Book Review: 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People- Part 4

Many people have not had an opportunity to read this classic book “7 Habits of highly effective people”. If you do not have time to read complete book, you can get yourself familiarize with the book by reading this post.

In Part 1, we discussed about some important concepts like P/PC balance and foremost fundamental habit (Be Proactive). Part 2 was focused on others Private Victory Habits i.e. Habit 2 and Habit 3. Part 3 was focused on Public Victory i.e. Habit 4, 5 and 6. Today is the last part and it is focused on Sharpen the Saw.

7 Habits- Sharpen the Saw

Let me narrate a story to explain this. Once, a manager of a woodcutter gave him an axe and asked him to cut as many as trees as he could. The first day, the woodcutter brought 18 trees. The next day he could only cut 15 trees. The third day he tried harder, but he could only bring 10 trees. Day after day he was bringing less and less trees.

After few days, the woodcutter thought that he is losing strength. He went to the manager and apologized, saying that he could not understand what was going on.

“When was the last time you sharpened your axe?” the manager asked.

“Sharpen? I had no time to sharpen my axe. I have been very busy trying to cut trees…”

It is obvious that the woodcutter would have accomplished the goal earlier if he had taken time to sharpen his saw.

Book Review: 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People- Part 3

Many people have not had an opportunity to read this classic book “7 Habits of highly effective people”. If you do not have time to read complete book, you can get yourself familiarize with the book by reading this post.

In Part 1, we discussed about some important concepts like P/PC balance and foremost fundamental habit (Be Proactive). Part 2 was focused on others Private Victory Habits i.e. Habit 2 and Habit 3.

Part 3, today’s post will describe about Public Victory i.e. Habit 4, 5 and 6. Next and last part will be focused on Sharpen the Saw.

Covey 7 Habits: Public Victory

Similar to first post, let us discuss a couple of concepts before jumping into Private Victory Habits.

The Emotional Bank Account:
An emotional bank account is an account that you have with everyone you know, in particular friends, family and loved ones. Similar to normal bank account, you make deposit and withdrawal in Emotional Bank Account. You make deposits by doing something nice and meaningful to or for that person and you make withdrawals when you hurt them or treat them badly. The balance in your account is the amount of trust that’s been built up in a relationship, the more trust the higher the balance. Just like a monetary bank account, you prefer to have a large balance in this account so that the relationship you have with that person is a high trust relationship.

Actions likes fighting, saying something you regret, or forgetting important dates in your relationship are example of withdrawals. Similar to monetary back account, it is easy to make large/small withdrawal. But if there is no deposit, you account will turn into red soon. You make deposits by one of the following methods:

1. Understanding the individual, Key to any other deposit. What is important to other person must be as important to you, as the other person is to you
2. Attending to the little Things: e.g. Watching Princess movie with your daughter
3. Keeping commitments
4. Clarifying expectations
5. Showing Personal Integrity
6. Apologizing sincerely when you make a withdrawal

I would like to write more about this but it will make this post very long. If someone just follow this principle and work on increasing positive emotional bank balance, you will experience stronger relationships.

Habit 4: Think Win/Win

A human interact with other individual with in following Six paradigms.

1. Win/Win: Neither my way nor your way, it’s another way
2. Win/Lose: Most of the people are scripted to think this way – I win you lose.
3. Lose/Win: Some of the people are programmed this way. Common thoughts in this paradigm are have it your way.
4. Lose/Lose: mostly when ego clashes. I do not win so I won’t let you win.
5. Win: People with win mentality do not necessarily want the other person to lose, that is irrelevant to them.
6. No Deal: self explanatory

Win Win or No Deal

Which option is the best? It depends on situation. In a game, Win is obvious choice. When playing with young children, you might to prefer Lose/Win to give assurance to young kids.

In most of the human interactions, Win/Win is the best option. You can also prefer No Deal. No deal means if we together can’t find a solution that would benefit us both, we agree to disagree.

4 steps process for Win/Win paradigm:

1. See the problem from other person’s point of view
2. Identify what is the key issue and concerns (not positions)
3. Determine what results would constitute a fully acceptable solution
4. Identify possible new options to achieve those results

Habit 5: First seek to understand, then to be understood.

