Dreams to Destination

We all have dreams. According to me, life without dreams will be boring. And nobody can stop anyone from dreaming. It is the birth right of every human being. God has given this beautiful gift to the human beings that they can dream. Here I am not talking about the dream that we see while sleeping but the dreams that don’t let us sleep; the dreams that we see during the day; the dreams that force us to work hard to achieve something big.

Dreams can be as big as your imagination. And there is no limit to our imagination. Napoleon wrote, "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve”. The problem with the people from middle class, lower middle class and poor people is that their dreams are too low. The constraints and limitations in their life probably don’t let them fly on the wings of dreams. But the fact is that even the poor people dream. The difference is that their dreams are limited to the next higher orbit of prosperity or capability. Their imagination can take them to that level only. An illiterate poor farmer’s son staying in a village probably dreams of just passing the matriculation examination and getting a small job in a government office. Or he may dream of very good rain in the next season and a bumper crop so that his father can get him a new bicycle. The son of a Havaldar from army just dreams of becoming a commissioned officer in the Army. There is nothing wrong in this. But the fact is that nobody stops them from dreaming much higher; much bigger.

There are stories of a very large number of people across the world who were of a very mediocre or even poor background and yet they achieved great heights. A bit of deep study will reveal that all these people had great dreams. Even if they had lower level of dreams, they kept on raising the bar every time they achieved what they wanted. There was insatiable intense hunger in their belly to achieve more and more. There is another category of people who become stagnant the moment they achieve their dream even half way. They call themselves highly satisfied people, but actually it is inertia that starts ruling their mind and they become stagnant. Their growth stops there only.

What we need is that we should have real high dreams, which many may feel as unimaginable for you. Don’t worry about other people even if they laugh at you. Convert these dreams into strong desire and decide a direction for yourself to start moving in the direction of your dream. And this direction has to be followed with full dedication, determination and discipline. Most of the time your dream may look too distant and therefore it may be a bit vague too. So breakup your dream into small deadlines, may be a large number of them. These deadlines could be called your milestones on the way to your ultimate dream. They are your short term goals. Visualize yourself achieving these goals and motivate yourself for action in that direction through auto suggestion.

These goals are short term and therefore look within reach and you can work hard to achieve them. Just remember that these goals should be SMART goals. The SMART here stands for Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Relevant and Time bound. Any goal that you set for yourself and it has these five characteristics, it is very highly likely that you shall achieve that. You keep achieving these small deadlines or goals one after the other and it will take you nearer and nearer to your ultimate cherished dream, your ultimate destination. Let us assume that even if you are not able to achieve the ultimate dream but you have achieved some milestones in that direction. You have obviously moved nearer to your destination. That itself is a great achievement of having a dream and then following it with a strong desire, with a direction and following it with dedication, determination and discipline to reach somewhere close to your destination.

In fact, you can have a set of dreams in different aspects of life. Some dreams can be related to your family, some related to financial prosperity and some may be related to your career. Once you have achieved a dream, you can always add the new ones.

You must always remember that a dream with action is Commitment and a dream with inaction is nothing but Hallucination. Build a Dream and the Dream will build you.

Appreciation: Yes, Flattery: No

Dear Friends,

I learnt the art of appreciation and its importance from my mother since my childhood. I assure you that it has done wonders for me in my college as well as 34 years of my career life in different roles. The only thing is that appreciation has to be sincere and it should come from the core of one’s heart. Otherwise, it is no more appreciation but flattery.

A sincere appreciation has no motive while flattery has a selfish motive. Appreciation is universally admired and puts the giver at a higher pedestal and the receiver also becomes your admirer while the flattery is universally condemned and the receiver may like it for a moment but shall understand the devious nature of the giver very soon. In the long run, flattery does more harm than good.

Flattery is always shallow and it is ought to fail and it usually does. Flattery will eventually get you into trouble if you pass it to someone else.

So appreciation: always and flattery: never.

We do a lot for our children. We get them expensive clothes, costly toys and give them the best of the food as nourishment for their bodies. But have you ever tried to nourish their self esteem? Most of us ignore and forget to give them kind words of appreciation that would be music for their ears for days, weeks, months and even years. The same holds true for your friends, colleagues and your employees and even your spouse. Your family life will also be much smoother if you follow this art of appreciation, the sincere appreciation. There can’t be better nourishment for the self-esteem of anyone than a word of sincere appreciation.

In our interpersonal relations we should never forget that all our associates are human beings and they are all hungry for appreciation. One of the most neglected virtues of our daily existence is appreciation. Somehow, we neglect to praise our son or daughter, whenever he or she does a good job. We take their minor achievements for granted and wait for big achievements to happen. But big achievements will come only if they are being nourished and motivated even for their baby steps in the right direction. Nothing pleases children more than this kind of parental interest and approval with a word of appreciation and a pat on their back.

Honest appreciation will get you results even from very average employees in your organization whereas criticism and ridicule is bound to fail. Under the extreme circumstances, even if you have to reprimand any employee, do it in private. Call him or her to your cabin and blast if required as one of the exceptional show of anger though you may not be actually angry at heart. Very rarely for some people, you may have to demonstrate your anger but it should be as rare as possible and that too in private. However, whenever you have to praise someone, do it in public and do it lavishly so that the words of praise for one are known to everybody in the organization and it will motivate others too. And remember that this should be a sincere appreciation and one should never stoop to flattery because that is short lived and ultimately harmful for any organization.

                                                                             

Keep Striving for Excellence

With warm wishes, 

Veerendra Jaitly

CEO: www.CcubeConsultants.com

2/101 Beverly Park, Sector-22

Dwarka, New Delhi-110077, India