"What Kind of Mindset/Spirits You Should Have?" by 王祥顺

What Kind of Mindset/Spirits You Should Have?

In Us, there was a writing competition regarding what you want the most in your life. The organiser received more than 2000 entries. From the survey, they found out that 51% want to be rich, 23% want to have freedom, 10% want to spend quality time with family members. Eventually, a very short essay won the first prize. In his essay, the author claimed that he wants to be happy and be passionate. He believes that if a person has such a mindset, he must somehow believe that there is a chance that they will get successful one day.

Be Happy.

Life is like a mirror, if you smile, it will smile if you cry it will follow as well. Don’t put the key to your happiness in someone else’s pocket – keep it in your own.  “Why do I let this person control my happiness?” Because in reality, no one should control that but yourself. For instance, your boss, your friends, your daughter-in-law sometimes may do and say hurtful things that are upsetting to you, but it’s up to you to make the best or worse of the situation. Share your positivity with the world. The more passion you can muster for the good things of life, as a matter of fact, the happier you will be. For an example, you will feel happy when you share your experience of using amway products with friends. So now is the time to reclaim that key that belongs to you. Don’t let someone else control your happiness.

Be Positive and Passionate

You can turn the negative energy built up inside into something productive and positive. For an example, there was a blind man complianed to God that being not fair to him, he felt like the God was punishing him. A teacher told him, “there is no perfection in this world, everyone is like an apple, God gives a bite on each apple, some may have a bigger bite same may have smaller. God likes you more, this is why He took a bigger bite you.” Another story goes like this, Mick, a survivor of the plane crash, however, his skin 70% burned. Most of the victims started blaming about their unfortune and being very frustrated in life. However, Mick has a different thought. He kept thinking how lucky is he, he still can use his brain to think, he felt grateful that 1/3 of his body were not burned yet, and start thinking what to do once his wound recovers. During his hospitalisation, he had a crush on a nurse, and he never gave up to think how to gain her love. And one day, he recovered and the nurse became his wife.  The story tells us that we should always be positive, live life passionately and fill our life with things we can feel passionate about.

Leadership Mentality

Let’s discuss on the differences between an employer and an employee. An employer has these characteristics/mindset: responsibility, ubsiness mentality, focus on product quality, margin profit, efficiency,  wider eye sight, and trust.

	Employer/ Entrepreneur	Employee
work	as the business	care about execution.
performance and process.	care about efficiency	Do not care much
Goals	An entrepreneur is a negotiator, a visionary and a thinker. Entrepreneurs see the work and the tools as a means to the goal.	/Employees see the finished work as the goal.
responsibility	focus on what is his or her responsibility	Less responsible
profit	Calculate the cost, think about how much they can earn	Less care
trust	Gain trust	Less care
Quality of work	Aim for excellance, build strategy and is constantly testing it.	procrastination
When come to failure	Learn for mistakes	Find excuses
mindset	Work my own self	Work for others

Teamwork

An Amway famous quoted. “Hapiness at work makes business lasts longer, teamwork expands business.” What is teamwork? what is competition? It’s important to recognize and understand the strengths of the competitors. The outcome of the competition has it to be either ‘win’ or ‘lose’ only? Is it better if we have a win-win situation? Win-win outcomes occur when each side of a dispute feels they have won. Since both sides benefit from such a scenario. For an example, BMW and Mercedes, they compete with each other, at the same time they grow from time to time.

3 Statements by Tao Ming

Title: 3 Statements

Speaker: Tao Ming

Tao Ming is  a senior economic analyst in Wall Street, senior trainer, senior lecturer, Amway (China) Executive  Diamond. Here, he shared his 3 statements.  If a person can firmly practise this three statements, no matter what he does, he will be a successful man in his lifetime, because these three statements are very philosophical.

1.      The first statement: What you want to do is more important than what you do!

2.      The second statement: Making a right choice  is more important than being hardworking!

3.      The third statement: Wisdom is more important than working hard!

First of all, let’s analyse the first statement: What you want to do is more important than what you do!

My teacher, by that time, was a famous financial experts in America. Many employers will ask my teacher: ‘What should I do now?’ My teacher would ask them back: ‘What do you want?’ Too many people do not know what they want.

