Nimble Foundation, Author at NIMBLE FOUNDATION BLOG - STAY SAFE!

May I invite your comments on my forthcoming book?

Introduction
“Life is a race. If you don’t run fast, you will be trampled”!
Yes! Indeed, once one starts toddling or even before that the race begins and one keeps wondering “What made me lose and the other one win, the same race?”One questions oneself amidst the darkest deep nights until one gets no answer and finally blames it up to the destiny. One often becomes uncomfortable when one thinks about the failures one had especially when one doesn’t get valid reasons for the same.
But we tend to forget these monologues – thanks to the mundane activities of one’s life. But if we dig deeper, the exercise has the power to take us closer to the solutions. This book aims to give you an insight into life which is a mixture of ups and downs, failures and successes. Once we understand this and accept the reality, it no longer remains a jigsaw puzzle. Life is journey. All our goals are but milestones, and we need to enjoy the journey.
At a certain stage of life, one tends to compare oneself with others. It is indeed a natural tendency wherein one often measures one’s success, joy or happiness by comparing these with those of others’. And then confronts a battery of questions like below:-
“Why am I not rich like him? Though we studied together and are best friends how come he/she has achieved what I could just think of? What makes him/her so very desirable? In short, one tends to become jealous of other’s success. Jealousy, certainly, is best avoided but if nailed properly could give us the desired results like success, happiness, prosperity and also peace of mind.
Through this book, I have tried to help the reader understand themselves better to ward off various negative influences and personality development needs. These hinder your chances to succeed. The book addresses the personality issues, and shows the path towards improvement. It will help to elevate your self confidence to an untapped level.
The book also throws light on important habits, skills and behavioral traits which successful people possess and practice. The contents have been divided into following chapters.

Attitude:

“A bad attitude is like a flat tyre! If you don’t change it, you will never reach anywhere”!
Attitude defines the major part of your personality. It makes you who you are. It is the way you respond to what you face in your life. Thus, a positive person seeks opportunities in the various hurdles he/she encounters whereas a negative person finds faults with every situation. This book will help you identify your attitude and learn the ways to correct the flaws by adopting certain procedures.

Communication:

Today’s world is a shrunken world. Globalization has brought us closer but you should have a knack of able communication with the world around you. Both, verbal and written communication skills are a must you to understand others and to express yourself effectively. This book aims primarily at pointing whether you lack these skills and, if yes, the various ways to improve on these. We, also, look forward to hone your existing communication skills through this book.

Interpersonal skills: – Man is a social animal. We continuously interact with the family, colleagues, friends and society around us. We have to work with those around and seek harmonious relations with all. Interpersonal skills come into the picture when we need to build and maintain cordial relations with the society. Through this book we take you to the various methods which would help you imbibe the necessary interpersonal skills.

Continuous Improvement: – Stagnation doesn’t breed success! Is it not true? Today’s fast changing world demands dynamic people who keep abreast of latest information and the changing advanced technology. Successful people, often, have a quest to explore more, learn more and thereby, pursue excellence. But one cant be directionless in exploration. This book is a must have guide so that you know what are you heading towards.

Willpower: – Willpower is the strongest virtue which successful people possess and which helps them achieve distinguished success. It is the ability to perform consistently under the testing times and the ability to withstand the difficulties. Willpower, alone, often defines one’s success. This book sheds light on the way to focus your physical, mental and intellectual energies and to build strong willpower. Success, then, is just a few steps away with strong willpower.

6) Habits: – Power of good habits are vital to success. The book intends to inculcate all the basic formal good habits like humility, understanding, and empathy for others. It will also help you develop a sense of humor which is a rare trait these days. This book will enable you to enhance your self esteem be the best of yourself.

Time management: – Time and Tide wait for none. This might sound a cliché, but it is the hardcore truth. One needs to effectively manage this very resource which is equally distributed to everyone on this planet. This book will hold your hands and guide you to use time in the best possible manner.

How to use this book?
Well, before using this book one needs to have undergone a self analysis. An analysis helps in the long way to identify one’s strengths and weaknesses. One needs to retrospect about the successful times and identify what contributed to those distinguished events. Was it your sheer talent, initiative or a group effort? Once you get answers to this question, ask yourself again whether you still use those elements in your endeavors? If you encounter a negative answer, ask yourself again “Why not?”After all why should happy history not repeat itself?
It is equally important to ponder over the failures of life as it is to dwell over success. Failures are the major lessons to be learnt in life. Ask yourself,” When did I fail and Why?” Is it because of some shortcomings? If the answer is yes, note down the shortcomings and counter them with the methods in this book.
This book can be used as a reference manual for developing a desirable and successful personality. Of course, you need to answer all the questions tabulated in the self assessment form.
Happy personality development ahead!

Three reasons why Blame Game is the worst!

