Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts

Friday 9 April 2021

How to identify your life purpose?

 How to identify your life purpose?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 
Having discussed the importance of knowing the purpose for being in a high energy state and achievement orientation, let us learn to identify the purpose by ourselves.
 
Through self-introspection, one can find his TRUE NORTH, and some people are fortunate enough to be aware of the purpose at a young age. Accordingly, they design their professions and life.

For others, it may take time to get clarity on the life purpose, and those need to explore it continuously if they want to make meaning out of life. That is a continuous evolution process.

Based on my experience, i have listed below some of the methods to find a purpose. 
  1. Identify what you love most to do
  2. Leverage your strength
  3. Experimenting and exploring
Identify what you love most to do:
 
Not all people have the privilege of choosing a path that they like. Practically, we take what is given. Even in that living environment, we naturally love to do some of the activities most of the time.We will not feel losing energy even when we are doing those activities for a longer duration. That is called passionate tasks.

We need to find those passionate activities and design the significant part of life around it.

When we are doing passionate activities, our energy level would be towards achievement orientation than procrastination or excuses. 

For example,

If you find yourself enjoying more when solving technical issues through your observation, analytical, creative skills, that may be likely your passion. Ensure that most of your profession or in general life activities around that passion of solving technical challenges.

If you find yourself enjoying more when helping others solve their leadership-related problems, then teaching may be your passion and ensure the most of your life activities around teaching on life skills.

You can relate to some of the celebrities who found their passion (sports, music, journalism, entertainment) early and made a career out of it. 

The key point is when you find your real passion and design your life around the passion, you will find meaning in what you are doing. That will make you work towards achievement orientation.One of the methods is finding what you love most to do 

let us discuss other methodologies next week!

Thursday 2 July 2020

Finding your Purpose

Finding your Purpose
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 
As we have been discussing the methodologies of being aware of self, the last one in the effort of self-awareness is finding the purpose of existence.

Some people are gifted to aware of their purpose at a young age and channelizing their energy in fulfilling the purpose. For others, the purpose has to be realized by asking the question themselves continuously. It is not a one-time effort, and this pursuit of search is a life long exercise.

In my opinion, we need to explore the purpose of life in two layers to avoid the complexity, one at a spiritual level and another at a materialistic level.

Most of the spiritual masters mention that the purpose of life is to live happily and peacefully, or some refer the purpose is to attempt to break the birth-death-rebirth cycle. Have we reached that level of maturity in awareness and practice it? That is one level of exploration.

From a materialistic perspective, we need to be sure about the purpose from our service point of view. We need to ask question ourselves, "what is the purpose of my existence? What am I doing with my background, education, experience, passion, and am i living meaningful or impactful?  When you ask this question frequently, you will get some insights about the macro-level purpose, at least from a materialistic perspective rather than not being sensitive to life. That is another level of exploration.

The most significant benefit of knowing the purpose is that we get clarity on the sense of direction, clarity on our thoughts and actions. When both thoughts and actions are aligned, we move towards the mastering of our emotions at the professional front.

My experience is that the effort to find the purpose will make you understand yourself better.

Depending on the individual's level of evolution, he/ she chooses to explore the purpose either from a materialistic or spiritual perspective. That exploration brings more awareness of self!

 

Monday 6 April 2020

Peaks and Valleys

Peaks and Valleys

Even though this book is old, this is very apt at this point, to make good and bad times work for us by maintaining mental stability and positiveness all the time.


Name of the Book: Peaks and Valleys
Author: Spencer Johnson (Bestselling Author of “Who moved my cheese” book)
No of pages: 100+

The  Theme of this book :
In the entire lifecycle, everyone goes through good and tough times. Our tendency would be enjoying too much during good times and getting upset too much during tough times as it shows the lack of maturity in dealing with the gift and uncertainties.

This book gives perspective on dealing with good and bad times of life in a story format and easy to read.

I especially recommend to entrepreneurs and business leaders to get perspective on managing good and tough times in business.

The essence of the book is given below. 

Valley (Tough Times):    
                                                                                          

 This time is an opportunity to learn more about life. Find the good hidden in a bad time. Could you make use of it? Do more service to others. Learn from the mistakes; develop strategies, competency development for a better future.

Peak (Good times):

This Time is for celebrating the achievement and enjoy the moment. But, be humble and grateful for being on the height. Reflect on what good things made your top and look back on the path you have come across. Sustain it.

Prolonging Peak (Good times):

When we are in peak, the tendency would be to get into complacent and arrogance. Instead of it, practice humility, do good things better, and do more service to others. Always remembering to reach the valley as part of the cycle.

Be mentally strong now, and everything will pass on!

Monday 22 July 2019

Finding Balance


Both in personal and professional life, one of the causes of stress or losing peace is due to taking an extreme stand or bias in a given context. When we fail to be in balance state, we invite all the troubles. Being in a balanced state is the outcome of self-awareness. Effective people will always find a balance in their approach.
 
