Information – Positive Thinking
The art of keeping cool, 300,000 & 10 cents goal and taxi taxi where are you?
I am happy this evening. There are several reasons behind. First one is the fact that I was able to complete a topic which was supposed to be published a few days before. Although the idea was there in my mind for this long, the flow of thoughts was not there. I was able to post it and email you that yesterday.
The second one was the fighting performance of the Indian Team in the 6th One Day International match at Oval stadium in England. Indian Team played excellent cricket and kept their cool till the last over. Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly played well to give India a good start and took India into to a comfort zone. It was sad to see Tendulkar getting out in the 90s for the second time in this series. Those who play cricket, competitive cricket knows the feeling and hard work required to make those many runs. However, it was Robin Uthappa, who was the hero of the game for India. Not many times, we see players showing the guts to attack at times of crisis and he showed that he has tremendous determination in him. Each of his shots were examples of it. Power, placement and guts. This is what we lacked in the games before and which was there in this game through Uthappa today. Not even for a second, he showed panic in his eyes and throughout it was glowing with optimism and focus. Well done Uthappa. You set the series to a thriller and we all look forward now to the final match of the series at the Lords stadium. I am sure that there is one person who is waiting patiently to play in that game. It is none other than Sreesanth. I feel he will get the opportunity to play in that crucial game. It is also my wish to see many active people within the team than docile ones. It is my gut feeling and I am waiting to see that happen. It’s a place where the ball seems and I am sure he will be able to utilise the situation, keeps his cool and do establish a permanent position in the team if given this opportunity. Saurav Ganguly also deserves extra praise in his determination and fighting spirit. What a come back he has made from his time of elimination to now! With the bat and the ball, he is showing leading examples to all youngsters. In one of the matches, his bowling average at one stage were looking like 7 overs 4 maiden 3 runs and 2 wickets or something like that. Well done, you set the right example to all those who get sidelined at times due to various reasons and remind them that if you stay focussed, victory will be yours. If not today, definitely tomorrow.
300,000 and 10 cents goal
I was writing about the status of Indian Football team members in comparison with the cricketers in my write up of yesterday. Just read that the Kerala government has awarded Rs.300,000 and 10 cents of lands for the striker of Indian team N. Pradeep for his Nehru Cup winning goal in the tournament final. That is a good sign. But it should not remain there. We should promote all other games so that more and more youth get interested to come out and participate in competitive sports.
Taxi, taxi where are you?
The taxi problems and my pursuit to find a solution for Abu Dhabi road users continues…. If you wish to support me in this, log on to Gulf News (http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/letters/letters.html) page and express your own comments. Pass it on to any of your colleagues or friends who is experiencing this situation these days while coming and going to office. If we don’t express our problems, no one will realise it.
God Bless and have a great day,
Ramesh Menon
06092007
Tackling your anger
Anger is a letter short of the word – ‘Danger’. Ask where your anger is coming from. What is it that makes you mad? Try to tackle it at it’s root cause. Recognising situations that spark your fuse can make it easier to avoid or work through them.
Relax
Simple relaxation techniques such as deep breathing and meditating can help calm you down.
Think out-of-the-box
Your thinking becomes confused and exaggerated, when you’re angry. Most situations do not portend the end of the world, so try to put happenings in perspective.
If you slow down, you might find a way to solve the problem. The world is not out to get you, even though it may seem like it.
Thinking logically might not alter the reality of the situation, but may keep your anger from exaggerating the problem.
Solve 
Channelising your anger towards solving the problem or trying to cope with the situation is the way out.
You can’t stop it from raining, but you can open your umbrella and stay dry.
Listen
Listening (though that is the last thing you want to do!) what the other person is as important as getting your point across. In fact you may sound exaggerated, hurtful, or aggressive. Say what you want the other person to hear-they may already know you’re angry. Then, listen carefully to the response.
This will help you stay calm-not to mention you improve your chances of resolving the problem.
Change your environment
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Move out of the milieu you were in. Try indulging yourself in any activity that will give you some time to cool down. A calm, rational mind and body will make better decisions.
Learning to manage and control your anger will surely make you healthier and happier for the rest of your life.
Using Fear To Your Advantage
Using Fear To Your Advantage
Facing your fears can help you achieve successes you never knew were possible
A friend of mine worked for a large Indian telecommunications company. After about six years of working there, he found that the initial excitement had died down and that his learning and growth had plateaued. That was when he received an offer to start up operations of a new entrant. The initial meetings clearly indicated to him that the role would be exciting. In fact, this was just what he was looking out for. There would be many challenges, especially since the company was new. At the same time, there would be tremendous learning.
However, after about three long months of discussions, my friend decided not to accept the offer. The reason he gave me was ‘fear’. He loved the job description but was afraid. He was afraid of stepping out of his comfort zone, of losing himself in unfamiliar territory, and of starting something entirely new. Fear made him flee from a great opportunity.
Fear happens to all of us and most of us normally react in one of two ways. We either flee, wherein we try to run away, or we hide and freeze, where we do not know what to do and are paralysed. These make people let their fears play on their minds and allow them to reach uncontrollable levels — leading to anxiety and pessimism. Like my friend who decided to give up on his opportunity, they continuously tell themselves, “I do not want to take risks. I do not want to do anything that I fear. It does not matter whether I am growing or learning, as long as I am safe in this old place where I have no fear.” But the problem is that, with time, your fears only get worse. You even begin to start fearing things that have absolutely no risks attached to them. You end up losing out on all the great opportunities in life.
How Do We Tackle Fear?
As the lines of a recent television commercial go, ‘at the end of fear, there is success’. The commercial shows two youngsters who are excited by an opportunity to tackle their fear. They react by fighting it, and enjoy every moment of the experience. Can we do this? Yes, of course. Think about adventure parks and horror movies where we pay good money to be scared out of our wits. We find this fear exciting. We deliberately trigger automatic reactions of fear in order to experience the thrill.
Like any other emotion, fear has both positive and negative aspects. Negative fear is debilitating. Positive fear is exhilarating. Life is boring without fear. Successful leaders constantly search for new, risky ventures. They even consciously focus on doing things that other people are afraid to do; go places where others fear to tread. Counteract the discomfort of fear by focusing on the positive side — the learning and the growth that every event generates. See events in a positive light that would give you power to overcome your fears and help you accomplish what you want to do.
People think that fear is paralysing and reduces your potential. Actually, the opposite is true. Fear can generate super-human feats. Have you not heard stories where normal people fought valiantly to save their friends and family from grave danger? Facing fear is empowering for leaders. It gives you strength you never knew you had. Fear is only damaging when you run away and do not confront it.
People avoid fear in order to preserve independence. Fear is only enslaving when someone else is purposefully trying to be fearsome and controlling. But the fear of reality — the possibility of missed opportunities — can motivate you to get to where you want to be. Rather than being afraid about losing security, comfort and predictability, start fearing about losing out on opportunities; start fearing about getting nowhere in life. Be afraid of being mediocre. Be afraid of waking up one morning and saying to yourself: “Why did I waste my life?” Use fear to your advantage. Fears accompany you until the threshold. Beyond that there is no fear, just success.
ON LEADERSHIP: SANGEETH VARGHESE for Business World.
The author is a leadership scholar from the LSE and founder of LeadCap. His book, Decide to Lead: Eight Decisions That Can Make You A Leader, will soon be published by Businessworld. will soon be published by Businessworld. He can be contacted at sangeethv@leadcap.org
Use More To Have More
Use More To Have More
The more you use your abilities, the more you will be able to benefit from them.
We often wonder why people who are already capable are blessed with more, while most others live average lives. How can a Jack Welch also be a successful speaker, author and columnist? And how could Vikram Sarabhai, the father of India’s space programme, simultaneously be a successful physicist, businessman, educationist and statistician? How could he possibly create institutions as diverse as the Indian space research organisation (ISRO) and the Indian institutes of management (IIM)? Are people like Welch and Sarabhai blessed with extraordinary talents, or does something else tip things in their favour?
