MOTIVATION ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH

When a person attends a motivational session or seminar, his performance, after the initial high, often falls back again to lower levels. Companies also wonder why many such efforts to motivate employees don’t work.

Some people confuse the effort itself with the goal and assume that motivation alone is enough.

The mother of a rather dull youngster was somewhat disturbed at his below par performance. She wanted to see him succeed, but wasn’t quite sure what could keep him interested and motivated. Finally, she decided to enroll him for a series of motivational sessions. As the sessions progressed, the fond mother explained, “Soon we’ll know what you will be happiest doing when you grow up.” “Oh Mother, I already know that,” the boy replied. “I want to keep attending these motivational sessions. I just love them.”

The means becomes an end in itself. We keep moving in circles. We travel to reach nowhere.

People do need motivation, but they need something more than that, something that can ensure tangible results.

When we are under the spell of motivation, we feel all fired up to perform. At that moment nothing seems impossible. But as reality sinks in, we become gloomy and start doubting our competence.

Motivation has effects similar to the energy boost one feels after consuming sugar. After sometime, the energy level dips back again. The problem lies with the undue expectations that we build without grasping reality.

We all build our dream castles in the air, but we forget to put foundations under them. Like gas balloons, we let our imaginations fly high. After a while, when the gas is exhausted, the balloon of our aspirations falls back to the hard ground of reality.

Our life is highly stressed due to increased pace and complexity. Illusive goals set under an external superfluous influence put us on a roller-coaster ride with sharp highs and lows.

Suppose a person has reached a considerably appreciable level in performance at a given point of time. He gets a shot of motivation and immediately starts feeling euphoric. He perceives that his performance has risen to a much higher level of a superlative degree.

However, he often realizes that no matter how hard he tries, there is no material change in his actual performance, because his success depends on the environment too, which may not always react favorably.

After sometime, this person starts feeling like a dwarf and his self-esteem falls. He becomes depressed and assumes that his performance has deteriorated to a level much lower than the actual one. Just as the system didn’t allow much increase in his performance level while he was in a euphoric state of mind, in the same manner, the system didn’t allow his performance level to go much below his average performance level. Gradually, he gets back to normalcy.

External motivation and force may not generate a performance level that is required for excellent results. For these reasons, people, who are forced into careers by parents or by circumstances, often turn out to be failures.

External motivation can work if the performance level needs to be raised for a short span of time. However, during this phase, if you set some goals that require a consistently high performance level over a long time horizon, you might face disappointment unless motivation gets transformed into inspiration.

Feelings and emotions can exist in the unrealistic world of imagination. Action happens only in reality.

People often confuse intent with action. They judge themselves with what they intend to do and others with what others do or achieve.

Motivation can be called effective not on the basis of what gets started, but on what gets finished.

The need for motivation arises only if a person doesn’t love what he is doing. This happens when a person is forced to achieve a goal he doesn’t identify with. A SELF-MOTIVATED person loves what he does. For this reason, excellent leaders and good marketers focus on fuelling the passions and desires of people instead of preaching them.

Motivation cannot work if people don’t feel a SENSE OF OWNERSHIP towards the goal.

There once lived two tribes whose enmity was legendary. While one tribe lived in the mountains, the other lived below in the valley. One day, the people from the mountains invaded the valley people and kidnapped one of their babies. The valley people sent some of their strongest men to track down the baby and to bring it home. These men didn’t know how to climb the steep slope of the mountain and had no knowledge exactly where the mountain people lived. Still, they kept trying for some days, but could not climb more than a few hundred feet. Disappointed and exhausted, one day they decided to return to their village. While they were packing for the return journey, suddenly they saw the mother of the baby coming down from the very mountain they had failed to climb. As the woman came closer, they could see the baby safely strapped to her back. They greeted the woman and one of them said, “We are very happy to see your baby. But we fail to understand how was it possible for you to climb this mountain which we, the strongest of men from the village, could not. Will you please, explain? The mother looked fondly at her baby and said in a low voice, “It wasn’t your baby.”

What we see here is the difference between internalized goals and superimposed goals. Most efforts by an organization to motivate its employees fail because they are not aligned to the dreams and aspirations of the employees.

Organizations view motivation like a sprinkling of holy water that is expected to cure the employees. Since many leaders and motivators fail to appeal to the emotions of employees, the employees don’t develop a belief in the organizational goals. The entire exercise goes waste.

Through this blog of mine, we are going to discuss various aspects of human behavior and psychology that affect the performance of the people not only in the field of Multi Level Marketing, but also in almost all the activities and situations in life, thus creating a platform for development of strategies based on a proper understanding of the human nature, including the negative side.

