So whats the way to be happy in life. Is happiness a specific outcome of something yes. I have known many people who say that material things cannot get happiness and they never aim to get something for them. Their goals seem to be so small and that sense of achievement is never there and hence never happy. Being Materialistic cannot make you happy but atleast it will not make you depressed. Having a good bank balance is better off than being a popper. Atleast that will not make you unhappy, if not happy. You will atleast not feel depressed about not being to have the basic things of life.

So being mateialistic cannot get you happiness what else can? If you need to know the 1 single reason it has to be Purpose. Because in life there will always be challlenges in life. You will never be without challenges. I have explained about this in many of my articles before on if you do not face challenges then it means that you are leading a very mediocre life. You are not leading a great life. Many people enjoy their challenges because its PURPOSE driven.

The one reason that really makes people excited about what they do is the Contribution. Contribution to some major cause that makes them feel important. Unhappiness is also because of not having a sense of contribution. In the movie, “The Rocky”, Rocky Balboa is pushed by his coach Apollo and only in the previous fight he would have lost to Clubber Lang. Rocky will not be able to give the best and will tire out soon during his practise sessions and thats when he understand the true purpose. For him the true purpose is just to prove himself that he is not a coward and can be a winner. Once he understand the purpose he is very happy and enjoys what he is doing. And thats when he realizes that even if he fails he will atleast not be a victim and need not have excuses.

When you are purpose drive and give you 100% even if you do not get the results you feel satisfied and happy that you have given its best shot. Have you experienced this many times? Your conscience is clear that you have done your best.

Many self development authors and speakers have been saying that today life is so comfortable and we need to be happier than our fore fathers. True I do agree with that and the fact that we have a computerized world today which makes life easier and many more easiers ways of doing things with the ATM machines and mobile phones and so on. So if thats ture why are we not happier than our stone age fore fathers?

We all today need a basic lifestyle. This differs from person to person. We have different needs at different times. so our happiness is also an outcome of this. The stone age man just wanted food. Now our needs are more. It is just not having 3 meals a day, its having a car, a house and so on. For few its a big luxury car and a bunglow. If this basic need is not met, then we feel not so great about ourselves and we do not feel happy.

How do you define happiness?

This cannot be a concrete answer. Differnt people define this in differnt ways. But let me tell you something, Happiness is most of the times just a state of mind. If you know what you want then you would always feel great about what you are doing and hence you can feel happy always. The reason why many people do not feel happy inspite of what they have is beacuse many times they do not experience happines. Happiness is an experience that you can live whenever you want. This moment you can be happy thinking about the happiest moment of your life, or feel sad about thinking the most disturbing things in your life.

Do this small exercise:

Close your eyes and recall a time when you felt happy. I want you to intensify this picture how much ever you want. Be in that experience as long as you want to and you can. See the pictures very clearly and hear whatever you heard that made you feel very happy. Once you are there in that intense experience of happiness, hold 2 of your fingers the index and thumb together. (called as Achoring in NLP). Repeat this a few more times until your anchor becomes strong. So whenever you want to feel happy after you have done this exercise, is just to fire the anchor, that is hold your fingers and you will run the same experience and feel the same way!

Lets face the fact. You just cannot feel great and motivated always. Even a small child has its own worries and difficulties. A common phrase used by many is “Look that child, without any worries, wish I too was like that”. Well how I wish I too could be that way.. haha.. for them not getting a candy can cause them worries and feel sad. Its not about what happens but its how we react to it.

One question commonly asked by many “how do I stay motivated always”. Sorry I don’t have any strategy for making you feel motivated always. I can only help you to understand that you can step into motivation whenever you want. And its so damn boring to be motivated always.

But in the first place why do you need motivation at all? How do you define motivation? Motivation is a state at which you can think high, take more action and be strong without much of fear. However this is not a great state to have when you are doing something that needs a lot of thinking. When you are formulating a strategy if your motivation levels are too high then you would not really put efforts in evaluating your strategies on whether or not they are the right ones. Your motivation would be so high that you want take immediate action without knowing the consequences of the same. So motivation is a state that is needed when you need to take action on something that you feel is important, during which time you have fear. I would also always add up the state of motivation with a state of CERTAINTY. When you are motivated to do something, you also must be sure of the things that you are doing.

For example, when you have fear of talking on stage (Public speaking) for example, you must not just have the motivation but also be certain about what you are saying. Else you would be the laughing stock. It’s just not motivation for you to invest money in the stock market, but also be sure that you are doing the right thing and investing in the right company. So Certainty and Motivation go hand in hand.

But is it always true? Well not really because your fear is also because of uncertainty. Well am I contradicting myself? I know yes, I am but not really true. I want to read the above 2 paragraphs again. It needs a great amount of balance. Its just that your motivation must be after you feel certain. Got it? Motivation is only to beat the fear. You must be first sure of what you want and do and then beat the fear. So your certainty comes first. For example, when you are investing, you must be certain that yes what you are doing is the right and will yield you results. After that you must feel that sense of motivation to break the barrier of fear. That’s when a voice inside of your head says “Oh my! Will I fail? Will I do well?”.

