3 powerful ways to Stay positive always & improve health & Productivity

“Stay positive” – you might have heard this from your well-wishers many a time , but when personal & professional challenges are many , it sounds more like a wishful thinking …!! Right ..

Hear me out in my weekly webinar session where I speak on 3 Powerful ways by which you can stay “Positive always” ..

Separate facts from fiction / gratitude / pursuing hobbies & exercise…

8 things you are doing which is unknowingly heading you towards losing !!

  • Let your bark bigger than bite –

Successful entrepreneurs don’t sit back and talk about what they are going to do. They plan, follow through and conquer. Nothing is going to get accomplished just by talking about it, and nobody is going to be impressed with words alone.

  • Wake up without a plan –

Time management is a crucial part of being an entrepreneur. There are only so many hours in a day, so to be efficient you need to know what your goals are and what tasks you need to get done prior to starting your day.

  • Look back –

You are going to face hard times, difficult decisions and possibly even failure at some point. Don’t let small bumps in the road stop your forward progress. Find ways to manoeuvre around obstacles and continue to push forward, never looking back.

  • Stop learning –

Your age, years of experience or level of success should never prevent you from learning. There isn’t a single person on this planet who knows everything. We can all continue to learn and be inspired from other entrepreneurs, whether they are billionaire household names or those just starting his or her entrepreneurial journey.

  • Be jealous or envious –

Seeing other people around you succeed should motivate you, even if they are your competitors. You should understand that every single person has the ability to become successful, and wasting time focusing on other people’s success or achievements will just sidetrack your own progress.

  • Make excuses –

If you make a bad decision and screw up, own it. If something doesn’t work out as planned, don’t look for excuses. Search for the cause of the problem and chalk it up to a valuable business lesson. If you identify and own the problem you will not make the same mistake again. If you are constantly making excuses for your mistakes, you will continue to make them because you haven’t properly identified the root of the problem.

  • Focus solely on Money –

Instead of chasing the money, focus on creating products and services that make a difference and provide value. If you do this, the money will come. I would be lying if I said the goal of mine is not to make money, but focusing on providing a great service paves the path for the money to follow.

  • Associate with negative individuals / thoughts –

People who constantly make excuses, complain and have a negative outlook should be avoided like the plague. We all know people like this. No matter what you say or what the situation is, they always chime in with negativity. People like this are a cancer and their negative aura can rub off on you. Surround yourself with like-minded individuals that are as focused and determined as you are.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

9 Skills you should learn that pay dividends forever.

The further along you are in your career, the easier it is to fall back on the mistaken assumption that you’ve made it and have all the skills you need to succeed. The tendency is to focus all your energy on getting the job done, assuming that the rest will take care of itself. Big mistake.

We should never stop learning. The moment we think that we are who we are is the moment we give away our unrealized potential.

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi

The act of learning is every bit as important as what you learn. Believing that you can improve yourself and do things in the future that are beyond your current possibilities is exciting and fulfilling.

Still, your time is finite, and you should dedicate yourself to learning skills that will yield the greatest benefit.

There are nine skills that I believe fit the bill because they never stop paying dividends. These are the skills that deliver the biggest payoff, both in terms of what they teach you and their tendency to keep the learning alive.

Emotional intelligence (EQ). EQ is the “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions that achieve positive results. EQ is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships. EQ is the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. It’s a powerful way to focus your energy in one direction, with tremendous results.

Increasing your EQ won’t just pad your bank account, it’ll make you happier and less stressed as well.

Time management. One of the biggest things that gets in the way of effective time management is the “tyranny of the urgent.” This refers to the tendency of little things that have to be done right now to get in the way of what really matters. When you succumb to it, you spend so much time putting out fires that you never get any real work done. How many times have you left work at the end of the day, only to realize that you didn’t move the important things along even one inch? Learning to manage your time effectively frees you up to perform at your absolute highest level, and it does so every single day of your life.

Listening. This one should be easy. If we’re not talking, we’re listening, right? Well, not exactly. A lot of times, we think we’re listening, but we’re actually planning what we’re going to say next. True listening means focusing solely on what the other person is saying. It’s about understanding, not rebuttal or input. Learning how to suspend judgment and focus on understanding the other person’s input is one of the most important skills you can develop.

There’s so much talking happening at work that opportunities to listen abound. We talk to provide feedback, explain instructions, and communicate deadlines. Beyond the spoken words, there’s invaluable information to be deciphered through tone of voice, body language, and what isn’t said. In other words, failing to keep your ears (and eyes) open could leave you out of the game.

Saying No.  The more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. Saying no is indeed a major challenge for many people. No is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to wield. When it’s time to say no, avoid phrases such as I don’t think I can or I’m not certain. Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them. When you learn to say no, you free yourself from unnecessary constraints and free up your time and energy for the important things in life.

Asking for help. It might seem counterintuitive to suggest that asking for help is a skill, but it is. It takes a tremendous amount of confidence and humility to admit that you need assistance. This skill is critical because the last thing a leader wants are employees who keep on trucking down the wrong path because they are too embarrassed or proud to admit that they don’t know what they’re doing. The ability to recognize when you need help, summon up the courage to ask for it, and follow through on that help is an extremely valuable skill.

Getting high-quality sleep.  A study found that when you sleep, your brain removes toxic proteins, which are by-products of neural activity when you’re awake, from its neurons. The catch here is that your brain can only adequately remove these toxic proteins when you have sufficient quality sleep. When you don’t get high-quality deep sleep, the toxic proteins remain in your brain cells, wreaking havoc and ultimately impairing your ability to think—something no amount of caffeine can fix. This slows your ability to process information and solve problems, kills your creativity, and increases your emotional reactivity. Learning to get high-quality sleep on a regular basis is a difficult skill to master, but it pays massive dividends the next day.

Knowing when to shut up. Sure, it can feel so good to unload on somebody and let them know what you really think, but that good feeling is temporary. What happens the next day, the next week, or the next year? It’s human nature to want to prove that you’re right, but it’s rarely effective. In conflict, unchecked emotion makes you dig your heels in and fight the kind of battle that can leave you and the relationship severely damaged. When you read and respond to your emotions, you’re able to choose your battles wisely and only stand your ground when the time is right. The vast majority of the time, that means biting your tongue.

Taking initiative. Initiative is a skill that will take you far in life. In theory, initiative is easy—the desire to take action is always there—but in the real world, other things get in the way. There’s a big difference between knowing what to do and being too scared or lazy to actually do it. That requires initiative. You have to take risks and push yourself out of your comfort zone, until taking initiative is second nature.

Staying positive. We’ve all received the well-meaning advice to “stay positive.” It’s hard to find the motivation to focus on the positive when positivity seems like nothing more than wishful thinking. The real obstacle to positivity is that our brains are hard-wired to look for and focus on threats. This survival mechanism served humankind well, back when we were hunters and gatherers and living each day with the very real threat of being killed by someone or something in our immediate surroundings.

That was long ago. Today, this mechanism breeds pessimism and negativity through the mind’s tendency to wander until it finds a threat. These “threats” magnify the perceived likelihood that things are going—and/or are going to go—poorly. When the threat is real and lurking in the bushes down the path, this mechanism serves you well. When the threat is imagined and you spend two months convinced that the project you’re working on is going to flop, this mechanism leaves you with a soured view of reality that wreaks havoc in your life. Maintaining positivity is a daily challenge that requires focus and attention. You must be intentional about staying positive if you’re going to overcome the brain’s tendency to focus on threats.

Summary

Research shows that lifelong learning pays dividends beyond the skills you acquire. Never stop learning.

How do you keep the learning alive?  Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

 

How Smart People Work Less and Get Way More Done

Ability to get things done. They keep their nights and weekends sacred and still get more done than people who work 10 or 20 hours more per week than they do.

A Study from Stanford University shows that they are on to something.

The study found that productivity per hour declines sharply when the workweek exceeds 50 hours, and productivity drops off so much after 55 hours that there’s no point in working any more.That’s right, people who work as much as 70 hours (or more) per week actually get the same amount done as people who work 55 hours.

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” -William Penn

Smart people know the importance of shifting gears on the weekend to relaxing and rejuvenating activities. They use their weekends to create a better week ahead.

This is easier said than done, so here’s some help. The following are some things that you can do to find balance on the weekend and come into work at 110% on Monday morning.

Disconnect. Disconnecting is the most important weekend strategy, because if you can’t find a way to remove yourself electronically from your work Friday evening through Monday morning, then you’ve never really left work. Making yourself available to your work 24/7 exposes you to a constant barrage of stressors that prevent you from refocusing and recharging. If taking the entire weekend off handling work e-mails and calls isn’t realistic, try designating specific times on Saturday and Sunday for checking e-mails and responding to voicemails. For example, check your messages on Saturday afternoon while your kids are getting a haircut and on Sunday evenings after dinner. Scheduling short blocks of time will alleviate stress without sacrificing availability.

Minimize chores. Chores have a funny habit of completely taking over your weekends. When this happens, you lose the opportunity to relax and reflect. What’s worse is that a lot of chores feel like work, and if you spend all weekend doing them, you just put in a seven-day workweek. To keep this from happening, you need to schedule your chores like you would anything else during the week, and if you don’t complete them during the allotted time, you move on and finish them the following weekend.

Exercise. No time to exercise during the week? You have 48 hours every weekend to make it happen. Getting your body moving for as little as 10 minutes releases GABA, a soothing neurotransmitter that reduces stress. Exercise is also a great way to come up with new ideas. Innovators and other successful people know that being outdoors often sparks creativity. I know that a lot of my best ideas come to me while I’m into outdoor activity. Example :- While you’re out in the ocean, the combination of  activity and beautiful scenery creates the perfect environment for an influx of creativity. Whether you’re running, cycling, or gardening, exercise leads to endorphin-fueled introspection. The key is to find a physical activity that does this for you and then to make it an important part of your weekend routine.

Reflect. Weekly reflection is a powerful tool for improvement. Use the weekend to contemplate the larger forces that are shaping your industry, your organization, and your job. Without the distractions of Monday to Friday busy work, you should be able to see things in a whole new light. Use this insight to alter your approach to the coming week, improving the efficiency and efficacy of your work.

Pursue a passion. You might be surprised what happens when you pursue something you’re passionate about on weekends. Indulging your passions is a great way to escape stress and to open your mind to new ways of thinking. Things like playing music, reading, writing, painting, or even playing catch with your kids can help stimulate different modes of thought that can reap huge dividends over the coming week.

Spend quality time with family. Spending quality time with your family on the weekend is essential if you want to recharge and relax. Weekdays are so hectic that the entire week can fly by with little quality family time. Don’t let this bleed into your weekends. Take your kids to the park, take your spouse to his or her favorite restaurant, and go visit your parents. You’ll be glad you did.

Schedule micro-adventures. Buy tickets to a concert or play, or get reservations for that cool new hotel or restaurant that just opened. Instead of running on a treadmill, plan a hike. Try something you haven’t done before or perhaps something you haven’t done in a long time. Studies show that anticipating something good to come is a significant part of what makes the activity pleasurable. Knowing that you have something interesting planned for Saturday will not only be fun come Saturday, but it will significantly improve your mood throughout the week.

Wake up at the same time. It’s tempting to sleep in on the weekend to catch up on your sleep. Though it feels good temporarily, having an inconsistent wake-up time disturbs your circadian rhythm. Your body cycles through an elaborate series of sleep phases in order for you to wake up rested and refreshed. One of these phases involves preparing your mind to be awake and alert, which is why people often wake up just before their alarm clock goes off (the brain is trained and ready). When you sleep past your regular wake-up time on the weekend, you end up feeling groggy and tired. This isn’t just disruptive to your day off, it also makes you less productive on Monday because your brain isn’t ready to wake up at your regular time. If you need to catch up on sleep, just go to bed earlier.

Designate mornings as me time. It can be difficult to get time to yourself on the weekends, especially if you have family. Finding a way to engage in an activity you’re passionate about first thing in the morning can pay massive dividends in happiness and cleanliness of mind. It’s also a great way to perfect your rhythm by forcing yourself to wake up at the same time you do on weekdays. Your mind achieves peak performance two-to-four hours after you wake up, so get up early to do something physical, and then sit down and engage in something mental while your mind is at its peak.

Prepare for the upcoming week. The weekend is a great time to spend a few moments planning your upcoming week. As little as 30 minutes of planning can yield significant gains in productivity and reduced stress. The week feels a lot more manageable when you go into it with a plan because all you have to focus on is execution.

Note :-

What do you do to make your weekends great? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

 

How To Crush Your Goals In 2020 !

 

For many of us, 2020 begin with a promise—a promise that this is the year we will accomplish that which has eluded us. Often it’s the everyday things that prove most difficult—managing your schedule, treating people the way you ought to, and keeping things in perspective when chaos is at hand.

The sad truth is that nearly 80% of us already failed off the resolution by now; and by end of this year, a mere 2% of us will be succeeding  in reaching our goals.

There are two reasons why we’re so bad at reaching our goals:

The first is that we bite off more than we can chew. It may seem reasonable to pick up three or four new skills to add to your repertoire, but that’s an expectation the mind can’t execute. When we try to develop too many new skills at once, they become competing priorities that leave us distracted, discouraged and overwhelmed.

The second reason most self-improvement efforts are doomed to fail is that our emotions have a nasty habit of hijacking our behavior. Without a strong ability to recognize and manage our emotions as they occur, old habits are sure to die hard.

 

The Good News

The good news is that you can address both problems and make the changes you desire by resolving this year to develop a single skill—emotional intelligence (EQ).

Piles of research over the last two decades has shown that emotional intelligence is likely the single most powerful success factor yet discovered, affecting everything from your performance at work, to your mood and the quality of your personal life.

It’s no wonder that 90% of top performers are high in EQ and people with high EQs make more annually than their low EQ counterparts.

But how does emotional intelligence play such a large role in so many important skills? Our brains are wired such that emotions are the root of all human behavior. Whether we’re aware of it or not, the motivation behind every action (no matter how small) is inherently emotional.

Here’s how it works:

All of your primary senses enter at the base of your brain (the light blue shaded area below). Before you can think rationally about what you’re experiencing, these signals must travel through the limbic system—the place where emotions are generated. This ensures you have an emotional reaction to events first.

Emotional intelligence ensures effective communication between the rational and emotional centers of your brain. As you improve your emotional intelligence, you improve your ability to understand and control the primary motivations for your behavior, which reaps dividends in everything you do every day. Emotional intelligence is powerful and efficient—it allows you to focus your energy on a single skill with tremendous results.

