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Show Me The Money!
Sunday, 16th March 2008
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Last week I read a news story about Warren Buffet becoming the World’s Richest Man and I wondered what happened to my mate Bill Gates??? I tried calling him but apparently he hadn’t paid his phone bill so I knew he was in some kind of trouble (just kidding!)!
I find it fascinating how the world’s richest people can increase and decrease their net worth simple depending on how the stock market and investors around the globe value their shares. One minute they’re the worlds richest person, and the next they’re only number 2 on the list...meanwhile the rest of us around the place are paying bills and working hard to earn money.
We’ve all heard the term “financial freedom” and every man and his dog wants to be financially free. Personally I think the term has been done to death but I was listening to an audio presentation by motivational speaker Anthony Robbins and I was curious to hear what he had to say about being financially free.
Out of the hour or so long audio presentation, I took away a couple of things. Firstly, if you want to be financially free you have to have the right mental attitude towards it. Money is a funny thing in society today. Some people value it more than others - in different ways. There are those who like to spend lavishly, and those who like to be around people who spend lavishly. Then there are those who can’t afford to spend lavishly and live within their means simply because they believe they’re not worthy of it. Then there are those who who are hungry for money and actively work towards achieving it. I’m sure there’s a lot more types in there, but for the arguments sake lets ignore them for now...
The presentation was geared towards the last type of people - those who want to be financially free and are willing to invest time and effort into achieving that goal. Three basic fundamentals that Tony spoke about were:
The power of compound growth - everyone’s heard about this. You chuck some money in the bank, interest rate gives you a return, and then your money continues to grow. But the point that Tony makes about this is that it’s often takes a long time to build up into something of real value, and that it grows at the speed of grass. But one day there will be a massive lawn infront of you. Interesting metaphor and it has re-invigorated my faith in savings accounts.
Asset allocation - Tony spoke about having three “buckets” for your money, and depending on how much time you have to reach your financial goals, you allocate a percentage of your money between these three buckets. The first is your safety bucket. That’s the money you lock away for a rainy day. The second is your growth bucket and that’s for money that you wish to invest and grow your fortune. The third bucket, which you should only leave for profits from your growth bucket, is your “dream” bucket. The money in here goes towards buying something that you want to reward yourself with because sometimes its not simply enough to see your bank balance growing. It could be something as small as a new outfit, or something as large as a boat. Either way, manage your money effectively between these three buckets and you’ll end up working towards your financial goals.
The secret of generating wealth - spend less than you earn and invest the difference. It’s something so simple and yet we don’t follow through on this.
The last thing I took away from the presentation was that towards the end of the tape Anthony said something really interesting about goals and results. He said that it’s not the actual attainment of the goal that is important, but more so the journey behind achieving it and how you’ve grown from the whole experience as a person. So true!
One important thing to note in this whole process is that its not simply good enough walking around saying to yourself and to everyone that you meet “I want to be financially free” because that’s been done to death. I’m a firm believer in actions speaking louder than words. Going back to the worlds richest man (for this week at least!) - Warren was interviewed on CNBC awhile ago and presented his tips for financial success. Its an interesting read and proves that this stuff actually works.
So this week I challenge you to start investing in your future. Go see a financial adviser! Go open an ING account! Work out what percentage you’re going to allocate into your three money buckets! Act today instead of talking about tomorrow.
Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!
AJ~
Author: AJ Kulatunga
Category:
build, weath, financial planning, bill gates, warren buffett, anthony robbins
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Stress Management
Sunday, 9th March 2008
Last week I was a bit stressed out with overwhelming workloads, so this week I thought I’d take some time to write about stress management - a topic that is very common to all of us. I thought I’d look at what exactly is stress, what causes it and what are some tips that we can all do to help manage stress in our day to day lives. In researching this topic I came across a fantastic article published by The Department of Mental Health in WA that outlines a lot of interesting points about stress.
Firstly, what is stress? It’s a common perception that stress is associated with worry as most things we seem to stress about worry us a lot. For example we might worry about making repayments on our mortgage, or if we’re going to lose our job and these things make us “stress out”. Another definition of stress is from Dr Hans Selye who specialises in stress theory. Dr Selye believes that stress is “the nonspecific response of the body to any demand made upon it”, and that the demand can be a threat or a challenge which requires the body to adapt immediately.
You’ve heard of people performing well under pressure? Well that is an example of “good stress” also known as eustress. And then there is the bad stress that makes us sick. This is known as distress.
The other definition of stress comes from Richard S Lazarus that explains stress as a condition experienced when a person perceives that “demand exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilise.” I think this definition is a good one as it catagorically explains why stress occurs in most people - its a perception that they cannot cope with the required task and thus “stress out”.
So now we know what stress is, what causes stress? The Mental Health article also lists both internal and external causes of stress. Some of them include:
1. physical environment
2. social interaction
3. organisational deadlines
4. major life events
5. daily hassles such as mis-placing keys, vehicle breakdowns etc etc.
The article also describes a few common symptoms on stress under four main areas:
- Physical
- Mental
- Emotional
- Behavioural
Finally, some tips on how to manage the stress in your life:
- Work out exactly what is stressing you out and then look at why this is stressing you out
- Learn to relax in moments of stress; learning meditation and other relaxation techniques really help you deal with stress in the heat of the moment.
- Eat nutritious meals and get enough sleep as resting lets your body rebuild itself
- Create “stress free” times when you get out of the house/office and go do something that you love. eg. gardening, visit the gym, go for a drive.
- Learn proper time management techniques. This might seem trivial but a large majority of items that stress us out in our lives are related back to us worrying about not completing tasks within a certain timeframe. Learning good time management skills will help us to deal with such instances.
And there you have it, a VERY basic overview of stress and how to deal with it. So this week I challenge you to work out what is stressing you out, and what you can do to deal with it.
Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!
AJ~
Author: AJ Kulatunga
Category:
stress management, relaxation, meditation
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VIP Treatment
Thursday, 6th March 2008
Hi everyone, I’ve had an amazing week, but first things first. We’ve finally broken the 1000 visits per month and in February 1018 people visited the site!!! Thank you all for your continued support, I guess it means I’m doing something right!
As you know, we won the HP Micro Economic Grant a few weeks ago, and last weekend the executives from HP came up to visit the NT and brought with them a media entourage. I was in the right place at the right time and managed to secure an invite to a few HP corporate social activities and it was an amazing experience with full VIP treatment.
On Monday I caught up with Grant Cleary from HP and Jack Hughes from the BEC to discuss our proposal. The photo above was quite a historic milestone for me as it represents the first real deal that I put together. Three key players coming together to change the world...albeit on a very small business scale.
Later on that afternoon I was invited to a Pre-Launch function at Sky City Casino as a guest of HP. They partnered with the Catholic Education Office and provided a new computer lab for St Francis Xavier school in the Daly River region. HP’s local technology partner - CSG installed the equipment in the school and another small but exciting technology company - SchoolKiT provided educational resources to train teachers in effectively delivering content to the kids using the new technology.
Now this sounds pretty straight forward. You take a multinational corporation with billions of dollars, pick a remote school, whack in some technology and watch the kids happily play. End of story. However when each of the key players stood up to talk about their role within the project you were faced with some pretty amazing stories about how things work in remote areas of the Northern Territory - a fact that we city folk often don’t think about.
First up we had Maj O’Neil, who is the Principal of St Francis Xavier. She spoke about the challenges of administering a a remote indigenous school. She mentioned how when she first drove into the Daily River Community the hospitality that she received from the locals was amazing. They were just so glad to see her even though they didn’t know her. They made her feel welcome right from the very minute she set foot in there. The second thing that she told us, which I found really interesting, was the intricacies involved in teaching two curriculums to indigenous kids. While the kids who attend the school learn about maths and science and the usual other subjects taught in western culture, they also learn about traditional Aboriginal culture like how to track and hunt.
Then we had Kyiha Harris from HP talk about choosing and implementing the technology. To her it wasn’t simply a case of grabbing some pcs and installing them. Kyiha said that HP had to carefully chose the equipment that would be deployed in the school because it had to withstand the unique environmental conditions of a remote location such as bugs, heat and dust. Also the region gets flooded quite often so the solution needed to be installed in a practical manner to ensure that flood waters would not ruin the equipment. In fact, while they were planning to get the equipment over to the school, the place had flooded and the only way to get it all in there was to transport it all via dinghy. When Grant told me this I couldn’t believe it, but sure enough he sent me a photo and it was quite an interesting sight!
The interesting thing about Kyiha’s stories were that she spoke with such passion and conviction about her experience that we all felt that she truly had no idea what she was getting into, but rose up to the challenge and worked hard to turn the dream of the entire project into reality. Inspirational stuff!
