Make Your Bed

Admiral William H. McRaven delivered a commencement address to the graduates of The University of Texas at Austin on May 17, 2014. It's been almost 37 years to the day that he graduated from University of Texas. The University's slogan is, “What starts here changes the world.” 

Admiral William H. McRaven in his address said

  “ If You Want To Change The World, Start Off By Making Your Bed”. …

I have been a Navy SEAL for 36 years. But it all began when I left University of Texas for Basic SEAL training in Coronado, California. Basic SEAL training is six months of long torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacles courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep and always being cold, wet and miserable. It is six months of being constantly harrassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy SEAL.

Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was your bed. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack—rack—that’s Navy talk for bed.

It was a simple task—mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle hardened SEALs—but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.

If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right. And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

If you want to change the world … start off your day by making your bed ,i.e start each day with a task completed..

Source: “Make Your Bed” by Admiral William H. McRaven

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Compound Effect..

Compound Effect is based on the principle that decisions shape your destiny. Little, everyday decisions will either take you to the life you desire or to disaster by default. 

“The Compound Effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices.”

“Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCE”

Daren Hardy the author of Compound Effect explains the principle through following ideas

a.  A single penny that doubles every day for 31 days has a larger payoff than taking $3 million in cash today.

b.  Or take three friends who start off in relatively the same place—one makes no changes (good or bad), one adds a weekly beer to his diet and watches TV on his downtime, another makes some small changes like eliminating 200 calories a day and reading 10 pages of a good book daily… Which of these three people do you think end up in a better place two years down the road? 

Choices are at the root of every one of your results. Each choice starts a behavior that over time becomes a habit.

The most challenging aspect of the Compound Effect is that we have to keep working away for a while, consistently and efficiently, before we can begin to see the payoff.

Source:  “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy  

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Always say less than necessary

“Be particularly careful with sarcasm: The momentary satisfaction you gain with your biting words will be outweighed by the price you pay.”

In 1825, Czar Nicholas I, ascended the throne of Russia. A rebellion immediately broke out, led by liberals demanding that the country modernise — that its industries and civil structures catch up with the rest of Europe.

Brutally crushing this rebellion (the Decemberist Uprising), Nicholas I sentenced one of its leaders, Kondraty Ryleyev, to death. On the day of the execution, Ryleyev stood on the gallows, the noose around his neck. The trapdoor opened...but as Ryleyev dangled, the rope broke, dashing him to the ground.

At the time, events like this were considered signs of providence or heavenly will, and a man saved from execution this way was usually pardoned. As Ryleyev got to his feet, bruised and dirtied but believing his neck had been saved, he called out to the crowd, “You see, in Russia they don’t know how to do anything properly, not even how to make rope!”

A mesenger immediately went to the Winter Palace with news of the failed hanging. Vexed by this disappointing turnabout, Nicholas I nevertheless began to sign the pardon.

But then: “Did Ryleyev say anything after this miracle?” the Czar asked the messenger. “Sire,” the messenger replied, “he said in Russia they don’t even know how to make rope”. “In that case”, said the Czar, “let us prove the contrary”, and he tore up the pardon. The next day Ryleyev was hanged again. This time the rope did not break.

A lesson from 48 laws of power..

“When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinx-like. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.”

Source:  “The 48 Laws Of Power" by Robert Greene 

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Extreme Ownership

Own everything in your world, and blame no one else....

Sent to the most violent battlefield in Iraq, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s SEAL task unit faced a seemingly impossible mission: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a city deemed “all but lost.” In gripping firsthand accounts of heroism, tragic loss, and hard-won victories in SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser, they learned that leadership—at every level—is the most important factor in whether a team succeeds or fails. Task Unit Bruiser became the most highly-decorated special operations unit of the Iraq War.

Willink and Babin returned home from deployment and instituted SEAL leadership training that helped forge the next generation of SEAL leaders. After departing the SEAL Teams, they launched Echelon Front, a company that teaches these same leadership principles to businesses and organizations.