It is not uncommon to hear an statements like, “I can’t understand my husband/wife. S/he would not listen to me”. Now read first part of the statement again “I can’t understand my husband/wife”. Is it fault of your husband/wife if you can’t understand him/her? Really? If you can’t understand German language, will you try to learn/understand more German language or will ask people to change German language.

Proactive (Habit 1) people take responsibility and put efforts to understand their husband/wife.

You understand each other’s by communication. There are 4 basic types of communication – Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening. We spend years learning how to read, write and speak bit no/minimal training in listening that enables us to listen so that we really, deeply, understand another human being from individual’s own frame of reference. This type of listening is called Empathic listening.

Emphatic Listening:
Normally we listen one of the following ways

1. Ignoring: Not really listening at all
2. Pretending: Acting as we are listening but not really listening. You can find that when someone says ‘Yeah?, ‘Right?
3. Selective listening: only part of what is being said. It happens normally when you listen to chatter of a preschooler.
4. Attentive listening: Paying attention and focus on words that are being said
5. Emphatic listening: Very few of us practice fifth and highest level of listening. It means understanding not only what is being said but also what is the frame of the mind of the person speaking. Emphatic comes from Empathy. Empathy is different than sympathy. Sympathy means you are in agreement with other. Empathy means you understand their frame of mind. You do not have to agree with the other person.

Listening – Important skill in understanding

You can understand others using Emphatic principle. Emphatic listening itself is an incredible deposit in Emotional Bank Account. The more balance you have in your emotional bank account, the more you understand the other person.

Diagnose before you prescribe (To be understood):
Have you ever visited a doctor and have experienced that s/he did not hear you? Did you have faith in the medicine? I remember I had some fever and some stomach pain when I was 15-16 years old. There was a long queue in Dr clinic and I felt that he did not listen to me. I left clinic unheard and un-understood. I did not have faith in the medicine he prescribed to me. So first diagnose (understand) before you prescribe (seek to be understood).

4 Development stage of Emphatic Listening

1. Mimic content
2. Rephrase the content
3. Reflect Feeling
4. Rephrase the content and rephrase feeling

As it might be awkward to people so I recommend practicing with couple of closed people. Additionally I recommend you sharing with them so they do not feel awkward when you suddenly repeating what they say to you.

Habit 6: Synergize

Synergy = the whole is greater than sum of the parts. All the habits prepare us to create miracle of synergy.

Synergy means 1 + 1 = 3 or more.

Synergy

Effective People strongly believe in synergy. They involve people in problems and work out solutions together. If you believe in synergy, next time you become aware of difference in your perception with your friend/colleague or family members, you would say – Good, you see if differently. Help me see what you see.

Valuing differences is what really drives synergy. Do you truly value the mental, emotional, and psychological differences among people? Or do you wish everyone would just agree with you so you could all get along?

Valuing the difference. Is it logical that two people can disagree and the both can be correct? It is not logical. But this is psychological and it is very real.

Let’s look at the photo below for 2 minutes. What do you see?

Covey- Lady Sketch

What did you see in above photo – A young lady or an old lady. If you saw a young lady, consider that I saw an old lady. And if you saw an old lady, consider that I saw a young one. Now who is correct?

Now look at three pictures below. Can you see both ladies (old and young one) in the middle picture?

Once you identify both ladies in lady sketch, it is obvious that new views of knowing the picture have both ladies gives a new paradigm. So, which view was correct? In fact, all views are correct but the third view provides more accurate picture. Believing that there could be a third view is synergy.

Summarizing Synergy habit- When you see only two alternatives – yours and the wrong one – you can look for a synergistic third alternative.

Let me conclude today’s post by summarizing Public Victory habits:

• Habit 4: Think Win/Win
• Habit 5: First seek to understand, then to be understood.
• Habit 6: Synergize

By the way you can purchase the book at Amazon

Question: Select a relationship where you think your Emotional Bank Account balance requires some deposit. Write down the view of other person’s point. In next interaction, just listen to understand other person and compare what you are hearing with what you have written down.

I am also looking forward to hear your experiences in trying to take new habits.

Book Review: 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People- Part 1

Like you and many other people, I have read many books. One of my all time favorites is “7 habits of highly effectively people” written by Stephen R. Covey. This is a classic and one of the most famous books ever written. I have been recommending this book to my friends, family members and colleagues. Recently, I realized that most of these have not read this book ever because of shortage of time. So I thought about writing a summary and lessons I learned from it. This post is not a substitute of reading the book. It is my attempt to provide summarized information to those who currently do not want to spend time reading this book because of other commitments. This is the first post of a multi-part series. This is also my tribute to Mr Covey who died in July 2012.

