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Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009

Sometimes I just want to stop and say, "Thank God!".



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Monday, December 07, 2009
A tribute to one of my mentor.


Few years ago I met a extra-ordinary man with extra ordinary philosophies. He told me his story and I was amazed in the philosophies that he shared to me that help me put my career back into shape. Here are few of the philosophies that he shared:
1. Failure is the result of a few error in judgement accumulated over time.
2. Success is the result of a few daily discipline executed over time.
3. Life accumulates. And I'm either accumulating debt that I'll be sorry for or I am accumulatingvalue that I'll be happy about.
4. All change needs to start with a change in philosophy and belief.

I realized that since that time that I heard and applied many of his philosophy and continued to refine it that my career took a dramatic turn. I would say that it was a blessing to have met him.

Yesterday he died because of pulmonary fibrosis. I was so saddened and at the same time thankful to God for giving me an opportunity to get to know this person.

To Jim, thank you so much.
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Friday, December 04, 2009
Top 10 principles that I like and live by! (cont)


In my last post, I shared five of the top ten principles that I like and lived with. Today allow me to share the remaining five.
Principle #6. Set goals.

I think setting goals has been belabored by many, if not all, of the motivational speakers I listen to. But only when I really took the effort of setting time to think about my goals in life that I have come to appreciate the exercise. If you have done this and felt it was not working for you then let me tell you that you are not alone. I too felt that way at one time. A time came when I thought setting goals are useless, after all only action produces results. But then as I continue to refine my goal setting methodology and I realized that it is guided action that produces right results and that's where goal setting comes in.

Until now I continued writing and re-reading my goals. And when a goal is achieved I feel a sense of fulfillment, a sense of satisfaction and my confidence increases. This year I achieved 3 major goals and have redefined and refined the other goals to meet worthy objectives.

Principle #7. Getting in debt for uncontrolled spending is really really bad.


It's a shame to declare to the world that I went down in debt. It may not be as massive as the debt of some people I know but the thought of being in debt as a single person is very shameful. I realized I lack the self-control to avoid it. I over spent on things that does not really matter. I am not different from the unwise. I stumbled financially and like a blind man I succumb to the ground of financial meltdown.

What turned things around is when I felt desperate. I was desperate to get out of debt. I was determined to stand up and fight a battle I realize I could win. If there is one thing I really regret this year it is to be in debt. Debt is a burden, a sort of shackle that can bind you and immobilize you.

The good news is I will be out of debt soon. My promise to myself is I will not be in debt for non-business reason. I will tear my credit card if I had to.


Principle #8. Be at peace with yourself.

I think one of the major struggles of a person is peace with him/her self. Some people are confused because they are at war with themselves. And what caused that war? I believe what causes internal conflict is when there is a major difference in personal belief and personal activity. To simply put it, it is when one person believes something but does not follow suit. This inability to follow through personal belief causes psychic damage and emotional conflict. A good example is say a person believes that he/she should be running his/her own business but the person is employed. This simple difference in belief and activity compounds to confusion and internal conflict.

When I realized this I clearly made up mind to identify my personal belief and act in accordance to that belief. In my case, I believe I should pray every morning and connect to God. I feel so disturb when I know I could have prayed and I couldn't follow through. This simple difference really affect my day and ultimately my performance. So I made up my mind that no matter what I should pray every morning. This minor re-alignment in personal belief added confidence in myself and a sense of fulfillment engulf my senses.

Principle #9. Challenge yourself continuously.

What or who challenges you? Do you wait for others to wake you up from rut or do you find ways to challenge yourself? The truth is many people wait for others to encourage them. Some people wait for others lift them up. But responsible people are self starters. They find ways to be encouraged. They go to places that encourages them to live a higher standards. They read motivational books and listen to audio books to inspire them. Instead of waiting for others to inspire them they look for inspiration.

My challenge to you is to challenge yourself continuously to live in higher standard, to improve your skills, to increase in knowledge, and to improve in performance. This always lead to living a better life and where there is growth, there is life.

Principle #10. Look up.

Are you always looking at your own navel? Always looking at YOU? There is a better way to live and that is to look up. It's not you and life is not all about you. I believe that there is a Higher Power that can fill the emptiness in our lives. I believe that we find meaning in Him and being in Him. This year is a also a year of oscillating faith. My faith in God goes up and down. But then I found that if I live outside of God that I feel empty and useless.


I tried looking up and up and decipher the glory of Him Who Sits on the Throne and an unto the Lamb that was slain. Let me tell you being in the presence of God - there is nothing like it in this world.
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Thursday, December 03, 2009
Top 10 principles that I like and live by!





It's December and that means in less than 30 days the year will soon be over and it will be a start of a new year. For me these times are usually the best time to reflect and look back at how I performed for the last 335 days of my life. I look back and tried to write down as many positive principles as I can remember that I applied for this year 2009. I came up with almost 50. For this post, I would share to you what I believe is the top 10 principles that made a positive impact for this year.

