Success is a Greedy Mistress

Success is a greedy demanding mistress. To begin with, she makes small demands - all she is looking for is your passion to be in the game to woo her. But as you gain wins and with It the heart of success, her demands become increasingly greedy - winning not just for the sake of winning,  but for all that it brings in its train - money, fame and status.

This is what I call ‘The Greed of Success’.

Take the example of the Aizawl football club which won this year's I-league championship. To start with, they just wanted to see the best way they play the tournament and lose less. But with time and wins over the giants of football, they became more confident. They started thinking they could finish as the runners-up and ended up winners of the championship and winning the prize money off Rs 1 cr! After the win, Captain Alfred Jaryan said - they don't play for money - ‘money can come in the way of true performance’. ‘We just put our heads down and try to achieve as much as we can’.

Let us pray Dame Success doesn't claim another victim.

Following Your Heart

Do you have this burning desire that you are destined for more? Harsha Bhogle, who graduated as a chemical engineer and has a degree from IIM Ahmedabad, followed his passion for  cricket. He chose to become a cricket commentator, find success and manage to make a comfortable living out of his passion.

But for all those who choose to listen to the voice within and follow it fearlessly,  there are wise words of advice from successful banker-turned successful author Amish Triphati. “You must use your heart  to decide the destination but”, he warns, “... use your mind to plot the journey”.

Success and Leaving a Legacy

The four goals of life according to Stephen Covey are; To live, To love, To learn and To leave a legacy.  And Naryana Murthy of Infosys who has loved his work and lived a full life, has learnt well from his rich experiences. Moreover, he has knack of simplifying complex ideas.

So success to Murthy is “the ability to put a smile on the face of people when I enter a room”, and  his enduring legacy,  he hopes, would be “a commitment to human decency”.

The Values Compass

“When I first came into the industry, I wanted my work to speak for myself and my aim was to earn a good name. Over the years,  my priorities changed and I wanted to make more money. But in the last four years, I’m back to square one. My character certificate became important for me.” - Actor Prabhudeva

Insight
Our values determine the choices we make. The priority of values tend to change as our definition of success changes. It is a good idea to revisit our values periodically to determine whether the things we do and the behaviours we exhibit are in sync with our values. Old or new.

Life Transitions

“To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don't isolate.” Michael Jordan, billionaire basketball star

INSIGHT
The journey from acquiring to contributing, from taking to giving, from looking without to looking within,  is the journey from doing to being. Each of us makes the transition in different ways, at different stages in our lives.

Power of The Story

“Retelling a story about the habits, mannerisms daily goals of successful people puts you one step closer to learning (& teaching others) how to recreate their results. Find people who have the skills you want. Study their stories, & tell their stories. We tend to teach what we need to learn, & I can't think of a better way to do it” - Annette Simmons in Whoever Tells The Best Story Wins

INSIGHT
Learning from the stories of others is the simplest way to learn. My personal collection of over 700 stories is my treasure of learning into which I dip to revive and refresh myself.

On The Virtues of Being Shameless

Can being shameless be a virtue? Kunal Shah, founder Freecharge thinks so. He believes it's a trained behavior because we want to fit in. But fitting in, he says, is a very dangerous thing because success is all about not fitting in. To him, people who are shameless ask for help, are more open to taking risks and do well in life.

Insight
A lot of pain in our life is caused by the labels we use to define it. Shameless or bold, virtue or vice, failure or learning, rich or poor are all self-chosen labels. Change the label, redefine, rejuvenate and address the pain - or relapse.

Celebrate Both Success and Failure

"In our culture deck, which I like to show to a new team member coming in...one of the main things we talk about is not celebrating," says Siminoff (founder of startup Ring). "I see these startups celebrating every new funding round, and the reality is that there are always bad things that are going to happen to your business. I think it's really important to keep the team realistic." - Anna Hensel in Inc.

Insight
Not celebrating is overdoing things. Both failure as well as success need to be viewed realistically, so why not celebrate ‘learning’ in failure and a ‘job well done’ in success?

Busting Productivity Myths

Popular productivity myths busted:
+ Long to-do lists change unconsciously to “what we haven't done lists,” creating stress and anxiety.  Switch to a positive ‘done list’. Makes you feel good about yourself

+ Focus on failure rather than success so that you can identify threats to your success in time.

+ When you have a problem, talk to a rubber duck. Stating the problem loud, organises and simplifies information & engages more parts of your brain. Besides, the duck won't interrupt, yawn or say he's too busy.
                                     -  in.askmen.com

Insight
Bust the myths, face reality!

Defining Success

Naveen Jain is serial entrepreneur whose company Moon Express, is the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon. Talking about when customers don't come on board easily, he says, “...Your success is not about your bank balance, it is about how many lives you have touched.”

Insight
One of the most critical task in today's materialistic times where the money god seems to have the largest following, is to define what success means to YOU personally. Here are 9 ways incredibly successful people define success.

http://tinyurl.com/jv5p2sv

Don't Take Your Success For Granted

“We aced at everything, creating products and designing them etc. Going in, I thought, that was it, that’s all we needed. Marketing, HR, and media relations were all BS. How I was proved wrong. Having a great product will not sell itself.” - Rahul Yadav at IIT E-summit 2016

Insight
On his desk, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz keeps a bottle of Mazagran, a carbonated coffee drink he introduced in 1994, and which failed to sell.

When riding waves of success remembering our past failures can serve us well.
#KnowYourself #Connect2Coach

Energy of Motivation

“Success is never owned; it is only rented -- and the rent is due every day.” - Author Rory Vaden

Insight
Success can either inflate our ego, or it can inflate our motivation to do even better. The first is least desirable.  The second, motivation, can create positive energy which should go into defining new priorities that emerge from the strength and the consequences of the success to create a new balance. #Connect2Coach

Failure Is Success in Disguise

In 1917, Einstein set out to design a theoretical model to prove space is bent around itself like the sides of a tin can.

He failed.

But in the process, he succeeded in doing something very interesting - unifying the effect of acceleration and gravity.

#MyLearning
Treat failures like Edison, who in  the course of his journey of the invention of the incandescent light bulb, said he had succeeded in “finding 10,000 ways that won't work.” Discard the 10,000 ways that won't work, but do learn from the ones that did, and had ‘Einsteinian’ outcomes.

Picture Source : Paul S. Cavella

Setting Life Goals

Economist and political scientist Joseph Schumpeter, who popularized the term "creative destruction" in economics, claimed that he had set himself three goals in life: to be the greatest economist in the world, to be the best horseman in all of Austria and the greatest lover in all of Vienna. He said he had reached two of his goals, but he never said which two,although he is reported to have said that there were too many fine horsemen in Austria for him to succeed in all his aspirations.

#MyLearning
Our life goals should be a healthy mix of aspirational professional and personal goals. Working toward becoming the best in each can be fun and deeply satisfying - and never mind that we may fail to achieve one or two of our goals - the fun lies in the journey!

Picture source: engineering. com