15. Say No and Empower People!

In the previous post, I said, 'Ask and you will receive.' But now am I saying, "When someone asks you for something, say 'No?'" No, I am not. I am only emphasizing th  need to say 'No' when you have to.

Why do you hesitate to say no?

You don't want to disappoint the other person. (eg. your child)

You don't want to displease the other person. (e.g. boss or colleague.)

You feel an obligation to say 'Yes/' (to someone whom you owe gratitude.)

You are afraid of the consequences of saying 'No.' (e.g. losing a relationship)

By saying 'Yes,' you expect the other person to reciprocate your gesture sometime in future.

If you have other reasons you can think of, you can add them.

Whatever may be the reason, the chances are that you are not likely to achieve your objective.

The other person may consider you weak or he may take you for granted. Or, he may feel that he is so strong that you can't say 'No' to him.

One of the most undesirable consequences of the failure to say 'No' is that you create expectations in the other person. In future, if you have to say no to him, he will feel as if you have betrayed him. 

There is a proverb in Tamil A beggar laments  'The noble lady who would always refuse to give me alms, has refused  today also. But what happened to the bitch who was giving me alms every day? 

The beggar is not upset by the former not giving him alms, because he had  no expectations from her. But he is upset with the 'philanthropic woman who was giving him alms every day.’ So, how can she refuse alms to me today’ is the logic of the beggar.

So, learn to say 'No' when you find the request unreasonable or when saying 'Yes' will not be in your interest.

By not saying 'no' when it would be the appropriate response, you are making the other person dependent on you. But by saying 'no,'  when, you have to, you are making the other person less dependent on you. This will make him think of other options and will empower him by forcing him to think and do things without relying on you.

14. Ask for and Receive!

'Ask and it shall be given' is an often quoted biblical saying. I have sometimes believed in this concept. 

But sometimes I have not believed in this concept because this concept conflicts with another concept 'God knows what you need. So, you don't have to ask Him for anything. You will get what you deserve.'

Philosophy can be confusing. There are conflicting and divergent ideas presented even in the same philosophical work. We have to choose what seems appropriate to us.

I am reserved and self-restrained by nature. I won't even ask people even the time of the day. I will rather look for a source from which I can gauge the time myself. I realized how many opportunities I had lost when people told me 'Why, if you had asked me, I would have given it /done it!" 

Sometimes people have even told me "In fact, I was expecting that you would ask me for this but I was surprised that you didn't." How frustrating it is to know that there was someone ready and even waiting to help you but you lost an opportunity by not asking!

When we don't have opportunities, we can't do anything about the situation, but when we have opportunities but miss them by not asking for help, guidance or support, then it is our own folly.

In another blog about the reflections from my life, I have mentioned how, in the beginning of my career, I lost a job opportunity in a public sector organization because of my reluctance to ask my employer for leave for attending the interview in a far off place. 

In retrospect, I had felt that if I had asked for permission to attend that interview, my employer, realizing that it was a good opportunity for me, would have allowed me to attend the interview.

Asking can be of many types - asking for information, asking for guidance, asking for help, asking for feedback, asking whether the other person needs our help, asking about something we want to know, asking for favors, asking people to fulfill their commitments (eg. a lender asking the borrower for repayment of the loan) and so on.

Think of the times in which people have asked you for something and you have obliged them and of the times when you have declined their requests. 

Chances are that the number of times you obliged others is more than the number of times you said 'no.' Most of the people have a natural tendency to say 'yes.' It is up to us to take advantage of this.

Whenever we feel a need to ask, we tend to suppress the need because we want to avoid feeling bad if the other person says 'no.' It is very simple to change your attitude. 

Ask people if there is a need for asking, with an open mind. If they say 'yes,' you gain. If they say no, you have nothing to lose and there is no need for you to feel bad about it. Getting 'no' for an answer is no rejection. 

If you can develop this kind of a mindset, you won't find 'asking.' Just observe other people. You will find that there are numerous people who have no hesitation in asking even strangers for help and often getting what they want.

Next time when you feel the need to ask something of someone, ask! You will not regret your asking!

13, How Does Positive Thinking Work?

The title ‘How does positive thinking work?’ may appear to be a loaded question because it has an underlying assumption that positive thinking works! I am aware that this is a debatable question. 

Some will assert that positive thinking works and some others will assert the opposite. Both the assertions could be right because there will be real life examples of positive thinking working and of not working. 

So, the inevitable conclusion could be that positive thinking works at least sometimes. So, let us try to understand how positive thinking works, when it does. It may look illogical to suggest that a person can influence events by the way he thinks. 

There are people who possess extraordinary capabilities and they will be able to influence others using the power of these capabilities. But how can an average person influence events and people through positive thinking?

The answer to this question is in two parts. One, a person who thinks positively will be able to motivate himself to perform better.. One can dwell at length on the physiological and psychological changes that a person who thinks positively will experience. 

But let me be brief. When you think positively, you feel more confident, more enthusiastic and more energetic. These positive changes in the personality, attitude and behavior by itself will make that person more effective, more productive and more successful.

Secondly, a person who thinks positively will invariably pass on his positive energy to other people and the environment. 

One example you can easily relate to is the way a cheerful person lights up the atmosphere in a gathering. He or she will instantly raise the spirits of many people just by his cheerful disposition and demeanor. 

You might have experienced this even by observing a cheerful person making smiles appear on the faces of many people assembled in a place. Even if you are not part of the gathering but are just observing him from a distance, you will experience a pleasant feeling, at least slightly.

Just as a cheerful attitude can spread cheer around, so will positive thinking will generate positive feelings in others and in the environment thus making it easier for the person to achieve successful results.

12. Six Silver Rules of Success

Having come across several lessons about success, you may be skeptical about some more rules about success. 

These are not rules really. These are suggestions given by people who have lived a life of success. 

It is up to you to decide whether to follow these rules or not. You have nothing to lose by following these rules. Your life is bound to become more interesting and if you can follow these rules of success with a certain  degree of conviction and enthusiasm, your life will become exciting too.       

1. Have a purpose

    Does it sound too old? It may even sound platitudinous. Fundamental rules of life don’t change. I won’t ask you to have a mission, vision and what not. 

H Having a purpose cane very simple. Unless you have a purpose, you will have nothing to look forward to. When you get up every morning, you should know that you have something to do. 

YYour purpose need not be rigid. You can change it as you progress. Living in my sixties, I have made my life simple. I live for my granddaughter. 

 y My purpose is to take care of the 8 month old baby till she becomes independent. Her parents are taking care of the child all right. But with a lot of time to spare, I am in a position to make life better for her by engaging her attention and enthusing her.

2. 2.. Have some discipline
You should have at least a few rules of discipline. It doesn’t matter if you can’t get up early or exercise regularly. Create some habits like spending an hour or so for reading, housekeeping, learning some skill, helping others or any other activity.

3.  3. Set up small goals and achieve them
Nothing can be easier than setting up small goals and reaching them. Nothing can be more satisfying either. Prepare a list of tasks for the next day before you go to sleep. Don’t be overambitious. Choose things you can do easily. Achieving small things over a period will motivate you to plan for bigger things.

4.  4. Have a memo

    You may have an excellent memory but don’t depend on it. Make it a point to have memos for doing important things. Dependence on memory has made many people miss deadlines and lose opportunities. Your memory will serve you better if you aid your memory through notes.

5.  5. Don’t give a damn about what others think

     Whatever you do, you will have people criticizing you. And even if you do the craziest thing, you will have people supporting you. So, the wisest thing will be to stop worrying about what other people are saying and do what you think is right.

6. 6. Be prepared to accept setbacks

I   It is healthy to expect the best but  it is wise to know that setbacks are inevitable. Accept setbacks as inevitable hurdles you have to pass on your path towards success.

The rules are not so difficult, are they? You may be wondering why the rules are described as silver but not as golden. Obviously because silver goes with the wods six and success!

11. Build Your Self Esteem - The First Step towards Self Improvement

How do you stay calm, composed and maintain self esteem in a tough environment? Here are some tips you may to consider as a starter guide to self improvement.

Imagine yourself as a Dart Board. Everything and everyone else around you may become Dart Pins, at one point or other. These dart pins will destroy your self esteem and pull you down in ways you won’t even remember. Don’t let them destroy you, or get the best of you.  So which dart pins should you avoid?

Dart Pin #1 : Negative Work Environment
Beware of “dog eat dog” theory where everyone else is fighting just to get ahead. This is where non-appreciative people usually thrive. No one will appreciate your contributions even if you miss lunch and dinner, and stay up late. Most of the time you get to work too much without getting help from people concerned.  Stay out of this, it will ruin your self esteem. Competition is at stake anywhere. Be healthy enough to compete, but in a healthy competition that is.

Dart Pin #2: Other People’s Behavior
Bulldozers, brown nosers, gossipmongers, whiners, backstabbers, snipers, people walking wounded, controllers, naggers, complainers, exploders, patronizers, sluffers… all these kinds of people will pose bad vibes for your self esteem, as well as to your self improvement scheme.

Dart Pin #3: Changing Environment
You can’t be a green bug on a brown field. Changes challenge our paradigms. It tests our flexibility, adaptability and alters the way we think. Changes will make life difficult for awhile, it may cause stress but it will help us find ways to improve our selves. Change will be there forever, we must be susceptible to it.

Dart Pin #4: Past Experience
It’s okay to cry and say “ouch!” when we experience pain. But don’t let pain transform itself into fear. It might grab you by the tail and swing you around. Treat each failure and mistake as a lesson.

Dart Pin #5: Negative World View
Look at what you’re looking at. Don’t wrap yourself up with all the negativities of the world. In building self esteem, we must learn how to make the best out of worst situations.

Dart Pin #6: Determination Theory
The way you are and your behavioral traits is said to be a mixed end product of your inherited traits (genetics), your upbringing (psychic), and your environmental surroundings such as your spouse, the company, the economy or your circle of friends. You have your own identity. If your father is a failure, it doesn’t mean you have to be a failure too. Learn from other people’s experience, so you’ll never have to encounter the same mistakes.

Sometimes, you may want to wonder if some people are born leaders or positive thinkers. NO. Being positive, and staying positive is a choice. Building self esteem and drawing lines for self improvement is a choice, not a rule or a talent. God wouldn’t come down from heaven and tell you – “George, you may now have the permission to build self esteem and improve your self.”

In life, its hard to stay tough specially when things and people around you keep pulling you down. When we get to the battle field, we should choose the right luggage to bring and armors to use, and pick those that are bullet proof. Life’s options give us arrays of more options. Along the battle, we will get hit and bruised. And wearing a bullet proof armor ideally means ‘self change’. The kind of change which comes from within. Voluntarily. Armor or Self Change  changes 3 things: our attitude, our behavior and our way of thinking.

Building self esteem will eventually lead to self improvement if we start to become responsible for who we are, what we have and what we do. Its like a flame that should gradually spread like a brush fire from inside and out. When we develop self esteem, we take control of our mission, values and discipline.  Self esteem brings about self improvement, true assessment, and determination. So how do you start putting up the building blocks of self esteem? Be positive. Be contented and happy. Be appreciative. Never miss an opportunity to compliment. A positive way of living will help you build self esteem, your starter guide to self improvement.

10. Why Coaching is the Way to Go in Team Management

If  you hear the word “coaching”, you may have, in your mind, the picture of a basketball team or a football team with a man giving directions or shouting at the players.  Of course, you know that coaching is not a term associated only with sports but the term gets instantly associated with games. Today, coaching  is an important  concept in leadership and management. The reason for the popularity of coaching is that it levels the playing field.

Coaching is one of the six emotional leadership styles proposed by Daniel Goleman. Moreover, it is a behavior or role that leaders enforce in the context of situational leadership. As a leadership style, coaching is used when the members of a group or team are competent and motivated, but do not have an idea of the long-term goals of an organization. This involves two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team coaching makes members work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone may have nor share the same level of competence and commitment to a goal. A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately competent members with varying levels of commitment. These differences can cause friction among the members. The coaching leader helps the members level their expectations. Also, the coaching leader manages differing perspectives so that the common goal succeeds over personal goals and interests. In a big organization, leaders need to align the staffs’ personal values and goals with that of the organization so that long-term directions can be pursued.

Coaching builds up confidence and competence.

Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at work. It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence of members by affirming good performance during regular feedbacks; and increase competence by helping the member assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development. Depending on the individual’s level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more coaching behavior for the less-experienced members. Usually, this happens in the case of new staffs. The direct supervisor gives more defined tasks and holds regular feedbacks for the new staff, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting roles to favor delegating as competence and confidence increase.

Coaching promotes individual and team excellence.

Excellence is a product of habitual good practice. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback is important in establishing habits. Members catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement that they themselves perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire to attain team goals. In the process, they attain individually excellence as well. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. In order to achieve harmony of music from the different instrument, members will polish their part in the piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble. Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.

Coaching develops high commitment to common goals.

A coaching leader balances the attainment of immediate targets with long-term goals towards the vision of an organization. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are kept in check. By constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and motivated. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational goals; and making an action plan to attain these goals can help sustain the increased motivation and commitment to common goals of the members.

Coaching produces valuable leaders.

Leadership by example is important in coaching. A coaching leader loses credibility when he/she cannot practice what he/she preaches. This means that a coaching leader should be well organized, highly competent is his/her field, communicates openly and encourages feedback, and has a clear idea of the organization’s vision-mission-goals. By vicarious and purposive learning, members catch the same good practices and attitudes from the coaching leader, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If a member experiences good coaching, he/she is most likely to do the same things when entrusted with formal leadership roles.

However, as is the case with all concepts, there are also some limitations associated with coaching. Coaching is just one of the styles of leadership. It can be done in combination with the other five emotional leadership styles depending on the profile of the emerging team. Moreover, coaching as a leadership style requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching: individual and team. Your members expect you to be the last one to give up or bail out in any situation especially during times of crises. A coaching leader must be conscious that coaching entails investing time on each individual, and on the whole team. Moreover, that the responsibilities are greater since while you are coaching members, you are also developing future coaches as well.

9. 10 ways you can start taking control

At first glance, it would seem that positive thinking and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) have nothing to do with one another. But many of us with ADD develop negative thinking patterns because we become frustrated by our challenges and frequent feelings of being overwhelmed. This negative outlook then makes it even harder for us to manage those challenges and move forward.

Practicing positive thinking allows people with ADD to focus on our strengths and accomplishments, which increases happiness and motivation. This, in turn, allows us to spend more time making progress, and less time feeling down and stuck. The following tips provide practical suggestions that you can use to help you shift into more positive thinking patterns:

1. Take Good Care of Yourself
It's much easier to be positive when you are eating well, exercising, and getting enough rest.

2. Remind Yourself of the Things You Are Grateful For
Stresses and challenges don't seem quite as bad when you are constantly reminding yourself of the things that are right in life. Taking just 60 seconds a day to stop and appreciate the good things will make a huge difference.

3. Look for the Proof Instead of Making Assumptions
A fear of not being liked or accepted sometimes leads us to assume that we know what others are thinking, but our fears are usually not reality. If you have a fear that a friend or family member's bad mood is due to something you did, or that your co-workers are secretly gossiping about you when you turn your back, speak up and ask them. Don't waste time worrying that you did something wrong unless you have proof that there is something to worry about.

4. Refrain from Using Absolutes
Have you ever told a partner "You're ALWAYS late!" or complained to a friend "You NEVER call me!"? Thinking and speaking in absolutes like 'always' and 'never' makes the situation seem worse than it is, and programs your brain into believing that certain people are incapable of delivering.

5. Detach From Negative Thoughts
Your thoughts can't hold any power over you if you don't judge them. If you notice yourself having a negative thought, detach from it, witness it, and don't follow it.

6. Squash the "ANTs"
In his book "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life," Dr. Daniel Amen talks about "ANTs" - Automatic Negative Thoughts. These are the bad thoughts that are usually reactionary, like "Those people are laughing, they must be talking about me," or "The boss wants to see me? It must be bad!" When you notice these thoughts, realize that they are nothing more than ANTs and squash them!

7. Practice Loving, Touching & Squeezing (Your Friends and Family)
You don't have to be an expert to know the benefits of a good hug. Positive physical contact with friends, loved ones, and even pets, is an instant pick-me-up. One research study on this subject had a waitress touch some of her customers on the arm as she handed them their checks. She received higher tips from these customers than from the ones she didn't touch!

8. Increase Your Social Activity
By increasing social activity, you decrease loneliness. Surround yourself with healthy, happy people, and their positive energy will affect you in a positive way!

9. Volunteer for an Organization, or Help another Person
Everyone feels good after helping. You can volunteer your time, your money, or your resources. The more positive energy you put out into the world, the more you will receive in return.

10. Use Pattern Interrupts to Combat Rumination
If you find yourself ruminating, a great way to stop it is to interrupt the pattern and force yourself to do something completely different. Rumination is like hyper-focus on something negative. It's never productive, because it's not rational or solution-oriented, it's just excessive worry. Try changing your physical environment - go for a walk or sit outside. You could also call a friend, pick up a book, or turn on some music.

When it comes to the corporate world, protocol is pretty much the religion. To know the things needed to do are the basics of productivity, but interaction and having a steady mind makes up the entire thing to true productivity. There are those who seem to work well even under pressure, but they're uncommon ones and we are human and imperfect. To get these little things like stress under our skins won't solve our problems. Sometimes it takes a bit of courage to admit that we're turning to be workaholics than tell ourselves that we're not doing our best.