Friday, May 31, 2013

Back to Back talks at Sri Lakshmi Nursing College

 Sometimes God showers blessings as a double dhamaka offer. All thanks to the Almighty that my desire to address more and more people came true as my craving for it grew stronger day by day. It was just couple of days back when I was invited to Sri Laksmi Group of Institutions to address the nursing students, some of who were pursuing their diploma in nursing and some were from B.Sc (nursing). There was a batch of students who were in their masters as well. Two sessions back to back were planned for one hour each and students from different classes were combined in one classroom and that's where the dreams party began.
The first session started around 11am and there were more than 80 students in the class, many were from north-eastern part of India. Kunal Taswalaji took up the introduction to introduce me for the first ever time. I was invited with a thunderous applause as I embarked upon the stage. I spoke about how I being from engineering and them being from nursing background didn't have anything common to talk about. Then I took them back in their memories of childhood and reminded them that they too had dreams like me to become highly successful in life. After that, we spoke about how fears have stopped us from even accepting our own dreams. Lack of self-confidence and scarcity of appreciation have ruined our self-respect and self-image. I addressed about these issues and shared my mantra with them. The mantra was 'BREAK YOUR FEAR AND LOVE YOURSELF'. The same topics were touched in a different style during the second session that started by 12:15pm. I was shocked to see students saying that their dreams have become smaller as they grew more. That's where I reminded them that dreams seemed to be smaller because they had pushed them away and taught the same lesson as mentioned above. The one hour sessions were elongated to 90 minutes each because students were enjoying the sessions.
 
Both the sessions were highly humourous and students laughed their heart out. Yet, the impact was tremendous. When I called up the principal, Smt. Bhagyalakshmi mam, I got to know that one of her students who was running around with a document from one week to quit her nursing, after the session went to her principal and committed that she would never quit but would stay back and complete her education. I was very glad to hear this feedback along with reading pages of feedback that the students had written. Over all, it was an amazing experience to address students from completely different stream and background from that of me but still be able to trigger the passion for dreams and break the fears in them. I would like to thank the principal mam for providing us the opportunity. I would like to congratulate Mr. Arun Chikmarappa, competing for Your Big Year competition 2013 because of whom close to 200 students were made aware about global platforms like World MERIT and Your Big Year. Last but not the least, I must thank my team IU(Inspiration Unlimited) and my mentors, Lalwani brothers for their amazing support and mentoring.

What is your insight?

All of us live through several moments of our lives. How many of us learn from every moment of our life? A poet views the grandeur of a waterfall and exclaims, "What a beauty!” An engineer witnesses the same and cries out, "What a waste!" What we take out of every instance of our life and things and situations around us is completely left to us. This is what I call as insight.
 
 
If a person is willing to learn even an empty road can teach him the best lessons of life. It is completely up to our discretion as to what we decide to take out of any situation of our life. Most of the times we neglect so many occurrences in our life that we end up being completely clueless as to where we spent all our time and energy. The reason is because we wouldn't have taken out anything constructively out of them but when we decide to focus on triggering our insight towards every small thing that happens around us, we get a deeper understanding of stuff around us. A thought that dives into the depth of something that is very ordinary shall reveal the extraordinary lesson beneath the ordinary. No big things can be understood unless we have understood small things. To understand the tiny truths of life, we need to develop an insight that studies more about everything which seems to be normal for others. Only then will we be capable to opine on any particular topic aptly.
 
What we think about others is what we are. The more we exercise this talent of ours to understand things, people, experiences and situations around us, the more we start understanding ourselves. We become more capable to judge our anticipations and feelings. We start discovering ourselves afresh anew. Life is all about discovering the highest true form of oneself which unfortunately gets muddled in the noises of the world around as we grow up. Having an insight into everything helps us to get back our true-selves. Your insight on this post is more than welcome and more than valuable.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Get updated, else get outdated

Man has travelled a very huge time journey from being an ape to a homo-sapien. During this period of evolution he has treaded the path of Old Stone Age up to the modern e-age today. With every upcoming age, he had to update himself to the requirements of the new age. In fact, Charles Darwin himself says in one of his theories about evolution that 'it is not the strength of the species to survive that results in survival but it's the flexibility of the species to adapt to the new conditions'. Hence, I salute to the mankind for having survived so long. But, are we applying the same upgradation process in our lives?
 
