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!

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. 

Managing fear

 “We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.” —Christian Nestell

     For most of us, the important reason for not taking any major decision or massive action in life is not due to lack of capability or resources, but the fear inside the mind. The moment we think of taking action  like  a change of job, taking more responsibilities, taking new initiatives, expanding the business etc , the first emotional response   would be  fear about failure or fear about rejection or even fear about success.

      Fear is normal, but the worst part is the moment fear creeps in, we drop the idea or taking action. Instead of abruptly dropping the idea, we can evaluate the fear with a rational approach as follows

Two questions shall be answered to justify the fear factor

1. What worst thing will happen if I take the idea into action?

2. What best thing will happen if I take the idea into action?

If you write the answer honestly to the above questions, you may get the following benefits or clarity on the below

1.   You estimate the maximum losses and your readiness to manage the losses or not .This helps to postpone the action until you get prepared to manage.

2.   Sometimes advantage may outweigh the losses. This helps you to take action.

     In either way, you get some clarity on the fear and this will help you either to take action or drop rather than worrying too much about the fear. You will be peaceful when you evaluate the fear with a rational approach!