Scenario 1:
1) An employee couldn’t submit the annual report on time. On enquiring he blamed the delay in work to the team’s noncooperation.
Many other commonplace scenarios occur in everyone’s life. And these are what we call as blame game.
So what exactly it means? Well, blaming others’ or situations for one’s own failures. This generally happens when one is not ready to take up responsibility of one’s failure because of ego or fear of criticism. Blame game means the activity by which one tries to identify the person or situation that can be made a scapegoat. In the above mentioned example the employee comfortably blamed the teammates for not co-operating with him. Sometimes the reasons are true but in most cases these are mere excuses one produces for hiding what one is incapable of doing. This makes them unsuccessful and then it becomes a habit.
Yes! Blame Game can become a habit if not consciously uprooted from one’s life!
And what does blame game indicate? The blame game is the game of timid. It comes easily to those who do not have courage to face life. Life poses several questions at various times. The people who are afraid of failures are the people who try to escape by blaming others. Life is two sided coin. It comes with the successful moments as well as failures. World hasn’t witnessed a person who hasn’t seen and experienced both. Then why to fear failure?
Winston Churchill once said,” Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm”!
Blame game is the worst played game which comes due to the following reasons:
1) Lack of courage: People who lack courage fear to face failures. They don’t want to take charge of something that they failed in. They want to shrug off the responsibility of failure and thus, they find an excuse for the failure. They blame the circumstances, the situations and many times other people who are involved in the project with them.
As the saying goes, “An inefficient workman always blames his tools”!
These gamers find excuses which would make them less responsible of the failure.
Certainly, the example quoted above is that of a blame game instead of an excuse. If people were not co-operating the employee could have arranged for a meet to discuss the issues!
People with courage often stand up for their failures. They analyze what went wrong in their efforts and if at all it is their mistake they accept it wholeheartedly. They are bold enough to accept their mistakes and learn from those for future projects. They firmly believe in the philosophy that “ In order to succeed in life you must first be willing to experience failure”!
2) Lack of Discipline: “The more disciplined you become, the easier life gets”!
Discipline is a must to succeed in life. If one doesn’t possess this virtue, he tends to play blame game when he fails. When one starts a project or a task one should be good at estimating the time it will take to complete the project. One needs lot of persistent efforts to finish the work in particular time.
Indiscipline interferes with the persistency of efforts and causes missing links which may not be connected again or may take longer to connect. This leads to loose ends and yes failure! One has to inculcate the habit of discipline in order to stop the worst game of blame game.
Discipline after all is knowing what needs to be done and doing the same when you actually don’t want to do it!
3) Procrastination: “Procrastination is like a credit card- It is fun until you get the bill”
And the price of procrastination is quite huge. Don’t put it off to tomorrow what you can do it today. People who like to blame others and situations for their failure are the ones who procrastinate the most. The tendency to avoid difficult work is the one which leads to procrastination of work. One needs to apply mind to difficult tasks at hand. One needs to manage time well, by prioritizing the activities one has. “Project prioritization matrix- Eisenhower matrix “ is a tool which can help anyone keep the track of importance of any activity based on its urgency. Once an activity gets delayed one may get entangled with other routine activity or countering an urgent task.
These are some of the reasons why one takes the rescue of blame game. One needs to change oneself and inculcate power of good habits. Habits change when one continuously works on them. It takes time but the self esteem it builds is totally worth it.
Thanks for reading.

