Category: Motivation

Live your Dreams, don’t Dream your life

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You go to sleep, with the moment that you are about to close your eyes when everything is dark, and with only the light coming up from your phone… You are checking Facebook and viewing some sort of cute video of someone going on a vacation. And you begin to wonder what would’ve been if that was you in that video, and you finally surrender to your sleep and begin dreaming of a vacation that may not come.

How many times we dream our life instead of living our dreams? 

I read in a book once that the house of your dreams is called the house of your dreams because you can’t have it, otherwise it would be called your house. 

The tip of this week, revolves around living your dreams; you need to first know your what are your dreams, so per example if I ask you about your dream house, you should be able to describe it with precision, from how many rooms to the colors of the walls and so on, and finally you would feel deep inside what makes it so special to you and why is that important.

After defining and identifying your dream and describing why this dream is important for you, you can ask a simple question. What is the simplest step I can get towards that dream, even if it’s too small to make a difference, or if you eventually won’t get there; What is that Simplest Step…? 

And then… You Just make that First Step… and follow it with more steps… and see where this would lead. There’s lot of motivational quotes and  programs about realizing your dreams, but this week… Just Make one step!  and when asked WHY… You know deep inside the answer. 

May all your dreams come true!

Cheers,
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Samer Chidiac is a Strategic Innovation Advisor, a Business Psychologist, a Philanthropist, an Author and a Speaker. 

You can check his Books on Amazon, Follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and check his Website for More.

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Sometimes, you need to go back to what worked!

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For the past 3 years, I have debated to go back to blogging and publishing Monday tips or not; The journey of The Monday Tip was fascinating by itself and it brought a lot of joy to me and to my reader… The Secret about the story of this blog was described in the Book “Balanced Circles” where I included all the posts and all the methodology and philosophy of how to reinvent yourself that helped me personally. 

Live Everyday with no Regrets, So you don’t regret it one day

Samer Chidiac

At the end of the year 2018, I have done a lot of thinking and decided to go back to the good old days of blogging about anything and everything… A Tip for Every Monday.

And in addition, based on popular demand, a New Relationships category will be added! 

I can’t promise that I will be writing every monday, but like Hell I will try! 

The Tip for this week will be, as it always been, simple: 

Sometimes you need to go back to what worked in the past because you never know how life can change in your favor, so that crazy idea you had when you were 20 might just be EXACTLY right 10 years later… 

Have a beautiful week,

Cheers,
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Focus on your destination, and then flow like Water…

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There was that day, a day like any other, when I started my laptop, maybe I was feeling a bit down, maybe just one of these days… All I could remember is that what you are reading right now, is the last post of a project that I never knew that I would be starting that morning… The Monday Tip, a Weekly Blog that aimed at sharing positive vibes, and assist others one way or another.

3 years later; thousands of readers from all over the world and a lot of articles have been written with one common purpose: Influencing the life of Others.

Some of the articles went around a productivity tip, some went for strategy, management, but mostly they revolved around giving you a slice of motivation every week.

With the end of 2016, I’m closing this chapter by keeping this blog alive as a reference, and documenting it into 2 books: “Refresh! The 30 day Challenge” and “Balanced Circles”,

  • The first “Refresh! The 30 day Challenge” is crafted in a way that uses 30 selected articles in a specific sequence with an associated challenge that needs to be completed within 24 hours, and where after the 30 days, you would feel the difference in resetting major aspects of your mind and life.
  • The latter “Balanced Circles” includes the full collection of tips, in printed format, with a logical format, and extended chapters and added epilogues. With an added section of the Refresh! Methodology.

“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.”

~Bruce Lee

Now what would be the quote of this week?

We all have thought of or started some sort of a project; be it a professional project, a personal project, an idea or a dream… Whether it was an important and significant or just random, 2 points you need to remember:

  1. Focus on the destination
  2. Flow like water

If you really want your project to succeed, you need to set a clear destination, that would be articulated briefly in your mind, and revised along the way. Some people fail because they spend too much time trying to figure out so many details in advance… Stop Torturing your project and yourself… Have a clear & simple destination.

If you are not flexible, you would break along the way, mainly because you would face a lot of unexpected surprises along the way; sometimes happy ones, and sometimes unpleasant; either case, your project may be impacted, and it’s the level of how much you are agile and flexible that would dictate the impact.

