Habit Archives — Page 2 of 3 — NIMBLE FOUNDATION BLOG

11 tearing elements of Negative attitude!

It is necessary to identify the negativity in your attitude. What is negative attitude? Negative attitude is when you start focusing on the problems that you might face during your efforts to achieve your goals. It is the lack of hope that things will happen to help you out in your mission. It is the feeling that people will not help you because on earlier occasions you met with rejections. Negative attitude is the lack of your conviction that you can overcome the hurdles that you might face during your journey. In a sense, negative attitude is also a lack of belief in you. Some more symptoms of negative attitude are enumerated below:

Laziness: When you think you don’t have the energy to get up and do the work. Sometimes you don’t even think and realize that laziness is simply whiling away the time. It is not even procrastination which will be described separately.
Low self esteem: It is an extremely harmful attribute in your personality. You start thinking that you are good for nothing. You accept the situations in which you are because your self esteem is so low that you think you can do nothing better.
Low productivity: Work has a strange tendency of expanding as per the time available. Even worse is when no time is allotted for the completion of a task. This gives you a feeling of solving certain important problems whereas in fact you are just being satisfied in remaining busy. This approach will never allow you to increase your productivity. For doing more in a given time, you have to stretch yourself. Therefore is it necessary that you allot specific time duration for a task. In the beginning, the allocation may seem difficult, but once you form a habit it will become much easier. Difficult or easy, it is necessary.
Lack of initiative: For any significant progress, initiative is necessary. What is initiative? Initiative is your first step for going ahead with a task. When it is something new, you have to creatively think and courageously take the first step, even if there is some risk. No risk is the biggest risk in life. Any significant initiative cannot be taken to move forward without accepting this reality. So don’t be afraid to take initiative.
Not listening to understand: In the course of conversations, sometimes we tend to focus so much on what we have to say, that we stop listening to the other person. This is particularly so when the speaker has said something for which we have a ready argument to negate what he has said. Unfortunately, such a habit does not allow us to listen and assimilate what the speaker says after that. Evidently it leads to miscommunication and problems. The solution is first understand and then be understood.
Faking: We feel envious of some people who are more successful in the material sense than we think that they deserve. Such a feeling leads us to a myth that it is their style which makes them successful and we try to imitate their conduct. This is a extremely bad situation. We lose belief in ourselves, and how can we expect that others will believe us.
Not trying to express: When we have certain ideas, but either we do not want to express, or we are afraid to express, is also indicative of our negative attitude. It is necessary to develop an ability to express without hesitation. The fear of rejection which takes away your ability to act is one of the serious handicaps.
Not learning lessons from mistakes: There is no one who does not commit mistakes. Whenever we undertake something new, mistakes may happen. This is normal. However, repeating the same mistake again and again, is neither normal, nor should be acceptable. Thus we must learn lessons from our past mistakes and use these lessons to direct our future efforts.
Ego: Ego happens to be another aspect of personality which does not allow us to grow. Ego comes in the way of our approaching people to help us. It makes us believe that it is below our dignity to seek help. A success Guru had said that there are eleven principles of achieving success. And what are these eleven principles? These are, ask, ask, ask….(eleven times).
Jealousy: Jealousy is a negative emotion which keeps sapping our creative energies. We gain nothing in the process. It makes us feel as victims of fate or poor destiny. Jealousy may even take away our sound sleep. The worst part is that sometimes it cannot be contained, it goes on swelling. Jealousy must be thwarted out of the personality.
Avoiding hard work: There is only one way to success, and that is the hard way. If we habitually seek short cuts it will be very difficult for us to work hard. What is working hard? When you are fully devoted to completing the job and you forget even your surroundings, you continue to work even when you are tired because you want to complete. That aspect of work may be termed as hard work. Initially it may be very difficult, but then one can form a habit. For any significant progress, hard work is necessary.

Thanks for reading.

Stress; Answer 20 Questions

I list below some questions which you need to ask yourself. Considering their importance in your success story, contemplate seriously and answer as honestly as you can. Please give marks from 1 to 4 in each question. In the end you have to add up your score. The scale of evaluation is given at the end.

Analysis:
After completing the assessment, you need to add up your score and compare your performance with the analysis given below. We all know the significance of human life is continuous improvement in all areas. Pursuit of excellence should be your habit.
You will find adequate suggestions and techniques for improvement in your weak areas during the program, its activities and the course material. Make the best use of the opportunities.
These questions are about the negative qualities. So if you rarely do it give your-self one mark. But if you do it very often it would be 4. Therefore lesser the points the better.
Scores:
47 & below Great! Just remember pursuit of excellence is unending.
48 to 63 identify the areas to be improved and work on these.
64 to 80. Please work seriously to remove the deficiencies.

Power of Good Habits!!

What is habit?
Habit is a routine of behavior that is repeated frequently, and tends to occur unconsciously. Bad habits intrude your life and prevent you from accomplishing your goals. Breaking any habit can be difficult. For instance, if a person smokes regularly, it becomes his habit and even if he wants to quit, it becomes difficult for him to give-up.
Psychologist and philosopher William James proclaimed that the entire life is nothing but a series of habits that we form repeatedly. The power of habit has been explained by various authors, world leaders and motivational speakers. One of the famous Authors, Stephen R. Covey, wrote a book titled “The 7 Habits of successful People” describing an approach to being effective in realizing your goals.
One can create excellence in big things, by developing good habits even in small matters. Keeping the desk clean, using mobile with discretion, removing the clutter from your mind, etc. All these can be practiced again and again easily. When you instill these habits into your life, you create the foundation for achieving your goals.
Here are 8 Habits of highly productive people that you may adopt to get the best out of you!!

Ruthlessly cut away the unimportant

That’s right. Try to focus only on the important things, and cut away everything that’s unimportant. There is no point doing something that is not needed for the desired results. So push yourself to quit wasting time, and bring yourself back to the production mode.

Allocate breaks strategically

Productivity declines over time without taking brakes. Take many small breaks during the day. The rule of thumb would be to take a 5 to 10 minutes break every 2 hours of work. Breaks are a highly effective way to boosting your productivity.

Remove productivity pitfalls

Things that limit your productivity must be thrown out. It can be the loud music you listen to when you work, your phone calls, alerts from your inbox, your slow computer, the internet, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. These things trap you and prevent you from getting things done.

Tap into your inspiration

No matter what field you’re in, your inspiration is the key to your output. So, channel your inner muse. Keep on thinking and contemplating the things that motivates you. And definitely you will find that your focus increases thereby up surging your productivity.

Create barriers to entry

Don’t make yourself too accessible. If you’re too accessible, then you will face a lot of interruptions. Nowadays, people can connect with others very easily- with the touch of button (text, emails, calls, etc.). Therefore, guard your time to improve your productivity.

Optimize time pockets

Make the best of every minute. For instance, if you’re working for 10 minutes, ensure that you achieve maximum outcomes in those 10 minutes and then you can take time off. You usually get time pockets while waiting for people, commuting, chess app, reading books, or planning.

Set timelines

Be clear on what you want to achieve, and then set your timelines for them. When you set timelines, you commit to yourself to complete the work on time, hence, paving the way for the reality to manifest.

Automate everything possible

Technology today has made automation possible for a lot of things we do. Hence, find a way to automate every task and let it be your habit. If you outsource, delegate. Delegation and automation wherever possible will enhance your productivity.
By no means, this is a complete list. But as you focus on improving productivity by adopting good habits you will be inspired to adopt more such habits which are particularly useful to you.
Thanks for reading.

Changing Attitude is Difficult but Critical!

