How to find the ingredients for success?

 

What are the ingredients for success? 

Where can you find these ingredients?

What is the best way you can learn quickly about these ingredients, fill your life with them and be successful, and stand out from the rest of the world?

The answer is observing others and following the principle given below.

Follow the principle called the “doing the opposite”.

What others do?	You do the opposite
Laze around	Get busy
Have no goals	Have specific goals
Do not exercise or rarely exercise	Exercise regularly
Do not read	Read voraciously
Do not save money	Save money
Eat junk food	Eat wisely
Waste time in front of TV	Watch TV judiciously
Have only one source of income	Have multiple sources of income
Are employees	Be an entrepreneur
Neglect family	Nurture and care for your family
Are unkind and hurtful	Be kind and caring
Criticize	Appreciate
Rarely praise	Sincerely praise
Have lots of acquaintances	Have few good friends
Do not give back to society	Give back to society
Do not pray or pray rarely	Pray constantly
Neglect spiritual life	Make spiritual life foundational

These are just a few. You make up your own list and start working on it.

You will be surprised how people will notice you. You will be surprised at your success and happiness.

Do you take your skills for granted?

We are good at many things and there are a few things where we are excellent. Sometimes we under perform in the areas we excel just because we are over confident and complacent.

Some sample areas to illustrate the point are given below:

• Presentation
  
• Singing
  
• Dancing
  
• Studying
  
• Painting
  
• Drawing
  
• Driving

Everyone can come up with his or her own list. Complacency is the biggest enemy of performance.

There are some antidotes for performing sub optimally because of complacency, and they are:

• Taking the skill seriously
  
• Practicing the skill at regular intervals
  
• Taking feedback from others
  
• Setting higher levels of achievement in the chosen skill area
  

Try these out for success!

How to stay positive?

Are you feeling bad right now? How have you felt the last few days? If you are like everyone of us, you would have experienced periods of feeling low.

How do you get into these states? One of the common ways you begin to feel low and find it difficult to stay positive is when your mind has hooked on to some words or phrases that are negative and acidic!

 If you carefully listen to you can catch these words.
Let me give you some of the common words and phrases people use to put themselves down:

• Loser
• I am ugly.
• I am a failure.
• She hates me.
• They are after me.
• My luck is bad.
• I am such a fool.

I am sure you can come up with a similar list. Many a times you may be beating yourself with the negative phrases told to you by others. These phrases can cause you immense gloomy feelings.

How do you get out of this trap? One of the best ways is to re-frame the words and substitute them with your own positive ones. It requires a bit of training. Let me recommend some books for you to help you in re-framing:

• Unlimited Power
• Awaken the Giant within

Both these books by Anthony Robbins give you a lot of exercises to change and re-frame your thinking.

In addition to these exercises here are few tips from an article I read in Psychology today.

Click on the link below:

Ten life-enhancing things you can do in ten minutes or less.


Incorporate these routines regularly to ward of negativity in your life.

How to use a book to change the state of your mind?

There are times when you will feel bored or depressed or just plain anxious. There will also be periods of extreme sadness or frustration, especially if you are going through a divorce or a job loss. This is the time you need to help yourself and not give up.
A book I found very useful is “Feeling Good” by David D Burns, MD. It will show you what are the basics of depression you need to be aware of. It will also teach you the warning signs of depression.
It has lots of exercises to get you out of depression. You can even  measure your levels of depression,  and chart your progress.

I highly recommend this book as a companion to professional help. It also gives you the threshold level of depression beyond which you need to take professional help.

I also suggest you buy the handbook too.

These books can save your life or the life of your loved one!

Do you act on your ideas before its time runs out?

 

For many of you, it is easy to get new ideas. However, few of you will actually sit down and capture them, prioritise them and decide to plan and act on them.

This habit can be risky. It is not the number of ideas you have that is important, it is the number of ideas you put into action and get to reap their benefits that are important.

A good exercise is to look back at the week that has gone by and write down the various ideas you had and take stock of how man you executed to completion and are reaping the benefits. 

The more you do this, the more sensitive you will be to treat ideas with special care.

 

How to use the principle of care?

All things deteriorate, unless you care for them. This principle is so obvious that you can easily neglect it.

