Category: motivation

Was watching a video by an enthusiastic and energetic 75-years young Alvin Foo. The gentleman was asked how he maintains such good health. And his answer was golden. He said he lives his life by the acronym SHIELD. What is SHIELD?

“S” for Sleep: 7 hours. Prioritize rest, allowing the body and mind renewal for each day’s vigor.

“H” for Handling Stress: such as via meditation to conquer challenges with a calm mind.

“I” for Interaction: Cultivating relationships (friends and family) to uplift and dispel isolation.

“E” for Exercise: Keeping agile and energetic by embracing movement you enjoy.

“L” for Learn: Fueling your mind with new knowledge, keeping curiosity alive.

“D” for Diet: Nourishing your body with vitality-enhancing foods.

Simple and doable!

• The recipe is not the dish.
• The plan is not the journey.
• The blueprint is not the building.
• The script is not the performance.
• The idea is not the execution.
• The schedule is not the event.
• The description is not the experience

What do these mean?

That at some point, no matter all the theory, it is only practice and execution that counts! A good lesson for me.

Heard this in a cool TED talk clip. A very strong lesson and takeaway for me.

The speaker had observed children’s habits closely, and shared an anecdote.

In a drawing class, an otherwise uninterested-in-school 6-year-old was keenly drawing something. When the teacher went to the child and asked her what she was drawing, the girl replied, “I’m drawing God”.

To which the teacher said, “But no one knows how God looks like.”

Pat came the reply, “They will, in a minute!”

The takeaway?

Kids don’t care about being wrong. That’s why they learn so much in such a short time, like picking up new languages, without a care in the world of what others think!

Stan Lee, the legendary comic creator, once faced skepticism when he pitched an unconventional superhero idea. “I saw a fly on a wall and thought, what if a superhero could stick to walls? And thus Spider-Man was born,” he reminisced.

But challenges awaited. Stan’s vision of a teenage superhero with personal problems was met with stark criticism. “People hate spiders. Teenagers are sidekicks, not protagonists. Superheroes don’t have personal problems,” his publisher retorted.

In a twist of fate, Stan decided to feature Spider-Man in a magazine on the verge of cancellation. The result? Overwhelming success. His publisher, once a critic, now wanted Spider-Man as a series.

Stan’s journey underscores a powerful message. That if we have an idea we genuinely believe in, don’t let naysayers get in the way. In Stan’s words, “Just do your thing. Do it as well as you can. That’s what truly matters.”

Yes and no.

Not a good enough answer? I couldn’t agree more!

Someone asked this question on an Adam Grant podcast recently, and I thought the answer was brilliant.

Does experience matter? Of course it does. Someone with a few years of experience in pretty much anything will probably at least be less worse than if they were starting a job completely afresh.

But can this be extrapolated to mean that someone with say 20 years of experience is necessarily better than someone with only 5?

Here’s where the answer was outstanding. And the answer is “no”. How? Because as Adam concluded, it is not about the experience itself that matters, but reflecting on the experience which brings about the transformation. And that is all that counts.

All rejections are bad right? Maybe not…

The founders of Google wanted to sell the company for $1 million back in 1999. But they were rejected, and dejected. Today that company is worth some $1.5 trillion!

Netflix was to be sold to Blockbuster at $50m, but was rejected. Today it’s ~$200bn!

7 out of 7 investors rejected investing in Airbnb at an early stage. The company was worth not even a million. Today it’s some $100bn.

If these companies had not received their rejections, what would have happened?

Time to believe that rejections and suffering and pain are good, not bad, maybe even great. Because that is when the real growth happens.

Have you ever been told that your idea is impossible? Remember the Chinese proverb: “The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.” In other words, don’t let the doubters hold you back from taking action.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says (Chapter 2, Verse 47): “You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work.” So, our focus must be on putting in our best effort without getting hung up on the outcome.

But let’s be real – sometimes, despite our best efforts, things just don’t go as planned. In those moments: Karma Yoga to the rescue! This is the philosophy that teaches us to perform our duties with dedication and detachment, without getting too attached to the outcome.

So, next time someone tells us our idea is impossible, remember the Chinese proverb, channel your inner Karma Yogi, and go for it anyway. And if it doesn’t work out, well… at least we can say we tried!

In an NBA post-match press conference recently, star baller Giannis Antetokounmpo was quizzed by a journalist, on failure. The usual, “would you consider this a failure now that you’ve lost this important game?”