THE WHEELS OF THE WORLD

At 16, leaves family to work in machine shops. At 28, becomes an engineer. 5 years later, completes his first automobile, the Quadricycle. At 40, incorporates the Ford Motor Company. In 1908, introduces the legendary Model T. In 1913, introduces first moving assembly line. To meet increasing worldwide demand. By 1918, half of all cars in America are Model Ts. Makes Ford the world’s largest automobile manufacturer. In 1926, focuses on air transportation. Develops the Tri-Motor Airplane. In 1932, builds first V8 Ford car. And brings luxury to the common man. ●●● Henry Ford ●●● Innovator. Visionary. Philanthropist. Gives a generation its freedom. A nation, its economy. And the world, its wheels.

HACKER ATTACKS VIA ORKUT- BEWARE

Beware of hacker attacks via Orkut

If you belong to the generation of net savvy Indians, beware of browsing social networking sites for long as your PC or laptop could easily fall prey to cyber attacks from hackers. As per the 2007 Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) compiled by anti-virus and security solutions major Symantec, social networking sites have become the latest target of hackers to attack home and enterprise computers.

“With the web emerging as the seamless medium of communication, information and interaction, online users are prone to get infected by engaging in social networking and browsing frequented websites due to malicious online activity in the form of worms, bots, viruses and Trojans,” Symantec India managing director Vishal Dhupar said.

Some of the popular social networking sites on the worldwide web are Bebo, Facebook (70 million registered users worldwide), Flickr (9.6 million users), MySpace (1.1 billion users) and Orkut. About six million Indians are actively involved in social networking and spend nearly an hour of their online accessing websites providing such networking activity.

“The use of social networking websites in phishing attacks is symptomatic of the trend towards targeting people rather than their computers or laptops because users are the weakest link in internet security. As a result, personal information, confidential data or corporate dossiers stored insecurely face the risk of being corrupted or stolen,” Dhupar noted, citing the report.

Phishing is an e-mail fraud method by which a hacker sends out legitimate-looking e-mail in an attempt to gather personal and financial information from recipients. Typically, the messages appear to come from well-known and trustworthy websites.

The report found that 65 percent of malicious attacks in India were through computer worms as against 22 percent globally due to lack of a fool-proof security patch or failure to install updates of anti-virus software in time.

High proliferation of viruses in India due to malicious code propagation vectors such as file sharing or executables has made net surfers or browsers vulnerable to cyber attacks.

“Unlike in the past, when netizens became victims by visiting malicious sites or clicking on deceptive e-mail attachments, hackers operating underground economy are targeting popular websites, accessed for a host of interactive services ranging from chat, messaging, e-mail, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging to discussions,” Dhupar pointed out.

“Of late, Indian consumers and enterprises are subject to savage attacks in the form of phishing and botnets that choke the mailboxes. The study, conducted from July-December 2007, revealed India had a whopping 32,502 bot-infected computers and over 60 command and control servers, which is an increase of 50 percent over the previous study in 2006,” Dhupar recalled.

According to the report, there were 345 phishing URL (universal resource locator) links with IP (Internet Protocol) addresses hosted in India. Even reputable Indian banks were not spared, as about 400 phishing attacks were detected in the second half of last year.

Among Indian cities, Mumbai had the majority of bot-infected computers (56 percent), followed by Chennai (16 percent) and Delhi (14 percent).

News Source: The Daily Telegrams, Port Blair.

"COMPETITION" - AN ANALYSIS

COMPETITION

A competitive world has two possibilities for you. You can lose. Or, if you want to win, you can change.

- Lester C Thurow

In the globalized world, big and small coexist, but the smaller one always lives in the fear of being gobbled up by the big. But can the mighty ones take their survival for granted?

The intensity of competition has increased so much that no matter who we are, all of us are under constant threat. For every success, there are ‘n’ numbers of aspirants who constantly work to displace the leaders.

Most people treat competition as a threat. We tend to forget that sometimes the threat posed by competition is a necessity to bring us out of our complacency and to hone up our survival instincts. Until the eighties, Bajaj Auto had only one brand in the two-wheeler segment: Chetak. However in the last decade, it has introduced more than six original designs and brands in the motorcycle segment alone, and has again started doing exceedingly well, so much so that, now it is one of the strongest contenders for the top place in the Indian two wheeler industry. Hero Honda is the world’s largest producer of motorcycles and TVS group is renowned world over for quality products and services. India’s two wheeler industry has come of age and is competing with even the best in the world. Nobody is complaining.

However, someone has rightly said, “Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people.”

Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest” suggests that man is basically selfish. He wants everything for himself first, and will go to any extreme to fulfill his selfish interests. As resources like food, land, career opportunities are limited, human beings inevitably see other human beings as threats and enemies. The results are war, hatred and jealousy.

