Willpower - Overrated as ‘the key to success’

What is Willpower? How do we define it?

Willpower can be described as a strong determination that allows you to achieve something, and stay stick to the desire, no matter how difficult the path is. A strong willpower also helps us calmly deal with delays in achievements. Let’s put a good example here to explain willpower better; we, as employees or workers in an organization always get up early in the morning, regardless of how tiring the previous day was. Why? Because our willpower constantly encourages us to avoid getting late or taking a leave at office as it might have negative impact to our productivity.

In today’s era, willpower has become an essential component for success, but has it always been this way?

No. If we go back to the history, people didn’t require willpower,   they used to follow their general instincts to survive and succeed. But with the evolving time, we humans have set lot of rules and boundaries for self and for others to get things in order. Each one of us is rushing to leave behind every other person in the race of competition. And we are hardwired with the belief system that we only will achieve success if we will follow these set rules and regulations.

As per the recent study and an experiment, where students were asked to have the marshmallow right away or wait for 20 minutes and then eat to get extra reward. The study showed that the students who waited for 20 minutes to get the double reward are fared better in later life, than those who ate the marshmallow instantly.

So, it proves that yes, Willpower is important to succeed and people are emphasizing more on strengthening the willpower in today’s era.

Even most of the organizations organize special trainings for their employees to help them strengthen their willpower.

But there are few things which sometimes overpower the willpower and should not be overlooked while traversing the terrain towards your goal. Those few things are; our previous failures which often leave us in discouraged state of mind, our physical health which keeps us drained every day and does not allow us to begin the day with right motivation and courage, and our emotions; low emotions often reduce our motivation level.

Courtesy: AK Mishra Library

Something just popped up in your mind and said that yes, it happens and you have experienced it many times, right? We know it, it happens; and these reasons get overlooked until and unless we face them in our lives. Even if you have unlimited will power, it has its limits, when you face the above mentioned reasons which often holds you back to get up and continue the race. Besides will power, your mental, emotional and physical power play major role. For eg. When you resist getting into an argument which makes no sense to you, it is the emotional and mental power that helps you resist more than the will power.  When you go to the meeting and use various tactics to crack it, it is your mental power. For petty most tasks like the craving for our favourite food or a dress we wish to purchase, we have all the will but our emotional and mental power stops us for varied reasons like health or finance issues respectively. Hence, Willpower is a limited resource, and the other components of success should be at work at times when your willpower starts depleting.

Get success with limited Willpower

Now, when you are aware that willpower is a limited resource, and there are other key components to achieve success, like a plan, a systematic approach; put the plan and systematic approach first and then compliment it with Willpower. Here, with systematic approach, I am also trying to encourage you to create the right environment, right conditions, right set of mind along with right guidance and planning that assure your success. If you will successfully develop a plan, a right environment, right resources; then willpower will act as an added advantage to help you get success.

1. Get in the company of like-minded people who have are experience and who can guide you towards the path of your goal
2. Stay happy and get out of all the emotional dilemmas which may become an hindrance to your success
3. Set right resources for you, the right strategy, systematic plan to achieve your goal
4. Replace your old beliefs and old conditioning of mind – if you have failed earlier, it doesn’t mean you will fail again. Failures are just a stepping stone to success. So, let go of the regrets, rather, use the past mistakes as learning and go for it again. Success will be yours!

Remember, you are reading this article because you have an aim, you have the dream, you have the patience, you are getting right guidance, and you have the will to achieve success. All you need is to work on the above mentioned aeas now to get success in each sphere of life. Good Luck!

The role of good or bad fatherhood in kids' life

Father figures are expected, from the very start of one’s life, to be wise and powerful. They are expected to solve our problems, to be with us when in need, accompany us to children park, tell us stories, protect us. They are judicious and kind, perhaps a little tough at times but always fair—but most importantly, we expect them to be always, on our side. 

To make fun of someone who has problems with their father, even after acknowledging their discomforting longing, is humiliating and rude. It’s completely alright for someone to desire a fatherly figure in their lives, especially, when in chaos and confusions. It’s utterly hurtful to want someone to protect us and fail at finding anyone at sight.

When does it start?

This notion of desiring a fatherly figure comes from our childhood—when we’re both young and immensely week, and need protection from everything that might hurt us. In our childhood, even a cat of a considerable size can kill us—things were mysterious when we were young, and often were outside of our control. To wish for a father in befalling situations is completely natural. The adult longing for a good father is a consequential emotion from not having a good father in the childhood. It’s a result of abandonment.

