3 Invaluable Abilities

When you hear the word “work”, you probably imagine sitting in front of computer, or cutting grass in the front yard. In fact, there are three important aspects that lots of people don’t realize

1. Ability to Pay Attention

Paying a good attention requires a lot of efforts, To do it right, you have to listen, and maintain proper eye contact. That’s not all, you will also need to think and digest about those things you are hearing at that moment. On another note, even you have this urge to cut the conversation and speak, you may not. You have to wait your turn for giving comments or to ask something back.

2. Ability to Admit

Admitting that you don’t understand is a way to gain additional information or knowledge. We can have this by asking, but admitting that you need help to finish a job or project that you run is even more important.

Many people do not want to admit they have messed up. They worry that it will ruin their perfect images, result in more works for them, or being blamed by others. Nevertheless, keeping on pretending as the perfect one makes us incapable of learning and growing.

3. Ability to Show Gratitude

Thanking someone for helping us should not be something that has to be told. It should be spontaneous. They just helped us and they will know the sincere-ness in our gratitude. There’s been a lot of stories about decent people that return lost wallet, saving lives, didn’t get any gratitude at all.

Sometimes, however funny it sounds, people feel embarrassed that they need help or have just lost something, but that should not block their way to show their form of appreciation.

5 Ways To Move On With Your Life

Ever experience fatal mistake for once in your lifetime? So tremendous and caused many damages? Felt like there’s no cure and nothing we can do to amend it? The fact is, you are not alone. Everybody messed up big time at least once in their life. Think about one of these examples. Perhaps it rings a bell.

1. Drug and/or booze addicts
2. Money laundry
3. Cheating on spouse
4. Public lies
5. Murder
6. Burglary
7. HIV infected from free sex or drug needle
8. Misconduct in workplace, demotion
9. Being laid off out of no reason
10. Hit someone with your vehicle
11. (The case could add up infinitely as different people has different encounter)

Usually, people messed up because of poor character. Because people choose to compromise over than to show their true character. Chances are, people with stronger character, provided they have a positive values, won’t mess up so easily. It is always a good investment to work on your character.

So, it’s done. Now what? There’s nothing we can do to change it, no matter how much time or resource we take to remorse or to amend them. This is something, that even many times have been said, that “we will never be able to change the past”. Forget those sci-fi movies with time machine and time traveler in them. Chances are those will be unlikely to happen in centuries ahead.

If we can not change the past, then the wisest thing to do is to ‘forget’ it. Each time after a huge disaster, there’s always an aftermath and mostly this is the painful part. We deal with our losses, with our loved one’s losses and it hurt, very bad. The 9/11 tragedy in NYC, the Aceh tsunami, onto the latest Mumbai attack. These left wounds. Wounds to be dealt with.

How can we forget such tragedy? Usually, time heals everything. Human has this very unique traits of slowly letting things go as time goes by. It doesn’t, however, cure the wound completely. But it will get better if given some time.

Here are few tips so we can overcome the feeling quicker and get on with our life.

1. Be Positive.

To the universe, we are only a particle of a dust. So if you think, you have a BIG problem. Think again. Try to think this way. Pull yourself away from your complicated thoughts and see if this is what you called a big problem. Other people might have had worse ones. So, instead, count yourself lucky. Only by being positive thinking, you can actually see there are lights at the end of tunnel and that this is not the end of the world.

2. Embrace Your Current Condition.

I know that you probably still haven’t accept your current condition. You don’t accept yourself being sacked unfairly, being robbed, being cheated, or diagnosed with deadly disease. But hey, this is a world where everyday people run forward. And they won’t stop even if they know your condition. This is the world where the fast outran the slow. The strong take out the weak. So unless you stop regretting what you shouldn’t have done or feeling so bad of mis-treated by someone and start to accept that this is your ACTUAL condition, you will never be able to move on. A book by Jim Collins “Good to Great” has revealed on a “Stockdale Paradox” whose held captive as Viet Cong prisoner in Vietnam war and he managed to survive because he (1) accepted that he was indeed a prisoner, living prisoner’s life, with no guarantee getting out from there alive, but at the same time he also (2) believed that one day, he will be out from there and reunite with his families.

3. Start Get Your Life Back.

When was your last time before the tragedy; hang out with your friends, went out to the bar, catch a movie, go skiing, eating out with your spouse, go bungee jumping ?(if this is what it takes of course). Anything that could get your lifeline going. You need sparks to light up your life. If you think you have been sitting too long, then you probably are correct. So stand up, make a plan on what to do this weekend, do it, and have fun with it.

4. Forgive Them, No Matter How Hard.

This is to some people probably the hardest part, especially when you are the victims. However hard though, forgiveness is needed in order to accept your current situation. Forgiving is not and never about losing. If you let things go and forgive those who has betrayed or treated you bad, you will be much more relaxed and you will have no chance of being the person you once hate. This is of course very possible because you have minimized the chance of retaliation to zero. If you think you can’t look them in the eyes and forgive them, then don’t force it. Give it sometime. Forgiveness is meant to be sincere. It has to be done and it has to be sincere. That simple.

5. There’s Always Reason Behind Everything.

Yes there is always a positive reason behind every tragedy. Unfortunately, we can only guess what it will be and will never know until we get it in the future. We can only connect them backward, not forward. Each of us has a noble role in this world, from the day we’re born. So this is our responsibility for God, our loved ones, and the society we live in.

Listen To The Ideas Of Others

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen”
(Ernest Hemingway)

If you think you know it all, chances are you will be too busy listening to yourself and how great you are to have time to listen to anyone else.  Listen to your people in your team.  They are the ones who knows to work with the resources and the products. They are the ones at the cutting edge and they may well have ideas, good ideas.  Talk to them.  Get their feedback, their ideas, their creativity.

But you obviously have to be careful to make sure that although you are listening to them, that doesn’t mean that you are going to act on every one of their ideas.  Listen, assimilate and then decide based on what you’ve heard, your own experience and ideas and what is practical.

You have to listen without always giving the signal that you will necessary use their ideas, so then they won’t be disappointed when you do something completely different.  But you can make them think their ideas were incorporated into your overall strategy.

If you regularly doing this, ask good questions and listen without prejudice, you’re immediately in a different class to most leaders.

source : The Rules of Management – Richard Templar