Dedication and Devotion
Showing posts with label Discipline. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Discipline. Show all posts

Saturday, December 13, 2008

What You Focus Will Expand

The sun's energy warms the world. But when you focus it through magnifying glass it can start a fire. Focus is so powerful! (Alan Pariser)

 

The law of attraction is currently a hot topic within self improvement field. One of the basic of this law is the power of focus. One would have greater chance to get what he want, if he focus on acquiring it. This focus is what becoming their daily thoughts.

Unfortunately, many failures happen because people misuse this great power. Instead of focusing on the goal, they focus on another things which are irrelevant to their primary goal.

Have you been giving more focus on fear than  the exhilaration of benefits that you might get if you take actions to fulfill your dream? It's like two faced coin, and just like everything in the world, it's all about risk and opportunity. It's about being half full or half empty. Aim your focus on whatever opportunity that lies ahead, then you will become more passionate to chase your dream.

A single 100 watt light bulb can immediately lighten a room, however, when the same light being funneled through lens tube with a very small diameter, it can turn the light into laser ray capable of splitting any rock into pieces.

Remember that the greatest force within ourselves, whether our thinking, feeling, or actions, when directed correctly will delivers overwhelming results. Successful people are those who are able to focus on whatever they want, instead those who fail focus on another irrelevant and unimportant things.

Make your decision today and try to focus on things that you want the most in your life, and in no time you will achieve what you want

This post is very related to my previous post about information overload, self purpose, or check the life purpose series.

 

 

Thursday, December 4, 2008

8 Very Simple Steps to Free Yourself From Stress

This post is a sequel to my previous posts about stress management.

Never let stress disrupt your performance. Get over with it with these simple 8 steps:

1. Breathe

A long and deep inhale can help your mind and body relax

2. Have an Eating Pattern

Diets with high calories and fat can cause your body weaker and dysfunctional in the long run.

3. Exercise

Coordinated body movement can make you feel calmer, more controllable mood, and easier to handle pressure

4. Get a Good Quality Sleep

A deep sleep of 6-8 hours every night can raise your energy level. Making you ready to face any challenge the following day

5. See Bigger Picture

Don't take your job as daily routine, instead, it is your pathway that leads to overwhelming success.

6. Empower and Delegate

You are neither Superman nor demi-God; learn to trust others to help you do your job. Only by this, then you can aim for a far more strategic role in works.

7. Perfection Can be Very Evil

If you spend most of your time trying to fix a working machine, you will never gain from that machine effectively. In short, you are wasting your valuable time.

8. Celebrate

Small reward to indulge yourself that comes in every accomplishment is a good motivation factor.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Character - A Single Factor that Delivers

How a leader deals with the circumstances of life tells you many things about his character. Crisis doesn't necessarily make character, but it certainly does reveal it. Adversity is a crossroads that makes a person choose one from two paths: CHARACTER or COMPROMISE. Every time he chooses character, he becomes stronger, even if that choice brings negative consequences.

As Nobel prize winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn noted, "The meaning of earthly existing lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul." The development of character is at the heart of our development not just as leaders, but as human beings.

What must every person know about character?


1. Character Is More Than Talk

Anyone can say that he has integrity, but action is the real indicator of character. Your character determines who you are. Who you are - determines what you see. What you see - determines what you do. That's why you can never separate a leader's character from his actions. If a leader's action and intentions are continually working against each other, then look to his character to find out why.

2. Talent Is a Gift, But Character Is a Choice

We have no control over a lot of things in life. We don't get to choose our parents. We don't select the location or circumstances of our birth and upbringing. We don't get to pick our talents or IQ. But we do choose our character. In fact, we create it everytime we make choices, to cop out or dig out of a hard situation, to bend the truth or stand under the weight of it, to take the easy money or pay the price. As you live your life and make choices today, you are continuing to create your character.

3. Character Brings Lasting Success With People

True leadership always involves other people. As the leadership proverb says, if you think you're leading and no one is following you, then you're only taking a walk. Followers do not trust leaders whose character they know to be flawed, and they will not continue following them.

4. Leaders Cannot Rise Above the Limitations of Their Character

Have you ever seen highly talented people suddenly fall apart when they achieved a certain level of success? The key to that phenomenon is character. Steven Berglas, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of The Success Syndrome, says that people who achieve great heights but lack the bedrock character to sustain them through the stress are headed for disaster. He believes they are destined for one or more of the four A's: arrogance, painfull feelings of aloneness, destructive adventure-seeking, or adultery. Each is a terrible price to pay for weak character.

