Monday, December 02, 2013

When you aim for the sky you reach the tree top at least

Life is all about aiming at the target and hitting the bull's eye. Now, how much time it takes and how many attempts it takes to hit the bull's eye is different for different people at different instants of time. No one is perfect on this planet to hit the bull's eye every time right from the first time. Everyone has a learning curve to go through and to grow through. No one can escape it. While doing so, we cannot miss taking aims and leaping forward. Let's take the target that's challenging enough so that we reach beyond the limitations of our abilities.

When you aim for the sky, you at least reach the tree top. This statement clearly signifies that when you aim to touch the sky which is a next to impossible task, you fall short of achieving it. But the reward for aiming so high is that you land on the tree top which is still much taller than what normal people aim at. As a result, you shall stand out of the crowd for hitting such massive height. The lapse in the accomplishment of the target between the sky and the tree top accommodates the different external random factors of nature that influence our work and, hence, affect the results that we are able to achieve. These factors of randomness shall exist in the same amounts, no matter what our targets are. If we aim just at the tree top, we shall end up somewhere near the stem because the unknown factors shall, for sure, play the spoilsport.

If it's clearly understood that we need to accept the limitations of how much a human mind can anticipate, plan and take action and adhere to the influence of nature in its own style in everything we do, we can aptly conclude that we need to aim much higher than what we need to achieve. Only then shall we give our best to bring out the best from us and reach the desired destination. Only unrealistic targets have the ability to bring out the unimaginable best out of us. Hence, let's aim more and achieve more.

Sunday, December 01, 2013

Skepticism isn't a bad attribute

Just like how humans aren't spared from not making mistakes, the same way, skepticism is also an in-built attribute of humans. Not just humans even that of animals. Animals too are skeptical about things and people before they get used to them. Try to throw a biscuit at a dog which doesn't acquaint with you. It shall first sniff and only if it feels satisfied it shall take the biscuit. Humans too cannot accept things that come to them without any reason. There needs to be a logical reasoning before accepting anything. Until this is understood skepticism shall be an inert part of human behaviour. 

Most of the times when we express our doubt over certain thoughts people around us try to characterize us as those who belong to the set of people who don't believe in anything and don't want things to progress. No matter how hard you try, you can never fake your feelings. You ought to listen to your instinct and the instinct, most of the times, functions as per the logic programmed in the subconscious mind. The moment there is a thought-process that's obstructed in this process, a doubt arises and the decisions get delayed. All these happen within few moments of time and can't be explained in detail to those who negate our skepticism. Hence, instead of worrying about what others comment about us, it's better to go ahead and display the reasons for our skepticism. If the answers are satisfying enough then further action can be taken instead of trying to hide it.

The aberrations in feelings due to hidden skepticism shall only lead to more confusion and more doubts. Trying to solve them ourselves we end up building a building of assumptions without any logical base. As a result, we construct our own world of imagination of assumptions which is much far than the reality right in front of our eyes. Hence it's best to get the thirst of skepticism resolved at the earliest so that we stop wasting time on finding our own reasons and invest the same amount of time saved on further planning and action.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Can you weigh the feelings?

When you feel happy you tend to feel very happy and that everything is right but on the other hand when things are going haywire, you tend to feel really sad. Can you weigh these feelings of happiness or sadness and cancel them out and say your life is at neutral position? At least in the Harry Potter series, they could take out their memories and put them into a bowl. Is it possible to drag out our feelings and place them in a bowl too, to measure their metrics? Well! I am not sure. But we still use phrases like, 'my heart is heavy with feelings'.
 
To just dig into the background processing of how these feelings are created, we find that feelings are internally generated but externally triggered. People and situations around us give rise to different sorts of feelings. Though it's not exactly possible to weigh the amount of these feelings directly, we can try an alternative route to do the same by measuring the quantity that gets replaced by such feelings. Whenever we are down and feeling bad the negative thoughts revolve in our minds which replace the thoughts of any kind of work. As a result, majority of the work gets stalled. The amount of work can easily be measured in terms of the growth it would have brought to us either in monetary terms or kind-wise. The amount of time our brain is devoid of work thoughts and filled with feelings that obstruct the working thought-process, is the exact amount of time lost which can be exactly measured and if you can charge yourself on an hourly basis, you can calculate the loss in terms of finances as well.
 
After a series of disturbing experiences all that I realized was that if there are CEOs who are unhappy with what's going on in their lives, even I can reach some good position like them even if I'm hurt and feeling bad or sad or unhappy at certain points of time. It's difficult to fight against the feelings and work, I agree, but there is no way out. Work has to happen and life has to move on. There is no point worrying and sitting down with hands tied. Allow the heart to be under turmoil while you're exercising your brain to carry forward the work because more the lack and loss of work, more the sadness.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Poor jokes? or Poor people?

Just few days ago, I was in a school to take up a session on leadership for the students. I had reached almost 45 minutes earlier and had had a heavy lunch just two hours ago. Naturally, sleep was catching up on me. I was in no state of taking up an energetic session but it was inevitable. I tried to take a brisk walk to awake myself from the day-sleep. It worked to an extent. I wasn't completely up and going. Then I entered the school and took a seat on a nearby bench. Just twenty minutes before my session was about to begin, the first grade students ran out of their classes to the quadrangle. Here comes the twist in the story.
 
I have a bad habit of cracking jokes and making people around me laugh. I started it with these young angels. I asked them, "A for ..." They replied, "Apple!" and I reverted, "A for Anna Sambar (food item in Kannada language). All of them chuckled. I asked once again, "C for ..." They replied, "Cat!" but I retorted, "C for Chitranna (yet another food item in Kannada language). Once again these first grade students laughed their heart out. This continued for few more alphabets where I was replacing their answers with food items and that too in a regional language. With each answer their laughter raised in decibel level and my energy state raised in quantum levels. Hats off to these kids who have the charm of enjoying every little happiness that's hidden around them, and who, in return, charged me up for my session.
 
If I had done the same exercise with other people around me apart from these kids, they would have neglected the humour in it and categorized it as PJ - poor jokes and not even energized me. It would have happened with you too many times when you tried to bring out humour and your friends made fun of you by calling your joke as a PJ- poor joke. As people grow, they tend to lose the fun-loving-kid inside them who can trigger happiness and bliss at every joke possible. It doesn't even matter if people aren't ready to enjoy, unfortunately they break the source person's enthusiasm also while sharing the joke and turn off his/her mood. I feel more than the poorness or richness of the joke, it depends on the poorness or richness of the ability in people to enjoy life. People have gone poor on the scale of enjoying humour. So, don't worry next time when someone condemns your thought as a poor joke. That someone might just be a poor soul on the planet. Go ahead and enjoy the nectar of life called laughter. So what say? Do poor people exist or poor jokes?

Saturday, October 05, 2013

The race is still on

No one knows exactly who came first on this earth. Excavations have proved that dinosaurs existed much before the homo-sapiens came into existence. Probably there are many more species which haven't been excavated yet, which might have been the predecessors of dinosaurs also. Jurassic park movie series has been a great showcase about the fight between dinosaurs just like how million other movies have showcased the fight between humans. The fight is always to show that one is better than the other just to achieve the desired objective. Fights shall go on because the race is still on.

The fights that I referred in the earlier part of the blog post was just not the fight that happens amongst people. It also refers to the internal fight that goes on inside us on a daily basis. The fight between the lazy and busy self in us, the fight between the visionary and missionary in us, the fight between different priorities of life, the fight between the passion and profession in our lives so on and so forth are all different shades of fights that exist in our lives. All these fights employ two sides which are vying to race one beyond the other. Every fight won moves one side ahead of the other. More the steps a particular side takes forward, the race gets extended by those many steps. People are trying to break each others records on a daily basis. There is stiff competition which is only increasing the speed of this race among individuals to prove who is better than the other. Someone will always be better at all points of time and some few will always try to beat him and become better at all points of time. Hence the race shall never end and be still on for ages to come and go.

Temporary failures appear as dead ends of life for those who fail to try again to win back what they lost. They forget to see beyond the obstacle that the race field is far and wide touching the horizon. All that we have to understand is that race is something which shall only travel with time as eternal as time is and never reach the destiny called end. Race is always on and it allows participants who are ousted out also to get back to competition and hasten the spirit.

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

Professionals define the profession

In today's world, with the surmounting amount of information flow from all directions people have a huge question on mind as to which profession to take up. Different opportunities present different scales of returns and the number of such opportunities is limited in case of those who aren't prepared and trained to enter the work world while for those who are pre-equipped, they are just too big in number and variety. Too many options only confuse our choices. Which profession to choose is of great question and the debate about the goodness and badness of a profession is never ending. That's where I need to jump in and tell that your profession can't define you; you will've to give a new meaning to the profession you get into.

I had heard my lecturer say in my college days that, "everyone is good, everyone is bad but only the percentage varies." Likewise profession is also something that's innovated by man. No profession is good or bad. It's the people in the profession who shall define the quality and fame of the  profession. Let's take two simple examples of Sir Richard Branson and Sachin Tendulkar. to understand the concept better. Sir Richard Branson is a true serial entrepreneur who has made people feel that entrepreneurship is the cloud nine of life. He has given his adventurous touch to the business world. In the same way, Sachin Tendulkar has displayed the true spirit of sportsmanship by taking cricket records to new heights which people might not even defeat for ages to come. He has inspired and influenced hordes of others to take up cricket as the profession just like how Sir Richard Branson has triggered plenty of youth to jump into the ocean of entrepreneurship and business.

We can find so many frauds and cheats in both the fields of cricket and business. Still people opt for such fields because of the personalities who have made those professions noble. Hence we must not have any bias towards any profession. We must think about what value we can add to the profession we are in and how we can influence lots more to take up the same profession and benefit themselves. Only then you become a true professional in your profession and a leader who sets new benchmarks and standards.

Set a new zero

Life happens in different stages. Every stage is a step to reach the next stage. While you're climbing the steps you need to climb one after the other or two after two based on your agility. However every step you take requires the same amount of energy and efforts. Climbing the first step is as equivalent as climbing the 10th step from the 9th step. Likewise in life also, to climb from one stage to the other the amount of energy and efforts required are the same. We cannot bank upon our previous achievements and work and hence become complacent or ignorant towards the amount of hard work required. We have to set a new starting point for ourselves, a new ZERO standard.

Once you set a new standard of zero for yourself, you shall forget all that you've achieved till now in life. There is no pressure of performance and you are just like a free bird who can fly as high as your heart wishes to go. The freedom of mind is more than essential to make new stories happen. There is no limit to the achievements and accomplishments that one can amass in his kitty. It's all in the game of mind. You need to tell yourself when you're at the peaks that you shall break open the gates of complacency and restrictions set upon your mind just because of the self image that you have built. A new image is awaiting to share your persona. Any new idol is formed only when we have the absolutely-no-form clay lump. A deformed idol cannot form a new idol for us. Hence we need to bring back ourselves to ground zero to re-launch ourselves.

Many might have a doubt whether we will lose out on everything and start all of a sudden newly when we reset our life at zero once again. It's not going to be that way at all. When you set your standards to be zero, your experiences don't become null. They shall back you up for sure. Your expectations out of yourself reduce because nothing much is expected out of a novice. The fun in planning for optimum utilization of resources ceases to exist with overly available resources. The loveliest part of life is not the number of times we succeed alone but the number of times we fail and bounce back to success. This can happen only if we allow ourselves to fail. Except for the beginner's luck, someone who starts or restarts at zero is bound to fail to learn the next lesson of life only to enhance the productivity multifold. Let's set a new zero in our life every time we grow old and make ourselves young once again.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Only conviction drives the vision

Commitment to work and dedication of time and efforts are the most essential requirements to reach our goals in life. Goals can range from being unrealistic dreams to rational visions. It all depends upon the individual who holds these dreams and visions in his eyes. He has the ultimate power of converting thoughts into reality. Fortunately or unfortunately, man doesn't realize the strength of this power unless he uses it once and that one time implementation requires thorough conviction. Conviction alone can drive visions into reality.

Conviction is all about sitting and doing the task at hand irrespective of whether it is interesting or not. Conviction deals with more of completion of the activity rather than the liking or the disliking of it. Starting different kinds of work is easy because there is the assistance of the initial curiosity or the beginner's luck. Sustaining is the challenging part and taking the work to completion is the toughest challenge. However, the mere decision of making up the mind for something so massive, can only be the result of taking commitment. A commitment is always kept up to because of conviction and hardwork. No matter how much time or energy it takes , one must make up his mind without even getting such distractions.

There are different ways to raise back your conviction. Have a mentor who can spot the flaw points in you without any doubts or questions. Develop the habit of reading more books because they are the sources of knowledge and wisdom. The vision towards which you're driving must be more important than the intermediate results. Only then will the conviction be able to drive us far ahead in life to accomplish all that we dream of.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Leadership is a D.E.P

To elaborate the title for those of you who couldn't interpret it, 'Leadership is a D.E.P (Daily Evaluation Process)'. To become a leader is a never ending process. Everyone is a leader to himself. The journey of becoming a better leader never ends no matter how many years of life we scale through. A leader is not the one who leads a lot of people. A leader is one who knows and does the job of leading himself or herself. Life is all about leading ourselves towards our goals. The moment the world sees us leading our lives, it surrenders to the leaders like us who have the power and clear direction to lead the globe. But, how does one evaluate himself as a leader?

Leadership is a daily evaluation process. He never gets a chance to get complacent at any point of time or can he compromise on any of his results. A leader needs to build his work day by day while developing himself so that he notices a better himself the next day than what he was the previous day. Hence I call that leadership is a daily job. Achieving excellence in whatever one does is what qualifies, as well as quantifies to be a leader. It's not about achieving perfection that defines a leader though he never gives up on striving for accomplishing perfection in every endeavour that he is a part of. For a leader, it's one day at a time and one work at a moment. A moment wasted apart from getting invested into work is a lost moment and he loses his leadership status for that moment. The more number of such moments only undermine the name and capacity of a leader. Hence every moment counts.

While we are pursuing our academics, we have the evaluation done once a month or once in 3 months or annually once. But while being a leader in real life, every day is a test or an exam. A leader needs to perform on a daily basis on a wide variety of things that he or she is involved in. There is no one to evaluate the performance except the results that his work is going to produce. It's all about self-evaluation. How well can you win your own self-evaluation will determine how well you have lead your day. Leading persistently and leading oneself correctly have to be tested on a daily basis and only then a true leader is formed. Once again, "Leadership is a D.E.P".

Sunday, September 08, 2013

Practical entrepreneurship

With the advent of internet, opportunities to be your own boss sitting at home have increased multifold. Information is available just a click away and resources to build a company are easily accessible at your doorsteps by way of ordering at your fingertips. The craze of owning something has forgone a long way more than just mere desire to form a kind of psychological lock. One who doesn't have to take others orders is considered to be great. As a result of all such factors, today's youth is jumping into entrepreneurship without having any practical insight into it just out of excitement. MBA books have introduced so many complicated terms just by knowing which people believe that they can become entrepreneurs.

Today, the word 'entrepreneur' has taken up various forms for people in different fields. For working people, entrepreneurship turns into something called intrapreneurship. For people in fields other than business there's a wide variety to choose from such as social entrepreneurship, political entrepreneurship, knowledge entrepreneurship and a lot more. In any form of entrepreneurship the most important thing to be taken care of is practicality. Any work can be printed on paper and conceptualized to the best idealistic extent. The true roots of success or failure can only be witnessed when we jump into the practical field of implementation of the intended idea. I have heard so many MBA students who come to the conclusion by the time they start working that they just need to take all their textbooks, tear them apart and throw away once they are in the real world. Books were written based on the real world scenario of the past.

Having graphs of thousands of dollars scaling their way up with every passing year or charting out tables and pie-charts indicating the expected investments or the profit/loss statements do not alone suffice to build a practical B-plan. One has to get a first hand experience on field about business, about working with people, about understanding the relationship between demand and supply and many more practical aspects related to business. Without basic understanding for at least a couple of years one will only be devastated to see his/her paper plans crushing down into ashes if the practicality of implementation is sidelined. Let's get realistic friends!

The challenging philosophies

Books like that of Nicholas Nassim Taleb and Malcolm Gladwell challenge the existing philosophies. Irrational idiots and lucky fools are some of the phrases that authors of these kind use for some of the most renowned people whom we refer to as the successful souls on earth. There was the time of Newton when he discovered gravity and lot of other equations for motion and the era of Newtonian mechanics evolved and everyone accepted that it shall stand true through all ages until Albert Einstein proposed his Theory of Relativity. The new theory proved that Newtonian mechanics wasn't true in all the cases. Similar to changes in scientific philosophies is the case with the humanitarian theories.

During the early times, people believed that if a person worked hard he would become successful in life. Later came the concept that mere hard work isn't sufficient. If that is the case, then donkey must have been the most respected animal. Alas! It's not the case here. So another attribute got added to work and that was smartness. People take pride in saying, "I am not a hard working guy, I am smart worker." Likewise earlier people believed that success or failure was entirely dependent on the person alone. Whether one succeeded or failed, it all depended on the person's thoughts, attitudes, efforts and character. Nothing was of any external influence or importance here. However some people took up the career of research to dig down the reasons for success or failure. They came back with statistics that showed the influence of date of birth, places of existence, availability of resources and a lot of other factors that played a very prominent role in the visible results.

As every living being is subjected to evolution even the theories framed by humans are subjected to evolution. No theory shall get outdated. It shall only be augmented with more points to suit the updated era in accordance with the existing technology. Let's not forget the lessons of the old school just because we've the new school and the teachers of the modern age. 'Old is gold' is an age old statement which can never be abolished but can be taken as an exception in some cases. Growth and success are a result of a lot many factors which the human species is still yet to completely discover although we are aware that it's an impossible task. Let's be focused on our goals and dreams and assimilate every lesson that can take us a step forward in life.

Cut the cold conduct

It's seldom easy for the human mind to remain positive all the time. People keep changing their emotions and moods based on the environment around them. Life itself has no reason to remain the same way as everything is subjected to change and change being the law of nature. Due to these fluctuations of feelings amongst humans arises different kinds of misconducts. Until recently about couple of centuries back cold meant only the measure of thermal energy of a substance but off late it has come to measure the degree of cohesiveness amidst people.
 
The moment we are unhappy with someone it rings the bell in our heart. It warns us to remain silent and distances us far away from smiling at the person. The reasons needn't be genuine as well. They can just be mere assumptions. Ego comes as a wall between people and avoids them from sharing and clarifying the misunderstanding. No sooner the lack of communication leads to cold war between the two and eventually may lead to a break in relationship itself. Hence it's essential to cut this cold conduct. One must learn that being cold to someone is going invite a reciprocation of similar sorts and nothing different except in case of some Godly souls. The moment one is able to spot this cold conduct either in herself or himself or others, s/he must take immediate action of cutting it down. The simplest way to cut the cold conduct is by communicating with a wholehearted smile.
 
When I was listening to the audio of Anthony Robbins this evening, he shared an interesting insight into how the cold war between US and USSR ended. President Reagan had decided to put an end to the cold war and hence got up from his seat, walked 4 feet away and turned back with a fresh smile and said, "Let's start afresh". This freshness of feeling and a warm smile accompanied with a heartfelt greeting are more than sufficient to cut the cold conduct of a person. When two massive nations could cut down the cold war, we're after all simple humans, we too stand a chance to fight life's negativity.

Monday, September 02, 2013

The cause-effect reversal

In science, the cause and effect relationship is a highly prevalent philosophy. Every effect is associated with a cause. Without a cause no effect can happen is the argument of science. Hence whenever there is an observation scientists run into their labs and theories to postulate the reason behind the occurrence with the highest logical justification possible. Same is the case with people around us. When you're successful people search for traits because of which you're successful but when you're a failure people search for reasons why you failed. So cause is discovered after the effect. Hence I call this blog post as the cause effect reversal as per the discovery of people.

No one can predict the future. We can only anticipate the future outcomes based on our past experiences and incidences. Similarly the present is always described and dated back as the output of previous actions taken in the past. Success or failure is a result of combination of many factors in different proportions. A person who works for fixed amount of hours and is being successful is appreciated for his discipline of following strict timings. On the other hand the same person who works for fixed amount of hours and is being a failure is blamed for just working in a limited fashion and is for not being flexible in his working hours. People are not ready to discuss about the attributes that together resulted in the outcome. All they want to point out is the reason one is successful or a failure.
Success or failure is a result of not just an individual's performance. It depends on many external factors. In fact, it's a combination of the external factors and the individual characteristics. Hence one must not worry about the reasons attributed by people for one's status of life. We just need to be honest to ourselves, our conscience and our efforts. We should continue working hard with a fixed focus on our goals, visions and dreams. Only then will we be able to evaluate the right effect with the right set of causes for the effect to come into effect. Life is all about doing than just mere evaluating.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Oh my God! Tussi great ho!

Just when you think that nothing is happening as per your desire things change their course and start falling exactly beyond the expectations that you own. Whether you would like to attribute this fortune to luck or randomness or uncertainty as per Nicholas Nassim Taleb or to favourable environmental conditions as per Malcolm Godwell’s Outliers it’s up to you. All those efforts which just feel like are going in vain, all of a sudden start yielding results out of nowhere. Being a theist I would definitely love to attribute this extravaganza of unexpected positive circumstances to the grace of God. Hence I repeat, “Oh my God! Tussi great ho!” (Oh! my God, you’re great!)
 
I remember a story which I had heard almost 2 years ago. As per Hindu mythology Lord Shiva and his wife Parvati are considered to be the divine deities of humans. As Lord Shiva observed that on earth many had lost respect for God and had been ignoring the value systems it was leading to huge chaos and a lot of misery for the followers of the Lord. Hence Shiva decided to teach a lesson to these ungrateful humans who had forgotten His existence. As a punishment, He stopped showering rain on earth. After about 6 months, Lord Shiva and Goddess Parvati decided to travel around the earth in disguise to find out if the humans had learnt a lesson or not. There was huge famine on the face of earth and everyone was struggling for food. They were chanting prayers in the name of the Lord and conducted many sacrifices to please Him. Lord Shiva and his wife were happy to see that their plan had clicked. A few steps ahead they met an old man who had been ploughing his land. Lord Shiva was wonderstruck as he heard from other people that this old man had been doing so everyday despite the occurrence or absence of rainfall.
Goddess Parvati was puzzled and Lord Shiva asked the old man as to why he was doing so. The old man replied, “Oh my Lord, ploughing is my job and if I don’t do it regularly, I will forget it. Showering rain is Lord Shiva’s job about which I needn’t worry.” Lord Shiva realised that he had almost forgotten how to shower rain and immediately recollected his power to shower rain on the earth so that he wouldn’t forget it completely. The old man’s perseverance and daily practice influenced Lord Shiva to shower his blessings on the living beings on earth. Likewise, even in our daily life, some rewards will be snatched away for some time. All that we need to remember is to keep our efforts continuous and focus on our work. Anyways God will do his job of showering the rewards at the right time.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Trust and belief

Every new seed turns into a sapling with a dream to evolve into a tree with the belief that it will match the sun’s eyes in the morning and the trust that sun won’t deceive from rising the next morning. Not just the plant, every living being on this planet goes to sleep with the belief that it will witness the time after sleep and the trust that the surrounding environment won’t eat it up while asleep. Life itself stands on the two wheels namely trust and belief. Without these two nothing is possible to accomplish in this world.

In the modern day world, there have been a lot of examples wherein the trust and belief of people have been taken advantage of and people have been cheated and betrayed very badly. As a result, people have lost hopes on words like trust or belief. Man has become the biggest enemy of man himself. Due to the innumerable instances of having been the victim of such emotional betrayals, people have started eyeing everyone with disbelief and distrust. It takes ages together to earn the trust and belief of people. Unfortunately there is no other better way to work and rock in life. A group of people have to trust each other and believe in each other’s integrity to work together towards massive goals and visions. Nonetheless, it’s even important to evaluate the people on whom we entrust our beliefs. Doubt and deceit are the best ways to win the competition but not to build a team. In a competition only one person wins but in a clear-hearted communication the entire team wins. Never is an individual a successful person (though only one face represents success on most of the occasions), it’s always a team that flourishes in success or perishes in failure.
By trusting none we don’t even open an opportunity for others to prove their integrity and austerity. Hence there is no probability of achieving anything called success than a mere routine life filled with notions and presumptions. The world has to move towards a better future and for that, we have to unite together trusting and believing each other. No wonder that life will show its dark colours at times but we need to ensure to toughen our evaluation process with every darker shade that blinds our eyes and visualize the brighter side of life. What we visualize is what will materialize.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Good Better Best

In this world of hi-fi competition, everyone is busy comparing oneself with others in terms of talents, skills, ideas, performances and so on. Each one wants to know how good s/he is in whatever s/he is doing. Nobody wants to be told that someone else is better than her/him. Everyone craves to believe that s/he is the best in the business s/he is in. There is no perfect specific scale to rate anyone numerically. Even though there is one, it is impossible to have all the stochastic variables required to measure perfectly the performance from all dimensions and rate one person against the other. Hence comparison itself is a redundant process, on which many spend years of their lives in vain.

When an amateur starts a new work, be it some kind of practising a skill or trying to develop a new talent or in sports, his peers support him, encourage him and appreciate him so that he improves. In fact, there is no benchmark to compare with anyone. Hence the word 'good' comes into picture. The moment he rises to a level of competency among his peers, the comparison of who is better than whom begins to happen. After swaying through umpteen comparisons, when one out beats the records set by all his predecessors, then he is considered to be the best. However strategic or logical the entire process might sound, it is absolutely relative in its existence. If there were no other people trying or doing the same thing then this amateur wouldn't get promoted to the levels of better or best. The predecessor who cannot compete right now feels that the current champ is a good player than attributing him as the best since no duel has happened between the bests belonging to two different generations.

The moment we measure ourselves in comparison to others we lose the individuality which is a proprietary property of an individual. Good, better and best are just words indicating the relativity between each other. Attributing oneself to any of these words will only freeze our levels. As life itself is a symbol of growth, or rather, I can say it as the process of growth, our capacity levels and performance levels also must be incremented on a regular basis. There is no upper limit to growth and development. It is just as unending as the expansion of the universe. Doing your level best will only draw a particular level for your best performance and conceal the possibility to extend beyond. Let's leave the job of rating to others while we are engaged in improving ourselves in whatever we are doing.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Happy Independence Day!

Being an Indian I am very happy and proud to celebrate Indian Independence Day today. I appreciate the Google doodle as well for the amazing depiction on the occasion of Indian Independence Day celebrations. On this occasion, I would like to take the opportunity to salute and pay respect to all those people from different parts of the globe who have worked for the freedom struggle of their respective countries. There are a million lives that were sacrificed for a billion lives to breathe the air of freedom today. The question is how well are we making use of this freedom that has been passed on to us.

All of us know that nothing comes free of cost. Everything that we receive takes some kind of payment either in terms of cash or kind or efforts. Likewise, freedom for the oppressed nations wasn't bestowed just by asking. It took ages of years, thousands of lives and millions of movements to break the shackles of the dominations to achieve the freedom for the respective nations. All of these were done with only one hope, that the country with freedom would progress much faster than a suppressed one. I am not here to comment about which country is progressing at what rate because a country never progresses, it's the people who represent the country, who need to progress. How well are we using our freedom to grow much faster and much bigger? Are we still in the mindset of surrender where in we are afraid to even nudge a step out of our boundaries? The mindset has to change. We have to dream beyond the existing support. Only then will we be doing the right justice to the freedom vested in our hands, in the best way possible.

It's up to us to use our time the way we want. The same way it's our wish to use the freedom that we possess in whatever way we want. There is no authoritative body which tells us to lead the life in a particular fashion. We can make the choice of the type of education we want to and the kind of work that we want to pursue. As long as what you're doing is moral, legal and ethical, there is no one who will question you. This is the biggest advantage of freedom. Let's use it to create wonders that shall stand as iconic examples for the future generations to follow our footprints. Let's make the best use of freedom to create more opportunities and platforms, which can help loads of others to succeed.

Hats off to Amitabh Bachchan sir!

The first day he entered facebook he garnered more than 10 lakh LIKEs. He is our evergreen and ever-young iconic actor Amitabh Bachchan sir. The consistency that Amitabh Bachchan sir carries on social media can only be compared to the commendable commitment of the sun to light the earth every morning. Generally, his posts have LIKEs, COMMENTs and SHAREs in numbers of thousands or ten thousands. I had assumed that Amitabh sir wouldn't be able to go through any of these comments but to my surprise I was totally wrong.
 
I was going through some of his latest facebook posts and found that  in one of the posts he has addressed the fact that he had skipped the post number from 288 to 299 and has wholeheartedly accepted it and apologized for the mistake. Not just that, in one of the comments someone has said that Dilip Saheb is a better actor than Amitabh sir. For that too, he has replied that he definitely endorses the same viewpoint and shares his respect for Dilip Saheb. In both these instances, he has mentioned the name of the person who has pointed out the mistake in skipping the number and the one who mentioned that Dilip Saheb was a better actor. Being so busy at an age where he is, he has patience and time to read through the comments and answer them. I was bowled out by his humility and his commitment to answer his fans and that too, addressing the right person.
 
Many of us feel that we seldom find time to answer the number of people around us who are connected to us by relations. Here is the legend Amitabh Bachchan sir who has been cumulatively posting on facebook and tweeting every now and then but who just doesn't stop there. He takes care to revert to the questions from his fans. Only a busy man can find/make for more work at any point of time. Amitabh Bachchan sir has proved that it doesn't take age or the busy schedule to steal away the commitment and the dedication from the soul of a person who has made up his mind to work hard.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Procrastinate the dozing off

It's not an easy job to stay awake all through out night. In fact, our body requires the necessary amount of rest in the form of sleep for proper rejuvenation so that we are able to rock the next day. But, in many cases we see that people are yielding to sleep and ending up with their work incomplete. It's a terrible fight to battle against sleep and stay awake to finish the work at hand. I have gone through this for a number of years now. However, as I have repeatedly written again and again, time is limited. You either choose to sleep or stay awake and work.
 
