Category: Motivation

Sometimes you need to start walking first

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Sometimes you need to start walking first

In my humble experience in the field of education, and especially when talking about “Innovation in Education”, I get stumbled by the old and new approach of problem solving techniques, especially how teachers used to teach students on how to use a specific process that should pay off.

For so many years now, I’ve concentrated my work on Innovation, whether in Business, in Life and in Education; there was a common item that, depending on how you perceive it, can make or break your plan or solution all together… It’s your attitude and reaction towards making mistakes. In Schools, students were mostly NOT encouraged to make mistakes, and therefore possibly the most noted successful entrepreneurs of our age, were either college dropouts or whom received a negative feedback from their professors and these same people did stick to what they were after even though most considered them in the status of committing an academic and business suicide.

Now depending on who you are and how your brain functions, you may be the type of persons who would look for the solution end-to-end before starting the execution or someone who can think about the highlight and then dig into the details, or just someone who have no idea what he or she is doing, and starting to see where that leads to…

For this week’s post, i’ll be focusing on the person who doesn’t have a clue 🙂 

Sometimes in order to find a solution for a problem, you need to dive into a journey or possibilities, a journey of YES and NO; Instead of just standing there, you can start walking, and then change direction, and maybe come back where you come from and start over, and repeat the whole process all over, and All over again and again…. is that a Sign of weakness? a Sign or strength?? is the person who couldn’t find the solution less qualified than the one who can? well.. Not Really.

Here’s 2 Rules that I learned from working among professionals in the field of innovation and also from examining success stories:

  1. You need to be ready to make mistakes.. It’s OK!
  2. You need to keep an eye on what your mistake lead you to.

Some of the innovations that changes our world, were not originally intended to be like that, but instead the inventor was trying to get somewhere else…

So The tip for the week, whether you are trying to solve a personal or professional problem, start walking down your possibilities and see where that would lead you, cause in that process you might find something more valuable than what you were looking for in the first place.

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Enjoy your Week!

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Samer Chidiac

 

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

 

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You Cannot Stop the Rain from Falling

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The more you become good in strategy, the more you realize how much you need to be able to see the impact of external forces to your life or to your business or to both.There will always be things that we can control, and things that we cannot… But it’s important to note that the things we cannot control, shouldn’t control us.

This week’s tip, is about how you should react when bad things occur towards you; I have been accused of being “too” optimistic sometimes, that I always look for the bright side even when things are going too dark, and too down, and one time I was asked the following question: “Why do you keep saying it was something good, when you know that the result is obviously bad??” and I normally smile, even when things can look sad, and reply back “You cannot stop the rain from falling”.

Let me ask you the following questions:

If you missed your flight… How would you feel?  Terrible? Angry?? Disappointed???

If several hours later you heard that the same flight you missed… Crashed…. How would you feel now? Lucky?? Happy???

Now what about all those decisions you took in your life and never knew what would’ve happened?

What if you met a homeless and gave him a sum of money, and later on discovered that he was a fraud?? Would you focus on your self and your act of GIVING or the fact that he was a bad person and took advantage of you? did he?

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

~Gilbert K. Chesterton

You cannot stop the rain from falling, but you can always control how you would feel about it… Just like in NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) where they say that it’s not the words that hurt you, but it’s you that allow the words to hurt you… And that’s very powerful.

So in the end, you can be optimistic & positive, or negative & pessimistic when either way, the result is still the same… I would choose to be optimistic and positive, everytime!

Enjoy your Week!

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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall

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So many of us would have a very common and specific question in our head… “The idea is not yet mature, should I wait till it is to start or should I just Start?” 

Well from the title of this article, you SHOULD Start… But only if you are planning to give your idea enough effort to succeed. You See Jumping without wings or parachute is the same as the intention to Suicide, but having all the tools and materials you need to fly is still an attempt to fly. 

How many times, you thought of an idea, and even decided that when “you have time” you will work on it, and then years later, you hear about it being built and promoted and made that person millions of dollars while you think that you would’ve done it better? my dear friend Wessam Zeidan always used to tell me.. “Your Idea is now Worth 20$, and that’s it will all be worth if you don’t execute it”

I would highlight to you the following: do you start typing your words and then you do a spell check, or you start looking up each of your words in the dictionary before you start typing? they both lead to the same outcome don’t they?

