Knowledge is a strange word as no one seems to actually be able to agree on what it actually means and it is defined in so many different ways.

It is generally understood to be defined as skills and expertise acquired through educational experiences and an understanding of a subject including the facts.

Knowledge comes about through lots of different processes of perception, watching, communicating, reasoning, mixing with other elements, learning and associations with others. Knowledge is generally understood as having a confident understanding of a particular topic or subject with the ability to use that knowledge for the advancement of man.

The great philosopher Plato stated that for the concept of knowledge to exist three criteria must exist. Any statement must be justified, must be true and must be believed for knowledge to be present.

There are different types of knowledge as follows:

Situated knowledge is the first knowledge we will discuss and this is based on knowledge known due to a specific situation. You may need to get more than one opinion to be able to make a full knowledgeable decision. Different people may have different information about the same item or subject.

Situational knowledge is often the result of trial-and-error experiences.

Scientific knowledge is generated using data rather than trial-and-error. Scientific knowledge is more accurate and is deep rooted in cultures, traditions and languages.

Experiential knowledge is a knowledge that is achieve after a personal experience. This is first hand experienced understanding.

Partial knowledge states that it is not possible to have a complete understanding of a subject and decisions are subject to error when based on partial knowledge.

Biological knowledge is the areas of knowledge that are rooted in our DNA. Babies have an immediate desire to drink milk. They have not experienced this before, yet they subconsciously know that they must. In fact they are not aware of the condition that they should do it – they just do it. This is a biological instinct.

Divine knowledge is what separates man from God. It is what man is aspiring to find. This knowledge is generally thought to bring us escape from our confusion here on earth.

I got on a plane once returning from Cebu to Manila and sat two seats away from me was a man I had never seen before. As I sat talking to my friend, he leaned over and said:

“Excuse me, but how can you be so happy with all the shit in the world going on?”

I replied “Easy…It’s not my shit!”

He looked at me like I was an idiot and then burst out laughing and said “That’s brilliant - that’s just brilliant.”

We talked for the rest of the journey and four years later we are still friends.

Have you ever woken up in the morning and for some reason that you can’t put your finger on, you just know it is going to be a great day and of you go happy and full of joy!

What a difference you bring to the world by just being joyful. A smile, a thank you. a hello or just the bounce in your step. The world loves joyful people and you know what all the problems in the world…

Well it just isn’t your shit. So don’t worry about it and just smile.

Easy to say no, but then your house is being taken away from you because you haven’t paid and the price of everything is going up so much and how will you cope.

You know what, no matter how much you complain about it, there is nothing you can do about it. So live with it and be happy or complain. It’s up to you.

And you know what else, no matter what they do, you will still go on every day. Day in day out so at least just be happy that you can go on.

Here are 5 tips to be joyful in the face of everything that is happening around you:

1. Put the humor in Life.
2. Practice Gratitude
3. Choose to be a giver than a taker
4. Live in the moment
5. Find the “bless in the mess”

The secret to finding joy is by being satisfied with what we have and instead aspiring to be better. It is the person that you become that will bring the joy rather than the things that you have. Joy is not the same as pleasure. Pleasure is a feeling that is normally followed by disappointment as we come down from the high, but joy is deeper than that. Joy is a spiritual feeling.

In a Christian world, we strive to surrender ourselves to “thy will be done.” Equally you have a purpose on life and your own personal will must be done also. When you are achieving your will that is when you become joyful. As long as you are within the feeling of your will, you will experience joy.

To conquer a mountain must be incredible. What more to accomplish an almost seemingly impossible task of conquering something as complex as you. Conquering yourself brings about self discovery and you will experience a joy like never before as you meet yourself for the first time.

There is really only one way to obtain joy and that is through love. Love for the world, love for your fellow man and love for yourself.

A man is paid in direct proportion to the service he renders mankind. The love that you get is dependent of the service you render. The money you have, is dependent on the service you render mankind. It has nothing to do with putting yourself first. It’s all about service.

I believe that this is a step to success. My life started to really gel when I stopped thinking of me all the time and started thinking about what I could contribute to others. I found that i actually liked helping others and as a result I became happy.

I found that all the help I gave to others came back to me multiplied by massive amounts and most of my problems started to float away. Oh how joyful!

Everyone in prison probably regrets (for the most part) what they did and wish that they could go back to the time of their crime and do it again, but this time don’t do the crime. Accountability for their crime is their’s and if they had made better decisions and stuck to their integrity they wouldn’t be eating prison food.