For example,

Being too much aggressive or too much passive in communication only leads to stress or ineffective. A balanced state is being in an assertive, firm and friendly tone which improves harmony as well as the effectiveness of communication as end result.
 
Being too much lenient with new employees and being too much harsh with on old employees only leads to instability in the organization. Balanced state is respecting both with compassion.
 
 Being too much on planning or too much busy on execution without calibration leads to either no result or poor result only. Balanced state starts with planning and get into execution and do the course correction.
 
 Being too much on micromanaging other’s work or fully leaving it to others also leads to stress only. Balanced state is to allow others to do the work with feedback for improvement.

The point is finding balance in your approach leads to harmony and peace than being extremism.It requires awareness on the state of mind which is possible with practice.
 

Tuesday 9 July 2019

Pursuing interest beyond work


As we are spending almost half of our life for work, obviously we expect a sense of fulfillment through our work. There are a few people gifted enough as they get all the status, benefits, and above all, sense of accomplishment due to the contribution or impact they make through the work. In reality, not all people get satisfaction through the job for various reasons, but due to personal commitments, they need to continue to work. Eventually, this non-fulfillment state affects self-identity and confidence.

To overcome that situation, as a proactive, it is essential to find and do something beyond your daywork that fulfills your inner feeling. For example, some of my known contacts and friends are engaged in activities that are not related to their current profession. When interacting with them, I realized they are  feeling more fulfillment in their extra activities beyond work like

One person engages himself in reading books after his office hours and weekends
One medical practitioner engage himself in conducting free medical camps / educating people on health on every Wednesday
One person is preparing himself for marathon participation
One person opens up his library after office hour for public and for mentoring the needy people  


The point is that you need to find a way to get a sense of fulfillment when the work circumstance does not provide. The only thing you should ensure is that the path must be more meaningful to you, and it should not affect your regular work, family, the community at large. The choice of feeling fulfillment is with you only!

Wednesday 26 June 2019

One Habit for a Lifetime


Habit is what you are doing consistently.

For all behind success story, there must be consistency in some of the actions. That is a habit. Even for our own sake of fulfillment, we need to have consistency in some of the practices what we do. The frequency is what you set depending on the action.
 
For example, I know some of my friends have the following “consistent practices or habits” as their life long practices.
 
  • Walking for an hour daily for the last 30 years
  • Being punctual to any event by being  present 10 min before the event
  • Giving Blood donation once in 3 months for the last 20 years
  • Calling the people on the birthday and wishes for more than 15 years
  • Conducting weekly discourses for more than 20 years
  • Waking up before 6 am and doing yoga for more than 40 years
 
When you observe your network, you may also come across many people with good lifetime habits.
 
When you have some good habits, as an individual, more than external monetary success, you feel proud of yourself, and also it enhances your confidence.

One habit for a lifetime, whatever it may be in terms of frequency, easiness, significant to others. However, sticking to one pattern for a lifetime is very much meaningful to you and make a difference to you.

The action is irrespective of your age, profession, choose some habit now, and practice it consistently.

or

if you are practicing some habits, please share as this will be an inspiration for others !!!

Wednesday 5 September 2018

Achieve small,incremental success


Everyone desires to improve the quality of life in both personal and professional life. In reality, a few are achieving more and moving on, and the rest of them are still dreaming. The key is to take action and to make small, incremental success. The small, incremental success will give momentum to higher level achievements.
    For example, you desire to master your communication skill to scale up your professional success. One of the steps you can take is to more expressive in your organizational meeting and be heard by others. That is small; incremental success takes you towards mastery of communication.   
    Similarly, you may desire to be a likable person and balance your emotions. The first thing you can do is take a conscious call and achieve the success of being cool( not getting angry unnecessarily !) for the next one week. That is a small success. That small success will reinforce your confidence, and incrementally, you can move towards your bigger goal.   
    Likewise, in your business, if you want to scale up internationally, stabilize your business first in domestic, and it is a small success. The small, incremental success will help you to move towards a bigger goal.

    To sum up, 
instead of only desiring or dreaming of achieving something big, take action, achieve small, incremental success.The small, incremental success will give your positive reinforcement to achieve more!

Sunday 2 September 2018

Preserving Quality of Relationship

    
Most of the time, we use to be emotionally upset or hurt by close relationships like family members, relatives, friends due to their communications, behaviors or actions. Any stranger may not have much impact on our emotions.

      When we emotionally upset, either we tend to reciprocate to them with outburst or we tend to think too much about the incidents or the person who causes the hurt. Eventually, without our consciousness, we start recalling all unfavorable moments with the person in the past and it reinforces our emotional outburst further. In this process, we spoil our health/mind and further strain the quality of the relationship.

