Learn from Others!

Help, Please Somebody Help! So sang the Beatles.

Help, is available whether it is for personal issues or business issues, you can get some answers with the right mindset. But you need to work on this so that you know what to do. One way is to learn from others who have been through some of the things you will go through.

I was reading with this commentary by Richard Branson in Today newspaper. He is an inspiration to me. I had an wonderful opportunity to meet and shake hands with Richard Branson when he came down to launch Virgin Mobile in Singapore. I told myself that I want to be successful like him.

Richard Branson like many others before him said that you must learn from mistakes of others and you should not be afraid of failures. He said that you can learn from failures of others/other companies more so then their successes.

I have always stressed that it is cheaper to learn from mistakes made by others than making the mistakes yourself. It will not only be more painful if you make the mistake yourself. What is worse is you may not recover from your fall if you do not know how to handle it.

No one is born perfect as a human being. So, we have to learn to to improve ourselves and make ourselves better human beings. One way, is to learn from others be it business or personal. You learn from their success and failures. This is what they teach you in marketing where you have case studies about companies that have succeeded and companies that have failed.

Likewise, you can learn to improve yourself as a person by observing and learning from people you think are better than you, more intelligent than you or richer than you. As long as you are willing to learn and change, the world is your oyster.

After I finished National Service, I was in a bit of limbo land. I analyzed my personality, my successes and failures. I wanted to change the way I was as a person and I wanted to be more successful in whatever I did. I had a friend who was my role model. I wanted to be more sociable, more out going, be a better public speaker. I used to be very shy. I would not even want to put up my hands to answer questions in class. Basically, I did not like who I was because I was stuck in a world where I had only a handful of friends.

I realized that I would have to CHANGE if I wanted to be a better person. I observed my friend and what he did and I emulated him. NO PAIN, NO GAIN. So I decided to be more brave. I tried to participate more in class. I decided to speak up and answer questions. Even when I sounded silly, it did not matter. I was learning. The change was not overnight. It took a couple of years.....I am still a work in progress. I am still trying to improve even now because we tend to pick up bad habits, regress or forget what we learnt when we are successful.

Today, I can say that I am proud of my achievements. I was a top Sales Manager in my previous job, I have given a speech in front of the President, jumped out of a plane (tandem parachuting), I can talk to almost anybody and I talk to Managing Directors of company.

You too can change if you have want to improve yourself. You just need to make a decision and you need to know what to change. You can do this by learning from others. Get a Mentor if you need some real guidance.

Good Luck!

Cheers,
Mark
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