lady gaga, anyone?

wow! or should i cite it as "Ouch!". it has been four moon since the last time i write my web-log entry. (trying to express my guilt - so it can be an excuse - to make me believe that I'm getting better-as usual-which is not so true). like million of us procrastinating has infected our intestine, it cannot be removed because once we remove it, the pleasure of eating wouldn't have been the same, so we ought to keep it, just to satisfy our hallucination of how "good feeling" should be . The motivation to write this entry come while I'm writing other thing (which should have been complete by my last entry) which means that I've been putting off doing something (other word for procrastinate) in order to write this.. thats my dear reader, is how bad it is to me. Or may be this is my strategy of getting things done. So i need to have important task, and delayed it to make other things done. ouch..

enough with the dramatical intro. I've recently read an article written by Dr. Piers Steel, an organizational-industrial psychologist. He was comparing two types of motivational wisdom. One is from Rhonda Byrne the author of the 190 weeks listed in the New York Times Bestseller : The Secret (I've watched the documentary - it does save a lot of my time, so i can procrastinate it) and the other one is world most controversial artist - Lady Gaga.

Let me introduce you to the wisdom they both offer. If you have come across the knowledge of law of attraction, you might have an idea about Byrne works. Her theory is that whatever happen to you, it is because it is what you wished for. If you always think about debt, debt, debt, out of the solution, what you'll find - according to her - is more debt! same goes for the other things. so if you want to be let's say, rich, all you need to do is to be more specific about what you want, imagine it vividly, cut some picture if you have to and put it on the ceiling on your bed, so you'll see it every time you woke up in the morning or maybe at night when you have those creepy poor nightmare. And then, after some period of time, a month, a year, 10 years or may be 20, wallah! you'll find what you wished for at your disposal. just like that.

Now about the lady, this is her quotes "That's good that you won a lot of trophies, it's nice, but you know what? After I sell a bunch of records, I take all the platinum ones off the walls and pretend I haven't sold a damn one and I've got to go do it all again." yeah, controversial as she is, as Dr. Steel mention in his article. "she suggests that images of success (e.g., trophies) can take the place of actual successes (i.e., more victories). So instead of going out and making it happen, we reflect on past or imagined glory and do nothing. The symbol replaces the reality".

Now, how many of us or our colleague has been through this? we strive for something and when we got it, we lost our motivation and after a while we are back to square one. as an example, how many of us is doing all we can to collect money to fund our wedding because our saving is far from enough because we never had enough money to save. But somehow in few month we manage to get it! a sum that we never thought we can get. But what happen after that? some of us is going back to the old -i didn't have enough money to save-life. i heard some of my friend says this. some of my friend heard me saying this. :D If you are a Gaga fans, you'll need to put your wife somewhere that you couldn't find and act as if you never get married and repeat the process. hehehe..

So which one is your choice? let me offer my analysis.

according to Dr. steel, in a study conduct by Gabrielle Oettingen of New York University on the power of fantasy on everything including romance life and getting a job. This study involving 3 groups, A fantasy group (Byrne group), A control group (most of us group) and a Mental contrasting group (the GAGA group). The finding is interesting. They find that the GAGA group do best in life compared to the secret group. In fact, the secret group do worse than the control group!

eh? this is not my analysis! o.k here's mine. Using the theory of the secret, as a Muslims, i believe that most of our fate is predetermined by Allah. But we do have some rooms to make change as Allah cited in the holy Quran " Allah wouldn't change the fate of one race, until they changed it themselves." which means that Allah do gave us some space to make changes, so it is definitely wrong to say that once poor, forever will be. And listening to Dr. Hj. Fadhilah Kamsah's motivational CD's, he always remind the listener to have a good thought to Allah. Because Allah will give us, what we think He will give us. E.g, when a mom keep saying in her mind that her son is bad, that is what she will get. a bad son. I do have some experience about this. last year my wife suggested that i bought an MPV that was sold by her colleague that going abroad. i didn't take the suggestion seriously because it wasn't in my agenda of the year. But the idea is there. since then i do admire it, look at it every time i see it on road, imagine how it would look like if i decide to make it more personal. sometime i include it in my conversation saying that if have more "rezeki", i'm going to buy that MPV. it'll be convenient for my family. A year later, without having any idea's on how could i afford it at first, it become mine. And last week i rammed it onto a pedestrian buffalo that didn't use the zebra crossing. Maybe they're looking for a buffalo crossing but couldn't find it anywhere.. hehehe.. so its a combination of a fantasy (of getting the car) and God's will. (I do imaging that I'm going to crash into something before the actual crash. this is the second time the exact same thing happen to me before the accident - maybe that's how powerful fantasy or maybe coincidence might be).

to be continued....