Thursday 31 December 2015

Evaluate your 2015

Dates that come around every year help us measure progress in our lives. One annual event, New Year's Day, is a time of reflection and resolution.”—Joseph Wirthlin

    Even though the transformation in personal and business life happens through  the changes WITHIN, irrespective of change in calendar years, now, this is the opportune time to plan for change. Instead of merely planning with wishes, it would be effective to look back , learn from the past and set the direction for the future.

    Hence evaluate your 2015 in all aspects of life with the right questions. This may help to reinforce the good things you did, correct the bad things you did in 2015.Answering to the following questions may l help you to set  the direction right on career / business / relationship / financial aspects.

Which initiatives worked well in business  / professional career  and which was not?
What  motivated me last year and what drained  my motivation level?
What factors improved  / affected the quality of relationship  with family members / peers/ subordinates / clients?
Which factors improved my personal financial success and what not? 
What made me proud of  my contributions to others?


Reflection is more powerful than any other form of learnings. Reflect on 2015 and move forward for great 2016 as each one of us in this earth are deserved for continuous growth..

Wishing you and your family & Business  to achieve new growth, peace, happy new year 2016!

Saturday 26 December 2015

Managing Time

“Priority management is the answer to maximizing our time “–John c Maxwell

       For most of us, pressing need is how to manage time. Even though there are best seller book and training session on time management with many formats, techniques, they help to some extend on awareness creation only. Those external driven factors may not be much more effective as  time management is more of  “Internal driven”. It is not managing time, it is about managing your temptation and emotions.

      For instance, If someone offers you a choice to get one cheque with  valued Rs 1000 and another Rs 2000. Obviously, most of us choose Rs 2000 cheque. In case, if  it comes with a choice that Rs 1000 could be cashed tomorrow and Rs 2000 could be cashed after a year, would your decision remain same? Most of us in a real experiment  would decide to take Rs 1000, despite the fact that the second option is a rationally better choice.

      This example demonstrates the temptation kicks in when immediate benefit is present, we tend to take irrational decision.Our ability to take good decision disappears when we see, short term benefits.The same is applicable when we prioritize our IMPORTANT and URGENT work. We know very clearly what is important for us in terms of growth  and strive for doing important things.When short term, immediate benefits come across our way like emails, meeting, phone calls, entertainments, we become sensitive to urgent and lose the focus on Important aspects.The attraction of small, short term pleasure outweighs the big, long term, hard activities.

       When we learn to manage those temptations or emotion, we become master of time management. Be aware of your emotions!


Monday 14 December 2015

Adversity

“Every adversity, every failure carries with it the seeds of an equal or greater benefits”-Napoleon Hill

         Adversity or difficult times happen in our life at any moment. The difficult moments can be losing job suddenly, losing dear ones, losing all earned money etc. Those moments make our life upside down and literally we may not have clue what would happen next. As it is beyond our control, we can not avoid and only option is to undergo the experience.

          Actually, those tough times only teach us a lot of valuable lesson about life. It brings loved one closer to us than ever before. It brings us a lot of time to introspect our past mistakes, which leads to difficult times. It makes us to think to handle the future different way .It brings out our real divine power within us and rise up as stronger than ever.


           Let us look back your life; you might have come across so many difficult times in different point of time. Despite all those ,today you are .This is due to the powerful learning’s , courage, will power, divine energy you got from those tough times. Similarly, you look around any nation, which had undergone many tough times in the past and today it stands tall because adversity makes them stronger than before.

          Hence, adversity need to be looked at as part of life, that also will pass over a period of time .Real happiness is not in good times and it is on how we manage tough times and come up .Great time ahead after every adversity. That is the Law of Nature!


Tuesday 1 December 2015

Encouragement


“Our duty is to encourage everyone in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea”.--Swami Vivekananda

       The following true incident happened several years ago in Paris Opera House.  A famous singer had been contracted to sing and all the arrangements were made  and the all tickets were sold out.During the event day, before starting the program, there were  feeling of anticipation and excitement among the fans. 

       The Event manager took the stage and said “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am afraid that due to illness, the man whom we have booked will not be performing tonight. However, we have found a suitable substitute and we hope  he will provide you a comparable entertainment experience”. The crowd shouted in disappointment and failed to hear the name of the person which was announced by the event manager. The total environment turned from excitement to frustration..