Today, if we don't update our knowledge and wisdom and upgrade ourselves, we might still survive as human beings but we might be just considered as the outdated individuals among our tribe. A very simple example to state here is about our computers only. Earlier we used to use floppy discs to store data but today there are no floppy drives at all in any desktops or laptops. So we have to be updated to know the usage of CDs, pen drives, dropbox, googledrive, skydrive, cloud computing etc for transfer of digital information. I still regret that I had bought a box set of floppy drives when I bought my PC around 6.5 years back. Everytime I see those unused floppy discs in my drawer I just feel how ignorant was I about the developments in the field of computers during my engineering studies. We need to be aware about the changes that are happening around us. I definitely agree that it's totally difficult to keep a track of all the developments but it's surely not impossible to keep ourselves updated about the new stuff that's getting innovated and discovered in the field that we are involved in. Else, there is no hope of being in pace with the competition or even running in the race of life for a satisfying livelihood.
 
Life has been blessed upon humans with all the necessary accessories fit in the human body only to learn more and do more. Being the best gifted species on this planet we need to do our bit towards the creation we are a part of. We owe a lot to the world around us. The best way we can honour our civilizations and the work of all our ancestors is by making sure that we grow what they gave to us by an inch or as much as we can and hand it over to the future generation before we leave this earth. If this duty has to be fulfilled we need to make sure that we are aware of what's happening around us so that we can improvise on them else we shall remain as the outlaws not from the society we are a part of but from the community of hardworking individuals who are striving to make this world a better place to live in. All of your comments are most welcome!

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Documentation passes on education

Documentation is the best way of passing on education. Man is mortal and that's why documentation becomes a very essential medium of passing on what one man knows to the other. Though man is supposed to be one of the living beings, he cannot escape death and his term of living is limited. However a non-living stone can live forever. Probably it should have been assigned with the identity of living because it lives forever. Extrapolating this to all the non-living things, every non-living thing is actually the living thing that lives through all the tests of time.
 
None of us belonging to the present generation have seen Aristotle or Plato or Galileo or even Hitler for that matter. We are lucky to know about them and how they looked, courtesy the books that printed their photos and the video-tapes that captured their precious moments of life. If there existed no papers or photographs or video-tapes, probably we would have forgotten the history of our forefather generations. The early man through different ages made his documentation on the walls of the caves. This has helped us to know what the Cro-Magnon man looked like and how he lived. Documentation has helped to avoid repetitions of inventions and discoveries. If no one ever documented anything then man had to still be in the Old Stone Age. Thanks to documentation! That it has helped to counter all these disadvantages and helped man's life to progress through different civilizations.
 
Documentation of the history has yielded our present. Likewise documentation of the present shall yield our future. Not just passing on of education, documentation also avoids repetition of work. Also one man cannot explore the entire world and all its aspects and learn all of them on his own. Different people will have to take the responsibility of exploring different fields and document about it. Once this is done, it shall serve as a form of education for others and as a result all of them shall be mutually empowered. You can pass on your feedback on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Power of music - Aashiqui 2

I am a kind of a person who likes movies with heavy beat songs, high voltage fights and powerful dialogues but after a long time I was deceived by this movie which completely impressed me and influenced me by its slow pace and scintillating music and that movie was Aashiqui2. Congratulations to the director and makers of the movie. I just feel like saying, "Main aashique tho nahin.... magar aashiqui2... jabse dekha maine tujko mujko aashiqui hogayee".
 
