STAY CALM; STAY FOCUSED

All that I can do at this point of time is laugh at the turn of events in life. It makes me wonder just like how my mentor wondered once upon a time, “Why is God doing all these things?” As I see things unfolding from a higher plane it becomes quite difficult to even anticipate which pawn He is going to play from which direction. It is His world and He has all the rights to move around things and take anyone of us for a ride. I have learnt that we must stay calm and focused with complete belief and faith in Him that He is acting only in our favour. No one can even contemplate why something happened. He knows it all. I bow to Him. I shall stay calm and stay focused.

There are two ways to look at life, or rather lead life. Decide what kind of a life you want and work hard to convert everything in your favour until you get to live the life you want. The second option is- accept the chain of events as they come in life and take the given ride. Everyone has an option to choose the kind of life one wishes to live. The second option is pretty straight forward. Hence there is nothing much to discuss on it. The first option is quite interesting. It teaches you that you can’t demand from life whatever you want. You need to earn every bit of what you desire to deserve it. The turmoil, be it emotional or physical, shall attack you, either separately or together. Be strong at such points of time. Reacting to any situation shall only make matters more worse. Stay calm and tell your heart, “ALL IZZ WELL” in 3 Idiots style and know that every problem has a solution. Don’t let your focus divert from the end result that you have already envisioned to happen. Your belief is tested by these temporary challenges. They are short lived. Being loaded with many negative thoughts gathered from past experiences of life, even the mind might undergo the fight to maintain itself positive. Stay calm!

There can be no achievement in life which can be accomplished without facing the tough challenges of life. Achievement that is achieved without any obstacles overcome sounds as no achievement at all. Stay focused on your goal and shield your mind with the strongest weapon called “BELIEF”. Every coming trouble should only go back disappointed that it couldn’t even shake you a bit. No one knows which decisions are right and which ones are wrong. Taking decision is a responsibility and one must stand up as a leader to take decisions. One should be ready to even fight to make the decisions right after being taken. To carry out such responsibilities on your shoulders during the most critical juncture of your life you need a mentor to guide you how to handle the burden. I am lucky to have one and I am happy if this blog post can guide some, who miss a mentor in life. You need to stay calm to take adequate decisions and stay focused to make the right set of moves to receive what you believe.

You got to feed the baby

I am sure that each one of you must have witnessed some or the other time in your life as to how a baby is fed. The infant might cry to have its food but her mom doesn't leave it just like that. There is a tussle between the two when it comes to having food. No matter how much the baby fights, mom wouldn't allow her to sleep with an empty stomach. Mom shall try all possible different ways of bribing up to scolding to the extent of beating the child if the child disagrees to have food. Because mom knows that the baby has to be fed, else it shall only spoil its own health. The objective is to feed the baby no matter what strategy is used. Mom becomes powerful enough to even bring the moon on earth just for the baby to have its dinner.

For leaders the world around them and the people around them are like their children. Leaders know what's right for the world and the people inhabiting it. If you're a leader you must take the step to take care of your surroundings. You must take up the challenge to make sure that people around you are fed well and leading quality lives. It doesn't matter whether people are ignorant about you, whether they are ridiculing you or they want to rebel against you. All that matters will be your love for them. No matter how much a baby kicks its parents, the parents do not let go off the child because it's their future in physical form. Likewise, leaders must be ready to bear the blunt of people around. Not everyone will be ready to trust you the moment you are taking some initiatives. It's not even necessary for everyone to believe what you're doing is right. Results should speak of your work. Your confidence in the work you have jumped into and the perseverance to bring your vision into reality shall drive in confidence amongst people around you to start believing you. It shall take some time before people are convinced about your leadership traits which they can imbibe in themselves. They need a proof already doing it and it can only be you. Beware! You will never be able to satisfy everyone around you. Someone somewhere or the other will definitely be unhappy or disappointed about you. Keep continuing your work irrespective about who appreciates or not until you reach your visions. As long as people are benefitting from your being on this planet there is no turning back in life.

Remember the baby crying and hesitant to have its food whenever you find people who are not ready to listen to your advice or suggestions. You shouldn't get angry being a leader. Instead you should only feel pity towards the person not paying heed to what you say imagining him/her to be a child in terms of maturity though s/he might have grown in age and physically. You should never give up on changing his/her mindset towards positivity. This task might take a minute or an hour or a day or a week or a month or a year or a decade or a lifetime. No matter how long it takes, you need to be the grown up mature person to innovate different strategies in order to make people follow your right directions.

An awe Inspiring eMagazine and An even more inspiring APP

Life itself teaches us to learn it from experience. There are lots of things that are running in this universe and as per Butterfly Effect every small instance occuring in this universe has the capacity to influence our lives. Vice versa is equally true. We inherit the ability from the source which we come from, which is nothing but the same universe to influence every bit of the universe that surrounds us. Following the same philosophy, with the hope of influencing the universe that surrounds us with inspiration through information a dream was born about two and half years back in the form of an eMagazine known as "IU eMagazine".

Today, people are fed up with the magnitude of negative news that is engulfing every page of the print media and every second of the visual media. What we see, what we read and what we hear are what that influence our thoughts, actions and character. To break through this shell of negative environment that is draining away the positivity and happiness from the world and lives of our fellow human beings, IU eMagazine has been striving hard to bring positive information from every corner of the globe possible in order to inspire every individual who clicks it open. Being the No. 1 Inspirational Magazine online, IU eMagazine has kept the gossips at bay and given focus only to bring the bright and positive information to keep you positive and inspired towards a beautiful life. The purpose to inspire the world has garnered global appreciation for the magazine, and today, there are readers from more than 150 countries of the world who endorse this wonderful concept. The authors who contribute to the magazine through their articles, poems and stories hail from diverse backgrounds from 50 different countries.

It was the next step aimed by this wonderful team behind the revoluntionary magazine to reach out to people who don't have computers, those who don't have enough time to sit at one place and access computers, those who are continuously on the move, those who cannot afford to buy a laptop and others. With the new age technology making it possible to access the online world with just a finger-tap on the screen of a smartphone, you will be more than happy to know that you will be equipped to access IU eMagazine-  your source for unlimited inspiration in the same way. Henceforth, you can access your favourite articles, poems, inspirational interviews and stories using the brand new app of IU eMagazine on the Google Playstore in the Android market. The infant is just 2.5 year of age entering the playhome called the Playstore. It's time to unlock your smartphones/tablets/phablets, open the playstore, download the 'IU eMagazine' app and enjoy reading to get inspired towards a fulfilling life ahead. Feel free to go ahead and recommend the app to anyone and everyone you know and be a part of this positive movement to change lives of people for a better world. You are a part of the universe that created you and you have every right to influence and inspire it for a better life for everyone around you. IU eMagazine app shall be your weapon to inspire the world!

(https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?=id=com.iuemag)

Not everyone is you

In the tight race of making many things happen it becomes quite difficult for everyone to play the role like everyone else. Each one shall follow a style of one's own in a speed of one's own. Everyone needs some space to pitch in one's own performance. Unfortunately not all kinds of work are individual-centric. Lots of tasks are dependent on more than one individual. That is where coordination and coherent speed of working need to be maintained to accomplish the results. While doing so, due the slowness of few people the entire team shall follow a slow process. No one can blame the other because it's all team efforts. All that you need to know is that not everyone is you, not everyone is like you.

God has bestowed each human being with some or the other talent. Each one of us go through or each one of us is waiting to find that Eureka moment when we discover our passion. It takes quite some time for all of us to discover our true passions. It's not just God alone who decides your talent. The environment you grow up in and the influences that you undergo during childhood also matter in moulding your talents and skill-sets. This being the case, one must not hurry on concluding someone else's capacity. One must always have the God's advocate eye to search for positive stuff in the most adverse situations. One must be able to recognise the true strength in the person standing opposite him. A fish can win a swimming race but never a running race. Likewise the moment you have spotted strength in a person in your team, make sure that he gets only those kinds of opportunities where his strength gets utilized the most. This shall empower him as a great leader. A leader must stop expecting that even the people working around him should have the same calibre and deliver the same results. God has never produced clones on this planet. So, no matter what, two people cannot work the same way at all points of time. Hence a leader must know that not everyone can be him, and guide accordingly. The moment there are expectations out of people to perform the same way like that of yours, they shall only shatter and bring more sorrow and lesser progress for the team.

A budding leader also looks up to his leader/mentor and it is natural for a budding star to imagine being a leader someday later. It takes committed hard work to reach a significant leadership position. Never ending efforts are indispensable while working to become a strong leader. When you are growing you must close your eyes and ears for any sort of stuff wherein you're pitched against the notably strong people. You need to remember that everyone cannot be like you and you cannot be like your leader at one shot. Treat people as they are than treating them for the way you desire them to be. None can ever be like you.

VTU results

VTU - Visvesvaraya Technological University is one of the most profound universities in Karnataka. Many of the engineering colleges are affiliated to this particular university. As every semester of engineering course or any other masters course completes, results are revealed by the university for the students. Sometimes it becomes quite difficult to comprehend the marks that one has received versus the marks that one anticipated to achieve. Many students are facing a lot of apprehensions because of these results which determine their placements, higher studies opportunities etc. I wanted to share my views of how students should take their VTU results, or any other exam results for that matter, and analyse them well rather than breaking their head on them.

All our lives we keep working for Vitamin-M. During childhood it's marks and during adulthood it's about money. Since marks and ranks hold higher priority for the society, no wonder that results affect the way the society perceives us based on our marks. Hence results become the apprehensive points for both students as well as parents. Students must learn to handle their results in such a way that the results don't drain away their mental energy. Marks just measure how well you have learned and written the concepts in your answer sheets. They don't determine how well and to what depth you have understood any of those concepts. When the results are announced, try to match your expectations with the marks announced. If they are matching, probably you have been able to anticipate well and the evaluation has also been genuine enough, only if you have expected what you exactly feel you deserved. Only if there is a disparity between your expectations and marks, there arises the tension. At such times, I have seen so many students who waste the entire day the results are announced just thinking about how they lost their marks. There is no point thinking then because you cannot change anything. All that you need to do is to have a calm mind and think what you can learn from the results. Either your expectations need some correction or the papers need some re-evaluation. Revaluation is not just about getting those extra marks; revaluation affirms your anticipation of the results of your efforts which builds your confidence in yourself more.

Coming to the most important aspect of the revaluation fees, how do you judge whether you want to spend for it or not? If the disparity between the marks expected and marks assigned is more than the range of 15-20, please go ahead with revaluation option though it might burn your pockets a bit. If the difference is somewhere near 10 marks, leave those marks for the external factors that influenced the evaluation of your paper. So your decisions should be quick the moment you see the marks. Results shouldn't take away your mental energy on the things that you need to focus on today and make you think what you wrote few months ago.

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.

The grapevine communication

More than 50% of the productivity of companies is lost due to grapevine communication. For those who are unaware about grapevine communication, you can Google for a lot of information and statistics out there. In simple words I can explain that grapevine communication is the portion of communication during our work time which doesn't result in any kind of results or progress. Simple examples of grapevine communication are; two colleagues gossiping about the clothes of their manager or someone sharing about review of a movie with his teammate during work timings. Such stuff doesn't lead to any progress of the work or the individuals involved, and definitely not that of the company.

People join companies and work only with an intention to progress ahead in life and to maintain a well-sustained livelihood. Being so, still they involve in grapevine communication and cut down on the productivity of the company. This is quite a paradox for many of us. Well! It’s all but natural for us, human beings. We are not machines. We have an extra emotional part to us. Machines keep doing the work as per the instructions given, whereas humans need an environment that is lively enough and congenial for their style of work. A laughing or sniggering environment is generally preferred to keep our moods high. Sometimes just to drain away the home strain with a third person like colleague makes people feel much relaxed to work. To cater to the emotional states of oneself or that of others people jump into grapevine communication discussing about all the stuff apart from work. That is where one of the individuals involved in the communication must be at least aware of recognising the trap that each one is jumping into knowingly or unknowingly, and cut short on the unnecessary discussion. Unfortunately, people hinder away from putting the full stop in such conversations with the fear that they might attract the scorn of their fellow-mates which is the case most of the times in work places. A person who thinks of work is termed as a killer of happiness for employees. As a result, many managers and directors are hated because of their seriousness towards work resulting from their in-depth understanding of the consequences of grapevine communication.

People, while working, must realise that they are in the workplace not to deviate from work. They have to focus on what is the next target or which is the next deadline. That shall keep all of us in regular momentum so that we don't stray away into non-essential chit-chats. Even if our colleagues are getting into such stuff we must take the initiative to reorient them towards their work. Only then an organization can become a giant. Though there might be resistance initially, people shall understand your true intentions towards progress of the work for the unintended interruption in their conversations and shall start following the suite very soon.