dan sullivan

What does success mean for you

Lifestyle, success

Have you clearly identified what are the parameters based on which you will be able to say that I am successful.

For some it could be a house, for some it could be travel to foreign land. For some it could be aspirational – as in – not having to go about life against a clock – its for me – though I haven’t been able to achieve it yet.

I used to have and still have this problem, that my line for defining success keeps changing on a lot of parameters. Which is where my problems start. Due to this I feel inadequate sometimes with respect to people who have more material things than me and keeping up with the Joneses becomes a problem.

On a lot of things, I think I have achieved success when I look back. Where I have come from, there’s a reason to smile. But when I keep looking at the ever moving horizon as I move forward, it does get me a little introspective and low. That’s when I follow Dan Sullivan’s advice – always look back at where you started from and how much you have covered, rather than thinking about what you have not covered. Then make a plan and take action for the next steps.

But defining what success means for you can actually help you in prioritising your life better. I had these visions of taking my family to certain countries on a vacation. Due to that I took a lot of decisions, where I had to hold back on spending on some items which were not aligned with this criteria.

Dean Jackson has actually designed his whole life around this principle. I am still a long way. But I would think you should also start defining what success would mean for you so that you know when you achieve it. Otherwise you will be running after the wrong things. Let me know what you think in the comments section below, would love to hear from you.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The One thing giving you a pushback

Energy, Fear, Human Brain, procrastination, Productivity

The human brain is designed for ensuring your survival at all times. Given that most of us – especially those who live in democracies are generally safe – the brain does actually does not need to do too much for survival. But because that’s the inherent design, things can’t be changed.

Which means that the brain will pushback on all kinds of new things that you think of doing, because it inherently means that it will need to work more. If it works more it will consume more energy, which in turn is a risk if there’s a sudden need for survival issues.

I have been trying to analyse everyday – sometimes successfully and sometimes without success – at which points did I face resistance or pushback, which caused me to procrastinate. There’s actually an interesting podcast which Dean Jackson and Dan Sullivan used to do called The Joy of Procrastination. They had an interesting take, that you should actually plan your day based on the procrastination points that you face everyday.

Once you realise that the pushback or resistance or procrastination or fear means that the brain is thinking that new work is involved, it could actually be good for you. So thinking in these terms, I am working now each day on trying to identify one point of resistance and then actually do that thing. Sometimes it has been writing an email to a prospect, sometimes its a difficult conversation with a colleague.

I am not sure if all the activities that I have done are actually becoming successful but there’s a great sense of relief after I do the thing, where I was facing push back.

While I am working on that aspect I am also trying to figure out, how I can make the Domino effect come into play, when I am doing these things which are giving me a pushback. I will keep you posted if I can build an “algorithm” which can help me make me geometrically more productive because of these activities.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Losing hurts more than the joy of winning – 2

losing, winning

Yesterday I wrote about how one less packet of buns caused me more anguish than the joy of getting the complementary items which BigBasket had sent me.

I keep writing about the Gap versus Gain philosophy of Dan Sullivan. How its more important to see where you have reached from where you started and feel happy, versus, continuously chasing a moving target and feeling depressed.

After the delivery boy had gone, I started wondering if the situation was really as bad as I was making it out to be. Compared to not having anything to eat, early in the morning, I had at least received one packet of buns. Now I didn’t have to wait for the shops to open, before I would get the items to make my breakfast. I could atheist have my breakfast immediately.

I had also not lost any money, since the delivery boy had ensured that he had updated the shortfall in his system right there and I had got the return also credited into my wallet.

That’s when I came back to measuring my situation with respect to where I had reached (got one packet of buns) from where I had started (nothing for breakfast) instead of measuring against an ideal (both the buns packets being available)

When you think in this fashion, you stop being a victim and start feeling more happy. Try it and let me know your experiences.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Time is a relative term – Good or Bad

arrogance, ego, Karma, Time

I think it was Einstein who spoke about time being short or long depending on the relative situation. If you were with you “girlfriend” it would seem shorter and if you were sitting on a hot stove, it would feel so long before you could switch off the stove.

I have a different take on time. Not to contradict Einstein. But thinking of time in a totally different way. After spending more than 50 years on earth, I have realised life goes through different phases like the weather. And they happen to everyone, like the weather.

When things go wrong with us, we tend to blame others for some trigger or the other. Suddenly the people who caused that trigger to happen, become “BAD” people. My take is most people are not bad. Its the specific “time” of our life which is good or bad. And times change, like weather changes.

The other way of also looking at this is that, when we like to transfer the blame of something, anything, to someone else….it means that we don’t have faith in ourselves. And till you don’t have faith in yourself, you will never learn the lesson which life teaches you. And life will keep giving you those lessons till you learn the lesson. The more arrogant you are about things, or bigger the ego, the more difficult it is to handle these things.

As Dan Sullivan says, till you learn the lesson, the “bad” thing which happened to you, the brain will keep relieving the issue and cause you more and more pain depending on the circumstance you are in. Once you decide to see what was the learning and how you will utilise the learning, the pain goes away.

NLP Professionals and Tony Robbins etc. have a different way of handling this issue. Some of it ], I have used and has worked. However Dan Sullivan’s rational explanation appeals most to my brain and therefore I have tried to utilise it more and more.

So “first lesson ” – Most people are good – times are good or bad and second, you can make BAD times – not so bad – if you get the learning out of the whole experience. Since times will change, anyway, its best to be equanimous in whatever situation you are and get the best out of it and bid for the time to change. As part of the Karmic cycle, I believe, when you do “good” even during these “bad” times the suffering is lesser and the change is faster.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!