Friday, January 16, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Luck Or Hard Work - Which One Determines Life Success?
I have been thinking about this question since a long time. How much percentage luck and how much percentage hard work play in our life success? I am sure that at any point of your life, you would have looked at a person and said "How lucky He/She is. I wish I was like him/her".
In order to understand this topic better, I began to read various personality development books and started talking with people regarding this. This article is about what I learned from them and what conclusion I had come upon.
A one sentence answer to our question is given in the book, the monk who sold his Ferrari, "What is luck, my friend?" Julian replied kindly. "It is nothing more than the marriage of preparation with opportunity." As we see, Preparation plays a vital important role in life success. When opportunity comes to a person who is prepared, he can take the opportunity. This is what Julian Mantle considers as luck. So if the luck knocks an unprepared mind, there is a high probability that he missed the opportunity and hence misses his luck.
When posed this question to my friend Shyam, he told me "Life really is generous to those who pursue their destiny. When a person is determined to succeed in his life, the whole world wants him to win. Lady Luck is greedy. It supports success. It goes with those who do hard work. The nature silently prays for the person who does hard work and lady luck can't ignore him for long. A better word for Luck is opportunity. A person, who wants to learn more, who wants to accomplish something great in life, who focuses on only realizing his dreams, is bound to succeed and the right opportunity will definitely knock his door."
If a person believes only in luck, he just buys lottery tickets. He just waits. He will always be like that gambler in Las Vegas, staying at the roulette wheel. But if u do hard work, and luck comes, u never miss that luck.
Arun Vijay, put the answer in this way "You need to do had work without believing in luck. If you do hard work, and luck doesn't come your way, you don't need to worry since you have only believed in hard work and not luck. Hard work includes ability and skills. You should have right attitude to make this happen. If you wish to fly, and you do hard work day and night without working on to acquiring the necessary skills required flying, it is almost guaranteed that luck will be reluctant to come to your foot step".
It is truth that there might be many people who got success just of sheer luck. But since exceptions are not rules, I personally believe that we should not take these people as our role model since they took a bit of short cut to reach success. Short cut don't always lead a person to success.
What I understand on this topic is that, we are supposed to do our home work without depending on the luck factor. We should not be like a person who buys a lottery tickets and waits till luck blesses him. He may end up spending his life on this. We have to take advantage when luck is on our side, and do as much to help it as it's doing to help us. This is called the principle of favorability or beginner's luck.
If you are a student, we can do our best to concentrate on our studies and do as much hard work as we can. If you are an employee, give your best to your job. If you have a dream to follow, start immediately on it. Luck waits for no one. Before it comes, be prepared for it.
In order to understand this topic better, I began to read various personality development books and started talking with people regarding this. This article is about what I learned from them and what conclusion I had come upon.
A one sentence answer to our question is given in the book, the monk who sold his Ferrari, "What is luck, my friend?" Julian replied kindly. "It is nothing more than the marriage of preparation with opportunity." As we see, Preparation plays a vital important role in life success. When opportunity comes to a person who is prepared, he can take the opportunity. This is what Julian Mantle considers as luck. So if the luck knocks an unprepared mind, there is a high probability that he missed the opportunity and hence misses his luck.
When posed this question to my friend Shyam, he told me "Life really is generous to those who pursue their destiny. When a person is determined to succeed in his life, the whole world wants him to win. Lady Luck is greedy. It supports success. It goes with those who do hard work. The nature silently prays for the person who does hard work and lady luck can't ignore him for long. A better word for Luck is opportunity. A person, who wants to learn more, who wants to accomplish something great in life, who focuses on only realizing his dreams, is bound to succeed and the right opportunity will definitely knock his door."
If a person believes only in luck, he just buys lottery tickets. He just waits. He will always be like that gambler in Las Vegas, staying at the roulette wheel. But if u do hard work, and luck comes, u never miss that luck.
Arun Vijay, put the answer in this way "You need to do had work without believing in luck. If you do hard work, and luck doesn't come your way, you don't need to worry since you have only believed in hard work and not luck. Hard work includes ability and skills. You should have right attitude to make this happen. If you wish to fly, and you do hard work day and night without working on to acquiring the necessary skills required flying, it is almost guaranteed that luck will be reluctant to come to your foot step".
It is truth that there might be many people who got success just of sheer luck. But since exceptions are not rules, I personally believe that we should not take these people as our role model since they took a bit of short cut to reach success. Short cut don't always lead a person to success.