According to a study at Erikson University in 2009, a grown man evidently seems extremely impressive to a small child. For a child, a grown man knows everything; the capital of India, how to drive a bicycle, how to fight, how to catch a ball. They can lift you up with their immense power. They go to bed secretly late, and wake up earliest in the morning. They can swim and let you ride their back. Fathers, by their all difference, are beyond astonishing creature.

People with father problems, contrary to its paradox, are almost, always, the ones who didn’t have very good fathers when they were small. Maybe their fathers were incredibly strong, but at the same time cruel or maybe disinterested. Perhaps, they were busy, and weren’t around much or perhaps they left after a disturbing fight. Perhaps, they divorced their wives, or may be they died. This is what, in many surprising ways, incline us to some tricky behaviors. This lead us to develop absurd fantasies, irrelevant to our maturity level and skepticism, around the idea of male protection.

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Consequences

We, even after the years of failing and learning our lessons, all by ourselves—still remain like a young child we once were. In a way, we were not allowed to mature away from our unquenched fantasies of fathers. We still, secretly, desire someone to step in and take the role. We want someone else to make our big decisions, we want them to protect us, and be tough around us. We want them, in a certain mysterious way, to vanish our problems from our life.

No matter how independent and self-sufficient we act, at the end of the day, we want them to sort out our money problems, we expect them to get angry when anyone tries to hurt us, to be proud of us when we achieve something—to love us for who we are, and primarily, accept us. To fulfill this intrinsic desire, we look out for fathers in friendships, at work, and all the places we emotionally visit.

We all must, if our emotions allow, accept that the adulthood fantasy of fathers is not of a good father. As absurd as it may sound, a good father is the one who boldly and honestly accepts that he isn’t that powerful and cannot solve all our problems. They are conscious that they can’t magically save us from the countless dangers of this world, no matter how much they wish to. They are also honest about this, and tell us the truth as soon as we’re strong enough to face it. Out of love, they let us know that there are not perfect fathers and the best they can do is help us grow, in the best way possible.

What do we need?

We markedly don’t need just a father, we need a good father figure. Someone who could help us out of our father issues, someone who encourage us to talk, acknowledges our sufferings and fears, and deeply wants the best for us and isn’t reluctant to say so; but who at the same time, out of love, wants to help us come to terms with a messy and essentially a disappointing world. A man, who out of love, will encourage you to be independent and, specifically, not to fantasize that anyone, however outwardly imposing, can do the impossible for you. And, shamelessly deny that anyone, even for the love and hate, will always be there for you by your side.

Good fathers allow us to accept the truth that there are, in the end, no fathers; just an independent you—who eventually, by failing and learning, becomes someone else’s, good father. 

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Do you think we have missed something that could help people with their father issues? Comment below and let us know.

How to Properly Complain without Offending Everyone?

If we look the internal structure of a complaint—you wouldn’t be surprised that it’s of the same pattern as a debate. It should go without saying that a debate must be attempted with an appropriate preparation—especially If you’d want to win it—so should a complaint.

Living in a capitalist society that constitutes people of varying mindsets and people who are driven by different motives—it’s inevitable that someone in our vicinity will hurt us in some way or the other. Markedly, it could be anyone; a colleague, a child, a friend or out of all, most likely—your partner.

People around us are often neglectful of something that matters excessively to us. With our definition, people surrounding us are mostly; thoughtless, brusk, offensive or unkind. We don’t often recognize our reactions to the maltreatment people throw at us. We might not agree but our reactions go right from our hearts and clearly depicts who we are. Our reactions can make a substantial difference between a life of a persistent bitterness, constant frustrations and our tolerable peaceful coexistence with so-called our ruthless society.  

An important section that contributes immensely to the art of living is sanely handling those who do us wrong and complain constructively. There are largely 3 main paths which one might opt to complain others;

1.       Shouting Panda

Here we shout, insult, belittle, explode to our extremes to crush our opponents. However, the thing that we often neglect is what lies behind these responses. It’s agitation and broadly a catastrophic feeling of betrayal and hurt. This unsettles us so much and hurts our dignity to such an extent that we find ourselves roaring our way to humiliation. But, at the same time—we also must acknowledge that Shouting Panda guarantees to prevent our complaint from ever being heard, let alone be resolved.

In our way to complain with all our rantings, we often end up offending who have offended us, which entirely dooms our original complaint against them. Here, we achieve nothing!

2.       Holding Panda

Here the victim says very little but hates very quietly and deeply. Here, one doesn’t complain directly from their disparity of ever being understood. This panda is often fueled with self-loathing and feels like he doesn’t deserve to be heard. It gets trapped in primitive self-hatred—resulting in an intense cynicism and melancholy and withdraws himself from the scene itself.