Before we dive deeper into 7 Habits, let me explain some concepts which are fundamental and used throughout the book.

1. What is a Habit?
Covey defined a habit as an interaction of Knowledge, Skill, and Desire.

Knowledge: What to do and why
Skills: How to do
Desire: Motivation, want to do

Habit

For example: I want to have a good relationship with others so these three areas could be described like

Knowledge: I need to listen to others to have a good relationship
Skill: I can listen deeply and allow others to complete their sentence before I speak.
Desire: I really want to listen to others

Creating a new habit (or breaking an old one) requires work in all three areas.

2. What is  Effectiveness:
Bringing maximum Long Term beneficial results. Most people see effectiveness from golden egg paradigm – The more you produce, the more you do, the more effective you are. But true effectiveness is a function of two things

1. What is produced (the golden egg)
2. The producing assets or capacity to produce (the goose)

Covey measures effectiveness by providing long-lasting results in life. It is also called P/PC principle where

P= Production
PC= Producing capabilities

The more P/PC balance you have, more effective you are.

3. Maturity Continuum
This is one of the concepts needs to be understood to reap benefits of 7 habits. Physically, you come in life as a dependent and depend on your parents on everything. Subsequently  you become physically independent and you can handle things without any help. Subsequently you become interdependent  when  you know watching a movie together is more fun than watching alone.

Dependence → Independence → Interdependence

Dependence –>	Independence –>	Interdependence
You	I	We
You did not come	I can do it	We can do it
I blame you for results	I am responsible	We can cooperate
Dependent people need others to get what they want	Independent people can get what they want through their efforts	Interdependent people can combine talents and abilities from many people and create something greater together
Need help	I can make it my own	On my own & Realization that We > I + You

The 7 habits are mentioned  below:

1. Be Proactive
2. Begin With The End in Mind
3. Put First Things First
4. Think Win-Win
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen the Saw

Habits 1, 2 and 3: Private Victory. Move from dependent to Independent
Habits 4, 5 and 6: Public Victory. Move from Independent to Interdependent
Habit 7: Sharpen the saw

1.Be Proactive
This is the first habit. As this is the foundation for other habits, I am dedicating rest of post in explaining this habit. Be Proactive does not merely taking more initiative. It means that as a human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Let me explain 3 things which is heart of this habit

I. Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern
II. Direct, Indirect, and No Control
III. Reactive vs Proactive Language

I. Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern

Concern: Health, our children, poor in society, Crime in world
Influence: We can do something about.

Proactive people focus their efforts in Circle of influence and generate positive energy. Eventually they enlarge their Circle of Influence

Proactive Focus vs Reactive Focus

Reactive people focus their efforts in Circle of Concern and generate negative energy. Eventually they contract their Circle of Influence

II. Direct, Indirect, and No Control:

Any problem we face falls under three areas:

• Direct Control: Problem involving our own behavior
• Indirect Control: Problem involving other’s people behavior
• No control: Problem we can do nothing about such as past situations, or situation reality.

Proactive approach puts the first step in the solution of all 3 kinds of problems within our present Circle of Influence.

Direct Control problems are solved by Private Victory= Habits 1, 2 and 3
Indirect Control problems are solved by Public Victory= Habits 4, 5 and 6
No control problem involves taking the responsibility to smile, to peacefully accept these problems, and learn to live with them even though we do not like them. In this way, these problems do not control us.

Some example to identify if your concern is in circle of concern or circle of influence.

Circle of Concern	Circle of Influence
If I had my degree or MBA	I can be more wise or acquire a new skill
If I could have just have more money	I can be more organized or save money
If I could have change my wife’s or my sons opinion	I can be more understanding
If I could have got another job	I can be more creative

III. Reactive vs Proactive Language:
Language plays a significant role in our development and effectiveness. We tend to become what we say. There are two type of languages – reactive or proactive. Some of the examples are below.

Reactive Language	Proactive Language
That’s just the way I am	I can choose a different approach
He makes me so mad	I control my own feelings
I can’t do it. I do not have time.	I choose to spend my time with TV
I must	I prefer
There is nothing I can do in this situation	Let’s look at alternatives

I guess you have figured out that effective people use Proactive language.