Human capabilities can be divided into two broad sorts: Obvious capabilities are those that we are conscious about. We exhibit and utilise these every day. Our obvious capabilities are pretty much on display all the time. Or they could be discovered with very little effort. They are embedded in our basic tendencies. For example, from an early age, Bill Gates had always showed a deep interest in computing. When he set up Microsoft with co-founder Paul Allen, Gates knew that his strengths were in computing and that was where he invested his time and money. How a college drop-out used his passion to become the richest man in the world is plainly visible to everyone.
Hidden capabilities are different from obvious capabilities. They can be developed only by wilful determination, requiring some amount of effort before their discovery. To discover your hidden capabilities, you would have to boldly embrace opportunities, even when you are not sure. This requires you to be aware of the new opportunities you are exposed to. By being at the helm of the world’s largest software corporation, Bill Gates was constantly thinking about the future of technology to give his company a competitive edge. That led him to the broader realm of how technology could change the world. His thoughts were no longer limited to emerging technology, but he was now imagining the future. He was constantly building and improving it. He was no longer just a computer geek, but a management guru —evangelising the latest management techniques. A futurist — defining the way things would be. An author — writing about how things are changing and even a world reformer — driving projects that were changing lives for the better.
How can you improve your obvious capabilities and discover hidden capabilities? The basic law regarding your hidden and obvious capabilities is the Law of Use and Possess. According to this law, if you use more, you have more; if you use less, you have less.
Use more to have more: Very simply, the more you exploit opportunities around you, the more you will come across them. If you utilise the immediate, short-term opportunities that you come across rather than wait for that perfect situation, you will receive more long-term opportunities. If you did not start out on the first conquest, you would never have had the opportunity for more. That one initiative told you about your warring capabilities and your leadership qualities; and legions fell before you. If you had instead chosen to stay put and deal with your kingdom, you would never have gone out and made the whole world your kingdom. The more you use your capabilities, the more you reveal about yourself, to yourself.
Use less to have less: You could also choose to destroy your capabilities by running away from situations; by never learning or by never making an effort. You squander away your capabilities — and they are never again able to regain their original shape. The less you use your capabilities, the less you will benefit. Slowly, you will lose all that you had once owned.
As a leader, choose more. When situations demand, face them by investing your capabilities wisely. As you develop them, more doors will open up for you. Only in this way would you improve your existing capabilities and discover more hidden ones.
ON LEADERSHIP: SANGEETH VARGHESE for BUSINESS WORLD
The author is a leadership scholar from the LSE and founder of LeadCap. His book, Decide to Lead: Eight Decisions That Can Make You A Leader, will soon be published by Businessworld. He can be contacted at sangeethv@leadcap.org
Catch Them Young
Piggy banks are for new-borns. And in this jet age, all kids know that money certainly doesn’t grow on trees. On your part, you may have invested in the right options and charted out your short or long-term investment plan, but the benefits that you may reap from making your kids financially aware cannot be quantified in monetary terms.
In fact, in this era of pay cheques, it becomes even more important to make your kids understand the concept of fiscal accountability. After all, it’s you who has to take the ultimate responsibility? That said, making your kids aware about dollar and dimes (in our case rupees and paise) is no miracle.
SundayET spoke to captains of different industries to find out how they have planned to secure the financial future of their kids. Besides encouraging habits such as sharing, understanding the value of money and even charity for the overall development of the child, they highlight a step-by-step journey on how to introduce your child into the financial world….
Budgeting
Although he hates to call Jetlite a budget airline, the habit of budgeting is what Jetlite CEO Gary Kingshott emphasised to his kids. “Budgeting is the first step of sound investment planning. You should know the resources that are available and accordingly you should allocate and spend them,” he says. According to Kingshott, from the very beginning, he inculcated this practice in his kids.