Integrity is defined as “basing one’s actions on internally consistent framework of principles.” In other words it is a code of honor. Depth of principles and adherence of each level to the next are key factors. One is said to have integrity to the extent that everything one does is derived from the same core set of values. While those values may change, their consistency with each other and with the one’s actions determine the degree of integrity.

Most of the principles on which we base integrity are spiritual in essence and words that spring to mind are commitment, honor, courage, loyalty love, trust and perseverance to name just a few, but they are mainly based on religious concepts. no matter what your religion these qualities are promoted.

We live in a world where integrity seems to be ignored. Integrity suggests going past “what’s in it for me,” but rather “what’s the right thing to do?”

Too often we here of people claiming to be “Christians” (or other religions) and then acting in a manner which clearly shows they are not. The news is full of people claiming to be living in integrity to these principles, and then going out to be thieves, robbers, prostitutes, corrupt and all the other evils of the world we see.

We are tempted with many things to steer us away from the life of integrity, but this is just a test to see if we really are in integrity or merely giving it lip service. Man pretends to be honest, yet he hides his income from the authorities and tries to cheat. Man asks his customers to trust him and then shows that they cannot be trusted by producing false invoices to hide money.

I have lost money because I would not “forget” the VAT content on projects when asked by my customers to do so. I work on this theory - If my customer does not respect my honest, then he will not respect my dishonesty and when it all goes wrong it will come back to you.

You should not have to think about your integrity. It should be a subconscious operation. People should know that when they deal with you - they can trust you.

Personal integrity is a major part of business and lack of integrity is a major part of failure. Your customers, friends and even family will leave you if you speak with forked tongue. If you know of the story of “the boy that cried wolf” you will know what I mean.

There will be times every day when your integrity is called to test and you can either do what you should do or do what you want to. You are in control.

There is a difference between hard work and working hard.

Hard work implies to me that the task in hand will take some effort and is burdensome to achieve the desired result; i.e. it was a lot of hard work. I feel that hard work implies a lot of sweat and tears.

Working hard on the other hand implies to me that there is focused effort and a concentrated aim that will get results. To me it is synonymous with determination, diligence, honesty, and responsibility.

Personally I prefer to work hard than to do hard work.

Being successful entails a lot of working hard and hopefully not too much hard work. You will need a lot of focused energy and it will take some time to achieve. There are a lot of quotes about the road to success, but most of them imply good motivation and honest ethics and talk about the importance of working hard.

Your working hard should include these ethics. Nothing good will long term come of anything based on something bad. You may make money, but looking over your shoulder all the time waiting for the authorities to arrive does have its issues which you may not like.

In actual fact I think working hard should actually be referred to as working smart. Working smart” is doing the same task by making and implementing a plan–including steps that may be an innovation in procedure, improving efficiency and reducing costs to perform the task.

People who are devoted to hard work generally don’t get as much done as someone who is working smart (working hard). Smart working involves planning, efficiency and value for time.

Planning the tasks is the key to smart working. If you do not have a plan you can spend all day achieving nothing as there is nothing to aim for. The worker becomes enslaved by the task rather than accomplishing the plan.

I was nearly in tears….

I was standing there all alone. This was one of the darkest worst moments of my life. I didn’t know what to do or who to turn to for help.

I just stood there all alone.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice said “Can I help you son?”

I turned to see a man looking at me with a smile on his face. He said “You look so sad and lonely and I just wondered if you were ok.”

As the tears rolled down my face he stood with his hand on my shoulder still and said words I will never forget.

“I give of my time, I give of my talent, and I give of my treasure. I give willingly, cheerfully, joyfully and lovingly. I always give with love. I give with the love of the spirit.”

“I see life as it can be, not as it appears to be.”

The world around us has gone to chaos. War, hunger, increasing prices and general chaos are all around us. This is a time when the world has never been more intelligent, cleverer than ever before, yet we cannot control the price of a liter of gas or a bowl of rice. This is a time when our fellow man needs more help than ever before.

Do you see life as it is or do you see life as it can be? The man that spoke to me probably saved my life, but he never knew. His generosity in reaching out to someone who looked lost in life has brought many years of joy to me. I never saw him again, but I never forgot him and his kind deeds.

We all have the ability to be generous in some way every day. We can give some one some change out of our pocket or simply help someone across the road or like the man that put his hand on my shoulder, just ask someone if they are ok.

Yesterday I read in the newspaper that in the last 3 months over 20 million people in The Philippines have gone hungry on more than 1 occasion because they do not have enough money to simply buy a bowl of rice.

And yet we think we are generous!

