Category: Motivation

Be the Change you want to see in the world

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Today is a special day, it marks the 3rd anniversary for a initiative I’ve started many years back, and this week’s tip is based on what I held in my heart for a long time… Be The Change you want to see in this world!

Here’s a brief on it,

Video Transcript

It all started in 1998, I needed to do a research for one of my courses in college about techniques of communication; I wanted to get to the bottom of how human communication take place… I went to visit a center that works with Hearing Impaired children, to see how you can communicate when you can’t actually talk;

Well, That was the start of an experience that changed my life!

I did my interviews with administrators, teachers and met several kids then and I got so blown away by what I saw that I decided to volunteer in that center, and I acted as a teacher for the Hearing-Impaired children…

I learned the sign language, and unlike what some of you might think, sign-language differ from country to country and even in the same country, and with children, they sometimes develop their own signs, per example my name is Samer… and in Arabic it’s like this… but the children then decided that I was called … (…)

One of the things or let’s say the shocking discoveries that I learned, was about being mute you know when an individual can’t talk.

You see not all of the mute individuals are incapable of talking, but it’s just because they are hearing-impaired, they don’t know how to speak… so they need speech therapy. Even when they can hear a little, and they put this device, that doesn’t automatically solve the problem, but actually they still need therapy to understand what’s happening.

That experience shaped my life, and for Years I carried this cause in my heart, and I was looking for ways that I could help those children and more children across the world; so years passed by, I moved from a college student, to a professional then to a senior executive and an international author & public speaker, so I came up with the idea of donating one of my intellectual properties to that cause. And I called it a WHITE CAUSE.

The idea, is to donate a product that can be sold and all the profits generated can go towards that cause. And at some point this will be self-sustained.

In 2012, I started the 7 Minutes Motivation Podcast, an Arabic motivational podcast of 7 minutes with every episode on weekly basis (every Monday) and later on I created the English Book, and now this book and its profits are donated for the white cause, which is supporting the hearing impaired children.

So Today, I Hear you! It’s a campaign that aims at constructing a fund that would go towards speech therapy sessions for children who can’t afford it.

You see a child, would need 2-3 sessions per week for a period of 1 to 2 years, with the session costing around 20$, so overall that’s a significant amount of money for some families struggling to secure the necessities in a country like Lebanon per example.

So The main objective of Today, I Hear you! Is to gather a fund that would secure 1,000 Speech Therapy sessions and distributed to different centers in Lebanon and those sessions would be offered to children in need, so you can support by donating something like 3$ or 10$ or 25$ and In return you will get  a free copy of my book 7 Minutes Motivation, in either paperback, electronic edition or audio edition.

I encourage you to go to iHearYou.Today check out the website and see how you can contribute and support.

Ya3tikon alf 3afieh (God Give you Health – 1,000 times)

Get Involved and start supporting the Hearing-Impaired Children TODAY!

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 like the Ant: Never give up, look ahead, stay positive and do all you can!

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One of my favorite and most probably one of the first stories I heard when I was a kid at school, was the story of the Ant and the Cricket, the cricket that was singing all summer while the Ant was working, and when the winter arrived, the cricket paid the price while the ant ripped off the benefit of hard work.

The summary of the story is goes something like this:

Once upon a time… one hot summer, a cricket sang cheerfully on the branch of a tree, while down below, a long line of ants struggled gamely under the weight of their load of grains; and between one song and the next, the cricket spoke to the ants. “Why are you working so hard? Come into the shade, away from the sun, and sing a song with me.” But the tireless ants went on with the work… “We can’t do that,” they said, “We must store away food for the winter. When the weather`s cold and the ground white with snow, there’s nothing to eat, and we’ll survive the winter only if the pantry is full.”

“There’s plenty of summer to come,” replied the cricket, “and lots of time to fill the pantry before winter. I’d rather sing! How can anyone work in this heat and sun?”

And so all summer, the cricket sang while the ants laboured. But the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. Autumn came, the leaves began to fall and the cricket left the bare tree. The grass too was turning thin and yellow. One morning, the cricket woke shivering with cold. An early frost tinged the fields with white and turned the last of the green leaves brown: winter had come at last.

The cricket wandered, feeding on the few dry stalks left on the hard frozen ground. Then the snow fell and she could find nothing at all to eat. Trembling and famished, she thought sadly of the warmth and her summer songs. One evening, she saw a speck of light in the distance, and trampling through the thick snow, made her way towards it.

“Open the door! Please open the door! I’m starving. Give me some food!” An ant leant out of the window.

“Who’s there? Who is it?”
“It’s me – the cricket. I’m cold and hungry, with no roof over my head.”

“The cricket? Ah, yes! I remember you. And what were you doing all summer while we were getting ready for winter?”

“Me? I was singing and filling the whole earth and sky with my song!”

“Singing, eh?” said the ant. “Well, try dancing now!”

Although this is a story designed for children, it’s very true in the world of business, entrepreneurship and leadership; you see, Ants are fascinating creatures, they don’t have left and right brain to think logically and creatively and they don’t have a Facebook account to brag about what they are doing or watching, instead, they are only driven by their instinct to fulfill their life mission and goal. 

If they’re headed somewhere and you try to stop them; they’ll look for another way. When I was a kid, I used to place a straw to prevent the ant from continuing its path and the response was, they’ll climb over, they’ll climb under, and they’ll climb around. They keep looking for another way.

This week’s tip, is about learning 3 things from this amazing tiny creature,

  1. Look ahead
  2. Work in a team towards a common goal
  3. Stay positive and do all you can 

Have a nice 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

Just do it… Make your dreams come true

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A wise man once said: “Finish the work, otherwise an unfinished work will finish you.” … Sometimes this can be true with unaccomplished dreams…

I have seen a lot of people who had big ambitions and dreams, and were very energetic and full of hope only to move to the opposite side, and become more pessimistic about their future and more importantly, more dissatisfied with their present; have you met someone who thought his or her career is heading nowhere? their personal life is not fulfilling and their social surrounding is not nurturing them enough? Well this is what happen when you lose enthusiasm in your self and in your abilities…

So the answer should be obvious, if you want to feel happy about your current situation, you should be living without regrets, and mostly the regret of the chances you didn’t take… even if your efforts didn’t get you there… but still you have tried… and the only way to Succeed, is to first TRY!

So this week’s tip, is very simple, TRY and JUST DO IT… it’s the only way you can make your dreams come true.

Sometimes you bend, sometimes you break, only thing that you regret was the chance you didn’t take

NICK LACHEY | The Chance you didn’t take

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

We Deserve what we Accept

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It really can’t get any simpler than this: If You Accept it… You Deserve it!

In many aspects and parts of our life, we find ourselves cornered, cornered in our own box… Hiding from what is happening outside.. Sometimes we would be afraid; afraid from what will happen next… and hoping that by closing our eyes, all of this will just go or fade away… And then reality teach us that some things won’t just vanish if we ignore them, and that eventually we will need to face the music, and face our demons, and we will have one choice, either we win or they do…

I have been in lots of situations myself that I felt that the world is going to end, reached so low, that I couldn’t see the light anymore… But at that particular moment, I REALIZED THAT I DON’T DESERVE THAT… and therefore I SHOULDN’T ACCEPT IT… And so I fought my way out of my problems… and Guess what! Nothing last forever, even problems… At some point things will just move on, you just need to wait for the storm to pass…

So this week’s tip, is about Striving for Excellence, and Not Accepting LESS… You Deserve to be treated right, and you shouldn’t accept it any other way, You Deserve to be Respected and You Shouldn’t accept Not to… and the List goes on and on… YOU DESERVE WHAT YOU ACCEPT… So Don’t Accept Failure… Don’t Accept Mediocrity… And Don’t Ever Accept someone to put you down…

And I believe the best speech you can read is the one done by ROCKY Balboa to his son!

Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that.

Rocky Balboa

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

Remember that Future Feeling

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The worst or best feelings you pass through might be caused by past events, it doesn’t really matter if it’s something that happened an hour ago or 10 years ago, when it had an impact on you, it had an impact on you, whether positive or negative.

Even when you’re in Love, you are in that feeling of LOVING your self when you feel it, you feel that warmth, even by thinking of a MOMENT that was totally responsible for weeks of happiness.

Now I was asked many times about a specific topic related to Love, and especially how should someone treat his or her loved ones, and my answer was always as simple as this week’s tip:

Remember that Future Feeling!

You really don’t need to experience the loss of someone to start appreciating them,

You really don’t need to wait for someone amazing to happen so you can start putting more efforts into your relationship,

Life is unpredictable, because people are, and your chances are always the same, in Love, in Life and in Work… So Make sure you don’t waste today, worrying about tomorrow, and don’t just learn from your past mistakes, learn from the lessons you DON’T want life to teach you..

