Pro-Active Philippines

The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement By Napoleon Hill

2011-08-18T02:08:00.001-07:00

Annotations by: Joe Joson

Goals! ACTION! TEAMWORK!

DEFINITENESS OF PURPOSE - The starting point of all achievements, knowing what you want. GOALS! Set SPECIFIC GOALS.

MASTER MIND PRINCIPLE - The coordination of effort between two or more people in a spirit of perfect harmony in order to attain a specific objective.

Teamwork! Creating a Specific Team(s) to focus on, work at and achieve a Specific Goal(s).

3. APPLIED FAITH - A state of mind through which your aims, desires, plans and purposes are translated into spiritual, physical or financial equivalents.

Action! Action, action and More Action. Action With Measurable Results. (Faith without works or without action is dead.)

4 PLEASING PERSONALITY - A pleasing personality helps you master the major cause of failure-the inability to get along with people harmoniously.

Pleasing Personality: An extremely desirable Teamwork quality sought for in every Team Player. Being just a team member alone as the first step is not enough. A personable, dedicated team player is something else.

5 GOING THE EXTRA MILE - Rendering more and better service than you are paid to render, doing it all the time and doing it with a pleasing, positive attitude.

As an Action component: Going the Extra Mile equates to lots of Specific Actions done.

As a Teamwork component: It takes a certain quality of a Team player to go the Extra Mile.

Team players that go the extra mile are normally the ‘lifters’ (those that lift or take Action) vice the ‘leaners’ (those that lean on others and do not do a whole lot).

6. PERSONAL INITIATIVE - The inner power that starts all ACTION; the power that inspires the completion of all that one begins.

Personal Initiative, the mother and beginning of all Actions. This is what takes winners to the finish line.

As a team player in a Teamwork: What can I, as an individual do to maximize the team’s results. What can I contribute to the team to bring us closer to this great objective or GOAL.

7. SELF-DISCIPLINE - The ability to control our thoughts and emotions. Self-discipline is the only thing in life over which you have complete, unchallenged, and unchallengeable control.

In a Teamwork, Self discipline helps to maintain order, predictability of results, reliability, greatly organized team effort.

“If you do not discipline yourself, someone else will come along and discipline you.”

8. CONTROLLED ATTENTION - The highest form of self-discipline, the act of coordinating all your mind's faculties and directing their combined power to a given end or GOAL.

In a Teamwork , the Ability to Focus everyone’s brains, skills, resources to achieve a specific objective or GOAL.

9. ENTHUSIASM - A contagious state of mind that not only helps you gain the cooperation of others but, more importantly, inspires you to draw upon and use the power of your imagination.

In a Teamwork, Enthusiasm fires up everyone else in a group. Enthusiasm brings in needed extra boost to everyone’s morale. This results in increased actions that bring us closer to our Specific Goals.

10. IMAGINATION - Your mind's exercise, challenge and adventure. It uses old ideas and established facts to reassemble them into new combinations and to put them to new uses. CREATIVITY!

In a Teamwork , Putting into gear our Creative Powers creates our drive, energy, motivation. When we go after a GOAL we challenge our creative minds, we go into an adventure that could become very exciting.

11. LEARNING FROM ADVERSITY AND DEFEAT - Hardship and adversity are a common language of nature in which she speaks to all living creatures and teaches them many things they would not learn in any other way.

In a Teamwork , we learn a lot from adversity, defeat and failures. But our persistence and tenacity will eventually reward us.

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. - Winston Churchill

“Losers quit when they fail. Winners fail until they succeed.” (Rich Dad, Poor Dad/Robert Kiyosaki)

“Winners never quit. Quitters never win.” (Dr. Robert Schuller, Crystal Cathedral,Garden Grove,CA)

12. BUDGETING TIME AND MONEY - Successful people know themselves, not as they think they are, but as their habits have made them: the use of time and money are the most vital of these habits.

Financial and time management are two very critical components needed to allow us to closely follow our ROADMAP or BLUEPRINT to our assured arrival at our destination or desired SPECIFIC GOAL.

13. POSITIVE MENTAL ATTITUDE - To govern your life, you must be able to govern your mind, and that is the starting point of all riches (and success).

