Life

Nap to increase productivity..

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Working hard is the most important ingredient for success? Pick up any self-help book and it comes with many examples where working hard is the key to success. 
But what about working smartly? Now you roll your eyes “Sure, lets work smart not hard”. Before bouncing off the page, let’s reflect in our last 2-3 days time interval where we were at our best in productivity. At least once in a day (Or given interval) we are at our mind mojo, at our best and performing like a smooth oiled engine.
 
So how can we repeat this mojo? Will this not be doubling, tripling our performance and hence working smart.
 
Enter Naps or Sleep lightly or briefly, especially during the day. It’s like dividing your day into 2-3 days by taking sleep breaks. Winston Churchill used to do this. Most of our leaders & artists use this as a tool to be at their bests.
 
Yes, it sounds weird, to take a sudden Nap and think of it as wasting time but the returns are tremendous. Imagine after every Nap you have your mojo and getting a shot of productivity boosts.
 
So next time if you feel sleepy in office or meeting go ahead and take a power nap to give boosts to your productivity.
 
Let me know if you tried this in comments below.
 

Perfectionism holds us back from self-improvement and courage.

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Perfectionist

Right from childhood, we seek to shield ourselves from vulnerable feelings like disappointment, hurt and diminishment. By building a wall out of our behaviors, emotions, and thoughts, we protect ourselves from the big bad world. But to live and lead with courage, as we already know, we must let ourselves be vulnerable. This means letting down our walls and recognizing protective thoughts and behaviors for the defense mechanisms they really are.

One of the most pervasive types of self-protection is perfectionism. To get success in any field, we must rid ourselves of perfectionism. To do so, let’s start by busting some of the myths around this damaging phenomenon.

Perhaps the most damaging myth of all is that perfectionism is about self-improvement and striving for excellence. But in fact, perfectionism is really about attempting to win approval. Most perfectionists are raised in environments that praise their exceptional performance, for example in athletics or school. As a result, perfectionists develop a damaging belief system that follows them into their adult lives, anchoring their whole sense of self in accomplishments and brilliant execution.

This locks perfectionists into an exhausting behavioral pattern of pleasing people, perfecting efforts, performing for others and proving themselves. People with a healthy drive for success, on the other hand, are much more self-focused and inspired by asking themselves how they can improve. It’s a stark contrast with perfectionists, who ask ‘what might others think of me?’

Significantly, leaders who armor themselves with perfectionism often assume that this way of thinking will bring them success. They couldn’t be more wrong because there is a much darker side to perfectionism, going way beyond the need to please.

Disturbingly, research shows that perfectionism is associated with addiction, depression, and anxiety. Furthermore, perfectionists are more likely to miss opportunities and experience mental paralysis that keeps them from fully engaging in life. Why? Because their fears of being criticized or not meeting the expectations of others keep them from entering the messy arena of life, where healthy competition and striving for true greatness occur.

So take off the armor of perfectionism and jump into the fray of life. You might make mistakes in the process, but you’ll gain something valuable in exchange: the courage to succeed.

Got Guilt? Use it…

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Anita came late to the office and felt guilty about it? Still, she completed all pending tasks that day, came up with more ideas and achieved much more. With the baggage of feeling guilty, but determined to take action, she had a much better day than usuals.

There are numerous examples like these, where we performed much better because of feeling guilty.

Still why guilt is considered a negative emotion or a bad thing? Why shouldn’t we use it to get our determination and achieve goals?

But there are guilts like someone cheating or stealing from others, we may define as morally incorrect guilts. So let’s categorize “Guilt” as (In want of better names to Type 1 and Type 2):

#Type 1: – Less offensive Guilt: Not meeting ours or others expectations without actually doing something morally incorrect. Being late to the office, or eating more sweets or binge tv watching are the kinds of guilt which leads us feeling down but is not that big a crime.

#Type 2: – Offensive Guilt: All other types of “Guilts”, morally incorrect types, cheating or purposely hurting someone. These are the cases that come when another person is hurt or hurts the social well being and more.

We should use “Type 1 Guilt” to our advantage. In fact, sometimes it happens; we feel so guilty about not studying earlier that we put extra effort to study the whole night. So why not consciously use it to improve ourselves…

As long as we control the guilt(emotion), we can use it to help us grow…What u say?

