cause or the effect of the game.  No matter whether you‘re playing only either one side of the game: “must have” or “can’t have”, if you are not willing to play the opposite side at the same time, you are still probably the effect of your own game.  

To have a better field for our games, it’s time for both sides of the game players be willing to be the opposite side and play them,  then we may have better solutions to our problems.  

How much are the government's intervention into the property market good enough for the benefits of all concerned?

Facing with the “hot money” in creating the inflated prices of properties in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong government has introduced a number of administrative measures recently to stop any short term speculators from speeding up to the unusual rate of property price increases.  Finally, the sudden addition of stamp duty up to 15% of the value of the property for any property transfer within six months after the purchase as introduced on Nov 12, 2010, had helped to cool down the property market with a sharp drop in the number of transaction, cancellation of the sales contracts with loss of deposits from the buyers, etc.   The government was happy to see the response of the market and felt that administrative measures being effective after a week.  But has it solved the problem of insufficient supply of affordable housing in Hong Kong? 

“Perfect competition” with the optimum equilibrium of demand and supply as learnt from the textbook of “economics” does not happen naturally in the market.  Most of the time, demand or supply is however manipulated by a number of small groups of people, but affecting the majority of us in the market.  High inflated prices are produced by making scarcity out of something including the control of the money supply.   Without releasing more supply of the property in the market, the demand will not simply be suppressed by the small curb of the property prices brought by administrative measures.

Money is a commodity back by confidence that goods and services can be exchanged with each other in a fair market condition.   Money will flow into areas which can attract interest and attention.   Money will not lose value only if without inflation or not flowing into unproductive areas that cannot be used for exchange with other people.  

To the majority of people who cannot control the demand and supply of the properties and commodities, we therefore need to face the problem to keep the value of money grow without losing value by inflation.  To the small group of people (sometimes including the government though it wants to play an impartial role), who have access to abundant money and resources to control the demand and supply of many commodities in the market, they may need to face the problem to keep the game going by including the majority of us without losing them in the games.

Life is a kind of game which poses problems with purposes, barriers and freedom.   It could be some kind of “games condition” whereby some parties playing “must have” versus others playing “can’t have”.   How well we play any game depend on whether we are at cause or the effect of the game.  No matter whether you‘re playing only either one side of the game: “must have” or “can’t have”, if you are not willing to play the opposite side at the same time, you are still probably the effect of your own game.  

To have a better field for our games, it’s time for both sides of the game players be willing to be the opposite side and play them,  then we may have better solutions to our problems.  

How do we channel the resentment of “anti-rich” in our community?

Economies do go through cycles of “ups” and “downs” whether they truly reflect the actual production or they’re arbitrarily monitored with speculation and inflated assets.  Whoever know better how to play the game could possibly be less the adverse effect of any dramatic changes in the rules of the game and any burst of asset price bubbles.

With the inflated prices of property assets just two years after the 2008 financial tsunami,  many Hong Kong people have complained the difficulties of owning property in Hong Kong, especially those generations born in 80s and 90s with less equity than older generation. The discrepancy between the rich and the poor is getting larger that getting a fair playing ground for everyone is apparently unavailable.

From the "Asia-Pacific Wealth Report 2010" released by Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini, the number of Hong Kong people with liquid asset of US$1 million or above is 76,000 as of Dec 2009.  In other words, it is only about 1% of the population of Hong Kong that could be classified as “rich people”.  Ironically, according to the research of Hong Kong Council of Social Services, the number of poor people grew more than 60,000 in just half years to reach 18.1% of the total population (1.26 million people) as of June 2010. The definition of poverty applied to those families which have household income less than half of the median household income of Hong Kong.  How to solve the discrepancy between the rich and the poor people has now become the top concern of the government.

Growing resentment of the unfair rules of games geared towards rich people (仇商仇富情緒) is getting more ground in Hong Kong recently, especially as perceived and voiced a lot more by media and internet channels, though we do not have the actual figure of people of Hong Kong with clear and expressed resentment emotion against “rich people” by any objective collection of opinion.

In fact, the term of “anti-rich” is too general  as whoever have expressed the resentment of “anti-rich” may not resent themselves being rich, but because of the stops or barriers they have perceived to prevent them from being rich to have the same  status, reward and benefit like those rich people. Rather it is truer to say that Hong Kong has always been a materialistic cosmopolitan to encourage people making a lot of money on their own in our history, that if any resentment is more resulted from not making one's life the way one wants.

Human emotion and reaction is a very interesting subject. If one knows very well, one can easily monitor and control the emotions of others towards certain direction. (please click here for more information of the subject if you would like.)

