Keys to Self-Confidence

KEYS TO SELF-CONFIDENCE

Keys-to-Self-Confidence

Every person on this planet wants to introduce this concept of Self-Confidence in their lives whether it is related to take risks in the business, public speaking, convincing critics or to manage one’s own life. Most people often step back from getting out to achieve what they want, simply because of the fact that they have low self-esteem. There are many leaders who  can’t survive the adversities when the crisis hits them on their blind side. Because they lack the confidence to take a decision and live with the consequences.

Self-Confidence begins with a realization of who you are. Self-Confidence depends more on your inner-conditions rather than on the outer factors including people’s opinions of ourselves which we have no control over. Whenever a crisis hits in the life of an average person, he usually gets stumbled with the crisis and loses his sense of significance which results in low self-confidence. To prevent that from happening, there are some keys which helps you to increase your self-confidence. I am going to discuss 2 important keys to self-confidence in times of crisis.

       

             KNOW YOURSELF

Keys to Self-Confidence

Lack of Self-Confidence is generally due to lack of understanding about our self. Most of the times we are too busy in getting along with people, hanging out with them & understanding them that we forget to maintain our Intra-personal Relationships. Intra-personal relationship is our connection with ourselves. If you do not know who you are, why you are here and what you can do, then you should not attempt to understand others.

The first person that you should know about is yourself! I have seen people who try to look like others, dress like others, talk like others and behave like others. They feel a sense of significance when they look like a famous celebrity. This is one of the signs of a person with low self-confidence even if they look confident, they are actually not.

The problem is they do not really know who they are and what is their uniqueness, which results in a low self-concept, low self-esteem and low self-worth. So they become like others to regain their self-confidence.

Always try to spend sometime with yourself.

Don’t always keep hanging out, got to parties or attend business meetings all the time. Take some time out of your schedule to understand yourself. Know your strengths and weaknesses and work on how you can improve yourself on a daily basis.

     Develop An Unstoppable Attitude

I have already covered the aspect of Attitude in my previous blogs. You can check them out here:

Attitude is Everything!

Attitude V/S Ability

No person in the world can teach you or should I say manifest the spirit of confidence in you. It is the realization of your true identity that helps you achieve that. The key to life is to maintain and sustain the right Mindset. And you cannot achieve that unless you change your thinking. You can never achieve new results from your old way of thinking.

Keys to Self-Confidence

Do not ever relate Self-Confidence with your past achievements or accomplishments. Because if we do that, it can become a great threat to our self-esteem. If your confidence is based on your possessions then you can lose your self-confidence when you lose your possessions. Self-Confidence is an automatic product of aligning your thoughts in the right direction.

Everybody fails at some point in their life. So, do not connect your sense of significance with your success. Nobody has ever achieved greatness without ever failing in their life. You could think of any great person that lived on the earth that you think was confident. You might agree that their failures were more important than their success as the failure taught them the principles to success and made them self-confident. They were confident because of what they knew about themselves and not what others thought of them. Successful people never trust other people’s opinions about themselves because they know that their success cannot be determined by others opinions but their planning & management of time and themselves. This is the source of real Self-Confidence!

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Leadership lessons from Armed Forces

LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM INDIAN ARMED FORCES

Leadership lessons from Armed Forces

The Indian Armed Forces has been leading the nation in times of uncertainty and fear. They have always been faithful in their commitment to serve every individual by avenging the nation. They become the hope of every individual when pressurized by external aggressors. In the midst of all this, they always provides us leadership lessons to learn from. Leadership spirit is embodied in the DNA of the Indian Armed Forces which inspires others to take charge of their life regardless of the tough and turbulent circumstances in life. They are the perfect example of leading in times of crisis and we can learn by following their example.

Ability to exert influence or the group:

Success in life lies to great extent, in knowing how to change men’s minds. Dealing with people is the greatest problem that all of us have to face. It is the mastery of this art that makes successful lawyers, politicians, preachers and even top executives. To some degree or the other, each individual possesses this quality of exerting influence on their fellow beings. But the difference between them is very wide.

We have had men like Mahatma Gandhi, who radiated influence in the darkest corners of the country, without coming into personal contact with millions of people. And this hold on the masses was so strong that they used to rise like one unit at his bidding, while, on the other hand, we have the uninterested and unsocial persons who, instead of exerting influence, arouse feelings of antagonism.

No one seems to perceive the ‘personal magnetism’, yet we all have experienced the power of such a magnetism in our leaders. Some people’s attractiveness, impress us or interests us deeply, while others unfailingly repel us. But influence is there all the time. There are people whose mere presence has a sublimating influence upon others. It was said of Socrates that ‘no one who met him was ever the same again.’ It is this personal magnetism which plays the vital part in exerting influence on others and it is worthwhile going into some qualities or conditions which bring it about. You can check my blog post to learn about the keys to influence.

Initiative: This is a very important quality of Leadership which the Indian Armed Forces teaches us. Initiative is the ability to take the first or introductory step and to act, usually in a new situation.

Initiative is  very much an acquired quality and  can be imbibed by a congenial environment. In the early stages of life, the parents or school teachers may want to create this environment to a great extent. By allowing the young officers to shoulder responsibilities independently in a processed dose fosters development of their initiative. Initiative enables them to act in a new situation and also to take the first or introductory step in any encounter. Some other qualities are also intimately inter-related with initiative and there is a mutual balancing effect or interplay which gives initiative its final effective form in any particular field of activity.

Leadership lessons from Armed Forces

Adaptability: It’s no secret that officers in the armed forces adapt and adjust to every situation they face in. They are calm and composed even if something unexpected happens. Some people become miserable if anything happens to interrupt their routine. Some are knocked off balance when life refuses to go according to their plans. There are others who are old-fashioned, out-dated and find it difficult to change their opinions.

This is because they lack adaptability. Adaptability means to quickly adjust to the changing environment, and may be manifested in several physical ways, but basically it is the quality of mind and depends upon the outlook and thoughts of a person. A rational and open-minded person would invariably be more adaptable than the rigid, orthodox or unadventurous type.

Solving any situation requires a judicious weighing up of the various factors involved and arriving at a conclusion. If a person loses his balance of stability, he will not be in a position to make a proper use of his resources. In our daily life, we come across many people who clearly shows us how varying types and degrees of stress play on their mentality. Business leaders can learn  this quality of Adaptability from the armed forces and adapt themselves and their organizations to the changing business environment.

Leadership lessons from Armed Forces

Sense of Duty & Responsibility: The qualities of sense of duty & responsibility are very much related to our daily life. To a layman, both duty and responsibility are occasionally used in one place or the other as if they are synonymous terms. Every one of  us is faced with certain tasks or actions which come within the orbit of being recognized as our duty. Sense of responsibility is a quality which is one of the general aspects of leadership and is intimately connected with it. It is our responsibility to manage and use our time in the direction of our eternal destiny and armed forces can be the best example of commitment to duty and responsibilities.

These were some of the things from the lot that I have personally learned from the Indian Armed Forces and applied in my life. What are some good leadership qualities that you learned from Indian Armed Forces. Let me know by commenting below.

Until next time,

Gagan.

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Influence In Leadership

INFLUENCE IN LEADERSHIP

Influence-in-Leadership

Leadership is an act of influence. Leadership is completely about influence. The very moment somebody’s thoughts, ideas or actions starts to influence our life in some way or the other, they are leading us. And thereof, we are always lead by somebody whether we are aware of it or not.

Let’s look at the following list of people and see if you can recognize what all of them have in common:

Sam Manekshaw

Ranjit bajaj

K.M. Cariappa

Pablo Picaso

Bill Clinton

Mother Teresa

Adolf Hitler

Tiger Woods

Warren Buffett

Nelson Mandela

Arnold Shwarzenegger

Martin Luther King Jr.

Have you figured it out? You might be knowing some of them very well but you might not have heard some of the other names before. The one thing which is common in all of them is that they all have “influence” Some of the people in the above list are well-known people but others are not so popular. But it shows that everyone has influence. It does not matter who you are, what you wear or where you live, You too can have influence on others.