Attitude either fires up or Kills the Goal even before you begin. A can-do positive mental attitude is a Must for a Teamwork to be effective.

14. ACCURATE THINKING - The accurate thinker recognizes all the facts of life, both good and bad, and assumes the responsibility of separating and organizing the two, choosing those which serve his/her needs and rejecting others. (Sounds like Wisdom to me!)

The ability of team players in a Teamwork to remove unwanted ‘noise’ or static, the ability to avoid needless clutter in decision making.

This helps avoid unnecessary detours. This allows for leap-frogging irrelevant issues or concerns. This helps with focusing on the SPECIFIC GOAL or destination.

15. SOUND PHYSICAL HEALTH - The key that coordinates all other principles and sets all ideas into motion, sound health provides the "flavor" to the good things in life.

A healthy Team player can put out excellent results consistently. The opposite, puts out reduced , diminished or no results.

“Achieving goals and bad health do not mix well.”

16. COOPERATION - Harmony based on definitive motive. Cooperation is the medium through which great personal power may be attained; the willing cooperation and coordination of effort to achieve a specific objective or a SPECIFIC GOAL .

An extremely critical component in aTeamwork . Cooperation is a must. Any group effort is dead without cooperation from team members.

17. COSMIC HABITFORCE - The cosmic habitforce is the universe's law of equilibrium, the one natural law into which all other natural laws resolve themselves.

As a Goal-setting component Cosmic Habitforce translates to this: There is no more effective and more powerful Universal Law than the Laws of Him who Created the Universe. Natural Laws are laws set by Him who created nature. Flow with Him, follow Him and your goals and desires will have maximum results, if those goals are lined up with His goals for you. (Not your will but His.)

Wake Up Philippines!

2011-06-12T19:49:00.000-07:00

Here we go again, another year celebrating our Independence Day for the nth time! There are many things that we can be thankful for in the Philippines! Yes, we in the Philippines know how to smile in the midst of adversities and misfortunes. We are used to it! We get back up each time we get clobbered by typhoons and floods and move on! We have grown resilient to these natural disasters! And of course, with our political termites all over eating away at our national coffers, we continue to breathe easy! WHAT?!! Hold on! Yesireee!!!! We in the Philippines continue to breathe easy even if we know of corrupt government officials in our neighborhood stealing right under our noses! We have grown accustomed to these man-made disasters....graft and corruption.

This, my dear countrymen, is the single biggest reason why our nation continues to be in this mediocre state! We as people and nation have NOT LEARNED how to make our elected officials accountable! And when any community or nation ALLOWS its leaders to do as they please, that community and nation is going to remain in that same mediocre state forever!

1. Our 'men' in Congress continue to do many things other than what would FEED THE NATION. They would rather plant stupid trees than rice or corn to help feed the nation!

2. Our men in Congress spend more time wrangling over where to bury a KNOWN DICTATOR than what would BRING EMPLOYMENT to the nation. Two thirds of these 'men' in Congress signed a petition to bury a DICTATOR in a place where heroes are normally buried!

3. Our men in Congress spend more time trying to impeach or sue each other than focus on what would bring FOREIGN INVESTMENT into the nation. The Chinese grew to be the number two richest nation on earth in just a little over 30 years! And that is from foreign investors pouring in investment money into their economy. Name me a few of our 'men' in Congress who are focused on this challenge!

Above are just a few of what our leaders are wasting your tax money on! They continue to get busy on NON-RELEVANT ISSUES. And we continue to leave them alone. Come elections we re-elect the SAME OLD LOSERS because we are INDEBTED TO THEM, THEY ARE OUR FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS, NINONG, NINANG, RELATIVES. They are great boxers, singers , actors , actesses. Or we simply took their bribe money during elections. Daming 'utang na loob'!

And....we do not care about past performances. Neither do we care about perceived or potential performance . And the result? Same old, same old.... So, Independence Day , here we come.... Independence from what? Give me a break!

To arrive at successful results, do not repeat the same old practices that lead to failure. Easier said than done? Yes, that is why we remain as mediocre as we are as a nation.

Wake up Philippines!!!!!

