26 A to Z secrets of success

26 A to Z secrets of Success: 

The definition of success is differ from individual to individual. Before giving you 26 secrets of success, I would like to define success according to my point of view. 

Success is when you achieve your goal, target, aim or purpose. 

Success is when you become most beautiful flower of your plant or most attractive fruit of your tree. 

Success is when lot of people look at you with admiration and seek your guidance. 

Success is when you are more useful for others than yourself. 

Success is when you are touching sky but your feet are firm on the ground. 

Success is when you are continuously walking towards your goal in-spite of obstacles or failures. 

Success is when you have reached to your destination but already have set your eyes on next goal. 

Success is when fruit of your achievement is useful for others. 

Now I would like to reveal 26 secrets of success. These are arranged in A to Z sequence and not in a sequence of importance. These secrets are nectar of my last 26 years of reading around 500+ books and 1000s of articles. One person can not have all the following qualities however you will find most of these qualities in a successful person. It may so happen that you are not finding your favourite word in 26 headings but that is certainly represented directly or indirectly under one of the secrets. Such as PERSEVERANCE, it is synonym with determination. Still if you feel that I had left out important quality, please do write me. 

Action Oriented: 

Taking a birth in the wealthy or intellectual family is not success. It is your destiny and result of your past karma. Success depends on your present actions which will convert into results and create your destiny. Actions depends on decisions you take now and decisions depends on quality of your thinking and thinking depends on your day to day observations, learning and interactions with people. 

Successful people are action oriented. It may so happen that their all actions do not result into desired outcome but they never stop. They may change their path but they will keep walking, keep doing, keep going ahead with a clear vision in mind. 

Blessed with Luck: 

Few of reader may not believe in luck but directly or indirectly we acknowledge importance of the same. Few people are born lucky and few are mostly fortunate to get their way wherever they go or whatever they do. 

If presently luck is not favouring us it does not mean in future also it will not favour us. Whatever the positive actions we are taking today, result of those will come before us on future date as luck. 

Communication Skills:

It is not necessary that if you lack good communication skills, you can not be successful. I have worked with few fine brains in industry but they were not having great oratory or communication skills. 

Still having a good communication skills helps in climbing steps of success. They work like a icing on the cake. Many people acquire good communication skills after achieving a certain level of success. 

Dedication and Determination:

The first step is to have clear dreams of what you wish or desire to achieve. Once the dreams are clear, decide action plan to achieve those dreams. When goal and strategy both are in place one need perseverance or dedication to walk on the path. Dedication is the one of the most desired single quality require to achieve any thing. If any body asks me what is the single most attribute require for success, I will select dedication or perseverance. 

Dedication alone can not drive to success however coupled with determination and discipline, journey will become faster toward destiny. 

Education & Learning: 

Probably few decades back formal education was not must for success. In present world also there are examples of great success without completing formal education. However chances of success are better when one is equipped with better education. 

Learning shall be life long endeavour. Knowledge is power. One need to be updated in his field. Technological and other advancements are continuous process so learning shall also be continuous process. Knowledgeable person will always have an edge to think clearly in complex situation, find solution of problems, decide the strategy and set the vision. 

Focused Efforts:  

You might have come across extraordinarily intelligent people but not getting success in life. If you deeply analyse, you will find that prime reason is lack of systematic focused efforts. They lack concentration. They do not follow monomaniacally a single focused goal. They will put their resources in various projects. 

There are people who are capable of doing multitask and can handle several projects simultaneously however those are exceptions. If you dig 10ft at 10 places, you may not get water but if you dig 100 ft at one place chances are bright that you get water.  

Goals Clarity: 

When we step out of a house, our destination is in our mind. But most of us are living entire life without any purpose. It might not be possible to decide the ultimate goal however, it’s also not difficult to decide short term and medium term goals. Goals may be materialistic, emotional, intellectual or spiritual but life without goal is like balloon without air.  Furthermore, people at work without goal might achieve something but their achievement will always be lower than their potential. 

 

Professionals say that your goals must be SMART (Specific; Measurable; Attainable; Relevant; Time Bound). If goals are not SMART then they are not goals, they are basically wishes. Written goals have always better chances of getting fulfilled so always keep on writing and modifying goals periodically. When the END is defined, chances are very high that you will reach the END otherwise wherever you reach consider that is END. 

