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

 

10th December 2010

`We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations'

Charles R. Swindoll

Just recall to your mind all the so called impossible things: a human beings cannot fly; a ship made of steel cannot float; a person cannot speak through wire; in movie the character cannot speak; a perishable food cannot be kept fresh for days together etc. Just think, are they impossible now? Did not someone see an opportunity hidden in each of the impossible situation?

It's all in the mind of the person. We have an option to see a glass as half full or half empty. It is up to us. We can notice a threat or an opportunity. If you look at any business situation, you will notice that ultimately business is a marriage between an opportunity and an idea.

Can you think of a world of only possibilities and no impossibilities? Will you feel excited to live in such a world? If yes, how long? What is life without challenges? If there are no challenges to be overcome, how can we market our skill or talent for a commercial reward?

Also consider a situation where the opportunities and capabilities are identical to anyone! If everyone can do anything as well as anybody, where is the motivation to outperform someone? We become mature when confronted with problems and impossibilities and not when we operate from a comfort zone. Only the bamboo which withstands heavy storms and winds grows into a strong tree.

One more exercise for this weekend: identify one task which you have been avoiding as impossible and list all the opportunities you will have if only you make it a possibility. Visualize your reaching the same and live that future life now. Meditate on this mental picture and notice the energy that you get!

N C Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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

 

9th December 2010

"Consult not your fears, but your hopes and dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what is still possible for you to do."

—Pope John XXIII

Whether we are conscious or not, we always have a reference points for doing anything. We mentally formulate our strategy based on our own evaluation of the situation with reference to our personal experience. In NLP, there is an important presupposition called `experience has a structure'. This means that every time we do something, our mind learns something and stores the same in the memory bank to be refereed to when required.

Just like in a computer system, the quality of data is very important and not merely the speed of data processing. Similarly in human system, if we store only information which will only discourage us, we will be drawing from such data only. Our enthusiasm and drive will be to that extent limited.

We can fix our goal, based on our dream. Or we can take into account our weaknesses and outside threats and accordingly choose to operate in our zone of comfort. We may be frustrated by our previous failures, but if this is going to deter us, we will not progress.

A failure is not an index of our capability. It is just a feedback on our effort level and strategy. As I had mentioned elsewhere, a flat tyre is not a reflection on the inbuilt capacity of an automobile. We need to fix the tyre and not change the car!

Over this weekend, you can do an exercise. Ask yourself a question: what are my inbuilt capacity and talent? Do I have a goal which will match the same?

N C Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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

 

8th December 2010

 

"Enthusiasm is the best protection in any situation. Wholeheartedness is contagious. Give yourself, if you wish to get others."

David Seabury

 

Success or failure is not whether you put in the necessary amount of effort, but on the quality of effort. It is not hard work, but the quality of involvement and commitment that you bring into the work.  People fail not due to the absence of goal or aspiration, but due to lack of commitment. You go and ask anyone. Everyone will have a goal. More often than not, people will have ambitious goals too.

 

Enthusiasm is a result of how much emotional value you attach to your goal. Ask yourself if the goal is very important or if so the degree of importance. The more important the goal, the more you will yearn to get the same. You will get totally involved in the process of reaching your goal.

 

People who complain of lack of team spirit are those who assign a low emotional value to their goal. You may not agree, but it is true. If you consider the goal as a life and death issue, you will get the energy and perseverance. You will have the mental and the physical stamina.

 

Someone told me a story of a cheetah chasing a rabbit. The rabbit outran the cheetah and ultimately the cheetah had to give up. But before giving up, the cheetah asked the rabbit as to how he was able to outrun the fastest cheetah. For this the rabbit replied that while the cheetah ran for food, he ran for life!

 

If you value your goal, you will get the speed and the energy. Your enthusiasm will be contagious and in addition to empowering yourself, you will also be empowering others!

N C Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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

 

7th December 2010

 

Genuine confidence is a way of thinking about yourself and your abilities. Confidence is your perception of your own potential; it's a kind of long-term thinking that powers you through the obstacles and tough times, helping you solve problems and putting you in the way of success. Your confidence is quite a separate matter from your social skills.

~ John Eliot, Ph.D

 

Frankly speaking, after reading the above quotation, I checked the meaning of the term `social skill' and I am surprised about how powerful is the above quotation. Social skills are the skills required to transact business in the society such as presentation skill, communication skill, team building skill, assertiveness skill, motivation skill etc. A person may have all the required social skills, but may not have the self confidence to pursue his goal.