And best of all, be ready to make mistakes, and learn from them, and adapt along the way! it’s OK not to be perfect, just take as much time as you need, and don’t worry if your project didn’t find the attraction you were hoping for at first, just keep going and NEVER give up!

I hope you enjoyed my project, and Remember to Stay in touch!

Have a nice week, every week!
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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Before asking questions, learn how to interpret the answers

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We’ve all heard the sentence that you need to ask the right questions in order to get better answers; While it is valid and true in most situations, it could be useless if you were – per example – not being able to interpret the answer one it was given to you :).

On one of my trips to Minsk – Belarus, I needed to perform a relatively simple task that every tourist would’ve done, which was taking the metro; My Russian language was more elementary, meaning that I could construct sentences and have some “decent tourist vocabulary” and could also understand the meaning of a whole conversation all together; the thing is I needed to ask for basic instructions like where to buy tickets and which way to go to Station X from where I stand.

The Funny thing, is that I knew the questions to ask, what I failed to do, was to interpret the different answers I received :), you see you need to be precise on the instruction so you don’t end up somewhere else don’t you?

In our life, we keep looking for answers, some could be philosophical like the purpose of our life or what the future could hold for us, and some could be very simple, like what should you wear on a specific occasion, and while some answers are more simple and further obvious than others,  the way you would seek the answers could differ dramatically… Mainly due to whom you are asking your question? are you asking yourself? are you asking someone else? are you asking The Divine? your guardian angels?

If you are asking a question to someone who only speaks Russian or Spanish, you will need to tailor your question to make sure they understand you, but most importantly, you will need to be prepared to interpret the answer that will follow; whether the answer you were looking for was literate or figurative or even simply silence. 

This Monday’s Tip, is about being prepared, so you don’t miss an opportunity, Communicate clearly on what you want, but most importantly, learn more about the answers you are looking for, so you don’t pass right next to them without noticing.

“Speed is irrelevant if you are going in the wrong direction.”  

~Mahatma Gandhi

Cheers,
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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Smile like a Tunisian

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It is no secret that Tunisia is a dear country/city to me, it has a wonderful nature, exceptionally nice people, superb spirit and a long history of intellectual culture, and of course its people are always smiling :). But that is not the reason why I’m writing this week’s tip.

You see, since 2007, while I work across the Middle East and Africa, my travel schedule is usually very filled, and traveling across east and west is not exactly a bus trip, so you can imagine hours of travel with all the complexity of getting visas on short notice and even the absence of daily flights depending on the country boarding from and many more…

However, in about 20 countries I covered, there’s always something that has been a bit different about Tunisia; No matter how things went wrongtires-300x200, they eventually work out at the last minute. I can name many MANY examples, of when I thought I will miss speaking at events because flights were delayed, or that there was a 90% chance that I WON’T be able to get Visa on time or simply because a combination of all of the above made me feel like pushing my luck to the extreme to succeed.

You would really laugh when you read the details of most of my travel plans, how I needed to speak in 3 countries in 4 days, while there’s like only one chance for me to make it on time and it would be if I take one exact flight and I could make it to the airport on time with no traffic and there was no delays at customs and no delays on the flights and and and… so Chances of Success was like 1 in 75… And it was a huge risk… But yet things ALWAYS worked out… Only in that specific country…

So then I learned this wonderful trick to make me overcome the complexity of everything… SMILING… Yes I used to Smile :), and know that despite all the VIVID complexities and risks, things will work out. I was smiling like a Tunisian. 

And I still remember talking with a friend/colleague there (Selma) who was normally panicking x 100 because she’s the one organizing a training or workshop where I need to speak in…

“Don’t Worry Selma, Things will work out, they always do… It’s Tunisia, and GOD Loves Tunisia…”

Now in our life, there are so much complexities that arise while we are trying to accomplish something, and most would seem like very tiny details that could mess up everything, remember to keep your spirit high, and to smile, cause then the universe will smile back at you, and things will just work out. Smile like those wonderful people! Remember: Keep your Spirit High, Look up to the Skies and Smile like a Tunisian.

Have a great week!

Cheers,
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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder… Ugliness as well.

