Daily Lessons from Life 23 May 2013 - Individuals can make a change starting with those around them: Tan Chuan-Jin

"Individuals can make a change starting with those around them: Tan Chuan-Jin - The Straits Times May 23, 2013 SINGAPORE -Within your own circle of people, you can make a difference, said Acting Minister for Manpower Tan Chuan Jin on Thursday. "If everyone does it, society will change..It starts with families, neighbours and friends," he said." Acting Minister Tan is stating a well known fact. Most, if not all people, know that nobody can change you unless you want to change too. Someone can influence you to change because you happened to like or want whatever that someone is giving you. Be it money, companionship, respect, whatever. Lessons for me are: 1. to know is not the same as to do. When you ask a smoker if smoking is bad for him or her, he or she will probably say: from a biological and medical standpoint, yes. Smoking is bad for my healthy. However, putting aside the nicotine-dependent bodily effect, I smoke because all my friends smoke and I want to be with them and be 'one of them'! So, the motivation for smoking may not be a rational thing but an emotional thing. Because of this difference, the smoker continues to smoke even know the knowledge of it being harmful is there!; 2. the next thing about knowing and NOT doing can be a question of: do I want to BE? Do I want to be SMOKE FREE? Do I seriously WANT to be SMOKE FREE? What good are my friends if I am unhealthy and even dying? Will they be there for me? Can I make NEW friends who do no smoke? Are they as fun or even more fun than my smoker friends? These are perhaps the series of questions that someone who WANT TO BE something will be asking himself or herself. When this person has decided what he or she WANT TO BE and WANT IT BADLY, extra efforts will be expanded to try to DO. Slowly, knowing turns into doing and doing repeatedly turns into habits and he/she BECOME!!; 3. once the person takes action to change, he or she can THEN begin to influence others around him or her. INFLUENCE through understanding what are keeping someone else from BEING like him or her. And the virtue cycle begins and continued on. It will be a case of: do unto others what they desired so that they will want to change. Of course, all these have to be within the boundaries of Legal and ETHICS. Yes. Everyone can make a change. ONLY IF THEY WANT TO. Everyone can then influence others to change, IF THE OTHER PEOPLE want to as well. It cannot be forced. You can be efficient with THINGS but you must be effective with PEOPLE. That takes time. And you need to be patient and with lots of perseverance. Good luck!!