10 Things I Learnt from the Nicest Man in Britain

Hello Friend ..

I came across this inspiring article about the "Nicest Man in Britain".

Luke Cameron (left) started his daily good deed challenge last January in memory of family friend Maura (right), who passed away in October 2013

He is Luke Cameron, 27. He ..

• Challenged himself to do a good deed every day of 2014
• Beat thousands of candidates to be given the 'Nicest Job in Britain'
• The philanthropist spent 2015 helping 45 different charities over 52 weeks

Over the last 12 months, he has driven some 30,000 miles - and spent countless hours volunteering - to help each worthy cause with fundraising schemes.

The British Heart Foundation, the YMCA and the Donkey Sanctuary are just three of the charities he has helped. He has also been able to help give valuable time to lesser-known causes.

When Luke Cameron decided to do a good deed every day for a year in 2014, he could never have anticipated how much it would change his life.

The 26-year-old from Cheltenham made the decision after a close family friend died from cancer in 2013.

He started writing a Good Deed blog and logged every kind gesture he made on the site, which has now amassed thousands of followers.

He said:

'In a world of taking selfies with your "besties" and Instagramming pictures of your new handbag and Rolex watch, we forget to think about anyone else but ourselves. 

'Our generation has forgotten to care about others, because we are too self-obsessed to even care what others are going through.'

SOME OF LUKE'S GOOD DEEDS:

Good Deed 345:
One of my colleagues is on crutches after snapping his Achilles Heel. So today I grabbed his lunch for him and took it to his desk so he didn't have to hobble around getting it.

Good Deed 341:
I baked a load of mini lemon drizzle cakes today and sent them around to friends and family.

Good deed 258:
A small but helpful deed today. Carried down my elderly neighbour's trash. Bin day tomorrow.

Good Deed 256:
I was with a colleague today, explaining about doing good deeds. She was a little skeptical about the whole thing, so while she was away from her desk, I left the money for her lunch.
Maybe I can change her opinion of random kindness.

Good Deed 244:
Today I helped somebody in need. I stopped my car on the way home as there were a couple with a map. I gave them directions to the centre of town. They were very grateful

Good deed 242:
While walking the dog, I noticed a load of litter over the field at 7am - clearly the morning after the night before.
It was a few glass bottles and shredded cans. So I carefully picked them up and disposed of them.

Good Deed 221:
I got up at 5.30am to help a friend move house today. I hired a van yesterday and drove around two hours to Exeter to load up and remove everything from a 3 bedroom house.

Lessons I Learnt about Doing Good:

1) Be kind. It starts from the heart.

2) Be willing to get my hands dirty.

3) Be humble. People may ridicule me.

4) Be adventurous. It means doing things I've never done before.

5) Be bold. Sometimes I have to do it alone.

6) Be-lieve that even little acts of kindness mean a lot to others in need.

7) Be alert and observant. My eyes will be opened to see the need in others.

8) Be other centred. Look out for the interest and needs of others and not just my own.

9) Be steadfast. It is so easy to give up.

10) Be loving. Again it comes from the heart.

Do good .... all the time!

The New Bread of Purity and Truth

Nobody likes old bread. They are hard, they taste moldy and they make you sick. What is this old bread. It symbolizes wickedness and evil.

What then is wickedness and evil, do we see them in our modern civilized society? Yes ... they come in the form of:

- selfishness

- lies

- envy

- hatred

- cheats

- anger

- vengeance

- etc

The bible exhorts us to eat the new bread of 'purity and truth' ( 1 Cor 6: 8). And what are they. they take the form of:

- integrity

- honesty

- abundance

- generosity

- charity

- upright

- righteous

- goodness

- cleanliness

- etc.

Therefore, choose wisely what you eat and eventually what eats you !!

Fight Poverty - Educate the Children

An educated population and workforce is a prerequisite for building a well functioning economy offering opportunities to all. Yet today, over 100 million children are still out of school due to poverty, including 59 million girls; one third of children out of school are children with disabilities.

I was in Siem Reap, Cambodia recently for a holiday. One afternoon, we decided to choose a fairly basic place to have lunch. So we ventured into this restaurant which serves both Western as well as Cambodian dishes. The prices are reasonable and for US$2, one can get a very decent hamburger and salad.