For those strong supporters of minimum requirement of sleep, I have been one so in my past. After seeing many people who could be equally efficient having slept just alternate nights, I had to question my notions. As I read about people like Donald Trump, who just sleeps for four hours out of 24 hours of a day, I was surprised. I even went on to the extent of enquiring with doctors from experience of 10 years up to 45 years to find out the exact requirement of sleep for a human body. All they suggested was a sound and deep sleep of 4 hours only per day. It is one of my goals to reach the efficiency level of just sleeping 4 hours a day, but still being the best at my work and energy levels.
 
Having narrated about my research regarding the amount of sleep required for our body, I want to jump into the problem of those people who find it difficult not to yield to sleep and hence end up sleeping for long hours. It's around 11-11:30pm during which there is a feeling of dozing off. If you can just get up from your place and splash water on your face, you can procrastinate your sleep. Set up some kind of a work that you have to do at that time, which will automatically drive you out of your seat, which will eventually put off the dozing. When we doze, there is a natural pull towards going to the bed and sleeping. This pull has to be fought against. That's why during night times, I plan up different tasks for every twenty minutes so that my mind keeps working in different directions and avoids dozing off. I just wish that some of these tips shall help you to procrastinate your sleep for sometime so that you can invest extra hours in your work.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

What is the meaning of your name?

Name is an identity for any person born on this earth. I am totally amazed at the way we Indians name our kids. With every name there is a well-defined meaning associated unlike those Western names such as Wall or Tall. Sometimes, there is even a history associated with the name that is christened. The meaning and history associated with the name automatically casts a huge influence in forming the character of the person. Though in many of the cases the person and his/her name's meaning are contradictory, still there is a meaning to the name. It's better to have something than nothing.

India, being a multi-religious country, there are many religions and as a result, many Gods whom Indians worship. The same God takes different incarnations during different times to save people from different evils. In fact, there is a proverb which says that God is only one but only has several names. So, each incarnation or form of God carries a different name based on different reasons. A simple example is those names which end with 'esh', like Mahesh, Madhesh, Ramesh, Nandeesh etc. All these names have 'esh' at the end which signifies Lord Eshwara (Lord Shiva). Names of Gods are very much prevalent in Indian society. Even different aspects of environment are attributed as names for people. The beauty of naming after non living entities is that the people with such names bring life to such non living entities. Knowing the meaning of your name is always a strong confident booster because it has a meaning.

Just like how life without a purpose is meaningless, even a name without a meaning is totally meaningless according to me. In fact, whenever I get to know someone newly, I try to describe or translate the meaning of their name. If I don't know one, I seek an answer for it. The best part about Indian names is that none of them have a negative meaning attached to them. Each and every name has a positive side embedded into it. As a result, just a mere recollection of what one's name stands for itself acts as a rejuvenation for a person. Know the meaning of your name and enjoy its fame.

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Upgradation and expansion are must

Some of the chat shops at the corners of the streets make the tastiest of the foods that are sometimes unavailable in the big star hotels. Many enjoy having the junk food that these roadside standalone food-on-wheels shops provide. Obviously, I don't exclude myself from this list of foodies. Just few days back when I visited one such food cart, I saw that, right next to that a new food shop on the footpath was open which served variety of other food items with people swarming around it. It automatically caught my attention and I could hear the earlier shop owner grumbling at the business that the new competitor was taking away from him. All this jealousy filled grumbling was only because he was losing business and the hindsight reason for the same was lack of upgradation and expansion.

If Microsoft had stopped at just first version of Windows operating system, they would've been out of business long ago. If Apple had stuck to their first model of iPhone, Samsung would have eaten up all the clients of Apple within a matter of few months. Every big company that we see has evolved through the gradual process of upgradation. Only if the shopkeeper had worked on establishing shops of similar kind in different areas or hired more workforce to upgrade his menu and prepared and served new snacks that could provide various options to the customers the new shop owner wouldn't have seen any business opportunity next to him. Alas! the first shopkeeper was content enough with having one food cart with 5 items on the menu as it had been working for him from years together. Unfortunately, on one fine day a competitor landed up right next to him, who took away majority of the market share in the form of a black swan.

If you're not updated, then you're outdated. If you're not upgraded, then you're outsmarted. Just like how evolution is the natural upgradation phenomenon of nature, just like how the universe is expanding, we need to learn from them that even we need to upgrade our products, skills and services. We will have to expand our work geographically as well as dimensionally to make sure that we aren't shocked by the surprise arrival of one of the competitors in the market one fine day. Customers will always be in search of new things in the market. If you're not providing them ,then definitely someone else will capitalize on the same. It's up to us to upgrade and expand our business wings to serve the huge and diverse customer base. No wonder that upgradation and expansion are must for survival just like the Darwin's theory on survival of the fittest.

The young and dynamic duo from Bangalore

It has been an amazing week for the selected individuals among the many applicants for becoming a part of IU1010 Season 2. All these youngsters from Bangalore were on a massive mission of educating the government school children about the lives of freedom fighters who had sacrificed their lives for Indian freedom struggle. With a holiday in the week, and the activity of IUY2C starting on Tuesday, these 8 elite enthusiasts had just 4 days to address students in government schools where such topics are seldom spoken about, to drive in the patriotism spirit among the younger lot. Among the 4 teams of two each involved in the activity, there was one team which went on to inspire 6810 children in a matter of just 5 days across 31 organizations/institutions with the help of ten volunteers panning 4 different cities of Karnataka. Megha and Moumita were the young and dynamic leaders of this team which cast the maximum impact.
 