So be motivated when you need to and then achieve great things in Life! You can’t stay motivated always and you don’t need to be. So just be motivated when you want to.

In most of the email I also share some quotes of successful people, like how specifically they achieved success in any area of their life. The entire existence of NLP is based on modeling successful people in various aspects of life and that’s what I have been doing time and again. In each of my news letter I share a quote followed by a learning from the quote.

My question for you today is “how much of that do you really put in use?” Why and how do you plan to use all these techniques and learning in your own life?

The main objective behind me using these quotes or writing various articles is not just simply to motivate you but make you understand that successful people had certain formula of success and that’s the key differentiating factor. If you being to use the same techniques and formula will you also achieve the desired results. (If you wish to subscribe to my newsletter visit the home page http://lifeofexcellence.com)

You know the interesting fact about human life? We all know what is right, what is wrong and invariable we know the solutions to the various challenges what we face or we know how to break the plateau and move on to the next level. But we fail to do it. Why? It’s a million dollar question. Why we do not do something or why we do certain things that are not good for us, you never have an answer for it. I am typing this while sitting at a restaurant at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (I came here for a training program) having my breakfast. Few of them smoking, few people eating more than what is desired, few not able to resist the temptation and so on. Don’t we know that we must not do it?

During my various Personal Coaching Sessions I tell my client, “DO IT”. They go like “BUT….”. I say “Ask you head to SHUT UP”. We pour all the rubbish in our mind and start questioning. You know one thing that I really cannot understand is this. When people ask for help and when they are given a solution, one must just put it into action and do it. Instead they being to question it, doubt the action and do nothing in the process. This is quite annoying. Why does one have to re-invent the wheel when its already done. When you buy a car, do you test if the tyre is made right and will it work fine and is it built in the right way? No right, you just start using it and yield the results right. Same way in life you need to have some trust and move on and get it working for you.

What you need just a SPARK! I love that when it happens and it does not always happen. But trust me you don’t need to press hard for the SPARK to happen. You can just be what you are and still get the spark. The only thing you need to do is to ensure that you keep your eyes open for these. There is always a spark waiting right in front of your eyes. I just got the spark to write this post when I just doing eating my breakfast.

The moment you know that you have the spark and you need to do it then make it happen. So for all those decisions that you have taken in the past, today is the day. Just do it and experience the difference in your life too.

Before you close the browser and the website, lets do a small exercise. List down top 5 things that you have learnt from this website over a period of time. How are you planning to use these 5 things that you have learnt and how do you want to implement the same in your life too. You may also drop that as a comment for this post. As you write them down, what are the 5 most important things for which you feel that you must take action today. For that too you can drop a comment in this post and I am sure all the readers including myself will push you in completing these small tasks. Live with Passion always and attain SUCCESS in LIFE.

I used to hate waking up early in the morning and I used to boast around that I up late in the nights so I cannot wake up in the morning. Honestly that was just sheer laziness and nothing else. I am sure many of you reading this also will go through the same.

I know you would have seen many such posts that talks about rising up early in the morning. But honestly I have tested many and they do not seem to work. But then I put something simple in my mind and then it started working. I’ll definitely share the same formula with you too.

But before that please answer this question? Why do you want to get up early in the morning?

Not getting up early is it a disorder? No way. In fact like how you want to know how to wake up early there are many of them who suffer from not being able to sleep early. Insomnia as it is called. This is not a post where I talk some medical stuff to you on what to eat, what not to do and things like that. Honestly let me tell you, it’s not so damn difficult to wake up early in the morning. Yeah its true. But before you move on I definitely want you to answer WHY?

1. Health

2. More money

3. Spend time reading

4. Improve your skills

5. Time with family

6. Want a 6 pack abs

7. Be more productive do more

8. Pursue a hobby

Is it one or more of these reasons? Now is it so very important for you to wake up then, why don’t you do it? What’s stopping you?

Honestly, if there is one formula for waking up early, its drive, it’s the FIRE. So wondering how to bring about the fire?

The fire is not something that can be developed. It has about having the deep desire to achieve anything. If you said the reason for you to wake up in the morning is one of the above (or even something else that’s important), then you need to have that deep desire to achieve it.

Why people do not wake up on time, is that they do not find a purpose. If I tell you that you need to run out of the room where you are sitting right now, you might not do. If I tell you there is some tasty ice cream waiting for you, then you might think (I know few people will run for this J). If I were to tell you that there is Fire in the room, then you run out instantly. This is Purpose! And Purpose is what creates a fire inside of you. So you must have a deep sense of purpose for you to do something. If you notice that beyond an age there are lots of people who start exercising which they restrained from doing otherwise, its is because that they would have had a disaster in life, meaning the doctor would have advised that if they were not doing that, they would fall in the trap of ill health. So the purpose is even more higher!

So you need to find the true purpose for you to wake up in the early in the morning! Isn’t exercising every day a good enough purpose? I know you have this question right! Yes its not good enough, because if its good enough then you would not want to read this on how to wake up early in the morning.

