General

How can we stay calm when we are about to be stressed?

Simplest way to stay calm when about to be stressed is by being prepared, by visualizing and identifying the areas where you would get stressed. And taking corrective measures to come out it without losing yourself. It’s easier said than done and each of us has different trigger points for stress, some in interviews, some to talk their bosses, some before exams etc…

Do a Pre-mortem…

A pre-mortem — also known as a premortem — is a managerial strategy in which a manager imagines that a project or organization has failed, and then works backward to determine what potentially could lead to the failure of the project or organization.

Try to understand the stress situation before hand since while in stress your brain will not function as much. And then practice or build cues that help you pass the situation with flying colors.

If you keep doing this, after some practice that stress area or point will no longer be stressful.

So let’s be calm and be ready for Stress….

 

How to win at life

Rule 1: let people do what they need to do to make them happy, mind your own business and do what you need to do to make you happy

Rule 2: Never break Rule No. 1

 

 

If you create something you enjoy that is exceptionally useful, you stand a good chance of being successful.  

So don’t think of fresh idea to start, think of a problem that you can solve for yourself and others in your domain.

I know this is a generic topic and I am not here to provide solutions to any of the problems. I want to tell you, there is an interesting way of looking at problems. And deciding important path in your life based on how much you like or dislike a problem.

Basically what kind of problems you want to tackle or you are best at tackling is the direction we all should move towards. Lets look at it in our work life(We can take similar examples in different verticals), in general you will have options to either join a big company, a midsize/small company, a startup or open your own (entrepreneurship).

Now each has its own problems or issues and benefits, lets look at each:

1. Big companies – Political drama with lot of push/pull of strings but with a decent pay and good work/life balance, if you are someone who can ignore lot of crap and still manage to work on something you do not like. Not much growth and stagnancy are some of the terms you will be fine with, so this the place for you.

2. Mid size / smaller companies – Again this is same with a bit lesser politics but more work and better than decent pay. So someone with same level ignorance capacity but higher ambitions should look here…

3. Startups – Decent pay, lesser infra/perks but good job satisfaction and lot to learn. Might have some amount of risks but still best bet today.

4. Your own – No pay, no infra/perks, best job satisifaction you do what you feel like doing and when you want to do it. Lots of learning and full chance of failure..

If you look at any aspects of your life you can divide in these kind of segments with problems in each and than decide which once you like tackle most…

 

“You want brave people in the side. Winning and losing keep on happening. You want good and courageous characters in the side.”

I do not believe exercising is going to be any good, yes never! Sure playing sports is an exercise we use to do that in childhood and colleges but that was more to hang around with friends.

Who want to really become Tendulkar or Dhoni, rather can become, very few!

After some days once you get into earning bread, things get piled up and you are out of shape. Working day & night or watching movies or hanging around with friends is all you do, moreover if you have a family, kids then you are more pressed again time to do anything about it. And it looks more and more as a waste of time. Club this with stress and pressure at work, now you have a perfect life 🙂

With all this who wants to spend time running half an hour in morning or play some sports, forget it! Let’s send that mail first or I need to talk to my boss for some issues blah blah! Our mind keeps on babbling.
But wait something changed, yes it did. One day out of reading loads of books on failure/success, motivational & stress management, I read something to do with exercising easy way of managing all. Now how can that be? How can exercise help in these things? With still that notion I started initial walks for 15-20 minutes and try to keep that regular to half an hour now.

The impact was immediate. Here are some points which I observe and some borrowed from other reads:

1. More ideas start coming and things were moving much faster because decision making was much faster.
2. More risk orientation, earlier for anything  can find thousands reason not to do, but now with one single good reason you do it.
3. No more sleep hours in office, yes afternoon cat nap was not required anymore, this is for those who steal a nap.
4. Better management of expectations with others for others, yes with this you will be much more confident so you can communicate things much better with others and reap the benefits.

These are some of my immediate positive impacts after exercising, still I would say long way to go but some start….