How Happy Are You With Your Life?

I recently come to know that Singapore has been ranked 22nd happiest country on earth by worldhappiness.report. You can steal a quick glance over here.

OMG! In case you haven't yet noticed, there are a few 3rd world countries that are ranked higher than Singapore.

Why are the people at these countries happier than us when we have better housing, jobs, living standards and so on...?

Being a true blue Singaporean, it did not take me too long to know why.

Expectations

In my opinion, expectations and stresses are the top 2 factors that have been constantly deflating my happiness level.

Just how many times have we been living under the expectation of people in and around our life?

I know I have. There are so many expectations we have to fulfill in life - school, marriage, family, social life, work place and list goes on...

Stresses

While I do understand there are both healthy and unhealthy stresses, it does not matter to me as stresses are what causes us to become unhappy with our life.

Have you have ever notice why children are ever so happy and carefree? I am sure people with half a brain would know the answer too...

Children, by and large, only have school and exam stresses to handle while we have a long list of other stresses to handle:

- parenting
- work place politics
- career advancement
- family harmony
- marriage
- peer pressure among friends, family and colleagues
- financial
- traffic jams (whether you are driving or not)
- health problems

What I listed above are probably only the tip of the iceberg compared to the longer list more stressful people may have.

Why Are People in the 3rd World Countries Happier?

 I do not really have all the answers, but I am guessing that people in these countries have, in general, lower amount of expectations and stresses in their life and hence the higher level of happiness in comparison.

And obviously, I am not referring to those countries where they do not even have enough to eat or a decent shelter over their head.

Everyone has a gauge of happiness within them. I know what makes me happy and most of the time, it did not take much to experience happiness. E.g. I am always happy whenever my kiddo come rushing towards me and hug me whenever I come home.

Simple happiness does not really cost much, isn't it? What are yours? What will make you a happier person?

WFH #2: Bolts and Nuts of Setting Up an eCommerce Store

In the previous WFH #1 post, I mentioned about getting an eCommerce course which I can conveniently watch and learn online at my own time and pace.

Well, I finally found one that is both affordable and well-organized when it comes to course materials and teaching style and pace.

Like I mentioned in the title, this course comes with both PDFs and lots of videos - the instructor walk-through the the entire eCommerce store setup (bolts and nuts) in such 'easy to understand' simplicity that I personally feel it is almost impossible for anyone to do it the wrong way.

At this very moment, I am still going through the videos and for a newbie like me, I must say I have learned a lot over the past few days.

Below is a short list of what I have learned so far:

- What is eCommerce Arbitrage (buy low and sell high) and ways to make money from it?

- How/Where to look for potential products and sellers and what are the pitfalls we should all avoid?

- How to approach and communicate with potential sellers and how to identify the right product to arbitrage?

- Tools and services we can use (short term) to quickly setup our product portal and get our first sale in

- The most popular and effective traffic source we can use to showcase products that we want to arbitrage

I have been going through the course material during my free time in the office, at home in the evening and most part of the day during weekends and I am truly enjoying every bit of it. :)

I really hope to set up my very first eCommerce product portal soon and get my first sale in. ($~$)

Stay tuned for the next update which will come really soon...

P/s: for those of you interested to know more about this course, kindly drop me a note or comment below with your email address.

Looking at Others and Ourselves the WRONG Way

Looking at Others

How often have we look scrutinize and judge others at the faults they have done or mistakes that they make?

And how often do we do that to ourselves? Nada. Almost never.

I never did. Until recently...

I have come to realize that we have been doing these scrutinizing and judgment thing the wrong way.

Instead of zooming into other people's fault and mistakes, we should actually zooming out and look at them from a more holistic point of view. Once we are able to achieve that, our initial judgement of other may differ entirely.

Just how many times have we change of point of view of a person after we 'see' them from a different perspective?

Are you always mad with your boss because he has been pushing most of his work over to you? Have you been complaining that he should also bank-transfer half his salary over to you too?

Would you look at him or her the same way again after you realize that he/she has been grooming you to take over his role after he retires or resign?

Looking at Ourselves

It's funny that we are 'almost' always able to forgive ourselves for the mistakes we made but we are not so forgiving when others make the same mistake...

Why?

I believe it boils down to having different perspective of how we look at others and ourselves...

All Most successful people and friends that I know do it the right way. They are harsh with themselves but they are ever so forgiving with others.

These people look at themselves with a magnifying glass and zoom into all their shortcomings and make improvements from there. And they zoom out on people to see the 'better' side of those who make mistakes.

These people have more friends, they are more successful than most people.

Just because they look themselves and Others the RIGHT way.

Let's start looking the right way starting today, shall we? :)