Are we just plain lazy?

How many times have we heard the little voice in us that keep persuading us to take the easy way out from situation? How many times have you succumbed to the little voice and decided to take that little break that, in the end, take away half of your life idling in comfort?

I guess all of us hear this little voice many a time. The difference is that some of us decided to acknowledge the voice as time for a little break and others use it as an excuse to run away from challenges in their life. For myself, I guess life has been too comfortable that I have grown a little lazy. Lazy to look into my life more often, too lazy to look into my finances, too lazy to look into breakthrough in my thought, too lazy to acknowledge and solve things that are going wrong…

I have learnt through the hard way that as easy as it is to be lazy, the price to pay when you finally wake up is double what it should be if you had taken time to look into the challenges when you can. I read a book recently. It says that by ignoring the challenges in our life and indulging in short term comfort, we are actually creating long term pain in our life. Some people can escape forever from jumping from one focus to another as they refuse to face the challenges in their life. They shift focus so that there is nothing to focus on in the end. This means no pain to focus on, no decision to focus on and of course in the end, no dream to focus on and no happiness in life to focus on.

Perhaps the pain involve in facing our challenges is too great, too big that our current mindset and character is not strong enough to handle it. But isn’t it faster to grow muscle by lifting weight that is above our normal threshold? To accelerate a car, shouldn’t we step on the accelerator in order to reach a higher speed? By maintaining the status quo, nothing can be changed. In fact, we will only grow old to finally feel the sense of regret of not doing the things that we should do to realize our dreams. We can only grow stronger by facing harder challenges. Brain muscles grow from facing bigger challenges in our life.

Are we just plain lazy to face these challenges? Yes we are but the more important question is; are we asking ourselves the right question when facing challenges? If we ask ourselves the right question, we would finally realize that there is no time to be lazy. No justification for laziness. No way to be lazy as laziness is deadly. When laziness set in, it claims not only your will to do things. Laziness when allow to breed will claim your dreams, claim your character and finally claim all the happiness you deserve.

So the right question to ask is; can we afford laziness? If you are filthy rich, do you want laziness to claim your right to having a better character or accomplish a dream? If you are young, would you want laziness to claim your youth? Maybe there are people who can afford to be lazy as they are happy just the way they are. However if you look deep within yourself and you can sense a fire in you that still shimmers, would that fire one day die out and you feel that you have lost the sparks in your life, your glimmer of hope, the light at the end of the tunnel?

We are not sure if being diligent will help you achieve your dream but I am sure that if you start indulging in laziness and ignore your dreams and passion, you will have live a life that you are not passionate about as there is simply nothing in your life you can fight for to create the fiery passion.

“What’s life when passion is covered by laziness?”

~James Tan~

Right or Wrong?

Sorry for the MIA from my blog for soooooooo long. There is always an excuse for not writing in my nice blog for so long. Reason being, I guess I have found someone I can confide all my emo moments in that I have grown too comfortable to write.

However, I guess the laziness has to stop as its time to pick up my momentum. For this blog, I would like to talk about what I have learnt in business over these few months. In the past, perhaps mislead by the propaganda of TV, small little kid like me always think that business is about being all righteous and being there for the client all the time. Success will come from hard work and perseverance. Evil businessman will all crash and burn in the end.

All the ideal business ethics mentioned above only happen in TV, in the very fairy tale that kids indulge themselves in. Business world is not as beautiful as shown in Singapore TV as MediaCorp role is to portray good ethics in front of their wide spectrum of TV audience. In actual fact, the business world is colder than most of us view it to be. Profit is the first language that all business man adopts. Numbers are the measurement for effort. Being nice only happens when profits and numbers measures up.

In other words, the evil businessmen that we see in TV are actually the true form of what businessmen are in the real world. Steve Job sold faulty iphone and is a virtual ass hole. But we still love and embrace his product regardless of his conduct in business. He is still well-secured in his throne in Apple because of the fact that we are supporting his numbers and profits in share holders’ meeting. If being an ass hole get him to where he is and gave the share holder a smiling face when they see the dividend they are getting from their shares, please be assured that he will be Apple CEO no matter how many faulty iphone he is going to create and how many people he is going to screw over.

Professionalism is about delivery and not about being nice. Being nice in business equates weakness waiting for others to exploit. When you curse a businessman for being shrewd and cold, I guess that is actually the best compliment for him. Most of us might actually think that the above mentioned traits of a successful businessman are really bad. In actual fact, they are not even remotely close to bad. In retrospect, it is the best kind of conduct any businessman can have.

Why did I say so? Simply because business is a tough organization to upkeep. Only with rationality, good judgment, seriousness and perseverance can one maintain a business and make profit from it. When I mean profit, I don’t mean keeping yourself away from the bottom line; it means loads of cash that you can allow your share holder to pocket as dividend. Businessman has to be tough and appear as cold as they have to make tough decision without putting any emotion to it. Profits come first as that is the fundamental that any company is resting on.

We can voice our displeasure over any bad business conduct but these conducts are the very fundamental of business survival. Those that are caught with bad business practices are not wrong to do so. They are wrong because they are not smart enough to play the game well and avoid getting caught.

So what am I trying to say here? Bad business conduct is the way to go? Not really. What I am trying to say here is that human are judgmental and would, many a time, judge things based on their own perspective. What is wrong in business in our eyes might be because of a lack of understanding of what it takes to keep a business going. What seems wrong to us is because of the very fact that we do not share the same ambition and situation that others are in. This questions the fundamental question if there is any right or wrong in this world? Or is right or wrong just a perspective based on understanding from our own perspective?

Whatever the answer might be, I have learnt to be more objective. To be focus on getting my goals but not sacrificing my principle to be fair to the people who are fair to me. People grow as they aged and I seek break through every year in my life. Learning to be cold and serious, being an ass hole when need be to get things done might be a thing which I need to master in order to advance professionally in my life.

"What is right and wrong if we are wrong of what is right sometimes?"

~James Tan ~