Life Changing questions to ask

I have experienced that sometimes asking completely different questions, we can overcome some of the inhibitions we have. I have seen this kind of method suggested in many books. I even remember browsing through a book in a book store about tough questions we should answer to change our life.

I have many such questions in my mind and I will share how such questions help me in shaping my thoughts.

Problem: I am unhappy because I don’t have enough money.

We have unlimited number of desires. We always have less money than we want. We always wish we had more money.

Question: You won a lottery, what will you do with all the money you get? Assume that this is the amount you have never imagined.

Don’t bother about whether it will happen or not. By a stroke of luck if it happens you will not know what to do. We think of so many things we can do as long as we don’t have the money. But once it comes to us, we will be lost.

Examples: If you won 10 million dollars, what will you do?

Answers: I will Buy a house. What next?

I will buy a new car. What next?

I will donate some money to charities. What next?

I will quit my job, I will start a new business. As you keep continuing to ask yourself what next? At one point of time you will reach a dead end. You will realize that even after acquiring all the things we will still not be satisfied. We will come to things which are important in our life.

Problem: I don’t like my job/role. I want to change my job/role. I wish I had better opportunities or I wish I was in better place

Lot of times we start thinking we are in the wrong place. We want something different from what we want. We feel dissatisfied. This continue to bother us.

Question: If I had an opportunity to start all over what will I want to be?

By asking this question repeatedly we can find out what we we really to be.

Example response can be

I want to start my own business. What kind of business? where and when? Will I achieve my goals if I start my own business? what are the things I am really missing in my current role? Why can’t I make something happen so that I can achieve things I want to in this current role?

And so on..

Some other questions you might want to try and answer

If I had a wish fulfilling tree/well what will I wish for?

What are the things I am not able to do as I feel I am busy?

What if I had all the time in the world one day?

Who are the people I care for most? Why do I think so? How do I show them that I care for them?

Who are the people that love me? Why do they love me?  How do I know that they love me?

If I had all the power in the world what will I do?

If I had a power to change anything what will you change?

What are the things that motivate me most?

Why am I doing what I am doing right now? What will happen if I don’t do this now? What will happen if I don’t do it any more? Does any one care about what I do?

What will happen if I gave up all the things I have? Will I miss them?

What will I ask if God appears before me?

If you had an opportunity to trade places with someone, who will it be? Why?

What is your idea of a perfect vacation? What is your idea of a perfect day? What is preventing you from having a perfect day everyday? How can you make it happen?

What are the things we have taken for granted?

Sometimes I also ask questions like:

What if I had no e-mail access for one week? given the fact that we have become so much addicted to e-mail, answering this question sobers me up. Imagine the time when there was no e-mail. We have taken for granted so many new things that come to us which never existed before.

How was life 100 years back? How was life 200 years back? How did people live at those times? What if the world still existed the same way? What will be I be doing in such situation?

This kind of radical thinking can be useful many times in our life. Once I read this kind of concept, I tried to attempt it. Even at work, sometimes we are stuck with a problem. To resolve the problem we start thinking about various work around solutions given the lack of resources or time. Sometimes I try to ask the question like, how will you solve this problem if you had everything and no constraints? That helped us lot of times arrive at a better solution.

These were some of the things I learned and thought about. If you have any suggestions, do let me know. Sometime I will be able to update this article.

Challenge of Growing Expectations

Have you ever noticed how we tend to change our expectations over a period of time. Growing expectations is a good thing but it can also lead to dissastifcation easily. When some thing we expect does not happen, we feel sad or disappointed.

Remember the first birthday presents you received. Assume that you got a gift that is worth 10 bucks from your father year. Next birthday also if your father gives a prize worth the same amount, it is likely that you will be disappointed.  We start expecting more things over a period of time. We expect things we receive to increase in value and worth over a period of time.

If you have liked reading articles written by me, it is natural that you expect better or at least of articles of same quality. We expect some things to get better over time.