Joe Joson

USA

People’s Hearts The True Seat of Influence

2011-04-08T15:48:00.000-07:00

To influence others, I heard that it all starts and ends in the hearts of men. To get the best results from and with followers and fellow leaders, we are taught that we home in on their hearts first. This sounds simple indeed but nothing could be more accurate.

I once heard about the three main reasons why people obey God. One reason I heard was our fear of getting whacked by that unseen Father who sees everything bad that we do and knows even our most secret and rotten of thoughts! The second reason I heard was that we obey because we are expecting some ‘heavenly handouts’ called blessings like food, money, and more money. We want good things from God so we obey. The third reason for obedience is simply because we like God. We love God! We obey with willing hearts!

True enough, whether it is God’s favor we want or whether we want another human being’s favor, one’s obedience, one’s following somebody else’ leadership or one’s decision to fall in behind a movement , is done best after we have influenced the hearts of the people we try to lead. One wise person put it this way: In leadership or in the arena of leading, one has to gain the people’s hearts first before he can expect their heads and hands to come and follow. Additionally, the wise guys have told me that if we think we are leading and no one is following, we are simply taking a walk!

People will only go so far and obey under threats and intimidation. Sooner or later a leadership under an oppressive and dictatorial setting will find opposition and even rebellion. The influence of ‘handouts’ are just as passing as their significance in the minds of people fade out. But win their hearts and people will follow sometimes even to their deaths. Amazing influence indeed!

Enter the past and present leadership in the history of the world and the principle of influence above holds true. Jesus Christ did not use swords to lead or influence people. He used something quite different from the usual leaders of his day. He has millions of followers today, two thousand years later and the number continues to grow. Mother Teresa used the same things. Both won their subjects’ hearts without question. We can safely assume that for years to come she will have followers and admirers just as Jesus Christ does.

Napoleon Bonaparte, who conquered a large portion of the world during his day, used the sword to spread his sphere of influence. It is said that when he was in exile after his defeat and alone, he mused and wrote about the fact that his ‘followers’ were all gone but yet ‘this Jesus’ still had millions following him. Hitler whose brand of influence attracted men of his own kind, rose and fell like a ton of brick. He led his nation to destruction. Indeed he influenced the hearts of men whose objectives were just as evil as his.

Leaders come , leaders go. The ones who leave lasting legacies and are greatly admired are the ones who have mastered the routes that lead to people’s hearts.

Looking at our own landscape of national leadership , we clearly see the three distinct routes that our leaders take. The Motherland has sadly been ruled by those that tried to influence their subjects by way of worldly and material rewards. It is still the influence peddler of the day. It is still king.

A new day is slowly dawning upon our landscape however. We see new leaders who strive to spread their wings of influence by the sheer purity of their love for the Motherland, their love for the people they serve. These new breed of leadership will surely find their place in history. They will be known to be those that dared to turn the tides. They will be remembered long after you and I are gone as the men and women who touched the hearts of even the smallest citizens of the land. These are the leaders that I see are slowly filling up our landscape. And you and I do not have to be sitting in a lofty position in order to lead and to get to the hearts of those around us. Indeed, one can win people’s hearts from the lowliest and humblest positions we may find ourselves in today.

Remember, it is he who touches the hearts that delivers the best and lasting influence .

Joe Joson

USA

Every Citizen and His Brother Want A Progressive Philippines

2011-03-24T22:22:00.001-07:00

Below article published in my blog before the May 2010 elections and republished at the Kuro-Kuro blog in September 2010

September 26, 2010

By Joe Joson

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For as long as I can remember, I have on every opportunity, asked people from our country this one question. Do they believe that the Philippines will ever one day become progressive or financially wealthy? The answer is universal. They would like to see that day come but they are not convinced that it ever will. Their usual comment: ‘Not until the leadership in our country learns how to properly manage itself, the nation will remain impoverished, backwards, disorganized and mediocre.’ In short, we remain the eternal ‘sickest man in Asia’ until we learn how to really, truly manage ourselves and our finances.

