We live in an era of remarkable opportunities and challenges. With determination and perseverance, we all can achieve our goals to become successful individuals. But most successful individuals also acknowledge a variance between what we are and what we wish to become. Perhaps our businesses or careers are thriving, but our relationships are deteriorating. Or perhaps our relationships are bliss but our financial standing is at risk. Or it may be that we have love and we have wealth but our physical condition is suffering. As individuals, it's no secret that we have ALL have areas in our lives that require help and balance.
To achieve fullfiment in our lives, we need to tap into the positive Qi (energy) in our environment. SME Magazine talks to Joey Yap, founder of the Mastery Academy of Chinese Metaphysics, a global organization devoted to the teaching of Feng Shui, Bazi, Mian Xiang, and other Chinese Metaphysics subjects on tapping into this naturally powerful energy to increase our level of wellbeing, bring harmony to the various aspects of our lives, improves areas in which we are lacking and restore us to the true goals and aims of who we want to be.
Q : WHAT IS THE ROLE OF FENG SHUI?
There are many types of Feng Shui that people perceive today but basically I would like to classify it into two (categories), one which is what people think of Feng Shui but is not, for example decorative. When you come to my office, there aren't any decorations such as dragons and toads, and whine chimes hanging here and there. We don't do that. Those are decorations and that's not what we do. We don't go into their buildings and decorate stuff. The real Feng Shui, we call traditional Feng Shui, is where we utilize the understanding of our environment and the energy that is in the environment to support, people at work. We align people to the energy around. We all know that we are energy. Every human being has internal and external energy and that's what keeps us alive, right? So, these energy fields that we talk about we call it "Qi Flow". The idea of Feng Shui is to understand where this energy is flowing and how to harness it into the building so that we can support the people. How this works is really simple, it's not by what we place in the property, it's by how we understand the business. We do this primarily for businesses and developers and banks and all that, so it's just for SMEs but we do have people at this level who work for large corporations, as you can see in my client list.
Internally, when we say we set up Feng Shui, we set it up in a way that effects change or positive growth in the culture or the organization. How do you change culture? You can't change it from the bottom up. Culture always begins with the leader. The leader is the one who set the culture. So we affect the Feng Shui in the head of departments as well as the key people in the organization and that affects the change for the rest of the people. That is the strategy of using Feng Shui. So we affect Feng Shui this way. Of course there are people who say "Okay, let's put some goldfish in this corner. "That we don't do. And that's why we are hired by all these top corporations and large organizations because we do this work and not say, "Okay you know what, give me some flowers in this corner". We understand that[what we do] helps people in their organizations. That's how we use Feng Shui internally.
Now externally, we also want to plan how you open your retail outlets. Where do you put your shops? Where do you put your first point of contact? Because that's what drives in your sales. That's extremely important. We have 2 portions of doing Feng Shui called Yin and Yang. The Yin part is an external aspect. Now the Yang part drives the sales and marketing. The idea of marketing is not how much the brand you put out there. It's basically opening the new markets. To open up new markets, you need to be strategic in new the places that you position your product as well as your retail units, so that you can achieve maximum market trend. Location, location, location is the most important. That's what Feng Shui does extremely and that covers the sales aspect. Now that the sales are in, we have to convert that into profit, because of the most important thing in business is making a profit. If there is no profit, we can't say that our Feng Shui works. Now, when I say in this way, you can see that Feng Shui is quite logical. Instead of saying," You know what, I'm going to find the lucky coin in this house and it's just going to trigger it and good things will happen then." No, that's not what we do. People don't pay top dollars for someone to come in and tell you to hang a wind chime. They want people to come in and tell you to change the internal and external aspects.
Q : SOME SMEs DO NOT CONSIDER FENG SHUI TO BE KEY BUSINESS IMPERATIVE. WHAT IS YOUR ADVICE TO THESE COMPANIES?
That depends on whether they have come upon the benefits of doing Feng Shui.SMEs don't send their staff for training. That's because SMEs haven't seen that the training help their staff. You see, you have to train key members of your team,don't you think so? You can't hire people who are ready made. All companies, SMEs especially, need to provide technical skills. Training is very important, so Feng Shui is equivalent to creating an environment where they could thrive. Don't you think people spend thousands of dollars trying to improve the facilities in their offices, including upgrading to the latest computers and stuff? What's the purpose of that? It is to make it more efficient. All because they haven't understood what Feng Shui could do, hence they don't use it. But when they understand what it could do, then they would use it, because sometimes, you just don't know why things aren't working. And that's where you know there's something wrong is the organization because people are unhappy and that is time to say let's check out the Feng Shui. Good people come into an organization and they turn bad. It's not imperative that they use "Feng Shui". There are other choices, but wouldn't you want the environment to support the people?
Q : WHAT IS YOUR FORECAST FOR THE YEAR OF WATER SNAKE?
Malaysia is in a unique state because Malaysia was born in the year of Rooster. Rooster and Snake is a combination, so it combines with the year. Malaysia is positioned in alignment with the stars so, we find that the opportunities and positive changes would be in favor of our country. In many ways, we think that the global economy is quite a mess, but the good thing we are still in a prime area so, there will be an inflow in terms of people coming in and that would give us more opportunities. The only problem with people here is that they don't realize how lucky they are. People always say "Malaysia is not safe" this and that, compared to Singapore, maybe, but compared to the rest of Asia, we are very, very good here. Here, if you are willing to work hard, you can have everything you want here. Despite what they claim, it is a good country to live in. Malaysia is going to have all these opportunities and people are going to see this and they are going to come in and look at all the properties being developed here, look at the amount of money they are pouring into our country right now. I would say it's a great place to be in. You wouldn't want to be anywhere else but here.
If you hear that we have opportunities, and next year we will have a lot. If you take advantage of this, you could afford all this stuff without other people taking care of you. It's not a "me, me, me, me "world. It's about what value; you can create in this world. The more value you create, the richer you will become. Malaysia facilities that function, and if you are willing to give value, you will be wealthy. Malaysia supports that, isn't that great?
Regional wise, China might have some issues in terms of their growth next year, especially for the first half of the year because there is a star that comes into the Central Palace governed by China, so they will go through a little bit of transformation for the early part of the year. But the momentum will pick up towards the end of the year. Singapore will also notice some transformation towards the end of the year. The first half will be a bit unstable and people will be thinking "Let's go to Singapore and make more money," but well they will be disappointed for the first half of the year. The huge part won't be in Asia. It will be in the Middle Eastern countries and it could affect Malaysians who are working there like businesses who have ties with the Middle East Region. But if you are talking about small growth, from a small business aspect, there will be a lot of opportunities coming in because when it is chaotic everywhere else. People will go to the places that are more stable and our country seems to be in a good position as it is combining with the star of the year. Rooster combines with Snake, and it means that the world would see us (Malaysia) and bring in positive change and opportunities for businesses. I would say this will be good and I'm optimistic.
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