Think over some of the things you have been experiencing:

- Relationships: We expect relationships with our friends and relatives to get better over a period of time

- Salary and Benefits: Anyone who is working will only expect their salary and benefits they receive to increase over years.

- As an Individual customer: Think of a store regularly. You expect your shopping experience to become more enjoyable as you continue to shop there. You will even feel more happy if the familiar store person start recognizing you are a regular visitor.

- As Organizational Customer: If you or your company is interacting with another organization, you expect the relationship to grow and get better quality of work and everything else.

It is natural for us to have higher expectations. We expect changes that happen around us to get better around us.

But do we do such things consciously? Are you surprised when people complain about something you do?

We expect things around us, people around us to change as we want to see them. But we are not working consciously on the change others expect of us.

Mahatma Gandhi said “Be the change you want to see in others”.

If you want others to be courteous to you, first learn to be courteous.

If you want others to look cheerful, be cheerful.

If you want others to be genuinely interested in you, you should also be genuinely interested in others.

If you want others to listen you, you must learn to listen to others.

If you want others to appreciate you sincerely, you should also be sincere in your appreciation of others.

Lot of times our hopes, expectations control our emotions. By keeping our expectations realistic we can gain control on our emotions also.

Don’t have too many expectations. Keep an open mind. Be ready to accept anything and then your emotions will be genuine.

On my part I also felt I need to make changes to my website look and feel to meet the growing expectations. It took me sometime to redesign the site and make it happen. Hope my continued to efforts to write good articles that convey my views will meet your growing expectations. It is for the same reason, I spend enough time to ensure that I am doing a good job on my website.

Summary

Growing expectations creates lot of emotional dynamics. I have noticed in this daily life and I felt I should share this.

Though it is ok to increase our expectations, we should keep those expectations realistic so that we don’t get disappointed.  And don’t let occasional disappointments (performance below our expectation) make you get prejudiced. Accept occasional failures as part of life and keep an open mind.

A few more examples of our growing expectations:

- We want our favorite team/sports person to win and win always

- We want our favorite movie stars to act in better and better movies

- We want our favorite authors to write better books.

Is it not true?

What are your priorities?

Do you sometimes wonder why and what another person is doing a particular thing for which you don't even have slightest liking or interest? I am also sometime asked how do I get time to maintain website and write articles. How do I manage to get time to read the books I read? and so on. I have thought about it and wanted to share my thoughts.

Reading this e-mail may not be your priority right now.
Watching a movie may not be your priority right now.
Reading a latest book may not be your priority now.

No two persons in the world are alike. No two persons have same interests and passions. But we always think and evaluate others from our perspective. What is important for you is different? Our priorities are different.

Do you know your priorities?

In personal life we have our own habits and way of doing things. We go on our life on our 'timescale'. And priorities change with time and state of personal life also. Our tastes changes and preferences changes. People are not predictable. We can all change our preferences at any time. We have the choice and freedom. That is why we are unique and different from other beings in the world. When faced with conflicting situations it is better think about what we focused on.

Priorities at work place

Priorities play a critical role at work place and lot of times we end up compromising on some things due to different priorities. Leaders, Managers and Executives are always thinking about priorities. When it comes to decision making priority is one of the factor that comes to mind. By having a better understanding of priorities in our projects and tasks we are asked to do, we can increase our effectiveness.

We can avoid fire-fighting by handling our priorities properly. Priority has become more important due to changing economic scenario. Each and every decision is weighed carefully and prioritized before making it final. You see priority everywhere and it is important business tool. When you want to send a letter, you can decide to send overnight, send priority, send express and so on. You pay the cost based on the priority. Your e-mail application has a priority option. Your Project Management tool will have a priority option.

Understanding priorities is important because it plays a role on our emotions and our well being. If you are confused about your priorities, you will find it difficult to take decisions. Interesting debates arise when two people discuss a point with different priorities. Everyone tries to put forth their case and communicate why they feel a certain task is important. It makes an interesting thing to watch varies points of view.

An effort to be flexible

Do you constantly or some times get upset with people around you at home or work who are always telling you do things differently: ”Why don’t you do it this way?  You should not do that.”