      The new  performer gave the performance everything he had. When he had finished, there was no reaction from the audience except silence. No one  applauded and the performer about to step down from the stage. Suddenly, a little boy stood up and shouted, “Daddy, I think you have done a wonderful job, Love you so much”’. The crowd broke into thunderous applause and cheering.

   We all need people in our lives who are willing to stand up for us , once in a while and say “ I think you have done wonderful Job”. That makes a big difference!!!

Saturday 28 November 2015

Begin with Certainty


“Ninety percent of selling is conviction and 10 percent is persuasion.”--Shiv Khera

        One of the key point lesson in sales training is that sales person must approach the prospects with  belief that  prospects turns out into sales .That is "begin with certainty". This is applicable to all aspects of your life.

       When you start a new venture, even though you know that it is going to be risky, start with certainty as this will give mindset to move confidently. In case if you  start with skepticism, that makes you weak and your efforts would be half hearted. Any obstacles during the venture makes you more vulnerable.

      Similarly, in organizational setup, if the leader is not convinced about any new initiatives or new targets and starts with uncertainty mindset, he signals the same through his energy, enthusiasm and communication to his team. More than his verbal, his body language triggers low motivations to his team.

      Even when you begin with certainty, there may be obstacles you may face, at least this mindset will enable you to think alternative solutions,otherwise you are vulnerable for any minor setbacks during the journey..

Hence begin with certainty as this will  provide more energy  to resolve any challenges during the journey!!

Wednesday 25 November 2015

Enhance your Perspectives

“Miracles happen everyday, change your perception of what a miracle is and you will see them all around you.”-Jon Bon

     We form opinions about life based  through our family, friends, working environment and the place where we are living. Eventually we form some beliefs and that  beliefs are  guiding our behavior and actions. Unless we enhance our perspectives about  life, our quality of life may not improve significantly.

     Enhancing perspective means to increase our ability to look at the things from different angles or view points and ability to differentiate which is good or right.

      For example, we may form the opinion that our children  as “Average” based on their  academic performance. But we might have missed to notice their other positive qualities such as good in sports, interpersonal skills, taking things cool and problem solving capability  and so on. Unless we are open, observe, listen and keen to enhance our perspective about the child, we continue to have fixed mindset as “Average” and lead our relationship with that quality.Similarly, we have some  fixed mindsets  in our capabilities, potential, career  growth, health, wealth, business development opportunities etc.. 

    The point is  that be open, flexible, keen to change your perception and accept new  information. This  attitude will enhance your  ability  to look the things  in different way in turn will improve the quality of life. 

Wednesday 11 November 2015

What do you focus Success or Growth

“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvements, achievements and success have no meaning”.—Benjamin Franklin

We may come across people who is perceived as “Successful“ either in terms of positional status, wealth accumulation or any other measurement by society, may not be so happy internally or  feeling fulfilled. One of the reasons could be  the success does not lead to happiness or fulfillment if there is a lack of growth.

To  get clarity on this, we need to understand the difference between success and growth.

Success is just a milestone and not necessarily end of life journey. Success may be too personal and it may not be impacting others. When a particular success is achieved, you may feel happy temporarily  and again start craving for something to just feed your own ego.

Whereas Growth is  a continuous or progressive journey, during the progression, it is impacting others as well in  a positive way. when you are continuously growing  and others are also benefiting along with your journey, you feel fulfilled.

For example, achieving or attaining the  promotion in your profession may be a success. Once attained, through the new role, if you are not making an impact  or contributing others, you are not growing and growth is stagnant. If there is no further progress, the success may not give you fulfillment and it becomes burden.

To summarize, if you focus more on achieving success  and it does not make  impact to others, that success may not bring fulfillment. If you focus more on achieving success after success with more impact to others, you are on a growth path  and the journey will give  a sense of fulfillment. What you focus makes a difference to your life!!

Wednesday 28 October 2015

Building Momentum

“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”-Thomas Edison

              Many times, we have good ideas or intentions to do something to improve our profession to business, but we fail to convert those ideas into reality. When we see others to implement similar ideas, we use to regret or feel guilty. One of the reasons for not converting ideas into reality is a lack of building momentum the moment idea is conceived.

Building momentum is one way of giving a shape to  idea to the next stage.

For example,

If you have an idea or intention to visit a foreign country, you can build momentum immediately by getting  as much as information about the place, cost of travel, culture, weather  etc.. This action  may propel you to next step and so on..

If you have idea to diversify your business into a new product portfolio, you can build momentum by getting information about the competition, market size, investment etc..This step may propel you to next step and so on..

