Whose problem is it ?

A man feared his wife wasn't hearing as well as she used to and he thought she might need a hearing aid. Not quite sure how to approach her, he called the family Doctor to discuss the problem.

The Doctor told him there is a simple informal test the husband could perform to give the Doctor a better idea about her hearing loss.

Here's what you do," said the Doctor, "stand about 40 feet away from her, and in a normal conversational speaking tone see if she hears you. If not, go to 30 feet, then 20 feet, and so on until you get a response."

That evening, the wife is in the kitchen cooking dinner, and he was in the den. He says to himself, "I'm about 40 feet away, let's see what happens." Then in a normal tone he asks, 'Honey, what's for dinner?"

No response.

So the husband moves to closer to the kitchen, about 30 feet from his wife and repeats, "Honey, what's for dinner?"

Still no response.

Next he moves into the dining room where he is about 20 feet from his wife and asks, Honey, what's for dinner?"

Again he gets no response.

So he walks up to the kitchen door, about 10 feet away. "Honey, what's for dinner?"

Again there is no response.

So he walks right up behind her. "Honey, what's for dinner?"

"James, for the FIFTH time I've said, CHICKEN!"

The problem may not be with the other person as we always think, could be very much within us!

Why should we shout ?

A saint asked his disciples, 'Why do we shout in anger? Why do people shout at each other when they are upset?'

Disciples thought for a while, one of them said, 'Because we lose our calm, we shout for that.' 'But, why to shout when the other person is just next to you?' asked the saint. 'Isn't it possible to speak to him or her with a soft voice? Why do you shout at a person when you're angry?' Disciples gave some other answers but none satisfied the saint.

Finally he explained, 'When two people are angry at each other, their hearts distance a lot. To cover that distance they must shout to be able to hear each other. The angrier they are, the stronger they will have to shout to hear each other through that great distance.'

Then the saint asked, 'What happens when two people fall in love? They don't shout at each other but talk softly, why?

Because their hearts are very close. The distance between them is very small...' The saint continued, 'When they love each other even more, what happens? They do not speak, only whisper and they get even closer to each other in their love. Finally they even need not whisper, they only look at each other and that's all. That is how close two people are when they love each other.'

MORAL: When you argue do not let your hearts get distant, do not say words that distance each other more, else there will come a day when the distance is so great that you will not find the path to return, not to shout.

Superman

The person who has had a significant influence in my life is Superman. Who said anything about Clark Kent? I'm talking about my dad, AKA Vuong Nguyen.

My dad is a short little man with an accent. He has been in America for eight years and he can't even speak proper English. He's one on the cheapest people I have ever known. The only place he ever does his shopping is the thrift store. He does not own anything that's anywhere close to being remotely new. Working six days a week, you would think he'd have more than two pairs of work pants. You should see him dress in the winter; he puts on anything and everything that he owns- no sense of fashion whatsoever. Everywhere we go he has to stop at every garage sale looking for deals. He just doesn't realize that someone could have seen me with him. As I've grown older, I've realized that there was more to this funny looking man than meets the eye. I discover that this is actually a hero in disguise. Let me tell you about his skirmishes with wicked Commie Dude and the diabolical Duke of Materialism.

Commie Dude was Lenin's cousin, ten times removed. His goal was to enslave the people of the world with his Communistic ideals. His favorite weapon was a sickle and his powers are most potent when the moon is crescent. Commie Dude commands an army of goons from his hide-out in Hanoi, Vietnam and wreaked havoc in this S-shaped country.

Superman didn't like that idea of everyone being the same, so he decided to join the South Vietnamese against the goons of Commie Dude. Disguised as a lieutenant, he fought for freedom. Unfortunately, the moon was in its crescent phase so Superman was captured. He was imprisoned for five years. The goons torture our hero and force him to join them. But Superman's will was made of Titanium and he held up. He escaped and took his family to the mystical, goon-free land called America.

Evil lurked in the form of Duke of Materialism in America. Getting into people's minds was what he did best. He used his telekinetic waves to turn the American dream into greed and despair.

But Superman was too smart for that trick. He went into disguise again- this time as a janitor. He recycled the villain's can with his own bare hands. The Duke's waves did little to break Superman's focus. Superman's great intensity allows him to sweep 10 miles of hallways, plunge 583 toilets and deploy 189 pounds of sawdust on puking incidents. Doing so, he is able to send his kids to Catholic schools in hopes that they will have a chance to make a difference in this chaotic world.

Superman answers to no one, except the big cheese, code name: JC. The two meet every Sunday in the Big House. JC gives Superman's soul nourishment. His faith in JC is what helps him get through tough times. Without JC there is no Superman.

Superman's only weakness is age. But fear not, he has an heir: me. His training for me began very early. I started out with potty training, recently moved to driving and eventually I too will be saving the world. But most of all, he stresses faith in JC. With all the powerful abilities Superman has entrusted to me, I will be able to carry on his legacy and make my mark on the world. So all you evil-doers out there better look out, 'Cause here comes...

Superman and Son.

Your message in bottle

am home. Seven weeks of gallivanting through Asia, three episodes of tears, two bouts of food poisoning, an extra 6.3 kilograms of new wardrobe and many new friends later, I came home on a 38 degrees (Celsius) New Year's eve to a refrigerator half filled with furry eggs, melted butter, moldy cheese and jars of everything gone bad.

As I stood before the opened fridge door, having only had three hours of sleep in the past 36 hours, the waft of stale, warm air stung my nostrils. It seemed that the fridge had broken down while I was away.

Standing there, I didn't know if I should laugh or cry. Instead I opted for a shower and a take-away Indian dinner before falling asleep at 11.30 p.m. The fridge would have to wait another day.

A few days later, I had lunch with a friend and told her about my trip - about where I had been, what I've learned, who I've met. As we talked, I couldn't help but think about a particular day that took place at T. Harv Eker's Making The Stage in Phuket so I told her about it.

I went to Phuket, thinking that I was going to refine my craft as a trainer, that I was preparing myself to embark on my new calling in life. Instead, I left with an opened Pandora box of my past, a glimpse of infinity and a discovery of my repressed fear of death. All that happened in one day.

On the third morning, when we were in the main room de-briefing after an exercise on modeling, I had asked Blair Singer a question.

"The one phrase that stuck in my mind was, 'Longevity has its place'," I said, referring to a line in Martin Luther King's speech.

"That's because you have a fear of death," he replied.

"I never thought I did," I responded after a moment's silence. What came out of my mouth following that surprised even me. "But I'm afraid I would die before I do what I'm supposed to do in this lifetime." And as I said that, tears welled up in my eyes.

Up until that point, I never knew I was afraid of dying. There were things I know I'm afraid of, dying just wasn't one of them, until then. When I was finished, I sank into my seat, grappling with that new found realization about myself. I don't remember what Blair said after that, all I remembered was hearing a lady in the audience saying, "But you are still so young."

At that point, I was still in denial. I'm more afraid that I would die being mediocre, I had thought afterwards.

When the session concluded, we went our separate ways to our day's rotation. That day, my rotation was in Blair Singer's room. We went through the Introduction template, prepared our speech and broke into smaller groups to rehearse. When it was my turn, I quickly ran out of words when I got to the part where I was supposed to tell my story. So before breaking for lunch, I asked him a question.

"I don't have a story for my ETR, what do I do? Do I just make one up?" I had asked innocently.

He looked at me and said, "If you only had ten minutes left to live and there is only one message you can give to the world, what would it be?"

Without hesitation, I had replied, "Be yourself."

As soon as those words left my lips, I felt as though a wave was coming at me, with the wall of water so fast and so high that I didn't know what I was supposed to do and where I was supposed to go. It was a feeling of being overwhelmed, a feeling that the task at hand was so mammoth, and so impossible, that I was paralyzed merely by the thought of it. Without realizing, tears started welling up in my eyes.

"You saw infinity, didn't you?" he asked then.

I nodded. I nodded because it was true - I had seen infinity and the size of it overwhelmed me and stirred up a fear within me that I had never known before.

When the feeling had subsided, and we went to lunch, I dried my tears but I still didn't have a story for my introduction.

That afternoon, when it was my turn to go on stage, I hadn't prepared myself for what was about to happen. Standing on stage in my grey shorts and black t-shirt, after I had gone through the first part of the introduction twice, told about my achievements as a three-time award winning author, I was out of words for my ETR.

He stood at the back of the room and waited. With arms folded across his chest, he finally asked me, "What happened in your childhood?"

I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat and, hesitantly, I started to answer him. As I began to speak, a sour sensation rushed up my nose and tears started welling up in my eyes.

"Breathe," he said. And I did. That's when it resurfaced - the memory of all those years feeling that I didn't belong, of knowing that I wasn't good enough and of being yelled at and beaten up. It was like the ghost of Christmas past had shown up, except that it wasn't Christmas and I wasn't dreaming. It was real. And all those years - they were real too.

Those minutes on stage felt like an eternity. All I remembered was answering his questions through my sobs, repeating what he said with whatever voice I had left as he helped me through my stumbling words. Eventually it came to an end, and through my tears, I saw that everyone was standing and giving me an ovation. I didn't know what to feel.

I learned several lessons that day:

I learned not to discount my past - as painful as it may be - because it has led me to where I am today.

I learned that just because I had made peace with it doesn't mean that the lessons are no longer important.

I learned not to undermine my own achievements as an author, even if my parents didn't think anything of them.

I learned that the childhood that I had was what got me started writing in the first place. Writing was the only way I knew how to cope, and at that time, most of what I wrote was fiction.

That day, on that stage, I saw my life in two distinct parts - the first was the years I spent running away from reality by hiding in the stories that I wrote; the second part, the more recent one, was the part where I started to confront all my demons and write about life as I've experienced it. And it was in the second part that I started to heal myself. It was also in the second part, that I began to heal others.

After I got off the stage, Blair Singer had said to me, "Maybe you should write about that." It was in that moment, that the pieces of the puzzle came together, even if all they were showing was just a small part of a bigger picture that I can't yet see.

I've always believed that each of us has a message within us that we are meant to deliver in our lifetime, that we are the glass bottles holding the parchment on which the messages were written, floating on the ocean of life until such time when we arrive on a beach and the messages are ready to be read and spread widely. I didn't know what mine was until that day.

Sometimes in life, we think we know where we are going, but we don't, not really. The Universe has its way of showing us our path, and even though it may not be as straightforward as we might have liked it to be, there is wisdom and intelligence behind it.

I believe that the Universe has a plan for every single one of us. What that plan is, we don't always know. All I know is that all we need to do is to take the next step, even if we can't see the entire path from where we are standing. I know now, that my purpose for going to Making The Stage wasn't to refine my craft as a trainer - that was just a bonus. I know now, that the true purpose for me being there was so that the pieces of the puzzle could come together and I would discover the message inside me that was mine to deliver.

I feel very grateful, and very blessed for the lessons that I've learned. I feel grateful for the people that I've met, who have taught me much about life, and about myself. But most of all, I feel grateful for myself, for seeing everything that has happened as a learning opportunity and for the wisdom to know that, whatever happens, the goal was always to lead me to finding the message within so that I can deliver it to others.

My hope for you is that you'll find yours too.

To your message in the bottle,

Touchstone

When the great library of Alexandria burned, the story goes, one book was saved. But it was not a valuable book; and so a poor man, who could read a little, bought it for a few coppers. The book wasn't very interesting, but between its pages there was something very interesting indeed. It was a thin strip of vellum on which was written the secret of the "Touchstone"! The touchstone was a small pebble that could turn any common metal into pure gold. The writing explained that it was lying among thousands and thousands of other pebbles that looked exactly like it. But the secret was this: The real stone would feel warm, while ordinary pebbles are cold. So the man sold his few belongings, bought some simple supplies, camped on the seashore, and began testing pebbles. He knew that if he picked up ordinary pebbles and threw them down again because they were cold, he might pick up the same pebble hundreds of times. So, when he felt one that was cold, he threw it into the sea. He spent a whole day doing this but none of them was the touchstone. Yet he went on and on this way. Pick up a pebble. Cold - throw it into the sea. Pick up another. Throw it into the sea. The days stretched into weeks and the weeks into months. One day, however, about midafternoon, he picked up a pebble and it was warm. He threw it into the sea before he realized what he had done. He had formed such a strong habit of throwing each pebble into the sea that when the one he wanted came along, he still threw it away. So it is with opportunity. Unless we are vigilant, it's easy to fail to recognize an opportunity when it is in hand and it's just as easy to throw it away.