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So you wake up one day, and while you are walking out of your room, you suddenly see a Cockroach on the floor and you start having a mixed feeling of disgust and fear, then you would start thinking that this insect might certainly have been in the kitchen and marched over the area where you place your food on… No Wait… The reason is because the person who was suppose to clean up MUST have been not working well, and Needs to be fired… and you continue with stuff like “Oh My god, I hate killing cockroaches… will it just go away… what should  I Do“… and over the course of the next 2 minutes all you could think of… is how inconvenient of a situation that must have been…  And to your surprise… it turns out that this was not an insect, but only a small piece of black jewelry that must have fell down from you while you entered the house late last night…

What exactly Happened??

Nothing… It was all just.. YOU!

Yes my dear friend, it could happen to any of us, and it’s perfectly normal, that your brain can play tricks on you, and in the absence of a confirmed truth, your _______________ could fill in the gap… (and depending if you’re an optimist or pessimist… you can place the correct word there.)

In one of his TED Talk, Professor Paul Bloom, was talking about the origin of pleasure in an exceptional presentation (Check it out here); He shared an experience that will illustrate the tip for this week, Quoting from his talk:

Now I’ve been talking so far about pleasure, but what I want to suggest is that everything I’ve said applies as well to pain. And how you think about what you’re experiencing, your beliefs about the essence of it, affect how it hurts. One lovely experiment was done by Kurt Gray and Dan Wegner. What they did was they hooked up Harvard undergraduates to an electric shock machine. And they gave them a series of painful electric shocks. So it was a series of five painful shocks. Half of them are told that they’re being given the shocks by somebody in another room, but the person in the other room doesn’t know they’re giving them shocks. There’s no malevolence, they’re just pressing a button. The first shock is recorded as very painful. The second shock feels less painful, because you get a bit used to it. The third drops, the fourth, the fifth. The pain gets less. In the other condition, they’re told that the person in the next room is shocking them on purpose — knows they’re shocking them. The first shock hurts like hell. The second shock hurts just as much, and the third and the fourth and the fifth. It hurts more if you believe somebody is doing it to you on purpose.

 Based on the experiment above, we actually can feel more pain, or more pleasure depending on how we think about it..

So if you like a person, you tend to see them more attractive by trying to look up the area in their face that drives you crazy, like a smile, eyes,,, etc… And If you hate a person, or believe they did hurt you in a way… No matter what they would do, you will always feel as if it’s an insult… even if it’s a simple “Good morning“.

Same thing goes with problems we have or we think we have… You can have an illusion of how difficult and inconvenient a task will be.. only to realize that it wasn’t that much worth your energy waste!

Just be Optimistic, and always try to see the beauty in everything, and see an opportunity in every difficulty… Even if it doesn’t work the way you would want it to… It will be much better than the opposite…

Enjoy your week,

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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Make your faith greater than your fear

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At one point in time, I was doing a coaching session for a young woman, who was explaining to me how she couldn’t cope with all the problems she had, and how difficult this life is… And while most individuals would consider the amount of problems they have as being the Worst scenarios, I’ve had a different response to that young woman:

“It might sound weird to you, but I don’t think that these are the real problems you’re having… You see what you listed to me – Given that they really are the only problems you have – is a list of problems that you already know… and since you already know them, you have the chance to fix them… I’m not saying they are easy to fix… but it’s easier to fix or cope with a problem that you know than to deal with a problem you don’t know you have? ” 

Let me ask you a question, and please take a little time to think about it… Which situation would you prefer to be in?

  • If you knew that someone will be coming at an exact time, but that time is a bit LATE.
  • If you don’t know when that same someone is coming over… it could be in 10 minutes or in 10 hours or even not at all.

Based on research, people tend to accept the first assumption, because the discomfort of the situation where you are uncertain, is far greater to a person than the acceptance of latency.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

So let’s step back a bit, and analyze a bit, did I just told you that it’s OK to accept a bad news than an uncertain good news? Well not quite that… it’s just that the time you spend worrying about an uncertain thing, will damage you more than knowing than it’s coming to you at a specific time.

How many of us WORRY ABOUT THE FUTURE Vs  And How Many are EXCITED ABOUT THE FUTURE? 