Whenever anyone is in the emotional tone of “resentment”, they tend to respond better to a little bit, higher emotional state of “antagonism”. The media is very smart by channeling the resentment emotion towards the apparent enemies: rich business people and creating “antagonistic” emotional state.  Yet, they’re not constructive emotions, but mis-emotions that could destroy the harmony within oneself and our community.

But who is the actual enemy of one’s state of condition?  The state of one’s mind and emotion determine one’s state of condition.  One will not accomplish anything if attacking only "apparency" but not the "actuality".

The call and responsibility to improve the conditions always lie on able people in any community and it’s no exception in Hong Kong.  The more able people we have, the better the living environment we have. Yet, it also requires that each of us:  the rich, the poor, and the government to help each other in providing better game fields with better rules of game. The rich people need to make money with exchange in abundance with quality products and service by doing business ethically. The poor people also need to work hard to make their own contribution to our community and soon they can improve and change their conditions themselves. The government needs to provide fair rules of games, opportunity and effective  legal systems for the rich and the poor to participate and needed help to those for minimum level of survival and protection and in cases of any emergency.  In other words, each person should take up his own responsibility no matter what role or condition one’s in and that's how the prosperity of any economy depends on.

It’s time for us to raise our emotional tone to be more “constructive” than “destructive” by taking our own responsibilities, then we will have a better life for all of us in living Hong Kong.

What can't one believe easily in this modern society?

In this new era of information age, we are constantly receiving information via many media from time to time whether we like it or not.  It becomes more and more difficult to fully duplicate, evaluate and judge every piece of information for its validity, credibility and workability to many of us especially they could be mixed with a lot of false or contradictory data; while honestly many people do not know how to study (even with good grades) to make it more complicated in effective learning and sound judgement.  It could explain the reason why some people may have established automatic blocking system to stop receiving any more information especially those requiring one’s own observation and evaluation so to prevent from falling into further confusion.

There’re a lot of chance for all walks of life of Hong Kong, especially students to be exposed to a lot of new knowledge, information and technology,  as witnessed from our high attendance of the recent Hong Kong Book Fair, Hong Kong Computer and Communication Festival, etc,  in the summer time.

I have also visited the recent book fair with over 900,000 visitors this year.  Many book distributors utilized this as a channel to unload their inventory to appeal those looking for bargain sales, and there’re many books sold as cheap as $10 or $20.  Indeed, there’re many book buyers. Yet,  I also observed that many simply walked around without really checking or buying any books as the book fair event could serve as a “cool holiday spot” while one can sweat a lot with the high temperature outside. One major book distributor told me that the real book buyers will not come to the book fair as they prefer to check and buy books directly from the book store.   In other words, it could refer to the fact that we don’t have a lot of people really “thinking”, or “looking” as the statistics of visitors indicated otherwise.

While it could be “study bug” to stop us from acquiring real knowledge, I noticed that it could be explained by a strange phenomenon in our modern society, that is “people simply don’t believe anything easily” to the extent that “they stop looking”.   If we want to trace it down further,  it could be possibly due to some kind of “failed help” or “having been betrayed” experience on oneself or and on others in the past to make one not believe in any possibility of “genuine help”.

Yet if one is really looking, one can still find some “genuine help” though not always from everyone to everyone in our society.  Finding some genuine help in our society will raise your confidence and belief in the possibility of help, though may not happen on oneself directly.

If one sees that help is possible, it will definitely help to open the door of real knowledge as one seeks the knowledge which can help!  If the knowledge is not for the use of help, what’s for?

What could we miss in management when applying mechanical automation alone in our work place?

While we witness leaps of technological breakthrough to help automate many job processes, we also somehow build in a lot of automatic circuit or response that many psychologists today are trying to study and establish the organizational behavior to develop certain type of management skills. Yet, no further exploration and research are made towards the direction on what or who is exactly behind the establishment of such automation.

When we look into the history of the definitions of "psychology", one will know what exactly the subject of 'psychology" is actually dealing with.

Webster's international dictionary of the English language -1829 defines "Psychology: A discourse or treatise on the human soul; the doctrine of the nature and properties of the soul."

Webster's High School Dictionary -1892 "Psychology: The powers and function of the soul."

Merriam Webster's 3rd International Dictionary- 1962, " Psychology: The science of mind or phenomena or activiites; the study of the biological organism (as man) and the physical and social environment."

Microsoft Encarta College Dictionary- 2001, "Psychology: 1. Study of mind, the scientific study of the human mind and mental states, and of human and animal behavior; 2. Characteristic mental makeup; the characteristic temperament and associated behavior of an individual or group, or that exhibited by those engaged in a particular activity; 3. Subtle manipulative behavior, subtle clever actions and words used to influence a person or a group."

Somewhere along the line, man lost his soul!

Let’s look who really build the computer machine; and who really invent the spaceship so man can land on the moon. It should be something more than what we see with our eyes only. You know you have not lost your soul!

