Maximise Potential

Your commitment to excellence in all areas of your life will ultimately determine your destiny and where you end up in life. You need to plan your life to get the most out of it. You must be strategic about your life and everything that happens to you is the direct result of your actions. I love this definition of success by John Wooden  "Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best you are capable of becoming." Your choices determine your actions and your actions determine your outcome. Here are the nine keys to get your life to world class. Deliberate Practice  – We look at a lot of successful people like Sachin Tendulkar, Roger Federer or Bill Gates and we like to say they are lucky or they are born talented. However, researchers like K. Anders Ericsson one of the world’s leading experimental researchers on expertise say that it takes 10 years or 10000 hours of deliberate practice to...

Novak Djokovic has just won his 15th grand slam on Jan 27th 2019 by winning the Australian Open. He has overtaken Pete Sampras and has joined the pantheon of all time greats. This is an amazing feat considering the quality of the opposition he had. People had written him off for the last few years. What makes him a true champion is how he has bounced back in-spite of his critics. He made history by winning the 2016 French open and became the first person since Rod Laver to hold four grand slams at the same time. That was an amazing feat. Considering that super stars like Federer, Nadal, Sampras and Agassi have not been able to do that this is beyond comprehension and a testament to the champion in Novak. I remember watching him in the 2007 US Open Final against Federer which he lost and thought this guy has a lot of talent but does he have the heart to survive the onslaught from Federer and Nadal? Well he has proved beyond doubt what it takes to be a champion. I have expanded h...

We might have had great plans for 2019 and we are just into the fourth week of the year. However this might be the time where we might have lost a little bit of momentum. I want to pull together some key ideas to keep the momentum going so that we keep that enthusiasm we have at the start of the year for the whole year. M. Scott Peck begins his best-selling book "The Road Less Traveled" with the words "Life is Difficult." We have all experienced difficulties and failure but the key question is how we can use failure to improve our success. In fact it might even be better to not label anything a failure. One example of a team that continuously falls short in big moments (world cup) is the South African cricket team which has always failed at knock out games in their world cup campaigns with one exception. They were highly fancied during the 2015 world cup held in Australia/New Zealand and still lost in the semifinal. It is likely that they are not able to bur...

Personal Development is the great springboard to further your career and life. As Jim Rohn the great business philosopher said “Work harder on yourself than on your job.” He also said Success is something you attract by the person you become. These are wise words indeed. Here are some simple steps on the path to personal development which have helped me. Spend time alone— I have read everywhere that the most successful people are people who either get up early to get some alone time or use the end of day for reflection. They use the extra time they get to plan for the day, exercise, read and meditate. Of course not everything is possible but I think spending some time alone offers options to do something for yourself. This is also the common thread among all masters like Benjamin Franklin, Ernest Hemingway and many others. Of course this also depends on the work you do. Some artists are more creative in the night and others early morning. Decide which time works for you best but ...

I am totally inspired after seeing Nadal once again reaching the final of a grand slam. What a champion he is. I am rooting for him in the final. Even if he doesn't cross over the line the champion qualities he has displayed can never be replaced. I had written earlier on the champions mindset of Federer and Djokovic. Here are the articles  Djokovic Champion Qualities  and  Federer's Champion Mindset . However, if I don’t write about Nadal I would be leaving out my favorite player Nadal. While some Federer fans might not want Nadal to win and vice versa I take a nuanced approach to sports. My philosophy is to learn from every winner even if you are not rooting for them. So, I like all 3 of them and all of them are great champions. Here are the 6 Champion qualities of Nadal. Self-Belief  – I love this word because all of us need to have this if we want to win big. He believes in himself even if no one else does. In 2005 he was considered a clay court sp...

2019 is well underway and while we may have many goals and resolutions the only control we really have is what we do daily. As John Maxwell beautifully said, "You cannot change something in your life unless you change something you do daily." The secret of success in your life lies in your daily agenda. We have all heard the line “Live every day as if it is your last.” While I appreciate the exuberance of this statement somehow it doesn’t resonate with me because if it is my last day it would put a downer on my spirit. What I have come up with is a statement that works for me and it is  “Every day is the best day of your life. Give it your best shot.” This statement has worked well for me as it tells me that today is going to be my best day and if I want to have a best day I must give it my best shot. What this does is it shows me that I can make my day great. This also tells me that there are no bad days so even if something goes wrong I can take it in the right way...