The movie was completely against my taste and I had even decided that I would not be going for the movie. But my trainer in the gym gave a superb review about the movie and its music. He marketed the movie for me and I was sold for it. Finally, I made up my mind to watch the movie and I was just bowled out. The young actors with their innocent acting and the gripping background score sandwiched with situational songs completely drove me into the film. I had no clue as to what the time was and how much time had gone by as I was watching the movie. Probably the story wasn't that great in terms of twists and suspense or surprises but there was one element of the story that carried the entire film on its shoulders and that was LOVE. Love means to care for each other irrespective of every other constraint. This feeling was perfectly showcased by both Aditya Roy Kapoor and Shraddha Kapoor towards each other.
 
Last but not the least, I need to talk about the music of the movie. The first song itself was damn amazing. The same song gets repeated in the female voice after sometime and Shreya Goshal has done a great job adding every bit of emotion to the song. When the hero says to the heroine that she had sung his own song far better than him in the movie, I didn't believe it but after I downloaded and started listening to the songs, every time I listened to that song there were tears in my eyes. This was one of the few times in my life that I was moved by a song for the feel it was sung in. All credits to the music director and the singers. I would definitely recommend everyone to watch this movie without any expectations but only to feel the power of music and the power of love but one cautionary statement from my side. Please go along with your spouse or would-be or lover else you will have an embarrassing time like me if you go single only to find couples around you completely involved in the movie. Do pass on your reviews about the movie on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Excel to extend

The moment I see the word 'excel', the famous movie dialogue from the movie '3 idiots' comes into my mind. In that movie, Aamir Khan tells his friend not to run behind success, instead advises him to run behind excellence and success shall automatically follow. Excellence at work is something everyone expects and people aspire to acquire. Not just work, every arena of life is important to make our life complete and hence displaying or achieving excellence in all arenas of life becomes a very important requirement to live an enriching and fulfilling life. Excellence is that epitome that differentiates the ordinary from the extraordinary and the champs from the chaps.
 
Each one of us has a desire to venture into different forms of work and also to scale up our position in the stream we are working in. Extending our boundaries of influence is a natural instinct that man has and craves for as he grows through life. How far can one extend is always determined by how far one is willing to expand himself to serve the extra responsibilities. They say that one in the hand is better than 2 in the bush. Likewise keeping up to the current work responsibilities is much more important than extending our hand to check out the next pocket. In current times, just fulfilling the duties alone is insufficient. Along with fulfilling one has to excel in the current field and prove that he has much more capacity to take in more work on his plate. Excellence serves as the benchmark to select a leader and only a leader can extend beyond the limitations.
 
You might have seen that busy people are the people who can make time for more work in spite of their busy-ness. Likewise people vest work with those who show that they already excel at the work which is vested with them. Just wishing for more freedom or more power and higher designation doesn't get us what we want. When we excel at utilising our freedom, power and position which are already with us to the best extent, only then can we extend our hands to ask for more and people shall extend their hands to give more. You can extend your hand to give your lovely feedback on

Wednesday, May 08, 2013

QUESTIONS for life

 
What is the goal of life?
What is the purpose of life?
Martin Luther king Jr. says "A man who won't die for something is not fit to live". So what is that you are ready to die for?
Do you need to have big dreams?
Will you be able to achieve all your dreams?
What all do you need to be happy?
Which is important? Your parents' dreams or your dreams?
What is that which you have missed all your childhood which you would want to get when you become an adult?
Who is the most important person of your life?
Do you feel you wasted lot of time in your childhood?
How much money do you wish to earn in next 10 years?
How much money do you think that you will earn in next 10 years?
What do you value the most? Health, money, family or yourself?
What do you do when you know that you havent kept up your commitment?
How do you feel when you get slapped by your principal in front of the entire class for no mistake of yours?
What is the most important thing that you need to focus in life?
What to do when people dont respect you while you are advising for their own development?
What is the feeling when your closest friend stops picking your call and doesnt even tell you that reason?
There are mentors to teach acting, speaking, dancing, bodybuilding, studying. Who is your mentor for living?
Do you think you are making the best use of time?
When you see Sachin making his 100th century, Salman Khan's movie Dabangg2's satellite rights being sold for 82 crores, Rahul Gandhi getting the entire Congress back up to become the PM of India what do you feel about all your achievements till date?
What do you think that you dint get earlier in your life which if you had got you would be a celebrity today?
Someone is happy being just a coolie, someone is happy being a monthly20k earner, someone is happy by constructing businesses, someone is happy sleeping and eating and enjoying all day, someone is happy going and coming back from office. What are the measures of success for these people.
Does success have a single meaning?
What all materialistic pleasures that you would want to acquire in life?
Can you be happy and content being alone or do you need people along with you?