Just take a look at the list below:

• Health
• Finance
• Relationship
• Job
• Business
• Children
• Car
• Computer
• Home
• Garden

The list can go on and on.

• What are the primary areas of your life you have to care without fail?
• What are the areas in your life you have been careless?

Make these two lists by asking yourself these questions and then compare them.
You may be in for a rude shock! It is time to start using the principle of care.

Do you blame yourself for a child gone bad?

There are times when despite all the efforts you put to raise your child into a fine person everything backfires. Your child turns out to be self-centered, selfish and uncaring.

In these situations, it is easy that you start blaming yourself for the way your child turned out. You may even ask yourself, “Where did I go wrong?”

I have come across many parents who have raised good children except for one child who completely turned bad.

Whenever I met such families where there is a “black sheep” so to speak, I used to wonder, “Why? What went wrong?”

This puzzle used to bother me until I read a thought provoking article in New York Times a few days back. The name of the article is ‘Accepting that good parents may plant bad seeds.’ The article has been written by Richard A. Friedman, MD.

I highly recommend that you read it because it may take the weight off your chest!

Here is the link for the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/health/13mind.html?_r=1

How to get better every step of the way?

Over a period of time you, like all of us, would have collected detrimental habits, thoughts, and attitudes in a bad baggage.
If you are like most of us, you will continue to carry this ever accumulating burden of bad baggage.

How do you lessen the burden? Alternatively, even eliminate it for ever?

Here are a few tips to reduce your burden:

• Empty the “bag” and examine the contents-bad habits, thoughts, and attitudes.
• Choose one habit you want to eradicate.
• Define the end state- the new habit.
• Develop action steps to develop the habit-start small.
• Give yourself at least a month before you decide the habit has been formed.
• Take the help of your loved one to motivate, control and monitor you.
  
• Celebrate once you have achieved your goal.

You need to do this day in day out,  you will find that in a year's time your burden is much lesser and you are feeling good because you have changed.

How to take a mini holiday every day?

I was sitting in the security area of a large automotive company for which my daughter is consulting.

The car had gone in order to drop her, and I was awaiting for the car to come back.

As I sat there I noticed a landscaped lawn, a thick bunch of trees with green leaves, and emerging right through the foliage were two coconut palms. The coconut palms had not so fully developed yellow coconuts against a backdrop of the blue sky. The palm leaves were swaying lazily and seem to exude a sense of peace.

Instantly I remembered my childhood when I use to look at trees with branches and leaves swaying in the wind. I had missed this scene all these days as I was internally preoccupied with my own thoughts. I looked at the beautiful scene for a long time and felt peace and joy.

The lesson I learnt today was that  I can always actively seek beautiful scenes and enjoy them every day.

I can choose to go on a mini holiday anytime I want, and it is completely free of any cost.

Do you protect your loved ones from negative inputs from others?

All your loved ones will be having conversations with people day in day out. Most of the conversations are that of the garden variety, causing no harm. However, once in a while they may encounter a person who instils in them a strong negative idea.

Example: you are a born loser; you are dumb;---

How do you ensure that the strong negative idea does not harm your loved one.

Here are a few tips:

• Build trust that they are willing to share with you their experience or conversation frequently.
• Be aware of the non verbal signals, especially of your children. If you find their face worried or anxious, or they appear withdrawn then you need to find out the reason.
• When they begin to talk to you stop everything and listen to them carefully. Do not negate their statements rather demonstrate by reflecting of what they say that you completely understand their content and the feelings.
• When they have felt understood by you, you can begin to destroy the negative inputs.
• Be patient because your attempt to negate the negative inputs may take a while.

Always be alert of how the world is affecting your loved ones. Make sure that you process their experience and turn them into something good and productive.

This is especially important if you have children. Neglect this one duty and you will let the children carry a burden, all through their lives.

 

Do you use a checklist to be healthy?

It is very easy to fall sick when you are careless. This is especially true for illness like fever, common cold, throat infection ---

In your busy life, you may often neglect to take precautions that will prevent certain common illness you may catch easily.

Here is a checklist for you to prevent you from falling sick.