We often learn this technique of complaining in our childhood when we learn to swallow our pain and push it inside us. It often leaked with veiled aggression against those who have done us wrong.

Here too, we achieve nothing!

3.       Adult Panda

Here Panda is mature and knows what he wants to communicate. In order to master such a behavior, we should fundamentally work with a background sense that we don’t deserve meanness and also, that meanness won’t on its own ever be able to disturb us.

We mustn’t put ourselves in a complete chaos, just because someone has said something mean to us—by an insult.

Here are few things Adult Panda can teach us;

·         We should take the meanness from the world in a calm and strategic manner.

·         We must be careful to not belittle our opponents or insult.

·         We must concentrate on how we feel rather than pointing fingers at our opponents.

·         Replace – ‘You’re selfish and evil for doing this to me’ by saying – ‘I feel hurt’.

Even after all the precautions and advice from Adult Panda, we shouldn’t extend our faith to everyone that they would always understand our complaint and accept what we’re trying to convey. But, we voice our complaints anyway, because we know it’s not good to swallow our complaints. And, no one gets benefited from our silence in a long run.

By sketching an appropriate style of complaining, we can fill in our words with reasons and reflections and we can take our hesitant self on the path of Mature complaining—one step at a time.

Happy Complaining!

If you think there is a better way to express a complaint, do let us know in our comment section. We might include it in our article and help several people to improve their complaining.

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EQUANIMOUS – What does it mean and Why it’s important?

Being successful is not a goal—it’s an everyday journey. It is said that your degree of success in life directly depends on how you use your mind and body. There are essential qualities that one should cultivate towards their body and mind. There are proper well-defined steps to be successful in the world. The two fundamental qualities are that; you must be able to harness the prowess of human mind and the human body.

Harness the Mind

To harness the human mind—the one quality that you must possess is to be Equanimous.

EQUANIMOUS

Adjective

1.       In full control of your faculties

Equanimous gives you access to different dimensions of your mind. If there is no equanimity, in a skewed sense of mind, your ability to use your mind is substantially reduced. Another major dimension is on the level of your energy, both physiologically and internally—one must be exuberant. It’s only when one energizes the exuberance within himself, he is able to have an ability to find a solution for the various complications of life.

Success will come to you much more easily, but beyond this, to be successful—one needs insight, inspiration and integrity.

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Insight: With this, you pay attention to your life around you in such a way that you get to see something that most of the people avoid in day-to-day life.

Inspiration: With this, one must be constantly inspired. It’s is important to understand why you’re doing—what you’re doing.  To look at the larger dimension of your actions and figure out the contribution that you make through your simple acts or whatever you are doing for that matter. You must acknowledge that every action that you take in your life is a contribution to some dimension in this world.  Someone or other gets affected by your actions—so the key is to be conscious of your actions and how it affects your surroundings, and that will provide us with a constant inspiration.

Integrity: Integrity is a crucial part of your success because your actions that you carry in this world exhibits an aura of trustiness around you—that you generate on the daily business. How many people you effect on the daily basis determines your daily efforts. The amount of trustiness will directly impact and enhance, simply because people pave the way for trustworthy people, rather than creating impediments.

How not to care what anyone thinks of you?

Courtesy: AK Mishra Library

One of our most prominent fears which haunt us when we socialize in this world and mingle with others—is that we may in our hearts be not interesting, rather boring. But the good news and fundamental truth too is that no one is ever truly boring. They are only in danger of coming across as such when they either fail to understand their deeper selves or don’t dare or know how to communicate with others.

There is simply no such thing as an inherently boring person or thing—is one of the great lessons of art. Many of the most satisfying artworks don’t feature rare elements, they are evidently about the ordinary, looked from a special perspective, with unusual sincerity and openness to varnished experience.

For example—look at the painting of Whistler’s Mother by James McNeill. It’s a simple depiction of artist’s mother sitting on a wooden chair against a gray wall. Outwardly the scene in the painting is utterly simple and could initially appear to be deeply unpromising material for a painting. Yet, like any great artist, McNeill knew how to interrogate his own perceptions—in a fresh, clear, underivative manner and translated them accurately into his medium—knitting a small masterpiece out of the thread of everyday life. And just as there’s no such thing as a boring everyday life, so too there could be no such thing as an innately boring person.

Humans witnessed in its essence with honesty and without artifice is always interesting.

When we call a person boring—we’re just pointing to someone who doesn’t have the courage for concentration to tell us what it’s like to be them. By contrast, we invariably prove compelling when we succeed in saying how and what we truly desire, envy, regret mourn or dream. In a simpler form if anyone recuperates the real data on what it’s like to exist is guaranteed to have material with which one can captivate others.