We tried Cambodian food instead and this person in the photo was our waiter. He was polite and cheerful and took our orders. He can just barely speak a spatter of English, enough to get by as a waiter. After serving us lunch, and since there were no other customers, he sat down a table just next to ours to study his English as seen in this photo. I took this photo of him, and I can imagine he must be thinking the day when he can speak good English and have a good education, the immense possibilities and a brighter future that will be his and loved ones.

One must understand that The Khmer Rouge government (1975-1979) systematically eradicated education in Cambodia, closing schools and universities, burning books, and killing librarians, teachers, and even people who wore glasses.

Following the defeat of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, the new government had to try to rebuild an education system basically from scratch, and the current state of education in Cambodia is still affected by this. The percentage of children completing primary school was also low, at 48%, and for completing lower secondary school was lower still at 21%.

On another note, there are a number of non-government organizations (NGOs) that are helping out with the education of children, particularly street kids and orphans. The Green Gecko project and the Sangkheum Center for Children are two Siem Reap-based NGOs that focus on providing a free education for children to help them avoid a life of continuing poverty and homelessness. Find out where the Green Gecko journey began on the streets of Siem Reap as Kim Suan shares her story in the video below. Click here for more of what Green Gecko project does.



If you are determine to do something significant and more specifically contribute to the education of the children in these wretched economies and make an impact to the lives of the young Cambodians, you can volunteer or donate to Gecko. Check out this link or use the donate button below.

   
I came across another charity organisation Room to Read by accident. Their vision is a world in which all children can pursue a quality education, reach their full potential and contribute to their community and the world. Education is

To achieve this goal, we focus on two areas where we believe we can have the greatest impact: literacy and gender equality in education.

“Literacy unlocks the door to learning throughout life, 

is essential to development and health, 

and opens the way for democratic participation and active citizenship.”

-Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary-General

Education changes everything. It certainly did for eleven-year-old Inkham from Oudomxay, Laos. Inkham lives with her parents, two brothers and new baby sister. She has a full day of helping her mother with cooking, collecting water and chores before school even starts. Inkam loves studying Lao language and writing essays at school, and she dreams of graduating from secondary school to attend a university. Room to Read's Girls' Education program ensures that Inkham has the supplies, tools and mentoring she needs to complete her secondary education and succeed in her dreams.



Here is another video. Indeeed education is the key to fight against poverty.



Room to Read celebrated its 10 year anniversary with the opening of its 10,000th library in Nepal. Over the last decade, Room to Read has scaled exponentially to impact more than 4 million children in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Zambia.



I am heartened that there are NGOs out there trying to eradicate poverty through education, especially for the children. You and I can contribute in a small yet significant way to fight poverty by donating or volunteering.

Yours for a purpose driven life,
Cheong

Build Your Marriage - Start a Hobby Together

'We may not have it all together, but altogether we have it all' - Author unknown


This afternoon, my wife and I worked on the garden together. This is one of the hobbies we have shared together since we were married. We do this almost every week end, usually on a Saturday.

We normally spend about an hour and half tidying the garden, weeding, pruning, re-potting, adding fertilizer etc etc. It can be quite tiring and back breaking especially when we have to re-pot plants and dig up the ground to grow new plants.

And because we live in the topics, the humidity can be a challenge but then we have done it for so many years and at the end of it, we found it rather rewarding. We have made something beautiful together.

We find that sharing a hobby together is a sure way of deepening our relationship and spending time doing such recreational activities have helped us strengthen our bond. We have been married for 25 years! Sure we have conflicts and quarrels at times, but we are not overcome by them. We resolve the issues and move on.

Besides gardening, we also take walks together in the evenings; at least twice a week, although we hope to do more. We also travel together and we are planning for a 5 day trip to Bangkok in December 2012. In fact, we have booked our air tickets and hotel. This year, this would be the 4th time we are travelling together.

Such common pursuits not only help in increasing our love, but also building up a friendship that would add meaning to our marriage. It has helped is to be close together and increase the level of understanding between us.

But before you jump into the bandwagon of sharing a hobby with your partner, be sensitive to the needs of your spouse or partner as each of us are different and would have different interests and pursuits. First, it is wise to sit together and discuss each others likes and dislikes. One must understand and respect each others' opinion about certain things. Discuss the games and things you liked to do when you both were kids. This may help you in coming up with some ideas about your pursuits together. It you are having problems in finding some avocation, here are a few activities from which you can choose those that you and your partner would love to do together.