     What is required at the moment is just awareness on our thought process. Instead of rewinding one bad moment for many times and affecting the relationship, rewind the Positive moments many times and cherish the relationship. They are dear ones and part of our lives on many occasions as wellwisher. The quality of the relationship has to be preserved without any further straining the relationship with our thought process.
The point is some relationship come across your life and stays with you for a long time for a purpose and it has to be preserved even though a few emotional outbursts happen. It needs awareness, patience, and compassion!!.

Thursday 17 May 2018

How does “being punctual” help your growth?



If you observe highly successful people, you can identify one universal quality they consistently display in their life is “Being Punctual.” 

What is meant by “being punctual.”?
As we generally understood, being punctual is not only on time for any event or meetings, it is adhering to the commitments to self and others. It is a commitment to yourself towards any activities and respect for others or sensitive to other’s time.

Being punctual is all about organizing self.

It is all about your attitude towards yourself, your work and care about others

How this attitude does helps you?:

When you organize yourself, eventually you will get the capability to organize others

For example, when you are committed to your work and you showoff on time, that makes you calm and you can think clearly. When you are sensitive to your commitments to others, it makes you more alert .when you are in calm and alert that makes you more effective in your execution. When your execution is effective, likely you achieve success.

Alternatively, when you are not showing off on time, you demonstrate your irregularities. You are perceived as not trustworthy. Sometimes, your irregularities make you restless, anger and eventually affect your work quality. This attitude reduces your personal effectiveness and in turn growth.

Hence, Set right your attitude of “ being punctual “ and this  will accelerate your growth as we witness from achievers ! 

Monday 7 May 2018

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!

Tuesday 17 April 2018

When do you lose your value?


Recently I received this photo from one of my friends. I am not sure whether this is a  sales discount as a consequence of Steve Smith's involvement in “ball tampering scandal” news or year-end sales push as coincidence. However, this picture reminds profound life truth.

Your value would come down the moment you lose your core life values like integrity, honesty, fairness for the sake of a quick win.This truth is not only applicable in sports, nowadays, but we also hear/watch the news on scandals in all spheres of business, especially in banking, that too, from a respected corporate man/women whom most of the youngsters are looking up as a role model. When they trade their values for short-term materialistic advantages, we lose the respect of those people, irrespective of their education, positional status, past achievements in their profession.

In Life, you can regain materialistic assets even if you lose, but you cannot regain once lose your internal consciousness if that is traded for low values.Hold on your high values for your peace and people under you as they are watching you, They can be your peers or subordinates or even your children .!

Friday 30 March 2018

Why do we lose opportunities?

     


      You may have an ambitious goal about your personal or business. When the right opportunity comes in to achieve the ambitious goal, how you communicate yourself makes much difference in grabbing the opportunity.

       For instance, you get an opportunity to work with dream employer but in a distant location. You are aware that this opportunity will change your life in a big way. However, your mind works on the small hindrances in the opportunity. For example, rather than visualizing the benefit from the opportunity, you may be worrying about the small hindrances like to how to relocate or how to reach distant and so on... The more and more you get into thinking about “concern “areas, more you will be missing the big picture of achieving your ambitious goal.

        There is no doubt that small concerns also need to be addressed, but the instant communication yourself on concerns outweigh the benefits and shuts your grabbing ability.How you are communicating yourself is important.

           This requires just awareness of your thought process on how you are looking at opportunities and concerns!

Tuesday 13 March 2018

why do we need a role model?



As you are aware that Roger Bannister, the athlete who created a record and famous for “four-minute mile” phrase expired last week at age of 88. He was seen as a legend not only for creating an athletic record, but he paved the way to study human mindset and life growth. Till 1954, in the sports world, finishing a mile within 4 minutes was impossible by human beings.When Roger Bannister created the record by completing in 3 min 59 sec, this became a possibility.

           Within 46 days banister’s achievement, an Australian runner not only broke the record he created a new record to complete by 3min 58 sec. Now, over the last half-century, more than a thousand runners have conquered a barrier that had once been considered was not possible.

            Nature had played its role thru banister to humanity on mindset.and possibilities.Either it could be on personal or in business, our mindset limits our potential. We always look someone as a role model or predecessor to show a new way or break the status quo or breaking the mindset.

             When you break your personal or business mindset, you become a leader or role model in your circle.But in reality, it is not possible for all, to create their own path by being role model. In such a case, look around, observe and pick someone as your role model and follow what they do.
Ultimatley, your mind restricts your growth , expand it through some reference , you life horizon also expands!

Wednesday 21 February 2018

Preserving Relationship



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

       When the gap is widening, even the other person does a favor for us, we tend to look at with skepticism.In this process, the quality of the 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.No one is perfect in all for every time.