What I understand on this topic is that, we are supposed to do our home work without depending on the luck factor. We should not be like a person who buys a lottery tickets and waits till luck blesses him. He may end up spending his life on this. We have to take advantage when luck is on our side, and do as much to help it as it's doing to help us. This is called the principle of favorability or beginner's luck.
If you are a student, we can do our best to concentrate on our studies and do as much hard work as we can. If you are an employee, give your best to your job. If you have a dream to follow, start immediately on it. Luck waits for no one. Before it comes, be prepared for it.
One Personal and One Professional Goal For 2009
Good bye 2008. It is over and it is gone. Only what we did in this year remain, as a witness for this great year that have slipped away from us. The year which made us jump with joy, made us take crucial step's and decisions of our life and spent a life we always wished to live. Lot of happiness and achievements, and it is time to tell a fair well good bye to 2008, and whole heartedly welcome 2009 to our life.
Welcome 2009. As fresh as it could be. A new year to go for our life ambitions. Life passions. A new year to see our dreams being fulfilled. A new year to achieve the impossible. A new year to bring out the best out of us, and make it the best life we ever had in our life.
Life Resolution New Year resolution is part of our rituals for January 1. However, study shows that 95% of those who make new year resolution fail to keep them up for more than 2-3 weeks. Today I want to ask you not to keep a New Year resolution, but a Life Resolution. We are going to pick 2 Life Goals for 2009 - one from our personal life and one from our professional life, and go through a life journey to achieve them. This is the first installment of power article's in sijith.com and the whole 2009 will be dedicated to article's in achieving these life goals we are going to set today.
Let us pick the best two goals for 2009 that would make 2009 the best year for us ever.
One important point here: You commit one thing to me. "I am going to allocate a weekly quota for these goals and commit that I will not take any other personal/professional goal, unless my primary goal quota is complete."
Question ? What if I have two goals in each category.
Answer: It is perfectly fine to have two or more goals for each category. BUT, you should make one of them as primary for each category, and other's as secondary. You are going to work towards the secondary goals, only if your weekly quota for these goals is achieved.
Personal goal 2009:
I want you to do an exercise here. Take a paper/pen. Write down one personal goal that if you achieve will totally change the way you live. It could be something as small as mending a broken relationship, or could be something big, say changing your dietary habit or come out of a bad habit or improving your financial life or learning a foreign language. Just one goal - not more nor less. Just one personal goal, that could change your life and turn your dream into a reality. This goal could be also a spiritual goal or any goal that would improve your inner/personal life.
Now that you have this ONE personal goal written down, I want you to do the second step.
Write down 5 steps that if you do one at a time, you will achieve the above goal. Let me explain you with an example.
Imagine your goal is: "To learn a new foreign language".
So here is how, I would break down the goal into 5 steps. (For each person, the steps would be different. Identifying what works for YOU is the most important part here).
Sub Goal 1: Join an institute teaching this foreign language.
Sub Goal 2: Decide on a syllabus for 2009 that if I complete them, would reach my target.
Sub Goal 3: Buy/Get the required books/resources that I am going to use for this goal.
Sub Goal 4: Decide how much hours/time I am going to spent every week for this goal.
Sub Goal 5: Commit to stick with my goal and constantly check my goal progress.
Professional goal 2009:
Now let us come to a professional goal. This is a goal that would make a real real positive impact on your professional life. This is THAT goal if you achieve, would change your professional career life, and achieve what you always dreamt in your life in your career.
I want you to write this down. How you are going to achieve them is not important here. What you want to achieve is important here.
Here is an example of a professional goal:
"I improve my communication and interpersonal skills"
Sub Goal 1: Join a toastmaster's club and start a public speaking course.
Sub Goal 2: Work with a professional mentor to identify the area's of improvement.
Sub Goal 3: Spent sometime every day for exercise. Join yoga classes or a gym.
Sub Goal 4: If you look to become a manager, work towards achieving managerial skills/qualification. Like improving relationships, increasing personal contacts, etc.
Sub Goal 5: Proactively invest time in one project that would make a difference and help me towards my life goals. (This is a quadrant 2 activity and we will cover about four quadrants of time management in one of the future article).
