The Decisive Life: Recent Episodes
Avic Caparas
No one looks forward to making tough decisions, but these are the types that could take us to the next level of achieving and becoming the best version of ourselves. Dive into decisions every week with Avic and learn more how you can become a better person by improving your decision-making skills. If you believe that your decision moments come always for a reason, don't miss an episode!
Learn success tips from Leslie Anne Huang who graduated with cum laude honors from the University of the Philippines in Diliman and landed in the Top 6 of the 2010 Philippine CPA licensure examination. In 2019, Leslie was one of the 137 Elijah Watt Sells awardees after obtaining a cumulative average score above 95.50 across all four sections of the US Uniform CPA Examination.
Sadness is a normal emotion in life. Who in the world does not get sad at all? But sometimes, we can be sadder than other times and it can be difficult to manage.
A recent surge of sadness among the BTS army came up when BTS announced a supposed hiatus a couple of months back. Our guest, Dr. Joanne Robles, is a neurologist and also a BTS army. She will share her experience in getting through the sadness as regards the BTS plans.
Her tips include: 1. Keep busy. 2. Know more the kind of person that you are. 3. Accept that the only thing you can do about any particular situation no matter how difficult it is is to control how you react. 4. Seek help from a medical specialist when you sense that you no longer have a normal reaction to a stressor. 5. Find a release or a medium of expression to your emotions, like a hobby, painting, music, etc.
Truthfulness may seem to be on the decline when you keep track of daily lies that are discovered in politics, recruitment, social media, schools, etc. Reasons are aplenty for why people don't speak the truth. These are good starting points to understand the triggers for past human action in order to learn from them moving forward.
Germany's holocaust education is a powerful case study for courageously counteracting denial and distortion of truth. Our guest, German embassy (in Manila) head of mission Laura Oexle, will talk about the beginnings and learnings from the holocaust education. As a parent, she will also share her strategies and tips to educating her children in truthfulness.
To progress at any work, constant learning is essential. Being a career diplomat demands "forever learning" as we will hear from the experiences of former Ambassador to Germany Melita Sta. Maria-Thomeczek. Ambassador Millie has spent 27 years in the field of international relations. She had three assignments abroad - Bonn and Berlin (Germany) and New York (USA). We gathered these tips from her career built on constant learning.
- Have the constant interest to learn and learn and learn.
- Be accepting, understanding and open to new learning. Any bias will hinder your learning
- Be humble to learn new things, and learn from past mistakes.
- Don't just learn alone. Learn with your team.
- Everything is a learning. Be discerning to know which learning to keep or to unlearn.
6. Be generous to share your learnings with other people so that they also grow.
How do you stay relevant in a world of continuous change and uncertainty? Although everyone reacts to change differently, those who achieve success have particular mindsets, adaptability skills and attitudes. Our guest Arlene Gotera has been in many changes throughout her career. She has gone from practicing as pediatrician to nurse to case manager, then to holding leadership positions in health care management. She has also been adapting to different cultures as a Filipina in the US and in Saudi Arabia. Her tips as regards adapting to change include: 1. For any big change, do a SWOT analysis (strengths-weaknesses-opportunities-threats). 2. Step back to leap forward. 3. Have a goal in mind and stick to the plan. Be guided by your mission and purpose. 4. Don't expect people to adjust to you. Adjust to the situation. 5. Let go of titles. Don't get stuck to the titles. Any profession as long as it is a decent and honorable profession is worth doing. 6. Get out of your comfort zone, it might just be making you resistant to change. 7. Deny yourself in little sacrifices every day and you will build your stamina to face any change. 8. Focus on the positives and see on you can mitigate the negatives. 9. Be humble to accept that not everything is in your control.
The uncertainties caused by the pandemic and the economic recession have made us value even more whatever life and work and relationships we are blessed with. Regardless of the hits and misses or climbs and plateaus, we can still connect the dots and capture at any given moment the legacy we wish to leave behind.