• Get into the habit of washing your hands with soap before you eat anything.
• Eat at regular intervals, preferably every two hours.
• Wash yourself everyday-have bath.
• Brush your teeth before going to bed
• Have a good night’s sleep-sleep at least 8 hours a day.
• Eat balanced food-consult a professional.
• Check the weather before you choose your dress for the day.
• Have a medical check up every now and then-Twice in a year.
• Exercise regularly.
• Enjoy out door sports or activities.
• Eat a lot of fruits and vegetables.
• Relieve your stress through meditation.

Please consult a doctor before you make any changes in your routines, especially related to exercising and food.

Have you tried reading young adult fiction lately?

l recently went along with my daughter to a book shop in Mumbai and picked a few books for her.
Going through the various piles of books displayed, a book suddenly caught my eye. The title of the book is Time Riders.

The book is all about time travel. I found the plot very interesting and gripping. It is a real page turner of a book.

Check out about the book at the following website:

Time Riders

It is a good practice to read children’s books because it can bring back the child in you. I have decided to go back to the book shop and buy some more books from the children’s section.

Making such a shift was like inhaling a whiff of fresh air as I was habitually reading only non fiction, which resulted in the air around me becoming thicker and heavier.

Try it out! Become a child again!

Have you been programmed to fail?

Have you been programmed to fail? This may be one of the most important questions you may want to ask yourself.
Right from the time of our birth to this very moment as you read this line, you have been consistently programmed to act in a manner that may be detrimental or beneficial to you.
Most of the programming comes from the people you meet day in day out. Other sources are, books, TV, movies, internet to mention a few.

Let’s take stock. Create a table as below:

List of people/other sources	Positive (+) or Negative (-) impact	Remarks

Such an analysis will give you a lot of insight. Take each item on the list and check how the influence is enabling or inhibiting you.

You may be surprised at the results. Once you know where the problems lie, you can then begin to take corrective measures.

For example, if a certain person is having a negative impact on you  can decide to eliminate contact or find other solutions to minimize the effect on you.

This is an exercise that needs to be done periodically, at least once in 3 to 6 months.

You will be well on the way to eradicate negative programming and reinforce the positive programming if you do this periodically.

How to make your subordinates always want you as their boss?

You may have worked with many bosses, and you may have liked a few of them and hated many of them.
How can you ensure that your subordinates will go all the way for you and want always to work for you as long as possible and even worry that you will leave them someday?
Here are a few tips:

• Show absolute concern for each one of them. You may have a large team, but you will have to set up mechanisms to dialogue with them occasionally.
• Demonstrate and demand full commitment for goals and deadlines.
• Listen carefully in meetings and encourage people to disagree with you.
• Allow team members to disagree with each other, allow the lone voice to be heard and always side with the team member who has a sounder point of view.
• Yield to a sounder view point from your colleagues and demonstrate openness by changing your own point of view.
• Engage actively to solve their problems.
• Critique attacking their behaviour and not them.
• Always be just and fair.
• Even if the whole world is against them, you take their side as long as they are right and the whole world is wrong.
• You should stand against them when they are wrong even though the whole world supports them.

These are some sure fire tips that will endear you to your subordinates forever.
You will be remembered for a long time to come and you may also enter the folklore of the organization as a hero.
Your organization and your teams need such a hero. Will you be one of them?

What to do when we feel low?

We live in a crazy world, in outrageous times, with change happening at warp speed. Some of these changes in our personal lives we welcome with a smile, but there are others that will beat us down and make us frown or even cry.

For many of us the latter variety of changes comes more often than the ones that will cheer us up. What do we do when we get beaten down?

Here are a few tips we can apply immediately to lift our moods:

• We must remember that every trouble has a beginning, middle and an end. It has begun and it will end.
• We should not magnify our troubles by our imagination.
  
• We should cut the recurring cycle of worry and focus on taking steps to solve the problem.
  
• We can choose to involve ourselves with our hobbies and pastimes and use them as a break while we attempt to solve our problems.
  
• We can listen to uplifting music.
  
• We can mingle with people we love, just be with them and be grateful that they are with us.
  
• We can choose to share our woes with a person who will be empathic with us.
  
• We can remember all the struggles which we went through and came clean, well, and successful.
  
• We can use pleasant memory as a weapon to ward off negative thoughts.
  
• We can choose to become bigger than our troubles.
  
• We can pray deeply for guidance and resolution of the problem.
  

We can do all these things while we are actively engaged in solving our problems by taking every step to the resolution of the problem.

