[Time-Management] 365 Thoughts for Self Improvement

 

31st May 2013

 

Fate and the Quality of Our Thinking

 

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

 

Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

According to me fate has a very little role to play in our life. It is just one single page in our book called life and we should believe that one page cannot decide our life. There are many things that affect our life and one such important thing is the content and the quality of our thinking process. Our mind is an amazing thing and it controls our entire life. The way we used our mind so far has shaped our life and will continue to shape our life.

 

We may face an event which is totally outside of our span of control. We can call this `fate'. But how we respond and react to it is not fate. It is how we use our mind. Take the life of people whose fate took them through worst challenges in their life. Consider the life of Helen Keller. It was her fate to have been born with such a physical disability. But she did not allow her fate to decide the quality of her life. She allowed her mind to take charge.

 

So is the case of Lance Armstrong, the seven-time winner of Tour de France, after he was diagnosed to have cancer. He did not allow his fate to decide what he wanted to be in life. Take the case of Mark Inglis, the world's first double amputee to climb Mount Everest. Log on to www.Ted.com  and you will see more and more such people who have conquered their fate through an empowering thinking process.

 

Fate may place a stone on our path, but our mind should decide whether to take that as a stepping stone or a stumbling block!

 

N.C. Sridharan

 

www.thetimefoundation.com

 

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[Time-Management] 365 Thoughts for Self Improvement

 

30th May 2013

 

Seek Help Rather Than Permission

 

When you take charge of your life, there is no longer need to ask permission of other people or society at large. When you ask permission, you give someone veto power over your life.

 

Abert F. Geoffrey

 

Between fight and flight, the human beings have the freedom to choose. We have the unique capacity to decide the quality of our life, independent of the will of others. We need the support and cooperation of others, and their input will prove to be very important in deciding our success. But ultimately it is our free will which should decide our life.

 

Seeking help of others is different from seeking their permission. When we seek help, we still retain our freewill. On the other hand, when we seek their permission, we are likely to surrender our freewill. When we decide on something, we have our own reasons and justifications for our decision. Sometimes we may not be guided by logical reasoning, but our intuition. Others may not have this input. Hence, they may not agree with our view point. Sometimes we may not have the maturity to accept the decision of others when we ask their permission and in the process lose our relationship.

 

Empowerment is a result of our willingness to take charge of our life. When we take charge of our own life and fate, we may go through a lot of tension and stress. But that is the only way to exercise our freewill.

 

Over this weekend, you may do an exercise. Take two important decisions you took over the last six months and check whether you sought the help or the permission of others to decide, and notice what happened to the quality of your decision!

 

N.C. Sridharan

 

www.thetimefoundation.com

 

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[Time-Management] 365 Thoughts for Self Improvement

 

29th May 2013

 

Concentrate on What You Can Do

 

Fix your eyes forward on what you can do, not back on what you cannot change.

 

Tom Clancy

 

If you read Stephen Covey's book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, you will come to know about the concept of pro-activity. Pro-activity is doing something in the direction of the result that you want to produce and not finding out reasons or excuses. There are many things we cannot change, no matter how hard we try. This is what Stephen Covey calls the area of concern.

 

Successful people concentrate on what they can do, no matter how small it is. There are many things in our area of influence, as Stephen Covey calls. We should know what can and should be changed and what cannot be changed.

 

The more we focus what cannot be changed, the more we will become frustrated and helpless and we will become irritated and tired. We will lose our self-confidence and self-worth. It will soon become our habit to blame and criticize others. This is an escape route we find to avoid doing what we can do.  We need to be very clear on what we can and should do and not on what we cannot do.

 

Over this weekend do a small exercise: Take a project which you feel you have not done well. List at least three things you can do to reach the outcome you have in mind. Break it up into small activities and slot one activity per day and notice what happens to your pending list over a period of time!

 

N.C. Sridharan

 

www.thetimefoundation.com

 

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[Time-Management] 365 Thoughts for Self Improvement

 

28th May 2013

 

Use Your Time for You

 

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.  Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking.  Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to become.  Everything else is secondary.

 

Steve Jobs

 

Last week I noticed something very interesting on my worktable. I noticed a hive constructed by a wasp at the tip of my pencil! The pencil was blunt and obviously I had not used it for a long time. I was about to destroy the hive. But, I thought for a while. I asked myself why the wasp chose this pencil to construct the hive and not another pencil adjacent to it. The answer was very simple: I did not use this pencil and hence the pencil was available for the wasp to do what it wanted on it!

 

Can I blame the wasp and complain and criticize? Isn't the nature of a wasp to construct its nest on any convenient place? The problem is not the wasp, but my attitude with reference to my resources: I did not use my pencil and the wasp used it!

 

I learnt a very important lesson in my life. If I don't use my time to produce what I want to produce in my life, someone will use my time to produce what they want in their life! Isn't it a simple common sense? I will have to find out what I can do to make my dream come true. If I don't do this, others will fill my mind with such thoughts to realise their outcome in life.

 

Our mind has intuition and knows how to get what we want in life. All that is required is to invest our resources on what we want to be and be conscious of it. Else, the same resource will be used by someone else to produce what they want in their life! 

 

N.C. Sridharan

 

www.thetimefoundation.com

 

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[Time-Management] 365 Thoughts for Self Improvement

 

27th May 2013

 

Ask for Responsibility and Be Passionate

 

Ask for the job you want. Ask for the salary you want. Ask for the responsibilities you want.

 

Brian Tracy

 

Anything given to us without our asking will not be valued. In fact, the harder we ask and yearn and get, the more will be its value to us. If we ask for a job and get it, we will love it and work to our maximum capacity. We will love what we got after a lot of efforts.

 

Many of us feel shy or perhaps afraid of asking for the salary we want. We need to understand that our time has a price tag that it is a marketable commodity. Any marketable commodity is sold and the sale price takes into account the value addition that has gone in making the product saleable. So is our time. We have to add value to our time by acquiring skills and knowledge so that we produce a value for the money that is offered to us.

 

The third component is the responsibility. If we ask and get the responsibility, we will love it and we will not get irritated in discharging our duties. We may struggle to discharge our responsibility. We may undergo a lot of stress and tension. But if we had asked for the responsibility and got the same, we will love the tension and stress that goes with it. In short, we will become passionate in doing what is entrusted to us.

 

Over this weekend list three things which you got after a lot of waiting and three other things very easily without asking for. Notice which you love most and you will understand the meaning of the above quotation!

 

N.C. Sridharan

 

www.thetimefoundation.com

 

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[Time-Management] 365 Thoughts for Self Improvement

 

24th May 2013

 

Inner Feeling Decides the External Behaviour

 

Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody is watching.

 

 Mark Twain

 

The quality of our inner feelings will decide the content and quality of our external behaviour. The software installed in a computer decides the output from a computer' In a human system the quality of the mind decides our external behaviour. If we call it `software' with reference to computers, we may call it `mindware' with reference to the human system.

 

Whatever we do just for the sake of money will have less quality content than those things we do for personal satisfaction. Just replace the monitory reward with personal satisfaction reward and see what happens to your attitude to work and the commitment level. A sports personality does not work for money alone. A multimillionaire may not want any more money, but he still works. These people work just for the love of their work.

 

Loving a person is a basic human instinct. When we move with people, someone may hurt us knowingly or unknowingly. It is human nature to feel angry or get hurt. The longer we harbour these feelings, the more we will feel angry and get hurt. Try to apply the `alt + ctrl + del' to this file in your mind and see what happens to your relationship!

 

The third part of the above quotation is even more interesting. Fear of criticism and judgement will prevent us from attempting anything new. Fear of failure will also have the same effect. Just ignore others' criticism and do your best and notice what happens to your enthusiasm and drive. We need others' feedback to improve our process of work. Every failure is a learning experience.

 

N.C. Sridharan

 

www.thetimefoundation.com

 

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[Time-Management] 365 Thoughts for Self Improvement

 

23rd May 2013

 

Audit the Quality of Your Thinking

 

The only limitation in your life is the limitation of your own thinking.

 

James A. Ray

 

The quality of our life is decided by the quality of our thinking. The one factor which distinguishes the human beings from others is our faculty of thinking. We are not merely human beings. We are also thinking beings. Animals also think. But they cannot think in a structured way. They cannot use thinking as a `technology', but we can. We can focus our thinking, expand our thinking, refine our thinking, define our thinking, fine-tune our thinking, etc.

 

We can think big or we can think small. We can think about opportunities or about threats. We can think about strengths or about weaknesses. We can think about what we don't have or about what we already have. We can think the conventional way or think laterally.

 

The important point about thinking is that we are always thinking. Thinking takes place independent of our will. We cannot reach a situation where we say that we are not thinking. Thinking is a continuous process. The only option we have is to direct and focus our thinking and decide the quality of our thinking.

 

Many of us are not even aware of what we are thinking about. Being aware of the content of our thinking is very important since what we think will come true. The difference between successful and not-so-successful people is the way they used their ability to think.

 

Over this weekend, can you do an audit on the quality of your thinking taking into account the above parameters and guidelines?

 

N.C. Sridharan

 

www.thetimefoundation.com

 

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