Relationship between Failure and Success

July 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

What is the relationship between failure and success?

Paradoxically, failure has a lot to do with being successful. Failure is inevitable and almost required to achieve success. Ask any successful person about his/her failures, and prepare for a long conversation.

In your quest to success, you will undoubtedly experience failure. One of the keys to success is how you choose to respond to failure. How you manage failures will directly determine your ability to succeed.

When faced with failure, most people quit. Obviously, quitting does not lead to success. If, however, after you experience failure, you decide to re-group, dust the dirt off your shoulder, learn from your mistakes, and charge ahead, then you’ve capitalized on your failure as a learning experience.

It’s a simple and inherent truth about failure, but so many neglect it: Failures give us the opportunity to start with a fresh and a smarter approach.

Just remember what Colonel George Armstrong Custer said,

It’s not how many times you get knocked down; It’s how many times you get back up.

In the “Failure” section of Success-Starts-Today.com, we will feature articles that can help you gracefully accept, learn from, and capitalize on your failures and allow them to propel you onto your journey to success.

Filed Under: Personal Development, Principles of Success Tagged With:

Tomorrow’s Success Starts Today

July 1, 2009 By 1 Comment

Regardless of your definition of success, there are two common truths:

  • Success requires conscious effort.  i.e. it is not automatic and does not happen by accident.
  • Success is a dynamic journey that requires time and consistency.

Therefore, if you want to succeed, you must start a journey to success, and it must start today!

Why today? Because today is the foundation for tomorrow’s success. Benjamin Franklin captured the importance of today when he said:

One today is worth two tomorrows; what I am to be, I am now becoming.

Tomorrow’s success depends on what you’re doing today.  In Today Matters, John Maxwell (one of my favorite leadership authors) firmly demonstrates that an individual’s daily agenda and activities almost always determine his or her success.

Does your daily agenda and activities today reflect a small step or task that would help you accomplish your future goals? If not, then it is time to pause, reflect, analyze your daily schedule, and make changes accordingly.

Filed Under: Principles of Success Tagged With: ,

What is Good Leadership?

July 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Most employed individuals have a “boss”, which by definition is a a positional leader… that’s to say, people follow what he/she says, because they have to, otherwise, there would be undesired consequences.

At Success-Starts-Today.com, when we talk about leadership, we are not referring to positional leaders. Instead, we are referring to a different kind of leader… the kind of leadership that influences people, guides them, motivates them, and keeps them focused… which, in reality, is the most important kind of leadership.

If you are “the boss”, do employees get their jobs done, because you remind them that you’re the boss and they must follow what you say? Or do they feel they are part of a team, they believe in you, your mission, and the common goals and objectives?

In other words, are they influenced by you because they have to or because they choose to?

Good leadership skills are highly desirable, but are unfortunately rare to find. As a result, even if you are not a positional leader and think of yourself as just an employee, having good leadership skills will help you influence others and make you shine.

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: , ,

It Made Me Think!

July 10, 2007 By Leave a Comment

My power window broke last Thursday. Since I had to wait for the right part to arrive to the mechanic, I ended up taking the public bus for a couple of days to go to lab in the morning.

While groggy, and slightly irritated that I did not have access to my car, I was waiting for my connection by the intersection of Oracle and Grant. When I sat down at the bus stop, a middle-aged woman, who looked tired, asked if she could use my phone.

I gave her my phone and since I was about 2 feet away from her, I could not help but hear her conversation, which went like this…

“Hi, it’s Sonya… I need a place to sleep… pause… I am on Oracle and Grant… pause… ok, I will be there in a little bit.”

Wow.

It really put things in perspective… I felt kind of silly that I was irritated that I had to take the bus for a couple of days.

Filed Under: Personal Development

Bring it on!

July 3, 2007 By Leave a Comment

For quite some time now, I have been disappointed by how academic scientific research has lost its real focus. Even though as a PhD student, I will become a product of that academic system, I decided that I will not get caught in it.

I am putting my money where my mouth is. After much research, I have decided to launch Fatty-Acids.org, which is my first attempt to use my science background to bridge the gap between the general public and the scientific community.

I have been quite busy with Pubmed searches and reading articles. It will take a lot of time, especially now, since I am not working on fatty-acids.org full time… not yet, anyway.

Here is my long term plan in a nutshell: generate a significant amount of steady income from my web marketing efforts, so by the time I receive my PhD degree, I would be able to pursue my dreams, goals, and visions… instead of being stuck in a job, where my primary objective is to please my boss, his/her boss, etc.

I don’t want politics in my future. At the young age of 26, I have already had enough. I just want to be doing the right thing, tackling the important questions, pursuing my passions, and enjoying life. But isn’t this every one’s goal in life? Yet how many actually get to accomplish it?