Our mind works only on emotion and no on Logic! If we are emotionally charged and motivated, then we can do anything. This is a pattern as we call it in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). When we put an alarm to wake up in the morning, there is a NLP Pattern that is fired that runs pictures in our mind, which in turn lead to an emotion and hence action. Emotions lead to actions! Useful emotions, useful actions!

So waking up in the morning is all about the emotions. What emotions are useful for you to wake up in the morning. Energy, motivation, is probably some of the emotions that are needed. For this however there are many ways of achieving the same especially using NLP.

1. Creating the Pattern in your Mind - For you to wake up in the morning you need something called a Trigger. The trigger could be an alarm, a wake up call, someone calling you or you just realizing and waking up all of a sudden (I know this is not right). This trigger has to be associated with a sense of motivation. So what you must do is to create a picture of how you will wake up in the morning. Intensify the same picture of you waking up in the morning with full energy. Once you do this, you must associate the picture with the trigger. So you must practice this for a couple of times. When you are wide awake, do this exercise. Allow the alarm to ring and when the alarm is ringing, create the picture of you waking up which you already know and intensify the same. Do this a dozen or more time so that the association between the alarm and you waking up becomes higher.

2. Force Yourself – This is just to create a pattern in yourself again. If you do something for atleast 2 weeks continuously then the chances of you continuing is much more higher.

3. Commit to Others – ask your loved ones to do the needful. Ask them to wake you every day in the morning and go for a walk along with them. And slowly you will start getting used to the pattern of having to wake up early. This is a driving force for you again to do it. With this you are just creating a new purpose for waking up in the morning.

4. Tapping your Subconscious - You must have to change the identity of what you are now. For you right now, the identity is that you are a late riser. This in one way will not make you accept to be an early riser. It’s the same for people who sleep late too. For them if they sleep early, they cannot accept themselves. This will make them to sit up late and they never feel sleepy or tired end of the day! For a late riser too it’s the same, because repeatedly over the period of time you have been labeled as a late riser, you attach the same identity for yourself which will go against you when you want to wake up early. So feed your subconscious mind with the new belief that you are an early riser. Every day as you go to bed, give this amazing thought to your conscious and subconscious mind that you are an “EARLY RISER” and you will wake up early in the morning!

Practice this and attain absolute mastery to wake up early in the morning. One piece of warning is that all this will work, only when you really want to. If you are a person who is already happy with what you are doing and you do not really want to wake up, then just forget it and be happy about what you are doing and if you badly want to wake up, then this is the best for you. Be an early riser and feel energized every day!

Imagine you play a game (I love this metaphor and hence use it more often), however strong you are you still want to defeat the audience and by the biggest margin possible. You never think and say “let me score only 2 goals and stop the opponent from scoring 1 goal” and so on. You want the best, the highest ever. You do not think of the fact whether you are capable or not. If you have the right mindset of winning, you don’t look at the strengths of the team or the weakness of the team and still want to beat the rest!

Now can this same happen for your life too? If you wish to and want to. If you desire you reach great heights, by stretching yourself far behind your expectations and your capabilities. What do you mean by capabilities? There is one concrete definition of Capability that I give “Its about what you think you are capable of”. That’s a paradox right! We never know our capabilities until we test out whether something is possible or not. A Olympic sprinter does not know whether he is going to better this record or in what time he is going to complete and he just rushes and pushes himself to the best possible extent. As the athlete he does not bother about what his muscles are capable of. If every time you think this is my strength you can never achieve. Remember Roger Bannister, when the entire world were pronouncing that running 1 mile of distance in less than 4 minutes was not possible, and would risk the heart to burst, he was one who did not bother much about the strength and capabilities, but believed more on his instincts and achieved the feat. This made him to understand what truly he was capable of and made others also believe that they are capable.

Say you want achieve something in life and then plan with same and carry out certain action steps, half way through you begin to analyze and think that this is what is possible for you and hence you are not capable. You don’t necessarily say the same words, but definitely pass on this message to your subconscious mind and then you take a step backward. When this is not really true, you waste your energy of your brain by passing these negative commands. This will automatically drive you negatively and never take action towards achieving Success in life.

“What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.” – Anthony Robbins

Your goals are not defined by your strength. Its your belief that will want to you take past your goals. You do not go by the blind belief which might not be useful for you. Having an engineering degree cannot make you a doctor. You must have certain amount of practicality in what you do. But when you practical you have make sure that its also a stretch. You must do more than what you can.

When you make a choice of your Goals and your targets, they must be like “Yes I can achieve it, but it’s not so easy”. This in itself will drive you to greater heights. Fear sometimes is useful because that’s when you work hard to achieve. Just that you must be in complete control of the fear and not fear control you. When you confront fear then you stretch and achieve more than what you think are your strengths. What is the difference between an person who has a small restaurant at the corner of the road and the giant Colonel Sanders of KFC? Is it about their strengths? Its is about Colonel Sanders willingness to stretch. While he must had the fear, how will I do it, he never would had the thought of Can I do it?

“Capability means imagination” – Napoleon Hill

Let me tell you as to why I can relate myself to this so much. Recently I had a mind blowing experience, the biggest test of my skills on NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). I decided to carry out an exercise of a Live Phobia Cure. I have done this before, but in a close group after people attend my Born To Win training program and so are framed up about my skills of NLP. Was indeed easier. But this was new and different, where I had to chose a person from the audience who I am meeting for the first time and then cure the Phobia. Guess what did I use for curing the Phobia? A Live snake! This was a great experience for me and I did achieve it. When first I was deciding to do it, its not about my strengths, but I also believed that I could do it. It was a stretch, and I did have a concern but never allowed that overtake me and achieve it! This is working against your strengths and stretching to achieve more.

This experience of mine, I shared not to impress you but to impress upon that anything is possible with the right strategy. If you were to work with your strengths and limitations, as the word itself goes, it limits your Success. Spread beyond boundaries to achieve more. Only when you do and take action do you really understand what you are truly capable and what you can achieve. When you know that you can run a kilometer in X minutes, you know that you can do it even lesser than X. Only after you lift 50 kgs of weight and do some bench press do you know that you can even do 70 or even 100. Your muscles begin to build more and you become stronger to take a chance of carrying more weight on your shoulder. Achieve the best in Life!

I want to recall a very interesting story that I happened to read

The old Master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it. “How does it taste?” the Master asked. “Awful,” spat the apprentice. The Master chuckled and then asked the young man to take another handful of salt and put it in the lake.

The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and when the apprentice swirled his handful of salt into the lake, the old man said, “Now drink from the lake.” As the water dripped down the young man’s chin, the Master asked, “How does it taste?” “Good!” remarked the apprentice. “Do you taste the salt?” asked the Master. “No,” said the young man.

The Master sat beside this troubled young man, took his hands, and said, “The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount we taste the ‘pain’ depends on the container we put it into. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things….. Stop being a glass. Become a lake!”

I am not here talking about the Physical Pain but the mental pain and agony that we go through in our lives. Physical pain is of no choice and we can over come with various pain killers. But where is the ‘pain killer‘ for your mind? Unfortunatly pharmacies do not sell them. They might think that you are crazy and asking for a pain killer.

How do you come out of the pain of life? What creates the pain? Events, Situations, people, incidents? Do these create pain? But how?

Before your proceed reading I want you to list down the top reasons why you experience pain. Please do this as this is very important for you to move on this post

I hope you are reading this after listing down the pain you are going through. Again reiterating its not physical pain, we are talking about mental pain, the feeling of pain. Now check the reasons what you have cited fall under these broad categories

1. People
2. Events
3. Environment and things not happening the way you want it to?

Can you tell me how do people create pain. Most of the times we assume that they have an intention of creating pain and hence we bear that pain and not able to talk to the concerned person. Let me ask you this, are there people who truly mean to hurt you and make you feel bad? Does your wife, brother, father/mother, boss or whoever be it have an intention of creating pain for you? Incidentally these are people who really are bothered about you. If that’s true how can they create pain? So where does the pain exist and where does the pain arise from?

Events create pain? How can events create pain? We choose the events and most importantly the events have already happened and without control, and how do they impose the pain in you?

And thirdly is things don’t happen the way you want to take responsibility and change the way you are doing things rather than feeling the pain and not moving forward in life.

The kind of pain what we undergo every day in life is nothing compared to what many people face in their life. I am not saying that your pain is nothing and it cannot impact you but there are people who change the way they look at things. That’s the point I want to drive in here.

Have you heard of this person by name Oscar Pistorius? He is the fastest man with no legs. Wondering how? He is a blade runner and has artificial limbs to run. He participated in several races including the race for able bodied. And guess what happened? The federations of athletics ruled him out from participating in races because he was using an external device to make him run better.

Oscar Pistorius was amputated on both the legs when he was 11 years old and at the age of 18, was introduced to running and never looked back and started practicing and decided to participate in the Olympics too. However he was not allowed to do so. Looks like the federation felt that he had a greater advantage. Truly yes he had a greater advantage, the advantage of having the “MINDSET” to look at the brighter side of life and not let go the pain take over him. The fact is that he was not even control of what happened to him. He could not do anything about his amputation as he was born with some deficiencies. Its about how he reacted to the pain he was having. Incidentally later the Athletics federation accepted him to participate in the Olympics.

How to come out of pain?

All said and done we still face the pain for sometime because we are not driven by logic, but by emotion. How do we approach it and how do we make sure that we do not allow the pain to affect us? Few simple ways to achieve this

    1.Behind every action is a Positive Intention or no Intention:

      When people do an act that might hurt you (or in fact for which you choose to get hurt) most of the times there is no intention. They do things without their knowledge and without realizing that they are doing it. They do not understand the consequence behind what they say or do and hence you feel hurt. So whenever someone hurts you, look whether they are doing it with an intention? If you know its not true then it won’t really hurt you.

An act is always preceded with a positive intention. “I want to feel important”, “I think I am better” and so many such thoughts go into the mind of a person before they utter something. Look at the highest positive intention behind why a person acted in a certain way. The moment you look at the positive intention, you feelings of being hurt will definitely reduce. Look at why the person wanted that positive intention and as they are lacking you are the only person who could give them the importance they need. So feel proud about it

2. Events can’t really control your feelings. I would like to recall this amazing formula by Jack Canfield (Co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul series),

Event + Response = Outcome

Most of the times we are not in control of the events, because the events have already happened and we cannot stop them now. But we definitely have the choice of responding the way we want to, to make the event not affect us. The law of polarity says “for anything that is negative there is always something positive” and if you were to look at the that, the event will not affect you.

Start choosing the response which favorable for you, which motivates you. If you lost money in the business, say good that happened and attach a meaning to it which best suits you and puts you in an empowered state.

We cannot control the events but can control the way we feel and respond to the event.

Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you respond to it

3. Disassociationis the key to not feeling the pain. When you feel the step out of yourself and start to think why the pain. Then the pain will sound so different that you will not feel it with the same intensity. You will start wondering why do feel for such a tiny challenge that you face. This is the immediate cure to the pain. Do that in an instant.

4. Words! The words you use make a difference. Stop using words such as “It so painful”, “I feel so hurt” (when you say this, just say to yourself immediately, ‘ok now stop feeling hurt’) and those disempowering words. This will only led you down even more.

When you feel the pain, you ask “Why me” and you feel unlucky and life seems to be unfair. But you fail to look at life in a larger perspective because life has also given you so many things. Whenever something good and interesting happened in life, you readily accepted and never asked “why me” during that time. So its not that life is sometimes painful, it’s just that we feel that way sometime. We are so gifted to get many things of life. We must learn to appreciate those nice things that we have and stop feeling about things that give us pain. Move on removing the pain in your life!

“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you’re in control of your life. If you don’t, life controls you.” – Anthony Robbins

Unfortunate that many people are not aware of what are useful or not so useful emotions of life. We think that Anger, Frustration are Negative Emotions and we must remove them. I guess NO! Wondering why I say so? Read on for you to understand why I call these as the Power Emotions and why these are important for us.

Anger:

This is probably the Best and the Most Resourceful State. Let me tell you, every time you get Angry you want Better things in Life. How? when you do get Angry, when things are not going the way you want it to. say for example, a subordinate of your is not performing the way you want to, then what do you do? you get angry, shout and so on. In fact most of the times anger is because of a feeling of guilt that you have not been to make the other person understand what you want them to do.This would result in Performance Loss. However if you feel that you have performed the best you tend to not get the best of the other person. The here in this situation a Feeling of Anger I would call as a Power Emotion because this emotion of yours will make to look at solutions. and when you look at solutions is this not a Power Emotion for you? So the next time you get Angry, do not worry much. You don’t need to probably express the anger but you can Definitely use it for yourself to attain better results.

Frustration:

Wow! I love this for 2 reasons. One is that you are working so hard and you are not getting the results you want and you feel rustrated. And for feeling Frustrated you have done lot of Work which means that you have tremendous amount of learning’s. you keep changing something or the other and still it does not work which means that you are just a few more meters away from the result. Frustration that you are not able to get what you want will make you think rationally and You will avoid all those errors that you are bound to make otherwise. When you are Frustrated the only thing You must be careful of is to make sure that you are in control so that you do not falter with some small mistakes.

Overwhelming:

This is a feeling that is more often experienced by many especially ones who are working from Head to Toe on many things. People who have many responsibilities feel this. Overwhelming is not a great feeling many times. However is that also useful sometimes? Remember you go through a feeling of Overwhelming only when you are bombarded with so much of Information. That is when you tend to move towards solutions faster. The next time you feel overwhelmed, remember you can tackle with ease. All you need to do is just sit and jot down all those things that you need to complete. I use lots of Post-it notes, both on my Table also my Laptop’s Desktop (I mean the Software Version of Post-it Notes) and cut down one by one and thereby you will feel good for having completed and you start clearing your mind.

Fear and Anxiety:

Many people ask me is feeling anxious good or not. I love that to a certain extent. Just that you must never allow the fear to control you but Instead you must have to confront fear and face with utmost certainty. I always believe that the little amount of fear is useful because that’s when you give the 100%. else there is a certain amount of complacency that will crop In and because of which you will give your Best. Say a day before a very Important presentation (considering that You are doing it for the first time or even otherwise) you do not have any amount of fear and you are cool about it, you do not give the best in the Preparation Process. There will always be a marked difference between a Prepared effort and an Unprepared Action. You tend to be more careful, more organized and better prepared when you have that certain amount of fear. Just Ensure that you do not allow that fear to control you and instead you are in control of the same.

Guilt & Obsession:

Why do I call Guilt as a Power Emotion, simply because if you are not Guilty about Your Actions and Results, then you begin to justify all Your actions and give excuses. If you give an excuse, you start carrying a Victimized Mindset and then you tend to not change the way you are doing things. you must feel guilty for not fiving you best, and do more the very next time. Success is always an obsession and must be a Habit. When People say ‘he/she is obsessed’, I Love it because it means that they are Value adding for the work they are doing. If you were to do what you ought to do, then you are only “Value Sustainer” and there can be someone who can do the same. If you are obsessed for perfection then you do more than what is expected out of you and then you are the ones who stand out among the crowd.

