Positive Thoughts

The mind is a very important thing. What it thinketh, it will do. Thoughts equal actions. But what is the driving force behind out thoughts? It’s emotions. Thoughts are equivalent to a car. You need a physical car to drive. However, emotions are the driver. The driver decides the course in which the car goes. In other words, emotions drive our thoughts in a certain direction. There exist two forms of emotions, negative and positive. Needless to say, positive emotions drive us positively and negative emotions drive us negatively. Therefore, it is very important for us to maintain our emotions positively by always saying positive things, by doing positive things and having positive emotions like love and faith in oneself.
Positive emotions drive you to great heights. However, unfortunately, negative emotions drive you deep into the gutter. So deep, that it is very difficult to come out of it and so deep that it blinds you from reality. You cannot tell what is real and what is not because you are only clouded by negative emotions and therefore, you only see negative things. For eg, in a relationship, “He doesn’t love me anymore.”
It is natural for us to be driven by our negative emotions rather than our positive emotions because take a look around us….negativity is emphasized rather than positivity. For eg, in the news, which we read everyday (and this is a very strong influence on our mind and emotions). The news only report negative news and rarely good news. It is already driven into our mind all these negativity. When we were growing up, parents always tell their kids, “Don’t do this. Don’t do that.” “You cannot stay up late. You cannot go out with your friends.” “Don’t” and “cannot” are all negative words. It has been instill in us as we were growing up and all around us. In order to break out of this negativity, we have to retrain our emotions and mind to think positively, to feel positively. Yup…you wouldn’t believe it but you have to train your mind to be positive. Some ppl who grew up in a positive environment needs less training while others who are brought up in the negative environment need to work at it even more.But the most important thing, first of all, is to realize it and be aware of it. The biggest stepping stone is to realize and to accept it and then only can you work towards changing your mind from negative to positive.

~~~~If you think you can or cannot accomplish a task, you will be correct in either case - Henry Ford~~~~

Bruin Open

Bruin Open is a badminton tournament organised by UCLA. It is held every year in the last week of October. So, what is Bruin Open to me? I am an avid badminton player....maybe avid is not the right word. I am actually a competitive badminton player (only at club level) who participates in quite a number of tournaments around the state of CA in a year.

Bruin Open marks the beginning of a great partnership that was formed 2 years ago with my badminton women doubles partner, Saroja. It was just 2 months after I gave birth to Zoey and Saroja approached me for the first time to see if I was interested in taking part in this tournament. This is not my first tournament as I have already taken part in a few with Chris, playing mixed doubles but it is my first women doubles tournament. I have always preferred to play womens' doubles as I felt that in mixed doubles, usually, the guy will dictate the game and I preferred to play a more active role in contributing to the game. Therefore, without thinking too much of my fitness or rather lack of fitness and preparation for this tournament, I said "yes" to Saroja. The rest, like we say....is history.

We never expected our first tournament to be such a success. We actually came back with a medal, 2nd place in the D category. Okla....although it's the lowest category but hey, you have to start somewhere right? Hehe.....moreover, I have not lifted the racket for 9 months and am much overweight and not able to move very well around the court. Despite all that, thankfully, my partner made up for all of my "temporary" disability with her lightning fast movement and good defense. I remembered in between the matches, I had to pump milk as I was still breastfeeding Zoey! Haha.....thinking back on this makes me smile! That's because when friends ask me what is that I'm carrying, I'll sheepily say, "It's a pump!" Well, you know la, Asians are still quite embarassed talking about these things.

Anyways......this is the list of tournaments that we won up to date!

Year 2005

Bruin Open - 2nd place in DWD

Year 2006

SunGod - 1st place in DWD and semi-finals in CWD

We missed out on the Dave Freeman tournament as I had to go back to Malaysia.

CalState Games - semifinals for CWD. We had a walkover as I twisted my ankle in the quarter final match but hey, we still won the match with us playing the mixed formation.

Bruin Open - didn't win any medal here. Didn't play too well in this tournament.

Bay Area Open Fall - 1st place DWD and Semifinals for CWD. Yeah, we actually flew up to San Jose to play this tournament.

Year 2007

Bay Area Open Spring - 1st place CWD and Consolation BWD. This was a pretty successfult outing as in the BWD, we beat some of the players that we thought were better than us! Quite a confident booster!

UC Davis Open - 2nd place CWD and quarter final in BWD. This was a good outing too coz' we had really tough matches and we won it mostly in 3 sets. And the highlight was in the semifinal match where we lost the first set and we were down 10-17 and we made a comback and win the 2nd and 3rd set. Another confident booster! Oh, did I mentioned that we had to play against each other in the singles cateogry at the semifinal stage? Yup....it was so weird!

CalState - 2nd place BWD and 1st/2nd CWD. NO twisted ankle this time!

SGVBC Open - 1st place DWD. This was the first tournament that we won prize money. $50 and an Armotec 250 racket each! Wow....we're on our way to being a professional player.

Bruin Open - which will be held in 3 weeks time. Probably our last tourney for quite some time. I'll let you know about the outcome next time.

That summarizes our 2 years of partnership. I must say, we are one of the few successful partnership, as far as our club is concern. We learn from each other and keep improving and the best part is we have the same philosophy, that is to "Have fun" while competing but at the same time, strong determination to win every match! We adopt the "never say die attitude" and another strong point of our partnership, is we both are very strong mentally and that is very important in competitive sports!

So, here's to 2 years of great partnership and more medals to come!

~~~~It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. -Archie Griffen~~~~

Off day or is it Day off?

I took a half day off today and spent time at home with my family. It was a much well-spent time compared to sitting in front of the computer at work running simulation. So, what was my day like? Days like this doesn't come very often and you really have to take the time and appreciate it. First, we went to Jack in the Box to have something to eat. Zoey was getting frantic as she was hungry and so was I. It was nice to just be able to sit down and chat a little while spending time with the family. Sometimes, people are so busy in their working life that they do not realise that time just pass them by in a wink. Lately, I had more time to sit back and appreciate the events happening around me and also the people around me.

We came back home after that and I started doing some of my profit lance thingy. I find it so overwhelming because there were just too much information and I don't know where to start. Yup.....we're trying to get into internet marketing and I've committed myself to writing this blog every other day as a start. I think this is a good way to start and from there, I will start to improve and promote my blog.

And what am I doing now? I'm sitting by the computer table and Zoey is sitting next to me, watching Barney. This is a mental picture that I must take note and remind myself often because this is what I am working towards. Being able to work at home and spend time with Zoey and not missed out on her growing up. Boy....they do grow up really fast. She's already 2 and this is the time she needs a lot of interaction and learning how to speak. For people who wants the freedom to work from home and spend time at home, I think this is the way to go.

Internet marketing is just about selling information. Most people, and I was one of them had the misconception that you need to have a product to do internet marketing. Not true! All you need is a computer and the ability to write or type. That is all you need to start of with. Of course, once you have written quite a few posts, you can then promote your site so that others would come to your site. So you must be asking, how do you earn money from this? You need to add in advertistment using Adsense and when visitors to your site clicks on these ads, you get paid. It's as simple as that.

So, today all of you bear witness to my pledge that I will work on my blog and my ultimate goal is to be able to work from home, eventually. Wish me luck!

~~~~Whatsoever the mind can conceive and believe ... it can achieve. -- Napoleon Hill~~~~