Enjoy your Week!

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Image courtesy of Stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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

Mediocrity is the enemy of success

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I can’t think of any inspirational / successful person who started on a perfect scale, where everything was in order and things came easy… Unless you are born, the son of royalties or so; You just need to make a living for yourself just like the rest of us.

Now although I know that success is not an easy think to make, it takes really hard work and so many factors and ingredients and maybe so many things that I don’t know about… It’s just one common factor, the pursuit of success doesn’t come from Accepting Mediocrity   

A brilliant person that his books inspired me for years, once said, Good is the Enemy of Great and once we accept the GOOD we stop pursuing the GREAT… 

That person was Jim Collins, in his book, Good To Great!

Whether you were a manager, a team leader or a simple individual, accepting mediocrity is simply surrendering to failure, And here I’m not saying that things should be perfect to start with, I guess we’re far away from perfection as it gets… But at least we should acknowledge that we are at an acceptable stage, BUT WE’RE NOT STOPPING HERE…

I know people who surrendered to their mediocre life, stopped pursuing their dreams and stopped believing they could make it, even not believing that they could even do a routine thing they’ve done 100s and 100s of times. Let me tell you this, it’s HARD to go back to excellence when you start accepting mediocrity, (not impossible.. but just hard).

This week’s tip, is about EXCELLENCE… is about going for the GREAT, and not getting satisfied with the GOOD… since the beginning.. and Accepting the GOOD only as a Stage before you reach to Great.. BUT NOT STOPPING THERE…

“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t

Always seek greatness, and never settle, cause when you do, everything starts to become easier to maintain, but harder to grow, and when your leadership accept a mediocre result, your followers will start accepting even less and less…

Have a great 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

At this particular moment, there’s only one thing you can do

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Sometimes the deepest sentences in life, are the simplest with a pure and very basic meaning… We watch movies, read stories and live experiences, to finally express one word… such as Love, Fun, Pain, Loss… etc

We LEARN… Yes we learn the meanings of an already known word to us, we re-discover it throughout many sophistication, we feel that if we learn it the hard way, we will keep what learned. Well we may be right! but not so quite…

You see, when an information, a relationship, a deal, a prize or virtually anything, comes easy we tend to underestimate its value, or even take it for granted… Unlike when we have to work really hard for it… If you received an advice from a friend for free… you might not take it as serious as if it would’ve come to you from a professional consultant that charged you 1,000$ to give you the exact piece of advice.

This week’s tip, explores a basic and fundamental principle… What we call: The Moment…

“What day is it?”
It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
My favorite day,” said Pooh.”
― A.A. Milne

As a senior strategist, with a strong force of habit, I can’t help but living far away in the future while living my present day… Whether I was writing a plan, evaluating and studying a business case and so on… Unfortunately I discovered that by sometimes living in the future, you lose sight of the present, but most importantly, you lose both… Cause the picture of that beautiful scene, no matter how clear and vivid it is, is only a representation of how you felt when you were there… and if you can’t remember how the air was twinkling on your cheeks while you took a long look at the beautiful mountains, the picture won’t deliver that feeling to you…

Therefor,in everyday, you should look out and enjoy the moment, cause sometimes you may be lucky to see a rainbow and sometimes you may just see a sunshine, and sometimes you don’t … Just remember this, every moment is the best moment you will ever have, so take advantage of it TODAY, NOW and LIVE it to the fullest… As it were your last… cause it is YOUR Last… And the next moment, is simply… Different.

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

Believe in your ability to surprise yourself

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The mornings in Istanbul smell differently from other countries, same thing when I used to wake up in probably any other country… Maybe it was the weather, maybe it was the hotel / house / room or any variation of the different accommodation that I had, but I was sure it wasn’t that… it’s the attitude I had when I woke up that influenced the reality around me… Every time!

You see, every day you wake up, you have a choice, to smile and LIVE that day, or not… And most importantly you need to believe in your ability to LIVE and not just Survive the day

The beauty of being human, is that you can achieve whatever you want to, if you have enough faith that you can do it… Unlike other creatures, that may not have that choice, we as humans have a lot of untapped potential that would make us go beyond so many limiting beliefs and even impress ourselves on our way…

When you were a kid, life was different, you believed you could do anything, and suddenly you grew up to start thinking before you actually do something, and then you started to think more and more, and then started having fear of failing and the voice that once told you that YOU CAN DO IT… Have grew up to say YOU CANNOT DO IT… Therefor, you need to walk up to a new morning, and believe in the your ability to impress yourself, to surprise yourself, cause you can do MORE THAN YOU THINK… Just try 🙂

If you don’t like how things are, change it. You are not a tree.
~Jim Rohn

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

Get yourself a reason to clean up the mess in your life

Posted in Motivation, RelationshipsTagged 1 Comment


Messed Desktop BeginLet’s put it this way, if your life at the moment look similar to what my desktop does, then you really need to read this week’s tip 🙂

If you had the chance to read some of the posts I’ve shared this month, you’d first know that most probably the mess in your life is there simply because you though the combination of small issues that you have at the moment is harmless and you can always fix it just when you want to… or “have time to”; While Actually the longer you carry and hold on to even tiny things, you just don’t know how HEAVY this would be on you. (Check out the original post) and not also that, but it’s HOW you are holding on to those small issues that also makes a difference… (Check out the Second post on that point)

So let’s start this week’s tip, with a small conversation I’ve had with a dear friend, knowing that I’m an early bird, and love to wake up very early and start my day and become productive mostly before everyone else is awake, she wanted to ask for a clarification, cause she knew that it doesn’t really matter if I slept at 10 PM or at 3 AM, the routine is still the same for me… I still wake up and be as productive as I can be…

So my answer to her was simple: “I Have a Reason to Wake up to Everyday!”

Do you remember the days you were dragged to wake up in the morning to go school? or to Work? Different times, but still the same reaction… Are you striving to hit that snooze button so you can get an extra 10 minutes of sleep?

… Now let me ask you this, Remember when you had this exciting news to wake up to the second day, that almost prevented you from sleep where every inch of your body was just too excited… It must have happened to you at one point in time… Just Look it up and try to remember the feeling that you had when it happened… The Energy that fueled you all over… it’s called Motivation… and in this week’s tip, I’m calling it the REASON

Messed Desktop

You see, once you have a reason to wake up in the morning looking forward to… All the other effort you would put would sound very insignificant… Cause that same reason, is not your answer to the “WHY” you’re doing what you’re doing…

Just like when you have a beautiful photo of a lovely memory, you really WANT TO SEE IT on your Desktop background… otherwise, you won’t have the necessary motif to clean up that mess…

Messed Desktop After

  “Early rising not only gives us more life in the same number of years, but adds, likewise, to their number; and not only enables us to enjoy more of existence in the same time, but increases also the measure.” ~ Caleb C. Colton

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

Sometimes you need to hear what you don’t want to

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At points in time, we feel that we have everything figured out in life, as if we know exactly what we want and how do we want it… Yet we would NOT be willing to do what it takes to get what we really want… It’s probably one of the most mysterious concepts in human psychology…

When I was very young, I have always have admiration to those tiny ANTS who taught me more about determination than probably all the business schools I have ever visited and attended… Those tiny creatures, that NO MATTER how much the 6 years old kid tried to keep them away from their path… They keep going back… And they Won’t Stop!

…Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.

~Steve Jobs

In this week’s tip, I’d like to highlight something very important, it’s about being determined to get what you really want… What you really want to achieve in Life… That’s why you have to do EVERYTHING THAT YOU NEED TO DO in order to get there… I can list countless examples from productivity to life lessons to economics and even to literature… That shows how most of the times you would NEED to do something you don’t like to get to something you want.

I have done so many talks about motivation to people who really wanted to listen… So many times I can’t even remember, and Yet I can almost still recall every individual talk I’ve had with someone who NEEDED to hear me out..

And I can’t illustrate it better than sharing with you the monologue from a very nice talk between Sean and Will (Robbin Williams and Matt Damon) in the movie Good Will Hunting.

So if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written… Michelangelo? You know a lot about him I bet. Life’s work, criticisms, political aspirations.
But you couldn’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling.

And if I asked you about women I’m sure you could give me a syllabus of your personal favorites, and maybe you’ve been laid a few times too.
But you couldn’t tell me how it feels to wake up next to a woman and be truly happy.

If I asked you about war you could refer me to a bevy of fictional and non-fictional material,
but you’ve never been in one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap and watched him draw his last breath, looking to you for help.

And if I asked you about love I’d get a sonnet, but you’ve never looked at a woman and been truly vulnerable. Known that someone could kill you with a look.
That someone could rescue you from grief. That God had put an angel on Earth just for you.

And you wouldn’t know how it felt to be her angel. To have the love be there for her forever. Through anything, through cancer. You wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand and not leaving because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term “visiting hours” didn’t apply to you.

And you wouldn’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than yourself, and you’ve never dared to love anything that much.

I look at you and I don’t see an intelligent confident man, I don’t see a peer, and I don’t see my equal. I see a boy. Nobody could possibly understand you, right Will?

So wherever you are right now, whatever you are doing, when you get the chance… JUST OPEN Your Heart and LISTEN…

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

There’s always time for something worth doing

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Although it’s Tuesday already in Dubai, It’s still monday in Seattle, so I still have time to make this post!

It has been a long week, and I can tell you that I’m dead tiered from so many things, and yet I have a loaded week… And sometimes I feel that I need to slow down on some things to make room for others; but then again I look up and smile, cause this is LIFE for most of us, there will always be more things that we want to do and we can’t make the time to do them;

This week’s tip, is about small things that you can do that makes an impact, it can be this 1 line message you send a love one, or a Thank you note to someone who did a great job, or share a quote that may be found at the exact time someone needed to read.

So here it is,

In every day, there are 1,440 minutes. That means we have 1,440 daily opportunities to make a positive impact ~Les Brown

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 are not the center, the center is You

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During my path of coaching and assisting people, whether it was on a professional or personal level, if we were in a casual conversation or in a formal meeting, I have encountered a lot of similarities in what hold some people off from realizing their potential, and sometimes in what is holding them from doing any type of progress!

This week’s tip is inspired by the same conversation that I had with like at least a dozen of individuals (with variations of course); the initial versus of the conversation starts with something like:

  • I don’t know what to do …
  • My personal life is going nowhere…
  • My professional life is going nowhere…
  • I’m not the same person I used to be before…

and then it continues on and on, and at some point in the conversation, I would ask “Why can’t you do this… ” and the reply is always similar to:

  • But you don’t understand, how can I do this while THAT is still there…
  • I can’t focus on my work while my Personal life is not working…
  • I can’t focus on My self while I’m having issues at my work…

So to cut it short, here’s what I end up saying:

“My dear <NAME>,

Let me put it this way for you, there are 3 Circles in your life. 1) The Professional Life, 2) The Personal Life & 3) The Private Life.

1) The Professional Life: includes all the work related items, your relationship with your boss, colleagues etc

2) Your Personal Life: includes your family, friends, loved ones, LOVEd one, and your life with them

3) Your Private Life: which includes YOU, how you eat, drink, exercise, what makes you happy, and what makes you sad… etc

All 3 constitute YOUR LIFE, but let’s be realistic, those 3 areas are not the front of the BLADE of a BULLDOZER that you use to CRAFT your life AT THE SAME TIME!  in fact although they are interconnected and interdependent, they are to be dealt with separately.

Of course when you are happy at home, and you are in great physical shape, it would affect your professional life in a positive manner. Of Course, the opposite will affect (and would probably mess up) everything around you. But Hey! don’t make yourself the CENTER of the 3 circles, just understand that The Center is YOU. And you just need to have a mental separation to all 3…

  • You need to Eat healthy, take care of your self, EVEN IF YOUR professional life is not going well.. Don’t Stop Taking care of yourself…
  • You need to take good care of your personal life Even if you have issues at work
  • You need to keep the work related issues… AT WORK….

”

From what I learned from Successful people, they do that a lot, they have this amazing ability of separating things mentally, if they have issues at home, they don’t make that affect their responsibility and especially their communication with their employees, teams and colleagues… If they have an issue at Work, they don’t bring on the stress home to their family.

If you put yourself in the Spotlight of the 3 circles, you won’t get satisfaction unless everything is solved / working optimally, however realizing that the center is you, makes you work further on developing / handling each aspect separately and enjoy the benefits!

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

Tackle the right problems in your life

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Recently, I was having some really painful toothaches, it seems that one of my teeth was giving me some hard time… so I decided to go to the dentist and remove it.

I went to the dentist, laid down and opened my mouth, the dentist smiled and said in a comforting *yet disturbing for some* “That’s the problem right there… We will have to remove it”… I couldn’t agree more with the doctor; but to my surprise, the doctor removed a different tooth! It was one of my “wisdom” teeth located 2 steps away from where I thought the problem was, that was causing all this mess, and was pressing onto the rest.

I didn’t understand at first, I was super confident of the root of the problem, I could feel it hurting me… but then it was not the root, but actually an effect of the problem.