We should remember that we have a choice to change our feelings while we attempt to solve our problems because when the dark clouds of our moods lift, we will be able to spot several stars of solutions shining forth. We can hook ourselves to one of the promising stars and sail through the turbulent waters we are in.

Do you learn from your children?

There comes a time in every parent’s life when the equation shifts, and they begin to learn from their children.

Do you learn from your children? I do. This is possible only if you have built trust in the relationship, and you are humble enough to focus and listen to what your children are saying.

If you teach your children in a loving way, sooner, or later they will teach you back. Sometimes they will critique you on the same behaviour you tried to correct in them.

If you actively pursue this, you can put them in command to help you to change your habits.

You will be surprised at how persistent and caring they can be to correct you. This approach has an added advantage-Your children will learn quicker as they teach and monitor you.

It is always a two-way street.

Try this out. You will be surprised how quickly and deeply the bonds between you and your children will grow.

How to feel happy to the core of your being?

When was the last time you felt really good inside? There are different forms of happiness. One of the best ways of gaining happiness is trying to make others feel cared for.
Here are a few tips:

• Do something for others that you have never done for them.
• Help a friend financially when he asks you for help, even though you know the money may never come back.
• Go to an old age home and lend an ear to an elderly person.
• Pray for a stranger.
• Spend time with your child, even if you have a lot of things to do.
• Give the most unexpected help to your spouse.
• Give a gift just for the sake of giving.
• Throw a party and call your friends just for the reason of being with them.
• Find a place of solitude and reflect all the up and down of your life. Express a sign of gratitude that all your fears never materialized, and you are fine even as you think.

There are many times we need to manufacture happiness for us. These are a few ways to do so. If you have more ideas, please do contribute.

What can you learn from the film Karate kid?

I found the film very captivating. There are many scenes in the film that rang a chord in my heart, having lived far away, from my own country, India, in the United States and in Switzerland, I can well understand the struggles, the 12 year old kid Dre Parker undergoes in the ancient land of China.
Here are a few lessons you can learn from the film:

• All cultures other than your culture will seem to jar when you first encounter them.
• You may strike a chord of friendship immediately with a few, but you may also encounter people who are rude to you.
• If you attempt to speak their language it will cut ice faster.
• You cannot push your loved ones to like the culture, they have to strike their equation on their own.
• You may find help from strange places and people you may not even imagine.
• It takes time to get used to a culture.
• Never paint a culture bad based on few individual behaviours. There are people who behave badly in your culture too.
• Every culture has deep mysteries and wisdom from which you can learn and broaden your horizon.
• A burning, positive goal within the context of the new culture can change your perspective completely.
• Search for things you can take into your own culture. The more you take, the better chances you will have to give them from your culture.
• Perfect practice makes you flawless.
• In a competition, winning is not everything.
• Discipline comes before mastery.
• Honesty and integrity will ultimately triumph.
• Winning over your fear of losing is more important than winning itself.
• Every culture is good, you have a great opportunity to learn and grow.

These are a few learning points from the film. If you have observed more, please do contribute.

As I wrote this, I have assumed  that you have seen the movie, The Karate Kid. (2010).http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1155076/plotsummary

How to cope with people when they change?

You may have noticed this, time and again. People change! People change without informing you that they have changed a new leaf. 

Many a times you may have not even noticed that they have changed until you get hurt by what they say or do.

What do you do in such circumstances?

Here are a few tips to make your life easier:

Forgive them! You need to do this more for yourself than anyone else.

Stop immediately attributing their behavior to their personal character. Most of the time the behavior change could be due to situation or circumstances.

If you feel that the person is important, and you want to maintain your relationship with him or her, critique, openly and honestly.

Critique in a manner that you attack the person’s behavior and not the person itself.

Make the person aware that you were hurt by his or her behavior.

If the person repeats his or her behavior, get into critiquing again.

At some point tell the person, if the behavior is continuing, that it is becoming a relationship issue and would need evaluation, whether the relationship should continue or not.

Cut the relationship if the person is not willing to correct himself or herself. You could decide whether the relationship is cut, for the time being, or forever.

While you are attempting to do these remedial measures, you also need to develop certain criteria for behavior classification-The ones you are prepared to pardon and stay in the game to continue the relationship and the ones you are prepared  to pardon but discontinue the relationship.

