It is not the mountain

My mind keeps wondering during my regular jogs around McRitchie (Singapore) and here is one of my latest insights. If, at times, my stamina is not that good, I dread the uphill parts of the track until I realized:

It is not the hill that gives me trouble, it is my own stamina. So, how can I blame the hill? Taking these thoughts further into our daily life, we can conclude.

It is not the problems and challenges that life throws into our way, and we all get our share of it. We need to nurture our ability to face them – analyse rationally, take the first step towards solving it now and go on.

It is not the difficult presentations and meetings that we face. It is the lack of preparedness. We need to prepare and practice what we want to say. We need to think what colleagues who disagree with us would say and prepare our answer.

It is not that our network is not big enough or we don’t seem to meet the right people. It is our ability to connect with people. Next time when you meet people, DON’T pull out your phone and look at it, DON’T criticise or disagree during the early part of a conversation. DO smile and approach people, DO say something nice about the other person, DO ask them questions and show interest in their answers.

In summary – Look at yourself and figure out what you can do in order to address a certain issue well. It has a lot to do with initiative, learning, preparing, practicing. Do this well and the ‘mountains’ get smaller.