Most people are not even generous with themselves. Most people believe that they deserve 2nd best. They use low class transport to get to a low class paying job to pay for their sub-standard accommodation just so they can live. Is this really the best modern man can do? Or can we do better?

I believe that we can do better.

I challenge you to do better. Find one thing that you do not like in your life and change it. Be generous to yourself. If, for example, you use public transport, promise yourself that you will never use public transport again and that you will only use taxis in future. If you use taxis all the time promise yourself that you will have your own car as this is unacceptable to you. How do you afford the taxi or the new car? Act accordingly! Act accordingly and you will probably have to change something in your life to do so. Do you not deserve your own generosity?

How can you be generous with other people if you cannot be generous with yourself?

Abundance is the source of generosity. Abundance implies an overflowing amount. so much so that we do not worry about filling up the cup. Abundance implies that you do not mind giving to others as you have so much yourself, what you give is but just a small amount. a drop in the ocean.

But how can it be a drop in the ocean if you don’t even have enough to look after yourself? This is the dilemma of abundance and generosity. How can I give if I don’t have. I suggest…you don’t have because you don’t give!

Remember the widow’s mite? She had nothing, yet she gave it away because she believe in the Lord and that he would provide for her.

Do you believe in your own abilities? Do you believe in the abilities of those who help you? Your team? Do you believe in the abilities of your God? Do you?

If you believe in all of those abilities, you know that you have nothing to worry about and that it is only fear that stops us from being generous. Remember no matter what you give…you were able to get it once (or you would not be in the position to give it away) so then you can get it again.

Believe in yourself and start to practice generosity. It all goes around and around. The key to a fast flowing river is the movement of the water and likewise the river of money is powerful when the money flows. As soon as the money stops, it has no power and no value. Keep it flowing…keep it growing!

Be generous!

And the man who put his hand on my shoulder; I realized later that I didn’t even know his name. All he wanted was to help me.

How generous is that?

Focus is defined in the dictionary as a concentration of attention or energy on something; as maximum clarity of an image.

So what does this mean to us and how do we use it?

Focus is important as it directs energy onto a subject for the required amount of time to make the changes required. It is widely accepted that what a person thinks about primarily will be reflected in the results in a person’s life. If a person focuses on making other people happy you can rest assured that that person will have happiness in their life. Along with happiness comes good health generally as the positive energy has beneficial results for the body. On the other hand, someone who focuses their attention on destruction and hate (take Hitler for example) will generally have an unpleasant life full of sadness. Even in death he suffers with a bad memory.

Successful people (and by success I am referring to position in life, financial, etc) tend to heavily focus on their success. They do things that are successful, they mostly say successful things and they tend to think successful things. It is rare to find a very successful person who spends his life watching TV, hanging out with drug addicts, gambling all day and drinking the local alcohol till they fall over.

No they are generally not watching TV and if they do it is something about success, they hang out with other successful people, they take calculated risks rather than gamble (not chance) and they drink expensive wines with dinner.

So how do you get focus?

Firstly, I recommend working in an area that interests you. It is very difficult to focus on something you do not like. So live your life as much as possible doing things you like. Most people have never sat down and written a list of the things they like in life. I recommend that you do and then spend the next few months evolving your life around these interests until you are predominantly doing the things you like to do.

Secondly, work on projects that are also important to you. As the saying goes “put your big rocks first”. This means first do the things that need doing first and then once they are done do the secondary less important issues. It is more important to meet with your clients than checking your email. Meet the clients first.

Thirdly, have a clear picture of what it is you want. If you have ever watched a movie on a projector that is not in focus, you will know how important focus is on the end result. When the projector is out of focus, the viewer can see the movie, but it is horrible to watch and impossible to see clearly. Only when the image is brought into focus does it start to make sense and become a pleasure to see. Life is the same. If you decide you want to buy a car, it is no good going to the car showroom and asking for a car as the salesman has no idea what kind of car you want and the possibilities are endless and the buyer will spend the rest of his life searching. If however you go to the Jaguar car showroom and ask for a 6 liter 24 cylinder 1963 wire spoke wheels in racing green with red interior, soft-top, manual gear shift e-type jaguar, then everyone knows exactly what you are looking for.

Further, associate with the type of people who can help you get what you want. It is really difficult to travel in the opposite direction to the mass. I am not saying go with the flow of society, but rather go with the flow of the society that is going in the direction you want. Choose your friends and associates carefully and make sure that they are in alignment with what you are looking for. If not, you may need to consider shifting associates rather than shifting desires.

These four keys to focus are in my opinion essential to success. There are other ingredients to the cake of success, but without these you are doomed. To recap:

1) Work in an area that is of interest to you
2) Work on projects that are important to you
3) Have a clear picture of what you want
4) Associate with people who are in alignment with your needs and desires

Energy is one of the most important elements you will need to be a success however you do need balance.

There are laws in the universe that dictate what happens in this world and they are non-moving and completely dependable. Our knowledge on how they work is essential to maintaining success.

Have you ever wondered about nature and how it all works? Which is more important to nature; a blade of grass or an elephant? How about a flower or a bee? Or is a cloud more important than a cow? Does nature decide that one is more important than the other or does it distribute nature’s energy in an equal amount? Nature does not have importance over domain; man does that and if we look at the state of man, we can see that if he followed nature’s way, the results would be better. Balance is always required and balance is always dependable.

So we need to work with the laws of energy and use that knowledge to our advantage without hindering the rights of other people.

The 1st law to energy is this; we attract who we are.

So if we give of positive energy, we will attract positive energy and giving off negative energy attracts negativity. If you are not sure if this works or not try it for an hour. Try being in a bad mood and see what happens to the people around you. Now I am not talking about trying to win the local popularity competition. As I said balance is needed, but rather just try to find the good in people. Treat them with friendship and respect. Generally be nice. Ask how you think they would want to be treated and treat them like that. Let your baggage go. If you are really hurt with someone, allow yourself to be hurt and then get over it. Don’t nurture the hurt for years and let it get in your way. Focus your thoughts on more positive issues.

The 2nd law to energy is; Intuition wins.

Knowledge and understanding can only go so far and then intuition kicks in. Intuition is a quality that you develop over time. Trust and loyalty in your own decisions is a must. If you doubt your own actions, so will everyone else. Again balance is an issue here. It is not practical to run off and just do everything at a whim, but instead it must feel right to you. Intuition comes from within. Learn to listen to what your body is trying to tell you and how it feels. Hen you are in congruence with your intuition it should feel good and smooth. Intuition is dependable.

The 3rd law of Energy: See the beauty in everything.

This is power in motion and gives a radiant energy to everything you see. No matter what is happening, there is something good about it. No matter what obstacle there is going on, there is something that can be learned. No matter how horrible a person seems to be, there is a loving side to that person. This kind of radiant energy breeds excitement because it focuses on positive things and this is what separates losers from winners. Winners see good in all.

The 4th law of energy: Giving from the heart creates more abundance.

There are two states to life; giving and receiving. For either to happen, the other must also. The saying goes “There is more happiness in giving than receiving” but I do not necessarily agree with this as receiving allows the giver to experience the joy of giving which should make the receiver happy also. You must be a receiver as well as a giver in order to allow giving work.

However, giving leads to more generosity and balance is required again. Do you see how nature always reverts back to balance? There is power in balance.

Conquering these 4 laws of energy are essential to success and you need to start practicing them daily.

A reminder of the four laws are:

1) We attract who we are
2) Intuition wins
3) See the beauty in everything
4) Giving from the heart creates more abundance

Don’t ever give up! If you believe something is true and correct and should be then don’t give up. If something is worth doing then stay in integrity and trust yourself.

The attitude to giving up is one of the major differences between successful people and the unsuccessful. The world is a tough place – no doubt about that, but wouldn’t it be boring if it wasn’t. Can you imagine living in a world with no obstacles or no problems? Or how about a world when you never could show your love or your courage as you got everything you wanted just by wishing? Maybe it sounds great, but I think after a while it would get very boring and very superficial.

I mean who would want to live in a world where you cold get a beautiful husband or wife and the car and house and all the money in the world just by thinking? I remember hearing Robert Allan (one of my mentors and multi-millionaire real estate guru) saying that the best thing about being a millionaire was the chase and hard work to get there, but once you are a millionaire it’s a bit boring as you can get everything you want! Now there is a shock to some of you. Actually with this ability would come also a lot of responsibility as we would get all the bad things we thought about too.

Now first of all there is a difference between giving up and giving in. Giving in to something can be a good thing. Giving in to a new idea or giving in to something not working is very different to saying that something is not working and I am giving up. When you give in to something you allow the possibilities of a new idea. This brings hope with it. However giving up admits defeat.

If there is something that you are trying to get done, but the people you are dealing with will not move, you may want to take a look at your negotiating and influencing skills. I have often found that giving people what they want also leads to them giving you what you want. Sometimes you may have to swallow your pride or sacrifice what you want to get the end result. Your customers and friends will reward your loyalty and you will be happy because you trust your own instincts.