You don’t have to be in a high-profile position to become a person of influence. In fact, you can have influence on the people right where you are. Everything you do in your life not only relates to your personal life but it impacts and influences others lives as well. If your desire is to become successful and change the world, you cannot do this without Influence. Influence is the key to unlocking closed doors. The rapid changes that happen in the world every other day is because of influence. Let’s look at some of the qualities of a person of influence:

Integrity: The most highly influential people always work on Integrity even though it may cost them highly. They set for themselves some moral standards on which they live by and operate. People may not like them but they respect them. Because their life is based on Integrity. They do not lie, cheat or steal and does not tolerate those who do. People like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi were so much influential because they lived with Integrity. The people in the world right now have become hypocrites. They show an enhanced picture of themselves to others so as to save their REPUTATION. 

Influence In Leadership

They focus too much on changing the conditions of the outside world rather than trying to fix themselves first.But people with integrity do no tell or show others what they truly are not.  They only reveal their true character and do not sell an enhanced image of themselves. They know their true-self and therefore they understand their self-esteem and self-worth. They are confident. When you find out who you are, you don’t pretend to be confident but it just becomes so natural for you to be confident that you don’t even have to think about it. And confidence brings influence. So, if you want to be influential, simply live with Integrity.

Understands People: Leaders with influence knows that every person is unique and they respect the identity of every individual. Some people are irritating and frustrating and have a completely wrong approach towards life. But influential people do not usually criticize such people because they understand that every person lives in an environment or culture which is responsible for shaping the character of that person.

Instead of criticizing, they solely focus on changing them by providing them information, helping to get a revelation and bringing in them a transformation.

Influence In Leadership

Empowering People: Empowering people is the highest form of Leadership. People like and respect true leaders for their ability to empower others. True leaders do not seek power for themselves but they want it so that they could help others become better. Influential People do not accomplish big goals only for themselves but because they want to contribute something to their generation. They impact the individuals and their organization by helping people to become better and they end up influencing them to they point where they start following the leader without even asking for it.

You too can become influential if you understand and apply the above three principles in your life and start making a change in the world RIGHT NOW!

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ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING!!

ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING!!

Recently I was reading a book written by Jeff Keller named “Attitude is Everything.” In the book, the author describes the power and authority of achieving a successful mindset. Success in life is not achieved by chance or merely by luck. It is achieved by a continuous disposition of mind over matter. It Is achieved by the application of the right attitude towards life.

The journey to accomplish your goals and purpose in life begins with the right mindset. It all starts with the thoughts. If you can control, manage and align your thoughts in the right direction, you’re creating a massive potential well in you to learn from crucial opportunities and difficult times in life. Why are some people depressed, frustrated, ill-tempered or sick all the time even after they have achieved everything in life that a person could aspire for? On the other side of the coin, there are people who are always calm, composed, happy, motivated and sickness-free although they may not have acquired any riches? Why is it so? It’s all because of the one word, “ATTITUDE”

Attitude determines Action:

There are some people who always handle tough and risky situations calmly and with ease. Their actions are the result of the attitude in the mind. Some people believe too much in things like “overnight success”. I don’t believe such a thing exist in this world. Every successful person has some tough, horrible and daunting stories which if they tell you, you would never believe in. It’s a result of keeping in company with right attitude or stable mindset in those tricky circumstances in life where everything seems to be shaky and falling apart and nothing seems to work for you.

 It is in those little moments that successful people pick up their failure and turn it into a testimony for the whole world to appreciate and admire them for the things you never thought of. It’s an old saying that a person’s thoughts and attitude determines their conduct and action towards a particular situation. And therefore, if you need to know the Attitude of a person towards life, then just observe their actions. The kind of things they do will tell you about their thoughts The kind of books or magazines they read, people they spend most of their time with, movies they watch and music they listen to determines their mental conditions.

Your attitude is your window to the world through which you perceive things. Therefore, it is your responsibility as an individual to keep that window clean so that you can see through it clearly and distinguish between right and wrong.

