My wife and I are expecting our first child, a boy whom our Gynaecologist estimates will arrive end January 2012. The date favored by many of our family members is 30 January 2012, as it is considered an auspicious date (the 8th day of the Lunar New Year). Friends have advised us to speak to our baby everyday to tell him to arrive on 30 January 2012.

Initially, I was for the idea of “telling” the baby which date to make his grand entrance into this world. Until 2 friends whom I considered mentors asked me this question: “You want your baby to live according to your expectation even before he is born???” That shook me hard.

Many of us live in the expectations of our families, friends, colleagues, communities, societies, nations etc, and we must have heard of others saying and experienced ourselves the fatigue of living under EXPECTATIONS. You must have felt weighed down, trapped, and frustrated, haven’t you?

Fatherhood is a new journey for me, and I am sure I will encounter many learning experiences in the months and years ahead. Like any parent, I resolve to do my best for my child, and let me start by letting my son CHOOSE his own birthday.

Son, it’s your choice, I respect it. Anticipating your arrival……..

I don’t remember being able to speak well and articulately in my school days. Though I am now in the career of speaking professionally, it wasn’t an aptitude I showed when I was a child.

In fact, I remember when I was a 12-year-old Primary 6 student, my form teacher wanted to try me out to see if I could be the emcee for the school’s speech day. She got me to read the opening para of the script, I flunk terribly.

It was only when I started to do my studies in mass communication that i felt I need to be able to speak decently in proper English. I started to listen to English news diligently and read news articles aloud. With effort over time, I started to speak better proper English.

Then I started hosting professionally as an emcee. Hosting in English was a breeze – reading, articulating, responding etc. Only when I had to speak Mandarin on stage did I start to feel inadequate. I felt my mandarin was not fluent, articulate and polished enough for stage.

So I went to a local children speech and drama school for one-to-one Mandarin articulation lesson. My tutor was a young lady from Beijing. She brought me back to basics, learning fundamental pronunciation of hanyi pinyin. After months of lessons, my Mandarin improved a great deal. Thank you Teacher.

I started to host more confidently bilingually in English and Mandarin. By modeling DJs and TV comperes from China, Taiwan and Singapore, I was hosting more competently in Mandarin with better articulation and rhythm. I was pleased to receive compliments from audience, invitation to host mega events like Chingay, and also to co-host on local Chinese radio stations.

Today, I could pretty much hold decent conversations in Mandarin without polluting my sentences with English or Singlish. In fact I enjoy conversing with friends from Taiwan and China. To me, speaking fluently in Mandarin feels good!

But my Mandarin is far from perfect, and certainly not very good yet. I would love to speak very polished and artful Mandarin on and off stage easily, and to read fluently and narrate confidently off any scripts or teleprompters.

My personal aspiration is to read & speak Chinese/Mandarin like a newscaster. I don’t know when will I be able to do that, but I know I will have to put in continuous effort over a long period of time.

This will be a lifelong personal development journey for me. Perhaps if I receive an invite to work and live in Shanghai or Beijing, I will be tempted to take it up for to fulfill this aspiration……

Live – Living is not a given, though many of us are guilty of not really living out lives, but just breathing through life. I am not about to give a lecture on how to life or do life coaching here, but rather, just a reminder to myself and visitors to this blog to really live our lives with passion, enthusiasm, excitement, vigour, love etc.

Experience - What’s living if we were to only live consciously, mentally and carefully? The value of life is in our EMOTIONAL experience. Experiencing love, fear, happiness, sadness, success, failures, anger, forgiveness, disappointments, hope, anxiety, calmness, nervousness, confidence etc. From our emotional experience we mature and become not only stronger, but wiser.

Learn - I have learnt that we are here on this journey of life to learn valuable lessons so that we can grow not only physically and mentally, but also emotionally and spiritually. From every challenge/obstacle/setback/failure/pain we could learn what we need to learn, and upon learning what we need to learn we will be able to proceed to the next phase…..of life.

I invite you to join me to Live. Experience. Learn.

Enjoying my Vietnamese drip coffee. I appreciate moments like this.

Relax… Just being……

Here’s the answer……words of wisdom……

This is quick and simple therapy work. You can use this technique to help yourself dissociate emotionally from disturbing scenes and experiences easily.

Client: Recently I went through an intensely unpleasant experience. After that, the scene keeps replaying in my mind, causing me to be emotionally disturbed and losing sleep. What can I do?

Coach: Here’s what you can do to help yourself disengage emotionally from the event:

1) “Looking through your own eyes” in your mind, play the scene in BLACK & WHITE from start to end.

2) Then “step out of your body” (so that you see your body looking at the scene) and play the scene BACKWARDS in COLOUR.

3) Repeat step 1 & 2 until you no longer feel the emotional engagement when you recall the event.

Result: Client feedback some moments later that when he recalls the event, the whole scene is in black & white and he is no longer emotionally engaged.

Go on try it and experience how it works for you quickly and easily!

Some years ago, I came across the word “disease” but spelled as “dis-ease”. Fundamentally, it means illnesses in our bodies are a manifestation of dis-ease in our mental and emotional well-being. To make it simple, “dis-ease” is STRESS!

Stress could come in various forms: physical, mental and emotional. We all know that while a certain amount of stress could motivate and spur us, anything more than what is comfortable puts a strain on our well-being. If neglected, this stress will eventually manifest into a “dis-ease”.

The good news is before that happens, we will always get alarm bells ringing, from very soft to loud. By then, if we still don’t hear the alarm bells, it will then force its way in with a heavy knock.

Examples of alarm bells ringing:

- soft alarm – fatigue & cold

- moderate alarm – migraine and persistent pain

- heavy alarm – severe pain

- next: a heavy blow!

Are your alarm bells ringing? Do you hear them? Attend to them early so that you get more Ease and not “dis-ease”……

Only 2 seats left for 1-Day Hypnosis Experience workshop on 12 Nov 2011. Learn Hypnosis @ www.JensenSiaw.com

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