Remember people and their names

A name is an identity of a person. Every person associates himself/herself with this identity. A baby which is newly born into this world doesn't have to worry about what it's called. It knows that all the people around it are only there to take care of it. All those people who smile at it and call out any sound seem to be talking to the baby. That's when the baby doesn't feel any need of a name or an identity. But as we grow up in life people know that we no more remain babies who don't know how to take care of ourselves. So the extra-care that a baby deserves gradually reduces. That is the time of identity crisis for a growing infant who doesn't find much attention from the elders. Hence an identity requirement arises and the child gets christened with a name. Thus a name becomes the identity of the person.

Name is an entity that symbolizes a person for lifetime. As a result, every person gets attached to it emotionally as well as spiritually. More than knowing that we are human beings, we refer to ourselves by our names as if there are a billion species out there in the world with different names other than just homo-sapiens. This close becomes our name as an integral part of a person's life. It's almost like a part of the human body from then onwards. When someone forgets our name it is as if he has forgotten that we are alive. Even if a person misspells or pronounces wrongly a name, the person gets severely disturbed. That's the essence of importance that one associates with one's own name. There have been so many examples when people have broken relations just because a person didn't care to remember the name of the other person. A small spelling mistake in the name is not tolerated by many people because one cannot visualise himself/herself with the wrong spelling. Hence one should be very much careful while writing down the names of people, especially while printing on banners and invitation cards. Every person has a dream to make a name for himself/herself before leaving the planet because no one shall remember the amount of money you make or the number of properties you build. All that the people shall remember once a person has left the planet is that, "There once lived a person by name ___________ who did so and so........"

By now if you have understood the importance of the name for a person, you will never even make a mistake by chance also to misspell or wrongly pronounce or forget a person's name who has been your acquaintance. People are happy to be recognised, exclusively by their names. Hence remembering people and their names becomes a very important factor in all our lives. We need to give that extra effort to remember people who have crossed our paths and especially their names too. Only then will we be able to build a strong network of people around us who shall respect us for the kind of respect we show them. Only by influencing positively the lives of thousands can we make our lives worth being lived and rejoiced.

Find your light tower

The world boasts of a diverse population consisting of multi-talented people from all races of life. Each one born on this planet carries an exquisite talent of his own. Life is all about finding the real strengths in oneself, and making sure that all those come to right use for the enhancement of the lives of beings around us in our environment. This being the case, every human needs to know his true potential as early as possible. To find it and use it in the right direction he needs a light tower which can guide him.

This light tower is none other than a mentor. Every human being is a bubbling mass of massive energy and potential. All that one needs to realise is how to channelize this enthusiasm. People keep exploring new things voluntarily until they find something strong that catches their attention for a long span of time. They want to contribute to this world in some way or the other, but are unfortunately unaware of the right ways to do it. A horse which is trained to run in a race can make the jockey win and win good sum of money for the people who have bet on it, but the same horse in a wide open field might run in any direction but won’t make even a single pie. The reason is, in the race there’s a goal and person to keep the horse focused on the direction of the goal. In an open field there is no jockey, nor any kind of direction towards goals. Hence each one of us should find a mentor who can guide us to run in a focused manner towards the goals and dreams that we have set in life. There is no harm or any rupture to our self-esteem if we are ready to accept the guidance of an experienced person. No matter how much we are independent we have to accept the law of nature that we cannot see anything without light.

Choosing a mentor or searching for a mentor doesn’t mean that you don’t know what to do in life or how to do what you want to do. Any person walking can reach from one place to the other in darkness also, but the moment there is a light tower, it shall guide him with light to reach his destination in the safest and  the shortest way possible as he can see things much clearly now. Likewise the addition of a mentor in our lives will always give us more clarity in our paths towards our dreams. Once you reach your destination you not only complete your journey, but you also leave footprints for those who are following. Your footprints might become the direction for someone and that person is right now searching for a mentor like you. Can you be one?

Social media - the messenger

"Did you tweet today?" "What was your status update today on facebook?" These have become the lingo of the current generation. Social media is engaging a vast mass of the population. Greeting cards are getting converted into e-cards and included as attachments with mails. Meetings are happening on hangouts virtually. Overall, the social media space is filling the space of communication amongst people. Even call or SMS feel outdated in front of the Whatsapp and ChatOn mobile applications. The least money is charged for people to throw their messages on social media.