Some went as far as comparing the situation of mismanagement and corruption in the Philippines as that of a fishpond that has a runaway growth of undesired species of fish (the corrupt politicians). The desired kind of fish (the few good men in politics) is badly outnumbered and are being eaten alive by the bad fish. Recommended solution: Poison the whole pond and start all over with a new generation of good fish. Others recommended dropping an Atomic Bomb to rid of the corrupt officials then start all over! This may sound comical and unrealistic but the seriousness of our troubles has permeated our society so deep and for so long that most people have given up.

One result is the never ending trek of millions of our citizens overseas to find employment. The result that hurts the most is the grinding poverty, the hunger of millions in our midst day in and day out. But the irony of the whole thing is that ALL that the leadership in the Philippines has to do is copy its Asian neighbors and in less than ten or fifteen years a truly financially successful nation can emerge! And this comment is based on what we have all seen and continue to see happen to nations who manage themselves well and excel economically.

If and when our leaders finally ‘get it’, we would then be competing vigorously with our Asian neighbors economically. Our leaders’ present preoccupation is unfortunately NOT economic competition with our Asian neighbors. They are still living in the stone-age political culture of competing with each other, killing each other, outmaneuvering each other at every turn, outspending each other during elections , outdoing each other on who can get as much as they can from government coffers once elected and who can get the biggest cuts from contracts from foreign investors. Only a few have teamed up with others to focus on economic competition with our successful economic neighbors.

Again if we asked our brothers in politics whether they wanted a financially successful Philippines, they would tell you that indeed they do. We all want the good life. Ask them what they need to do to bring the good life to everyone in the Philippines, they will give you a blank stare. They are clueless. But they can rattle off a list of things they can do to defeat their political opponents. They can tell you all kinds of tricks up their sleeves on how to stay in power. And mind you it rarely includes honesty. Neither does it list their own bank accounts to finance their election campaigns. They have on their lists for their campaign sources such things as fertilizer funds, allocations for the army’s supply of boots and so on.

So here we are with Elections 2010. The number of overly-eager candidates running for office is, as usual, endless. Everyone wants to ‘lead’ or perhaps leadership is the farthest thing from their minds. So why is everybody pushing his way into office? For one, politics for at least six decades or more, has been our nation’s leading brand of ‘big business’. While our Asian neighbors compete with the world with real profitable businesses to enrich themselves, we in the Philippines enrich ourselves by getting elected and taking ‘profits’ from taxpayers’ money! And how can we miss this? Look around you and see if this isn’t true! Many of them who did not have a dime for themselves a decade or two now have wealth way beyond what their salaries could have brought them. Start looking at their possessions and property which they did not have before then ask yourselves how they accumulated these from their annual pays! It will not add up! Lifestyle checks? Will they work? Not a chance!

Some folks from the CBCP have issued statements appealing for our politicians to come out clean and run clean and honest administrations and elections. Why do we in the Philippines plead for crooks to come out clean? In nations who have their judicial systems fully in place and enforced, these crooks are sent to jail! Or is it because the enforcers are crooks themselves?

So, every citizen and his brother want a progressive Philippines! Then start with ourselves! If you are a crook, knock it off and start thinking about long term benefits of using taxpayer’s money properly. If you are not a crook, God bless you and tell your dishonest brothers to help you spread the word on the long term merits of a well organized, well managed, fully accountable, truly responsible, financially sound, ethically and morally grounded government . With this approach everyone will benefit from the nations’ wealth that will surely come in ten years or so, guaranteed! That is IF ALL of us focus on just that. Doing the right things so that the whole of the Philippines and not just a select greedy few becomes wealthy.

So, I dare everyone to look past their noses and look at the LONG TERM benefits of a clean and well managed government. It is truly worth fighting for! Once created and sustained, our nation can begin to be one of the Economic Tigers of Asia. Our professionals overseas will have reason to come home, set up businesses and add to the emerging economy. The biggest bonus will be the foreign investors from around the world. When they start rolling in and staying in, our nation can then race with the economic giants of Asia and the world. Our lives will be forever changed. And no citizen of the Philippines will say no to such newfound source of pride and strength. Our present ways of running our affairs is our greatest weakness. Let us dare to change for our children and grandchildren. It all starts with all of us. Have these thoughts with you when you go to the polls this summer. Make your vote count LONG TERM!