My teacher now is one of the top ten financial experts in the United States. A decade ago, when I met him in a meeting, my up line did not tell him that my teacher was doing Amway. After the meeting I found out that my teacher is an Amway executive Diamond, I was shocked, because I could not believe that such a great man like him involve in Amway. My teacher had 20 minutes discussion with me, it was in 1994. After this, he changed my life.

I asked my teacher: Since you are a great financial expert, the U.S. top ten financial expert, why you do Amway business?”

He asked me: ‘What do you want? What do you actually want in your future?’

Without any hesitation, I blurted out: ‘money!’

He immediately asked me, how much money I want?

I immediately replied: ‘As much as possible!’

He felt strange. In fact, many ones of us, when somebody asks us how much money do we want, we will definitely reply ‘as much as possible’ without further think that why we need so much money, because we know that what we need now is money, as much money as possible, no matter how,  grap it on our hand first. 

One day a young man told me that he wanted money, I asked him how much he wants. He said as much as possible.

I asked him: ‘what other else?’

He said: ‘I never think of it before’

I said: Well! Then I'll think about it for you. You are at work now, how much do you earn in a month?

He replied: I earn two thousand dollars a month!

I said: Good! If you are offered a job and this is exactly the same job, you can earn 8,000 dollars a month, with the same workload, would you like to change your job now?

‘Yes’ he said.

I asked again: Well! After two months, if somebody offers you a new job with exactly the same workload, and you will be given 15,000 dollars, just that you need work an extra two hours, will you accept the offer?

OK, he said! Because deduct two hours from sleeping time a day is not big problem!

I continued: Two months later, I have a job, exactly the same as previous job, 50,000 dollars a month, but you can only sleep two hours a day, do you still want this job?

We learned a lesson here. We realised that, money, is not the more we get, the better! There are many other things that we need to take into account. In this modern era, we pursue freedom as well. Freedom, by definition, it means the right to choose. There are 2 kinds of rights to choose in our life, namely, financial freedom and time freedom!

Some people claim that they have money so they have financial freedom. This is wrong! When you can be said to be financial freedom? This is when you go out for shopping and never say these 3 words: ‘It’s too expensive’ and you replace these 3 words  with ‘It’s so nice.’

What is time freedom? This is when these three words never came out form your mouth: ‘no time!’ You are now realize that the time freedom and financial freedom of a person's life is too cool, and this is so-called the rights that we want it in our life.

Why do we have to do Amway business? Amway not only resolve the financial problem, it also solve the quality of money! Quality money can give us freedom.

Too many people in this world do too much things, but forget what they actually want, what they want to achieve in life, and where is their destination. For example, we are now staying in Zhengzhou and we set Beijing as our final destination. If we want to go to Beijing, we don’t care what kind of transports we use, whether it is a plane, a car or a train, am I right? The transport is just a tool allowing us to reach Beijing from Zhengzhou. But, in the real world, many people care about the colour and the shape of the transport we use, which is so unnecessary. Once we reach our destination, we will get down from the vehicle. We wont spend the rest of our life on board. In fact, Amway is like a tool to achieve freedom in our life. As long as it can bring us to a more successful life, we do not really care whether we like it or not, beautiful or not, or comfortable or not. The most important thing is ‘Are we on the right track?’ If not, it’s time to change.

The second statement: Making a right choice  is more important than being hardworking!

A successful people must be hardworking, but hardworking people are not guarantee to be successful. This is because we put our efforts in the a different direction, and hence, the outcomes we obtained will not be the same. So we must make a right choice and right decision at the early stage. The life we are leading in the future is the result of the current decisions we make.

The third statement: Wisdom is more important than working hard! (Smart Work Is Better Than Hardwork)

Work Smart, Not Hard. There are a lot of people keep working hard without wisdom. Our life will inevitably force us to work hard, but we have to work smart at the same time. We need to understand why we have to work hard. The purpose of being hardworking is not to suffer in the future.

We worked hard and smart for a while, hopefully, we can enjoy a better life in the future, instead of keep on working hard and suffer for the rest of our life.  If we want to escape from the bitter life in future, we have to make use of our brain, use wisdom to make the right choices, and prevent the endless suffering.

Changing Retirement Mindset

This is an incredibly inspiring sharing by Diamond Mr YS Chin during centre meeting at CVI Penang.