And that’s exactly what’s missing for many studies on organizational behavior by simply using the pattern of automation (as somehow we don’t have perfect automation with correct predictability at all times) to find out how to control the pattern better by adding more control circuits for mind control or alteration purposes; without realizing or ignoring the fact the one behind the automation is the soul who likes to have his own self-determinism, likes to create, likes to fix or unfix his attention units, like to cause something good to happen, etc; but not a machine or a piece of mud itself.

If we are who we are really that we have not lost our soul, is it stupid for us who have created the pattern of automation but to make it to have full control back on us that we finally have lost our soul?

The rebellion does not simply come from any possible defect of the automation system to cause any breakdown itself, but from the resistance of the reduction of the self-determinism of the soul himself against any other counter-effort in making him to be fully automated, like by absorbing all his attention units in the same direction and distance for a real long time. The automation machine could eventually breakdown to the point when the soul himself gives up and simply succumb.


If we really understand who we are, how our mind works, and have some concept of the ideal state of our beingness with decent method to attain so by utilizing our own rights of self-determinism, then we won’t easily miss the picture of understanding and managing people properly for the greatest good of the greatest number of people concerned.  Fortunately, there are some sensible management solutions you can learn to really improve morale and productivity by keeping our "spirits" up!

What has Foxconn missed in its management to cause unusual suicidal rate recently?

Between Jan 2010 to May 2010, thirteen Foxconn employees attempted suicide with ten deaths and three serious injuries. The rapid rate of suicides is unusual to draw a lot of attention and criticism around the world; and therefore causes headaches to the management how to fix the problems right away as the situation has been out of their control for many months.

What could the management do to put the situation under its control? If one could find the “right why” of the situation being “out of control” or “bad control”, then one could find the door to open for the workable solution to reverse the condition and put it under “good control”.

The recent response to stop the suicidal rate was to ask each worker to sign a letter, requested by the management on May 22 , 2010 that the workers needed to promise not to kill themselves and even agreed to be institutionalized if they appeared to be abnormal mental or physical state, for the protection of myself and others. The letter also stated that workers who killed themselves would not gain “any compensation beyond the provisions of law and administrative regulations.” However, the management needed to withdraw such a bizarre letter right after the plunge of another worker. In other words, the letter was a “bad control” solution. To prevent further suicides, a 1.5 million-square-meter safety net will be put up around Foxconn dormitories, and it’s equivalent to 1,200 standard swimming pools. It could be again a “bad control” solution.

What is “good control”? “Good control” is an ability for the management and workers who are willing to start, change and stop in one’s own field of responsibility and activity. But why today some companies still need to use “bad control”, which is enforced or inhibited force to get compliance at the expense of the willingness of the workers to start, change and stop on his own self-determinism. Probably some companies believe that it’s the only way the management can get the production but they have missed the most important element of management tool, which is the knowledge of human emotion and reaction.

One can employ many management tools to analyze the success or failure for any company. While they may be all true or valid, knowledge of management tools can be viewed as a pyramid with a common denominator at the top which evaluates all other data below it. If one is able to know and master the top level of the pyramid, one can easily understand how to apply the remaining management tools by correctly using the data.

At the top of the pyramid of the management tools, we can have a common denominator that is knowledge of human emotion and reaction. Regardless of the type, size and industry of any company, the only thing that can motivate or inhibit any productivity or performance within or outside the company is human emotion and reaction.

It’s too simple to classify people with positive or negative emotions. In fact, there is an emotional tone scale that one can be as high as enthusiastic or as low as apathy. There’re also various emotional tone positions even in the negative emotional band. People react and behave differently on various emotional tone positions, and therefore require different methods of communication and handling. Once you have mastered it, the rest of the management tools can be integrated easily to give you better understanding and competence to fully implement all other management tools for better success of your company.

When the emotions in the workplace are more close to the “apathy band” or “subapathy band” chronically which are simply little bit above the “death band”, one will not be surprised to witness suicide in the workplace. People on this band care less even including pain and suffering.

I recommend you watch this business film DVD, “Emotions in the workplace” and it will help you understand the subject better with a lot of illustration. The below is a video clip for a preview.

You can now buy your own DVD copy directly in Hong Kong, with a booklet of "The Emotional Tone scale" included. Free postage is offered if shipped to Hong Kong.

In order to prevent from any more suicide in the workplace, what first the management should do is to survey the existing workforce to find out their emotional tone and then introduce effective measures and messages with correct tone that can help to improve the emotional band of the workplace to higher tone position rather than dragging them further into lower emotional tone band. Once the emotion tone of workplace is up and improved, it will guarantee higher production, morale and efficiency.

Now, based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard, there are answers to these emotional tones. One can learn and master the answers for results. So know your people for the success of your company!

If you are interested in getting more information about emotions in the workplace or any in-house training or workshop on the subject, please email me.

