Category: Motivation

Have a clear vision and take easy steps to get there

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I still remember a small chat I’ve had with one bright young man on my team a while back, we were discussing the impact of data and change on the course of business, it was more about decisions than it was about the science of data and the example I’ve share with him at that time was simple:

  • When you go to have a shower, (and if you’re like most people 🙂 ) you will need to balance the hot & cold water to find the perfect relaxing fit so you would enjoy your shower, however most tend to work on EXTREMES… they go from Extremely Hot, to Extremely Cool and so on… If it’s Hot… you automatically move the water to cool, then it’s too cool then you go back to less hot and then back… until you succeed.

That example was to simplify the importance of small decisions and testing and doing the corrective measures as you go until you find your match; That bright young man then, became a renown data scientists and one of the world’s Big Data Influencers. (Always proud of you Ali Rebaie )

Fast forwarding to today, and our tip for the week; pretty simple… let’s start by the DON’Ts… it’s actually just One:

Don’t Take Too many decisions at the same time

You see in real life, battles between armies, happen when a lot of soldiers are fighting at the same time, and the side who makes the most damage to the opponent normally wins that battle. In Chess, and on the other hand, it’s different!

In chess, you do have a lot of soldiers, with another set of different ranks etc, and you have to move them one step at a time… It’s still one army deployed on the board fighting the other, but the reality, it’s 2 people only playing. and Yes, you can win the game without causing enormous damage to your opponent, in fact all you need is to have ONE MOVE, The Right One…

The board contains 64 squares of alternating colors. Each player has 16 pieces: 1 king, 1 queen, 2 rooks, 2 bishops, 2 knights, and 8 pawns. and if you think that is easy… There are over 9 million different possible positions after three moves each. There are over 288 billion different possible positions after four moves each. The number of distinct 40-move games is far greater than the number of electrons in the observable universe.

THAT’S HOW COMPLICATED THIS GAME IS!! But still it is Won… ONE STEP AT A TIME.

Life is a game board. Time is your opponent. If you procrastinate, you will lose the game. You must make a move to be victorious.

~ Napoleon Hill

Have a nice week,
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(This post is dedicated to UAE’s Chess Champion 2015, Saeed Ishaq)

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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Be like a baby… Then Grow up!

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If you ever had the opportunity to study Psychology, one of the foundation of this magnificent study will be about learning, and how do we learn. And to be able to understand the evolution of the Brain & Mind in this, they normally start with studying babies.

There’s a fascinating small game that parents play with their infant child, that is almost universally known as “PEEK-A-POO”, where the parent (adult) hide his or her face from the child and then show it again with the work “PEEK-A-Poooooo” (Where I come from the word was “BAA’OOUSSI”) and the look on the child’s face at that moment, is priceless :).

For those of us who are not too technical on this, The Game is nice, brings positive vibes and simply fun and easy to play with a child; In Psychology, the explanation of that, is simple… The Infant’s Brain at that stage of Learning, REALLY THINKS THAT THE OTHER PERSON DISAPPEARED! and throughout time, the game will start being less interesting as the child develop the understanding of how it works.

Now moving on to another very nice thing about babies, when they start to walk or talk… Their first attempts are always the most important and most desired to witness by their parents… It doesn’t have to be perfect… in fact, NOONE ever is expecting a child’s first words would be “To Be or Not to Be… That is the Question” :P; but instead they might start speaking in a very alienated form of speech until one day they say something that sounds like “DA DA”, or the day when the child will try to stand up by themselves and then fall down in a cute and adorable way.

Now what would be the role of the parents at that stage… in simple terms:

Protecting > Encouraging > Motivating > Correcting > Raising the Bar
(and then starting this all over again)

You see a child saying “DA DA” is different than a 10 years old speaking like that… So first there’s a safe environment to actually innovate and do whatever you like, then you get the encouragement to do so, then you get a cheerful motivation, and a correction but then the parent is no longer impressed by that attempt, and then they require more efforts 🙂

This week’s tip, is pointing out that each one of us, learn in different ways, but most importantly gets motivated in different ways, and therefor, by applying the simple rules of parenting… An employee can be encouraged to start learning something new, to excel in their field and become innovative…

And Although you may think that this Tip is dedicated for Managers… You are right… But you are your own MANAGER… and You need to start motivating yourself using those rules… And you Will succeed…

Start small, Encourage yourself to try, Reward your self for the small improvement, correct yourself, raise the bar and then REPEAT.

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

You can’t change people, but people can change because of you

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How many times you have closed your eyes and wished deep inside  that someone could just change? and how many times you thought you really “could do it” and change them? was it a behavior that you didn’t like, was it a wishful thought to make your relationship become better. Whatever the reason was, we all did it, and more likely we will all keep doing it… Trying to Change others… 

The Miracle of Believing is Individual, is Singular, I wish I could believe for all of you, but the fact remains that you need to believe for yourself.

~Jim Rohn

In my upcoming Book, “Living an Influential Life”, I go over the power of Influence and how you can inspire and aspire others to change by simply working on yourself and building specific aspects of YOU that will make others look up to you.

