Make peace with the past, move on!

Love poems are sweet but for Valentine Day this year, an increasing number of zoos offered people the chance to name creatures after those who'd spurned them in love. An El Paso Zoo allowed people to name a cockroach after their ex and feed it to meerkats. At Sydney Zoo, visitors entered a competition to name a highly venomous brown snake after an ex-lover. Entrants had to explain to the zoo what their ex did to earn a snake being named after them.

Sometimes people dwell on the things that happened years ago. 

Do you wish you could press the rewind button so you could redo portions of your life? Do you struggle with major regrets about your past? Do you spend a lot of time wondering how life would have turned out if you had chosen a slightly different path? Do you replay past memories in your mind like a scene from a movie over and over again?

Although self-reflection is healthy, dwelling can prevent us from enjoying the present. Ruminating on the past won't change it. It can be a vicious cycle that keeps you stuck in the same emotional state.

Just this week, I cleared the clutters in my office drawers. That physical act helped me see that some things in my past need to be discarded; some things need to be kept and cherished. 

I try to make peace with the past. I had endured hard lessons and now I try to focus instead on what I've learned from that experience. When I do think of negative events, which can be very distressing, I walk myself through the facts and details of the memory, instead of dwelling on how I felt.

One word of caution: this is easier said than done. Like any skill, this gets easier the more you do it. I am slowly beginning to get better at letting go of unresolved pain, little by little.

Put problems in perspective

Soon-to-be richest woman in the world 2019: MacKenzie Bezos
Source of income: divorce
Divorce from Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, might soon make her the world's wealthiest woman, if she is entitled to half of Bezos' entire Amazon-based fortune. That means she could get as much as US$66 billion based on the value of the company today.

"The worst thing that happens always turns out to be the best thing," so says Byron Katie.

There comes a time in all of our lives when we're feeling down, defeated. When it seems like nothing is going our way. 

In one way or another, we are all hurting. Everyone is in the same boat. Even the laughing, happy-go-lucky crowd is hurting. They try to hide their hurt by drinking and joking, but it won't go away.

Just because a person smiles all the time, doesn't mean their life is perfect. That smile is a symbol of hope and strength.

There are parents who have been deeply wounded by children. Others suffer illness: cancer, heart disease. Relationships break up and all that is left is a broken, wounded heart. And what about the unemployed, whose dreams have collapsed? It is true! Every person on each carries his/her own burden of pain.

When you are going through the worst times, when the fog surrounds you and you can't see any way out of your dilemma, convince yourself you will survive, you will come out of it. Life does go on. Happiness is not living without pain - not at all. True happiness is learning how to live one day at a time, inspite of all the sorrow and pain.

If you're rolling your eyes and wondering, "How does any of this help me solve my problems?" I'll tell you: it doesn't. Unfortunately knowing this makes no difference whatsoever when you're stuck right bang in the middle of it all. And, of course, all of this only makes things somehow even worse. It doesn't help me overcome what I'm dealing with.

The bottom line is hope. If everyone around you is dealing with their issues - even those that are worse than yours - then you certainly can.

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

But I get it. Even as I say all of this, we both know that when disaster strikes, it's challenging to stay levelheaded. There are times when you want to say to life: "Please give me a break,  just give me a chance to catch my breath." But life doesn't listen. 

Start by looking at your entire life. Remember all the problems you faced - and eventually overcame. You probably felt a lot of the same emotions back then, too. You thought you'd never get over your ex, that you'd never find a better job, or that you wouldn't live through the humiliation of  some situation. But you did. Even the more serious problems probably seem a lot different today. After all, you did make it through them, and they ultimately helped shape who you are today. 

The look to the future. The future can have truly great things in store for you. Of course it won't be puppies and rainbows, but you already know that. Disappointments, defeats and fears. But you'll get through it all, the good and the bad, just like you did in the past.  You boat hasn't and won't sink so easily. There may be some waves, you might go through some storms and you'll probably end up seasick from time to time, but your journey across the ocean we call life will continue. You have to steer you life back in the direction you want it to go. So your journey wasn't as smooth as you wanted it to be. Does that mean you're just going to let yourself get blown off course? I didn't think so.

