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THINK ABOUT THE ANSWER

AN IMPORTANT QUESTION

LIFE CHANGING QUESTION

We are always being asked questions. But what about the questions that change our lives. 

I was once asked such a question as a young man. The question was asked one eventful day during a shift I worked as a student in my College. 

When I was a student, as part of my responsibilities, I had an opportunity to meeting several elderly men who where all unique in their own way, and some of these gentleman took a lot more care than others, and some were a lot grumpier than others. 

A lot of students, quite frankly, did not enjoy talking with these men and would try to avoid spending any more time there then they had to. On the contrary, I took the opposite tack attending to the talks of these men. 

Instead of just asking about my academics development, I spent a lot of time talking, learning, just good old give them attention beyond what they needed time. So, I became the main target of their pent up mental energy and honestly, I had a lot of fun spending my time with them. 

But, beyond establishing a great rapport with these men, there was one gentleman I spent a lot of time talking with. He wasn't at first appearance much different than the rest but he had a wicked sense of humor and a grand spirit about him

Life Changing Question

One day, after all necessary academics and leadership taks were done and I stayed with them, he called me over to his Office. At first thinking he was about to introduce the obvious topic's, I was ready. Instead, he beckoned me even close so he could obviously speak very quietly to me out of earshot of the other man. 

In a soft voice just above a whisper, he asked, . .

"What do you want to be remembered for after you die?" 

I was somewhat taken back thinking immediately that he was old  man, may be he got physical distress and required immediate medical attention. I quickly asked, "What's wrong? 

"No, no, no, nothing bad", he whispered. 

"I want you to think about just what I said. What do you want to be remembered for after you die? 

I Didn't Understand

"I don't understand what you are asking me". I said confused. 

"It really is a simple question but an important question. How do you want people to think of you when you die? Do you want to be known for your humor, for your caring, for helping people no matter who they are, or do you want to be remembered as a person of status, wealth, spending big money on a house, fancy car, long vacations or possessing big assets?"

I know I probably sounded like a babbling idiot to him at that time because I couldn't give him a well thought out answer at all. I still remember feeling uncomfortable because I had no clear answer to give. 

A Question Worth Thinking About

Over the years, we may all face this important question. It may be a question that comes to you because of a tragic circumstance, or it may come to you after you have observed or witnessed other people stepping up to many needed issues and taking on great odds to change societal obligations. 

It may be a question you ask in later years when you finally realize that you won't live forever. Or, it may also be a question that you may never want to ask yourself because you are too caught up in enjoying the materialistic side of life. 

Think About The Answer

Is it time for you to ask, "What do you want to be remembered for after you loose power, ability or die?"

WHAT HAPPENED?

BUILD THE BEST YOU

The miracle power that elevates the few is to be found in their industry, application, and perseverance, under the promptings of a brave determined spirit.

Many motivational experts of today like to say that great people are made through different ways. I would argue the exact opposite. I believe we are all natural born great and best, but have been deprogrammed along the way.

As children, we were natural great, innovative, best, talented, curious and humble, always hungry and thirsty for knowledge, with an incredibly vivid imagination; we knew exactly what we wanted, were persistent and determined in getting what we wanted, and had the ability to motivate, inspire, and influence everyone around us to help us in accomplishing our mission. So why is this so difficult to do as adults? WHAT HAPPENED?

As children, over time, we got used to hearing, No, Don't, and Can't. No! Don't do this. Don't do that. You can't do this. You can't do that. No! Many of our parents told us to keep quiet and not disturb the adults by asking silly questions. This pattern continued into high school with our teachers telling us what we could do and couldn't do and what was possible. Then many of us got hit with the big one institutionalized formal education known as high school, college or university.

Unfortunately, the traditional educational system doesn't teach students how to become the best people they wanted to become; it teaches students how to becoaAme polite order takers for the corporate world. Instead of learning to become creative, independent, self-reliant, and think for themselves, most people learn how to obey and intelligently follow rules to keep the corporate machine humming.

Developing the best in you to live your highest life, then, requires a process of unlearning by self-remembering and self-honoring. Being an effective person again will require you to be brave and unlock the door to your inner attic, where your childhood dreams lie, going inside to the heart. Based on my over three years research in the area of human development and success, here are few easy steps you can take to awaken the genuine person in you and rekindle your passion for greatness.

Humility.