Attitude is your response to a situation, circumstance, person or an object. But the detailed definition of attitude would be; a predisposition or tendency to respond positively or negatively to a situation, circumstance, person, idea or an object. It influences a person’s choice of action and response to challenges, incentives, rewards etc. These are called stimuli. Stimuli are challenges, incentives and rewards. Four major components of attitude are –

Emotions and feelings
Cognitive – belief or opinions held consciously
Inclination for action , spontaneity
Evaluative – positive or negative response to the stimuli

The first 3 components influence or determine the 4^th component.
The importance of Attitude can hardly be exaggerated
It controls our lives. This is why it is extremely important. We must also understand the difference between positive and negative attitude. It is important to know what these both can do for us.
Positive attitude brings strength, energy, motivation and initiative.
Person with a positive attitude will ask “How something can be done?”, rather than saying, “It is very difficult. We don’t know whether it can be done or not.”
It gives you power over your circumstances rather than your circumstances having power over you. That’s the power of positive attitude; it gives YOU the power. You control circumstances, rather than circumstances affecting you or your behavior.
It is also an understanding of the fact that nothing can change until you change. Therefore, everything changes once you change. You have to identify what are your habits, what are the things that are holding you back. And you have to overcome those, and to overcome those, you have to change.
It is necessary to train your mind to see good in everything. To see something positive, so that it encourages you to go ahead in whatever you are trying to do. Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it. Let’s make it positive.
It will be a good idea, to decide and say it to yourself every morning that you will face everything that comes to you today with a positive attitude. All things about you are important and you should give importance to all those things. Only when you are careful about everything around you, others will give you the respect you deserve.
While positive attitude will help you in every aspect of life, negative mind will never give you a positive life. It will create only negativity. Further, negative thoughts create negative situations.
A bad attitude leads you nowhere. You cannot go very far until you change it. Therefore, if you identify that your attitude needs some enhancement, do it sooner than later. A person with negative attitude sees difficulty in every opportunity. Whereas a positive thinker, sees an opportunity in every difficulty. This is a big difference. How can you change? You have to figure it out for yourself. Because it depends on your habits.
Positive thoughts are good, but they are not enough. They have to be followed with positive feelings and positive actions. Actions are most important. Without actions you cannot have the benefits of positive attitude. Attitude has to be supplemented and supported by respective actions.
The only disability in life is bad attitude. There is no reason why you should live with a disability which is under your control. There are some difficulties we have to live with. But it’s not so with your attitude. Your attitude is something you can change and the best thing is to change it. Whenever you feel pain in your life, think about its full form –
P – Positive
A – Attitude
I – In
N – Negative situation
If you have a tendency to self doubt it keeps giving more negative energy to feed on. That means you are actually attracting negativity. One American in his grey years said “my life has been full of misfortunes which never took place”.
Another man had said, “I don’t have time to hate people who hate me, because I am too busy loving people who love me”.
Thanks for reading.

Self-appraisal Time Management; Answer 26 Questions

Self appraisal Communication Skills; Answer 21 Questions

Bad News: Time Flies Away / Good News: You are the Pilot

If there is one thing that is equally distributed by the Lord Almighty, that is Time. And it is the most important of all resources. Proper use of time makes the people very successful and vice-versa. With the fast development of technology, executives are expected to be far more productive. It is possible. But it calls for more efficient use of your time.
In fact, over the years our attitude towards time has changed. Today, each one of us has become aware of cost of time.
One can effectively use time if the goals are written down. The specific goals make it mandatory to write down a plan of action. And when you have worked out your plan to achieve your goals in respect of important aspects of life, there is hardly any time which you can afford to lose.
I would like to mention here that some habits need to be changed to be more time productive. These are:

Procrastination is the most potent culprit which destroys some of your most precious time. It is only important tasks that you want to carry out as a priority. But if the task is challenging, many a time you tend to postpone it. In the process, you lose time but more importantly the burden or guilt of not attending to important work makes you time inefficient. So having a habit of procrastination even in the smallest measure is not permissible.

Time has the habit of expanding to work to the time allotted. Even if you are able to do a job in two hours, but you have four hours available, the work will expand to fill all four hours. So what is the remedy? Allot lesser time to the task. You may have to stretch yourself a bit. Do it. But, save time.

Another villain which steals away your time is indecision. Whenever you are not able to decide between two or more options, you lose time. You must learn to be more decisive. Normally decisions are not taken because of risks associated with the decision. We must remember that not taking any risk is the biggest risk of our life.

Verbosity in our speech is another time-wasting demon. We need to be terse in our communication. It just requires better focus and a determination of not using more words than are necessary.

If we follow the system of diving our tasks into four quadrants as propounded by Steven Covey of “Seven Habit of Successful People”, we can surely save time which is often wasted.