The NBA star countered beautifully.

He asks the journalist if he gets promoted every year at work. Of course not!

And so if you do not get promoted at work one year, then are you considered a failure? Is that year considered a failure? Of course not!

It’s just one stepping stone after another on the path to success.

Nay, traversing the path itself is success!

While it’s easy to say we need to relax and breathe when the punches flow fast and thick, is there something we can keep in mind to make the process easier?

Sure.

One, is to practise getting many punches. Keep putting out our best work, and be shameless in seeking feedback, no matter how bad or good.

Two, is to keep moving. Not to evade the punches, but to grow from them. To use the message for improvement, while ignoring the messenger and their mode of delivery.

Three, is to always remember that our work is what we do, and not who we are. If we take things too personally, that’s a setup waiting for disaster. As Keynes said, in the long run, we’re all dead. So no tension!

How do we take punches? Not literal ones. Just the ones where we get negative feedback.

Even though we’ve done our very best, there are things outside our control. Our intent might have been perfect, but sometimes stuff does hit the fan.

Can we do anything about it now? If the answer is no, then it might be a good idea to just relax and take a chill pill.

If you are someone who is creative and imaginative, then it’s likely you are going to conjure up some wild images of the worst that could happen.

As they say, fear is just imagination taking a wrong turn.

It’s okay to get bad criticism. Or negative reviews. It’s not the end of the world. The world honestly couldn’t care less. If we didn’t care much either, we’d bounce back in no time.

But is this all there is to it? More tomorrow!

Success in life is plenty about “who you know”.

Everyone knows this, and most people hence try to keep knocking on as many doors as possible, hoping someone will suddenly notice them and give them a pot of gold.

Nope, not how the real world works, according to a book on success that I had the chance to flip through at a bookstore.

“Who you know” comes from “who you are” and “what you have to offer”.

“Who we are” is a function of our values and ethics.

“What we have to offer” is a function of the work we do.

If we work on these two aspects, then everything else, success included, will follow.

There are many ways to be disciplined.

You can do things every year. Every minute, every hour. Every week, every month.

But none of these are as good as a single day.

The sun rises and sets with a rhythm. It’s observable, and we humans “get it”.

If success is in our crosshairs, all we need to do, is to keep building our body of work, day after day after day, and before you know it, years will have gone by, with all that work having turned to gold.

But is it easy?

As the comedian Russell Brand says, “One day at a time. It sounds so simple. It actually is simple but it isn’t easy: it requires incredible support and fastidious structuring. “

How many will remember us once we are no more?

Maybe a few close ones, and that too for a very short period of time.

Life soon goes on.

People find ways to cope, and over 99% of the people in your life wouldn’t even think about you anymore.

All the stress and anxiety you put yourself through in order to please these same others…. Poof!

It will help to think of all this the next time we stress about something. Who are we really living for?

While we know we should not quit, it is important to identify where all our efforts need to be put in first.

There are many things we chase after – money, status, promotion, bonus, relationships, properties and what not.

We cannot get eveything. But we can perhaps get what we want if we choose wisely and work with full focus.

This choosing, implicitly involves “quitting” some things. Which is great.

But my Guru says that all of these need to be quit. Not necessarily physically, but mentally. All the attachments to the material world need to be quit. It takes an insane amount of grit to do that. More than the grit required to succeed in any material discipline.

So, from a spiritual point of view, it’s really not a question of Grit versus Quit. It’s always Grit and Quit.

This is the question posed to us in a very interesting book called Quit, by Annie Duke.

We’ve been told since forever, that we just shouldn’t give up. Perseverance is the key to success. Quitting is for losers. If you give up, the world has no place for you. And on and on, there’s so many of these messages and quotes and what not – we’ve all been at the receiving end of many of such.

But Annie is one of the best poker players in the world, and she knows a thing or two about quitting. If you’ve played poker, you know that no matter how much luck you have on your side, you can’t keep winning every single game.

She summarizes beautifully:

Success does not lie in sticking to things. It lies in picking the right thing to stick to and quitting the rest.

But where does spirituality fit in to this? Find out here tomorrow!

Was reading an interview by Satya Nadella, the current CEO of Microsoft.

The question he was asked was whether early in in his career after joining Microsoft, did he think he would make CEO some day?

Mr Nadella’s answer was awesome, because he said he never even once thought about becoming CEO, as he was focused purely on excelling in his current (at the time) work.

Here’s his killer advice in his own words:

Don't wait for your next job to do your best work. 

