This is a true story told by a friend of mine. It happened to one of his ex-colleagues. Let’s call this ex-colleague Debra .

Debra’s father passed away few months ago. During that time, she was all by herself. Her mum passed away few years ago, and the entire family consists of her father, her elder brother and herself. Unfortunately, the elder brother had an argument with the father and left the house. He went to chase after his dream and became a chef in a famous restaurant.

When her father passed away, she has nobody to turn to but her elder brother. Unfortunately…he could not be reached. She asked for help from her friends, my ex-colleague included and they tried to track him down. He changed a lot of jobs and to their surprise…he’s currently in Middle East…and could not be reached. So Debra was all by herself…and few of her friends who are trying to help out.

I’m sure some of you might have heard stories like this before….stories where people, due to a misunderstanding or miscommunication, or due to their own ambitions (like chasing after money, materials, etc)….. often neglect the people who are precious to them. Some even missed out on the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones…..and could only live in regret.

To be honest, this is not the first story I’ve heard. There was this lady who called to a radio station many many years ago…crying…and said that she could not bid one last farewell to her father who passed away while she was working and earning money in Europe (she wanted to earn more to give her father a better life in Malaysia). But in the end, all those money didn’t really matter because her father was no longer around.

Sad stories, yeah. But they all serve an important lesson to all of us – cherish our loved ones while they are still around. Be there for them when they need you. Any material and any amount of money does not matter as much as the welfare of your loved ones. And most importantly, make sure the decisions you make will not create a life full of regrets for you later on.

And to Debra (not her real name, and she doesn’t know me), I hope you’ll be strong. You still have plenty of good friends around.

As for Debra’s brother….it’s good to chase after his dream and ambition….but how would he feel, when the news of his father’s passing finally reached him…maybe 6 months later?

Most people dream of many things but most do not dare to take actions. They prefer to wait for that one golden opportunity – the opportunity which will propel them to stardom, to become a millionaire, or to be what they believe they should be.

So they wait…and wait…and wait….ignoring other opportunities which appear around them.

And it won’t come as a surprise if I tell you that some people actually spend their entire life waiting for such golden opportunities. 1 year become 5 years…and 5 years become 10 years….and so on. By the time they realized, it’s all too late and they would’ve wasted much of their life waiting for nothing.

Do you want to end up this way as well?

To be fair, sometimes there’s no harm to wait for a better opportunity or a better option. But the key here is not to wait too long or become too obsessed with that one ‘golden’ opportunity. Waiting is okay, but you have to know when to stop waiting and call it quit. I know it’s not easy to give up on something you strongly believe in…but at times, that will be your best option.

Let me give you a simple example (used by the radio One FM). Lee brought Muthu to visit a client. Upon arriving at the lobby area in ground floor, they found out that the lift has broken down. Muthu, being the lazy person he was, decided to wait for the lift to be repaired since the client’s office was located at the 12th floor. Lee, on the other hand, had a feeling that the lift would be out for quite some time. So, he took the risk and used the stairs. In the end, the repairman was not able to fix the lift on the day itself and Muthu was penalized for not attending the meeting with the client.

As you can see, Muthu did not want to take the risk and grab the available opportunities. He strongly believed that the lift would return to normal soon. So he waited. Lee took the risk and went for the other seemingly better opportunity – to use the stairs. True, maybe the lift would return to normal once Lee went for the stairs but it was a risk worth taking.

Last but not least, I hope that everyone who reads this article will learn to be more open-minded and pay attention to the countless opportunities which present themselves to us in our daily life. The opportunities that we strongly believe would work might not work at all and the golden opportunity that we believe would come might not come in the end. So, there’s really no point for us to be stubborn and hold on to something which is not going to bring us anything good.

I know it’s easier said than done. But understanding such situations/cases will certainly help (at least for me).

Every now and then, the radio station One FM will talk about some important life lessons. One of them is about choices in life.

Do you still remember when we were kids, most of us would have the ambition of becoming a scientist, a doctor, a policeman, a nurse or a teacher? These are the popular occupations for kids. And people may sometimes wonder why must it be those few and not other occupations like programmers, accountants, financial controllers, etc? Well, simply it’s because we did not know those terms yet at that time. We made our decisions based on what we knew.

Same thing goes for everyone when we grow up. We decide and we choose based on what we know at one point in time. And sometimes, we will encounter a better option after we made the decision. So, some of us would start to blame ourselves, and feel bad over that “silly decision”.

What I can say is, there’s no such thing as a silly decision. Everything happens for a reason. If you never try, you wouldn’t know that the first decision you made is actually not a good one. And also, if you haven’t try the new and seemingly better option, how would you know that it will actually be better?

So before you make a decision, think about it and ask yourself plenty of questions. Will you regret? Do you think you can live without this option? Or do you think you should wait for other better options? Maybe you should go out and explore the world. Learn more things, gain more experience and meet more people. That way, when the time is right, you will know whether the option in front of you, is actually the right one.

Until then, don’t rush into making a decision.

p/s…….. but if you really made a decision and it seems to be a wrong one, just don’t worry ya. Things will be better, I’m sure. And don’t regret over what has been done. Learn so that you can prevent history from repeating itself.

p/s…….. also, sometimes exploring and waiting are good for us, but there are also times when we need to be fast and grab the opportunities which may only come once in a blue moon. So explore, think (carefully and quickly) and decide. I know it’s pretty subjective, but this is how our world works anyway.

Figure that picture paints a thousand words. So I drew this simple comic (yes, stickman) to express what I wanted to say in this article.

I recently came across a simple story which is actually pretty meaningful.

A farmer came into town and asked the owner of a restaurant if he could use a million frog legs. The restaurant owner was shocked and asked the man where he could get so many frog legs! The farmer replied, ‘There is a pond near my house that is full of frogs – millions of them. They all croak all night long and they are about to make me crazy!’ So the restaurant owner and the farmer made an agreement that the farmer would deliver frogs to the restaurant, five hundred at a time for the next several weeks.

The first week, the farmer returned to the restaurant looking rather sheepish, with two scrawny little frogs. The restaurant owner said, ‘Well… where are all the frogs?’ The farmer said, ‘I was mistaken. There were only these two frogs in the pond. But they sure were making a lot of noise!’

Most of the time, problems seem to be bigger than they really are. Why? Because our mind made them so. We “over think” or worry way too much….more than necessary. But for most cases, we have no control over such problems and worrying about them do not change things for the better. Instead, it will only make things worse and it is very draining on ourselves.

The funny thing is, we worry so much….and could not sleep well….but when we really managed to get some sleep and wake up the next time, the problems will somehow become not-so-big. What seemed to be big and overwhelming problems the night before, might end up being something small and unimportant.

I know it’s easier said than done because I myself worry too much at times over things I have no control over. And I know how draining it can be. It’s something most of us need to learn – to stop spending too much time worrying over things we cannot control and to realize that when we really take a closer look at those problems, they might not be as serious as we initially thought they are.