Sylvia Fernandes
Free
VIA Frontiers Expert
Sylvia Fernandes Quick Facts
Sylvia Fernandes is the Founder & CEO of VIA Frontiers. She is also the author of Bye Bye Black Cat – Turn Your Luck Around to Realise Opportunities. She has been operating in the Asia Pacific Region for the last 12 years and is currently based in Singapore. Go to www.viafrontiers.com for more information.
Articles by this expert
SelfGrowth articles and saved writing connected to this expert.
Article
Step On The Accelerator
The Singapore Formula 1 Grand Prix will be upon us soon. I was never a fan of this race. I could not understand how enthusiasts sat in the heat of the day watching cars go around a circuit, with danger looming at every corner. I see, hear and feel the adrenalin rush and understand what they are excited about but I would rather lie in bed, reading a book. Until the day I went into the city... and heard the engines roar.
Recently added
Article
Creating Effective People
As I read about the global war for talent I wonder about the employees who are not considered talent. While we are in great need of talent to drive leadership and fill pipelines for succession planning, we most often look outside of the organization to find these employees. Baby boomers are leaving the workforce taking wisdom and experience with them. Generation X are next in line ready to take charge. So what does it take to push this lot of employees to become talent?
Recently added
Article
The Ultimate Forerunner
As the plot thickens in Game of Thrones season after seaso I wonder who the eventual victor will be. While there seemed to be obvious winners when I first started watching the series, they didn't turn out to be the victors. If anything they were unexpectedly slain never to return to the series again. That is part of the intrigue as it keeps me wondering what unexpected thing will happen again.
Recently added
Article
Let’s Talk the Talk
Americans were crying out for change in 2008 when President Obama’s campaign was offering precisely that. For the first time in history a presidential campaign relied heavily on social media where the words of change were taken down to the people on the street, who accessed it with relish. Citizens understood what was on offer. They got excited and were enthusiastic about becoming part of the vehicle that mobilized or at least promised this change.
Recently added
Article
The Creativity Spot
Having breakfast at a hotel coffee shop yesterday I waited for a friend to join me. He was on a conference call and due any minute. I have my grandmother's habit of drinking a hot beverage when it is piping hot so as the waitress served my cup of coffee I reached out for it and started sipping it. Looking around at others I noticed a group of 3 businessmen on a Skype call. Another had earphones on and he too was attending to a work call. One lady was writing. She seemed to be in her own world. "Today" I thought to myself "every man and his dog is writing or has written a book"
Recently added
Article
Modeling Not on The Catwalk
We were having friends over for dinner again. The lovely aroma of food and sound of the wok clanging was like a cacophony of sounds I was used to. Mum was the ultimate entertainer. She loved to cook and did it effortlessly. It was very usual for our family to have friends and family over for meals. As a child I looked forward to hearing that my favourite cousins were invited for a sleepover. It was our little reward that Dad afforded us. The deal was that we had to complete our homework for the week before they arrived on Saturday. That was Dad's strict rule.
Recently added
Article
Ecology Is Not Just About Biology
The ecology aspect is often overlooked in the pursuit of goals or achievements. Unless people have a heightened state of awareness they are generally oblivious to questions such as what happens after they achieve their goal; how does it affect them, their family, financial situation, health and overall future. They fail to ask if the desired change is in line with their values or even the most basic question of all – “Is this what I really want?”
Recently added
Article
The Ultimate Winners
Sharon Osbo e once said on the Oprah Winfrey show that she preferred to be a beautiful face alighting from an old car rather than a wrinkled woman in a posh one. The US and UK television personality and wife of rock star Ozzy Osbo e was talking about society's obsession with physical looks. She could not, and neither could Oprah, understand people's willingness to do anything to maintain their looks and physique, often times at the expense of their mental health.
Recently added
Article
Do You Feel You Are Lucky?
A study on luck in the 1990s by Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, who later published a book on the topic, discovered that lucky people practised four basic principles. He said lucky people are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities; make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition; create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.
Recently added
Article
Skiing the Slopes of Leadership
It was Boss’s Day on the 16th October. I was listening to the radio as I drove out to do a keynote address to heads of private banks. My mind was systematically going through the points I had to raise during my talk but it was a difficult task as the DJ was getting callers to share how they planned to celebrate the day with their bosses. The talk back radio show was popular most mornings. A string of callers responded, some who liked their bosses and others dreading the day as they felt compelled to take their bosses out for lunch to say the least.
Recently added
Article
What's Your Operating System?
Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, the man who defied all odds and shattered his physical limitations, was recently sentenced to five years imprisonment for culpable homicide. He was tried for the murder of his girlfriend, South African model Reeva Steenkemp in a widely publicised case. As the case went on and his life was laid bare, a striking paradox surfaced from this man's public persona. It appeared that for all his superhuman feats, he is also a very vulnerable and insecure man.
Recently added
Article
Do You Make Decisions While You Sleep?
A while back I watched a movie called "Remember Sunday" where the hero suffers short-term memory loss due to a brain aneurism. Waking up every morning his mind was a total blank about the previous day. So he had to record himself daily to remind himself of important things he had to do that day. Doctors told him that his hippocampus was damaged. This is the part of the brain, which creates and consolidates memory.
Recently added