[Time-Management] Arise, awake and take charge!

 

1st July 2010

 

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reasons for remaining ashore.

Vincent Van Gogh

In life where we focus is very important. We have a choice to focus either on the opportunities or the problems we will have to face if we want to use the opportunities. What we choose will decide the quality of our life. When we look at a half glass of water, either you can say that the glass is half full or half empty. It all depends on where you look.

In our life, we have to take risk if we want to be successful. Success is not an overnight affair. It doesn't `happen'. We have to make it happen. The reality is, the higher you aim, the more will be the challenges. If you want to achieve bigger things in life, you will have to take bigger risks. You will have to get ready for bigger tension and stress. You will be ready to find more and more difficulty people. You may have to acquire higher order of skills and knowledge.

In life we pass through the dilemma of having to choose between the reasons for achieving a goal, or the excuses for not achieving the same. If you balance the reasons and the excuses, you will choose whichever weighs more. If the reasons outweigh the excuses, you are tempted to take the risk.

Over this weekend, you can do an exercise. Choose on big task you have in mind, but hesitant to start your efforts for some fear or other. create two columns and list all the reasons why you want this result in your life, and all the risks and challenges that you will face in your process of working for the goal. Ponder over the same, meditate on the various issues and weigh both the sides. You will notice the clarity that you get from this exercise.

Either you will get obsessed with your goal, or quit!

NC Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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[Time-Management] Arise, awake and take charge!

 

30th June 2010

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 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 be facing an event which is totally outside our span of control. We can call this as 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 times 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 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] Arise, awake and take charge!

 

28th June 2010

"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. This means 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 as the area of concern.

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

The more and more we focus what cannot be changed, 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 goofed up. 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

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[Time-Management] Arise, awake and take charge!

 

27th June 2010

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. I almost did it. But something struck me-my attitude to life! 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 was available for the wasp to do what it wanted on the same!

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 it and it was used my the wasp!

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 what they want in their life! Isn't a simple common sense? We have to fill our mind with positive thoughts and work out plans and strategies to reach the same- no matter what others may say. 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 as to how impossible is my dream. It all depends on what I want to focus my mind on.

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

N C Sridharan

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[Time-Management] Arise, awake and take charge!

 

25th June 2010

 

ASK…

 

"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 for will not have high value. In fact the harder we ask and yearn and get, the more will be its value to us. Anything which is offered to us without our asking for will not be respected and valued by us. If we ask for a job and get the same, we will work to our maximum capacity. We will love what we asked and got.

 

Many of us feel shy or perhaps afraid of asking for the salary we want. We need to understand that we have a commercial value for our time and our time 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 o our time by acquiring such skill 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 the discharge of the same. We may have to struggle to discharge our responsibility. We may have to 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.

 

List three things which you got after asking and three other things which was offered to you without your asking. Notice which you love most and you will understand the meaning of the above quotation!

 

N C Sridharan

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[Time-Management] Arise, awake and take charge!

 

24th June 2010

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. As in a computer it is the software what decides the output, so in a human system the quality of mind decides our external behaviour. In a computer we call it as `software'. With reference to the human system we can call it as `mindware'.

 

Whatever we do for 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. 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 should be seen as basic human instinct. When we move with people, some one may hurt us knowingly or unknowingly. It is also human nature to feel angry or hurt. The longer we harbour these feelings, the more we will feel hurt and angry. Try to apply the `alt+control+delete' to this file in your mind and see what happens to your relationship!

 

The third portion of the above quotation is even more interesting. Fear of criticism and judgment 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. At the same time take others' feedback as a scope to improve your process of work. Take every failure as a learning experience.

 

N C Sridharan

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[Time-Management] Arise, awake and take charge!

 

23rd June 2010

 

"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 form 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 we can think about threats. We can think about strengths or about weaknesses. We can think about what we don't have or about what already have. We can think the conventional way or we can 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 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, want 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 the above parameters and guidelines?

 

N C Sridharan

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[Time-Management] Arise, awake and take charge!

 

22nd June 2010

 

"It's good to have money and the things money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things money can't buy."

 -George Horace Lormier

 

We check our bank passbook to know if we are secure financially. But do we ever check `emotional passbook and balance sheet'? We want to know how rich we are in terms of our money and possessions. But do we ever check how poor we are in terms of assets which we don't have? Such assets include things such as good health, happy family, goods friends, affectionate children etc.

 

If you think for a while no amount of money can buy the above assets. In our anxiety to earn money and secure our future, we sacrifice our present. A day will come when we will have enough money but no relationship and health. One day we will realize that we were more busy acquiring material wealth and sacrificed all our emotional possessions.

 

You need to know that your parents at seventies and children at tens are not going to be like that for long. Your friends circle and the people around you are too valuable to be ignored. Money cannot buy peace of mind and bliss. Money cannot buy true friendship and affection. Money cannot buy the satisfaction of raising a happy family.

 

Over this weekend list all those things which money cannot buy and check if you have any of them!

 

N C Sridharan

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