"Better City-Better Life" 2010 Shanghai World Expo

2010 Shanghai World Expo is now being held in the city of Shanghai, from May 1 to October 31, 2010. The theme of this exposition is "Better City – Better Life" and signifies Shanghai's new status in the 21st century as the "next great world city". It is the most expensive Expo in the history of the world's fairs. It is also the largest World's Fair site ever at 5.28 square km. More than 190 countries and more than 50 international organizations have registered to participate in the Shanghai World Expo. China expects to receive almost 100 foreign leaders and millions of people from across the world to come and visit the World Expo. More than 70–100 million visitors are expected to visit the expo which is the largest in history.

I am very impressed with the idea and the scale of this largest ever World Expo and will definitely find time to visit to really experience myself.

While many countries promote the idea of " Better City- Better Life" through different theme pavilions in Shanghai, the most important part is how we can bring the ideas of bettering our city and life to be implemented right in our own city.

Let's look to our city, Hong Kong. What can we do to make sure we have better city for ourselves and next generation?

To understand how well a city is doing, one can instantly think of the living standard of the city. In other words, its abilities to survive. It's true that every city is trying its best to survive. Some cities can survive better than other cities. Some can barely survive and some survive abundantly.

While we can focus exclusively on the structural or mechanical aspect of it by bettering the money making machinery to raise our living standard, we're somehow aware of the fact that it does not guarantee that we can better our life in this manner alone. Stress, anxiety and depression are inevitable products for many people living in such a metropolitan city of Hong Kong. Raising children is getting more difficult to make them more able, happier and self-determined people; while the drug education and prevention programs are not enough to make a drug free Hong Kong that any threats of drug abuse can take away their life easily. Unfair access or disclosure of information by manipulation can create an unfair playing fields in certain sectors for the advantages of a few, like the marketing tactics employed by property developers, the complicated investment products packaged by investment bankers, etc. Probably you can name more of the areas that need our concern and effort to change the conditions for real quality of better living.

Yet, looking at a wide spectrum of life and people, with majority of faces in apathy, grief, pain, resentment, anger, boredom and relatively lesser faces of strong interest and enthusiasm in Hong Kong, one will not need to lose hope or confidence easily. Why is it so? When you look further, you will find behind all these unhappy masks of many people are basically good people! What one simply needs to do is to look, explore and apply better means and ways to enhance the quality of our city and our life.

One honestly cannot change much. Yet any change starts on an individual basic. When one person changes, he can influence another person in his vicinity, and then the effect can be multiplied.

Let's work for a better Hong Kong!

How can you make your pay beyond minimum wage?

It has been a very controversial issue whether we should have minimum wage policy in Hong Kong; and even if introduced but how to determine the minimum wage to cater to the interests of various sectors of the community. As of today, we have not yet come to any conclusion on the minimum wage policy in Hong Kong.

When we look at the actual reality of various economies of the world, one can easily tell that equality of the distribution of wealth is not attainable; and in many instances we see extreme disparity between the rich and the poor.

While men are born equally with many rights, the outcome however will depend on how one uses his or her own rights. As we would like to examine the workable possibilities to effect better change and control in our life, the subject of “fate” or “destiny” will be of no use for discussion due to its uncontrollable factors outside the scope of “what can be done” to help each other to exercise their rights for the benefit of himself and others.

Here I would like to offer a free webcast to the readers of my blog. This webcast also includes some drills of how to apply them in real life that you can do because something can be real to you only when you know how to apply or use it.

The regular cost of this webcast training including the review of your answers of the drills is HK$150 per person. Now you can watch it free on my blog but without any review of your answers. It cannot be delivered to any group for staff or business training purposes without any prior consent.

If you think someone may benefit from watching this free webcast, please feel free to forward to your friends that they would need to watch it on the same terms. I hope it helps to give you some ideas on how to live by exchanging abundantly in your life.

If you would like to have this webcast training or a workshop (either in English or Cantonese) to look into more of the subject for your staff to raise morale and productivity in your company, please write me an email (hkexecutives@gmail.com)

Are you celebrating your Valentine's Day with love and admiration to your soul mate?

Today, it's the first time that we have the Valentine's Day and the Chinese New Year on the same date in the last 57 years and we will only have the same occurrence 38 years later. Valentine's Day is no longer restricted to be a western custom, but is getting more popular in Hong Kong too. Whom you will celebrate your valentine day is a very important person to your life.

No matter you are engaged in a relationship or in a marriage, it’s the aspect of life which can easily make or break your life. Many stories either prove them to be lighting one’s life or breaking one’s heart. Some could go so emotional that one’s universe could only contain the other person one loved, with everything else out of the sight of the two people. “Love” could be used either in the right or wrong direction depending on whether it could provide additional life force to lift up all dynamics of one’s life. Is “love” a trap or a channel for more happiness, joy and freedom?