An interesting person isn’t always someone with whom obviously and outwardly interesting things have happened: like someone who travelled the world or met importance dignitaries, nor someone who talks about the weighty themes of culture, history or science. On the contrast, an interesting person is someone who can give us faithful accounts, drama, and strangeness of being alive.

Then, what are some of the elements that get in the way of is being as interesting as we in fact are;

Our Loss of Faith

We feel boring and exhibit the same feeling when there is a lack of faith. We often believe that it really could be feelings that would stand the best chance of interesting others. When we tell an anecdote, we majorly concentrate on giving the outward details—like about the weather, people who were involved, what time was it—rather than maintaining courage to report the layer of feelings, beneath the surface—the intricate facts which flashes the moment of guilt, the sudden sexual attraction, the humiliating sulk, that strange euphoria at the middle of the night, every small detail. We should acknowledge that our neglect is not just an oversight, but it could be a deliberate strategy to mold our ideas of dignity and normality. We lack the nerve to look more closely within.

For say, most five-years-old are far less boring than most 45-years old. What’s interesting is that kids don’t necessarily have exciting feelings, far from it, but their sheer frankness and uncensored version of their feelings are what makes their insights interesting.

Our inner-struggle to appear normal

We all feel boring not by our nature—so much as by a fateful will that begins its effect in teenage years to appear normal, even when we’re honest about our feelings. We may still prove boring because we don’t know them as well as we should, so we get stuck at the level of insisting on an emotion rather than explaining it. Any situation is extremely exciting, awful or beautiful, but not to be able to provide those around us with any of the sorts of related details and examples that would help them understand why. We can end up boring not so much because we don’t want to share our lives, as because we don’t yet know them well enough to do so.

Luckily, the gift of being interesting is not an exceptional talent. It requires only direction, honesty and focus. The person we call fascinating is someone alive to what we all deeply want from social intercourses, which is an uncensored glimpse of what the brief waking dream called life feels like.  Through the eyes of another person and reassurance, we are not entirely alone with all that feels most puzzling, strange and strong within us.

5 MORNING ROUTINES TO WIN THE DAY

Tim Ferris, author of ‘the 4-hour Workweek’, has his 5 favorite morning hacks to maximize his productivity. As per Tim, positive momentum and a distraction-less start of your day don't come naturally, rather it’s manually earned every day by following a strict routine. After Interviewing hundreds of ultra-successful people, from the famous chess prodigies to athletes to billionaires – he has picked the common denominator out of all and made a list of his top 5 routines.

Out of his top five routines, he claims that even if he gets to three routines per morning – he wins. And as the famous saying goes, “if you win the morning, you win the day”.

Tim Ferris is an efficient all-rounder – he fluently speaks 5 languages, is a national Chinese kickboxing champion, holds a world record in Tango and is a best-selling author. That’s a big list for a single man – and getting demotivated from a long list of someone else’s achievement is not the point. Rather, it is a proof that the only thing that’s stopping us from succeeding in any field is our mental limitations, and Tim has a way out.

There is a lot we can learn from Tim, and his belief that single individual can achieve greatness, and with a right set of mind – can reach the pinnacle of his field. So, let’s get started.

Top 5 Morning routines

5. Make your bed

It might sound like an unimportant ritual, but it gives one a sense of control at the very beginning of the day. It’s a form of strategy that helps you to deal the intangibles and curveballs that life throws at you. No matter how complex your day is planned ahead – you can always make your bed and straighten at least one thing.

4. Meditate

He states, ‘more than 80% of the world class performers I’ve interviewed practice one form or the other of mindfulness’. As per Tim, there are few who go to Headspace, few who opt for guided meditation, and others who stick to traditional meditation techniques.   

3. Do Pushups

Tim says, doing any kind of physical exercise first thing in the morning helps you to stay prime, and wake your complete body at a go. He prefers to do the pushups, but he recommends any kind of exercise – sit-ups, lunges, and squats. Doing so quiets ones’ mental chatter and effects the mood dramatically.  

2.  Hydrate yourself

You need to water yourself and take out the dryness of the entire last night. He recommends titanium tea which is one teaspoon of turmeric, some ginger shaving and a teaspoon each of black tea and dragon tea. He recommends it for excellent cognition and weight loss. He personally prefers it with a glass of cold water, but even warm water would do the same trick.   

1. Write a Journal

The most important trick in his list is to write a journal for whatever is going in your head. You can plan your day or prioritize things or just express gratitude for the various labels in your life. When Tim writes his journal, he broadly considers four categories; opportunity for the day, some small goals, yesterday’s achievements and relationships.