I’ve seen very few people getting excited about the unknown… but many do worry and fear the unknown… While in fact, most of us, we don’t fear the unknown… We fear bad events that might occur… And the same thing we don’t get excited about the unknown, but in fact, we get excited about the possibilities of the great things that might occur in the future.

This week’s tip, is about Faith.

Irrespective what you believe in or not… Faith is and has always been about making the unknown to be known to us in a special format… It’s about picking up at the point when logic reached its limits, or in Friedrich Nietzsche’s terms, when reason commits a suicide.

So if your fears come from the unknown… Break the Unknown with your Faith about the good thing that will happen… and Make your Faith Greater than your Fear.

Enjoy your Week!

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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Evolve

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This morning on my way to work, I stopped by the gas station’s supermarket and wanted to get myself some breakfast (by the way I start work REALLY early), it was almost 6 AM already, and while I was browsing the items in that mini-market, I saw a young girl, she was around 13 or 14, and all dressed up with her school uniform for preparation for school, and I continued browsing around… and then I saw her again across the hall.. I was a bit surprised of how fast she could move from 1 meter behind me to around 20 meters in a blink of an eye..

When I was paying for my items, I saw her and her again, they were twin sisters :), both wearing the same school uniform and getting ready to go to school. I smiled because when I saw each separately, I really couldn’t tell the difference, but when they were together, I could spot so many items to tell them apart.

twin-948720_960_720

This week’s tip is not about similarities but about differences, and how to make a difference in our life and build a better us.

You can always take some time to reflect on your life and see how much you have accomplished and how close you are to realizing your dreams, or even how far you are from where you want to be, that’s a very healthy exercise you can do; you just need to keep in mind that life will take you places you just need to enjoy the journey with all its ups and downs.

Going from the story of the Twins, in biology, an identical twin have practically the same genomes (A genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA, including all of its genes. Each genome contains all of the information needed to build and maintain that organism. In humans, a copy of the entire genome—more than 3 billion DNA base pairs—is contained in all cells that have a nucleus.) and therefor neither (in simple terms of course) have a competitive edge over the other, yet that can literally guarantee nothing about their identical future.

Just for fun check out Wikipedia on the list of famous twins

alorsquoidefun.fr-regime-homme-sculpture-art

So the tip for this week, is how to make a difference in your own life, and mostly it goes down to a simple decision…

What do you want to be in your Life?

Do you want to be a famous actor? do you want to be superstar doctor? do you want to be an athlete? who do you REALLY want to be…

The most important part you need to understand, that in order for you to get to where you want to become… You need to EVOLVE… you need to evolve yourself, your style, your education and so many things… And realize that this PROCESS is imperfect, and often painful to do…

You just need to KEEP GOING, until you are free from your current self, and evolved into the person you want to be.

This can take time, but if you stop there… You will not WIN… and instead, you will stay in a phase that you will never feel satisfaction, so you need to KEEP GOING until you make it.

Reach till the END… and Then you will start a new beginning in a new Form, in an evolved manner…

‘What the caterpillar perceives is the end, to the butterfly is just the beginning.’

Enjoy your Week!

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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Have a clear vision and take easy steps to get there

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I still remember a small chat I’ve had with one bright young man on my team a while back, we were discussing the impact of data and change on the course of business, it was more about decisions than it was about the science of data and the example I’ve share with him at that time was simple:

  • When you go to have a shower, (and if you’re like most people 🙂 ) you will need to balance the hot & cold water to find the perfect relaxing fit so you would enjoy your shower, however most tend to work on EXTREMES… they go from Extremely Hot, to Extremely Cool and so on… If it’s Hot… you automatically move the water to cool, then it’s too cool then you go back to less hot and then back… until you succeed.

That example was to simplify the importance of small decisions and testing and doing the corrective measures as you go until you find your match; That bright young man then, became a renown data scientists and one of the world’s Big Data Influencers. (Always proud of you Ali Rebaie )

Fast forwarding to today, and our tip for the week; pretty simple… let’s start by the DON’Ts… it’s actually just One:

Don’t Take Too many decisions at the same time

You see in real life, battles between armies, happen when a lot of soldiers are fighting at the same time, and the side who makes the most damage to the opponent normally wins that battle. In Chess, and on the other hand, it’s different!