Honesty Generates Trust:

Many may argue that in present days most of the successful people are not honest. But I am sure that dishonest person can not have happiness and peace of mind. Having a success, mostly financial one, without peace of mind is not meaningful. 

Honesty in behaviour is key to create trust. If our thoughts, words and actions are not aligned, people will not trust us. Sustainable success is impossible without trustworthiness.  

Invest Your Resources:

It is not possible to do YAGYA without giving AAHUTI. whatever you have, your knowledge, time, energy and money, you will have to invest to get some thing better out of it. A farmer will have to plough the field, sow the seed, water it etc. to get the crop. 

If there is no input than there is no process than how can there be output? The main reason of failure is our input are less than required to get desired output. 

Joyful: 

It is not necessary that all successful people are joyful but I will consider all joyful people as successful. Success can not be measured with wealth, fame or power alone. If wealth, fame or power is not coupled with joy than that success has got no meaning. 

Some may argue that once I get  success, I will become happy but those people will never get happiness. Rather chances are great that happy people will get success sooner. 

Kwality: 

Whatever you think, whatever you talk, whatever you do, adds the flavor of quality and you will be delivering the extra ordinary performance. The existence of your business or profession depends on quality of product and services you are giving to your customer and client. Quality depends upon quality of input material, process and quality check for final output. Success is impossible if you are not quality conscious. 

Leadership: 

It is impossible to think of success in absence of leadership quality. Leader is the person who can get extraordinary result from ordinary people. A leader can inspire and motivate team to get peak performance. Many people get confused managerial skills with leadership traits. One can manage things but people to be lead. Mostly we do reverse. We start managing people and leading the things. 

Move on: 

In my opinion we must discourage every one to use word FAILURES. The word failure has been used so negatively in day-to-day life that it can’t do any thing better than to demean and demotivated someone. The failure is basically not getting success in that attempt, which can be better defined as experience. Thomas Edison did not get success 999 times before developing bulb, but he learned 999 ways how not a bulb can be made. 

 

In work life, failing is actually accumulating experiences. The best example of learning from failure is Abraham Lincoln. When we will start calling failures as experiences, we will not get demotivated and never feel down. We will start again with new experience and new zeal. Instead of asking how and why you failed, ask how was your experience and what are your next plans. Failures are best lessons to learn and strong foundation stones on which a palace of success can be built. 

Net Working:

A person with average talent but strong net work has better chance of getting new job, closing the deal and winning the project. People give more importance to attitude than ability. Over a period families are shrinking but friend circles are growing. Social networking sites are booming. Professionals are eager to join groups, association, clubs etc. major deals are getting closed either at the golf course or get togethers. 

Organise Yourself: 

Most of the successful people manage their time very efficiently. They strongly believe in delegating responsibilities down the line. They focus on creating efficient systems and processes. Mostly you will find their table and schedule less cluttered. Successful people are efficient as well as effective. 

Positive Thinking & Attitude:

Positive thinking is the seed of positive attitude. Thousands of books are written on positive attitude but very few are focused on positive thinking. I wonder how one can have positive attitude without positive thinking. Positive thinking require lots of conscious efforts and continuous watch and refinement of thoughts. 

Positive attitude helps in getting success as well as overcoming failures with greater speed. You will not find a single example of highly successful person with negative attitude. 

Quick Decision Maker: 

Success oriented people are very quick on their feet. They have amazing ability to see the end even before starting a first step. Since they can visualise the final destination and path instantaneously, they are very quick in making decisions. They have great intuition and do not need all the facts to take decision. I have seen many successful entrepreneurs who do not delegate  effectively but they are quick in taking decisions. Their quick decision making trait compensate their weakness of non-delegation. 

Risk Taking Ability:

Safe players can never be successful. They can walk but they can not run. Nothing greater have ever achieved without taking risk. It does not mean that they jump blindly in the well but they step out often with calculated risk. They will risk their all the resources once they are convinced about their ideas. According to them ship may be safe in harbour but ships are made to sail. Successful people do not enjoy routine life where there is no risk. They strongly believe in high risk high gain rule. 