These Power Emotions also need to be controlled to a great extent. You need to understand why these emotions are being experienced and then take the corrective measure to change the track of feeling the same way. At one point, though these are Called Power Emotions, most of them are Still Negative and do not eliminate the Negativity involved.

The entire Idea of this article was for you to understand how you can direct the Negative Emotions into more positive and directed result oriented Actions. So Take Charge now!

You might not accept that you are not a person who gives up, but lets face the fact that yes we tend to give up sometimes. I am being absolutely practical, we do give up. Not that the most successful person does not give up or have fear but just that they learn and do something else quickly to overcome the same. This is what has got results what they have now. So it is imperative for us to understand this basic thing of life. If you are someone expecting to feel motivated and confident every single moment, I am sorry I really doubt if you can really find a solution anywhere in the world. You will have your own set of ups and downs and its how you react to the same and achieve more. If you can avoid these, life becomes better.

1. Lack of Plan

You might have heard this several times that’s if you do not have a Goal in life and plan for it, you will not achieve your results. This might be the most repetitive fact of not achieving success, but still I am going to reiterate the same to you too. I am so passionate about Goals that I tell every single person and ask them “What do you want”. There is no clarity in this for many people. Can you clearly tell me what do you want? Life still moves on even if you are not aware of what you want in your life, however the journey might not be smooth, might not be the way you want and will not get you satisfaction and a sense of achievement.

Even if you have a Goal, ensure that you have the right strategy to achieve the same. I know of many people who say ‘Yes yes I have a goal’, they fail to understand that they need some ways to achieve it. Sitting back and relaxing can never get the results.

2. Desire

Honestly, this has to come first even prior to setting Goals. Where is the fire in people? There is no purpose for their own life and they are not even curious about things of their life of what they have to achieve. They truly wish only to have the best, but there is no deep sense of desire. Its like having to run outside of a room. If I were to say there is something exciting waiting for your outside your room, how enthusiastic are you about running out? Say if you relaxing yourself in the couch with your remote in the hand and a bowl full of chips and sauce, will you ever get up to move? This is what is precisely happening in life too. Where as if I were to say there is fire inside the house what would you do? Would not even bother about who is there and what is there and run for your life.

Unfortunately all things that you want in life are not like the Fire, its like the piece of cake outside the room. You need to kindle the fire in yourself. If not, let me assure you will never achieve anything in life, because you perceive that you have everything in life.

3. Feeling unworthy

I see people who think that they cannot achieve thing simple because they are not aware of what to do and how to do. This in itself is a hurdle that stops them from achieving the best in life. Imagine if you think that you cannot do something, whatever happens you will only perform average. Failure is not the end results but only a means to the end. If this is understood clearly then you will not feel bad and sad for the results you produce. Moreover remember this fact that not everyone was born with qualities of achievement. Its becomes a habit. Winning is a habit, wanting to win is also a habit.

Remembering every time that you are capable, in itself is a habit. Having high self esteem is perhaps the most important quality that you must posses. If only you had the thought that irrespective of whether you will win or lose, you will take your stride forward for achieving excellence will.

4. Knowledge & Skills

This might not be the key reason to be successful, but important because at some point in time you need develop knowledge and skills. While experiences give certain results, continuous learning’s are very important. If we do not raise our skills and knowledge. Many school dropouts becoming successful, while they ensure that they keep updating their skills. They have people to manage their activities which require really skillful people. They learn from these people and start implementing them.

Like Steven Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People says “Sharpen the Saw”. If you do not do this, you become obsolete and reaching your desired results becomes difficult.

5. Discipline & Time??

Are you one among those, who says “I do not have the time”? Success is a habit, its is not an occurrence or an accident. When you want to reach your ultimate Goal, you need to break them down into smaller chunks and you need to consistently achieve. You need to take action every single moment to make it big. When you want to achieve you set your own rules of the game. When you set the rules of the game of life, you must adhere to it. You do not do this, then how do expect to achieve the results you want? I doubt if you can ever do it.

Even the most successful person always finds time for Family, for doing what they like and passionate about. While every single person in the world have the same 24 hours day, how is that one person is able to achieve more than what is possible? Simple they are disciplined and manage the time giving it more importance. The 5 minutes of planning of time will get 1 hour of free time every day, but many fail to plan this. You will always be carried over with many things in life. There will not be a single day in life when you will not have work to do and if at all you reach a time when you lack work, it just means that you are not growing and you are not achieving.

6. Too big & Commitment

Many people fail to act within their limitations. While you must expand your belief and achieve more, you must also know what to achieve. Many people set unrealistic targets, like for example losing 10 kilos in a months time. You need to be sure if you can really achieve it. If not you get de-motivated for not being able to achieve. When setting your Goals you must do a Threats and opportunities chart and find out what is feasible for you.

