Poems for Peak Personality!
Two Short Poems, Today!
Poems for Peak Personality!
Focus
Thought words and deeds
of a focused man
Stimulates action
as per plan
Unexpected situations
Are overcome
others are managed
Avoided some
Define your goals
Far and near
All your impediments
your focus will clear
Resolve
Should you dare to resolve?
Turbulent task or evolve
Plan to meet enemy strong
Fight a battle that may prolong
Develop strong will
With best of skill
It’s your determination
That denotes dedication
Which alone culminates
Bringing success ultimate
Poem of the Day – Time
Time
Often,
Value of time is little known
for time’s inherent wealth,
scanty respect is shown.
Any other possession; if
we lose.
We can try to get it back
if we choose.
Wealth of time
will never return.
Simple lesson, though
often we don’t learn.
For time if lost, is lost forever.
It’s same for the stupid, and the clever.
Yet if asked, how much
you value your time
you may find, you care less.
With invaluable time;
should we ever make a mess?
We regret mistakes
committed in the past.
And for futures’ sake,
worry our tasks.
What about the present?
We seem to forget;
though ‘present’ is the best time, I bet.
Every moment of time you must use
Achieving anything significant that you may choose.
Poem of the Day – Attitude
Attitude
Every tide yields to an ebb.
Every high heralds a low
Storm in sea secures a calm
These are nature’s fluctuations, which flow.
Day fades to fetch the night
Until it is morn again.
Spring softens winters worst bite
Happiness returns without a stain.
Success and failure are intertwined
Joy for ever; you will never find.
Life does depend on what you do
More than that, it is your attitude.
Poem of the Day – Duty First
Duty First
Row the boat of ‘duty’
Sail safely across the sea.
Search through your mind
What your duty can be.
Never is there a situation
Nor any circumstance
That could ever affect your intention
Of duty; you want to perform.
Hindrances, hurdles even hurricane
May hurt or shake your resolve.
With devotion to your duty;
Greater courage will evolve.
Duty first, always in mind
Greater joy; you will never find.
Women is no less!
By Invitation. Author Abdul Kalam.
Women are an important element of our Society. The modern society has started recognizing the individual identity of women. She is believed to have her aspiration, abilities and qualities as a man does have and it is also agreed that she should have the opportunities to develop her faculties and to express them according to her own choice.
Women can help the society in various ways. They can engage in social activities and work for the betterment of the society.
Young educated girls can get engaged in a profession of her choice. We need more doctors, engineers, software developers, and social workers. The world cannot grow at good pace unless women come forward and take initiative for the development works.
They can contribute enormously in the field of health care. Women education will also improve the level of sanitation and hygiene.
As a mother, her role in the development of the emotional psychological aspect of the new born child has been also very significant. She was not only the creator and maintainer of her child but an educator and disciplinarian as well.
One of the major problems of India society is the inferior position accorded to women. The do not enjoy equal status and their condition is far from satisfactory. Women Empowerment refers to strengthening the social, economic and educational powers of women. It refers to an environment where there is no gender bias and have equal rights in community, society and workplaces.
Women population is around 50% of the total population of the world. They have every right to be treated equally with men in every spheres of life and society. The empowerment of women would result in overall development of society both at micro and macro level. Active participation of women in economic activities and decisions, would contribute towards overall economic development.
The challenges/ barriers of women empowerment are the following:
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Because of the inherent superiority complex among the males, they often doesn’t allow their female counter-part to rise as high as them.
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High level of domestic responsibilities.
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Restrictions to participate in social, economic and religious activities.
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In our society, the boy-child often gets preference for education and healthy diet over the girl child.
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Preference for male-child still exist among many families in the society.
The solutions for empowerment of women includes the following:
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Education through mass communication is very important. Both women and men should be made aware of their responsibilities to promote and practice gender-equality.
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Gather national data and identify the areas where instances of violence and gender-inequality is the most. This data can be used by the Government, NGOs and field workers to raise the status of women.
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The society should be made aware that both boy-child and girl-child are equal, and they both should have equal access to resources.Thanks for reading.
De-stress with Cute Cats
By Invitation. Author Abdul Kalam.
Domestic pets are a source of pleasure and fun. Most boys and girls love to keep pets. Pets help an individual to achieve a healthy state of mind and playing with our pets makes most of us happy.