The above goal/sub goals is just shown for an example. You can choose them based what you want in your life, and how best you want to use 2009. Here is a criteria for choosing your goals : "It is the ONE goal that would change my life, make 2009 the best year ever I had, and take me closer to achieve my life dreams."
Let's can take our time, and work towards our goals. Let us bring out the best out of us. Let us go for to achieve the impossible and get want you dreamt in your life. Believe me, you are in the process of changing your life, and changing the life of people's aroundyou, and let us be excited that we are in the process to make 2009 the best year ever we had in our life.
Wish you all the best and New Year greetings to all the readers.
Welcome 2009. As fresh as it could be. A new year to go for our life ambitions. Life passions. A new year to see our dreams being fulfilled. A new year to achieve the impossible. A new year to bring out the best out of us, and make it the best life we ever had in our life.
Life Resolution New Year resolution is part of our rituals for January 1. However, study shows that 95% of those who make new year resolution fail to keep them up for more than 2-3 weeks. Today I want to ask you not to keep a New Year resolution, but a Life Resolution. We are going to pick 2 Life Goals for 2009 - one from our personal life and one from our professional life, and go through a life journey to achieve them. This is the first installment of power article's in sijith.com and the whole 2009 will be dedicated to article's in achieving these life goals we are going to set today.
Let us pick the best two goals for 2009 that would make 2009 the best year for us ever.
One important point here: You commit one thing to me. "I am going to allocate a weekly quota for these goals and commit that I will not take any other personal/professional goal, unless my primary goal quota is complete."
Question ? What if I have two goals in each category.
Answer: It is perfectly fine to have two or more goals for each category. BUT, you should make one of them as primary for each category, and other's as secondary. You are going to work towards the secondary goals, only if your weekly quota for these goals is achieved.
Personal goal 2009:
I want you to do an exercise here. Take a paper/pen. Write down one personal goal that if you achieve will totally change the way you live. It could be something as small as mending a broken relationship, or could be something big, say changing your dietary habit or come out of a bad habit or improving your financial life or learning a foreign language. Just one goal - not more nor less. Just one personal goal, that could change your life and turn your dream into a reality. This goal could be also a spiritual goal or any goal that would improve your inner/personal life.
Now that you have this ONE personal goal written down, I want you to do the second step.
Write down 5 steps that if you do one at a time, you will achieve the above goal. Let me explain you with an example.
Imagine your goal is: "To learn a new foreign language".
So here is how, I would break down the goal into 5 steps. (For each person, the steps would be different. Identifying what works for YOU is the most important part here).
Sub Goal 1: Join an institute teaching this foreign language.
Sub Goal 2: Decide on a syllabus for 2009 that if I complete them, would reach my target.
Sub Goal 3: Buy/Get the required books/resources that I am going to use for this goal.
Sub Goal 4: Decide how much hours/time I am going to spent every week for this goal.
Sub Goal 5: Commit to stick with my goal and constantly check my goal progress.
Professional goal 2009:
Now let us come to a professional goal. This is a goal that would make a real real positive impact on your professional life. This is THAT goal if you achieve, would change your professional career life, and achieve what you always dreamt in your life in your career.
I want you to write this down. How you are going to achieve them is not important here. What you want to achieve is important here.
Here is an example of a professional goal:
"I improve my communication and interpersonal skills"
Sub Goal 1: Join a toastmaster's club and start a public speaking course.
Sub Goal 2: Work with a professional mentor to identify the area's of improvement.
Sub Goal 3: Spent sometime every day for exercise. Join yoga classes or a gym.
Sub Goal 4: If you look to become a manager, work towards achieving managerial skills/qualification. Like improving relationships, increasing personal contacts, etc.
Sub Goal 5: Proactively invest time in one project that would make a difference and help me towards my life goals. (This is a quadrant 2 activity and we will cover about four quadrants of time management in one of the future article).
The above goal/sub goals is just shown for an example. You can choose them based what you want in your life, and how best you want to use 2009. Here is a criteria for choosing your goals : "It is the ONE goal that would change my life, make 2009 the best year ever I had, and take me closer to achieve my life dreams."
Let's can take our time, and work towards our goals. Let us bring out the best out of us. Let us go for to achieve the impossible and get want you dreamt in your life. Believe me, you are in the process of changing your life, and changing the life of people's aroundyou, and let us be excited that we are in the process to make 2009 the best year ever we had in our life.
Wish you all the best and New Year greetings to all the readers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