It’s almost the same when you are starting a project or you want to realize an idea, or even when you are taking a decision. You first need to have a vision of what you want to achieve, and then try to look up what you need to make this happen, and then START… and don’t worry, You Will work out the details as you go…

2015-09-04 15.26.10

Few days ago, the weather in Dubai was very sandy you can almost not see the buildings from the sand storm and driving was not very easy, but people didn’t need to see the entire road, they just need to see 50 meters before them, and accordingly they would take the decisions where to turn, when to stop, when to speed up and when to slow down.

It’s pretty much like Life, Put your goals in front of you, and start, and then start working out the details as you go. And just like the Highway of Dubai, you can always park in a gas station, refuel, have coffee and get some goodies to help you out in your way.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.
~Ray Bradbury

Enjoy your Week!

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Photo Credit: Elena Chepak
Photo Scene: Belarus
Model: Elena Chepak

Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Without Challenges, You can’t feel the taste of Success and Happiness.

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When studying some basic concepts in psychology to help me understand the drive a person would have a to achieve a fulfilling life,  researchers always stumbled upon what we call Happiness. Are we happy when we have a high level of pleasure? Are we happy when we achieve a higher goal? is happiness a permanent state? a goal to reach for?

So many questions to be asked, and only one answer is interesting for you to know about right now, Happiness means different things to different people but somehow the impact is the same for everyone.

The same challenging definition is the definition of Success, is being successful related to fame, money, achievements? what does success mean? or even better.. what does Success TASTE like.

Each one of us have tasted success at one or more times in his or her life, it might be the first time you walked when you were almost 2 years old or the diploma you earned when you were 20 or the huge deal you landed to your company making you in the top 20% (The High Performers); I’m sure if you only closed your eyes for 20 seconds and remembered that time, you would suddenly smile and feel happy of the memory itself.

One thing that would make almost anything worth appreciating, is how easy or difficult it was for you to reach there… You see if you spent 2 minutes to find a photo online to use for your presentation, chances are you will forget where you stored it on your computer, and you probably won’t care that much if you lost it… Cause you will spend 2 more minutes later on to find it again or find an even better one.

Without challenges, success and excellence won’t exist, especially when such a success is meant for the homeland and its fruit is harvested by the citizens. Without challenges, we won’t feel the taste of success and happiness we wish for our people in this dear land.”

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum

However when success was the highlight of a road filled with challenges, that taught us determination and when we needed to look for motivation to make it, this success will be hard to forget, and where you will be fighting to defend your right to keep it and benefit from it.

So if you were in challenging situation, just remember how Happy you would be when you succeed, knowing that you worked hard to make it happen.

Have a beautiful week,
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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Patience is a virtue that pays off

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It was back in 2010, I was scheduled to speak at an event about entrepreneurship, and the main audience was college students graduating the same year; The organizer was insisting that I talk about my career path and what were the lessons learned for me at a young age in a relatively challenging world.

It was about 45 minutes talk that covered many points, some were funny references, some sad and some very motivational… I finally ended up my speech with this:

One common attitude I used to find in fresh graduates I interviewed for various potions in my company was their apparent lack of patience, they want to reach to the top quickly and when you ask them where do they see themselves in 5 years, almost everyone would say : ‘A Manager’. Knowing that I love and admire ambition, I’m also a realistic person, and just because some 20 years old dropped out of college and made it big, doesn’t mean that it’s the right way to do things or it will happen to you JUST AS IT HAPPENED TO THEM.

But let me tell you a small secret: Patience is a Virtue that Pays off!

