How to Improve Decision Making Skill

My friend asked me whether I have any advice on how to improve decision-making skill. And I started asking myself these:

How good am I in making decisions? Had I been making good decisions in the past? 

One word stared straight at me. FAILURES.

Failures = Bad Decisions. There have been many big failures in my life. It took me a long while to recuperate - mentally and emotionally.

But I had a better equation now. Failures = Decision to Learn = Courage to make mistakes. Yes, I have chosen at many times to learn the hard lessons from the bumpy roads in my life.

I had made decision in my past to learn the lessons from life. But now, I have made a decision to win and to love. So my friend's question came just right on time as I also need to improve my decision making skills.

Here are a few decision making strategies that I feel can help.

1. OOC/EMR Decision Making Process from Anthony Robbins

I never quite get down to try this decision making process. But in terms of making big and important decisions, I think it is good to go through this process.

2. From the book "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. 

I am not advocating to make decision in a blink - the power of thinking without thinking, the first two seconds decision making or the gut feeling. But this gives us a very good perspective. Sometimes, we already have made a decision in a blink. But we somehow tell ourselves we need more data. Perhaps, it is really good to trust our gut feelings. Perhaps not - it really depends on our level of mastery and the circumstances.

What really stands out for me in "Blink" is a study done on married couples, where they videotaped their conversations. From there, they used the different criteria to predict whether the couple would divorce in years to come. There are certainly a lot of things that can make or break a marriage, but the result was astonishing. It just came down to one criteria - whether the couples have contempt for each other.

My point is there are massive data and thousands of criteria for us to make decision, but usually the key important criteria is just a handful. And that's what we need to focus on. The rest is just noises and are not really important.

I used to break off with a guy because we just seem not able to get together well. Then, I asked both of us to envision how our old age will look like. I envision an old man and old woman lovingly holding hands walking together. He envision an old man alone, sitting on a chair, being at peace. That tells a lot about his value system and my value system in terms of partnership in life. Neither is right or wrong, but to be together, our values system has to align with each other.

3. Is it Love or is it Fear?

From A Course In Miracles and Return to Love (Mariane Williamson), I learn that a lot of things we do and decision we make, either we are driven by love or driven by fear.

Why do we not do the work we love?
Why do we stop from taking that action which will bring good change to our life?
Why do we stop going to the gym, eating healthy food and getting enough sleep?

All I am saying is use LOVE to make the decision instead of fear, and as Paulo Coelho put it, once we make the decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

Love itself is a decision. We make decision to love ourselves and others, to be happy, to heal and be healed, to change.

Fear is the darkness. Love is the light. We do not get to the light through endless investigation of the darkness. The only way to the light is through entering the light. (From A Return To Love)

Albert Einstein famously proclaimed "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it". It means that if we are to make a decision of a problem solving at the same state when we created the problem in the first place, we will never be making a good decision. When we create the problem, we are in the darkness or in the fear. Thus, we need to go to light and the love to make the decision on how to solve it.

So, let's our decision-making to be driven by love, instead of fear.

The life of Myanmar refugees

My wife is sick for 3 days but I only have RM50 on hands for all our expenses before the next pay day. How can I afford to send her to see doctor?

The local police and RELA keep extorting money from us instead of helping us. They tear up our UN identification papers, raid our house and do full body check on us to search for money. They take our money even if we are left with 50 cents. When will we be able to escape from their bullies and from losing our hard-earned money?

How long we have to stay here before UN can transport us to our permanent resident in US or Australia where we can really settle down? Some of us have waited for 5 years and some up to 10 years and there is still no news.

I can only work illegally when my boss calls me. Sometimes, it is only once, twice or none a week. If I do not have job, I cannot feed my wife and our kids. Will I have a job tomorrow or even next week?

Are my children and wife safe in our home country? I miss them so much but I know I cannot go back. The only way for us to be united is to bring them here. How do I find a big load of money to pay the agents to bring them here? Will they be able to escape from the army and survive the harsh journey to come here?

How does our future look like? When can we live without all these worries?



Every day, these kinds of thoughts haunt the group of 40 over Myanmar refugees who are staying in two small flat units at Jalan Imbi, at the capital centre in Malaysia. Their living condition is poor. They barely have enough fresh food and usually eat chicken bones with rice. Sickness visits them as regular as friends. Many of them, especially the women, lost few stones as both appetite and food quality deteriorates. For some men, their wives and children are thousands miles away and they live everyday with the risk of not able to see them ever again. For men with families, they fear they cannot provide for their wives and children. Hopes and dreams have deserted them for most of the times. Worries come like swarm of flies, uninvited and hard to drive away. Their everyday life is so uncertain and future holds no promise to them. It is like they have escaped from one hell, only to end up in another, so to speak.

Back in Myanmar, they were the oppressed group, whose half-century struggle for independence has made them particular targets of the military. Village raids, pillaging, murders, genocides, and rapes are not uncommon. Children are kidnapped and enlisted to the army, only to suffer beatings, starvation, brainwashing and being left to die. But leaving their home to come to Malaysia is not easy either. They went through painful struggles to adapt to the new environment where no one speaks their language except the few country fellowmen. And it is a point of no return because they will be shot to death if they go back. Even though they are lucky to be alive and away from the brutality in Myanmar, they are stripped of their total freedom in terms of their body, soul and spirit. It is like they have to go through failures and heartbreak almost every day, thinking but not knowing how their life would be. These scars of their emotional abuse run deep and wash away their feelings of self-worth.


Despite the harsh reality, they are not completely at lost. At the very least, I think they are blessed with 3 invaluable things:

1. First, their faith in God and Christianity is strong. They pray with remarkable intensity.
   
   
2. Second, there are at least some warm-hearted people who care about them -a group of generous Christians and a woman who has been looking after them for about 1 year now for 1 group and another group for few months. The woman is Madam Esther. She visits them twice a month and brings them rice, fresh vegetables, chickens, clothes, Vitamin C, medicine, games for the children- among other things. She teaches the women knitting and even buys them threads. When she learnt some have eyes infections, she bought eye drops and eye wash for them. She works hard to get enough funding to keep bringing these gifts to them. She sings with them, talks to all of them and encourage them to talk about things like what they are thankful for ("Thank you!" in Myanmar is "chei-zu tin-bar-te"), what they are feeling and what they hope for. She is even planning to bring all of them to the Zoo in this coming August. It will definitely be a fun day for all of them, especially the children.
   
   I say, most of all, she brings them love and hope.
   
   
3. So, the third blessing is also their love. Though they are deprived of many other things, they are not short of love to give. They love their families. They love and help each other.
   
   I hear of James who is already in United States. As he has a steady job and a home, he provides shelter and food for his fellowships, those who cannot get a job yet. I hear of an uncle in US who help to sponsor tenth of thousands to enable his brother’s families to be united in Malaysia.
   

No wonder Esther says she is the one who is blessed in her visit and not the other way around.
Esther explains this crucial fact to me - the most important mission of their cares is to help the refugees to restore dignities in their life. It is not just about bringing them food, but to be there for them constantly so that they know they have people who care about them and can be relied on.

It is a gratifying experience for me to be able to join Esther on the visit on Sunday, 13 July to get to know the life of the Myanmar refugees in the 2 flat units. I find them to have very mild and relaxing manner, even the men. They are also very courteous. They pulled out the chairs for us to sit while they all sat on the floor of the tidy living room. They offered to carry everything for us, even our own handbags. The women are pretty and slim; some are a bit thin because of sickness or loss of appetite. The women speak no other language except Burmese, but the men, most can speak good Malays. They learn it while working for the local bosses – a testimonial of their strong wills, adaptabilities and brightness.

The kids are also very bright and active. There are 3 kids who perform wonderful songs and dancing for us. They understand English quite well because they learn it at the school – a service provided by the NGOs. Unfortunately, I cannot remember most of their names, except for a boy names Solomon and the girl, whose name sounds between “Tracy” & “Crazy”. I still cannot figure out her exact name even though I have asked her to repeat more than twice. There is a small kid who smiles very often and he looks very adorable in his red-striped shirt and little brown vest. And then there is a kid who is born with bandy legs, but he walks swiftly everywhere, obliviously carefree of any impediment. I learnt this from his father, Peter, who is a pastor and also our translator. Then, there is also a teenage kid who is deaf but so smart and observant that he instinctively showed us the ways when we were at lost on which staircase to take to go up to their flat.

They all are really captivating.

I think and believe this. Though life is difficult, we can only sink so low but we won’t stay there forever. With even a little spirit and faith left, and most of the time, with helps from some generous people, we are going to rise up and have a future that we may never dream of. Not only we create a future for ourselves, but we also create a future for our children, so that they do not need to go through the same hardship we have been through. Even though we may not become rich, but we are in many ways, successful.

And every little piece of dignities that is restored lead to that. And, we should be reminded again – this is not only Esther’s mission but mission of God as well.

P/S: Esther will welcome funding from any generous people. Please contact me if you would like to contribute - I will introduce you to Esther.

Image from http://hubpages.com/

How ordinary people become monsters ... or heroes

"The world is always filled with goods and evil."

There are many times as conveyed in many of my previous postings, I wonder at how good people can turn bad, how and why people condone evilness, how we sometimes struggle within ourselves to want to be good or bad when our life goes off-course, and whether to forgive people who did evil things to us.

It is always fascinating to me to explore the subject of goods and evil. My INFP personality describe me as the following:

An INFP describes the inner conflict as not good versus bad, but on a grand scale, Good vs. Evil. Luke Skywalker in Star Wars depicts this conflict in his struggle between the two sides of "The Force." Although the dark side must be reckoned with, the INFP believes that good ultimately triumphs.

Thus, when I recently stumbled across the talk by Philip Zimbardo in TED, the author of the book "Lucifer Effect - understanding how good people turn evil", I am very much excited to continue on the subject. Click on this link to watch the interesting talk.

Here are the summary of the talk:

1. When our most favourite angel, Lucifer turned into devil, it shows that ordinary people can transform into perpetrators of Evil.

2. Evil is the exercise of power to intentionally harm (psychologically), hurt (physically) , and/or Destroy (mortally) and commit crimes against humanity.

3. There are 8 social processes that grease the slippery slope of evil (there are a lot of similarities with the points I tried to make in my posting Human Crime Today, so I show it here side-by-side) :

(1) mindlessly taking the first smallstep.

(2) dehumanization of Others

(3) De-individuation of Self (anonymity)

(4) Diffucation of Personal Responsiblity. - DON’T THINK OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR ACTIONS.

(5) Blind Obedience to Authority - FOLLOW THE CROWD. FOLLOW THE AUTHORITY.

(6) Uncritical Conformity to Group Norms. - IGNORANT. AFRAID TO DO WHAT OTHERS CONSIDERED AS UNCONVENTIONAL OR NOT COURTEOUS.

(7) Passive tolerance of evil through Inaction, of indifferent.
WAIT AND SEE. DON’T RESPOND TO THE SITUATIONS UNTIL IT BECOMES CRITICAL. IT IS NOT URGENT TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS (ACTIVE). MAYBE IF WE DO NOTHING, IT WILL GO AWAY

(8) In new or unfamiliar situations.

4. Give people power without oversight can cause evilness.

5. We should refocus away from Evil to understanding heroes- most heroes are everyday people, who emerge as heroes only in particular situations. - For e.g. Joe Darby , who stopped the Abu Ghraib abuses by exposing the photos to a senior officer. HE DID THE RIGHT THING WHEN OTHERS WERE DOING THE WRONG THING.

6. Situations have power to do 3 things:

(1) The very same situation that can inflame the hostile imagination , in those who become perpetrators, of evil can also inspire the
(2) Heroic imagination in others of us, or
(3) render most people passive bystanders and guilty of The Evil of Inaction. (they follow momma's advice: don't get inolved and mid your own business!
But momma humanity is my business.)

So, we can choose to be a Perpetrator of Evil, Guilty of inaction or Be a hero!.

7. We should encourage children to develop the heroic imagination and talents - Hero-in-Waiting.

8. You have to know how to be a deviant to be a hero. Act when other people are passive, be social-centric not ego-centric.

9. A true Hero said "I did what anyone could do, and waht everyone OUGHT to do".



I also learned from the Nuremberg Trials, why the Nazi leaders can commit evilness on such a grand scale to the Jewish under the influence of just one man - Adolf Hitler. There are 2 main reasons which I could not have agreed more. There are: 1) the lack of empathy for other people and 2) the culture to follow the authority without questioning.

Let's put on our halos and fight for the goodness in the world!

Sense of urgency - a critical asset in career and life

On the fateful day of 25 January 1990, Avianca Flight 52 crashed into Long Island, New York after ran out of fuel, killing 73 of the 158 people on board. The plane was put on hold from landing by Air Traffic Control several times on its way to New York due to bad weather. After on hold for more than one and a half hour, the crew asked for "priority" landing, which at their critical level of fuel shortage, they should have declared an emergency. The delays, a failed landing attempt at the about 10 minutes from the crash, and communication failure between the crew and air traffic controllers; all these caused the disaster where we all have so much to learn from.

The Avianca Flight 52 is a story of catastrophic result due to poor sense of urgency. There are several things we would find ourselves asking:

Why the crew failed to use the word "fuel emergency" to declare the extreme seriousness of their situation instead of asking for "priority landing"?

Shouldn't the sound of fear and urgency in the pilot and co-pilot's voices have been enough to show to the air controllers they are facing an emergency despite the culture and language barriers, had it been there?

Shouldn't the crew be more forceful and insist on being given immediate landing when they were redirected elsewhere, such as using some forceful words like "NOW" and "We can NO LONGER WAIT"?

A true sense of urgency is an exceptionally important asset for one to become successful in career and life. A true sense of urgency is not about being impatient on everything; it is not about rushing around energetically, running from meeting to meeting and screaming at people to execute. No; that is a false sense of urgency.

True urgency, according to John Kotter, a famous author, focuses on critical issues, which is needed now, not eventually, not when it fits easily into a schedule. True urgency is driven by a deep determination to win, not anxiety about losing. Now means making real progress every single day, not leaving ourselves with a heart-attack-producing task of running one thousand miles in the last week of the race.

With an attitude of true urgency, you try to accomplish something important each day, never leaving yourself with a heart-attack-producing task of running one thousand miles in the last week of the race. Critically important means challenges that are central to success or survival, winning or losing. A sense of urgency is not an attitude that I must have the project team meeting today, but that the meeting must accomplish something important today.

I still have a lot to learn on having a real sense of urgency, because I have always been a procrastinator on a lot of things. But slowly, I am improving; starting by doing the right thing and planning ahead. (Actually, to be honest, it is largely driven by working with a bunch of people with super sense of urgency. Haha....Ahem....).

In my previous blog post, I also mentioned that the lack of urgency caused an innocent girl to die of abuse because no one responded to the situations before it got critical. In Avianca Flight 52, it caused the death of 73 people. Although, not all things are matters of life and death, but I am sure we have a lot of things to learn from the past disasters caused by simple lack of urgency.

A week ago, I was absent from a special occasion; a wedding dinner of a wonderful couple, whom I personally get to know both of them really well. Earlier in the week, I made plan to work with my co-worker (also my partner) on the same weekend as the wedding dinner. My co-worker was working with me on part-time basis so the only available full days for us to work together is only during weekends and holidays. I had casually suggested to her that we need to work on certain outstanding issues, which seems quite important but not so urgent. She said she was busy but she might be free on coming weekend. I thought to myself then "I have a wedding dinner to attend on the same weekend" , but I did not say anything about that to her. Few days later, she confirmed she can meet on the weekend.

I know it will be marvelous for us we work together full day on the weekend because we can really make good progress with one whole day without interruptions. Unfortunately, this also means I could not go to the wedding dinner. So, I made a choice; to work on something that are important to me but relatively not so urgent; not because I have to but because I want to make good better progress in my work and maybe have the rest of following week free to do other things.! In fact, on that day, we worked from 1 p.m. until 6 a.m. the next day, on something that was totally not urgent! But we really did achieve something important because we have completed what we set up to do, and we are satisfied to know that we might be able to use our new-found knowledge anytime in the future.

So, if anyone of my friends ask me now or in the future why I do not show up at certain occasions, my general answer will be:
There are always a lot of choices we can make in our life. It is up to individuals to evaluate the priority and urgency of any of their choices. Since I want to be a business owner, having a sense of urgency in my work is very critical now.

I believe a sense of urgency is more than making the right choices, it has to be synchronized with our thoughts, feelings and actions; our attitude altogether. It should not only be used in work, but also in our everyday life. It is not rushing through things like I used to do last time; it is doing important things NOW instead of LATER.

Human Crime Today

I watched a quite disturbing movie last week that left me pondering on a lot of things about life. The reason why the movie is disturbing is because it is based on a true story and it shockingly reveals how cruel and uncaring people can be. Unlike most of the true stories with inspiring theme, this one does not have a happy ending; and the good does not always triumph over the evil.

The movie is called “An American Crime”. It is about an innocent teenage girl, named Sylvia Likens, who was tortured violently to death by a group of abusers. The abuse, triggered by a struggling woman with health problem and huge stress of taking care of seven children with virtually no money, eventually joined by her children and a whole neighborhood of youngsters.

Though Ginia said in her very excellent review on the movie, that the victim had the bad luck to grow up in a time and a place where “ignorance was understood as its own brand of wisdom”; somehow I feel, ironically, that statement still applies today. Thus, the title of this post is "Human Crime Today".

With a close examination, we can see the same things happening in societies today, although largely with less severity than brutally torturing a girl.

IGNORANT. AFRAID TO DO WHAT OTHERS CONSIDERED AS UNCONVENTIONAL OR NOT COURTEOUS.

The neighbors did not take any actions when they heard heart-wrenching screams on many occasions. They choose to ignore so they do not have any troubles.

Sylvia’s father did not bother to check out the condition of house where he was going to put his two daughters to live there. He was afraid to be prying even though this will concern his daughters’ safety and comfort! If he had, he would have found that the household had no stove, only three spoons in the kitchen drawers and there were fewer beds than were needed for those already living there. And, how he could completely trust a woman he had just known for a day to take care of his daughters is beyond understanding.

FOLLOW THE CROWD. FOLLOW THE AUTHORITY.

The children followed what their parent do or ask them to do without thinking whether the actions are right.

The neighborhood youngsters joined the crowd to torture Sylvia and decided since everyone was torturing and hating her, she must have done something really bad to deserve this. No one question what Sylvia had really done; whether she deserved these; whether the accusations upon her were all true.

Even Sylvia’s sister was forced to follow the crowd so that she would not be receiving the same condemnation or injustice done to Sylvia.

WAIT AND SEE. DON’T RESPOND TO THE SITUATIONS UNTIL IT BECOMES CRITICAL.

Sylvia and her sister had not done enough to stop the abuse, for e.g. by making police report.
In fact, when probing into the inaction on Sylvia’s part, investigators were wondering whether Sylvia is masochist. But they arrived at the conclusion that Sylvia was too young to know what was done to her was incorrect. After all, how could an adult and bunch of kids be so wrong?

Maybe Sylvia and her sister were waiting for the time when the abusers would have mercy and stop the torturing. In fact, in many occasions, it seemed the torture would end and Sylvia was given back the normal treatment. But very soon, the Sylvia would somehow engage the wrath of her’s abusers and the tortures started again. Some evil people just would not change.

DON’T THINK OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR ACTIONS.

It seems like the abusers never anticipated Sylvia would die from all the tortures and inhuman treatment done to her.

Neither did they think they would go to jail for that and that would all change their life enormously.

IT IS NOT URGENT TO SOLVE THE PROBLEMS (ACTIVE). MAYBE IF WE DO NOTHING, IT WILL GO AWAY (PASSIVE).

Somehow, until the Sylvia’s death, no one had done anything to help her in time; else; fate would be reversed. In one part of the scenes in “An American Crime” (WARNING, some spoiler here.), the director wanted us to believe there would be a happy ending if someone would have done the right thing then. We hope very much that was what happened.

But the neighbors, the children or the youngsters, the parents of the youngsters, Sylvia’s family and even the reverend, and more countless people; all failed to do the right things on time to save her. When they found Sylvia was dead, then only the youngsters tried to resuscitate her, called the police and the sister finally revealed the whole story to the police.

....................................................................................................................................................................

A lot of people mourn Sylvia after so long, especially when "An American Crime" shows the world, some parts of how it happened.

I guess the compassion and sadness are also due to the fact that most of us experience or see something similar in the world where we live in (most probably in smaller scale); not just the injustice, but also the rest of the people that do nothing to help. Indeed, human crime today in that part is very abundant.