“I did two things. I set up a limit of $100 a month. And I gave them an option that either they can take the whole yearly amount or ask for it per week. In this amount, they had to manage their expenses such as buying presents for their friends, partying or others. This not only gave them a real-life experience about money, buying and selling but also taught them to make their own decisions whether to spend or save or on different things,” he muses.
Kingshott believes that this also generates interest in children and makes them responsible. “But you’ve to play smart. Set the terms of the allowance and make it clear to your children at the outset, otherwise they’ll always find an excuse to ask for some more amount,” he cautions. Today, he feels that the habit of budgeting has helped his children not only to manage their finances but also in their personal lives.
Open an account
Vikas Vasal, director, KPMG India, advises firms on issues which can turn around their fortunes. As a director of one of the world’s leading advisory firm, it’s not easy to miss on the numbers. “Numbers are important for your kids too,” he says. He has two children — seven year-old Chahat and five-year-old Muskan.
“Recently, I opened a bank account for my eldest one. I made her go through the terms and conditions just to make sure that she understands the purpose of opening a bank account. She did make some childish inquiries but that was the purpose of her going through the content. I also made her fill the form and wherever she was at sea, I bailed her out by explaining the financial literature in simple and easy manner,” he says.
Vasal feels that since the child’s account is linked to the parents, you can make sure that your kid deposits a part of his/ her monthly allowance in the bank. “ Later on, you can gradually introduce your child to the entire range of banking services, such as ATM cards, net banking, debit cards and even statements,” he adds. For young adults, Vasal suggests that the parents can set a spending limit for the card and keep a track of the money that the child spends every month.
Mutual fund SIP
An expert on financial matters, Reliance Money CEO Sudip Bandyopadhyay feels that when it comes to teaching your kid the nuances of growing money, there’s no difference between an adult and a child. “To inculcate investment habits in my children, I have introduced them to mutual funds through systematic investment plan (SIP). With micro SIPs available in the market, you can get your child started with an investment of as low as Rs 50 per month,” he says.
According to him, the charm of managing money is exciting for youngsters and seeing the money grow only adds to the confidence of the child. “Your children would be on their feet, literally. Once you get them going, they would start inquiring about any financial product they are exposed to, with you,” asserts Bandyopadhyay.
He believes that making your child invest in SIPs involves a two-pronged approach. “Not only they’ll use their allowances for making investments but it will also help in future if they wish to pursue higher studies,” he adds. Bandyopadhyay feels that you should involve your child as much possible as in the decision-making process.
“For instance, whenever we are planning for holidays, I take suggestions from my children on how can we efficiently budget our travel plan. At the end of the day, your children should realise that they are growing up and are part of the think-tank of their family,” he reasons.
E-banking
Insurance is subject matter of solicitation. And the same stands true if you really want your kids to be financially aware, believes Nitin Chopra, CEO, Bharti-AXA Life Insurance. “You’ve to generate a curiosity among your children so that they ask for details.
Most parents forget that any young adult would love to take on responsibilities, provided you give him space. In my case, from the very start, I made sure that my daughter, Vidita, was aware of my financial transactions. And in this Internet age, I made sure that she learnt almost everything about banking on the Net. Today, she advises me when it comes to handling accounts,” he laughs.
Chopra feels that today parents don’t have enough time for their kids. But taking out some time and imparting the right lessons can help in shaping their future in a much better way. “I went along with my daughter to the US at the time of her college admissions but she needed little help from me.
She was confident and filed all the papers, including opening an account, all by herself,” he remembers. According to Chopra, ‘e-banking’ is the future and if kids have a basic understanding, it will help them in the long run. “Today, you can do anything and everything on the net and if you are comfortable with it nothing is better,” he adds.
Money games
He may be dictating terms to his subordinates on how to bargain in the wholesale market while sourcing fruits and vegetables for Food Bazaar outlets, but when it comes to educating his kids, Pantaloon Retail Food Business CEO Arvind Chaudhary believes that playing money games is the best way to teach the secrets of a good deal.