Examples where you may want to discontinue the relationships are:

·         Cheating

·         Robbing

·         Physical abuse

·         Sexual abuse

·         Demeaning and constant harassment

·         Treating you like a thing and not as a human

 The  list could be longer for you or shorter. You have to decide. Developing such criteria can save you a lot of pain.

A thumb rule to remember always is to forgive, no matter what, but never forget.

How to get brilliant ideas?

Do you know that there is a vast potential of ideas in you that never surface and see the day? Whether you realize it or not, there is a vast treasure house of ideas within you which has been supressed all these days, months, years, or even a lifetime.


Why do these ideas remain hidden? What suppresses them? How do they get supressed are the key questions you need to ask yourself?

Let me give you the reasons why they do not surface, eventhough you need them:

• Constantly restless mind


• Always focusing on the external world


• Always being in company of people


• Television


• Video games


• Seeking constant stimulation from outside


• Always speaking and rarely remaining silent


• A limiting belief that you are not an ideas person

These are few of the reasons why those wonderful ideas within you rarely see the day.

Here are some concrete steps to surface them:

• Choose a specific area where you want ideas


• Dwell on it for a few days


• Start a new habit of spending atleast an hour alone


• Put away all the external stimuli-go to a queit place


• Choose a specific time for thei get away


• Practice quieting your mind-learn to meditate and pray deeply


• Relax and enjoy the peace


• Focus on the peace day in day out


• As you listen and go deep and let go, ideas will begin to surface on its own

You will need to practice this routine every day and be patient. Over a period of time, you will suddenly start getting a flood of ideas.

Try this out! It works like magic! It is magic

How to apply your mind and stay out of trouble?

I have observed this, time and again, people just don't apply their minds to solve their problems. Even if they do apply thier minds, they do not go all the way to generate sufficient options. The end result is they choose a suboptimal option that gives them mediocre results.

How do you ensure that you always get the best of the solutions for yourself? The secret magic key is to apply your mind.

Here are a few tips:

1. Generate atleast five options before you choose the final solution
2. Revisit the solution after an appropriate period of time.
3. Discard solutions that are not working; Go back to the drawing board often
4. Discuss with your spouse or friend to get new perspectives
5. Surf the net atleast once to get new ideas
6. Be alert to the impact of the solution on your life
7. Write a journal about your experience of implementing a chosen solution

These  are few tips to get you started; Come up with your own

Just start it!

Everyone of us have the tendency to procrastinate fun things we want to do.


I have recently started doing things as quickly as possible and as near in time to the thought of doing that particular thing as possible. 

The results are amazing! I am doing much more and enjoying life much more. No more postponement, just start it and the momentum will carry you through

What do you think? Try it out!

What goes around comes around!

Recently I witnessed a person getting pay back for what he did some time back. It took about a year for the fruits to bear; However, it finally did.

Think carefully what you do to others! Your deeds have a peculiar in built ability to bring the hens home to roost!

Even though evildoers will seem to succeed and have lucky breaks, their deeds will eventually catch up with them in a time called the pay back time.

What do you think?

How to overcome immobilization by fear?

Many a times we are immobilized by fear. We shun an activity or a task as we imagine all kinds of consequences of performing it.


This immobilization may persist for years. You may have even attempted the task but given up half way. Here is a tip that may help you.


Handover the responsibility for making you perform the task to a person whom you trust. 


Make that person take charge of you and the task. Ask the person to be ruthless and counteract all your arguments for not performing the task.


Go ahead and perform it under the chosen person's supervision! You will be surprised! 


The task will get done and you also may realize how easy it was.


Let me know after your success. Share your success here!

How to stay focused if you are too creative?

Creative people get lots of ideas. Some of them are good and many of them need reworking. The problem for creative people is to stay focused. They quickly get bored with their own ideas.


Here are few tips to stay focused:

1. Scan through your ideas
2. Select just one idea to work on
3. Develop action steps to achieve that idea
4. Determine at what stage of completion of the action steps you will start embarking on a new idea
5. Implement those action steps
6. Start o a new idea only after reaching an agreed upon progress of the first chosen idea
7. Let all the new ideas incubate in an idea bank

You will be able to accomplish much more if you stay focused.

What do you think?