Not so positive feed back?

Since many of us working in technology based industry and many of us are developing products and services, we must have been receiving different feedback from our clients or from other authorities on a consistent basis.

Many of us really struggle to handle those negative feedback or might have even felt disappointed and frustrated with it. We have been taught from childhood that life is meant for facing problems and overcoming challenges and because of that we swim against the flow of life. We may think we are in the right direction towards our personal and professional goals.

But in reality, life can be be absolutely phenomenal, It should be and it will be. We are meant to have an amazing life. There is no more space for 'bad feelings'. Yes, I know many of us reading this would disagree with the above cited sentences in this para. You might have heard from some freelance advisers – 'No Pain No Gain'. In fact, even this proverb may not be right. Let me prove it to you.

Main cause of our worries is the 'not so positive' thought on future. We may think, what if I don't make it, what if I don't fix it, what he would think if I do that. We need to clear all these thoughts of negativity. Then think about NOW - exactly this moment, this second of time. The negative feedback or any problem we are facing, will not affect us right NOW. When we could really concentrate on NOW - every pain, stress and every negativity will dissolve. When we realize nothing can disturb us NOW, our life would be more joyful. Of course, being in NOW doesn't mean to be irresponsible and never thinking about future goals. Rather we need to take every negative feedback as an opportunity to shine and act NOW. When we do so, we could also improve the quality of the services or products we are involved in. And for sure we would eventually achieve all our professional and personal goals. 

Always passionate in helping you.

Thank you, Jerin Jacob.

Get out of our comfort zone!

Getting out of our comfort zone is one of the primary actions we need to take when we are following our dreams. Now what is this comfort zone is all about?

I personally feel comfort zone is nothing but laziness to get out of bed, the unwillingness to stop wasting time watching TV rather than reading something beneficial for life, or not taking the right action even though we know that it is necessary. Or simply we could say just like floating in the water of life and going with the flow and going wherever it is headed to. And reaching the place where you must not want to be.

So my intervention here is to help you to get out of just floating in the water of life and to let you go where you want to reach in life. I feel it is my responsibility to let you aware about what we will miss in life if we don’t get out of our comfort zone.

First of all I am going to start with the things we are going to miss if we don’t get out of our comfort zone. You know that anyone who has achieved anything in life has always done this – getting out of the comfort zone. If we don’t follow our dreams and stayed in the comfort zone we definitely regret in life but that moment may be too late. We might be missing a wonderful life we deserve, we might be missing each and every dream we are capable of achieving, we might be losing the respect of the society, we must be missing the love of our family, more over we will feel uncomfortable to live by staying in the comfort zone which we felt is very safe and secure.

Now that I would like to share the story of Mr. Nick Vuichij . By that you could realize the benefits of getting out of our comfort zone. You might have heard the inspirational biography of Mr. Nick Vuichij – the founder of “Life without Limbs foundation”. He was born in Australia for the kind hearted couple. When he was born he was born with no arms and no legs. What an awful situation, even then his parents stood for him and brought him up. His parents decided to make him feel everything is normal. He was enrolled in a school not in a special school but with those who has arms and legs. But unfortunately at the age of seven he became so disappointed and frustrated about his life and was to kill himself. But at some point of time he decided to win not to fail in life. He decided to get out of his comfort zone; he decided to be self reliant in his life and to follow all his dreams.

My dear friends you know what after 14 year s without arms and legs he is not just living a normal life but I would say he is living an extraordinary life, He can eat his food himself, he can comp himself not just that he can swim, he can kick balls all in an amazing style and with a charming smile. It’s not over he now owns numerous businesses and he is one of the best entrepreneur and as I already said about his foundation “Life without Limbs” by which he is travelling all across the globe and sharing his life experience.

So what is the point here, Mr. Nick Vuichij decided and get out of his comfort zone in his small age despite of his physical inabilities.

So what are you looking for, I would say if he could do this then anyone could achieve anything. But only thing which is holding back us from our dream is we are scripted for being in the comfort zone. It is not our fault not the fault of our parents but I think it must be with the way we think towards life situations. If we start thinking right thoughts then we automatically start moving out of the comfort zone and would be enthusiastically follow our dreams.

Now the question is how could we think right thoughts?

It’s very simple we just want to decide to think right and tell ourselves -

“From now onwards I would think only good thoughts which are in harmony with my dreams” each and every time when we feel bad.

So change your thoughts it would change your actions and habits and eventually the good thoughts will transform your life. Before I wind up I would love to summarize the whole thing. You must have seen the sign board - “Keep right” in high ways when it is under construction or in repair. We are in a process of repairing our road to success so always keep in the right side, always keep right thoughts and follow the rules of success and YOU WILL DEFINITELY REACH YOUR DESTINATION. YOU WILL DEFINITELY ACHIEVE YOUR DREAMS.

Always passionate in helping you,

Thank you, Jerin Jacob.

Can anyone Lead?

I was introduced to the concept ‘Lead Without A Title’ by Robin Sharma, who has written numerous books including ‘The Monk who sold his Ferrari’; and he has been a mentor for NASA, IBM, Microsoft and Nike among others. Even though I have never got the privilege to read his books but I was fortunate enough to listen to his audio podcast in which he shares his insight on ‘Lead Without A Title’. I have been so excited about the concept from the day I first listened to it. Since excitement is contagious I am sure you also will feel it when you read on!

The concept ‘Lead Without A Title’ is nothing but to take control of our life and lead at every possible opportunity even without any title to hold. Let me be specific; when we consider an executive in an organization as per the concept we need to think and act like a CEO. We need to grow sales as a CEO would, we need to cut cost as a CEO would, we need to take part in reducing power consumption as a CEO would, we need to think about the customer care as a CEO would. This doesn’t mean we need to do the job of a CEO. Rather we should be the chief of our functional area and be ready to take responsibilities.

