I leapt out of bed at 7am this morning, wondering what had just happened.

My body, surprisingly, is fine. Blistered, marathoned feet, aching trapezius muscles aside, my mutant healing powers must have took care of the rest.

My mind, on the other hand, was suspicious.

For the past 10 days I’ve survived on 4 to 6 hours of sleep a day, 1 to 2 very irregular meals a day, and called upon more mental and emotional energy than I knew I had.

Felt like I returned from scout camp. Or nazi camp. Ok maybe not nazi camp. I’m guessing people don’t actually return from nazi camp to blog. So yes, a really long and multi-tasking kind of scout camp.

But It wasn’t scout camp, either. It was delivering Malaysia’s Largest Youth Lifestyle Festival, YOUTH’09.

And my mind is still suspicious.

After all the punishing I put myself through, instead of ‘crashing’, I leapt out of bed at 7am, lay around thinking for an hour, did a bunch of chin-ups, and here I am, the only one in the office, blogging like you’re listening.

I know there’s a huge mess to clean up. And loads of post event work with clients, press, partners, volunteers, youths etc to follow up with. The road ahead is long.

Yet, I feel fine.

YOUTH’09 has re-affirmed that everything can be resolved if you’re looking for solutions. It has also re-affirmed to me that the practice of patience, kindness, and compassion always wins.

There’s also so much good stuff to reflect upon, soak in, and tie up in my head. And of course, the business direction for 2009 will be a real adventure.

So why is my mind is suspicious?

I admit, there is a part of me which wonders when I will give up, burn out, or get really beaten. Because really, the journey has just begun.

But I also know that it is this self-doubt, suspicious inner skeptic, which is the real challenge, not anything else. I know it’s this suspicion which prevents people from pushing through to achieve what they intend to. And I know, if I keep moving forward in spite of suspicion, nothing can stop me.

Thank you, friends, youths, volunteers, partners, and team for believing. Couldn’t have done it without you. Will write a proper thank you soon. Will clean up the office now.

How many promises have you made in your lifetime?

Promises to yourself. Promises to your boss. Your mother. Your friends.

What if you have kept them all? How would your world be today?

How many promises do we make, both knowingly, and unknowingly. Because when you think about it… you’re not the one making promises… promises are made when people believe you.

A promise becomes a genuine promise if there is genuine BELIEF in it… for example:

A promise to yourself

You say to yourself, “I’ll go to the gym 3 times a week”. Do you believe yourself? If you don’t fully believe yourself, it’s not w very good promise is it. No belief, no promise.

It’s probably like a goal. And it’s like OK if you didn’t hit a goal, but its NOT OK to break a promise.

Promises are very different from ‘setting goals’, voicing out your intent, and ‘trying your best’. Promises have a different weight and effect on those who make them, and those who believe them.

A promise to others

As a brand owner / marketer, let’s say your product says “Gives you radiant skin”. If the customer believes you, your product had better damn well live up to it, or you’ll be breaking a promise, and losing repeat customers, and failing in business.

When you look at a brand, what do you expect from it, what do you believe about a brand? The moment your product is out there, people may buy into it, and suddenly, you’re making a promise whether you like it or not.

Marketers talk about a BRAND PROMISE – and they should keep it.

Khailee’s Promise

I previously “mentioned” that I would show you my latest Halloween costume, right? And if you believe me, that’s as good as a promise.

And I will stay true to it:

So here you go. I was dressed as SERENA WILLIAMS.

World number #1 baby!

Here I am trying to be a tennis player, hitting on girls:

It was fun at first, then it got uncomfortable (for onlookers, too), as my wallet, handphone, carkeys and such was in this waist pouch underneath the front of my skirt. So I had to like, play pennis whenever I answered the phone.

Anyways, where was I. Oh, promises.

Big Promises

Just a closing thought.

There’s a lot of power in keeping our promises. Shared promises can unite nations. And shared promises kept, will be completely worth the effort put into keeping them. (Hint hint Anwar or Obama)

The last 6 months of my life has been the most intense, mostly because I’ve been focusing every working hour on keeping my promises, to my clients, to my team, and to myself. And because so many young Malaysians and brand owners believe in YOUTH’09 and YouthSays, it creates very big, shared promises, which once kept, I know will completely be worth the effort put into keeping them.

//

Promises VS Goals idea, thanks to MindValley and Bill Bartmann

The tennis skirt and racket thanks to Xinch

How much time do you need to finish this?

How much attention do you need to finish this?

How much sleep do you need to feel fresh?

How much rest do you need to feel fresh?

Just like how time is so different from attention, I feel rest and sleep have a related, important distinction, too.

Time, like sleep, suggests quantity. Attention, and rest suggests quality.

And if you think about it, we go through life swapping time to get sleep, sleep to get rest, and rest to gain attention to do what we do best, before we head back to sleep again.

