Your children need your presence more than your presents. - Jesse Jackson

Yesterday, I went home unusually early and excited to teach my son some basketball for the first time. Not surprisingly, he got on his shoes faster than he usually does, and with a big shining smile. We played, had fun and talked seriously about basketball, life and God. I can see very clearly that he was so happy that I came home early and kept my promise to teach him basketball. After a couple of hours as we walked home he said, “Thank you daddy” – and that made my day.

As parents, and being so busy at work, we tend to drift into ‘auto-pilot’ mode thinking that our kids will just be fine even with our hectic schedules so long as we can put them to good schools and provide them the things they need. The truth is, they need more of us, our time and we need to be more hands on with them like: taking a concious effort to join them to dinner, go to church on sundays, go to a park and find regular time to talk to them individually. No good child was ever brought up in the absence of good ‘hands-on’ parenting.

Being a ‘hands-on parent’ means being in control of ones’ time for the children and doing things with them. This practice provide real-time guidance and quality time that will indelibly mark our children’s memories and shape them according to our will and purpose.

1.   Be contented with what you have

Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor. –Benjamin Franklin

We live in the age where wanting something is the basic ground work of every successful economy. Our generation is centered on acquiring possessions and gaining power or recognition, thinking all these are important to a more prosperous life. To many, having one car or one watch isn’t enough and so they continue to work more to acquire more. “Keeping up with the Jones’” or just wanting to look good triggers a chain of actions that slowly build up pressure and the first that usually gets affected is your time. This is followed by the pressure to sustain one’s image and a host of other emotional wants that can spiral to an endless loop of must-haves.

An old but handy timepiece adds no value to ones being other than it in can make you look good – for a little while or until someone comes up with a better looking watch than yours. If we learn to look the other way and appreciate the simplest things that life has provided us, we immediately put ourselves on path out of the ‘rat race’ and moving independently forward to a life where we are truly in control.

2.   Connect With Others

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession –Mark Twain

Humans need another human and apart from it, we are like weeds plucked out from a fertile soil and left to wither. A community group must be spiritually nurturing and supporting. It values our diversity and weaknesses while it takes on it’s strength from its common belief systems. We find comfort by the numbers. We find our courage from the support of others and find wisdom from the experiences other community members make. It is like a strand of fiber, when pulled, it easily breaks but when bundled close and tight , it becomes almost unbreakable.

We can only be as strong or as weak as all the members in our chosen community pulled together.

3.   Spend more time with family

The family is the country of the heart –Giuseppe Mazini

As they always say in church and in many books that, “the best things in life are truly free”. The problem is, we refuse to believe or simply do not believe as our little minds are molded by commercialism that “there is no such thing as free lunch”. The biggest treasures that we have are those people that are waiting for us back home who, just wanting to see and share their time with us.

I realized, despite my very busy schedule, that the more time I spent with my wife and kids, I tend to be less worrisome, calm and I smile or laugh more often. Thinking more about them gives me a special purpose and fulfillment in life which is just about everything I need to be happy.

4.   Serving Others

I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve. -Albert Schweitzer

Being a Christian obliges me to return all the blessing I receive to others in need. Every chance I get, I share anything that comes abundant to me and give it to anyone who have less. This act always gives me a natural ‘high’ that is beyond anything that I’ve felt in the past. This feeling of helping and serving others relieve me from physical tension brought about by problems at work, a sense of genuine purpose and an enlightened spirit.

To be completely scientific about it, an independent research also indicate that any form of help such as: tithing, volunteer work, donations etc prove beneficial to human bodily functions which significantly help reduce emotional pressures and eventually increases life expectancy.

5.   Exercise Regularly & Eat Healthy and Less Foods

As with any well oiled machine, our bodies need regular tune-up much like that of a car. Things like: changing the oil regularly, replacing the spark plugs, the air filter and etc. Our bodies need proper nutrition to keep its bodily functions working properly. It needs regular exercise to condition our muscles to move and burn away excess calories and prevent storing additional body fats.

