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Life Advice

Be a Fighter! 10 Tips to Dominate Life from Army Veteran Vandana Sharma

“When the going gets tough, instead of running; you must accept the challenge, fight till the end, and become a better person”, this quote sums up the inspiring life of Army Veteran turned entrepreneur Vandana Sharma, who teaches us to dominate life.

A person with lots of achievements; she served the Indian Army for ten years. And now, this Kargil War veteran and TEDx speaker is shaping the startups via her organisation, StartupPeopleConsulting. She is an inspiration to many, who has won the Women’s Icons Asia-Pacific Award, BERG Singapore, 2017. She is a fighter who has shared ten tips to dominate life and become successful via a question-answer session.

So get inspired and dominate life with these amazing tips:

1. How can a person develop a fighting spirit?

Consistently facing failures and not giving up helps to develop the fighting spirit. When you stay on a course and see success; it encourages you to sustain and continue to pursue your dreams relentlessly.

It’s necessary to not quite to initial failures and keep going on a single path to find success in life.

2. Can you share ways to become more productive and dominate life?

Live each day as if it was your last.

Spend the first two hours meditating, exercising or just spend it in solitude mindfully.

Spend the first hour at work planning and prioritising things for the day.

Set goals for immediate, short-term, and long-term.

Dream about your ambitions and visualise success.

Push yourself to complete your bucket life, outside of your ambition and career goals.

Minimise screen time that doesn’t help you relax or learn anything new and worthwhile.

It’s one of the most important life tips; you must set goals, plan ways to achieve it, and visualise them. It will definitely improve your productivity. 

3. How should one step out of the comfort zone?

To begin, I recommend travelling alone. That helps you face situations that you haven’t come across in the past and do things on your own and enjoy it too.

Subsequently, try taking decisions on work or aspiration list, which seem audacious. But work on a plan and pursue it step by step.

Follow people who have achieved what you aspire to achieve.

It’s a very important suggestion, as travelling makes you discover the new dimensions of your personality.

4. Do you believe in ‘Surround yourself with positive people’?

Yes, I definitely do. A person thinking is the sum of the five closest people. One needs to have positive influences to make the most out of life.

You must spend time with people who can help you achieve your goals and assist you in developing your personality. 

5. How can one overcome naysayers and critical people?

By not worrying too much about them. Understand that no one became successful by pleasing people. The only takeaway I can get from a critical person is that this person may help you know your flaws or shortcomings, therefore, use that feedback to strengthen your weak areas.

You must not spend time in pleasing others, but make sure to keep an eye on constructive criticism, as it will help you overcome your weak spots. 

6. Can you share one of the important success lessons for youths?

Never give up on your dreams.

I spent my entire lifetime pushing myself towards things that were either considered difficult or impossible, and it gave me a lot of joy to be able to break stereotypes of different kinds. I played basketball school nationals, and captained various teams with short stature of 5’2” and was applauded for my work in providing logistics support to fighting troops during the Kargil War.

Also, I worked my way through the Corporate HR ladder and led successful and winning organisations. All this while I parallelly enjoyed a fulfilled life with two wonderful sons, a lot of world travel, and good friends and family.

Always try to push your limits. You never know, you might become successful in achieving something which seems impossible.

7. Which bad habit can ruin a person life?

A negative mindset can ruin everything. One must consciously keep detrimental and negative thoughts out of the system, to be able to succeed in life.

Our mind is very powerful; it tries to turn your thinking into reality. If you think the positive, then the good things will happen, and bad things happen when you cling to negative thinking. 

8. What your perception of failure?

tips to dominate life from Vandana SharmaFailures are your teacher. Learn from them and know if it’s worth pursuing your cause or move to a better/ different one. Wear scars of your failure as badges of honour. There is no shame in failing. There’s a shame only if you haven’t given attempted at all.

One of the famous football players David Beckham loves to learn from failures. He is the called the virtuoso of the penalty shootout. But did you know? He took more than 50,000 kicks to master the art. He failed a lot during this process, but he never gave up and learned from failures. 

9. Along with failures, everyone must know how to handle success. Can you tell something about it?

Always stay humble. Success is like a greased pole. It’s hard to always stay on top. Be aware that you will come down some day. Someone bigger better and stronger will take the lead. Therefore, staying humble and not getting carried away in the face of success is super important.

Humbleness keeps you on the right track and going through success and failures.

10. Do you believe that ‘Books make your future’? Can you recommend any book?

While there are tons of amazing management and life lesson books, my favourite is :

a. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll

b. The 80/20 principle: the secret of achieving more with less by Richard Koch”

If you feel inspired and have learned something new, then make sure to share it with your friends and family. 


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