We can even remove the words “for your next job” from the above sentence, and it would be great advice for anything and everything we do in life!

Yes, you know who that is? Who’s 100% successful?

Why, it’s you of course!

If you’re reading this, it means that you have succeeded against all odds, all failures, all problems, and have still made it to today.

You are 100% successful at not having been defeated by your worst days.

Isn’t that such an optimistic thought?

What can you not achieve in the future, with such an untouchable inimitable success rate behind you?

What do you think the ideal height of a basketballer should be? What about the height of a pro basketballer? And what of one who plays for the world famous all star Harlem Globetrotters? 7 feet? Or 6 and a half feet? Or at least 6 feet right?

Maybe you’ve never heard of Mani Love then. His height? Wait for it…

4 feet, 5 inches.

Think I’m kidding? Please watch a few YouTube videos of his. Like maybe this one.

It’s insane what he can do. Some of his moves, no 7-footer can ever pull off.

But if we were limited to 4 feet 5, would we have the belief in ourselves to achieve what he has?

What other self-imposed limitations are impeding us today?

Raising the bat is common in cricket, when the batsman scores a 100 runs. A century.

The batters raise their bats if they score 200 or 300 as well, or even more.

But there was one occasion where a batter raised his bat after scoring just 1 run.

Yes, your read that right, one, not one hundred.

Why?

Because in his prior 6 innings, he had got out for a duck, i.e. a grand score of zero.

It would have been a problem only if this guy didn’t come out to bat the 7th time around. But he did. And he celebrated that 1 run with aplomb!

A great lesson for me in persistence, and in self-deprecating humor. ????

Know who Brian Tracy is? I didn’t. Or at least I thought I didn’t. His Wikipedia page says he’s a motivational speaker and author that has written 80 books. 80! Incredible!

And then I saw the title “Eat that Frog”, and then I realized wow I do know about Brian Tracy. He’s the guy that said if there’s something hard or unpleasant (like eating a frog) you need to do today, then do it first up, without postponing it to later in the day. That is good advice, and well known.

Today I came across a short clip of the same Mr. Tracy. He was answering a very important question. “What are the enemies of success?” Here’s his lovely answer:

There are 3 enemies of success:
1. The Comfort Zone – self explanatory
2. Learned Helplessness – where we practice and normalize saying “I can’t do it”
3. Path of Least Resistance – i.e., always looking for an easy way, but nothing worth having ever came easy.

What clarity!

Everyone knows about the super-sweeper incident from many decades ago. President JFK went to NASA to inspect a rocket launch. He chanced upon a sweeper. JFK asked the sweeper what he was upto. The sweeper didn’t feel shy or embarrassed to tell only the the most important man he’d meet in his life that he was sweeping the floor. Instead, he told JFK that he was contributing towards putting a man on the moon. What a superb attitude to life!

This is often quoted in relation to Krishna’s teachings in the Gita as well. Our life purpose and work purpose must transcend the mundane. Krishna emphasizes many times that it is not what work we do that matters, but only “how” we do the work.

Folks think that they will be happy at work only when they become the CEO. But the CEO’s role might be the hardest, and definitely the loneliest. The CEO is alone, managing a huge team below him, while also solitarily reporting to a Board above.

As many expert opine nowadays, if we want people to align with us, then we should get them to care. And no one cares about what we do, they only care about why we do it.

Merc-AMG won 8 F1 races in a row. And then they lost.

Toto Wolff, the team Principal at Merc spoke about what it takes to build a “winning culture”.

Paradoxically, the winning culture comes from losing, or rather the learning from the losing.

The statement of his that I liked the most?

The days we lose, are the days our competitors will regret the most. Because those are the days that we learn. 

How will we look at failure the next time we face it?

An old article by Chinmaya Mission founder Swami Chinmayananda wishing everyone a new year, never gets old (pun intended!).

It’s not just the usual Happy New Year wish that we all practise at the turn of each year. Rather, he turns the question on its head, and asks if really anything is new.

Aren’t we still the same morose, dejected, anxious, desperate, demanding, greedy, selfish (I can add many more such words to describe my own mind!) people that we were just the eve of the new year? What changed then just as the clock struck twelve?

Swami C asks this very question. If one day to the next is exactly the same, then what are we celebrating? The quality of time is not moving or changing. It is us humans who have divided time into minutes and hours and days and years, and we keep track of it, and rejoice as it apparently whizzes past us.