To summarize Be Proactive means:

• Proactive people operates from believe that Our behavior is a function of our decisions and not our conditions
• Responsibility = Response + ability = Ability to choose response
• Highly proactive people recognize this responsibility
• By nature we are Proactive but by default we have chosen to empower conditions to control us and have become Reactive
• Other 6 habits depends on development of proactive muscles
• Although proactive muscles may be dormant but they are there

In my next post, we’ll discuss about other habits.

Question/Challenge:

1. Choose any problem you are facing and analyze if it is no control, direct or indirect control problem. Identify first step you can take in your circle of influence to solve it and take the step.

2. Observe your language  that it you are using a reactive language or proactive language. If you are using a reactive language, change into proactive and observer your experience. How do you feel?

You can share your experience via comments or via email.

Your Feedback

If you have an idea for a blog that you would like to see or a question about a post, email me.

How to find time for family when you are too busy

Whether you are an employee or an entrepreneur, expectation from you is much more than as it was in twentieth century. There are times in life when you have to work more than average working hours. This could be caused by one or many reasons e.g. you have a project deadline, or a product is about to be launched, or a conference schedule date is approaching, etc. Unless you are just a career starter, you might have experienced such situation. Whenever you are in such situation, you can take some actions to move out of it quickly.

Guardian of time
photo credit AlicePopkorn

You can use the following technique to find time for your friends or your group or any volunteering work. I just think that it is our family that is ignored the most when we are too busy. So I have used family but same is applicable for others too.

1. Litmus test
If you think you are too busy, this is the first action you should take . I refer to litmus test as asking this question to yourself “Do you have a constant problem of not having enough time?”. Do you find yourself in short of time constantly (I called it as condition Red) or it is a temporary situation (I called it as condition Blue). If this is a temporary phenomena, you need to find a way get out of it. If you have been in busy for quite some time, then you need to have an appointment with yourself and look deeper.

By the way, litmus test is much more effective if you do it in front of mirror looking at yourself in the eye. If not sure, ask your spouse or partner or kid or family members. If you find a theme in people’s response you know the answer.

In short, litmus test requires only couple of minutes but this provides you a picture if situation requires minor band-aid or a big surgery.

2. Acknowledge and express gratitude
This is most courageous step. Assuming that outcome of litmus test is condition blue i.e. you are too busy only temporarily. Next step is to acknowledge your family. As I mentioned earlier, I have experienced that our family is the first to suffer and suffer the most whenever we are too busy. Agree or not, your partner or spouse is doing hard job. Now, I am not saying that your job is easy. But you being busy makes your partner or spouse’s job harder. Your partner or spouse or kid might not say this to you as they do not want to increase you troubles but they do miss you the most. You might not be able to spend as much time as you would like to with them but accepting the situation and acknowledging them for their support makes them feel great. Express your gratitude for your family members.

If your partner or spouse starting complaining, do not be defensive. Just listen. It is a wonderful opportunity which will give you two benefits

– Your partner or spouse frustration will be out and s/he will be more supporting afterwards.
– You will figure out what’s essential for your family

3. Analyze and set a deadline
If you have completed first two steps, this step is comparatively easy. Analyze the situation and determine a deadline by when you can get back to normal working hours. This step might require discussion with your manager, colleague or team. When analyzing the situation, remember your priority. When making choices, or saying yes to others’ demand on your time, remember what’s really important to you. You partner or spouse, your family. Not other people’s needs. Always keep that in mind.

If you prefer, you can also do analysis (step 3) before acknowledgment (Step 2). In such situation you can combine expressing gratitude (step2) and discussion (step 4). I prefer this order as this acknowledging people generates more positive energy and it becomes easier to perform analysis and set up a deadline.

4. Communication
Once you have completed step 3, you have determined by when you will get back to normal working hours. Now time to communicate this to your partner or spouse or family, depending on your situation. Discuss with your wife on what important things she would like to be taken care till you get back to normal timings. Also request for support to do things which you would normally do. Get your family with you and work towards getting more time for everyone. It is much easier when you work with your family together towards a common goal of more family time vs you fighting alone to get more time alone.

5. Plan future
Plan activities or events in future e.g. plan a date with partner or spouse or plan a lunch date or book a vacation. Try to have some short time commitments (lunch date etc) before deadline. Aim for quality time or plan time for intimacy. You know it is said that vacation starts when you buy the tickets. How do we feel, is affected with what we see in future. That is why you feel happy on Friday morning but feel dull on Sunday evening.

Btw you can also take some easy to implement activities like

– When you reunite at the end of the day, share 20 minutes talking about the day.
– When you leave each other in the morning, spend at least two minutes together.
– Make goodbyes important.

Bottom line, plan things in advance. As soon as things are planned, you and your family will have positive experiences.

6. Honor your commitment
This step is extremely important. Honor your commitment. You do honor your work commitments, your social group commitments and your customer commitments, then why wouldn’t you honor your family commitment. At least communicate to family member immediately if you can’t keep your commitment and re-commit, but communicate. I know this is a difficult step but it is very important step otherwise your spouse or partner will not believe you next time. And I think it does not do any good.

I finish this post with a question- What other ways/activities you have used to find time for your family when you are too busy? Leave your comments.

6 Leadership skills you already have if you are a parent

A leader is one who influences or leads others. You might not have significant leadership responsibility in your job or profession. A parent leads the life of his or her kid. So if you are a parent, you are a leader. And you might not have realized, you have developed some leadership skills while parenting your kid. You might not have gone through a formal training or these skills might not be evident to you but you do have these leadership skills.

I do remember the day when I was learning to ride a bicycle. I was scared and did not want to try it. My father reassured me that I can do it. I was scared of falling down and getting hurt. But my father reassured me that I will not fall as he will hold from back, encouraged me, and asked me to try again. Gladly I did and I learned how to ride the bicycle. What my father did is exactly a true leader is required to do in profession. Leading people to achieve more than what they could think is possible, is true leadership.

I strongly believe that every parent develops some leadership skills as part of raising your kids. Each child is unique thus each parent might require/develop different skills. Some of the skills which I observed more common in parents are mentioned below.

1. Patience
Kids test the patience up to a very last limit. Kids push parents to test boundaries. This is something every parent experienced. I myself have realized that my patience has increased multifold after becoming a parent.

2. Work with limited resources
This is constant battle for leaders and managers. They always have to work with limited resources. It is not uncommon for parents to leave house couple of hours later than you planned. You might get upset for a while but soon start having maximum enjoyment of remaining time. This is exactly what a leader or manager has to do on daily basis. A parent know how to gain maximum benefits of limited resource specially time.

3. Lead by example
This is my favorite. A true leader always leads by example. A parent has to do the same with his or her kid. If you want your kid not to loose control in case of disappointment, a parent has to demonstrate this being in control in case of disappointment. Sharing my personal experience, I wanted to teach my daughter to say please and thank you. I realized that me and my wife use hindi language and words like please and thank you are not used very often in Hindi language in family. So we started using please and thanks in English in daily conversation and our daughter picked-up easily. I could see that our daughter picked up with in couple of days. We were asking this from her since more than a month but she did not do it as she did not see us doing it. So a parent has to lead by example.

I am sure every parent would have to adjust/correct himself or herself to develop correct behavior or habit in his or her kid. So each parent have ability to lead by example, a much-needed skills of leadership.

4. Innovation
Necessity is a mother of invention. This quote goes well with parents. A parent has limited personal time, so s/he combines exercise where parents and kids both can have fun e.g. swimming, trekking, etc. Every parent becomes an innovator.

5. Being focused or present
A parent spends some undivided time with their kid. I know it is not possible to give always undivided attention and some parents have expressed the guilt that they have not been spending as much time with their kid as they would like, which is another topic. Whatever time you are spending with your kid, there are time-slots in which you are totally focused with your kid. I know there are times when we parents do multitasking but this is one of the items in my boundary list. Check my post on Create a Not To-do list or a Boundary List. Maintaining focus is one of toughest challenge for leaders in this era and every parent has spent time being focused on his or her kid. So if you are a parent, you have developed skills of being focused or being present.

6. Communication
Parenting require a clear, consistent, two-way communication between a kid and parent. Communication has two component – listening and speaking

Listening- Whenever you kid had an unpleasant experience, you listen to your kid. You might not know what exactly happened but you do not make your kid wrong. You just listen.

Speaking- You instruct your kid with appropriate words. Kids are very sensitive so parent has a very high responsibility to use appropriate words. Kids are great observers so correction might not be easy after inappropriate words are out of parents mouth. You use directive as well as collaborative communication.

In nut-shell, parenting develops your communication skills which is a strong leadership skill.

To summarize, you as a parent have developed strong leadership skills while raising your kid. You might not be aware of this or these skills might be rusty with in you. Level of expertise might be different for you but you posses all of these leadership skills.

Now my turn to listen. What skills you have experienced growing as a parent? I will appreciate if you leave some comments to share with other blog readers.

5 strategies to recover from a painful rejection

Every individual faces rejection in life. There are rejections which have no or minimal impact likes rejection from an average prospective deal or someone turning down a request to recommend you on LinkedIn. However sometime it seems that rejection is too big to handle and seems it chattered or broke the heart. It usually happens when someone breaks a relationship committed from other person, or someone lost a job in which he or she was putting his or her heart and soul. Such incidents are unfortunate but reality is that it does happen in life. Recovery from rejection is a process but if this recover process takes long, it may generate lot of negativity and slows down you momentum. It also makes recovery process more difficult. Earlier a person recovers, better it is. Good news is that there are some methods you can take to recover from a painful rejection.

Here are 5 strategies to take to faster the recovery from a painful rejection-

1. Take a break
   First is to not to take any action. In case of a painful rejection, human body’s first reaction is to produce anger emotion. Now, do not take any action at this point. Few years back, I received a rejection email from a colleague and I replied immediately. Later I regret that I should not have sent it. My response did more damage and I have to put a lot of efforts to repair that damage. I have experienced that we do more damage when taking action in anger.  I do not think anyone received any good when replying in anger. So take a break. You can take a break anywhere between 15 minutes to days as it depends on individual. Unless you think you can look into situation without anger, do not respond. Take a break.
2. Take it easy policy
   Second, take it easy policy. If you consider yourself as source of this situation, this strategy is very helpful.

Harland David Sanders famous secret chicken recipe was rejected 1,009 times before a restaurant accepted it.

Thomas Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. Of course, all those unsuccessful attempts finally resulted in the design that worked.

Steven Spielberg rejected from the University of Southern California School of Theatre, Film and Television three times. Thirty-five years after starting his degree, Spielberg returned to school in 2002 to finally complete his work and earn his BA.

Roger Federer is a world class tennis player but have 2013 as probably the worst year. Is he not a good player? He has won 17 Grand Slam singles titles and still at number 7 in world ranking. Consider what would happen when if Thomas Edison, Steven Spielberg, or Roger Federer would have left the path they chosen when faced failure or rejection in early phase of this life? Bottom ne, you can’t win all the matches in life.  So, take it easy policy.

• Surgery- separate the fact, statement, and interpretations
  This is where you have an opportunity to analyze the situation. First two strategies help you to calm down and established peaceful ground to make this analysis. In many situations, a rejection is painful because of underlying meaning or negative story which we make in our head. I am not saying that the other party has no responsibility but interpretation made is drives the experiences of pain.  Consider rejection as standalone transaction and try to separate a fact, a statement and the interpretation you have make with previous experiences and personal views.

 

One night, during my very early years of career, I received a phone call in night that my closed friend has died. He was 25 years old. His home town was 4 hours away from my house. Next day, I had a very important meeting to attend dealing with reputation of the company. I called my Manager, who was also a member of senior management)  immediately and requested to leave town immediately. My request was rejected. There was no valid reason apparently. I was shocked. So next day, I went to office in morning for 2 hours and then left to home town of my friend. I returned after 3-4 days. Luckily I had gone through first two steps as I stayed with my friend’s family for few days so I was calm and was in a situation to do this surgery. After this surgery, I realized that my view or interpretation was that I am not good because I could not see my friend face before funeral. Fact was that I could not see my friend’s face before funeral but the story I attached with it made this rejection very painful. At that time, I was young with very little experience and had no responsibility so I resigned from job after I return. My decision turns out to be good but it was definitely one of the decisions made under emotional influence.

After this de-construction, you know your interpretations or views. Now time to be creative and think a compelling positive story. Remember this might not true either but your earlier story is also not true. It is a story. So why not write one which is positive and compelling. Looking back in situation I shared earlier, I could have re-recreated my story as “senior management depends on me so much for this important meeting.”