Or do you get upset when things don’t go the way you planned them or at least hoped they will happen.

You are not alone. It happens to every one. We need to understand that life is full of unexpected things and it is our attitude towards that will make a difference how we handle life. We have a choice: to accept things as they happen or be constantly upset and stressed.

Sometimes I feel this is due our ‘childlike’ attitude which lingers on after we grow up also. As a child we might be used to get things when we request from our parents/elders. Or it may be that you never used to get things the way you wanted and hoped that when you grow up things will change.

Either way, we start expecting things to happen the way we want them.

I also experienced these emotions and decided to face this by changing my attitude.

Example 1: On a particular weekend our family wanted to go to temple. I generally like to visit temple early in the day. I hoped we will all be ready by 9 AM and get started. I got ready by 9 AM and was ready to go. But my wife was delayed and she was not ready. I was upset that things are not going as per my plan. It was 10.30 AM that we started for temple. It so happened that on that particular day going late was a good thing as we were able to attend some special pooja at temple. We would have missed that if we went early that day.

Then I thought to myself, it was good that we were late. And I could have avoided getting upset by keeping an open mind approach. I could have been flexible about the timing as there was no hurry and a thought start at 9 AM was just an idea and that has no rules attached to it.

Example 2: We all take pride in our work and attached to the way we do the things. When someone makes comments on our work we tend to get upset.

Part of our testing project, I prepared a report and showed it to my team. My boss liked it, but someone else made a statement that it is irrelevant and waste of time. He said that doing it was not needed and so on.  When I prepared the report I expected everyone in team also to appreciate it and this unexpected event upset me.

With such situations becoming frequent, I decided to develop right attitudes to events. I decided to keep my attitude open minded and flexible. Instead of considering a “different approach” suggested by another person (friend, family member, coworker, boss or any one else) as a suggestion instead of criticism. Nothing is cast in stone and everything can change. Change is a way of life. By being stubborn we may be making things difficult for others as well as ourselves.

I made a resolution to myself that I will be flexible and open minded. I have attempted to implement this to my great ability and continue to do this. This made things easier for me and also others. Others are not afraid/hesitant to point a mistake in my work because they know I take action to correct it.  By being flexible to request from family members I have made it a pleasure to share moments instead of rejecting or getting upset about minor expected events.Just another simple example: I have made it a habit to update my website on 1st of every month and consistently did that for quite sometime. But this particular month, I could not do it on 1st and was delayed. Instead of getting upset about this delay, I decided to take this as a opportunity to learn and eliminate such delays in future. My “deadline” is flexible and there is no point in fretting about it.

What is flexibility?

How do I know I am flexible? I consider myself flexible, when I constantly find myself doing things which I would have otherwise resisted. When I accept and accommodate unexpected demands from others and take extra time to fulfill their needs. When I experiment with things which I am not used to. When I ‘listen actively’ to others suggestions without ‘rejecting’ them before hearing them out.

Summary

After consciously making effort to be flexible, I have been less stressed out and I can think of many instances where my flexible approach made things easier for me and others. I consider others opinions and suggestions and implement them at the earliest opportunity. Do think about your personal experiences of getting upset. May be you can try this approach and make things better.

To conclude, I have not become an expert in being flexible, but getting good at it with practice. It is not so easy being flexible.

SWOT Analysis

I have a personal habit of performing SWOT analysis once a year. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

Objectives of SWOT Analysis:

To become aware of strengths, weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and  Help in decision making:

-         How to leverage Strengths?

-         How to increase number of strengths?

-         What are the opportunities and how to pursue them?

-         How to overcome weaknesses?

-         What are the upcoming threats? What can be done to avoid them?

Application to Personal life

Performing SWOT analysis in personal life can make us aware of our own strengths which we need to use in our work and personal life. Are we using our skills effectively. This helps us to look for opportunities where we can use our strengths to contribute better.

