Become Your Enemy

Wait!

Before you start thinking anything insane, understand my definition of an enemy.

Enemy is an eminent critic who makes us aware of our scopes of improvement, without being paid. Yet, he is so steadfast to his duty that as soon as you overcome his one challenge, he would be vivaciously waiting to give you a tougher one. He pushes our comfort zones and makes us take each move considerately.

You must have experienced that these days, it is really difficult to get an honest opinion, be it in a personal life or in a professional life. People are too seemly. That is why it's today's dire need to have someone who can look into your eyes and point at your face to tell you your shortcomings, without being bothered about the ramifications. Someone to fuel your energy to set grander goals and industriously surpass them.

There is a saying, " Why would I need an enemy if I have a friend like you?" Message of this statement has got deteriorated over a period of time and is normally used in a negative sense. I say, if you have a friend, who tells you what is right for you and is continuously behind you to make sure you do it, who challenges your every action to help you improve and progress, that is actually what a friend should be doing. Isn't it? Ironically, that is what an enemy as well does. Doesn't he?

You are your best friend and you are your best (not worst) enemy.

Friend or enemy, call it anything, the role remains same - pushing yourself harder towards setting higher standards and achieving them. Be a resolute critic of your thoughts, character and actions, relentlessly filtering and refining the opinions coming from outside and choosing what is right for you. And then grasp what will help you improve continuously. And then do it! That's what successful people do. This shall bring the sense of achievement and placidity in your life. This is what life is all about - learning beyond ego, improving continuously.

And you know what?

You must do what you know you should do.

Be well !

Life of Questions

I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of human excellence is to question oneself and others.
- Socrates

During my graduation, almost always, I went to the class with the intention of checking the depth of the knowledge of faculty members. I used to keep asking until they either stopped answering or changed the topic or got angry and asked me to leave the class. But that did not stop me from asking questions. I asked my friends and family members and whoever shall come by. But I had learned by then. My intentions had changed. Then it was not to check the extent of their knowledge but to have a thorough understanding about life. 

During this process, I realized something. It became clear to me that I started questioning very late. I cannot recall myself asking too many questions when I was young or was in school. Maybe that was why I was never told not to question anything or anyone. I was observing when other children were questioning (and were barked upon to stop to do so). And then, when I was doing graduation, students rarely asked the questions they should be asking. I believe it was because they were trained to the method of asking questions. I wasn't.

Sounds unclear?

Let me simplify this for you. But, by asking questions. ;)

Have you observed the eyes of a new born? Or maybe a 2-4 months' old kid? Of course you have! Curious eyes they have. Don't they? I highly doubt that anyone shall disagree with me. First question that a baby asks, even before actually learning to speak, is, "What". For example, What is this and what is that. And mother naturally explains every single thing to her child.

Then next question a kid asks is "Who". And mother, again, automatically answers him by saying, "Look, this is your daddy". As the child grows further, he learns, what is what and who is who. Simultaneously, he also learns asking "Where" and "When". For example, where he should pee and when he should sleep or wake up or when he should speak or not speak. Here comes the grey area. When this situation arises, when children are asked not to speak or question, their minds seek an answer to the new type of question i.e. "Why". Like why they should not speak. What elders don't understand is that children don't have the training to understand that when is the "right time" to ask why they should not speak at that moment. And they are again asked or rather scolded not to question further. Same situation arises when elders themselves don't know the answer or have an excuse of being busy with other priorities above their family. These incidents get repeated few times and gradually child learns that it's a wise choice not to ask "Why" to anyone. Because everyone gets pissed off when being asked "why", better not to ask it in the first place. Who knows when someone will loose his mind over being asked so?

Teach your children How to think and NOT what to think.

Time goes by and over the period, they grow and become teenager. Learn "Where" and "When" about the ancient history and modern history and all that is taught in the schools. They learn about when and where they should go for the different types of parties or for a date. Then comes adulthood. It's a time to learn "How". How it happens, how this works and how that is done, how money flows and how people behave in their professional life and how that is different from a behavior in their personal lives, how to talk to someone, how to attract people, how to say "No" and how to do/ be/ have what you want to do/ be/ have. Once this "How" is learned and it has started working in your favor, your cycle of life is set. You can have the same mundane world out of that. People around you may change but the actions remain same. Because it is a conscious training you have undergone.