In fact, when we deal with another person, especially in such a close loving relationship, we are not meeting with that person alone. A person has many dynamics of life, including himself, group, mankind, the world, the physical universe, spiritual beingness, etc. besides the loving and sexual relationship. So when two people meet, they are meeting with their dynamics of life. It is a fact no matter whether you realize it or not. What conditions and how well each is doing on various aspect of life can greatly influence the condition and quality of the relationship.

An individual as a unit of human being, has his or her own rights of rationality, self-determinism, and rights of own goals and purposes in various dynamics of life. Though the individual may not know how to exercise or use his or her own rights, we have no right to deprive the person of his or her inherent rights.

When two people meet for a relationship, it should be something to help each other in enhancing but not suppressing the rights of each other. They are no longer working on other determinism but able to maintain one’s self determinism by pan-determinism; which is able to see the viewpoint of each other to find the best viewpoint for the interest of both parties. In other words, there are two heads, not one head only in the relationship. However, most of the time, we will easily lose our rights to each other as “love” is supposed to be expressed in this manner by many bad examples of people around us or one simply cannot control one's emotion or behavior with some strange ideas of using bad control in the relationship. "Love" can be used as a weapon of control to the other person rather than a platform for exchange of life force in abundance. Sooner or later, one cannot find anything one can admire from the other person in such relationship. No wonder why so many people do not really enjoy their relationship though they could not separate from each other for whatever reasons, or continue to break up relationship one after one.

Of course, one gets what one sees; and one only gets what one thinks should be. If one only wanted to use relationship to trap another person, one not only trapped another person but also being trapped.

It’s time to reveal what you really want from a relationship, how you can contribute to make this relationship happen and how both of you can enhance the life force with each other. By giving or allowing the rights to each other, you will set yourself and your partner free . And only then you can have a true loving relationship with admiration. Such relationship can be so powerful to uplift all aspects of your life to such a high level that you may not envision could possibly happen to both of you!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Is life a struggle or a game for happiness?

Before we have any clue why we are on this planetary earth and whether it’s our choice or not, the fact we know is “we are here”. Immediately after being born, we have been provided with the care from our parent and our community. We have also inherited our cultural value and its way how we should live our life. It seems that a lot of things were pre-determined and decided for us no matter whether we like it or not.

Living within these barriers of life, do we have power of choice to decide our own purposes, achieve the freedom from overcoming the barriers, and have fun and happiness in life? Is it true that older generation has better games to play than our new generation, especially those born in 80's and after in Hong Kong?

Everyone is playing some kind of games depending whether it's known or not and whether it serves better goals and purposes. Any game of life consists of barriers, freedom and purposes. "Game" in fact has the same elements for any players regardless when and where you're born.

Without goals and purposes in life, we are dead. Freedom is a relatively term as one needs to identify the barriers to know what one seeks to be free from. Knowing everything without barriers has no games to play at all.

Life on the other hand can be a kind of struggle if living with a lot of “unknowns” on barriers, purposes and freedom, as one is playing the games "unknowingly". Life also does not always go all the way we desire to be and so one may simply flip to less count on one’s abilities but to empower other sources or authorities having better means and ways to determine our future. Some could assign “fate” or “destiny” or “ feng-shui” or “idol” as the cause of their lives or accuse others having used up all better opportunities to cause the difficulties of their current life. As such, we’ll have more “unknowns” to be out of our control. It’s really a struggle of life.

Starting a new decade with possibilities and impossibilities ahead of us, do you have some kind of games you really enjoy or life is still a kind of struggle?

To get out of the struggle of your life if any, no matter in the areas of work, relationship, family, community work, social life, and even politics, you may need to look, find or review your goals and purposes in different areas of your life. Ask yourself what kind of effect do you want to create in those areas? In other words, what are the desirable results you want to see? What kind of barriers are you aware of that you are willing to face? How can you make the barriers known and overcome them?

Instead of looking what can’t be done, something can be done about. Instead of saying that something is impossible to be known, something can be known about.

By making something possible to be done about, we can then do a lot more. By making something "unknown" to "known", we have acquired more control of our games. Life will be no more a struggle, but is more enjoyable.

Having a lot more people in our community to live better games is a better goal for our leaders to enhance the well being of all concerned.

Can you create better games of your life with better goals?

As now is close to the year end of 2009, it’s always a good time to look at what we have accomplished and what we have failed to achieve in the past, in comparison with our goals.

What goals we have and how we intend to make them happen by our planning and execution determine our level of ‘Havingness” in this universe. The goals can be anything for the individual, his family, his children, his group (career, business, communities, associations, etc), Mankind or life itself.

