Back to basics: Core fundamentals for Success

There is no magic bullet or magic pill or a secret formula to achieve success. There are no new fundamentals to be followed to achieve success. To simply put it, you cannot manufacture new antique, antique is antique so are the success fundamentals.

Success is not doing five thousand things really well, success is doing half a dozen things really well five thousand times. Earning success is hard, the process is laborious, requiring patient and persistent efforts consistently over-time. Slow and steady win the race, be world’s biggest believer of consistency. As the saying goes “small smart choices, plus consistency plus time equal radical difference.”

Nothing fails like success, success breeds complacency. Success is like a breath of air, although your last breath was important but the next one is more important. It is important that you keep success and not just get it, you have to maintain it. It is not about attaining one goal one time.

The belief that success should be as fast as fast food does not work, there are no quick fixes and silver bullets, do not fool around. Success takes hours and hours of relentless practice, faced with sheer agony and frustration of failures, set- backs until you become number one. The only path to success is continuum of mundane, unexciting, daily discipline which compounds over time to create a fairy tale ending.

Everything in our life exist because of the choice we have made. Each choice starts a behavior which eventually becomes habit i.e. we make our choices then our choices makes us. The biggest challenge is we are not even aware that we are making these choices. What we are today is because of the choices we made at some point in time. Our life is product of our moment to moment choices.

Difference between lucky and unlucky depends on the choices you make. Everyone has opportunity to be lucky. When luck comes your way you should take advantage of it. New definition for luck is
preparation plus personal growth plus attitude plus opportunity plus action equals luck.

Given below are few fundamentals for producing giant results and achieve success:

1.    Habit: Habit is formed by conditioning of our brain. Things regularly practiced day in day out gets transformed into a habit. A simple example is, as soon as we hit the car seat, we fasten the seat belt. Forming habits is difficult and does not happen instantaneously, but if regularly and consistently practiced would get a place in the subconscious mind thus forming a habit. Forming a habit requires a big motivation, our brain also works on a carrot. We have to link pleasures and pains to our particular act to form a habit of consistently doing or not doing an act. It's never too late to start a good discipline. Every great act start with small steps. Small daily actions over time will help transform the action into a habit. Find a motivation to choose one new habit, ripple effects of the same will improve other areas of life.

2.    Values: Your values should be congruent to your goals. Your goals should be 100% matching your values.  For e.g. your value can be “family”, but if your goals does not have anything about family, then you are off-track going to different direction hence impacting your success. It is essential that your deepest value should be congruent to your goals and your habits should speak about your value system.

3.     Goals: Unless you have clearly laid down goals you will not be able to execute the same. You need to first define your life goals, then your business and professional goals and go after the same. Goals should be strongly connected to your values. Your values determines your behavior. What stands between you and your goal is your behavior. Your daily behavior would indicate how serious you are about your goal. The goals you set should be sharp and measurable. As the saying goes “What gets measured gets improved”. An analogy for importance of sharp and focused target can be derived from this simple example, “ An aircraft is on the run way to go from Delhi to Mumbai, had the direction been 1% deviated from the direction required to travel from Delhi to Mumbai, the aircraft would have landed 150-200 kilometers off the desired course.” Hence it is important that we have focused goals with minutest details.

4.    Entertainment and Education Ratio (EE Ratio): Do keep measuring this ratio, do not waste too much time on entertainment, entertainment may be by way of watching TV, busy playing games in Play Station or xbox, facebook and other social media etc., all these will not add any value to you . Spend time getting more knowledgeable and educated, spend time on your personal development. Spend time on activities which help your own world, do not bother much about the world around you. Do not spend too much time reading new papers or keeping yourself updated on the news. Rather to be productive, subscribe to tweets/RSS feeds to get the news for your needs and business requirements.

5.      Tracking your actions: All winners are trackers. It brings moment to moment awareness in life.

Track every action of your life every day. If you want to lose your weight, track everything you eat and every exercise you do. Write on a little piece of paper or in your mobile. Process forces you to be conscious of your decisions. Tracking enables improvement.

6.     Morning and evening rituals: Get into a habit of using your morning and evening time well. Some part of your morning time can be used for fitness training, gratitude, day planning, inspirational reading and some part of your evening time can be used for reflection for the day, ideation and inspirational reading just before going to the bad.