Cleaning your Window:

If Attitude is your window to the world, it is necessary to keep it clean. It is important to consider the fact that every person on this planet has certain pattern of attitude which makes them different in their approach towards life and circumstances differently.

However, in the beginning it was not so. All of us are born with our windows clean but as we go through the different stages of life, it gets cluttered, filthy and foggy because of mishandling by some people! And that is because of the kind of culture prevailing in the society in which we live in. When we are born, we are like a clean sheet of paper and the culture that we live in, decides what should be written on that paper. Therefore, the culture we live in makes and shapes our attitude and is largely responsible for the accomplishments or failures that we experience in our life.

I am not going to tell you any steps on how to change your attitude for success or mention a few bullet points because unless you apply those things into your life, nothing won’t change. You can find those things on the internet. But the things that I am telling you are based on practical thinking and then applying it in your lives.

You can listen to all the motivational stuff as long as you want but you know the reality that you’re not gonna change by that. You can only change your life once you discover who you are! Only the truth about yourself can reveal your true potential to you. Nothing and nobody else can tell you that. You have to find it yourself. Once you find that, I am sure that you don’t any external source of motivation to do what you want to do. It’s not like listening to motivational music that charges you up for some time and the next day, you are dead again! You do not need any motivation to do what you want to do and achieve what you want from life, just set your target with a vision, plan for it and once you have done that then the execution should be ruthless!

Your life cannot change unless you change the way you look at the world and change your attitude towards tough & turbulent times in life’s journey. Most people look for some motivational stuff to get them fired up to do what they want to do. But somehow they don’t understand this very subtle art of changing their mindsets. We waste most of our time to look outside so that we can get successful but in that process, we don’t even realize that whatever we need to fulfill our purpose is already within us. All we need to do is CLEAN UP THAT WINDOW!

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No Excuses!

      NO EXCUSES!

 

No Excuses!

There are people who achieve great success in life despite facing difficult circumstances or situations in life and then there are people who can’t use their resources well to achieve what they want to achieve in life. The only difference between these two is in their attitude or spirit of mind. The former kind of people just have a reason to do what they want to do even when faced with hard and turbulent times and the latter kind of people just try to find the excuses for what they are not doing and could do in the future. They have all the resources and the opportunities to get successful. However, these kind of people always look at the things that they don’t have.

The most successful people in this world have a reason for what they do with their life. They do not leave their success in the hands of fortune or chance, rather they work on themselves to achieve great things. The quality of the time that you spend determines the quality of your life. Only you can decide where you need to spend most of your time. Do you want to spend your time on listening to music or to listen to success stories of successful people? Do you want to spend your time watching movies or reading books? The decisions you make every single day determines what kind of life you will live.

• Life is what you make it: It does not matter how many excuses you have about the circumstances in your life or the kind of life you live right now. It all depends on you. Your life is only decided by you, and therefore we should stop complaining about our lifestyle to other people. It may be true that you didn’t had a good family background or the culture which brought you up was not righteous. But we cannot blame others for the rest of our life.

To get successful and achieve what we want in our life, all we need is ONE REASON. There may be lots of reasons of why you cannot start doing things that you want to do, but all you need is one single reason to do it. Only you are the Maker and Shaper of your destiny and no one can decide what your life would be unless you give them the power to do so. When we submit our precious time to listen to or watch things that are irrelevant or unnecessary for us to do, we are giving that external source, the power to decide our destiny. Therefore, your life is very much predictable and its predicted by the decisions that you make in your life.

No Excuses!

Excuses are just a way to construct an escape route from the reality or to prove that the situations that you face in your life are justifiable. It is true that we can’t decide our circumstances every time but we can definitely decide how we react to the difficult situations in our life. We can definitely change our perception towards things in life. We can still have hope for the betterment of situations rather than pushing ourselves back from our goals. I want to repeat it again and again so that it gets into your mind, “Your life’s destiny is shaped by the decisions that you make”.

• Change your Perception: Rather than looking at the problems in a negative way, we must learn to perceive them as opportunities to make things better. Problems in life are a temporary obstacle or interruptions which comes in your life just to test your strengths and weaknesses. We must learn not to give in to the problems rather face them fearlessly.

No Excuses!

Looking at the difficulties as opportunities to learn something new is an intriguing concept. Successful people are never concerned about the problems, no matter how big they are. They just want to know how to tackle it or how it can be solved. And then they learn from it. They know that it may take some time to fix a particular problem, but they never give in to the problems.

• Be Accountable: When I ask people about the people to which they are accountable to , they usually mention their friends, relatives or someone in the family. But most of the people are never accountable to themselves. How can you tell me that you are accountable to other people but not even to yourself?

This can be considered as one of the major causes of why people make excuses. Because they keep other people accountable for their actions and when they fail at something, they start blaming others. There’s nothing wrong in accountability and commitment to others. But the first person that you must be accountable to is none other than yourself. Because nobody in the world knows you better than yourself. You can lie to every other person in the world, but not to yourself. You can’t cheat yourself. Therefore, it is necessary for you to be responsible and accountable for your actions to yourself.

No Excuses!

Almost any person can get the guts to start things that they want to do in life, but it takes a wise man to complete or finish things what they started. All of us start things easily with thrill and excitement but when that excitement fades away, most of us quit and start making excuses. Therefore, I ask everyone of you to stop complaining about everything in your life and start living your dreams.

STOP COMPLAINING! START DOING!

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        FALLING UP!

FALLING UP!

The most distressing thing in life is when we fail to achieve something which we desire the most. Failure is often perceived as a negative word and failure is something which people try to avoid like plague. Every person on this planet wants to be successful. I have never met a person in my life who said, “ I plan to fail tomorrow”. Everyone wants to be successful. No person ever wants to fail. But we have made success so much a priority in our life that when we fail, we do not know how to manage that failure. Failure is not the end of the road. Rather, it is just a detour to success and must be conceived in that manner only.

Every single person that achieved something great and became successful in some area of life did so, not because they managed that failure effectively. They did not mourned or cried over that failure rather they learned from it and moved on to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish.

Here are some things which you must consider when you encounter failure next time;

• Failing to deal with failure effectively is worse than failing at something: The only thing which matters when you fail is how you deal with that failure. Its not important how much great or big your failure is, but how do you manage that failure? Do you loose hope and discontinue to move towards what you wanted to achieve? Do you feel sad and depressed when you fail? Do you loose faith by thinking that everything in life is working against you? Or do you analyze your failure and keep improving your mistakes until you succeed in what you wanted to accomplish? The decision is all up to you, Many great people in the history failed, but they knew the art of managing that failure effectively and turn it into success.

You must know how to manage and control that failure effectively. And this is important because if you cannot manage failure effectively, you will always be filled with the fear of failure. You will be afraid of failure even when you succeed because you don’t know how to manage it. Therefore, never be afraid of failure but learn how to setup failure into a success.

FALLING UP!

• Failure must be seen as a detour or an interruption: Most people perceive failure as an end to the road of their success, However, failure is a temporary problem and a temporary problem should be met with a temporary solution. We should never try to find a permanent solution to a temporary problem. But still this is happening in our society. That’s why, the number of suicide cases across the world are increasing every year. Many students kill themselves every year because of their poor performance in an exam which does not even measure their true potential. Therefore, they find a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

We must be wise enough to know how to deal with the failure. Your success in life is not cancelled by your failure. Failure is a little interruption on  your way to success. We should never take failure heavily. It must be dealt with a temporary solution because its not going to last forever. Life has many seasons. Failure is just a season and seasons change. Therefore, key to success is to hold on the failure and you will soon go through it.

• Perception of True Failure: Having a clear perception of failure is very important. Most of the times, we call something as because it does not meet with the expectations of others. We are much more concerned about what people expect us to do rather than doing what we want to do. Sometimes we connect our failure with our social image or our reputation. We are afraid to try something new because there is some fear of damage to our reputation. We start thinking about what other people will think about us when we fail. We can never maintain the level of our success if we just continue to give priority to other people’s opinions or expectations of us.

FALLING UP!

You do not fail unless you consider it as a failure. I have told earlier that it is important to learn from failure and you either succeed or you learn. There is no such thing as a permanent failure. Its all limited to your mind and your belief system. You never fail unless you believe it.

Failure just gives you the opportunity to relax yourself for some time and think about the possibilities and go through the planning process again. Every great inventor of history failed several times before they succeeded. Wright Brothers failed many times before they made history. Colonel Sanders faced several hardships in life before he founded the KFC at the age of 62!

 Every great success that came has been accompanied by great failures. Its not a big deal if we fail at something because everyone who tries to do something big has failed and will fail. It is just a process to make you strong to handle the big success. So, if you ever fall in life’s journey, never undermine your success due to that, just face it and FALL UP!

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Vision for the Future

VISION FOR THE FUTURE

Vision for the Future 

Hellen Keller was 19 months old when she suffered from a disease and became deaf and blind. She wrote poetry and books that became Nobel Peace Prize quality. She became a well-renowned leader that the world could ever witness. She was almost 80 years old when she was being interviewed by Walter Cronkite. In that interview, Walter Cronkite asked her, “Miss Keller, What could be more worse in life than being deaf and blind at such a young age?”. She responded by saying, “The only thing worse than that is being born with the ability to see, but have no vision.” And about this thing I want to talk to you today.

I don't even have to ask you about how much that answer from Hellen Keller influences you. People are born with sight but having no vision.

Vision is not about sight. Vision is more than merely sight. You can have sight and still be without vision. Sight doesn't give the ability to do great things rather vision forms the foundation for the fulfillment of your purpose.

VISION DEFINED………..

Vision for the Future

Vision is the capacity to see things beyond what your eyes can see. Vision gives direction to the purpose. When you are going to see your Purpose is becoming your reality, it is your vision. Most leaders of today have no vision for the future of the people that they lead. They are more concerned about fulfilling their personal ambition rather than having a vision for the people that the lead. Vision is the ability to see things that the eyes can't believe.

When you a purpose for your life, you must develop a clear vision to direct yourself to your destiny. A clear vision for the fulfillment of your purpose is necessary to achieve and accomplish. You should never be directed by your emotions to achieve your goals. Because emotions are just chemicals that are secreted by the body which can change every single minute. Be directed by the divine vision that you saw. And if where you are in life now is not where you thought yourself to be, than that stage in your life is temporary. This is very important. You should never judge your future by the present stage of your life. It is Temporary and will definitely change by your efforts.

Next to having a clear vision is to know your ability to fulfill it. If you saw a vision no matter how big it is you already have the potential to make it a reality. The key to fulfilling your life's purpose is vision. Start asking yourself this question, “What is my destiny?”, “Where am I heading in the next 10 or 20 years?”.

Most people don’t have any reason for living life. When you ask them, “Why do you work?” or “For What reason do you get up in the morning?”or “Why do you go to the job that you hate?” Most of them have no answer to that question or they say something like, “I do it because everyone else is doing it.” They have no reason for living. Purpose is necessary to make your life meaningful. Without purpose, their is no meaning in life. The reason for existence is only satisfied with purpose. Everything in life is created with and for a purpose. Nothing is created without a purpose. You have also been created with a purpose that you must discover in order to live an effective life.

It is a distressing fact that every person living is planet is born with a purpose and yet only few of us realize it and start fulfilling it and make it to the end. Vision gives you the ability to endure the tough and turbulent times in life. It gives you an insight that whatever tough circumstances you face in life, you can get through it. Your vision for your life may be personal but its never private. Its never only limited to the individual. The vision that you have affects and nurtures the whole community.

Wright Brothers believed more than anybody else that they could make a machine that could fly in the air by defying the laws of gravity. Alexander Graham Bell believed that sound waves can be converted into electrical signals and can be transmitted through a wire.

Therefore, believe in the vision that you have perceived and start fulfilling your purpose rather than waiting for the right kind of opportunities to come to you. Start Today!

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