Practicality and Capability are two different things. While you are capable of achieving anything, you need be practical in defining when and how. Many people fail to do so and hence they get bogged down for what is not achieved and give up so easily.

Many people lose because of the lack of commitment. There is always something that comes in the way of Life. Life never stops. If you are not committed to the Goal, you can never achieve it. People start giving excuses and become a victim of their own life. Reflect on yourself on the kind of Victim stories that you are giving yourself and hence accept that life is meant to be this way and can never get what they truly want.

7. Want a Genie and a Magic Lamp

Listen, Success is not a shortcut. It is next to impossible by achieving your dreams in a shortcut way. People look for shortcuts and quick fixes for everything. If you are one, be sure of the results. DISAPPOINTMENT. It is bound to happen, because for everything there is a way to achieve and never do you get the results what you want in the easiest possible way. What I mean is not that you must struggle to achieve your outcomes but must work for it.

One of the main reasons why people do not achieve is because they forget what to achieve and also think that things will happen without much of intervention. Unfortunately its their own life and they need to be control of their life. There is a Genie in everyone’s life? Guess who is that? If you did not replying saying “Its me” I am sorry you are mistaken. You are the only person who is responsible for your life. If people fail, they don’t remember this fact that they can only make a change in their life.

8. Fear

Do you want me to write about this? One top most reason you know is fear. Where does this fear come from? People dream and the dream remains only a dream and never becomes a reality because they refuse to take the step forward. I still can recall the Golf game when during the last round Greg Norman a champion was supposed to have a clean victory. He was world No. 1 and was a clear 10 shots ahead of the 2nd in the row. And on that Sunday, was the most dreadful for Greg Norman, because he lost. Why? Fear I guess would have been the reason. He had everything to lose while the others had nothing to lose and they won.

Life is very similar. You have nothing to lose, because you don’t have to feel embarrassed about things of life. Even if you don’t get the desired results nothing wrong because anyways you don’t get what you want by not doing. If you do not experience pain, then you do not get the muscles growing when you hit the gym. You will have some amount of pain when you do things. People fail because they fail to put back that fear which is only between their ears (I mean the mind). Just break free from all those limitations of life!.

CHANGE! This is one secret of people who are successful and also not successful. People are unwilling to change and accept that they need to change. People do not realize that the way to achieve things is by having a CHANGE in life. A Small change will create a huge difference in life. The Butterfly Effect says so. If you are willing to make the small difference in your life, then your dreams becomes a reality. If you can avoid these and take a step forward then you will reach faster towards your Goals. You must not be desperate but you must have that drive, that fire.

Without the fire in yourself, without realizing you have a Hero within to handle anything you cannot realize your dreams. Remember, life is a Miracle and not a surprise. We need to design life the way we want to. If you can take control and drive with safety you can get what you want. Be obsessed in life, obsession for achieving is important. Success is defined as achieving what you want to achieve in life. Obsession is good useful things of life. So be obsessed and achieve the best in life! Live with a purpose and Lead a Life of Excellence.

Success comes with a Great Vision

“Every business and household must have a computer and must run Microsoft software”, was the basic guiding vision of Bill Gates. When everyone in the world were not even aware of the software industry’s future here was a man who trusted on his gut feel and passion decided to take the vision the farthest possible way. He was almost there achieving his vision. This clear vision of him won him several laurels and went to be the richest person in the world for 13 continuous long years.

“Do what you are Passionate about, the rest will Follow” – Praveen Sherman

This is something that I learnt from Bill Gates even as an young lad. I grew up seeing the success of Bill Gates and I was for a long time under the impression that he was just making lots of money by luck. But what Bill Gates proved was different. There is no one who could write software code as he could. When as a student at the Harvard university, every single student would have wanted to be part of the great institute and graduate to be successful, Bill Gates decided to stop studying and pursue his dream of writing softwares for every computer in the world. Just started the agreement between IBM and Microsoft, Gates along with friend Paul Allen was to write an interpreter for the IBM PC. He was not ready on the date that was announced for the installation and the good news for Gates was that the party at the other end too were not ready. This got the fire in him to write that piece of software and bundle with every IBM computer in the world. He was just passionate about software, coding and technology that incidentally also made him the richest man in the world

“Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana” says Bill Gates that has made him a great innovator too. Focusing on taking the computer to every single house hold made him an household name too.

Failures are learning lessons:

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” - Bill Gates

Bill Gates was never afraid of losing and went on to win a lot of deals because of this. While the Microsoft windows operating system is the widely used in the world, there are a good number of criticisms and unhappiness about the software among the users. While many of them used to get bugged using Microsoft products, Bill Gates did not easily give up. He took all those as nice lesson and is improving every single day. When critics were talking about infringement of laws by Bill Gates, he struck on and was giving the best the employees and the users of Microsoft Software products.

“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” - Bill Gates

Higher the Self Esteem the better it gets

When you start achieving something big, there will be people who would want to make fun of your efforts, pull you down and so on. The stronger you stand the bolder you get the faster these negatives wither.

