Cordially Yours

How Do You Define Success ? If you ask this question, you will receive various answers because the definition of 'success' will vary from person to person. While a few people may be agnostic towards questions like this, a person may say that he wants to amass wealth within 10 years. So, his view of success is to become rich. Another person may say that they want to climb the rungs of their career ladder and that their success trajectory will end only if they reach the top position in their company. The focus here is career-oriented and not money-oriented. Similarly, there can be as many definitions for the word "success" as there are human beings.  A study of the lives of highly rich may reveal that not all of them are happy. This means that money cannot get you happiness. If a rich person boasts that he is a heavy-hitter and that he keeps working for 90 or 100 hours a week, what is the use? How can he enjoy his life? He has thrown work-life balance to the wind. He do...

You have been making sincere efforts to achieve big growth , but you falter along your way. The reasons can be varied, but the fact remains that you are not able to achieve the goals or sub-goals you have set. You get stuck. The roughness of your failure has bruised your mind. So, you are no longer in the mood to move forward. You now feel that your failure is an ominous indication showing that you are facing an insurmountable obstacle to your growth. Is this situation real, or can you move ahead despite the failure that hit you hard? The answer is: Yes. This situation may be real, but it is not insurmountable. This means you can return gallantly to the path that will take you towards your goal. The main point to understand is that if you do not learn to bounce back after a setback, you will never achieve the growth you are aiming for. Not being able to bounce back is the biggest obstacle, and it is much bigger than all other hurdles you have faced or may face during your growth jo...

If you feel that it is all blurry when you start taking steps to achieve big things in your life , it is not your fault alone. Most people feel the same way as you do. The beginning of the post may appear inappropriate or facetious. But please read on.    In your life, you may have come across people who have achieved extraordinary success in their fields. What are the lessons you have learned from their achievements? Can your success expeditions be similar, or can you achieve similar success? If such questions crop up in your mind, the answer to them is that you can succeed like them or even surpass the magnitude of their success. But how to accomplish this? If you are ready to piggyback on their ways, you can easily achieve your aim. How do you think you should go about this? We should find out. 1. While comparing your ways with those of people who have achieved stupendous success in their fields, you may find that their ways are completely different from yours. Y...

Why should you be ready to change your plans ? You set goals and make a few actionable plans to achieve them. But when you undertake the journey, you may face unexpected hurdles, however superior your plans may be. Remember that there can never be bullet-proof plans. That is why you have to make the required changes when you face hurdles. Of course, it may not be necessary to make complete changes to your plans. But you may have to make certain tweaks so that you get rid of the hurdles you are facing. Of course, it may be necessary to change your plans when there is a misalignment between your goals and your plans. Never keep dwelling on your old plans once you have revised them. An expert was asked, "How to find a solution to a problem?" He replied, "A problem will continue to remain so unless you realize that the problem itself will be the solution." What does he mean by that? The precise meaning is that a problem provides you with an opportunity to fine-tune or t...

What is success? The meaning of the word "success" is not the same for everyone. Why? The reason is that every person is unique and so is his or her perspective. But in general, the very thought of earning substantial money gives people tingles of excitement because, according to them, possessing or earning abundant money is the sign of success, and if they have a good amount of money, it will ameliorate their life.  It is also true that those who are not well-off nurture a tinge of jealousy towards affluent people. Communists call inequality in distribution of wealth unjustifiable. On the contrary, capitalists feel that communists' definition of equality is nothing but rannygazoo. Regardless of the opinions of communists and the capitalists, that success is nothing but earning substantial money is a myth. Points to ponder. 1. Experts sagely nod their heads and say that success is all about our goals and the strategies or ways we adopt to achieve them. In fact, setting t...

Should you worry about how others judge you? The answer is an emphatic "NO." The point is the moment you stop worrying about criticisms or how others, including your close relatives and friends, judge you, you are fast-tracking your success. Further, you will be coming out with optimum output because you have unloaded the burden of getting the approval nods of others.  Let us assume you have made a big decision. Of course, you might have thought about it a thousand times before making it. But others may feel that your decision is goofy. So what? There is no need to worry about what they think because if you focus on what others feel, you suffer from temporary amnesia. Thanks to such obliviousness, you forget your goal or vision of your life. So, you cannot achieve it. The moral is that instead of worrying about what others feel or how others judge, you must keep taking all the steps required to achieve your goal. Reasons why you should stop worrying about judgmental...

Can you be obstinate and stick to your old ideas? To this question, experts emphatically avow that you cannot afford to be. Things and more particularly, technological developments are happening at a meteoric pace and so are trends. If you stick to your old ideas, you will be branded a clumsy conservative. Further, you will not be able to get the results you desire to have. Competition is fierce in every field and reluctance to change will spell doom to your personal and career growth . Only IQ-challenged people, perhaps out of their naivety or due to their stupidity, will refuse to heed the advice of experts. Please read on to know a little more about this topic. The step of adapting to changing trends can be described with a single word spelled " Reinvention ." You have to reinvent yourself. You have to think of and embrace ideas that suit the new trends. Only then, can you move ahead and get the results you desire to have. Here is a classic example. Before the advent o...

