Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Only conviction drives the vision

Commitment to work and dedication of time and efforts are the most essential requirements to reach our goals in life. Goals can range from being unrealistic dreams to rational visions. It all depends upon the individual who holds these dreams and visions in his eyes. He has the ultimate power of converting thoughts into reality. Fortunately or unfortunately, man doesn't realize the strength of this power unless he uses it once and that one time implementation requires thorough conviction. Conviction alone can drive visions into reality.

Conviction is all about sitting and doing the task at hand irrespective of whether it is interesting or not. Conviction deals with more of completion of the activity rather than the liking or the disliking of it. Starting different kinds of work is easy because there is the assistance of the initial curiosity or the beginner's luck. Sustaining is the challenging part and taking the work to completion is the toughest challenge. However, the mere decision of making up the mind for something so massive, can only be the result of taking commitment. A commitment is always kept up to because of conviction and hardwork. No matter how much time or energy it takes , one must make up his mind without even getting such distractions.

There are different ways to raise back your conviction. Have a mentor who can spot the flaw points in you without any doubts or questions. Develop the habit of reading more books because they are the sources of knowledge and wisdom. The vision towards which you're driving must be more important than the intermediate results. Only then will the conviction be able to drive us far ahead in life to accomplish all that we dream of.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Leadership is a D.E.P

To elaborate the title for those of you who couldn't interpret it, 'Leadership is a D.E.P (Daily Evaluation Process)'. To become a leader is a never ending process. Everyone is a leader to himself. The journey of becoming a better leader never ends no matter how many years of life we scale through. A leader is not the one who leads a lot of people. A leader is one who knows and does the job of leading himself or herself. Life is all about leading ourselves towards our goals. The moment the world sees us leading our lives, it surrenders to the leaders like us who have the power and clear direction to lead the globe. But, how does one evaluate himself as a leader?

Leadership is a daily evaluation process. He never gets a chance to get complacent at any point of time or can he compromise on any of his results. A leader needs to build his work day by day while developing himself so that he notices a better himself the next day than what he was the previous day. Hence I call that leadership is a daily job. Achieving excellence in whatever one does is what qualifies, as well as quantifies to be a leader. It's not about achieving perfection that defines a leader though he never gives up on striving for accomplishing perfection in every endeavour that he is a part of. For a leader, it's one day at a time and one work at a moment. A moment wasted apart from getting invested into work is a lost moment and he loses his leadership status for that moment. The more number of such moments only undermine the name and capacity of a leader. Hence every moment counts.

While we are pursuing our academics, we have the evaluation done once a month or once in 3 months or annually once. But while being a leader in real life, every day is a test or an exam. A leader needs to perform on a daily basis on a wide variety of things that he or she is involved in. There is no one to evaluate the performance except the results that his work is going to produce. It's all about self-evaluation. How well can you win your own self-evaluation will determine how well you have lead your day. Leading persistently and leading oneself correctly have to be tested on a daily basis and only then a true leader is formed. Once again, "Leadership is a D.E.P".

Sunday, September 08, 2013

Practical entrepreneurship

With the advent of internet, opportunities to be your own boss sitting at home have increased multifold. Information is available just a click away and resources to build a company are easily accessible at your doorsteps by way of ordering at your fingertips. The craze of owning something has forgone a long way more than just mere desire to form a kind of psychological lock. One who doesn't have to take others orders is considered to be great. As a result of all such factors, today's youth is jumping into entrepreneurship without having any practical insight into it just out of excitement. MBA books have introduced so many complicated terms just by knowing which people believe that they can become entrepreneurs.

Today, the word 'entrepreneur' has taken up various forms for people in different fields. For working people, entrepreneurship turns into something called intrapreneurship. For people in fields other than business there's a wide variety to choose from such as social entrepreneurship, political entrepreneurship, knowledge entrepreneurship and a lot more. In any form of entrepreneurship the most important thing to be taken care of is practicality. Any work can be printed on paper and conceptualized to the best idealistic extent. The true roots of success or failure can only be witnessed when we jump into the practical field of implementation of the intended idea. I have heard so many MBA students who come to the conclusion by the time they start working that they just need to take all their textbooks, tear them apart and throw away once they are in the real world. Books were written based on the real world scenario of the past.

Having graphs of thousands of dollars scaling their way up with every passing year or charting out tables and pie-charts indicating the expected investments or the profit/loss statements do not alone suffice to build a practical B-plan. One has to get a first hand experience on field about business, about working with people, about understanding the relationship between demand and supply and many more practical aspects related to business. Without basic understanding for at least a couple of years one will only be devastated to see his/her paper plans crushing down into ashes if the practicality of implementation is sidelined. Let's get realistic friends!

