Wednesday 28 November 2018

Leading Self (Having Faith)


As we discussed, leading self is all about strengthening your inner world.

The fifth and last factor to improve strengthening inner world is “Faith.”

Faith can be defined as complete confidence or belief or trust or conviction about something. That something can be unknown, no proof or evidence or not seen. However, internally, we feel the presence. The moment you think and feel about it, it would give internal strength. That is FAITH.

The faith can be entrusted on God, Nature, your capabilities, your people or your profession. It can be anything which is held on with strong conviction.

For example,

if you strongly believe and trust in your values and it will drive your life, that is faith
If you strongly believe your favorite Guru or God and it will guide you, that is faith
If you strongly believe yourself and your capabilities without any doubt, that is faith

Why do you need faith in something ?:
 
When you have undoubted faith in something, that gives positive feeling inside you and your mind accepts life challenges or face any consequences with clarity and courage.

Faith makes you stronger internally both during normal and tough times.

If you read any successful people, they have faith either on themselves or on their product/services or in the force beyond their imagination, say divine power.

Just answer yourself on which you have faith? How strong is it? Make it stronger and hold it or surrender yourself to that faith, eventually, you become stronger, and your leadership capability will also become stronger!

Tuesday 27 November 2018

Leading Self (High-Level Discipline)



As we discussed, leading self is all about strengthening your inner world.

The fourth factor to improve strengthening inner world is 
self-discipline”.

When we say self-discipline, most of us, relate it to being punctual or being organized. That is also required, but those are low order discipline. Nevertheless, for some people, still maintaining that discipline is being a challenge.

To strengthen the inner world, what is really required is high order discipline practices. That is under no compulsion from external factors, how you stick on your routines or values for long-term benefits.

For example, you have decided to follow some kind of diet practices in your lifestyle and you committed to that. Even though you are free to give up the diet practices at any point in time, but if you consistently stick to it for your own benefit, that is high order discipline.

The point is that under full freedom, what you are doing consistently without give-up will reinforce your inner strength. Alternatively, when you break frequently your own commitments, you will lose your inner strength.

Personally, I know one CEO of a large organization adheres daily walking practices for more than 25 years irrespective of his busy schedule, travel etc. That is high order discipline. I wonder to correlate his business success with his personal discipline.

 The action is to take one initiative which is good for your forever and stick on this consistently.
 Eventually, that will improve your inner strength and leadership!

Tuesday 13 November 2018

Leading self ( Owning responsibility)

As we discussed, leading self is all about strengthening your inner world.

The Third  factor to improve strengthening inner world is “personal  responsibility.”

When you search the meaning of responsibility in dictionary or Google, you get the answer as a duty to do something or the ability to respond to the situation. Those are outward focused.
From a leadership perspective, my view is personal responsibility is a feeling of ownership about something. That could be your life, your family, your team, your organization, your work or about the world. It is more of Inward oriented.
Most of the personal problems are due to lack of ownership feeling at an individual level only.

How does personal responsibility enhance your internal strength?

When you have a feeling of ownership about something when a problem occurs, you try to find solutions, and in this process, you are giving yourself towards solutions and internally you are feeling safe, comfort and peace.
Alternatively, When you do not own something, when the problem happens, you tend to blame or complain about the situation, and in this process, either the problem aggravates, or you are undergoing stress within yourself.


For example, 
When you own your work, if somebody points out some problem, you try to correct the problem. In case if you are not owning, you try to defend or put the problem on somebody.

If you own your team or organization, you try to educate your team member when you find fault with their performance. Else, you blame them or complain.

If you feel you are responsible for your family harmony, you try to bring solutions for relationship conflicts; else you complicate further by arguing and complaining.


The question to ask yourself is how much ownership you are taking for all life aspects and you can see the correlation of your internal strength!

Let us discuss further.

Wednesday 7 November 2018

Leading self (Being grateful for everything)



 

As we discussed, leading self is all about strengthening your inner world.

The second factor to improve strengthening inner world is “ being grateful for everything.”

Being grateful means internally feeling gifted or blessed to have this life and being thankful for everything.

Generally, we use to crib about the things which we have not yet attained or achieved or what we missed in the past. In this process, we forget the profound truth that up to this moment, many factors are working in favor of us to exist. As life is so uncertain that, we need to imbibe the feeling of being blessed for every aspect that made us to this moment. Those aspects could be your education, work, family, friends, personality and so on.

When you feel gifted and being in a grateful state, you gain the following benefits

1. Becoming humble which takes you to the next level of your evolution to divine
2. Sincere desire to make an impact by giving and you start attracting the right things
3. Internally feeling secure and confident.

How to be grateful?

1.    Count your blessings, and good things happened in your life
2.    Count your worries or challenges
3.    Compare the blessings vs. challenges, and I am sure everyone will have more blessings than challenges.

Having suggested a rational way of being grateful, you need to be more reflective to feel the gratefulness at emotional way. It is possible through awareness and self-introspection.

Whatever way you develop your inner world with a feeling of gratefulness, that is ok as long as you are in a grateful state as this improves your LEADERSHIP qualities in the external world.

Leading Self (Improving self-image through actions)

Having discussed the two approaches to improve self-confidence, now let us consider the third approach to improve your self-image and confidence.

Through action and small success:




One of the most powerful methods to improve your self-confidence is to take action by yourself and experience the small victory. That achievement experience will inculcate positive reinforcement in your mind and each cell of your body. The positive reinforcement in your mind improves your self-confidence.

For example,

One of the professional challenges for most of us is public speaking or making a presentation to strangers. Even though you are competent enough in your subject, the fear inside you may make you feel low about yourself or you display low confidence. How to overcome low self-image and improve self-confidence on public speaking?

You need to take action of speaking in a small group and experience it. When you achieve the small success through your actions, your mind registers that event and positive experience. When you are doing it again in a relatively larger audience, your mind pushes you with positive reinforcement of earlier success, and again you will do well. When you repeat those positive experiences many times, your self-image and self-confidence will go up on public speaking.

similarly, whenever you feel low about yourself in any aspects of life, you need to take action and experience it.

Hence, you need to take ACTION and achieve small success to improve your confidence which is more effective than any other methods like a self-help book, observation or listening.

Leading self (Improving self-confidence)

Improving self-image by enhancing the perspectives
 


As discussed last week, there are 3 methods by which we can improve our self-image inturn the self-confidence
  1. Self-introspection
  2. Enhancing perspectives
  3. Through self-actions
Enhancing perspectives:

We are forming beliefs about self and the world through our windows and what we are seeing through it. Typically the windows are our family, friends, working environment and the location we live. When we widen our windows and vision, we see a new world of possibilities.
 

Widening windows are possible through observation, reading and listening to others.

For example,

When we see a person with no financial support, only with an engineering background, values, passion creates world-class  IT Institution, it enhances the perspective within us and gives us confidence on new possibilities.

When we see a man/women hailed from the middle-class family is heading the corporate giants at the international level, it enhances our perspective and gives us possibility thinking within us.

When we see a person, with the right strategy, passion and faith achieves world recognition, and become president or first citizien of a nation, it enhances our perspective and gives confidence within us about new possibilities.


Personally, when I met Onlysuccess founder Mr.Vidyashankar in 2008 and came to know about his childhood village background, an introvert type but with a deep hunger in making a difference to establish a world-class training organization.That moment instilled a confidence in me to start my organization in 2012 to make an impact on others.

The point is, irrespective of your background, if you enhance your perspectives, it will give you new possibilities, in turn, increase your self-confidence and in turn self-image.

Hence, look around and enhance your perspectives!

let us discuss the 3rd method to improve your confidence in next week.