But the true happy new year as Swami C concludes, is only when we change and transform ourselves, and become better, more evolved, spiritual beings. The moment that happens, it is indeed the dawn of a very happy new year!

Enough successful people will tell us that life is a marathon, not a sprint. And yet most people live their lives as a series of successive sprints, often more tired starting the next one, than they were the prior.

Look back at your school days, and you’ll realize that many folks who stood top of their class have not made it as far as their potential would have probably suggested at the time. Why could that be?

Perhaps it’s the case of the “golden touch” as one author put it. If we start out successful, then the potentially misplaced confidence in our own abilities skyrockets. We think that we are solely responsible for our own success, and don’t believe that something like luck aka extraneous factors even exists.

Others are often too scared to even try. As my Guru often notes, success is nothing but repeated failure. However, failure that comes from not even trying is not what he’s talking about here. We (me in particular) need to be bold and venturesome. Not timid and close-minded. Failure of the courageous type is nothing more than a synonym for learning.

The world today is obsessed with outputs.

External manifestation is what takes the cake. Bulging biceps or hardboard abs? Wow, everyone wants that, but without going to the gym or eating clean.

Want to close a mega sales deal? Everyone does, but not by putting in the 100s of hours and 1000s of cold calls. Folks look for the one-call-wonder.

Young new joiners at companies want to quickly learn all the technical skills and show off their knowledge, and get promoted as quickly as possible. That’s a good thing, except that experience and (lack of) speed brings emotional and mental maturity – something that is woefully ignored.

But equally, the other side can be emphasized. Most employers don’t care about outputs. Only inputs. Number of hours and weekends worked and “facetime” is more important compared to actual work done.

So is the world more output focused? Or more input focused? Purely from a spiritual point of view, does either matter?

Top Class and Top of the Class, are two totally different things. We’ve each seen this. People who are top of the class in school and university, may be successful, but rarely are the truly top class and top-of-the-world successful.

Pete (his co-founder) and I thought of the people we wanted to run these new business areas as "10 out of 10s". We had both been judging talent long enough to know a 10 when we saw one. Eights just do the stuff you tell them. Nines are great at executing and developing good strategies. You can build a winning firm with 9s. But people who are 10s, sense problems, design solutions and take the business in new directions without being told to do so. Tens always make it rain.

Here’s what Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone says in his book:

Notice how he doesn’t even mention the 1s to 7s?

Are you an 8, 9 or 10? 😄

We must have all come across that book with a weird title. “Eat that frog”.

Want to eat a frog? No thank you. But that’s what the book says. There’s always stuff we don’t like to do, like eating frogs, and hence we should do those tasks first. This is more from a work perspective, so that by the time the day is even half done, we feel like we’ve accomplished something.

Of course there are those that love to eat frogs, literally, and so to those I wonder if this title even makes any sense.

But keeping them aside, one slightly dated but interesting example is of the actor Amir Khan in Dangal. He was playing two roles in the same movie, initially as a young muscular fighter, and then eventually a fat old man.

But what was his genius here? That he decided to eat the frog later, and requested his Director to shoot the ‘old man’ scene first, followed by the ‘young man’ scene. He knew that eating and becoming fat was easy, but losing it would be very hard. And if he had no reason to look fit, he would just lapse off. Clearly, eating the frog later is also not that bad, but it must be eaten!

Steve Schwarzman is Blackstone Group’s Chairman and Co-founder. The company is worth some 100 billion dollars plus.

But he didn’t start out on top. In one of his first jobs, he was asked to take a printout of a presentation that he had made. This was to be used by his boss for an important client pitch.

Enroute to the client’s office, his boss realized that Steve had made a mistake in his calculations, and a big one at that.

To remedy the situation, his boss told him he could still manage the show, if Steve could just tear out all the even pages and leave only the odd ones. Simple enough, and Steve was relieved that he wouldn’t be the cause of a messed up meeting.

Except, that in the tension and anxiety of that moment, Steve tore out all the odd pages instead!

So it’s not all rosy, even for the best, even for those who have scaled Mount Success today. Just need to develop some thick skin, learn from our mistakes, and keep ploughing on.

There are two very critical ‘back’s in life. No its not like there’s a substitute back when one’s got back pain.

These 2 backs are essential for growth and success.

The first back is setback. We often only look for victory everywhere, but setbacks are a part and parcel of life. If there is no setback, we will never have the chance to learn and improve our game.

