Chapter Twenty Six

Lead Your Life Successfully

Obama Versus Osama

It is the attitude that gives 100 per cent success in your life. You must have a positive and strong attitude to lead your life successfully. Thomas Jefferson once said, ‘Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude’.

Although the names, Obama and Osama appear to be similar, these personalities are poles apart. Barack Obama has a positive attitude and has grown as a global leader while Osama Bin Laden had a negative attitude and became a terrorist. Both Obama and Osama are intelligent leaders and the former used his intelligence and skills for the benefit of mankind, while the latter used his capacities for the destruction of mankind by unleashing terror. Operation Geronimo, which was conducted in the early morning on 2 May 2011 by Barack Obama in Pakistan to eliminate Osama, offers a great lesson to all terrorists in the world who live on gun culture. It is true that the one who lives with violence, dies with violence. The way Operation Geronimo was conducted in Pakistan reveals the military and intelligence supremacy of the Americans. That too, it was conducted in an alien land without the knowledge and assistance of Pakistan and without any casualties on civilians.

Barack Obama is a great American leader next to Abraham Lincoln who rose from the ranks. Although Lincoln did not complete his full tenure as President, he played a crucial role in averting the disintegration of America and maintained the unity of America apart from striving for the abolition of slavery in America.

How to Be Happy

Happiness is a state of mind where you are filled with joy. Your happiness lies only in your hands. Nobody can upset you unless you allow them. Find out what makes you happy and work on those things only. Stay away from things that upset you. Accept that certain things are beyond your control. Learn to live with realities. Spend some time daily on things that provide you with joy and happiness. Laughter is the best medicine for several stress-related problems. Learn to laugh by sharing jokes with others. If you are not good at cracking jokes, stay with people who have a sense of humour. Hit the gym regularly to lift your energy levels, or go for meditation or yoga.

Your Decision Determines Your Destiny

Your thoughts determine your destiny. Your action rather than reaction determines your destiny. Destiny is solely in your hands and especially how you think, view and make a decision at a particular point of time. Although certain external factors influence your decision, the final onus of crafting your destiny solely lies in your hands. That is the reason why several people assert that your destiny is in your hands.

Research shows that the longer the duration of the thought, the longer the process of attracting similar energies. Hence, allow positive thoughts to stay in your mind for a longer time as it enables you to view things positively, thus helping you make the right decisions. Whether you want to become a good person or a bad person, and whether you want to achieve this in a big way or small way—everything lies in your mind. The human mind is a super computer, and if you know how to make use of it then the sky is the limit for you. Allow yourself to be dominated by positive thoughts. Think about the direction you want to move in for 15 to 20 seconds atleast, and the same will reflect on your behaviour. People are not aware of several tools and techniques for achieving success. Once they know it and apply it, they can easily touch their tipping point. Successful people know such success sutras and utilize what they have rather than blaming their external environment, thus achieving success.

Life Leadership

Life leadership is all about how you lead your life. It emphasizes on your abilities and skills to lead your life successfully. It says that everybody is a leader, whether with title or without title and irrespective of titles, ranks and badges. You are the leader of your life as you have to lead your life ultimately. You cannot let others dictate your destiny. You need to understand, assess and decide your priorities in making decisions. As a life leader, you have to play your life game with limited damage for achieving maximum success, and with minimum resources for achieving optimum outcomes.

Life leadership focuses on your self-awareness, goals, work-life balance, continuous learning, making the right moves and ultimately achieving success. Leaders always lead others, thus providing direction and vision to others. In order to become a good leader, you must lead your life successfully to influence and lead the people around you.

Life Is a Game, Play Well!

Life is a game. It all depends on how well you play with what you have, without any complaints. Have fire in your belly to face challenges in your life and you will come out with flying colours. Leave no room for regrets in the later part of your life. Decision-making depends on a particular point of time with the availability of existing resources.

When you play life’s game, make sure that it is a win-win rather than a win-lose as win-lose creates ill-feelings among others. Be a good player. Count the cost before you fight. Rise to the challenge. Face the fight. Don’t lose your heart if you don’t win. Fight back with renewed efforts and energies. Don’t give up.

Lead Your Life Successfully

Here is the distilled content to lead your life successfully:

Pursue your passion. Don’t be a copycat. What worked for others might not work for you as you are gifted with unique talents and abilities. Find out what works out for you and what is close to your heart. Over a period of time, you will achieve success in your area of interest.

Once you have identified your talents and passions, build skills around them. People often run for skills by ignoring their inherent talents. If you want to achieve success early, acquire skills, abilities and knowledge that supplement your talents, not the other way round.

Be different but don’t be indifferent. Don’t follow the crowd. Enter into the areas where there is the least competition to soar like an eagle in your domain. Hence, you must do a lot of research in identifying the areas where the competition is the least.

Don’t enter into too many areas simultaneously. Choose a particular area of interest as per your passion and work in that direction only. Over a period of time, you will acquire mastery and find out further new areas for branching out.

The French writer and Nobel Prize winner, Anatole France, rightly said, ‘To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe’. Hence, believe in your dreams strongly. Don’t get distracted by others just because you find some hurdles in your success journey. Distractions are part and parcel of life. You have to manage distractions and continuously move on as you strongly believe in your dreams.

Finally, never give up. Winston Churchill once remarked, ‘Never … Never … Never … Never Give up!’. Pursue up to the hilt. Research shows that the people who persisted for a long time such as Edison, Einstein, Honda and Colonel Sanders had made it big.

As the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, take your first step to script your success story and lead your life successfully. Your first step will give you momentum and that is enough to keep you going forward aggressively. Thoreau rightly remarked, ‘If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours’.

Finally, as Napoleon Hill said, ‘Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win which is one of the essentials to success’.