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.

Learn to Lead - Leading Self

As discussed, the first step in personal development process Is leading self or personal leadership.
Personal leadership precedes everything. If we do not learn to lead self, we will be finding difficult to manage others, organizational roles and responsibilities, and even family life.

What does “leading self” mean?

Leading self-means being aware of yourself, your emotions, beliefs, values and how you are effectively managing yourself. It is more of strengthening your inner world. The quality of your inner world would reflect externally as your outlook, appearance, tone, and style of carrying out your activities.

Hence, leading self-means how you are strengthening your quality of inner world.simple.

If your inner world is positive, vibrant, peaceful, then our external personality will also be more positive, energetic and pleasant to you and others.     
    
How to strengthen the inner world?

Irrespective your upbringing and environment, with little awareness and practice, you can strengthen your inner mindset, and thereby you lead yourself. It is all about keeping your mindset in a positive mode.

Given below the factors contributing to strengthening your inner world.

1. Self-image
2. Personal responsibility
3. Self-discipline
4. Being grateful
5. Faith

When we enhance our perspectives on the above factors, eventually we can strengthen the inner mindset.

Let us discuss each factors next week. 

How to be grateful forever?

Being in a grateful state is one of the biggest virtues a person can possess. Grateful is a powerful feeling of being thankful for everything happened in life. A lot of research is being conducted for the benefit of being in the grateful and many studies show that the person with gratitude mindset will have more satisfaction, happy in life and less disturbed with life challenges.

Being in the grateful state is a natural process for a few people and difficult for some people in the world of a busy lifestyle.However, from my experience, with a little effort, the mind can be trained to look at the life with more gratitude 

How to practice gratefulness?:

1.Pick any one aspects of your life, say your education, job, family members, friends or any other opportunities you got in your business.
2.Think through how much lucky you are to have those aspects of your life. Think through the possibilities of forces which could have worked against you and how all the forces have worked out in your favor in getting those aspects.
3. When you think through deeply, your mind starts accepting your giftedness.When you do this frequently, eventually, you start looking at everything in life with gratitude mindset.

The point is that everyone has troubles and challenges, but how you look at the things with gratitude will give you strength to overcome the challenges. Being in a grateful state is possible by all with a little bit of awareness and effort!

Being grateful on a bad day

Generally, not all the days in our life go as we expect and make us happy at the end of the day. Sometimes a day is filled with a lot of disappointments, irritations, delays, hurting, rejections, and annoying situations.

The reason could be due to petty reasons like water tap leakage, housemaid not turned up on time, pickup cab late, not getting the preferred food at café or even at home, weak signaling or network issues.It could be even reasonable reasons like customer’s turnout, non-cooperating colleagues, angry moments with boss or spouse or anyone else.The list goes on ………………………..!!!!

That is, we have infinite reasons to claim the day as the dull or bad day on any labeled reasons.Cumulative of all reasons eventually affect our mood either as sad or unhappy at the end of the day.
How to turn the bad day into happy?

Just count the blessings of the day. If you observe all the moments of the day, amidst of the entire bad moments, something turned out as your favorites. That is natural design. Think of those favorable moments.(for example, your dear ones smiling face or some one's supporting words to you ).Be grateful for those moments.

The point is that there are no such only bad moments in life.Either we forget or ignore to see the positiveness in all the moments.It just needs awareness and widening of our perspectives of life!

Who packs your parachute?

Charles Plumb was a USA navy jet pilot. On his seventy-sixth combat missions, he was shot down and parachuted into enemy territory. He was captured, spent six years in prison and he survived.Now he became a motivational speaker on managing adversity in life.

In most of his seminars, he used to ask his audience “who packs your parachute?  Meaning that who helps you through your life?

His realization was that the person who packed his parachutes held his lives from falling from the jet and he remembered that unknown person with gratitude.His message is in everyone‘s life, some unknown people are helping selflessly either physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually. Are we recognizing those unknown people and expressing our gratitude? 

This is a powerful metaphor for us to acknowledge the people who come across in our lives and help us in a different way.

If they are known people like your parents, teachers, siblings, spouse, children, colleagues, business partners, clients, then be grateful to them for your actions! 

If they are unknown, at least recognize and express your feeling of gratitude. That feeling, vibration makes a difference to you and to the unknown.

Giving is noble

A young man traveled to Himalaya as pilgrim trip.He found a stone on the riverbed and he picked it as he knew the value of it. After returning home, he was showing the stones to his relatives and friends.One of the relatives also aware of the value of the stone and requested the young man to give it to him. 
Without any second thought, the young man gave the stone to the relative.

