No gain without pain

Dear Readers

At the outset let me thank all of you for regularly reading my blog (as on date there are 176 followers too who get this blog in their email inbox) and for your valuable comments and feedback.  As I am traveling out of the country for around 2 weeks, this blog may not be updated till 24^th Sept.10.

I would request you to please bear up with this break. However this offers you a good chance to catch up with some of the older posts…there are 250 odd posts to choose from. In addition you can also visit our weekly posts in www.poweract.blogspot.com I   am sure you find the posts refreshing, relaxing and rejuvenating. Do spare time to also post your comments which are both a motivator and a reality check for me.

Thank you for your patronage of this blog.

Jacob

If you want a place in the sun, you’ve got to put up with a few blisters. Abigail Van Buren

Each of us craves to be acknowledged, if possible recognized and we would be delighted if we are perceived as successful icons. We would like to be on the highest rung of the pecking order and should we be lucky and talented then ideally we would like to call all the shots. In short, each of us seeks to have a place in the sun; high up, shining bright and basking in glory. However there are no shortcuts to achieving these accolades and with rare exceptions every single idol be it our heroes on screen, on the sporting field, our politicians, business leaders or our parents have worked hard, suffered in their own way and triumphed over many odds. They can recount the blisters they have had to painfully endure just to be up there.

The three most important qualities that catapult us to managing a place in the sun are hard work, diligence and resilience. Each of those qualities have a major bearing in ensuring that we remain focused, never wavering and are passionate about what we seek to achieve. It is this passion that will ultimately gives us the strength to keep going when we have to face challenges, unexpected hurdles and painful realities. Hard work is not just plodding along but going about our task putting in all our intellectual and physical effort. The jargon smart work has replace hard work  but in reality it requires a lot of hard work to identify how to be smart enough to get work done from others or to simplify the task on hard.

Diligence is all about being attentive, careful, meticulous and conscientious. The objective is to ensure that effort is never wasted by minimizing errors, following standard operating procedures and delivering results within the allotted time frame. Some would argue that mechanization is the perfect answer to ensure perfect diligence but what we fail to appreciate is that diligence is not rote but intelligent action that involves varied managerial skills too like decision making and effective leadership. Resilience is the one quality that needs courage of conviction, tenacity of purpose and a very strong will. It is the one quality that is an insurance against failure. Most people never realize their full potential because they lack the resilience to overcome setbacks. They lack both the energy and the will to recoup and launch a fresh assault to attain success.

In chasing our dreams we would get hurt, be ridiculed, our abilities and wisdom questioned, our enthusiasm dampened by critics and worse of all we could be plagued by self doubt. Each of these are blisters that we have to accept, adjust too and suffer if we really want to make a place for ourselves in the sun.

Remember: Where there is a will there is a way

Try this:

1. Identify a couple of successful individuals known to you. Try and meet them and ask them to share their most trying moments in their life. Ask them what kept them going and how they managed to face the odds stacked against them. Ask yourself if there are any lessons for yourself in it.
2. Make a list of activities that you passionately wanted to achieve but never even go around beginning.  Ask yourself what prevented you from achieving your passion. Is there a way out of those problems today or you have simply given up on those passions?

This post is courtesy www.actspot.com

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