      
   The point is many people are coming across on our life journey and some relationships staying with us for a lifelong for some purpose and let us preserve it with patience and compassion .!!

Never react when you are in disturbed state


     One day Buddha was traveling 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. 

      Most of our email communication or direct communications in professional life becomes annoyed or tuned out negative when we react it during our disturbed state. Give a little time to settle it down, your mind becomes in a positive state and you can produce results”

Wednesday 8 November 2017

When your inherent strength turns out weakness?


Inherently, each one of us gifted with positive qualities or strength to manage the personal or professional challenges.For example, the strength could be honesty, focusing on result, straightforwardness, decisiveness, confidence, etc .Those strengths will be boon for you during normal circumstances only. During a stressful time, when you use the same strength in overdose, it would become negative. During those time your inherent strength + some more positive strength to be used with consciousness.

Let me explain further 

For example, you may have strength “Confidence of getting things done from your colleagues.” During crisis time or when things are not going well as you expect, your tendency will be using your inherent strength. Further, you apply the “ confidence ”in overdose, it turns out as“arrogance," and the situation would become worst.

Highly effective people are aware of this paradox, and they always use further good qualities during crisis time and make the situation better. As in above example, along with confidence they use additional qualities such as being reflective + humility, then the result would be better.

To put it simply, during illness, when 100  mg antibiotics are not effective, we tend to go for 250 mg, ended up with more complication since the actual system needs  100 mg antibiotics + some other vitamin to overcome the illness, not just overdosage of same antibiotics.

The point is just to be aware of your inherent strength and use it appropriately. When you overuse the same strength during setbacks, it turnout weakness. Alternatively, in conjunction n with your inherent strength, apply other positive qualities as well.




Monday 6 November 2017

Being busy is not being effective

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

       Most of the highly effective people have one common pattern in their daily management process. That is they take a timeout from their regular work for reflection.Frequently, they use to take time for themselves and evaluate what is going on in 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 and even manage the challenges in a different approach.

       Take time out frequently from being busy and get clarity on what is right and good for you and your surroundings. Finally what counts is your impact and quality of life!!

Wednesday 20 September 2017

Why are we reluctant to appreciate others?

One of the common complaints or phrases, I use to hear in an unorganized or small organization from employees is “I am not getting appreciation from my colleagues or manager”. In fact, it is not heard in a family environment, but it would be the hidden cause of all the domestic arguments and fights.It is particularly from spouse!

Why we are reluctant to appreciate others when they do even small good work?

The psychological reasons for this reluctance to appreciate others could be
Fear of losing control 
More of self-centered and thinking as if no time for anything else
Taking granted others as they are part of us 
Poor self-esteem or low confidence
Not being in awareness or always busy in something 

This needs self-introspection within us.

One of the studies said that the person needs to be in a positive frame of mind. If one is not in a positive state, he/she cannot able to appreciate others. Hence, appreciation is not for only motivating others, it is a measure of our wellness of mental strength. 

Relook your habit of appreciation of others and frequency, especially the people in your family and the people are working for you. It reflects your mental health. 

How to work with non likeminded people?

We enjoy what we do only when the colleagues, partners, teammates are in almost same wavelength, that is a similar thought process, acceptance, understandings about the intentions etc .However in reality, we may work with the people who may not be similar thought level. Practically you may not have an immediate solution to move away from them, the only option left out is to cope with them.

How to deal with those people?

Accept their qualities as such. The moment you accept them, you mentally prepare yourself to work with them

As you think more about them, you are developing negativity about others and reinforce your non-acceptance.

Think & distant yourself  beyond them as  life provides a lot of opportunities to enjoy and  then you  realize how small they are in your life

Least, you relate with nature.Nothing lasts forever like cyclic of day and night.Everything will change 

The point is you can not change all the things as you like, but you need to adapt to reality as ultimately you need to do a lot in a short span and your peace of mind is important!

Monday 18 September 2017

No effort or experience is waste

In personal and business environments, sometimes we may feel upset when our work is not recognized as it supposed to be or when the effort does not produce right results. If you observe some highly effective people, they continue to be persistent in their efforts and moved on. It is more perspective on how they look at the at the efforts and result.

You may be aware of the incident that happened to Thomas Alva Edison as he had done thousands of experiments to find an alternative for lead in storage batteries, but could not succeed.. When one of his associate friends asked about his  guilt  about his effort vs. result, Thomas replied, “ I have got a lot of results from effort’s.Now i  know several thousand things that won’t work.This learning experience will help me to find the right alternative”. Rest of the history we know. 

Key learning’s from highly effective people's perspective

1. Result is not in our hand, but effort
2. Each effort is not a waste, it gives experience to us
3. Life is all about experience 
4. One experience leads to another experience, by the way, we mature 
5. Eventually, your effort  & experience produces results.

The point is how we look at each experience, effort, moments in life and move on!