If there is anybody to learn leadership principles from, it would be these gentlemen.

 “For all the definitions, descriptions, and characterizations of leaders, there are only two that matter: effective and ineffective. Effective leaders lead successful teams that accomplish their mission and win. Ineffective leaders do not. And the only way to  become effective is to take…Extreme Ownership ”

The basic idea is that leaders are responsible for every thing that is in or somehow impacts their world. It’s easy to assign blame to outside circumstances or other people (subordinates, superiors, peers), but Extreme Ownership removes those excuses.

Source : “Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win ” by Jocko Willink

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One Small Step …

One small step at a time is  about the big idea of “Kaizen”, which is Japanese for “taking small steps to continual improvement.”

Kaizen is an ancient philosophy captured in this powerful statement from the Tao Te Ching: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Though it is rooted in ancient philosophy, it is just as practical and effective when applied to our hectic modern lives. Japanese corporations have long used the gentle technique of kaizen to achieve their business goals and maintain excellence. Now this elegant strategy can help you realize your personal dreams.

Kaizen has two definitions:

a) using very small steps to improve a habit, a process, or product.

b) using very small moments to inspire new products and inventions.

This philosophy of small steps toward improvement was introduced to Japan after the war, when General Douglas MacArthur’s occupation forces began to rebuild that devastated country.

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens—and when it happens, it lasts.” 

—John Wooden, one of the most successful coaches in the history of college basketball

Just take one small step at a time for everlasting result ....

Source : “One Small Step Can Change Your Life” by  ROBERT MAURER

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Fly Free Fly High

One seagull, dreams of flying better than a seagull has ever flown, instead of spending his days looking for scraps of food.

“Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight—how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly…This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one’s self popular with other birds.”-  Richard Bach

There is one seagull in a flock, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, who cares a lot less about scrounging for food than the other gulls, and cares more about learning how to fly well. He gets thrills from figuring out how to fly faster and more dangerously than any gull has flown before. He crashes a lot, but always gets up, fluffs his feathers, and begins again. The other gulls in the flock don't understand why he cares at all about this, and the elders take his determination in this as a sign that he does not care about the right things. They declare him an Outcast. He pleads, but they ignore him and send him away. He gets to a ‘Heaven’, how he call it, he finds other seagulls, who like flying like he does. Chiang (He is one bird who is in ‘Heaven’ and he teaches Jonathan to ‘fly’)  teaches him to fly and Jonathan comes closer and closer to perfection. After practising some time he wants to return to the earth to teach other seagulls who would want to. He soon found several good flight students. Fletcher Gull (He is also a very questioning seagull who thinks that there must be more in life then just thinking of how to get food) was one of them, he has a desire to learn to fly. Jonathan teaches Fletcher to fly like Chiang has told him. Fletcher soon develops enough to take Jonathan’s place as an inspired, powerful teacher, and so Jonathan moves on to a higher level of consciousness.

To fly high and to fly free one must try to achieve excellence.

And the price needs to be paid for excellence. Excellence requires leaving the flock, being alone, and practising. And the practice requires "fierce concentration."

"You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past"-  Richard Bach

Source : “Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A Story” — Richard Bach

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The Secret of Achieving More with Less

 The secret in simple terms as per  Richard Koch ~~

  “Do more of what makes best use of time and money.”

You have probably observed that often the majority of output stem from the minority of input. It could happen in your business when the majority of sales come from a little subset of your products. Often this ratio is around, but not limited to 20% and 80%.

People expect life to be fair and balanced, but it’s not. That’s why it’s called the 80/20 rule or principle. Aka the Pareto principle, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity.

“The 80/20 Principle tells us that, at any one point, a majority of any phenomenon will be explained or caused by a minority of the actors participating in the phenomenon, Eighty percent of the results come from the 20 percent of the causes, A few things are important, most are not.” ~~ Richard Koch

 Taken literally, this means that, for example, 80 per cent of what you achieve in your job comes from 20 per cent of the time spent. Thus for all practical purposes, four-fifths of the effort—a dominant part of it—is largely irrelevant. This is contrary to what people normally expect. So the 80/20 Principle states that there is an inbuilt imbalance between causes and results, inputs and outputs, and effort and reward. A good benchmark for this imbalance is provided by  the 80/20 relationship: a typical pattern will show that 80 per cent of outputs result from 20 per cent of inputs; that 80 per cent of consequences flow from 20 per cent of causes; or that 80 per cent of results come from 20 per cent of effort.

“The way to create something great is to create something simple.” ― Richard Koch

“Strive for excellence in few things, rather than good performance in many.” — Richard Koch

Source : “The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Achieving More with Less”  — Richard Koch

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Sense of Purpose

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” 
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” 
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

 Frankl was a psychologist, and he founded a school of psychology called Logotherapy .Viktor Frankl was also a holocaust survivor, and this in so many ways informed his work. One might think that this was the most horrible experience of Viktor Frankl’s life, and in many ways that was true. Frankl was trained in psychology and neurology, and had achieved some renown when the Nazi’s sent him to Auschwitz in 1944. It was a most horrible and dehumanizing experience. 

Frankl survived the experience of a concentration camp because he realized that there was an important task he personally needed to complete: the completion of a manuscript he had been working on. That manuscript later became one of the most influential book of the post-war period: Man’s Search for Meaning, a book that explains the basis for his psychological theory, called Logotherapy, which holds that a fundamental basis for psychological and spiritual health is a sense of purpose.

Frankl noticed that there was a difference among those who survived and those who did not: a sense of purpose.

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source:  “ Man’s Search for Meaning " by Viktor Frankl

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The dilemma “ be strong or be intellegent”

“According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.”
 — Leon C. Megginson, Civilisation Past and Present, 1963

The thing that separates us humans from other animals is that we constantly change into new forms, new avatars. We are sad, we are happy, we are emotional, and we are angry. We communicate through different languages, we do different kinds of work, and we deal with different kind of people differently. Effectively, we keep on changing ourselves as per the demands of time and situation.

In fact, success in life depends largely on whether we are able to change ourselves with changing times.

If we are flexible and formless – like water – taking the form of whatever is around us, we gain power and succeed against those who rigidly hold on to their ground.

Despite this, when it comes to our ideas – especially when we have only one – we rigidly hold on to them.

This is very much like Henry Ford who supposedly said, “People can have the Model T in any colour – so long as it’s black.” This nearly ruined Ford Motors Company in the 1920s, because while Mr. Ford was in love with his idea of “only black Model T” cars, Americans were shifting to bigger, faster, fancier, and brightly painted automobiles.

Source:  “Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin 

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Art of work… ?

There was a painter named Peter Paul Rubens who found himself inundated with requests for paintings. To alleviate this, he created a system. He employed dozens of extremely talented painters, one specializing in robes, another in backgrounds, and so on. He created a vast production line in which a large number of canvases would be worked on at the same time.

When an important client would visit he would ask all his painters to leave for the day. Rubens would work at an incredible pace, with unbelievable energy. The client would leave in awe of this prodigious man, who could paint so many masterpieces in so short a time.  

Another story centers around a young Serbian scientist named Nicola Tesla and US inventor Thomas Edison. The significance of this story is contained within the lessons of how Nikola Tesla was taken advantage of and how he is the real inventor of many critical inventions to the technological advancement of our society, such as AC power system. This story illustrates how Edison observed this law and Tesla became the transgression. 

When Tesla met Edison in New York, the famous inventor hired him immediately. Tesla worked 18 hour days finding ways to improve the primitive Edison dynamos. Finally, Edison offered him a big reward to redesign them completely — a monumental task that could last years without success. Tesla finally did it, as he went to Edison to break the good news and claim his big reward. Edison told Tesla, “you don’t understand our American humor!”, offering him a small raise instead.

A lesson from 48 laws of power..

“Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.”

Source:  “The 48 Laws Of Power" by Robert Greene 

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