Anything grate starts with humility. To be a highly successful person, you must first humble yourself like a little child and be willing to learn from others. Be humble as a child, always curious, always hungry and thirsty for knowledge. For what is excellence but knowledge plus knowledge plus knowledge - always wanting to better yourself, always improving, always growing. When you are humble, you become genuinely interested in people because you want to learn from them. And because you want to learn and grow, you will be a far more effective listener, which is the #1 tool for growth.
 

Know your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

This is a useful key to gain access to self-knowledge, self-remembering, and self-honoring. Start by listing all your Strengths including your accomplishments. Then write down all your Weaknesses and what needs to be improved. Make sure to include any doubts, anxieties, fears, and worries that you may have. These are the demons and dragons guarding the door to your inner attic. By bringing them to conscious awareness you can begin to slay them. Then proceed by listing all the Opportunities you see available to you for using your strengths. Finally, write down all the Threats or obstacles that are currently blocking you or that you think you will encounter along the way to achieving your dreams.

Regardless of how busy you are, always take time to do what you love doing. Being an alive and vital person vitalizes others. When you are pursuing your passions, people around you cannot help but feel impassioned by your presence. This will make you a charismatic person. Whatever it is that you enjoy doing, be it writing, acting, painting, drawing, photography, sports, reading, dancing, networking, or working on entrepreneurial ventures, set aside time every week, ideally two or three hours a day, to pursue these activities.

 Dream Big.

If you want to be larger than life, you need a dream that's larger than life. Small dreams won't serve you or anyone else. It takes the same amount of time to dream small than it does to dream big. So be Big and be Bold! Write down your One Biggest Dream. The one that excites you the most. Remember, don't be small and realistic; be bold and unrealistic! Go for the Gold, the Nobel, the highest you can possibly achieve in your field and life. After you have written down your dream, list every single reason why you CAN achieve your dream instead of worrying about why you can't.

Have Vision.

Without a vision, we perish (Even the Bible says this). If you can't see yourself winning that award and feel the tears of triumph streaming down your face, it's unlikely you will be able to lead yourself to victory. Visualize what it would be like accomplishing your dream. See it, smell it, taste it, hear it, feel it in your gut.

Perseverance.

Victory belongs to those who want it the most and stay in it the longest. Now that you have a dream, make sure you take consistent action every day. I recommend doing at least 5 things every day that will move you closer to your dream. This is very important

Honor Your Word.

Every time you break your word, you lose power of moving on. Successful and grate people keep their words and their promises. Keep the promises you promise yourself. You can accumulate all the things and riches in the world, but you only have one reputation in life. Your word is gold. Honor it.

Get a Mentor and a role model.

Find yourself a mentor. Preferably someone who has already achieved a high degree of success in your field (anything you do). Don't be afraid to ask, ask as many questions as you can. You've got nothing to lose. Reuben Koikai.blogspot.com is an excellent mentoring blog and a great resource for finding local mentoring articles. In addition to mentors, take time to study autobiographies of great people that you admire. Learn everything you can from their lives and model some of their successful behaviors. Learn from them, but don't be them.

 Be Yourself.

Use your relationships with other grate people and mentors and your research on great best people as models or reference points to work from, but never copy or imitate them like a parrot. Everyone has vastly different success styles. Be yourself, your best self, always competing against yourself and bettering yourself, and you will become a first rate YOU instead of a second rate somebody else.

Give. Finally, be a giver.

Great people are givers. By giving, you activate a universal law as sound as gravity life gives to the giver, and takes from the taker. The more you give, the more you get. If you want more love, respect, support, and compassion, give love, give respect, give support, and give compassion, Most of it GIVE TIME. Be a mentor to others. Give back to your community. As a great person, the only way to get what you want in life, is by helping enough people get what they want first, be a problem solver. Sir Winston Churchill once said, "We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."

Thank you for reading this.

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Reuben Koikai

Refuse to Blame Anyone for Anything

Refuse to Blame Anyone for Anything

The chief cause of negative emotions and the primary destroyer of inner peace is blame, it is not possible to have a negative emotion without having someoneor something to blame in some way or for something.

Blame requires one or both of two factors to exist. The first is identification. This occurs whenyou take something personally: You identify with it. As soon as you decide to feel that someone hasdone or said something negative that affects your personal interests in some way, you immediately become angry and blame that person.