If you have the intention to bring new initiative in your organization, you can build momentum by immediately seeking suggestion or help from those people who did it already.

Simply, if you have an idea or intention, communicate to your dear ones and commit.That way you build the momentum and that momentum may take you to next level action.

All the achievements are made by execution only. Hence action is important to convert any intention to reality. Hence, building and keeping momentum is a first step and necessary  for any achievement!!!

Monday 19 October 2015

Acceptance Mindset


“The first step toward change is awareness.the second step is acceptance.”—Nathaniel Branden

          One of the qualities of highly matured people is “Acceptance Mindset”. Acceptance mindset means first accepting anything as such  without resistance. That can be accepting the people as such, accepting the situation as such, accepting the self as such etc .Once accept as such , then they will  do the response or do the corrective mechanism to improve.

      For example, when you accept some of your bad habits or rude behavior as such, you may think of an improvement. When you do not admit, always tend to fault others for your habits or behaviors.

       When  you accept the other’s behavior as such in your professional environment, then you think of modifying your response to each person, else you always get into firefighting, arguing or blaming others.

       When you accept that your business is not going well, you will think changing strategy to improve, else , you cite the reason as government’s failure, Economy, your own employees etc.


      The point is to accept anything first, that is reality. Once you accept, your mind will work on improvements or alternative. Once you resist to accept, you are going against the nature  and it gives back to you in terms of losing temperament, spoiling  health and  quality of  relationship etc...Hence, accept first and cultivate the habit of acceptance and act !

Monday 12 October 2015

Being grateful does not lead to complacency


              Recently, in the management seminar, I was speaking about being grateful for what we  got in life. After the session, one participant asked me if we are grateful and  content  with what we have, does it not lead to complacent  and stop our growth further? I realized  that I should  have explained  elaborately more about  gratitude, being content and complacency as it requires clarity  for most of us.

My perspective on this is as follows:

               Contentment means being grateful for what you got or achieved. For example, with so many years of  hard work and dedication, you might have attained  your dream senior leadership position in your organization. You can be grateful for the achievement and remember all the people with gratitude. That is grateful and contentment.

               But it will or should not stop you to think next level promotion. Obviously the next level growth demands  further more hard work, skill set  and if you are not ready to invest yourself in skill development and hard work, then you become complacent. To put it simply, when possibilities are there for higher level growth and if you are not willing to invest yourself, that is complacent.


             To summarize, being grateful  and content  will give you peace of mind and that  peace of  mind will enable you for next level growth provided you are ready to pay the price for that. If you are not ready, you become complacent, not due to grateful. Hence grateful does not lead to complacency!

Monday 5 October 2015

Start Now

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”-Arthur Ashe

        Everyone wants to lead a life with achievements in a profession or business, maintaining cordial relationship with others, healthy body and mindset. But in reality, not all will have the right environment  and opportunity right from childhood to channelize their energy towards achieving the above. Only a few gifted people have the blessings from childhood, For others, it may take life long process. During the process, some people give up, eventually contented, or even complain about age, circumstances, and others.

        If you look at one of the most divine creations, “Butterfly” which everyone likes for its colorful wings and shape. In its life cycle, it evolves as butterfly only at the fourth stage by passing over the egg, caterpillar, chrysalis stages. However, it completes its lifecycle with the transformation from ugly caterpillar to beautiful butterfly. What matters is a transformation in a lifetime, no matter at what timeline it happens in life.

Hence,

If you have not managed your business so far, start now to transform now…
If you have not managed your relationship well with others, start now to renew it…
If you have not managed your finances properly, start now to reorganize
If you have not managed your health, start now to rejuvenate or look into it.


        Every day is a possibility of positive change in life.No point in regretting about the past and complaining the environments or others.Start now for new beginnings!

Tuesday 29 September 2015

Positive state before doing

                 One day Buddha was travelling from one town to another town along with his followers. On the way, they took a rest and the Buddha asked one of his followers to get some water from the nearby lake.A disciple walked up to the lake and he noticed that some people were washing clothes in the lake water and also a bullock cart crossing through the lake.As a result, water became muddy and the disciple thought this muddy water cannot be given to Buddha to drink. He came back to Buddha and told that the water was muddy and not suitable for drinking.

                 After a while, Buddha again asked the same disciple to go back to the lake and get some water. The disciple also went to the lake and found that mud was settled down and the water was clean enough to drink.So he collected some water in a pot and brought it to Buddha.