Though dogs are the most preferred pets because of their faithfulness and honesty, but still there are thousands of cat lovers in the world.
The cat is a beautiful small animal resembling the likes of a tiger. It lives on the streets as well as in our houses and is one of our favorite pet animals. The cat’s body is covered with soft, silky hair and has four short legs and sharp claws hidden in the fleshy pads.
Cats seldom make any noise while walking or running. Cats have bright eyes and they can even see in the dark. Cat is found all over the world and milk is cats favourite. Many people keep cats as their pets to scare away the mice. But unlike dogs, cats are selfish and dishonest. Cats even steal food from our kitchen and are very ferocious at times.
But in general cats are gentle and playful and they love playing with the children. Many people think that cat is a harmful animal for it spreads various disease like diphtheria and thus they advice to keep children away from the cat. Some people also associate black magic with a cat.
The most significant superstition related to the cat is that if a cat crosses the way of a passerby, he or she should not walk past. This is just a superstition because common sense says that when a cat crosses a road it means that the animal needs to go somewhere. It is as simple as that.
Cats possess scary grey coloured eyes and most of the children are scared of cat’s eyes. A cat gives birth to three to four kittens at a time and these kittens need proper love and care when they are born. Taming a cat is not difficult if one is determined to do so. When it comes to food, a variety of cat food is available in the market with various options such as canned cat foot, dry foods, kitten food etc.
While taming a cat, it is essential to keep in mind if you have plants which are toxic to cats, they should be kept out of their reach. If your cat has given birth to kittens, make sure that your house is quiet because a lot of noise and activity can scare a small kitten and a cat lover would never wish to scare a kitten for sure. Cats can be shy in nature and can even take time while adjusting with the environment. One needs to be patient and deal with the animal with a lot of love and care.
Thank for reading.
Social media
By Invitation. Author Abdul Kalam.
Social media is a phrase that we throw around a lot these days, often to describe what we post on sites and apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and others.
But if we use the term to describe a site like Facebook, and also a site like Digg, plus a site like Wikipedia, and even a site like I Can Has Cheezburger, then it starts to get more confusing. Just what is social media anyway?
The term is used so vague that it can basically be used to describe almost any website on the internet today.
Or maybe not. Some people have more of a restricted view of social media, often equating it to mean the same as social networking (a.k.a. Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Other people don’t consider blogs to fall under the social media category.
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So, What Is Social Media?
Rather than define the term using a bunch of boring jargon that would probably only complicate things further, perhaps the best way to get a clearer understanding of it is to break it down into simpler terms. To start, let’s look at each word individually.
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The “social” part:
refers to interacting with other people by sharing information with them and receiving information from them.
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The “media” part:
refers to an instrument of communication, like the internet (while TV, radio, and newspapers are examples of more traditional forms of media).
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Okay, so from these two separate terms, we can pull a basic definition together:
Social media are web-based communication tools that enable people to interact with each other by both sharing and consuming information.
Yes, it’s a broad definition – but keep in mind that social media is a very broad term. This is likely as specific as we can get without zeroing in too much on a more specific subcategory of social media.
2. Common Social Media Features
The following list of common features are dead giveaways of a social media site.
If you’re questioning whether a particular site could be classified as social or not, try looking for at least one of these features.
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User accounts:
If a site allows visitors to create their own accounts that they can log into, then that’s a good sign there’s going to be social interaction. You can’t really share information or interact with others online without doing it through a user account.
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Profile pages:
Since social media is all about communication, a profile page is often necessary to represent an individual. It often includes information about the individual user, like a profile photo, bio, website, feed of recent posts, recommendations, recent activity and more.
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Friends, followers, groups, hashtags and so on:
Individuals use their accounts to connect with other users. They can also use them to subscribe to certain forms of information.
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News feeds:
When users connect with other users on social media, they’re basically saying, “I want to get information from these people.” That information is updated for them in real-time via their news feed.
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Personalization:
Social media sites usually give users the flexibility to configure their user settings, customize their profiles to look a specific way, organize their friends or followers, manage the information they see in their news feeds and even give feedback on what they do or don’t want to see.
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Notifications:
Any site or app that notifies users about specific information is definitely playing the social media game. Users have total control over these notifications and can choose to receive the types of notifications that they want.
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Information updating, saving or posting:
If a site or an app allows you to post absolutely anything, with or without a user account, then it’s social! It could be a simple text-based message, a photo upload, a YouTube video, a link to an article or anything else.
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Like buttons and comment sections:
Two of the most common ways we interact on social media are via buttons that represent a “like” plus comment sections where we can share our thoughts.
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Review, rating or voting systems:
Besides liking and commenting, lots of social media sites and apps rely on the collective effort of the community to review, rate and vote on information that they know about or have used. Think of your favorite shopping sites or movie review sites that use this social media feature.
3. What’s the Difference Between Social Media and Social Networking?
As mentioned earlier, a lot of people user the terms social media and social networking interchangeably as if they mean the exact same thing. Although the difference is subtle, they’re not the same. Social networking is really a subcategory of social media.
The easiest way to understand the difference between social media and social networking is by thinking about the terms “media” and “networking” separately. Media refers to the information you’re actually sharing–whether it’s a link to an article, a video, an animated GIF, a PDF document, a simple status update or anything else.
Networking, on the other hand, has to do with who your audience is and the relationships you have with them. Your network can include people like friends, relatives, colleagues, anyone from your past, current customers, mentors and even complete strangers.
They certainly overlap, which is why it gets confusing. For example, you can share media with your social network to gather likes and comments–a form of social networking. But you can also just upvote a link on Reddit, which is a social media platform, to help out the community and give your say in the matter without any intention of building relationships with other users.
Still confused? Try to think of social media like fruit. Apples, bananas, oranges, grapes, berries, melons and pineapples are all part of the broader fruit category the same way that social networking, social news, social bookmarking, wikis, blogs and private web messaging are part of the broader social media category.
4. Are Traditional Media Also Social Media?
Traditional media was mentioned earlier on in this article just to demonstrate broader examples of media, but don’t be fooled into thinking that TV, radio, and newspapers are a part of social media. At least not quite yet entirely. The line drawn between the two is slowly thinning as each continues to evolve.
Social media doesn’t just give you information but interacts with you while giving you that information. This interaction can be as simple as asking for your comments or letting you vote on an article, or it can be as complex as Flixster recommending movies to you based on the ratings of other people with similar interests.
Think of regular media as a one-way street where you can read a newspaper or listen to a report on television, but you have very limited ability to give your thoughts on the matter. Social media, on the other hand, is a two-way street that gives you the ability to communicate too.
5. What Are Some of the Known Issues With Social Media?
Social media isn’t all just fun and games with your friends, celebrities you admire, and brands you follow. There are lots of common problems that most major social media platforms haven’t totally solved, despite their effort to do so.
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Spam:
Social media makes it easy for spammers – both real people and bots – to bombard other people with content. If you have a Twitter account, you’ve probably experienced a few spambot follows or interactions. Likewise, if you run a WordPress blog, you may have gotten a spam comment or two caught by your spam filter.
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Cyberbullying/Cyberstalking:
Children and teenagers are especially susceptible to cyberbullying because they take more risks when it comes to posting on social media. And now that we all interact on social media via our mobile devices, most major platforms make it possible to share our locations, opening up the doors for cyberstalkers to target us.
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Self-image manipulation:
What a user posts about themselves on social media only represents a small portion of their life. While followers may see someone who’s happy and living it up via their posts on social media in such a way that makes them feel boring or inadequate by comparison, the truth is that users have the power to completely control what parts they do and don’t want to broadcast on social media to manipulate their own self-image.
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Information overload:
It’s not unusual to have over 200 Facebook friends or follow over 1,000 Twitter accounts. With so many accounts to follow and so many people posting new content, it’s almost impossible to keep up.
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Fake news:
Fakes new websites promote links to their own totally false news stories on social media in order to drive traffic to them. Many users have no idea that they’re fake in the first place.
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Privacy/Security:
Many social media platforms still get hacked from time to time despite having good security measures in place. Some also don’t offer all the privacy options that users need to keep their information as private as they want them to be.
6. What Does the Future Hold for Social Media?
It’s difficult to predict anything exactly, but if one thing can be said about the future of social media, it will probably be more personalized and less noisy. Over-sharing will be less of a problem and filtering out irrelevant information will become a stronger trend.
Snapchat is a social media platform that’s really at the forefront of social media evolution. Rather than blasting out updates for all our friends and followers to see, we use Snapchat more like we communicate in real life – with specific people only at specific times.
If anything, social media is probably about to move more toward ephemeral sharing for quicker, more intimate sharing without the stress of having to blast something out to hundreds or thousands of followers that stays up there unless it’s manually deleted. Instagram has already made the move toward ephemeral content sharing with its Snapchat-like stories feature, so maybe more platforms will be soon to follow.
Thank for reading,
Self awareness
This article on Self awareness is the second part of the series which takes you on specific aspects of self development. For those who have missed the first part you can read it here.
Self awareness is a relatively unknown facet of self development. Even though hardly talked about is importance can hardly be overemphasized. So what exactly is self-awareness?
Self awareness is a sharp realization of one’s own personality – it is a collective understanding of one’s strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, motivations and emotions. Self awareness is very important for anyone who wishes to be in better control of his life and relationships.
Self awareness has certain overt manifestations.
Eye for detail:
A self aware person has an eye for detail. This signifies that such an individual always focuses on his priorities and does not miss out on anything important by getting distracted by what is not.
Consciousness about every moment:
Time is money. A moment lost is lost forever. A self aware person is always conscious about his time and invariably knows how to make the best use of it. High productivity and efficiency are key attributes of a person of a time conscious person.
Active, Alive and Alert:
Self awareness enables a person to be alive to any emerging situation and ensures that he is active and alert in his response. This really indicates that such a person never suffers from procrastination which is the bane of life, and which has literally destroyed many personalities.
Learning through self observation:
Among other things, self awareness also inculcates in the individual the conscious habit of self observation. A person is able to observe himself in terms of what is good in him and what is not. He also tries to assimilate the good of others again by observing what to emulate.
Being honest with self:
It is often said – one can never run away from one’s own self. Being self-aware also implies that a person is honest with his own self. This requires a person to objectively analyze on the areas of weaknesses, and focus on covering his development needs.
Three Step process for developing self awareness:
Step #1: Being aware of emotions:
Often we tend to take decisions solely using our mind – what is commonly known as rational thoughts. However, being aware of our inner feelings – our instinct which is what our inner conscience tells us to do is equally important. With awareness of our gut feelings, we can start taking better decisions and take the first step to self awareness.
Step # 2: Track your feelings:
A self aware person is able to track his feelings both positive and negative. This can be best achieved by jotting down on a daily basis these feelings and then analyzing the trend. Monitoring the feelings is a way by which a self aware person is able to define his purpose in life, and is able to enhance positive feelings and channelize his thoughts into positive action.
Step # 3: Expand the practice beyond tracking the feelings:
Once a self aware person gets used to tracking his feelings, the next step is to track the energy level. This enables him to identify the period(s) of the day when he are most energized, focused, and is able to produce highest quality work. Tracking the energy also provides insights into what motivates and what drains the energy.
Ways to Develop Self-awareness:
Certain positive activities that can be undertaken on a daily basis for developing self awareness are:
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Look at yourself objectively:
This signifies that a person starts accepting himself for all his strengths and weaknesses.
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Keep a Journal:
Maintaining a journal helps you record your day to day experiences and enables you to better understand your difficulties and
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Goals / Plans / Priorities:
Start recording the goals, plans and priorities. Goals are the broad overall objectives to be achieved in life over a short/medium/long term. Plans represent the route map towards the achievement of the goals. Priorities signify the areas of focus when plans are put into implementation.
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Daily Self Reflection:
A process of daily self reflection ensures that an individual is never trapped in a rut. Self reflection is a key technique for generating self awareness and involves the following:
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Try out new experiences:The saying goes that you do the same things, the result remains the same. Trying out new experiences involves exploring new ideas, experimenting new techniques and find out new and innovate ways to solving the problem.
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Discover physical limits:A person only becomes aware of his true physical limits when he tests them. Pushing the limits enhances the physical capacity and also enables a person to do more
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Self motivate:Daily self reflection on how a person can keep himself self-motivated at all times. Self motivation is the power that enables a person to keep going.
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Meditation:
The process of meditation can help become self aware and focus clearing the clutter of unnecessary thoughts. Meditation helps an individual develop a unique focus that helps an individual in covering all the areas mentioned above.
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Feedback from friends:
Seeking out feedback from true friends involves getting their honest opinions about areas of improvement and weaknesses that need to be developed upon.