Disclaimer: Please use this at your own risk 🙂

Scattered Priorities

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Scattered Priorities is one of the biggest hindrances in achieving success, as they say, “If you have more than 3 priorities than there are no priorities”.

It’s true not only as leaders, managers or entrepreneurs but at our personal level as well. Think about it when u have tried to accomplish too many things nothing happens.

So why do we do it? Why we set ourselves for failure aiming too many things to achieve? Here are few:

1. Our Fear of Failure or Insecurity:

To safeguard ourselves from failure we build a facade of different priorities or tasks. But imagine the fallacy of this, if you fail in your prime task or priority, is it not better to fail and try again, than to compromise? As said, “There is no reason to have Plan B because it distracts from Plan A“.

2. Lack of Self-Believe:

We do not want to commit to one thing, as we are in self-doubt. It might be because of what others think about us or past failures or lack of determination to make it happen.

3. Too many options leading to indecision:

Sometimes we get too many choices to decide and instead of taking the time to decide, we pick 2 or 3 options and start running with it.

4. Smart-A** expects as s/he can do 10 things together, so can the team or subordinates:

This is true for leaders, entrepreneurs, and managers. They think that since they can design, review business, talk sales simultaneously hence everybody should do 5 things together.
It’s a big fallacy since the leader would have reached this level of productivity in the field with almost 10+ years of experience or more. Expecting same with the team is sure recipe for failure. A team should have a coherent goal and corresponding set of tasks to be achieved. Just to keep them busy with more tasks helps to do nothing.

What else do you think leads us to scatter ourselves and setting for failure? Please share your thoughts in comments

Ask your Life

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I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life will pay no more,
However I begged at evening,
When I counted my scanty store.
For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set of the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.
I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have willingly paid

Why we dont judge nature?

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Ever wondered why we don’t judge nature?

Have you noticed that we do not judge nature, we do not say that the scenic view of sun should have more shade or it should have more brightness etc. We enjoy it with childlike curiosity and love. Why do we start judging ourselves or people? What changed us, not to accept ourselves and others as it is and look at it from curiosity and love rather than other negative emotions?

If we can stop judging ourselves and others, the world will be a much better place just like nature. Our mind will be free to do much better things……….

So like nature let’s observe our life and others with more curiosity and love, same as we observe mother nature.

Create Mini Habits to Build Habits….

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All of us want to create good habits so that we be happier and more content in life. But somehow the tasks of getting into good habits become so huge that we all give up.

A simple solution is instead of trying to create habits with a longer cycle, create mini habits by breaking your habits into mini steps. As its proven:

It’s all about practice, not performance when we are looking to create a habit.

Here are few examples of breaking into small steps for mini habits:

Exercising: Start the exercising by doing one pushup a day, make sure you achieve it consistently daily. You can do more than one day but one is mandatory.
Writing: Start with one line per day, make sure you write one line per day without fail (Offcourse you can write more 🙂 )

I am sure all of us can figure out smarter ways to break our own wannabe habits into mini habits and accomplish our goals, so go create mini habits to build habits!!!

 

6 minute miracle morning to make it ur day….

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6 minute miracle morning to run ur day

  1. Minute one (Silence) – Spend the first minute in purposeful silence
  2. Minute two (Affirmation) – Affirm your goals and what u will do today at a higher level to accomplish.
  3. Minute three (Visualization) – Visualize what you want to accomplish and how happy it will make you.
  4. Minute four (Scribing) – Write down results you are committed to creating today.
  5. Minute five (Reading/Focus your mind) – Read something good which is positive, just a page or two. Or practice mindfulness for a minute.
  6. Minute Six (Exercise) – Do a one minute yoga to still your mind and body.

If possible start your day with these 6 minutes and improve your productivity manifold for the day.

Beggar with a Bowl….

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Long ago there was a beggar who came to a greatest and most powerful king and asked the king for alms.

The Beggar said, “If you are filling my bowl, promise me you will fill the bowl full”. King was surprised and kind of angry, saying “What do you think I can’t even fill a bowl?”. Beggar answered it’s up to you to decide but once promised you have to fill the bowl full.

King ordered best jewels and diamonds to be filled in the bowl, as soon as the bowl was filled it became empty. King was very angry and order more to fill the bowl. King could not give up and the whole kingdom was consumed but the bowl was still empty. King at last begged with the beggar why is the bowl not filling?

Beggar said “The Bowl is like Human Desires it is never fulfilled no matter what you fill it with”