Step up, Do more, Be more!

What do CEOs do? They take their organizations in a desired direction by setting goals and achieving them. Now you are master of your life or to say CEO of ‘Me’ Incorporation. It is your responsibility to take your life in a desired direction. This is the hard part; most of us don’t know where we want to go in life because we never take out time to think about it. Remember nothing happens automatically in life. Without goals ‘Me’ Incorporation just cannot do well. Will you put your money in the company which has no vision, no goals? Take charge of ‘Me’ Inc.

To have an effective life, follow three simple steps -

Write down major goals – Dreams without deadlines are wishes, dreams with deadline are goals. Write down 4 major goals (one for each quarter) which if accomplished will make 2010 the most successful year of your life. Make those 4 goals the focus of your year. Writing down your goal helps you in making a plan and thereby increasing the probability of success many folds (research says 10 times).

Plan your day in advance – The role of world or the matrix is to suck you into its own plan. If you do not focus everyday on your plan, then your surrounding will sweep you off track. Before you leave home you must know how the next 10-12 hours will help you reach closer to your overall goal. If you do not know that you are going to gym at 7 pm then chances are you will end up browsing the net longer or loitering at coffee shop or just spending more hours at work. Successful people know in advance what they are going to get out of their day. Take care of your days and years will take care of themselves.

Evaluate your progress – However good your strategy is, it is always good to look at the results. Keep a journal to evaluate your progress regularly. This helps in redefining the action plan and staying on track. Take a simple example, if your goal is to write 100 pages in 3 months then it’s almost a page per day. But after one week if you have written just 3 pages, then you have to change your strategy. May be the movies, facebook, or gmail is taking too much time, or may be your goal is unrealistic. In both cases, you need to fine tune your future strategy. Please don’t be a person who doesn’t get time to evaluate his progress, because then you are saying that you do not have time to look at the map as you are too busy driving. Not a smart strategy, inevitably you will be unproductive. Every week set some time to evaluate your progress and keep you on track.

We are the happiest when we are growing. Setting and achieving goals is the fastest way to grow. You cannot just take your automobile out and wish to reach a wonderful place. No! Rather you need to know your destination upfront and then drive consciously to reach the desired destination. Be the CEO of ‘ME’ incorporation and take your life in the desired direction. Be the best CEO ever. Have a great year ahead.

A few days back, I was travelling with my boss when he asked me a simple question, “What has been the biggest day of your life?” Answer to the question was not difficult for me, but the question was thought provoking. It made me think that we might live for 70 years, but few days in these 70 years stand out. Each day we either live in the memories of these few days or are preparing for these few days. These few days are the crucial numbers of life that everyone needs to understand.

Carefully chosen numbers can be a great motivating factor. They have the power to continuously remind you of what is important, so that you can stop bothering about the small stuff. But if you don’t know which numbers are crucial for you, you might end up spending your life in achieving the wrong ones.

Here is list of crucial numbers of life which you might want to ponder and then prepare list of your own -

1. How many days of your life will you spend in office? If the score is very high, you might regret in the end.
2. How many times do you go for a vacation every year? If the answer is one, then chances are that you can go to 70 different places around the world. Hope you are covering – African Safari, Sunset from Kenya, Shadow Dance in Thailand, Tango in Puerto Rico, Bull Fight in Spain, Tour to Grand Canyon, Highlands of Scotland, and list is long.
3. How many people have you proposed? Or how many people have proposed you? Guys! Don’t feel sad about the score of the latter question. It’s okay; we all have similar scores.
4. Are you a part of any hobby group – bikers association, secret societies, speakers club, meditation group, or smoker’s paradise? Life is not meant to be lonely, isn’t?
5. How many different professions you have tried? Salesman, writer, teacher, social worker, DJ, all these can be pursued part time, and will add to experiences of life.
6. How many times do you remember stealing the show? Or simply put, how many crazy things have you tried in life? You just need some energy to get high score in this category.
7. How many friends do you have? Friends, not acquaintances.
8. What is the magic figure on your bank account? Hey, I agree this figure is absolutely CRUCIAL, but there are many people who just keep tracking this number and lose out on all other numbers. Worth it?
9. How many lives have you impacted? This is the measure of satisfaction, it’s beyond money.
10. How many times have you ventured into new territories? How many times have you tried super hard, but everything went to waste? Experience of failing is the hardest. Failure might break confidence temporarily but builds character. If you haven’t failed, then you haven’t really tried. If you haven’t really tried, then you haven’t really lived.

In the end it’s a numbers game! Life is a collection of experiences. There are a lot of numbers to achieve and a lot to look forward; life is not that hard or boring as it sometimes seems. Identify the numbers which are important to you and you will never run out of motivation. Numbers motivate us, understand the numbers of life.

At times, all of us say that we live in an unfair world – system is unfair, people are unfair, life is unfair. True, we live in an unfair world. Let’s see how this unfair world works. It starts right from birth; we were born in a hospital where doctors and nurses were held responsible for our well being. We went to school and college at somebody else’s expense. We use car, cell phone, laptop, electricity, and thousand other things which we never invented. And by the time we grow up, we have learnt that the world is unfair. So when our time comes to pay back to the society and give our 2 cents to improve the system, we complain that life is unfair. Hmmm, quite unfair!

I will not say that world is fair, we do not have equal opportunities and equal resources, which is quite unfair.  A child born in a richer household has an edge over child born in poverty. A person living in a developed country has advantage over person in a developing/underdeveloped country. I am totally aware that sometimes people cheat for small benefits. Quite unfair! But if you go back in time, say 300 years ago, you would find that we lived in a world of monarchy, where if you were not born in a royal family then you would have been a slave throughout your life. There were no rights to complain and no concept of freedom, which we now take for granted. And what are the chances of being born in royal family – 0.1% or less? I don’t know, I couldn’t find census numbers of that time. But now we have come so far in life that we can demand for our rights and chase our dreams. This world is unfair because few of us don’t shoulder responsibility and want to go through revolving door of life at somebody else’s push. We call it freedom – freedom for which our forefathers sacrificed their lives, and freedom which we take for granted.

The world has always been unfair and it will remain unfair. But, does unfair world stops you from being fair? Not sure. There are three ways to live in this unfair world, being a

1. Spectator, who complains about unfairness whenever he faces uneasiness.

2. Annihilator, who deliberately works to make the world unfair.

3. Contributor, who takes responsibility to do his job well and make this world a better place to live.

Solely due to the contributors, we live in this unfair world where we can choose to be any of the above three. What a gift all of us have got but we hardly acknowledge it. Quite unfair! Current philanthropic initiatives taken by Gates, Bono, Buffet and many other entrepreneurs might lead to a world by 2030 where child born in any part of the world can take a stab at a life of his/her choice. Throughout history, people at every level have contributed to make a better world. The best part of being a contributor is that it gives you a feeling which most of us keep chasing, a feeling called satisfaction of contribution. When you realize that you are contributing to a cause, you don’t feel like complaining about the unfairness of this world. Rather, you feel passionate about the job at hand and you get up with enthusiasm to make a difference. You start living each day rather than surviving. You can make the most out of life by contributing.