Do post in more of your questions on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

Experience v/s Expertise

Experience and expertise are so much interconnected that it's not easy to understand them separately. In simple words they are just inseparable words. The dictionary says that experience means to just undergo an event or occurence and expertise means to be proficient at something such as a skill. However expertise itself is achieved by undergoing repeated experiences.
 
Every moment of our life is an experience for us. Breathing through our nose itself was a new experience when we were born. From the time we entered this world, we repeated this experience more than a billion times and today each one of you reading this blog are an expert at breathing and or I can say that you have the best expertise in breathing. If you ask yourself as to why you were breathing continuously, the answer would be that breathing was a necessity for surviving and you had to become an expert at it in order to survive. So, expertise was the necessity root cause for experience to occur recursively. Expertise is the root desire for repeated experiences and reduplicated experiences form the path towards achieving expertise. Every new experience is the first step of expertising that particular activity. You have to have numerous experiences of the same kind to expertise any field of experience.
 
People fall prey to wishes of becoming experts without executing the necessary actual repetitions. Just experiencing once doesn't make anyone perfect or an expert. Diverse experiences of the similar kind can only make an expert come out of us. Hence make it a point to undergo sufficient experiences related to your goal to become an expert at accomplishing it. You can feel free to share your expert feedback on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

Sunday, May 05, 2013

2P tend to P2P

The title might be little confusing. Let me clear the confusion before we go ahead with the article. 2P means practice and patience and P2P means performance to perfection. I could have easily split up this blog post into two, one on practice and the other on patience but didn't do so because at the end only the combination of these both can yield the expected result in life. Let's have a brief insight into this amazing combination.
 
'Nobody is perfect' is a repeated slogan that we hear almost everywhere, still the drive towards perfection is always enforced upon us. In fact, there is nothing wrong in racing to be perfect because on the way to perfection we shall meet excellence for sure. There is no other better satisfaction than achieving the peaks of perfection in our performance. Any kind of performance needs consistent practice to reach the perfection. Just practice alone doesn't help. Only perfect practice can lead to perfection. The duration of practice might last as long as we reach perfection and hence it demands patience. Only when we patiently practise can we deliver perfection in every performance of ours. If you practise continuously for few days and after that lose patience and give up the practice then perfection can't be achieved. On the other hand, if you're totally patient and practise once in a while without any sense of urgency, even then the perfection in performance cannot be achieved.
 
Different people who have become successful in life have derived various lessons from their journies. Some state the message of patience, some of hardwork, some of humbleness and so on. However, success is a result of culmination of all these positive qualities. No one quality alone can yield success in life. We have to possess and exhibit all the essential requirements which the success demands. You can share your opinions about success on

Friday, May 03, 2013

The new meaning to MBA

MBA means Masters in Business Administration, a post graduation course that students pursue after their graduation. Well! In today's world, MBA degree is failing to create people who can actually master the administration of any business. Reasons are many. It might be because of the lack of expert teachers or void of practical opportunities or the huge syllabus only taught in theory etc. It was an opportunity for me to address such MBA students from one of the colleges from Bangalore by name Sheshadripuram College of Management Studies on May 2nd, 2013. I was invited by the faculty with a hope that my words could actually make a difference in the lives of those students. I had a huge responsibility to cater to as I was suppose to be addressing MBA students with myself having no MBA degree to my name.
 