Fruit of labour

"Impossible is just a word invented by wusses, lazy people, and cowards. Nothing is impossible in the hands of a person who's crazy enough to keep trying. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing." This is what I have learned in life in my 9 years as an athlete. This is about the time where I transformed a goal that people thought was absolutely impossible, to something I achieved with excellence. That's not to say that I did not have to sweat, bleed, and cry to achieve it. It was a dark day; one of depression, sorrow and anger. As I climbed out of the pool, after witnessing my time in the 100 yard freestyle, I did not feel obliged to speak to anyone. At that moment, if somebody had walked up to me and tried to speak to me, I would have completely ignored them. The water dripped off my suit, seeming like each drop that landed on the floor added to my anger. Everything was in slow motion as I walked back to the boy's locker room. I saw the bright, dazzling smiles of swimmers who had just achieved a best time taunting me. However, I had not. I had failed. Or at least that is what I thought at the time. I had not known that the most important ingredient for success is failure. As I was lying on my cool bed, thoughts flew about in my head. I had not talked much to anyone since the big swim meet a few days before. I had thought about my past failures, and how they outnumbered my successes in terms of thousands. This added to my bad mood. I started to pray to God that I could achieve what I was aiming at. Suddenly, like a bolt of thunder, an idea hit my head. Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. Just like that, the famous Winston Churchill quote that I had not read for over a year just popped into my head. At practice the next day, I told my swimming teammates about my goal time and they all either laughed or replied with a somewhat similar response like, "You can't do it" or "Probably not." Believe it or not, these are the responses that made my goal achievable. I channeled their responses into my anger each day at practice. When I felt tired, they replayed in my head: you can't do it, that's impossible, don't get your hopes up. All of them, every single one, played back clearly and as if they were taunting me. The smell of chlorine filled my nose as I stroked through the length of the pool. I can do it, no goal is unachievable, no matter how unrealistic it may seem. It was the day of the meet where I would determine if my mental strength and physical practice would pay off, the day I had to prove to myself and others that with belief there is no limit to your achievements. I stood on the block seconds before my race would start and thought about my whole journey to this day. I was willing to die for this, and I would not let myself fail. The ten seconds of thinking seemed like years. I stepped on the diving block and tightened my goggles. I heard the warning: "Swimmers are you ready?" Then the beep sound, marking the beginning of the race, went off. I sprung like a cheetah off of the block and dove with perfect form into the pool. I felt the cool water glide across my back. I gritted my teeth and was off like a fish, bouncing off each turn at the wall as if it was a trampoline. Thoughts ran through my head. I need this! I need this! On the last turn, I came back to the wall with every piece of strength I had. I touched the final wall with my fingertips and I knew that I had swum the perfect race. I sprung my head out of the water, and panned my eyes in slow motion towards the scoreboard that had the times... I had done it! I had achieved my best time! Joy filled my heart like water fills a cup. Tears rolled down my cheek and I started sobbing more than women after they watch Titanic. I saw the expressions on all of my friend's faces as I climbed out of the pool; their jaws dropped to the ground. I began to laugh and gave them the thumbs up. In life, it is only those who can visualize success and believe that they can achieve anything, and those who get up after being knocked down, those people will become champions in whatever they are pursuing, whether it is in athletics, business, or life. This is the importance of belief. I have learned in life that having belief in yourself opens all gates. Never forget that anything the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.

Do you have change ?

Several years ago I was at a train station in Amsterdam waiting in line to buy a ticket. As I stood there I saw a young homeless man asking people for money so he could buy breakfast. It was early in the morning and most of the travelers simply ignored the young man or gave him a dirty look. There was one exception though - an older, well-dressed businessman who looked as though he was from the middle-east. When approached by the panhandler, the gentleman looked straight into his eyes and quietly asked "How much will you need?" I couldn't hear what the young man said but watched as the older man pulled several bills from his wallet and calmly placed them in the young mans' hands. I don't know if the young man actually used this money for breakfast or for some other purpose. What I do know is that I witnessed two completely different reactions to the same situation. I saw people who were either afraid or annoyed or distrustful. And then I saw this man who was not afraid and treated the homeless man as though he were a brother. I decided then and there that, even though we have to be careful in this world, I would rather be like him. May this day bring us many opportunities for kindness... ;-)

Parables of Spoon

A holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and said, "Lord, I would like to know what Heaven and Hell are like. "The Lord led the holy man to two doors. He opened one of the doors and the holy man looked in. In the middle of the room was a large round table. In the middle of the table was a large pot of stew which smelled delicious and made the holy man's mouth water. The people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful, but because the handle was longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths. The holy man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. The Lord said, "You have seen Hell." They went to the next room and opened the door. It was exactly the same as the first one. There was the large round table with the large pot of stew which made the holy man's mouth water. The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons, but here the people were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The holy man said, "I don't understand." It is simple" said the Lord, "it requires but one skill. You see, they have learned to feed each other. While the greedy think only of themselves.