Posts Tagged ‘Business’

October17

Be careful what you wish for, you may get it

By: RirianProject

I learned a valuable lesson from the life of a friend of mine, this story takes place about twelve years ago but I use his life as an example to me every day. At the time, he was in his early thirties, married, and extremely successful, at least by most people’s standards. But he wasn’t just married, he was married to an incredibly beautiful woman, an attorney who was top of her class at one of the country’s most prestigious law schools, she was brilliant. And it wasn’t that he was just successful, he was in a high profile business, dealing with celebrities and captains of industry, the people you read about in People magazine. He bought a big house, two Mercedes, and traveled the world. He was the envy of most everyone he knew, had set out with goals when he left college and for all intensive purposes met every single one of them by the time he was thirty three years old. And despite all he had achieved, he was an extremely unhappy person, the more this couple had the more they wanted, the more he made the more his wife spent to “keep up with the Jones’.” He felt on a daily basis that he was, for lack of a better term, emotionally out of breath, he was constantly chasing and never catching. It would be easy at this point to take you right to a cliffhanger, to say this person couldn’t take it anymore, that there is a tragic end, that he abused alcohol or drugs, that he hit rock bottom and turned his life around. But he was really no different than most people, and most people who are unhappy with their lot in life don’t commit suicide, and they don’t abuse alcohol or drugs, most people just continue on the path they are on, never make changes and remain unhappy.

One day my friend decided he didn’t want to be unhappy anymore. He didn’t just walk out on his business, but he knew he didn’t want to be in that business anymore, the pressure was to great, the stress was no longer worth it, so over the next two years he closed it down in an orderly fashion. He knew he was unhappy in his marriage but he just didn’t walk out. He talked to his wife about what didn’t work for him, she didn’t understand how he no longer liked their life, they tried therapy, and although he probably knew it was over from the beginning, he tried until he couldn’t try anymore.

At age thirty five he had given up life as he knew it, his work, his marriage, and set off on a new path, but this isn’t a fairytale. He was not instantly happy, he had spent thirteen years working and achieving everything he hoped for, achieved it all and was miserable, now he faced the hard part, he had to figure out why? Why he was so unhappy. Why his dream job and fairytale marriage did not make him a happy person. And how to move forward with his life.

It took years, but ten years later, he was remarried, still successful in an entirely new business and happy. It took him years to figure out what went wrong and how to try and put his life on the right path.He learned that his mistakes were the same that most people make, chasing things that don’t matter, going after material objects, being concerned what others think of you. He learned material objects are great, success is wonderful and an admirable goal, the respect and admiration and even envy of your peers is a wonderful thing to have, but if it defines who you are, if it is your life’s sole ambition, then unhappiness is sure to follow. Life is a constant journey of understanding who you are and what you need, and it constantly changes. If you are unhappy in your life or simply content, strive for more. Not all change needs to be radical like my friends, most often it is just simple adjustments in life, focusing on the things that are most important like family health, and knowing you are the best person you can be. Its about trying to live as stress free life as possible, and that the things are most important come from the inside.

Posted in: Productivity3 comments

September28

You’ve Got to Fail to Succeed

By: Ririan

Can you believe that too much success can be a bad thing? What if someone just succeeds all the time at everything they do without ever knowing one single failure? Then, one day when failure finally strikes, what will they do? How will they manage? Now imagine someone else who has known constant failures and setbacks throughout his life – constant rejections, bankruptcies and upheavals. Imagine this person coping with one more little failure. That’s right, person one, is a gibbering nervous wreck, unable to face the world. This one gigantic failure has completely bowed them and they do not know how to cope or what to do. While our constantly failing person two is just sitting and waiting for it to be over; just one more failure in his long list. Oh well, get up, move on.

A few failures in life happen to everyone. No matter what your scale of measurement or emotional pain threshold is, you will find something to test you and see if you are strong enough. Just like a plant that grows stronger after being pruned hard, a person who lives through several failures, or even just one big one is stronger and more able to cope with anything that life throws at him.