And while I was under the impression that I was right on what to be done, I was NOT! In fact, I JUST thought I had everything figured out…

A lot of time in our life, when we face problems, we tend to jump into conclusions that would lead us to figuring out solutions that may make our situation even worse, and instead of fixing the it, we makes it worse, while we have good intentions in the beginning. This week’s tip, is about taking how to try to dig deeper in trying to figuring out the right root of the problem.

On one of the monthly meeting for the Speed-Coaching Mondays in Dubai, where Coaches and Clients meet for free networking and coaching. I had 15 minutes to coach a girl who was thinking too much about how a failure her life is, along with several other problems in her life like the lack of her attention span, and how she can never take risks and so many other things she was attributing to both her personality and the environment she was living in.

After around 5-6 minutes of her describing her dozens of issues, I started asking very simple questions to her… and as strange as my suggestion to her was (Which I’ll let you know in a moment), we decided to connect a couple of weeks later.

She was very happy with the (totally un-related) suggestion, I was suspecting that what she was experiencing was the effect of a problem or an issue that she would be totally unrelated to her thoughts, and I was right… The Air Conditioner’s Filters in her flat has not been cleaned / maintained for a while, and that cause several elements of dust to be thrown in her bedroom, and causing her issues (although in a light way) breathing and therefore sleeping though the night… and when she took some days to sleep in an Hotel for a couple of days (That was my suggestion), she felt so much better and got more motivation and energy to work out the issues in her life…

So my suggestion to you, is simple… Remember that the real problems in your life are those you are NOT AWARE that you have them… so Think outside of the box, and step aside from the possibilities that are “obvious” to you. And you might be surprised!

Enjoy your Week!

SC

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 need to stand up and walk, before you can run

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In my line of business, I’m lucky to meet interesting individuals from all over the world, almost everyday 🙂  and in this post, I’m going to introduce you to one of them!

This is the first Monday of the year 2015, and for some, the first day of the first week of the year that would change their entire life. You would wake up, filled with motivation that this is THE day that you need to make it happen…

Unfortunately for some, they are close to losing faith in themselves… As this is not the first Monday they have felt this enthusiasm, it has been the same in 2014, in 2013 and maybe since 2003? And some have been waiting all of their life for Life to Happen!   is it just bad luck? is it just that some are not DESTINED to be great? not to become successful?

To be quite honest with you, I haven’t always been that optimistic and enthusiast about life 😦 . There were days when I felt that no matter what I did, I would NEVER succeed. And the reason why I felt this way, is because I was holding myself accountable by comparing myself to “successful” people and underestimating the reason (s) and mostly the TIME-FRAME it took them to become successful!

If you take a good look at some of the basic things you’re able to do today with ease, you would be surprised how difficult for your grandfather to visualize himself doing the same when he was your age. Some things was NOT AT ALL EASY back then, yet today, we take them for granted… Even some of your favorite artists today, have been in business for years and some DECADES.

This week’s tip, is inspired by a conversation I’ve had with a very interesting individual, She’s the proud owner of a “Happiness Project” of spreading positive vibes and motivation everyday to hundred of thousands of people around the world.

When I first discovered the Quotes Gate  Facebook page, my first impression, was that a successful company, led by several team members, must be running it… Until I received a message from the owner, ASMA, introducing herself to me and initiating connection, and after an interesting discussion, I learned (and got shocked) that it was only a young Egyptian Student managing this page from her iPad! I was shocked because the page has more than 900,000 Fans!!! a number some very established media companies fail to reach with all their budgets and team efforts… 

 Driven by only her passion to helping others and spreading wellness to her community, ASMA is doing a Fantastic Job!

But there was a Catch to this story!

You see, based on our discussion, I discovered that this well established project, is only at its beginning, and have way more room for growth that you can possibly imagine, only the owner, was standing STILL and waiting to FLY. Not diving into our conversation and the details of the strategy I’ve advised her to do… You will hear about it when the time is come 🙂  I just wanted to stress on the fact that Every Professional was an Amateur at one point in time, it’s OK to Start somewhere and stand up, and learn to walk first… Then learn to run, and then JUMP…

It’s better to improve by 0.5% everyday, than to wait 1 year to improve 100% … if you do the math, you’ll see that improving 1/2 a % daily will lead you to being more than 600% better!!

Remember this quote by The German Philosopher and have a beautiful year ahead!

Enjoy your Week!

SC

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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