Four formidable pillars of success

It is often said,” Nothing succeeds like success!” It is indeed the truth. Once you are successful there is no looking back. Many success stories are a testimony to this statement.The success story of Steve Jobs who was fired from his own firm is one to get inspired from.Stories like this have inspired us and keep motivating us to achieve success. We all desire success. Who wants to fail? We all have dreams and wish our dreams could come true. We often wonder ,” What will make me successful in my endeavor”?
Well, we here discuss the mantra for SUCCESS.
There are four formidable pillars wherein lies the foundation of success viz. courage, desire, direction and hard work. All these four essentials pave the way to success and work in cohesion to make your dreams come true. Remember success is never an accident. But it is a choice which one constantly makes. The choice of emotions, feelings, attitude and above all a discipline which one practises everyday until he meets success.
“You are the masterpiece
of your own life.
You are the Michelangelo
of your own life.
The David you are sculpturing
is you
(Dr. Joe Vitale)” This is the quote from a famous book ” The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne.
Definitely who else can turn your fate towards success? It is only one, who has to be successful, should work out courageously in his life to realize his dream and his desires with relentless hard work in a particular direction. This, alone, could turn the tables to success. No one else can be held responsible for a failure and no one else can enjoy the sweet success than the one striving hard for it.
Let us discuss these “must haves ” which can lay a strong foundation for success as one can’t buy success- It needs to be built!
1) Courage:- ” Courage is not the absence of fear but the acquired ability to move beyond fear.”
Courage is the ability to take up what sets you on fire. Courage is to pursue one’s passion and attain success. But many times the fear of failure takes one away from following one’s passionate dreams.
As the quote by Marc Anthony goes,” If you love what you do, you will never work for a day in your life! When you work for something you love, you tend to put heart and soul into it and the result is a fruitful outcome. So why not be courageous enough to achieve success by doing what you love? Michael Jordan , renowned Basketball player is the leading example of courage. He was courageous enough to pursue his dream of being a football player in spite of several failures..
Indeed, courageous terrains are the risky ones. But it is often said,” No risk is the biggest risk”. One needs to take calculated risks and foresee hindrances while one takes the path of courageous behavior.
Take up your passion as an adventure and go ahead with the well chalked out plan to achieve success without any delay!
It is true that Success is not final and failure is not fatal. So what is that differentiates between the two? Well, it is a continuous courage one possesses to overcome the failures and to convert those into success which really counts.
2)Desire- “ A desire is the starting point of all achievements, not a hope,not a wish but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.”….Napoleon Hill
Indeed, one has innumerable desires throughout one’s life but to realize those desires one needs to work hard in a certain direction. If one desires something quite passionately, one finds a way and is ready to work hard to achieve it with commitment and dedication. If the desire is weak, one often ends up with an excuse. Many people desire to be millionaire, and many others to be a film actor. But why all of them can’t fulfill their desires while only a few carve their niche?
Well, one needs to have strong willpower in order to support the equally strong desire.
For eg:- If one fat person wants to lose his extra pounds, he should wilfully exercise and control his diet, or sweet tooth. Thus, exercising and controlling his dietary habits are entirely dependent on his willpower.
It is often thought that the desire is a product of will but rather its converse is true. Will is a product of desire. The more your desire to attain some height, or achieve something in life the more is your will to help achieve it.
Thus, we can also say that the distance between the success and failure is measured by power of one’s desires. A person who has unsuppressable desire is sure to walk the distance towards success sooner when compared to the one less desirous. This also leads to the fact that the stronger the desire the sooner the achievement. One should always dig into one’s desires and build a strong will to materialize the same.
Bill Gates has been desirous of the success his company enjoys today. Nothing can be achieved without a strong desire.
Let us now come to the most important of all the pillars:-
3) Hard Work:- For All your days prepare
   And meet them ever alike
   When you are the anvil, bear-
   When you are the hammer, strike!
                                                                                                                            ….Wings of fire by Dr A.P.J
The power of hard work can never be underestimated. Hard work always bears sweet success. There are proven stories which lead to the fact that determined hard work never gets unrecognized. Consistency in hard work leads to the sure destiny of success. There is no elevator to success and thus, one needs to climb the stairs. One should not only work hard but one should work in silence and let the success roar, eventually.
Hard work goes hand in hand with patience. One has to be patient enough to enjoy the success after one’s hard work. The best example is of the farmer. Farming is no joke. One has to toil hard to sow the seeds in the fields and be patient enough to reap the harvest. The crop doesn’t grow in a single day but takes its own time. The seeds of hard work needs to be nurtured with patient care.
It is nothing but disciplined hard work throughout the years which has produced the stalwart legends like Abraham Lincoln or Nelson Mandela . It may be asked whether hard work guarantees success! It might not guarantee success but it helps in improving the chances towards success. It is often said that if hard work becomes one’s weapon then success is bound to be one’s slave.
One might encounter bad luck or bad moments in life but relentless hard work works as a alchemist which transforms into great success.
The Indian freedom Struggle led by M K Gandhi is a testimony of his hard work towards achieving independence.
And we now come to fourth pillar of ensuring success:-
4) Direction:- Direction of efforts plays an important role when striving to achieve success. Hard work should always be accompanied with right direction. Remember :-Hard work without correct direction leads nowhere.
Swami Vivekanand was guided by Saint Ramakrishna in his pursuit of higher self. A mentor is the one who provides for the correct direction and guidance so that one often reaches one’s goals without wasting time in futile ways. When one desires of something one needs to specifically chart out the plan, detail in the timeline within which one needs to achieve it and finally search out for a mentor who can guide accurately guide him onto the path of success.
Dr A P J has rightly quoted in his book Wings of fire
” When the student is ready, the teacher will appear!” With mere talent one can’t dream to achieve success. One has to get the ship guided in the proper direction else it will be drowned or may not reach its successful destination.
Acquiring success is not so difficult. It is merely when your desire meets a courageous and well-directed hard work that leads to success. Success is 99% perspiration and 1 % inspiration. Success comes to those who believe in the power of their dreams and desires. These people work hard towards achieving those desires with relentless conviction, dedication and discipline even at the cost of risking their lives. No denying the fact that hard work is indeed a two way street. You get back what exactly you have put in!!