It is for this very reason that failure must not be feared. There is no point! If you do not succeed, it does not make you a failure, it just means that what you did at that point in your life did not work. Stop doing that and try something else.

The problem with failure is that it has so many emotions wrapped up in it that it becomes memorable. For some people, if they think back on their lives, all they can remember are just a string of dramatic failures one after the other, connected with a delicate, tentative life-thread. It is as if these people can not remember anything good or successful ever happening in their lives. And yet there must have been something – something in their youth, or childhood that did lead them to also have positive experiences.

And, if you examine the lives of highly successful people whom you admire and look up to, they will all have a gigantic flop at some point in their lives. Very few people hit the ground running. It is sometimes very helpful to read people’s biographies to see how they have made it to where they are. Very rarely do you find people who have just gone up and up. If there is someone like that, it is because they have inherited a family business or been given a leg up from the start.

In order to succeed from your failures you must stop associating negative emotions with them. A little bit of sadness and regret is absolutely normal, but after that, forget the emotion and move on completely. The only thing to take away from a failure is to learn how it happened and to make sure it won’t happen again. Remember the old saying: fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me!

Posted in: Self Improvement4 comments

September28

Bad Habits – Your Free Ticket to Failure

By: Ririan

There were several self help texts and books around many years ago, but these were hidden deep within obscure libraries and unless you had already heard of the author, you really had no chance of finding them on your own.

Nowadays, there is the internet with its millions of websites, discussion forums and mailing lists that with literally one click of a search engine, you can have millions of websites brought before your eyes without you even having to leave your chair. You can find information about the psychology of self help, about the process of self help. You can see stories of individuals who have achieved success through self help techniques and guides – anything you want is there for you to see. So, let me ask you, my friend, what is stopping you from achieving the success you want?

There are some people in life who succeed no matter how many obstacles and hindrances they have in their way. Their house can burn down, they will get another one. Their business may collapse and they can go completely bankrupt, they will get up and start another business. They can lose a leg, they will sign up to run a marathon.

Then there are some people who will fail no matter how many wonderful opportunities they have. The goose that lays the golden eggs could land in their lap and they would cook it and eat it. Why is this? There are many reasons to do with motivation and the ability to spot opportunities and seize them when they come. But another reason is that people who fail have BAD habits. They do not put themselves in the way of success because they have bad habits ingrained into everything that they do.

If you come home every evening and slump in front of the television with a drink instead of doing something energetic like going for a run, or going out to meet friends, then what will you gain? It is very likely that you will not gain much except weight. An important point to note is that those happy, successful people you see on television spend hardly any time sitting watching TV themselves!

If you create an atmosphere of success around you then chances are high that you will attract more success to you. This can be achieved by adopting successful habits and ditching all those bad habits completely. Make a habit of looking after your appearance. If you look like a successful person, then you will feel like one and you will BE one!

Make a habit of doing things which are aimed at success. Learn more about your field by reading for half an hour everyday rather than watching TV. Those little tips you pick up by reading about your subject or reading trade journals could really help you when you least expect it.

Think about your life and how you can stop those bad habits which waste your time and achieve nothing and try to introduce one or two good habits into your life. Read more, or walk more. Take up a hobby which will keep you interested and interesting to others around you. You never know, it could just be the path to success that you are looking for.

Posted in: Self Improvement3 comments

May21

Making A difference in an overwhelming world

By: Ririan

The world is an overwhelming place and it is changing faster every day. Pollution, wars, disease and famine ravage entire countries while individuals across the world are beset by violence, poverty, and a world that is generally indifferent to all of this. The world itself is even threatened through global warming and nuclear war.

Through all of this there is a natural human desire to help. A desire that can be held down by any number of reason but one of the most common is that the problems just seem to large. 30,000 children a day are dying from starvation, and more die in genocides and wars. There is simply nothing that can be done.

There is a story of a prudent businessman who worked near the beach. He would walk along the boardwalk each day and think about the world. He was an average man who understood the futility of trying to change the world.

One day as he walked out he noticed that the entire beach was filled with starfish. He didn’t understand why, but he knew they were going to die and as he walked along the boardwalk he watched them. He tried to imagine what anyone could do. He saw bulldozers pushing them back into the water but knew it was impractical.

Then as he walked he saw a young boy the boy was franticly running along the beach picking up starfish and hurling them back into the ocean. The businessman stopped and watched him for a moment and then walked down to talk to the young boy.

“There are too many, you’ll never make. A difference,” the businessman said as he approached the young boy.
The young boy grabbed another of the starfish from the beach looked at the man then threw the starfish as hard as he could into the water. “It made a difference for that one,” He said.

The story does not say what the businessman did with the lesson he learned. Some hear the lesson but it falls upon deaf ears, other hear but find other excuses. A few though understand the lesson and take it to heart and one of those men not only change the lives of those who they help, but those who understand why they are helping.

The world is an overwhelming place. The problems of this world cannot be solved by the richest or most powerful of men, and they certainly cannot be solved by us. Instead, we must learn a truth greater than that of the size of the world. We must learn that each time we choose to make a difference in a single life we save the world for that person.

Posted in: Self Improvement9 comments

April3

Time Management

By: RirianProject

Time management starts with being focused on what you are doing in the moment. There are even some people who will argue that technically there is no possible way to multi-task because you can literally only perform one task at a time. Either way you’d like to look at it, time management is a skill that you must master no matter what your profession or age.

Some people will tell you that time management is all about creating a list of things that must be done, scheduling every moment of your day, setting goals, and prioritizing your tasks. Although these concepts are at the core of time management, there are many other factors that come into play as well such as decision making and critical thinking.

The Pareto principle, also known as the 80-20 rule, states that for many events, approximately 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. The concept was developed by Joseph Juran who named it after an Italian economist Vitfredo Pareto who observed that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. There’s nothing really special about the number 80. In fact, in most business principles you’ll see that ratio. It’s mainly used to emphasize just how much is lost, or gained with time management.

Whether you are looking at time management from a personal level, a business level, or as a general way of life, there is one constant: time management is about getting results and not necessarily being busy. There is a huge difference between those two ideas. Have you ever seen someone in your office (or perhaps a friend or spouse) who seems to constantly be running around fretting about “all the work” they have to complete? They look really busy – and in fact they are. But their time management skills could be lacking. At the end of the day, I can almost guarantee that person has not accomplished as much as they should have or could have had they implemented a time management program.

One way to start to manage your day is to understand that every person has a natural cycle. Are you a morning person, or a night person? Are you ready for a nap by 3:00 PM? That is your natural cycle. If you’re a night person, you shouldn’t be trying to handle your most important or your hardest tasks during the morning when you are least likely to be able to think clearly or act decisively.

In order to start prioritizing your day, you also have to stop thinking of NO as a dirty word. If you take on a project that you can’t do, or one in which you don’t have the time to do then you are not helping that person out. You are going to produce less than stellar results!

Put the “Getting Things Done” mentality into motion. If it takes less than 2 minutes to do – then do it! Remember, 2 minutes is just an arbitrary number. It could have 5 minutes, 7 minutes, etc. If it’ll take longer than 2 minutes to accomplish, then you need to decide if it’s something you should do, or if it can be done by someone else. If it must be done by you place it into one of three piles. The first pile contains tasks that will only take one step to complete. The second pile contains things that will take two or more steps to do. And the third pile contains things that are for reference. Everything else should be tossed out to the trash!

There’s a great quote whose Author is unknown: Today, be aware of how you are spending your 1,440 beautiful moments, and spend them wisely.

Posted in: Featured, Productivity1 comments

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