Some days later, the relative came back to the young man and returned back the stone. Surprised with the fact that he liked the stone very much, the young man asked him, “I know you are fond of stone, that is the reason, I have given it you. Why are you returning back now?”

The old man replied, “I know the materialistic value of this stone, but more than that there is something precious WITHIN you that enables you to give this stone to me. I wanted to possess that. That is more valuable than anything else!!

Moral:

It is not how big we are in terms of materialistic, it matters how generous we are in giving to others, either it could be knowledge, money, time etc. That attitude makes a difference between ordinary and extraordinary!

Are you grateful or regretful?

      There are only two set of people based on their perspectives about life .One is being grateful for everything and another one being regretful for everything. The first set of people looks at the life with the achievements they did so far, being grateful, happy, and look for next level growth. The Second set of people always looks for what they missed out irrespective of their achievement, becoming skeptical about themselves and lose the sight of future prospects

       One of the studies in sport reveals that, the person who won the bronze medal use to be happier than the person who won the silver medal. The reason may be that silver won person kept thinking about how he missed out the gold medal, forgetting the gift of being achieved silver, whereas the bronze won person kept feeling that he got into the medal winners list and be proud of achieving.

      The point is that aiming for high is good, but not at the cost of forgetting the current achievement and celebration. It is our mindset, how we look into the life, feeling either happy about current achievement despite challenges or cribbing about what we lost.

      Let us celebrate the current achievement of 2016, feel grateful, and aim high for 2017!

Real entrepreneurial attitude

       Recently I had an opportunity to meet a very old businessperson, who has successfully built his organization and gained a very good reputation in the industry. His third generations have also stepped into the business and they are actively managing the business. Despite his ageing and health issues, he is having a habit of coming to office regularly and involving himself in important decisions.

     On seeing his passion and hard work, with curiosity, I asked, “Sir, Having created a big empire and developed the team to manage the business, are you not still happy with the growth? Why do you trouble yourself at this age? He profoundly replied, “It is not the question of happiness. I am already happy with my accomplishments, as I know where I came from, but not satisfied. My thinking is always on how to create more wealth to my employees and how to create more employment opportunities to many people.”

     I am amazed with his thought processes and witnessed the person of self-realization. The God chooses the right people for right purpose based on the thought, intention, enables right action and result!.Real growth and fulfillment is when we make our life for others. 

Real entrepreneurial attitude!

Dealing with setbacks

       In business or professional environment or in sports, when something goes wrong, the most affected person will be those who are headed the business or organization or function or team . Simply, the captain of the team. The challenge for the captain is to bring back the confidence of all stakeholders through quick actions and more than that managing self emotionally to overcome the setback.
       When we go through the successful peoples life stories, some common patterns emerge in their thought process and approach in dealing with setbacks

1.They use to feel gifted to lead a team either as captain or as owner of the business. They see the position as a responsibility. They internally feel and believe that if they are blessed with such privilege, they will also be blessed with to overcome any setback. It is more about taking the setback as  part of the divine play to make him strong

2.They strongly believe that failures are acceptable. This reflection protects them from self –sabotaging and think a way forward 

3.They deeply spend time with themselves to introspect the causes and mistakes they did. They  critically evaluate the assumptions, decision making process, management style  behaviors etc.  

4.They are quick to come out with an alternate plan and put into action

5.Single minded focus on execution till seeing the result 


It is not a problem falling down. How quickly we bounce back and strong reveal our true inherent strength.

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!

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.

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. 

Be grateful for what you got.

     “Develop an attitude of gratitude for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.” --Brian Tracy

      There are two kinds of people looking at the life in different ways.The first set of people looks at the life with the achievements they did so far, being grateful, happy and look for next level growth.The Second set of people always looks for what they missed out irrespective of their achievement, becoming skeptical about themselves and lose the sight of future prospects.

          One of the studies in sport reveals that, the person who won the bronze medal use to be happier than the person who won the silver medal. The reason is that silver won person kept thinking about how he missed out the gold medal, forgetting the gift of being achieved silver, whereas the bronze won person kept feeling that he got into the medal winners list and be proud of achieving.

         The point is that aiming for high is good, but not at the cost of forgetting the current achievement and celebration. It is our mindset, how we look into the life, feeling either happy about current achievement despite challenges or cribbing about what we lost.

        Let us celebrate the current achievement, feel grateful, and aim high. With this awareness, you attract the good things in life!