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Feedback at the work place:
Professional feedback can be sought from colleagues at work. This helps a person reach out and network and enables him to learn from the experience of others.
To sum up self awareness is not an eventual objective by itself. It is continuing process that enables a person to live a truly meaningful and fulfilled life. The process of discovering the true meaning of the term in all its facets is a truly rewarding process. The pointers mentioned above are only the starting points for you. All the best!
How to Brighten Your Personality to Realise Your Dreams?
Pages from my forthcoming book, ‘PowerPacked Personality’ for Your FREE reading!
Here are some more pages continued from where we left…..
Last week we had talked about the first step to realize your dream is to write down your specific goals. When you become very clear about your goal which will help you to realize your dreams, you have to work out a plan of action for realizing each of your specific goals. Here are some further pages which I hope you will need to understand and make suitable efforts. We have to always remember that anything significant cannot be achieved without consistent hard work. Perseverance is the key to climbing up. Leader of success is steep and difficult, but the rewards merit all.
Implementing your goals
- Why do you set your goals? Let’s consider this basic question. The simple answer is that you are not happy with your present status and you want to improve. Now let’s consider who is responsible for your present status? Your circumstances, influence of your parents, teachers, friends, relatives, neighbor and all those who have been interacting with you. They have influenced you mind which in turn has influenced your actions and behavior. Over the years you have formed some habits. Triggered by your habits, you continue to do the same things over and over again. Your relationships with others remain the same. Nothing changes. Therefore you don’t own what you want; you don’t garner respect from others. Life is drudgery. Nothing to look forward to. You accept that this reality and you have to live with it. And then, you write down your goals. These could be about health, career, finance, family, hobby and even spirituality.
- Once we understand that you background and habits have brought you to a situation which you are not happy with, you need to do whatever it takes to change these influences and most importantly change your habits. You may not be able to change company of everyone around you, but you can choose to divide your time according to your choice.
Implement Goals Quotes:
- People will always have an opinion, but you have to live life the way you want to. It’s very easy to tell others what to do, but difficult to implement it on yourself.
- Set some goals. Stay quiet about them. Smash the hell out of them. Clap for your damn self.
- Success is steady progress toward one’s personal goals. (Jim Rohn)
- You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.
- When a planner speaks of implementing goals rationally, he implies that it is possible to demonstrate logically and experimentally the relationship between the proposed means and the ends they are intended to further. (Alan A. Altshuler)
- In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell. (Jack Welch Winning)
Self-Belief
To be connected with earlier chapter.
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:
- Stop making any excuses for any reason what-so-ever.
- Do not indulge in any negative thought.
- 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.
- You stop procrastinating because that is indicative of your lack of confidence.
- Stop pursing perfection. Perfection is never achieved. It only stops you from moving ahead.
Once you develop self belief and you observe that you confirm 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.
Personal Productivity
Personal Productivity and its review constitute are essential ingriedients in the implementation and achievement of personal goals. But what is personal productivity? Does it mean how we manage our time? The answer is yes and no. Yes, time is an important aspect of personal productivity. Rather, it could be so provided your activities are aligned with your goals. And yet it is a lot more. Does it mean one’s achievement towards realization of personal goals? Not just that! Personal goals may change. Personal vision may change. And if one may say so personal mission statement if one ever cares to establish that – that also may change.
When we talk of mission statement or vision or an organization, that hardly ever changes. But when we are talking of an individual, the factors that affect a person’s likes and dislikes, desires, drastically change with changing circumstances, or even without these.
The most important factor for a person’s success is his/her personal productivity. As we growwe realize that it is not just money, not just health, not just family, or your social status, hobbies etc., that bring you happiness, but it is a combination of all these in varying proportions. So what we need to do is to align all our activities to achieve whatever we want in the aforesaid different fields.
Therefore a daily review of what you do becomes very important. In the highly competitive world we have today, the targets that the organizations set for you are hard ones. These sap your energy and rob you of the power and ability to think what you must do. You only start following sometimes even unachievable targets. In the process, you totally destroy you concept of personal productivity.
Hence, what is really needed is to have the right balance and proper perspective towards life. It is only such a healthy attitude that strikes a right balance between family and friends, home and work, health and money that will lead to a truly happy and successful life.