7.     Do not over do anything: Overdoing is not a sustainable model, do what you can do consistently. Consistency always pay for. For e.g. If Mr. A and Mr. B are asked to travel/fly on the flight from Delhi to Mumbai, with Mr. A given instruction to fly directly while Mr. B is asked to hop down and up in between in 10 locations, for sure Mr. A would be much efficient and reach much before even if he had flew at half the speed of Mr. B. In stop over and start again you lose the momentum hence do it consistently. You will succeed better than over kill.

8.    Relation reflection: Family day should be defined and adhered to. Show the love to your family. Make your spouse feel important, respect her, treat her well, develop her and give time to her. She is one who would be always there with you.

9.    Circle of Influence: You are known by your circle of influence. The people you spend most time with would determine your behavior, your priorities in life, your habits, your thoughts etc. etc. You can select five people with whom you spend your time with, understand their priorities in life, their social strata and see if they match your thought process. You need to decide on the people with whom you can spend three minutes rather than three hours, three hours rather than three days, three days rather than an extended holiday. You should select the people you want to disassociate with, have limited association with and have extended association with. This would enable you to create a right circle of influence which would be congruent to your goals and value system.

10.  Do better than expected: Always be one up than what is expected. Steve Jobs: always delivered more than customer expectation. Shock it all philosophy of Richard Branson: known for always doing things differently, see all his new launches. It had wonderful impact. If you do better than expected, you build credibility with the other person which helps you succeed. Always prepare well to deliver beyond expectation. If you need to deliver a lecture for a group, do all the research on the group to understand the expectation, then go and deliver better than expectation, this would create an “awe”. If you are going for the best job/dream job, prepare well, be aggressive to demonstrate your passion. Go that extra step, do research about the company, search the employees in any one of your or your friends contact, have a greeting sent through him to the decision making authority, nine out of ten times, you will fare better than others and it is most likely that you will get the job. Do not do common things that others’ do, always do something different.

All the above fundamentals converge to something called taking personal responsibility of your life i.e. owning hundred percent of your actions and choices. It is like, what percentage of shared responsibility you have in making a relationship work 100/0. Always take 100% responsibility as you alone are responsible for what you do and don't do and what happens to you. No matter what happened own it, take full responsibility for your life. Eliminate all your excuses.

When you do smallest course corrections, it will make a great compounding effect over time
and the results will be nothing less than exceptional. Commit to one small insignificant step over a time.

Get the grit and passion of successful people who are willing to do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Always express the feeling of gracefulness to others. Attitude of gratitude is by being grateful for everything around you. What you appreciate appreciates!

Source : The Compounding Effect by Mr Darren Hardy

What is success

What is Success? 

Success is important, successful is vital to the well-being of the individual, to the family unit and the group and future survival of all these things, success provides confidence, security and sense of comfort and the ability to contribute at a greater level, success provides hope and leadership for others in terms of what might be possible.

Success is not an option, success is your duty, obligation and responsibility. Success is an ethical issue, it’s a duty towards your family, your profession. If it does not become an ethical issue for you then you won’t feel obligated or be driven to fulfill your capacity, people do not approach creation of success as must have obligation, do or die mission, or as a habit, or something you are obsessed with.  Thus most of us spend most of our life giving excuses of why you did not succeed. This is what generally happens when you consider success as an alternative or an option rather than an obligation.

Success comes about as a result of mental and spiritual claims to own it followed by taking necessary actions over time till that state is acquired. If you approach success with any less than your ethical and moral duty, obligation and responsibility to your family, your company, your future you will most likely not create success and will have more difficulty in keeping it. When you approach success as a responsibility and ethical issue, everything else would fall in place.

Success always comes as a result of earlier actions. There is no overnight success, no one sees the countless actions taken, mental stakes one has passed through to get the much deserved success, accomplishment and victory. Success allows more success. Success perpetuates success, if you are successful in achieving a goal or target, you set another target and continue to succeed.

Success is like a breath of air, although your last breath was important but the next one is more important. It is important that you keep success and not just get it, you have to maintain it. It is not about attaining one goal one time.

To attain success one should establish a right level of action and thinking that will guarantee success and ensure that you continue to operate at that level in your career and life and  to get things what you want in amount greater than you have ever imagined.

Approach to Goal Setting

Set your goals properly and be so pre-occupied with your own doing by thinking differently and embracing a die-hard commitment for success.

Human kind by and large set targets at sub-par level as we have pre-determined notions which we have learnt and gathered by our experience and from people around us. Remember any goal you set is always difficult to achieve then why not set goal which is much higher. Do not under-estimate your capability.

If you set sub-par goals, you simply will not invest enough energy and efforts on it. Why get merely good at something when market place recognizes only excellence.

Any desirable goal or target always suggests that you are yet to accomplish something you have planned to achieve.

Points to remember

1.       It always take more than normal efforts to make giant success.

2.       More than normal efforts gives enough to overcome unexpected events on the way to success.

3.   If you under-estimate the efforts, time and energy to do something, you will have to quit in everything, you won’t develop the persistence required to accomplish your targets.

4.      If you correctly estimate the efforts, time and energy to do something, the market place will sense by your actions and you will be regarded as a force to be reckon with and market place and people around you will begin to respond positively.

5.   The biggest mistake everybody does is reduce the targets if the same is unattainable rather than increasing the actions. The only way for one to win is to push the finish line up. A great manager will push a person to do more at the risk of coming up short rather than targeting less.

6.    Never ever reduce your targets, always work on increasing the actions, re-thinking target suggests you are getting off-track.

7.    Any target with right amount of actions in right amount of time is achievable. The target set is never wrong, the action determines whether the target would be achieved or not. No excuses should be taken or accepted as all excuses are garbage and only an escape route.

8.   Regardless of the timing, the right acts done to the right degree, persisted over time will guarantee success.

9.   Enthusiasm for any project is important but you cannot forget an equally important fact that your customer are not as enthusiastic about your project as you are, they don’t even know if it exists, and thus to make a difference always work with 10x efforts and actions.

10.  Approach every situation with a win it attitude, whatever it take mindset. Have a champion mindset and always remember to follow through completely as this is the great common denominator of all winners, they see every action through to completion and they make no excuses.

11.  As long as you are alive, you will either live to accomplish your own goal or dreams or be used as a resource to accomplish someone else’s goal or dream.

Success does not merely happens, it is the result of relentless proper actions persisted over time, only those who operate with appropriate view and corresponding actions would guarantee themselves success. Luck clearly has something to do with success, anybody who is lucky would tell you that luck is directly proportion to the amount of action taken, more action you take, the better is the chance of getting lucky.

Regard success not as something which merely happens to you, rather success should be regarded as something which happens because of you. Success is like a marriage which cannot sustain itself on the love that was created on the wedding day.

Source: 10X Rules by Grant Cardone

Creating a Lasting Change

We all have dream, we all want to believe deep down in our souls that we have a special gift, that we can make a difference, that we can touch others in a way, that we can make the world a better place. At one time in our lives, we all had a vision for the quality of life that we desire and deserve. Yet, for many of us, those dream have become so shrouded in the frustrations and routines of daily life that we no longer even make an effort to accomplish them. Many have lost that sense of certainty that creates the winner’s edge.

Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives. Controlled focus is like a laser beam that can cut through anything that seems to be stopping you. When we focus consistently on improvement in any area, we develop unique distinctions on how to make that area better. One reason why so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus, we never concentrate our power. Most people just dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular. Most people fail in life simply because they focus on minor things rather than focusing on big impactful things.

It is a fact that individuals have powers to change virtually everything and anything in their life in an instant. All the resources we need to turn our dreams into reality are within us merely waiting for the day when we decide to wake up and claim our birth right. While we all have the capacity to do massive things, we are stuck procrastinating actually waiting for the right time which never comes. In many ways procrastination is a fundamental law of universe. A parallel for this can be drawn from Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of motion. An object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by an external force i.e. objects in motion tend to stay in motion, objects at rest tends to stay at rest. So if we do not decide or do not take any action to turn our dreams into reality, we would just dabble our way through life and be like an object at rest which always trends to stay at rest. We need to take action and put the object in motion so that it stays in motion. We may start with small actions which over time will lead to massive results and giant success because results from each action would multiply and have compounding effect.

To make all these actions, you need to change – a change in your beliefs, your habits, your thought process, your attitude, your conviction, and your success criteria and so on. All these changes you make in yourself have to be a lasting and consistent to be of any true value. We have all experienced change for a moment, only to feel let down and disappointed in the end. In fact, many people attempt change with a sense of fear and dread because unconsciously they believe the changes will be temporary. A prime example of this is someone who needs to begin fitness training to lose weight, but finds himself putting it off, primarily because he unconsciously knows that whatever pain he endures in order to create the change will bring him only short term rewards, he fails to see the long term objective and the rewards which would flow in. Again this can be closely associated with the concept of pain and pleasure. We are always attracted towards things which provides temporary pleasures and always tend to move away from the temporary pain which would provide lasting pleasures in the long haul.

To create a lasting change, there are three elementary principles of change which are extremely powerful when implemented and applied skillfully. These principles can be equally applied in any situation – whether for individual change, change in the company to maximize it potentials and so on.

1.       Raise your standards: Anytime you sincerely want to make a change, first thing you must do is raise your standards. The most important thing is changing what you demand of yourself. Make note of all things that you would no longer accept in life, all things that you would no longer tolerate and all things that you aspire to become. Everybody have that power and courage available with them, one only will have to take a step towards utilizing these effectively.

2.       Change your limiting beliefs: If you raise your standards but don’t really believe you can meet them, you do not have the conviction, you have already sabotaged yourself. You won’t even try, you will be lacking that sense of certainty that allows you to tap the deepest capacity that’s within you. Our beliefs are like unquestioned commands, telling us how things are, what’s possible and what’s impossible, what we can and what we cannot do. They shape every action, every thought and every feeling that we experience. As a result, changing our belief system is central to making any real and lasting change in our lives. We must develop a sense of certainty that we can and will meet the new standards before we actually do.

3.       Change your strategy: In order to keep your commitment, you need the best strategies for achieving the results. It is true that if you set a higher standard and you can get yourself to believe, then you certainly can figure out the strategies. You simply will find a way. Another important aspect in figuring out the best strategies is to find a role-model, someone who is already getting the results you want and then tap into their knowledge. Learn what they are doing, what their core-beliefs are, and how they think. Not only will this make you more effective, it will also save you a huge amount of time because you won’t have to re-invent the wheel. You can fine-tune it, re-shape it and perhaps even make it better.

In life, you see lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough, you must take action. These principles helps establish a right level of actions and thinking that will guarantee your success and ensure that you continue to operate at that level in your career and life and get things what you want in amount greater than you have ever imagined.

Source: Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins

Building Emotional Intelligence: A way to success

You may be first in your Post-graduate class and have the smartness of best of leaders combined. However to have brightest future in business you may still have a few things to learn.

Most of us during our school years have got a fallacious understanding that only how well one do academically is going to matter in life. As per Daniel Goleman, a best known writer and researcher on the subject of leadership, “once you get into a business particularly if you are an entrepreneur you know that’s nonsense. Lots of people with consistent A grades wind up working for people who were B graders.” Thus the assumption of how well you do in school determines how well you do in business goes for a toss.

 Then what does determine how well you do? Researcher Goleman has spent three decades finding this out and has written and co-written many books. Through a compelling blend of research and scientific analysis he has made that what sets up top businesspeople apart is “Emotional Intelligence” which he describes as the sum of self-awareness, self-management, empathy and social skills.

A higher proportion of the competencies that distinguish the stars among leaders turn out to be based on emotional intelligence rather than just IQ abilities. That does not mean that IQ is irrelevant. IQ is important in sorting people into jobs they can do but once you are in the game you are competing with people as smart as you and you are competing with how well you can manage yourself and lead other people.

Also emotional and social abilities does not come with birth, with consistent practice you can rewire your brain to push your emotional intelligence to genius levels.

So how to go about building your emotional intelligence. Few steps:

1.       Take Stock

To figure out which aspects of emotional intelligence need work, Goleman’s book “What makes a leader” suggests “imagining your ideal self” five to ten years from now i.e. live your life backwards. You can ask yourself questions like:

a)      How would you like your day to be?

b)      Who all would be there with you?

c)       What kind/nature of relationship would you have with them?

d)      Consider your deepest values and biggest dreams: how would these be part of your daily life?

Next: Learn how your ideal self compares with your current self. Goleman recommends answering such questions as:

i)                    Are you usually aware of your feelings and why you feel that way?

ii)                   Can you manage your distressing emotions well – e.g. recover quickly when you get upset or stressed?

iii)                 Can you usually sense the feelings of the people you interact with and understand their way of seeing things?

iv)                 Do you have a knack for persuasion and using your influence effectively?

Do not just introspect, you also need to find out how you make others feel and how they see your leadership style. This can be tough to know but you can always solicit anonymous written feedback which gives you frank opinions about your behavior. Once you have the feedback, do not just concentrate on you Emotional Intelligence shortcomings, it is equally important for you to understand your strengths too. This feedback would help understand where your real self-overlaps with your ideal self and give you positive energy you need to move forward to the next step in the process and work on bridging the gaps.

2.       Praise, Pay Attention, Practice

One gap which is seen in most entrepreneurs is “Poor listening”. Very often we want people to keep it short, which often means we cut them off and take over the conversation to get them out of the door quickly. But if you want to be a good listener, then you have to actually take time to hear what they have to say and be sure you understand them. Another common shortcomings which is a big problem for entrepreneurs is “Entrepreneurs are typically people who drive themselves harder than most others and who have a very high internal standard of excellence. They do things very well, and that can become a pattern of perfectionism, where you tend to look only at what was wrong rather than what was right.” The problem in leadership is when people who have driven themselves to the top that way become managers or leaders and use the same lens with their teams and if they give failing grades and not passing grades, that demotivates people.

To overcome such weaknesses, Goleman proposes drawing up an action plan. Pick a list of few changes you can make and set a target for each. E.g. to boost your listening skills, you may plan to meet each of your colleagues or employees for lunch, away from office distractions. Also at home try not to take over conversations and relax into just listening, being sure you understand before responding. To become less critical, constantly remind yourself to notice what others in your life do well. Praise them and do not just attack them and make it a genuine.  One powerful conversation with the person away from work about what they want from their life, their career and this job, will give you sound grounds for giving them feedback in terms of where they want to go. A personal angle builds great loyalty, and a sense that you care about people.

For this changes to get implemented you should work at it daily and consciously. The neurology of habit tell us you need to become mindful of the old way, what you are trying to change, intentionally replace it with a new habit and do it at every naturally occurring opportunity. It might be with your kids, your spouse or your colleagues.  All of those are learning opportunities and you are trying to build new circuitry in the brain – a foundation of the better way. As the research suggests if you practice anything consistently for 66 days (Ref: Martin Seligman), we find that one day you will do the new thing in the right way at the right time without having to think about it. It will become spontaneous which means this action has moved from your conscious mind to a sub-conscious mind where all of our habits live.

3.       Open your eyes and Close Them

As you continue your daily practice, Goleman says, you can speed your progress by shadowing leaders known for their empathy and social skills. Observe how they stay cool under stress and adapt. See how they strike a balance between listening and effectively communicating, how in a group they help move everyone toward a joint goal, acknowledge others’ contributions and encourage everyone’s strengths. As you keep observing, you quickly start emulating these role models and mirror them in your day to day workings. Similarly, even imaginary feelings and visualization could raise your emotional intelligence. When you picture a happy scenario in detail, it fires the same brain cells actually involved in doing that activity. Another key to emotional intelligence is daily meditation. Focus on your breath and bring your mind back to it when it wanders. Essentially it’s training attentional skill. One of Goleman’s favorite things about mindfulness is that you take it everywhere. Say one of your shortcomings is anxiety or a quick temper. When you are starting to get really mad or overly worried, mindfulness can help you notice that’s happening to you. You can short-circuit the episode. Meditation is vital over the long run, its fundamental, the ability to stay focused on the task at hand or keep going to reach your goal.

4.       Savor Face Time

Emotional intelligence is under severe attack now, more than ever. Technology fragments the attention we pay each other with every text message beep and social media alert. With technology, information flow is very fast and there is no time zone restrictions thus making it harder to feel empathy or use your social skills to advantage. The brain actually was built for face to face interactions, that’s always best, but however simply being in the same room as someone else may not be enough, as instead of paying attention to each other we are being pulled away from a person by a thing i.e. a phone or some other tool. In such situation, one should ask oneself, can I afford this? Is this the best thing to do now?  You have two options, either say this is a really important text; you have to look at it or the other option is to say I care more about the person in front of me, generally caring about those in front of you will prevail. Chemistry happens when we pay full attention to each other, never when we are distracted. This is true for any relationship. So whenever possible , let that go to voice mail, close that chat window and start spreading your emotional intelligence one rich face to face moment at a time.

Source: Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman