13 Feb
Be Younique Blog

Texting while Talking

DON”T! It is so common for people to text while the person in front of them is talking. I was just in a meeting yesterday with someone doing exactly that. It is so disrespectful to others yet we do it all the time. Will you text if you are talking to someone important…a person you admire, a well-known celebrity, or your boss? Respect requires giving full attention to the person you are with, no matter who they are.

It’s funny how we would text while in a conversation but fail to answer some text messages for hours, sometimes even days upon receiving a text message. Some don’t even reply at all. Again, will you respond to a text message sent by an important person after a few days? You would probably respond instantly! It just shows that we don’t respect the person if we don’t reply to their text message as soon as we can.

What I’m saying is that we should be present whenever we are with people. Physically present isn’t being present. You can spot couples everywhere who are there but aren’t there with each other. They are having dinner together but the guy is texting someone at work while the girl is posting pictures in instagram.

Oh! By the way, people don’t pray anymore before they eat, they take pictures of the food instead. 

Before:

Today:

Remember, if you really need to text someone, and you’re talking to a person or a group, ask permission first before you do. And do it only if it’s important. If not, do it later. Simple table manners. Duuuhhh!

11 Feb
Be Younique Blog

Master the skill of Asking Questions

What can we learn when things don’t turn out the way we want them to?  

What can we learn when our expectations aren’t met?

What can we learn from our success and our failures?

The best way to learn is to be a kid again. Kids ask questions all the time.

Yesterday, I watched Wall-E – the animated film – with my kids. Gabbie, my eldest, asked me more than 50 questions during the two-hour movie. Why is Wall-E a robot? What happened to the spaceship? Why are all the people in the spaceship fat? Etc.

When we grow older, we stop asking questions. It’s either we think we know all the answers or we feel it’s embarrassing to ask. For me, there are no dumb questions, if asking will help you understand a subject more.

However, the questions I am referring to are the questions we ask ourself daily…those questions that help us introspect. I heard one American motivational speaker say, “The questions we ask ourself determine the quality of our life.”

04 Feb
Be Younique Blog

Don’t run from your Problems

Run TO your problems; not FROM your problems. If you have a problem, get ready for a collision course. If you don’t, your problem will catch up to you one day. Rest assured that if you do not deal with your problem now, it will be a bigger problem when you get older. It’s going to be a tougher and meaner opponent. 

When dark clouds are hovering above you, remember that it will pass. It’s only a matter of time before the sun shines again. All you have to do is persevere.

Tough times make us tough! Tough times don’t last but tough people do!

27 Jan
Be Younique Blog

Turn your Emotion to Devotion

Emotion is short-term; Devotion is long-term.

Emotion is a short-lived adventure; Devotion is a lifetime experience.

Emotion brings you places; Devotion makes you stay in those places.

Emotion gives you a vision; Devotion makes you fight for that vision.

Being Emotional can drive you crazy; Being Devoted can drive you to the OUTER LIMITS!

Once you are emotional about something, ask yourself if you can be devoted to it. If not, then you might be wasting your time. Move on to something that you can be devoted to.

26 Jan
Be Younique Blog, Books

Books I’m Reading Now

The Impact Equation (Read 20%)

-No matter how good you and your ideas are, if you don’t have a platform, you’re just making noise.

Mastery (Read 18%)

-This is a good sequel to outliers. But be careful with some of the book’s ideas that may seem immoral. The author’s first book, The 48 Rules of Power, is really a book on manipulation; but you can use the knowledge instead to protect yourself from people who uses their power abusively. 

To Sell Is Human (Read 12%)

-We are all in sales! You can call it “Moving People.” This gives a scientific approach to why all of us needs to learn to be sales people.

The Invisible Goriila (Read 23%)

If you love psychology books, you’ll love this one. Our intuition deceives us everyday. Find out what the invisible gorilla is.

The Honest Truth About Dishonesty (Read 5%)

-Another psychology book that rocks!

APE (Read 5%)

-Author Publisher Entrepreneur.

-Everything you need to know about self-publishing.

I can see how much of the book I’ve read because I use a Kindle. It shows the percentage of content you’ve already finished. I buy e-books in Amazon; I hardly buy books anymore. The only time I buy books is when it’s written by local authors who don’t have e-books.

23 Jan
Be Younique Blog, Business

3 Steps to turn your Idea into Reality

1) Idea

This is the Creation phase. All ideas were incubated in thought first before it became a reality. 

Be positive. Be open to any idea that will come up. After gathering all the ideas — choose which ones you will use. 

Be negative. Scrutinize all the flaws and weaknesses of the idea. This is the time to shoot everything in sight.

Be positive. Take all the positive and all the negative together; check if the positive outweighs the possible negative hurdles along the way. If it does, this is the moment you welcome the bad with the good. It helps you prepare for contingency plans for any possible negative outcome.

2) Sell

You need people to buy into your idea. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. This is different from convincing; this is inspiring people to jump aboard the bandwagon with you.

3) Ship it

An idea is just an idea if you don’t execute. Business guru Seth Godin coined this catch phrase “Ship It.” Act! Move! Go! Make Things Happen! Do something that matters by making your ideas matter.

22 Jan
Be Younique Blog

Write Things Down!

“The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory.”

Albert Einstein was once asked by his student…Professor Einstein, can I get your telephone number?

Einstein reached inside his bag, took out his telephone directory, turned it to the letter E, dictated his name Einstein, and gave his telephone number.

The student gasped, Professor Einstein, you know all the formulas in the world and yet you don’t know your telephone number? To which Einstein replied: Young man, if you write things down, you free your mind.

How many times did you have a grand idea that you instantly forget simply because you didn’t write it down. Or how many times have you attended a seminar with no paper and pen on hand to take notes (Today, it’s an iPad — usually not to take notes but to take pictures of the slides. So I guess you can use a camera too), only to forget everything discussed the next day.

I have attended seminars more than 10 years ago that I can still vividly recall — I remember the speaker, his main points, even the venue and the date of the event — because I wrote it down. In fact, I heard this Einstein story more than a decade ago.

Write things down! It may sound common sense, but it is not common practice.

21 Jan
Be Younique Blog, Leadership

The Secret to Success in Life

In the Leadership Challenge, Major General John Stanford replied when asked how he’d go about developing leaders:

I tell them I have the secret to success in life. The secret to success is to stay in love. Staying in love gives you the fire to ignite other people, to see inside other people, to have a greater desire to get things done than other people. A person who is not in love doesn’t really feel the kind of excitement that helps them get ahead and to lead others and to achieve.

Of all the things that sustains a leader over time, love is the most lasting. Leadership is not an affair of the head. Leadership is an affair of the heart.