MOTIVATION

I had short chats with some people who were participating as blood donors at the event organized by a social organization on Sunday last week. Most of them have pretty similar answers when asked with a question about the motivation behind donating their blood - they want to help other people.

Some people might think that there is an economical reason for donating blood and yes that could also be true. However, the discussions that I had with street parking attendants who came there still in their uniforms revealed that the packages given in return of their participation is not the main factor that motivated them to donate their blood. At the event there were also people with good financial standing whom I personally know and when asked about their motivation their answers are also to help other people beside also to stay healthy because of donating their blood. And there was also one young female artist who is also participating with a motivation to help other people.

We all aware that achievements and successes are made possible through motivation. It could begin just as wishes to accomplish something but the results will of course all depend on our desires and efforts to make those wishes come true. There could be sacrifices and hardships involved in achieving those what we want but we shall focus our attention on the rewards and happiness of achieving our goals to always maintain our motivation.

Remind ourselves daily about our goals and visualize the happiness we can enjoy from reaching those goals.

Habit

When attending the Declaration of Indonesia Bersinar 2015 at the commemoration of International Day Against Drugs, I was having a brief but interesting discussion with several participating guests about how addiction can destroy people's life.

Addiction can occur not only to the use of addictive substances but also to other common and ordinary steps which later developed into a habit. We more often give negative connotation when we heard the word habit. But good habits can also be developed from those simple, easy day-to-day steps - from the usual things we do. For example, a habit in exercise regularly, a habit in studying hard and lots other good habits, including the habit of positive thinking.

We've heard many stories about great success achieved by ordinary people because of their determination and habits. Jim Ryun in 1966 set the world records for the mile and the half-mile runs.  He ran six miles every morning before school and ran another six miles after school - every day, no matter what the weather. Before setting the world records, the habit and commitment shown in the 12 miles daily routine practices also made him the first high school student at the age 17 to run a mile in less than 4 minutes.

Time and efforts are indeed required to achieve success and happiness, but it is not as difficult as we often imagined. For example, by having the habit in setting goals in all aspects of our lives, we will be able to change our lives to become more meaningful. Remember that goal-setting is not a one time activity. It is a habit that we must have throughout our lives.

Begin today doing repetitive ordinary steps to form good habit and reap extraordinary achievements.

What's in a name that we call a BRAND ?

The great poet William Shakespeare said "what's in a name that we call a rose, by any other name it would smell as sweet". Is that statement still valid today? Will that still be that way in the future? Roses are indeed beautiful and smell good so the statement was of course true. But in a broader context we would universally agree that having the right name is very important. We can imagine the difficulties that we must experience in calling someone with a name for instance zxthpr.

Brands are our names in business. In its development there have been various ways in using brand to create perception and acceptance.The Brand even though intangible, this is what makes a business of value to its customers. The Brand is actually company’s primary product and one of major assets but companies often forget about this major asset.

Many companies failed to communicate their brand to their customers and prospects. There are however some basic principles as in naming humans that should be considered in the creation and communication of brands.  For any type of products and/or services that we offer to our customers, good brands that are easily remembered will generate higher recalls or even become top-of-mind and eventually higher actual purchases by customers.

Many views on generating better awareness of this legacy asset have been made by experts in business and marketing. For those seeking names for their brands, just remember this simple and easy to remember guideline :

Bold, Radiant, Affectionate, Nested, Different.

Fast Forward into the Future

Each of us has the same amount of time, rich or poor, young or old.  We often heard people said that time is money but do we really realize that without time we certainly could not spend the money to get what we want. Time is actually the most important ‘raw material’ in life. We can save any other type of raw materials for future use but not time. Time cannot be saved for later use. Time is irreplaceable as we never make back time once it is passed. It is not how much time we have, it is how we use it for our priorities.

No one can manage time but we can manage those less important things that take up our time. Goal-setting in all the six areas of life – financial and/or career, health, education, family, social and spiritual would enable us to visualize what we would be in the future – like a fast forward into the future. Create plan of actions. It would make us able in a way ‘save’ time as we will always know what to do next. Our effectiveness and productivity both as individual and as part of the larger community will be increased significantly when we have the habit of setting goals.

Just a gentle reminder that we need to be able to roll back to the present time. As our past is something we can learn from and our future will be determined by what we do at the present time. Start setting goals, create plan of actions and carry on with our activities according to their priorities and impacts to ourselves and others.

Why do Great Plans Go Wrong?

The beauty of a failure is - it’s an opportunity to start anew.

It is a chance to make improvements.

But if we are not doing careful and thorough analysis of what went wrong that caused the failure,

we might end-up having a nightmare

instead of getting the right tools

for fixing the problems.

It is more often than not that the factor that caused a failure was poor communication between departments and/or functions.

If we focus too much in our effort to solve the problems that caused the failure, our plan of actions that look great on papers might not be implementable.

We should find out whether or not communication inside our organization provides the opportunity for ideas, thoughts, opinions and information to be easily discussed.

Good communication is a catalyst for success.

JUST DO IT!

Everyone would want to be successful in career, business and life. Knowledge and effort would be required in order to achieve success in any field and we can work alone or together with others. Knowledge, skills and perseverance in the execution will determine how high the achievement would be.

However, why didn’t so many people who actually have good knowledge and skills able to produce monumental works, while those who have no special skills and even with just modest knowledge often produce works that they can be proud of?

 

In many interactions that I had with those people with skills and knowledge, it turns out that they delayed in doing something they had planned due to their fear of failing. Why did they still have fear even though they had often heard stories about people who repeatedly fell down but always rose again to reach their dreams and eventually they achieved remarkable success?

If you are one of those who often experience the fear of failure thus delaying steps required to achieve your dreams, immediately after you read this article review again the plan that you have carefully made and start taking those first steps with focus in what you are going to do and do it with high confidence. JUST DO IT!

Be a posi+ive person

From two different people last night and this afternoon I got the inspiration to write about positive attitude.

We certainly want to increase the positives and reduce as much as possible the negatives. Many people tried in various ways to improve their shortcomings. There is however, a possibility that they tend to focus too much on their negatives. 

There is a better way to get rid of the negatives by keep acquiring positive thoughts and/or by continue developing those competencies and capabilities we already have.

Remember this simple analogy: a glass of cold water continuously filled with warm water so that the cold water gradually be replaced would eventually turn into a glass of warm water.

www

A reminder to exercise every morning was sent to a group by a friend whose name starts with w. Two other friends in the same group whose names also start with w reminds me about www.

No, it is not as what most of you probably have just had in mind when you read it. www that I just mentioned stands for WORK WORK WORK. It is of course important that we do our best either as business persons or as employees to have good financial and career. But financial and career is just one areas of life. There are 5 other areas as defined by Paul J. Meyer in his TOTAL PERSON(R) - Physical & Health, Mental and Education, Family and Home, Social and Cultural, Spiritual and Ethical.
Set meaningful goals and action plans in all areas of life and work diligently to accomplish them.

Who is the best consultant?

In the congestion at the exit of Waru toll-gate on a business trip last week to Surabaya, a chat with the driver reminded me to write an article about the importance of having the right consultant.

There were various problems faced by companies and the contributing factors were also different. The congestion as one example has resulted in increased distribution costs as well as reduced customer service level which in the end would reduce the profit margin, is a real challenge for companies nowadays.

Often management in companies forgot to consider suggestions from their own employees at the operational level for their brainstorming process. In the effort to find solutions for the problems faced, many very useful suggestions could be gathered from the people at the operational level. An example that occured at a company which has made ​​plan to reduce the number of drivers to anticipate the increase in distribution costs. It was actually the valuable input on appropriate steps that should be taken by the company in overcoming the problems encountered from one of its drivers that really worked well.

The driver who was with me said the congestions that always occur just after the toll gate should not have happened if either the gate is not located there or the design of the road after the gate is not uphill. The logic is simple because for the loaded trucks would be more difficult to start moving again after payment of the toll-fee so that congestion is not inevitable.

From those examples mentioned above, we will be able to find lots of valuable suggestion from our employees doing the day-to-day operational activities to solve various problems in our company. Always remember to first find those consultants in our company who can be the source of ideas for management not only in solving problems but also in achieving better results.