• Consider it as an opportunity for improvement
  I strongly believe that in case of failure or rejection, there will be something good underlying. A quote, “There’s nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.” Look for good in situation after rejection. There will be something good. Sometimes it is not obvious and hidden but it is there. You can look for what you learned and look for improvements. If you are careful listen, you can learn something in rejections. Sometime it is simple did not match. But it is worthwhile to look for what can be improved and it is wonderful opportunity for improvements.As a project manager, I constantly find for required resource. I remember when a resource was shared across many projects and my request for this resource just for minimal allocation was rejected. I never understand the reasons but I accepted it. I discussed this with other team member and found out that one of the team members was happy to take additional responsibility. It turns out that this rejection forced team members to expand themselves and saved me some of my time too as I have less people to interact. It would not have been possible if I did not have this rejection.
  
• Read your end vision/goal again
  Last point is the get closure to your end goal or vision. When face rejection of failure, this is very helpful. It allows you to look if this rejection is critical for your success and not. Does this rejection really affect long term goal or it is just a minor impact. It enables you to see if you need to ignore this rejection or some major actions are required to ensure your goals are on track. As you read your goals, it also helps you keeping focus in your goals and helps in avoiding distractions created by rejection or failure.One of my favorites inspiration quotes– You have to have darkness…for the dawn to come. By the way, if you love reading inspirational quotes, visit my earlier blog called  Top 10 inspirational quotes.

 

I hope you find these points helpful in getting over as any rejection you might face.

Question: What experience you have had with rejection and how did you deal with it? What other tools or actions you think are useful and want to share with other members.

5 methods for converting knowledge into wisdom

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing that a tomato doesn’t belong in a fruit salad”

I read this quote and it simply got me thinking for few minutes. I decided to reflect on some of my experiences.

Knowledge and Wisdom could have several meaning. I describe knowledge as something you gather from learning, education, training, or reading type activities. Wisdom is applicability of knowledge with combination of your memory, conscience, emotional stability, and gut feeling. Of course, there are other elements which affect your wisdom but I am going to focus on understanding and applicability of knowledge in life: This is what I refer to converting knowledge into wisdom.

Knowledge: gathered from learning and training and coaching
Wisdom: comes from day to day experiences. A state of being wise.

“Smoking is dangerous to health” is printed on every single cigarette box in this world but people do smoke it. Some people are heavy smokers. Why? All of them have this knowledge but they still smoke. So Knowledge alone does not make big difference. It require much more than knowledge to not to smoke which is Wisdom.

I am writing this blog for normal people much like me who read book, attend training, and engage in active discussion with friends and colleagues to find ways to be a better person or a better human or to live a better life.

5 methods which I have experienced and enhanced my ability to convert knowledge into wisdom. There are many other methods but I found these 5 as most effective for me.

1. Take Notes: Physical or digital, do take notes. This is for me the most important and foremost method. It has been proven scientifically that an average human mind can remember only very limited percentage (5 or 10% max) after 24 hours. So take notes to capture a thought, a quote, an idea, or an insight.

Taking note has four major benefits

1) It clears your mind

2) It shows importance of the topic to other people when you are in meeting/discussion

3) It can be referred in future as human mind can’t retain all in memory

4) It could be a used a weapon in your outreach armory

Let me deep dive in fourth benefits in particular. If you store your notes of the book you have read, good quotes you saw/read, and insights you have about yourself and stories which inspired you. If all of these are available into a common notebook/application, this is your secret and valuable weapon which you can against yourself in positive way. When you are not so encouraged or not in a great time or feeling low, take this notebook or application and start reading this collection. In my opinion, everybody needs some dose of inspiration once in a while. I have found this very useful in my life.

I strongly recommend a common place for storing your notes. Smart phones and tablet have made this so easy. I used to add those quotes in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation. Now I am storing in Evernote application. I still have to combine migrate old quotes from Microsoft PowerPoint to Evernote.  So start taking notes.

2. Ask question to yourself or speculate: When I read anything great, I ask myself – can I apply this into life? Is there anything I can do better using knowledge I just acquired? You got to articulate and look for possible applicability in past, present and future. Ask yourself questions like – “Could I have applied in past?”. Or “Can I apply in any situation I have in hand or I am going to face in future?”

