Feedback and leadership training for MGT2010

Salam to all,

I have spent the whole day re-reading your reports and keying the results into the computer. I hope to publish the overall results on happyinislam.blogspot.com next week. Generally, I was touched by the sincerity in doing your reports. I smiled when I saw the comment of Muhammad Aiman. Anyway, well done. The overall marks for the class reflect your hard work.

I still owe you a leadership training. Due to various constraints, it will probably be in the 3rd week. I will put up a notice outside my door so that people who are still interested can sign up. I will ask one volunteer to collect rm 10 per person. All the money collected will be given to a charity that feeds homeless people in KL. If anybody wants to accompany to visit this charity, let me know in advance. If anybody is joining my MGT4410 class, please see me before the class starts.

Book review: Mind over mood

This is a fantastic book. It gives you a step-by-step guide at how to turn negative moods into positive moods. Based on the most up-to-date theory in cognitive psychology, it helps you to identify moods, identify behaviour, identify automatic thoughts and discover alternative thoughts that are more constructive.

More importantly, this is not about simply 'thinking positive'. Thinking positive often means lying to yourself. This is a very different approach. You don't lie to yourself but you realise that there is more than one way of seeing things.

Book review: How God changes your brain

What happens to your brain when you pray? This books discusses how becoming more spirituality enhances connections between neurons in your brain. When people associate spirituality with positive emotions, becoming more spiritual enhances our brain functions, our memory, slows down the aging process, reduces stress and makes us more cooperative. When people associate spirituality with bad things (which can happen), becoming more spiritual leads to anxiety and stress. This book reflects 15 years of research. Typically, researchers would take a brain scan, inject a die into the boy, ask a volunteer to do spiritual exercises and - at the end - take another brain scan to identify which areas of the brains were stimulated by the spiritual exercise. The authors' opinion is - from a purely physiological and scientific point of view - becoming more spiritual might the best thing for anybody's long-term mental and physical health. The book sometimes focuses too much on spirituality and dismisses religion as almost secondary. Nonetheless, the basic message of this book remains true, interesting and scientifically valid.