 

 

What Does Emotional Intelligence Look Like?

Emotional intelligence is the “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behavior, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions that achieve positive results. Emotional intelligence is made up of four core skills that pair up under two primary competencies: personal competence and social competence.

Personal competence comprises your self-awareness and self-management skills, which focus more on you individually than on your interactions with other people. Personal competence is your ability to stay aware of your emotions and manage your behavior and tendencies.

  • Self-Awareness is your ability to accurately perceive your emotions and stay aware of them as they happen.
  • Self-Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and positively direct your behavior.

Social competence is made up of your social awareness and relationship management skills; social competence is your ability to understand other people’s moods, behavior, and motives in order to respond effectively and improve the quality of your relationships.

  • Social Awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on.
  • Relationship Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions and the others’ emotions to manage interactions successfully.

While working on your emotional intelligence will improve a lot of different skills, there are five in particular that people tend to set goals around when the year changes. I’ll explain how you can improve each of these skills solely by focusing on your emotional intelligence.

 

Managing Your Time

In this age of abundance, time is the one thing nobody has enough of. Perhaps that’s why Google receives 111 million searches a month for Time Management. Few people recognize how time management depends upon the emotional intelligence skills of self-management and relationship management.

Creating a good schedule is a very rational thing, but sticking to that schedule is decidedly emotional. Many of us start out every day with the best intentions to manage our time wisely. But then we receive a complicated email from a co-worker, a consuming phone call from a friend, or otherwise get sidetracked until our well-laid plans go up in flames. We spend the rest of the day trying to put out somebody else’s fire, or working to resolve issues that weren’t there in the morning. Before you know it, the day is gone and you’re completely off schedule.

When the distractions are your own, sticking to a schedule requires self-management. When the needs of others try to impede upon your plans, it takes effective relationship management to finesse the relationship while ensuring that your priorities are still addressed.

Embracing Change

Show me somebody who claims to love change, and I’ll show you a well-intentioned liar. Change is uncomfortable for everyone at times, and for many of us it makes our skin crawl. Those who apply well-honed self-awareness and self-management skills tolerate change much more successfully than others. Self-awareness enables you to adjust comfortably to change because it gives you the perspective needed to realize when change is coming and how it’s affecting you.

Self-management keeps you cool in the moment—often with a reminder that even the most stable, trusted facets of your life are not completely under your control. Those most averse to change, who possess great self-awareness and self-management skills, even set aside a small amount of time each week to list possible changes and what actions they can take in response.

Mastering Conflict

Emotional intelligence is commonly mistaken as a synonym for “nice.” In fact, the most emotionally intelligent response is often one where you openly and directly express yourself. To paraphrase Aristotle, getting angry is easy. Getting angry with the right person, at the right time, and to the right degree requires emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence doesn’t allow lashing out, or making yourself into someone else’s doormat. To be assertive, you have to know what you’re feeling, read the other party accurately, and express yourself in a way that garners the best result. People with high EQs do this naturally.

Making Great Decisions

It has taken the world far too long to wake up to the fact that emotions simply cannot—and should not—be ignored when making decisions. Neuroscience shows us that sometimes the most rational thing you can do is trust your emotions when making a decision. But in order to make this work, you have to be aware of the emotions you’re feeling, know why you’re having them, and see how they factor into the situation at hand. Here, there is no substitute for emotional intelligence.

Giving Outstanding Presentations

Few things strike primal fear in people like standing under the spotlight in a room full of people. Even the most eloquent among us can be reduced to verbal garbage once the sheer anxiety of public speaking takes hold. That’s why a knock-’em-dead presenter’s most inspiring presentation is often the one he delivers to himself. A bit of positive self-talk—reminding himself of all the times he has succeeded and how qualified he is to speak on the topic—enables the effective speaker to use his performance anxiety to sharpen his focus and make him more articulate. If you think that’s silly, then you probably haven’t tried it. Emotional intelligence doesn’t just make you aware of your emotions; it equips you with strategies for keeping them from holding you back.

Summary

Give improving your emotional intelligence a real shot in 2020. You’ll be surprised where it takes you.

How will you reach your goals in 2020? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

Why Successful People Don’t Multitask

You may have heard that multitasking is bad for you, but new studies show that it kills your performance and may even damage your brain. Every time you multitask you aren’t just harming your performance in the moment; you may very well be damaging an area of your brain that’s critical to your future success at work.

Research conducted at Stanford University found that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time.

A Special Skill?

But what if some people have a special gift for multitasking? The Stanford researchers compared groups of people based on their tendency to multitask and their belief that it helps their performance. They found that heavy multitaskers—those who multitask a lot and feel that it boosts their performance—were actually worse at multitasking than those who like to do a single thing at a time. The frequent multitaskers performed worse because they had more trouble organizing their thoughts and filtering out irrelevant information, and they were slower at switching from one task to another.

Ouch.

Multitasking reduces your efficiency and performance because your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. When you try to do two things at once, your brain lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully.

Multitasking Lowers IQ

Research also shows that, in addition to slowing you down, multitasking lowers your IQ. A study at the University of London found that participants who multitasked during cognitive tasks experienced IQ score declines that were similar to what they’d expect if they had smoked marijuana or stayed up all night. IQ drops of 15 points for multitasking men lowered their scores to the average range of an 8-year-old child.

So the next time you’re writing your boss an email during a meeting, remember that your cognitive capacity is being diminished to the point that you might as well let an 8-year-old write it for you.

Brain Damage From Multitasking?

It was long believed that cognitive impairment from multitasking was temporary, but new research suggests otherwise. Researchers at the University of Sussex in the UK compared the amount of time people spend on multiple devices (such as texting while watching TV) to MRI scans of their brains. They found that high multitaskers had less brain density in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region responsible for empathy as well as cognitive and emotional control.

While more research is needed to determine if multitasking is physically damaging the brain (versus existing brain damage that predisposes people to multitask), it’s clear that multitasking has negative effects.

Neuroscientist Kep Kee Loh, the study’s lead author, explained the implications:

“I feel that it is important to create an awareness that the way we are interacting with the devices might be changing the way we think and these changes might be occurring at the level of brain structure.”

The EQ Connection

Nothing turns people off quite like fiddling with your phone or tablet during a conversation. Multitasking in meetings and other social settings indicates low Self- and Social Awareness, two emotional intelligence (EQ) skills that are critical to success at work. Talentsmart has tested more than a million people and found that 90% of top performers have high EQs. If multitasking does indeed damage the anterior cingulate cortex (a key brain region for EQ) as current research suggests, doing so will lower your EQ while it alienates your coworkers.

Bringing It All Together

If you’re prone to multitasking, this is not a habit you’ll want to indulge—it clearly slows you down and decreases the quality of your work. Even if it doesn’t cause brain damage, allowing yourself to multitask will fuel any existing difficulties you have with concentration, organization, and attention to detail.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me..

 

9 Signs You’re Successful—Even If It Doesn’t Feel Like It

If you’re ambitious, you’re bound to feel like a failure from time to time. Lofty goals lead to inevitable moments when you aren’t yet living up to your expectations.

We live in a world that reinforces this feeling. Though most people won’t admit it—other than the guy with the ‘He who dies with the most toys wins’ bumper sticker—in the back of our minds, we equate material possessions with success.

It’s a shame we fall prey to materialistic thinking because we certainly know better. A study by Strayer University found that 90% of people believe happiness is a bigger indicator of success than power, possessions, or prestige. Digging a little deeper, 67% defined success as “good relationships with friends and family,” and 60% said it is loving what you do for a living. Only 20% stated that monetary wealth determines success.

But saying and doing are two very different things.

When it comes to success, our eyes often lead us astray. It’s hard not to feel like the most successful people are those with the biggest houses, the most expensive cars, and the most influential friends. Regardless of what you achieve, there’s always someone with more, and this can make you feel like you’re losing. The problem isn’t your lack of toys; it’s believing that toys indicate true success.

Real success is about who you are and how far you’ve come. If you ever worry that you’re not as successful as you should be, you may be evaluating yourself against the wrong criteria. Sometimes you just need a reminder as to what you’ve really accomplished in life.

The success indicators that follow will help you do just that.

1) You’re no longer the center of the universe. We all know “successful” people who act like they’re the center of the universe. It’s their world and the rest of us just live in it…right? That’s not success. True success requires the ability to feel empathy—to realize that other people’s feelings and dreams are just as important as ours, and we cannot succeed without them.

2) You stay positive. Hope and optimism are essential components of a happy life. If you dwell on the things that go wrong, you become bitter and resentful. When that happens, you fail—no matter what you may have achieved. Real success means always seeing the bright side and believing you have the power to make even the worst situations better.

3) You know that failure isn’t forever. You’ve learned that the only people who never fail are those who don’t try. When you fail, you don’t automatically assume that you’rea failure. Instead, you embrace each failure as an opportunity to learn something—and then you move on. If you still struggle with this at times, know that you’ll never experience true success until you learn to embrace failure. Your mistakes pave the way for your success by revealing when you’re on the wrong path. The biggest breakthroughs typically come when you’re feeling the most frustrated and the most stuck. It’s this frustration that forces you to think differently, to look outside the box and see the solution you’ve been missing.

4) You keep things in perspective. Sometimes bad things happen. It’s part of life. For most of us, however, our very worst day would seem like a vacation to somebody who has real problems—like not having enough to eat, or trying to survive a civil war. Locking your keys in the car—or even getting passed over for a promotion—aren’t that bad once you learn to develop perspective. If you’ve mastered the ability to keep your problems in perspective, mark it down as a huge success.

5) You ask for help when you need it. Refusing to ask for help, no matter how much you’re struggling, is a sign of emotional immaturity. Asking for help means that you no longer feel like you have something to prove by being perfect. It shows you aren’t afraid of people discovering your weaknesses and you understand no one succeeds alone.

6) You realize that life isn’t a zero-sum game. It’s not a see-saw, either. Just because somebody else achieves a big success, that doesn’t mean you suffer a loss in equal proportion. You just didn’t win that particular time. One sure sign of success is the ability to celebrate others’ achievements with sincere enthusiasm.

7) You can tell the difference between drama and excitement. Remember the days when stable relationships were boring, and you quickly got tired of anyone who treated you as they should? If that kind of “drama” is a thing of the past, congratulations. If you prefer stability and depth to drama, you’re succeeding.

8) You no longer care what other people think. You only worry about what other people think when you still feel like you have something to prove. Conversely, you know you’ve “made it” when you don’t worry about that anymore—when you’re true to yourself and your principles, and satisfied with your life. You know you’ve made it when you understand that other people’s opinions are just that—opinions. They have no effect on reality. They don’t change who or what you are.

9) You accept what you can’t change and change what you can. There’s a difference between pessimism and practicality. If there’s a hurricane headed your way, there’s nothing you can do to stop it. But once you accept that the hurricane is coming, you can start working to mitigate its effects. If your company downsizes and you get laid off, every moment you spend in denial just delays whatever is waiting over the horizon. You’re able to move on only when you start exploring your options and making plans to change what you can. Taking responsibility for changing the things you don’t like about your life is one of the biggest indicators of success.

Bringing It All Together

There’s no sense in feeling like a failure just because you think you should have a better job, a bigger house, or a nicer car. Real success comes from the inside, and it’s completely independent of circumstance.

What are some other indicators of true success? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

 

10 Signs You’re Burning Out (And How To Stop It)

“I wish I could go back and tell myself that not only is there no trade-off between living a well-rounded life and high performance, performance is actually improved when our lives include time for renewal, wisdom, wonder and giving. That would have saved me a lot of unnecessary stress, burnout and exhaustion”

 Even the best jobs can lead to burnout. The harder you work and the more motivated you are to succeed, the easier it is to get in over your head. The prevalence of burnout is increasing as technology further blurs the line between work and home.

 “Burnout from my current job” was one of the top reasons that people quit.

Burnout can get the better of you, even when you have great passion for your work.

Burnout often results from a misalignment of input and output; you get burnt out when you feel like you’re putting more into your work than you’re getting out of it. Sometimes this happens when a job isn’t rewarding, but more often than not it’s because you aren’t taking care of yourself.

Before you can treat and even prevent burnout, you need to recognize the warning signs so that you’ll know when it’s time to take action. Here they are, in no particular order.

Health problems. Burnout has a massive, negative impact upon your physical and mental health. Whether you’re experiencing back pain, depression, heart disease, obesity, or you’re just getting sick a lot, you need to consider the role your work is playing in this. You’ll know when burnout is affecting your health, and you’ll just have to decide whether your approach to work is worth the consequences.

Cognitive difficulties. Research shows that stress hammers the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for executive function. Executive function impacts your memory, decision-making abilities, emotional control, and focus. When you notice that you’re making silly mistakes, forgetting important things, having outbursts of emotion, or making poor decisions, you’re likely burning out.

Difficulty with work and personal relationships. Stress bleeds over into everything you do, particularly how you interact with people. Even when you feel that you’re keeping your stress under control at work, it can rear its ugly head at home. Often it’s your relationships that suffer. Stress makes many people more likely to snap at others, lose their cool, and get involved in silly, unnecessary conflicts. Others are more inclined to withdraw and avoid people they care about.

Taking your work home with you. You know that sickening feeling when you’re lying in bed thinking about all the work that you didn’t get done and hoping that you didn’t miss something important? When you can’t stop thinking about work when you’re at home, it’s a strong sign that you’re burning out.

Fatigue. Burnout often leads to exhaustion because of the toll stress takes on your mind and body. The hallmarks of burnout fatigue are waking up with no energy after a good night’s sleep, drinking large amounts of caffeine to get you through the day, or having trouble staying awake at work.

Negativity. Burnout can turn you very negative, even when you’re usually a positive person. If you find yourself focusing on the down side of situations, judging others and feeling cynical, it’s clear that negativity has taken hold and it’s time for you to do something about it.

Decreased satisfaction. Burnout almost always leads to a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. Projects and people that used to get you excited no longer do so. This dip in satisfaction makes work very difficult, because no matter what you’re putting into your job, you don’t feel like you’re getting much out of it.

Losing your motivation. We begin jobs in a honeymoon phase, seeing everything through rose-colored glasses. When you’re in this phase, motivation comes naturally. In a burnout state, you struggle to find the motivation to get the job done. You may complete tasks, and even complete them well, but the motivation that used to drive you is gone. Instead of doing work for the sake of the work itself, your motivation stems from fear—of missing deadlines, letting people down, or getting fired.

Performance issues. People who burn out are often high achievers, so when their performance begins to slip, others don’t always notice. It’s crucial to monitor your slippage. How were you performing a month ago? Six months ago? A year ago? If you see a dip in your performance, it’s time to determine if burnout is behind it.

Poor self-care. Life is a constant struggle against the things that feel good momentarily but aren’t good for you. When you experience burnout, your self-control wanes and you find yourself succumbing to temptations more easily. This is largely due to the way that stress compromises your decision-making and self-control and also partially due to lower levels of confidence and motivation.

Fighting Burnout :-

If you recognize many of these symptoms in yourself, don’t worry. Fighting burnout is a simple matter of self-care. You need good ways to separate yourself from your work so that you can recharge and find balance. The following will help you to accomplish this.

Disconnect. Disconnecting is the most important burnout strategy on this list, because if you can’t find time to remove yourself electronically from your work, then you’ve never really left work. Making yourself available to your work 24/7 exposes you to a constant barrage of stressors that prevent you from refocusing and recharging. If taking the entire evening or weekend off from handling work e-mails and calls isn’t realistic, try designating specific times to check in on emails and respond to voicemails. For example, on weekday evenings, you may check emails after dinner, and on the weekend you may check your messages on Saturday afternoon while your kids are playing sports. Scheduling such short blocks of time alleviates stress without sacrificing your availability.

Pay attention to your body signals. It’s easy to think that a headache is the result of dehydration, that a stomach ache is the result of something you ate, and that an aching neck is from sleeping on it wrong, but that’s not always the case. Oftentimes, aches and pains are an accumulation of stress and anxiety. Burnout manifests in your body, so learn to pay attention to your body’s signals so that you can nip burnout in the bud. Your body is always talking, but you have to listen.

Schedule relaxation. It’s just as important to plan out your relaxation time as it is to plan out when you work. Even scheduling something as simple as “read for 30 minutes” benefits you greatly. Scheduling relaxing activities makes certain they happen as well as gives you something to look forward to.

Stay away from sleeping pills. When I say sleeping pills, I mean anything you take that sedates you so that you can sleep. Whether it’s alcohol, Nyquil, Benadryl, Valium, Ambien, or what have you, these substances greatly disrupt your brain’s natural sleep process. Have you ever noticed that sedatives can give you some really strange dreams? As you sleep and your brain removes harmful toxins, it cycles through an elaborate series of stages, at times shuffling through the day’s memories and storing or discarding them (which causes dreams). Sedation interferes with these cycles, altering the brain’s natural process. Anything that interferes with the brain’s natural sleep process has dire consequences for the quality of your sleep, and you need adequate, quality sleep to avoid burnout.

Get organized. Much of the stress we experience on a daily basis doesn’t stem from having too much work; it stems from being too disorganized to handle the work effectively. When you take the time to get organized, the load feels much more manageable.

Take regular breaks during the workday. Physiologically, we work best in spurts of an hour to an hour and a half, followed by 15-minute breaks. If you wait until you feel tired to take a break, it’s too late—you’ve already missed the window of peak productivity and fatigued yourself unnecessarily in the process. Keeping to a schedule ensures that you work when you’re the most productive and that you rest during times that would otherwise be unproductive.

Lean on your support system. It’s tempting to withdraw from other people when you’re feeling stressed, but they can be powerful allies in the war against burnout. Sympathetic family and friends are capable of helping you. Spending time with people who care about you helps you to remove yourself from the stresses of work and reminds you to live a little and have fun.

Summary –

If these strategies don’t work for you, then the problem might be your job. The wrong job can cause burnout in and of itself. In that case you’ll have to decide what’s more important: your work or your health.

How do you beat burnout? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

 

3 Powerful Ways To Stay Positive

We’ve all received the well-meaning advice to “stay positive.” The greater the challenge, the more this glass-half-full wisdom can come across as unrealistic. It’s hard to find the motivation to focus on the positive when positivity seems like nothing more than wishful thinking.

The real obstacle to positivity is that our brains are hard-wired to look for and focus on threats. This survival mechanism served humankind well back when we were hunters and gatherers, living each day with the very real threat of being killed by someone or something in our immediate surroundings.

That was eons ago. Today, this mechanism breeds pessimism and negativity through the mind’s tendency to wander until it finds a threat. These “threats” magnify the perceived likelihood that things are going—and/or are going to go—poorly. When the threat is real and lurking in the bushes down the path, this mechanism serves you well. When the threat is imagined and you spend two months convinced the project you’re working on is going to flop, this mechanism leaves you with a soured view of reality that wreaks havoc in your life.

Maintaining positivity is a daily challenge that requires focus and attention. You must be intentional about staying positive if you’re going to overcome the brain’s tendency to focus on threats. It won’t happen by accident.

Positivity and Your Health

Pessimism is trouble because it’s bad for your health. Numerous studies have shown that optimists are physically and psychologically healthier than pessimists.

Extensive research study has been conducted by  university of Pennsylvania on age group 25 to 65 to see how their levels of pessimism or optimism influenced their overall health. The researchers found that pessimists’ health deteriorated far more rapidly as they aged.

They found that optimists have lower levels of cardiovascular disease and longer life-spans. Although the exact mechanism through which pessimism affects health hasn’t been identified, researchers at Yale and the University of Colorado found that pessimism is associated with a weakened immune response to tumors and infection.

Researchers from the University of Kentucky went so far as to inject optimists and pessimists with a virus to measure their immune response. The researchers found optimists had a much stronger immune response than pessimists.

Positivity and Performance

Keeping a positive attitude isn’t just good for your health. University of Pennsylvania has also studied the connection between positivity and performance. In one study in particular, they measured the degree to which insurance salespeople were optimistic or pessimistic in their work. Optimistic salespeople sold 37% more policies than pessimists, who were twice as likely to leave the company during their first year of employment.

The research report shows that people can transform a tendency toward pessimistic thinking into positive thinking through simple techniques that create lasting changes in behavior long after they are discovered.

Here are three things that will help you remain positive :-

  1. Separate Fact from Fiction

The first step in learning to focus on the positive requires knowing how to stop negative self-talk in its tracks. The more you ruminate on negative thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our negative thoughts are just that — thoughts, not facts.

When you find yourself believing the negative and pessimistic things your inner voice says, it’s time to stop and write them down. Literally stop what you’re doing and write down what you’re thinking. Once you’ve taken a moment to slow down the negative momentum of your thoughts, you will be more rational and clear-headed in evaluating their veracity. Evaluate these statements to see if they’re factual. You can bet the statements aren’t true any time you see words like never, always, worst, ever, etc.

Do you really always lose your keys? Of course not. Perhaps you forget them frequently, but most days you do remember them. Are you never going to find a solution to your problem? If you really are that stuck, maybe you’ve been resisting asking for help. Or if it really is an intractable problem, then why are you wasting your time beating your head against the wall? If your statements still look like facts once they’re on paper, take them to a friend or colleague you can trust, and see if he or she agrees with you. Then the truth will surely come out.

When it feels like something always or never happens, this is just your brain’s natural threat tendency inflating the perceived frequency or severity of an event. Identifying and labeling your thoughts as thoughts by separating them from the facts will help you escape the cycle of negativity and move toward a positive new outlook.

  1. Identify a Positive

Once you snap yourself out of self-defeating, negative thoughts, it’s time to help your brain learn what you want it to focus on — the positive.

This will come naturally after some practice, but first you have to give your wandering brain a little help by consciously selecting something positive to think about. Any positive thought will do to refocus your brain’s attention. When things are going well, and your mood is good, this is relatively easy. When things are going poorly, and your mind is flooded with negative thoughts, this can be a challenge. In these moments, think about your day and identify one positive thing that happened, no matter how small. If you can’t think of something from the current day, reflect on the previous day or even the previous week. Or perhaps there is an exciting event you are looking forward to that you can focus your attention on.

The point here is you must have something positive that you’re ready to shift your attention to when your thoughts turn negative. Step one stripped the power from negative thoughts by separating fact from fiction. Step two is to replace the negative with a positive. Once you have identified a positive thought, draw your attention to that thought each time you find yourself dwelling on the negative. If that proves difficult, you can repeat the process of writing down the negative thoughts to discredit their validity, and then allow yourself to freely enjoy positive thoughts.

  1. Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude

Taking time to contemplate what you’re grateful for isn’t merely the “right” thing to do; it reduces the stress hormone cortisol by 23%. Research conducted at the University of California, Davis, found that people who worked daily to cultivate an attitude of gratitude experienced improved mood, energy and substantially less anxiety due to lower cortisol levels.

You cultivate an attitude of gratitude by taking time out every day to focus on the positive. Any time you experience negative or pessimistic thoughts, use this as a cue to shift gears and think about something positive. In time, a positive attitude will become a way of life.

Bringing It All Together

I realize these three tips sound incredibly basic, but they have tremendous power because they train your brain to have a positive focus. They break old habits, if you force yourself to use them. Given the mind’s natural tendency to wander toward negative thoughts, we can all use a little help with staying positive.

How do you stay positive? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

6 Easy Tricks That Will Make You Way More Productive

When it comes to productivity, we all face the same challenge — there are only 24 hours in a day. Since even the best ideas are worthless until they’re executed, how efficiently you use your time is as important as anything else in business.

I’ve become fascinated by productivity secrets because some people seem to have twice the time, and there’s no better way to reach your goals than by finding ways to do more with the precious time you’ve been given.

It feels incredible when you leave the office after an ultra-productive day. It’s a workplace high that’s hard to beat. In my experience you don’t need to work longer or push yourself harder — you just need to work smarter.

“Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” —William Penn

I’ve learned to rely on productivity hacks that make me far more efficient. I try to squeeze every drop out of every hour without expending any extra effort.

And my favourite hack also happens to be the easiest one to implement. It’s so easy and useful you can begin using it now.

  • Never touch things twice. That’s it. Never put anything in a holding pattern, because touching things  twice is a huge time-waster. Don’t  save an email or a phone call to deal with later. As soon as something gets your attention you should act on it,   delegate it, or delete it.
  • To pull this off you’re going to have to eat some frogs.“Eating a frog” is doing the least appetizing, most dreaded item on your to-do list. If you let your frogs sit, you waste your day dreading them. If you eat them right away, then you’re freed up to tackle the stuff that excites and inspires you.
  • You’ll also need to master the tyranny of the urgent.The tyranny of the urgent refers to the tendency of little things that have to be done right now to get in the way of what really matters. This creates a huge problem as urgent actions often have little impact. The key here is to delete or delegate. Otherwise, you can find yourself going days, or even weeks, without touching the important stuff. You’ll need to get good at spotting when putting out fires is getting in the way of your performance, and you’ll need to delete or delegate the things that hinder real forward momentum.
  • No is a powerful word that you’re going to have to use.When it’s time to say no, avoid phrases such as I don’t think I can or I’m not certain. Saying no to a new commitment honors your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully and efficiently fulfill them. Research conducted at the University of California in San Francisco shows that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. Learn to use no, and it will lift your mood, as well as your productivity.
  • You should check e-mail / social media on a schedule & not random as you are doing now If you aren’t going to touch things twice, you can’t allow e-mail / social media to be a constant interruption. Take advantage of features that prioritize messages by sender. Set alerts for your most important vendors and best customers, and save the rest until the scheduled time. You could even set up an autoresponder or bot that lets senders know when you’ll be checking your e-mail again.
  • Avoid multitasking.It’s a real productivity killer. Research conducted at Stanford University confirms that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time.

Multitasking reduces your efficiency and performance because your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. When you try to do two things at once, your brain lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully. Never touching things twice means only touching one thing at a time.

Bringing It All Together

We’re all searching for ways to be more efficient and productive. I hope my productivity hack helps you to find that extra edge.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.

 

9 Ways to Combat Decision Fatigue

Deciding everything from which pair of socks to wear to which candidate to hire is cumulatively exhausting.

Making decisions, even small, seemly harmless ones, can wear us down over time. Every day we must decide how to spend every waking minute — what we eat and wear, what we work on, what we do with our spare time. By bedtime, the average person has made 35000 decisions. Every decision requires time and energy, and depletes our willpower.

This is called decision fatigue, and it’s different from physical fatigue. You’re not consciously aware of being tired, but you’re low on mental energy. The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts. This may cause you to become reckless in your decision-making, acting impulsively instead of thinking things through. Or you may simply do nothing, which can create bigger problems in the long run.

Luckily, there are plenty of ways you can keep this from happening. Learn you how can combat decision fatigue, replenish your willpower and boost your productivity during a decision-heavy day with these nine simple steps.

  1. Make fewer decisions.

The best way to reduce decision fatigue is to reduce the number of decisions you have to make in a given day. Look for ways to streamline your choices. Avoid random decision-making by using lists throughout your day. To-do lists keep us on track. Shopping lists help us avoid walking up and down grocery aisles trying to decide what to buy.

Plan your meals the night before, so you know what you’re having for breakfast, whether or not you’re going to pack a lunch and what you’ll make for dinner. Stop trying on 10 different outfits in the morning; pick out your clothes ahead of time. Find ways to automate certain decisions, such as signing up for automatic bill pay for the regular bills. Instead of thinking through which route to take when driving somewhere, use a GPS to help you navigate where you need to go.

  1. Delegate decisions.

You can delegate decisions the same way you delegate tasks. By giving responsibility for decision-making to other people, you reduce the number of decisions on your plate. Consider your responsibilities in your home life, work and elsewhere. Are there obligations you can delegate to someone else? This means you’ll need to stop micromanaging those around you and have confidence that others will do their part.

Managers can delegate some decisions to employees. Parents can delegate certain things to children. There are times when we can delegate to friends and family. This could be as simple as asking a friend to put together a playlist for a party or asking the person you’re meeting up with to pick the restaurant for dinner. When done right, delegating can empower people and show them that you trust them.

  1. Have a process for making decisions.

When you have to make difficult or important decisions and you have several options to weigh, use a decision matrix to help you make the best determination. A decision matrix helps you analyze your choices by listing the options and the factors you need to consider and then scoring it by the importance of each factor you are weighing. This may sound complicated, but once you get the hang of it, a decision matrix can be extremely helpful.

A decision matrix can clear up confusion and remove emotion when you’re faced with multiple choices and countless variables. Unlike a simple list of pros and cons, a decision matrix allows you to place importance on each factor.

  1. Make big decisions in the morning.

Researchers have found that time of day impacts our judgment and our ability to make the best decisions. It might seem to make sense that morning people make their best decisions in the morning and night owls make their best decisions at night, but researchers have found this just isn’t so. For most of us, the best time of day is in the morning — that’s when we make accurate and thoughtful decisions. By afternoon, most people hit a plateau, and in the evening, we start making riskier snap decisions.

According to the study, people tend to change their decision-making policies throughout the day. In the morning, they tend to be more cautious and meticulous in their choices. But as the day wears on and decision fatigue sets in, they start making riskier decisions. So if you have a have a big decision that requires careful consideration, aim to make it in the morning.

5. Limit your options.

Having too many choices will stress you out. You become mired in your decision-making and start second-guessing yourself. This often happens when we’re making purchases and are faced with endless options and alternatives. Our decision fatigue is heightened by our desire to “shop around” and get the best deal. It all takes up so much energy and overloads the brain.

Try paring down your options, so you have a limited number of choices. Often, the benefit of spending a great deal of time investigating a wide range of choices is negligible — you might save a few Money, but you’ll end up feeling anxious and overwhelmed. Instead, pick two or three to compare and don’t spend too much time wading through the pros and cons. Make a decision and stick to it.

  1. Set deadlines to space out decisions.

Decision fatigue can often occur toward the end of a long, complex project that you’ve been working on over weeks, months or years. As the end of the project looms, there may be many last-minute decisions to make, which you’ve been putting off until now. This is when people start making snap decisions and bad choices because the length and intensity of the project have worn them down.

The solution is to create micro-deadlines that force you to act early and not keep pondering your choices. Don’t set yourself up to make critical decisions at the eleventh hour. Space out these decisions so you’re truly using your best judgment.

  1. Simplify your life.

Constantly needing to make decisions can leave you feeling depleted and eat away at your willpower. That’s why, after a busy, exhausting day, we’re tempted to eat junk food, skip our workout and veg out on the couch. Making healthy choices just seems beyond our self-control. If this is you, it’s time to scale back. Find ways to simplify your life. Cut out things that aren’t important.

Hobbies, activities and volunteering are all great and wonderful things to do, but if you’ve reached the point where you’re overwhelmed, it’s time to drop the excess commitments in your life. Having fewer tasks and activities will lead to fewer decisions and will help you feel restored and in control of the choices you do make.

  1. Stop second-guessing yourself.

We often get trapped in the mindset that everything we do needs to be perfect, and this puts a lot of pressure on us to make the “right” choice, because a “wrong” choice could somehow ruin something. The truth is, this is rarely the case. Still, we regret our choices and wallow in uncertainty over the selection we made. It’s time to let go and move on.

Stop second-guessing yourself. Stop going back and pondering your choices to see if you like something else better — that will only make you regret all the time you’ve wasted. And most likely, the choice you made to begin with, the path you picked or the selection you opted for, is just as good as any other option out there. Now you need to focus on making it great.

  1. Develop daily routines that put less-important tasks on autopilot.

Establish daily routines that minimize and simplify your choices. By having firm habits and a strict routine, you put certain decisions on autopilot. Set a wake-up time and stick with it. Instead of debating whether you should work out or not, have a routine that establishes what days and at what time you exercise.

Eat a variation of the same healthy breakfast every morning. Pack a simple lunch every day. Instead of agonizing over what to wear every morning, have established outfits that you rotate each week. Many successful people have a handful of go-to outfits. President Barack Obama talked about wearing only gray or blue suits while in office so he didn’t have to give too much thought to what he would wear.

Steve Jobs was known for his black turtlenecks and jeans, and Mark Zuckerberg sports his iconic gray Brunello Cucinelli T-shirt. Whatever your preferences, make it a routine. Doing all this will help you waste less time and create consistency in your life so you know exactly what comes next without a lot of thought. It will also help you conserve your willpower and give you self-control.

 

15 Best Home Based Business Ideas for Housewives & Moms

Home based business is blessing for the housewives and moms. Home based business ideas can be started with low or Nil Investment and require very less time. Nowadays many housewives and moms are looking for home based business. They are keen to earn more money by doing part time business in the spare time. In order to assist them, Earn With Nayak features 15 Best Home Based Business Ideas. These ideas are somewhat flexible in nature as being a housewife you need to give sufficient time to your family and children. So, let’s take a look at best home based business ideas that can make you financially independent.

Cooking based business Ideas for Housewives & Moms

1)    Chocolate Making

Chocolate making is evergreen home based low investment business idea. As per us, it is a perfect business for the housewife. In this business, you need to make chocolates and sell. You will need a help from someone as you need to wrap the chocolates to make it attractive. In order to sell the chocolate, you can tie up with shopping malls or local grocery shops or sell online or in exhibition. In online there is various option available to get bulk order or scale up your business or increase your visibility. (drop us a message to learn more)

Capital required for chocolate making – Rs 5000 – Rs 10000

Expected profit margin – 20%

2)    Cake Making

The second home based business idea is cake making. Cake making doesn’t require many resources, tools or equipment. You just need skill and training for cake making. You should be extremely good in making a cake in order to withstand in the market. Selling of cake can be done from home. In addition to that, you can tie up with local bakeries to increase the sell or sell online. (drop us a message to learn more)

Capital required for cake making – Rs 5000 – Rs 10000

Expected profit margin – 20 – 30%

3)    Cooking class

The third business idea for the housewives and mom is a cooking class. It is pure ladies based business idea. In order to start cooking class, you should be very good at a culinary skill. You also need small space at home along with multiple cooking facilities to start this business. You can sell at your locality or online or start cooking coaching classes online or create membership platform. (drop us a message to learn more)

Capital required for cooking class- Rs 20000 – Rs 25000

Expected profit margin – 30%

Skill & Product based business Ideas for Housewives & Moms

4)    Candle Making

The next home based business idea for housewives is candle making. Candles are widely used nowadays not only for religious purpose but also as a decorative item. To start this business you need to learn a technique of making a candle from wax. You can refer a book or attend a training program for the same. There are lot of avenues where you can sell your Candle both online & offline . (drop us a message to learn more)

Capital required for candle making – Rs 10000 – Rs 15000

Expected profit margin – 15-30%

5)    Greeting Card Making

Greeting card making is small home based business. Demands of greeting cards are increasing and greeting cards are required on almost every occasion. So, starting a greeting card making business could be very good bet. This business requires less capital and more creativity. There are lot of avenues where you can sell your Card both online & offline . (drop us a message to learn more)
Capital required for greeting card making – Rs 500 – Rs 2500
Expected profit margin – 40%

 6)    Customize Cloth making

The next home based business for housewives is cloth designing. This business requires more money as you need to procure multiple types of equipment and you also need manpower for making customize clothes. You can create a facebook page or WhatsApp group in order to sell these clothes or showcase in exhibition or sell online at marketplace. There are lot of avenues where you can sell your Candle both online & offline . (drop us a message to learn more)
Capital required for Customize cloth making – 1 Lac or depend.
Expected profit margin – 30%

7)    Blogging

Blogging is most popular home based business for everyone including housewives. In order to become a successful blogger, you need to be very good in term of content creation and knowledge. Today blogging is a primary source of income for many.
Capital required for Blogging – Rs.5000
Expected revenue – Variable

8)    Silver Jewellery Business

Jewellery is one of the most favourite topics of ladies. If you love jewellery and ready make a small investment you can start your own silver based jewellery business from home. It is a profitable business. However, it requires time to establish yourself in this business.

(drop us a message to learn more)
Capital required for Blogging – 1 Lac
Expected profit margin – 40%

 Service based business Ideas for Housewives & Moms

9)    Match Making

Matchmaking is a simple business that can be started from home. You just need biodatas of unmarried male and female candidate to start this business. You need to give very less time to this business. You can create your online portal to market your service. (drop us a message to learn more)
Capital required for Match Making – NIL
Expected Revenue – Variable
10)     Account Keeping

If you are a commerce graduate with expertise in accounting you can start home-based accounting business. Many small companies are looking for people who can effectively manage account and prepare a balance sheet for them. It is an evergreen business without any investment.
Capital required for Account Keeping – NIL
Expected Revenue – Variable
11)     Form Filling or Data Entry

Computer savvy super moms and housewives can go for form filling or data entry operation business. Many websites offer job-related to form filling and data entry. You will be paid once you complete the data entry job.
Capital required for Data Entry – NIL
Expected Revenue – Variable

12)     Beauty Parlour

The beauty parlour is best part time home based business idea for housewives and moms. You need to take training before starting a beauty parlour. It requires a time to establish yourself as a good beautician.
Capital required for Beauty parlour – Rs.25000
Expected Revenue – Variable

Other business Ideas for Housewives & Moms

13)    Tuition Class

Tuition class is next small business ideas that can be started from home. Teaching and learning skill is a must in order to start this business. Initially, you can start with few students, with growing demand you can plan to convert your small tuition to big coaching class.
Capital required for Tuition Class – Rs.5000
Expected Revenue – Variable

14)     PTC Jobs

If you are good at operating computer you can plan to take up PTC Jobs offered by various websites. PTC job means pay to click job. This type of job will pay you money for clicking and viewing an advertisement.
Capital required for PTC Jobs – NIL
Expected Revenue – Variable

15)     Play Group

The demand of play group is increasing in many cities in India. If you have a suitable place and money for investment this business is for you. In order to start this business, you need to decide play school course and take appropriate permission. After doing that you need to buy all kind of play school equipment like furniture, toys, educations aids etc. Once it is done you need to recruit staff for the play group. (drop us a message to learn more)

Capital required for Play Group – depend on location
Expected Revenue – Variable

Over to You,
Apart from above you can create your own home based business depending on your skill area/interest/hobbies.
Earn With Nayak will be glad to assist you in your business. We have Start-up Guide Program where you will be given Business counselling & Guidance for business setup process, Helping you in digitalization of your business & assisting you in designing important key aspects for sustaining your business.

No one can stop you but you…Go for it.

 

Cost of Timing the Market

Some time back , I went with my family to nearby multiplex for a movie. The movie, a thriller, had already received rave reviews and we couldn’t help but sneak into nearby multiplex to see for ourselves what the hype was all about. The movie is unpredictable, open to interpretation and the plot takes multiple twists and turn from start to end.

During the course of the movie I walked out of the hall 3 to 4 times to receive few important calls. While I ensure that none of these calls lasted more than few minutes each and I hoped back to my seat as soon as possible , these exits virtually marred my experience beyond description , By the end of the movie , while almost everyone leaving the theatre was going gaga about the movie’s gripping plot , I was clueless as to what the big deal about the movie really was.

Few months later , when this movie had TV Premier I decided to give another shot & guess what. I simple loved the movie and could finally relate with everyone around me who had loved the movie at theatre few months earlier.
What exactly happen that dramatically changed my opinion about this movie.  Did the script, cast or movies climax change? No. what really did change was that second time around, I watched the movie in entirety without missing any scenes, unlike the experience at the theatre, where I walked out of a few scenes to answer phone calls.

By now, most of you would be wondering if any of this has any bearing on your wealth creation. Well, it does. While SENSEX has generated CAGR of 14% since 1990 , the journey was filled with short term volatility along the way . No wonder then that many investors would have tried to “time” their entry and exit in equities to avoid volatility and / or to maximize their returns and guess what, this could have marred their investment experience just like mine was at the movie, due to untimely exits .

Following statistics of Sensex (1st Jan 90 to 30th Sept 19) brings forth the cost one has to pay for unsuccessfully timing the market.

Assuming an investor started investing on 1st Jan 1990 , his investment would have yielded ~ 14% CAGR , if he had stayed invested up to Sept,14 . However, If the investor was not invested on 10 best days (Ranked by daily returns) , his returns would have come down to ~10% . If he had missed 20,30 and 40 best days, the returns fall dramatically to ~7.7% , 5.6% and 3.6% respectively .While 40 days may seem minuscule when one considers a history of ~7000 days , missing out on 40 best days , would have knocked off more than 10% CAGR from the investor’s returns .
As the old cliche goes “Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity “. In the world of investment, missing out on a few days even over a long span of time can make a huge dent in your wealth creation potential. You would do well to ensure that your investment experience is not marred by untimely exits, like my experience in movie.

At least I had the option of watching the movie again, as an investor do we have the option of rolling back the clock to recoup the best days our investment missed?

Disclaimer:- Equity Investment are subject to market risk , read all Scheme related document before Investing. Always Consult professional advisor before Investing

Apple & Strawberry Story

A teacher teaching Maths to seven-year-old Arnav asked him, “If I give you one apple and one apple and one apple, how many apples will you have?” Within a few seconds, Arnav replied confidently, “Four!”

The dismayed teacher was expecting an effortless correct answer (three). She was disappointed. “Maybe the child did not listen properly”, she thought. She repeated, “Arnav, listen carefully. If I give you one apple and one apple and one apple, how many apples will you have?”

Arnav had seen the disappointment on his teacher’s face. He calculated again on his fingers. But within him, he was also searching for the answer that will make the teacher happy. His search for the answer was not for the correct one, but the one that will make his teacher happy. This time hesitatingly he replied, “Four…”

The disappointment stayed on the teacher’s face. She remembered that Arnav liked strawberries. She thought maybe he doesn’t like apples and that is making him lose focus. This time with an exaggerated excitement and twinkling in her eyes she asked, “If I give you one strawberry and one strawberry and one strawberry, then how many you will have?” Seeing the teacher happy, young Arnav calculated on his fingers again. There was no pressure on him, but a little on the teacher… She wanted her new approach to succeed. With a hesitating smile, young Arnav enquired, “Three?”

The teacher now had a victorious smile. Her approach had succeeded. She wanted to congratulate herself. But one last thing remained. Once again she asked him, “Now if I give you one apple and one apple and one more apple how many will you have?” Promptly Arnav answered, “Four!”

The teacher was aghast. “How Arnav, how?” she demanded in a little stern and irritated voice. In a voice that was low and hesitating, young Arnav replied, “Because I already have one apple in my bag.”

In our lives as entrepreneurs too, many times we ask questions or engage in conversations with our employees, partners, vendors, customers or even family members. However, when they give us an answer that is different from what we expect we immediately get agitated and judge them to be wrong, dumb or stupid.

This should not be the case, there may be an angle, a point of view or idea that we may not have understood, seen or imagined at all behind their responses. Therefore, it is important that we listen and understand what is being said, carefully rather than having preconceived notions and judgments. We must develop the habit of understanding the entire perspective before we react to a situation or person. Creating an environment where people are unafraid to speak up, share their ideas and responses even if they are contradictory to our thoughts, is essential for us to broaden our horizons. A robust two-way communication plays a key role if we want to evolve to the next level and become a good human being. Needless to say, adopting an open approach towards people and their ideas is one of the most essential key to make a difference as an Entrepreneurs, a Boss, a Vendor, a Supplier, a spouse or any other role that we play every day.