 

We all have our own capabilities which are special to us. We have our own unique strengths and we have the external world which can form as a platform to showcase our talents. But we should have the self confidence that we are capable. This is a state of mind. This is not a social skill.

 

We should have the self confidence that we have the innate capacity to overcome temporary setbacks and failures. We should have the self confidence that we have the ability to solve the problems that we may confront.

 

Just like we have to develop our social skills, we should also develop self confidence. These are two different portfolios which are equally important and they complement each other. One without the other is useless.  Having all the social skills without self confidence is useless. Similarly, we may have all the self confidence but we may lack in some of the basic social skills, which is also useless.

 

Over this week end, evaluate how you fare on the two most important and critical indices of self confidence and social skills!

N C Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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

 

6th December 2010

 

Greatness is attained only by the thinking of great thoughts.

 Wallace D. Wattles

 

I read somewhere that thought is the ancestor for any action. All our actions emanate from our thoughts only. As our thoughts, so will be our actions. If we think of big things in life, we will fix noble goals. We have to be aware of what our capacity is and how the same can be used to tap the full opportunity the world presents to us. In fact, if you think for a while, you will understand that there are two things which are uniform to all of us: our capacity and the external opportunity. I have been repeatedly writing that the content of our brain is uniform across the human race. If at all there is a difference, the difference in only in the way we use the same. The way we want to use our brain depends on our mind. Thoughts are formed in the mind and not in the brain!

 

Great thoughts lead to great thinking and great thinking lead to great efforts and great efforts lead to great achievements. We are limited by our own thinking. Our limitations are not imposed on us, but they are accepted by us.

 

Once in a year, we should spend some time to think of what Jim Collins calls as `BEHAG' which stands for `Big Hairy Audacious Goal'. We have to think of a goal which is much bigger than our present achievement level. Have you heard of Mark Inglis? He stood on the top on Mount Everest on 15th May 2006. You may ask what's so great about it? Nothing, except that he was the first ever double amputee to scale Mount Everest!

 

Lance Edward Armstrong won the Tour de France race a record number of seven consecutive times. You may ask what's so great about it? Nothing, except that he did this after he was diagnosed to be suffering from testicular cancer!

 

Over this weekend, can you think of a BHAG in your personal and professional life?

N C Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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

 

3rd December 2010

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.

 Bruce Lee

If we get everything we want without any difficulty, we may not enjoy life. There has to be some excitement and thrill. We need to be stretched. We have to be tested on our endurance. We have to be challenged so that we come out with our full potential.

Honestly check yourself: when do you celebrate a victory? Do you get excited when others let you have your way, or when you have to fight your way? A sportsman celebrates his victory only when he fights till the last game. When the game is too easy for one player, neither the player nor the spectator enjoys the same.

Take the example of a sculptor chiseling statue. The harder the stone, the more will be the expertise required to make the statue and more will be excitement to in the process of making the statue.

Have you ever driven a car through a mountain path? Didn't you enjoy the same? Would you have enjoyed the journey if there has been no mountain to climb? If there are no problems to overcome, life will be boring. We need challenges to surmount and we need difficult situations to show our real capacity. Do you think Thomas Alva Edison would have been excited if he had discovered the right filament even in the first attempt? Do you think we will think of Neil Armstrong if he had taken a two hour flight to the moon to land on the moon?

So we need problems to solve and difficult situations to overcome. At the same time we need to pray for the strengths to overcome the same.

N C Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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

 

2nd December 2010

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

I happen to receive the above quotation on my mail box today and I decided to write on the topic of habit once again. Isn't true that we are what we repeatedly do? When someone is called an excellent person, it means that the quality of his performance is of a superior quality. Excellence is a state of mind and when implemented properly, it becomes a habit.

Just as we got into any habit due to repetition, we can also get habituated to excellence performance by repetition. What is required is a conscious and consistent effort and a determination to do so. We can do the following simple exercises:

·         Take a small job everyday and do it excellently well. It could be a very small job, like cleaning your spectacle.

·         Don't jump into doing a job when you are not ready. Take some time. Decide if you have the resources to do justice for doing the job on hand.

·         Decide which job you need not do excellently. You don't have to be a perfectionist.

·         Make a public declaration of your intent to develop the habit of excellence so that you get the benefit of the peer group pressure to stick to your resolution.

·         Mentally visualize how your life will transform if only you get into the habit of doing your job excellently.

·         Know yourself. Find out which jobs you normally don't do excellently and check if you can improve the standard of your performance of those jobs.

Try the above small things and notice the effect of the same on your life!

N C Sridharan

www.thetimefoundation.com

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