Introduction to the forthcoming Self-help Book: ‘PowerPacked Personality’

Yes! Indeed, once you start working or even before that the race begins and you keep wondering “What made me lose and the other one win, the same race?” You question yourself amidst the darkest deep nights but get no answer. And finally you create one. You blame your destiny. This is the only way to find comfort.
One often becomes uncomfortable when one thinks about the failures one had. No one likes to own the responsibility especially of the failed endeavor. One tends to forget these unhappy monologues; thanks to the mundane activities of life.
But these monologues if dug deeper, have the power to take us closer to the real answers we seek. This book is aimed at giving you an insight into your life, its challenges and the answers you desperately want to find out. If the principles propounded are followed in true spirit, life will be no longer an irritating jigsaw puzzle but an enjoyable and successful journey.
Though comparison is odious, yet at a certain stage of life, one tends to compare oneself with others. It is indeed a natural tendency to measure one’s success, joy or happiness. And then the person confronts a battery of questions like: “Why am I not rich like him? Though we studied together and were best friends? Once close buddies, why am I shy of even reaching out to him? How come he/she has achieved what I could just not think of? What makes her so very desirable?
In short, one tends to become jealous of others’ success. Jealousy, certainly, is best avoided but if dealt properly could give us the desired drive that will take us to our desired destination, our sought after goals. Success, prosperity, peace of mind and happiness just follow.
This book will help you understand yourself, leverage all natural human emotions through simple step-by-step forward movement. Simplicity of understanding and ease to follow practices and procedures are the principal features of this book.
The book will work as a reference manual describing how to handle difficult situations. It could work as a catalyst to bring out of the shell and make your existence as lively and as colorful as that of a butterfly.
Further, the book addresses the other personality issues that keep you away from achieving the success you always dreamt. It shows the path towards improvement and elevates your self-confidence to an untapped level. The book throws light on most of the important skill set and behavioral traits which successful people possess as listed below:
1) Positive Attitude: “A negative attitude is like a flat tyre! If you don’t change it, you will never reach anywhere!” Attitude defines the major part of your personality. It makes you who you are. It is the way you respond to what you face in life. Thus, a positive person seeks opportunities in the challenges they encounter whereas a negative person finds faults with the situations or the people.
This book will help you identify your attitude and help you learn the ways to correct the flaws adopting certain simple procedures to be followed consistently.
2) Effective Communication: Today’s world is a shrunken world. Globalization has brought us closer. Good Communications has become more important than ever before. Both, verbal and written communication skills are critical to understand others and to express yourself effectively. This book is your guide to develop these skills. Simple exercises easy to follow offer you powerful technique to improve on these. There is no limit to improvement.
3) Interpersonal skills: We continuously interact with the family, colleagues, friends and society. We have to work with those around and maintain harmonious relations. Good interpersonal skills are, therefore, crucial to our success and happiness. Through this book we take you through the various methods which would help you imbibe the necessary interpersonal skills.
4) Continuous Improvement: Stagnation doesn’t breed success! Today’s fast changing world demands dynamic people who keep abreast of latest information and the changing advanced technology. Successful people have a quest to explore more, learn more and thereby, pursue excellence. But one can’t be directionless in exploration.
This book provides you a direction. It can act as a personal guide so that you know what are you heading towards.
5) Willpower: Willpower is the strongest virtue which successful people possess and which helps them achieve distinguished success. It is the ability to perform consistently under the testing times and the ability to withstand the difficulties. Willpower, alone, often defines one’s success. This book sheds light on the way to focus your physical, mental and intellectual energies and to build strong willpower. Success, then, is just a few steps away with strong willpower.
6) Habits: Power of good habits are vitals to success. The book intends to inculcate all the basic formal good habits like humility, understanding, empathy for others. It will also help you develop a sense of humor which is a rare trait these days. This book will enable you to be the best of yourself.
7) Time management:- Time and Tide wait for none. This might sound a cliche but it is the hardcore truth. One needs to effectively manage this very resource which is equally distributed to everyone on this planet. This book will hold your hands and guide you to use time in the best possible manner.
How does one use this book?
Well, before using this book one needs to have undergone a self analysis. An analysis helps in the long way to identify one’s strengths and weaknesses. One needs to retrospect about the successful times and identify what contributed to those magnanimous events. Was it your sheer talent, initiative or a group effort? Once you get answers to this question, ask yourself again whether you still use those elements in your endeavors? If you encounter a negative answer, ask yourself again “Why not?”After all history repeats itself.
It is equally important to ponder over the failures of life as it is to dwell over success. Failures are the major lessons to be learnt in life. Ask yourself, –
“When did I fail and Why?”
“Is it because of my shortcomings?”
If the answer is yes, note down the shortcomings and counter them with the methods in this book.
This book can be used as a reference material for developing a desirable and successful personality once you have done with the self questionnaire presented above. Happy personality development ahead!

8 Moves to Maintain Right Perspective

Life is lived through your perspective, your perspective of life. Perspective for an artist or an architect is how the object looks in relation to other objects around. Likewise, ‘Perspective of Life’ is relative to what we see around and what we have to deal with in our normal day to day life.

Never Undermine Perspective. It is said that never underestimate the power of perspective. It can change everything. Your attitude depends on your perspective of life. You may believe that there are too many ups and downs or you may view the same as the process of growth.
Your Perspective Guides you about the relative importance of things. Thus, your priorities will depend on your perspective. One must keep in mind that in the environment of constant change, one may has to revisit one’s perspective often.
Time is a resource which has been equally distributed to all human beings. The moment you realize the importance of time it will reflect on your perspective and accordingly you start dealing with people and situations differently.
An interesting example of perspective may be attributed to the people who are very short. They have always to look up. At the same time the person who is proud and vain will tend to look down on others. So the person who is grounded will see the reality much better and will succeed in building up good relationship with the people at work place in society and at home. The proud will not.
‘We cannot change the cards we are dealt, but how we play our cards is in our hand’. Thus the life may be looked as a game of cards in which our ability and our choice to choose the right path are both very important. Many a times if you are too much concerned about something, your worry about the same may lead you to wrong decisions.
Never try to give any explanations to people who do not want to understand you. People only hear what they want to hear and the best examples that you may give to such people is only waste of your time. Therefore don’t do that.
An important point to maintain your right perspective is that you should never compare yourself with any other person. Comparison is odious and should always be shunned.
It’s necessary not to worry because worry does not solve any problems of tomorrow, but it surely takes away your peace, today. Actually, solving problems is the significance of life. So, it’s necessary to re-training your mind to process life as it is. Problems are perceived because you find that things are not happening the way you want them to happen. Peace cannot be forced to stay with you but it can be achieved by proper understanding and with proper perspective.

Thanks for reading.

Eight Big Benefits of Belief (Self-Belief)

In life it is necessary to have some beliefs. That does not mean that you need to follow any dogma or belief forced on you. You can pick your own beliefs with discretion. First, let us understand what is self-belief. What are the qualities that it inherits? Self belief is an invaluable virtue which brings great possibilities in your life. Its indications are that you:
i) Stop making any excuses for any reason what-so-ever.
ii) Do not indulge in any negative thought.
iii) Stop thinking that difficulties surround you alone. You do not jump to conclusion and take hasty actions. You express your fears to others without any hesitation, because you keep in mind that everyone has some fears.
iv) You stop procrastinating because that is indicative of your lack of confidence.
v) Stop pursing perfection. Perfection is never achieved. It only stops you from moving ahead.
Once you develop self belief and you observe that you conform to all what has been said above, you will find the following eight advantages coming to you smoothly and seamlessly.

Self-belief enables you to hold strong conviction. All things do not happen the way you have planned or the way you expect. But strong conviction will help you to move ahead without fear of failure.
Self belief also helps you develop optimistic attitude which is necessary today in the wake of fast changing world. Life is becoming extremely competitive. Any opportunity missed once may never come back again. But if you have a negative attitude you will not be able to catch the fleeting possibilities.
Your self-belief also makes you more reliable to others. Thus you tend to build up better relations with others. Your credibility is not question. Since people can trust you they vie for good relations with you. Needless to say that for any significant project you need help from others.
Self-belief also helps you to be focused and self motivated. You no longer take life as it comes. You don’t depend on unknown sources to bring you luck. You carve your own destiny. Self motivation helps you to maintain enthusiasm and interest in life.
Your risk taking ability improves if you start relying on yourself. It is said that there are no gains if there are no risks. Your conviction helps you to take calculated risks in meeting the challenges of life. The tendency to avoid and escape facing challenging situation reduces substantially. You start realizing that difficulties form a necessary part of life.
Further, self-belief enables you to give and receive constructive criticism with an open mind. In the current scenario exchange of ideas and views are extremely important. The autocratic leader is not acceptable any more. So if you want to progress you have to collaborate with others from your own organization or outside outfits.
Self-belief helps you to be more assertive. You start caring for yourself more than pleasing others. Someone said that he doesn’t know any formula of how to succeed. The sure short formula for success has never been discovered. But there is a firm unbeatable formula for failure and that is trying to please everyone. Your self-belief will not allow you to embark on the journey of securing approvals where these are not mandatory.
Last but not the least, you start working on improving your self respect. You realize that if you do not respect yourself, others will follow suit. When you’re in need to raise self esteem, you become more effective and you become more productive. Now, you start managing your time very effectively as any improper or inadequate use of your time will hurt your self-esteem.

Thanks for reading.

