productivity

How to Attain Higher Productivity at Home and Work

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Because it’s Monday and I’d like to start my month better than before, I am blogging about not just productivity but HIGHER PRODUCTIVITY.

Each year that is added to my life, it has always been my mission to change myself for the better. This applies not just in my personal life but in all aspects of my life in general. Actually, improving myself has always been one of the major driving forces why I do the things I do each and every day. It’s the reason why I took up Psychology back in college, why I like reading about self-help stuff, why I’ve set up this self-help section on this blog in the first place. However, one thing that I keep noticing all these years when it comes to wanting to achieve bigger things in my life is that I easily get distracted with seemingly important matters at hand and before I know it, another year has passed and my life has once again been filled with doing exciting and urgent stuff that don’t really bring me the kind of value that I want nor pay me huge dividends in the long run.

When this year started, it was my plan to change that and become more productive. That was why a week after I gave birth in November 2015, I was already attending a $425 internet business marketing course which lasted until the third week of January.   Moreover, over the course of this year, I’ve also subscribed to a couple of free coaching programs which I think will help me get the productivity level I want in my life. And because this new blog is not just about documenting my experiences in motherhood and the travels I’ve had, but also about dipping my toes in the world of entrepreneurship, I really have to be as productive as I can be so I can do everything that needs to be done despite the challenges being a new mother bring and set up the business that Mahal and I have been planning for.

So on this post, I’d like to share with you some productivity tips that I’ve learned from Eben Pagen. It’s all about the willpower of habits and how they can work for us…

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Bag of Beans Athena

Bag of Beans Athena Tagaytay Restaurant Review

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I used to travel all the time before the baby came. I am out of the house and exploring the country more often than I was at home. It didn’t even stop me when I got pregnant. As soon as my obstetrician gave me the go signal to travel, Mahal and I did so for almost two months straight during my last trimester hopping from one province to the next all over Mindanao and the Visayas and some parts of Southern Luzon before we finally got back home here in Manila. I’ll blog more about that soon.

But since I gave birth and had Tuz, travels were limited to once or twice a month. We’d just visit nearby places and mostly our goal is to eat. If before, we scrimped on food so we can travel some more and have more money for plane tickets and hotels, this time, since we can’t really travel much until baby Tuz completes his rounds of various vaccines, we splurge on food instead! And one of the food places nearby that we love to visit is Tagaytay, particularly Bag of Beans. Continue reading →

Random Thoughts This Rainy Night

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It’s been 2 months since I started my MOMTRANEUR blog on July 26 and my plan was to have new content once a week. But as luck would have it, it’s in my nature to follow my inklings and cravings and I tend to write whenever I’m inspired so instead of having done 10 blog posts as of today, I already have 15 posts. Yey for me!

On the other hand, I wasn’t able to follow my schedule which is to blog every Tuesday because of course, I can’t force myself to feel inspired to write every Tuesday. And when I’m not inspired, I can’t write nor do I want to write. Tonight for instance, it’s Friday evening, it’s raining so hard, my wi-fi is so weak I can’t even finish what I’m doing online but I feel like writing my thoughts (which later I will post when my wi-fi connection gets better), so here I am writing on my notepad.

Anyway, my point is, yes I’m trying to get there… eventually. The point is, … Continue reading →

Lovers

My Past, Present and Future

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It’s our 25th monthsary and baby Tuz’s 10th month! We’ve been busy the past month at home taking care of our baby, celebrating our two years together (which I will still blog about — I still have a few more Tagaytay posts lined up in draft mode), doing personal projects and going out that I haven’t really had the time to fully reflect back on our life together and how it all came to be. You see, when you reminisce the past, it gives you more reason to be grateful for with what you have today. Don’t you think? And that’s what I’d like to do here through this blog post.