It was 2:10pm in the afternoon and I entered the class of 1st year MBA. Akhila mam, the main co-ordinator for the event had made good arrangements and the director of MBA welcomed us. A boy read out my profile which wasn't updated recently and then I took upon the stage. After thanking God, parents and the students, I entered the topic of MBA. When I asked the students as to how their MBA was going, their replies were something like these,'boring', 'hectic'.... When I asked them if they were actually enjoying their MBA, the answer was silence. Some of them had no idea as to how this MBA degree would offer them any further scope in life. Some were pursuing MBA just for the sake of a post graduation degree which was a disheartening fact to notice. Instead of supplementing their qualification, MBA had become a supplement that they took to improvise their qualification credibility.
 
Through good amount of humour, I could interact with the students and discuss about the issues that were affecting them. Then I conveyed the new meaning of MBA which actually turned around the cards. M means 'Make your dreams come true'. B means 'Break your fears' and A means 'ACTION'. Taking action to break all your fears in order to make all your dreams come true should be the philosophy of MBA. Lots of examples were shared and a new trigger to look forward for a enjoyable and successful life was given. I could share my own testimonies as to how I became one of the leading bloggers with my efforts for one whole year, how from a student who couldn't converse properly in English during Engineering, today, I can take speeches in 5 different languages and have become a multilingual inspirational speaker. I wanted to present my own life stories because I was the live proof in front of them.
 
At the end, students came on the stage to claim fearlessly that they would be breaking their fears from now on and would go on to achieve their dreams. Couple of students even shared about their ideas of starting manufacturing plants in India itself instead of importing the products from foreign countries. Some even shared that they were shocked to realise that they had for the first ever time heard to a speaker who took up a 2 hour session with the utmost energy. This was a pat on my back and I felt satisfied about my work. I thank my mentor and IU(Inspiration Unlimited) for whatever I am today and of course Mr.Kunal Taswala who in spite of not having lunch, captured the precious memories in his photos. If anyone would like to have such sessions in your institutions, I would be more than willing to deliver many more such empowering sessions. You can contact me on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

WORLD INSPIRATION DAY #WID

The world has 365 days of a year to cherish every emotion possible. Still people have assigned certain specific days for celebrating special occasions. Different countries celebrate their independence days, republic days and region specific functions on particular days. However as a global audience all of us celebrate those days that are common to the entire world which influence every human being because all homo-sapiens share the same set of feelings and emotions.
 
When there can be a day to express Love to your Love on the occasion of Valentine's day, a day to express love towards your mother on the occasion of Mother's day, a day to celebrate Christmas, a day to mark international Human Rights, a day for women, a day to spread awareness about AIDS, a day to celebrate Merit (June 30) then there must be a day to share a message of inspiration, to do something inspiring, to make inspiring things happen, to energize others and that day is termed and celebrated as WORLD INSPIRATION DAY on 23rd of April every year! It was the day Inspiration Unlimited Vision was first conceived.
 
Life is a roller-coaster ride for every one of us. No one loves to suffer, yet all of us are made to, sometimes either due to the mistakes of self while other times due to the errors of the environment. Problems and hurdles are the part and parcel of the game called LIFE. No matter what, each one of us has to battle through the setbacks and failures to realize the highest purpose of our lives. There are those lucky few out there who bounce back after every boulder of uncertainty strikes them and leaves them shattered. They are the real leaders who go on to lead the globe. However, the majority who stay shattered could have reached the light at the end of the tunnel, courtesy, a little Inspiration. While they are being hit by the avalanche of issues of life, there needs to be hope and scope to uplift their lives and this can happen only when there is a possibility of solutions. The foundation of this possibility is inspiration. If people aren't inspired action doesn’t happen. Hence, inspiration is a must.
 
Amidst the countless number of problems that are thumping down the spirit of living itself amongst people, it has become the ultimate necessity to reawaken the energy of life in the world. Though it’s believed that people need to be energetic, enthusiastic, motivated and inspired throughout the year, not everyone can be, courtesy, the energy sapping nature of people around us. Hence, to respect and celebrate that day of the year that can trigger the inspiration to sustain the optimism and fighting spirit throughout and make it memorable, enters into the records of world history a day named as WORLD INSPIRATION DAY on 23rd of April.
 
This day shall remark the day responsible to pay homage to all those industrious people who have left a legacy of inspiration for each one of us alive to follow. This day shall be the standing ovation to all those world leaders who are inspiring stories that inspire their contemporaries. This day shall serve as the womb to all those inspirational legends of the future, who will decide and take immediate action to lead an empowering life influencing and inspiring the masses around.
 
To commemorate the victories of the past, celebrate the achievements of the present and cherish the visions of the future, we shall celebrate the WORLD INSPIRATION DAY on 23rd of April every year. This day embarks the significance of the requirement of inspiration in every arena of life. This day gives a chance to every person of the globe to blink at all the pressures of life and wink away into the era of inspiration. Every one of us has the right to live a fulfilling life and accomplish all our dreams, goals and visions. Each one of us has the right to stay inspired. Let’s celebrate the WORLD INSPIRATION DAY to awaken the dreamer in us who shall walk every extra mile possible to make this world truly a better place to live in.
 
Twitter: @WIDInspiration

Thursday, May 02, 2013

Chess for Social Change

ENTREPRENEURSHIP is a huge field to address in a span of 2-3 hours. Still team IU gave its best to cater to the necessity to kindle the fire of entrepreneruship among the youth of Bangalore on the occasion of Labour's Day a.k.a International Workers' Day on May 1st of 2013. During the session there was an interesting participant among the crowd who came on the stage to share her feedback and here's her inspiring story to inspire a lot more.
 
A brief introduction about yourself
My name is Bhavana.B. I am pursuing my MBA from Maharani College of Arts, Commerce and Management. I am a national level chess player. I have represented my school for 3 consecutive years in chess and have won many prizes. I have participated in HKES tournament wherein I secured first prize and in many other inter-college competitions wherein I have won many prizes in the chess competitions.
 
With how many people have you shared the knowledge
about chess and what were the implications?
I have taught chess to 4 of my cousins out of which one went on to participate in national level chess competition. She was trying from 4 years but was unable to make it. Last year, I left my internship to help and guide her. By God's grace and my guidance she was able to pass through all the rounds at the national level and is a national level player now. Right now, we have 3 national level chess players in our family. Also, there are couple of young cousins of mine, one studying in 6th std and another in 2nd std  whom I am coaching about chess. It's a pleasure to also be teaching about chess to a 5 year old kid.
 
Apart from these, I am also training a 3 year old kid in chess. I have shared my knowledge about chess with Gururaj.S, who is a member of faculty in RIESI Bangalore and passionate about promoting the game of chess. I had written down some articles about chess and passed them on to him. He had got them circulated and I have received many positive feedback about the same. Once I had got a message from a teacher from Tumkur whom I had never met that my material had benefited her and she would be teaching chess to her child. I was very happy to know that my material had helped someone whom I didn't even know. I wish that all these people go on to become international chess players.
 
How do you plan to use chess as a medium for social change?
Today, whenever anyone talks about sports, it's mostly cricket or football. Indoor games are not given much scope. I want to make sure that chess becomes a part of our lifestyle itself. Just like how one doesn't remember when s/he brushed for the first time, I want people to not even remember when they started playing chess. It should become an intricate part of life is what I believe to achieve.
 
You can pass on your feedback for the fantastic work that Bhavana is doing on is.mohanbn@gmail.com