Smart working: 

Doing things rightly is good but doing right things is more important. Working smartly requires creativity and innovativeness. It reduces fatigue and eliminate the wastage. Smart people gets more output in given resources. If a person can do hard work along with smart work than it is a feather in the cap. 

Team Building: The height of ego, I consider, when a person says I am self made and independent person. We are product of team work of 2 persons who are our parents. To achieve anything worth while we need hard-work and support of many people. 

The successful people know this secret very well and build a team of employees, associates or partners who are mentally, emotionally and physically dedicated to his goals and purpose. 

Understanding & Empathy:

EQ i.e. Emotional Quotient used for knowing level of emotional intelligence of a person. Successful people are sensitive enough to feel, understand and empathise emotional turmoils of self as well as others with whom they are dealing with. This quality help them in connecting other people and getting most out of them. One can not build palace of his success without using bricks of efforts of other people. 

Vision and Direction:

The first step to be successful is having clear vision. Success is basically journey from present status to future destination. There is a difference between goal and vision. Vision is long term outlook whereas goal is short term target. Vision is final destination where as goal is intermediate milestones. 

Spend more time in clarifying your vision and direction otherwise your ladder will be against wrong wall and your all efforts will be wasted. If you feel lack of ability in visualising your final destination, take the help of experts. Dedication, determination, decisions and actions are all useless if your vision is blurred. 

Wealth Creation:

If we keep apart success in spiritual world, wealth and earnings are major criteria and barometer of success. Mostly it so happen that when our earnings are good, we ignore creation of wealth. We spend the money for wasteful things which has got depreciating value. One can not be so fortunate that in life never meets failure. Failures and bad times are inevitable. At such stage accumulated wealth can bail you out and again give you courage to take risk and get success. People are wise who create wealth for having sustainable success. 

Xceed the Expectations: 

When you work to get success, there are several stakeholders. Such as shareholders, customers, lenders, employees, society, government etc. Each stack holder has certain expectations. Successful people make it as a habit to exceed the expectation of all stack holders. That increase confidence and trust of all involved and efforts of involved create a momentum where it is impossible to fail. 

Yes I Can: 

Though courage is covered under risk taking but I would stress on having attitude of 'Yes I Can' and 'Yes I Will'. Attitude matter more than skills. People have courage to take first step without much knowledge of future path, get success easily than people have lot of knowledge but do not have attitude of I CAN or I WILL. 

Zealous:

Last but not least, passion to excel is major trait of successful people. Passion is their source of energy and enthusiasm. For their passion they can give long hours without feeling stress in body or mind. Their mind will be 24 hours occupied with their passion only. Flip side is that, they ignore all other aspect of life. But nothing great ever achieved without passion and passion for excellence. 

ABC to look in an employee

Often there is a question in mind, how to recruit and who to retain. After my 33 years of working in various industries/ sectors, in different countries and from lower level management to higher level leadership, I have acronym my formula as ABC.

ABILITY: First and foremost requirement to look into the candidate is his/ her ability to perform the role which is planned for him. So before starting search for candidate make job profile and role profile. Job profile to have description of job which need to be performed by new recruit and role profile will describe what kind of person is needed for that job. The requirement of qualification and relevant experience needed for that role. In organisation at what level you would like to recruit and what package you are ready to pay will also form a part of role profile.

In most of the organisation it show happens that we recruit a person based on availability or reference and try to fit him in the structure. We will try to fit a square in round and that will give pain both to the candidate and organisation. No candidate is bad or poor, he can be unfit for that role. For getting peak performance from the employee it is important that role and person both get fit into each other.

BEHAVIOUR: Positive attitude would have been right word however to make acronym ABC, I selected the word 'behaviour'. Apart from ability, positive attitude plays a vital role in giving peak performance. A person is having a positive attitude or negative attitude is mostly the result of genetic qualities, upbringing, education, past experience, training and culture of our own organisation. As per most of the HR professionals, person can be trained for ability but difficult to modify attitude. Human kinds are so unpredictable that they can change their behaviour as per time, people and circumstances. 

It is very difficult to check the behaviour of a person in an interview which does not last for 30 minutes in most of the cases. However there are various scientific methods and tests are available to have a better judgement about mental state of a candidate. It is always better to take help of experts particularly for critical positions. Past reference checks can also some time reveal about person's personality traits. 