Our mental and emotional condition is also affected by the food and exercise it gets. The chemistry derived from different variety of food sources influences our moods which in turn influence the decisions and choices we make every day. Basically, we if we feel good about ourselves from inside-out, our emotions stay uplifted and give a general feeling of happiness.

I must admit, I am not really big on saving money much less on investing. However, we all need to save and make money one way or the other; if we atleast care about securing our future or our children’s future.

The only way I know then on saving money is the same way how most people still do now – apportion an income and place it in a bank. Very crude and ineffective. No wonder saving money takes so much discipline and effort to make it work.

But before we jump in, allow me to say that there are two key elements that must always be considered when saving money. Elements needed to make saving money to work for you, every time. First is doing it ‘automatically’ and second, protecting it from yourself .

1) Saving ‘Automatically’. This means having someone apportion your money for savings on your behalf with no conscious effort. A common example may be automatic deduction by your payroll officer or automatic fund transfers by your bank.

2) Protect from yourself. These may be processes or programs that limits you from touching your nest eggs from unnecessary withdrawals for a  specific period of time.

So what are other ways to save and how do we start it? Here it is:

1. Increase your monthly HDMF (Home Development Mutual Fund) contributions.

I am pretty sure that right now, you are paying only the minimum required by the government for your HDMF or PAG-IBIG. And, what still many of you do not know is that, PAG-IBIG also functions like a bank (a provident saving bank).

Increasing your PAG-IBIG contributions doubles or triples your money since this will be matched equally by your employer. So, say for example, your monthly contribution of 50 bucks is matched equally by your employer with another 50 bucks. That’s easy money! Also, since it is a savings deducted together with your other obligations like your SSS; it is non-tax deductible and earns dividends overtime.

This means the more you contribute the more you earn overtime and without you even knowing it.

2. Get a savings-linked annuities.

Annuities are premium payments made on regular intervals like monthly, quarterly or annually. There are some non-traditional investment vehicles that are now linked to savings. A very good example is a whole life insurance where you pay annuities until the age when you plan to retire and a portion of these premium payments goes to your savings. This way, one is compelled to pay and save at the same time to get covered by an insurance.

I got mine at PruLife UK with a no-frill life insurance plan. Scout for a plan that fits your needs and make sure its linked to savings. To do this ‘automatically’, ask your payroll officer to do an automatic salary deduction and directly deposit the premium payments to the insurance company’s bank account.

3. Save windfalls and extra incomes to savings-linked annuities or other investments.

Yes we do have windfalls once in a while and these may be in a form of bonuses or successful business deals. Windfalls or extra incomes provide for us an opportunity to advance our payments on mortgages, savings-linked annuities, or to buy more investments. The whole idea of advancing payment on savings-linked annuities other than increasing your savings is to protect you from difficult times such as unemployment.

But do not advance your savings-linked annuities too much as you might be putting all your nest eggs in one basket. An 18 to 24 advance payment will do the job and give you enough protection during hard times.

4. Simplify investment. Get a Managed Fund.

I’ve written in my previous blog article that I am completely opposed to putting my savings in a bank since it only earns very little interest plus other deductions. So it’s really not a wise move if you do and it’s only the banks that earns from your hard earned money.

So where do you put your money? Put it in a managed fund. I prefer managed fund because its simple, balanced yet yields higher returns, and less time consuming. This way, my money is diversified across different investments thus making it more secure in the long run.

5. Pretend that you didn’t get a raise.

If you do get a raise, I highly advise you NOT to tell your wife or else… you know I mean. Since you and your family has adjusted to the lifestyle prior to your salary raise, keep your mouth shut and save the extra to any investment vehicles that you may have. Again, you may pay in advance your annuities or make another investments.

You can the again negotiate with your payroll officer to direct deposit the raise to annuities of your choice.

6. Buy Certificate of Deposits (CDs).

A certificate of deposit is a promissory note issued by a bank. It is a time deposit that restricts holders from withdrawing funds on demand. Although it is still possible to withdraw the money, this action will often incur a penalty.

