Promises, not goals

Bill Bartmann is the ultimate underdog, survivor AND achiever. He was homeless at age 14, a member of a street gang and a high school dropout. He then took control of his life by taking the GED exam and putting himself through college and law school.

1. Make Sure Your Goal is Your Own. Spend a solid amount of time figuring out what YOU really want. Think of all the people who are pursuing goals for other people. It’s not worth it. It’s the saddest realization to wake up at 50 or 60 and realize you’ve been chasing something you don’t really want for most of your life.
2. Make it a Promise. Use the word ‘promise’ instead of ‘goal’. Most people don’t reach their goals. Thinking about goals actually sets your mind up to fail, because not reaching goals is quite normal. When you make a promise, you don’t think about something you’re going to ‘attempt’ or ‘try’ or ‘strive to do’. You expect to keep promises. When you make a promise you really want to keep it, so your mind starts working for you to reach your goal.
3. Clearly Identify Your Promise. Most people are vague when they come to goals. They say “I want to get rich” or “I want to be famous.” But you need to know the specifics of what you want. How rich? How famous? If you can’t clearly identify your promise, you’re going to have a difficult time achieving it. When you can clearly see your promise in your mind’s eye, it becomes so much easier to achieve.
4. Identify You Personal Motivator. In order to achieve a significant goal or promise you’re going to need a lot of motivation. You need a good motivator, something to keep you fired up when the times get difficult. This can be anything that keeps you passionate and focused. Maybe someone once told you you couldn’t do something, so it’s the idea of proving this person wrong that keeps you motivated to carry on. Or maybe it’s your children that help you keep your eye on the prize.
5. Create a Promise Plan. It isn’t enough to have a clear promise and a personal motivator. You need a plan. You need to map out and write down the who, what, where, when, why and how of your promise. Your promise should include all the components of a proper business plan.
6. Review Your Plan Regularly. Take 20 minutes each day to review your promise plan. Focusing on your goals makes them all that much more attainable. Analyzing and refining your plan gets your brain working for you, showing you things that you hadn’t thought of before. Your promise plan becomes better and more efficient.
7. Tell Yourself You Will Achieve It. Repeat to yourself over and over again that you will reach your promise. This concretizes your promise in your mind and builds confidence in your ability to reach it.
8. Tell Others About Your Promise. When you tell someone else about your promise, it gives you additional motivation to make it happen. The more people you tell the better. This may be scary, but it gives you an additional incentive to realize your promise. In addition, many of the people you tell will come forward to offer support or resources to help you reach it.
9. Visualize the Final Result. A powerful tool to help you realize your promise is visualizing the final result. What does it feel like? What does it look like? You need to be able to see yourself in the moment of success.

101st post..a tendulkaristic Task

Image copyright:101fm.asn.au

used for no motives whatsoever, just for fun

Here it is, the 101st post of Life is a treat. Hardly a reason to celebrate but considering my laziness and lack of commitment to this space, this looks nothing short of a tendulkaristic achievement...well, atleast to me :)  

Thought hard about it and decided to change the look of the blog to a simpler format. What a surprise, the people at blogger had just the right solution at hand in the page itself. The new features for changing the blog layout is mind blowing. One has to use it to feel the ease and beauty of the implementation. Hats off to all those behind such efforts at blogger. I love the way preview works now. Great experience at the blog.

On second thoughts, I went back over time to recollect the flow of thoughts on all the occasions (numerous, to say the least) when the templates were changed here. And I figured out it works likes this. You visit the blog after a while and admire the last written post (!) and get motivated to write a new post. You log in and then stare at the white spaces and realise that the white space in the mind is bigger & brighter than the white space of blogger editor...but the urge to do something pulls you over to...yes...changing the template. 


Wow! now that I have got the psychology part figured out and all that stuff...let me see if I manage a straight record of keeping my commitments.

Many thanks to my wonderful friends (few but I value their thoughts and views much higher than mine) who keep writing and providing the much needed inspiration. 

Be back soon...

A promise is a promise

They said it's impossible. Many laughed at the idea itself. Some went into analytical mode and said it just cannot be done. Some wanted the project to be scrapped. Some wanted to ban it. One man's dream and his commitment to a promise made five years back took the entire world by surprise - the 'Nano' which by any means is not an apology of a car as many had expected.

It's sheer engineering excellence. The specs indicate a courageous act of breaking all barriers and limitations to deliver a car which promises much more than any one expected, applying multitudes of skills and knowledge to reach technology to common man.

In delivering the dream, the Tatas have lifted India to great heights and made the worldwide biggies wonder, "how on the earth did they do it?"

Just look at the reactions:

We cannot make a cheaper car. We don’t know how to make a 1 lakh car unless we sacrifice something. We won’t go below the 800 in our product line-up. Shinzo Nakanishi MD, MARUTI SUZUKI, INDIA BEFORE THE NANO LAUNCH

We have been considering the possibility of a mass car. So far, even our feeling was that such a car can’t be made, but we'll take a closer look at this and explore all possible ways. Arvind Saxena SENIOR VP, MARKETING & SALES, HYUNDAI

I haven't seen the car yet, but there must be something for us to learn from the viewpoint of manufacturing technology and costcutting measures. M Takedagawa PRESIDENT & CEO, HONDA SIEL CARS INDIA

Here is the brilliance of it.

- Dealer price of just one lakh, almost half the price of currently available cheapest car making it the world's cheapest car

- Addressing all safety concerns, they have come out with an all sheet-metal body, with safety features such as crumple zones, intrusion-resistant doors, seat-belts, strong seats with the rear tailgate glass bonded to the body. As if these were not enough, they have added tubeless tyres which have also reduced the overall weight of the car..

-Environmental concerns: The nano promises to bring emission performances exceeding current regulatory requirements with an expected fuel efficiency (20 km/litre) along with low carbon dioxide emissions.

- Over hundered vendors had worked with the team for 3 years to make this a reality

This is COMMITMENT to deliver on a promise made. The value of the impact can only be undestood by counting the number of people who said it is not possible! In fact, it was almost a forgone conclusion that even if some one from Tatas had actually announced that the project will be kept in cold storage, every one would have understood and left it at that. But rely on the Tatas to deliver through engineering excellence and above all they have shown the real meaning of commitment, value & shown the world what it takes to keep a promise.

This could very well be the achievement of the millennium. India salutes. The world looks at him in awe. And, as if all these were his daily routine, the great man has quietly changed gears and has his sights firmly on the other end of cars with Ford.

A well kept promise that will change the way a nation drives.

'...A promise is a promise' Chairman Ratan Tata said as he announced the Tata Nano at a dealer price of one lakh rupees