The second back is comeback. This is how we implement our learnings from the first back, i.e. the setback.

Taken together, setbacks and comebacks are an insanely powerful combination.

No need to fear setbacks because without one, we would never know how to do better. And there is no shame in comebacks, only honor.

Heard this in a talk show recently. The guest was asked about people spending more time in offices and working and it leading to burnout.

He said that it is indeed true.

So what to do?

You need to enjoy your job, not love your job. 

That was his advice. Why enjoy and not love?

Because he said love for one’s job brings attachment. Which then invariably leads to stress, anxiety and disappointment, especially when something doesn’t go as planned, when results are delayed despite efforts, or colleagues do not collaborate and so on.

Hence enjoy, not love!

Apparently there are two types of passion. Harmonious and Creative. This I came across in a podcast where the guest was none other than famed surgeon and author Atul Gawande. Here’s what he had to say:

"I'm gonna give you another framework that I work with on this. There are cycles of how the work works, and it's understanding those cycles. So surgery is a harmonious passion in a very straightforward way. I can go in to do a two or three-hour operation and I will get something done and I will lose sense of time. And it, I can't tell you what a great experience it is working with a team focused on doing something where everybody is skilled and, and working harmoniously together. But there is nothing creative about it. In fact, you're trying to be anti-creative. You're trying to do things the same way every time. What you accumulate are thousands of people you've taken care of and not necessarily something that builds something larger. Whereas writing or doing certain kinds of research work, that's six months of effort, not always harmonious. Painful. A learning curve every time, but at the end of it, incredibly gratifying. And I found my six month cycle of doing with the creativity added in is my sweet spot."

So interesting isn’t it? That’s probably why it always helps to have at least two or more passions to focus on. One can be our daily office jobs, while the other could be something more creative for the evenings. Worth trying!

A cool bit of advice I came across.

"If you are below 40 years of age, say Yes to everything. After 40, start saying No."

This is so interesting. Why?

Because most youngsters are still figuring out what they want to do, what they like, what their passions are, what they truly enjoy, where they find “flow” and so on.

The more we say Yes, the more opportunities we may get to experience and explore what we may end up liking.

Not to take this to the extreme of course – that we just keep saying Yes even to stupid things.

Most people are looking for this. And are yet hardly finding anything relevant to them.

And so I chanced upon an article that explained this really well. Here are the main points from there:

1. Your career is not your life.
2. Explore, then exploit.
3. Don’t do the job you want to tell other people you do. Do the job you want to do.
4. Be ruthlessly honest with yourself about what you value—and how much professional success matters to you.
5. Flow comes from voluntary, difficult, and worthwhile work.

The full article can be read here at this link. Enjoy!

Does this really work? We’ve all heard it a million times. How to be successful? “oh, just follow your passion”

Most of us don’t have the liberty of following our passions. Loan repayments and other financial considerations seem to always get in the way.

What to do then?

No need to fret, because Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor on Shark Tank had a cool thing to say on a recent podcast.

“Don’t follow your passion, instead follow your effort.”

Isn’t that just radical? We all put in great efforts in our own fields of work. We spend hours and hours. Why not make that count, rather than fretting about passions?

We know already why prepping in advance is key. We covered it yesterday. But here’s a nice example. It’s very similar to piloting a hot air balloon ride.

Really? Yes, even though most of us will rarely get the chance to pilot one, apparently these folks need proper training and a pilot’s license – very cool!

And that’s a good thing, which means all their passengers (about 20 of them in a ride) are all safe and happy.

But the way hot air balloons work, is that you have to adjust the hot air (helium etc) that is blown into the balloon in order for the balloon to either ascend or descend.

But the catch? It doesn’t happen instantaneously, unlike much of the digital world we are used to today. Click a button, and boom all done!

Nope, hot air balloons are analog machines, and so if you see a mountain coming up, you have to manage the air in the balloon well before that mountain comes close if you want to scale the peak safely. Whos doing all this? The pilot of course, thinking 10 steps ahead. That’s the importance of prepping in advance!

What are the reasons for Curry’s ridiculous success? He himself highlights two of them.

1. Imagination, and 2. Repetition.

Imagination? What’s that? No different from Creative Visualization that my Guru strongly endorses. Don’t just dream of the future you want, but visualize it, strongly, as if it has already happened. And add smells and taste and flavour to it. It will come true, if you also follow #2, Repetition, which is the same as Practice.

As Curry notes, every dream has to be “built upon the foundation of hard work”. Is he taking it easy, now that he has achieved the pinnacle of success? Quite the opposite – because he says he practices today more than ever before in his life! And it’s those days where he doesn’t feel like going for practice, but still shows up – that make all the difference.

Is it always so good for him? Does every aim-and-shoot always result in a perfect 3 pointer? Far from it. But he focuses on his wins, and looks to better each weak shot, forgetting the associated negative emotion. He calls it “Intentionality of Amnesia” 😀

Steph Curry is just 34 years old, but already holds the record for the maximum 3 pointers ever scored (>3000) across all the seasons he has played. He crossed other stalwarts like Reggie Miller and Ray Allen who held these records previously.

The interview I wrote about yesterday? It was conducted by Miller himself – after Curry overtook him!

What does that teach us? That nothing is permanent, and today’s greatness can easily be outdone tomorrow.

Will it be easy? Absolutely not. In fact, for any of today’s greats to best Curry, it is estimated that they would need to score an average of 250 three-pointers – for each of the next 15 seasons! Most of them will neither achieve this average, nor even play that long. Besides, Curry’s own score count is likely to increase further during this period!

So, how does Curry’s basketball magic happen? Super lessons for us (mainly me) in tomorrow’s concluding post!

Three is a very important number in spirituality. Many mantras are chanted in 3s or multiples thereof. Even 108, which comprises 1 mala, is divisible by 3. Then there’s the 3 worlds – bhur, bhuvah, svah. And the 3 gunas – sattva, rajas, tamas, and so on.

But this post is not about the spiritual 3s. Rather this is about – wait for it – basketball!

Scoring a 3-pointer in basketball is not easy. Even if there are no opponents, it is hard enough – having to stand well outside the D, and aim and shoot a ball through a tiny basket (barely bigger than the ball itself) perched 10 feet high.

But there is one man called Stephen Curry who plays in the NBA, who’s made a career out of this. He’s scored 400 3-pointers in a single season – a record that no other professional player has even come close to.

I don’t follow basketball as such, but I recently watched an interview with Steph Curry titled “The Art of 3s”, and came across some brilliant takeaways that can be used in our daily lives. Continued tomorrow!

Was reading some investment related material today, but realized quickly that it was excellent life advice as well.

1. While size matters, what matters more is character. The latter helps create sustainable value.
2. More than the present size (of the investee company), what matters is what size it will become.
3. There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less. (Bertrand Russell)

Some good food for thought, don’t you think?

Incentives. That’s what makes the world go around.

Think about it. Would you go to work tomorrow happy and excited, if your salary was doubled overnight? Or if cut in half?

Seems obvious, but we never willingly do anything unless we see merit in it. Thank you, inertia. Questions abound. What is it that I will get by doing this? What is in it for me? From a spirituality point of view, these might be terrible questions to ask. We are in fact always taught to reduce our attachments and desires. However, given that we are anyway in the material world and running after material things, we might as well put this to good use.

We may not be able to change our own salary / bonus, and nine times out of ten, the incentives provided to us are inadequate. But what if the incentive was the quality of our work and not the money? This is possible and only needs a mindset shift. There can be nothing more satisfying than seeing our own work done in the best manner possible, much like a Michelin star chef might marvel at his most requested dish. We must each think for ourselves. What incentivizes me? Is it money? If so, how much? And what do I need to learn / teach myself so that I get there?

We often mistakenly believe though that it is our quality of work alone that gets us into better positions. Sure, quality is important. But think about the mobile phone in your hands right now. It must have what, 100s of components in it? Such a beautifully crafted instrument. Do you think there is only one person on earth who knows to manufacture these to precision? No chance! So no worker is irreplaceable. Not even the leader of a nation (although some are better than others!).

While quality of work matters, quality of relationships matters even more. People may not remember the work you did for them. But they will remember the time you gave them, the attention you gave them, the affection you showered upon them and the empathy you treated them with.

And hence incentives are absolutely critical when dealing with people as well. Think of all the people you know in your professional life, personal life, sports life, gym life, hobby life, spiritual life and every other walk of life. How are they doing? How much better would they be doing if they had incentives that were aligned to their tasks at hand? When working with them, do they always do their role well, and does it somehow impair your work too? What is it that we can offer them, so that they enjoy their work – whatever it might be? The incentive doesn’t need to be monetary always, and therefore we don’t need to be someone’s boss in order to help them. It could even just be offering respect, admiration, love, concern and empathy among other things.