CFC FFL Singapore – Sharing God’s Love to Us
First of all I am writing this topic to share the wonders of God’s love to me and to share His love to all of us. Ever since I came here to Singapore and started a commitment to my never ending personal development blog, the next best thing that came to my life was God’s community. CFC FFL Singapore (Couples For Christ – Foundation for Family and Life) is a community of God’s love and a commitment to my spiritual growth. I remember writing a Family Mission Statement based from one of our household gatherings which was a challenge for me and for other brothers and sisters in Christ as well. What really touched me was when my wife told me about my 7 year old son, Jed’s sharing about family mission statement in school. Her teacher really appreciated and thanked us for our son’s sharing. She wished that if only every family will practice the same kind of teachings, our country will be a better place to live in. Wow! that brought tears to my eyes.
It was never my plan to join any religious program or organization having attended different religious groups from the past. I attended my first seminar during the second half of 2008 when my friend invited me and told me that dinner was free. Without hesitation I attended the seminar with the food in my mind and did it again and again for the next series of seminars or talks. Yes I was indeed nourished by the food served to us. But it was from the talks and sharing of personal experiences that gave me the nourishment of my spirit.
It is truly a blessing to belong to a community of God’s servants considering that my family is not with me here in Singapore. When you’re alone working in a foreign country, any temptations are possible. CFC FFL community is a place where you can share your personal problems, inspirational stories, love, gratitude, fun and the smiles the can melt a heart. Indeed a family that you can count on whatever prayer requests you need, whether for a good health, a good career, or just a better relationship. Here, I was able to communicate my personal challenges in life, my experiences in personal development and also learned from others more challenging experiences. When I listened to other people’s experiences, I realized that my personal challenges are small compared to their life experiences. I heard about a wife leaving a successful business in the Philippines despite family and friends continuous discouragement of living a new life to be with her husband and family. Others shared their success and blessings from their career through continuous hard work, persistence and prayers. Truly with God nothing is impossible. It is through our abilities to believe, to desire and unwavering faith that we can achieve what we want in life.
I highly encouraged those who are away from their loved ones or for those who simply need peace at home with their family to seek us to share God’s love. I’m not limiting your choices to our group, there are also wonderful communities that will suit to your culture, religion, beliefs, or faith. What is important is you develop a personal and spiritual relationship with God and the people that you can connect with your life experiences. I assure and guarantee you that the time you spend with God and the relationship you develop with your community is truly worthy of your time.
To you, I offer you my short prayer of gratitude for visiting my site. I wish and pray for you all the good things that you deserved in life. To share the blessings that you deserved to our fellow.To learn from the bad things to become a better person. Please share God’s Love to Us, Amen!
PS
I’m sharing with you a presentation from the male group made during the CLS or Christian Life Seminar day itself so this was not really practiced well but the message was from the series of seminar talks.
My Happy Birthday Wish for 2010
First of all, I would like to thank God for adding another exciting year into my life. I am very thankful for the person that I become and the person I will become. I am thankful for my family, my wife Helen and my son Justin Daniel for the unquestionable love they have shared with me. They are the reason for my pursuit of continuous personal development. If I work hard on my self-improvement I become a better husband and a father to them. Next, I would like to thank God for the friends that I have met physically and virtually. I learned a lot from other people’s inspiration in life spiritually, emotionally,financially, physically. I thank the mentors for giving me the business skills of inspiration and what I can become as a person.
My wish for my birthday is for God to continue to develop my character of a potential person that I will become. To continue the hunger for knowledge, wisdom and skills of the person that I want to be, that is to make a little difference to my neighbors, friends. To become a better husband to my wife, Helen and a better father to my son, Justin Daniel.
This year I wish (i preferred the terms – will make it happen) to put the learned skills in internet marketing into action. To continue to learn and improve the skills together with like minded individuals through mastermind groups. I want to start my own projects like BayanihanOnline (still under construction) that I just started with the intention of being a service and inspiration to the many.
Thank You 2009 and An Exciting 2010 Goals!
WOW! 2009 will be my most memorable year! It was the year where I learned to develop my skills in internet marketing. My objective at that time was to learn how I can generate more leads to my network marketing business through pay per click. I learned more than what I expected and the thought of passive residual income while you sleep is such an inevitable and powerful tool. Internet marketing is such a lonely business if you do it by yourself so I highly recommend that you find a mentor just like when you enroll to get a college degree. I developed my skills in the field of search engine marketing – both in search engine optimization and Google adwords. It was my first time to buy a domain name for jeromecastaneda.com and learned to use this powerful blog resource of Wordpress. Actually, I managed to rank on the first page for some keywords about my blog. Woohoo! I was able to dominate almost all the sites on the first page for my name Jerome Castaneda and hope to totally dominate it next year 2010. Indeed, wordpress is the king!
I had the chance to attend Tony Robbins Unleashed the Power Within 4 day’s seminar at the Singapore Expo. In those 4 days I had the chance to shape my destiny in my thoughts and managed to do a firewalker on burning coals. It was also in this event that I truly take care about my health especially the food that I ate. I just developed the love for green stuffs, vegetables and fruits. Wow, it was truly an awesome time to remember.
It was the year where I regularly attended a Personal Excellence and Growth Meetup with great life coaches, Mr. Patrick Lim and Ms. Jessica See. I’ve met like minded people and exchanged life experiences and philosophies to grow and become the person that I want to be. There were 2 things that I learned if you want to succeed or grow in life, 1. the people you know or associate with and 2. the books that you’ve read.
2009 was the year I started to grow my spiritual relationship with the Lord God through CFC-FFL Singapore (Couples for Christ – Foundation for Family and Life) as a member for the Servants of the Lord (SOLD) group. Here I got the chance to meet God filled spirited people where there’s no inhibitions about telling your personal challenges in life. Here we prayed for each one’s personal success, family and health miracles. I highly suggest to any individual to join a spiritual or religious group especially if you’re working away from your family just like me.
Now, some people (especially with hardcore employee mindsets) may ask me why on earth should I spend much time learning stuffs that is outside of my job skills as a Mechanical Engineer. My answer is very simple my friend, I have Big Dreams. I am taking Jim Rohn’s advise to work hard on myself than what I do on my job. Personal development builds up my character and my attitude at work. I have the power of concentration and the focus to become a very productive engineer not only at work but with my relationship and communication with my colleagues.
As I looked forward about my 2010 goals, I am very excited about the potential person I can become. Year 2010 will be the start of my 10 year master plan. I’ll continue the commitment of my never ending personal development blog, to become the best father to my son and a loving husband to my wife. I’ll continue to read or listen to books or audiobooks, to meet like minded individuals in personal development and internet marketing fields. I’ll continue to work and apply my skills in internet marketing, to help local businesses generate more sales to their business. I’ll continue to take care of my health by having a regular exercise and watch out on the food that I take. Most of all, I’ll continue to praise and worship God for all the blessings and for the person I become.
Goodbye Jim Rohn – the legacy continues!
Everyone in the personal development community is in the mixed state of sorrow, surprised, shocked, or bewilderment. Our grandfather of personal development, Jim Rohn died last December 5,2009 of pulmonary fibrosis. My first encounter with him is through an audiobook CD that I bought, “Building Your Network Marketing Business” at a network marketing convention in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. From then on, his philosophies made a great impact in my life by listening to his audiobooks repeatedly and continuously. I want to share with you in one of my audio CDs disc 6 entitled, “Waking The Sleeping Spirit Within”.
The 7 Fundamentals for Wealth and Happiness
This based from his early journal taught to him by his mentor Earl Shoaff. One of the major things taught to him by his mentor is to keep a journal. Don’t miss anything that comes your way. Don’t trust your memory. Be serious and take notes all of the things that you hear. Keep it in a journal.
1. Personal Development – Nothing happens For You until it happens To You. Learn to Work Harder on Yourself than You Do on your job. Wow, this is such a great philosophy that I learned and am continuously applying. Wealth is not something that you go after, wealth is something You attract. Success is not something that you pursue; success is something You become. So, If We Want more, We must become More.
Jim Rohn great business philosopher
2. The Search for Knowledge – If you wish to be wealthy, if you wish to change your life you must go in pursuit of the ideas that can make a difference in your bank account and your personality. Search for among your experiences; search for among other people’s experiences but by all means continue the search. Be a searcher of ideas.
3. Setting Goals – zero in on what you Want, Your Objectives! Earl Shoaff told him, if you don’t have a list of your goals, I can guess your bank account within a few hundred dollars. It meant that if you don’t have a list of your goals it can affect your bank account drastically. Jim Rohn divided it into two parts, 1.long range – your dreams for the future. Don’t give up on your dreams. Without dreams and the vision, we perish.
“Goals. There’s no telling what you can do when you get inspired by them. There’s no telling what you can do when you believe in them. And there’s no telling what will happen when you act upon them.”
If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us”
4. An activity plan – having a game plan that is visual. Operate from document not from thought. Put your ideas on paper so that you can show to someone. It’s like building a house. You build a house based on a paper (blueprint) not on your head. Don’t start the day until you have it finish. Don’t start the month until you have it finish. And if you think long term, don’t start the year until you have it finish.
5. Association – you got to be careful with people you associate with. This can be both positive and negative. Never mistake the value and the effect of influence. Be careful about those people who are influencing you. There are 3 questions quiz that can help you in association. 1. Who am I around? Who do I spend a fair share of my time with? 2. What are they doing to me? Where have they got me going? What have they got me saying? What have they got me reading? What have they got me doing? How have they got me thinking? 3. Is that O.K.? Find people of substance and spend more time.
6. A plan for your resources – your best resource is your money. If you will be faithful over a few things they will make you ruler of many things, a bible phrase. Poor people spend their money and save what is left. Rich people save their money and spend what is left.
7. Lifestyle – don’t just learn how to earn but learn how to live. Lifestyle is culture and uniqueness. Read the books, enjoy the concerts, and study the fine. Sophisticated people know that a few treasure is better than a house full of junk. Sophisticated people know that just small things well-designed start the idea of culture and refinement in the person’s life.
Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.
Persuasive Communication – the Art of moving people through to action
It has been almost a month since the last meetup August 28 and just another 3 more days and it will be another meetup. A lot of things had been happening lately towards my goals. How I wish that I can outsource my thoughts of experiences to someone so that he/she can update my blog on a regular basis.
The meetup started with myself sharing the books that I’ve read that made some changes in my life. I have read tons of self help/personal development books ever since but I listen to audio books more oftenly from my iPod. I’ve shared 3 books, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, The Psychology of Achievement by Brian Tracy and How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie. The first 2 books taught me about belief in myself which I applied effectively in my job during my first few months of work as a CAD Engineer. The last book taught me about relationship as I develop how to communicate effectively. These 2 points that I shared about belief on oneself or your ability to communicate with yourself effectively. Relationship or your ability to communicate well with other people were key to changing my old bad habits.
The meetup topic was presented by Ms. Jessica See. Please visit persuasive communication about the definition of persuasion by Steven Scott. There were 3 principles of persuasion 1. honor and respect the person you are communicating with 2. understanding the other person’s frame of reference and 3. you’ve got to be an effective communicator first.
In order to understand the other person’s frame of reference there are factors to consider as the saying goes, ” We all respond to our map of reality, not reality itself “. First, there’s a man vs. woman frame of reference. Second, the different types of personality 1. Choleric -a person who enters a meeting with one goal, to make the meeting as productive as possible. This type of people are doers, drivers or controllers. 2. Sanguine – enters a meeting looking forward to socialize with those who are most fun to joke around and talk with. They are promoter, expressive type of people who loves to talk 3. Phlegmatic – enters the meeting hoping . They are generally contented with the status quo or neutral. 4. Melancholic – refers to a type of people who are analytical, research facts or details. Samples are engineers, accountants, scientist and other technical related fields of work. Check more at Four Temperaments. A good reference for this topic is Personality Plus: How to Understand Others by Understanding Yourself by Florence Littauer.
You got to be an effective communicator first and the response you get is the meaning of your communication. Asking good questions are not enough. You must be prepared to listen to the answers of your question and drill down more based from those response.
Lastly, a recommended reference book is The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Dr. Gary Chapman.
PS
See you at the next meetup this September 25 for another interesting topic on Make a Powerful impact with your presentation!
PS2
Pls. checkout the previous meetup, Personal Branding, the PURPLE CAT way.
Personal Branding, the PURPLE CAT way
Last night was another great night that you shouldn’t missed every end of the month on a Friday. Why, it was the second “Personal Excellence and Growth Meetup” and the topic was Stand Out from the Crowd! Learn to Create a Personal Brand! I must say it’s getting better and bigger (more crowd and great food).
Personal Branding is something that is uniquely yours. It is something that helps people to remember You. What do you think if you hear the word, Trump? you’re right, skyscrapers, The Apprentice (You’re Fired!), and oops, his hair. What about Oprah? I believe everything she says will turn into gold, imagine her Book Club and other organizations. Her famous tag lines, ”You are responsible for your own life”, “Live Your Best Life”. Think about the famous brands in the market, say Nike is equivalent to “Just Do It” . What about when you hear “It keeps going, and going, and going…” yes, you’re right its our neighbor who kept on yelling non-stop at her husband for whatever reason. OK, it was Energizer Batteries.
There must be a purpose for those slogans or names. Personal branding can only happen if you have a Purpose. What do you really want for Your life? What don’t You want in you life? What have You settled for?
You need to define your USP or Unique Selling Proposition. What will make your customers buy from You (ideas) instead from others. In order for you to understand your USP, you need to know 1.) Your Strengths 2.) Your Skills 3.) Your Values 4.) Your Passions.
You need to Reinvent Yourself. It means that you must unlearn (things that will not help you grow), learn (that will help you grow) and relearn (making a habit of continuous growing). Ask yourself, what’s missing with this picture? Here’s a very nice quote from one of my favorite (invisible) guru Zig Ziglar, ” Go as Far as You can See and when You get There, You will always be able to See Farther.” Reinvention is about maximizing your Assets (strengths) and camouflaging your Liabilities (weaknesses). Be aware of how You are communicating with Yourself. Talk to yourself in front of the mirror and say “I’m the Best” as often as you want and feel what you’ve said.
Bringing Passion into the pursuit of Your dreams is critical if You are to dream Big and achieve those dreams. Please refer to my previous post for more information, Finding Your Passion! Furthermore, you can ask some questions;
- What do I love to Do? – look for elements in your Job that you feel good, it could be Your friends, relationships or anything.
- What do I enjoy Doing?
- What gives me an adrenaline rush?
- What do I feel proud of?
Here’s another great way to psyche up yourself, You need to Look Good and Feel Great. The greatest risk to a reputation is his/her failure to factor image into his/her success in business or career. Here’s a circle of Success Cycle, if you Feel Great then you will Look Good. If You Look Good then You will Project Well. If you Project Well then You will have a Positive Response and when you respond positively then you will Feel Great (back to the start, see the cycle).
There is never a second chance to your Signature Look. Here are some tips to work on your signature look;
- Capitalise on your Assets – these could be your physical, your pearly white smile, your eyes, your nose, your gorgeous body
- Dress to suit your Body Shape
- Go for your Colors – enhancing your instant switch (power on) to your Glowingness
- You need to understand your Dress Style
- Dress to suit your environment or audience – you can dress a level up from your environment without being overdressed.