During graduation, I had an advantage over other students because when I was young, I wasn't told not to ask "why". So I wholeheartedly used this question. And it helped me learn and clear my concepts thoroughly. I learned about why things are the way they are, why people behave in a way they do and why purpose is necessary for perseverance and why asking questions is crucial. I, therefore, believe that, what is missing in people's lives is "why" in the adulthood and the life past that.

Great people ask this powerful question, "Why", to their advantage, with the intention to find an opportunity to overcome the present, unacceptable, situations, instead of complaining, "Why me?". If something is not working as per their desire, they ask themselves the reasons, hunt for the answers and don't stop until they find them. You know why? Because they know what their "why" is. Take Muhammad Ali or Thomas Edison or Henry Ford or Mahatma Gandhi or any great achiever for that matter. When they faced crisis and challenges, they asked themselves, "Why this cannot be done?" and looked for the alternatives, found or created options and achieved greatness. They changed the results of the equations just by questioning the unacceptable ones. Ultimately, what looked improbable became possible, just like an inverse probability.

Finally, after all these adventurous events, once you get in the business of life, you learn, most probably, the hard-way, about "whom" you should approach to get certain things done. And then you realize how much important this question, whom, is and yet how unjustifiably scarce you used it when you were learning the language! Anyway, eventually you feel like, life is making some sense.

Questions initially create confusion, but then brings the clarity. Questions are the answers. Answers to knowledge, awareness, commonsense, maturity, success, happiness, life. You just need to learn to ask the right questions.
Einstein has said, "It's not that I am so smart. I just stay with the question much longer."

Now that you have learned the importance of the types of questions in your life and how to use those over a period of time, you must remember that, someone, somewhere is learning the same thing and she could become your future wife! Even tragic situation is, she is already there.

Then you realize that silence is the best answer to all the questions of life. (Pun intended)

;)

Enjoy life!

Keep questioning. Keep learning.

Plant trees for your kid.

Common Enemy

" Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? "

" That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, " said the Cat.

" I don't much care where " said Alice.

" Then it doesn't matter which way you go, " said the Cat.

" - so long as I get SOMEWHERE, " Alice added as an explanation.

" Oh, you're sure to do that, " said the Cat, " if you only walk long enough ".

                                                - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Where am I headed? And Why?

Why am I doing which I am not passionate about?

Is this feeling of mundaneness for a particular activity is temporary or is it here to stay?

What do I actually want?

What achievements shall content my heart when I will look back from the end?

Most of the people do not dare to ask these questions to themselves. They don't go beyond the second question. And they do not even answer the first question. And gradually it becomes easier to live cheating oneself by giving evasive excuses and complaining for one or the other thing. Their situation is just like an envelope without an address on it, just the way Mark Twain has said, "Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" Aimless. Living because they are afraid of committing suicide or of afterlife!

People don't want to do things which come to them easily. They never do anything about it. Had they developed and nurtured those skills, they would have achieved all they have ever wanted. Even when some people realize what their gifts and talents are, they don't actually give their best to nurture and develop them daily. They procrastinate! This habit is the common trait of all those people, whom you see around you, complaining and blaming.

I had a friend in college who loved watching movies. He had a real taste and thorough understanding about movies. He could be a really successful movie critic. He was a good judge of all the aspects to be considered to rate a movie. We, as friends, used to suggest him to opt for that career but he always took it casually. He didn't do anything about it. During the last semester of our graduation, he fell sick and after 3 months of hospitalization, he died. He was just 22 years old. You don't know how long you will live. People procrastinate the actions which matter most instead they ought to be procrastinating procrastination.

How much time do you have?

Someone has said, " You spend your whole life believing that you're on the right track, only to discover that you are on the wrong train." On the wrong train of procrastination.

Get up!

List down 5 most fascinating things you would like to do in your life, and then layout a plan to achieve those. Believe that it is possible! Believe that you can do it! Work daily, unnervingly, towards it. Move further inch by inch. Do something about it. Anything! Once you have absorbed a thought that certain activity can take you to the highest level of success, if you improve at it continuously, you will not need any external motivation to act on it. If you have the "why" to stand for, to fight for and to die for, you can easily take care of the "how". Target for the most ideal state of your success. If that is not possible right now, go for the next most ideal state and so on and on. But keep " most ideal state " as your primary goal. Question yourself and the way you have always done things. Learning comes from observation and practice.

Fight the feeling of procrastination. It is the most commonly found habit, common among all small players. Don't settle being small. Go and get what you wish for.

Get up! do it. This is the sign you have been waiting for. This is the right moment to start.