Let’s pause for a second and think of the following… If you have been doing something in a specific way, and it was working for you… Would you want to look for ways to enhance it? chances are that you won’t… However when that specific way lead to a disaster, then you would be forced to change… But there are those times, when you are not really looking for way to enhance and change things, and suddenly, you see someone else doing it in a much efficient way, that you feel inspired to change!

During my line of work, I used to travel a LOT… and I have used to ask the cabin crew for requests in a very polite manner but really had no specific way on how to do so; Until one day, one of my Best friends, Bachar D.  who was more experienced in traveling than I was, gave me a great tip… We were siting in a restaurant and he asked for a napkin from the waiter, he said to him: “Excuse me, <First Name – that he could read from the nameTag>, when you have time, can you please get me a napkin.” and the waiter smiled at him, and despite how busy he was, he did prioritize getting the napkin for him in no time…

Now of course it may sound silly for you, but when Bachar explained this to me, he said that the fact that he mentioned ” WHEN YOU HAVE TIME” in the sentence, it made a huge difference in the structure of the sentence and the other person felt more respected, and of course this was a trick that he learned in the airline business…. and Ever since, I tried it and used it over and over and over and it works every time…

He really didn’t ask me to change… He didn’t say that my “can I have a napkin please” is horrible… he really didn’t say anything… he was just being him, and doing things his way… and Just that… Inspired me to make a small change in my behavior.

So the tip for this week, is Instead of trying so hard to Change people, Be The Change you want to see… and inspire others to change because of you!

Your Story Matters... By Bachar Dib

This post is dedicated to Bachar Dib

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

Don’t spread a lie, to reinforce the truth

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I’ll start by telling you a small story:

A while Back, I was going through some house cleaning services in Dubai, and I liked a particular website / service… The Design of the site was very good, and it was user-friendly and not to mention the service looked very professional and the prices reasonable.

I reached to the Booking section where I needed to choose a timing for when the person would come to my house for the and I still vividly remember that I Chose Monday at 8:00 AM. Sadly, when I reached to the payment section, I had some issues with some coupons and credit card, so at the end, the transaction didn’t go through.

On Monday at exactly 8:00 AM, the door bell ring, and a nice lady from that company was standing there, wearing her uniform (with the branding of that company on her shirt, so you really cant miss it 🙂 ) and I said to myself, well maybe my transaction did go through after all and I will pay in Cash at the end of the service.

Around 30 minutes after she have started cleaning the apartment, her phone rings, and she started speaking in Filipino, and then she was like very upset and started yelling to the caller, and later on looked at me in a very sad Face… “I’m Sorry Sir, this is the wrong address, I need to go”; I was a bit shocked… but after I called her supervisor to understand what happened, it turned out that the address of the other client who booked the cleaning service was NOT AT ALL RELATED, but for a non-native English speaker, you could get confused by the numbers in the address and magically reach me!

What were the odds of that happening?  Around 1 in 3,000 actually… But why it is important to tell you this… Cause it Actually Happened! and it could also not be an honest mistake and instead a thief coming into the house… and the issue was that I FILLED IN THE GAPS to make things work out… Got it?

How many times, a good friend of yours (at some point in time), has been with the wrong person, but instead of noticing how WRONG the situation was, she / he started to fill in the gaps by creating assumptions to have a quick fix? does the following sound familiar to you:

  • He might have forgotten that he needed to call me
  • She definitely was busy
  • He’s a good man, I think the way he is treating me like this, because of work pressure
  • …. and the list go on and on.

Despite that this is not healthy most of the times, you know, filling in the gaps with assumptions… Filling the gaps with LIES is even worse.

Some people go to the extreme here, trying to reinforce a specific message, a specific “Truth”, they come up with Lies. And this comes up a lot on social media these days, and are spread mostly by honest people, who do believe what they read.

Let me give you an example,

  • Let’s say, Miss Y knows that Mr. X have a crush on her… and then her friend Miss Z told her that Mr. X was talking to his friend about her. Well, he might have been doing so, but Miss Z made this up… and Miss Y believed it.. cause it confirmed her notion of Mr. X have a crush on her.
  • Let’s say you’re from that part of the world where you’ve never had an encounter with Arabs or people from the Middle East, and all you know about them is what you see in the news, and mostly is BAD stuff… What happened when you hear about an incident and the  main suspect is an Arab? chances are that you will believe that cause it will reinforce your beliefs… Although if the main suspect was not an Arab, you may look for ulterior motives and stuff.
  • You See a photo, an article, a link showing some very skinning people suffering  and you’ve known that Hunger sadly exist in some part of Africa, and if the photo shows black individual, and the label says, this photo was taken Last week in Somalia, Chances are you’re going to sympathize with them, and share the photo yourself… The cause itself is true, but that specific image might not be related, and it could also be taken from a movie where these are actors… but you wouldn’t care would you?
  • Last and not least, if you support a specific political party or religious party,  you will tend to believe all the good and reject all the bad, and vice versa towards the “competition”

Let’s go back to Basics for a second… It all started with Kids… You do know that Children in their early age, they don’t know how to Lie? and in fact they can’t understand how you can actually tell about something while it isn’t true… They are so innocent at that age that when you hide your face from them, they think that you disappeared and when you’re back with a PIKAPOOO… They GET fascinated!! And then they start learning how things work, and how to get attention, until they start LYING to get attention… The issue becomes serious… When this Actually works for them…

So this week’s tip, don’t believe everything you read / hear / see, just because it confirms your point of view… And most importantly don’t come up with Lies just to reinforce a truth or a belief!

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

Enjoy your own life, without comparing it with that of another

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They say that it’s easy to feel better when you watch someone else feeling more miserable, and it’s easy not to feel pretty if you bumped into a more attractive person, and you know what, yes they are right! only it’s a double edge sword… You can hurt yourself while doing that.

I’ll give you an example from a question I asked, on my first post on this blog:

When was the last time you looked at yourself in the mirror and you were completely satisfied with what you saw? do you accept everything about yourself everyday?

Before you continue reading… Think through the first 2 paragraph, and try to conclude what this week’s tip would be…

Come on… Try it before you continue reading.

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I’m curious to learn what your answer was, so if you can comment on this page or send me a msg on my Facebook Page… 

Ok here it goes,

Instead of checking how good or bad your life is by looking at others, you should do it when you look at yourself; Some of the best times of our life may never come back to us, not because life is cruel, but simply because the phase where we could party all night and sleep for 1 hour and then jump up and continue our day, needed to end at your 20s, and when you’re 40, that won’t be pretty applicable anymore (Because of our body structure/Energy of course).

is that a bad thing? not particularly, Noone says that you should keep on partying all your life, but I would say to look at your life TODAY, and realize where you are RIGHT NOW, and compare it with Where you would want to be and where you were… I Wouldn’t normally suggest that someone would crawl back to the past, EXCEPT if He/She would be looking at the future at the same time.

You could not like yourself right now, remember you can change… and you can have a great Life… it’s in your hands… not in anyone else’s,

“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

So it’s time you look at yourself and check out how your can change… and if you need ideas, it’s ok to look at others… but don’t let others make you feel inferior just because they are doing better than you are, you really have no idea what they might be going through.

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 ready to make mistakes, don’t take things too seriously

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By the end of 2015, I got asked a simple question, it was more of a concern than it was a question… “What if I failed?” combined with “What if taking this step was a mistake?”

I normally smile when I hear such concerns, because they reflect a lot about the person who is asking the question… And My answer would be that simple… “It’s Ok! So What?”

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” ~Dr. Seuss

We normally fail to achieve so many goals, because of the chance that we will fail in doing them, because of the chance that we may be wrong in the first place, or unsure about our capacity, and most importantly, because we are too AFRAID of Failure.

In the practice of Creativity and Innovation, one needs to be willing to make mistakes, and start all over, or even divert to a different direction as part of the process and repeat that over and over and over! and believe it or not, that’s the way you would be able to come up with great ideas.

This week’s tip, is not about being afraid, or about failure… It’s about the attitude, YES, the attitude. 

You need to start your project, with the attitude that you might fail, and it’s OK;
You need to start your project, with the attitude that you will embrace your mistakes;

You need to start your project knowing that the ending point, might not be the same as you expect it to be and it’s Still OK!

Do you want to succeed? then be ready to make mistakes and don’t take things too seriously… It’s not the end of the world, the more you do mistakes, the less your mistakes will have a major impact, and slowly, you will start having less and less… until you have very few.. It’s called Experience!

Cheers,
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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

Don’t be the same. BE BETTER!

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It’s the first Monday of the year 2016, and possibly you’re at the stage of thinking of beginnings, change, transformation, ambition or simply thinking about improvement.

I’ve had a practice since I was in my early 20s, that I used to do on the edge of the year… When I look back and reflect on how that year has passed by, and more importantly… How my life is going?

Well, yes, some years has been sweet, some has been sad, some were weird and it seems that the more you grow older, things start to get more and more challenging, and you get back to wishing how easy your life was when you were younger, and the opportunities you could’ve seized with that Body you had and so on…

“Don’t wish it was easier wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge wish for more wisdom” – Jim Rohn

Well, the thing is… No matter how you want to look at it… It will look right. YES… it will look right! if you want to see it as a bad year, you will be right, and if you want to see it as a good year you will see it… so either way… rest assure.. You’re Right! 

My advice for you this year, is to become a better version of yourself… Become A Better Person… Just BE BETTER!

You may not be able to control the wind, the flow of things, the rain or whatever you face externally… But remember that you can ALWAYS control your personal development! Learn More, Explore More, Experience More… And BECOME BETTER.

Try to check edX or Coursera and pick one of the free courses.. You can get an accreditation from one of the top universities in the world, like Harvard and MIT… FREE & ACCREDITED… imagine if you can take 1 or 2 courses per year… Would that be better on your resume by December 2016? How about Matching that with 2 books… and maybe learn a skill from just watching YouTube?

It’s easy… YET you’re still the SAME as last year! Don’t be… BE BETTER THIS YEAR!!

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

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

 

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…

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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!

SC

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!

SC

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