The Secret of Success

Brooklyn-born Bob Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet, studied at MIT and earned two degrees, electrical engineering and industrial management. His parents paid for the first year of studies and thereafter he paid his own tuition by working night-shifts programming at Raytheon and other companies. The secret of his success: "I don't remember when I slept!".

What is Stress?

Stress is when we are stretched almost beyond our limits; when the challenges of life seem to exceed our intellectual and/or physical capacity to handle those challenges. When you are in a stressful situation, work like crazy to exit the situation and complete the challenge and then, once things have cooled off, work hard to develop greater intellectual and physical capacity. The key is, when faced with an apparently insurmountable challenge, respond aggressively to "challenge the challenge". Nip the problem in the bud. If you feel not in control, take a few deep breaths to help focus the mind and bring it back to the attacking, egoless state. Then continue the advance.

Get out of Your Comfort Zone: Accept Mental and Physical Stress

Welcome activities that get you out of your comfort zone. Frequently we dread doing activities that force us out of our comfort zone, maybe because we do not feel as adept at that activity and prefer to do tasks that seem to reinforce our strengths and make us feel good about ourselves. Out-of-comfort-zone activities should be welcomed as great learning and growth opportunities, stretching your capacity to deal with new things and new situations, rather than seen as depressing situations that put us on the back foot. Frequently, too, many out-of-comfort-zone activities are things that we need to do rather than choose to do and hence we may feel a natural aversion to these activities. Imagine you are a General making battle plans. Define your objectives. Understand the pressures of war, understand that mental and physical stress is a natural accompaniment to combat. The war will go on regardless, it is your duty to fight it well. In fighting we are also learning, to deal with the increasing pressures of combat. Treat that as a challenge. Plan and foresee problems and difficulties in order to defend against them. And remember, application is always tougher than theory.

Buy-in

If you want to enact a major change, it is very important to get buy-in and to do so as early as possible. In doing so, you need to give people the opportunity to voice concerns early before commitments are made. In addition you need to provide facts and reasoning to support the change, it should not be a rushed job.

Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), economist, Founding Father and first Treasury Secretary of the United States, stated:
"Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike".