Good example of people that coped well with mistakes, failure and embarrassment..

Good example of people that coped well with mistakes, failure and embarrassment..

Failure VS Success

Confronting the Fear of Failure

Failure is one of the "dirtiest" words in our society — including all the four letter words. Many people would rather be odd, hostile, overworked or many other "terrible" things than be seen as a failure. With the tremendous stress we place on success, this isn't surprising. After all, successful people are winners aren't they?

People feel sorry for losers and no one wants to be pitied. At the same time, we are constantly bombarded with truisms to make us feel better after an apparent failure. These are phrases like, "We learn from our mistakes, you can't win them all, everybody's wrong sometimes" — but these don't really help.


The Myth of Positive Thinking

People tend to use the phrase, "Think positive" as not thinking at all about what can go wrong. This kind of attitude usually leads to more failures, because people are lulled into a sense of security and fail to see the pitfalls in front of them.

People need to learn how to fail. Everyone does fail at some time, but it is a major problem only if they let one failure defeat them altogether or if it keeps them from attempting new ventures.


 Failing Well

How many people can lose a big business deal and say, "That was great. I learned something from it and am better for it." Unless we can say it - and really mean it - we probably weren't learning that much from the experience.

It may come as a surprise to hear that truly successful people not only have failed, but also are good at failing. Studies have found that we may have been lucky if we were forced to fail. One might even say that a key to success is learning to fail well.

A professional sports team is a good example. Losing not only doesn't permanently defeat them; they usually profit by that loss and learn to accept it. This doesn't mean they stop trying. Many people consider themselves failures when they really have just quit trying. We cannot "cop out" on our problems, because copping out can only leave us feeling inadequate.


What Are We Afraid Of?
To analyze the reasons why we feel pressure or anxiety about failure, we have to understand that it is the fear of failure that hurts far more than the failure itself. Actually, it is the fear of not being sure what will happen. Most of us can learn to accept and deal with the worst if we really know what's coming. We may not like it or look forward to it, but we can handle it. Not knowing is a different story. It creates anxiety, vacillation and a very gut level desire to escape the whole problem. Each of us is different in the things we fear, and to analyze the reasons we are pressured by the fear of failure we have to find out what kinds of failure bother us. There are many kinds of motivations, values and goals and ways we might not live up to our expectation. A few common fears might serve as examples.


Blowing Up Problems Out Of Proportion

We don't take it very literally when a teenage says, "If such and such happened, I'd just die," but the fear is a real one. It basically says that we need a certain amount of "something" to make life worth living. It might be the need to be admired, appreciated, or just accepted by others. But, we have to do certain things to be held in esteem by others.

Being accepted, for instance, implies that there are some general rules or norms to be followed. If we try to take these rules automatically as a right way to be, we won't be able to live up to all of them and we will continually feel inadequate.

Setting Unrealistic Expectations

Another fear centers on the need to be unique in some way — a need to be better than others. It is extremely unlikely that any one person can be better than all the other 6 billion people in the world in anything. If we feel we have to be better than somebody else, rather than just being the best we can, we are doomed to be a constant failure until the day we die. It is also a good point to remember that, even if we made it to the top, it wouldn’t be long before someone else came along who would better us.

Other common fears in this category include the fear of losing or of being beaten by the guy in the next office or the next sales call, the fear of being rejected, the fear of being controlled or hemmed in. There are many others, of course, each as potent to those who feel them as the next.


Strategies to Overcome Pressure and Beat the Fear of Failure

The question is often asked of psychologists, "I can see why I feel the pressure, but what can I do about it?" And usually the person thinks he's being kidded when the answer is, "Tell someone all about it and then use your imagination."

Basically two things happen when we begin to feel pressured. We get anxious or nervous and tighten up, and we begin to rely on our defense and escape mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms are: getting a lot of sleep but still feeling tired, coming home at night and getting lost in the TV or newspaper, or a hundred others.

Dealing with Symptoms Rather than Causes

The result of these mechanisms is that we begin to lose sight of the issues or problems by trying to put them out of our minds so they don't worry us so much. As the problems become vague, solutions become more improbable, and, unconsciously, that makes us more anxious. This is not a weakness. Biologically we are programmed to either fight or run in a pressure situation, just the way animals are. We are also programmed this way psychologically. We all tend to find excuses to justify our behavior before it happens and this is our way of running. Frequently, we try to rationalize behavior after it happens and this is how we fight back.

Healthy Failure
Reducing the pressure requires that we break the mental set that "success is equal to right and therefore equal to good, while failure is equal to wrong and, as such, is bad." We have to learn to accept failure as a normal healthy part of life. We all fail sometimes, and if we can learn to bend rather than break under the pressure of failure, we are much better off.

In order to reduce the pressure and make us feel better, it is vital to reduce the fear of the problem by bringing everything out in the open — and not only the facts of the problem, but also our feelings about it. Go ahead and let the feelings out - it is a healthy reaction and one calculated to relieve stress.

We Used to Call it Shell Shock

During WWII, the Allies found out that wounded Russian Soldiers were not suffering from "shell shock" in hospitals as much as American soldiers were. The Russians insisted on keeping even wounded men on the lines, and there were far fewer long-term problems, because the men were forced to face their fears and get past them rather than run away from them.

Once we face the realities of the problem, we can bring our imagination into play. We can imagine what the worst outcomes of the problem could be, and then think of alternatives open to us. Once a person realizes the worst and can develop alternatives, he is relieved of much of the terrible pressure of uncertainty.

Copping Out

Of vital importance, also, is not giving up. A good illustration of this is a salesman who knows that for every sale he makes, he will get ten rejections. If he starts his day with a rejection, he can say, "I'm probably not going to be able to do anything today, so I might as well knock off," or he can say, "One down, only nine to go until I make my sale." The latter will keep him on the job longer with a much more satisfying feeling and better sales.


The Basic Steps in Summary

1. Talk about it — with somebody who will listen and be neutral. Get it out — facts and feelings.

2. Imagine trying to overcome the problem and falling short of the goal (failing); then figure what the worst consequences would be and what could be done about them. Thus, if the worst does happen, you're at least prepared and if it doesn't, then you're relieved and probably pleasantly surprised.

3. We can give ourselves extra chances. An illustration of this might be the baseball team whose slogan is, "Wait till next year." Eventually their continued effort will pay off.

4. Have something to fall back on. For many people, religion is a back-up. They turn to it when they do fail, in order to ask for help. Other people develop strong personal relationships to fall back on realizing that a person can't do everything himself.

5. Most powerful of all - take the chance and face it. There is nothing better to reduce the fear of failure than having it happen and knowing what it can and can't do. We must face it, live through it and prove to ourselves we can survive it.

What exactly is a winning team?

I believe that every leader should strive to build a team that possesses the following three qualities of greatness:
Effectively achieving set objectives
This is the most basic requirement — getting the job done. The necessary conditions for this are cohesiveness, competence, and accountability of the team.


* Cohesiveness is essential for excellent team performance. Let’s say we want to put together a team of 10. What we want to see is that the team results will be much more than simply a sum of individual effort. Cohesive teams achieve that through sharing and building on each other’s strengths. Disjointed teams actually do worse than that because of the costs of coordination (meetings… you can tell how bad things are just by the amount of meetings an organization holds daily).

* Competence is an obvious point, but it is often confused with narrowly defined criteria for the immediate job at hand, applied to all team members equally.

* The sense of accountability motivates and sets an important framework (ethical, financial, strategic, tactical etc), within which the team makes everyday decisions. It is unmatched in power which it exerts on our performance and no coercion, no prospect of profit (material or not) come close in effectiveness.

A leader would be remiss if she relied on these conditions to occur automatically, yet how often do we see exactly that, management lamenting about their staff’s shortcomings without any attempts to rectify them? Too often!

Innovative

Superb teams develop and prosper through innovation. This is especially important in the era of globalization when the competition is fierce and the pressure to minimize costs is often overwhelming. Why can’t this team’s work be done as well, but cheaper, elsewhere? This question never comes up if your team’s innovative spirit is seen as a great asset, a jewel within the organization.

Enjoyable

We spend perhaps half of our waking hours with our colleagues. If this is unpleasant, so is a half of our life. To me personally, this isn’t an option. As a leader, I also understand that only those teams that are enjoyable to be a part of, are sustainable in the long run.
What to aim for (and why this is not happening)

Does my take on winning teams sound reasonable? Many more points can be discussed and added, of course, but the important question I would like to answer at this point is this: what qualities should one look for in people to create a winning team as described above?

