Money transactions become frequent nowadays and paying electronically has become new norms now. Cards became outdated and UPI became the most favourite mode of payment in India. For those who don't have any idea about UPI, it's Unified Payment Interface created to make the transactions hassle-free. 

As a user of major 3 UPI apps for almost more than 3 years and also tried 3 core banks UPI solutions, I have seen some advantages in UPI apps. The common advantages are adding multiple accounts and internal transfer between the added accounts are simple and easy.

But one of the competitive advantage I noticed is their speed. The UPI apps QR recognition speed is much faster than the core banks UPI l interfaces. One might think what difference it would make if it is just a few seconds.

Let me take an example, In a country like India, if you are standing in a queue, in a shop or in a gas station, it would usually be a long one. The time taken by each individual to complete the transaction matters here and the longer the time, the more people behind us frustrates. I have experienced it multiple times and what I noticed in those situations were, the UPI apps worked better and faster than the core banking apps. Even if we scan a part of the QR code, the apps recognise it immediately and the transactions would be smooth. 

You may wonder why I have explained these experiences in detail. Just to make sure how a small competitive advantage can give enormous results. Unbeknownst to me, the speed advantage of UPI apps made me switch completely from bank apps direct UPI solutions to dedicated UPI apps for all my mobile payments. I didn't even realised it.

Recently I came across the "Winning Edge Concept" and I think it would be one of the best personal examples I encountered. A small difference in speed made me use those apps (which I have been using multiple times a day). 

I have searched the internet for any articles or case study to judge my experience whether it's an isolated incident for me or common for all. But haven't seen any bench mark tests to check the QR code scan speed. So the perspective is from my personal experience. If you know any case study, please share it with me or comment the links.

There is a zen thought "Every encounter is a teacher" and I think I learned a valuable lesson from my own experience. I hope sharing my experience may teach you something and please share your thoughts or your own experience if you encounter any.

Follow me in Twitter and WhatsApp for regular updates and daily Personal Development/Self Development related contents.

Have you ever noticed when people are given same situations and same skill sets, some people outshine most? Have you ever wondered why and how? There are so many psychological traits behind it and one of them is "Winning Edge Concept". Let's see what is it and how we can make it help in our lives as well.

What is Winning Edge Concept?

When people with same skill sets and same circumstances compete,what decides the outcome? The small differences in ability may have a large impact in these cases and it defines who wins and who lose. In short, the small differences in crucial times make large impact in the outcome. 

How it works?

How such small differences can lead to huge impact in results? 

Let's take an example, In the Women's road time trial event in Rio Olympics, Kristin Armstrong came first, Olga Zabelinskaya came second and Anna van der Breggen came third. They secured the gold, silver and bronze medals respectively.Here the winning edge is, the time difference between the three medalists. Olga finished approx 6 seconds later than Kristin and Anna finished 6 seconds later than Olga. Just 6 seconds decided the medals even though they rode for around 45 mins. Just 11 seconds delay caused the 4th person to miss a Olympic medal. They all had equal skillset and they were all the No.1 players in their countries. But what pushed a person to only have bronze and silver but not gold was a little competitive advantage which Kristin accumulated throughout her training years.

How to use it for our advantage?

There is a formula called 10x in which the people want to use winning edge. In any field, if you want one step ahead of everyone, you have to train 10x then everyone else. Another classic example from another popular sports, football. 

When most players started slowing after 30, how Cristiano Ronaldo keeps his prime and gives tough to the players in 20? Some of the players words about him may shed light on it

"At work, he's a monster. He arrives first and leaves last. He's working, he's working ... I've never seen that and I understand better now why he's won the Ballon d'Or five times." - Matuidi

"You’d come to training and he’d already be in the gym. Then, he’d stay for extra work after training to work on his finishing, before going swimming and then returning the gym. He was determined to be the best." - Berbatov

I hope no more explanation is needed to tell about competitive advantage over skillset.

Let's finish this post with an awesome quote from Grant Cardon "Your greatness is limited only by the investments you make in yourself."

If you think I haven't wasted your time but added some value to your thoughts, please feel free to check my other posts.

References:

https://www.statista.com/chart/5597/rio-2016-vs-the-world_-percentage-margin-of-victory/

https://www.sportskeeda.com/football/5-players-astonished-cristiano-ronaldo-training-methods-evra-scholes

https://twitter.com/GrantCardone/status/1325825072100208641?t=yWmEKexgdYqPmr-CFnz3Sg&s=19

Importance of Personal Values

Human psychology says, In every situation, humans act and react as per their core personal values. In nutshell, the values one believe makes the person. What exactly are these values? How it is connected with Personal Development? Lets see,

What is a Personal Value?

Personal Values are beliefs or principles. Upon some of these Personal Values, people build their life consciously or unconsciously. These beliefs or principles becomes the core ideology of a person when he starts to adopt it. We are made up of various values and unknowingly we prioritise them. All our decisions are depends on our personal values and their prioritisation.

Personal values differs for each person and everyone in the world are set of different personal values in different proportion. This difference makes every person so unique. It inadvertently affects every decision they make and so we could see people make different choices in same situations. One's core values form his/her mental picture and the mental picture will reflect in their decision.

Personal Values Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Why Personal Values?

Animals live on their instincts and change depends on their situation. They take decisions on their instincts alone. But when humans start to think, their decisions were based on analysis. Most of the time, the emotional decisions are hard, not because of the lack of data we have in hand, but the clash between two values they believe.

While taking each decision, you are growing a value and at some point of time, the value charges you to take action when presented a situation. Even if not conscious, it happens unconsciously. So Personal values are part of us and we are driven by them. In other words, it makes the humans as thinking animals and it creates a society on a collective values the individuals possess.

How Personal Values affects individual?

A child starts to copy the values of its parents or with whom it spends most of the time. But, over time, it can start to create its own values based on circumstances. A kid may be from a conservative background, but later he/she can adopt a liberal lifestyle. A fine example is portrayed in "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by the Author Robert Kiyosaki. He mentioned that, in some point of time, he took advice from both but implemented what he thought best. There comes the analysis part. He analysed and did what he thought right and that decisions grew the Rich Dad Values in him which made him super successful.

So the values you believe and adopt, shape your life. Also it plays an important role in reflecting your self confidence. When you do what you believe, you choose a path and start your journey. When you are forced to do opposite of what you believe or you choose actions which doesn't reflect your values but oppose them, subconsciously you are shrinking the belief.

Personal Values - Decisions Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

Right or Wrong, following the values by action, increase you happiness and satisfaction. On the other hand, if you do things oppose your values, you feel guilty. Each time, the action taken doesn't reflect your values, you damage the value you believe and it will directly affect your happiness and confidence.

The unpleasantness caused, will lead some people to distract their mind from actual problem. They fall for some short term happiness to overcome. But, until the root cause is identified and fixed, we have to face the same situations again and again. This is not the growth path. One should either align his/her lifestyle with his/her core values or at-least change the values to suit the lifestyle. The second one is tough but not impossible. At-least, in long run, they will find happiness.

How to identify my core values?

Brian Tracy suggests a method to identify what core values you like. Write an eulogy on what your friends and family will say about you. Its a good starting point and it will tell you what kind of life you want to live. For what, you want to remembered for and what is the legacy you want to leave. Think about it and what you get will be your desired core values. Now self access, what will your friends/family say about you now. The gap between these two is the journey you have to take.

The beginning of a journey

Once you identified your personal values, you can prioritise them in an order and the top most is the one that portrays you. That value should be the one you can even sacrifice your life for. Once the values are identified and prioritised, it is going to form your life. There should not any compromises.

Now you can start align your life based on the values. When you have to take the decisions, you can check which one align with your values. It is a long journey and once it is started you will feel happy when your life is in harmony with your values. You start to feel confident level and happiness raising.

This is the journey in which you will start to acquire what is needed for your life. The skills, things and even people who support your values will find you on their own (universe call it as Law of Attraction). You will witness that you are a speed learner when comes to acquiring the skills and you are surrounded by the people you want to live with.

The journey itself is the benefit

Another one important thing about it is, when your desired personal values start growing in you, you will feel the peace of mind. Our life is like a building. When you set the base as strong as possible, the building will be strong. Our personal values are the base of our life. When you set the values as strong as possible, the life will be unshakeable whatever happens. Because you trust your values, you build your self confidence. When your self confidence is high, your mind will be always calm. When you train your mind to be calm, you can take any decision and turn any situation to your advantage.

So the journey we begin with the values, doesn't have any end benefits, but you will start to reap the benefits when you go further each day.

Cautions

One important caution is there. When you choose a value, you make it as your highest priority. You should not leverage it or compromise it for any other thing. Universe has a law. It will reward you, when you embrace the value. But if you betray the value, you have to face the consequences. So you have to be very careful when choosing your personal values.

You may find yourself in cross roads sometime. When two of your values clashes, you have to choose the higher one. That is why we prioritised it. Changing the order in later point of time, will affect your life. Following the preset prioritisation is easy, but if you want to change it in later point of time, the change comes with its own price.

The End?

Building our life is a never ending journey. Our path may differs but the journey continues. Whether you build it on top of best values and live a wonderful life or on top of fear and live a mediocre life is in your hands. Choose your own personal values and make your lifestyle, instead of let others choose your life.

I hope I made some minutes of you useful. If you find it useful, you can make others time useful by sharing it to your friends and family. If you like this one, please subscribe to my newsletter. I hope to change at-least a million life and please be part of it.

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A simple guide on how to back on track if you lose interest in your own goals.

Ever set a goal and after sometime lost interest in the Goal? Then this post is for you.

People set their own goal, then why do they lose interest in their own goal? 

There are multiple reasons why people lose interest in their own goal. Some of the major reasons are,

Lets see them one by one,

1. Impractical Goal Setting:

The Goals set when our hopes are too high, are mostly impractical to achieve. After listening to a motivational speech or reading a motivational blog/book, your hope level will be high. The goals set at that time, will be high and you will try to push yourself at your best, by not taking the limitations. You will have a self thought that "I can do anything". 

That is probably true and you will have unmatched energy at that time. But after some days, if you cannot keep up your energy, you will feel the limitations draining your energy, you will start to think about the goal as not practical one. Once you convinced your subconscious mind that it's too impractical to achieve, you tend to lose your interest in that goal and move to something else. 

Let's take an example, One day Mr. X had a nice chat with one of his friends and was in a  good mood. He also watched a motivational video. He decided to set the course of his life upwards and become a millionaire. He sat down and created a Goal for that like "I will become a Millionaire in a Year". Then he started preparing monthly, weekly and daily targets for the goal (Goal Setting). He started to follow the targets religiously for a few days or even a few weeks.

After some time, he analyzed and found that the plan he created is not suitable for his current routine and he is unable to cope-up. Sometimes he is unable to do his daily targets which results in him announcing his day as failure to achieve his grand target. These circumstances may feed his subconscious mind, that he cannot achieve his targets and eventually it leads to him to lose interest in his goal.

One thing he missed is, the truth, that achieving a big goal is not gonna be a cake walk and there should be some sacrifices. Most of the time, the initial plan backfires and one should always alter the plans on the go (Improvisation).

There are two approaches to fix it.

1. One can re-analyse, when not in high hopes and remodel the Goal to fit to our current situation.

In Mr. X's case, he can analyze again and check why he is not able to complete the daily targets. Are they too impossible to do? If so, then he needs to set more practical tasks/targets to achieve. 

if something is not working out, change the plan to different action items to achieve the Goal.

2. One can re-analyse but stick with the impractical route

Sounds funny? But it will also work, if you train your mind to see the results. The best example is Elon Musk.

"If you give yourself 30 days to clean your home, it will take you 30 days.

But if you give yourself 3 hours, it will take 3 hours.

The same applies to your goals, ambitions, and potential." - Elon Musk

As said by Elon Musk, if you give enough of yourself to your goal, you can accomplish it in less time, or even if you may not achieve it you would have achieved what others can't even think of. For this second option, you have to train your mind, not to be distracted or discouraged with the obstacles and the fear of failure. 

2. Too Many distractions

One of the reasons we fail to achieve our goal is distractions. People are good at planning, they plan, organise and set targets. But when it comes to completing the targets, most of them failed. Why?

The major reason is “too many distractions”. There is a constant race between Instant Gratification and Delayed Gratification. 

Instant Gratification 

A short happiness of fulfilling an immediate desire, like watching a movie, spending money on the things which makes us happy for a short time.

Delayed Gratification 

A long-term Satisfaction we get after achieving something, like investing money for the future, learning new skills or completing a goal successfully as per the defined target. 

Instant Gratification is powerful and so people who couldn’t resist it, are often distracted by other pleasure activities and lose their time and energy. The desire to induce the Instant Gratification activities usually keep on growing and one wont get the feeling of satisfaction. It's kind of feeding the fire. It will always ask for more. The more you give, the bigger the fire becomes. 

On the other hand, the activities which lead us to delayed gratification, may not give instant pleasure and sometimes may be boring, but in long run, it will give better results. People who can’t control their urge to mediate pleasure, fail to see the results and lose their interest in their daily targets. 

Some of the activities that can cause Instant Gratification - Checking Mails, Spending more time in watching entertainment videos and Social Media, Binge watching Movies/Series.

How to fix it?

First, we have to understand that the pleasure we get in instant gratification won't last longer and the urge will continue forever. The Second step is trying to stick with the schedule. Checking Mails and Leisure time is needed, but give them a smaller window. Give them the last place in the schedule. Give first priority to the tasks in hand and make those leisure activities as a reward for your work. No work means No reward - Make it as a rule and follow it strictly. Self Discipline plays a major role in achieving it.

Read Brian Tracy’s Eat The Frog and James Clear’s Atomic Habits. These are some of the best time investments you can make if you want to overcome bad habits and be productive with your time.

3. Having multiple goals at a time:

Another Major problem for losing interest in your goal is, having multiple goals at the same time. Some people set multiple Goals and are unable to pursue any of them. We may think that achieving multiple goals is possible. But in reality, you won't achieve any of them. In other words, if you focus on only one thing at a time, you will give your 100% at that work and your success rate will be high.

As long as you can have the bandwidth to complete all your defined targets for all your goals, you can have multiple goals. But you also have to take into consideration other factors, like personal life, work-life balance and your social life. You shouldn’t over-burn yourself. 

One may think “Why shouldn’t I?, As long as I am comfortable with it”. Over-burying yourself in a long run, may cause depression and other personal problems, which may affect your mental health as well as your primary focus on Goals. So, in the end, you may not be able to achieve any of your goals. So it is better to have one goal at a time and pursue it.

Apart from these, there may be other reasons for losing your interest in your goals. The goal may not align to your interest and may not suitable at this moment. Please share if you want to add any other reason and also share your feedback.

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A short note on Being Positive:

How come be positive in a negative situation?

You mean to say that we shouldn't worry whatever happens?

Positive thinking is just only taking positives and neglecting negatives in our life. In that case, are we not being blind for the negativity around us?

These are some of the questions, we face when we think about positivity. Aren't these true? or is there a misconception in understanding about being positive?

As a learner about positivity, I also had these questions and still searching the answers for many follow up questions. This post is to give what I understood so far. 

Image by Luisella Planeta LOVE PEACE 💛💙 from Pixabay

Being positive neither means turning blind eye on the negativity around us nor not to worry about our situation. Being positive means, taking advantage of every situation and try to find opportunity or way out of nasty situations. 

Life is not a smooth boat ride. It may be simple sometimes and complex many times. Problems occur and life may become complex in a minute. Financial problems, Health issues, Relationship problems, you can name n number of issues in the world. How come one can be positive at such situations? Is it means, we have to accept whatever happens as fate? or have to wait for anyone to save us?

No one is gonna save you until you want to save yourself. The first thing one can do to save himself/herself is to believe in self. Again a jargon used by may positivity coaches? Absolutely NOT.

Being positive means, accepting the situation and trying to act according to that, means, according to the the current situation/problems, trying to figure out what is the available best course of action we can do to change the situation/problems. Sometimes you can find a way to solve the problems, sometimes you have to live with them but can ease the pain. 

It may be a bit rougher than you thought, if you landed in this page for some magic to solve all your problems. Being positive doesn't work in that way. 

For example, lets take the boat ride again. Boat rides may be smoother sometimes, but harder at the time of storm. Worrying when its harder is not gonna make it smoother. But trying the possible ways to sustain in storm makes you alive. The steps you take at the time of storm is not gonna guarantee that the storm will disappear or you can be safe for sure. But believing, the storm may go out of our way anytime and preparing for best solution available at current situation is called Being optimistic. Once you passed that problem, it becomes smaller and it becomes part of you legend. 

As Napoleon said, 

A genius is the man who can do the average thing, when all those around him are going crazy.

 Be the genius and Be positive.

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Everyone starts as a rookie in their field but how some selective people reach the top and others disappear in the crowd? 

While thinking about it, I remembered two different stories from different eras but both are part of a war.

The first story is about famous Achilles from Iliad. He is considered as one of the greatest hero in greek mythology. When he was a child, his mother dipped him in the river Styx which is supposed to give the powers of invulnerability. She dipped him by holding his feet and apart from his feet all other parts of his body became invulnerable. 

He became a fearsome warrior and known for greater victories. In Greek Mythology, when he entered the Trojan War, he did amazing things but got killed by a wound to his heel which is the only vulnerable part in his body. 

The second story is from World War 2, in which SRG(Statistical research group), a research group at Columbia University helped the Army to fix the military problems. One of the encountered problem was, increasing the armor for planes. The data was collected from the planes returned from fight. The planes had maximum shots on fuselage. So the Miltary wanted to strengthern those parts where the planes got hit heavily.

But Abrham Wald, a member of SRG proposed a different solution, to increase the armor around the engine which had the least hits. He explained further that the data derived is from the planes returned and not included the planes lost in the fight. There is a fair chance that the engine part is weakest and the planes get hit in the engine may not be able to return but others returned. In other words, you can find people who get hit in hands and legs in the wards but not the people who are shot in the head. 

What these two stories tells us? Becoming strong is not on focusing our strengths but to strenghthern our weak points.

People who do that from the early stage, self analyse themselves and turn their weakness into strength. So when the opportunity hits, they can utilize it without a second thought. 

But vast majority of people don't want to discuss about the weakness. They hate to accept the weakness and try to cover it. In initial stages, it is even possible but later one may not even able to recover from it and it may cause serious troubles in both personal and professional lives.

When we think, if we accept something as our weakness, the society will look down on us, we accept the fear of rejection and let it ruin our chance to fix it permenantly.

So I think the first point in becoming great in any field is accepting that we are not great but trying to become one, by fixing our weakness one after another. 

There is a Chinese Proverb which goes as

"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever."

"I am so Busy on the presentation, I will workout tomorrow", "It won't take much time, I will do it just before deadline", "Calling this person will take so much time, I will call when I have free time". These are very usual thoughts we have on daily basis. But do we know, by allowing these thought and delaying our activities, we fall into the habit of delaying? 

What is Procrastination?

The habit of delaying our activity or task is called procrastination. Some people may have a thought, 'Why it is bad? Anyway I am going to complete that task in the end or I am gonna call that person when I am free. What is bad about it?'. 

The task we delay today either becomes Urgent task or negligible task. If it becomes urgent, it creates stress and if it becomes negligible, its importance is lost. Either way, we are losing our health or one step towards our goal.

Lets see with an example,

If you have an exam which you must pass in the end of month, but you procrastinate the preparation, you will feel very much stressed at the near of the exam. Initially the preparation task will be in 'Important not so urgent' zone but will fall under 'Important and Extremely urgent' and you will feel lot of pressure. It may affect both your grades and health due to lot of pressure. 

If you are a blogger, and you set a task to blog consistently. But when it comes to blogging, you procrastinate. Over a period of time, your daily task will lose its importance and you have to start everything from the scratch. 

Procrastination makes us lose our health, our opportunities, our Goal and our success. Once it becomes  a habit, we fail to acknowledge it and it may drift us backwards in our professional as well as personal life without our knowledge.

How to overcome it?

Overcoming procrastination is not a one time war, Its everyday war.