Even if someone who is doing something you don't love completely, you can immediately become angry atthat person, a complete stranger, because you took his driving behavior personally.

But when you learn yourself to detach and stop taking things personally, the negativeemotional charge connected with the person or incident stops almost immediately.

The minute you say positive things to yourself, all negativity associated with any event vanishes and youbecome calm, relaxed, and positive once more

Reuben Koikai

ACCEPT YOUR TRUE SELF

EVERYONE IS UNIQUE IN HIS OWN WAY

Sometimes, when all our doubts, fears and insecurities wrap ourselves up, we always come up with the idea of I wish I was somebody else. More often than not, we think and believe that someone or rather, most people are better than us.- when in reality, the fact is, most people are more scared than us.

You spot a totally eye-catching girl sitting by herself at a party, casually sipping on a glass of Asti Spumanti. You think to yourself, she looks so perfectly calm and confident. But if you could read through her transparent mind, you would see a bunch of clouds of thoughts and you might just be amazed that she is thinking "are people talking about why I am seated here alone?..." Why don't guys find me attractive? Or they don't like my ankles, they look too skinny I wish I was as intelligent as my best friend.

We look at a young business entrepreneur and say Wooh what else could he ask for? He stares at himself at the mirror and murmur to himself, I hate my big eyes I wonder why my friends won't talk to me, I hope mom and dad would still work things out.

Isn't it funny? We look at other people, envy them for looking so outrageously perfect and wish we could trade places with them, while they look at us and thinks of the same thing. We are insecure of other people who themselves are insecure of us. We suffer from low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence and lose hope in self improvement because we are enveloped in quiet desperation.

Sometimes, you notice that you have an irritating habit like biting off your finger nails, having a foul mouth.

I have a friend who never gets tired of talking. And in most conversations, she is the only one who seems to be interested in the things she has to say. So all of our other friends tend to avoid the circles whenever she is around, and she doesn't notices how badly she became socially handicapped and gradually affecting the people in her environment.

One key to self improvement is to LISTEN and TALK to a trusted friend. Find someone who you find comfort in opening up with even the most gentle topics you want to discuss.

Ask questions like:-
Do you think I am ill-mannered?
Do I always sound so argumentative?
Do I talk too loud?,
Does my breath smell?
Do I ever bore you when were together?.

In this way, the other person will obviously know that you are interested in the process of self improvement. Lend her/him your ears for comments and criticisms and don't give them answers like "Don't exaggerate!" Or "That's just the way I am!" Open up your mind and heart as well. And in return, you may want to help your friend with constructive criticism that will also help them improve themselves.

Remember, you cannot give what you do not have. Before telling other people some ways on how to improve themselves, let them see that you yourself is a representation and a product of self improvement. Self improvement makes us better people, we then inspire other people, and then the rest of the world will follow.

Stop thinking of yourselves as second-rate beings. Forget the repetitive thought of "If only I was richer" or "If only I was thinner" and so on. Accepting your true self is the first step to self improvement. We need to stop comparing ourselves to others only to find out at the end that we have got 100 more reasons to envy them.

We all have our insecurities. Nobody is perfect. We always wish we had better things, better features, better body parts, etc. But life need not to be perfect for people to be happy about themselves. Self improvement and loving yourself is not a matter of shouting to the whole world that you are perfect and you are the best. It's the virtue of acceptance and contentment. When we begin to improve ourselves, we then begin to feel contented and happy.

Reuben Koikai.

NEXT TIME YOU SEE A PROBLEM YOU THINK YOU CAN NOT SOLVE, THINK AGAIN

Adventures in Creative Thinking

How many times have you caught yourself saying that there could be no other solution to a problem and that problem leads to a dead end? How many times have you felt stumped knowing that the problem laying before you is one you cannot solve. No leads. No options. No solutions. 

Did it feel like you had exhausted all possible options and yet are still before the mountain large, unconquerable, and impregnable? When encountering such enormous problems, you may feel like you're hammering against a steel mountain. The pressure of having to solve such a problem may be overwhelming.

But rejoice! There might be some hope yet!

With some creative problem-solving techniques you may be able to look at your problem in a different light. And that light might just be the end of the tunnel that leads to possible solutions.

First of all, in the light of creative problem-solving, you must be open-minded to the fact that there may be more than just one solution to the problem. And, you must be open to the fact that there may be solutions to problems you thought were unsolvable.