Listen to being Loved and be Happy

Loved breeds happiness. And when you make others happy, you are loved. There is a close bond between love and happiness. How does listening help you in being loved and being happy? This is the subject of our discussion in this essay. The feeling that you are being loved brings you satisfaction. It enhances your self esteem and results in happiness. When others care for you, you feel important and when they listen to you, you feel significant and elated which adds to your happiness. Same is true when you listen to them.
Let’s deal with the subject by considering the following 3 questions:
What is good listening?
How does it help you to being loved?
How does it help you to be happy?
Question 1. What is good listening?
i)It requires you to put your agenda aside and totally devote to understanding and assimilating what is being said. You don’t listen to give a reply, but you just listen to understand. The moment you become keen to give a reply, your mind will start analyzing the speech from your own perspective. It will hinder your ‘objective’ understanding.
ii) Your attention should be fully in the present. There should be no thoughts about the past nor should you think about future.
iii) You need also to understand the body language of the speaker. And, this would include eye contact, posture, facial expression etc.
iv) Listening needs to be non-judgmental. You must not allow your likes and dislikes or personal prejudice to affect the meaning the speakers wants to project.
v) To be listened is so important for the people that many a times they will like to be heard rather than just granted the request what they requested.
vi) Active listening calls for you to listen about 80% of the time without interruption balance 20% of the time you may ask questions. This will indeed be an attribute of good listening.
vii) You need to make it known to the speaker that you are attentively listening. Thus, your nods with your head and words like ‘Yes’hmm ‘I see, I agree go long way to make be you an adept active listener.
viii) You will indeed enjoy your choice of active listening with the results that you will derive from the activity.
Question 2. How does active listening help you to being loved?
Now we can consider how listening actively makes others happy and make you in turn happy. They not only respect you but they love you if you actively listen to what they say.
The speaker feels that he/she are important when you carefully listen to them. They are reassured that you care for them. In turn they will care for you. The speaker thinks that they have some worthy ideas that is being expressed. And if you don’t listen to them with due attention, they will feel let down. But if on the other hand you not only listen but make it known that you have listened, the speaker will feel elated and happy and so will you be. Respect is always mutual, you have to earn respect. You have to make others happy to receive positive vibes making you happy in return.
Besides, better listening rids you of any bitter discussion. You understand that these are futile. Avoiding arguing, you also avoid bitterness which often is the result of trying to win an agreement. Active listening empowers you to hold your opinion without any offence. Because of your listening skills you are in a position to offer you opinion in a relevant manner. When your conversation with everyone becomes more meaningful, both of you enjoy it. Undoubtedly it brings happiness. Exchange of ideas in such a situation brings about a lot of learning on both sides. Continuous learning raises your self –esteem which in turn makes you satisfied with yourself and be contented.
In fact, even between the spouses the problem starts with one not listening to other. One feels ignored and the problem starts. Left unattended, it grows into unmanageable differences. If we are unhappy at home or at the work, place life is messed up. Children too turn rebellious because they feel that parents don’t try to understand them. In the fast changing world today maintaining good relations is more challenging than ever. Yet good relationship is emanating from better understanding which forms the foundation of respect and love.
So if you want to be loved by others listen to them and make them feel that they are loved. If you want to gain happiness distribute the same among others who will gladly reciprocate.

Question 3. How does Good Listening help you to be Happy?
Every living being has physiological needs and safety needs. Living being must have food to live and is keen to care for life. That part is survival story. No happiness is involved. But, after survival needs are fulfilled, psychological needs come to the fore for human beings.
As social entities, humans want to have a feeling of belonging. It’s an experience that they belong to a community, a family or a group gives them a feeling of satisfaction. If they are alone and uncared their psychological craving of togetherness disturbs them.
Good listening helps you to have cordial relations with your family and friends. When you listen to them they come closer to you, they experience that you are giving them importance. By listening you reassure them of their significance. Inwardly they feel obliged to you as you are fulfilling their psychological need of heart to heart communication.
As we discussed earlier ability to express your ideas give a great satisfaction. However, you approve of your ability only if the listeners pay attention, understand and when possible and needed, take action. Likewise when you are actively listening, the speaker feels comfortable and satisfied with his skill of expression. In turn the process fosters better relation and love for each other. This is particularly important among the family members and close friends. Besides, when you speak, you say what you already know. No doubt it satisfies your need for expression, but you don’t learn anything new. But listening gives you the opportunity to learn what you don’t know. Learning gives a great satisfaction and enhances your self esteem. When your self esteem is high you wish to do greater things. Self-esteem enables you to venture on the new turf, start new project. Maslow’s theory of happiness is recognized as the last word in respect of this great wishful emotion-happiness.
“There is a clear distinction between love and respect or esteem. The ability to feel self-esteem springs from being embraced by families and communities”. Further, you become more creative which again contributes to your confidence.
Good listening also helps you to mitigate your personal ego. Because when you are full of ego, you tend to behave as if you know all and therefore you shun listening, much less active listening.
Actualization makes you really happy. And what is actualization? Maslow defines actualization as “what a man can be, he must be. This need may be referred to the desire for self-fulfillment. So discovery of self, understanding the capabilities and then doing what it takes to actualize yourself will grant the best results. But this cannot take place unless you are a good listener. Further, survey reveals that you tend to perceive situations, people and their reality more accurately if you are good listeners.
With all the advantages described above there remains no doubt that listening and its resultant process will make you one, who understands the world and the people better. This understanding will make you happier, more than your expectations.
Thanks for reading.