We are joined in this live stream by my guest Mr. Mario Gatus, chairman of the board of Lee Hecht Harrison Philippines. With a career spanning almost 60 years, he will share his experiences and their meanings that helped him build his legacy. We learned these lessons from him: 1. There’s no dull moment in your life if you are having fun, enjoying yourself in the work that you like. 2. When people are separated from work and become less productive, society needs advocates for strong career transitioning. 3. A shift from employment to entrepreneurship needs the right mindset, discipline and persistence. 4. Follow the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.) 5. Keep on learning as the world is changing so fast.
Any discourse on finding life's meaning would be incomplete if it does not touch on death. In knowing the reality of death, we can be urged to find meaning in this one life that each one of us is gifted with. Just as the sight of the finish line drives a runner to give his one last sprint for the gold, accepting the reality of life's end - when it ends - could push us to reflect always on the direction that we taking each day. What am I moving towards?
My guest is Dr. Maria Fidelis Manalo, a palliative care specialist who has helped many terminally ill patients not only with medical care but also managed their psychosocial and spiritual care. For her, a person who has lived life to the full even if it was an ordinary life will also find meaning in death. On the other hand, persons who have not known what to do with their life as if life is passing them by will not know what to do when dying hits them.
Who would wish to talk about past failures when you are a top-notcher?
Angelica Jao has been candid about one failed subject - how she felt upon getting her failing grade, fighting the fear of future failures, her own learning from that failure.
Angelica landed in the top 3 of the chemical engineer licensure examination conducted in May 2022. She graduated from the University of the Philippines (mentioned in the video as UP) in 2020 with the degree of BS Chemical Engineering cum laude. She is an alumnae of the Philippine Science High School (mentioned as PISAY). These are her tips for dealing with failure:
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Think that failure does not define you. You are not going to fail forever. Neither does failure lessen your dignity as a person.
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Use failure as a motivation to know what you can improve on.
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Ask for help.
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Grab every opportunity to get back up.
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Be thankful that you failed, as it really happens.
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Think of other people who are not as privileged as you are.
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When you fail, then you can say you've been there and it was not as bad as you thought it was.
Angelica finished college with cum laude honor, and landed in the top 3 of the chemical engineer licensure examination. When I asked her for her one message to the world with her achievements, she said “everything adds up.” Even if she was not able to join the live stream due to internet problems, I gave 4 tips as inspired by a video entitled “Integrating the Wins” by Brendon Burchard. These tips include:
- Find meaning in your daily tasks. Live the day with gratitude.
- Keep a journal. Write down the things that have impacted you.
- Take time out to appreciate the big and small wins.
- Take it in. Step back and view your present experiences in perspective. Be grateful that you can do things now, and you don’t postpone what you must do.
The body, mind and spirit are interconnected. They must be in harmony for all of them to function well. When the body is not well, it is not easy to remain calm. When we are controlled by fear or hatred, there are manifestations in our body. When there is spiritual joy, the body can suffer anything. I give my proven strategies to rest the body, mind and spirit:
- Regular disconnection from digital screen during mealtimes.
- Relaxation through walking.
- Benefiting from nature’s therapeutic power.
- Knowing which elements of nature do not give you rest.
- Appreciating nature with family or friends
- Regular spiritual retreats and prayer
- Mindful reading of books or listening to audiobooks.
- Having sufficient sleep.
When the environment rewards mediocre performance and misconduct, would you stop aiming for excellence? No, you are meant to work well and overcome your limits in order to get to the next level of success. Our guest in this first episode of summa cum laude talks is Justine John Serdoncillo. He graduated from Syracuse University with the degree of aerospace engineering summa cum laude. His tips to surpass his limits include:
- Prayer. I don't think I can do it all myself. I have to get strength from God.
- I schedule my tasks. There are several useful apps to be on time and work well.
- Rest is important to maintain productivity and endurance.
- Focus on understanding the topics. The grades will just be a bonus to the knowledge you get.
- Education is a big investment. Use your time well.