So don’t ever give up, just give in. Giving in to what will be, surrendering to what is coming this is what we mean. Above all trust yourself. With trust comes integrity and with integrity comes the responsibility to what is right.

In the American Independence of Declaration it says “those who have the ability to help have the responsibility to help”.

Don’t ever give up!

Communication is the process of transferring information from a sender to a receiver with the use of some kind of medium in which the communication is understood to be the same by all parties concerned.

Now this sounds like a fairly easy task, but countries have gone to war over bad communication, friends have killed each other over poor communication, marriages breakdown daily because of poor communication and people loose jobs because of it as well.

You may think we would take the time learn how to communicate effectively, but in reality we tend to blunder along assuming what every one thinks and means.

There are many different types of communication. There is verbal, such as speaking even using the tones of our voices. Animals grunt and communicate (and some humans I know too!). then there is the non-verbal ways off communicating such as body language, sign language, touch, eye contact, writing, Morse code, smoke signals and so on.

In fact the verbal part of communication is small compare to what we as humans say without speaking. The way we stand, walk, look say much more about us than our voice. Actions speak louder than words.

How can we communicate in a better way and get better results? Well communication starts with receiving the communication correctly. We generally do not listen or read correctly. Even when we write we need to take care:

Message A: Meeting Now. Cancelled Lunch Instead

Message B: Meeting Now Cancelled. Lunch Instead

They mean completely different things and the only difference is the full stop in the sentence.

Taking care to send the correct message and to receive the correct message is essential. We are generally far too busy to listen properly, but we need to take the time to do so as it leads to fewer problems.

How will communicating properly aid our success?

Well in business there are generally two teams; a client and the supplier.

The client should know what they want before they approach the suppliers. They should have thought out the whole project before presenting it. I have sat through many meeting where clients haven’t researched their project and ended up wasting everyone’s time adjusting and adjusting everything. So clients should understand their project constraints and outlines before moving ahead. With the help of the internet, we have no reason not to be able to find out information about everything before the two parties are put together. This also helps the client to know that they are not being taken for a ride. Clear communication from the client will give the suppliers the ability to know all the requirements and avoid nasty surprises later. How many times have you heard “But you didn’t inform us about this part” during meetings? I have heard it far too many times.

The supplier should be able to take the incoming material and read it carefully before replying. Any questions or topics not clear should be addressed. Always find out who is your point person from the clients end and insist on only one point of command as it is impossible normally to please 10 different people making decisions. Everything should go through one coordinating person. If there is something unclear, do not assume. The saying “If it can go wrong, it will go wrong” pops up too many times to make second guessing a habit.

Assuming is a habit that kills communication and leads to disaster. We assume when we do not know the answer of something. As humans, we need to have answers to everything immediately and we cannot take the time to find out the truth and so we fill in the blanks based on previous experience and decide what will happen next based on expected behavior.

It will save a lot of brain drain, hassle and arguments if we stop assuming and communicate with the other party. Even if it takes a while to get the correct information do not make decisions until you have the correct information required.

If you believe, you only need to ask once.

I think that this is a fundamental part of success. Most people for example, pray every night to God for the same thing over and over again. But if they believed that God was really listening and that God was a powerful creator who made everything in the universe, why do they need to keep asking over and over again?

If you truly believe that God can do these things, then you just need to ask once, accept that it is coming and move on to the next part of life.

It will come to you when you are ready for it. This I think is the second part of success.

1) Believe it to be so;
2) Put yourself in a position to be ready to accept it.

If you found the magic lamp and you rubbed it and the Genii came out and said “Your wish is my command!” and you asked for a 100 foot yacht. Would you be happy if the Genii gave you it? Where would you put it? Could you afford to maintain it? Do you have a crew? Do you know how to sail it?

If the Genii was a good Genii he would say “I am preparing your 100 foot yacht, but it will take a little time to come…in the meantime, here is a rowing boat to get you started.

Money does not come to you for the same reason. Are you prepared for 1 million dollars? What would you do with it in the first place? Spend it all on fast cars, fast houses and fast people? So the Genii says; “Here is 1000 dollars for now, get used to it and let me prepare the rest for you at the same time.

The Law of Attraction states that you must attract the money to you and that the money must be equally attracted to you. This is why lottery winners go bankrupt. They didn’t attract the money to them, they got it by chance. No attraction = no stickiness!

Believe that wealth is yours ask for it once - then act accordingly and life will prepare you for it.

We are all millionaires in life the money is just on its way, put your self in the position to get out your claim stub when it arrives and say “I am ready for it and it is mine.”

Believe it to be so and maybe just maybe it will be.