In chess, you do have a lot of soldiers, with another set of different ranks etc, and you have to move them one step at a time… It’s still one army deployed on the board fighting the other, but the reality, it’s 2 people only playing. and Yes, you can win the game without causing enormous damage to your opponent, in fact all you need is to have ONE MOVE, The Right One…

The board contains 64 squares of alternating colors. Each player has 16 pieces: 1 king, 1 queen, 2 rooks, 2 bishops, 2 knights, and 8 pawns. and if you think that is easy… There are over 9 million different possible positions after three moves each. There are over 288 billion different possible positions after four moves each. The number of distinct 40-move games is far greater than the number of electrons in the observable universe.

THAT’S HOW COMPLICATED THIS GAME IS!! But still it is Won… ONE STEP AT A TIME.

Life is a game board. Time is your opponent. If you procrastinate, you will lose the game. You must make a move to be victorious.

~ Napoleon Hill

Have a nice week,
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UAE-Champion-Saeed-1-660x330

(This post is dedicated to UAE’s Chess Champion 2015, Saeed Ishaq)

Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Be like a baby… Then Grow up!

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If you ever had the opportunity to study Psychology, one of the foundation of this magnificent study will be about learning, and how do we learn. And to be able to understand the evolution of the Brain & Mind in this, they normally start with studying babies.

There’s a fascinating small game that parents play with their infant child, that is almost universally known as “PEEK-A-POO”, where the parent (adult) hide his or her face from the child and then show it again with the work “PEEK-A-Poooooo” (Where I come from the word was “BAA’OOUSSI”) and the look on the child’s face at that moment, is priceless :).

For those of us who are not too technical on this, The Game is nice, brings positive vibes and simply fun and easy to play with a child; In Psychology, the explanation of that, is simple… The Infant’s Brain at that stage of Learning, REALLY THINKS THAT THE OTHER PERSON DISAPPEARED! and throughout time, the game will start being less interesting as the child develop the understanding of how it works.

Now moving on to another very nice thing about babies, when they start to walk or talk… Their first attempts are always the most important and most desired to witness by their parents… It doesn’t have to be perfect… in fact, NOONE ever is expecting a child’s first words would be “To Be or Not to Be… That is the Question” :P; but instead they might start speaking in a very alienated form of speech until one day they say something that sounds like “DA DA”, or the day when the child will try to stand up by themselves and then fall down in a cute and adorable way.

Now what would be the role of the parents at that stage… in simple terms:

Protecting > Encouraging > Motivating > Correcting > Raising the Bar
(and then starting this all over again)

You see a child saying “DA DA” is different than a 10 years old speaking like that… So first there’s a safe environment to actually innovate and do whatever you like, then you get the encouragement to do so, then you get a cheerful motivation, and a correction but then the parent is no longer impressed by that attempt, and then they require more efforts 🙂

This week’s tip, is pointing out that each one of us, learn in different ways, but most importantly gets motivated in different ways, and therefor, by applying the simple rules of parenting… An employee can be encouraged to start learning something new, to excel in their field and become innovative…

And Although you may think that this Tip is dedicated for Managers… You are right… But you are your own MANAGER… and You need to start motivating yourself using those rules… And you Will succeed…

Start small, Encourage yourself to try, Reward your self for the small improvement, correct yourself, raise the bar and then REPEAT.

Enjoy your Week!

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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

You can’t change people, but people can change because of you

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How many times you have closed your eyes and wished deep inside  that someone could just change? and how many times you thought you really “could do it” and change them? was it a behavior that you didn’t like, was it a wishful thought to make your relationship become better. Whatever the reason was, we all did it, and more likely we will all keep doing it… Trying to Change others… 

The Miracle of Believing is Individual, is Singular, I wish I could believe for all of you, but the fact remains that you need to believe for yourself.

~Jim Rohn

In my upcoming Book, “Living an Influential Life”, I go over the power of Influence and how you can inspire and aspire others to change by simply working on yourself and building specific aspects of YOU that will make others look up to you.

Let’s pause for a second and think of the following… If you have been doing something in a specific way, and it was working for you… Would you want to look for ways to enhance it? chances are that you won’t… However when that specific way lead to a disaster, then you would be forced to change… But there are those times, when you are not really looking for way to enhance and change things, and suddenly, you see someone else doing it in a much efficient way, that you feel inspired to change!

During my line of work, I used to travel a LOT… and I have used to ask the cabin crew for requests in a very polite manner but really had no specific way on how to do so; Until one day, one of my Best friends, Bachar D.  who was more experienced in traveling than I was, gave me a great tip… We were siting in a restaurant and he asked for a napkin from the waiter, he said to him: “Excuse me, <First Name – that he could read from the nameTag>, when you have time, can you please get me a napkin.” and the waiter smiled at him, and despite how busy he was, he did prioritize getting the napkin for him in no time…

Now of course it may sound silly for you, but when Bachar explained this to me, he said that the fact that he mentioned ” WHEN YOU HAVE TIME” in the sentence, it made a huge difference in the structure of the sentence and the other person felt more respected, and of course this was a trick that he learned in the airline business…. and Ever since, I tried it and used it over and over and over and it works every time…

He really didn’t ask me to change… He didn’t say that my “can I have a napkin please” is horrible… he really didn’t say anything… he was just being him, and doing things his way… and Just that… Inspired me to make a small change in my behavior.

So the tip for this week, is Instead of trying so hard to Change people, Be The Change you want to see… and inspire others to change because of you!

Your Story Matters... By Bachar Dib

This post is dedicated to Bachar Dib

Enjoy your Week!

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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Don’t spread a lie, to reinforce the truth

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I’ll start by telling you a small story:

A while Back, I was going through some house cleaning services in Dubai, and I liked a particular website / service… The Design of the site was very good, and it was user-friendly and not to mention the service looked very professional and the prices reasonable.

I reached to the Booking section where I needed to choose a timing for when the person would come to my house for the and I still vividly remember that I Chose Monday at 8:00 AM. Sadly, when I reached to the payment section, I had some issues with some coupons and credit card, so at the end, the transaction didn’t go through.

On Monday at exactly 8:00 AM, the door bell ring, and a nice lady from that company was standing there, wearing her uniform (with the branding of that company on her shirt, so you really cant miss it 🙂 ) and I said to myself, well maybe my transaction did go through after all and I will pay in Cash at the end of the service.

Around 30 minutes after she have started cleaning the apartment, her phone rings, and she started speaking in Filipino, and then she was like very upset and started yelling to the caller, and later on looked at me in a very sad Face… “I’m Sorry Sir, this is the wrong address, I need to go”; I was a bit shocked… but after I called her supervisor to understand what happened, it turned out that the address of the other client who booked the cleaning service was NOT AT ALL RELATED, but for a non-native English speaker, you could get confused by the numbers in the address and magically reach me!

What were the odds of that happening?  Around 1 in 3,000 actually… But why it is important to tell you this… Cause it Actually Happened! and it could also not be an honest mistake and instead a thief coming into the house… and the issue was that I FILLED IN THE GAPS to make things work out… Got it?

How many times, a good friend of yours (at some point in time), has been with the wrong person, but instead of noticing how WRONG the situation was, she / he started to fill in the gaps by creating assumptions to have a quick fix? does the following sound familiar to you:

  • He might have forgotten that he needed to call me
  • She definitely was busy
  • He’s a good man, I think the way he is treating me like this, because of work pressure
  • …. and the list go on and on.

Despite that this is not healthy most of the times, you know, filling in the gaps with assumptions… Filling the gaps with LIES is even worse.

Some people go to the extreme here, trying to reinforce a specific message, a specific “Truth”, they come up with Lies. And this comes up a lot on social media these days, and are spread mostly by honest people, who do believe what they read.

Let me give you an example,

  • Let’s say, Miss Y knows that Mr. X have a crush on her… and then her friend Miss Z told her that Mr. X was talking to his friend about her. Well, he might have been doing so, but Miss Z made this up… and Miss Y believed it.. cause it confirmed her notion of Mr. X have a crush on her.
  • Let’s say you’re from that part of the world where you’ve never had an encounter with Arabs or people from the Middle East, and all you know about them is what you see in the news, and mostly is BAD stuff… What happened when you hear about an incident and the  main suspect is an Arab? chances are that you will believe that cause it will reinforce your beliefs… Although if the main suspect was not an Arab, you may look for ulterior motives and stuff.
  • You See a photo, an article, a link showing some very skinning people suffering  and you’ve known that Hunger sadly exist in some part of Africa, and if the photo shows black individual, and the label says, this photo was taken Last week in Somalia, Chances are you’re going to sympathize with them, and share the photo yourself… The cause itself is true, but that specific image might not be related, and it could also be taken from a movie where these are actors… but you wouldn’t care would you?
  • Last and not least, if you support a specific political party or religious party,  you will tend to believe all the good and reject all the bad, and vice versa towards the “competition”

Let’s go back to Basics for a second… It all started with Kids… You do know that Children in their early age, they don’t know how to Lie? and in fact they can’t understand how you can actually tell about something while it isn’t true… They are so innocent at that age that when you hide your face from them, they think that you disappeared and when you’re back with a PIKAPOOO… They GET fascinated!! And then they start learning how things work, and how to get attention, until they start LYING to get attention… The issue becomes serious… When this Actually works for them…

So this week’s tip, don’t believe everything you read / hear / see, just because it confirms your point of view… And most importantly don’t come up with Lies just to reinforce a truth or a belief!

Enjoy your Week!

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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Enjoy your own life, without comparing it with that of another

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They say that it’s easy to feel better when you watch someone else feeling more miserable, and it’s easy not to feel pretty if you bumped into a more attractive person, and you know what, yes they are right! only it’s a double edge sword… You can hurt yourself while doing that.

I’ll give you an example from a question I asked, on my first post on this blog:

When was the last time you looked at yourself in the mirror and you were completely satisfied with what you saw? do you accept everything about yourself everyday?

Before you continue reading… Think through the first 2 paragraph, and try to conclude what this week’s tip would be…

Come on… Try it before you continue reading.

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I’m curious to learn what your answer was, so if you can comment on this page or send me a msg on my Facebook Page… 

Ok here it goes,

Instead of checking how good or bad your life is by looking at others, you should do it when you look at yourself; Some of the best times of our life may never come back to us, not because life is cruel, but simply because the phase where we could party all night and sleep for 1 hour and then jump up and continue our day, needed to end at your 20s, and when you’re 40, that won’t be pretty applicable anymore (Because of our body structure/Energy of course).

is that a bad thing? not particularly, Noone says that you should keep on partying all your life, but I would say to look at your life TODAY, and realize where you are RIGHT NOW, and compare it with Where you would want to be and where you were… I Wouldn’t normally suggest that someone would crawl back to the past, EXCEPT if He/She would be looking at the future at the same time.

You could not like yourself right now, remember you can change… and you can have a great Life… it’s in your hands… not in anyone else’s,

“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

So it’s time you look at yourself and check out how your can change… and if you need ideas, it’s ok to look at others… but don’t let others make you feel inferior just because they are doing better than you are, you really have no idea what they might be going through.

Enjoy your Week!

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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Be ready to make mistakes, don’t take things too seriously

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By the end of 2015, I got asked a simple question, it was more of a concern than it was a question… “What if I failed?” combined with “What if taking this step was a mistake?”

I normally smile when I hear such concerns, because they reflect a lot about the person who is asking the question… And My answer would be that simple… “It’s Ok! So What?”

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” ~Dr. Seuss

We normally fail to achieve so many goals, because of the chance that we will fail in doing them, because of the chance that we may be wrong in the first place, or unsure about our capacity, and most importantly, because we are too AFRAID of Failure.

In the practice of Creativity and Innovation, one needs to be willing to make mistakes, and start all over, or even divert to a different direction as part of the process and repeat that over and over and over! and believe it or not, that’s the way you would be able to come up with great ideas.

This week’s tip, is not about being afraid, or about failure… It’s about the attitude, YES, the attitude. 

You need to start your project, with the attitude that you might fail, and it’s OK;
You need to start your project, with the attitude that you will embrace your mistakes;

You need to start your project knowing that the ending point, might not be the same as you expect it to be and it’s Still OK!

Do you want to succeed? then be ready to make mistakes and don’t take things too seriously… It’s not the end of the world, the more you do mistakes, the less your mistakes will have a major impact, and slowly, you will start having less and less… until you have very few.. It’s called Experience!

Cheers,
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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project