Of all the mistakes people commit, the worst can be the mismanagement of their days . The result of this mistake can be so profound that it can ruin their lives. This post intends to help everyone check if they are managing their days judiciously and if not, how to eliminate ruthlessly those wrong things they do. They need not take radical steps. Instead, they have to embrace the "Kaizen" mindset to stop taking incorrect steps that lead to the mismanagement of their days. How to find out if you are mismanaging your days? If you cannot complete the tasks on your to-do list at the end of the day or you feel that your output is below your expectations, it shows that you have not managed your day wisely. Though there can be several reasons for this, the most important can be you have not planned your activities properly. Even if you have made a plan for the day , you have not executed the plan effectively. What can be the most appropriate way to start a day? The most effectiv...

Does everyone think your performance is below par, be it in your workplace, sport, vocation, or other sphere? To put it differently, have you not achieved the high-performer tag yet? What can be the reasons for this? Have you thought of any plans to correct the situation and improve your performance? If you have no clue as to how to go about it, here are a few ideas to become a high performer. In the book "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People," Stephen Covey puts "being proactive" on top of the list of habits of high-performing successful people and rightly so. Several experts have corroborated this. This means if you want to be a high and effective performer, you have to be proactive. For example, if you have a team meeting the next day, you should be ready with all your presentations the previous day itself. So is the case for a sports meet, an event, and so on. In short, being proactive and preparing well for your activities is the key to being an effective ...

"Do you want to become a millionaire ?" You may say "Who doesn't want?" My next question is: "If you want to become a millionaire, are you taking the right steps towards achieving this? Have you ever done an introspection to find out if your current habits are helping you in your journey? If not, what is/are the habits should you get rid of?" Experts firmly opine that if you want to amass wealth, you should quit a particular habit. Do you want to know what this habit is? Please read on. You may say "I am working hard for 40+ hours a week but my financial status is not improving at all." This statement reveals that a particular habit is sabotaging your journey. The fact is that you are not alone. Hundreds of thousands of folks toil and toil but they do not achieve huge success . What is the reason? The reason is that these folks, like you, are not planning and preparing for their journey. They haphazardly lead their lives. There is no doubt ev...

You may be a well-read person or may have very high skills. But do your knowledge and skill guarantee success? History even from the time of troglodytes reveals that high talent or wisdom does not guarantee success .  On the other side of the spectrum, some people may achieve stupendous success even though their knowledge and skill levels pale compared to those you possess. Why this success paradox? Let us try to find out. You should first know the ingredients of success. According to conventional-minded experts, hard work with a sense of purpose will get you success. On the contrary, modern gurus opine that you need not work hard but should do smart work to succeed. Regardless of what experts opine, you need to know the reason for the huge success of a few less-skilled people and the average lives of those highly skilled and knowledgeable folks. Why such a difference in the lives of these two groups? Researchers, like you, have always been wondering about this parad...

Almost everyone including those who have embraced renunciation and those of the mundane type has goals. Since every individual is unique, the goals of people vary also. Unfortunately, not all people achieve their goals. You may wonder why the number of people who fail is much higher than those who are successful. This post may throw light upon this phenomenon and show how to achieve success .  Is having goals good or not? Having goals in life is certainly good. But will it alone get you the success you aspire for? The answer is a resounding "No." You may now ask: "Then, why the heck experts including the troglodytes and the contemporary gurus are asking us to have goals in life?" According to them, if your mind consistently focuses on your goals, you will hit upon ideas to achieve them. But the reality is completely at variance with what they opine.   Why are you not getting results despite your focus on your goals? You have great ideas. You do not fail to seize wha...

Even highly successful people cannot boast that they always have good days . This means they have bad days as well, perhaps more infrequently than those who achieve average success. You may wonder what "good days" and "bad days" mean. Good days are those on which you successfully complete all the tasks you have planned. Bad days are those on which nothing works out and whichever task you undertake remains incomplete or does not move an inch from the point of its start. Have you ever given a thought why, on certain days, you are not able to carry out the tasks you have planned despite all your sincere efforts while, on some other days, you are able to complete your tasks? To put the question differently, why do you feel completely satisfied with your performance on certain days while it is quite the opposite on some other days? Let us try to find out the answer to this question. The question obviously leads to another question. That is: "Are you good at organizi...