Here are seven key qualities I look for. I can easily develop everything else, such as technical skills, communication, and domain knowledge. I have little control over these innate virtues.


#1 Intelligence: Nothing beats raw intelligence, the ability to think clearly, to frame one’s thoughts, to use appropriate examples, to abstract. Intelligent people create intelligent solutions. Intelligent people are interesting to work with.

The problem with traditional hiring today is that people are pre-selected for interviews based on some arbitrary measure of experience in the industry (why five years and not three or seven?) or the stated knowledge of a tool or technology (is your resume not full of buzzwords?). But how often do you see the requirement of intelligence?

#2 Integrity: As leaders, we put our utmost trust in people. As the experience of many political leaders suggests (President Obama’s effort in putting the Cabinet together is the most recent), integrity is not to be taken for granted and its lack in a subordinate can be very damaging indeed.

#3 Enthusiasm: Another powerful internal motivator, it cannot be taught. It is, however, said to be contagious. The upbeat take on life, events, and adversity is essential in today’s environment.

#4 Curiosity: The drive to learn, challenge, question, and try to understand is incredibly important if the team’s performance, growth, and the ability to innovate is of any significance at all. I don’t know how to develop it in someone lacking it. Do you?

#5 Diversity: One of the fallacies of hiring is approaching it as if people were screws — state the length, the diameter, the head shape, and the type of the thread, and expect them all to be the same for the immediate project at hand.

This approach is demeaning for the candidate and limiting (possibly, damaging) for the organization. Recently, an IT executive lamented on his efforts to find a job after being laid off. It seems, he said, that 20 years of diverse experience, solid leadership, and great results are not as important as whether he managed a particular system. This is the reality.

I look for people with complimentary skills and experiences, which not only make the team so much more powerful in terms of the breadth of collective knowledge, it also encourages teamwork and learning (we all need each other), and creates a team that delivers much more than a multiple of the individual effort.

#6 Teamwork. There is a small proportion of the population unable to work in a group. They may be great at what they do, highly intelligent, and have solid values, but it’s a team we are building, right?

#7 Sociability: What kind of people do you like to work with? Friendly, helpful, with a sense of humor? So do I.

The 10 Most Important Things In Life

I'm a relatively young man. I don't consider myself wise but I do pay attention more than most people my age.I love to tell stories, jokes, and in general my life is an open book. I love to have fun and tell those around me exactly what I'm thinking. Believe it or not when I am not talking I am doing something even more important, listening. I truly enjoy a good conversation and especially with those older. I give speeches and tomorrow is for a group of seniors and older. Everyday I look at older people and think, what have they done right and what did they do wrong? I have gathered it all from talking to seniors about what they did right and what they wish they had done.

1. Be patient
Money must be saved over a long period of time. Don't take high risks for quick returns. Investing is a marathon not a sprint.

2. Take the risks while you are young.
It is ok to take calculated high risks occasionally, but do them when you have time to make it up.

3. Don't gamble
Gambling is for the desperate and the poor. If you must, do small amounts and view it as
pure entertainment. You will never make money in the long run gambling

4. Stay healthy.
Good health keeps your mind sharp, your doctor bills low, you lifespan long, and lets you work more to make more money. Healthy people make more money

5. Laugh and Smile
See above. Happy people make more money.

6. Buy and car a keep it for many years or if you need a new one buy one a few years old.
A car is one of the biggest waste of money in our lives. People spend too much on new one. Should be buying newer used ones.

7. Everything in moderation.
I learned this from an older customer that used this as his mantra. He said he did everything in moderation from drinking to working. He said it was the key to life

8. Keep the fights clean and the sex dirty
The key to a happy marriage. A good marriage will help you save money or cost you a fortune if it goes bad. People stayed together longer in years past. They were a savings team.

9. Don't spend your money on worthless things.
Don't buy anything at the checkout counter, don't buy collectibles, don't buy all the worthless junk sold around you at the box stores.

10. Move
Stay active. The more you see the more you learn. The more learn the more ideas you have. The more ideas you have, the more chance you come up with something that will earn or save you money.
These are all my opinions as gathered by my ears. Some people may agree some may not but it's how I live my life. Enjoy

Influence – the Key to Success

"Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all." – Dwight Eisenhower

"Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself believe."