Job profiles can mostly falls between 2extreme scale. One where a person is required as a solo performer where he will hardly be interacting with another person in organisation such roles are like research fellow or games where single player performance only matters. Other extreme is where team player is absolutely necessary. While checking behaviour traits one need match with job requirement also.

CHARACTER: Integrality or honesty is most desired quality needed in an employee particularly where long term association is desired. It is almost impossible to check while recruitment whether candidate is having strong character. While new recruitment except checking past references there is no other way to check integrity of a person. However few organisation take help of social media sites to check persons connections and posts.

Organisation must have strict policy for removing an employee where it is proved that employee has demonstrated dishonesty. Management face dilemma where employee is having above average abilities but found to be dishonest. My personal opinion is such employees should be terminated without any consideration. 

Author: CA HEMANT C. LODHA

lodhah@gmail.com

@hemantlodha

Fb: lodhah

ATP Advertise to Popularize

Indian parliament election 2014 will be remembered in history for effective use of advertisement. My 6 years niece with a flag in hand chanting ABKI BAAR, followed by 5 years nephew shouting MODI SARKAR is an example of widespread impact of advertisement about elections. In my entire life, I have never seen such an effective and intensive campaign to make someone popular not only in India but also internationally. 

 

If you do not know how to market, you cannot promote yourself, your products and your services. How good you are, how best is your product and how efficient your services, it has got no meaning. Doing good is not enough, informing people that you are doing good is equally important. Even, if you are performing social activity and you want it to reach people, you need to advertise. 

 

In present era of social media and networking, one can advertise his products and services very fast and very quickly. 

 

5 Tips to effectively advertise:

1. It will be waste of money to advertise bad product. Improve your product first. 

2. Be truthful about whatever you are promoting. 

3. Advertise among relevant audience only. 

4. Use cost effective media. 

5. Apply innovativeness and creativeness.

ASC Avoid Short Cuts

Short cuts are always with the cuts. If a fruit takes certain number of days to grow, let that take its own time. By giving certain chemicals and fertilizers process may be hastened by few days but it can’t have same nutritional or taste values. In few circumstances short cuts may be beneficial but in most of the cases short cuts result in to inferior quality of final product or services. Nowadays, people are adopting all sorts of illegal and unethical practices for becoming wealthy. This approach might be beneficial in short term but one should also be ready to face adverse consequences of it sooner or later in life. 

 

At the same time, it does not mean that we cannot minimise unnecessary time taking processes. Efficiency is important but it should not be at the cost of quality and intrinsic value. There is nothing wrong in taking shortest path to achieve same quality and output. 

 

5 Tips for short cuts:

1. Do not compromise on natural process.

2. Do not compromise on quality.

3. Do not compromise on ethical and moral values.

4. Use short cuts to improve efficiency without compromising quality.

5.  Keep patience.

ANA: AVOID NEGATIVE ASSUMPTIONS

ANA

Avoid Negative Assumptions

 

Someone said ASSUME means make ASS out of U and ME. The God has given us mind and intellect to use it wisely, logically and creatively but we waste the same in assuming nonsense things. When our ego is slightly hurt we start building all negative feelings about that person by assuming things for which the other person have no clue. Those negative feelings will keep on piling up and suddenly blast at wrong time, in wrong place and in wrong context. 

 

The solution is, if you get hurt by your friend, relative, family or colleague, straightway go to him and express what you are feeling. In 99% cases, chances are that all misunderstandings will vanish while discussing and you will have a better bonding for future. 

 

If you keep on assuming, your relationship will be eaten away, like termite eating wood silently. 

 

5 Tips how to avoid negative assumptions:

1. Be alert about what you are thinking. 

2. Clarify assumptions at earliest. 

3. Let small things pass. 

4. Try to understand from other person point of view. 

5. Where possible clarify in writing.

AIP Ability Increases Power

Whatever the role you are playing or whatever the field you are into, becoming powerful and influential in that field is of utmost importance. Power is needed to get fame and success. 

 

Question is how to get genuine power. Power is basically fruit. To get good fruit one need to nurture the root. Ability and capability is the root of power. Therefore, its mandatory to keep developing ability and capability by learning and training. Mainly, power is categorized into three areas i.e. Physical, Mental and Monetary. In Indian mythology, Durga; Saraswati; and Lakshmi symbolize them. 

 

Though, in modern era, monetary power is considered more important than intellect and physical power. Yet, monetary power can’t be better utilized in absence of physical and mental power. 

 

5 Tips to develop ability

1. Select the field in which you want to increase your influence. 

2. Keep learning through education, training, reading etc. 

3. Apply your intellect in practicallity. 

4. Interact with experts in the field. 

5. Grow the network of related people.

AIM Allow Intelligent Mistakes

Allowing mistakes is the first step for encouraging invention, innovation and initiatives. As a parent, as an elder, as a boss and as a leader in society, we tend to analyze and criticise actions of juniors. We develop an attitude of I AM OK, YOU ARE NOT OK. In this process either we create rebellions or the dumbs. 

 

Allowing mistake does not mean that you allow dumb and repeated mistakes. There is a saying “if you never commit mistake then you are in the category of God otherwise you are a human being. Nonetheless, if you repeat mistakes then you fall in the category of fools. Apart from your juniors, allow yourself also to make mistakes. Do not feel bad when on realizing your mistakes, do not blame others for the same.

 

When failures and mistakes are analyzed chances of repeating the same will drop drastically. Usually, mistakes occur due to ignorance, lack of knowledge and poor systems. When we do critical analysis, then, we could find innovative ways of not repeating them again. 

 

5 Tips how to handle mistakes

1. Find the intention behind mistake and deal accordingly. 

2. Learn lessons from mistakes. 

3. Avoid blame game. 

4. Encourage creativity, innovation and initiatives. 

5. Document it for future reference.

AFI Ask For It

How to get whatever you want? The first and most effective method is to “ASK FOR IT”. As a child, the very first thing we learn is “To Ask” but as we grow up, we feel shy in asking. Likewise, in personal and professional life, everyday we want to achieve something, which is not possible without taking help of others. If we feel inferior and shy, then it might hamper our growth.

 

In life we pass through three stages i.e. Dependent, Independent and Interdependent. As a child or in the initial stage of anything, we are dependent and normally do not hesitate to ask but as we grow in our role we feel independent and that’s the point where our ego starts building up. Principally, its our ego which stops us from asking others.

 

5 Tips how to ask without shying. 

1. Always be ready to help others. Actually, helping others take away guilt feeling and eases us in asking for help when required. 

2. Ask without hesitation. Normally feel people strong and elevated when someone asks them for help. 

3. Ask only when genuinely you need help. 

4. Asking financial help shall be avoided unless you are having trust on that person. 

5. Ask help from right person who has the ability to help.

ADD Actions Decides Destiny

Nowadays, most of the people don’t trust luck or destiny. Probably, the reason is that the word “destiny” is not understood in right perspective. Keeping in mind the basic rule of nature, whatever “KARMA” we do now, “FAL” has to be there in future. That “FAL” is our luck or destiny. In some cases, result is immediate or it might take few years. However, as per eastern philosophies, it might occur after few births. 

 

Whatever action we are taking now is our “KARM” and whatever happening to us is the result of our past “KARMA”. Since, for luck, all the philosophies and religions have different views. Thus, it has become debatable issue. Nevertheless, all religions are having consensus on one thing that we should always do good “KARMA” and avoid bad “KARMA”. Best way to differentiate between good and bad is to ask your own conscious. 

 

5 Tips to create your destiny 

1. Keep sowing the seeds of good “KARMA”. 

2. Do not to do anything, which is good for you but harmful for other. 

3. Genuinely help others. 

4. Do not procrastinate your actions unnecessarily. 

5. Think thoroughly about consequences before action.

ADA Attitude Decides Altitude

A person with positive attitude creates an atmosphere of optimism and happiness around him. All forces start working to help achieve the target of person havingright attitude. Generally, people tend to avoid persons having negative attitudedue the fact that negative attitude creates an atmosphere of depression and pessimism around him. Such persons are always under stress because of the feeling that nobody is there to help them. 

 

Positive attitude is the result of positive thinking. One can’t have positive attitude with negative thoughts. When thoughts and attitude is not aligned, person will lose trust. As human being negative thoughts are bound to come, important is to be always conscious about that and keep burying them as early as possible. 