You may say that it is natural for others to feel jealous over your success or your earnings. Though you are true, their resentment towards you may make you uneasy. The problem with people is that they will have a low opinion about you if your life is just average and not spectacular enough. On the contrary, if you lead an affluent life or if you have achieved success in your endeavors, they will feel jealous. The question now is: Are there ways to handle these jealous folks ? The following points may help.  Experts advise that it is better to avoid telling people what you earn. But what about your lifestyle? It may make people know that you are wealthy. Let us first look at the first point, i.e. answering people who ask you how much your salary is. If you are an entrepreneur, people may be very much curious to know if you make enough money for your sustenance or if you earn substantially. If the earnings are just average, these jealous people are hap...

You have set your goal and have started putting forth the efforts required to achieve it. You review your efforts periodically to ensure that everything is in order. According to you, everything is moving as you have planned. You are now half-way through in your journey. Suddenly, you have a nagging feeling that there is a loss of steam or things are not moving at the pace as before. You are obviously upset. What may be the reasons? What is holding you back from achieving the success you have been longing for and cherishing in your bosom? Let us find out.  The reasons may be: 1. After reaching a certain point, you have started indulging in what is known as "self-sabotage." True, you have put in place proper systems. But there is some lacuna due to which your plans fall through. You commit avoidable mistakes and these may decelerate the pace of your journey. 2. Not listening to the advice of experts in your field may be another reason for the retardation of your...

You may have a clear vision about your life's goal . You may be putting forth your sincerest efforts to achieve the goal as well. But in the cockles of your heart, you may have a feeling that the speed of the results of your efforts is not satisfactory. Is your feeling right? If so, what should you do to accelerate your success? Let us find out. Is your feeling right? To the question if your feeling that the speed of results of your efforts is far from satisfactory is right, the answer is: Since this feeling has surreptitiously entered your mind and you are not comfortable with it, your feeling is right. Of course, overnight success is a Utopian dream and can happen only in fantasy stories. Further, several instances of overnight successes leading to disasters abound in human history. This means there should be gradual improvements. By "gradual," you need not construe that the improvement should be slow. Your journey should be reasonably paced. If the pace of the improvem...

You will not find a person who does not want to be successful on this planet. Even an ascetic who does penance on the Himalayas may have goals and want to succeed in achieving them. But the question now is: Is the route to success tough or easy? Let us dive deep and find out. What is success? Success is nothing but achieving the goals that we have set. Of course, goals may differ from one person to another because every individual is unique. Some may want to amass wealth, a few others may be looking for leading a peaceful and hassle-free life, and yet a few others may wish to have a fabulous and enviable career.  Is achieving success tough or easy? The fact is achieving success in life is easy provided you follow certain ways. There may be hundreds or thousands of steps that may make your journey towards success smooth but almost all of them come under a few major ones. What are these major steps? 1. Introspect and be clear about what you want to accomplish. Spend some time, in f...

Why do people fail? This question may haunt everyone including you. What is it that can most effectively turn failures into successes ? If you ask this question to successful people, you may get different answers from each one of them. This is because every one of them is unique and their situations are different. But there is a common attribute or trait every successful person may have and this trait plays a major role in their enviable journey. Let us find out what this attribute is. According to successful people, this one attribute or attitude enormously amplifies the results of the efforts they put in. This post will dive deep to know more about this attitude. Now what is the attitude these successful people are talking about? It is what is popularly known as an " optimistic outlook " or "positive attitude." You, like myriad others out there, may argue whether bad things have not happened or will not happen in the lives of positive-minded folks. This argument i...

At the beginning of every year, many of us make resolutions. Whether we stick to those resolutions or abandon them is another question that we may deal with later. Jonathan Swift, who authored the famous "Gulliver's Travels," said in 1699 that he had made a few resolutions in the beginning of that year and the most important and sensible among them was "Not to set(t) up for observing all these Rules; for fear I should observe none." So, let us not worry about making resolutions, not to talk of sticking to them. But there is one very important thing about which we need not make any resolution because knowingly or unknowingly, it is a desire we always have in our minds. The desire is nothing but to live as long as possible. This post talks about what you should do to try to live longer so that you can enjoy the success you always want to taste and the success that may be round the corner. What is success? We should now know what success means because its definiti...

There is a notion among people that getting rich is not everyone's cup of tea. These folks may be working hard but may be leading an ordinary life. So, they think that it is difficult to amass wealth. They cite several reasons including that one has to be born with a silver spoon, has to have education from an Ivy League Educational Institution, or similar such things. Other excuses they cite are that prices of almost all commodities and services have sky-rocketed and that their incomes have not gone up in the same proportion. Do you think that their notion is right? The answer is a huge "No" because there are scores and scores of people who have not been born in rich families, nor have they done their studies in Ivy League schools but have joined the group of top-income earners. How is this possible? This post tries to delve into this topic. Do you have a clear goal in your life? The main reason why people fail to get rich is that they do not have clarity as far as the...