Things Successful People Do...

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight," because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague — be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it's not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.
To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., "If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work.") Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.
Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The good news is, if you aren't particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don't have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking .... well, there's no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.
7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control "muscle" is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn't get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.
To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you'd honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother — don't. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur ("If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.") It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that's the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.

8. Don't tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it's important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don't try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don't put yourself in harm's way — many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.

9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., "Don't think about white bears!") has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.

If you want to change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like "If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down." By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.

It is my hope that, after reading about the nine things successful people do differently, you have gained some insight into all the things you have been doing right all along. Even more important, I hope are able to identify the mistakes that have derailed you, and use that knowledge to your advantage from now on. Remember, you don't need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It's never what you are, but what you do.

Copy of..
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/02/nine_things_successful_people.html

Coffee..

There is some truth to caffeine, after all. It really does help you feel more awake. Brain studies show it reduces sleepiness and improves alertness, effectively jump-starts a sleep-deprived mind, and increases the ability to pay attention — a real bonus when there's no time to rest.

For those who consume caffeine regularly, an even more intriguing benefit may be its capacity to stimulate positive feelings and perk up mood. Researchers think this mood-enhancing effect reinforces the consistent use of caffeine — and may explain why some individuals get “hooked” to it. And though recall studies show varied results, moderate caffeine consumption may improve both long-term and short-term memory.

And, that brings us to coffee. Before we proceed, here's a little bit of coffee history. Coffee was discovered in Ethiopia, but first cultivated in the European peninsula. Then the popularity of coffee slowly spread to other countries. Social factors too contributed to the popularity of coffee.

It has always remained a popular beverage, and often associated with compatibility, intellect, interaction, and, unavoidably, romance.

Sharanya Menon, assistant prop handler and owner of Highlight, Mumbai, says: “Whether alone or with company, a cup of coffee can spark off the best of ideas. Personally, my best ideas have come over a cup of coffee and a book. It is the best way to spend an afternoon when everyone else is busy.” But, there always are contradictory opinions. Arun Krishnan, an engineer from Bangalore says: “May be coffee stimulates the mind, but it doesn't work for me; this belief is rubbish. ”

In a place such as Chennai, a morning begins with the strains of ‘Kausalya supraja rama purva…' and the familiar aroma of fresh ‘decoction coffee' that permeates the air. And, it could be a great time for bonding. As a neighbour says: “The most important part of my day is the ‘half-hour' I spend with my husband every morning over a hot cup of coffee! We plan the day's menu, the priorities of the day etc., after which the day goes by in a whirl. But nothing like that feeling of companionability and togetherness that we quietly enjoy over a cup of coffee.”

So, looks like ‘a lot could happen over a cup of coffee', isn't it?

--Maya Rajshekar,Hindu Article

Importance of Education...Article from IE

WHILE passing through the idyllic rural countryside of Rajasthan, glori ously covered in the winter sunshine with the green and gold of mustard fields, I wondered at first why we wish to impose our modern notions of development on the people living in these landscapes. They appear to have an unhurried life, one much closer to nature, where children learn needed skills as part of the natural process of growing up, without being pushed into artificial structures of modern schooling and education that only appear to create new and hard-tofulfil needs and dreams.
If our modern state cannot fulfil those dreams and desires, do we really have the right to create them? Why not, it is tempting to think, let people live a near-subsistence level life whose limits they understand and whose problems they know how to cope with? Yet, the value of education and its intrinsic merits have been argued for consistently. Some challenge the kind of education being provided, but most continue to agree with the need for a ‘broadening of the mind’.
In a recent visit to Udaipur, I was presented afresh with reasons why education is needed if children are to realise their capabilities and articulate their dreams. The children I observed were attending a month-long residential education camp as part of a non-formal education programme run by an NGO. Between the ages of six and fourteen, many had never been to school while others had attended intermittently. From poor families in the villages around Udaipur, they helped their parents with farming, fetching water, cooking and raising younger siblings, in ageold gendered roles. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the girls looked duller than the boys, weighed down by domestic chores inappropriate to their age while boys still enjoyed some possibilities of freedom.
Their families’ dire poverty is understood when one discovers that many are sent by parents as migrant workers to the cotton fields or diamantaries of neighbouring Gujarat. Young children upward of seven are in great demand in the Bt cotton fields, where they perform what one anthropologist calls ‘floral sex-work’ — pollination by hand. The hands of little children are especially suited to such work, as they are to the diamond industry. Earn though they do, children of both sexes are liable to exploitation of several sorts, a fact parents are not unaware of. Girls often come back pregnant only to be married off to much older men. These migrant children lose out not only on an education but also on the kind of childhood they might otherwise have known in the village.
Parents need to be cajoled into sending children to the residential learning camps. Initially, neither they nor their children are convinced of their value. But the qualitatively different learning experience in the camps draws the children back. Here they are taught in their own language, by dedicated and inspired young teachers, using new methods of imparting education which include the use of stories and story writing, pictorial and skillbased learning.
What do these children, poor, with malnutrition visibly apparent in their stunted physical growth, take away from these camps? Some come with scabies, others with open wounds, yet others with hidden illnesses that lead to tiredness while doing some basic physical exercises. Yet, despite all these handicaps, it is the bright eyes betraying a desire to know a different world that the teachers and even an occasional visitor encounter. On my visit, the children were collectively ‘writing’ a story from a simple picture of a bear and a lion or other similar characters. Suddenly from being poor, illiterate children, they turn into magical role-players creating a varied world full of many kinds of knowledge drawn from their lived world. They learn to articulate, to perform, to communicate, to dream dreams. The hunger, not for ‘education’ but for knowledge about the world, is palpable; simple things that more privileged children take for granted — knowing one’s own age; seeing Rajasthan, their state, on the map of India. What is a map? For children with no knowledge of who Sachin Tendulkar or Dhoni were or who the prime minister of their country was, suddenly such nuggets of random information could turn into the source of dreams and of citizenship.
But an even greater impact on the children seems to come from the new daily routine that they live for this short period. Each child gets a new set of clothes, exercise books, pens and pencils. Each child, perhaps for the first time in her or his life, wakes up in the morning to brush teeth with Colgate tooth powder, visit a clean toilet, have three assured meals in the day, learn during the day and have time to play cricket and football. It is the scope that this learning space provides for friendships and for childhood that draws the children back again and again and makes them into new little persons. We need to renew our commitment to bringing such children into the fold of knowledge.