Now be it the game of monopoly or learning the bulls and bears of the stock market over the Internet, “I encourage them to play lot of money games. They really help sharpen their mind and bargaining skills,” says Chaudhary. The Chaudhary family, in fact, assesses every family member on the last weekend of a month on how efficiently he/ she bargained for goods. “Negotiating ability should be inculcated in a child right from the beginning. It gives them a broad picture about the importance of money,” he feels.
Chaudhary also tries to involves his children in daily financial matters. “If I am making some payments through cheque, I ask them to cross-check whether I have filled up all the relevant details. Similarly, I ask them to keep a track of the due date of an insurance premium,” he reveals. Chaudhary believes playing stock games over the Internet has made his children more aware of how actually the stock market operates and this will help them in future.
The Practical Side of Leadership
Leadership as you see it:
Leadership, at the end of the day, boils down to taking the right decision at the right time. A leader needs to set the direction, get buy-in from the team, and then align the company to achieve the goals. Helping set the balance between short-term and long-term goals, between achieving day-to-day numbers and teamwork is also important.
In addition to leading the team, it is important to have skills in change management, have a more participative style of management and being able to build relationships at all levels. You have short-term and long-term relationships; you have strategic and operational relationships. A leader should be able to identify and manage each one of them. I learnt how to juggle between short-term and long-term relationships, between managing our growth goals, and also investing in long-term and high impact projects like Shiksha for school education and Bhasha for enabling technology in major local languages. One needs to have leadership at various levels — operational and strategic. Operational leadership is about here and now. It is about producing short-term results that are visible. Strategic leadership is broader and is more at a change level. An organisation requires both of these.
Leadership in the US and India:
In my experience, I have noticed US companies focusing a lot more on the excellence of their middle management. Middle management is the layer that ensures operational excellence — the visible results that we were talking about. The top management formulates the vision, sets the direction with clear goals, and helps drive change. Mid-management operationalises the vision and makes the changes a practical reality. People at this level tend to have been in the company for a long time compared to junior management, who are relatively new, and hence the mid-managers tend to get taken for granted. They can get jaded and demotivated easily. It is very important that any organisation focus on them and make them effective.
Another observation I have made is that, in India, we don’t tend to differentiate between types of leaders themselves. Most of the time we rely on people who have already done well in large organisations to drive incubations or start-ups. But this will not always work. Running and producing results in an already established company is a different ball game compared to starting up a new entity or division. One needs the right type of people for the right type of job. The right type of leader can determine the difference between success and failure.
Leadership style:
I demand excellence, I demand stretch results. I am very involved with my team, whether it is a three member team or a 300-member team.
How do you demand excellence? There are two ways. Giving the team highly challenging assignments and goals is one way. Another way is to take a small number of good people and give them really crazy assignments. Give them a very tough and nasty job. There is a risk in the second method that I will lose some of them in the process. But I will definitely get to stretch and derive excellence from the rest. This produces great leaders. Both approaches work well.
I have a high amount of humility, focus on team building and focus a lot on communicating and reaching out to all levels in the organisation.
The excitement of being a leader:
The fulfilment and satisfaction derived from the hard work, the frustrations and the challenges, the success and, eventually, seeing your team and institution grow and create a broad impact, is tremendous. Being a leader in tough, challenging situations brings out the best in me. You give me a choice of assignments and I will gravitate towards the one in which I will learn the most, usually the toughest. This definitely brings many challenges. But I, for one, would rather die trying than not try to make the impossible possible. I will do things that I have not done before. I will go to places where I have not gone before. You give me the charge of a $1 billion company and ask me to grow it to $1.5 billion in the next 5 years. No doubt it has its own challenges, but I will not find that as exciting, as the things are mostly in place. But give me a company with lots of problems — operational, cultural, strategic — I will take it; for the learning, for the challenges.