It was a phase of Indiapreneurship that was being celebrating by team Inspiration Unlimited on the occasion of our 67th Independence Day. Inspiring people to work towards solving the problems of India with simple solutions was the core agenda of Indiapreneurship. Moumita went on to share her feelings about how she felt when she got to know that she could mentor people younger than her. She felt really proud and happy for having done so. Megha shared about the learning she took out of these sessions where she addressed hundreds of budding Indians. They spoke about how the mindsets get formed as we grow up in life and how difficult it is to break mindsets once people grow up. They were overwhelmed to see that students from primary classes were far more enthusiastic in participating and learning when compared to their seniors in schools. Overall, Megha and Moumita expressed their deepest gratitude towards Sujit Lalwani sir for having designed this amazing activity.
 
It was an exhilarating experience to listen to these young duo sharing their lessons from their experiences. The confidence they had in their eyes of having accomplished the feat of reaching out to so many kids in a matter of just few days and transferring the energetic inspiration with the future of India was exemplifying in itself. It has been a vision of IU to build massively strong leaders among the youth of the globe starting with India. Witnessing such hardworking and high spirited souls like Megha and Moumita has, in fact, enhanced our belief and faith multifold that it will not take much time before we see India as a transformed and intelligent youth led developed nation of the globe. I extend my warm wishes on behalf of entire team IU for the amazing work that these young-STARS are doing and request them to continue the same with the same zeal and relentless passion.

The first generation entrepreneurs

In today's world, there's a huge fuss and pseudo-fame associated with the word entrepreneurship . Becoming an entrepreneur has become a craze among the youth because of the respect and limelight associated with the word entrepreneur. Just registering a company doesn't make someone entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship requires one to invest every bit of his/her soul to establish his/her idea to yield fruits for many who shall believe in it. Such core entrepreneurs are called as first generation entrepreneurs who are ready to sacrifice everything that they have just to see their company take the shape that they have dreamt of from a long time.
 
After a company is established, the power shall get passed on to the next heir either based on genetics or talent. The one who is running the company may take up new businesses and run them. The board of directors decide the investments to make and the shares to sell. Even they are entrepreneurs who run the business but they aren't called the first generation entrepreneurs. They are the entrepreneurs who shall manage the passed on legacy of an established business. Their goal is to stick to the objective vision defined by the first generation entrepreneurs. Unlike their predecessors they aren't ready to put their own personal assets at stake for the sake of the company. They will give their best to manage and play with the company assets to build or break the company. This is the prime difference between the first generation entrepreneurs and their successors.
 
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Dhirubhai Ambani, Michael Dell and other great founders of extraordinary companies fall into the league of such first generation entrepreneurs. They invested their sweat and blood to build every ounce of their visionary company. Only visionaries become such first generation entrepreneurs. They are the people who had complete faith in their idea and were ready to sacrifice everything they had to see their vision turn into reality. Every entrepreneur should consider himself as a first generation entrepreneur if he dreams of building a firm that shall last through ages and which shall definitely keep his name immortal.

Friday, August 09, 2013

Risk is the ratio of...

I miss those awesome leadership empowerment sessions where people used to gather in huge masses to witness the real stories of special individuals who had turned around life with their hardwork and dedication. They hadn't memorized the lessons from the many available self-help books. They had undergone the tough life scenarios that had taught them the real lessons of life. I still remember their examples from their own lives and the lessons learned from them. One such extraordinary personality had addressed the topic of risk required for success. Being an engineering student, his mathematical definition of risk had impressed me.

He defined risk as the ratio of fear of failure to belief to succeed. If the fear of failure in the task that we take up in hand is really high, then the risk felt is also really high. If we are unaware of the result and we don't have much belief to succeed in the endeavour, even then risk is high. On the other hand, if our belief to succeed is greater than the fear of failure in the challenge that we have taken up then automatically the denominator is greater than the numerator. As a result, the risk substantially reduces. Risk is just one of the those anxious and apprehensive mental states of mind. It is a clear cut result of the kind of feelings and emotions that we showcase towards our work. I do accept that the factors in the equation are subject to random uncertainties of life. They do influence the factor of risk as well. However, this equation gives us a measurable form of risk though the quantities on the RHS are not exactly measurable quanta.

Each individual will have to decide the amount of fear of failure and the amount of belief to succeed that he has in his heart and mind for the undertaken task. These will definitely change their values at different instants of time owing to various factors. How well can one manage their ratio constantly is all that will show the calibre of the person in working towards his vision or dream. Proper planning and a strong conviction towards achieving one's own goals with the ability to flexibly adjust and adapt oneself to the random unexpected scenarios and still move steadfast towards goals will always help to reduce the risk factor and increase the result factor.

The state of mind attracts the past of kind

In one of my recent reading through an amazingly exquisite book, I was learning about how the human brain is trained not to learn from history. Though we repeat huge number of times that we learn from our past mistakes, we seldom implement what we have learnt form our past in our present to make the future more pleasant. A very simple example to prove this epiphenomenon is, though we are aware that good and bad times keep coming and going in our life, we are fooled by such repeated occasions and we assume them to be long-lasting as long as they last.

Try to evaluate your state of mind right now. Whatever it may be as of now; it can be happy or sad. If you actually scan through the scenes running on your mind right now, they will be similar to your current state of mind. If you're very happy, all those memorable unforgettable moments of life when you won and people appreciated, the good times that you had with the closest people in your life shall be ruling your mind. If you're sad and down on energy, all those bad times of bad health, bad incidents, others mistakes causing your misery shall be ruining your mind. Our state of mind persists as long as we allow it to persist. If we feed it sufficiently and succinctly with the kind of fodder of the like, then it keeps building on it. It's up to us to choose what we want our brain to harvest on. The kind of input given will result in the same kind of thoughts, emotions and feelings.

Everyone has had his/her share of good and bad times. Life hasn't been cozy for anyone all along. It has offered its own share of rough times for man to become stronger to face such recurrences. If we don't hold on to the reigns of the horse, the horse shall take the path of its own choice. Same is the character of our mind. If we don't control what it thinks upon, it shall think about all the garbage available in the memory world. Hence, we need to take the extra step to raise our states of mind to be every happy and exhilarating with bubbling energy all the time. To make it happen we must go back to those past instances when we were in such states of mind and bring them back to rejuvenate the present state.