- I surround myself with people who have goals and want to do better and work harder.
- I face my hardships with calmness. I don't react to everything that I experience.
- Freedom means you could do what you want to do. Your conscience will be there to guide you.
- Your actions will have consequences.
- Emotions will always be hard to manage "at the moment." Address them properly.
Online trolls get away with rude posts when they hide their identities. But when identified professionals wish death or harm on others, it can get alarming. And all uncivil behavior can agitate anger that can spiral into an uncontrollable tit-for-tat rude exchange. Why be polite even if others are not? 1. Politeness gives you an edge in your career. 2. Polite persons implicate their families in their good reputation. 3. Polite persons can adapt in all types of environments. They have made sacrifices in striving for politeness. Rudeness is a misfit in polite environments.
How do you become polite even if others are not? 1. Lower your expectations about people. Education does not make a person polite. Respect for other people does. 2. Learn to listen. If customers display rude behavior, listen as they might be really pointing out something that can be improved by your organization. 3. Be extra nice online. Review your content before hitting POST or SEND. 4. Be attentive to polite role models. Etiquette books can help and living examples of polite behavior can help even better. 5. Know that it is other people who decide to grant authority on communications from you. That's the limit to faking politeness.
Ethical fading happens when ethical aspects are not considered in the decision-making processes. Sometimes, it is more than fading because people get blinded in self-deception and really make unethical decisions. Regardless of whether it is fading or blindness, both can lead to wrong decisions. I give you 9 tips to avoid ethical fading. 1. Be prepared for ethical challenges. 2. Take courage. 3. Plan if-then scenarios. 4. Be humble. 5. Think of ethics (not just avoiding evil but also doing good) as a lifelong pursuit. 6. Be vocal about your ethical choices. 7. Surround yourself with honest confidants. 8. Rely on personal safeguards like enough hours of sleep, physical exercise, good quality work, etc. 9. Consider looking at decision situations from the eyes of the powerless.
What if someone you love knows that stealing is bad, and yet she will vote for an electoral candidate with known ill-gotten wealth? What happened to the alignment of values with the vote decision? In this video, I give you 5 ways to understand her current hierarchy of values which shows a contradiction in values. Sincerely find out more information as to how she sees realities from her perspectives. 1. When she tells you the reason for her vote, listen for more information or asks “Tell me more.” 2. If she comments on your behavior, repeat the statement with a question mark, and you could know more how you are coming across. 3. Check for information gaps, although be careful with the tone of your voice matters as you are not in a debate but in a friendly conversation. 4. Reframe her statements in a positive way. 5. Expand her realities but helping her to consider other possibilities. It is important from hereon to improve in training and education methods. Be prudent as well in giving her future assignments that will make people question her integrity, when she upholds one value but still is convinced of a contrary value.
Learning skills have never been easy using the internet videos. You can hardly ask a teacher in the classroom to slow down or go back to the lesson 10 minutes earlier without distracting other classmates. However, with online videos, you can slow down or go fast watching an online pre-recorded tutorial or class. Nevertheless, there are still distractions like advertisements in online videos, and offers of paid courses if you really want to go deep in a certain lesson. In this episode, I highly recommended two principal ideas. First, have your BIG WHY in front of you all the time to keep you motivated throughout your journey to upgrading your skills. Second, be prepared to make some investments if you wish to be efficient and save time and effort, and if you are determined to stay online and develop as a pro. I then give 3 tips to go either slowly or faster in the online world of learning.
The Cambridge dictionary defines gullibility as “the quality of being easily deceived or tricked, and too willing to believe everything.” Gullibility has become very relevant in an era of misinformation, disinformation, and fake news. It becomes much more relevant if you are managing decision-makers because we want them to have an accurate perception of reality including the facts of the problem they need solving, the alternatives open to them, etc. There is a danger to dismiss the relevance of gullibility if you are surrounded by educated people. However, many fraud victims like the Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme are educated, intelligent and accomplished individuals. My primary tip is to get to know your decision-makers, what they believe in, what they read and listen to, where they get information and how accurate are their data sources. These steps demand a greater vigilance on you who manage decision-makers to be careful with your own sources of information, spend time with them to point out incorrect information, improve reward systems to influence diligence and prudence in sourcing accurate data, etc.