Anyone, if were busy in the pursuit of some definite and worthwhile goals with a lot of constructive and completed actions, would find himself with increased life force. The life force could dramatically get the person distracted from any past pain or upset though not permanently erased without any possible negative impacts to the person himself. Therefore, goals setting and pursuit are activities with a lot of therapeutic values. Any goals that are more constructive to the individual, family, children, group, mankind and life are valuable to pursue.

Each individual may have various goals towards his or her life. You may think your goals towards the Mankind are so worthwhile that any being on this earth should pursue it. But the reality is that we do have different viewpoints and many people may not agree with you.

The goals can be meaningful to the person only when he can see and set it for himself, but not enforced by other people or authorities. That’s why you will only get silent submission or even open rebellion if you have enforced your goals towards your children no matter how good you may have thought about the goals for them. Worse, you may have killed the creativity, abilities and happiness of your children in making their personal and self-determined goals to come true.

If you look at our new generation in Hong Kong, you may wonder why quite a large number of people are unhappy, lacking enthusiasm or simply living idly and to the extreme like wasting their time by doing something harmful to themselves and other people. There could be various issues behind such phenomenon as each individual is different. But you may find the common denominator of unhappy people as: lack of self-determined, meaningful and constructive goals. Some people may have meaningful goals, however, if they’re so stuck with the past pain and upset, cannot easily use his life force to get motivated and be persistent to do anything for his goals. They may eventually go apathy about the future that no goal is meaningful and simply complained life was against them with bad lucks.

Our future depends on what goals we have set for ourselves and others. At the time of the holidays, I wish you and your family all the best with the abilities to make your goals attainable soon in this universe.

From the recent Hong Kong TVdrama of “Beyond the Realm of Conscience” to “Office Politics” in real life, how can an executive survive for his success?

While the recent popular TV drama series of "Beyond the Realm of Conscience" was performed with clear portrayal of roles, the audience could easily identify and differentiate “white hats” from “black hats” by watching and following the story track. The “black hats” argued that they needed to do harmful acts to others as their environment had forced them to do so. The environment one was living could be so difficult that one needed to adjust or twist one’s personality in order to survive for success in such an environment. The rare birds of “white hats” insisted that their survival was based on good deeds to other people no matter how difficult the environment could be.

In real life, one may not easily identify “black hats” especially when they are doing any harmful acts covertly but masked with “good reasoning” or "pretended help". One may also simply miss any “white hats” if one tends to believe good people no longer existing in our environment, especially after much experience of being “hurt” or “betrayed” from bad people.

Is men good or evil? It is a philosophical question. Different religions and philosophies have their own understanding and evaluation of human personality and behavior.

But let’s look at yourself and people around you. Do you find more good people than bad people or the other way round? Do you have more good colleague or staff than bad ones in your office? By observation of evidence, we generally have more good people than bad people in our society, right?

However, we also notice that it is almost impossible to find someone who is absolute right or good at all times; that is always perfect even without any careless mistake. Likewise, it is almost impossible that you can’t find at least one small good thing from any person who has demonstrated only harmful acts at all times.

Though “absolute” is not easily observable and attainable in this universe, the truth of the matter can be better expressed somewhere along a spectrum with the two ends of "being 100% good” and “being 100% bad”. Is the person doing more good things than bad things? In other words, is the person constructive rather than destructive with good intention or not?

To live a better, prosperous and flourishing life, it is therefore important to live and work with people who are more constructive than destructive, as sometimes it is hard not to be badly influenced by the destructive people. Though you can say you simply concentrate on your own job in your office that you believe it will be all right, the truth of the matter is that how good the people working in your office can greatly affect your performance especially if you are the senior manager or the owner of the company.

With all the data and resources on hand (even if limited sometimes), when making any sensible (which is in fact ethical) decision, it is necessary to come up the solution for the greatest good to the greatest number of people involved towards a saner goal or purpose. In other words, our decisions and actions do not necessarily affect us alone but also other people around us based on the fact that we do not live alone.

To learn more about the human evaluation for the prediction of their behavior to the best interest of all concerned, write me an email.

What does it mean to you by owning a luxury apartment flat in Hong Kong?

Hong Kong has recently broken the world’s record by selling its luxury apartment flat with the highest dollar per sq ft (HK$71,000 or US$9,102 sq ft) in Oct this year; as a “token” to celebrate the anniversary of the infamous financial tsunami. With sustainable power of wealth, one can buy anything at any price he or she wants to “show off” one’s status of power but not necessarily the actual value of the property concerned. Drawing admiration or envy from others may probably give them much higher satisfaction than the joy from actually living in the apartment. But how long does this feeling of “happiness” last? Probably it will not be long. Then how can one continue to create “happiness”?

