Business as a Transferable Skill for your Personal Life

I would like to thank Nilson Caldas for developing this article with me.  It came about as a result of an English class and the content is too useful not to be shared.  During the session we had a conversation on how certain essential business, not to mention sports, skills can be equally useful in our personal life, that is, transferable to our personal life.  Here's a brief examination on the matter, the skills in all areas being

• preparation
• selling
• negotiating
• reaching a target

The World is made up questions, and you have to be prepared to answer them.  If this seems a little nebulous, let's look at the language in detail. In business it is sometimes said that, whilst problems cannot be solved, issues can be. Hence some business people prefer to speak of "issues' rather than "problems".

Both business and sports involves strategy, leadership and team spirit. Both involve reaching targets and beating the competition to be successful.
All three, sport, business and your personal life, need a strategy.

In your professional, sporting and personal life, you have to come up with a sales pitch.  To get a job, your sales pitch is your job interview.  On a first potentially romantic encounter, it is your appearance and confidence level.

To be able to win a sports championship, you have to be able to present your winning strategy to all parties. To move house, pay for university, become self employed or book a holiday, you have to sell your ideas to your wife or girlfriend, children and/or friends.

All three involve important meetings.  For instance when you decide to live together or get engaged, at some point you may feel the need to tell your next of kin.

Or when making certain lifestyle announcements - such as not being religious.

In business, sports and our personal lives we need to prepare for important meetings. We need to prepare notes before starting conversations, otherwise how can a wife, boss or team get answers to his/her/their questions?

And finally, motivation.  We all need it.  Some of us get it from family and friends.  For some of us that is not an option.
Some get it from religious or non-religious leaders and communities. And some of us get it from motivational quotes.  Such as this one by Earl Nightingale:

"Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it.  The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use."

The use of motivational quotes is what got me through the penultimate semester of Vets' school!

Thanks for reading.