Since we love to travel whenever we can, we thought of doing a much needed vacation this weekend where we’ll relax, surf, look at beautiful views and what-not… so before we get all busy with nature, I thought of sharing a story… one of my many stories. I’m the type of person who likes to  remember the past as long as that past has turned me into a better person today and keeps doing so. Otherwise, into my mind’s recycle bin they go. Lol!

Anyway, this story is something I already wrote more than 2 years ago that I wanted to publish here… It’s a bit long for a blog post so if you’re one of my readers or if you’re new to this blog, you can read it section by section or chapter by chapter. This one has 3 chapters, just something to occupy your free time and hopefully learn from. Whether you do your reading in the toilet (like I do when I read some of my books, online news and other people’s blogs) or in the car in the middle of traffic or wherever you do your reading, that’s alright and much appreciated. I just want to tell you some bits and pieces about my life and hope to inspire you as well. 😉 Continue reading →

leftover food

Making Leftovers Special

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Happy weekend, everyone! How’s your holiday so far?

One of the things I look forward to on a Sunday whenever possible is making leftover lunch. And no, it’s not just getting everything that’s left on the fridge, reheating them in the microwave and putting them on the table, but it’s about making them special as well. I love making simple things special! How?

Well, with my practice of living a life full of gratitude, I try as best I can to acknowledge all the blessings that come our way and that of course includes the food that we get to enjoy every single day no matter what it is to the point that we get to serve a feast with all the leftovers that accumulate over the week that passed. Continue reading →

Good Life

Living the Good Life

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I am not rich but I wasn’t born poor either. You can say I was born below middle class with my mom working for the government while my dad, after a couple of stints in the world of sales and marketing here and abroad, chose to stay home and take care of the family instead. It was quite a struggle growing up especially when I had people around me (in our little compound and in school) who were living quite a good life. I remember having feelings of envy, depravity and scarcity, sometimes with not enough food to eat and no money to pay for the things I needed in school. Thank God for my scholarship all throughout my school years, at least my tuition fee has always been paid for.

During times of so much wanting and desire for good food and material things, I’d turn to books in our school library (fiction, science-fiction, novels and encyclopedias). I’d read about adventures, architecture, cooking good food, astronomy and the universe because they make me feel less deprived and they help me forget about the fact that I haven’t even eaten anything yet that day. When severe hunger strikes, I’d pick up empty soft drink bottles as an eight year old kid in our school canteen so I can exchange them for money and I can buy myself some chocolate, which, I won’t immediately eat despite my hunger, because I’d want to revel in the fact that I have a chocolate for a few more days. Continue reading →

Richard Branson

The Day I Met Richard Branson

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Just a little TBT post…

This photo above was taken on May 12, 2013 when I got invited to go to Malaysia by Air Asia and there I saw in person Richard Branson, one of my ultimate idols. I’ve been reading his blog since and this one really struck a chord in me: LIFE IS NOT A JOURNEY TO RETIREMENT.

Growing up, I was programmed to believe that life is a journey — that I should live a good life, I should finish my studies, I should find a good job and climb its corporate ladder, I should marry and build a family, while saving up for retirement, then I can die. When I think about it, it’s quite morbid, isn ‘t it? But the truth is, subconsciously, I’ve been doing that in one way or another all my life. Like what Stephen Covey taught me in college, “Begin with the end in mind.” While that principle is indeed very helpful in terms of goal-setting and reaching for your dreams, once you’ve achieved your end, it doesn’t really end there. That’s just one lesson in life out of the multitude we’re gonna learn as we traverse this little spot in the universe. And that, for me, is more exciting!
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Positive Thinking

Positive Thinking Works

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HOW CAN I ALWAYS STAY SO POSITIVE?

One busy evening, I was asked by a male friend of mine online: “How can you always stay so positive?”. I surmise that many of my friends are wondering about the same thing too but he was the one brave enough to actually ask me. I replied that it’s something I have always inculcated in myself since way back in college. A decade or so later, I am finally reaping its benefits.

