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Words. Wisdom. Winners.
How did you fail today?
Sara Blakely is a tremendously successful businesswoman.
Someone asked, what do you attribute your success to?
“Every night at the dinner table, my father would ask my brother and me, ‘What did you fail at, today?’”
Did you fail today?
Did you get knocked down and bruised today?
Did you face rejection today?
Sara had it ingrained in her mind that it’s okay to fail.
What was not okay was to live with that failure.
Treat failure as a part of life, and it will turn success into a habit.
When do we grow old?
When do we grow old?
Is it simply upon hitting a certain number?
Or perhaps before that?
We grow old when we think the way we see the world is the right one.
When we believe it is our point of view that matters, and it need not be changed.
When we refuse to see another way to live life, because it will challenge our comfort zone.
We grow old when we refuse to embrace the new.
Predicting the future
What did you do today?
Learned something?
Met someone interesting?
Took notes and executed upon your ideas?
Or watched Netflix, ate junk food and slept a little more.
And what will you do tomorrow?
Day after?
Quicker than you know, the days turn into weeks, weeks into months, months into years.
Quicker than you know, your present turns into your future.
By the choices you made today.
The best way to predict your future, is to look at your day today
The easiest way to correct our flaws
We all have flaws.
We’ve all made mistakes.
Done things that aren’t a badge of honor.
But the hard question is:
How to correct them?
What if we stopped looking for them in everyone else?
What if we just corrected just this one flaw?
Because it really necessarily about their flaws.
It is certainly about how we compound their flaws in our minds.
To correct our flaws, stop looking for them in others.
Feeling inferior is also a habit
If most of what is sold in the world is pegged on you feeling inadequate and incomplete, is it then a surprise that we constantly feel inferior?
Cosmetic companies are constantly telling us – we don’t look good.
Finance companies are constantly telling us – we don’t have enough.
Car companies are constantly telling us – we don’t look cool.
Fashion companies are constantly telling us – we don’t look good.
And when we submit ourselves to this media, this information, this narrative, we sub consciously begin to feel it.
What you do repeatedly becomes a habit. Feeling inferior works the same way.
Feeling adequate can also work the same way.
Good things take time
A tweet yesterday said that entrepreneurs are patient and impatient at the same time.
And that resonated with me. I agree with it. And also believe that the patience impatience directed at the right things works wonders. And if misdirected can backfire.
Impatience with finding the truth will work.
Impatience with people won’t.
Impatience with fixing the errors will work.
Impatience with getting results won’t.
Patience with customers will work.
Patience with the version you want to sell won’t.
Patience with spending money will work.
Patience with wasting money won’t.
Entrepreneurs: Impatient with action. Patient with results.
Drown
You don’t drown by falling into the river.
You drown by being submerged in it.
The jail we cannot escape
Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years.
And for all these years, he wasn’t treated well. Not given decent clothes to weak, food to eat, books to read.
Eventually, he went on to become the president of South Africa and for the swearing in ceremony he invited the jailers as well. The same jailers who hadn’t treated him well.
When asked, why would you invite those who didn’t treat you well, he replied,
“If I didn’t invite them, I would still be in prison”
Such is our mind. It is the biggest prison of all. We can escape or be released from any physical prison, but it is the one in our head that is the hardest to.
And the one that we have to escape from.
Respect, empathy and sympathy
Sympathy: I feel sorry for you
Empathy: I can understand what you must be going through
Respect: I admire the way you are handling this
To sympathise, is to start with the basic. You could even lie through it. And when the hard times are over, you do not need to stay with the emotion.
To empathise, is to go to the next level. You can rarely lie about it. And when hard times are over, you would have struck a chord with the person, because you understood them when very few did.
To respect, is be at the highest level. You can lie all you want, but it instantly shows. And when hard times are over, this grows even further. Because you saw the worst of the person and still stayed.
To respect is to empathise. To empathise is to be capable of sympathy.
Education
The lion in the circus is called well-trained.
It has been trained to obey, to follow protocols, to adhere to boundaries, to comply, to surrender.
It has been trained not to think, not to innovate, not to imagine, not to aim big.
Just become the best at what you are asked to do.
The lion in the circus is called well-trained. Not well-educated!
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