For me, most of the times, my wife made good recommendations for the clothes that I wear and did get some good compliments from colleagues in the office. So better include your wife or girlfriend whenever you want to select the dress style you want and be sure to you are comfortable wearing it.
Excite Others by developing a WOW statement or signature will get others to say WOW. A signature wow is a personal style that you did with a special touch. To guide you ask yourself;
- What am I known for?
- What do I want to stand for?
- Am I making a difference?
The sacred trinity for a Brand’s Success is 1. Clarity 2. Consistency and 3. Authenticity
- Does the message that you want to send to your target audience or public at large have clarity?
- Are you consistent in the image you project to others?
- How authentic are you? Are you true to Yourself?
Lastly, Tell the World! Position and Promote Yourself. Be visible.
My take on this is, Just Be Yourself at Your own Very Best All the Time.
Be-YourSelf-Brand
PS
The next Meetup topic on August 28 will be on Persuasive Communication – The art of moving people through to action. Check more info at this site. See you there!
HINT: Don’t you know that the bold words above, is an abbreviation of PURPLE CAT. check it if you got it.
Finding Your Passion!
I had a great time last night at our
Just to share some bits from what I’ve learned about finding your passion. Passion is something that fuels your purpose, why you are here in this world.
Passion is something you
- love to do
- enjoy doing it
- feel strongly about it
- are drawn to it ( attracts)
- feel good doing it
- like to talk about it ( again and again)
- feel excited about it
- want to keep doing it
- can show expression
from my own experience, it is something that I kept on thinking about it even when am asleep or at work, I spend a lot of time and energy on it, i write about it (now you know why I have a blog).
So what about you? Share me your Passion.
Success Journal
success journal
Finally with the help of my wife, I managed to create a success journal. This will be my greatest gift to myself of all occasions (father’s day, birthday, new year, etc) so far. Btw, thanks to my wife for creating it patiently. You see I do a lot of note taking whenever I attended a talk, seminar, learning experiences, ideas, from books I read, friends that I talked to but I wrote this mostly in sheets of paper, notebooks (runs out of pages quickly). So this time I make sure its a thick one that will last longer.
Global Internet Seminar day 2
I managed to attend the 2nd day Global Internet Seminar at the Expo, Singapore which started 9am until 7pm. I didn’t attend the first day obviously since I still have a work in the office. The first speaker of the day was the CEO of Success Resources (organizer of the event) Mr. Richard Tan who shared his extraordinary experience in organizing a big event in UK with just 2 months to fill the 5,000 capacity auditorium. Richard was followed by Christopher Guerriero an expert in the health and wellness thru his site HealthlifeDotCom. I learned a new idea from him about how to create a book in 30 days or less in just 7 simple steps.
He gave us some words similar to T. Harv Eker’s (TFAR method). His was Words – Thoughts- Feelings- Actions- Results. Hhhmm…looked familiar to me. There were 3 things in the mind of the average people; 1. Wait 2. Watch 3. Wish. Can you relate to this one? Then am sorry you’re an average person.
Here’s a saying that also caught me “True Wealth - stop chasing money instead chase self improvement” Wow, amen to that my friend!
Hot tip: How to create you book in 30 days or less!
1. Choose you subject (Passion + experience) – 1 full day
2. Write out main topics to cover in bullet points. - Half day max
3. Gather information for each topic. – 2-3 days
4. Record everything you know each topic individually (1 day)
5. Transcribe it (48 hours)
6. Send it to an editor to make you sound professional.
7. Get it typeset and professional looking.
There were just so much in his program that I can’t write it here. Check him out in Success Magazine as he was featured there as the time of this event. He was also being endorsed by Bob Proctor of the phenomenal The Secret.
The next speaker was Ewen Chia, World’s #1 Super Affiliate Internet Marketing Guy. It was his second talk from the first day (which I missed). Just like other speakers, he shared his humble life story. There were 3 simple steps to making online money fast, first is NICHE, second was WEBSITE (obviously) and last VISITORS.
Well what really caught our attention there was his Instant Website Generator which all you need to do is fill up the blanks like your affiliate logins. I would say it’s a website for the lazy (easy to setup) and it promotes itself with dynamic self updating with fresh contents, news article, videos. Unfortunately, he’s not selling the software and only available if you enrol to his seminar as one of the many packages.
Btw, he showed his clickbank account to show the difference from the first day (sort of a challenge). I can’t remember the figures but I bet it’s worth your month’s salary. Haha!
Tom Hua, Internet Business in-A-Box guy from Australia but originally from China (correct me if I’m wrong). First impression was his height (small) but with a big heart, a true blue entrepreneur with lots of business both online and offline. Just like Ewen Chia, his concepts of internet marketing are much the same, 1. Product 2. Website 3. Traffic. I didn’t take much notes here since he gave us a link of his site where in we can download the PowerPoint. Not bad huh since you can just purely concentrate on his ideas without being caught in scribbling notes. (Let me know if you want a piece of it…hmm)
Patric Chan, (How to Start Your Own Internet Business Today) is a guy that I can also relate to since this guy is into personal development. He shared his LEAP (stands for Leverage Expert And Partnership).
His LEAP formulas were;
- Product Ownership
- Leverage on other Business to Promote you
- Create an Info Product
- Membership program for Passive Income
- Partnership with Others
- Become an Expert in Your Niche
- Use an automation system
AFAIK, he’ll be having a 2 day leap program this coming July 11&12 here in Singapore.
Lastly, Andy Hun and looked like an upcoming guru in the scene since only few people were left (about less than 30). He shared about SkyQuestCom program which was own by Richard Tan.
I came a bit late since its an hour MRT ride to home.
Checkout Day 3.
Unlimited Power
Here are some few powerful things that I’ve learned while listening to an audio book of Anthony Robbins about Unlimited Power.
Personal power is the ability to act or take action.
There are 3 steps for personal power;
1. Energy – Physical vitality to take action. Physical, intellectual and spiritual energy to take action to make the most of what we have. Need to maximize physical vibrancy.
2. Skills – a. specifically define exactly what it is you want and
b. specifically define exactly what others want and fill the needs elegantly.
skills can be learned and developed through a technology called NLP (Neuro Linguistical Programming). It is the science of personal achievement. The key to NLP is modeling successful person’s beliefs and actions.
there are 3 fundamentals steps to any form of human excellence.
1. model or duplicate their belief system
2. duplicate the person’s mental syntax – sample is,” The dog bit Johnny” or what if say, ” Johnny bit the dog” so you get what does this mean. This is just basically changing the order of sequence and that is syntax.
3. duplicate the person’s physiology – is posture, breathing pattern, tonality, facial expressions,mascular tension. it determines the person how they use their brains.
challenge is to become a modeler.
“Control your thoughts they become your dreams
Control your dreams they become your actions
Control your actions they become your habits
Control your habits they become your destiny”
3. Turning Fear into Power -
There are 7 Disciplines of Success
1. Always act from Personal Power (the ability to take action).
key point: I realized that there are no failures; there are only results or outcomes.
you always succeed to get results.
2. I am totally responsible for my world or I create my world.
key points: responsible, taking charge
3. I am always stretching (if you can’t you must)
and there are 3 keys to stretching
i. commitment to do something beyond the present ability.
ii. make a public declaration or commitment
iii. model someone who is already producing the results
iv. do it! follow the model…act as if you do it.
4. I am committed to unconscious competence (flow and produce the results) rather than cognitive understanding (details).
5. I always act from personal integrity (wholeness, true to themselves).
I always lie (our own beliefs) with integrity.
6. The meaning of communication is the response you get.
7. I am committed to do WEIT. (What Ever It Takes to Succeed) caveat: without harming any person. goal is from interest to commitment (to make it happen).
There are 7 Character Traits to become Successful
1. Passion – juice that makes your life
2. Beliefs
3. Strategies
4. Values
5. Energy level
6. Bonding
7. Develop your communication skills
