2012 Count Down Final Week – Retrospection of 2011 and 2012 New Resolutions!

Bucket Challenge:
Look Back 2011 And Make New Year Resolutions!

(Ending Sunday 1^th January 2011)

This week is the last week of the year. It’s time to say good-bye to 2011 and welcome 2012! A new year always brings new hopes and great enthusiasm. With a new year starting just around the corner, we all plan for new year celebrations, look forward to a fresh start and hope things will be better in the coming year! It’s time we review, place closures to our past, take the key learning and make new resolutions and challenges. It’s the reason we are all celebrating New Year with pomp and joy around the world!

The final week 2011 challenge is to spend time with self, have a look at what we did and achieved in 2011; take away the key learning; and decide the directions, next steps and challenges for 2012!

Don’t be sad that this is the last challenge of the year, because looking ahead in 2012, there will be many more challenges waiting for us!:)

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Challenge:	Retrospect 2011 with honesty and Make 2012 resolutions
	Be honest with yourself, take the good and bad learning from the important events in 2011; and see how we may improve in 2012. (if you keep a diary, review the you in 2011 vs. the you in 2010 – any differences?)
Extra Challenge:	Declare your 2012 Resolutions by sharing with us in the “Comment” below 😉 or share it with friends and families. Join our bucket list challenges for 2012 if you want (as a motivation)!
Goals:	Start the year with a fresh mind and clear goals.
Time required:	1-Night or more
Energy level:	Low to medium
Preparation:	Set some time alone.

SMART New Year Resolutions:

Specific: make specific, clear goals satisfying 6 “W” questions”
Measurable: goals should be measurable, quantifiable
Achievable: foresee the “How” with reasonable personal stretch
Realistic: it’s really what you want
Timely: goals to be completed within a defined time frame

*For more explanation on SMART, click here

Resolutions are meant to be positive, motivating and take you to the next level of self-assurance! If you find yourself trapped by it, it might not be what you really want. If you have a big goal which is seemed intimidating to achieve, you may want to break it down into small ones.

“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man. ~ Benjamin Franklin”

More Links:
Our 2012 (Resolutions) Project Actions and Progress!! (Being updated constantly)
New Year Resolutions (123NewYear.com)
New Year Resolution (Personal Excellence)
Challenges Idea List!

 

Merry Christmas !

BucketListChallenges wish you a magic Christmas and a Happy New Year 2012 !

 

2012 Count Down Week 2 – Reflect on Your Relationships with Your Families!

Bucket Challenge:
Build/Enhance your relationships with family members (including close love ones)!!

(Ending Sunday 25^th December 2011)

‘Thanksgiving’ has just passed and soon it comes ‘Christmas’ and ‘New Year’. It’s festival seasons again! It’s family time and also the time to say thank you, to express appreciation and to make right with the family members and the important love ones. It’s time for retrospection!

If there were some unreconciled disagreements, arguments or grudges hold between you and the family members, it’s also time to reconcile, repair the damages, put down the grudges, let the unhappiness and negative feelings go! Prepare rooms for a new relationship for the coming year!

This week challenge falls in the period of Christmas days, so our challenges will be family related!

Challenge:	To make extra efforts in the relationship with family members!
	It may be making right with the past unreconciled matters, enhancing current status or increase the intimacy level of the relationships!
Extra Challenge:	Hands On and Just Do…(at least to 1 family member) (a) Write or share heart-felt thoughts; (b) Give a bunch of flowers and express your appreciation; (c) Say “I Love You” (this can be easy for some; but difficult for some others); (d) Find out and show interest and support to family member’s future plan.
Goals:	To realize building relationship requires efforts; the more you put in, the more you get out! Leave no regrets before heading into another new year!
Time required:	This whole week (event till next week if needed)
Energy level:	Low to Intense
Preparation:	A willing open heart, a pair of listening ears and a set of warm hugging arms!!.

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2012 Count Down Week 3 – Challenge Your Beliefs!

Bucket Challenge:
Knowing Your Top 5 Beliefs that made you Who You Are today and Examine them!!

(Ending Sunday 18^th December 2011)

You are What Your Beliefs are!
Ever be conscious about your own beliefs?
Are you the master of your beliefs or your beliefs dictate who you are?

In this week challenge, we will be finding out the Top 5 Beliefs that we are holding on today. Be kind to ourselves and our beliefs, no judgments on whether it is right or wrong, good or bad beliefs, just acknowledge them and be grateful. Because of them, we are where we are today!

If we want to move forward and be better, we need to examine our existing beliefs, to assess the validity and limiting aspects of our beliefs, so we may understand and free ourselves from the limitations.
Be the Master of Your Own Beliefs.

Challenge:	Find out the Top 5 Beliefs
	To know our own beliefs which made us who we are today; and to examine the limiting aspect of the same beliefs.
Extra Challenge:	Create or choose 3 new beliefs that will take you further in 2012
Goals:	To empower ourselves that we are the master of our beliefs and we have the choices on what we are believing in.
Time required:	3-hours, 8-hours, 1-day (or a life time)
Energy level:	Low to Intense
Preparation:	A way to start is by asking yourself: “How am I doing now?” followed by “3 layers of Asking Why vs. Reasoning”. Within the reasoning, identify the beliefs embedded and examine them (their positive and negative influences). Then choose again to embrace the same beliefs further or to modify for better cause or to let go. Click here to see a step-by-step demonstration How to examine and challenge your own beliefs.

More Readings:
Remove a Limiting Belief in about 20 Minutes

 

My No TV week with Many Things I did in return …

Wow… This weekly challenge is harder than I have expected! On average, I spent about 5 hours a week on TV or streaming. That is if I was not on a TV Series Pilgrimage, where I would have spent the whole weekend watching +-14 episodes of the full season in one go. (Luckily, this only happens about 3 times a year)

Happened to be in this same week of “NO TV“, I have been waiting for two episodes from my two favorite TV series, “The Mentalist” and “Criminal Minds” (the episodes have been postponed 2 weeks due to American Thanks Giving and …). So I really did put some mental efforts, self-control and encouragement to keep myself away from the temptation! It’s like the more I am constraining myself from it, the more I want it! A human weakness which exists from the start of the creation… can’t help it!

With ‘NO TV‘, I have noticed, all of a sudden, I have many more hours! I did some catching up in my study (Retail Management), blogging (“BucketListChallenge” and “To-Live-Is-To-Create“); a painting for my friend who has just opened a breakfast corner (see below); spend quality time with love ones; prepare X’mas presents and read a book!

My Painting

I feel very full-filled at the moment after accomplishing much more than I set out to at the beginning 🙂 I am very much looking forward to tomorrow when I may enjoy my long waited two episodes 😛 And certainly, going forward, with the benefits I have evidently received with ‘NO TV‘, I am willing to cut down my TV hours and number of my TV pilgrimages per year.

* The book I read was “I feel Bad about my neck“, written by Nora Ephron. She is also the creator of various romantic comedy films, i.e. “When Harry met Sally“, “Sleepless in Seattle“, “You’ve Got Mail“, “Julia and Julia“…

 

How to Examine and Challenge Your Own Beliefs?

A way to start is to ask yourself: “How am I doing?” and followed by“3 layers of Ask Why vs. Reasoning”. Write your reasoning down and identify the beliefs embedded and examine them (their positive and negative influences in your life). Then choose again to embrace the same beliefs further or to modify for better cause or simply to let go. The below example will explain better!

Example: (click on the picture for better visual)

During the examining process, I would encourage you to challenge each of your belief the following:

• Does the positive influence of a belief define my core values in life and my character?

• Is the positive influence of a belief the main driver or the motivator of my life?

• How much does the negative influence cost me? Could I still afford it? Do I still want to pay for it?

• If I choose to let go the belief, how would it change me? What do I get to lose?
<Generally it doesn't cost you much… but brings more :P)

With the above process, it will be easier to identify your main or current beliefs, to examine the positive and negative influences and make new choices!

There are few more questions here for your references:

• How am I feeling emotionally these days?
• How is my view or progress in personal development?
• How am I cooping with studies, house chores or work?
• How am I doing in my career?
• How is my physical outlook and health state right now?
• How am I doing financially?
• How is the relationship with my parents or children?
• How am I doing in my marriage?

Ready to Join us for our weekly challenges? Challenge Your Beliefs!

Some Common Limiting Beliefs:
(partial source: ReCreate Your Life)

• I’m not good enough.
• I’m not important.
• Change is difficult.
• Nothing I do is good enough.
• Too much money is sinful.
• It’s not possible. I cannot do it.
• Mistakes and failure are for losers.
• I’m powerless. I cannot change or decide…
• I’m not confident. I am not competent.
• If I voice out my opinion, I will be judged or rejected.
• People aren’t interested in what I have to say.
• I’ll never get what I want, no matter how hard I try.
• I’m not worthy to be loved or being treated with respects.
• I’m not good looking enough to be attractive.
• Marriage is the end of all excitements and the start of an ordinary life.
• Rich people are bad because they get rich by taking advantage of others.
• What makes me good enough or important is doing favors for others.
• What makes me good enough or important is having people think well of me.

More Reading:
Terms of Enragement

 

Be the Master of Your Own Beliefs!