Remember, everything is solvable and if you can't see a solution, it only means you haven't worked it out yet. Of then the reason you can't see the solution is because you're too close to the problem. Our minds naturally play tricks on us, twisting and distorting our thoughts. Ask yourself what's REALLY going on here? Look at your track record; you'll make it work, just like you always have! Keep focused even through the hard times, on our dreams and goals.

To tell someone going through a storm to "pull it together" is like telling a snail to go faster. Here's my stand: no matter how far down you are, there is always hope to recover. Hope when there is no hope. Hope is about waiting for a happier day. It sets the tone for change.

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear, If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. It is during our darkest moments, that we must focus to see the light.

Do you listen or hear?

"Why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences, and gates around their homes? They don’t build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside.” President Donald Trump made a moral and emotional case to plead for £4.5 billion for his border wall prior to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history – and the possibility of another shutdown looming in three weeks. 

Donald Trump is a novel President - New York Times commented that everything he has done so far suggests that even if he were able to identify the most knowledgeable people in the world, he probably wouldn't listen to them anyway.  

The struggle to be heard is real. It's something we all confront at one time or another. 

Growing up as the eldest of six siblings and cousins, I learned how to eat fast, talk fast and interrupt them. Listening has not always come easily to me, and I'm not alone.

Sometimes, in some people, the brain generates ideas too fast to stop them from coming out of the mouth before they can be carefully considered. Some call it passion or enthusiasm, others call it rude. 

Listening is a fundamental skill of genuine success and it's hard to be great or trusted without it. Still, being a good listener is hard work!

Craig Smith, a leader I respect and admire is an absolute master at this. He makes concentrated effort to narrow his attention to whomever he was dealing with. When he spoke some someone, he wouldn't allow interruptions, not event when his phone rang.  It made no difference if he was speaking to another CEO, the customer or an intern. The demonstrates that he is engaged with what others are saying and that he cares about their points of view. Through his actions, he conveyed how important you were, not how important he was. These are attributes of a magnetic leader. The way I see it, his success has a great deal to do with his ability to focus on listening to the person right in front of him. 

Most people, even professionals who routinely practice public speaking or sales pitches are sometimes poor listeners. What separates the near-great from the great and makes executive presence is the want to exchange ideas, opinions and information - being genuinely focused on what someone is saying, not just pausing to be polite. 

In my experience, salespeople make some of the best listeners - and also some of the worst. Some don't talk their way into a sale. They listened their way into a sale. Conversely, others talked their way out of a sale by refusing to listen. 

This is not something you can fake - at least not consistently. If you merely face the speaker and zone out, your inattentiveness will be revealed the moment it is discovered that you have not absorbed the content. 

Has this ever happened to you? You're reading a book or watching Netflix while your partner is talking to you. Suddenly you hear, "You're not listening to me." You look up and say, "Yes, I am." This is what happens when we listen without showing respect. It's not enough to keep our ears open; we have to demonstrate that we are totally engaged. 

It has become routine to walk into meetings and see half a dozen attendees punching the keys of their laptops or cellphones while someone is speaking. Many of them could be typing notes, but from my perspective, they may well be checking their email. 

Remember, perception is everything when it comes to professional presence.  If you do not appear to be engaged, it may not matter that you are engaged.

If your objective is to make people feel like a million bucks in your presence, don't interrupt nor finish the other person's sentences. Don't let your eyes or attention wander elsewhere while the other person is talking. Eliminate any striving to impress the other person with how smart or funny you are. Your only aim is to let the other person feel that he/she is accomplishing that.

Telling our brains and mouth not to do something is no different than telling them to do it. I am trying to master this, so I can listen effectively with respect.