Even if very few or none can, I know I have the talent, vision, and drive to do it! There is always “a first”, right? I am up for the challenge… Bring It On!

Filed Under: Entrepreneur

Cell Line Drama

June 13, 2007 By Leave a Comment

In basic science lab research, many scientists use cells to study a particular disease. For example, since my project deals with understanding some of the molecular mechanisms of colon cancer, I utilize different colon cancer cell lines (such as SW480, HCT116, HT29, etc).

While a cell line should be the same whether it’s in a lab in California or whether it is in NY, I have always had this suspicion that a cell line could be different in two different labs. Why? Well, cells can condition themselves to the environment in which they are growing, and since they are cancer cells, they tend to accumulate random mutations the older they get.

Clearly this would pose a huge problem… a lab can publish an article listing their observations in HT29, which would contradict another lab’s published work in the same cell line. Both observations, even though contradictory, may be accurate.

The above-stated thoughts were not based on hard data, so they were mere gut feelings. This suspicion, however, was unfortunately confirmed in my last PhD committee meeting, when I showed results in HT29 that was contradictory to previously published work. At first, my committee questioned my results…

It turns out, there are two different strains of HT29. While I was glad to learn that my work was accurate, I was saddened, because my fear was confirmed… some results in the lab could be simply artifacts of the the system.

Simple and logical assumptions (assuming that a cell line should be the same) can cause a lot of drama and lost time. It seems rather daunting and overwhelming when the implication here is that scientists need to critically analyze everything… especially when they are pondering complex systems, such as cancer or a cell line.

Filed Under: Grad School, Science

Today Matters

May 31, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Do you think today matters?

In his couple-years old book Today Matters, John Maxwell (one of my favorite leadership authors) firmly demonstrates that an individual’s daily agenda and activities almost always determine his or her success.

If you retrospectively analyze your progress over the last month, the last 6 months, or even the last year… have you accomplished every thing you sought out to accomplish?

Did your agenda and activities today reflect a small step, task, or goal that would get you closer to where you want to end up a year or so from now?

If not, then it is time to pause, reflect, and analyze your daily schedule.

Of course, everyone has off days, so do not agonize over an unproductive day here and there.

Filed Under: Personal Development, Principles of Success

Last Committee Meeting

May 29, 2007 By Leave a Comment

Last Thursday (May 24th) I had a PhD committee meeting. It went great. I got awesome suggestions and critiques from my committee members… however, these meetings can be visually depicted by the following comic.

phd020507s1.gif

The only difference is that a committee meeting has 5 fire-hydrant hoses instead of just one.

Filed Under: Grad School, Science

Lesson from Starbucks

May 27, 2007 By Leave a Comment

From a business standpoint, there is a lot that can be learned from the Seattle-based chain. One of these great lessons is how this company grew despite the fact that they have not spent much on advertising. They rely on their brand awareness, which is associated with high quality coffee drinks, a higher quality customer service and experience, and, as a consequence, customer loyalty.

Personally, I have never been helped by a “grumpy” Starbucks barista. Have you? On the flip side, I have consistently heard that Starbucks is an awesome company to work for, because it treats employees well, values them highly, and treats them like partners instead of just disposable employees.

Beyond a doubt, the way Starbucks treats its employees leads to happy employees and a positive customer service experience. As Mark Henricks concludes his forward to the February 2007 issue of Entrepreneur, “effort made to create happy and motivated employees creates happy and loyal customers.”

Filed Under: Business

Reporting Science News

May 10, 2007 By Leave a Comment

As a scientist, sometimes I cringe when I read reports in the mainstream media about scientific discoveries. Since the news reporter has to make it to-the-point and catchy, a lot of the science is lost… this, oftentimes, leads to inaccurate reporting. For example, what would you think if you read this headline:

“A New Drug Kills Cancer Cells”

Well, the headline suggests that a cancer cure has been found. Sounds Great, Right? The problem is that the message the reader takes from the headline is probably very different from the actual discovery, because the headline neglects at least two hugely important questions:

a) Which Cancer cells?

There a ton of different types of cancer… even within a type of cancer, let’s say colon cancer, there are many different reasons why colon cancer occur, and based on the stage and genetics of a tumor and the individual, drug A could work beautifully for patient 1 yet does absolutely nothing for patient 2.

b) How are the studies performed?

In labs around the world, every day scientists use compounds to kill cancer cells that grow on plastic dishes. This does not mean that these compounds are effective cancer therapies. At this point, these compounds are about 10 years of animal and clinical studies before they enter the marketplace.

Even the news stories, which provide more details, lack a certain level of depth that would capture the whole picture, which is probably necessary since the average person would not understand/not care about all the important technical details.

It is a double-edge sword, really. People would like to see the progress that the biomedical science field produces, but in order to communicate these stories to the average person, the result sometimes is the wrong or misleading message.

Filed Under: Science
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