Do it now!

(FYI - There is no afterlife.)

Improvement is just a beginning

Every day brings new choices.

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves. Because the choices we make lead up to real experiences. It is one thing to decide to climb a mountain and quite another to be on top of it.

When it comes to making a choice, words like "tedious" and "complicated" surround our minds. However, it is a really simple area if we try to understand the basic concept of making a choice. It becomes very easy to make a choice when we are clear about what our values are and what we actually want. In my opinion, as far as the purpose of making a choice is "self-improvement" and "self-development", any choice is good. Making the best choice out of available alternatives is what needs consideration. We can start from where we are, with what we have, to be what we want to be by doing what we have to do so that we could do what we want to do.

Most of the people neglect their natural gifts. They ignore their in-born talents with what they are sent into this world, and hoping that they will make an exciting and interesting living, try to get into the race with other people, just to find out it's all the same everywhere. People must understand that there are people everywhere. Various facilities and different methods are not going to change the very fact that ultimately they have to interact with people. It's funny that we are expecting something interestingly different from the people who are also expecting same thing from us. How is that going to change everything?

A person acquires around 80-90 % of the traits from the closest 5 people around him. His thinking pattern and habits are highly influenced by these people. That is why it is very important for you to choose the people around you wisely. If you are thinking that, I am not in a condition to make such choices with the available limited resources and provided circumstances, then let me tell this to you that you have got the power to choose. You have an opportunity to enjoy and cherish the company of greatest people of the world whom you admire and consider successful. Do you want to choose your closest 5 persons out of these successful, enthusiastic and famous people? Yes? You can do one or more of the following things:

1. Watch them online. Observe them. Learn from them. Spend at least 1 hour with them consciously. Listen to their audios.

2. Read their biographies. Again and again. Even 1 chapter a day means spending a week or two with them.

3. If you are not in a position to do any of the above, imagine! Imagine about those people conversing with you. Make their image like God. Imagine how relentlessly they must be doing their job and persevere to achieve their goals. Think about how impeccably simple and modest their behavior is in spite of such a great success. Visualize how they make extraordinary and challenging tasks look convenient and easy. It's a treat to watch them doing their work. Isn't it?It doesn't have to be right when you envision these traits. It doesn't matter what the facts are as long as your purpose is to develop yourself.You just have to deliberately give efforts and make sure that every day you spend maximum time with the people you want to be like. You have a choice to improve your company.

Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.

Now consider this - How many of all successful people did not follow their intuition? How many of them ignored the talents which came naturally to them? Almost none I guess. Imagine Picasso making a sales presentation or Mother Teresa acting in a movie instead of Marilyn Monroe. Isn't that we ought to do the same thing? Should not we find or identify our natural gifts and develop and nurture them?

Trust me! There is struggle in every field. It would be a wise choice to find what we love and then persist in enhancing skills in those areas. Of course there will be ups and downs through the course of time but you will be able to sustain because you love doing it. You will gracefully handle yourself because you have chosen doing this. And in case you have not found out what your natural gift is, you are lucky enough! Swami Vivekananda has said,“If you have aim, concentrate all your energy to achieve it. If don’t, you have the strength of 100 horses lying inside you. You have the potential to achieve anything and everything. Set any goal and get it.”You are free to choose any area to start with and then progress, improving yourself to become an expert at it. If you read one book per month from the area you want to develop yourself in, within next 5 years, you will be among top 5% world experts of that field. Make "continuous improvement" your purpose of life and you will handle the times of turbulence with confidence. You will be in control when money and fame will come to you, out of your continuous efforts, because, then you will be aware that you are still on the way towards excellence and it's just a beginning.

Christianity says:

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Phil 3:14

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Phil 4:13

Stay assured that no matter which field you are choosing to begin with, it will take you all over the places you have always wanted to go, as long as you are committed to improve continuously. If you take a break from improvement, success will take a break from you. It all depends on the choices we make. And behavior is a choice. Make a promise to yourself that until you make "continuous improvement" your behavior, you won't stop. Promise yourself to improve to such an extent that when people think something related to your field, they think about you. Make yourself a brand of your area out of improvement. Everything starts from small. Believe that one step at a time is all we need to take. It's just a beginning. Even each next step is just a beginning.

Make improvement you choice.

Write your history on your own!

Purpose Drives Passion - 2

What is the most important thing in one's life?

Should someone ask this question to me, my one word answer to it would be: "Purpose". In my opinion, everything else is insignificant.