 

The social media has all the options of like, share, retweet, comment etc. These options are virtually providing an environment for feedback for whatever the people post on different social media platforms. These are more public than they appear to be. They showcase our thoughts and feelings put in words to a number of people completely unrelated to the topic of interest. It's not always the set of people who LIKE or RETWEET what we update, who are the only ones to whom our messages reach. We must be really careful before updating any content online. As more and more people are glued to the internet learning what's happening in the lives of others, more the people are feeling the lacking of a friend who can give an ear to listen to them. As a result, frustrations pile up in the hearts of people which come out as baseless self-realizations on the social media platforms as posts, tweets, comments and status updates.

 

Indirectly, social media has become a platform of messaging the things running in the minds of people. When a person is hurt by his/her friend, there's an instant message online depicting the incident and the conclusion from the experience which might be completely wrong also as in most of the cases. The status update is posted to make sure that it hits the person who has hurt than just to merely update a status. Social media doesn't put an obligation on people from coming on to the streets of timelines and shouting nonsense their heart and mind out. As a result, everyone feels the freedom of not being questioned or condemned by anyone while updating online whatever that comes to their mind which might lead to bitter results later. Hence it's important to use social media only as a platform for connecting with others as a means of communication rather than as a messenger to spit our negative emotions and feelings. The right use of the modern technology is highly important.

The RIGHT thing

Right things at right places with right people make right things happen at the right time. There are so many 'right's in the previous sentence that it just gets difficult to understand as to what is the right thing to be done. However confusion is a part and parcel of life and hence you are bound to enjoy its bliss. Right and wrong are two perceptions at the end of the day. What is right for one person might seem completely wrong for the other.

 

I have heard this justification from a lot of people that all the successful people were just present at the right place at the right time and that's the reason they were able to become successful in life. If success was a mere result of coincidence then probably half of the world would have been successful which is not the case. Success is a string that is formed by connecting all the dots at the right intervals. Success is not a point on a board, it's a long route that doesn't seem to end at any point of life. Success demands perfection and perfection happens due to the combination of right inputs. That's what this blog post speaks about. Along with being at right places at the right time, doing the right things along with right people is also important. Nothing right happens on its own. We need to execute the right action to encash the right results.

 

Connecting back to the perception concept in the earlier part of the article, doing what is justifiable and brings about good to majority at no cost of harm caused to the minority is called the right thing. Things which are done with good intentions in life will always ensure right results for us as well as for the ecosystem around us. Give your best and you can be sure that the right thing shall happen on its own and God shall take up the responsibility to reward your efforts rightly.

Something will happen for sure

All of us were born tension-free into this world but as time goes by, we attach every type of tension around us and by the time we leave this planet we also leave behind a huge pile of worries and tensions. Fear of what will happen in the future is one of the most critical issues that's disturbing many souls around us. What will happen in the result? What will happen if there is a catastrophe? What will happen to me if my company shuts down?

 

Man has the unlimited ability to think out of the box whenever it comes to predicting the future. More than predicting the future it's more of the fear of the future that keeps talking in the person. No matter what we think or what we do, none of us have a complete control to what can happen in the future. We can try our best to make happen the best but we need to be aware that not always what we desire is what we deserve. Just because this probability of things turning out wrong can happen, we needn't worry about those things which turn out wrong. All that we need to know is that something will happen for sure. At least nothing will happen for sure if nothing else takes place. Man has to be prepared to face the unexpected. Life is a journey that brings every other day unexpected challenges only to make us stronger to face the life ahead.

 

Exam is a big worry for students while inflation is the biggest worry for a country. Recession is a big tension for final year students while food for the next day is the basic worry for a poor fellow. At the end of the day, each one of us want something from the future and the probability of it not happening often feeds imbalance into our minds and life. If we are able to console ourselves that something shall happen for sure and we can give our best to make something that's beneficial for us to happen as well, we can free our mind of tensions so that we can concentrate on what needs to be done at present.

Experience to empathize

In one of my previous blogs I had spoken about empathy. Empathy is a very important quality that one should have to understand others emotions and feelings. You can check more about its importance in the following link http://mohanbn.blogspot.in/2012/12/empathy-art-to-learn.html. However here I would like to touch upon the topic about how to develop the power of empathising with people.

 

Experience shall form the core of empathy. Unless you have experienced the situation what the other person is narrating, you can never empathize with the other person. In fact no two people shall undergo exactly the same process. So complete empathy can ever be achieved at all. But it is definitely true that all of us undergo similar situations in life if not the same exactly where in the emotions and feelings felt by us would match at least if not the situation. This is the required experience of emotions and feelings that can help us develop empathising power. Unless you haven't even experienced the emotions same as the other person in a similar situation, it shall be highly difficult for you to empatize with the other person's situation.

 

Empathy is an art to learn if you want to network with large number of people and work towards grand success. Then it becomes essential for you to get into someone else's shoes day in and day out to empathize with the other person. Hence it's important for you to explore various experiences so that you can instantly remove your shoes and slip into another person's shoes the moment s/he is narrating their story to you so that you can empathise in the best possible manner. I really empathize with the difficulty of writing a feedback with my reader as I have also been asked for feedback by many other authors. Still, I would invite my dear reader to post a comment about the blog on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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Sow the seed of sharing

Sharing becomes such an integral part of our life as we grow up. The human mind/heart (you can choose whichever makes more sense to you) is incapable of holding all the experiences, facts and figures that one goes through in life. Probably the only reason a person accumulates knowledge is to share it is what I feel. Wow!!!!! this can be an enitrely different blog altogether. What say? Ok, let's come back to the sharing part. So when do people share?

People share with friends or relatives with whom they feel close enough, whom they think shall understand their situations. I am sure that you have heard it numerous times that children share all that happen in school at home just like how parents share all that happen in office at home. So there must be a starting point for this sharing somewhere. Let's take a hypothetical situation. When you are among your friends and you start a topic of movies and share your recent facts about it what are you expecting next? It's undeniable that the other person shall shell out his/her facts about movies and start sharing whatever recent things that s/he has heard about movies. This type of an experience happened to me very recently. When I was taking a session for kids in a school, I just shared about my accident and how I got hurt, immediately the kids started sharing their experiences of having got hurt. I had sown the seed of sharing.

Sharing is what makes each one know more about the other person that eventually strengthens the relationship. So if you want to know what other person has been through just sow the seed for sharing by sharing few of your past incidents relating to that of the other person that you want to know. Remember sharing is caring! You can post your comments on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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Empathy - an art to learn

Can you feel the same what the other person can? It's a bit difficult. I can understand. Different people have different notions and hence different emotions regarding the same incident or circumstance. However the best relationships are between people who can share and emote the same level of feelings and emotions. When water is flowing it can always flow through a level same as the previous one or at least below. It cannot rise against ascending levels except for high forces.

Let me relate the water flow example here to the levels of empathy. Empathy is all about putting oneself in the shoes of the other person and trying to feel what the other person felt. So if one can emote same level of emotions or deeper ones like that of the person who is sharing his/her experiences then sharing will continue. More the sharing, better the relationship. However if the person in front cannot feel what the other person is sharing then it feels just as a plain talk and hence the person might just stop sharing further if the person opposite cannot respond. Only in cases of extreme conditions the person might go on sharing irrespective of the opposite person's response. A single person cannot go through all the situations in this universe. We also have to remember that every situation has something to teach us. To learn and also to guide a person one must be able to feel the emotions with the same intensity as that of the other person and this is called perfect empathy.

The better a person can empathise with other people, the easier it becomes for others to share their feelings, emotions, thoughts and experiences with the person. Only when complete details are shared a good suggestion can be provided to make the situation better. People feel close to those who can understand and empathize with them better than others. So learn and master the art of empathy to have great relationships. Do let me know your views on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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Prospecting can lead to business

Prospecting happens when you encounter a prospect and build a relation of knowing each other. Prospect means a stranger basically. Prospecting is a method of building new contacts. Business doesn't have any rules.  It doesn't restrict you to a certain set of people only. It's all about how many contacts you make and how well you make use of them. You can build business with any person you see on the street if you are able to model out something that can fulfill either your or his/her needs. So let me connect prospect and business now.

The basic underline rule before I move forward is that anything that can satisfy or fulfill one's needs or desires can give rise to a business. Every person on this planet has certain set of needs and desires which s/he wants to satisfy/fulfill if someone can offer a fair deal withing the person's budget. If you have a valid product then you have a customer for sure. You just have to find the right customer base and prospecting is the alternative of referral marketing. I will touch referral marketing topic in another blog. Let's see prospecting for now. Everyone on this earth can be your friend. So how did you make new friends when you were a kid. You probably went out of your home or to school and found another kid and started talking. The common with both of you was the environment. So with any stranger, find out the common ground where you both stand. It might be just the traffic in front of both of you. It might be the cold weather or the same showroom you visit or just the same bus in which you're travelling.

Once the common ground is identified just put across your view about it which should ask for a reply or a nod from the other person. The moment the other person replies, the conversation begins based on which you just build a simple 3-4 minute conversation. Introduce yourself and exchange cards. Your one more friend for life and one more customer for business is ready right in front of you. This easy is prospecting. Do pour in your questions on prospecting on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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Don't bore to the core

None of us intentionally want to get bored nor be a boring person. We want to live an interesting life and gain other people's interest in us as well. The simple rule is to give what you want to get. So if you don't want to get bored then make sure that you are not boring someone else. So how do we not bore is the core of this blog. Courtesy the experiences my team has had and suggestions made by our team leader, this blog shall solve your PR problems. {PR -people relations}

 

When does a person get bored? When s/he faces things repeatedly in the same old fashion. Eg: students are bored of lectures, employees of bored of working, wives are bored of cooking, teachers are bored of teaching. When does a person not get bored? When s/he faces something new which the person is willing to know and learn. I hope you have got your answers. If not, read further. Let's focus on not what we want to not get bored but on what we can deliver to not bore others. Whenever you are meeting the same person again, make sure you have a new information to convey. If you are meeting someone who wants to learn from you, make sure that you have something new and of next level than what s/he knows already to teach. If it's your client, make sure you have a new project or a product that the client can enjoy having and experiencing.

Know that for providing new everytime you will also have to undergo lot of research on what the person likes/dislikes and search for new things. Correct? Completely wrong. If you are a person who wants to keep yourself continually happy and excited and don't want to get bored then you will automatically learn and know new things and become an interesting person who neither get bored nor bores others. If I haven't bored you with this blog, then feel free to pour in your feedback on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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Energy matters

The transfer of enthusiasm is the achievement to be accomplished by any speaker when s/he takes on the stage. The audience can be at any state just before the talk begins. So the task of bringing them to the required  excited state is left as an initial challenge to the speaker. The initial part of the speech is the most crucial during which the crowd decides whether to listen further to the speech or just handover the external ears only. The initial short timed phase is the time that a speaker gets to convince the audience that it's worth listening to him/her for next few minutes and in this phase what matters is - 'Energy'.

The confidence is clearly visible in the amount of energy that the speaker can induce into each one sitting among the audience that can build a bridge of exclusive energy force between the speaker and each person present. The extra energy hardcodes the words spoken on the minds of the people listening. Normal temperature is never expressed to be experienced by anyone. Only a high or a low temperature is spotted by any living being immediately which results in an immediate response. Similarly, people are used to the normal energy of the peers around them. The moment they witness a dynamic energy source walking and talking to them from the stage, it catches their attention immediately. The best part of being energetic in a talk is that it gets transferred to the other person at the receiving end as well and no doubt that just like when electrons get excited they produce current similarly people who are excited by your energy feel the current flow through their body.

An iron rod can be bent only when it is heated. Likewise the necessary corrections on the existing beliefs and assumptions can be made only when the temperature of enthusiasm is raised in the person opposite to you with whom you are speaking. For the enthusiasm to rise in the other person, you must be ready to propel the energy waves by being the source of the same and hence I claim that 'Energy matters'. Hope and believe to read your feedback on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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The birth of Talent

It has been a question on mind right from childhood as to why different people have different talents and varied skill levels in those respective talents. Everyone of us are born as babies emptyhanded. A poet is not born with a pen in his hand, a cricketer is not born with a bat in his hand, a painter is not born with a brush in his hand, a singer is not born with a mike in her hand. Still we see that some excel in sports, some in arts, some in science. I keep wondering sometimes as to how a child develops a talent of his/her own in the process of growing. Today while I was teaching my younger brother about painting, probably I saw the birth of the talent of painting in him which I want to share in this blog of mine.

As everyone of us know that be it any talent, no one is a master of it right at the beginning. Only he becomes a master of the talent who works as a slave of his persistent interest and commiment to the talent. At the beginning stage, any person develops an interest towards a talent due to various reasons. May be an inspiration from a role model in the same field or a chance to try out the talent accidentally or a force by parents or teachers to work on the talent for the sake of grades. Whatever the reason might be the amateur gets in touch with the talent. The talent is not born even at that time. It is just getting ready to take a part of life of the amateur. The moment the fresher to the talent starts enjoying the refreshening feeling that the talent generates in his heart is the time the talent is born. The talent is born inside the man himself. The young boy matures into a man to safeguard and develop this talent of his. This scenario is quite similar to the situation wherein a gorgeous girl impresses the teenage boy and the wink of her eyelashes blossoms the love in the heart of the lover. As this love fills the life of the lover so does the talent starts to encompass the artist.

Thus the talent starts evolving with every practice in the mind and body of the human. More the interest, more the passion, more the commitment, more the practice, more the talent growth happens just like how a child grows into a beautiful lady with great care and nourishment. Every man gets a chance to try out his hand at different talents but he chooses to give birth to which he is attracted more. Perhaps only God can explain the reason for this attraction and why different people are attracted towards different talents. I just feel its similar to how different people are attracted towards different people of the opposite gender. At the end of the day all that counts is how well one takes care of the talent that is born inside. I request my dear reader to recognise the talent that is born within and nourish it well to present it as a gift to this world.

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Will you relive your life once again?

Hi folks! First of all I would like to apologise for not being able to update a blog yesterday itself as I had promised earlier that I would be writing a blog a day. 'If you miss a lunch you are entitled for a grand dinner' is a saying as per which I will be posting 2 blogs today. Let me kick off with the first one.

Now that you have read the title of the blog "Will you relive your life once again?", you might be guessing what this blog may be about or wondering to know why I ask this question. This question came up on my mind based to back to back experiences that I had very recently. Day before yesterday while I wrote the blog on the Rabbit and Tortoise story, it so happened that I had completed the blog and clicked on PUBLISH POST. At that time the autosave got interrupted and all of a sudden the login screen came back. I went to the previous page only for my 30 minutes of writing not to be seen. I tried to go through drafts but in vain. Unfortunately I was too sick to sit for that 30 mins itself. I had just felt the nerve of relief when I had written the last line of the blog and all of a sudden it had vanished in air. Now the choice was either to yield to the uneasiness and pain of rewriting the entire blog again  and quit or to withstand the pain and recompose the blog to keep up my vow of ABAD for march month. I felt the second one pushing me more than the first one pulling me back. Hence I went ahead and rewrote the entire blog and published it.

The 2nd incidence was today in office. I was supposed to prepare an excel sheet document and send it to my manager quickly about datamodel changes in JDE world A9.3. It took about 15 minutes to collect all the relevant information and update the excel sheet in a neat format. Once again the situation repeated itself. I accidentally closed the excel document before saving my changes. Man!!!!!! I told myself and reopened the closed document to check if I was fortunate enough not to have lost the changes made. But mistake is a mistake and cant be undone. All the changes were gone. Once again, efforts and time had to be spent for rework. The choice now was either to go through the tedious process again and mail it to my manager or give it up to let the other colleagues follow through. I felt a strange sense of ownership of work which told me it wont take much time for the rework, lets do it! I agreed to this philosphy and finished the work.

After these 2 incidents, I just asked my mind would we people really be willing to do the same work all over again if for some unfortunate reason it gets washed away. Would we be willing to spend our time and efforts on rework again and again? Would J.K.Rowling have written the entire book of Harry Potter once again if for some reason her original manuscripts were lost or burnt? My mind added more complexity to this situation by asking me back whether we would choose to do the same activities today which we had completed yesterday with lot of sweat just because we lost the proof of completion of yesterday's work. Adding more what would we have chosen if we had a choice either to relive all our yesterday, days before yesterday,  weeks before yesterweek, months before yestermonth, years before yesteryear  again for accomplishment of something or just move forward from the present life.

In my opinion I just feel the reason or the purpose holds the highest strength to push us to redo the rework. If that is not strong or important enough for us, we might choose of not doing it again. This might vary from person to person, from situation to situation. Question is - who is stronger? Person or the situation? This is an open ended writing of mine. Friends! I would like to know what are your views on this. Please dont miss to add your opinion in the below comments section. I am damn sure that you value your opinion which you can share on is.mohanbn@gmail.com

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