After a bit more mingling after the official speeches we were off to dinner at Buzz Cafe for a fantastic feed and great conversation - all expenses paid for by HP. I couldn’t believe that I was amongst such a great group of people, all because I was in the right place at right time a few months ago in Perth.
Even though I didn’t get a chance to visit the school for myself, it was a really great experience being a part of the entourage and listening to every ones stories. The whole project is something really special and the kids will definitely love the new technology. Cynthia Karena was one of the journalists who went to the school and this is the article that she wrote about her experience - “Attacking the great digital divide”.
One final point that I’d like to make is that while we sit in our offices, or classrooms or at home and run through the mundane tasks involved with our daily lives, there are people out there working hard to provide experiences to others that change the world. Something to think about for this week - “What is going on in the rest of the world while I sit here?”
Sincere thanks to Grant, Kyiha, Brad and all the other amazing people that I met that night for letting me share in the excitement. It was really great meeting you all and I look forward to working with you on our Technology Training Initiative over the next few months.
Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!
AJ~
Author: AJ Kulatunga
Category:
Dream, Inspire, HP, St Francis Xavier, Changing the world
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Personal Policy
Sunday, 24th February 2008
Before I begin this week’s post, on Monday last week I received a phone call from Awards Australia saying that I had made the top three in the Career Achievement Category of the NT Young Achiever Awards so that means I’m in the finals!!! My competition for the award this year is Rachel De Viriglio from Rachael’s Design A Cake and Tashka Urban, a singer/songwriter from Central Australia. They have both achieved quite a lot and have already won many awards for their achievements so it’s a great honour to be competiting with some of the best young achievers that reside here in the Northern Territory.
Now, last week I caught up with Ian Dennis to ask his advice on this policy document that I’m writing for ACS Young IT. Ian has a wealth of knowledge in statistical analysis and policy development and I thought he’d be a good starting point to understand the intricies of policy development. During the hour or so that I spent with him, Ian outlined his simple strategy for writing policy and gave me some useful tips and tricks on writing effective policy as well as some reference websites to help me strenghten my own policy document. Thanks for all your help Ian, now all I have to do is follow your advice!
Also last week I had my usual catch up session with Nathaniel Peek from Pixel Harvester. He never ceases to amaze me with his stories and he’s got some pretty out there tales. I can’t wait for his autobiography to come out! During lunch he said something very interesting (and also very out there). We were talking about his inability to get ADSL into his new apartment and how he was being too nice about it all and wasn’t complaining enough to his service providers to get results. He said to me “I don’t get angry very often. I don’t have time in my life to get angry.” and I thought what an interesting statement!
The more I thought about what he said I realised that its so true. I’m a big fan of time management theories but in this case, based on what Ian and I had spoken about previously, it sounded more like it was a policy of his not to get angry and to focus on other more meaningful things in his life. It was almost like his Personal Policy.
For those of you who don’t really know about what policy is, think of it like a set of rules and regulations designed to guide decision making on a particular topic. For example, at work there will be tons of policies about appropriate computer usage, or policies on annual leave. Policy serves as guidance to decision makers when faced with a particular decision. Sometimes the decision making process can be very clear cut however at other times you really need to examine policy to ensure that the decisions made are concurrent with the rules of that particular policy. On the flip side, if you find that policy is hindering your ability to make good decisions then it might be a chance to review that policy and update it.
So how does this relate back to Personal Policy? Well if you think about it, in life we’re faced with many decisions and we base our decisions on our experience and the experience and advice of others around us. So by developing our Personal Policy we are able to make better decisions especially in less than ideal circumstances. For example, if you decide that you want to save up for a deposit on a house and all your friends want you to go out with them and spend money, then you might be more inclined to stick to your policy and save the money instead. You formulate your policy on what is most important to you and work from there.
So this week I challenge you to come up with 5 rules that you wish to incorporate into your Personal Policy. They might be something simple as “My policy is to spend more time reading Dream Build Inspire Lead!” or something more complex as “My policy is to improve my connections with people who can influence my career”. Whatever it is, write it down and stick to it. You’ll find your decision making becomes a lot clearer when you have your Personal Policy to guide you along the way.
Dream, Build, Inspire, Lead!
AJ~
Author: AJ Kulatunga
Category:
personal policy, inspire, young achiever awards
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