– Winston Churchill

I just finished reading this book: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I want to resume it, and to do so, I wrote this list of each important point Mr. Carnegie discuss in the book. The first time I ear about that book, I was skeptical. The title could seem selfish and pompous, but it is nothing like this. This book is about how to be more human and a good citizen; it is about being nice with people and how to work with them.


1. Do not criticize. “Criticism is futile because it puts a man on the defensive, and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a man’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses his resentment.” – Dale Carnegies. Related quotes: Criticism

2. Give honest, sincere appreciation. “Dr. Dewey says the deepest urge in human nature is ‘the desire to be important.’”. Related quotes: Compliments

3. Get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle. The thing here is to give to your interlocutor what he wants, and not what you, you want. Related quotes: Desire and Others’ view point

4. Become genuinely interested in other people. Related quotes: Interest

5. Smile.

6. Remember names. “Remember that a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in the English language.

7. Be a good listener. “Encourage others to talk about themselves”. Related quotes: listen

8. Make the other person feel important. “And do it sincerely”

This is the most important points he talk about in his book. However he added other sections that goes in that trend.

Twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it

2. Show respect for the other man’s opinions

3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically

4. Begin in a friendly way

5. Get the other person sating “yes, yes” immediately

6. Let the other man do a great deal of the talking

7. Let the other man feed that the idea is his

8. Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view

9. Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires

10. Appeal to the nobler motives

11. Dramatize you ideas

12. Throw down a challenge

Nine ways to change people without giving offense or arousing resentment


1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation

2. Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly

3. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders

4. Let the other man save his face

5. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be “hearty in you approbation and lavish in your praise.”

6. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to

7. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct

8. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest

How Helping Others Can Reduce Stress and Increase Happiness

Help Yourself Find Happiness By Helping Others

Helping others brings good feelings to the giver and the receiver of the good deeds. Using your special gifts to help others can be a gift to yourself as you enjoy a self esteem boost for making others’ lives better, and make the world a better place. You feel more worthy of good deeds yourself, your trust in the decency of people is reinforced, and you feel more connected to yourself and to others. In fact, research shows that those who demonstrate more altruistic social interest tend to enjoy higher levels of mental health, above and beyond the practical benefits of receiving help and other known psychospiritual, stress, and demographic factors that you would expect.

Creating a balanced lifestyle that includes service to others can help you feel less stress as well, as you feel more connected to your spirit, more grateful for what you have, and less invested in the ‘rat race’ that causes stress for so many of us. The following articles can give you ideas and resources for how to create a life that includes more helping others.

* Finding Meaning Through Helping Others: Do you have a nagging feeling that something's missing? Many people find volunteering time, money or castoffs as a way to give life meaning.

* Follow Your Passion: Look within yourself and see what you'd like to be doing to help others, and then do it!

* Network For Good: This site  can help you find volunteer opportunities in your area that fit your criteria.

Discover How to Live a Happy Life

Living a happy life is not something that we just know how to do. As we go on in life it almost seems as if people teach us how to live miserable lives instead of happy ones. The truth is that you are supposed to live a happy life. Here are 3 keys to help illuminate the road to a happy life.

1. Find out what makes you happy.
Ask someone to write down 50 things that make them happy and you will find that most people start struggling to come up with things after the first 10 or 20. If you don’t know what makes you happy then you don’t know what to work for to make you happy. Stumbling across happiness is like stumbling across a winning lottery ticket, it rarely happens. So what makes you happy?

2.Pursue what makes you happy.
Now that you know what makes you happy it’s time to start implementing a plan that will help you reach happiness. It’s great that you now what makes you happy now but information without action is useless. What actions will it take for you to be happy? A hint to doing this is making the entire actions dependant on you. If your happiness is dependant upon someone else you are on the wrong track. Don’t rely on other people to make you happy.

3. Learn not to stress.

Notice here that I said ‘learn’ not to stress. This may take some time but it’s important that you learn to not stress out over everything. Stress not only causes mental fatigue but it can also cause physical problems in your body. If necessary go to a stress management seminar and learn how to do this. The less stress that you have in your life the happier you will be.