The evolution of self-esteem in a career

The evolution of self-esteem in a career: Phase 1: I am not important Phase 2: I am important Phase 3: I want to work on something important The sooner you get to phase 3, the more success you achieve and the more impact you have.

Japanese Concept - Ikigai (secret to a long, happy, meaningful life)

What’s your reason for getting up in the morning? Just trying to answer such a big question might make you want to crawl back into bed. If it does, the Japanese concept of ikigai could help.

Originating from a country with one of the world's oldest populations, the idea is becoming popular outside of Japan as a way to live longer and better.

While there is no direct English translation, ikigai is thought to combine the Japanese words ikiru, meaning “to live”, and kai, meaning “the realization of what one hopes for”. Together these definitions create the concept of “a reason to live” or the idea of having a purpose in life.

Ikigai also has historic links: gai originates from the word kai, which means shell. These were considered very valuable during the Heian period (794 to 1185), according to Akihiro Hasegawa, a clinical psychologist and associate professor at Toyo Eiwa University, adding a sense of "value in living".

To find this reason or purpose, experts recommend starting with four questions:

• What do you love?
• What are you good at?
• What does the world need from you?
• What can you get paid for?

Finding the answers and a balance between these four areas could be a route to ikigai for Westerners looking for a quick interpretation of this philosophy. But in Japan, ikigai is a slower process and often has nothing to do with work or income.

In a 2010 survey of 2,000 Japanese men and women, just 31% of participants cited work as their ikigai.

Gordon Matthews, professor of anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and author of What Makes Life Worth Living?: How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds, told the Telegraph that how people understand ikigai can, in fact, often be mapped to two other Japanese ideas – ittaikan and jiko jitsugen. Itaikkan refers to “a sense of oneness with, or commitment to, a group or role”, while jiko jitsugen relates more to self-realization.

Matthews says that ikigai will likely lead to a better life “because you will have something to live for”, but warns against viewing ikigai as a lifestyle choice: “Ikigai is not something grand or extraordinary. It’s something pretty matter-of-fact.

Okinawa, a remote island to the south west of Japan, has an unusually large population of centenarians and is often referred to in examinations of ikigai - though not by Gordon.

According to Dan Buettner, an expert on Blue Zones, the areas of the world where people live longest, the concept of ikigai pervades the life of these islanders. Combined with a particular diet and support network of friends or “moai”, ikigai is helping people live longer on Okinawa as it gives them purpose, he says, who provides a karate master, fisherman and great-great-great-grandmother, all of whom are more than 100 years old, as examples.

Just knowing what your ikigai is is not enough – all of these people put their purpose into action, Buettner explains in a BBC interview. Researchers stress that ikigai can change with age. For anyone whose work is their reason for living, this will come as a relief as they approach retirement and begin the search for a new ikigai.

Zen quotes

Chances of Success

What is Rich Life?

1. You and your loved ones are healthy
2. Quality time with family and friends
3. People who love and trust you
4. Work that fills you with joy, pride
5. Opportunity to learn and grow
6. Freedom to express yourself
7. Courage to dare, dream and do
8. More beginnings

Easy Work VS Hard Work

This is easy work: 1 complaining 2 pretending 3 blaming 4 judging 5 resenting 6 taking 7 shouting 8 expecting 9 waiting 10 doubting This is hard work: 1 inspiring 2 learning 3 teaching 4 trusting 5 empowering 6 building 7 committing 8 giving 9 loving 10 leading

Formula for Success

Five-point formula for success are:

* Understand and foresee the role of technology in your lives

* Learn new problem-solving capabilities

* Acquire new leadership capabilities

* Develop a set of consistent values and ethics in your life

* Be customer centric and business aware

Foreseeing tech evolution

The first capability Kris wants students to work on is understanding and foreseeing the role of technology in their lives.“You need to be productive despite the information overload. The concept of ‘pass out today and that’s your education life’ is not valid any longer. You need to learn continuously throughout your life,” he said. “Remember, the jobs of data cleansing, massaging and tagging and writing the Artificial Intelligence programme had not existed about 10 years ago.”

Problem-solving techniques

The second capability is about learning new problem-solving capabilities. “Keep in mind that biases will impact your ability to solve problems,” he said.He gave an example for the Confirmation Bias. “During a product launch, people tend to seek out positive information that puts their company product in a good light,” he observed. “Creative techniques like brainstorming, lateral thinking and design thinking would help us think out of the box.”