Practically, no one will care about how hard your start was, when your end was not a success, in fact, ironically, when you become successful, the MORE Miserable your life was, the more admirable your success is… At some point in time one of my jobs was removing dust from books in the university library and re-organizing the books in alphabetical order for what is equivalent to 60$ per month before I leave to my night shift job that paid 100$ per month and then rolling in the weekend to do some work for some additional 10-20$ / week and so on… I never looked down at my self, and I knew this was not the end… This is only the beginning and I need to be patient, cause great things WILL happen.. And Years later, I started making in 1 day of what an average classmate used to make in a full month…

Patience doesn’t have a value if you’re not paying much attention to almost every aspect of your life at that time, you could be waiting for a train to pass, but if you fall asleep waiting, you might just miss the train, and remember that it’s the VALUE that you bring to the company you work at is what matters and not the time you spend there, And Most importantly, when you reach your destination, it doesn’t really matter what had to happen in the process, you just REACHED THERE! I don’t really remember the exams I had to pass nor the grades I had on these exams… And guess what! till this day, after I became CEO and worked for one of the biggest companies in the world, Those Exams grades Still didn’t matter.

So today, 5 years later to that talk, I recall a time when I used to look up Job opportunities that perfectly matched my skills but where I was not interviewed because my years of experience didn’t match the requirements, and I still recalled the time (that I was lucky enough to have had) when I met the same Hiring Manager few years later, who was attending one of my talks, and was surprised that I was the  Keynote Speaker introducing a technology that he, himself thought I didn’t have experience to even work in one of his teams.

My advice this week is the following:

Don’t try to take shortcuts if you find the road is too long, as no road is too long for a destination worth reaching… Patience is a Virtue that Pays off… So Be Patient, and Keep Going!

Enjoy your Week!

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Photo Credit by Samer Chidiac
Scene Location: Beirut – Lebanon
For Purchasing & Licensing refer to 500px.com 

Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

A winner is a dreamer who never gives up

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I was having a chat recently about my opinion on what would be the key to success & winning…  I wasn’t very sure about what would that be… But I answered: perseverance

Most of the winners in this life, have faced lots of failures and disappointments in their life & career, but they never stopped believing in the beauty of their dreams… and Never gave up!

In one of my lectures at one of the universities, I had an interesting question:“How should we know when to take an opportunity and when we should wait for the next one?”

I hesitated to answer, since there’s virtually no guarantee that an opportunity will be the right one or that the next one (if there was one) will be the right one… so here it was the answer I gave that young lady:

“The Short Answer is that you WON’T KNOW… But it’s not a game of chance and that you need to gamble with opportunities, All you have to understand about opportunities is that they are MEANS, and not DESTINATIONS; So you get an opportunity to have an interview, an opportunity to meet someone, an opportunity to showcase your work to some buyers… And therefore, if you don’t have a destination in mind, all opportunities would look the same to you…”

The Key to Winning is to NEVER GIVE UP, and to try to fuel your chances by taking the opportunities that would get you closer to realizing your dreams.

Cheers,
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 “I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not ended.”
― Nelson Mandela

Photo Credit: Samer Chidiac
Scene Location: Belarus
Model: Elena Chepak

Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Challenge yourself and discover your true potential

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Don’t limit your challenges; challenge your limits.

― Jerry Dunn

There’s almost nothing more demotivating than one specific limiting-belief that you would chain yourself to, the belief that you are LIMITED, that you have reached to the peak of your potential and there’s nothing that you can do about it anymore.

Well, you may hope you would get that when you are 70 years old, unfortunately, I’ve seen so many people that give in to that limiting belief in their mid or late 20s . The reason could be the lack of support from the right people, or the many times they have TRIED and failed… and finally, they Gave up!

No matter what the reason could be, it doesn’t really matter… An experienced runner would tell you that the key to succeed in running 5 KM would be to Succeed in Running 4 KM first, and before that you need to Run 3 and before that it was 2 … And once you know that you passed the challenge of the 3, pushing yourself to reach to 4 is not that hard, and so on… So the Key to Growth and Success, is to Challenge the existing setup and grow beyond that…

Start discovering what lies next to the current YOU… CHALLENGE YOURSELF! 

Have a nice week!

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Photo Credit: Samer Chidiac (c) 2015

Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Be the Change you want to see in the world

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Today is a special day, it marks the 3rd anniversary for a initiative I’ve started many years back, and this week’s tip is based on what I held in my heart for a long time… Be The Change you want to see in this world!