 

We deal with several people in our day to day working and it is important that we know about their attitude. Generally if a person is having genuine smile on his face, chances are bright that person is carrying positive attitude. 

 

5 Tips how to maintain positive attitude

1.

Never lose hope and be optimist. 

2.

Allow only positive thoughts to stay. 

3.

Keep appreciating people surrounding you.  

4.

Discuss do not argue.  

5.

Wear a permanent smile.  

ABH Appreciation Brings Happiness

We Indians are extremely miser in appreciating others as well as self. Though there are many who are expert in doing fake appreciation, which is called as CHAMCHAGIRI in Indian slang. Normally, we are good in appreciating and encouraging children but refrain our self when it comes to appreciating better half or a colleague.  Praise can change anyone's attitude and raise anyone's altitude. 

The power of appreciation in boosting confidence is tremendous. Appreciation encourages you to perform better in order to live up to the expectation of the praise you get. Many times the praise or appreciative words may be an exaggeration, nevertheless those words set a minimum bench mark for performance and one ends up with a better than expected performance. Genuine appreciation and praise boost the moral and create happiness between the parties. 

5 Tips for effective praise:

1.  Praise publicly, criticise privately.   

2. Never miss an opportunity to praise. 

3. Be truthful and genuine in praising. 

4. If possible give some thing in reward along with the words.

5. Try to publicize the good work in relevant group.

Prayer

WoW: By prayer you may not get any thing but you will lose your anger.  

ABG: Avoid Blame Game

The moment we fail, either in exam, in job, in venture, in relationship or any aspect of life, we start looking for a person or circumstances to which we can blame for our failure. 

 

Blaming others is neither going to convert failure into success nor its going to teach lesson for the future. It’s quite possible that others might have contributed to the failure however, if we deeply analyze it, we will find that we ourselves is the major cause of failure. 

 

The need is to develop a habit of finding fault in self instead of others. Stephen Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has described first habit as “Be Proactive”. Focus on circle of influence. We our self is the first person in our circle of influence. 

 

5 Tips to avoid Blame Game

1. Analyze the reasons of failure.

2. What you could have done to avoid failure?

3. Focus on reasons of the failure rather than person behind it. 

4. Document the lesson learned for future use. 

5. Even if the person is reason of failure, avoid blaming.

AAP Achievement Advertises Personality

Let your achievement speak about yourself rather than self-boosting your work. Many people have the habit of chanting their work and past achievements whenever, wherever and whom so ever they meet. Though people may listen patiently but such people lose their reputation very quickly. 

 

Secretly most of us have a desire to be appreciated but the best policy is not to opt for self-boosting. Let your work and achievements have their own glory. It does not mean that advertising is bad. Advertise your work, services, organization but not the self. Right time will come and you will be recognized for your work and that is the time to show your humbleness. 

 

5 Tips to glorify your achievements

1. Prepare a smart presentation of your work done. 

2. Present your work to the right person. 

3. Chose right time for the presentation. 

4. Be truthful about facts and figures. 

5. Give appropriate credit to all involved. 

 

LFA: Learn From All

Every thing, every plant, every animal, every person and every situation is a teacher if you are ready to be student. I am compiling these tips more for my self-learning than passing on to the readers. I wish I should be student till my last breath. Though technology and Google has given us knowledge on our fingertips, however we can learn a lot from our surroundings. “I know all” is the biggest illusion and highest ego. The moment you think, you are a master, you lose your mastery. For continuous learning one need to drop his ego completely. One needs to be consciously observant. One needs to keep all senses alert. Keep open your eyes and ears. Never treat anyone inferior and yourself superior. When you will treat yourself student, you will treat everyone with respect as a teacher.

Take a simple example of pencil, how many lessons we can learn from it.  Unless and until it goes through the pain of sharpener, it is of no use. What it has inside matter more than what it has outside. It is of no use unless it takes the help of finger. Lastly it has limited life. 

5 Tips to Learn from All:

1. Nobody knows every thing but every body knows something.

2. Speak less; listen more.

3. Observe minutely.

4. Don’t blame. Learn from your own mistakes and failures.

5. While learning, keep your ego aside.