Being a leader

Third capability, he said, is acquiring leadership capabilities. “You are never too young to be a leader. You may soon be starting your careers. And you may wonder how you can be a leader if you are occupying a low spot in the office hierarchy. Understand that leadership is not a position or tile. Leadership is about inspiring other leaders,” he said.

Citing the examples of Sourav Ganguly, Virat Kohli and Mahndra Singh Dhoni to dwell on how to inspire others by being aggressive, by standing as an example and how to dream big, Kris said, “Leadership is not rank or privilege. It is situational. There is no single best leadership style. Practice leadership in the workforce or in your personal life. Identify areas where you are good and offer to help others in that areas. Find a mentor at your workplace and in life, who can show you the ropes of life.”

Values and ethics

The fourth capability, according to him, is developing a set of consistent values and ethics in life. “Your core values will guide the way you live and lead your work life. When we started Infosys, we were very clear that we wanted to create an exemplary company that the world trusts and respects. Our then tagline—Powered by intellect and driven by values—reflects this thought,” he pointed out.

The six values that you must imbibe in life are—Integrity, Fairness, Transparency, Excellence, Compassion, and Innovation. “Live these values every day of your life and in every transaction,” he advises the students.

“Most of us are obsessed with breakthrough innovations or disruptive ideas. They are important. But remember that the incremental innovations too are important. Smartphone is a disruptive innovation as compared to the PC. But every year, the smartphones get a little faster, the screens get a little brighter, the cameras get a few more megapixels. These are examples of incremental innovations,” he pointedout.

Customer centric mindset

The fifth capability, according to Kris, is to be customer centric and business aware. “Understand who your customers are and carefully listen to them. Be aware of the business fundamentals—like setting the price, cost structures, profitability of your product or service, how branding works and how to negotiate,” he said. “No matter what role you play in your organisation, you must learn to be a sales person, be a finance person and be an economist,” he advises.

“You must develop a customer centric mindset and must be curious and listen to your customers and other stakeholders more,” he said

Critical Things Ridiculously Successful People Do Every Day

Having close access to ultra-successful people can yield some pretty incredible information about who they really are, what makes them tick, and, most importantly, what makes them so successful and productive.

"Whenever you see a successful person, you only see the public glories, never the private sacrifices to reach them." – Vaibhav Shah

Kevin Kruse is one such person. He recently interviewed over 200 ultra-successful people, including 7 billionaires, 13 Olympians, and a host of accomplished entrepreneurs. One of his most revealing sources of information came from their answers to a simple open-ended question:

“What is your number one secret to productivity?”

In analyzing their responses, Kruse coded the answers to yield some fascinating suggestions. What
follows are some of my favorites from Kevin’s findings.


They focus on minutes, not hours. Most people default to hour and half-hour blocks on their calendar; highly successful people know that there are 1,440 minutes in every day and that there is nothing more valuable than time. Money can be lost and made again, but time spent can never be reclaimed. As legendary Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller told Kevin, “To this day, I keep a schedule that is almost minute by minute.” You must master your minutes to master your life.


They focus on only one thing. Ultra-productive people know what their “Most Important Task” is and work on it for one to two hours each morning, without interruptions. What task will have the biggest impact on reaching your goals? What accomplishment will get you promoted at work? That’s what you should dedicate your mornings to every day.


They don’t use to-do lists. Throw away your to-do list; instead schedule everything on your calendar. It turns out that only 41% of items on to-do lists ever get done. All those undone items lead to stress and insomnia because of the Zeigarnik effect, which, in essence, means that uncompleted tasks will stay on your mind until you finish them. Highly productive people put everything on their calendar and then work and live by that calendar.


They beat procrastination with time travel. Your future self can’t be trusted. That’s because we are time inconsistent. We buy veggies today because we think we’ll eat healthy salads all week; then we throw out green rotting mush in the future. Successful people figure out what they can do now to make certain their future selves will do the right thing. Anticipate how you will self-sabotage in the future, and come up with a solution today to defeat your future self.


They make it home for dinner. Kevin first learned this one from Intel’s Andy Grove, who said, “There is always more to be done, more that should be done, always more than can be done.” Highly successful people know what they value in life. Yes, work, but also what else they value. There is no right answer, but for many, these other values include family time, exercise, and giving back. They consciously allocate their 1,440 minutes a day to each area they value (i.e., they put them on their calendar), and then they stick to that schedule.


They use a notebook. Richard Branson has said on more than one occasion that he wouldn’t have been able to build Virgin without a simple notebook, which he takes with him wherever he goes. In one interview, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis said, “Always carry a notebook. Write everything down. . .. That is a million dollar lesson they don’t teach you in business school!” Ultra-productive people free their minds by writing everything down as the thoughts come to them.


They process e-mails only a few times a day. Ultra-productive people don’t “check” their e-mail throughout the day. They don’t respond to each vibration or ding to see who has intruded into their inbox. Instead, like everything else, they schedule time to process their e-mails quickly and efficiently. For some, that’s only once a day; for others, it’s morning, noon, and night.


They avoid meetings at all costs. When Kevin asked Mark Cuban to give his best productivity advice, he quickly responded, “Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check.” Meetings are notorious time killers. They start late, have the wrong people in them, meander around their topics, and run long. You should get out of meetings whenever you can and hold fewer of them yourself. If you do run a meeting, keep it short and to the point.


They say “no” to almost everything. Billionaire Warren Buffet once said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” And James Altucher colorfully gave Kevin this tip: “If something is not a ‘Hell Yeah!’ then it’s a no.” Remember, you only have 1,440 minutes in a day. Don’t give them away easily.


They follow the 80/20 rule. Known as the Pareto Principle, in most cases, 80% of results come from only 20% of activities. Ultra-productive people know which activities drive the greatest results. Focus on those and ignore the rest.


They delegate almost everything. Ultra-productive people don’t ask, “How can I do this task?” Instead, they ask, “How can this task get done?” They take the I out of it as much as possible. Ultra-productive people don’t have control issues, and they are not micro-managers. In many cases, good enough is, well, good enough.


They touch things only once. How many times have you opened a piece of regular mail—a bill perhaps—and then put it down, only to deal with it again later? How often do you read an e-mail and then close it and leave it in your inbox to deal with later? Highly successful people try to “touch it once.” If it takes less than five or ten minutes—whatever it is—they deal with it right then and there. It reduces stress, since it won’t be in the back of their minds, and it is more efficient, since they won’t have to re-read or re-evaluate the item again in the future.


They practice a consistent morning routine. Kevin’s single greatest surprise while interviewing over 200 highly successful people was how many of them wanted to share their morning ritual with him. While he heard about a wide variety of habits, most nurtured their bodies in the morning with water, a healthy breakfast, and light exercise, and they nurtured their minds with meditation or prayer, inspirational reading, or journaling.


Energy is everything. You can’t make more minutes in the day, but you can increase your energy to increase your attention, focus, and productivity. Highly successful people don’t skip meals, sleep, or breaks in the pursuit of more, more, more. Instead, they view food as fuel, sleep as recovery, and breaks as opportunities to recharge in order to get even more done.

Bringing It All Together

You might not be an entrepreneur, an Olympian, or a billionaire (or even want to be), but their secrets just might help you to get more done in less time and assist you to stop feeling so overworked and overwhelmed.


What do you do to stay productive? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Egypt

Warren Buffet View on Leadsership

"If you're looking for a manager, find somebody that's intelligent, energetic and has integrity...if they don't have the last, be sure they don't have the first two. If you have somebody who lacks integrity, you want them to be dumb and lazy."

Congrats WINDIES for WT20 2016 Champion

Write off West Indies cricket at your peril. Less than four months in, 2016 is already a year of great celebration and renewal for cricket in the Caribbean. West Indies won the Under-19 World Cup. West Indies won the Women's World T20. And now West Indies have won the World T20. In doing so, Darren Sammy's men have become the first team to win two World T20 tournaments, having also triumphed in Sri Lanka in 2012.
Those are the facts. The how is all the more extraordinary. Set 156 to beat England and win the championship, West Indies found themselves needing 19 off the last over, to be bowled by Ben Stokes. Marlon Samuels, who had steered the chase, was on 85. But he was at the wrong end. This was all down to Carlos Brathwaite, the allrounder who emerged on the Test tour of Australia just a few months ago.
Six. Six. Six. Six. Job done with two balls to spare. The first one was a poor ball from Stokes, down leg, clubbed over deep backward square. Then a length ball slammed down the ground over long-on. Then over long-off. One run needed. Push a single? Why bother when you have the power, like Brathwaite, to crunch another six over the leg side. The West Indies players streamed onto the field in jubilation. They had not only done it. They had done it in style.
And all this from a team that, in the weeks before this tournament, was stuck in another pay dispute with their board. But that is for another day. This day was about what happened on the field, and West Indies dominated the first over of the match and the last over of the match. England, along the way, had their own ups and downs, but by taking wickets throughout the chase gave themselves a strong chance of claiming their second World T20 title.
But if Brathwaite destroyed them at the end, Samuels was the one who chipped away at them through most of the innings. Samuels walked to the crease in the second over of the chase, when England had surprised West Indies by using Joe Root with the new ball, and he duly claimed Johnson Charles and Chris Gayle in his first over. Samuels had a mountain of work to do, and he did it, just as he had in 2012.
Samuels is an enigmatic cricketer, one who seems to spend long periods in hibernation. During those times he looks like a Don't Care Bear. But when he awakes, he is capable of anything, as he showed during the World T20 final in 2012, when his 78 from 56 balls set up the West Indies victory over Sri Lanka. Here when he came out of his hibernation, he was a Kung Fu Panda, clubbing England's bowlers and kicking them into the dust.
And he did it with limited support. England's bowling was good. David Willey picked up 3 for 20, Liam Plunkett was hard to get away, Adil Rashid cost less than six an over. Dwayne Bravo managed 25 off 27 balls but besides him, Samuels and Brathwaite were the only ones to reach double figures. Brathwaite's final score was 34 from 10 balls, not out. Notably, Root did not bowl an over after taking 2 for 9 in his first.
West Indies found themselves needing 45 off the last four overs, then 38 off the last three, and 27 off the last two. But Eoin Morgan had left himself with Stokes and Root as his only bowling options, and Stokes could not hit the mark. Chasing had again proved successful for West Indies, who did not lose a toss in this tournament and bowled first every time.
You could sense the relief for Darren Sammy, then, when he won the toss for the 10th successive time in T20 internationals, and sent England in. Ball one, Samuel Badree skidded it past the bat of Jason Roy, who was struck on the pad. Not out, sliding down leg. Ball two, Badree skidded it past the bat of Roy and onto the stumps. Roy had starred with 78 in England's semi-final win over New Zealand, but this was going to be a rather different sort of innings.
When Alex Hales flicked Andre Russell to short fine leg in the next over, it felt like an anti-climax was brewing. So too when Morgan, perplexed by Badree's wrong'un, edged to Gayle at slip to leave the total at 23 for 3 in the fifth over. But Badree bowled out, his figures of 2 for 16 impressive, and suddenly it was more of a contest.
Root was outstanding in the face of wickets falling around him. He struck seven boundaries and all were from classy, traditional cricket strokes, mostly along the ground, through the gaps. When eventually he innovated, he immolated. On 54 from 36, he fell when he tried to paddle Brathwaite over short fine leg, but in that position Sulieman Benn dived forward to take a sharp catch low to the ground.
West Indies' fielding was universally outstanding. No catches were dropped, and some of those taken were far from straightforward. Badree, Brathwaite and Russell were all hard to get away. Bravo found three wickets, including those of Stokes and Moeen Ali in the space of three balls. But the fifth bowler - a combination of Benn and Sammy - leaked heavily.
Benn's three overs cost 40 runs and Jos Buttler clubbed him for a pair of consecutive sixes in his 36 off 22 balls, and Sammy bowled just one over for 14. Sammy finds himself in the strange position of having captained West Indies to one of their greatest triumphs in recent years, but in doing so having almost done himself out of a job. He made only eight runs in this tournament and bowled three overs for 31 runs. In three games he neither batted nor bowled.
But frankly, who cares? Sammy is a dual World T20-winning captain. His men have done what no others in cricket have done. And they have given the Caribbean region a hat-trick of triumphs in 2016. What a year for West Indies.

Good one from Bill Gates

நம் வாழ்க்கையை இன்னும் அழகாக புரிந்துகொள்ள, வெற்றியை சுலபமாக எட்ட, வாழ்க்கை தருகின்ற பிரச்னைகளை எதிர்த்து நீச்சல் போட  என்ன செய்வது? நமக்குக் கற்றுத் தருகிறார் கம்ப்யூட்டர் உலகின் முடிசூடா மன்னன் பில்கேட்ஸ். உங்களுக்காக அந்த எட்டு பாடங்கள்

Lake Bled, Slovenia