2) DAILY RITUALS/ROUTINES

Procrastination is killed through proper preparation. This means you must plan out your days and actions! Remember the last time you rolled out of bed late and had to run to your class, meetings, or work? How did that day turn out? Most likely horribly.

How you treat the beginning of your day will determine set the tone for the rest of the day.

I begin each day by asking myself a series of questions (which takes around 5 minutes.

1. What am I grateful for? — Gratitude opens up the gates for receiving. Viewing life with humility helps open your eyes to opportunities rather than shun them away.

2. What are my goals? — Set your mind on your goals right off the bat!

3. What do I need to do TODAY to progress in my goals? — WRITE A TO-DO LIST

Let’s talk about to-do lists for a little bit. How do we make them effective?

Once you write them down, treat them like a game. THE GOAL IS TO CHECK OF AS MANY OF THEM AS POSSIBLE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. If you can do it now, do it now. Mark it off. Go for the next task. Mark it off. Have you ever had a to-do list that was only 33% checked off? It is never that you do not have the time to accomplish your tasks. It is always that you allowed procrastination into your life.

When you begin to-do lists, don’t be deterred by the results. Know you’ll get better. Be harsh on yourself! At the end of the day, look back and see how many you checked off. Commit that tomorrow you’ll finish your tasks, faster and better.

DO THESE STEPS FOR 21 DAYS STRAIGHT AND COMMIT IT TO A HABIT

The results of your daily actions will be your gauge of how much procrastination is sabotaging your own goals. 

Try these simple steps, and please let me know how it has affected your life. I hope these small adjustments will impact you positively.

In this post, I will lay out some practical action steps that will help you battle against our enemy, PROCRASTINATION. Before going into the how, I hope you read about why procrastination affects us so much, and why we need to change it. This post will be a bit more dry because I’ll talk about actual things you can do now to form new habits.

Know this:

Sow a Thought, Reap an Action

Sow an Action, Reap a Habit

Sow a Habit, Reap a Character

Sow a Character, Reap a Destiny

It all begins with your intention of wanting to change your ideas about procrastination, and then follow through with daily actions. 

Question: What kind of actions and habits do I need to develop in order to beat this disease?

Here are a few things I do:

1) CONSISTENT, CONSTANT GOAL SETTING

The less clear your path, the longer time you’ll spend wondering about your actions and where they’re going. Set goals that will stretch you in all ways. Set daily goals, weekly goals, monthly goals, yearly goals, WHATEVER PUSHES YOU. 

WRITE THEM OUT, obsess over your goals. I put together my own goal powerpoint that I look at THREE TIMES A DAY. How often do average people look at their goals? Never.

Think of what it would feel like to achieve your goal. Visualize having that 6-pack; the stares you’ll get from people, the power you’ll feel, the pride of achievement.

Visualize having that A in your test; your professor handing back your victorious test with a smile, your parents congratulating you, the relief you’ll feel.

Visualize achieving your dream income; being able to treat out everyone you see, not stressing over the bills, living your dream lifestyle.

Feeling good about yourself and future?

NOW THINK OF HOW IT FEELS TO FAIL YOUR GOALS

The potential of opportunity and loss of opportunity will push you emotionally and mentally to go forward.

As mentioned in my last post, I believe that the greatest killer of our dreams, health, finances, relationships truly is procrastination. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at your own life. When it comes to working out for myself, I know that if I don’t get it out of the way in the morning, I have a 1% chance of even doing it later on in the day. If I push back a business call, I know that it’ll get pushed back to oblivion. For anything I do that I can do RIGHT NOW, but instead make an excuse to do it later, the chances of completion are eliminated.

Does this sound familiar?

I’m sure that all of us don’t intentionally procrastinate. Of course we know the sayings “Rome wasn’t built in a day” or “slow and steady wins the race.” We’ve heard these sayings our entire lives. If you gave a seminar on procrastination, and why not to do it, you’d probably be a professional at that speech. 

So why is it that as you’re reading this right now, you know you have a project that’s being put off. You took a “Facebook break” from your homework, that ended up turning into a 2 hour detour. You know you snoozed your alarm clock 5 times today, and could have gotten up 30 minutes earlier. If we know why we shouldn’t procrastinate, why do we still do it?

Ultimately, it comes down to your HABITS. As I’ve learned from successful people ranging from leadership guru John C. Maxwell to those students that set the curve in class to those that are shredded in the gym, they all make a habit of not procrastinating.

