The Second Decision for Success

I will seek wisdom!

Knowing that wisdom waits to be gathered, I will actively search her out. My past can never be changed, but I can changed the future by changing my actions today. I will train my eyes and ears to read and listen to books and recordings that bring about positive changes in my personal relationships and a greater understanding of my fellowman. No longer will I bombard my mind with materials that feed my doubts and fears. I will read and listen only to what increases my belief in myself and my future.

I will seek wisdom. I will choose my friends with care.

I am who my friends are. I speak their language, and I wear their clothes. I share their opinions and their habits. From this moment forward, I will choose to associate with people whose lives and lifestyles I admire. If I associate with chickens, I will learn to scratch at the ground and squabble over crumbs. If I associate with eagles, I will learn to soar to great heights. I am an eagle. It is my destiny to fly.

I will seek wisdom. I will listen to the counsel of wise men.

The words of a wise man are like raindrops on dry ground. They are precious and can be used for immediate results. Only the blade of grass that catches a raindrop will prosper and grow. The person who ignores wise counsel is like the blade of grass untouched by the rain - soon to wither and die. When I counsel with just myself, I can make decisions only according to what I already know. By counseling with a wise man, I add his knowledge ad experience to my own and dramatically increase my success.

I will seek wisdom. I will be a servant to others.

A wise man will cultivate a servant's spirit, for that particular attribute attracts people like no other. As I humbly serve others, their wisdom will be freely shared with me. Often, the person who develops a servant's spirit becomes wealthy beyond measure. Many times, a servant has the ear of the king, and a humble servant often becomes a king, for he is the popular choice of the people. He who serves the most grows the fastest.

I will become a humble servant. I will not look for someone to open my door - I will be excited to open the door for someone. I will not be distressed when no one is available to help me - I will be excited when I am available to hep.

I will be a servant to others. I will listen to the counsel of wise men. I will choose my friends with care.

I will seek wisdom!

(Extracts from the book I read: The Traveler's Gift)

The First Decision for Success

The buck stops here!

From this moment forward, I will accept responsibility for my past. I understand that the beginning of wisdom is to accept the responsibility for my own problems and that by accepting responsibility for my past, I free myself to move into a bigger, brighter future of my own choosing.

Never again will I blame my parents, my spouse, my children, my co-workers, for my present situation. Neither my education nor lack of one, my genetics, or the circumstancial ebb and flow of everyday life will affect my future in a negative way. If I allow myself to blame these uncontrollable forces for my lack of success, I will be forever caught in a web of the past. I will look forward. I will not let my history control my destiny.

The buck stops here. I accept responsibility for my past. I am responsible for my success.

I am where I am today - mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionlly, and financially - because of decisions I have made. My decisions have always been governed by my thinking. Therefore, I am where I am today because of how I think. Today, I will begin the process of changing where I am - mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally and financially - by changing the way I think.

My thoughts will be constructive, not destructive. My mind will live in the solutions of the future. It will not dwell in the problems of the past. I will seek the association of those who are working and striving to bring about positive changes in the world. I will never seek comfort by associating with those who have decided to be comfortable.

When faced with the opportunity to make a decision, I will make one. I understand that God did not put in me the ability to always make right decisions. He did, however, put in me the ability to make a decision and then make it right. The rise and fall of my emotional tide will not deter me from my course. When I make a decision, I will stand behind it. My energy will go into making the decision. I will waste none on second thoughts. My life will not be an apology. It will be a statement.

The buck stops here. I control my thoughts. I control my emotions.

In the future, when I am tempted to ask the question, "Why me?" I will immediately counter with the answer: "Why not me?" Challenges are gifts, opportunities to learn. Problems are the common thread running through the lives of great men and women. In times of adversity, I will not here a problem to deal with; I will have a choice to make. My thoughts will be clear. I will make the right choice. Adversity is preparation for greatness. I will accept this preparation. Why me? Why not me? I will be prepared for something great!

I accept responsibility for my past. I control my thoughts, I control my emotions. I am responsible for my success.

The buck stops here, indeed...

(Extracts from the book I read - The Traveler's Gift)

What All People Want?

All people want and have the right to be treated with dignity and respect - No exceptions.

- Gail Pursell Elliott

如果你也听说

歌曲：如果你也听说
歌手：张惠妹
专辑：star

突然发现站了好久
不知道要往哪走
还不想回家的我
再多人陪只会更寂寞

许多话题关于我
就连我也有听过
我的快乐要被认可
委屈却没有人诉说

夜把心洋葱般剥落
拿掉防卫剩下什么
为什么脆弱时候
想你更多

如果你也听说
有没有想过我
想普通交朋友
还是你依然会心疼我
好多好多的话想对你说
悬着一颗心没着落
要怎么附和
舍不得又无可奈何

如果你也听说
会不会相信我
对流言会附和
还是你知道我还是我
跌跌撞撞才明白了许多
懂我的人就你一个
想到你想起我
胸口依然温柔

许多话题关于我
就连我也有听过
我想我宁可都沉默
其实反而显得做作

夜把心洋葱般剥落
拿掉防卫剩下什么
为什么脆弱时候
想你更多

如果你也听说
有没有想过我
想普通交朋友
还是你依然会心疼我
好多好多的话想对你说
悬着一颗心没着落
要怎么附和
舍不得
又无可奈何

如果你也听说
会不会相信我
对流言会附和
还是你知道我还是我
跌跌撞撞才明白了许多
懂我的人就你一个
想到你想起我
胸口依然温柔

如果你也听说
有没有想过我
想普通交朋友
还是你
依然会心疼我
跌跌撞撞才明白了许多
冷漠的人就你一个
想到你想起我
胸口依然温柔

如果你想起我
你会想到什么

Count on my Love - Liz Phair

Count On My Love – Liz Phair
Soundtrack: No Reservations
Album: Somebody’s Miracle