Here’s a brief on it,

Video Transcript

It all started in 1998, I needed to do a research for one of my courses in college about techniques of communication; I wanted to get to the bottom of how human communication take place… I went to visit a center that works with Hearing Impaired children, to see how you can communicate when you can’t actually talk;

Well, That was the start of an experience that changed my life!

I did my interviews with administrators, teachers and met several kids then and I got so blown away by what I saw that I decided to volunteer in that center, and I acted as a teacher for the Hearing-Impaired children…

I learned the sign language, and unlike what some of you might think, sign-language differ from country to country and even in the same country, and with children, they sometimes develop their own signs, per example my name is Samer… and in Arabic it’s like this… but the children then decided that I was called … (…)

One of the things or let’s say the shocking discoveries that I learned, was about being mute you know when an individual can’t talk.

You see not all of the mute individuals are incapable of talking, but it’s just because they are hearing-impaired, they don’t know how to speak… so they need speech therapy. Even when they can hear a little, and they put this device, that doesn’t automatically solve the problem, but actually they still need therapy to understand what’s happening.

That experience shaped my life, and for Years I carried this cause in my heart, and I was looking for ways that I could help those children and more children across the world; so years passed by, I moved from a college student, to a professional then to a senior executive and an international author & public speaker, so I came up with the idea of donating one of my intellectual properties to that cause. And I called it a WHITE CAUSE.

The idea, is to donate a product that can be sold and all the profits generated can go towards that cause. And at some point this will be self-sustained.

In 2012, I started the 7 Minutes Motivation Podcast, an Arabic motivational podcast of 7 minutes with every episode on weekly basis (every Monday) and later on I created the English Book, and now this book and its profits are donated for the white cause, which is supporting the hearing impaired children.

So Today, I Hear you! It’s a campaign that aims at constructing a fund that would go towards speech therapy sessions for children who can’t afford it.

You see a child, would need 2-3 sessions per week for a period of 1 to 2 years, with the session costing around 20$, so overall that’s a significant amount of money for some families struggling to secure the necessities in a country like Lebanon per example.

So The main objective of Today, I Hear you! Is to gather a fund that would secure 1,000 Speech Therapy sessions and distributed to different centers in Lebanon and those sessions would be offered to children in need, so you can support by donating something like 3$ or 10$ or 25$ and In return you will get  a free copy of my book 7 Minutes Motivation, in either paperback, electronic edition or audio edition.

I encourage you to go to iHearYou.Today check out the website and see how you can contribute and support.

Ya3tikon alf 3afieh (God Give you Health – 1,000 times)

Get Involved and start supporting the Hearing-Impaired Children TODAY!

Enjoy your Week!

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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Be like the Ant: Never give up, look ahead, stay positive and do all you can!

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One of my favorite and most probably one of the first stories I heard when I was a kid at school, was the story of the Ant and the Cricket, the cricket that was singing all summer while the Ant was working, and when the winter arrived, the cricket paid the price while the ant ripped off the benefit of hard work.

The summary of the story is goes something like this:

Once upon a time… one hot summer, a cricket sang cheerfully on the branch of a tree, while down below, a long line of ants struggled gamely under the weight of their load of grains; and between one song and the next, the cricket spoke to the ants. “Why are you working so hard? Come into the shade, away from the sun, and sing a song with me.” But the tireless ants went on with the work… “We can’t do that,” they said, “We must store away food for the winter. When the weather`s cold and the ground white with snow, there’s nothing to eat, and we’ll survive the winter only if the pantry is full.”

“There’s plenty of summer to come,” replied the cricket, “and lots of time to fill the pantry before winter. I’d rather sing! How can anyone work in this heat and sun?”

And so all summer, the cricket sang while the ants laboured. But the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. Autumn came, the leaves began to fall and the cricket left the bare tree. The grass too was turning thin and yellow. One morning, the cricket woke shivering with cold. An early frost tinged the fields with white and turned the last of the green leaves brown: winter had come at last.

The cricket wandered, feeding on the few dry stalks left on the hard frozen ground. Then the snow fell and she could find nothing at all to eat. Trembling and famished, she thought sadly of the warmth and her summer songs. One evening, she saw a speck of light in the distance, and trampling through the thick snow, made her way towards it.