We live in a competitive world. It doesn’t mean that for us to succeed, others need to fail. It is also wrong to treat life always as a Zero-sum* game.

EVERY MORNING in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. it knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle- When the sun comes up, you’d better be running. - inspirational sign on an office wall

* In a zero-sum game, win for one necessarily means loss for another and the sum of all wins and losses is zero. When two people gamble with each other, it has to be a zero-sum game.

Role of Human Psychology In MLM

ROLE OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY IN MLM

The amazing business of MLM is all about dealing with people. It’s about meeting people, interacting with people, learning from and teaching the people, convincing people, motivating people, reasoning with people, and above all, managing people to build, lead and expand a successful organization of MLM under your belt. This business is essentially about inspiring people to strive to materialize their dreams and ambitions with the help of the truly fruitful business opportunity that they are equipped with in the form of MLM. In a nutshell, this business is about human psychology and its intricacies.

Hence, one of the most important traits that are required to succeed in Multi Level Marketing is a practical understanding of the human psychology. In fact, it is indispensable if one is serious about making a career out of MLM and really making it big, and for part timers too, a little knack of understanding the way the human brain acts and reacts is a must for achieving the desired results in this immensely rewarding yet highly competitive business.

In order to understand, explore and learn about this fundamental phenomenon comprehensively, we, at Zillion 2^nd Innings initiate a series of significant related topics, herewith, wherein the readers/users are welcome to post their comments/articles on the different aspects of the subject being analyzed i.e. the ROLE OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY IN MLM. The selected comments/articles would be published in this Blog together with the name of the author.

To start with, let us take a look at a very basic form of amusing yet highly educative comparison between a young boy and a young girl’s psychology, which often outwits a trained psychologist by its very practical nature. Go through the following pictorial analysis:

Now, go through the Girl’s mind:

The obvious conclusion that one can arrive at would be that there is a great deal of difference between how a young boy and a young girl’s mind react to each other. No two brains are similar. Hence, people often react differently to a given situation. They may agree with one point but be at loggerheads with the other. The very human nature is the basis of this profound study on human psychology. It’s not due to the difference in the two sexes, but due to the difference in the two minds that a boy’s actions and reactions are typically straightforward in contrast with that of a girl.

Hence, it’s important to understand the situational behavior of the people with different mindsets. Observe the following example carefully:

THE STORY OF 4 PEOPLE (Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, Nobody) There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about it, but it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody would not do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when actually Nobody asked Anybody.

Everybody has his/her own point of view and a different attitude towards things. It’s very human for people to love being in COMFORT and ease. In fact, that’s what everybody works hard for. Hence, shouldering responsibility and to lead by example is the trait of the rare breed. And ironically, that rare breed is the one that is most likely to view things with a positive attitude and, hence, most likely to succeed. Nobody likes to work hard yet everybody has to do exactly the same in order to achieve what he/she wants.

Hence, it is a very fundamental lesson that since people love comfort, you show them how to achieve the same with the least amount of effort. And that can be done not by WORKING HARD (they hate it) but by WORKING SMART with the help of the much tried and tested business of MLM.

Picture source: Funtoosh.com

EARN HEFTY POCKET MONEY BY E-TUTORING

There’s a new way to earn as you learn. If you are a student of math or science and have decent communication skills, you can make up to Rs. 17,000 a month e-tutoring kids in America and Europe. Educational Process Outsourcing (EPO) is enabling over 100 Delhi students make handsome dividends from a few hours spent answering queries and clearing doubts. Manya Education Private Limited, an e-tutoring firm, recently began campus recruitment in IIT-Delhi, Delhi University and Jamia Millia Islamia.

Academically strong students from the Sciences stream were selected and trained for a month. The e-tutoring model requires these student-teachers to log on to a chat-based software and answer queries from students in the US and Europe.

For an average four-hour session, they earn between Rs. 12,000 and Rs. 17,000, depending on competency. Varun Thakur, a Chemistry (Honours) student, is back from office in time for classes in Venkateswara College, after four hours spent interacting with American students in grades IX to XII. “E-Tutoring is exciting. I work from 3.30 am to 7.30 am and am back home before classes. The courses in the US are the same as ours. The only difference is the teaching methodology,” says Thakur. Beginning with Math, Physics and Chemistry, Manya Education plans to include social sciences lessons. The teaching fraternity has welcomed the initiative. “E-tutoring is a great option for bright students with a good grasp over their subjects,” said Rihan Khan Suri, placement officer, Jamia Millia Islamia.

News Source: The Daily Telegrams, Port Blair