1. Save 10% of your income.

Maybe one of the easiest goal to measure is one that involves money. Money can be counted and when something can be counted you can easily determine whether you made it or not. I started this year with a goal to save 20% of my income and I followed suit but by the last quarter I got largely in debt (for wrong reasons) and I ended up saving only 10%. But even with 10% savings I was still amazed on how much I was able to save by the last quarter. I was amazed how my lifestyle adjusted to it. Had I not saved 10% I will still be the same guy last year without a penny in my name.

My success in this area leave me excited in stretching my strategy to saving 20% of my income for 2010.

2. You are self-employed.

I think being self-employed is one of the most powerful principles that I have learned and applied since 2007. It changed the way I look at work and the way I look at my performance. The concept is really simple, it is to realize that you are the CEO of your own personal service corporation and that your employer is your biggest client. Therefore you need to satisfy your customer with your performance and help you employer save and earn more money. When you think this way, you will realize that for your employer/customer to get the best service you need to grow in experience, in intellect, in skills, and in relationship handling. You will also realize that you need to empathize with your employer's customer to serve your company better.

Being the CEO of your own company means you are responsible in your own growth. You cannot blame your employer for your pay check because your employer is your customer and he/she is paying you for the quality of service that you are giving. This type of attitude will bring you to the attention of people who can help you advance in your career.

3. Read, read, and read.

One of the principles that gave me a lot of ideas is the principle of reading and studying. A lot of the people I know don't want to hear about this principle because they are too lazy to take extra time to read. They often tell me that experience is better than reading. I know that it is true but there is something about reading that I could not explain that gave me an edge over those who wait for experience to learn. It is as if a portion of my mind has been opened and began working for me. I believe this portion of the brain is unused by those who refuse to take time to read and are deluded by their ignorance and laziness.

Read for an hour in the morning and in the evening a book/magazine within in your field . This habit will continuously move you to the direction of being the top 10% in your organization.

4. Act, act, act, and act.

There is no substitute for action. If you want to multiply your results you need to take action. It is the only way to produce results.

Most of the time you do not need more knowledge to be successful, you need to do something about your goal to be a success.

5. Take notes

Take notes of ideas, quotes, concepts and stories. Taking notes is another dimension to learning. There is something about taking notes that makes the writer smarter. Even more smarter if the writer re-reads what he/she wrote in his notes.

Another note-taking concept that I learned and applied is keeping a small notebook for ideas. I have notebook with me and if I get an idea I write it down so it will not be lost into oblivion. If there is a to-do item I also write it down so it will not clatter in my head and affect my focus.

Allow me to stop here and continue tomorrow for my post. Meanwhile I give you the last five principles that I believed and applied in 2009.

6. Set goals.
7. Getting in debt for uncontrolled spending is really really bad.
8. Be at peace with yourself.
9. Challenge yourself continuously.
10. Look up.
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Thursday, November 12, 2009
Facing Your Giants

Used Max Lucado's book cover for this poster... something I was working on few weeks ago.:)

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Monday, November 09, 2009
Purpose


The story of Sisyphus
One of the famous Greek mythology is the legend of Sisyphus. If you remember your Greek mythology class Sisyphus was a king punished in Tartarus by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity. Reading about Sisyphus one can ask what is the purpose of life? Is it to labor just to roll a boulder on top of a hill and at its pinnacle see that same boulder that he worked so hard fall back to the bottom of the hill? Meaningless right? And this very word 'meaningless' echoed in one of the writings of Solomon, the wisest king who ever lived, in the book called Ecclesiastes. There Solomon wrote, Meaningless of meaninglessness! All is meaningless!". Even the wisest king who lived realized that by the end of the day we are just 'chasing the wind' if we pursue our own desires. So if you think that our purpose is to pursue our own happiness, our flesh, our own pride, our own ambitions, and our desires then there will come a time when like Sisyphus we are simply rolling boulders up and down the hill for nothing!

So what is the purpose of life? Rick Warren in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, wrote that people who does not know their purpose can either guess about their purpose or read their manual and from there learn about their purpose.

Did we came with a manual?
I am a Christian and I believe that the Bible is our manual for life. If you think otherwise then I will not debate you. I will simply ask you to try reading it and I pray that God, the Creator of the Heavens and Earth, will open your mind as He has opened mine to understand it.

In a nutshell...
So what is our purpose? Let me quote King Solomon's answer to this question,
"Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man."

Yes we are here to fear Him and to glorify Him. 'Is that all?", you ask? Yes that's all. You see outside of God, life has no meaning. But with Him there is wholeness, peace, and real joy.

To conclude
Maybe you are disappointed with my discussion on Purpose in this Vision, Passion, and Purpose series of posts. I could not blame you.:) This is a bit direct and I do not want to shove my faith on anyone. However I experienced life in an extraordinary way these past few days and I realized that living life without a definite purpose is a complete waste of time and energy. I have lived my life for myself and you know what I realized how meaningless it was. I have worked my butt off and by the end of the day I experienced what Solomon calls 'chasing the wind'. I did not felt any satisfaction. I was achieving some results but the bottom-line is that I feel so out of place. At the pinnacle of every challenge I will simply roll by boulder down the hill and watch it as it reaches the bottom. But amidst it all I still heard a still small voice asking me to pray for sight although I thought I was not blind. I prayed that I may see what I may have missed in life and like the blind man that Jesus healed I could say that all I know is that I was blind and now I see. I see clearly that life's purpose is worship and I want to spend it worshiping my God. Once I got my sight and learn my purpose it is easy to be passionate. Indeed Vision, Passion, and Purpose goes hand in hand.

God bless you,
Joseph


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Wednesday, September 09, 2009
no image

I'm sure you've heard the words, "Winning is Everything" but is it really true? A little thought experiment can prove that winning is really not everything. Try to imagine a picture of you winning,  it could be you receiving a trophy in a sports competition, or receiving a huge amount of money from a lottery, or receiving a medal for academic achievement, or it could be just waking away after giving your neighbor a piece of your mind leaving him silent and shocked, or it could be anything. Now try to imagine a picture of your integrity and reputation, will you trade your integrity and reputation for a trophy? or cash? or medal? or a chance to shock and awe your neighbor? Which is more important to you - your integrity and reputation or winning? If you choose the later then let's go to the next category: imagine your family or love one, it could be your father or mother or brother or your sister or your child or everyone. Now will you trade any of them for  personal glory? or piece of gold? Probably not. What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but losses his own soul? Nothing.

Don't get me wrong winning is important but it's all there is.
--
Taking a sip,
Joseph Librero
Visit my other BLOG - http://yuppietalks.blogspot.com/
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Sunday, June 28, 2009
6 Lessons I learned from waking up early

I apologize for not updating my blog this week. I was a bit occupied lately with my work-life and I was very much focused on my 30-day challenge. A couple of people already told me personally they've recommended my blog to their friends and for that I want to thank you (you know who you are). If you want to comment please comment on the article or send me a mailjoseph.librero@gmail.com. So how was I in my 30-day challenge? Right now I voluntarily wake up between 4AM to 5AM with the exception of today where I woke up at 7.30AM. :( I was not able to sleep early last night causing on an adjustment in my waking time. So what did I learn so far in this experience?








1. Don't sleep late.

If you are an early riser then you probably know this already. Rising early does not mean you need to deprive yourself with sleep. I used to sleep late and try to wake up early and I realized that I cannot keep this kind of lifestyle because it is taking away my productivity and creativity. A restless body creates less than a well-rested one. While it's true that you can function with little sleep but I am pretty sure it's hard to perform at a hundred percent if you don't have enough rest.










2. If you think you are awake don't roll back to sleep - stand up instead.

One of the mistakes we can make in our quest to wake up early is to roll back to sleep when we are about to wake up. This will cause us to fall back to sleep and ultimately make our goal. I know this because I just did it today.:) Also if you are using your internal body clock to wake up, doing this will callous the judgment of your brain causing you repeat the process the next day until you will lose interest in pursuing your goal.




3. Be more focused as the weeks go by.

Within the days of the first week of starting any habit or goal our body gets excited with our mind and everything seems to be "in the flow". Meaning our body will cooperate with the mind and soul so the triumvirate you are working as one so everything is easy as a pie. But after about a week one of them seems to lose track and doing it seems to be a chore. In my case I need to remind myself of my goal and the reason why I'm doing it and that there are people out there who is reading and will be reading my blog who is looking out for me to succeed.:)









4. Get ready for some paradigm-shift.Developing a new habit is not easy if you do not change your frame of mind. If you maintain the thought that waking up is hard then it's almost a guarantee that it will not be long until you will go back to your old self. In life it is the same, you need to change your paradigm (internally) before your body (the externally) will truly change.In my case I have to be convinced that if I have to grow I have to wake up early and I have to change the way I think about waking up. I have to be excited about waking up early instead of doing it as a chore.


5. How are the other "ducks" doing?
No habit is stand-alone. It means that if you try to make a part of you better other parts has to adjust at least a bit. When we try to keep all the "ducks" in line we need to make sure the other "ducks", other aspects of your life, are moving with it as well. In my case, waking up early should mean I come to the office early, I get more things done, I get more things done early, I make decisions more effectively and etc. This should translate to me coming home early or delivering more and getting more things done .


I am aware that for some of you this is a piece of cake and some of the lessons I shared are no-brainer but for some of you who are struggling the way I did I hope you will get inspired and I hope I've triggered a part of you to be better. Probably the best lesson that I've learned so far in this quest to wake up early is that waking up early is way better than not waking up early or waking up late.




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