Weaknesses make us aware of areas of improvement. We are aware that we are not perfect. It helps us to perform introspection and look at ourselves critically. Very rarely in our life we take a look at weaknesses. This provides an opportunity to do that.

Opportunities are things we can do to realize our potential. Things we can do and go beyond our regular duties and responsibilities. Things that make us feel proud later in our life.

Threats are danger signs to watch for and plan for prevention of them. Taking steps to ensure that threats do not materialize.

Application to Business

Obviously this kind of analysis for a business has larger use. Without getting complacent, every business organization should make an analysis and continue to grow, improve their business.

A Sample Personal SWOT Analysis from my own experience

Strengths	Weaknesses
Testing Skills Time Management Skills Project Management Skills Web development skills Family relations Writing skills Personal homepage Book Reading Book Collection Spiritual Interest	Oral communication/Presentation skills Lack of focus Getting too much busy with work
Opportunities	Threats
Writing a book Serving as a volunteer Share experiences through homepage	Ill health

A sample Business SWOT Analysis

Strengths	Weaknesses
e-business development experience Existing Infrastructure Existing Customers Technical Skills Experienced People Customer Service Experience Office across country Business Contacts/Personal Contacts Hardworking Team Quality of work	Project Management Sales/Marketing (Getting new customers) Lack of References from existing customers (?) Quality of work
Opportunities	Threats
New Partnerships Business Opportunities in other countries Existing customer base of Indian Blitz	Low Cash Flow Weak Economy New Competition

Once such analysis is available a business organization can compare its current performance and see what can be done and make improvements.

Summary

Performing SWOT analysis does not take lot of time. It is worthwhile to do this once a year or when needed. This provides an opportunity for introspection. Either in Business or personal life, SWOT analysis can make us take decisions to change our life by making us aware of our capability and potential.

Practicing lessons learned

I give lot of importance to not only learning from books, others’ experience, but also to putting this learning to practice. If I come across a new way of simplifying my tasks or a tip that I can use in the tools I use, I try to implement the same at the earliest opportunity. It also gives me an opportunity to keep ‘continuous improvement’ going on in things I do and things around me. This also helps me shape up my personality and character.

There are two distinct incidents which took lot of courage on my part to put theory into practice. During my college years, I used to read ‘Competition Success Review’ magazine. This magazine used to contain one article in section ‘Improve your personality’. I used to read these articles without failure which were mainly focused on leadership skills and also overcoming personal weaknesses. One such article I read was about overcoming fear. The suggestion given there was: To overcome fear is to do exactly do the thing you fear most.

Experience 1: Participating in “debate”

During schooling days I never participated in debates and I did better in Essay Writing competitions only. Only once during school days I participated in debates. Not being quite ‘talkative’ I did not do well in the debating competitions. This remained my weakness.

During college days when I read the article I mentioned above: I thought I should overcome my weakness of stage fear and participate in a debate. During 3rd year B.Tech program there was a debate competition. I remember the topic was something related “Petroleum conservation”. Not being an enthusiast first I thought of not participating. But I wanted to take the opportunity to overcome my fear. I spent couple of hours preparing material for the topic and noted the points in my mind. When I went to the competition there were more than 20 participants. I was very nervous and I was glad that I was the first participant. I did not do quite well in the debate and I had difficulty in speaking coherently. At one point my mind went blank and I paused almost 5-10 ten seconds before I could resume. I cursed myself under breath when my mind went blank. And I was glad when I finished my part. Though I didn’t win any prize I have my personal prize to cherish. I went through my own emotions to overcome a weakness. To some extent it helped me to overcome my stage fear and improve my confidence that I can certainly take up difficult challenges.

Experience 2: Join my friends in journey to Bombay from Kanpur

The second experience I can remember is when I was studying in Kanpur for my master’s degree. As we approached our final semester we have to attend campus interviews and also interviews in other places. All of our classmates had to go to Bombay to attend interview in L&T company. I was already upset about some missed opportunities. The journey from Kanpur to Bombay is a long one and we don’t know where we can stay in Bombay once we go there. My other classmates were adventurous enough to take the journey where as I felt I will skip going to the interview because I didn’t feel like traveling because of the uncertainty in the travel plans and our lodging etc. Long journeys always make me weak after first day and I had such experience earlier. I had a stomach upset and became very weak when I took up similar journey.

At the same time one of my classmates was sick and joined in hospital. I tried to take the as an excuse: “I will take care of him, instead of coming with all of you” was a convenient excuse than admitting that I am afraid of taking up the journey because of my silly fears. I went to hospital and sat by side of my friend. At this time I took another booklet with me “How to overcome fear”. When I read this booklet in the hospital, again I read the same suggestion I mentioned above. Immediately I felt ashamed and came back from hospital and asked my friends to book ticket for me also along with them. When I took this particular decision I went through lot of emotions and I remember this very clearly even now. I was later glad that I could join my friends for the trip. I had been to Bombay couple of times before and I was able to guide my friends through my knowledge. We went to Telugu Mahasabha and tried for accommodation there. We could not get there (in Dadar) and from there I was able to guide my friends to go to IIT Bombay which was near to L&T. We managed to stay with a few friends in IIT Campus and attend the interview. Though I didn’t do well in the interview, again this personal experience was something that taught me an important lesson. In our imagination we tend to exaggerate things that can go wrong and hence our fear overpowers our reasoning. Only way to overcome fear is to take up the challenge.

Summary

In my opinion fear is one of the worst enemies that can play havoc with our mind. We all need to develop our strategy to overcome this. It is not enough if we conquer this weakness once, it surfaces again and again with different face. Recall incidents in your own life where you overcame this weakness and write them down. By doing something similar, it acts as a reminder to me that in past I was able to overcome weakness by own effort and I can do this in future too.

Motivation: Will power to change habits

What do you want to change?

Many of us have developed some habits over years. Due to various factors we develop some good habits and also some minor bad habits. Minor bad habits include smoking, drinking too much coffee or tea or similar things. Sometimes we feel these are bad habits that we can give up whenever we want. I recollect this quote/joke about giving up smoking:

“Giving up smoking is very easy, I have done it more than 100 times”

Though this is said in a lighter vein, it conveys truth that giving up bad habits is not so easy. It takes will power, determination to take a step and adhere to it. I have met lot of people who have given up habits like this.

Making a Resolution

Let me illustrate a small example from my life:

When I was working in Ramco, we used to get coffee served to our desks twice a day and thrice a day, if you happened to work late. People say, drinking coffee is one of the ways of relaxing yourself. It will increase your effectiveness. But we also know that coffee contains nicotine and too much coffee is not good for health. I used to wonder whether I should continue taking all those servings which made my total intake of coffee up to 4 times per day. There were times I thought I should give up drinking coffee. I didn’t take this seriously. There were times I was upset when coffee is served late and eagerly looked forward to it. It became an addiction.

It happened so that one day I was working as usual. Usually coffee was served any time between 2.30 -3 pm. I was absorbed in my work and at around 3.15 pm I asked myself have I taken coffee? I looked around and found that I did drink my coffee which was served to me and I found evidence of the empty cup in my trash can. Every thing happened so mechanically that I didn’t notice, when I got coffee and when I finished drinking it. At this time I felt very bad. If I am doing something for the sake of doing it, without realizing any benefit out of it – Why do it? At this particular moment I was so ashamed of myself, that I took a decision to stop drinking coffee at office and stick to my daily morning cofee alone. From that day onwards I didn’t drink coffee at office. After few days, I found that I didn’t miss coffee at all.

Lessons Learned:

If you ask me, was it a great achievement? I would say yes, because this particular “resolving not to drink coffee” was small, but had significant impact on me.

I learned that if I have will I can stick to my decision. It served an example for myself whenever I wanted to give up something else. If I can do it once, I can do it many times. From this experience onwards I encountered a few more situations where I took similar “Don’t” decisions and I stood by them. It helped not only in small decisions but in some big decisions also. It strengthened my will power, determination. It improved my self-discipline. It made me more confident of my decisions. It made me think that I can “Change” If I WISH it.

It is not to say, that I am only person who has achieved this, I know of many people who took such decisions and stood by them. I know how proud I feel whenever someone asks me “how many times do you drink coffee?” and I reply “Just once in a day” and see a surprise on their face. I want to remind you of such similar experiences in your life which you should be proud of.

“Where there is a WILL there is a WAY”

Views on ‘Individual responsibility in a Society’

Being a responsible individual is very important for the progress of society. A major difference I have been observed between other countries and India is the basic difference is in this single factor of ‘Individual responsibility towards society’.

Whenever I think of this topic I am reminded of the following famous fable:

Once upon a time a king ordered people of his kingdom to bring a cup of milk and pour it in the big vessel kept outside his court for collection of the same. Through out the day every one in the country came and poured milk in the vessel. End of the day when the king inspected the vessel he found it full of water.

There is no need to explain what happened in the above story. ‘Every citizen thought since everyone else would bring milk, even if he pours water no one would notice’.

In my opinion two factors effect the motivation of individual towards the society

Pride: Having pride for the country, state, region or even locality makes a major difference in my opinion. Many countries take pride in following rules. They take pride every single aspect of their nation.

When I was touring Singapore, the pride of the citizens for their cleanliness and discipline made a deep impression on my mind.

I found myself wondering:

• Do I take pride in the society you live in?
• Do I take pride in following road rules always?
• Do I take pride for living in the cleanest locality of your city?

Fear: Fear of law is another major motivation. Law enforcement is very strict and any violation can lead to penalties that cannot be reversed. In observance of traffic rules in US, even at midnight when the likelihood of a traffic cop being around is very unlikely the rules are still observed.

Factor that de-motivates an individual in following rules of society:

80-20 rule: Though 80 percent of people are law abiding citizens, remaining 20 percent who get away from law even after violations. This 20 percent tend to influence others to abandon their discipline. When this happens the balance tends to get disturbed.

What can be done to ensure this de-motivation does not tilt the balance.

• Don’t get tempted by the 20 percent who get away and start voicing criticism and destroy pride and confidence. Instead appreciate citizens who abide by laws and encourage discipline. And come what may be a responsible citizen always.

I am not trying to make any judgement on this attitude but felt should share my thoughts on what I feel when someone passes negative comments on the very country, region or locality we live in without realizing their own responsibility to the same. Hope my views make sense. Any society cannot progress without this basic awareness that motivates individual to strive for the progress of society and build a new world that one can be proud of.

Arise, Awake and Stop not till the goal is reached

This is the basic message that was conveyed by Swami Vivekananda. Though it is a simple sentence, this conveys a lot of meaning. The following is my personal interpretation of the same after reading more of spiritual speeches and attending lectures.

ARISE: Do not sit idle. Get up. Get into action. Don’t waste your life in sitting idle and doing things that waste years and takes one away from GOAL. Give up laziness and be filled with an energy to get into action. Always be filled with a positive energy that lets you stay focused and be in action.

AWAKE: Awakening does not mean just getting up from sleep. Here Awakening means the mental realization about one’s state. Awakening comes when one realizes that one is sleeping. Realize one’s current state and realize where one needs to go is the mental awakening that is needed for an individual.

GOAL: Having goal is the first step towards realizing the same. One of the most difficult things in life is become aware of one’s goals. Goal is not petty desires that one attempts to achieve. A higher goal that sets an individual very determined to achieve, which focuses energy of an individual. The goal should be very clear in one’s mind. Reaching the goal should be the only purpose for which the individual lives the life. Mere thought about the goal motivates the individual to do anything. Character of the individual is developed and motivated by the GOAL.

STOP NOT TILL THE GOAL IS REACHED: Once the GOAL is clear in mind, work with unwavering concentration and determination towards achieving the goal. Do not flinch from path that leads to the ultimate GOAL. Have only one aim day in and day out to reach the goal.

In summary, the sentence upon reflection gives a very strong message to every individual to become aware one’s true nature of achieving their ultimate goal of life.