“Open the door! Please open the door! I’m starving. Give me some food!” An ant leant out of the window.

“Who’s there? Who is it?”
“It’s me – the cricket. I’m cold and hungry, with no roof over my head.”

“The cricket? Ah, yes! I remember you. And what were you doing all summer while we were getting ready for winter?”

“Me? I was singing and filling the whole earth and sky with my song!”

“Singing, eh?” said the ant. “Well, try dancing now!”

Although this is a story designed for children, it’s very true in the world of business, entrepreneurship and leadership; you see, Ants are fascinating creatures, they don’t have left and right brain to think logically and creatively and they don’t have a Facebook account to brag about what they are doing or watching, instead, they are only driven by their instinct to fulfill their life mission and goal. 

If they’re headed somewhere and you try to stop them; they’ll look for another way. When I was a kid, I used to place a straw to prevent the ant from continuing its path and the response was, they’ll climb over, they’ll climb under, and they’ll climb around. They keep looking for another way.

This week’s tip, is about learning 3 things from this amazing tiny creature,

  1. Look ahead
  2. Work in a team towards a common goal
  3. Stay positive and do all you can 

Have a nice week,
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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Just do it… Make your dreams come true

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A wise man once said: “Finish the work, otherwise an unfinished work will finish you.” … Sometimes this can be true with unaccomplished dreams…

I have seen a lot of people who had big ambitions and dreams, and were very energetic and full of hope only to move to the opposite side, and become more pessimistic about their future and more importantly, more dissatisfied with their present; have you met someone who thought his or her career is heading nowhere? their personal life is not fulfilling and their social surrounding is not nurturing them enough? Well this is what happen when you lose enthusiasm in your self and in your abilities…

So the answer should be obvious, if you want to feel happy about your current situation, you should be living without regrets, and mostly the regret of the chances you didn’t take… even if your efforts didn’t get you there… but still you have tried… and the only way to Succeed, is to first TRY!

So this week’s tip, is very simple, TRY and JUST DO IT… it’s the only way you can make your dreams come true.

Sometimes you bend, sometimes you break, only thing that you regret was the chance you didn’t take

NICK LACHEY | The Chance you didn’t take

Enjoy your Week!

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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

We Deserve what we Accept

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It really can’t get any simpler than this: If You Accept it… You Deserve it!

In many aspects and parts of our life, we find ourselves cornered, cornered in our own box… Hiding from what is happening outside.. Sometimes we would be afraid; afraid from what will happen next… and hoping that by closing our eyes, all of this will just go or fade away… And then reality teach us that some things won’t just vanish if we ignore them, and that eventually we will need to face the music, and face our demons, and we will have one choice, either we win or they do…

I have been in lots of situations myself that I felt that the world is going to end, reached so low, that I couldn’t see the light anymore… But at that particular moment, I REALIZED THAT I DON’T DESERVE THAT… and therefore I SHOULDN’T ACCEPT IT… And so I fought my way out of my problems… and Guess what! Nothing last forever, even problems… At some point things will just move on, you just need to wait for the storm to pass…

So this week’s tip, is about Striving for Excellence, and Not Accepting LESS… You Deserve to be treated right, and you shouldn’t accept it any other way, You Deserve to be Respected and You Shouldn’t accept Not to… and the List goes on and on… YOU DESERVE WHAT YOU ACCEPT… So Don’t Accept Failure… Don’t Accept Mediocrity… And Don’t Ever Accept someone to put you down…

And I believe the best speech you can read is the one done by ROCKY Balboa to his son!

Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now if you know what you’re worth then go out and get what you’re worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain’t you! You’re better than that.

Rocky Balboa

Enjoy your Week!

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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Remember that Future Feeling

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The worst or best feelings you pass through might be caused by past events, it doesn’t really matter if it’s something that happened an hour ago or 10 years ago, when it had an impact on you, it had an impact on you, whether positive or negative.

Even when you’re in Love, you are in that feeling of LOVING your self when you feel it, you feel that warmth, even by thinking of a MOMENT that was totally responsible for weeks of happiness.

Now I was asked many times about a specific topic related to Love, and especially how should someone treat his or her loved ones, and my answer was always as simple as this week’s tip:

Remember that Future Feeling!