Joe Joson, USA

An Interesting Look at SOPs

2011-03-17T03:07:00.000-07:00

Comments by Joe Joson , USA
(Article titled 'Cong Cesar junks the SOP' was published in the Catanduanes Tribune March 10, 2011)

An Open-Letter, Commentary on the article on SOPs below

ROSULO

Cong Cesar junks the SOP

Cong Cesar left me in a puzzle last week when he said he was pushing through a policy of not accepting any SOP in the numerous projects he has lined up for the province. SOP, literally “standard operating procedure”, is as we all know a common but widely condemned lingo in the bureaucracy or the corporate world referring to any commission, bribe or lagay appended to any funded contract.

Comments: It is now my turn to be puzzled at why the decision NOT to accept any SOP in the numerous projects considered puzzling. I thought that this was the right thing to do.

I am no devil’s advocate, but my impulse was to throw back to the congressman the question as to where and to whom will the proverbial porciento go since public contracts, no matter how big or small, are by tradition already loaded with SOPs at the outset. My calculations gave me an approximate of P50 million in congressional and other special releases for Catanduanes Cong Cesar has already worked out or is working out for the past nine months of his term. Another intuitive mind on the side, could be seeing a couple of million or probably more in SOPs tucked into the fund releases, the normal order of things considered.

Comments: I appreciate the openness of the author by stating the following:

1. That the ‘proverbial’ porciento does exist

2. Public Contracts are by ‘tradition’ already loaded with SOPs at the outset.

3. SOPs tucked into fund releases, the NORMAL order of things…wow…

The congressman was forthright. Frankly he said he was waiving any personal benefit or gain from public projects, particularly those funded by his congressional funds, and as a matter of policy, would plow them back to the projects. This means that contracted projects will be implemented without the usual 10 or 15 percent set aside by contractors as SOPs for the congressman or those in authority over the projects. Needless to say, the effect of such selfless decision is that more money will be devoted to the project, ergo, more quality in the projects.

Comments:

1. “Frankly he said he was ‘waiving’ any personal benefit or gain from public projects…”

Waiving a personal benefit sounds like the Congressman is giving up on an automatic entitlement. Sounds a lot like the ‘entitlements’ of pabaon and pasalubong to me. The Congressman’s decision to forgo on his ‘entitlements’ could very well be a result of the investigations at the AFP where receiving entitlements of ‘traditional’ pabaons were routine.

2. “This means that contracted projects will be implemented ‘without the usual 10 or 15 percent’ set aside by contractors as ‘SOPs for the congressman’ or those in authority over the projects.”

I find these statements to be very direct and it is a wide-open declaration of the existence of a corrupt practice. Very interesting indeed!!!! SOP’s for the Congressman is a fact according to this author! I suppose this must not come as a shock to anyone on the island but it is downright appalling to others observing from a distance! This would make headlines in many places!

The SOP and the notoriety of its use has since time immemorial been a principal cause of corruption in government. Its unrestrained practice has been a scourge not only for the constituency but among civil works contractors who are forced to save on costs to recover what they set aside for SOPs, at the expense of the quality of public projects. It is an accepted fact that most of those in the bureaucracy to include many members of Congress and the Senate, over decades, have been deep into the evil SOP practice so that the people do not find it funny anymore every time the legislature is caricatured as the house of “buayas”, “senatong” or “tongressmen.”

Comments: No kidding! We must therefore not be puzzled over one’s decision to ‘junk’ the SOP if we call it evil.

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Except for one or two, I hardly know of any member of the legislature in recent times who have despised the notorious culture in the use of the pork barrel funds now redolently disguised as “congressional development funds” or the so-called Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).

Comments: Above statement is telling us that except for one or two, ‘everyone in the legislature’ LOVES THE PORK! That is a lot of guilty SOP recipients based on the 10 to 15 percent take on contracts! Too bad the Committee on Justice of the House of Representatives cannot investigate itself! The information we have here is plenty fodder for our investigating ‘committee’.

Senator Ping Lacson is one, only that he over-dramatized his abhorrence of the pork barrel by waiving altogether his P200 million yearly CDF. And he lost most of his constituency in the process.