However, many middle class of people in Hong Kong have expressed grievance as they do not benefit from the sharp rebound of the property market recently ; and they neither acquire any property six months ago nor at the earlier right time with undervalued price that they could afford in the past. Some even went to the street this Sunday for an open strike to express their dissatisfaction; in the hope that something can be done about it to increase the affordability of housing to them by making the government solely responsible for their troubles due to its unfair policies in favor to private properties developers. But how long does this feeling of “unhappiness” one would like to keep? Probably you don’t want to keep it long. Then how can one convert “unhappiness” to “happiness”?

“Wealth”, “Power”, and “Status” are probably the most wanted goals for many people in Hong Kong, but not necessarily attainable by many people even after having working and trying hard for the entire life. Only a few can achieve these goals they really want. But are they the only goals in life to create happiness?

There are many different ideas or perception about “happiness” around us. If you don’t know the subject well, you may not easily create happiness on your own will. In order to create happiness as you want, one needs to make life rather than being made by life. Don't you think the person who knows how to create happiness for his life can be wealthier than those who can't?

Hong Kong Dianetics Centre will offer a free lecture on “Why are Hong Kong People not happy as they should be?” this coming Friday. If you are interested, find time to go there and may your life be happier afterward. Your future depends on your abilities to create happiness for your life!

Are you sold to every solution to your life as an executive?

We are living with a lot of problems every day, but at the same time, we are constantly sold with many ideas of solutions, especially in highly commercialized cities. Many people are trying to sell "solutions" to others.

With constant "hard selling" from others for a long time, most of us have adopted a defensive mechanism of "can't believe" or "can't be sold" to avoid any problems resulted from unworkable solutions or any risks of being betrayed. However, anything including "real solutions " can easily be set aside without "looking" and "evaluating" on our part in the first place.

Computations of "nothing can be helped", or "I can't be helped" or " I can't help" could be developed behind this defensive mechanism.

It may not be a problem if you are not aware that there's any problem. It looks "workable" to people with less responsibility or less hope about their future.

But for any executive with higher responsibilities in creating the future, he or she can't say that there's no problem when there's actually one. He or she can create more problems either by using unworkable solutions or ignoring any solutions including workable solution.

It's indeed a difficult dilemma to really live a truer and better life if one cannot observe, evaluate and decide the workable solution to any problem one's in.

If we can remove any stress, anxiety and fixed ideas we have, we can look and evaluate better that will enhance our abilities in finding and applying workable solutions to our work and life.

The most needed attribute is not whether you "can believe or not," but is your ability to look, evaluate and decide. So next time when you are approached with any "selling" of "workable solution", you may simply ask yourself to "look" first, but not necessarily "believe" or "can't believe"; as in fact you are senior to any problems or solutions. Probably that is the only sensible way to handle our life though "sold " with ideas of solutions all the time.

What stress are you facing and handling in your everyday executive life?

“Executives” are tough beings not only they want to get things done to the right direction, but also they are demanded to perform. A high necessity level is usually an inherent attribute for any successful executive.

However, we know somehow that there are some hidden influences which can trigger us to some unexpected response, emotion and thought. No matter how hard we have tried to put them aside, they simply won’t go away easily. “Stress” is the common symptoms not only for many executives, but also almost for every walks of life, especially in Hong Kong.

People try to use many different methods to get rid of their stress. Some even see this as “money making business” by marketing its products or services with the theme of “Stress Reduction”. Shopping can reduce stress, weight loss will help reducing stress, traveling can reduce stress, taking street drugs makes less stress, psychiatric drugs make you feel numb about stress, making a lot of money will increase your security so to reduce your stress, etc. Some may even go apathy about it and conclude that “stress” is simply part of human nature.

But do we know the sources of the stress in relation to the mechanism of the human mind?

If the invention of any of our high technology is due to the intelligence of human mind, why shouldn't our human mind have the correct technology and solution to fix any stress to keep our human mind in optimal function at all times? We can travel to the moon but why we cannot solve the problems of our own minds. Can we have some decent methods with long lasting effect that help us to put our human mind under our control?

Let's watch the below film about "Dianetics" to see whether it can give you some hints of the source of your stress and the better ways to handle any of your stress:


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You can send email to info@hongkongdianetics.com and ask for the information of their two days weekend "Dianetics Seminar" if you would like to find out more.

I hope the above may help you living better with your executive life in Hong Kong.

How can you improve your learning rate in English?

Learning a new language is not always as easy as mastering your own mother language. When come to learning English, the most evident barriers for duplication and understanding are: grammar, vocabularies and small words.

In this era of demanding speed and efficiency, methods of speed reading and memory retention have been promoted through many channels to speed up the “inflow” of any information. But most of the time, it’s done at the expense of full conceptual duplication and understanding.

If you do not know every word you are reading, how could it be possibly that you really understand it? We can speculate, or guess the meaning in our reading that sometimes we may be right, but most of them we could be wrong.

