WINNING vs. Avoiding DEFEAT

Having read many self development books, articles, blogs and viewed a few videos, every once in a while I come across the concept of Attitude making the difference. Attitudes are basically reactions to situations, and our reactions depend on how we perceive a situation.

Attitudes are reactions to perceptions, and perceptions could be deceiving

 Zig Zigglar in one of his talks mentions about a lady who came to him and asked for help. Her problem was that she didn't like the company she worked for, she didn't like the workplace, the staff, the management. Zig asked her to open a note book and start writing reasons why she loved her job, she was dumb founded as she though if she liked anything about the company then she had no reason to come to Zig for advice. Zig, however, nudged her on with a couple of suggestions like the company pays her for the work she did, they provided her with a decent office space, they covered her health insurance, and soon she had a list of 22 items (if I remember correctly) that she liked [loved] about her company. Next Zig asked her to go through the list every night and also after getting up in the morning. Next time they met after a few months she seemed very happy and when asked, she said people in my company have changed so much and she loves working there.

Similarly, race car drivers are taught to drive their cars along an ideal path on the racetrack, and not to drive to avoid hitting the side walls, meaning, worry about where to go and not about where not to go.

Imran Khan, Pakistan's finest cricket captain who helped them win the world cup, says that when he joined the national team as a teenager, he was taught to play so that they don't loose, and the result was they hardly ever won. When he became the captain of the national team, he demanded from his player to stop worrying about what if they loose, and instead focus upon what needs to be done to achieve victory. He gave the famous "cornered tiger" speech to the team when they were almost out of the world cup competition and only had a mathematical possibility of making it to the next round. The team responded and did what they had to do and leave the rest on mathematicians to figure out if they can qualify. Pakistan eventually ended up winner of that competition.

So, it's all in the mindset or attitude of a person, about what he or she wants. Determine the desire, set up a goal or destination. Once that is determined, next comes self discipline and determination which can be defined in many different ways but ultimately it comes down to a commitment to oneself to achieve what is desired and not to give up. And finally, the most important step towards success is to take the first step, and then keep moving towards your goal, jump over hurdles, go under the obstacles, keep getting up when tripped but remain determined to achieve what you desire. Good luck!

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

We had been talking about Steve Jobs having pancreatic cancer and Apple pushing for iPhone5 and his authorized autobiography ahead of schedule so he may be able to present these before he moves on. And when iPhone 4s was launched it seemed like a non-event. The tech pundits started ridiculing the new team for being lackluster and not at par with launch events hosted by Steve jobs. Little did we know that they did an incredible job given the circumstances. Most of the Apple employees probably knew that the time has come for them to say good bye to an icon who can easily be considered at par with Ford, Carnegie, Wright brothers, and other great visionaries in history. Had it not been for Steve, we probably would still be dabbling on standard desktop computer with Monitor on top of a box and type writer style keyboards. The laptops would still be at least an inch thick, the MP3 players with non-standard, non-intuitive UIs, graphical OS GUIs wouldn't have been as developed as they are, we would still be struggling with trying to fit desktop GUI onto touch screen based devices, cell phones would not have become as smart and easy to use as they are, Android wouldn't have emerged and probably MS Windows wouldn't be what it is. Steve had a vision and followed it undeterred and the rest just kept trying catching up. Who else would have been able to get a cell phone vendor to not put their logo on a phone that they market? Who else at age 13 could've gotten free microprocessor chips from HP? here have been failures and mis-steps on his life, but he learned and kept moving forward. Even the way he left this World shows how prepared he was for future......