You might ask how come it took that long? You see, I admit that in those years of practicing positive thinking, it was not every minute of every day that I had been totally positive. I am human too, I get hurt and depressed from time to time. There were days when it’s worse than the others. I cried, I blamed my parents, I wanted to die… all those negative stuff you could think of. I talked about this before in my previous blog post — Law of Attraction and How to Apply It.

I KNOW WHEN TO STOP

Even now, with all the negative news I hear about summary killings, drugs, state of lawlessness under the Duterte administration, the earthquakes and other calamities, I can’t help but feel sad and scared. And if I don’t control my emotions and try to see the positive side of things, these might just get me depressed for I am an empath and I easily get affected by other people’s energies (this is also why my blood pressure easily shoots up when I watch a scary, horror, sad movie and why I easily get stressed).  But little by little, through hard work, constant practice and discipline, I am  always able to stop myself from emotionally breaking down and I manage to keep back on track. How? Continue reading →

map Ayala Malls Serin

Ayala Malls Serin in Tagaytay – Not What We Expected It to Be

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So I have been hearing about Ayala Malls Serin that opened in Tagaytay 2 years ago (April 2, 2014) and the few times Mahal and I went to Tagaytay and passed by it, I kept getting intrigued by it. It looked so elegant and serene from the outside.

So that one particular day we were celebrating our second anniversary, after our little excursion to Marcia Adams and Puzzle Mansion Museum, we dropped by Ayala Malls Serin. We were waiting to get hungry (Marcia Adams’ dishes were so yummy and filling that even after several hours, we were still quite full!) so we thought of going around this prestigious lifestyle mall in Tagaytay. Continue reading →

Puzzle Mansion

Puzzle Mansion Bed and Breakfast in Tagaytay

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This blog post will be part of a series of posts that I’ll be doing about Tagaytay Must-See Food Places and Tourist Spots. And since we’ve just celebrated our second anniversary this month (Aug. 15), there’s no better way to spend it on a rainy afternoon with our baby Tuz than by heading there not just for some fancy meal but to also explore some places we’ve never been to before as long as the time and weather will permit it.

~~~oOo~~~

Tagaytay is the nearest tourist place to my home and so most of the tourist spots here I’ve already visited since I was in college (circa 1995-1999), the first one being Tagaytay Highlands with my wealthy classmates from AdMU. It was a spontaneous little out-of-town trip with a few boys and girls to celebrate the fact that classes have just been suspended that day if I recall correctly or maybe we just finished our exams and we had lots of free time to kill… Hmmm… Whatever the reason was, I remember feeling so lucky to be invited by my block mates to such a high-end place which is via membership only and I fell in love with Tagaytay since.

Anyway, I digress…

So it’s really nice when new places to visit in Tagaytay would crop up every now and then and one of those places we’ve never been to before is the Puzzle Mansion Bed and Breakfast. Continue reading →

Marcia Adams

Marcia Adams Tagaytay Restaurant Review

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This blog post will be part of a series of posts that I’ll be doing about Tagaytay Must-See Food Places and Tourist Spots. And since we’ve just celebrated our second anniversary this month, there’s no better way to spend it on a rainy afternoon with our baby Tuz than by heading there for some fancy late lunch.

~~~oOo~~~

I’ve been wanting to go back to Tagaytay for a long while now and I was really planning to do that on our anniversary month (We turned two last August 15). It just kept getting pushed back because of the monsoon season until one Sunday afternoon, when the weather wasn’t as bad as the last several days that we finally decided to go. Should the weather get worse once we’re there, then we can stay somewhere in Tagaytay City. But if not, at least we’re just almost an hour away from home (with light traffic).

Mahal listed a bunch of places that we can go visit in Tagaytay. Some of those places I’ve already been to so when he mentioned Marcia Adams, I immediately got intrigued and told him “I haven’t been there. Let’s try it!” Continue reading →