Consider any event, activity or action; if there is no purpose, it seems illogical and futile. In other words, if any action is purposeless, it is pointless doing it. It is like hanging by a rope and moving hands and legs thinking you are flying. What's the sense in doing that? (Of course unless you are shooting for a movie - but then there is a purpose!) If you are interacting with someone, share your purpose for your action. It is the best negotiation tool. And it leads to a win-win situation. This much is the power of a purpose. You take care of the whys of others and they will take care of the hows for you.

The most important action on this planet is living a life. And that is why the most mysterious question for any human ever has been is, "What is the purpose of my life?” There comes a moment in everyone's life when he asks himself this question. There comes a stage when he thinks about why he is born in this world. Even Buddha has said, "Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it."

They say, "Purpose of life is a life of a purpose." I say, "Purpose of action is an action of purpose." If you are dancing for fun, dance and have fun. Focus only on having fun through dancing. Rest is unnecessary and unimportant. Zen philosophy doesn't confuse spirituality with thinking about God while peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel potatoes. If you do this, and I know you can, you don't have to be serious about anything, ever. Then each activity will become enjoyable.

Everything is done with a purpose of achieving a desired goal and we just have to make sure that the goal is to flourish or to excel in our desired fields as well as the happiness of every other individual, regardless of our relationship with them. It's because we are not here from somewhere else. We are here since forever. We are eternal part of this universe. So all we need to do is, as Pablo Picasso has said, "Find your natural gift and then give it away", to make the world happier and peaceful place to live.

How to find a purpose?

I believe, only introspection can help us to find our innermost reasons for living and the simple answer lies within ourselves. Life is a creative process. We have a free will of choosing our ways. If you don't have a concrete purpose right now, and you really want to find it, make one! Any one! Make a resolution, promise yourself to behave patiently and with humility with others and to perform better than your previous performance in every activity.

In my opinion, if you make "habit of improvement" your purpose, you won't need any other purpose for the rest of your life. Once you make "continuous improvement" your purpose for everything you do (Japanese call this "Kaizen"), you will grow in every front of life.

Whether you are leading a project or managing a team, whether you want to learn handling conflicts or improve communication skills, whether you want to learn swimming or singing or dancing or skating or cooking, whether you want to make a lean and muscular physique or want an organized, focused and calm mental state, make "continuous improvement" your only purpose. Say this to yourself every day, "I improve myself at anything and everything I do. And I do it for myself."

Once you make this a habit, you can't get out of this continuous cycle.

First loop of this cycle is a little bigger than the consecutive ones, which repeat itself. This cycle conveys that once improvement becomes your habit, all you need to do is to make a choice and your job is done because you know you improve yourself at everything you do. Now you are so confident that if you take any task on hand, you are going to nail it. Superbly! Now you know you can do everything. You just have to give it a shot.

Start from here and then introspect. Goals should match the state of development of the individual and society. According to Hindu religion, there are four possible aims to human life called "purushartha" (meaning efforts) namely, Kama (wish, desire, love and sensual pleasure), Artha (wealth, prosperity, glory), Dharma (righteousness, duty, morality, virtue, ethics, non-violence, truth) and Moksha (liberation i.e. liberation from the cycle of reincarnation). In short, the goal is to realize the fundamental truth about oneself. Tat-Tvam-Asi (Thou art that) says you are the reason behind all actions. Then why not be a reason for something great?

I believe, a person should be valued on the basis of his values.

Once you take the ownership of your actions, you will attain a great sense of achievement and satisfaction. You will have balanced state of mind with serene calmness even when results fall shorter than expected. And next time you will be better and mature.

Let us choose our action so wisely that this world becomes a habitat of happily living creatures and Mother Nature will bless us with her free flowing love!

Stay Happy!

Purpose drives the Passion

If a man had an option of not getting out of bed, he wouldn’t. Ever!

People spend whole life, innovating like Mr. Steve Jobs or climbing mountains like Mr. Khoo Swee Chiow, skating like Mr. Tony Hawke or gardening like Mr. Roberto Burle Marx or playing guitar like Jimi Hendrix. How could they stick to a single thing for their whole life? Why cannot we follow a single passion for few years!

Very few people have made a remarkable impact in the history of mankind. Those are the people who do what they love, passionately. More importantly, they have their reasons for loving it. Reasons give purpose to the actions. And purpose drives the passion.

