Small blend of magic

I am always into making "big wishes". You know, those that shakes the earth, moves mountains and nothing short of turning water into wine. That sort of big stuff.

It was not until a friend, Bea, who shared with me her story about wishing small, her wish was for an iPad. Magically, three days later, she found a long forgotten overseas bank account with money to buy her the much wanted iPad and more.

Inspired, I said. Ok. Let me wish for something really small too.

You see, I ve been thinking about getting an extra blender. I like my fruit juices or blended fruit smoothies - which I make religiously every morning. When I am at work, I sometimes feel like having fresh juice but there is - of course - no blender at work. However I also think it is quite frivolous to have two blenders. One for home. One for office.

Still, after hearing Bea's story, I closed my eyes and wished silently.

A day later, when I was at Fortress, a large Hong Kong electronic shop to buy a humidifier, I looked wistfully at the blenders. Big ones, small ones, powerful ones, stylish ones. Whilst they are no where near as expensive as iPad, I am careful not to buy stuff just because I want them.

Anyway......my bear said, we have this blender at home. He pointed to a small travel size blender of a good brand.

"We do?" I asked in surprise.

Yup. In the cupboard. Got it years ago, free from one of the credit cards. Its still unopened.

"Unopened?" I parroted dumbly. My heart beating fast by now. 

 

You can imagine that I can hardly sit still all the way home as I cannot believe I have the blender I have been thinking about. Wishing about.


Back home, the blender is really up on one of the shelves, still in box, never opened.


With shaking hands, the blender is removed from the box and cleaned. And it works perfectly. Yes, I can take it to work. Even better, I can take it for my long travels (I will be in India two weeks in Jan, and this will continue to supply the fresh juices)

When I was drinking the smoothie freshly blended by my new found blender, I thought about the miracles of small wishes. In my case, a small blend of magic.

With the dawning of a new year, wish all your little wishes and your big dreams come true in special ways. Happy new year. May 2014 herald in another 365 days of magical time.

--

Best wishes for 2014

Q

 

 

 

FOOTNOTE:

 

 

 

Do you know that I have set up a blog together with my friends Sean Sha, Tracy Xu (in cc mail). It is held by Wechat/Weixin and we update it regularly with stories/sharings/learnings - such as my little funny story above. Hope to see you on Art Of Flying Blog.

 

Sean has kindly provided the instructions to get linked up on Weixin blog

 

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9 Previous Articles

Willing to learn? How far will you go?

When new gradutes are interviewed, undoubtedly 9 out of 10 will claim "Willing to learn" as one of their strengths. When it comes to "Willing to learn", no one can beat a young man called Larry.

        A final year student in finance, Larry travelled 20 hours by train to/fro to listen to one corporate professional speak for 2 hours.

        Intrigued, I asked Larry. Is she famous like Hillary Clinton? No. Do you know her well? No. I never met her before. Is she a good speaker? I don't know. Will you get a certificate? No.

        My goodness, why are you taking all the trouble? He smiled and softly replied, "Because I love to learn. And I believe I can learn from her."

        Larry travelled not only once, but twice to learn from the speaker, who each time spoke for only 1 or 2 hours. He said he will travel the third, fourth, N-th time as long as knowledge awaits him on the other side of the journey.

        THAT my friends, is the true King of Willing To Learn.

        H a p p y   f o o t n o t e:  The corporate speaker and Larry are now friends, and this young man is invited as VIP guest for all her speaking engagements - including those that are for C-level participants only. 

Larry can be reached at weixin:briliantlarry

Uhm......is this your bad habit?

I have a bad habit.

Very often, I don't zip back my bag after opening it. Kind strangers will walk up to me and worriedly caution, "Miss, your bag is opened." Actually, I have lost things too. Still, I never quite learnt to zip up my bag.

Most of us have this or that bad habit. Have you ever thought where it came from? When it started? And most importantly, how to motivate yourself to kick the bad habit?

One bad habit some speakers have is the constant use of Umm, Ahh, Err or You know. When used too much, these are annoying noises to our listeners.

Want to know my Ahh secret, how I stopped this habit?

Very simple. Here's how.

Whenever you are about to say Umm or Ahh, just open your mouth but do not let the sound come out! It may escape the first few times, but later, you will learn to catch it before it slips from your lips. 

Your Ahh when silent, becomes a pause in your speech. Remember what I say about Pauses? Pauses in speech - no matter long or short - are always welcomed by our listeners. So there you are -- cure a bad habit and gain a brownie point. Are you motivated to give it a try?

Now, your turn to advise me how to kick my bad habit of not zipping up my bag, ok?  :)

Footnote:  Talking about habits, author Charles Duhigg of the Power of Habit found a sure-fire way to replace bad habits with good ones. 

Drop us your name and email if you like to receive more information onThe Power of Habit. Let's learn some good habits together!

Zero to One Hundred in 3 lessons

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From Terrible to Terrific

        Absolutely no one. Yes, no one would believe that I used to be horrible at public speaking. No one except my boss, Wander Meijer, who saw me stutter and stammer, turned pale and then turned very red in the face as I stood on the stage to deliver my annual address as CFO of the company.

        Up to then - that was in 2006, I was hopeless at presentations. Did I do anything about it? Yes! I usually make up my lack of confidence with heavy laden PPT slides - full of words, full of numbers, full of pictures. Slide, please speak for me. Did I do anything about it? No. I thought I am too hopeless to be helped by any training. So I suffered silently for many years.

        In 2006, I received a global award from USA Centre of Creative Leadership and with it,  invitations to speak publicly. Out of desperation, I hired a coach to save me. It was baptism by fire with 3 sessions of 1:1 coaching over 2 weeks.

        Surprisingly, my first public presentation post-coaching was so well received. Audiences of C-level calibre generously awarded me with 3.95 out of a maximum score of 4 for content and style. Magically and almost overnight, I transformed from a Terrible speaker into a Terrific speaker. Literally from Zero to 100% confidence in 3 lessons.

        As a result, I am now very passionate in helping you make the same transformation because I know it is very easy. And I promise you, really fun and practical.