It was my teenage years, when I was avidly reading various non-fiction books. I used to pick them out from my local library (renting books from library was quite in fashion those days). The local librarian became a very good friend of mine and used to help me pick out a good balance of fiction and non-fiction writers. Back in those days,  while I was reading one of the non-fiction writers, not sure which book talked about the concept of focus and faith. It compared focus and faith to be pivotal to the intellectual world of life philosophies. With detailed study of various philosophies and content,  I thought to add few more key components which can holistically form an approach which can be used to put in perspective the various dimensions of life problems.

Diagrammatically, the F-Ladder can be summarised in the following:

Like a ladder, each component works as the steppingstones to the next one. Eventually, leading to the finish line and rewarding the individual for reaching there. Many times, you must have observed that, we fail to resolve our short-term or long-term problems because one of the components is missing in our plan of action. Many times, it is either “Faith”, “Focus” or “Force”. So, lets analyse all of them and see how they are intertwined with each other from an execution point of view.

(a) Figure: First step to resolving any issue or problem is to properly figure out and acceptance of the problem. Introspection has been a very effective tool in this regard. Introspection lets you to be critically honest with yourself and helps you figure out the issues you would want to resolve. This step is the most critical in the journey of self-awareness. So, spend some time on “Figure First”.

(b) Faith: Brad Henry, once intelligently said “Believe in yourself, everything else will fall into its place”. It is a very well-known fact that if anyone wants to succeed in life, they must believe in themselves. We must believe in ourselves and in our abilities because our inner faith will create our external results. People easily lose faith in themselves when encountering setbacks, failure and fear. When you lack confidence in yourself, others will pick up on that and won’t take you seriously. Not many people live the life that they have always wished to live; they give up on their life goals as soon as they encounter the first setback. One of the main causes for this is that they do not believe in themselves.

(c) Focus: Focus is the key aspect of the F-ladder. In today’s world, Focus is something which has become scarce commodity mainly since everyone is trying to attract your attention to themselves leading to lack of focus on your own primary purpose. We have started to live in a world of perpetual distraction. While we produce our best work in a state of deep focus, there seems no end to the tools, tasks and people that break it. From Slack pings and routine email checking, to poorly spaced meetings and the lure of sites that tap into our psychology, staying focused at work has never been so hard.

(d) Force: Till now, we have discussed about “Figure”, “Faith” and “Focus”. These aspects are soft aspects, which one can develop over a period with knowledge and practise. However, the fourth factor “Force” is the physical manifestation of above three discussed aspects. These can express themselves with certain set of actions or behavioural changes which lead to resolution of the issue you might have been facing in your day-to-day life. This element helps you in setting new course or charting new paths for yourselves.

(e) Finish: Setting a finishing line is very critical to any process. Generally, if you set up a moving finishing line, the sense of achievement is lost as you may never cross the finishing line. Finishing line is a great motivator to not only sportsmen but also to corporate wizards, students. This also helps in cultivating “Can-Do” attitude and provides sense of achievement. However, setting up an appropriate finishing line is a separate ball game together. You may want to begin with quicker wins first, rather than putting yourself up for something which is quiet far from realisation.

(f) Fulfil: The last aspect of F-Ladder is sense of fulfilment. Having the feeling after crossing the finish line and sitting back and enjoying the fulfilled feeling garners a lot of positivity to life and gives you the humble experience. It also allows you to help alleviating others and make the world better place to live. One may not realise, “Positivity” also spreads like wildfire and can be infectious.

Conclusively, F-Ladder if appropriately practised does provide you with series of aspects in organised way to successfully resolve issues and increase the happiness and satisfaction quotient of one’s life. It also motivates you to have a head-on with life problems, instead of avoiding them. Because, avoidance of the problems opens the gateway to addictive habits, increased acidity and depressive mental state. So, use it as much as you can.

Nihit M