The Life Lessons from City of Leicester - Ultimate Excellence

The Life Lessons from City of Leicester; The Home of EPL Champions

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The Life Lessons from City of Leicester would really be depicted by looking deeper into how Leicester managed to win the English Premier League, it seems truly unfathomable. It doesn’t actually make sense how they’ve won and that got me thinking about how we could learn from some of the things that brought them the title.

The Life Lessons from City of Leicester

PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTHS IS ONE OF THE LIFE LESSONS FROM  CITY OF LEICESTER

Leicester’s entire squad had a value of £54million. That might sound like a lot, but that’s the exact amount that Manchester City paid for 1 player. In comparison, the total value of Manchester City’s squad is £418million.

There’s a general consensus that you can buy titles by spending money on the big players. What Leicester lacked in money and star power they made up for with work-rate. They ran more than any other team in the league and that showed. The other teams just weren’t prepared to run as much as Leicester were.

Running isn’t everything but it was all they had so they went full tilt and simply outran the other 19 teams.

LESSON 2: TEARING UP THE RULE BOOK

Possession. The late Johan Cruyff had a big hand in creating the greatest reign of any team in world football with his contribution to Barcelona. Their philosophy was based on two simple facts:

  • If we have the ball, you can’t score.
  • If we have the ball, we stand a better chance of scoring.

Over the years, nearly every club has tried to adopt this possession based game and mostly failed. Leicester had the lowest possession of the entire league. Pundits everywhere couldn’t wrap their heads around how they were able to win games without the ball.

One of the life lessons from city of leicester here is to sometimes do the total opposite of tradition or convention. If everyone is doing internet marketing, maybe do some direct mail. If everyone else is getting offices and hiring locally, maybe you work from home and hire remotely.

You don’t always need to do the thing that everyone else is doing in order to find successes.

LESSON 3: FOCUS

The big clubs usually make it pretty far in most competitions so come crunch time in the last 8-10 games of the season when every point matters, there’s a bunch of mid-week games to consider in different competitions. This often means managers will rotate the squad to rest players.

You often hear things like “We can focus on the league now”. What that really means is we can just focus on one clear objective.

In business, it’s vital to have that same level of focus. Don’t try to have 4 or 5 divisions of your company when you’re still building things up. A single product or service company will almost always outperform one with multiple products and services in the early stages.

Keep the focus.

LESSON 4: STICK TO WHAT’S WORKING

Barring the odd suspension, Claudio Ranieri picked pretty much the same 11 players every game. This allowed the players to gel. There was less doubt around the squad. Everyone knew their place.

As creatives, it’s easy to move onto the next thing because it’s more exciting but let this be a lesson to stick to what’s working.

LESSON 5: KEEP IT FUN

On the cusp of the biggest upset in sporting history, they’re only training 2 half days a week. My old Sunday league side trained more than that!

Their interviews were hilarious: “Surely you must now be accepting that you could win the league” “We’re just happy to get our 40 points and be safe from relegation”.

The whole thing was like a joke to them.

Don’t take yourself so seriously. It’s easy to relax when things are going well but it’s down to you to make the time to relax regardless. It clears your head, keeps you positive and take time for yourself. Get out the house, throw parties, see your friends, go on holidays. Keep it fun.

LESSON 6: DON’T GIVE UP

At so many different times, they could have bottled it and caved in, settled for a draw, accepted the loss and not bounced back. Pundits the world over kept saying things like “They’ll drop off after Christmas”, “They won’t be able to keep this up”.

Well, they did keep it up. I don’t know how. I’m not sure anyone does but there was some crazy belief in the squad that they could keep going. That never say die attitude earned them the odd point here and there which is the exact thing that wins you titles.

During a match with West Ham, they were 2-1 down with their star man Jamie Vardy getting sent off, they somehow equalised in the last kick of the game. Jamie Carragher during the TV analysis afterwards said “The dying seconds of that match are what will make them champions”.

There was no reason for them to keep trying. There were 15-seconds left but for some reason they had one last go and ended up getting a penalty which they scored. That point contributed to them winning the league because the title race would still be alive right now if they had lost that game.

You need to grind out your wins. Not everything you do is going to be a landslide victory. Learn to love that hustle and grind.

It’s those small moments in business that you have to work hardest for. Don’t give up.

Congratulations Leicester, you deserve it.

www.betterproposals.co.uk

Circumstantial Living is Such a Calamity - Ultimate Excellence

Circumstantial Living is Such a Calamity

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How many times do you do something to court attention? When did you cease being yourself for others to applause you? When did you give in in pursuit of your principles to earn a name? Can you count the many times your past won over your future? Why do you have some negative feeling towards self? You doubt yourself more than you doubt strangers just because you have no track record of success? Check this. It is just a quick dose for you. Make it sound like your piece.

No one has the key to unlock your potential. No history can dictate your futureCircumstantial Living is Such a Calamity - Ultimate Excellence without your cooperation. If your parents don’t have what it takes to become successful, it does not mean you are also doomed. It’s about you, through you and with you that things can change for better. It is natural for rivers to flow downstream but it’s still natural for fish to swim upstream. Therefore, it’s up to you to train yourself to be a positive thinker in negative circumstances just like this fish. Life can only retain its original taste if it’s appreciated by the person who lives it.

