By the time you reach your goals, your goals change. You go after them and the cycle repeats. This is not wrong but forgetting to enjoy the journey and treating that as the destination can help make this process more enjoyable. Think about your last big and successful project. If I ask you what you remember most about the project, it will rarely be what really happened when you just completed the project. Most people remember several memorable moments throughout the journey – good and bad. If this is the case, why not enjoy what you are going through in your current project(s)?

When your friends have a problem, it looks so easy. Sometimes you wonder why your friends are even calling them “problems.” It is true the other way around too. Your problems will look simpler for your friends. Rather than trying to analyze this, you can actually try to take advantage of this by simply asking for help to solve your problems or working with a mentor.

This one rule has helped me go and try the most insane things in my life (in a good way.) Think about it. When you don’t have something and you want to get it, the first thing to remember is that you don’t have it yet. So you can’t lose it. If you try and not get what you want, you won’t be worse than where you are now today. So, most often trying only has an upside (except for the opportunity cost for the time) So why not try rather than not try?

Just like you can’t have a baby in less than 9 months even if try to place a “rush” order with GOD, long-term relationhips take a long time to build. If you are young, you have a huge competitive advantage if you start building your network right now. If you are old, it’s never too late to start anytime.

If you don’t step out of your home, you may not have the risk of meeting with an accident but you don’t go anywhere either. They say risk and reward go together. One thing to remember is that taking a risk and being irresponsible are two separate things. I am not advising you to take the latter and label it as risk. Any action (or inacation) in your life has consequences associated with it. If you are irresponsible, there are consequences and they are probably bad ones.

During our breakfast meeting today, Jeanne Urich at Adexta had a comment on this. She said many times it is just that “the rising tide lifts all boats.” What happened in the valley between 1997 – 2000 was an aberration. Almost everyone was successful not because they were smart but because the market was so hot that people were buying anything and everything. Salespeople had become order takers. If someone was successful during that period and was attributing that success to solely his or her smartness, there would be a problem. You should develop the wisdom to know what you get from luck or smartness or a combination of both.

In the valley, if all the ideas that are floating become companies, I am sure there will be a few hundred companies created everyday. Having an idea and having an ability to execute on an idea are two different things. Think about it. How much effort do you need to put in to think about a new idea? How much risk do you have to take to continue to just “think” about an idea? Now compare that with what it takes to execute on an idea. Its a world of difference.

People complain to me about bad bosses, company culture and economy and so many things. However, the biggest enemy that is making it hard to “win” is within themselves. If you can religiously keep the promises that you make to yourself, you will be a “different” person very soon. I have wrote about this before here.

Several leaders say that they don’t get bad news easily. Only good news travels to them fast. When I ask them to remember those instances when bad news DID travel to them what was their reaction, there is a big silence. If you shoot the messenger when the message is bad, naturally the messenger is careful next time. When you don’t hear bad news quickly, think about where the resistance points are and try to clear the them first.

I have wrote about this before too but it is worth re-visiting. When I ask people what are the chances that all their decisions will be right in the upcoming year, none of tell me 100%. Finally we settle down to 50-50 – meaning they are OK to have 50% of their decisions turn out to be right and 50% of their decisions turn out to be wrong. This is just fair. This will lead to some successes and some failures. At the concept level, people agree with this but when they ACTUALLY fail in something, they can’t take it. When we go back to statistics, they say that it is true that 50% of the time they would fail. But they really can’t handle failure.

How much time you spend to get back on your feet after a failure is a key indicator of how fast you will succeed. Agreed that you need to analyze what led to the failure and learn from it but if you are in an endless loop of blame and regret, it won’t help.