                 Buddha looked at the water and looked up at the disciple and said “what did you do to make the water clean to drink? You just allowed it as such to settle down the mud. Similarly, when your mind is in a disturbed state, you cannot make use of it effectively for decision making or doing anything useful. Give a little time to settle it down, your mind becomes in a positive state and you can produce results “

Thursday 24 September 2015

Possibilities


“The Future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious.”- John Sculley

         Sometimes we are skeptical about the future and think that the status quo will continue as such either business growth or financial status or even professional growth  or quality of life.During such time, “Possibilities thinking” may be useful to get confidence or overcoming the skeptic mindset.

        For example, observe any successful people from business, sports, media, politics, etc., You may realize that their background were ordinary or much worse than yours. How they became successful is that they believed themselves. Before believing themselves, they think the possibilities of becoming successful or achieving something great. They believed in the possibilities of changing their destiny better than they were. They believed in the possibilities of tomorrow, which would be  better than today.

        Similarly, look at the developments in all the fields like connectivity of the world through internet, mobile communication, affordability of transportation modes, education, healthcare inventions, etc which was not imaginable a few   decades ago. Today it has become reality as  someone was thinking about the possibilities changing from better to best.

         In a nutshell, what was not possible yesterday becomes reality today and it is the result of possibilities thinking of humanity. Hence, think about new possibilities in your life either business turnaround, personal transformation or improving the quality of life, it will become reality with right actions!  

Monday 14 September 2015

The power of faith and surrendering

“Faith is permitting ourselves to be seized by the things we do not see.” – Martin Luther

      
          Even though we possess the knowledge, experience and capability in our profession, sometimes our confidence will be shaken. During such a time, if we are not able to maintain “mental cool,” outcome will be disastrous. One of the ways to calm our mind would be faith in divine power and surrendering.

           For instance, recently I was called for speaking in a forum. Even though the topic was very close to my heart and preparation was good, somehow the new forum, environment and the senior experts sitting on the dais made me inferior, eventually I was losing my confidence. I knew in a few minutes, I need to deliver my speech and no way I can escape the situation and in the back of my mind, I was losing all the confidence and  the contents of the speech. At that moment, it was very difficult to boost the confidence with our intellectual learnings and techniques.

            The only option I had was to surrender to divine power. I was telling myself “I have not tried this speaking opportunity as it comes to me as divine wish. If it gets to me as divine’s wish, how come divine make me  to fail in this? Even if I fail, that is the divine’s wish to gain experience out of this.Surely things will turn out favors in any way.” Within a few minutes, I was called  and surprised my speech came out more powerful and content made positive impacts as I received a positive response from the people.

           The point  I am asserting here is that be faith in yourself, if not, be faith on divine and surrender ,that will make you calm and  life will be good whatever happens!

Friday 11 September 2015

Battle Choice

“How people treat you is their karma, how you react is yours.”—Wayne Dyer


           In professional or  business environment, sometimes , we may have to work with the people who may not be inline with your thought process, attitude,character ,simply put it wavelength. The person could  be your boss  or  peers or subordinates  or even the customer. Practically you may not have immediate solution to move away from them ,the only option left out is to live with them  temporarily.

          What is the choice available to manage those characters? One choice can be to  confront with them  and always prove that you are right. This choice is like adding fuel to fire as resistance always back firing. In this process, either you lose your peace of mind or your productivity or lose track of growth as you always think how to make others  wrong.

          Another choice can be to make your mind  to accept them as such  and keep moving on your  growth activities. Learn from the nature that anything is cyclic and things will work out in your favor soon. Learn from your past that tough times never lasts forever and how you managed similar situations.


          In essence, your peace of mind is more important than anything else. That depends on the choice of battle you choose!!

Wednesday 2 September 2015

Managing Emotions

“The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control their emotions by the application of reason.”—Marya Mannes

      One of the toughest  management is managing the emotion of self. The internal  emotion will manifest as behavior to the external world and makes us  either great or break. It can be in relationship, day to day decisions and even in managing personal finance. Those who can able to master their emotions  through self awareness becomes successful in all aspects of life.

        For instance, as most of  us aware of the fact that  stock market is one of the investment avenues of our period and if we manage well, we can create wealth. But how many of us really have made money in stock market consistently? One of the reasons  that most of us  are operating in stock market mostly with  emotions like anxiety, greed, fear  and then take decisions which most of the time goes wrong.

        Likewise, in a relationship with our family members or even with fellow workers, we are predominantly run by emotions like fear, jealousy, anger and then proved  by words or natural process which moves the relationship character.