I had a meeting schedule with a senior manager. Just day before this meeting, I was reading something interesting about marketing, which was totally irrelevant for this meeting but I ask can I apply somewhere. And I decide to apply into this meeting. Although I could not apply as I was expected but I enjoyed the process. I will share his into more detail in next method. So ask question to yourself.

3. Discuss with friend, mentor or colleague: This is very effective. I strongly suggest to share what you see or what you understand and ask you colleague or friend to share what they see or understand. Ask what you would have applied this in past situation? Now I do not go to anyone and ask for their advice or view. I do have a circle of professional and personal network and I do discuss with few of them more often as compared with some of others. However, I do often (almost daily) discuss my insights, my experiences, quotes with my wife. Sometime she is little frustrated as I have a tendency to go in very details but most of the time she is willing to listen to me and share her thoughts. I do have some great friends with whom I discuss. So to summarize, discuss with friends, mentor, colleague or wife – whosoever you think can contribute but do share your views.

4. Try it: This is no brainer. You got to try it. Unless you try, you are not in game. You are like a spectator who is standing in the stadium or like a player who is getting ready for the game. If you want to win the game, you have to play the game. Now it is not sure if you will get success of failure but this is sure that playing will make you a better player and your chances to win in next game will increase because you are now a better player.

Btw it is very easy to tell someone what to do (knowledge) compared to do in real situation (wisdom). So if you are watching a game played by someone else, do not condemn (or angry with) them for their mistake. Being in court to play itself is very courageous and warrants appreciation. Just remind yourself that “It is so easy to give advice to others but difficult to follow yourself.”

As I mentioned in method 2 above, I read an article which I decided to apply for a meeting scheduled with a senior manager. I prepared for meeting with all agenda items and my notes were front of me during meeting. It was a telephonic call so I have no one looking at me. I started perfectly but within 5 minutes I was much diverted from my agenda. We finished on time and it was a good meeting but I could not apply knowledge I learned. But I tried. I look for reflection which is my fourth method. But I tried. Similarly you have to try. You will meet sweet success and sour failures but you got to try. There is no alternative.

5. Review: I find review is the only method to improve further. After attempting to apply the knowledge, review it. Did it work? What did not work? How would you do it differently in future?

When I did a review of my meeting with senior manager and reflected on what went wrong and what did I learn. I learned that I probably need to go slow for next meeting. I was too excited to share my view and difference it could make, I could slow down my speaking in my next meeting. I could also prepare a slide for next meeting to support my thoughts/idea. So review when you try something new. You may not only discover why these did not work but can also find a new insight which could be something new for next time. It could be that you only require some adjustments based on need of the other person.

I do weekly review of my task, goals etc and as part of process is to capture 3 things/behaviour/actions which worked during last week and another 3 things/behaviour/actions which did not work last week. This is integral part of the review and one of the sections I really enjoy.

Being honest, this is something I have adapted around 6 months ago and I find it very insightful. Again, I am using another tool for this but I am intended to migrate this into Evernote for the same reason I explained earlier. I am not promoting Evernote, it is just one tool which I use a lot and have fallen in love with it. You may decide to review daily or weekly or at any other frequency.

Just to summarize, 5 methods for converting knowledge into wisdom are
1. Take Notes
2. Ask question to yourself or speculate
3. Discuss with a friend, mentor or colleague
4. Try it
5. Review

So let’s change the role and let me ask you.

 “What other methods you know or used to convert knowledge into wisdom?” Please leave your comments and thoughts.

What inspired me to start writing my blog?

Seriously I can’t believe that I am writing my personal blog. I have been thinking about writing my blog from couple of months and today is the day!!!! So what changed today? Today, I attended TEDx Zurich 2013 a full day event where various inspiring people came on staged and talked. Well we all read inspiring books, see inspiration video and create a action lists which disappears in few days. So I looked deeper and discovered another interesting reason which is I happened to talk to someone who blogs. We chatted for several minutes and I found that he started blogging 2-3 years back. I even did not look for his blog as he writes in German but meeting someone who has been in similar situation provided the push I needed. My today’s experience validates my belief that you are who you talk with.

I encourage you to pick up an item which is in your to do list since days or months or years and find a friend, mentor, coach or someone who has an experience which could be useful in taking a baby step for your goal/action.

What event/experience made you start you blog or something else which was is your to do list since days/months/years? Leave your comments please….