If you do not know how to use dictionaries properly, you will not be able to understand any vocabulary you run into in your reading.

If you do not know the definition of “small words” (like, if, as, at, on, off, etc) used in the context of the material you’re reading, you will not get full conceptual understanding of the material.

If you do not know the English grammar, you also cannot fully duplicate the material in your reading.

With the decreasing learning rate of the workforce in Hong Kong, I would like to recommend some references that can help any executive to help themselves or their staff to speed up the learning rate by mastering the learning blocks.

Here is a short description of each and pictures of the inside book/illustrations:

THE NEW GRAMMAR BOOK

LRH researched the subject of grammar and isolated the exact basics to enable anyone to learn and effectively use this subject. Gone are the complexities and false data that have plagued grammar for many years.

With The New Grammar, it is possible to greatly improve one’s ability to communicate to others and understand others’ communications to him.

Illustrated Hardcover, 607 pages.

SMALL COMMON WORDS DEFINED

It is the small, common words that are most often
misunderstood and form a major barrier to understanding.

In this book, more than 3,000 illustrations clearly show each definition of the most common words in English. A unique method of providing a firm understanding of the basic building blocks of the language.

Illustrated Hardcover, 750 pages.

HOW TO USE A DICTIONARY PICTURE BOOK



Using a dictionary is something people often take for granted. But few have ever been shown exactly how to gain all the benefits a dictionary can provide or how to use it efficiently.

This illustrated and easy-to-understand text explains proper dictionary usage to both young students and adults, giving them this vitally needed skill.

Illustrated Hardcover, 263 pages.

The above books definitely help you to raise your level of duplication and understanding of English Language. Previously only available for key to life course at US$1,250, now you can get them all in a separate package for only US$345. Limited set is available for this special price.

You can now click the link at http://www.lrh-books.com/order_mult.php?item=dict,small_common,new_grammar&trackid=2275 to place the order online before this special offer has expired.

I hope the above recommendation may help especially if you are serious in improving your learning rate in English!

What is the common problem for most executives?

Life is livingness. There can be numerous problems that could put any executive in trouble. One of the common problems is that the executive cannot reach, or confront to get his communication across so he can get what he intends to have.

To get things done, one needs to communicate well what one intends to have. It’s also true in his any other activities besides his own career. Good communication can exercise good control with clear start, change and stop for any activity involved.

Facing with decreasing learning rate of the workforce, it could easily multiply the problems of communication that slow down the speed of the production and delivery of the products or services of the company. In other words, not only any executive needs to raise his confront and improve his communication skills, but also increase the learning rate of the staff of the company so his order can be duplicated, understood and executed.

To judge a person how good his communication is, you can use the time from when you ask the question and the time he could be able to answer your question. The more time the person needs to answer you back, the poorer shape the person is, and therefore the less efficient on his job duties.

At the same time, it is ironical to say that communication can give you what you have but also can give you trouble if you communicate wrongly or incorrectly. In fact, there are a lot to learn about communication. If one can master his communication, he will not be far way off from his own ideal scene.

If you want to improve your management skills as an executive, the first thing you may want to look at is to improve your communication, which is the foundation for any management skills including leadership.

If you want to know how to improve your communication skill, write me an email.

Can we trust our own observation and evaluation?

The world seems to grow into complexity as we grow up. Things in the environment no longer appear to be as simple as black and white. We start to learn more but get more complicated or even confused.

Information age indeed gives us instant access of information at our fingertips ( via our keyboard). It is getting harder to digest and differentiate which information is more valuable or close to the actual scene or reality.

We also get used to evaluate any subject by using positive and negative viewpoints. So whenever we study any subject, we use internet search and most of the time we get controversial information on some subjects especially in social forums. We easily heard both positive and negative voice from different opinions but our key question is: “Which is truer or more right than others?” We get “ridges” rather than flow of logic of information that can be useful or valuable to us; especially people tend to retain negative ideas or thoughts more than positive ideas or thoughts.

So it is important to be “three feet behind your head” to have an exterior viewpoint to really look, observe, and if possible it is better to go directly to the source of the information to find it out yourself rather than seeking any second opinions, and you know that sometimes what many people see and agree can still be far off from the real picture. As you are the only person who is responsible for all the observation in this physical universe, it is time not to simply bring the observation and conclusion from others into your universe without you first to “look”.

Unless one can establish his own ability of observation, evaluation and responsibility for one’s own conclusion, one can be true to what one observes without being the effect of any positive or negative voice on the subject. You probably will agree that such attributes are very much needed especially for any executive in any government and business organization; as any effective policies, decisions and implementions are based on true observation and evaluation.

I hope you enjoy your own universe of observation and evaluation which can bring more happiness, sanity and rationality to your life and people around you.