Second choose a hobby and get started. Don't delay, make plans to start as soon as possible. It's okay if later you found that the hobby does not fit both of you. Start again with another one. The key is to start sharng one together. Here are a bunch of ideas of hobbies that you can do together:

• Grow a garden
• Design and work on your landscaping
• Learn tennis, skating or golf
• Get season tickets to a sporting event or the opera
• Take art, dance, or cooking classes
• Go running together
• Volunteer charity work 
• Go on picture-taking walks
• Visit museums
• Read the same book and discuss
• Play XBox or another video game
• Cook new recipes
• Collect coins or stamps
• Write a book
• Travel
• Start a blog 

Have fun and a blessed marriage!!

The Transformative Power of Personal Projects : Ji Lee

Ji Lee is born in Seoul, Korea, and raised in São Paulo, Brazil. Ji Lee studied design at Parsons School of Design. He currently works as the Creative Director at Google Creative Lab in New York and teaches design at School of Visual Arts. In the past, Lee has worked as the branding director at Droga5 and art director at Saatchi & Saatchi.



Ji Lee is the founder of the widely publicized Bubble Project and the author of two books: Talk Back: The Bubble Project and Univers Revolved: a 3-Dimensional Alphabet.

Ji Lee in his earlier career learnt that he cannot depend on others to make things happen. So the solution  is - "I just have to do it myself".

The result was the a creative advertising initiative - the Bubble Project, in which Lee placed blank speech bubbles on ads around New York City.  He would leave the bubbles blank and wait and see what happens.

The masses responded and the project went viral, gaining Lee recognition and ultimately forwarding his professional career.
What personal projects taught him:
"
1) Personal and professional projects complement each other

2) Creating platform is powerful. Creating projects, not for myself, but for others to participate and collaborate.

3) Time is a concept which can be stretched, eg an hour can be stretch to become 3 hours.

4) Sharing is rewarding. "

The whole creative landscape has changed because of the internet - open source, creative comments.Give away something and there's always a giving back in a much bigger scale.

Here are some of the bubbles.

The Face of 7 Billion People

The above picture shows the Face of 7 Billion People.  The earth’s seven billion are depicted by 7,000 human figures, each representing a million people. Go to this site to zoom in on this face and you can also find out the main types of Language, Religion, Nationality, Race, Livelihood etc in our world today.

With world population projected now just above 7 billion which was reached this year on Oct. 31, there is renewed interest in our collective impact on the Earth. This is prompting some to wonder: are there too many people in the world?

While there is no consensus on the planet's carrying capacity, we do know that population will continue to grow. According to projections from the U.N. Population Division, world population will likely reach 10 billion before the turn of the century.

Overall, people are living longer, healthier lives, and many couples are choosing to have fewer children. But we are faced with the largest ever group of potential parents. And great disparities exist between countries. While many wealthy and middle-income nations are concerned with low fertility rates and ageing citizens, the world's poorest nations struggle to meet the needs of young and rapidly growing populations.

One particular concern is about the future of adolescents and youth: how can we ensure that younger generations inherit a world worth living in?

The world's 1.8 billion young people aged 10 to 24 constitute more than a quarter of the world's population. Just below 90 percent live in developing countries. As parents of the next generation, their choices will help determine future population trends.

During most of our lifetime, we have seen the world population nearly triple and have experienced the consequences, both positive and negative. Discussing numbers with economists and policy makers and hearing the dreams and needs of adolescents and youth have brought the picture into sharp focus. In the world's poorest nations, about 60 percent of people are under the age of 25.

The challenge is before us .... how to invest in the lives of our young ??

Beauty in Ugliness

As we flip open our morning papers everyday, we are bombarded with many bad news and ugly news. In the last few months we have witnessed that : earthquakes in New Zealand, tsunamis in Japan, droughts in many parts of the world, famine is many African countries. Yes ugly weather, ugly moods, ugly situations, ugly behaviours, even ugly truths.

Uglyism lives! It appears when we least expect it. Instead of staying just below the surface, it's popping above the surface and hanging around. I'm sure even today, even with your eyes closed, you have seen ugliness. Without trying, you will be exposed to ugly comments, ugly injustices, ugly squabble, ugly arrogance, ugly attitudes, ugly confrontations, and a few ugly messes.

What do you do when faced with ugliness? I see 4 possible options.

1. You can run away from it; 
2. You can ignore it and go straight to Denial;
3. You can condemn the ugliness and talk about how bad it is and how sad it is and that this is the reality of life;
4. You become an agent of transformation.

Yes,let's strive to become an agent of transformation. You have a gift, maybe not as glamorous as you expect, but you have a gift. The God of transformation has given you eyes to see the unseen, to see beauty when all around you is pain and ugliness. You CAN see the good when it's covered in badness, the hope in hopelessness, the healing in pain. There is beauty in the middle of ugliness.

Now, the question: Do you choose to open the gift, or run with the ugly crowd?

For one week, just one week, try seeing the unseen.

Pray for eyes to see beyond the ugliness, to see hope and goodness and beauty. It's a gift from God. Believe it. Live it, for just one week and you will be transformed. Your mind will be renewed. You will become an agent of transformation.

Look for it! And may God bless you every step you take to be an agent of transformation.

"Pray for eyes to see beyond the ugliness!"

Ready for Action

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
- Benjamin Disraeli –

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie -

The dreams I only thought about, the ones I took no action on, well they are still dreams. But the ones that I took action on, they are now a reality.
- Catherine Pulsifer -

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.
- William Arthur Ward -

There are 2 kinds of people.

First there are those who said I want to feel good before I do something. And these people normally do not feel ready, they don’t feel competent enough and they don’t feel easy to just do it. As a result they keep procrastinating and they may never be ready to do anything in the end. They are driven largely by their emotions, they are constantly waiting for their emotions and so the swings of emotions freezes their will to take action.

Do you feel like this at times; you rather watch TV than read a good book; you rather sleep in than to wake up and go for a morning walk. And so most times, these people seldom progress ahead, someone else will always come and take their place, they lose out and they short change themselves because of this poor attitude to action.

And as they wallow in inaction and waiting for the right emotions to come, little did they know that doubt and fear creeps into their thinking and emotions. Laziness will also set in and further immobilizes the person. And if you look deeper, you may find that the person is gradually deteriorating to a condition where an absence of goals, vision or passion in life is evident.

On the other hand, there are the ones who said I want to do something and I will feel good in the end. These two types of thinking are worlds apart. This latter group understands that actions trigger emotions. They are disciplined for they know that when they do the right thing they will also get the right good feeling.

They also know that action may not bring immediate happiness as there may be challenges along the way, there may be initial frustrations, and there may be failures. They know that it will bring feelings of satisfaction, joy and wholeness at the end of the journey.

Therefore, if you make a study on successful individuals, you will find that they are action oriented. They didn't stand still and remain motionless even when challenges showed up. Successful individuals are aware that inactivity is a great enemy and a danger.

They pushed themselves and developed the disciplines to take consistent action. They will pause to contemplate and evaluate their progress and once they get the feedbacks, they take a different action or repeat the same and move on until they reach their goals. Their dreams and visions become a reality. They feel fulfilled and empowered and they move on to greater action.

Whatever you want to do, do it now. There are so many tomorrows.
- Michael Landon -

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
- Russell Taylor -

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover
- Mark Twain -

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.
- Norman Vincent Peale

Yours for a Purposeful Life!

Power of ONE

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
- Edward Everett Hale -

Not many people realize that the unraveling in the
Middle East actually began with a 26-year-old Tunisian street merchant. After his pushcart was confiscated by authorities, he set himself on fire on December 17th. Without the internet, this would have been a non-event on the world stage, but with the help of the internet, the Tunisian government was toppled in short order.
Within days the protests spread rapidly throughout the Middle East and African countries. Incredibly, it all began with a 26-year-old street merchant.

Ayn Rand
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.

Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I... I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Uta Hagen
We must overcome the notion that we must be regular... it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.

Indeed, One Person "CAN " Make A Difference

Most people, by nature, are very set in their ways. We make mistakes, and instead of taking steps at the point of that mistake, we have the tendancy to "bury it" somewhere deep and secret, hoping no one will ever notice or find out about it, fooling ourselves into thinking, "It will never happen again". George Santayana writes in his Book, 'The Life of Reason' , " Those who cannot remember the past, are condemed to repeat it."

There is no doubt that that "One Person Can Make a Difference" no matter what the obstacle may be. You can find instances of this all through recorded history . Changes and Impacts" made by men such as :

- Alexander The Great
- Genghis Kahn
- Christopher Columbus
- Marco Polo
- Indiri Ghandi

Yours for a Purposeful Life