Recording Contents:

1:02    Greetings and Speaker’s Background.

3:36    Early retirement, why?

5:00    Planning- When to start?

7:15    Life Planning- Rethink Retirement.

8:00    Life is unpredictable.

11:47  Longevity risk

12:40  A story of a 83-year-old German

15:00  Are you the top 20% earner? – Table 2

16:06  When even RM12,000 a month is not enough to get by

17:00  Can you save RM2000 a month?

18:55  Reduced Spending Power – Figure 3

20:30  Impact of inflation– Figure 2

21:10  Will your EPF savings be enough to sustain your retirement days? –Table 1

25:25  What would be your life with single source of income?

27:00  29-year-old Thai Double Diamond -Retire young, retire rich.

28:40  Survey on business success rate

30:05   Reluctant vs Reactive vs Proactive Planner – Figure 4

33:25  “It’s more important to grow you income than cut your expenses. It’s more important to grow your spirit than cut your dreams”

34:35  Money makes money & Time makes money – Figure 5

42:25  “Don’t do anything for the money you will make, but instead for the skills you will learn.”

43:20  “We are our own power station.”

44:10  “The only difference between rich and the poor is how they use their time”

45:35  Book Sharing: The Monk who Sold His Ferrari- page 162.

47:48  After retirement,  everyday is weekend.

50:00  Initial Life Objective: Earn a living>First pot of gold>build your business>live a purposeful life.

54:40  Building a pipeline.56:05  Work as a team, you are not alone.

58:10  “If you want to go somewhere, it’s best to find someone who has already there."

Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement.

When every month is thinking  pay the mortgage, insurances  and credit cards that are all spiraling higher and higher, the last thing we can focus on is how to save for retirement? Let’s do some simple calculations,

Take out you calculator and get ready:

How many years you expect to live: A

What age you plan to retire: B

How many years you live without salary= A-B

What is you monthly expenses: C

How much you need to save before the age of retirement: (A-B) x C x 12

For an example:

if you expect to live until the age of 85 (the life expectancy for Malaysians is 74 according to the World Bank, but we expect to live longer with Nutrilite)

and plan to retired at the age of 55

Let say, you spend RM 1,000 a month.

How much you need to possess before you can fully retire: RM0.36million

Can you save RM1000 a month now? If not, how can you get at least RM0.36million later?

Can you survive with RM1000 now? If not, how are you going to survive with this amount in 30 years later along with the inflation rate? How if you live longer than 85 years old?

If we want a normal, simple and stable life, we need to spend RM10,000 a month and we need to get at least 10 times more which is RM3.6 million when we come to day of retirement.

And some of us might say, ‘Nevermind, I have EPF’. Our EPF, in fact, is not as much as we think. Let’s take a look on the Malaysian average EPF savings.  If the EPF is your sole savings for retirement, your savings amount would need to be much larger than that of the average Malaysian as shown in the table or you would have to live an austere retired life. 

Table 1: According to this research, for the next 20 years after retirement, you will get around RM500 a month. Ask yourself, will RM500 per month be enough for a living?

Figure 1: If we do not plan earlier, this is going to happen. Will your EPF savings be enough when you reach 55 years old? Will it be enough to sustain your retirement days?

Figure 2: This is the impact of inflation. Assuming 6% inflation rate, after 20 years you have to spend RM64 for three meals a day.

Table 2: Are you the top 20% earner?

http://www.statistics.gov.my/portal/images/stories/files/LatestReleases/household/HIS_2012_Eng.pdf

Figure 3: The trend of reduced saving power

Figure 4: These are the types of planners:

For the proactive planners who have a long-standing vision for retirement, most of the factors discussed above represent enablers to their planning process: ‘My current planning is to retire at 60 and all my planning is aimed towards that.’

The reactive planners have similar characteristics but their choices are more strongly determined by their current situation rather than long-term planning with a mix of enablers (family) and blockers (finances): ‘I am financially burdened I have to stay on to 65.’

The reluctant planners consider retirement is too far in the future and feel daunted by the idea of getting old. Their journey is characterised by blockers, mainly psychological: ‘I’m very unprepared for retirement you know! I’ll admit it; I’ve done nothing about it.’

Figure 5: