Ability to Bounce Back!!

Get ready Magnus Carlsen, Vishy Anand-2.0 is coming to challenge you!!

Anand showed great character, preparation and temperament to win the candidates championship; which is a double round robin tournament where the winner will take a chance to challenge Magnus for world champion title. Vishy Anand was accurate in his calculations and throughout the tournament he showed that hunger and passion towards chess.

It is not a simple yet another tournament win for him. After his loss to Magnus last year in world championship and his bad show in many tournaments thereafter, many believed that his career is over. He was fighting against his age where his opponent in last world championship was 19 years younger to him. Even Vishy showed that demotivation and appeared as rusted.

This win make totally different sense if we look at his character and his determination.

After his loss to Magnus, someone asked him, what you think. Anand said, “In the 9^th game of World Cup in Chennai, I realized I am going to lose my world title. Life is a bitch, sometimes what all you have to do is put a ctrl-x on life and start all over again”.

And he has exactly done that.

It is termed as a greatest comeback ever. But talk about that character, that faith, that confidence, that brave front, that ability to bounce back, that belief that I can do it, that positive approach. Let’s talk about how he went about it. Let’s talk about that sheer determination to do it one-more-time all over again.

Anand went ahead with this very meticulously. He took a break, did lots of soul searching, confidence building and did a wonderful preparation with his team. These were evident in his games of Candidates Tournament. He was bang-on and was never was in a bad position in the tournament. He built a great defense in the final game just that even computers couldn’t suggest a break-through.

This is a true champion, a great determination, fantastic practice and then great execution. Irrespective of what happens in the re-match of world cup with Magnus, a true champion is already been made. This story will be a great deal of inspiration to younger sports stars, to corporate life, or common people like you and me.

What I learnt? In our life, almost on every day we encounter situations like this, where we need to put a ctrl-x and start all over again. But, do we do that? Sometimes we feel at the bottom of the confidence level, can we step back and start all over again? Can we have that great determination and temperament to do-it-all-over-again? One-more-time?

Thanks Vishy, for inspiring many lives by your character.

Technical Tracking and Story of a Looser

Since some months, some unknown person started posting some negative comments on my blog.

I was wondering about the identity about that person.

With help of our IT team I tracked down that person and I was shocked to know that he was part of my management team.

I really feel sorry about that person, who un-successfully tried to disturb me and feel proud about the fact that I never trusted what that person said.

Anyway, this is life!

The Marathon Mindset

This is an attempt to find similarities between Marathon and our corporate life!

The first lesson we learn is that anyone who wants to run a marathon must re-programme his or her thought processes and attitude. Believe it or not, a marathon mindset is a sporting, yet intense mindset that allows us to focus on finishing well rather than ‘winning’ the race. That is not as preposterous a concept as our conditioning might lead us to believe, for being a winner is about much more than just coming first. Ask any marathoner, and you will be told that the key is to relax your body, put your mind at ease, and keep running. But most important of all, it is enjoying what you do. Likewise, the key to success both in the corporate world and in life is to do well by staying united with the others around you in a spirit of comradeship and enjoying the run.

A marathon mindset will not only make you successful but also bring meaning, joy and contentment by defining many aspects of your life. You do not look at everything from the perspective of whether you’re winning or losing, but imagine that you are running alongside others in the larger race of life. Only in a marathon does a fellow runner egg you to keep going.

In a world that places utmost emphasis on winning, even if it is by trampling over others, can running the race really be as important as winning, if not more so? And will such a ‘paced’ approach – that is, a long-term view of your work – help you achieve your goals at all?

Look at it this way. Such a shift in your perspective would radically reposition you for long-term success without your ending up all frazzled and burnt-out in a hyper-competitive environment. Can’t imagine how that is possible? Well, believe me, it is!

Few points we can learn are;

1)     As you focus on finishing the race rather than winning. Why can’t we apply this to our lives? Just enjoy what we are doing?

2)     Look at a large picture; don’t look at sprinting the way out, perhaps focus on finishing. So, a bad boss, one bad appraisal, one bad project should not affect you in the larger interest of life.

3)     Define the goals of your life. Life is more than just win-lose battle.

4)     It’s all about measurement