In fact every day, we response to the events in our lives based on our conscious or unconscious beliefs. When is the last time you have a new belief? Or create a belief for yourself? Were you aware when you adopted or created that belief? Or just let the new adopted belief dictates what and how you suppose to be?

Are you the master of your beliefs or the beliefs dictate who you are?

Chances are high that we all had one or many heart breaking experiences with our ex-lovers. When the relationship ended, amongst all the negative feelings and thoughts we had, we took up new beliefs unconsciously while we were making statements like, “all men/women are the same, they are selfish and only care about themselves…”, “I shouldn’t have believed him/her, whoever cheated before would cheat again…” or “I can never trust man/woman again, it’s just full of lies and excuses…” and many other more. So we enter our next relationship with these new beliefs and hoping the outcome of this new relationship will be somehow different from our beliefs. We in fact having contradicting beliefs to what we really want to believe; at the same time, these contradicting beliefs are limiting us to give 100% of ourselves to this new relationship.

Beliefs in relationship is just one aspect of our lives. There are beliefs related to family, health, work, personal development and money. Not to mention if you have a religious background and associated beliefs.

We need to realize that WE HAVE EVERY POWER TO CHOOSE WHAT WE WANT TO BELIEVE!

Beliefs that have been given to us as a child can be further embraced, modified for better or removed. Human beings are social animals, sometimes compromising in beliefs could happen (just to make others happy). If you CHOOSE to compromise, be happy about your compromising. No complaints or back firing afterward. Be responsible! If you really don’t want to compromise, MAKE A DECISION to adopt a new belief that will give you self-assurance on your beliefs. A belief like the below might be helpful:
“THERE CAN BE DIFFERENT BELIEFS BETWEEN YOU AND ANYONE; AND IT IS PERFECTLY OK. NO JUDGEMENT, NOTHING GOOD OR BAD, RIGHT OR WRONG ABOUT IT. IT’S JUST LIKE WEARING DIFFERENT STYLE OF CLOTHES. SAME TASTES YOU SHARED WITH OTHERS; SOME YOU JUST DON’T. THE CLOTHES YOU WEAR HIGHLIGHT THE BEST IN YOU; SO DO YOUR BELIEFS. YOU DON’T HAVE TO AGREE WITH OTHERS’ BELIEFS, PERHAPS YOU MAY TRY ACCEPTING THE DIFFERENCES. THIS SHOULD APPLY TO OTHERS TOO!”

Once you take on the above belief, ‘compromising’ will not appear as the only way; and you will need the courage to stand firm for what you believe in and make it clear to others.

I believe: “Everything is possible, as long as I give my very best.” There is a hard truth that it is just not the case in some circumstances; however I am always encouraged by this belief to go an extra mile, to find more alternatives, options and not to stop or give up at the first obstacle. And I still choose to stand firm on this belief.

The limiting aspect of a belief
There are always two sides of a coin. Beliefs that I take as positive influence may have their negative aspects too.

Just take the belief I have above as an example, “Everything is possible, as long as I gave my very best.” when I don’t achieve my goals, I start to judge myself on not giving ‘my very best‘; otherwise I would have achieved the goals. I lash myself to give more efforts (normally on the same actions which I have been doing already, instead of smart thinking and find other solutions). I become more and more stubborn in achieving the goals and start blaming myself for still not achieving the goals! It’s all just because I believe I am not giving ‘my very best‘! The belief has limited myself from being open-minded about my results, from seeing a new possibility of alternative solutions, as well as recognizing and appreciating ‘my very best‘ efforts.

And yet, I have not mentioned when I impose the same beliefs over others and start thinking they are not giving their very best… Just try not to copy what I did, imposing own beliefs over others… life will be much easier if we just accept others’ beliefs which we are not necessary agree.

Our Beliefs are Our Perceptions
Our beliefs reflect our perceptions which sometimes might not be true and may be distorted according to our own past experiences and unconscious wishes. We need to fully understand the source of our perceptions and make a clear distinction on if the source is factual or based on emotions and past experiences. To drill down to the source of our perception enables us to release ourselves from false perception we had, hence to alter our beliefs.

The main message of this article is:
to know our own beliefs, the limiting aspects of the beliefs and to make new choices. So that we may grow strong with the beliefs we consciously choose and at the same time not to be limited by these beliefs! How to Examine and Challenge Your Own Beliefs?!

Join us with our weekly challenge, Challenge Your Beliefs and find out more about our own beliefs!

More Readings:
“Belief Works” by Ray Dodd (A book that I am currently reading)
Examining Your Beliefs
Changing Core Beliefs
The First Step in Changing Your Belief System
Remove a Limiting Belief in about 20 Minutes
Make A Choice – Stand Behind It And Believe In Yourself
“ReCreate Your Life” hosted by Morty Lefkoe
(I go through his free online materials and find it quite useful as it gives step-by-step guidance.)

 

30 Ways to Relax

Want to find new ways to relax your mind?

Below is a list of 25 ways to relax ~ Enjoy them 🙂

1. Listen to relaxing soft music
2. Read story to a child
3. Gardening
4. Put on a mask and simply just rest on sofa or bed (do nothing)
5. Take a 30 minutes nice bath with candle light
6. Join a Yoga class
7. Play with kids
8. Prepare a nice meal for family
9. 20 minutes Meditation or breathing exercise (breath in positive and breath out negatives)
10. Write down your stress or emotions or write a book (take you to another world)

11. Learn how to dance
12. Take a walk in the park or by the lake
13. Play with pets
14. Read a nice book
15. Meet new people
16. Go out and drink a little
17. Give someone a gift
18. Cleaning the house or re-arranging furniture
19. Join an acting class
20. Make Love
21. Break routine i.e. do a take away meal and eat by the lake or in a park after work
22. Visualize you are on a journey to peaceful land for 10 minutes
23. Create your own song, singing away the stress
24. Enjoy a massage session with relaxing ambiance
25. Go to a stand up comedy performance (for a good laugh)
26. Do exercise for an hour and enjoy steam room or sauna thereafter
27. Enjoy a really nice meal with your favorite food or restaurant
28. Do some art activities i.e. painting, crafting or clay modeling
29. Learn how to shoot gun, throw balls
30. Visit an aquarium or watch fishes in the tank

Good websites for more:
Managing Stress

 

The other 8 quality hours…

What do you do in other 8 hours??

Within the 24 hours a day, if you sleep 8 hours, work 8 hours, then you still have other 8 good hours to spend! After a quick finger counting, you might say that you work more than 8 hours, plus time spent on commuting to work, eating, chatting with friends, taking care of family chores, spending time with kids, watching TV, internet surfing…etc, you just simply don’t have anytime left, let alone the quality nor the hours for yourself!

So, what do you spend most of your 8 hours on?

A statistic survey concluded by A.C. Nielsen Co., indicates that the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV per day (or 28 hours per week, or 2 months of non-stop TV-watching per year). In other words, when you reach 65 years old, you would have spent 9 years in front of the TV.

Nowadays, with Generation Y, X, Z(M), we just change from in front of TV to in front of computer. It’s the same behavior without changing the concept in the mind.

Do you also spend 4 hours per day on TV or computer? or even more? Just imagine if you could insert those 9 additional years (assuming 4 hours per day) at age 30 (or at any age as you wish), how much more could you have achieved!! How much money or career progress could we have made?! Not to mention how much more time we may invest with love ones and family to enrich and strengthen our relationships with them! How much more could we have done than just sitting in front of TV watching our time away or on computer playing games or watching streaming!

If you have more time, what will be the things you always want to do? If you have half day or one day off, on what activity and how would you like to spend this day? Solely for yourself or spend with particular others? Is there anything that has been calling for your actions?

This is the time we become aware and say “No” to TV or computer streaming. This is not a post against television or the lovely series that we spend hours and attention on.
It is more about we find some hours and make time for ourselves! To do the things we always want to do.

Why not join us our Weekly Challenge,
2012 Count Down Week 4 – No TV for a week!

For those who really want to start making a difference in the other 8 hours, may I recommend you to read this book by Robert Pagliarini, THE OTHER 8 HOURS.

For those who normally use watching TV as a way to relax their mind after a long day, why not try other ways of relaxation! See <30 Ways to Relax.

 

2012 Count Down Week 4 – No TV for a week!

Bucket Challenge: Free yourself from the screen (TV or Computer) for one week!

(Ending Sunday 11^th December 2011)
This week’s challenge don’t requires us to do something but more about NO TO DO something. It’s sometimes harder for us NOT TO DO. Will you manage to pass the challenge?

Challenge:	No TV for one week.
	Don’t watch television or computer streaming for one whole week. This includes watching DVD, youtube, cinema…etc.
Extra Challenge:	Spend 1-day fully on reading a nice book. (or an activity you have always wanted to do)
Goals:	Realise how much time we spend in front of TV or computer; discover what we can achieve if we invest this extra time on something else great.
Time required:	all the hours you spend on TV or computer and 8 hours on reading (or something you like to do)
Energy level:	Low to very high
Preparation:	Unplug the TV power cable and ask a friend to keep for a week; buy a nice book or find out and schedule the activity you want to do.

–>Why this challenge<–

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See Hsing’s My No TV week with Many Things I did in return …