Indeed Circumstantial Living is Such a Calamity

We must learn to embrace our circumstances positively. We need to tune to the right waves, which will be clear to our lives. Noise  kills our concentration and we lose focus in this precious life. If you are not very educated or your people are all illiterate, that should never deter you from being more determined and prepared to prosper. You cannot continue making your life a product of your not so good situations and think that you are going to enjoy life. You will be so wasted at the end. All your efforts will be futile. Self-pity and self-denial is the source of all fatal misery.

You might be in awkward moments in life. These are times when life stops making sense. Stops moving on. Becomes blurred and misty. You feel helpless and hopeless. There is hardly anything you can do to escalate the situation. Your family is breaking. Your relationships are dying out, one by one. Your faith is losing ground and it can no longer move you to the next step. Your prayers cannot ignite your spirit. People might be all over in your life waiting for your help, for you to pay them what you borrowed expecting better returns. All your dreams are no longer alive; they are shattered. You feel less. You feel empty. Questions cannot stop flowing into your mind but no answer is willing to come from the same.  But in all these remember, ‘Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start’-Nido Qubein.

This is what most of us go through. The difference is how we handle it, think it over and speak it to our lives. If we declare failure even before making an attempt to overturn the situation, we don’t have any chance to win the battle. Why are we defeated by passing circumstances or even painful experiences which already took place in our life?

Why do we get wrestled so easily by storms of our own making? It is because we want to handle the giant problem at once. We must break our problems into short ‘verses’ which we can easily comprehend. The other is that we think we can give solutions to everything and thus get so frustrated because we don’t get the best outcome when we want to change the situation. We forget to involve, to consult and to surrender to God and to others who can be better than we are.

Article by Samuel Kanja, Chief Trainer at Kanja Life Coaches.

Work Life Equilibrium - Ultimate Excellence

Work Life Equilibrium

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Are employees Really “Living”?

Work Life Equilibrium is really wanting as people seek employment to improve their lives. Unfortunately, many compromise themselves, thereby failing to focus on life in its broader sense. Job is just one aspect of life, SAMUEL KANJA lays it bare.

Work Life Equilibrium - Ultimate ExcellenceI take this opportunity to address critical issues, which need to be addressed and internalized by critical minds, which are open to reality. You are living for a purpose and your purpose is defined. You have what it takes to move your life not only to the next level but also to the highest level possible! Everything that happens in life is part of life but it’s not life itself. Education is part of life. Your family and friends are part of your life and your job is…. also part of your life.

One mistake that most of us make and fail to learn from is thinking that our lives are part of our job. It may look off the line but that’s how most of us look at it. We have a duty to be diligent and vibrant at the workplace at all times because we are ultimately serving people, but this should not be an excuse to forget that we will not live forever.

Don’t start living when you retire because you might not have all the time to see the essence and sense of life! Life is not defined by the work you do but why you do it! Work is not measured by the coins that end up in your bank account at the end of the month but by the value it adds to your life. What remains after you stop working is the true image of what you were doing.

Have you ever thought of being an employer? Certainly! I sincerely hope that you are concerned about what you do in life as this can enable you to work excellently for your company/employer and even more importantly, position yourself in a way that allows you to spot and take advantage of opportunities which seem small when coming and mighty when vanishing. Your life should be your top priority since your job will be more fulfilling when you understand where it is in the list of what matters.

We should ask ourselves this question:”If there were no money in life such that I had all I needed, what would I do with my life?” Many people are driven by what they get out of their jobs but fail to think deeply about how that job makes their lives better and more meaningful. I have come to realize that in most cases, our job /career path conflicts with our talent(s), gifts or abilities and in this competitive world, we do not want to take the time to think about what we can do best – we instead only find time just to think about what we are doing and not what we can do. I have met very few people who are worried by their stagnated talents but I have come across thousands who are worried about their jobs and careers. People must work and people must live! Your life is too precious and excessively broad to be occupied by just your job.

Take charge of your life! and desire to achieve work life equilibrium. Be the master of what you do rather than a victim of what society thinks you should do. One of the biggest challenges for any employee is to know why they are working and understand how their job blends in with their lives. The fact is it is a journey that never comes to an end but it has different degrees of success. Work can never be equated with life.

Life is beyond comparison with any component of it including family, relationships, careers, spirituality etc. All these are just small portions of life; variables in a infinite equation i.e. if Life equation is as follows, Y= X1+X2+X3+X4……..Xn ,then work is just that X1 and then it would be impossible to say that Y=X1 unless all other variables are Zeros. We need to balance our lives as it depends on so many factors and all are important for it to make a logical sense. Life can be compared to the body. 1 Cor 12:14, 17, 21, 26 says, “For the body itself is not made up of one part, but many parts. If the whole body was just an eye, how could it hear? And if it was only an ear, how could it smell? So then, the eye cannot say to the hand I don’t need you. If one part of the body suffers, all the other parts suffer with it; if one part is praised all the other parts share its happiness.”

A person may live without work but you will never find a person working without life. Most people are struggling with life not because they have fewer hours or more work to do but because they are not alert of how life is. Life is not work. You can have people living without work but you will never see a person working without life. That’s so obvious when said but not so when thought about. Work is divine.

All the same, it can be expensive if we lose all our earning on lifestyle diseases. It does not add value to life either, if glorifying our occupation will make us lose our children to immorality. The saddest thing is when families break up and down just because we didn’t give them time when they needed us most. What do we gain if we own all the money in the bank and lose something that does not even have a price-tag? Love your Job! Embrace Your Job! BUT REMEMBER to Love your life and Live it. Work is not measured by what we earn, but by the value it adds to our life.