The challenging philosophies

Books like that of Nicholas Nassim Taleb and Malcolm Gladwell challenge the existing philosophies. Irrational idiots and lucky fools are some of the phrases that authors of these kind use for some of the most renowned people whom we refer to as the successful souls on earth. There was the time of Newton when he discovered gravity and lot of other equations for motion and the era of Newtonian mechanics evolved and everyone accepted that it shall stand true through all ages until Albert Einstein proposed his Theory of Relativity. The new theory proved that Newtonian mechanics wasn't true in all the cases. Similar to changes in scientific philosophies is the case with the humanitarian theories.

During the early times, people believed that if a person worked hard he would become successful in life. Later came the concept that mere hard work isn't sufficient. If that is the case, then donkey must have been the most respected animal. Alas! It's not the case here. So another attribute got added to work and that was smartness. People take pride in saying, "I am not a hard working guy, I am smart worker." Likewise earlier people believed that success or failure was entirely dependent on the person alone. Whether one succeeded or failed, it all depended on the person's thoughts, attitudes, efforts and character. Nothing was of any external influence or importance here. However some people took up the career of research to dig down the reasons for success or failure. They came back with statistics that showed the influence of date of birth, places of existence, availability of resources and a lot of other factors that played a very prominent role in the visible results.

As every living being is subjected to evolution even the theories framed by humans are subjected to evolution. No theory shall get outdated. It shall only be augmented with more points to suit the updated era in accordance with the existing technology. Let's not forget the lessons of the old school just because we've the new school and the teachers of the modern age. 'Old is gold' is an age old statement which can never be abolished but can be taken as an exception in some cases. Growth and success are a result of a lot many factors which the human species is still yet to completely discover although we are aware that it's an impossible task. Let's be focused on our goals and dreams and assimilate every lesson that can take us a step forward in life.

Cut the cold conduct

It's seldom easy for the human mind to remain positive all the time. People keep changing their emotions and moods based on the environment around them. Life itself has no reason to remain the same way as everything is subjected to change and change being the law of nature. Due to these fluctuations of feelings amongst humans arises different kinds of misconducts. Until recently about couple of centuries back cold meant only the measure of thermal energy of a substance but off late it has come to measure the degree of cohesiveness amidst people.
 
The moment we are unhappy with someone it rings the bell in our heart. It warns us to remain silent and distances us far away from smiling at the person. The reasons needn't be genuine as well. They can just be mere assumptions. Ego comes as a wall between people and avoids them from sharing and clarifying the misunderstanding. No sooner the lack of communication leads to cold war between the two and eventually may lead to a break in relationship itself. Hence it's essential to cut this cold conduct. One must learn that being cold to someone is going invite a reciprocation of similar sorts and nothing different except in case of some Godly souls. The moment one is able to spot this cold conduct either in herself or himself or others, s/he must take immediate action of cutting it down. The simplest way to cut the cold conduct is by communicating with a wholehearted smile.
 
When I was listening to the audio of Anthony Robbins this evening, he shared an interesting insight into how the cold war between US and USSR ended. President Reagan had decided to put an end to the cold war and hence got up from his seat, walked 4 feet away and turned back with a fresh smile and said, "Let's start afresh". This freshness of feeling and a warm smile accompanied with a heartfelt greeting are more than sufficient to cut the cold conduct of a person. When two massive nations could cut down the cold war, we're after all simple humans, we too stand a chance to fight life's negativity.

Monday, September 02, 2013

The cause-effect reversal

In science, the cause and effect relationship is a highly prevalent philosophy. Every effect is associated with a cause. Without a cause no effect can happen is the argument of science. Hence whenever there is an observation scientists run into their labs and theories to postulate the reason behind the occurrence with the highest logical justification possible. Same is the case with people around us. When you're successful people search for traits because of which you're successful but when you're a failure people search for reasons why you failed. So cause is discovered after the effect. Hence I call this blog post as the cause effect reversal as per the discovery of people.

No one can predict the future. We can only anticipate the future outcomes based on our past experiences and incidences. Similarly the present is always described and dated back as the output of previous actions taken in the past. Success or failure is a result of combination of many factors in different proportions. A person who works for fixed amount of hours and is being successful is appreciated for his discipline of following strict timings. On the other hand the same person who works for fixed amount of hours and is being a failure is blamed for just working in a limited fashion and is for not being flexible in his working hours. People are not ready to discuss about the attributes that together resulted in the outcome. All they want to point out is the reason one is successful or a failure.
Success or failure is a result of not just an individual's performance. It depends on many external factors. In fact, it's a combination of the external factors and the individual characteristics. Hence one must not worry about the reasons attributed by people for one's status of life. We just need to be honest to ourselves, our conscience and our efforts. We should continue working hard with a fixed focus on our goals, visions and dreams. Only then will we be able to evaluate the right effect with the right set of causes for the effect to come into effect. Life is all about doing than just mere evaluating.