5 things you need to do in order to lead a successful lifefreemen.com.my/.../5-thing-to-a-Successful-life-eBook-1.pdf2017/09/05 · 5 things you need to do in order to lead a successful

5 things you need to do in order to lead a successful life

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INTRODUCTION

Take it from a guy who has fucked up more times that you

probably wet your diapers when you were young.

Being successful takes tons of practise and probably more

failures that you and I would dare to count. But isn’t that

what makes success so cherish in life?

A lot of us strive and hunger for success in our lives, and we

don’t truly realise the reason success is so precious is

because failure, the contrast of it, being so much more

common commodity and easily obtainable. This makes

success such a rare and prize possession. Yet, most of us

don’t dare fail more and expect that success will come easy.


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My name is Michael, and for those who don’t know me, my

life is an example of a person who champions the cause of

people trying to get more out of their lives through the many

many many attempts that I have made to become

successful today. My life as been a living example to many,

what not to do, but in my defense and my own personal

belief, what is necessary and a MUST for everyone to do, in

order to understand and truly appreciate what it takes to

become great.


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I am a serial entrepreneur, and investor and in my true

passion, a coach and a mentor to many. I became who I am

through the trials and tribulations in my life, through failures

and heart breaks, falls and rises. Though I came from a

decent background, with two hard working middle income

parents, I somehow was born in this life with a hunger to

achieve more. That, my friends, was the death warrant I

signed to get me on this crazy path that I took till today.

I left my stable career as an engineer by the age of 27, after

years and tears of my parents investment into my education

to be a professional, to start my first business. I made my

first business million within the first year through steady

guidance and mentorship of a successful businessman,

whom I hired as my business coach. I enjoyed 3 years of

fame, glory, and fortune in the thriving company before it

tanked due to greed and partnership problems. I lost my

money in the worst way possible, with humiliation of a failed

company, court cases and public humility for being involve

in one of the biggest scam at that point of time. Though my

name was cleared legally, I carry the scars of these events

as a reminder for me to press forward with vigor and to take

my time to make my mark and my money with integrity,

honour and for the greater good.


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I rebuilt my wealth again through a small mortgage

brokerage business and property investments. I started

Freemen Group in 2008, and focused soon focus into

education which was my passion, and turned it into my main

business. I now run a boutique education business focusing

on liberating working adults towards a better life through

investments and self awareness towards their journey of self

fulfilment. I advocate contribution toward humanities growth

through personal development and personal breakthroughs.

Freemen Group has grown to encompass education and

investments in the realm of real estate and

entrepreneurship, covering 3 countries in South East Asia

and growing.


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To the inspiring entrepreneurs and growth seekers, I write

this little guide on what I believe to be my core values to

take the challenge of becoming more successful in life.

I personally belief that it is vital for every single individual to

strive for success as a constant to remind themselves that

life has so much to offer. My hope is that one day you may

attain the greatness you desire and perhaps then, contribute

and make a positive difference to the world we live in.

No man or woman can truly and unconditionally help others

without first helping themselves become a success.

I leave you with 5 key believes of mine in hope that through

your own journey and experience, you may find them useful,

and hope that it serves as markers to show you that you are

on the right track.

Towards your personal greatness and beyond.


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5 Things You Need To Do In Order To Lead A Successful Life

1. SUFFERING IS COMPULSORY

When I started my first company, the biggest realisation I

had was that I loved my boss.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I hated my job, I hated the long

hours and I definitely despised my boss. As a matter of fact,

I blamed him for being such a lousy boss, that he inspired

me to quit and start my business.


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It was after I started my first business, that I realised it

wasn’t as easy as I thought. I started a trading business,

selling vending machines as an investment business. I

thought that by just starting something cool and new, and

able to sell it, I would end up at the penthouse, rolling in

money, partying all nite and driving my Ferrari.

Nobody told me I had to work longer hours than in a job. A

day where I had a 9 to 5, I would consider that my off day.

When entrepreneurs mention flexible time, they forgot to tell

you a work week can be 7 days long, 16hrs a day, 30 days

a month.

Nobody told me that I had to learn how to sell my own shit

and make the darn things as well. I thought I could just hire

a team of bad-ass executives and let them figure the whole

thing out.

Nobody mentioned to me that I had to be the one working

harder than them, and that if the sales didn’t come in, I still

had to pay for their salary and the rent, while I eat bread and

water for lunch and go hungry for dinner.

Nobody warn me that if my people quit on me, that I still

have to pay them a full month salary with compensation,


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and finish their jobs, pick up their trash, on top of my own

and continue to haul the load.

It was after a 48hr stretch of zero-sleep and after delivering

the goods to my customers, only to be yelled at for being

late and demanding a refund, at a traffic light junction, that I

bent over my steering wheel and rest my head against it,

wishing that I had my old cushy job back, with my boss,

which I started to love by then. For a split second, i reflected

that a job would be my safe haven, with security, stable

income and almost no responsibilities what so ever.

3 seconds later, I took a deep huge breath, suck it all in, told

myself to shut the *uck up, and step on the pedal as the light

turned green.

I uttered under my breath with determination “I won’t quit on

myself”

That was 12 years ago, more than 11 businesses back, and

a few hundred employees short. Now I run businesses in 3

countries and have offices in 5 different states. I don’t have

my Ferrari, but I do have a great team, great life and a great

business to go with, and yes, I consider myself to be pretty

successful right now.


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If you ever thought it would be easy to climb the ladder of

success, and the keys to the gates of your 10 acre mansion

be handed over to you on a silver platter, you need to slap

yourself silly, wake the hell up and get back to work.

If you think one second that you can avoid all the pain and

suffering, and just cross the finish line and claim your prize,

you got to knock yourself on the head and tell yourself to

stop dreaming.

There is no victory, without a fight.

You can never cross the finish line without a race, and you

can never be a winner, unless you have felt the pain, the

agony, and suffering, prior to a win.

For those of you who are looking for more in your life, let me

tell you that there is so much MORE success waiting for

you, and the question isn’t why you aren’t you receiving it

yet, rather, it is WHO do you NEED to become, in order to

receive that SUCCESS you deserve.

If you aren’t willing to fight for what you believe in, if you

aren’t willing to DIE for your cause, don’t you dare, for a

minute, think you will LIVE greater than who you are.


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It takes a HUGE amount of dedication, strength and

conviction for one to hold on to great success in their lives,

and if you don’t have the scars to show it, the thousand mile

walk to prove it or the broken bones to live it, then don’t

whine at the pathetic life you have.

Either get the heck up again and keep on moving, or stay

down, and love your boss.


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2. DO WHAT YOU LOVE

If you really want to be successful, then STOP looking at the

money and start asking yourself, what is it that truly wakes

you up every morning, jump out of bed and keeps you going

the whole day, sleep late at night, and still look forward to

the morning after?

If you can find this crazy reason from within, then I promise

you, success will come naturally.

Success only comes to people who are in a constant love

affair with themselves.


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You have to love the things that you do, and the people that

you work with and from the results you create. I am talking

about your passion.

What is your passion?

What is your inspiration for yourself?

and if you have thought long and hard about this, then perhaps you can ask yourself a deeper question;

What joy do you bring to the world?

What is your message that will make your life, your family’s

life, your community’s living, your state or your nation, or

even the world, be better?

If you can find this special something within, ignite that

spark and connect it to the people around you, learn to turn

it into a product or a service that people can understand,

focus on fine tuning it into something that can give people

the same results as you do, and I promise you, the world will

be your playground!

I started my journey in pursuit of success through

conventional wisdom. You know, the one everyone talks

about at the pantry of the offices, or the canteens in the


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school. The ones about making tons of money and who’s

wearing what, and who’s got a new car and what’s your

favourite brands and how to make so much more money so

that you can have all these too?

Well, I was one of those kids with a Wishlist too. And I

thought to myself, that if I could find a way to make more

money and buy all those stuff, and be like all these cool

people, that I would be super happy and my life would be a

paradise.

And so, I went in pursuit of wealth, and built on my first

business with a great lust. And damn, was I good at it. In a

couple of years, I was living my dream life, living in my own

luxury studio condo, driving my BMW sports and having the

time of my life. I remember waking up one morning, realising

that I have achieved what I have set out to do, and obtain all

the material needs I obsessed about, yet, I wasn’t looking

forward to the day ahead. It was 11am, and there I was lying

in bed, dreading the day ahead and hoping it would just

pass. I had achieve all that I wanted, yet lying there that

day, I realised I wasn’t contented. I wasn’t HAPPY. It didn’t

take long for my new found fortune to disappear, needless


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to say, and when I had to start all over again, what I did

then, was to follow my heart.

This was the turning point in my life.

It was the time when i stopped listening to the noise from

the outside world telling me what i needed to do, what I

needed to have and how I should be living my life, and

instead, listening to my instincts, the little voice within my

head, feeling what it is like to live my life based on my own

faint but significant desires.

Step by step, I started to point myself in the direction where

my heart would lead me. I would access my feelings and

trust myself more, to do the things that I found joy in doing,

inspiration in creating and enthusiasm in executing. I started

to have fun in my life again. Sometimes, I would feel like a

little kid, playing and laughing his heart out, enjoying the

moment day by day. I found myself inching closer to sharing

my lessons in life for the benefit of others and I soon found

myself closer to home, being on stage, sharing my thoughts

and lessons to inspiring others to find their own ways and

create their own successes.


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For the life of me, I would have never thought of a life on

stage as a public speaker, motivator, teacher and life

changer, would be the life that I would lead. If it wasn’t for

the fact that I lead my life by chance, and trusted my inner

voice, I would probably end up in a small time business or

just in a job, perhaps still unfulfilled. Now, I wake up every

day looking forward to the day ahead. I hunger for more

time to do the things I want, and I inspire to learn more and

more of what I do, so that I can go out there and do it better.

If I had to say it in another form, I would say, its like having a

love affair with my life.

Do what you love.


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Everyone of us has a unique message. If we start to focus

on it, we start to resonate at a higher level and raise our

energy, and raise our standards in life too.

If you find yourself stuck right now, or lost, then my advice is

to pause what you are doing right now and take a hard look

at yourself first, before you continue on the journey.

Give yourself the space to listen to your heart, and I

promise, when you tune in, you can feel what you truly want

to do. No matter how crazy it sounds, I want you to follow

that voice and start taking action into making those things

possible. Be stubborn, be insane. If, by doing this, it

continues to ignite your inner spark, then, you are on the

right path.

Learn to connect the dots between what you love to do with

the people around you, create a system to monetise it, and

you will soon see how easy it is to create in your wealth

from doing what you love to do.

Success comes easy after, when you piece the dots

together, linking your passion to the people around you, and

then finally to the products or the services you provide to

make their lives and yours better.


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3. To get the fullest of life, you have to take a DUMP once in a while.

I used to be driven by anger and it worked very well. I build

many successful business with this emotion.

I lived my life with a vengeance and I wanted to prove to the

world that I could build something bigger and better.

However, I was never truly happy with my results regardless

how successful I was. It was as though there was something

within me that was still unsatisfied with my results. It wasn’t

until years later, through meditation and self healing that I

found the source of my anger.


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It was from my past.

I wanted to make my dad proud of me.

For a long time, I remember my dad telling me that it was up

to me to carry the family name and that I had to be as

successful as him. Being the only son, I would drive myself

to prove to my dad I was worthy of his love. The drive

created this huge need for significance and made me drive

myself far and great. But it also created a wedge between

me, my dad and my siblings, as I was in constant

“competition” to win his heart. It also gave me a narrow view

of life, blinding my view of the people around me, to care for

their well being or their significance. I also nurtured negative

emotions of frustration, anger and inferiority (hence a huge

ego to protect), in this journey forward.

It wasn’t until I took the time to reflect, that I discovered the

origin of my drive. I decided this wasn’t the way I wanted to

live, as I wasn’t living my life for me, but rather for my father.

i learnt methods to let go of these emotions and to create

new purpose to drive myself forward. It took me a while to

dissolve these emotions, which had built up with several

layers of incidents and events throughout the years. When


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the walls came crumbling down, I found new empowering

beliefs to support my cause. I also discover a sense of inner

peace as I began my own journey with a new forward vision.

Almost 90% of the people I met live their lives similar to

mine, driven by their past.

Why is that a problem, you might ask?

Well, think of it like driving a car looking at the rear view

mirror. There is no way a person can determine where they

are going, rather, they are only moving forward in reaction to

the things that are happening to them.

I found out, when I was living my life based on events that

have happened in the past, I wasn't in control of my actions.

Instead, I was reacting towards present incidences, fuelled

by emotions dictated by past memories.

I was neither living my life to the fullest, nor was I in pursuit

of what I was truly meant to do. I knew I had to break it. I

realise I was still living my life for my dad, and until I let go,

there was no way I could live this life for myself.


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Interestingly enough, when I begin to study this, I found out

that it is in our blueprint to do this. This is our primal instinct

or our basic survival codes to use past information to create

natural instincts to survive, moving forward.

We tend to remember what hurts us the most and our body

and our mind devises the greatest of schemes and methods

to drive ourselves away from these incidences, so that we

avoid the pain, or devise methods based on these events, to

grow better. Its the reason why our species have learn to

survive and grow to be the significant species on earth.

But that’s just it. This isn’t the stone age anymore, and this

primal programming is making us live our life without

knowing our true nature. True, we would survive, but not

without compromising the opportunity to live life for

ourselves. We aren’t thriving, nor growing for our own

purpose.

Here’s the bad news, we can’t get rid of it. Its deeply rooted

in our subconscious mind. The good news is that we can

actually HACK it. There are ways to manipulate this system

and make us, not just survive, but thrive.


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When I was living driven by my anger, I learnt that I was

suppressing my greatest because my primal survival

instincts was processing past experiences and creating

emotions to block the pain from hurting me. These emotions

also blur out many other capabilities I may have live life

differently. Think of emotions as a form of general

anaesthetic. It numbs the pain but also distorts your

capabilities to think clearly.

Think about it. Every time you come across an event which

comes close to something that has hurt you in the past, your

emotions triggers.

For example, imagine you find your girlfriend flirting with

another guy. All of a sudden, flashes of memories from the

past, perhaps of another love one betraying you or whom

have left you for another comes into your thoughts by

association. Your body temperature raises, and you start to

feel jealous and become angry. You start to address the

situation with a raised voice and confront the pair. At this

point, the normal you are neither in control of the situation

nor of yourself. However way the story ends from here on,

doesn’t matter. If you continue in this manner, you have


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changed nothing within your programming and it only proves

that your primal instinct are still in control of your life.

By unlocking the past and letting it go, you may address the

situation in a whole new way. Without judgement, you may

see your love ones action objectively as a need for

significance or a longing of love. You then have the clarity to

understand her needs more, perhaps give her the love that

she needs, so that she too can let go of whatever emotions

that drives her from her pass. Understanding and seeing her

without past prejudice allows you to address the situation

much differently.

How do we break the codes?

One way of hacking it is a technique I call an Emotional Dump.

While we cannot control the emotions, we can hack the

memories upon which the emotions hook themselves on.

The first part of living a greater life is to release all negative

emotions that are suppressing ourselves. Guilt, shame,

anger, regret, fear, self-pity and more. Once we rid

ourselves of these emotions, we can start to rebuilt our


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internal systems with more powerful emotions, such as joy,

happiness, pride, peace and love.

With those emotions inside ourselves, it works wonders to

ignite our passion and move forward in inspiration of

seeking a more purposeful and abundant life.

We do this by taking an emotional dump on a regular basis.

An emotional dump is very similar to meditation, where you

will need to find a quiet space to remove yourselves from

the daily stress and relax your mind.

Give yourself 2-3 minutes to relax and bring your mind to

the present. Start to recollect all the negative incidences and

events that may have transpired and look deep within to find

the root cause. You can do this by verbalising, imagining or

writing it down.You know when you are close, when the

memories starts to trigger off painful emotions and you start

to want to avoid. These are what I called the emotional

cores. Get as close as possible and be as specific as

possible of the incident. Now, this is where you start

hacking. You release these negative emotions by replacing

the incident with positive emotions. Remember, you cannot

and should not destroy the events, but instead, manipulate it


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by replacing old negative emotions with new positive

emotions.

Start with Gratitude and Love. Find any possible way of

giving gratitude to those incidents, thanking the people

inside, forgiving, apologising and change the entire event to

be one filled with your love. If you successfully do this, then

you successfully hacked the program and release the

chains of which these emotions latch on to you.

Almost every successful individual I know, who lives a live of

wealth, health and happiness practises this in one way or

another. Their lives are filled with gratitude, love and

abundance.

When i started to practise emotional dumping and healing, I

started to have lesser negative emotions control my

thoughts. I soon became the captain of my ship, navigating

my own life, learning to create and use my set of values as

a compass and constantly look forward, focus on the

direction of which I have set sail.