Many times during the day, I am reminded of this single sentence which fills me with an energy to stay positive and keep working without getting de-motivated. Working towards one’s goals with dedication is what makes the life fulfilling.

The above is my personal interpretation that I thought would share with everyone. This sentence taken from one of the eight Upanishads and used a motto is worth reflection whenever one find’s time. I have been thinking for quite some time to share my views with everyone and I realized one such goal today.

Lesson in Self Discipline

To be in the conference room by 09:00 AM was my GOAL

Plan was to start at 08:30 AM and reach with 5 minutes to spare.

Intention was there, goal was known but attitude mattered a lot.

The following has been my experience:

I thought I would get ready and start at 08:30. And at 08:30 I knew I was 10 minutes behind schedule in my preparation. I was excited. The fact of crashing the planned time and still believing that I can make it to the hotel by 09:00 AM was in my mind.

Setting impossible targets and trying to achieve them gives a thrill. We enjoy this game. It generates more passion. The thrill we experience is different. We believe in doing miracles will take us past the target somehow. By some last minute effort things will happen without any problems.

I started at 08:40 and believed that actual time it takes to reach the hotel is 20 Minutes. If the traffic is less and if all traffic lights turn green when I approached them I can manage in 15 minutes.

At the back of mind I thought of using my two-wheeler and made an assumption that it will be in working condition when I need it.

It is not that I had not anticipated any hitches. I had done enough home work on where and how I should reach my goal. Had doubts about where the parking lot will be. I don’t know the actual place of conference but was confident that I able to manage. The actual time to reach the place includes Travel + start up time (starting the scooter etc.) + end time (the time needed to park the scooter, locate the venue and reach the venue). The startup time and end times are ignored at the time of estimation. If minor details like this are ignored reaching the goal as planned will be difficult.

As I started by journey I started thinking. What if I reach at 09:05 AM and the conference has already started.

1. Will someone question you why you are late?

Chances are less. There are other people who come late. Why would someone question me?

2. If asked can I get away with it?

You can always blame it on the factors about which no one will hold you responsible for.

Blame it on the traffic jam, blame it on your vehicle which didn’t start, blame it on your memory you thought the conference was at 09:30 AM, blame it on watch which is running slow. Creating such alibi is never difficult. You can get away very easily and never admit mistakes own mistakes in planning. I could have done the risk planning and budgeted for more startup time. I could have planned for leaving at 08:25 instead of 08:30 given the peak hour traffic.

3. What if still someone try to blame it on me?

Why not blame it on culture. If someone asks you why you are late, you go off into a lecture: culture of following ‘delayed’ time standards. No meetings start on time. It happened so many times that you reach on time and the program started late. Blame it on the work culture. You can still get away with it.

As you can visualize, my thoughts were taking me away from accountability. I realized that the problem lies within me. It is only my individual ethics and self-discipline that can change my attitude.

In the above situation, I was given goal of reaching the hotel by 09:00 AM.

I had complete freedom and choice to plan, execute and succeed.

• I should have done more accurate estimations. If I can’t estimate the effort or time required with very few variables how can I do with many variables.
• I should have done risk planning and budgeted time for it.
• I should have not have taken for granted the time for startup and end. Should have included those factors in my estimates.
• I should have tested the tools: the clock, the scooter or whatever tool was used and effects the schedule.
• I had complete control of the situation and still I am not successful in execution of this.

I realized if I have to reach my goals I need to have self-discipline. I am the loser if I don’t reach my goals. After all they are my goals. I realized that I should take complete responsibility for my failure to reach my goal. It has been a lesson that I will never forget.

Being truthful with oneself is very important. This can be achieved through high self-discipline. I am sure many go through the kind of experience I went through. This has been relatively trivial goal. But this builds the character and it becomes a habit. We keep doing the same mistakes, try to blame the result on our fate or the world. One can’t afford to make the same mistakes with more important goals.

Realize that no one is more bothered about your goals than YOU. Take control of your life. Achieve your goals through self-discipline.