When we hear the gold plated word ‘leadership’ many of us may say ‘this is not my cup of coffee’ and may avoid it. If we do so, we will never excel in our personal and professional life, because those who have achieved anything in life were always ready to lead. What I am trying to convey is that it is easy to aspire to become the person you admire most. But until we start thinking the way successful people think (may be our role-models), we will never accomplish any of the goals we have set in our life.

Many of us may feel little uncomfortable to hear this. But the fact is this is the way successful people made positive remark in this world. Dare to lead; whenever we get an opportunity to lead, think like the man you aspire to become and respond to the life situation as he would. When we start to do that, we will automatically start to shine!

But for many of us it is not that easy to do as it is being said. We love to be in the comfort zone and never even try such concepts and resist change. The main reason behind this self depreciation is that our brain has been scripted like that for ages from the day we born. The good news is we could re-script our brain and can take charge of our life.

To do so and if we really want to ‘Lead Without A Title’ we need to invest our time to converse ourselves. Every one of us has a great leader sleeping deep inside us. Talk to ourselves and wake him/her up and wake the potential within. You might have been exposed to many self help lines and great leaders who walked upon earth have always said “change your thoughts”. All great concepts and ideas start from good thoughts. So start conjuring good thoughts and think right towards people and eventually we would become better leaders who could even ‘Lead Without A Title’.

In the process, we would also succeed in becoming better human beings.

In ‘your organization’, you may be a young web developer who might have joined a month ago, may be a senior guy in the same discipline, may be a Adobe Flash based game developer, may be a front office executive, may be a trainee, may be an office cleaning staff, who ever you are; any one can ‘Lead Without A Title’. Last week in our organization we won a trophy as part of the Onam celebrations. The team which made it happen was terrific. They did it with passion and each one of them lead their part wonderfully well. You could find such lot of examples in your organization also the people with passion and purpose doing exceptionally well. That means we are born leaders; but we need to realize it and be persistent on it.

My version of ‘Lead Without A Title’ is doing our job with full responsibility and passion. Now that we have got a basic idea about 'Lead Without A Title'. But naturally may feel insecure as I am, to do something exceptional and extraordinary. The interesting fact is, we could define our own ways of 'Lead Without A Title'. There are no hard and fast rules to do this and if we look for it we could find a leader deep inside each one of us.

So, on this day, we each one of us need totake that wonderful decision to ‘Lead Without A Title’ each and every moment. Most importantly when we lead; do it in style and with a smile :-).

Please do remember to

1. Take responsibility

2. Be passionate

3. Appreciate little wins

4. Innovate

Let us lead together!


Always passionate in helping you.
Thank you, Jerin Jacob. 

Moral Authority

The world’s no. #1 authority in mentoring Steven R Covey preaches that each one of us has four basic dimensions in our life.

• Body

• Mind

• Heart and

• Spirit

In order to achieve anything worthwhile, we need to set balance in this four dimensions of our life. Since this article's intervention is nothing but to share some information to improve the quality of our professional life. I would prefer to relate this dimensions obviously to our work life.

As per Steven Covey, we need to have four basic qualities to do something exceptional in our vocation. The qualities are

Discipline – that's for the Body

Vision – that's for the Mind

Passion – that's for the Heart

Conscience – that's for the Spirit

In fact, if our intention is to make a positive remark we need to really give greater importance to the fourth paradigm. If we neglect 'Conscience' then even if we are passionate, visionary and disciplined the result may not be a positive one. For example,

We could be regularly irregular to reach office – Disciplined! :)

We could have vision but which is against/misleading from Company's vision. - Visionary!

We could engage passionately in something

which we are not suppose to do for the Company - Passionate!

End result of the above doings would definitely bring negative undesired results.

So Conscience is very important and should go hand in hand with the other #3. ie, - Discipline, Vision and Passion.

Look back to History and consider Gandhiji and Hitler; what separates the two?. Both were visionaries, both were passionate about their people and both were disciplined. But conscience is the one thing that separates Ghandhiji from Hitler. Ghandhiji fought for Indian independence and his weapon was non-violence. He stood for us and led the independence struggle and never forgot to respect our opponents also.

He was the real leader. Ghandhiji's leadership was moral. Even then he took a very vital role in Indian independence he never held a position. He was never elected to any assembly. By considering Ghandhiji's insightful life we can compare Management and Leadership.

That is “Management is formal authority”, “Management is a position”

But “Leadership is moral authority” “Leadership is a choice”.

The point is, when we are disciplined, visionaries, passionate and most importantly we drive by conscience we will definitely make progress. We all could make a positive choice now, to satisfy our spirit – ie, do only those things which we may not feel guilt about. This choice can change our destiny and in turn our organization's to a very positive one.

Some one once said “Service is the rent that we pay for the privilege of living upon this earth”. In fact if we need to have that service mentality we need to drive each day with conscience. Yeah, I know many of us may think about the practicality. I would say if you could read the article this long, you are passionate in learning from anywhere or from anything :). To prove the practicality of these dimensions I suggest you to just stop reading for a moment and think about your life still now.

Think about the above four dimensions in your Life.

…

…

Have you really thought on it?

…

…

If you had really made a thought on my above request. I am sure you must have realized that whatever you have achieved were unaware/aware application of these four qualities.

So it is really possible for each one of us to lead with moral authority. Interestingly, if you have really stopped a while and thought about the things I had requested for. You have got another proof that you are living with conscience.

This article is simply meant to reaffirm yourself or to make you realize your greatness inside you. Let us contribute together our full potential to our organization. But remember to do things with conscience, with passion, with discipline and with a long term vision.

Always passionate in helping you.

Thank you, Jerin Jacob.