Comments: Lesson learned from Ping Lacson, don’t give up your SOP or you lose your constituents! If anything, Lacson showed courage when he did what he did. He was setting a great example as a leader.

Of course I am not saying that Cong Cesar should follow Sen. Lacson’s example. There is much to be done in our poor province. There is still a good use for CDFs or PDAFs with the uncertainty in the sourcing of other public funds that can be tapped to alleviate the economic difficulties we are in. If put to good use, the P70 million-a-year for our lone district would mean a big lift from harsh life. And what better way to maximize the benefits of these funds if they are made available without passing through the barberos (para gunting).

Comments: Better still, be nice to see pork go to projects that help alleviate hunger on the island!

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Cong Cesar is on the right track in using his congressional funds for small impact projects. Among them are the scholarship programs benefiting 1,500 students in the province, the P1 million direct subsidy for poor patients at the EBMC, the P100,000-per-town subsidy for patients at the various district hospitals, the water wells, irrigation systems and Tesda training. I was told that before the school season ends, at least 15 multi-purpose centers costing about P1 million each will sprout simultaneously all over the province to provide venues for community projects or activities. Rain or shine, our only collective enjoyment in life, the baile, can now be held to our satisfaction.

Comments: Amen! And while we are at it, EBMC does not have a single dialysis machine that is functional. Perhaps that Pork can be used to help fix this challenge?

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And the big-ticket projects are coming. The P600 million for the Viga-Pandan phase of the circumferential roads is already assured in the 2011 budget. The Ro-Ro port improvement in Codon is underway for that anticipated tourism linkup between Catanduanes and Caramoan “paradise” in Cam

Sur.

Also it will be a matter of time before the Japanese loan funds will be ready to complete the eastern road links, a much awaited project that will lay bare the tourism potentials in the Pacific side of the province.

Comments: The ‘big ticket’ projects will do well to get implemented without any portion of it going to SOPs.

Cong Cesar provides a very consoling element as he takes the odd challenge of breaking tradition in the SOP culture, something that would seem strange for all of us. Over the years, what has been laid before us, with impunity, is corruption that has crept into all LGU levels with every official down to the kagawad shamelessly asserting his or her claim to the embedded SOP and every contractor or supplier rummaging around for cash to be advanced to the project proponent.

Comments: It has been said that leaders will NEVER rise above the limitations of their character. As the Commander-in-Chief leads the nation with leadership running under his flagship of integrity, ALL his underlings must take a solid position behind him, that is if we want to rise above our very mediocre state as a nation.

My worries subsided soon as I came out from that wholesome chat with Cong Cesar on the new moral tack he will be taking in his projects. I myself have been a long political practitioner in the province and being a pragmatist, I was about to put into him my sense that in Catanduanes, money determines the destiny of politicians. But feeling the sincerity and resoluteness of a young leader out to make a difference in our lives and aspirations, I forthwith set aside, at least for now, my long-time biases against Catandungeno congressmen.

Comments: It took courage, despite everything, for the Congressman to junk his ‘percentage’ from the Pork. It took courage to announce that to the public by a friend. While it is deemed that it was not an open admission to any guilt by anyone, we are happy to see that the fight against corruption is making inroads in this small part of the Motherland.

Perhaps all potential recipients of SOPs on the island will take the hint and follow suit and ‘waive’ their ‘proverbial’ and ‘traditional’ take from the people’s coffers.

Better still, despite the fact that pork is supposed to be a discretionary fund, it would be proper to see an accounting of these funds, once utilized, to let the people, the taxpayers, know just what we spent it on. This includes the ‘calculated’ P50M that is being or has been worked out for the last 9 months according to the author.

Isn’t full transparency called for by the President? We would all like to believe that he does!!!

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ROSULO welcomes your comments via email: rosmanlangit@yahoo.com

With all due respect!

Joe Joson

USA

The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement By Napoleon Hill

2011-03-05T14:21:00.000-08:00

Annotations by: Joe Joson

DEFINITENESS OF PURPOSE - The starting point of all achievements, knowing what you want. GOALS! Set SPECIFIC GOALS.

MASTER MIND PRINCIPLE - The coordination of effort between two or more people in a spirit of perfect harmony in order to attain a specific objective.