When IBM pulled out of the contract for the operating system to be bundled with the IBM Clone PCs, Bill Gates stayed on and started focusing on the creating Windows amidst lots of hiccups that will hamper the company. Inventing the MS Access database system, was a relevant owing to the failure of the Omega Database with IBM. He saw an opportunity at every single place that helped him to achieve greatest heights. He did not allow others to deter him by inventing many thins to the public and still reaching his top most Goals and vision.

“Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes” – Bill Gates

Opportunity knocks once:

Bill Gates took up the responsibility of being the Chief Software Architect, Bill Gates was nurturing Microsoft by building a broad range of products. This was not just capitalize on the knowledge but provide the best by understanding the need of the people. He did not sit back and wait for people to ask what they wanted and instead made a revolution of creating an opportunity for himself and his company by innovating. He did not sit and do something that anyone could, but he took the reins into his hands to almost single handedly take Microsoft to this great heights.

“I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.” – Bill Gates

Action Speaks Louder

This is one never mentioned secret of success. Action is the key word. When logic never drives us its emotions. We must have that emotional strength in us to take action. Bill Gates as a small young boy never had anything to lose which he kept telling his good friend Paul Allen. When he had several odds again him such as the American Law and several cases against him, he still consistently took action by developing more software which the people wanted. This made him a super star overnight. If not for Bill Gates, Microsoft would have not seen the light today of what it gets. This was because of his constant delivery of ideas to his Goals and vision.

He was a drop out from one of the worlds best universities the Harvard and not everyone from there went to achieve great heights like Bill Gates did, which proves the basic fact that education is just a tool for success and does not define success itself. During the convocation address at the Harvard university, Bill Gates mentioned that good he came when they were graduating and not when during the time when they joined the university else they would have changed their mind.

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.” – Bill Gates

Trust- An unwritten rule for great leadership wisdom

Right from day 1 at Microsoft, Bill Gates was very open to the ideas. This he also proved later when Steve Balmer stepped into the shoes of Bill Gates and became the CEO of the company. He always believed that there is no end to learning from people, from books and so on. “I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot”, says Bill Gates ready for more ideas to float around which will make sure that the same culture of innovation continues in Microsoft even without his presence.

“At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top - I’m afraid that’s not quite right.” – Bill Gates

Success must never get on to the head

This is by far the best lesson what we learn from Bill Gates. At a tender age of 21, Bill Gates had achieved many a things including having money and fame. This did not allow him to stop achieving and always had the drive to achieve great heights. “If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago?” quote Bill Gates with utmost passion and determination.

“Microsoft is not about greed. It’s about Innovation and Fairness.” – Bill Gates

Never stop learning was the Mantra of Bill Gates which he follow till date. This empowers him to be a Great Leader of our times. He will always be remembers as an Icon and even without his presence in Microsoft he would still be regarded as a great inventor and a real genius in every regard of Business, Technology and Entrepreneurship.

Firstly, in a Game there is a Goal. Imagine in a game of soccer there are no Goal posts and how would the game be? It will be boring and every player of the game will have not motivation to win the game. The very fact of a Goal is to ensure that which direction every player must have to move and where to go so that they target victory.

Play Life Like a Game: Set GOALS to Motivate Yourself and Get the Drive of Life.

Every game cannot start without a Strategy. This will make the game worse and will not get the needed results. No guarantee that after having a strategy, you will get the desired results but you will at least have some measure to understand what went wrong or what went right and how to change the strategy so that you get the desired in your Next Attempt.

Play Life Like a Game: Plan Your STRATEGY to Achieve Your Results.

Is it that you start playing your life with just a Goal and a Strategy? Not all the time. In a game of soccer there are various positions and how does one decide the position? Based on the strengths of the person. If as an individual is excellent in Striking the ball then, they become the striker and start playing in the Forward positions. If an individual understands that they are only good at defending and can stop anyone from moving ahead of them, they become the Defense.

Life is very similar where you need to identify what are your strengths. You need to work towards understanding that what is that you are indispensible at. Not that every one invincible, but definitely you must atleast feel that way. You must carry the feeling that you are indispensible and carry on only with those activities where you think you can create the highest value.

There are many ways in which you can identify the strength or even create them. First one is simple, just check for yourself what is that you are strong at and what do you do well and then start focusing on that, master the same and take your life to the Next Step.

If you are yet to identify the strength, then look for what you are passionate about and spend most of your time in doing the same thereby it becomes your strength. Once it becomes your strength move towards excellence and make yourself Indispensible.

Answer these questions and you find the answer for your Strengths:

When you Feel at your Best?

What is that you are good at Teaching others?

What you Like the Most about Yourself?

What are your friends, Parents and Others Proud of You for?

Strength is a combination of skill, knowledge and attitude. While we spend most of the time on developing our skills and improving our knowledge, we never look at having a better attitude. The attitude that I am good at something and I can do my best in that area is something that we need to develop more. The certainty is the most important feel that we must have to so that we can handle anything in life!

David Beckham, class player understood his passion and his strength and went out to be a successful soccer star. In your life too, you must carry the same momentum once you identify your strengths.

So Start Your Life, Play it Like a GAME!