People naturally don’t want to work. Face it, we’re pretty lazy. I know if I had the choice to, I’d lay in my bed all day and watch some anime (which I haven’t been able to for so long). Because of that, we naturally put off what should be important to us. Those that have broken free of this disease actually look at this work differently. They know that the pain of not doing so and the later lack of results IS GREATER than the pain of doing it right now.

Let’s take a school example. For myself, I graduated from UC Berkeley with a 3.67 GPA without EVER HAVING TO PULL AN ALL-NIGHTER. Was I just lazy when others were pulling out their hair? Not at all. If anything, I prepared so well the days before the final day, that I didn’t need to study anymore. What’s more painful? Studying a little bit every day, or forcing yourself awake with a combination of Monster, Rockstar, Coffee, and stress?

I hope you say the former choice. 

Think of the pain of not doing it now, compared to the pain of doing it now.

If you don’t say “I love you” to your parents now, maybe when you do it’ll be too late. If you decide to eat that extra dessert now, then maybe your optimal health will never come. If you don’t wake up on the first alarm, then maybe you’ll waste 30 minutes, where you could’ve spent that in better places.

If you don’t take that risk now, that opportunity MAY NEVER present itself again.

DISCLAIMER: Of course there’s a balance to everything. Nobody’s perfect, but it’s all about the overall balance of things.

I already can predict someone’s test score when they say they have to pull an all-nighter. Of course it won’t be the best. Some argue that they study better under stress? Well you may get a decent grade on the exam, but shouldn’t the goal be to comprehend rather than to memorize? 

I can tell that if someone procrastinates on their homework, they will most likely procrastinate in all other aspects in their life. More than likely, they will be unhealthy. These people are more prone to going on fad diets and fail them. These people are those that hit the gym every New Years, just to quit a few weeks (or even a few DAYS) into their routine. These people are those that DO NOT HAVE ROUTINES THAT LEAD THEM TO SUCCESS. 

If you Fail to Plan, You’re Planning to Fail.

There’s a reason why there is a 5% in society that are successful, and a 95% that are mediocre. It all comes down to these little details on habits. 

I hope I’ve done a good enough job showing you why we need to curb this epidemic. In my next post, I’ll lay out some practical steps that you and I can both take to go forward.

Up in Norcal, the rain season has finally come out of nowhere, which is testament to the bipolar nature of our weather system. Nevertheless, rains just promote thinking and reflection. Right now seems like the perfect time.

Today while driving, I recognized a huge problem in the world. This disease affects BILLIONS of people every single day. It is probably the single greatest cause of death and disappointment in the world. Because of this disease, the world is now facing a diabetes epidemic. Because of this disease, our finances are being wiped out.This is something that all of us have at one point or another suffered from (perhaps you’re afflicted with this at this very moment). After seeing the horrible effects from this disease my entire life, today I have decided to start a campaign against fighting off this plague. Maybe we can even make those Livestrong wristbands which are so popular out there.

Who’s with me?

Well first we need to pinpoint what this DISEASE is.

PROCRASTINATION

Procrastination is the number one killer of our greatest dreams, desires, and achievements in life.

That feeling of “I’ll do it tomorrow” plagues us all. It’s the cause of diet failures. The cause of gym results. The cause of business failure.

Everything physical stems from something internal and mental. Procrastination is a cancerous tumor to one’s life. 

Imagine your own life without procrastination. Your homework would’ve been done sooner. You would have had that 6 pack you’ve been dreaming of for years. You would have your dream significant other, who you’ve been scared of talking to. Your relationship with your family and friends would be better. Your finances will be soaring. Life would be filled with concerns of what to do with all your extra resources, rather than worrying about the lack of them.

Who’s in it with me to solve this deadly disease? Let’s rid the world and ourselves of such a debilitating feeling. 

In my next posts, I’ll describe some steps we can follow to cure this behavioral cancer.

My blogging seems to be so intermittent that I shouldn’t even call this a blog, but once again, writing is definitely a cathartic experience. Every so often one should take a step back and reflect and absorb what’s truly happening in their lives. Recently I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t even had time to truly sit down and relax. It’s a weird feeling, but sometimes when you’re so busy, you forget what it’s like to be able to relax. Have you ever felt that way before? Saturday evenings tend to be the time frame that’s most free for me, but today I was so not used to leisure time that I just relaxed in my room with my roommate Jason. Maybe it’s what I really need. Time to rest and reflect.

Recently I’ve been thinking about dreams a lot. I’m not talking about the ones that happen in your sleep. I’m talking about the ones in your mind, in your heart. Didn’t we all have limitless aspirations when we were young? Growing up, you feel that you superman. You walk in the world as if everything obeys your command. That is, until you trip and taste your first sip of pain. You dream of a dream relationship, until your significant other breaks your heart for the first time. Have you ever felt a pain so bad that it left a scar? Whenever you revisit those scenes, the emotions and feelings come back to you? 

My purpose is not to be emo in this post. Rather, I wanted to mention those things because I believe that our dreams shrink over time not because we want to, but we’re afraid of feeling the pain that we’ve felt before when we went for our dreams. Our trillion dollar dreams shrink to billion dollar dreams. Our trillions to millions. Our millions to thousands. Our thousands to….hopefully nothing else.

I feel that especially once you’re old enough to understand the world on a bigger level, you start to see that society has a way of setting boundaries on your dreams. You dream of traveling the world when you’re still young while you grow up. You want to explore the world through personal experience rather than pictures. You then look around and see that none of your peers or older friends were capable of achieving that. You then start to think if this dream is possible. Your self-doubt starts to chip away at your dream. Your dream of traveling the world gradually shrinks down country, by country, until you end up justifying why you never needed to travel in the beginning. 

For the longest time I had the world influence me in this fashion. People, especially in America, love to compare their results with each other. What car does my best friend have? I can’t believe they just got a new girlfriend! Wow they spent that much on a dinner? We ask questions like this when we look through our Newsfeed on Facebook. We see their status updates. We judge our capabilities according to our surroundings.

This is something that I’ve realized I need to snap out of. If we only live once (at least to our perceivable knowledge), why do we spend time compromising our dreams? If I asked you what your dream was, wouldn’t you tell me some grand vision that you have? If you do, what is it that you’re doing NOW to get you closer to that dream? The human soul flourishes on dreams. As the business philosopher Jim Rohn puts it, “The power of the future is an awesome force.” Dreams and aspirations provide the spiritual, emotional, mental fuel that’s necessary for us to face life’s everyday problems. The larger the dream, the more power we have.

Only you know if you’re truly progressing towards your dreams. Your gut and soul will let you know. Try teaching a child piano when they truly want to play the guitar. Their repugnance is so strong to the point that they retaliate physically and emotionally. Children have not yet developed a complex psyche that allows them to hide these emotions. However, for us that have grown up, we disguise our emotions using our thoughts. Ultimately, I believe that everyone still has that child inside of us, that still has these gut responses. 

I love working and coaching people because I long for that moment of breakthrough. When that person realizes that a barrier they formerly had was simply an illogical fear. However, while working with people, the biggest thing that saddens me is when people proclaim to me that they want to achieve great things in life, whether it’s financially, personally, spiritually, and they do NOTHING at all to change it. They start to name all the reasons why they cannot achieve their goals, instead of FOCUSING on a plan to help them change their current situation.

My question is, when will you have had enough of a half-fulfilled life and shoot for that fulfilling life?

Stop looking at the status quo, and the social norm. Create your own standards. Embody your own social norms. It’s your life, your dreams.

There’s a saying that if you shoot for the stars, you may hit the moon. I’ve made that decision to shoot for the stars. What if I fail? So what? I would feel way worse knowing I did not do all that I possibly could to achieve my dreams than failing them. At least I tried. 

As I posted on my Facebook status, I dream of one day opening a school. What are your dreams?

I hope everyone makes that decision that start heading down the path that you truly want to, rather than the one that society is convincing you to proceed down. Trust me, the feeling is way better.

I just posted on my Facebook “You know you’ve been working too hard when you don’t know what to do with free time.” After thinking a lot (and feeling a little pathetic about myself haha) I figured that I’d post another blog post. I’ll just let my thoughts run wild and see where this takes me. I feel that throughout my life, I’ve always followed a strict structure. However, I’ve finally realized that there must be fluidity and flexibility to live a truly fulfilling life. “Go with your gut” isn’t necessarily a bad statement. For some reason, your gut will usually tell you the right direction with the least stress possible.

I’ll try not to make this a personal development blog, but hey, that’s one of my passions, so it’ll probably turn into one. The interesting thing about blogs is that you write it without the intent of specific people to see it. I suppose it’s relieving to let out your feelings onto the Web (such a vague term these days). I suppose everyone wants to be heard by someone or something.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been looking into spirituality recently. (By the way, I’m just going to be typing the first things that come to my mind and not erase anything, so if there’s no cohesion, please forgive me). For my entire life, I’ve shut off spirituality because I was raised in a very “rational/scientific” environment. Religion was never discussed at the dinner table. However, when I look back, I think it’s safe to say that I was afraid of spirituality because ultimately you have to take that leap of faith. Some things in life just don’t make logical sense. But some of the most beautiful things in life don’t make logical sense. I still haven’t reached many conclusions on my spiritual journey, but each day I am progressing. 

It’s definitely an exciting time. It’s like the first day you move into a new town, and go out and explore. Your eyes are filled with wonder and heart filled with joy. Who knows, maybe this post is even getting me closer to knowing what spirituality is all about. My roommate Jason Lee is playing Price Tags on the guitar in the background, adding some nice ambient music while I’m thinking. 

Perhaps I’m too rational of a person sometimes. I’ve discovered that pure logic and reasoning takes you so far. In my business experience, logic can get agreement, but emotion will seal the deal. I’ve found that emotions are deeply connected to spirituality. The most loving people out there seem to be the most spiritual.

Yesterday I talked to the owner of Source restaurant in San Francisco for Munch On Me. His restaurant is solely focused on creating a space of positive energy. The owner Andrew Fox is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met. His restaurant is a physical manifestation of his deep spiritual beliefs (I don’t know exactly what they are yet, but I know they’re strong). Because of that, he is incredibly tolerant, kind, and strong. 

As much as I’ve tried to reason out and analyze success, it seems there’s this deep connection between spirituality and success. Maybe like I mentioned in the beginning of this post, everyone just wants to be heard by SOMEONE or SOMETHING. What’s an even greater force than the Internet? God

I’ll end this post on that note. After typing that, I just got the chills. I feel like I’ve made a deeper spiritual connection. Everything happens for a reason

A Progression of Thought and Self

Prior to college, I was your typical kid trying to go along with the rules of life as quietly and obediently as possible. Immobilized by the fear of being hurt by others, I removed myself from people by studying hard and playing video games. A while ago I actually counted that I probably spent more than 1000 hours playing simply the video games in the Final Fantasy series! I always tell people that when I was younger, if you stripped away my grades then you would find an empty shell. Ultimately, a person’s intrinsic value outweighs extrinsic values. My fears of talking to people and putting myself out in the world blocked the path to achieving anything great. I remember just the thought of talking to a girl would make me blush. I remember being so shy that I would even be afraid of picking up the phone at home because I did not recognize the number. I remember believing in m­y self-made philosophy of “don’t try, you’ll only get hurt.”

As life philosopher Jim Rohn says, “Success is attracted by the person you become.” I think everyone has the capability to be successful in their own definition, but the road will inevitably be bumpy. However, anything worthwhile in life will take hard work. The world as we know it was built on the labor and ideas of others, not simply on dreaming. 

Life change can occur in everyone. I am adamant in the belief that if I could change, then you can too. My mentor Duke Tubtim quoted his minister saying, “in order to be blessed, you must go outside your comfort zone.” All of our dreams lie beyond our current self-imposed limitations. You find yourself at your current situation in life because of the compilation of decisions in the past. However, the future is being created right NOW second by second. If you are tired of where you are right now, I’d suggest that you start seeing what little changes you can do right now and continue to do every day. The Magic of Compounding does not just work for your finances (referring to re-investing your profits), but also works for your own life. The smallest changes you make today will make remarkable differences in the end. Each night I try to read a book on personal development for 20-30 minutes. Not only does this help clear my mind, but also gradually adds to my mental bank of knowledge over time. Did you know that 95% of Americans read only one book every year? Let’s change that statistic and begin to explore the knowledge of the world. Compound whatever small positive changes you have and you will create a gold mine in the future.

It all begins with a bold declaration of not being satisfied with what you have right now. Be grateful of the past, but not content of the future. I vowed at the end of my high school career to change my negative direction in life. Life change comes from the inside rather than the out. Anyone can do it, but you must be able to envision the end destination. I saw myself as being fearless and a leader in society. I immediately started that journey.

My next post will talk about creating a strong foundation for taking on a new frontier in life. Post to be continued…

The following set of posts will detail my reflections after my time here at Cal, and give my perspective on topics such as academics, social life, health, and some other pertinent topics. I hope these ideas will be able to benefit someone.

The Purpose of Reflection

After officially finishing my last class at Cal, I think it’s time for some reflection on the craziness of college. I guess I’ll start this post on why reflection is even important. Imagine life as a large jigsaw puzzle. Not just one of those elementary 100 piece puzzles that you could do blindfolded. I’m not even talking about the 2000 piece puzzles that you lay out on the kitchen table and work on for a month. Life is the largest 3-D puzzle that we all are trying to piece together one action, one day at a time. We start nothing but our own two hands, mind, and a stack of unorganized pieces, and the objective is to assemble the most perfect jigsaw puzzle by shaping your dream lifestyle.

Each day provides us with the building blocks for our future. Reflection allows you to learn from your experiences and selectively add certain elements to your ultimate lifestyle. Going through life without reflection is essentially like shaking up the jigsaw puzzle box, hoping that it will magically be assembled. Lifestyle requires careful craftsmanship. 

Thus, to close this chapter on my life, I feel that proper reflection is necessary. In this post, I hope that my ideas will be able to benefit others that are looking for some answers. If not, this’ll just be my own personal journal entry. After my 7 semesters at UC Berkeley, I have both achieved and failed much. 

• I leave with a 3.7 GPA in Integrative Biology while NEVER pulling an all-nighter
• Held presidency for the Pi Alpha Phi fraternity for 2 terms
• Served on the Interfraternity Council 
• Taught the Introduction to Leadership Decal for 3 semesters
• Was a University Health Services Health Worker for a year
• Participated in the management internship for Target, Corp.
• Worked part-time for 1.5 years
• And most importantly, made a ton of new friends and had fun

My next posts will detail how to create a strong foundation to start getting what you want from college and also from life.

Post to be continued…

Hey guys, so this is my first blog post EVER, so hope it’ll be something of worth to you. During this Spring Break, because I had some spare time, I really wanted to take a step back and evaluate my life, my direction, and my mindset. It’s an exercise that I think that everyone should do every now and then. Ask questions like the following:

How am I feeling?

Where am I heading?

What am I doing?

Who am I as a person?

What can I do to become better?

This self-analysis if done consistently will guarantee you personal growth and hopefully success. Nevertheless, thanks to my good friend David Cary, we began a deep, philosophical conversation about life, which eventually ended upon the topic of FEAR and DEATH.

I hadn’t seen David in a good half a year, and this was what we were talking about? Yes we’re weird haha.

Regardless, our conversation led to a revelation that motivated me to even start writing this blog entry. David told me that according to his readings by the philosopher Montaigne, “to philosophize is to learn how to die,” and immediately I was awed by the meaning of that phrase. In order to think about life, we must ACCEPT death, as morbid as it sounds. When I thought about it more, all of our fears stem from the foundational fear of death.

Death is a touchy, painful subject. We mourn at funerals not only because we love the person that passed away, but also because we are reminded of our own mortality. We believe that life is the absence of death, so as long as we can stay alive, we’ll be fine.

However, there’s another way of looking at it. From the great motivational speaker Jim Rohn, “life is the struggle to keep death at a reasonable distance.”  Death makes life beautiful because we know that everything is ephemeral. We take things for granted until we lose them, so if we never lost anything, we would take everything for granted. Death is the single truth of life, so why run away from it?

As blunt as it is, we must accept the fact and resolve it within ourselves if you want to live life fully, for once we reconcile that fact with ourselves we are truly powerful.

If we do not fear death, what else in life to fear is there? What really hit me about me and David’s conversation was the part about fear. I finally realized how much FEAR has dictated my life and where I am today. Think about how your fears have influenced your life decisions?

I was always afraid to fully express myself for fear of being judged.

I was afraid of leadership because of the fear of responsibility.

I was a “nice guy” because of my fear of offending people.

I never sought out a girlfriend because of the fear of getting emotionally hurt.

There’s an acronym for FEAR that says, “False Evidence Appearing Real.” Our fears are only our perceptions of what we think things will be like. Things scare us when we are not sure of the outcomes. But fears are what inhibit our potential. If we don’t face our fears, we won’t know the “Truth” (whatever that may be).

According to the leadership guru John C. Maxwell, “to go up, you must give up.” In other words, in order to grow and improve in life, we must be willing to pay the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual price. While the journey is tolling, the results will be worth it.

How many times have your fears prevented you from achieving your own goals and from grasping your dreams. Too many times have I wimped out and given the excuse of “I don’t need to do this” when I truthfully knew that I did need to. Let’s first recognize that we do have fears, and then see what we can do to overcome them.

For example, today I walked right into a Ferrari dealership in La Jolla, and sat in a car that many would feel would be impossible to attain. I walked out of the shop and told the employee, “give me three years and I’ll be back to buy this.” If we can’t even imagine ourselves achieving our goals, how will we ever attain them?

This is meant to be a call to action. We must all become BOLD to truly LIVE. Don’t let our perceptions of our fears prevent us from what we all want from life. Dream as big as you want. Love as much as you can.

We will all die one day soon, so let’s stop running away from ourselves and face up to life and be brave to achieve your dreams.

Thank you if you read through all of this. I hope that my revelation added some value to your day.

James