Now, with this optimistic mindset, we can try to be a little bit more creative in solving our problems.

Number one; May be the reason we cannot solve our problems is that we have not really taken a hard look at what the problem is. Here, trying to understanding the problem and having a concrete understanding of its workings is integral solving the problem. If you know how it works, what the problem is, then you have a better foundation towards solving the problem.

Not trying to make the simple statement of what problem is. Try to identify the participating entities and what their relationships with one another are. Take note of the things you stand to gain any stand to lose from the current problem. Now you have a simple statement of what the problem is.

Number two; Try to take note of all of the constraints and assumptions you have the words of problem. Sometimes it is these assumptions that obstruct our view of possible solutions. You have to identify which assumptions are valid, in which assumptions need to be addressed.

Number three; Try to solve the problem by parts. Solve it going from general view towards the more detailed parts of the problem. This is called the top-down approach. Write down the question, and then come up with a one-sentence solution to that from them. The solution should be a general statement of what will solve the problem. From here you can develop the solution further, and increase its complexity little by little.

Number four; Although it helps to have critical thinking aboard as you solve a problem, you must also keep a creative, analytical voice at the back of your head. When someone comes up with a prospective solution, tried to think how you could make that solution work. Try to be creative. At the same time, look for chinks in the armor of that solution.

Number five; It pays to remember that there may be more than just one solution being developed at one time. Try to keep track of all the solutions and their developments. Remember, there may be more than just one solution to the problem.

Number six; Remember that old adage," two heads are better than one." That one is truer than it sounds. Always be open to new ideas. You can only benefit from listening to all the ideas each person has. This is especially true when the person you're talking to has had experience solving problems similar to yours.

You don't have to be a gung-ho, solo hero to solve the problem. If you can organize collective thought on the subject, it would be much better.

Number seven; Be patient. As long as you persevere, there is always a chance that a solution will present itself. Remember that no one was able to create an invention the first time around.

Creative thinking exercises can also help you in your quest be a more creative problems solver. 

So, next time you see a problem you think you can not solve, think again. The solution might just be staring you right in the face. All it takes is just a little creative thinking, some planning, and a whole lot of work.

Reuben Koikai

GIVE TIME, BE A LISTENER AND MAKE FRIENDS

What does it take to make a friend? A normal question with not so normal answers in some cases. 

One of these situations of not the usual answer happened to me luckily not that long ago. 

As some would suspect from your background, may be you are not the most open person at times because of the kind of work you do or just your personal background, and work is in the justice system where one does not necessarily develop a natural affinity to make friendships with everyone. 

But, one thing that should never be compromised is the ability to give everyone a fair hearing without prejudice or malice. In other words, do not paint everyone with the same brush because of past circumstances.

I had occasion to be a leader at my local college and during my responsibilities as a leader I took a walk around the other colleges. I came across other leaders who was leading same level students and stopped in to preview and evaluate his work. 

As soon as I walked in his office he came over and started to chat. As he began to tell me about his work, studies, leadership experience and exposure, I sensed that there was more to his casual discussion than first appeared. 

Sure, he was friendly and quite knowledgeable about his responsibilities but there was more to him than what first was presented.

Just As I Suspected 

I began to ask him about what he did before he became a leader and learned what I had suspected. He had been a failure in classes and several times in his life but never stopped with failures and did appointments.

Now, three years ago, I would have simply thanked him for his time and left. But, as time would have it, and as I was not given to make prejudicial judgments, I remained to listen to his story. 

And, what had been a happenstance meeting turned out to be an open dialogue where we both shared our backgrounds. 

He had made a complete reversal in his life. He had made a decision to become a better person, clean from failing and turned his life around partly by focusing his energy on his ability and gifts. 

We must have chatted about our differing backgrounds and experiences for well over an hour, and this conversation continued off and on for several weeks whenever I happened to be in his college and around town. 

The long and short is that we are very good friends to this day appreciating each others background and being openly accepting of what made our lives different and unique. 

You can make a good and best friend too.

The making of a friend, for me, means being accepting of others, not to prejudge, to give each person an opportunity to express whom they are without jumping down their throat, or assuming that they are unworthy of my time.

Each of us is unique and we all are different. We are neither better nor worse; we are just different. Friendship will not happen unless you are willing to.

Make a friend by giving out your time;