I also learn to take each wave of challenge with grace and

returned it with gratitude and love. It made each obstacle


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easier and smaller for me to overcome and eventually

dissolve with no residual negative emotions.

I learnt that success isn’t just being driven, it is also the

ability for me to recreate the future without the judgements

of the past, living my life to the fullest.

Why don’t you give it a try? At the very least, after every dump, I guarantee, you will feel lighter.


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4. DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE

I once taught a course to share with people how to become

a millionaire through business within a year. After doing it for

a couple of times, I realise it wasn’t easy for me to share

with people how to do it. It is not a myth that this can be

done. I wasn’t making up the possibilities. The reason why I

was compelled to do this in the first place was because I

experienced it first hand myself.

My first start up business was a million dollar start up. Within

a period of 11 months, I made a turnover exceeding one


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million through hard work and grit. I have since started multi

million dollar businesses. Well, the credit didn’t all go to me.

It was because I had a great business coach to guide me

along the way.

It was with this experience I later decided to share my

secrets out through a course. I thought with all that I have

learnt and been taught by my mentor and more, it would be

easy to re-create my success to others. But as hard and as

much as I shared, I could not repeat the success. I decided

to meet up with my mentor and asked what was I missing in

my million dollar start up success recipe.

I shared all I’ve done and at the end, I said with a puzzling

look “All I did was follow your instructions. You told me that

you would only coached me if I believed I could built a

million dollar business or more within one year or less.”

My mentor laughed out loud for a whole minute.

He then lean forward and calmly looked into my eyes and

said “Michael, you were one of the few who actually took my

words seriously”


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I learnt that day, even though he place that question to

many of his students, most of them who were in a start up

never took it seriously. I, on the other hand was gullible

enough to believe it. He witness first hand, a young man in

his twenties, starting his first business up, believing he could

own a million dollar business within the end of the year. And

he did.

It was true. I didn’t doubt his words, and I took on the

challenge to envision a great business.

Who was I then?

Did I have the skills to do it? Did I have any experience of

doing this before? Did I have a big customer database or a

proven track record to begin with?

Nope. i was an engineer with an idea, starting from scratch.

All I had was a crazy dream to be big.

I cannot tell you how powerful dreams and vision are. I can

only be a testament, that whatever i have done and achieve

today, comes not from within myself, but from the crazy

ideas I had in my head, and the belief I held strong to, until

today, that I can reach the stars.


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I was once asked “Do you DARE to dream the impossible?”

Society, through our stringent and dull education has

suppress us in many ways of allowing us one of our one

true greatest gift as mankind. The ability to conjure up

miracles within our minds. The ability to dream.

It has replaced these dreams with material needs. We have

substitute our passions and purpose with the drive for

significance through the pursuit of money and worldly

needs.

I have learnt that successful people go beyond status quo

and create new possibilities. Almost all the successful

people I learnt from have a great vision of their future,

before they were even rich. As a matter of fact, I know a few

multi millionaires who started when they were broke.

How do they do that?

They had a written goal or a vision.

Napoleon Hill once said “What the mind conceive and

believes, the mind can achieve.”


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I didn’t start this journey with tons of research, and million

dollars in my pocket and a safety net. I did all the opposite. I

wouldn’t recommend it to all, but I took the leap of faith and

jumped. The only difference I had before I took that leap

was the fact that I had a dream, a written dream to be big in

my life.

I told myself to take that leap, with the intention of making it,

or die trying.

My motto back in those days were “What do I have to

loose? The worst that could happened is death” And I was

ok with that.

Now, don’t ever think this will be easy, or that this is hocus

pocus.

It takes COURAGE to dream big.

You will know how big you are dreaming, when your mind

starts to quake with excitements of the possibilities and the

results when your dream comes true. Once I locked into my

dreams, I took the time to write them down. I would let the

idea settle for a couple of weeks. If it sticked, I up hold them

with the highest intentions of fulfilling them.


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Believe is the next key to making your dreams come true.

Doing without believe is dangerous. It is more likely you will

hit obstacles first, before achieve your big dreams. It takes

practise, persistence and determination to keep the faith

going, and consistently moving towards achieve your

dreams.

This is a marathon, not a sprint.

Give yourself the space to rest and reward yourselves along

the way, but whatever you do, never give up!