To improve your character, do the following:
  1. Search for the cracks. Spend some time looking at major areas of your life (work, family, marriage, service, etc.), and identify anywhere you might have cut corners, compromised, or let people down. Write down every instance yo can recall from the past two months.
  2. Look for patterns. Examine the responses that you just wrote down. Is there a particular area where yo have a weakness, or do you have a type of problem that keeps surfacing? Detectable patterns will help you diagnose character issues.
  3. Face the music. The beginning of character repair comes when you face your flaws, apologize, and deal with the consequences of your actions. Create a list of people to whom you need to apologize for your actions, then follow through with sincere apologies.
  4. Rebuild. It's one thing to face up to your past actions. It's another thing to build a new future. Now that you've identified any areas of weakness, create a plan that will prevent you from making the same mistakes again.

"Never "for the sake of peace and quiet" deny your own experience or convictions" - Dag Hammarskjold

Source: The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader - John C. Maxwell

The Law Of Sacrifice

Lee Iacocca understood that successful leaders have to maintain an attitude of sacrifice in order to turn around an organization. They have to be willing to do what it takes to go to the next level. Swallowing his pride was a heroic sacrifice for Iacocca, one of that many top corporate executives never would have made. But it was a price he had to pay to save the company.

Many people today want to climb up the corporate ladder because they believe that freedom and power are the prizes waiting at the top. They don’t realise that the true nature of leadership is really sacrifice.

Leaders give up to go up. That’s true of every leader regardless of profession. Talk to any leader, and you will find that he has made repeated sacrifices. Effective leaders sacrifice much that is good in order to dedicate themselves to what is best. That’s the way of Law of Sacrifice works. Sacrifice is a constant in leadership. It is an ongoing process, not a one-time payment.

"When you become a leader, you lose the right to think about yourself" (Gerald Brooks)

source : The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership – John C. Maxwell

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Building Trust From The Top Down

Say what you mean, and do what you say! Trust fritters and dies two ways. First, when people aren’t candid with one another. They sugarcoat tough messages. They use jargon and baloney to purposely make matters obscure and, therefore, themselves less accountable.

The only way to get candor into an organization is for the bosses to identify it as a top value, consistently demonstrate it themselves, and reward those who follow their lead. The second trust killer is when people say one thing and do another.

Again, bosses are the main culprits. They tell people to take risks but excoriate them when they fail. They endorse stretch budgets and invite their people to dream big, but punish them if the numbers fall short, even at the end of a decent year. They proclaim a commitment to customer service, but let the factory ship less-than-perfect product to make the month’s sales quota. Or perhaps worst of all, they espouse the company’s values at the top of their lungs, but keep and reward people who don’t live those values simply because they make the numbers.

All that tells the organization is, nothing I say means anything. Or put another way; don’t trust me. Trust, ultimately, isn’t very complicated. It’s earned through words and actions – and integrity in both.

source : Winning – The Answers : Jack & Suzie Welch

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Lead Yourself Well - 5 Ways to Improve Self Discipline



"The first and best victory is to conquer self" - Plato



How do you define self-discipline? I was once asked like this.


"Can you wake up early tomorrow and jog 3 miles?"
I said "Yes, of course"


"Can you do that again the day after that?
I said "Sure, why not?"


"Can you do that everyday for the rest of your life?"
I said "............"


Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but you never know where it's heading. If you know you have talent, and you moved a lot but seldom deliver - you may just lack of self discipline.

Take a look back to last week for example. How much of your time did you devote to regular, disciplined activities? Did you do anything to grow and improve yourself professionally? Or dedicate yourself on savings? living healthy life?

If you put them aside and told yourself you will do it later, you need to work out these 5 action plan.

1. Develop and Follow Your Priorities
Anyone who does what he must only when he is in the mood or when it's convenient is NOT going to be successful. All you need is a good plan. If you can determine what's really a priority and free yourself from everything else, it will be much easier to follow through on important things. This is the essence of self discipline.

2. Make a Disciplined Lifestyle Your Goal
Discipline can not be a one time event. It has to be a lifestyle. One of the best ways to do that is to develop systems and routines, especially in areas crucial to your long term growth and success. If you want to be a good basketball player. Practice every hour, every day, all year long and beyond.

3. Challenge Your Excuses
This is an unfortunate habit of human. Giving excuses. However, to develop a lifestyle of discipline, you need to challenge yourself for not making excuses. If you have several reasons why you can't be self disciplined, realize that they are really just a bunch of excuses - all of which need to be challenged if you want to go to the next level of achievement.

4. Remove Rewards Until the Job Is Done
Don't have desserts before finishing your vegetables.

There is one experiment like this:

One hundred kids were gathered to be offered one marshmallow for each. They are elligible of having another marshmallow if they can wait long enough not to eat the first. End up only 5 of them made it for the 2nd marshmallow

If you want to be a successful person, you have to 'torture' yourself for not having short term reward. This is very powerful for cultivating your self-discipline.

5. Stay Focused on Results
Anytime you concentrate on the difficulty of work instead of its results or rewards, you're likely to become discouraged. Never focus on the hard part. Imagine what it's like at the end of the tunnel. This can boost your motivation in making yourself discipline. A good cause.
Have a nice day!
Image by pong_pong

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