Richard Macalintal

Who Do You Pay First?

Sep 2, 2010 Abundance, Blogging, Motivational, Personal, success Leave a comment

Who do you pay first, your bills or your self?

As much as we want to say we pay our self first, but in reality this is not happening to most of us. Majority of us, including me, have a different mindset when it comes to this reality in life.

Poor people like me, tend to pay bills first in contrast to what rich people are doing which is the opposite. Though there’s nothing wrong with this practice at that particular moment, it would badly affect us in the long run.

Our mind is our greatest asset that controls everything. Our success lies on its ability to think beyond what is ordinary. With our whole body, they join hand in hand to give us the best that we can have. That if we only use them. With this in mind, it is only right to treat our self well and take good care it. Surely it deserves to be treated first after our payday. You can do that by eating in a restaurant, cruise, buying gadgets, travel abroad or other things which you will surely enjoy.

As our monthly cashflow from salary is flowing, so our bills and expenses in which sometimes are equal or more than what we earned. It is our custom practice to first allocate money for paying bills and other thing, then the excess will be our savings and a treat for ourselves. But sad to say, nothing left or only few left for us to enjoy. Then as a result, we find ourself eating in the same old cafeteria, ordering the most basic and cheap food that they have, chicken rice!

By doing this, we are depriving ourselves to enjoy the fruit of our labor. We are also setting our mindset to the kind of attitude where we tolerate this kind of behavior as normal and best practice. We are too relaxed within our comfort zone. As long as no credit card collector or no creditor will chase us, it’s ok to treat ourselves this way. And our whole mind and body is getting use to it, adapting to this kind of scenario sitting inside the comfort zone lying inefficiently.

While paying bills is our obligations, it is also our duty to satisfy our needs and wants more that anything else.

Let’s say you eat in a fine dining restaurant and over spent few bucks after your payday. If you’re budget is too tight, you may end up running short and would not be able to pay some of your bills on time. Then those tax and credit collectors will chase after you. Your mind and body are in good condition now to fully function, after you have you fine dining experience. Then the next thing your mind will think is how are you going to pay the bills on time and where to get the money.

By having these questions linger in our mind, we are actually exercising it to function beyond its normal capacity. This is where we will find ourselves slowly moving out of the comfort zone and trying new things we haven’t done before to raise the extra money. For rich people, they use these scenarios to drive them to the fullest of their capacity. They strive to seek for better opportunities which they can only see if they seek and use the full power of their mind.

Our mind is very powerful, but oftentimes we just let it rest dormantly inside the comfort zone. Sometimes, we need to push ourselves to the limit and seek for better opportunities around us. And we can only do that, if we start paying our self first.

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What’s Wrong With My Education?

Aug 25, 2010 Blogging, Motivational, Personal, success Leave a comment

When I was in elementary grade 2, my teacher had a different way to discipline us. She frequently gave us exams and base on the results, she punished us for the mistakes and errors that we got. And the punishment, we lie down on our desk while she hit us on our butt with her stick. The number of hit corresponds to the number of errors we committed on the exam. The pain that we had on our punishment motivates us not to commit mistakes on the next exam. And the lesson that we got, don’t make any mistakes.

For few years, I thought this event or anything similar to it is beneficial to me or to those involved. Our mind was still young and we’re on the stage of developing our thoughts and habits back then. We were trained never to commit error or mistakes, which most of us became the basis of everyday living. This is how we are trained in school. And this is how we grew up, never commit mistake and be on safe side always. Then comes the famous line, study hard, get good grades and get a good job with good benefits. The cycle goes on and on, never realizing that we became slave to our jobs.

In reality, there is a bad side of this kind of training. In order to be successful in life, we must do extra effort. That means leaving our comfort zone, bear the hardship and commit mistakes. Failure is a great teacher as what they say. And success is a product of so many failures. Success is not a good teacher, failure is. We tend to be contented on being safe, sitting in our comfort and never venture risk. Risk equals to extra effort and tendency to commit mistake. That is why most of us never take it. No wonder only few people are successful, only few people take risks.

Let’s start by changing our mindset that committing mistakes is not good. We all do commit mistakes. What’s most important is, learn the lesson and move on. Dwelling much about it makes it worst and eventually hampers our personal growth.

Instead of only punishing someone who committed mistakes, try also to discuss the very important lesson that they can learn from it. Try to explain mistakes with a positive point of view, not only the negatives of it. This is the best way to empower people around us.

Join us in empowering each people’s lives and take calculated risk to achieve financial and time freedom thru our OFW Business.

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An Essential Ingredient of Success – Persistence

Aug 18, 2010 Motivational, Personal, success 2 Comments

Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers, highlights the difference in mathematical ability of Asians versus Westerners. He goes to explain with facts as to why the Asians are much better off in Math. And one of the core reasons was because of the higher level of persistence exhibited by Asian students to solve a particular problem. And this very attribute of persistence, he goes on to say, is one of the primary reasons why all successful people achieve more than others. It’s dogged persistence!

Now how many people do you personally know who practice the habit of persistence in their day-to-day life? If you are like most people then you would count them off your fingertips. Not many out there. So it’s no wonder that only 1% of the population amass 96% of the wealth on the planet. They rightly deserve it, and the rest don’t. You might be seeing Bill Gates for what he is today, but have you studied how he got there? Probably not. If you have, then you know how he used to wake up at 0300 in the morning just to sit in front of the university computer, because that’s when there is no rush. Have you studied how Richard Branson became who he is today? He used to sleep off at his work desk due to exhaustion, especially during his early days. There is not even one single person at the top who has not put in sheer effort to build what they have built today.

Now why do you think some people just don’t seem to back down, and some do? I strongly believe that it has to do with their upbringing. Again, in the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell highlights on a strong correlation between a person’s upbringing and their achievements in life. If during your childhood your parents have encouraged you to stand up for yourself, stood behind you when you expressed your views boldly and didn’t put in you a fear of bowing to Authority, then you are in good stead when you grow up.

In addition, I feel that the people who persist do it because they find it meaningful to them. Take me for example. I love to learn about flying, so I love the Microsoft Flight Simulator. Every time I sit on the simulator, I lose myself totally into it; I forget to have lunch, I forget my chores. I basically forget everything else but the simulator. Because I just love the idea of learning to fly and that is one of my dreams. That’s why I persist. I find it meaningful. Now ask yourself, are the things that you are involved in meaningful to you? If not, I will guarantee you that you will not make it. That shouldn’t discourage you at all; it should, in fact, encourage you to find a vocation that is meaningful to you so that now you have the right setting to persist till the very end. From whatever angle you look at it, your goal should get you excited and run up positive emotions within you. If it does, then you will stick with it longer and the chances of you reaching your goal is greater.

All said and done, persistence is the name of the game. A wise man rightly said, ‘You don’t fail until you quit’. Don’t quit, keep going…

John Bino. He is an entrepreneur and success coach specializing in helping fellow entrepreneurs and the community at large to realize their true potential. His mission is to help people become more valuable to their family and the marketplace.

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