There may be some math behind the semantics, but I just woke up from an 8 hour slumber, and screw the math, I think I could use a bit more sleep rest ;p

From an award winning ad campaign in India… the ad copy is quite relevant to Malaysia’s political scene too.

I was alone one night, in deep thought…

I was wondering what I would learn by going through a selection of 213 quotes on “action”.

The one thing I personally took away?

The need for consistency and continuous effort.

Not revolutionary, I know.

But it hints at me quite accurately, as I’ve spent the most part of life on “think smart” to the extent I’m relying less on “work hard”.

Looking ahead, for the ambitions I’ve chosen, I might have to do both.

What are the top 3 activities you enjoy?

I realize I have been spending most of my life chasing the activities I enjoy. And this really paved the path I have followed thus far.

If only I enjoyed different activities, I would be a completely different person today.

So here’s my hypothesis:

If you want to completely change your life, one way is to change what you enjoy most.

To test this hypothesis, I will conduct this experiment.

Follow me for a moment to see what I mean.

At the end of the post, I will invite you to conduct this experiment… well see if it completely changes your life.

STEP ONE: List the top 3 activities you enjoy most.

Here are my top 3, as of 2 months ago.

1. I enjoy being absorbed in purposeful creation.

   Heck it doesn’t have to be too purposeful sometimes. I get so happy when I’m drawn into writing a new song, designing a new website, or developing a new idea, even though the purpose may not be initially apparent to me.

2. I enjoy chasing my curiosity.

   Mostly, this means, flipping through the bookstore, or spending hours online reading and surfing and clicking, researching a topic, or looking for answers.

3. I enjoy laughing.

   I love puns, random jokes in real situations, and laughing with people. My favorite set of jokers are Jeff, the MindValley guys, and myself. You have no idea how often I make myself laugh.

Okay, those are the top 3 activities I enjoy most. I know this because I spend 90% of my waking hours doing creating things, learning things, and laughing at my own jokes.

3 simple things make me a happy camper

But it looks like some changes will be made…

STEP TWO: Change your top 3 list

Now, my life would be quite different if I told you the top 3 things I enjoy is

1. Watching TV
2. Sleeping
3. Eating junk food

I might be speaking to you now as a napping godzilla. Hence, I will not enjoy any of those.

Picture this instead….

What if I enjoyed making money more than chasing curiosity, creating new things, and laughing?

For the most part of my life, making money has never been a top priority. ‘Enough’ money always came to me, through the stuff I did.

And I never really saw a pressing need for loads of money, anyway. I’m not a big spender, and I end up with plenty of savings.

However, in December 2007… I decided to develop a love and pursuit for truckloads of money.

You see, if I can get my brain to develop a healthy addiction to filling up my bank account, it will automatically cause me focus my energy on activities which will attract more wealth into my life.

(Notice I am “exaggerating for illustrative purposes” and really drilling this into my head. I know “I enjoy making money” is easy for some of you, but believe it or not, it’s taken me 2 months for me to feel it in my bones.)

It’s about time I got filthy rich.

I’m sure I’ll find a good use of the money later.

Off the cuff, I imagine, having a lot of money definitely equips me better to live out my ideals of social enterprise and market-driven change.

I might even buy myself a pair of slippers from impoverished jungle folk.

So this is how I’m living this experiment out.

Will changing what I enjoy most will completely change my life?

So far so good.

• I have over the past 2 months, included “I enjoy making money” in my top 3.
• I’ve chucked away a few things I was working on, and have shifted my attention to new things. (More on this later)
• Quite immediately, I’ll be spending the next 2 weeks in intense learning mode… reading books, and meeting people about investing, currency, and finance.
• I have made a billion dollars Let me get back to you

For now, I’m going to work on my new ventures, as well as get a deeper sense of the rules of the big picture money game, and go from there. Not sure where this will lead me, but I’ve got a feeling I’m going to enjoy it. And I’ll be blogging about this, too.

Now, it’s your turn.

If you want to change your life, try this.

1. List the top 3 things you enjoy.
2. Learn to enjoy something you don’t currently really enjoy all that much. Remember to create a burning desire for that new activity.
3. Remind yourself of this often.

Report your results on I’m Making 2008 the Best Year of My Life Facebook Group.

The author of my favorite online comic, Wondermark!, shares some reflections on his life’s focus…

Nearly a year on, I’m finding myself turning down work-for-hire gigs more and more often so I can have time to focus on the comic and other personal projects. Like Tuesday’s comic expressed (in a fashion), I don’t want to waste or give away any more of my own personal calendar-squares than I have to. Often that means that I walk away from decent paychecks or even potential career opportunities — but in doing so, I’ve realized with growing clarity how important it is to spend my finite energy in pursuit of my own goals, rather than those of an advertising agency, movie studio, or corporate client.