         Managing emotions  well is mastery of all skills. For some people, it is a natural process  and for others, it is possible with awareness and practice. If one masters managing emotions, he starts attracting all good things in life!

Thursday 27 August 2015

Learn from Success

              In both personal and business  aspects, delivering results or achieving success milestone   is relatively easy if factors like process, people, and the environment favor us. However, sustaining the success is much more important and a real challenge. Even though it is difficult, but it is possible, as we are seeing  outstanding, lifetime successful people from business, sports, music, media etc. How can we sustain the success forever? One of the answers could be “learning from the success."

          Most of the time, when we achieve success, we forget to look back the factors led us to success. Whereas after failure, we tend to look back what went wrong and learn from the mistakes. Similarly, when we achieve success milestones, we can look back in the process, which led to success. The factors can be the strategy we adopted, the approach we used, people whom along with we delivered result, People for whom we delivered, environmental factors like competition, timing, and other assumptions etc.


          This reflection or introspection on success will help you to reinforce the confidence on you, adopt the same methodology in future and to improve the quality of execution.This will help you to sustain the success. Hence, it is not only important to learn from failure, but from success as well for sustaining it.

Tuesday 18 August 2015

Myth of multitasking

“You can do two things at once, but you cannot focus effectively on two things at once”-Gary Keller

       With the intention of doing more in a given time, we tend to do multiple activities simultaneously or switching rapidly from task to task in the same time.It  is called multitasking.

        For example, you are in preparing the presentation for your annual review, in between, you attend the phone calls as you received, and you call someone, attend the SMS and browse the internet, download the mails and again focus on preparation of reports.

       Each time when  we move between tasks, the brain takes a little  time to  reorient    itself to the new task at hand. Psychologists estimated that multitasking in the form of switching backwards and forwards between tasks increases the overall time needed to complete the tasks by 40 percent.

      The simple message that we achieve more personal productivity if we stay focused on tasks for longer instead of diverting our attention to different tasks.


      With so much distraction in today’s world, it is easy to be diverted in the name of multitask. However, the reality is that we are losing our productivity.With awareness and self-control, it is possible to orient our focus on a given task and complete!.

Saturday 15 August 2015

Why goal fails?

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” –Jim Rohn


               In professional and Personal environment, many of us  have experience of setting  goals  and not able to achieve the same.There may be many  external  reasons for not achieving the goal, but one of the  causes for failure is an internal oriented or mindset in approaching the execution.

            Whether we are setting the goal only with OUTCOME oriented or PROCESS oriented makes a lot of difference in the success or failure. For example, if you set a goal to improve your revenue by 2X in a year's time. This is outcome oriented. If you focus only on this outcome,  likely you may not achieve the goal.

            Instead, if you focus more on setting process goals to achieve revenue increase by 2X in a year time ,then  likely you may achieve the goal. For example, you set goals to improve your skill set, up gradation of knowledge, improving network etc and working on it will lead you to achieve the goal. This is a process-oriented goal.


           To sum it up, we tend to focus more on the outcome than the process to achieve the outcome. This leads to failure of achieving goals. Instead, being disciplined in the process   will improve the probability of achieving the goal.

Sunday 2 August 2015

Appreciating the value

“Light can be understood only with the wisdom of darkness."--Ka Chinery


         Most of the time, we use to approach the aspects of life as granted. The reason could be we   get anything easily and we do not see much value in it. Our tendency is while everything goes right, we assume that it happens because of our brilliance or effort and hesitate to appreciate the giftedness.

         In order to balance this mindset only, nature always plays with balanced and equanimity principle. To appreciate the value of life and its blessings, challenges or difficulties are given.

For example,

When we get sick, we appreciate the value of fitness and respect the physical body....
When we loss materialistically, we appreciate the value of hard earned money....
When we are alone, we appreciate the value of relationships....
When we are undergoing the tough times, we appreciate the value of mental strength and self-development....
We appreciate the value of light when we are in darkness...

         It does not mean just to appreciate the value of life, one need to undergo all the troubles in life. With a little bit of awareness, gratitude and balanced approach, we can appreciate  everything that happens in our life.

Sunday 26 July 2015

If you resist anything, it will persist

“The only proper way to eliminate bad habits is to replace them with good ones.”Jerome Hines

       Most of us use to make commitments to give up  bad habits or unwanted habits. We initiate  effort to  to give up, but  end up with failure as habit will never give up us!!! .