Development of a vision:
When the company (Microsoft) decided to back me up for Project Shiksha in 2002, we were struggling as to what to do in the educational field. Some team members from Redmond were conducting focus groups to understand the needs better. As I went through the results, I realised there was a big gap in what was required in India and what was being done. That helped me formulate our vision for Shiksha — seeing a better future for India and then betting on it. The idea for Project Bhasha came up while Bill Gates was visiting India for the first time in 1997. We were passionate about a software localisation programme. People were really apprehensive about making software in Hindi. But Bill Gates could see our vision and, according to him, Microsoft is not here in India to serve just the creamy 2-3 per cent. We need to be broadbased and reach out to more people. Once that was agreed, I wanted to do all languages — 14 of them. I tried selling it to the headquarters and they thought I was crazy. But at the same time they saw the passion and agreed. So, vision is really about seeing the shape of the future and betting on it. It is also about keeping your ear close to the ground and watching out for early trends.
Handling the change agents of technology and leadership:
I love technology. I use technology as a great tool to help me lead from anywhere, anytime and at all levels, help me respond rapidly to our customers, partners and my team.
I am very adaptable and a quick learner. Throw me into a new environment and I learn quickly and ramp up fast. I am also highly optimistic and can see the positive opportunities in most situations. These qualities help a long way when dealing with change.
Author: Rajiv Kaul (for Business World)
Rajiv Kaul became the managing director of Microsoft India when he was just 31, at an age when most of his peers were in middle management positions. At Microsoft he saw the dot com boom and the subsequent bust. He also conceptualised and implemented projects like Shiksha and Bhasha, which continue to have a high impact on Microsoft’s future. In his last assignment at Microsoft, Rajiv was at the software giant’s Redmond headquarters leading the emerging markets group. Currently Rajiv is excited about his new move, as a partner in Actis, a leading private equity investor in emerging markets. Rajiv looks forward to using his skills and knowledge in each of the regions that Actis operates.
It’s sillier to upset yourself by yourself
It’s sillier to upset yourself by yourself
1 Sep, 2007, 0019 hrs IST,Vithal C Nadkarni , TNN
There is someone who knows and understands your every thought and feeling,” says an SMS doing the rounds of mobile networks.
“This is someone who understands your pleasures and pain, the joys and the sorrow, who perceives your deepest needs and longings of your heart.” No prizes for guessing who this can be: It’s you and you alone who’s privy to all your thoughts and innermost feelings. Remember that the next time you feel overwhelmed in the essentially lonely battle of life. For no matter how much you care and however much you try to reach out to those whom you love (or even hate) across your somatic barrier, you and your inner ‘skull cinema’ remain strictly out of bounds to the world.
No matter what psychics tell you, no one else can get in there. ‘You’ as a self-conscious voice trapped inside your skull-tower are born alone and die alone. That doesn’t mean you’re destined to feel desperately lonely and unhappy. Being alone inside ourselves is the reality we share with everyone else. Existentially, we are all in the same soup: but the key to your deliverance from self-perceived alienation lies in your hands.
This was something the Greek philosopher Epictetus pointed out two thousand years ago from a different angle: you do have the power to change and control yourself to a remarkable extent. What you don’t have is similar power to control the behaviour of others (we aren’t talking about fatwas or political diktats). “No matter how wisely you may counsel people, they remain independent entities and may — and indeed have the right as individuals — to ignore you completely,” says the late Albert Ellis, founder of Rational emotive Behavioural Therapy (REBT), in Accepting Reality.
“If, therefore, you get unduly aroused over the way others act, instead of paying closer attention to how you respond to their actions, you upset yourself over an event that is beyond your control. This seems akin to tearing your hair because a jockey, a prizefighter, or actor does not perform the way you would like. Very silly business indeed!”
Conversely, it’s sillier to upset yourself by yourself, since you do have control in the way you behave and the things you do. Thus, says Dr Ellis, by the proper cultivation of your emotional garden, the most harrowing things that happen will not perturb you too much. As the Bhagvad Gita says, Atmevah atmano bandhu (you alone are your own brother).
Waste not, want not
Waste not, want not
Gulf News/Published: September 01, 2007, 23:35
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. The call to the public made by municipalities and others concerned with refuse disposal. But it is no longer such bodies alone, as environmentalists are now keen to see an end to the profligate wastage that occurs, more often than not resulting in harming the environment. This is especially true when it comes to disposing of electronic consumer durables like computers, mobile phones and similar such products.
