Personal Mastery

MLRITM Graduation Day – 2021

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It’s a great honor and a humble experience being the Guest of Honour at the Graduation Ceremony of 500+ BTech and B Pharmacy graduates at Marri Laxman Reddy Institute of Technology and Management, Hyderabad. Best wishes to all the students !!

About 20 years ago, I was standing on the other side as I received my post-graduation (M.Sc Physics) certificate and Gold Medal from the then Vice-Chancellor of Acharya Nagarjuna University, Dr. L. Venugopal Reddy, and Governor of the combined state of Andhra Pradesh, Dr. C. Rangarajan.

 

Atomic Habits

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I have taken ten days’ vacation during the 2020 Christmas break. And at the same time, I have received the Atomic Habits book from a secret Santa in my office. This book was on my to-do list for a very long time. It might be because of Internet pressure or because I have read many reviews about this book over the last year.  I went ahead and studied the book and was blown away by the wisdom, tips, and tricks provided in the book by the world’s renowned habits expert James Clear. It is his first book, and he sold more than three million copies within the first year of releasing the book.
In any organization, employees look forward to organizations’ interest in investing time and effort in contributing to their personal and professional growth. As part of this initiative, EnergyTech Global has a platform called the “EQUIP – People & Possibilities” Talk Series. It is a monthly interactive session presented by different teams to share their day to day activities, learnings, tools & technologies. Sharing is caring, and adding value to others is the essence of equipping each other. This time, it was my turn to add value to people through EQUIP series, and I decided to share my newfound knowledge about Atomic Habits. In this video, I have given a detour of the book Atomic Habits by James Clear. I am sure that you will feel good for investing an hour of your time and watching this video.

 

Five Big Ideas

1. Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. – 1% tiny improvement every day. 

2. If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead. – Goals Vs. Systems. 

3. The most effective way to change your habits is to focus not on what you want to achieve but on who you wish to become. – Outcome-based habit Vs. Identity-based habit.

4. Priming your environment will help you shape your good habits quickly and break your bad habits.

5. The 4 laws of behavior change is a simple set of rules we can use to build better habits. They are (a) make it obvious, (b) make it attractive, (c) make it easy, and (d) make it satisfying.

Make 2021 Your Best Year

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Dear Friend,

I’m thrilled that you have decided to spend a few minutes of your time reading this article on my blog. I promise to add value to you and help you grow in 2021, provided if you can stay for a few more minutes and complete reading this article till the end. 

I am now forty-three years old, and I am more certain about a few things than I was at thirty. I am now getting a better handle on my growth and what matters the most. I have realized that growth happens daily but not in a day. Ever since I learned this concept, I have started teaching this to people working with me as the first cab of the rank activity. 

My mentor John Maxwell once said that if he could come to my house and spend a couple of days with me, he would tell me whether I would be successful and what direction my life is headed. He is right because,

–> Growth happens daily, not in a day.

–> We will never change our lives until we change something we do daily. 

–> We overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do in several days.

–> We overestimate the event and underestimate the process.

–> We fail to realize that either pay now and play later or play now and pay later. But either way, we are going to pay. In other words, if we work hard now, then we will receive rewards in the future.  

–> We underestimate the compounding effect of consistency. If we get one percent better each day for one year, we’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time we’re done. Conversely, if we get one percent worse each day for one year, we will decline nearly down to zero.

Our success lies in the daily decisions that we take on daily practices that we make. Every fulfilled dream occurred because of dedication to the process. Neither success nor failure doesn’t occur suddenly in someone’s life. It happens as a result of what we do daily. 

My mentor taught me how to set aside some time to review my past year every year. He told me that it’s a habit that he has developed over the years, and it’s one of the biggest in terms of setting him up for his success. I started practicing it for a couple of years and started seeing results in my life. 

I strongly encourage you to ask yourself these questions:

–> What wins do you need to celebrate from the last 12 months?

–> Can you write an inventory of your success, wins, achievements, and special moments during the last 12 months?

–> What are the three best lessons you learned from the past 12 months?

–> Which relationships are helping you grow and which ones aren’t?

–> What outcomes did your choices produce during the last 12 months?

–> What activities deserve more of your time and fuel, and what deserves less during the next 12 months?

–> What are your top 5 goals for the next year?

–> What is your detailed plan to achieve your top 5 goals identified for the next year?

I know that 2020 was a difficult year for most of us due to the pandemic, and I am glad we sailed through it. I am positive that 2021 holds great things for all of us. Why the hesitation in listing what you want to achieve in 2021 and the kind of systems and habits you would like to develop to reach your goals? Once you understand the power of consistency in building habits that make you a better person, you will stop asking how long it will take and start asking how far I can go? 

–>The goal is not to read a book; the goal is to become a reader.

–>The goal is not to run a marathon; the goal is to become a runner.

–>The goal is not to learn an instrument; the goal is to become a musician.

–>The goal is not to lose 10 Kgs in the next 12 months. The goal is to regain your health for the rest of your life.

This year, focus on the identity that you want to build for yourself. If so, I encourage you to spend time to reflect, review and design your plan for 2021. I’m excited for you as you begin this review process, and I guarantee you’ll make 2021 a better year in your life!

Your friend,

Mr. Kishore Borra

Before you go…

If you enjoyed this post, you would love my book, “Don’t Coast: Accelerate Your Personal and Professional Growth.”

Grab your copy from the below links:

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The danger of being goal focused

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In the Bible, Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan in the Gospel of Luke. It is about a traveler who is stripped of clothing, beaten, and left half dead alongside the road. First, a Jewish priest and then a Levite comes by, but both avoid the man. Finally, a Samaritan happens upon the traveler. Samaritans and Jews despised each other, but the Samaritan helps the injured man. Jesus is described as telling the parable in response to a lawyer’s question, “And who is my neighbor?”. The conclusion is that the neighbor figure in the parable is the one who shows mercy to the injured fellow man—that is, the Samaritan.

 

Inspired by the Good Samaritan parable, Princeton University Theological school experimented in the 1970s. They divided students into various groups and given them the assignment to prepare a sermon on the Good Samaritan. Once the assignment was completed, the students were told to go to different campus building rooms to present their sermons.  

On the day of the presentations, all the groups were asked to meet in one big hall. For the first group, the professor gave them the details of their presentation room and asked them to deliver the presentation to the audience waiting in the room. For the next few batches, they did something interesting; they apologized and told them that they are running late, and each batch was expected to start the presentation a few minutes ago. They asked them to hurry and told them that it shouldn’t take long to reach the room, and hence the remaining batches of students rushed to their respective rooms. 

On the way, they planted an actor on the campus who is just like the wounded traveler in the Good Samaritan parable. The actor was lying on the ground, hurt and moaning in pain, screaming and crying out. An interesting thing was observed. Every batch went right past the person in need to give the presentation on helping a person in need without paying attention to the person in need. Some of them stepped over the person in pain and went running towards their allocated presentation rooms. 

It is what I call the danger of being goal focussed and goal-oriented.  All the students had a goal to deliver a presentation as per their allocated schedule. Therefore they are so one-sided and narrow-minded and so focused on their goal that they missed the bigger picture and perspective of what they should have been doing in the first place. It is often a danger of goals.

Call to action …

Therefore think about focussing more on our systems than on our goals. 

  • If you are a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.
  • If you’re a coach, your goal might be to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at practice every day. 
  • If you’re a musician, your goal might be to play a new piece. Your system is how often you practice and your method for receiving feedback from your instructor.
  • If you’re a software engineer, your goal might be to spend 30 minutes every day to keep you up to date and master the technologies that you are associated with.
  • If you’re a personal development trainer, your goal is every day to read, file, think, and write for your future presentations.

I am not advocating that goals are useless. I am simply saying that goals are about the results we want to achieve, and systems are about the processes that lead us to those results. 

Goals are certainly good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress. 

Before you go…

If you enjoyed this post, you would love my new book, “Don’t Coast: Accelerate Your Personal and Professional Growth.”

Grab your copy from the below links:

Please subscribe to my social media channels:

Growth comes from discomfort !!

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There is a wonderful story that I heard about lobsters. Do you know how lobsters grow? A lobster is a very soft tissue animal, and it forms a hard shell for its protection. But the hardshell does not grow. As the lobster grows, the shell gets tighter and tighter. What happens is the lobster gets to the point where it is uncomfortable in its shell because the shell is too small and it is stuck in that constricting shell. It climbs under a rock or someplace safe and sheds the shell and start growing a new one and finally comes out of the rock. Later, when it grows more, its again gets uncomfortable, goes to a safe place and sheds the shell and grows a new shell. The stimulus for the lobster to grow new shell is its discomfort. Lobster waits until it is uncomfortable, and then it decides to grow, and it repeats it multiple times as it grows bigger and bigger.

Growth and comfort do not coexist. Comfort zones are most often expanded through discomfort. Therefore we have to make ourselves uncomfortable to grow. T. Harv Eker said “Nobody ever died of discomfort, yet living in the name of comfort has killed more ideas, more opportunities, more actions, and more growth than everything else combined. Comfort kills!”. Too many of us are so afraid of being uncomfortable that we don’t grow as much as we could. When I was asked to leave my well-paying job with awesome international travel opportunities, I took a massive risk to do something that would potentially make me very uncomfortable. It was my willingness to being uncomfortable that led to my growth. My willingness to grow has continuously opened up a lot of doors for me in life. I have made growth as the number one priority in my life.

Call to action …

Few people enjoy the feeling of being uncomfortable. The challenge is to get past that initial feeling of wanting to return to the norm, so you can grow and benefit from that discomfort. Are you willing to put yourselves in an uncomfortable position? Most of us find ourselves in an uncomfortable position all the time by accident. We all know that we don’t learn anything when things go right, and we only learn things when they go wrong. Things go wrong for all of us all the time, and we all say we would never want to go through that pain again. However, we all agree that its a growth opportunity.  What if you willingly put yourself in those positions. Imagine the speed of growth that could be achieved when you direct yourself into discomfort. Realise that times of stress are signals for growth.

Before you go…

If you enjoyed this post, you will love my new book, “Don’t Coast: Accelerate Your Personal and Professional Growth”.

Grab your copy from the below links:

Please subscribe to my social media channels: