Self-Management

Management is not just for managers, just as leadership is not just for leaders. We all manage, and we all lead. These are not actions reserved for only those people who happen to hold these “positions” in a company or in the society. Both management and leadership are like callings, and we all get these callings to manage and lead at different times, and to different degrees. Consider another way, we can all learn to be more self-governing through the disciplines of great management and great leadership with concepts that can give us wonderful tenets to live and work by. I have come across Twelve Rules for Self-Management which all successful people lives and works by and have achieved the greatness they in their lives. The Twelve Rules are:

1. Live by your values, whatever they are. Values guides our every decision and, therefore, our destiny. Successful people know their values and live by them. If we want the deepest level of life fulfillment, we can achieve it in only one way, and that is by deciding upon what we value most in life, what our highest values are and then committing to live by them every single day. We need to realize that the direction of our lives is controlled by the magnetic pull of our values. They are the force in front of us, consistently leading us to make decisions that create the direction and ultimate destinations of our lives. Life always has a way of testing our commitment to our values. Give yourself the gift of taking hold of this force that shapes your destiny. Spend some time to understand your values and hierarchy of values so that you are able to link up with your priorities in life and build a great system of values that gives you magnificent direction in life along-with happiness and fulfillment in living by them.

2.    Speak up! Be assertive! Ask the question! No one can “hear” what you are thinking without you be willing to stand up for it. Mind-reading is something most people cannot do. Questions change the resources available to us: In the realms of business as well as personal life questions do open up new worlds and gives us access to resources we might not otherwise realize we have available. Learning to consciously control the questions you ask will take you further to achieving your ultimate destiny than almost anything you know. Often our resources are limited only by the questions we ask ourselves.  One important thing to remember is that our beliefs affect the questions we will even consider. Many people would never have asked the question because everyone around them had told them it was impossible. They would feel it was a waste of their time and energy. Be careful not to ask limited questions, or you will receive limited answers. The only thing that limits your questions is your belief about what is possible. If you continue to ask any question, you will receive an answer. All we need to do is to create a better question and we will get a better answer. Unless you ask, you will not get the answer.

3.    Honor your own good word, and keep the promises you make. If not, people eventually stop believing most of what you say, and your words will no longer work for you. Commitment, faithfulness, trustworthiness, dependability and integrity, whatever you chose to call it, it is a powerful ingredient and a prerequisite to success. Let your “yes” be “yes” and “no” be “no”. Be true to yourself and honor your commitment. You will never achieve your predetermined, worthwhile dreams and goals without commitment.

 

4.     Practice gratitude. Gratitude is the antidote to fear. Be in a state of constant gratefulness. When you appreciate how far you have come, that fuels you with a positive sense of energy that will make you go even farther. So be in a state of appreciation, appreciation for how far you have come. Gratitude can magically turn your relationships into joyful and meaningful relationship, no matter what state they are in now. Gratitude can miraculously make you more prosperous so that you have the money to do the things you want to do. It will increase your health and bring a level of happiness beyond what you have ever felt before. Gratitude works as a magic to accelerate your career, increase success and bring about your dream job or whatever it is you want to do. The magical power of gratitude turns your life into gold. Gratitude operates through a Universal law, the law of attraction, “like attracts like”. The idea of gratitude can also be related to Sir Isaac Newton’s scientific discovery of “Every action always has an opposite and equal reaction”. When you apply the idea of gratitude to Newton’s law it says: every action of giving thanks always causes an opposite reaction of receiving thanks. This means that the very action of gratitude sets off a reaction of receiving. Spend at least 10 minutes in a day (preferably early in the morning) practicing gratitude and being thankful for things you have achieved in life so far.

5.   Do not expect people to trust you if you yourself are not willing to be trustworthy for them first and foremost. Trust is an outcome of fulfilled expectations. Trust is a tricky thing. When you have got someone’s trust it is great. You can sell them more stuff, get more favors, ask for more, and generally benefit a great deal. But when someone does not trust you, forget about it, you are in big trouble. Trust = Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy + Self- Orientation. Trust can be measured across four key factor, including credibility, reliability, intimacy and self-orientation. Credibility is all about what we say, our skills and credentials. Reliability is all about the actions we take and our predictability. Intimacy is tied to know comfortable people and confiding in us, and our empathy. And self-orientation is about ego.

6. Be more productive by creating good habits and rejecting bad ones. Good habits corral your energies into a momentum-building rhythm for you; bad habits sap your energies and drain you. Do not waste time in doing things which do not contribute to your goals. Do not be busy being busy. Focus on few: few friends whom you can count on, few goals in life, few programs to watch, few books to read. Be brilliant on few things, be a virtuoso, not victim. Be an artisan of your life. Obsession is the hallmark of excellence. Pick up good habits that keeps you obsessed and energized in what you do. Note down your bad habits and see the patterns in it, you can cut down on the same by consciously curbing the same. Utilize your time like a time tactician, whatever you do it well. Hard work is important but hard work should yield peak productivity. Find someone better than yourself. Learn to delegate. Think about the big picture, give them freedom.

7.    Be ethical, for it seems to be getting rare today. Curious, for those “old-fashioned” values like dependability, timeliness, professionalism and diligence are prized more than ever before. Be action-oriented. Seek to make things work. Be willing to do what it takes. At the same time live up to your reputation. Nothing is more important than your good name. Going to sleep with clear conscience. Do not lose your reputation as you get to your goals. It would take a life time to build your business/personal reputation, but it takes only 20 seconds of bad judgment for wiping that off. Never let that happen to you.

8.   Be interesting. Read voraciously, and listen to learn, then teach and share everything you know. No one owes you their attention; you have to earn it and keep attracting it. Reading a book will have many positive effects in your life. As you read a book, your creativity increases. You try to visualize the situations and characters described in the pages. Reading a good book or a good article can change your day and it will have positive effects on your mindset and way of thinking. You will attain knowledge which is the greatest power on earth. So get reading. It's a whole lot of fun. Reading will have positive effects in the future without doubt.

9. Be nice. Be courteous, polite and respectful. Be considerate. Be humble. Manners still count for an awful lot in life, and thank goodness they do. Being polite is being respectful and subtle. Being courteous is to show a helpful gesture. Be humble to show an outpouring of love for all living being and assist in any way you can, give selfless service to all without motive of any selfish gain. The law of attraction is applicable here to, like attracts like, if you are nice, others would be nice to you, similarly if you are courteous, polite, respectful, considerate and humble to others, you will get the same in return.

10.   Be self-disciplined. Self-Discipline is the ability to control one's impulses, emotions, desires and behavior. It is being able to turn down immediate pleasure and instant gratification in favor of gaining the long-term satisfaction and fulfillment from achieving higher and more meaningful goals. To possess it is to be able to make the decisions and take the actions, and execute your game plan regardless of the obstacles, discomfort, or difficulties that may come your way. Self-discipline is the fuel that gets you places. The happy by-products of discipline are success, self-respect, and improved physical and mental health.

11.  Do not be a victim or a martyr. You always have a choice, so do not shy from it: Choose and choose without regret. Look forward and be enthusiastic. Victims are frightened by change while leaders and entrepreneurs takes this as an opportunity. Work for yourself and not for your company. In case you feel you are being a victim, take a decision, leave your safe harbor of the known. While it is going to be disruptive process and you would be confused, but you will come out successful after going through the cycle of clarity, disruption and confusion. Change is always difficult to start, messy in the middle and exciting at the end. Always make a choice, do not reach to a level of expiry date for yourself as given in the food products, medicines etc. Course correct before the best before date.

12. Keep healthy and take care of yourself. Exercise your mind, body and spirit so you can be someone people count on, and so you can live expansively and with abundance. Get to a world class fitness level. Nothing is more important than health, it is more important than your family, because If you do not have good health, you cannot be there for your family, cannot celebrate with your family. Often we take our health for granted until we lose it. When we are young we would sacrifice our health for wealth and yet when we get old and figure out what life is truly all about, we would sacrifice every penny of our wealth for one good day health. To commit yourself for self-care take care of your health. When you are in really a good physical condition life is lot more fun, lot happier.

Self-management is a critical set of skills for all to be successful in life in the face of change in so many dimensions in the life, changes that seem to happen slowly or in an instant. All human being thrive to be successful in life and one who understands his/her relationship to self-management makes it to the mountaintop.

Source: Learnings from Robin Sharma and Darren Hardy

Leading a successful life: Fearlessness

Happy New Year to All ! Here is my blog on how to be "Fearlessness" in your success journey. Hope you find this useful.

Fearlessness

We were born to be fearless. We do not inherit fear from our ancestors. It is not an instinctive reaction, nor is it necessary for survival. One minute we can be fearless, and in the next we can learn to be fearful. For the moment let us put aside the question of whether fear has any value. The issue at hand is whether it is inborn or acquired behavior.

A parallel is drawn to explain why fear can be categorized as acquired behavior. 1. A child has no fear of spiders until she is taught to be afraid by her mother. Her first reaction to them is the instinctive one.  2. A child is afraid of the ocean, not the water itself. You can see the same child happily splashing bath water all over on numerous occasions. He must have learned to be afraid of the ocean but he has an ability to get rid of this fear in a short time. This definitely indicates a learned behavior and not an instinctive one.

The important difference is that learned behaviors, automatic or not, are capable of being unlearned or modified very quickly, whereas instinctive behaviors can only be suppressed, amplified, or redirected. Breathing is instinctive while breathing rates are learned. Eating is instinctive while food choices are learned. The urges to get warm when you are cold, get cool when you are hot, seek security when you feel insecure, or move toward or repeat pleasurable experiences, and move away from or avoid unpleasant or painful experiences are all part of human beings list of instinctive behaviors.

It is a fact, supported by research, experiments and experience, that fears can be unlearned, often quickly, without suppression, amplification or redirection. This alone puts them into the learned behavior category. We learn fear due to three vital factors: a) Self-doubt; b) Memory of pain; c) Expectation of pain.

Self-Doubt

 

Self-doubt is the most important factor, for without it fear does not occur. Self-doubt is also learned behavior. Basically, self-doubt is born when an individual interprets a feeling or sensation as meaning that one has lost contact with their source of power or love. To the degree that this interpretation is repeated with similar feelings or sensations it becomes learned and automatic behavior.

Memories of Pain

Memories of pain are present in everyone, but everyone is not affected by them in the same way. Fear is born - and eventually learned - when self-doubt is present at the time a painful experience occurs because, due to the self-doubt, an expectation of pain arises under any stimulus that resembles the original pain.

Memories of painful experience

Fear only arises in this case when a new experience reminds us of a previous painful experience and we have an expectation of another painful experience because we do not know what to do.

It does not matter if we have self-doubt, or painful memories, or fear of anything whatsoever. We learned how to act one way, however we can teach ourselves how to act differently. Self-doubt can be erased by teaching ourselves over and over and over again to trust in ourselves. To trust, not that nothing bad will ever happen, but that whatever happens we will be able to cope, and that more good things will happen than bad. The future is never fixed, but now is the moment of power. What we do and how we think in the present moment may not control the future, but it has more influence on the future than anything else. There is no fear without self-doubt. Self-doubt begins with a decision. It can end with a decision, too. To move from self-doubt to confidence, you need to embrace fearlessness.  We are our best selves when we are confident. Some of the benefits of confidence are the ability to be yourself, possessing greater courage, speaking your mind, feeling good about yourself, staying calm despite unfavorable circumstances, and having greater appeal as a friend or a mate. Confidence is byproduct of fearlessness. Hence, fearlessness is stronger than confidence. If you do not fear anything, you will naturally be confident, because a lack of confidence is primarily caused by fear of rejection, danger, or failure.

Fearlessness enables people to do unbelievable things like climb skyscrapers, launch their body across the goal line, and most importantly, boldly live their ideal life! Most people wanting to be more confident will aim directly for confidence, however they could have better success by aiming for fearlessness. In many ways, it’s a more direct approach to being more confident. When you try to be confident, you’re attempting to build yourself higher than your fears in “I can do this” kind of way.

Imagine you see a celebrity standing next to you and you want to talk to him/her, but you aren’t confident enough. To try to gain confidence at this point is going to be very difficult. Confidence comes from within, so it takes time to improve your baseline confidence. Though there are some in the moment strategies like confident body language that can physiologically increase your confidence. But what if you attempted to conquer your fears as a way to become more confident?

To conquer fear, you should first address your fear of rejection. The celebrity might respond negatively to you. If you ask him/her out, they might say no. He/she could laugh at you and embarrass you. However, these rejection scenarios are only scary or embarrassing for like 10 seconds. Can you not handle that as a worst case scenario? Are you going to let yourself be scared of 10 seconds of awkwardness or discomfort? This applies to any possible rejection scenario, from asking for a raise, to asking for a job, to asking for a financial help.

Second, you should address the fear of failure. The fear of failure is a level above the fear of rejection, and involves longer term evaluation of what the rejection means. You might feel that this one instance of rejection is representative of your asking for a job. You might feel like this job is the only job available for you, and if they do not give you a job, then all hope is lost. 

The fear of failure can be dissolved with some logic. There are 7 billion people on earth and every single one of us has different tastes and preferences. If you are a good and honest person, then most people are going to at least like you as a friend. People tend to be irrationally scared of approaching strangers. The logic is that any single case of rejection is just that – a single instance. If you are willing to keep trying, you’ll find success.

 

When you remove fear, confidence tends to emerge. Confidence is believing in a positive result, while fear is worrying about the potential of a negative result. Once fear of a negative result is gone, it’s easier to believe in a positive result (i.e. be confident). Fearlessness means nothing is holding you back. 

100% fearlessness is not always healthy though. The key in life seems to be knowing which fears are healthy and helpful to have (a fear of heights is not such a bad thing to have) and which fears simply hold you back (asking a question, trying something new, being embarrassed). Some people’s fear is so crippling that they cannot function normally. Others die because they don’t have enough fear. As with many things, balance is ideal. Be fearful of things that are worthy of your fear, but do not ever let the word “no” scare you. Do not ever let it hold you back from pursuing opportunities. Opportunities only pay off if you are willing to take them, which you can do by losing your fear and picking up confidence.

It is said that the antidote to fear is : you must make a decision to have faith, knowing you have done all you can to prepare for whatever you are fearing, and that most fears in life rarely come to being, attack that root. Then you can move forward!

To end, here is a beautiful poem “Where the Mind is Without Fear” written by Dr  Rabindranath Tagore:

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Source: Learned Fearlessness by Robin Sharma, 

Poetry : Dr Rabindranath Tagore (http://allpoetry.com/Where-The-Mind-Is-Without-Fear#sthash.nb445acj.dpuf )