LEARNING TO SAY NO

Is it common for you that you are trying to squeeze in time for yourself in between tight deadlines and long working hours? Well then all you need to do is learn the gentle art of saying no! Most often than not, just to do well in our lives and be in the good books of everyone, whether it is our personal or professional space, we end up taking a lot more than we can handle. And saying ‘no’ can be very difficult for people with low self esteem, who lack an assertive nature and want to meet everyone’s expectations. 

HERE ARE SOME STEPS THAT YOU SHOULD FOLLOW
 
KNOW YOUR PRIORITIES   
You might be having too much on your to-do list, but that does not mean you let things control your life. Rather you should be the captain of your own ship. Learning how to organise your priorities might seem a herculean task but this is the first step towards having a grip on your life.
Says Prabhakar Diwedi, an HR professional, “I learnt my lesson the hard way. I had this habit of taking on a lot of responsibilities thinking I could handle everything easily. Before I knew it, people were piling up things on me seeing my track record of taking on things without any problem. This habit of mine backfired and somehow I managed to put a stop on it by simply declining things.” Prabhakar’s mornings and nights were spent in the office doing work meant for other people. He learnt that it is best to negotiate things rather than completely declining offers.
BE FIRM IN YOUR APPROACH   
Clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, Dr Veena Chakravarthy says, “You need to be firm in your approach. One cannot possibly please everyone every time. You have to realise that it is not the person you are turning down, whether it is your friend, relative or colleague, it is the idea or situation that you are not comfortable with. Everyone is entitled to have their own choice and opinions. You need to see how you can actually contribute to the bigger picture and if you are doing justice to yourself and your work.”
DIPLOMACY AT ITS BEST   
You can say what you feel but when you add a tinge of diplomacy it will do you more good than anything else. You have to remember one thing that you do not owe anyone any explanations. The decision should be up to you and after saying so there is no need to fret about what the other person will think about you.
For Ananya Deshmukh, a banker, who started off with her career did not turn down anything fearing she may miss out on an opportunity. It was when she started missing her deadlines and her work started getting affected that she realised what went wrong, “I was very enthusiastic when I started off. So I never said no to my seniors just in the hope that they will be impressed with me and my capabilities. But it was only time that made me realise what I had gotten myself into. With so much work on hand I started missing deadlines and my work used to be anything but perfect.”
ALWAYS SAYING ‘YES’ ISN’T HEALTHY   
Clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Dr Rachna Kothari feels that one has to envisage the negative repercussions of saying yes all the time, “If you say yes to things you already know are beyond your reach, control or capability; then you might be more prone to stress after committing the same. You then end up having a double problem! First, you said a ‘yes’ instead of a ‘no’ and second you need to make that yes possible.”
She also advises that you need to pause, think and then answer. Eat only what your stomach can digest otherwise chances of throwing-up are more.
Top 10 tips for learning the ‘Gentle Art of Saying No’

1. Value your time
2. Know your priorities
3. Practice saying no
4. Do not apologise
5. Stop being nice
6. Say no to your boss
7. Try per-empting requests
8. Get back to you
9. Maybe later
10. It’s not you, it’s me.

QUOTATIONS

Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.
Euripides

They can because they think they can.
Virgil

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Thomas Jefferson

Keep steadily before you the fact that all true success depends at last upon yourself.
Theodore T. Hunger

We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is, the more he is inspired to glory.
Cicero

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
Frank Loyd Wright

The surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience.
Elbert Hubbard

There is only one success--to be able to spend your life in your own way.
Christopher Morley

Success is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.
A. Branson Alcott

The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows.
Aristotle Onassis

The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These may for the most part be summed in these two: common-sense and perseverance .
Owen Feltham

Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving.
Dennis Waitley

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.
Vince Lombardi

Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.
Jeremy Collier

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure--which is: Try to please everybody.
Herbert Bayard Swope

Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time.
Josh Billings

The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Earl of Beaconsfield

Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration and inspiration.
Evan Esar

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
Jospeph Addison

Impatience never commanded success.
Edwin H. Chapin

The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do, well.
Henry W. Longfellow

To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first.
William Shakespeare

Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.
Albert Einstein

The man who makes a success of an important venture never wails for the crowd. He strikes out for himself. It takes nerve, it takes a great lot of grit; but the man that succeeds has both. Anyone can fail. The public admires the man who has enough confidence in himself to take a chance. These chances are the main things after all. The man who tries to succeed must expect to be criticized. Nothing important was ever done but the greater number consulted previously doubted the possibility. Success is the accomplishment of that which most people think can't be done.
C. V. White

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it.
W.C. Fields

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out. Robert Collier

Perseverance Quotes

Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. Oliver Goldsmith The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong. Thomas Carlyle Press on! A better fate awaits thee. Victor Hugo Perseverance is king. Josh Billings The waters wear the stones. The Book of Job 14:19 Energy and persistence conquer all things. Benjamin Franklin Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall. Confucius The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. Chinese Proverb Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. Epictetus The important thing in life is to have great aim and to possess the aptitude and the perseverance to attain it. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe   Success in life is a matter not so much of talent or opportunity as of concentration and perseverance. C. W. Wendte I hold a doctrine, to which I owe not much, indeed, but all the little I ever had, namely, that with ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable. Sir T. F. Buxton Those who would attain to any marked degree of excellence in a chosen pursuit must work, and work hard for it, prince or peasant. Bayard Taylor It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. Washington Irving Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity. Louis Pasteur Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure. Edward Eggleston The drops of rain make a hole in the stone, not by violence, but by oft falling. John Foster Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance. Samuel Johnson Do not think that what is hard for thee to master is impossible for man; but if a thing is possible and proper to man, deem it attainable by thee. Marcus Aurelius It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. Confucius

 

BILL GATES

His 11 RULES,
Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2 : The world doesn't care about your self-esteem.
The world will expect you to accomplish something
BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school.
You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss

Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity.
Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping:
They called it opportunity.

Rule 6 : If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault,
so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7 : Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you
talk about how cool you thought you were:
So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room..

Rule 8 : Your school may have done away with winners and losers,
but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades
and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer.
*This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9 : Life is not divided into semesters.
You don't get summers off and very few employers
are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF.
*Do that on your own time.

Rule 10 : Television is NOT real life.
In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11 : Be nice to nerds.
Chances are you'll end up working for one.

BILL GATES , The ultimate man for inspiration..

About him,

William H. Gates (Bill Gates) is a visionary man who uses that gift to advance technology and extend the boundary of what software and machines can do. As a result of his work, he had widely influenced many peoples; and along the line he became the true entrepreneur.

       Bill Gates was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle's Swedish Hospital .He was the only son and the second of the three children of William Henry Jr. and Mary Gates. Bill grew up like any regular child, but he had a talent that distinguished him from the rest. It was a talent that became his passion to "hack" computers, which got started when Seattle's Lakeside School offered computer time to their students. There, Gates, at age of thirteen, wrote his first software program, which played tic-tac-toe. And also there, Gates and Paul Allen got acquainted and their shared interests in computer programming bonded their friendship. Their partnership brought their talents to new heights. For example, they worked at Computer Center Corporation (CCC) and gained more computer experience; they opened their first company, TRAF-O-DATA in the fall of 1971, which specialized in monitoring and analyzing traffic statistics in cities and countries. 

          Gates's first major accomplishment took place in 1975 when, with the help of Allen, he wrote the first versatile software program, Altair BASIC, that became the industry standard. He was the first to challenge the freebie software distribution in a capitalistic letter. The following year, 1976, he dropped out of Harvard and made his third accomplishment, which was building Microsoft.

          Gates came of age in a time of innovation and creative thinking. During that era, technology was still at the brink of evolution; therefore no hardware or software yet set the standard. Few knew about computers and most of them were kids like Gates. Gates took advantage of his opportunity to fulfill his childhood joy of computer game play and became an expert programmer.

        Bill Gates's accomplishments influence us widely at work and in school. For example, Microsoft's products allow businesses to run productively. While in school, they allow us to share ideas (email) and give us a taste of technology. Most important of all is that Gates's accomplishments highlight a bright future for the human race and that is what makes him an inspirational leader. Gates's accomplishments teach us that success can be achieved through hard work and persistence. The best thing of all is this lesson can be applied to anyone. Just follow your passion and dream the undreamable!

"There will be a day, not far distant, when you will be able to conduct business, study, explore the world and its cultures, call up any great entertainment, make friends, attend neighborhood markets, and show pictures to distant relatives--without leaving your desk or armchair. It will be more than an object you carry or an appliance you purchase. It will be your passport into a new, mediated way of life."

by Bill Gates (The Road Ahead, 1995