Believe. Be. Live.

What if someone spills sugar in your coffee? You can drink it. And what if someone spills cyanide in your coffee? You will die! Now, what if your best friend, by accident, spills cyanide in your coffee? You'll still die! Similarly, we come by both kind of experiences in life, through friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, news, movies, etc. That is why it is very important to watch your coffee. Become your thought-guard. What you take in should be your choice. Because, there will be times when everyone will be around and yet neither counting on you, when odds won't be in your favor, when the wind will be blowing against your face and time will be standing in front of you like a huge mountain- in such times of crisis only, you will need someone to have your back. But remember that struggles of the mind are fought alone. You will have to become your motivator, your guidepost and your light house. You will have to become your compass to stay consistent to your right direction. I believe, the only time of crisis for anyone is when a person doesn't believe in himself.

" If you see Nirvana as somewhere outside the mind, you're deluding yourself. "

                                                                                                                        - Bodhidharma

You'll be doing everything right - making plans, organizing, prioritizing, maintaining discipline with dedication and determination, and yet there won't be visible fruits of your actions. Understand that such times are here to pass by. You have courage to withstand such times of dilemma. You have patience to go through such tough and unpleasant situations. Hang on, or rather keep moving forward. Stay with your plans and you'll become more deserving of your dreams. Besides, will you be really living a life if you'd give up on your dreams? So keep working on yourself and your goals. Remember that you can enjoy the air in your hair when the wind blows against your face, of course, if you are not bald. Live the challenges and don't bother right now about the final goal. Be in this moment and rest will fall in place.

" You're conditioned to be in desperate need of a future. "

                                                                                    - Alan Watts

Focus on this moment. Life is not only success or happiness but it is living in this very moment fully. It doesn't matter whether you feel happy or sad or angry or blissful as long as you are true to yourself in this moment. Trust your soul and live truly. Stay a lifelong learner. Never let your brain settle with a thought pattern. Don't let your thoughts crystallize; keep them fluid. It keeps mind open to new ideas. That is one way to live interestingly.

Let me share an example of out-of-box-thinking - A farmer was much troubled by trespassers during the nutting season. After consulting with a botanical friend, farmer placed notice at conspicuous points. The place was unmolested that year. Notice was - "Trespassers, take warning! All persons entering this wood do so at their own risk, for, although common snakes are not often found, the Corylus Avellana (scientific name of hazel nut plant) abounds everywhere, and never gives warning of its presence."

When you know there is more than one way to handle situations, it is easier to believe in yourself. You just need to put a right message in your mind.

It's time to get out of the shell.

The road is yours. Rise and Shine.

Presence leads to Improvement

Having read "Eat that frog first", a friend said, " I am now convinced that one should first finish up the challenging task and then handle the easier ones." I couldn't help asking him, " How is it not a commonsense?" When I was about 8-9 years old, or rather young, I used to help my mother wipe the floor clean at our home. Naturally, I had ended up at first cleaning the places with difficult approach or access and where things needed to be moved, and then I used to quickly wipe the remaining places clean. I had never given this a thought but that got converted into a habit. And it stayed with me during and after graduation and even after marriage. [ If you know what I mean ;) ] Just kidding!

Anyway, point is, with this habit, one can plan his hour, day, week, month, year and even whole life and get positive results. This increases effectiveness and enthusiasm along with efficiency. Ready tools like Pareto Principle and MoSCoW, which are available online, can be used to learn how to prioritize. You can choose the one that is suitable to you and plan further. It could be the case that even after prioritizing, you end up doing differently. How to improve continuously when you don't have this habit imbibed in you?

Important is, to understand how we work, how human mind works. Let me ask you this - How did German technology reach at such a level of excellence that we now blindly trust it? Or how an improvement tool like "Lean Manufacturing" developed when there was nothing to refer to about Lean Manufacturing? How did an extraordinary medical science called "Ayurveda" come into existence? You see, human mind craves novelty. It's difficult to focus on one task for longer period of time. Look at the children and you will realize this. But answer to the above questions is - this cannot be a result of efforts of few years! It takes decades and decades of commitment, focus, passion, courage and perseverance to stick to what you are doing, and then improving continuously. In India, there is a saying which means - peeling off the skin of a hair. This is used when you want to say that someone has such a nasty habit of asking too many questions for getting more and more details that it ultimately frustrates you. I think this saying is being used unjustifiably. Because the people who question the current situation only can generate the idea for improvement. German technology has evolved because dedicated people have spent their lives to improve a single component or an assembly. Lean manufacturing must have been an outcome of continuous refinement of existing processes. It must have taken painstaking efforts to explore the number of medicinal uses of various herbs for Ayurveda's existence. This is why great people keep saying that improvement is a never-ending process.

To improve, let me suggest a simple idea - Be there. Attend yourself. Attend your activity.

One improves when the mind is 100% present in the moment. You can't stop this from happening if you are 100% there. Mind has to do it. Also, you might agree with me that looking for the problems is also a way of improvement. This is why consultants observe the process when you call them up for improvement. So mind will keep pioneering alternatives. A simple idea can make a huge difference and give you a scope of improvement. Some ideas will come to you when you are focused and some will come when you are at leisure. That is why Einstein used to play violin. You should just keep trying.

Bill Gates has said - " The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency."

What we can take from this is - as long as we are here in this moment, we are fine with the magnification of efficiency or inefficiency. Both cheers us up. Right? After all, our business is improvement.

Let us be here and in now. Let us get better.

And do let me know YOUR improvement stories.

Cheers!