Are You Single? It’s Good News!

Disclaimer: This article is not for everybody. This is for single people out there. If you have a partner at present, it’s good news. If you don’t have a partner yet, it’s also good news!

Confession, I’m a no-girlfriend-since-birth man. I really am! I was raised up to truly focus on my studies.

I remember my mom telling me “Son, study hard because [formal] education is the most important thing we can bestow upon you.”

Because I came from poor beginnings, I took my mom’s advice seriously. I understood what she was trying to point out to me. And so, I graduated First Honorable Mention in elementary and Salutatorian in high school. In college, I was listed in the Dean’s List in two of my eight semesters.

During my school days, I never courted a woman. Can you imagine how difficult it was for me AND for the girls around me? :)

But I did have crush to some of them.

When I started to work I said to myself, “Hey, school’s finished and I now earn my own money. I can court a woman I like!”

Then I saw myself constructing a plan, doing some research, interviewing people asking for their advice to court a friend. She’s beautiful, kind, down-to-earth and family centered.

But before the planning and researching stage, I normally visit her as a friend. We go out as friends. We talk and text over the phone as friends.

Then I blurted it out. I said, “I want to court you.” (One of the things I learned in leadership is to be clear to the people around you.)

She denied.

I pressed on. Of course I asked her “Why?”

But it didn’t take long and I stopped.

And then I was enlightened by a timely quote I read, “Just wait, the right one will come along. If they haven’t yet, maybe it’s because God wants you to love yourself more first.”

I realized that instead of spending my time with a single person at such a young age, I started to work on improving myself, my gifts and my talents.

I started to go to the gym to work out.

I lead people to serve patients for their medicine needs.

Last month, I attended seminar about Organic Farming (I dream of having one). And I encourage you even just to visit the farm. It’s awesome and amazing experience!

A few days ago, I bought the cheapest model of guitar from the music store. Because I didn’t have the time to study how to play the instrument years ago, I believe I now have it, the time. It is one of my fondest dreams to play “bahay kubo.” (Don’t laugh too hard).

This coming November, I’m scheduled to attend conference about entrepreneurship. I’m excited!

I focus on growing myself more, on taking time to care for myself.

Preacher Bo Sanchez keeps on talking about “love tank”. He said, “I believe that each of us has a ‘love tank’ from where we scoop up and dispense love to others.  If we keep on giving love to others, our love tanks will soon be empty—so we need to replenish that tank.”

If you’re single, use your time to discover more about yourself.

To grow as a person you dream to be.

To expand your territories. To serve more people.

To love yourself.

And I believe, soon you will attract the person harmonious for your life.

Have a blessed weekend!

Why We Need to Detoxify our Body, Emotion and Spirit?

This is the greatest time in all of human history to be alive.

One of my supreme goals is to live to be 100 years old. This is so that I can enjoy the very most that life has to give for the very longest possible time with excellent health, high levels of energy, and freedom from illness and disease of any kind.

Just a few days ago, I had the privilege to actually live inside an organic farm even for a short period of time. Almost everything there is organic.

The soil is organic. The fertilizer is organic. The plants are organic. The chickens are organic. The pigs are organic. The food is organic. Even the people living inside the farm are organic.

I’m not kidding! They eat and breathe organically.

And from what I observed, they are happy people.

Detoxify our Body

Back when I was studying, most of my college life, I lived alone in a room my family rented near the school.

Because I was alone, I did the laundry, maintained the room clean and cooked and washed the dishes.

Yes! I cooked my own breakfast. Can you believe that?

My breakfast usually is a cycle of fried hotdog, fried bacon, fried ham, fried hotdog, fried chicken nuggets, fried longanissa and… did I mention fried hotdog?

All were processed food. And I dreaded to eat vegetables.

That was me.

Today, fruits are part of my daily diet. And after that living-in-the-farm experience, I make it a point to eat vegetables. I realized I need meat as a source for my protein requirement, but vegetable is also important.

This helps me to be more energetic, more enthusiastic and more positive in my physical outlook.

But detoxifying our body alone is incomplete.

Detoxify our Emotions

Our emotion plays a role in the way we live our lives.

We might be healthy in our body but if our emotions are sick, our body will be sick as well. Just give it some time.

If all you do is imagine your fears everyday, guess what will happen into your body, it will give way and be sick as well.

If you’re sick in your beliefs, if you believe that you’re ugly, you’re no good, no one will like you, and no one will love you, your body will cave in and die as well.

I believe that we need to love ourselves and acknowledge our needs. We ought to have self love by allowing only positive and encouraging things into our lives.

Philosopher Zig Ziglar said, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.”

Your mind is like a garden, if you do not deliberately plant flowers and tend carefully, weeds will grow without any encouragement at all.

We need to detoxify our body and emotions. But the last part is the most important dimension of our life to detoxify.

Detoxify our Spirit

Preacher Bo Sanchez said, “Spirit is the deepest part of you that is connected to God. When you are not connected to God, you have no peace, you have guilt, and you have burdens. And what happens, your body manifests all that guilt and manifest all that confusion. I’ve seen many people when they reconcile to God, when they repent on their sin, they get healed in their body. Slowly, diseases fall.”

May you live longer life. 

Have a blessed weekend!

Do You Experience Shortage of Time?

In today’s living, we seem to experience shortage of time or what I call time deficiency. Information age has something to do with this. We are bombarded with gadgets plus a worldwide access to almost everything.

People are never been connected and updated with each other.

In my elementary days, our big family (from grandparents to tito’s and tita’s to cousins) only has one gaming console, the Family Computer. During that time, if you want to play, you need to wait for the game, played by the big bosses, to be over (which is almost impossible to happen). What we do while waiting is read a book, play marbles or tagu-taguan (hide-and-seek).

We don’t have much choice.

Today, saying “I don’t have much to do” or “I don’t know what to do” or “I don’t have other options” is almost saying “I do not sin.”

Our time is now indirectly proportional to our choices.

To better illustrate this, I borrowed this graphic from the famous Seth Godin. 

Management of Choices

Since college I’ve been caught up in the dilemma of experiencing time deficiency. A lot of projects to do, exams to review, thesis to finish and girlfriends to show up (No, just kidding with the last example).

When I started to work, same thing.

Until one day, I asked myself, “How can I manage my time?”

So I started to Google time management, watched videos about it and read articles about it.

And then I realized that Life is about choices. Life is about series of choices.

Millionaire Bo Sanchez said “There is no such thing as time management there is only management of your choices, actually making the choice. Actually saying “I’m taking charge of my choices.”

Friends, if you do not choose, other people will choose for you.  If you don’t schedule your time, other people will come in, friends, barkada; things like TV and the internet will come and get your time.  

This is my big message for you this week.

Make a choice.

Have a blessed weekend!

Why do we Need to Re-imagine and Re-invent Education?

All around the globe, there’s a growing consensus that our education systems are broken. Our education system created a curriculum comprises of topics with corresponding time allotted to each topic. Because of this, they failed to address the learning curve of a specific student.

It doesn’t matter whether the student learns quickly or slowly as long as the curriculum is being followed. And from my personal experience during my early years in primary school, every time I was not able to cope up, my self confidence goes down; my creativity turns into dust.

All kids have extensive creative capacity. In education, it is as important as literacy, and we dissipate it.

Let me share you a story about a boy in the Nativity play.

The part where the three kings come in to offer their gifts, they went out of order.

And completely unintentionally, the first child came forward and said “I bring you gold”.

The second said “I bring you myrrh”.

Then the third child came forward and said “Frank sent this.”

The point is that kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they’ll have a go. They’re not frightened of being wrong.

And I don’t mean that being wrong is the same thing as being creative.

Sir Ken Robinson, an English author and international advisor on education observed, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.”

According to UNESCO, in the next 30 years, more people worldwide will be graduating from education since the beginning of history. But now kids are going back home to play Candy Crash. Because now you need an MA or MS, whereas before you needed a BA or BS. Soon you’ll need a Ph.D.

It’s a process of academic inflation.

We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence.

Sir Ken Robinson believes that, “Our only hope for the future is to adopt a new perception of human ecology. One in which we start to reconstitute our perception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds, in the way we strip mine the earth for a particular commodity. And for the future it won’t service. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we’re educating our children. The only way we’ll do it, is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are, and seeing our children for the hope that they are, and our task is to educate their whole being, so they can face this future, which we may not even see. But they will, and our job is to help prepare them to make something of it.”

Technology & Education

I found this very interesting website founded by Salman Khan, an American educator, which produces video lessons teaching a wide spectrum of academic subjects. It is a teaching tool based on your own learning pace with their adaptive assessment environment. The website is www.khanacademy.org

It is a non profit website funded by Bill & Melinda Gates foundation and Google.

I share this to you because I believe that our classroom should not have a one-size-fits-all type of teaching. There are students who learn faster than the other regardless of age.

With the help of technology, we can accelerate learning for all ages.

Have a blessed weekend!