Many modern-day electronic items contain chemicals that are difficult, if not harmful to dispose of, unless by professionals who are aware of the correct procedure. This is why there are an increasing number of locations where proper discard of unwanted items can take place. The Dubai Municipality has set up areas where old computer terminals and monitors can be dropped off, for recycling by their experts, if possible, and reuse, most often by some needy charity. There are also facilities in Dubai where mobile phones can be similarly discarded, knowing that in their disposal they will cause least harm to the environment.
All it needs now is for members of the public to get into the habit of using these facilities, rather than finding excuses why they should not.
You are destined to have free will!
People spend more time arguing about whether they are driven by destiny or acting out of freewill than doing what they should do. They forget that they waste their time of their own accord, their own sweet free will!
There is no such thing as future. Future does not exist till you create it in your present moment, here and now. We all waste our time regretting or savouring what happened in the past and speculating about what would like in the future. Neither is of any productive value. There is nothing we can do about the past, it is gone; it is history.
There is nothing that you can do thinking about the future; you have to act now to make your future. Your future is in your hands, and your hands only. Trying to fashion your future based on past experiences is like driving car looking at the rear view mirror. All you will meet is disaster!
We are comfortable being told that we are destined to do certain things. We are relieved when we learn that our sins and problems are because of our past karma, because then we can disown responsibility.
Be very clear, there is no such thing as karma, the way you understand it. Your unfulfilled desires shape your actions and this is karma. As of now your future is driven by your fantasies, your unfulfilled desires, and what you do not have. When the product arrives, you ask, who ordered this, not I!
Start being comfortable with what you have. Enjoy what you have acquired instead of hankering after what you do not have. Spirituality is not about renouncing in the sense of what you understand. There is nothing that you have now that you need to renounce. Nothing at all. Just renounce what you do not have, your fantasies. You will see your life change in front of your eyes.
When you focus on enjoying what you have now, you will have to focus on the present instead of wasting time speculating and regretting. Your entire mindset will be on action. Because this action is not tinged with regret and speculation, you will automatically fall into what Krishna refers to in the Bhagwad Gita as the action without expectation.
When you learn to stay in the present, your freewill destines you to be a true Yogi, one who is truly uniting material and spiritual life. You will be in eternal bliss.
O God, I’m so sorry
O God, I’m so sorry
K. Khuptongs / HINDUSTAN TIMES New Delhi, August 31, 2007
This year could be my luckiest year, passing out from university and enlarging my circle of friends like never before.
But this week I have committed such a big blunder unknowingly that I have to share my feelings with you in Inner Voice.
It is amazing how life exists outside education.
Recently, I happened to meet my childhood friend after ten years. From that day on we rebuilt our friendship steadily. We went out and enjoyed ourselves, we chatted and gossiped about our past school life.
I came to know that both her parents had passed away three years ago, which really touched me. Though such a sad thing had happened to her, she was still trying hard not to give in, giving all her effort to smile and enjoy life.
She promised me a gift from home for Raksha Bandhan day. I restlessly waited three days for the D-day. But I was surprised on Tuesday by her reaction. I argued about this and that most of the time but there was no sign of argument on her side. Instead she said she would treat me to dinner, overlooking my inability to treat.
So we had a heavenly dinner outside, really filled our stomachs and got back each to our place. I called her to thank her for the dinner. But she sounded a bit different on the phone, as if she was weeping. It was only then that she told me that it was her mom’s death anniversary.
O GOD. Had I known earlier, I would have reacted to show my care instead of joking and arguing. She really did try to act strong but obviously needed some friendly company, which is why she asked me to have dinner with her.
God, I am really sorry. I did not know. How could I know? How does one guess these things? I wish I had been nice to my friend when she was missing her mother. Please help me be kind always, for who knows what pain someone is hiding?
ClicksandWrites 
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