We often experience that our mind loses focus if we do the same activity for hours. Man gets bored easily even while doing what he likes to do if there is no purpose connected to it. We need a reason to love doing something.

Father earns to provide his family a good living. We work harder to repay a loan in order to be eligible to borrow another loan!

If we do not find a purpose to live, we stay unsatisfied and do not have any sense of achievement. We must start from where we are right now. Having a desire “to be the best at the task on hand” can be the beginning of a purpose of life. And then eventually we can carve out a path to lead our life towards greatness. Satisfaction of giving best gives us the push. The discipline to the commitment of doing the best we can, to reach at world class level, takes us at the position where we can achieve the unthinkable.

We decide our definition of success.

Getting to the best physical shape and peaceful state of mind can be the starting point. Progressively we can refine our priorities and figure out what we want out of life. How we want to see ourselves when we reach at the final stage of lives. To begin with, we can plan to imagine ourselves with "some" achievements for current year and then sticking to the practices which convert those imaginations into reality.

Remember that unimaginable success is achieved with perseverance and determination. Each success is just a milestone passing by. There is more to go for after each milestone. Discipline to do what is important, Determination to maintain the discipline and dedication to support the determination are the corroborative structures which underpin the set goals.

So let us desire to do outstanding and be extraordinary. Let us settle only with our personal best each time. Let us accomplish what we desire.

Let us play our part with dignity.

Let us spread love, joy and peace and contribute our share to goodness.

Mind your own business

When I interact with someone - What do I observe? What do I feel? What do I think? How do I react or respond?

When people are discussing about actions and events I do not agree with, what is my reaction?

When someone judges a person on the basis of his actions which are socially inappropriate or may be even morally unacceptable, how do I feel?

What should be the standards to judge someone? Or is there even a need of it?

These are the questions which come to my mind when I am surrounded by the opinions of people about other people. Won't that be alright if I just took the learning out of experience and moved ahead to implement that in my actions to pursue my goal?

I have a friend who is a real science-obsessed person. He "loved" and "respected" Einstein. But that lasted only till the time he came to know that Einstein regularly visited harlots.

In another situation, there was a faculty member in an institute who was married when she did her masters in nursing faculty. She was first time pregnant when she did her PhD. She was first in GPSC exam when her second kid was only 1 year old. Students use to guess that may be she bribed to get the first rank in state level government exam and  it was not possible to achieve such feat in given situations. Students spread this message across other students and her achievements stood obscure among them.

My question is, can I learn anything from these experiences?

In first incident, what happened to my friend's perspective?

Einstein's expertise in science used to inspire him. Einstein's visits to harlots had not affected the extraordinary contribution of him to science and technology. But still my friend's perspective got affected by unimportant information. The person who used to inspire him to learn persistently about science and technology was, for him, suddenly transformed into a normal human being. If he could have only learned from his achievements and ignored the information irrelevant to his interest and priorities, how excellent that would have been!

In second incident, what did the students do?

Students had the live example to get inspired from the achievements of their faculty member. They could have asked her for the methods to prepare for the master's and doctorate courses and the entrance exams to get a good government job. They could have discussed and interacted about how to balance the work and personal life responsibilities and achieve goals. But instead they changed that possibly inspiring image into the regular one and unknowingly chose to let go off the chance of lifting themselves up from their routine mediocre habits.

I wonder what I shall achieve if I focus on unnecessary things.

My business is my goal. And my goals are, improving myself, my nation and my society. I have an opportunity to choose to take all the positive attributes from anything or anyone - living or dead, whatever can help me get closer to my goals. All I want to do is look for or rather hunt for the best qualities in the people around me and learn a few of them. If I meet at least 1000 people in a year, and I learn at least 1 good attribute from each one of them, I stand being aware of 1000 good qualities in just one year. I get excited by imagining the extravagant results I can derive if I can get those implemented in my life in 1 year. Additional and greatest advantage is, I now sincerely appreciate those 1000 people on the basis of their endowments. At the end of 1 year, I respect more 1000 people surrounding me. Imagine how beautiful my life will be if I love and honor even 2000 people around me just within 4-5 years.

We get what we celebrate. The attribute we appreciate is the attribute we receive. People choose their response - knowingly or unknowingly. So what we celebrate is what we shall receive.

There is a lot to do in life - for ourselves, for nation, for society. That is why, we must look for the opportunities to get inspired and stay motivated from. That is our business.

Seek and you shall find.

Stay happy! Stay blessed!