Overcoming your fear of tech is crucial to your success in everything online. You might not fear using your mobile phone, but you are more challenged with using the internet, the computer and computer applications. Adapting a framework used by Brendon Burchard in his video on how to overcome fear, I give tips on overcoming the pain of loss, process and outcomes when you are shifting to more complicated tech applications. To get over the pain of thinking your loss of stable income when you shift to online business, visualize the gain or benefit you will attain. To overcome the fear of the long process of learning, recall the adjustments to change that you have successfully mastered in the past. To tame the fear of negative outcomes that might arise, you could use your imagination to envision positive outcomes. Many good applications also provide learning platforms sometimes call online universities. I cited Kajabi which provides a 30-day free trial if you use my affiliate link https://app.kajabi.com/r/sipGFLnn and Tubebuddy which recently created a university for YouTube Creators. You can try any paid plan using https://www.tubebuddy.com/avic
Regrets may arise after even the most well-crafted decision. We could have prepared more for the outcomes, deliberated longer on more alternatives, or even made a different decision. Regrets could last briefly or persist longer in time. Research shows that regrets of shorter duration come from an action, while enduring regrets are triggered by something we did not do otherwise known as an inaction. While there are popular recommendations to deal with regrets, I give 5 tips in this episode that are less aligned to prevailing suggestions. To wit, I depart from dual options of either dwell in regrets or change your life, and I suggest that you take more courage to reflect on your regrets to concretize improvements. If you hear someone telling you not to worry as many people have the same regrets, I’d rather ask you to love the uniqueness in your situation. Most importantly, I recommend that you embrace your decisions including the process and the outcomes as all these are opportunities for personal growth.
Did you regret wrong decisions? That is a normal reaction because if we could be right, why be wrong? Did you get more fearful after making a wrong decision and trusting yourself less in subsequent decisions? Fear is also a normal consequence of making wrong decisions. This podcast episode makes use of a dilemma from a narrative found in the internet about a man walking in the desert for days looking for water. The man found a bottled water with instructions to use the water to start a pump. Avic Caparas illustrates the different decision options using a decision tree. From that illustration, she gives 3 tips to make right decisions. These tips include being creative to get out of a two-option decision situation, including the decision-maker’s wellbeing or survival among the decision criteria or areas of consideration, consider the decision consequences to other people who will are affected by it.
If you have reached a point when you have worked on so many areas in your career and home life and yet you feel “a bit of a lack of accomplishment,” or you are just starting your career and yet you believe that you will not achieve anything at all, then this episode is for you. How do you become an achiever and not a doer? Achievers are also doers, but achievers have not simply done tasks and finished activities. They have added value to their organizations through their actions, results, improvements, successes and the like. Opportunities brought about by the digital world and the massive open online courses give no excuse not to achieve anything or stop being an achiever. I share my tips using the 7 unique letters in the word achiever: aspiration, courage, honesty and humility, investment, energy, validation, and having reasons instead of excuses.
Many people are prone to ruminating and dwelling on issues for a long time especially in these challenging times. In this episode I describe my own experience related to my YouTube channel. I was overthinking if I could talk about many other topics aside from those that have gotten many views, if I should spending a lot of time editing my own videos, and if livestreaming would be a better alternative to pre-recorded and edited videos. From this case study coming from my own experience, I have drawn 4 lessons to help the listeners learn how to stop overthinking. These lessons are best remembered with the acronym TGIF. First, take action even in a tiny portion of that problem you have. Second, give yourself grace that you are not perfect and you can also fall into overthinking. The third relates to inspiration. Find inspiration and open yourself to the possibility that you could learn from other people. Lastly, face your fears, and tackle these fears either at the level of logic or emotions or both.