In an ongoing Poll on Linked In, which asked users, “What was most basic thing for Startup to succeed?” Self-belief is leading the show with 37% respondents feel that Self-belief is most important aspect to succeed. I thought of connecting this result to test my own belief and what better than – A very well-known concept, “Half-Filled and Half-Empty” – we get to hear this quite often; at least in the part of world and community of People, I frequently interact with.Probability of looking it as Half-Empty is 50% and so as the Half-Filled community. We end up blaming the perspective of Life and situation and move forward.

The quote above was to establish the theme and undercurrent of the article and also at the same time to establish the disclaimer – this is perspective driven and these are my personal thoughts. For the “No-Perspective” people – you just need to get to action – either drink the water off glass and empty it or just fill it up with more liquid and call it filled. :).

Many of you think that to succeed and improve on; you need to come up with something new every day, week or month.  (I always thought that way… 😉)At times, you falsely also believe the fact that reinventing yourselves will help you in doing better. While working in various geography and with ethnically diversified teams, I believe the key is practicing on what you preach and definitely certain element of minor adjustments as you proceed – be like Romans in Rome, is the first step to be better with every single day.

Persistence and Determination is very easy to sustain if we have a consistent routine (just another Gyan Statement). Discipline is simply remembering what you want. Add Self-to-Discipline and then it might be the most critical factor in any kind of success or achievement, and self-discipline is created by routine. Now – I have tried (and successfully failed attempts) this aritho-geometric progression of Self-Discipline, Routine nth times – reasoning that routine makes the life monotonous and bores me; forgetting the fact that freedom which this routine offers at large (just realized 😉 ).

For all the small spark of brilliance, where I had my life routine, without re-inventing the wheel, I could use my time very efficiently. Following an established routine based on the priorities helped me in being organized – and therefore didn’t had to waste time consuming CO2 (read Carbon-di-Oxide) to put-off fire. I have worked and met with very talented people but was really disheartened to see a miss in achieving their potential because they were spending too much time trying to improve things that don’t need improvement. Of course we all should be creative and innovative but that energy shouldn’t be wasted simply because we don’t want to follow those who blazed the trail ahead of us.

The mantra which I think has worked every time is – “Keep talking to people” – Standing silently on the side lines watching other’s playing will not lead you near to your goals. Fundamentals are simple – whatever we focus on, it prospers.  Let’s establish our Goals and set our focus on it – without any myopic and hyper-myopic defects.

While you have to have a lofty-long term goals, do not overlook the smaller opportunities at your feet today. Just as we cannot look past on the opportunities on our feet, we also cannot afford to give up too soon on any of them.

Remember, Opportunity and Beauty always lies in the eyes of Beholder.

We all hit lulls where we feel bogged down – and we just need to fight the “urge to give-up” and “what-if” is just the great tool to help do that. Consider an Example, You have been assigned to work on a complex Deliverable where seeing the light at the end of tunnel isn’t easy, you can either give-up and miss on opportunity to handle the situation and improve upon your knowledge or take up the challenge to deliver. When you take up a challenge and just focus on achieving the solution;  and you somehow forget to think about the roadblocks and uncertainties which you are going to encounter. Why is that so? When we narrow down our focus towards solution , a miracle is bound to happens encountering those roadblocks is just a passe.

Expect Miracles to happen and they do happen when you are set for success and when you are driven towards it. A stonecutter may have to strike the stone for hundred times before the 101st blow split the stone. The final blow as you see is successful because of the 100 blows which preceded it. The stonecutter here can teach us two things – 1) He doesn’t know in advance the number of blows he would require to split the stone as each stone is different; however, 2) he does know that if he doesn’t quit too soon, any stone can be cut.

Believe me, everything which we do is very difficult in middle – and the only trick is to get past this middle and reach to the far side of success and it is just that small delta “Half-Filled/Half-Empty” attitude which will decide which side of scale we are on ….

Thank You.