There are some suggestions to use our time more productively. These are:

Keep a Time Log for 2-3 days. Understand the normal, routine use of your time. Now study the same to find out where you can save time. The exercise will not go waste. In process the credit balance of your time current account will increase.
If you want to become really time efficient follow the rule of 60 : 25 : 15.You must try to complete your routine (daily tasks) in 15% of the available time. Besides, 25% time should be spent on ongoing projects. Finally, spend 60% of your time on developments, innovations, and new projects.
Make a to-do every day morning and try to complete the jobs which must be done on that day. In this list, you must keep in mind the priorities. In fact proper prioritizing your tasks enables you to use your time very productively.

Working out priorities:
You must analyze your tasks. Then place them in three distinct categories:

Tasks which are important as urgent. These cannot be carried forward.
Tasks which are important but not urgent. For example, looking after your health and going for a walk daily is important but not urgent.
Tasks which are neither urgent nor important. These should always receive the least importance.

While making your to-do list you must be realistic. Don’t pack too many things in a day which cannot be completed. If is unnecessary to create a burden for yourself. This will decrease your efficiency.
Thanks for reading.

Why Settle for ‘Less’ when you can ‘Achieve’ More?

Personal development personal and career growth progress and potential concepts. Coach (human resources officer supervisor) motivate employee to growth.
Situation 1:-
An “X “employee gets the promotion while a “Y” employee doesn’t!
Situation 2:-
“ABC” salesman could reach the given target in the particular time while the other “KYC” couldn’t and hence is fired from the organization.
Clearly, the difference between the two is their ‘Effectiveness’!
In today’s competitive world, the word “Personal Effectiveness” has got an immense importance, and why not? Today’s work environment is very demanding and to be successful means grooming yourself and honing with the skill of being effective. Personal effectiveness is not restricted to the corporate environment. Productivity is important and can be applied well to all other walks of life. May be also the be kitchen work , gym work out or anything else carried out by you.
What is this technique and how to imbibe it?
Well, let us discuss in detail what is personal effectiveness after all?
Peter Drucker quotes:-
“Efficiency is doing things right, Effectiveness is doing the right things”.
Self explanatory as it is personal effectiveness of a person can be calculated by two parameters. It not only measures the result against time but also gauges the quality of work. Quality and quantity, both are important. Thus, effective people are those who can achieve more quality work in less time. While doing so they are not stressed, or confused as if they are working under pressure. Neither do they lose their physical health nor do they lose their mental or emotional one. These people are consistent and deliver results constantly.
Andre Maurois says ”The effectiveness of work increases according to geometric Progression, if there are no interruptions”.
So let us take a look at how do you achieve personal effectiveness. Personal effectiveness is the art which helps in self development. You need to observe and practice the seven important rules to achieve the same.
Rule 1:-
Thoroughly understand what you want to do
When you start doing a certain work do start in haste .” Well begun is half done”- Isn’t it? And that is why it is required to thoroughly understand the task which you are supposed to begin. Read through or just mind walk through the process. You may encounter some grey areas which can be dealt with by exploring more from the umpteen books and also the internet. Information can be extracted from various sources if not available readily! Isn’t this process more sensible than starting the project in a hurry and then stumbling across something which you are clueless about? This is one of the principles to work your way straight to personal effectiveness. It reduces the time in which the work is done and also improves the quality of the work.
Rule 2:-
Focus on your work.
It is easier said than done! But you need to starve all the distractions that come in your way and you need to feed your focus. The art lies in not digressing from the objective in any way. Focus means to continuously put your attention on something and forget the rest of the world. When handling something of critical importance, lock yourself in where no one can disturb you. Once you start on focusing on what you want to achieve, every other stuff should appear meaningless. Focus empowers and teaches you a lot. If you love your job, this love will add to your focus. One has to decide to be focused until it becomes a habit. And eventually the end result is qualitative work in less time.
Rule 3:
Self belief
Undeterred faith in youself is a sure way to personal effectiveness. Unless you believe in yourself how can you make the world believe you. Doubtful mindset spoils the results. You should have a constant strong belief in yourself and your capabilities. Best possible results often are delivered when you keep reinforcing that YOU CAN DO IT !
Rule 4:
Expect the unexpected
Life is never a straight line. Everyone has their own ups and downs. All of us have roughs and crests. But the art to lead personally effective life is to be least disrupted due to unexpected events. You can have a plan. But rarely do plans get executed in the same way as planned. You should be proactive enough to foresee any interrupting event and should have an alternative plan which would work without any hassles. Personally effective people are prepared to handle any situation with great ease.
Rule 5:-
Application of mind which is always necessary.
Mind is the biggest weapon. Human beings are armed with it and must use it for improving on the battle of being competitive. Many great feats are best performed when mind is applied to those. Never take for granted even small objectives. Once you apply mind to a particular problem, you will definitely find a solution. The more you apply your mind to something that you love it becomes more effective .
Rule 6:-
Put your mind and soul into the work
When you dedicate totally and put your mind and soul into an objective, you start enjoying the work. When you do the same you leverage on opportunities .The lessons learnt through various experiences in life could also be put to use to be personally effective.
Rule 7:-
Stretch yourself a bit
Nothing worthwhile can be achieved by shortcuts. You should be eager to move an extra mile Then only better things can happen.
It is often said that “ if you wish to achieve something you haven’t you need to do something you have not!” That is where you can get different results by putting yourself to a task little more than yesterday. Your objective should not be competing with others, but improving your own self . Continuously improving the work that you do and following the other 6 rules is the way to sure ‘personal effectiveness’
Thanks for reading. Wishing you all the best in the New Year.
Your comments are welcome and will be highly appreciated!
Thanks for reading.

Courage to Continue Denotes Success

The word success as defined in the dictionary means “ the accomplishment of an aim or purpose” . True as it is but definition of the word success changes from person to person. Every individual’s definition of success is different. And why Not? We all have different aims, objectives, goals and purpose of life. And accomplishment of those would mean SUCCESS
to each one of us. Though there is no common definition of success many successful people have presented their views on success. Let us now understand what success meant to them and how best we can add to our success from their experiences.
A writer, statesman and a leader as he was Winston Churchill who has contributed immensely to the Britain’s victory in World War II has quoted that
“Success is not final, Failure is not fatal; It is the courage to continue that counts”. Isn’t it true? Many people think that if you fail at something , it is the end of your life. The suicidal stories you hear after the academic results are declared clearly indicate people’s
attitude towards failure. The quote mentioned above re instills the value of courage to continue the effort in spite of several failures. In short, perseverance is one of the keys to success.
When one wants to achieve something one should turn deaf ears to what people say about your endeavors . Because as the quote goes,” At first they will ask why you are doing it ;But later they will ask How did you do it?
Yes, this is especially important for the people who are torch bearers. Torch bearers are people who attempt to tread the less taken path and are the first ones to do so. When you are pursuing something different and novel, skeptic people always try to ask the validity of such pursuit. Well, if you are convinced about your effort and are ready to give in your hundred percent you will be successful at it. And then the same people would ask you the ways in which you tried to achieve such an untapped feat.
Life is a mix of good and bad times. We are successful sometimes and sometimes we do fail. The most important thing in life is to “Be thankful for hard times as they have made you.” Hard times are testing times. Failures should be visualized as a lesson. I t is rightly said,” When the going gets tough, the tough gets going”! Every struggle to get successful will make you wiser and stronger.
While achieving success it is important that you put your heart , mind and soul into excelling at what you have undertaken. If needed you have to sacrifice a lot in order to achieve something great. Swami Sivananda has rightly pinpointed the secret of success. He
quotes ,” Put your heart , soul and mind into even your smallest acts”. It is also very evident that there is no shortcut to success. It is well known that there is “No elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.” Hard work in proper direction definitely yields success. ease everybody.
Success is a result of focus, hard work, learning from failure , loyalty and persistence .Indeed when you strives to excel at certain thing you are bound to be successful. When you balance your hard work with persistence and loyalty the end result will be none other than SUCCESS.
Nelson Mandela quotes” Don’t judge me by success but how many times I fell down and got back again”. If you have persevering attitude in life, nothing can stop you from being successful. Perseverance is a factor which differentiates between success and failure.
Success is , thus, relative to each individual. Unfortunately, many people don’t have goals at any time in life. Life is very short and the most important thing in life to be successful is to set some goals. What is a life without goals? People misconstrue goals to be only related to career and finances.
Well, negating that opinion you can categorize goals as:

Career goals,
Financial goals,
Health goals,
Family goals and
Goals for society
Hobby Goals
And Spiritual Goals

You have to take charge and set goals for yourself. The priority of goals would differ from person to person. You may feel family and health goals are more important than the rest of the goals. An ambitious person may prioritize on career and financial goals. Hobby goals are the goals which are meant for yourself satisfaction. Society plays an important role in everyone’s life. You should also set some goals which will benefit the society. It is a way to give back to the society where you belong.
Maslow’s pyramid of self motivation has the self actualization need at the top of it! Spiritual goals help achieve that need of a person.
While setting up goals make sure that your goals are SMART.
SMART Goals mean
S- Specific
M-Measurable
A-Achievable
R-Realistic
T-Time bound
Well, to achieve success be specific about what you want to achieve. The goals should have some yardstick against which you can measure your success. You should always have realistic goals and not unbelievable ones.
An example of setting a goal could be “ I want to reduce my weight by 1.5 kgs in a matter of 15 days. Once you do that you can start working over it by chalking out a plan and then executing the same.
Always check on what you have achieved against what you wanted to achieve And keep on bridging the gap, if any. When diligently persevered, success becomes a habit!!
Thanks for reading.

7 Habits of highly Effective Conversationalists

An interesting conversation is very important business etiquette. It’s also critical for relations building. We converse day in and day out. So we must try to think back how often we are very interesting and how often we are not. There are certain rules which we need to keep in mind to develop our good business conversation habits. These are as follows:

Be present: When you are conversing with someone for fun or for business negotiation, you should be totally with him or her. You should not think about anything else; not about any past events nor any similar situations. You should only be listening to the person you are speaking to. While listening, you should be assimilating the information not to reply but to understand. In simple words first understand then only try to be understood.
No opinions unless you are asked, please: Your conversation should not be just to vent out your opinions or to display that you know everything about the things that you are discussing.
It also does not mean that you should not participate in the conversation. You a have the right to differ, but, you should be doing that with elegance, grace and poise. That can happen only if you listen and understand the other person properly.
Make others talk: Ask open ended questions using what, how, where, when etc. When they answer these questions, they will be able to speak out in detail what they have in mind. They will be able to throw more light on the subject of conversation which will add to your knowledge and pat their ego. Don’t just ask questions for which the answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Go with the flow: You must first listen to the person talking and if at all you have to say something different from the current topic wait until the subject changes.
Besides, you need never be waiting for speaking out as soon as the speaker completes the sentence. In such an instance your mind will be only concerned with what you are going to speak. In the process you will not listen and you will not understand what the person just spoke.
If you don’t know, say it: You should never behave like “I know everything” even when you know much. One never knows all. Thus, if you are asked something and you don’t know simply say “I am sorry, I don’t know!” There is nothing wrong in that.
Don’t equate your experience with theirs: Now, if someone is sharing with you an experience and you also had a similar experience earlier, hold that back. Let the speaker enjoy telling/sharing his/her experience and then briefly only if necessary just in agreement you can say that yes this is true because you also experienced the same.
You should never stop or rob him/her from sharing that interesting experience with you.
Don’t repeat yourself: Repetition in a conversation is extremely unwelcome. People will get bored and they will definitely think that it is not worth talking to you because you keep on repeating yourself. And many people do the same. Therefore try to think, observe and ensure that you never repeat the same thing over and over again.

Thus, one must listen, be more open and while speaking, should be brief. Verbosity kills the efficacy of the idea. Always use simple language and short sentences. Short sentences means one can vary the sentences between four words to twenty words. If you are using a sentence containing 20 words, you must pause in the middle just like you give commas in a written speech and not speak in one go. Develop a sense of humour to keep the conversation light.
Thanks for reading.