CDs only offers a small annual rate of return, usually around 5%-6% per year but the good part is it prevents you from touching your money unnecessarily. It also provides another good option to place your windfalls or extra income since it only requires a minimum of five thousand (Php 5,000.00) pesos per certificate.

As you can see, there are ways to force yourself to save and there are still some more out there. So far, I only included those that works for me and still slowly increases my savings contribution every so often.

When do you pull the plug and say it’s over in a nice way? Hard as it may seem but sometimes when you have stretched your limit to give an employee several chances to shape-up, there are not much option left but ask the staff to leave.

I mentioned in my previous blog post that one very critical factor for a successful leadership is having a very very good members in your team. A team is as strong only as its weakest link. Of course we do not only stop there, it takes nurturing your employees to make them stronger and competitive.

I have been fired several times by my former employers for various reasons and I know exactly how it feels like to be rejected – really! But looking back, it has taught me life’s valuable lessons and how I was able to pick myself up and learned from those adversities. Here are some very useful advice to those who has been laid off from work and hot to deal with them.

1. Change your outlook. Rejection is never easy but blaming yourself, your boss or the company won’t help either. View it as a crossroad to new opportunities. Opportunities to learn and make new things. Seize this opportunity!
2. Start refocusing on things you should have done but can’t while employed.If writing or consulting is a hobby that you do on the side, now is the time to go full time on them. Most successful business start up as a hobby and surely this is something you wanted to do all along.
3. Leave the bitterness behind. Who can’t feel some bitterness after being laid-off? Every body does, but leave this negative feeling behind as you walk out the door and embrace a new life. Dwelling more more about it certainly will make your days ahead even more bitter and may put you in depression.
4. Keep busy. The only way to fight bad thoughts from coming back is to keep yourself busy. Do something healthy and fun like taking out the kids to a park, play basketball, a date with you girlfriend or wife. Just keep busy.
5. Avoid being alone. Ask for peer support. Be with your friends and ask them to accompany you during these hard times. Being alone will only increase the chances of you feeling sorry and blaming others or yourself.
6. Read the Bible. I guarantee you, this is the ultimate medicine. All concerns, fears and questions are answered in this sacred book! Just pick it up, open and read any page that opens up in front of you and behold – the answer is there. It’s no coincidence God is speaking to you.

Warren Edward Buffett (born August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska) is an American investor, businessman and philanthropist. He is regarded as one of the world’s greatest investors and is the largest shareholder and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. With an estimated net worth of around US$62 billion, he was ranked by Forbes as the richest person in the world as of February 11, 2008. –Wikipedia

Secret #1: Happiness comes from within.

“In my adult business life I have never had to make a choice of trading between professional and personal. I tap-dance to work, and when I get there it’s tremendous fun.” — Warren Buffett

Secret #2: Find happiness in simple pleasures.

“I have simple pleasures. I play bridge online for 12 hours a week.” — Warren Buffett

Secret #3: Live a simple life.

“I just naturally want to do things that make sense. In my personal life too, I don’t care what other rich people are doing. I don’t want a 405 foot boat just because someone else has a 400 foot boat.” — Warren Buffett

Secret #4: Think Simply.

“I want to be able to explain my mistakes. This means I do only the things I completely understand.” — Warren Buffett

Secret #5: Invest Simply.

“The best way to own common stocks is through an index fund.” — Warren Buffett

Secret #6: Have a mentor in life.

“I was lucky to have the right heroes. Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out to be. The qualities of the one you admire are the traits that you, with a little practice, can make your own, and that, if practiced, will become habit-forming.” — Warren Buffett

Secret #7: Making money isn’t the backbone of your guiding purpose; making money is the by-product of your guiding purpose.

“If you’re doing something you love, you’re more likely to put your all into it, and that generally equates to making money.” — Warren Buffett

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It  was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.

This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960′s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.