As for me… I’ve been very fortunate to have worked on exciting things with exciting people since day 1. I owe it to my ability to have big dreams in the first place, and doing whatever it takes to realize them.

But I’ve got HUGE dreams, and I’ve got to work a whole lot harder (and smarter). I only have a couple years more before my metabolic rate slows, and I realize how mortal I am.

Hence, for 2008, I’m kicking it into high gear.

For starters, I spent a whole day today kick starting a new venture with Joel. More to come. Keep track of my plans and progress here, and remember to update the group about your progress.

P/S – Check out my friend Amir’s new blog. PassionBasedLearning.com

Don’t let this be you.

In day-to-day contexts, I notice negotiation, persuasion, and strategy has so much more to do with emotions, and not as much to do with logic and reason.

And I thought humans were “rational”.

I had to learn this the hard way, losing badly in board games like Risk, Imperial, Monopoly, and mafia

In the future, I will “act irrationally” as a strategy!

Let experimental psychologist Stephen Pinker explain to you how this could be beneficial to you, in his video, “Do hotheads always win?”

The Big Think site reminds me of TED btw, but snappier.

Lately, a few write-ups and incidents have left me feeling somewhat ahead of myself. Pretentious. I’m not suggesting that the recent publicity/ newspaper write-ups etc have been misleading. Not at all…

You see, I am a small fry gunning for big dreams.

Not some big shot.

However, due to the unconventional fashion of “my work”, it is pretty easy for anyone to reach a conclusion far off from the truth. Either I’m doing a lot of great things, or just a lot of crap ;P

Do I care about what people think?

Confession #1

Yes, of course I do. And I should.

This year, the Malaysian media will play a big part in my projects, and it would make me even more uncomfortable if my story gets exaggerated, or misrepresented in any way.

Along these lines, I’ve observed, first-hand, how “putting your best foot forward” can sometimes lead to “crossing the line”.

Hence, I want to do my part to come clean with myself, and what I do.

Fact or Fiction?

Khailee is an “entrepreneur” who runs many “businesses”

Um, what is an “entrepreneur”?

The simplistic view suggests “someone who starts his own businesses”.

However, the modern understanding extends a bit beyond that. Read more about this is in Wikipedia and in an article I wrote over 2 years ago.

So what does that make me?

On one hand I do not “own my own office”, hire full-time staff, or have a big company in my name.

I simply do not.

However, I’m involved in a couple of ventures as a shareholder.

I’ll begin with MindValley.

I started off as a typical employee.

Today, I’m involved with them on 3 levels:

1. I own shares in MindValley.
2. I’m also paid to work on the various projects within MindValley.
3. Bunch Out is own my venture, and I co-own this with MindValley.

If we were in tune with Silicon Valley lingo, I might be labeled an “entrepreneur-in-residence” or EIR. In simple terms, it is used when Venture Capitalists pay someone in salary and shares, to start and grow businesses.

But there are other EIR arrangements. See Wikipedia or the blog of some other EIR.

About Bunch Out, I may spin it off as my own company – depending on it’s success. I will also be hiring interns / employees for that one, and will announce that soon.

About my other “businesses”… I co-founded theCICAK.com with Poh Si Teng, but it is not a registered non-profit (yet). All the money we make from theCICAK is used to fund operations and writing competitions. No one pockets anything privately.

I also co-founded Project Bazooka – but it owned under YuRi’s company, and we are in the process of transferring its ownership to volunteers.

Both ventures have gained noteworthy influence and profits, they aren’t “businesses” in it’s most technical sense.

So that’s really it.

Do I make a lot of money?

It’s funny how some people actually come up to you and ask. Well, I am not filthy rich, but I do make “enough” money (and not work many hours) to never need to consider a “normal” job. But money is a basic need, a good-to-have, but not exactly the deepest motivator in my life.

Do I personally see myself as an entrepreneur?

I don’t really care much. I prefer to focus on my work, not the name calling. But even if I am, I’m not a conventional one, or a very successful one.

Especially when you put me side by side with giants, like yesterday, when I spoke at the National Youth Entrepreneurship Conference, and met some of them.

I was inspired, and blown away. Admittedly, I felt very small.

Compared to them, I’m really “not there yet”.

But of course, that’s not stopping me from getting ahead in 2008, and have at least ONE “home run”.

Nothing will stop me from having my big ideas make a real big impact. I refuse to swim around in “BETA” forever. This year I’m going all out.

I have already started work on 2 new ventures, but I will only talk about it when its up and running.

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.
~ Henry Ford

So yeah. Will reveal more soon.

Just thought I’d come clean with myself, and with some members of the audience who might follow up with my recent speeches through this blog.

For those who read this in time, and still think I’m worth catching, I’m invited to speaking at an entrepreneur’s meet up on Jan 31st, and MDeC is flying me to Penang to speak alongside ex-Googler turned investor, Colin Wong at an internet entrepreneurship event on Feb 1st.