As you inch closer and closer to achieving your dreams, i

promise you, miracles will happen within your life. You will

start to open up and grow. You will unlock limitations within

yourself to push yourself further and you still start to see

barriers break down to allow you to pass towards your

journey of success. When you are clear of your direction

and vision, the universe bends backwards to help you

achieve them.

Back to the story of making those millions. As I now look

back at my entire journey, I didn’t just make one business a

million dollar success, I made 4 businesses that way (and

counting).


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So what is the one thing about dreaming big that made me

such a runaway success?

Would you like to know?

My dreams were the LEAST about making the millions in

the first place. The biggest achievements in my life came

when I conjured up a great vision of doing something great

that would impact the world, rather than collecting the

dollars and cents.

The secret of designing million dollar dreams is to NOT do it

for money. Design your dreams based on your love or

passion of something, and with the big desire to see this

passion bring huge benefits to people. The more you can

see your passion impact the lives of others, the bigger your

wealth will be.

5 years ago, I declared my dreams to empower more than

10,000,000 people to become bigger than who they are. I

realise then, that I would need to impact more than a

100,000 people a year if i lived another 100 years!

But when i choose not to let go of my dreams, my world

started to expand, and today, I have recruited an awesome


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community of people who share the same vision as me. We

have grown to 3 countries and 11 cities, helping people to

see their greatness. I have grown from a local business

owner to running a regional corporation. And it all started

from an insane goal of making a difference in peoples lives,

despite race, religion or sex.

What dreams do you have, that will make a difference to the

lives of others around you as well?

If you are able to figure this out, the world becomes your

playground, and success follows.


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5. LOVE FUCKING UP

Failure is not a dirty word.

Its a word I have learn to embrace as much as I embrace

success in my life. As a matter of fact, I believe failure is a

compulsory ingredient in the formula of success.

In my early years, I have fell short of success so many

times. I kept failing. Most of the time, after one or two

attempts, I would just flush the thought or the dream down

the drain. Other times, I would give up, after I hit a wall so

hard and fall back on my back, and having my friends or

other people laugh at my attempt. I gave in to the shame


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and humiliation. Rather than try again, i would stay down

and avoid the embarrassment.

It wasn’t until I realised the biggest failure of them all was

the failure to try again. Having enough of trying, failing and

giving up, I picked myself up, and hone on my skills one

more time, and worked my butt of, day after day, failure after

failure, until one day, I broke through and started by first

business.

After a year of hard work and defying the odds, I end up

owning a million dollar company with a team of great

people. By then, I learn to embrace failure as a gauge for

me to move forward.

Fucking up is the one element necessary to make you a

better person towards achieving your dreams. It is the one

thing that gives you a positive indication that you are moving

beyond your boundaries and pushing yourself to the

extreme. If you aren’t failing enough, that probably means

you are in still in your comfort zone. Last I check, success

ain’t gonna fall on your lap or just come to you.You have to

get out there, and go get it.


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If you truly wanna break free and thrive, then failure is

necessary to guide you.

Here’s a question I want to ask you?

How bad do you want to be successful?

Humour me and imagine the day you have reached

success. Wealth, health, happiness, love, joy… you have it

all. Perhaps a big house, couple of nice cars and a loving

family. Maybe even a successful business empire spread

out across several countries.

Here’s my question: Imagine yourself then.

Are you the same person as who you are now?

Do you possess the same skills or better skills?

Do you possess the same mindset, or has your mind

expanded exponentially and become wiser with the

experience?

How about your believe system? Do you have the same set

of believes or do you now believe in greater possibilities?


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Are you smaller than who you are today, or bigger?

If you have answered any of this towards a greater you,

then you know that you need to grow a lot bigger in order for

you to contain larger amounts of success in your life. It is

the fundamental truth of the universe. The bigger you grow,

the more you can hold. Just how big do you want to grow?

And just like your feet, as it grows and expands, it becomes

uncomfortable in the shoes and eventually starts to hurt.

That’s when you change the shoes to bigger ones.

Its exactly the same in life. Failures are indications that you

are growing up and that it is just a matter of time, before a

bigger life comes to you, to suit the bigger you.

I have learnt through my trials and errors to take failures and

mistakes in life as a test. Its a test to check if I am worthy of

greater things. Many people look at failure as a shameful

thing, that if you fall, its embarrassing and when you get up,

you try to avoid talking about it, and feel accumulate

thoughts towards shame, guilt, regret or self pity.