       The study shows that during the process of giving up any bad or unwanted habits, our mind focuses more on resisting the habit and in this process we are losing our mental strength. Instead, focus on developing new habit  or divert your  time on something new habits while setting the mind to give up the unwanted habit. In this process mind focus on a new habit forming and this increase mental strength  than  focusing on to resist.

         For example, if you want to give up the habit of spending too much time on browsing net.If you focus to give up, your resistance will weak your mental strength and likely you may not succeed. Alternatively, while to decide to give up the habit, take new habit like  spending time with closed one or writing or reading, etc. and focus on continuing new habit. Eventually, your focus on new thing will help you to  succeed in new things as well as  diverting you from unwanted habit.

It is because what you resist will persist and what you positively focus will flourish!

Wednesday 15 July 2015

Invest in yourself

“Investing in yourself is the best investment you will ever make.It will not only improve your life, it will improve the lives of all those around you.”—Robin Sharma

          At one time a bird asked a BEE, “After a continuous hard work, you develop the honey, but a man steals the honey… Do you not feel sorry about that? . Then the Bee replied, “Never.. because a man can only steal my honey, NOT  the art of making honey..

         Sometime in professional life, your work may not get the timely recognition  or somebody may claim credit for your work. In business association, someone may exploit you  and your ideas without rewarding you. Those are the moments are only temporary and short term in nature. The surroundings or others  can only temporarily halt your progress. No one permanently stops your growth. In the long term, your unique talent will become discovered and acknowledged.


         Keep investing on your skill and talent development. Keep investing your time on managing yourself, ethics, purpose, character, motivation and conduct. You will attract good things in life!

Breaking limiting beliefs

“What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is  more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.”-Tony Robbins

         Most of us have inhibition to set high standards or aspiring big .One of the reasons is that the mind is always looking for some reference or role model to get convinced. Once we  believe that something is possible based on the reference, we also may achieve or even surpass the earlier standard.

         For example, till 1954, no one  believed that man can run a mile in less than four minutes.Even medical experts concluded  that it could not be done and humanly impossible. Roger Bannister, an athlete from British smashed the belief by running a mile in 3 minutes and 59.6 seconds. The breaking the record was  commendable, but what happened afterwards, which I think is worth to mention. After he broke the record in 1954, over the next few years, more than forty people run a mile  in less than four minutes. They broke their limiting belief  on seeing the record .Today it has become possible and standard.

         In business or in a professional environment, if you want to achieve new heights, but lacks courage, look around what others had achieved and set the base. This will give confidence or will help you to break the limiting belief.Once  you break the belief, you can also achieve and even may surpass the already achieved standard.Always break the limiting belief and you attract the good things in life!!


Foster relationship for happy life

“People may hear your words,but they feel your attitude.”-John C Maxwell

                Building relationship with others is important for successful  and happy life as  we always rely on others for support and guidance .The relationship shall  be with our parents, spouse, children, friends, boss, peers, subordinates,customers and all those are interacting with us on day to day basis. How can we build and nurture the relationship?

           One is to accept the people as they are.By creation,each one is unique and has different in characterization. We cannot expect others to behave as we are. We need to realize this fundamental fact and appreciate the positive sides of each individual rather than finding fault with others. Once we find fault and criticize, relationship gets strained.

           Second is to develop the trust and it is long term process. On a short term basis, if we build relationship with the intention of what is in it for me attitude, it won’t last long. We need to gain the confidence of others by demonstrating the behaviors which we expect from others.

           Relationship is a two side mirror glass thru which we are seeing others and others are seeing us. If the glass is broken due to discourteous words or rude behavior, it is difficult to re-form. So Let us foster relationship and be happy! ..         


Interpretation of experience matters

“Deep Experience is never peaceful.” --Henry James

       Our maturity and growth evolves to the extend to new experience. Even then, experience alone does not make much impact of growth. The way we  interpret  the experience makes a big difference.The experience  can be  good or bad feeling, but how we internalize the feeling with a right spirit  matters a lot.Otherwise the experience may be passing through as just an event in life.  

       For example, two friends are watching the same movie together, but both  may have different feelings about the movie, because  they interpret the experience in a different way.

       One more example from the history is that millions of people  had experienced  humiliation by the British rulers as same as Mahatma Gandhi. But he interpreted the experience in a different way that   made him to lead Ahimsa movement against  the British. The interpretation makes a difference.

        Similarly, in your professional or business environment, you may go through tough times or may get different feedback about your performance from your peers. It makes a positive impact on you only when you take the experience, interpret in a positive intention. That makes a beginning for the new person in you!!!

Past # Future

“Past does not equal to future.” –Anthony Robbins

      Everyone may experience  setbacks in life either in business or in professional endeavor or in financial aspects. But how quickly we learn from the setbacks and change the strategy is all about real growth.By nature of the design, no one  will be going through continuous success  or continuous failure throughout the life.

      Most of us have a tendency to get into  the hopelessness emotion  during setbacks  and  too much celebration or noisy  during success.  Remember the phrase “Past does not equal to future “ in both good and bad times.

If your past is painful:

Remember past does not equal to the future. Learn from the failures or pain, change the strategy  and approach the life with the new way. The new approach will give different results..

If your past is so successful :

Remember past does not equal to the future. Do not be too complacent about the past. Feel good about the past, be grateful and accelerate  the strategy for being more successful or sustain the success.

Since the law of nature is “ Change “ and it cannot be avoided, Hence, whatever happens, enjoy the experience, welcome the future with confidence and hope as past does not equal to the future!

Self-efficacy

“In order to succeed, people need a sense of self efficacy to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles of life.” —Albert Bandura


      Self-efficacy can be defined as one’s belief in his ability to succeed in specific situations. The success or failure in whatever situation is generally depends on individual‘s belief in his ability to face the situation. For example, if you are venturing into new business or new initiatives in your professional environment, more than environmental factors which alters the result, your belief about your capability gives you all strength to manage any challenges during execution.

      People with high self-efficacy are more willing to take action, especially on new activities. They stay longer in the face of challenging times. Now the question is whether this quality is inborn or can be developed by anyone. The answer is a high level of self-efficacy can be developed by anyone with little effort.

      One of the ways to develop self-efficacy is through observation. It is demonstrated through study about a person with phobia and the person’ self-efficacy about managing the phobia is improved when he observed fellow phobic struggled with and overcome their phobia.


       Similarly, if you observe your role model for any of his excellent qualities, you can also gain the belief about your capability. It is a simple proposition that “if it is possible by others, it is possible by me “. Who could be your role model to observe and learn? 

Gain strength from new experience

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”-Eleanor Roosevelt


         Studies show that 85 % of the population struggle with confidence issue. Since the fear had passed into the  subconscious brain, it is hard to gain confidence only  through  outside  resources like  self help scripts. It can be improved through “ within”  development of  the individual.

          When you experiment  new actions in small day to day activities  and  continuously expanding  your horizons, the experience gained from such action will  improve the confidence.

For example,

If you have a habit of waking up at 6 am, practice waking up one hour early consistently which will improve your will power

If you use to walk for 5 km at a stretch, extend it to 8 km at a stretch as this will improve your strength

If you use to drive only in a city environment, go for long drive which you have not done so far as this will enhance  your courage

If you use to spend hours together on the net, cut into half and resist the temptation  as this improve your willpower

The intent of stating above examples is  to reinforce the thought that new experience will widen your perspective about yourself and this will enhance  your courage, will power or confidence level.Since the experience are fully experienced by you as  “within”, this will sustain your confidence level than anything comes from external..


Experiment and share your experience!!!

Counting your blessings

“When you focus on being blessed, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.”—Joel Osteen


       Most of us are looking at life in terms of “what yet is not received or achieved." For example,  we use to hear the conversation from someone that “I would be happy if I get so and so asset or I would be happy if I get so and so status or I would be happy if i get so and so problems solved” and so on. Expecting something bigger or aspiring for great things is not sin and that is required for internal motivation. Still, for being happy, always keeping conditions with IF and BUT  leads us to miss the view of the present moment and the greatest blessings we have received in life.

       Instead of cribbing with future uncertainties, count the number of good things you have got in  life  like people surrounded with you, the educational and exposure privilege  you got and so on.

       When you count  our blessings, rationally you realize that no of blessings will be more than the problems you have. Also Internalizing the blessings  will give more mental strength to address whatever problems


        Hence count your blessings, be grateful, be happy for having those blessings, you can counter any problems and achieve more in life. 

Preserving Relationship

“To err is human; to forgive,divine.”--Alexander Pope



     Generally, we get hurt by close relationships with family  members  or with people in a professional environment. When we get hurt,our tendency would be  thinking too much about the incident  or the person cause it. Unconsciously, we start  recalling all unfavorable moments happened earlier  with the person and forming  negative emotions about the  person. When this repeats frequently, as they are closely associated with our life, gap is also widening over a period.