Don't know where we'll be tomorrow
But we'll beg and borrow everything we need
You are standing next to me,
Where I want to be
Is anywhere you are

Some day if we never said it
We might live to regret it
Come on, don't let us slip away in a daze

You can count on my love
And I'm bright out when it's raining
When you feel your hope is fading
You can count on my love

Blue eyes, bluer than the blue sky
Smiling down like sunshine
Everywhere you are
For you, I only want the best
You only have to ask
And I'll be there for you

Some day if we never said it
We might live to regret it
Come on, don't let us fade away in a haze

You can count on my love
And I'm bright out when it's raining
When you feel your hope is fading
You can count on my love
With me you'll feel protected
And you'll never be rejected

You go through your whole life waiting
But you don't know what you're waiting for
One day you'll meet somebody
And your whole world now is an open door

You can count on my love
You can count on my love
And I'm bright out when it's raining
When you feel your hope is fading

You can count on my love
With me you'll feel protected
And you'll never be rejected
When you need a friend to lean on
You know you never need a reason
To count on my love
Count on my love
You can count of my love

Energy for Change

You can create the energy to turn your dreams into reality by knowing what to say when you talk to yourself.

-Shad Helmstetter

The Mighty Hedged Funds on SALES!

At the end of October last year 2007, the FTSE 100 was 6,721. Just a year later, and now the index is 3,890. That’s a fall of 42%!

US, London and Japan stocks are far from alone. Share prices have plunged round the world, and have recently fallen so fast that there’s the smell of blind panic around. What’s more, now the great and the good among the politicians and central bankers are competing with each other to tell us how bad the recession will be, and how long it will last. In other words, this might seem to be about as bad as it gets – Sir John Templeton’s fabled point of “maximum pessimism” - which is just when contrarian investors start coming into their own.

But while sniffing out shares that have fallen right out of favour isn’t too difficult right now, there’s a much bigger problem out there. Hedge funds are in forced sale mode! Stock markets may be in fire-sale territory (even longer-term bears such as Jeremy Grantham believe stocks are now closer to being undervalued) but a lot of the big sellers are the hedge fund managers. They bought stocks with borrowed money, and are now having to offload them.

While we can’t yet know exactly what’s being sold, we do know there’s plenty more stock still in the pipeline. The hedge fund industry has been staggering through its worst time in two decades, with an average loss of 17% this year. That beats the performance of most global stock markets, but it’s still not exactly great for a concept that was supposed to be able to sidestep declining markets (though to be fair, ‘short-selling’ bans haven’t helped recently).

Now the heat is really being turned up. Some 8,000 hedge funds with more than $1.7 trn in assets are “being caught in a vicious cycle” say BusinessWeek’s Matthey Goldstein and David Henry, “as worried investors pull out their money”. The problem lies in the mix of plunging markets and massive de-leveraging, i.e. paying down debt, across the financial system. Over the three months to September, another $179bn was wiped off the value of hedge fund assets by falling asset prices, according to Hedge Fund Research.

Spooked by the market falls, and keen to have ready cash at hand, investors have been pulling their money out at a rapid rate, with almost $31bn being withdrawn over the quarter – which means hedgies need to sell more assets to repay clients. On top of this, as markets fall, lenders are also cutting credit lines to their hedge fund customers or are making ‘margin calls’, i.e. demanding that those funds come up with extra cash to back up their borrowings.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy is still tying up tens of billions of dollars-worth of hedge fund assets. Lots of money managers had “parked” cash and other securities at the investment bank's prime brokerage operation. But these accounts are now frozen.

But it’s about to get even worse...

That’s more than enough bad news for any industry to cope with. As many as 30% of hedge funds will be shutting up shop “in a Darwinian process”, says Emmanuel Roman at GLF Partners, and the US authorities will force-feed regulation onto the rest: “there need to be scapegoats, and they are going to go hunt people”. That will make business even harder, and lead to even more forced selling.

In London, out of 450 hedge funds, more than 100 could be at risk, says Miles Costello in The Times. New York Professor Nouriel Roubini, who has been spot on about how bad things were going to get, agrees that hundreds of hedge funds will fail. “We've reached a situation of sheer panic. Yet I fear the worst is ahead of us. Don't be surprised if policy makers need to close down markets for a week or two in coming days”. This is pretty apocalyptic stuff. But the cavalry isn’t about to appear over the horizon.

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson confirmed to Bloomberg yesterday that unregulated firms like hedge funds won't initially get government aid as “we're focused on regulated financial institutions.” So “you can argue that it could be worse than Wall Street because no one is coming in to save the hedge funds”, says Hank Higdon at Higdon Partners.

Why you shouldn't go bargain hunting just yet? What does this mean for the ordinary investor?

Well, because of the hedgie effect, share prices could easily fall some way further than anyone expects. “The market’s going to overshoot on the downside”, says Peter Boockvar at Miller Tabak, who sees the Dow tumbling to 5,000 next year, more than 40% below today. “When that occurs, I’ll be a raging bull”. So it’s a brave man, or woman, however contrarian, who’s prepared to dip more than a very small toe in the market with the hedge funds in forced sale mode for some time to come. I certainly wouldn’t be buying any funds, passive or actively managed.

Period.