No input no output - No reading No speaking

Only nothing can be created out of nothing. All that we create is from the existing. It proves the simple theory that without any input there can't be any output. This is true in any case. In the arena of speaking as well if we don't have enough information in our brain, we can't convey much through our speeches. Information inflow has to happen to cause information outflow. Reading is the best form of giving us knowledge and information at our finger tips and to feed our minds with. Hence reading is a must for one to excel at speaking.

In today's world, knowledge is growing or rather multiplying in quantities unimaginable. I totally respect and accept the fact that it's impossible to garner all the information in the limited capacity of our brains. Still, our brain is large enough to gather sufficient stochastic information that's required for our professional, personal and spiritual growth. There's, in fact, no limit on the amount of information that can be burdened on our heads. It's scientifically proven that the maximum extent to which a human brain has been used till now is only 13%. In most of the other cases it's lesser than 10%. If this is the case, then we are sure that no one lacks the resource or space to collect information. If we can exploit this amazing memory reservoir between our shoulders, we can have huge statistics and logistics remain imprinted in our brain cells.

Once we have this collection of huge amount of diverse scattered data occupying every possible memory cell, we can pick and connect any two of them using the CPU of our brain to produce in front of others. This mode of expression can either be writing or speaking. Just like when a soldier surrounded with a thousand enemies will for sure hit someone by randomly shooting, we will be able to deliver content in any comfortable format by picking up any of the available data. However, if there's nothing to pick from then nothing can be spoken about. Hence I reiterate, no reading, then no speaking.

Sunday, August 04, 2013

Business on mind

This morning I was accompanied by my brother for breakfast at a hotel. We ordered the staple food of South India, Idly+Vada (Idly and Vada are dishes made for breakfast across many parts of South India). We got our orders served. Once we finished with Idlies, we tasted the Vada. It was crispy and amazingly tasteful. I was totally impressed with the taste and feel of the Vada. Immediately, I extended my heart full of appreciation towards the server and appreciated the good quality of the Vada. Instantly the reply came from him, which was, "Shall I serve you one more Vada?"
 
The server didn't forget business just because he was flattered by an appreciation. Most of us resort to saying a humble 'Thank You' whenever we are appreciated for some good work of ours. The time of flattery takes us on cloud 9 and we forget everything else at that time. But the server was not of one of that kind of people. He had a presence of mind to convert the appreciation received into a sale which could benefit his hotel. Presence of mind on what is the need of the hour should be more on our mind before any flattery tries to take its place. There are lot of tricksters out there in the market who will try to take everything from you just by flattering you with their sweet and nice words. We must be shielded to such flattery. Even if it's a genuine appreciation we must try to take advantage of it as to how it can benefit our business and organization. Only then do we make the right us of what comes our way.
 
Taking advantage of an appreciation to convert into a sale is no mean job to do. In fact it's the right thing to do because when a customer is happy, he is bound to appreciate your product/service. At that time, if you can serve him with more facilities which might come at a cost, it will definitely serve the customer. As long as the king is served he loves to be the king. Since customer is the king, servitude attitude towards him is an important requirement to grow your business. No matter how many appreciations or humiliations come your way, make sure to have your business and its targets keep running on your mind continuously.

Happy Friendship Day!

Probably you can go through Wikipedia or Google to find out the roots of how Friendship Day originated and how it was decided to be celebrated on the first Sunday of every August. However, over the last few years such special days depicting the celebrations of some form of relationship between people have gained huge recognition. If not for the existence of the calendar, such days would have seemed completely meaningless but thanks to our ancestors that we have a calendar completing 365 days every year but the 4th time. Once again wishing you all a very Happy Friendship Day!!!!!!!!!
 
Friendship is that kind of special relationship that doesn't demand any kind of blood relation. It doesn't command a public commitment like that of a marriage. It has even happened on so many occasions that friendship has been the only reason for survival when both the prior relations have failed to help and support. Blood relations and marriage relations generally have an assumed kind of a trust but in friendship the trust has to be earned. An earned pie always teaches more than a passed on pie. Likewise the earned trust teaches us a lot about life and supports us in the most difficult situations than an assumed trust. The best part about earning trust in friendship is that all our friends were strangers to us once upon a time. We earned the trust of strangers and vice versa and that's the reason we have friends today, some of who become an integral part of our lives.
 
At the end of the day, every relationship is based upon trust be it assumed or earned. If we can see a friend in everyone who surrounds us and forget that we knew the person before and start working to earn the trust of the other person then every relation of ours will be as powerful as that of friendship. Man was born as a social animal and he has to engage with everyone in his society. Hence, it's essential for each one of us to see a friend in everyone around us and work for the good of each other. Only when we support each other can our society be a wonderful place to thrive in.

Friday, August 02, 2013

Ask GOOGLE uncle

It was almost more than three years back when I joined freshly as a software engineer at Oracle, I was exposed to the industry tools of which I had no idea of. I was put into the unlimited ocean of DBMS to play with the tools available. Whatever I tried on the tool, it shot up an error which prohibited me from proceeding further. I had to get out of my seat every 5 minutes to ask my senior what to do next. That's when he told me that there was an uncle whom I should ask all my queries to and that uncle was GOOGLE.
 
Google is a company founded by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. It provides us the best search engine on internet. People have got so used to Google that it has become analogous to internet today. The moment someone is asked to search through internet, s/he goes to Google. It's highly difficult to even imagine a world without Google today, which has been helping us find any kind of information at our fingertips. In spite so much of popularity of Google, still some are suffering not knowing as to how to use Google properly to resolve their queries. Google itself provides a lot of educational tutorials to learn on how to use Google better. Some of the best industry experts have written innumerable blogs on how to use Google to get exactly what you're searching for. I am not intending to share any such techniques about Google search because there is already lot of information floating online which you can make use of.
 
I wrote this blog post only to pass on the message that one can learn how to use Google in an efficient way using Google itself. In fact, I also wanted to express my gratitude towards Google for the amazing support that it has been in a lot of my work. Google has reduced the information gap between the source and the destination. The reason Google thrives is not because it's a company which has the best
search engine but because it's a vision which is benefiting mankind to a large extent. Thanks a lot Google!!!!!!!!!!!