Attitude & determination

Determination is the key to implement any worthwhile project. Determination brings consistency in our efforts. It also motivates us to work hard for a task we have undertaken. Determination triggers perseverance which is an almost essential element in achieving significant success. But this indispensable quality of human being depend entirely on their attitude.

What is determination?

It is the process of becoming resolute, of bringing firmness in your endeavour. Without determination one cannot hold conviction which is essential to convince people. Unless you are determined to follow your path, distractions may attract you attention. You lose focus. In such cases the efficacy of your efforts is bound to suffer.

How is determination related to your attitude?

Your attitude to life is extremely important in deciding your daily performance and how you want to lead your life. Your attitude will help you to set goals which need to be achieved. Each of your goals will require a separate plan of action. It you lack determination, due to your casual attitude, even written specific and SMART goals may become meaningless. Because your plans need to be implemented, these require perseverance which can come only when you are determined to do. The implementation will happen with determination to perform. Thus attitude and determinations are inter-related. In fact, these are intertwined.   

People who make significant progress are often called lucky. But they do not know how much hard work was put in to achieve that success. As Colin Powell said, “A dream does not become a reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.” Any worthwhile goal or project is achieved with determination, dedication, self-discipline and lots of efforts. Further if your determination is fixed, your efforts are never wasted. Few things cannot be achieved if you have skill, and use diligence.

How determination works?

Determination is also doing. It is not just a decision. It pushes you to do what you have decided to do. it makes you do things what need to be done at what time even if you don’t like it. It is said, “Wake up with determination, go to bed with satisfaction. Whenever you strongly desire to acquire something, you can’t stop thinking about it. Determination tells you that if you can’t stop thinking about it, don’t stop working for it. Road to success is under construction till it is completed. The same passes through many terrains; some are easy but others are difficult. Determination drives you ahead through difficult terrains which happen to be the strength of determination.

Finally, determination enhances your self esteem. Self esteem in turn helps you to make you attitude positive impeccably.

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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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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).
10. 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.
11. 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.

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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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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:

1. Tasks which are important as urgent. These cannot be carried forward.
2. Tasks which are important but not urgent. For example, looking after your health and going for a walk daily is important but not urgent.
3. 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.

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Thoughts are Important

Thought is a process of using your mind to consider something. Thought can also be a product of that process which may be known as idea. Such a thought or an idea is conscious deliberation but we get many thoughts without our conscious effort. Thus, we may be thinking of certain things at most inopportune times. For example during our prayer, if we are not able to concentrate, certain unhappy, weird or even obscene thoughts may just crop in. At times, it is difficult to control thoughts. It requires constant efforts on the part of our consciousness to meditate on certain topics. When we are totally involved in the process only then unnecessary unrelated thoughts can be kept at bay.

 

Positive Thoughts

We must have only positive thoughts. These positive thoughts will encourage us to take action on the decisions that we make. Wandering thoughts are a waste. Haphazard thinking on a subject or a problem will not lead us anywhere. So the important point is that we must have an objective before starting to meditate on any subject. Solutions to problems can be found or worked out only after deep thinking, focusing or meditating on the subject.

How to secure positive thoughts? Positive environment will surely help breed positive thoughts. When you see only good things, listen and read good material, it will help generating positive thoughts. Thus, we should expose ourselves to decent and encouraging media. It’s also good to have role model/models that would influence our thoughts. Since thoughts also depends on our interaction with others, so good progressive people as our contacts will be helpful.

Our Wishes and Desires

Our wishes and desires also influence our thoughts. Therefore it is best to fix goals: short term goals, medium term goals and long term goals. After crystallizing the goals it’s necessary to devise action points and to act on these. At the same time, reviewing them regularly is necessary. Such a course of action will surely carve out the course of our thoughts. Since we can always school our desires or wishes which should be positive we will be able to generate positive thoughts.

 

Goals, Thoughts and Action

Once we have fixed our goals and our action points, if we keep on thinking about these, we will be encourage to take action. When we action our plan it gives satisfaction. This in turn enhances our self esteem and believe in ourselves. On the one side we moved towards achievement of our goals, on the other we are creating an environment for nurturing positive thoughts.

It may also be worth to think of our major achievements of the past. We may have had identify the pillars of our success but recollecting this is also helpful. At the same time lessons that we have learn from our failures during the past should also not be ignored.

On an average an individual has around 50000 thoughts during 24 hours. The above process will control our thoughts during the period that we are awake. However thought process continuous during our sleep. These cause various dreams good or bad. Our day to day positive thoughts and believe in ourselves is bound to have positive impact on our thoughts during the sleeping hours.

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