Sit up Straight

Our body language speaks a lot about ourselves. It is directly related to our confidence levels and state of mind at any given time. Good body language affects confidence and vice versa. Today we will discuss the advantages of sitting up straight. Yes, just sitting up straight in your chair can do wonders not just for your posture but also to your confidence levels. Try it now. Just straighten your back. There you are. Is it making you feel better?

It has been observed that when people sit up straight in their chairs, they tend to believe in themselves and their thought process. People who sit up straight during an interview are more likely to ‘believe’ that they are qualified for a job. Try this little experiment. Write down some positive things about yourself with your back straight and also while slouching over your desk. Does it make any difference? You are more likely to accept and believe in those positive attributes if your back is straight.

When others look at us, sitting straight, they make a positive impression about us; but the best part is that when our back is straight even we feel good about ourselves. Isn’t that a great ‘pick me up’ tool? Any time you start doubting your capabilities, just straighten your back. Nothing could be simpler than that! Your posture will convince you that you are good at whatever you are doing in that moment. Remember your thoughts are affected by your posture, even though you may not realize it at that time. So if you want to become a positive thinker, you have to pay attention to your posture.

Another great tip of the day is to nod your head up and down, as in a ‘yes’, when you are doing some serious study/thinking/contemplation. This gesture makes you confident about your thought process as opposed to the gesture of shaking your head from side to side, as in a ‘no’. Just this insignificant gesture sends some powerful signals to your subconscious mind. You can employ this piece of information to better equip yourself to handle your life. You can try nodding your head while listening to a lecture or presentation; I promise that you will end up assimilating more than you otherwise would have done. So it is a good tool to use in classroom learning!

It is easy to train yourself to sit up straight and nod your head up and down; you can try doing it imperceptibly (the head nodding), so that it doesn’t look too odd; or you can do it intermittently, especially when engrossed in some mental activity. These small changes to your physical posture will offer you great psychological benefits. Try these two tricks while answering multiple answer questions! Your first ‘choice’ will invariably be right!! In any case, you will always do better in an exam if you are sitting up straight!!

Try and maintain a straight posture all the time, soon it will become a habit, and you won’t have to think about doing it. Decide for yourself, would you rather be confident, sitting up straight with your chest pushed out or would you prefer to remain under confident, slouched over your desk, your face looking at your knees? The choice is entirely yours!!!

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Hard Work vs. Smart Work

These days you hear a lot of talk about working smart. People often tell you, ‘You don’t get any where by sheer hard work. Look at the people working at the construction sites, or the ones breaking stones at the roadside. They are working very hard but are they getting anywhere in their lives? If you want to achieve success you need to work ‘smart’.” Such comments leave most of us in confusion. What happened to sayings like, ‘The harder you work, the luckier you get.’ What has happened to the earlier prescription for success, ‘Work hard and success will be yours.’ Is it important to work hard or not? Is hard work a pre-eminent qualification for success or not?

I believe it is. Of course you have to be ‘smart’ about working hard, but hard work always pays. Just being smart or working smart is only half of the real story. The fact remains that hard work and smart work must go hand in hand for you to be successful. Smart work is about making the right strategy. It is about following a disciplined work culture. But finally work gets produced by working hard on that strategy and by implementing those plans on ground. Hard works translates your vision and ideas into results. Look at any successful man today; you will find that besides being smart in their heads, they all work very very hard indeed.

Working hard and working smart go well together. They are not exclusive of each other. Smart work teaches you to be more productive with your time. If you are happy with your current level of success then smart work will surely allow you the luxury of not having to work as hard as you would otherwise do. But if you want to reach the pinnacle of success in your chosen field, than just smart work won’t really help.

Many people think that hard work goes largely unnoticed. They believe that unless you are ‘smart’ about letting others know that you are working hard, you remain a drudge. They call hard work a kind of drudgery. They are more interested in letting the ‘boss’ know that they are working hard. Their focus lies in the wrong direction. They waste a lot of their time and energy in doing this. I think that hard work always gets noticed. Perhaps not in the short run, but eventually people can’t help but notice hard work. No one in this world is blind enough not to notice a hard working guy. And the rewards follow without you having to push for them. Rewards come your way naturally when you have confidence in yourself and your work!

You need to stop worrying about doing ‘hard work’ or ‘smart work’; you should just concentrate on doing your ‘best’ everyday. You should strive for excellence in all that you do. Thinking about rewards and results saps your energy. It creates a ‘neediness’ in you. This neediness is a negative energy; it repels people and rewards from coming your way. Rewards come to you when you are not looking for them continuously. When you strive to learn new things, work at them, grow in your work by improving yourself everyday, how can results be anything but great? When you step out to work with a passion to do your best, you will bring out the best in others as well! That itself is a great reward!!

The most important thing is to focus upon excellence. Success is a byproduct of ex
cellence. When you try to look for your reward in a job well done, other rewards will come your way. Remember that the best always strive to get better! For that you need to push yourself beyond your comfort zone. You need to constantly innovate and improve. You need to work hard as well as smart!!

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Tap the Power of your Subconsious Mind

Most of us rely only on our ‘conscious’ mind for achieving success, while the vast resources of our ‘subconscious’ mind remain untapped. The truth is that the conscious mind is just the tip of the iceberg, while the subconscious mind is the entire ‘iceberg’ itself. By neglecting to tap into our subconscious mind’s powers we end up using only 10% of our real caliber. How can we undo this mistake and make full use of our subconscious mind?

The most important factor in working with your subconscious mind is your attitude. You can tap into this vast resource of information and creativity only with an attitude of calm and confident expectation. Yes, you have to confidently expect the subconscious mind to work for you. After that you have to accept and believe that everything that happens to you, takes you progressively towards achieving success. Are you ready to be calm, confident, expectant, and accepting?

Here is the plan for you to follow:
1. Know what you truly want: Most of us think that we know what we want, but when we are asked to write it all down, we usually flounder.
2. Write down your one goal in great detail: Until you write your goal on a piece of paper, it remains just wishful thinking. Once you put it down on a paper, it becomes a clear signal to your subconscious mind that you actually want to achieve that goal.
3. Reframe your goal in simple, present tense: Re-write your goal in simple, present tense (for example: I am successful. I am confident. I have cleared CAT. I earn 40,000/- per month. Etc) on a small card. Read and re-read it as often as you can, so that it gets steeped into your subconscious.
4. Make a list of all the steps that you are ready to take to move towards your goal: Making such a list helps make you believe in the possibility of achieving your goal. It intensifies your desire.
5. Prioritize this list: Re-do this list putting the most important step on top of the list and the least important step at the bottom of the list.
6. Everyday take action on one of the items on your list: Taking some concrete step everyday helps you maintain momentum towards your goal.
7. Visualize your goal as often as you can: See the outcome of your goal as a foregone conclusion in your mind’s eye. Feel as though you have already achieved your goal. Form a clear and vivid picture. The clearer your picture is the faster it will come into your life.
8. Feel the happiness and excitement: Create a heightened emotion of happiness, satisfaction, achievement, and excitement just the way you will feel if you had actually achieved your goal.
9. Behave as though your success is a reality: Have complete faith in your subconscious mind’s ability to bring your goal into reality. Be confident that you are moving towards your goal.
10. Release your goal: This is the most important step in this process. Once you have taken all the 9 steps (in about 9 days), you must just release your goal to the power of the universe. Yes, just let it go. Release all attachment to it. Just trust that you will be guided to take the right actions at the right time. Get out of the way of the working of the universe/your subconscious mind.

Try this technique on one small goal today. When you achieve that goal, your faith will strengthen. Then you can try it on other more important goals. Don’t take my word for it. Use your life as your laboratory. Soon you will graduate from a ‘positive thinker’ to a ‘co-creator’ of your destiny! Are you ready for this ride?

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Discipline your Self

Gary Ryan Blair, a motivational speaker, once said, “Self-discipline is an act of cultivation. It requires you to connect today's actions to tomorrow's results. There's a season for sowing, and a season for reaping. Self-discipline helps you know which is which.”

Just like motivation, discipline cannot really be enforced from outside. It is an intrinsic quality which is very important to be cultivated in order to achieve success. We need to be self disciplined if we wish to achieve our dreams. Most people do not like the word ‘self discipline’ as they think that it restricts their freedom to do, say or think what they want to do, say or think. People tell me that they try very hard to be self-disciplined but tend to fall into old patterns because of habit. This predicament tells me that these people have not understood the true meaning of self discipline. So what does self discipline really mean? Is it about creating rigid structures/ time tables and following them religiously? To me self discipline is an intrinsic attribute that defines who we really are. It does not amount to ‘doing’ something. It is all about ‘being’ something.

The first most important step in being self-disciplined is setting a goal. To most of us goal setting means specific objectives that need to be met and smart actions that need to be taken, in a given time frame. A goal is generally supposed to be tangible and material. It is something which the intellect can comprehend as ‘success’. Of course, such goals are important; but our primary goal should always be that of attaining self discipline. Once that goal is achieved, the rest would fall in place automatically. Unless you are self disciplined your smart goals will remain unachieved. In the process, they will end up causing so much stress in your life that they will do more harm than good.

So, how can you become self disciplined? Self discipline encompasses self respect, self worth, and self responsibility. It is an amalgamation of all three. It is a shift from dependence upon others to dependence upon self. When you want to achieve success that brings money and a sense of personal satisfaction with it; it is a form of aspiration, a goal of ‘doing and having’. The goal of ‘being’ self disciplined requires introspection. This goal is ‘intrinsic’ and not driven by any external trappings. If you want to impress someone with your self-discipline, then the goal has been set by that person not you. Do you get that? Self discipline is a goal for you, by you, and about you. Its focal point must lie within you.

How will you know that you have become self disciplined? The following are the qualities of a self-disciplined person. Check them out and grade yourself:

· A self-disciplined person respects him/her self.
· A self- disciplined person takes responsibility for ‘all’ that s/he experiences in life.
· A self-disciplined person does not dissipate her/his energies by dabbling in un-productive activities.
· A self-disciplined person remains focused on the task at hand and channels all her/his energies in the right direction.
· A self-disciplined person knows exactly what s/he desires from life.
· A self-disciplined person sets high standards for her/himself.
· A self-disciplined person is open to new learning.
· A self-disciplined person produces high quality work (quality of your work is a direct reflection of how much respect you have for yourself).
· A self-disciplined person works for self development and not to impress or belittle others.
· A self-disciplined person feels worthy of all that s/he achieves.
· A self-disciplined person doesn’t play the ‘blame game’.
· A self-disciplined person doesn’t wallow in ‘victim mentality’.

Are you there or do you require some more ‘self-discipline’? Think about it and take action asap!!

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Achieve your Highest Potential

How many of you think that you have achieved your highest potential? I am sure there are none. After all success is a journey and at any time we have the potential to achieve more than we currently have. But how many of us actually understand this fact? More often than not we reach a plateau and stop thinking about achieving more. In order to achieve our highest potential in each stage of our lives, we need to understand ourselves. A few questions help us do just that. Take some time and answer the following questions.

What is important to you?
What do you live for?
What have you always wanted to do?
What stops you from achieving more than you have?

Answering these questions would set you on an amazing journey of self-discovery and stupendous growth. Are you ready for it? Are you aware of the activities that make your heart sing? The trick lies in indulging in these activities more often and with more enthusiasm. Be totally involved in these activities. When we are involved in something that we feel passionate about, we automatically give our all to it. We are able to devote all our energies to the task at hand. In the process of enjoying ourselves, we lend more power to the end result of these activities. Ask yourself; do you want lukewarm results or powerful results? The choice is entirely yours.

Sometimes we get too bogged down by the mundane things that just have to be done. It is easy to slip into half-hearted efforts of drudgery and most of the times we do just that. Have you ever thought what may happen if you start paying more attention to your routine tasks? To begin with, start focusing more on the benefits of the work that you do, rather than on the work itself. Create a sense of inner pride about everything that you undertake. For example, don’t do your job because you have to. Do your work as though it is the most important job in the world.

Why must you do that? Why should your attitude matter in such a simple, routine thing as your work? The fact remains that if you approach your work with grudging obligation, a few things will happen.

You won’t enjoy the process. You will be more focused on just getting it done. You won’t give your full attention to the process.
Since you didn’t pay full attention to the process, the results will not be satisfactory. The results may be ‘okay’, and you might be fine with it, but won’t ‘good’ be better than ‘okay’? And won’t ‘great’ be better than ‘good’?
You will miss out on a great sense of accomplishment that comes from a job well done.

If you wish to experience a greater sense of joy and fulfillment in your life, enjoy the things that you do, and expect the very best from life. Settling for anything less is insulting your highest potential!!!!!!!

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