I too started my life thinking that way.


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I have to admit, my thoughts only changed when I was

coached by a successful business man. It was his insights

that allowed me to see failure in a different light. I was

fortunate to have him guide me in my first business. Every

time there was a crisis in my business and when I was

screaming “The sky was falling!”, he would ignore my

ranting and guide me calmly to seek solutions. He would

asked me critical questions like “What have you learnt from

this?” or “How do you use this situation to make your life

better?” The quality of questions help me move forward and

learn from my mistakes as a lesson to improve upon.

However, there is a GREATER side to failure that I would

like to share. It wasn’t until I experience the worst screw up

in my business that i have an epiphany about what truly

failure meant.

In 2007, I saw my first start up business which was worth

several millions plunge in a matter of months. I was caught

up in a scandal, with my business partners embezzled

millions of the companies funds as well as our customers

money and went missing. The company came apart almost

instantaneously and it wasn’t long before I saw my 3 year

old company collapse within a matter of months. Worst of


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all, I was up in headlines as this caught the media’s

attention. I was humiliated, publicly shamed, out of business

and almost bankrupted.

At age 30, I fell into depression and felt my life meant

nothing. I was at my lowest. I would wake up at 3am in the

morning every nite and walk the streets, wondering like a

lost soul, trying to figure out my life then. It was during one

of those nights that I started to pick myself up again, and

decided to crawl back up and fight for my life. It was

because I believed received certain directions for me to get

up again. Perhaps I was hallucinating or it was just part of

my depression, but I choose to believe there is a higher

being or a greater power in the universe which guides us.

I give this greatness a form and I call it God.

I received a message from God telling me that whatever

happened was DESERVING of me, and that I was

responsible for everything that has happened. It was then, I

was told to STOP blaming the world for my grievances and

ACCEPT everything that I have received as a gift and

believe that there is a purpose for everything that has

happened to me.


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It was from this experience, I had the opportunity to see

each Failure as a GIFT from God.

I started to believe the greater powers of the universe will

not entrust such great and heavy responsibilities of each

failure upon a person unless he or she is meant for bigger

things. I swallowed every bitter lesson my downfall brought

me, from court cases, to the public humiliation, to facing

people and becoming a better leader again. I choose to

accept each and every one of the events and failures as my

own, not those of my partners or others. I took credit for

those mistakes and serve myself the lessons I deserved.

It brought me tears, it brought me realisations.

It taught me to be humble, to be thankful and to trust again.

It was through the realisations of my failures that I began a

new beginning in my life not just to grow, but to be

responsible and to serve.

I saw the birth of new relationships, humble beginnings,

greater care and love in appreciation for things and the

people around me. As I move on and grew, so did the

people around me, and so did my success.


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If you have experience a great downfall and lived to tell the

tale, then you are meant for greater things. I know most of

us might get frustrated and asked ourself questions like

“why me?” or “Why did it have to happened to me?”

Stop doing that. Think about it.

If these gift was given to any person lesser, he or she would

be dead or in a worst of place by now. The gift of failure isn’t

to be taken lightly and if it was given to you, it means that

the universe believes you are meant for bigger things, and

can take the weight of these lessons so that perhaps one

day, you may lead others to grow as much as you.

So Grow!

Take on each failure with the zest that you are blessed.

Don’t dwell on it so much, but instead, learn the lessons the

universe intended for you and be determined to keep

moving forward and becoming better.

Own your failures as much as you own your success.


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Love fucking up.

May you learn to accept that the universe see’s the

greatness in you and that it is constantly giving you

everything you deserve to be the greater of you. If you truly

believe in this, then there is NO failure or success, just

greatness.


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CLOSING STATEMENTS

To sum it up, the 5 things I feel are needed to lead a successful life; to suffer, to love, to take a dump once in a while, dream the impossible and love fucking up.

Last but not least, life is a journey, enjoy the ride. My hope in sharing all this is perhaps to inspire you to take on the adventures in life and not to be stopped by disappointments and temporary defeats.

I wish that your road to success be as colourful and as vibrant as mine, for I have enjoyed my journey so far, with a crazy scenic view of life changing stories, awesome friends, filled with gratitude and love.

Here’s towards your success and beyond.

MICHAEL TAN

www.facebook.com/MTliveoutloud/

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