You really don’t need to experience the loss of someone to start appreciating them,

You really don’t need to wait for someone amazing to happen so you can start putting more efforts into your relationship,

Life is unpredictable, because people are, and your chances are always the same, in Love, in Life and in Work… So Make sure you don’t waste today, worrying about tomorrow, and don’t just learn from your past mistakes, learn from the lessons you DON’T want life to teach you..

Enjoy your Week!

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Image courtesy of Stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

Mediocrity is the enemy of success

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I can’t think of any inspirational / successful person who started on a perfect scale, where everything was in order and things came easy… Unless you are born, the son of royalties or so; You just need to make a living for yourself just like the rest of us.

Now although I know that success is not an easy think to make, it takes really hard work and so many factors and ingredients and maybe so many things that I don’t know about… It’s just one common factor, the pursuit of success doesn’t come from Accepting Mediocrity   

A brilliant person that his books inspired me for years, once said, Good is the Enemy of Great and once we accept the GOOD we stop pursuing the GREAT… 

That person was Jim Collins, in his book, Good To Great!

Whether you were a manager, a team leader or a simple individual, accepting mediocrity is simply surrendering to failure, And here I’m not saying that things should be perfect to start with, I guess we’re far away from perfection as it gets… But at least we should acknowledge that we are at an acceptable stage, BUT WE’RE NOT STOPPING HERE…

I know people who surrendered to their mediocre life, stopped pursuing their dreams and stopped believing they could make it, even not believing that they could even do a routine thing they’ve done 100s and 100s of times. Let me tell you this, it’s HARD to go back to excellence when you start accepting mediocrity, (not impossible.. but just hard).

This week’s tip, is about EXCELLENCE… is about going for the GREAT, and not getting satisfied with the GOOD… since the beginning.. and Accepting the GOOD only as a Stage before you reach to Great.. BUT NOT STOPPING THERE…

“Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t

Always seek greatness, and never settle, cause when you do, everything starts to become easier to maintain, but harder to grow, and when your leadership accept a mediocre result, your followers will start accepting even less and less…

Have a great Week,

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Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project

At this particular moment, there’s only one thing you can do

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Sometimes the deepest sentences in life, are the simplest with a pure and very basic meaning… We watch movies, read stories and live experiences, to finally express one word… such as Love, Fun, Pain, Loss… etc

We LEARN… Yes we learn the meanings of an already known word to us, we re-discover it throughout many sophistication, we feel that if we learn it the hard way, we will keep what learned. Well we may be right! but not so quite…

You see, when an information, a relationship, a deal, a prize or virtually anything, comes easy we tend to underestimate its value, or even take it for granted… Unlike when we have to work really hard for it… If you received an advice from a friend for free… you might not take it as serious as if it would’ve come to you from a professional consultant that charged you 1,000$ to give you the exact piece of advice.

This week’s tip, explores a basic and fundamental principle… What we call: The Moment…

“What day is it?”
It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
My favorite day,” said Pooh.”
― A.A. Milne

As a senior strategist, with a strong force of habit, I can’t help but living far away in the future while living my present day… Whether I was writing a plan, evaluating and studying a business case and so on… Unfortunately I discovered that by sometimes living in the future, you lose sight of the present, but most importantly, you lose both… Cause the picture of that beautiful scene, no matter how clear and vivid it is, is only a representation of how you felt when you were there… and if you can’t remember how the air was twinkling on your cheeks while you took a long look at the beautiful mountains, the picture won’t deliver that feeling to you…

Therefor,in everyday, you should look out and enjoy the moment, cause sometimes you may be lucky to see a rainbow and sometimes you may just see a sunshine, and sometimes you don’t … Just remember this, every moment is the best moment you will ever have, so take advantage of it TODAY, NOW and LIVE it to the fullest… As it were your last… cause it is YOUR Last… And the next moment, is simply… Different.

Enjoy your Week!

SC

Samer Chidiac

Samer Chidiac is a Sr. Strategist, Author & an International Innovation Expert.

The Monday Tip Weekly blog is part of the “Influencing the Life of Others” project