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.

Mindset matters

“Anything is possible if you have the mindset and the will ,desire to do it and put the time in.” ---Roger Clemens

      You might have observed that some of the highly successful people lack formal education and business management skill, but they are quite successful in any venture. Also, you come across some people with knowledge and extraordinary business skills, but will not be much successful or achieved much. Why does this contradiction  exist? The answer is a mindset towards achievement.

       It is proven  that anybody can achieve more in life and it requires the  four  factors  as follows

1. Desire to achieve

2. Faith in self and God

3. Consistent Effort

4. Ability or  Skill

        It looks like all the four are equally important, but the reality shows that first three are important and the fourth ability or skill can always be acquired or delegated.What matters most is the mindset and the first three elements are related to a mindset.Even if you have all talent or skill, but lacks in desire or faith in yourself and too lazy to take consistent effort, you may not able to achieve great things in life.

    Hence set your mind for high ambition and be faith in yourself or god and tune your mind for taking consistent effort, then you get all the skills or capability to achieve anything.You attract good things in Life!!

Setting the standard high

         One of the differences between highly successful people and mediocre people is that setting high standards for themselves. Setting high standard means they are always thinking  big and expect more from themselves.It can be in the area of professional or business growth or in a relationship.

The psychological effect of thinking  big and expecting more will be as follows

a)      Always feeling   highly motivated

b)      Not  looking  for external motivation to keep them happy

c)       Always engaging  themselves  in productive work which benefits them and others

In the absence of setting high standards, mediocre people get into the following behavior

a)      Feeling    dull frequently

b)      Always looking  for external motivation like  entertainment, media or other outlet, even then not feeling  fulfilled

c)       Always looking for situations to complain or blaming others

d)      Looking  at the life with skepticism

Hence, for the benefit of your own sake, always set high standards or expectation from you .This will push you to new heights and in this process people surrounding you will also  get benefits.

Environment matters

“You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective”. --Clement Stone

          One of the opinions about the Personal development program is that during the session, everyone is feeling motivated and highly inspired to do great things, once they are out of the session into real life, they become  less energetic. This may be true, because your environment  influences your thought processes, behaviors and activities. The environment can be family, professional or friend ‘s circle  beyond the profession.

       It is said that you are the AVERAGE of the five people you spend most of the time. This is true. If you surround yourself with positive and highly energetic people, you will also start to observe them and reflect in your behavior. Without your conscious effort, you will start believing that what they are doing. That is the power of the environment and its influence  in our life. Similarly, if you are surrounded by  negative people with complaining others about all things, you will also start believing in their thought process and you will  demonstrate the same behavior.

       As you cannot change the environment completely, be aware of the quality  and change your mix of environment  like meeting new people, joining forums, visiting new places, getting exposed to new challenges and associating with people beyond your regular environment .This will help you to enhance your perspectives.

       Since the environment influences your action, be aware of the quality of your environment and choose the balanced mix.

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!