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Be impressed not envious…
The nature of my work is that I come across many stories of success and super duper success. So what happens when I come across a client who is more successful than I am? I get impressed or inspired even. The other way to feel would be envy, which so many of us do feel when we see others being more successful than ourselves. Move ahead in life and take others with you on the journey. Don’t make it a race where you have to win or be better than someone else. Be inspired not envious!!!
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There is more than one way to look at something
Over the weekend we reviewed the insurances we had. The thought did cross my mind that I was paying for life insurance, health insurance, house insurance, car insurance, etc but we had never claimed anything ever!? Waste of money right? Actually not. The fact that we haven’t had to claim anything back from an insurance company translates to the fact that we have had a good life so far with no stressful accidents and incidents. Best example of preparing for the worst but hoping for the best and when the worst doesn’t happen, it’s a blessing in disguise.
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Know your worth
The other day I went with my daughter to the shops to buy a particular game of Lego. It was the last piece on the shelf so I did what most of us would do, I checked the packaging to make sure that it wasn’t a damaged piece. Fortunately it wasn’t but then I noticed that the barcode of the product was covered by another barcode of another product. I put two and two together and figured out that probably someone had tried to sneak a high priced product with a lower priced barcode. As dishonest as the behaviour sounds, we probably are all doing the same. Not literally by…
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Breakfree from whatever is holding you back
Shekhar Astitwa (Indian Lyricist) in one of his songs wrote what can be loosely translated as: “Melt the chains that hold you back, make swords out of them and win every battle with them. So what if you are out of luck, so what if your swords are broken, fight with the broken swords and win every battle” The thing with humans is that we let many things hold us back. From laziness to fear to self pity, from lack of self belief to believing that we simply don’t have it in us. So break free from whatever is holding you back (mentally or otherwise) and go get whatever you…
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Fear of success
When I started my accounting business all those year ago, I came up with a great tax advice product (or so I thought at that time). It was so great in my mind and in my plans that I thought it would be crazy successful and I wont have the resources to deal with all the incoming queries and work. I decided to roll it out gradually fearing my lack of capacity if the response was as expected. The advice product did not set the taxation advisory world on fire as I expected and not much came out of it in terms of financial reward but I was at that…
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The lizard brain in us wins
I always have a fairly long list of things to do once I reach work on any given day. As the clock ticks by I keep getting things done and adding a few things along the way. Then somehow I keep postponing the same things day after day but always find a reason (excuse) not to have been able to do it on a day and why tomorrow might be a better day to do it. At times something that can take as little as 10-15 minutes gets postponed several times. What is happening I would wonder? Apparently there is something loosely referred to as “Lizard Brain” could be responsible…
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How much excess baggage are you carrying?
When I was studying at UNSW (university) I had long breaks between classes so I would carry a bag full of all the text books I had for the semester and tell myself that if I had time, I would pull out one of those books and start reading. Semesters ended and so did my bachelors degree but I hardly read the books I was carrying to university everyday and those who have been to UNSW would know how big the campus is and if you had lectures at either end of the campus, you would be walking a fair distance and climbing lots and lots of stairs. Thinking about…
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Failure is not a prerequisite for success
Every successful business story seems to have a few failure stories attached to them. It almost seems to be sold to startups that you have to fail a few times before you can succeed. Failure is thus glorified as a badge of honor. Result: When things don’t go to plan we are quick to label it as failure and move on to something else. Failure is not a prerequisite to success. Let’s get this message out instead!!!
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Don’t die chasing deadlines
Working in a deadline driven industry teaches you a thing or two. Pipeline is always full of potential opportunities and work would never end. One deadline will follow another and then another. To stay sane and take time for life you need to block your calendar out for various times of the year and get away from it all.
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Quality is the business plan
If someone had asked me a few years ago if our accounting firm had a business plan, I would have pulled out a dozen pages of carefully put together ideas of where our business was coming from, where it was and how it was going to get to the place we wanted it to. Ask me now and I would say something in the lines of “Our business plan is to deliver quality service to our clients to the best of our abilities”. The rest just takes care of itself when we are able to do that.