Fear, Greed and the Management

The change world has witnessed in 20^th century is for more predominant than in 5 centuries earlier. But 21^st century is generating a far more visible variance. With the change happening so fast, every organization has to keep pace surviving. Till the last century any enterprise would be satisfied by a certain percentage of incremental growth every year in production, sales or profits. That was a linear growth. But in the current century entrepreneurs are hungry for exponential growth. So the game of the business has undergone a drastic change. Accordingly the enterprise owners have changed their HR policy and motivation techniques.
Employee motivation till now:
Motivation has always been recognized as essential driver for management. In order to ensure that the workforce move ahead as a team and contribute to the organization’s objectives. The business leaders recognized and carried out the certain procedures for enhancing productivity and keep to the staff motivated. These were positive initiatives which can be summarized as under:
i) First on the list is that the employees must have the feeling that the management recognizes that they are significant part of the organization. They contribute productively to the company’s mission.
ii) A person who is made to feel important applies his/her mind while performing any task. Further, application of mind results in the person enjoying the work which in turn motivates.
iii) Listening to the juniors promotes real participative conversation. The manger is able to understand their team. They know what to communicate and how to communicate to move the wheel of progress.
iv) A policy of systematic engagement encourages staff to take help of seniors at the time when it is needed. The efficiency increases and so also the satisfaction of the staff members.
v) In traditionally managed family organization the owners would make their children to start from the bottom. If it is an engineering organization, working at the shop floor would be the first step for induction in the enterprise, and then gradually upwards. This helped workers to have a positive attitude towards the organization.
vi) An experienced senior was given the responsibility of mentoring. The mentor would ensure that the newcomer is exposed to each department. Doing the work is the best way to understand how to perform it. This would be considered as personalized training. All newcomers would be exposed to it irrespective of who they are.
vii) Positive feedback helped to keep anyone motivated. But appropriate criticism when necessary formed a part of training. This too ensured that person did not lose direction.
viii) Proper compensation and reasonable periodic enhancement too were taken care of. If a person is not able to meet family expenses, there would be some kind of pressure which dissociates and breaks the bond.
ix) All organizations need to outsource some of their activities. In times gone by the owners would allow the senior managers to start such small ancillary units and use the services or products. It would provide additional income. This also served to strengthen the bonds.
In the competitive business environment today, organizations which are hungry for growth have to adopt aggressive policies. Performance, sales and the bottom line are the chief parameters for appraisals. Generally, the CEO is engaged with clear understanding of producing some specific results. His/her compensation is fixed as per the promised results. So, it becomes their duty to live up to the promise. Fat compensation command fat results. Here, starts the story of Greed and Fear. For many organizations these two tools work as the chief motivators.

Fear and Greed
Fear and greed are two primal emotions which have been used as strong motivators for people to act. Normally insurance business relies on fear, stock market on greed. But today every CEO tends to use these.
The CEO who is hired the by the management using the above two tools, he/she uses the same for their subordinates. How else they would achieve some deadly targets? Due to fierce competition in the industry CEO and all have to slog and work like automatons 24×7. The good packages become just enough to meet the growing needs of the upscale lifestyle fear of losing the job becomes rampant. The situation has its heavy toll on the working people. Meeting impossible deadlines become deadly and people suffer. The story doesn’t end here. It only begins.
Most people engaged in the enterprise work under constant pressure and become stressed. Whenever genuine results are possible, it happens, but where the situation looks impossible, window dressing is employed. Manipulative reports and figures resembling mirage are displayed. An illusion of reality is created, which may last for a short time or at times even for a longer duration. But how long can illusory, self satisfying techniques last? The best known example of deceptive reporting is the story of subprime loan sanctioned in USA due to which some of the biggest banks fell.
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Five Steps to turn Failure in to success

Failure is one necessary step towards achieving anything which is significant. Failure needs to be accepted, as fear of failure never allows you to take any risks. It pushes you into inaction which is the bane of life. Inaction is worse than procrastination. In any one’s life, procrastination is the enemy of a strong personality. It fills you with guilt which goes on increasing. Though failure has many negative effects, there are also some positive outcomes. In this essay, I would like to discuss both the negative and positive attributes of the failure. More importantly, I will put forth some suggestions on how we can leverage the positive aspects of failure and use it as a tool to propel us towards achieving our mission.
Negative aspects of failure are listed below:
i) It discourages you. Sometimes you get into depression as you feel you are good for nothing.
ii) It affects our positivity. It tends to weaken our hope and brings in a streak of pessimism in our life.
iii) We start avoiding company of our successful peers which dampens our spirits. This in turn weakens our personality.
iv) Sometimes, it may make you feel that life is good for nothing. It is not worth living. You want to escape. In worst cases, it pushes people to try to commit suicide.
v) In order to cover the loss due to failure, it may make the victim reckless. Trying to cover losses without proper thinking, the person plunges into bigger problems, debts etc.
vi) Often, failure leads to addiction. In a bid to escape facing the realities of life the ‘failed person’ resorts to drinking, drugs etc.
vii) Failure brings social stigma whereby people look down upon you. No one likes to be in the company of someone who has failed. Failure is not accepted as a part of struggle for success is some societies.
viii) It is sad but the victim is often ridiculed to make matters worse. Instead of helping to pull the person out of trouble those who had harbored some kind of grudge enjoy putting spanner in the wheel. The victim suffers even more.
ix) Extreme anxiety attacks the mind and the victim starts doubting everything. Suspicion brings further misery to the life of the victim.
x) Besides, failure may result in sleeplessness. It aggravates the difficulties and problems. It also affects health and weakens the mind.
So much for the negative impact of failure. Positive results of failure are also many, if the failure is viewed in the proper perspective. How the failure impacts a person or an organization depends on your immediate response after the failure takes place. If you own the failure and analyze the reasons, failure turns a teacher. Best lessons are drawn only from failures. But if you start the blame game and assign reasons of your failure to some people, sabotage or even the circumstances to give yourself a clean chit the failure snowballs into worse failure.
These are many reasons why failure should be viewed positively. I will list 5 which are most important according to some psychologists. These are:
i) As said above, failure acts as a teacher. Follow the lessons learned in a failed attempt and don’t repeat the same. Lessons learnt during failed projects, when put to practice and adopted suitably, shape the character.
ii) Failure inspires you to innovate. If one thing does not work, you try another. All scientific inventions are based on this aspect a failure. Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed. But I have found out 10,000 ways in which things don’t work”.
iii) Failure is used for quality enhancement. For any product, the quality department will try to find out the circumstances in which the product fails. But for software programmers this is just a necessary tool.
iv) Failure enables individuals to face facts of life. It helps you to understand that struggle in life is necessary. This is the only way you can come up.
v) The worst factor in anyone’s life is fear. Failure helps you to overcome your inherent fear and makes you courageous. Further, you develop courage to take calculated risks in life. This is necessary as the dictum – no risk no gains.
Having talked about the negative and positive aspects of failure, let us deal with the question, “How negative effects of failure can be countered and how can we turn failure into success? I give below the answer as 5 steps that we must take to achieve the desired results.
Step I. Be prepared to accept failure. For any venture which poses some risks you must be prepared for the worst at the beginning itself. In this case you will be able to handle the situation because you are not taken by surprise.
Step II. Create a strong desire in your mind to succeed in spite of the grave difficulties on the way. Become prepared to face the difficulties and work hard. Don’t expect the task to be easy. You strong desire will help you to adopt this attitude.
Step III. Open your mind to embrace any change that you may have to make in your plan of action. World is changing fast and there is no science to inform you what changes will take place and when. Your open mindedness will come to your rescue.
Step IV. Develop your mind power. Comfort or discomfort resides only in mind. While a heavy traffic cannot deter someone from enjoying listening to the music in cool comfort of an air-conditioned car, it can be a harrowing experience for another soul who is not prepared to adopt the change.
Step V) Last but not the least, choose a role model. There are many great world leaders who have embraced many failures before coming out as great winners. Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela or Steve Jobs- who was turned out the company he started, are just a few examples.
Therefore, choose your role model. Read and understand his/her life. Draw your own lessons and go ahead with your projects.
When we focus only on the positive attributes of failure during the journey of the work involved, we will be rid of the harmful impact of so many of the negative attributes of failure. So our attitude and choice of actions make all the difference.
Thanks for reading.

All About Talent

Everyone is endowed with one talent or another. It’s important for us to discover the hidden talent. In fact the main purpose of education should be to identify the talent of an individual. However in our education system the students at school rarely identify what they have to do in life. Except for a few of them who become clear about what they have to do after the school well in time. In such happy cases, some of them are helped by their parents and some close relatives and a few of them by the teachers.

If the inherent talent is recognized and the child is encouraged to pursue a career in line with the inherent talent, he/she is bound to do very well in life. When you pick up a career where you enjoy your job, you are likely to excel in the profession.

Cicero, the great philosopher had said 2000 years ago:
“Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability”
It is true even today. Success of persons like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates confirm the veracity of the statement. Whatever you are by nature keep it; your line of talent lies in what the nature has intended you to be.
It is often said that you cannot come out of mediocrity if you are or have to pursue a career which is not to your liking. There is one school of thought that says “if you so desire you can start liking anything that you may be doing”. I don’t entirely deny the truth of the statement. But it is easier said than done. It may be possible, in rare cases, only with consistent efforts and training under a mentor. So, do what you can to discover your talent sooner than later, and leverage it.

Thanks for reading.