Earth has completed one more round about Sun and is presenting us with an opportunity to make fresh resolutions. Are you the kind of person who makes a New Year resolution, gets bored of it and forgets it? If yes, you should read on. The very fact that you make New Year resolutions, irrespective of whether you follow it through, is a good sign;you are someone who is interested in improving yourself. Voyage shares with you some simple and easy to remember thoughts on self improvement, so that you may choose what you like, and throw it when you get bored and choose another when you like.
What is like to be successful in life? Well, we too don’t know precisely, because most of us are inexperienced and it is too early to say what success in life tastes like. Most people link success to material gains, better life style etc. But is it what success really is? The definition of success might vary from person to person. Nevertheless, any successful man would converge to the idea that finding success is finding harmony between personal life and official life.
Robert Holden and Ben Renshaw, in a book suggests a 3 pronged strategy to Success. According to them “The S3 formula will help you consider the key factors in a work life balance. The first S stands for ‘Success’- begin to form criteria of what success means to you. The second S stands for ‘Strategy’-start to form a workable plan to achieve a balance between work and life. The third S denotes ‘Synergy’- make sure you focus on relationships and creative co-operation with those around you.”
Often we hear that the competition is getting stiffer. Ever wondered against whom we should compete? Darwin’s idea of competition and survival is applicable in all most all aspects of life. Say, you are competing against a colleague
covertly. You see him daily, you smile, you greet
but in the bottom of your heart you compete against him. You compete against him and you succeed in getting ahead; you compete against many and then you come first; now you don’t know against whom you have to compete. In the process of competing with others knowingly or unknowingly we are improving ourselves. So why not we improve ourselves without competing with others. In short why shall not we knowingly compete with ourselves? Judge what you were yesterday and foresee what you will become tomorrow.
There is a person who stands upside down for few seconds when he gets into the swimming pool. Unable to contain curiosity, he was asked why he does so. The answer was simple, he said, he was experimenting! Now too it is not understood what his experiment was but he was living crazy, and experimenting with a calculated risk. Extend this principle to life and experience the results of these experiments. According to a web site “Doing unique, random, different, and ridiculous things is a good way to exercise the mind and promote new ways of thinking about the world around us”
How important is it to smile? Recently in a casual talk a person narrated a successful experiment he did in life. He learnt to get things done fast. Wonder how? All he had to was to smile when he approached someone. It is hardwired in humans and it is hard to look at a smiling face and not to return a smile, unless you have curbed it for such a long time. Smile works wonders and that explains the popularity of Smileys.
A person with constricted mind is like a cup which is full:a full cup overflows when more water is poured into it. A constricted mind can never imbibe new ideas and thoughts and can never accommodate others. Have an open mind and be receptive to new ideas.
Einstein was someone who enjoyed classical music and was a decent violin performer. Sir Issac Newton was a person who didn’t enjoy any form of art. But he had two passions other than physics : Alchemy and Astronomy. Having a hobby helps to shift your focus from the daily chores and reinvigorate yourself. Learn a new skill and challenge yourself; learn swimming and eliminate the possibility of drowning in 4 feet deep water, learn singing and eliminate the possibility of being mocked as a poor singer,or even try making parenting your hobby, be a better parent; the possibilities are numerous.
Having told about being successful, lets now think about failures. Success and failures are interlinked. Success is not the absence of failures but the courage and will to overcome failures. During tough times, it is difficult to fend the criticisms and stay focused. With this realisation, revisiting our driving principles and introspection any failure can be overturned into success. When put in the right perspective, failures are, as the age old adage says, stepping stone to success.
Voyage sincerely hopes that its readers get benefited from these thoughts and support us in this ‘voyage’ of self exploration and self improvement.
