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.

Respect commitments to the self

Commitments are the most important promises that we make to ourselves and to others. Commitments are also used in certain other different scenarios such as personal commitments or family commitments or business commitments where in sometimes they are not just promises but are contracts or dire necessities without fulfilling which the life cannot proceed in a sound manner. If we expect someone else to believe in our commitments, we must first believe in us that we will live upto the commitments that we make to ourselves.

New year resolutions are some of the common commitments that people make to themselves and hardly few percentage of them are ever fulfilled throughout entire lifetime. It all depends upon how much of respect that we give to our own words. I still remember an example wherein Mahatma Gandhiji had stopped eating jaggery for some days just to advise a son of His disciple not to eat jaggery, because Bapu felt that if he couldn't stop eating jaggery, he couldn't advise someone else on the same lines. So he took a commitment to Himself that he wouldn't eat jaggery. The prime motive of His was to lead by example and hence he respected even this small commitment to himself though the situation would have got resolved by He just adivsing the little boy. Just because of his commitment to lead by example he could forfeit his desire for jaggery. Such should be the respect that we give to our commitments. Sometimes we make commitments out of motivation during a small period of time and after that motivation subsides we start disregarding our own commitments and break them. The reason for this is that we forget the reasons for our motivation that we had sometime back. So how do we make sure that we don't break these commitments?

If you can live upto the commitments that you make to oneself then you can easily fulfil the commitments made to others. Hence I will talk or rather write about just three simple steps to make sure that we respect and fulfil the commitments made to the self. First, write down the reasons for you taking up any commitment and preserve this to read and re-read everytime you are working towards this commitment irrespective of whether you have or have lost the motivation. If you have lost the motivaion, reading will trigger it back, if you still have the motivation it will just multiply by re-reading the reasons for the same. Second, there will be certain instances when you will be dragged away by negative forces such as laziness or ill health or disinterestedness or disturbed feelings due to which even reading doesn't bring back the motivation. At these circumstances, just remember that by breaking the commitment you are going to further worsen the situation and just by doing the small work required will definitely make the situation better. Its a simple human psychology which always becomes happy when you do something that you think you cannot do. Third, the belief inside us in ourselves grows everytime we stand for what we speak. We don't have to make big commitments to change the country or the society or the world. Small simple commitments that we make to change ourselves positively can be more than sufficient to cast an impact towards global betterment because you are bound to definitely influence this character of yours into others around you.

Everyday blogging is one of the small commitments that I make to myself and fulfil but sometimes when I fail to do so, I come back with double the efforts to cover up the past failure. Hope to know your stories on self-commitments on is.mohanbn@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/Mohan.B.Nagesh
www.twitter.com/ISmohanbn