   When the gap is widening, even the other person does favor for us, we tend to look at with skepticism .In this process, the quality of relationship is strained .The one way of approaching this mindset is to value the relationship by recalling one best moment  or favor we experienced  with that person. Instead of rewinding one bad moment for many times and affecting the relationship, rewind the positive moments for many times and cherish  the relationship.


     So many people come across our life, only a few relationships happened with purpose, which we may not know the reason . Only in human beings, some relationships are  continuing  for a long time  and let us preserve it with patience and compassion!!

Decision Making

“When people are afraid, they make emotional decisions”.—John Mellencamp

           Even though , we learn structured methodologies, tools and techniques for arriving logical decision, still  decision making is being one of the difficult aspects of life management. There are two situations when we face a decision making dilemma. One is during crisis (urgent) moment and  another one for making (important ) personal life decisions like  a child's education, switching the profession, changing the job, relocation or even the investment decisions.

        Generally, our minds go as per the emotional urge during the moment of decision-making point. Even though emotions drive our behavior, most of the time, any decisions taken only based on emotional reason may not be the right solution. It is preferable to answer for both emotional and rational needs before taking an important life decision.

         For example, if you desire to  change your profession, look into the emotional need such as passion, pride, ego fulfilling, happiness, etc. as well as rationally evaluate  your Knowledge, Skill set, gap needs to be filled and  alternative plans, etc. This balanced evaluation of both emotional and rational need may give you the right  mindset  to take a decision which makes you peace and happiness.

        Be aware of your decision making pattern of all important life decisions, balance with emotional and rational approach  and you attract good things in life!

Stepback

“Take a step back, evaluate what is important and enjoy life.”—Teri Garr

          Most of us have the tendency of “being in busy"always. It can be in professional or business environment either chasing the success after success or managing the challenges with the same approach. In this process, over a period of time, either we become addicted to same methodology without evaluating its effectiveness or become so rigid in thinking process  leads to ignoring  other aspects of relationship, quality of execution, next level growth  etc.

           The study shows that one of the qualities  the successful people  possess is  “being reflective".Frequently , they use to take time for themselves and evaluate what is going on around their life, what is important, what needs to be changed  etc.. This will give them clarity on the behavior to be dropped or adopted, the strategy to be modified or tuned etc for improving the quality of life.


            It is beneficial for health, relationship, and efficiency perspective, take some time for yourself, and evaluate the proceedings. This will give you more clarity on what is right and good for you and your surroundings. 

What do you focus?

“There is no use talking about the problem unless you talk about the solutions”-Betty Williams

         When things are not happening as we expected  or  any problem happens  in professional or business or in a family environment, the most obvious tendency of us    is  “fixing who is responsible?”. For  any  problems, finding the cause is a good thing, but the moment we focus our searching the cause on “People” factor, it likely turns out as blaming, complaining ,justification, arguments and eventually into  personal vengeance .

          Instead, if we shift our focus of searching the cause  on “process “ factor, it likely turns out, what improvements needs to be done to fix the problem. Sometime fixing process  may prevent the issue permanently as well as take care of human errors .

          Shifting the focus on fixing “process” than  “people” is possible with a little bit of awareness on our intention and behavior.It is difficult but possible with practice. For any problem solution can be fixed through process, in turn process will take care people factor also.

Just be aware of your reaction to the problem, shift the focus and you attract good things in life!

Learned Helplessness

“A little more persistence, a little more effort and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.”—Elbert Hubbard

     Some years back a research had been conducted  on a dog with repeated electric shocks in closed environment. Typically, we would expect any sensible dog to seek to avoid the pain of electric shock.What surprisingly observed was that, even there were opportunities to escape from the pain, they simply put  down and whined. This observation led psychologist to develop the concept of “learned helplessness”.

      At times, as human beings, we seem to give up any attempt to change the situation. We  accept the role as victims and  inability to do anything about to change the situation.

     When we are facing tough situations for long in professional or in a family environment, we start feeling that we have little control over it and start believing as such.Instead of taking even  small effort to change the situation we use all energy to cope with the situation. Over a period, we become victims of helplessness.

    You may have experienced helplessness feelings either in  career progression, business growth  or relationship quality.Over a period of time, you cope with that.In this process, your helplessness feeling pulls your confidence  and quality of life..


Hence aware of the areas, where you feel “helplessness” and take action to change it.