25 posts tagged “inspirational”

Responsibility is the most vital thing ….but this has to be looked holistically....not just for namesake!

In our lives we claim responsibility for anything good that happens, but we don’t take responsibility for anything bad that happens. Only if we take up responsibility for everything that happens in our lives will we start growing.

As Great philosopher, Swami Vivekananda once said: “Take as much responsibility as you can shoulder. The more responsibility you take, the more you expand. Expansion is the only growth; without expansion, you will contract and die.”

Here let me share a little story which i read recently....it goes like this....

Once a man was giving a talk on Responsibility at the Charity Club. He gave an example of what happened a few days earlier. He said, “A friend and I were walking down the street towards the park when we saw a helpless man lying unconscious on the road.” He paused and looked at the concerned faces of the audience.

Then he continued, “Nobody had bothered to help him. Not only that, when we came back after our walk, the poor man was still lying there!” It never occurred to the man that he could help! Instead of blaming others, let us look into ourselves and see what we are doing to solve the problem! We always find fault with others. But how many times do we ourselves do something to address the issue?

Understand: when we declare that we will do whatever we can for people, when we stand up with responsibility, we expand and the divine energy flows through us.

Can air flow through a blocked bamboo? No! A blocked bamboo will only help carry a corpse to the graveyard. The same bamboo will become a flute when it is hollowed out! As long as you are self-centred, you will serve like the blocked bamboo. When you are free from ego and stand up with responsibility, the expansion happens and you become like the bamboo flute. Then, just as the air that enters the bamboo leaves it as music, so, too, will the air that enters you flow through you as energy, and things will happen through you!

If you feel responsible for whatever is happening around you, you start transforming your life and others’ lives. Responsibility is one of the ways to consciously grow. You only need to do two things: trust that life is good and know that you can expand to the responsibilities that you take up.

Most of us wait for the status to come in order to take up the responsibility. Be very clear, it never works that way. Only if you take up responsibility will the status come. The more responsibility you take up, the more you grow. Only when you feel responsible for all that is happening around you do you become a leader. Until then you are just a follower. Be blissful!

Finally wait is over…sigh! I can confirm for myself now that I’ll not be going to B-school this year!

Alas! as per the results list,  my name was missing! It dethroned my fate of MBA admission into the Top 6^th best B-school in India… at least for this year but I’m not regretful for that.

Definitely, it doesn’t sent me into fits of despondency!..seriously thats not the school i aimed at...but I was aspired for the Best School : IIMA or IIMC…certainly not for this…YES, I feel I’m a capable  guy to get into these two institutes.. But again for that I have to cross the big hurdle called …CAT (it’s a likely Tiger mind you!)   That's exactly am gonna do it:)

Right now, i'm recalling Walter D. Wintle's inspirational poem …absolutely awe-inspiring!

The Man Who Thinks He Can

If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you like to win, but you think you can’t.

 It is almost certain you won't.
If you think you'll lose, you've lost,
For out in the world we find success begins with a fellow's will.

It's all in the state of mind. If you think you are outclassed, you are.
You've got to think high to rise.
You've got to be sure of yourself before you can even win a prize.
Life's battles don't always go To the stronger or faster man
But soon or late the man who wins is the man who thinks he can
-Walter D. Wintle

Nevertheless, my task is cutout…like The Conquistador Hernando Cortés in the past…where in order to eliminate any ideas of retreat, Cortés burned his own troop’s ships….Man…He did have balls! (no punK)….well, anyway that’s shows the hungry for a WIN over enemy that clearly depicts in his every instinct… absolutely when you know what you really worth then its you the one who got to go there and get what you deserve!

No Question about it….YOU GOT TO WIN! badly....YES, VOUS AVEZ à GAGNER!

Oops!...you know I was missing my French lesson from many days…L but again I was seriously busy in the office with presentations stuff!

It seems like I’ll continue French whenever I find little time and moreover I’ll make it as my relaxation stopJ

Au revoir!

On sunday, as usual i went to write my mock test...at the same center which is a convent school. There i found a boy who is just 7 to 8yrs of old and writing something seriously on the paper...believeme, after reading it completely... i'm just stunned! absolutely that boy writing something very great...yeah, he was writing about the success!  he is explaining how simple success can be... so thought to share the same thing on my vox:)

Here he says....

The Extra Effort…! Absolutely, I just need little more extra effort which definitely ensures my dream for sureJ . Thanks to my buddy for sending this excellent link which I posted here.  I’m recharged! I know my goal is very hard but you know it’s completely ok it might take lot of efforts, why not after all my dream is one of the greatest dream so its worth it and it gonna be one of the greatest achievement in my career.  So, I’m ready to put my extra effortJ

Baz Luhrmann - Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)

Baz Luhrmann

 ....

Just one word i have...WOW! 

Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '99: Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.

I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh never mind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.

You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4:00 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing everyday that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts; don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead; sometimes you’re behind; the race is long, and in the end it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive; forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters; throw away your old bank statements.

The Billionaire Broker: The Early Years of Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab always had difficulty in school, but he never knew why. Today, he has become one of the most famous – and successful – dyslexics in the world. From using comic books to help him pass English literature classes to heading up the largest discount brokerage in the U.S., Schwab’s current fortune of $5.5 billion ranks him as the 57th richest person in the country.

Charles Robert Schwab, Jr. was born on July 29, 1937 in Sacramento, California. His childhood was a difficult one, with his small-town lawyer father constantly turning family dinner conversations into talks about “how limited resources were.” As a result, Schwab was put to work early on. “I did as much as I could: raising chickens, pushing an ice-cream cart, bagging walnuts, driving a tractor on a beet farm, working on the railroad,” he says. “I think this eclectic career helped me a lot in life.”

Schwab went to school in Woodland, where he quickly discovered he had a problem. He could not read or understand English as well as the rest of the students. Knowing little about dyslexia at the time, Schwab’s teachers simply thought he was a slow student. He did not tell anyone about his problem for years to come, but he knew he would have to work hard to overcome it. He turned to the Classic Comic Book versions of the likes of “Ivanhoe” and “A Tale of Two Cities” to help him through his reading assignments.

“I bluffed my way through much of it, I’m sure,” says Schwab. “Fortunately, I have a pretty ‘up’ personality, and that helped me all the way through. I tried hard and I had pretty good communication skills, so I could persuade my teachers that I was a pretty good kid.”

After graduating from high school in 1959, Schwab was accepted into Stanford University, thanks in large part to his high grades in economics and his strong golf game. There, he earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA. All the while, however, he continued to suffer from dyslexia. As a freshman, Schwab admits to having been “completely buried,” and he failed both French and English. “To sit down with a blank piece of paper and write was the most traumatic thing that had ever faced me in life,” he says. “I had ideas in my head, but I could not get the stuff down. It was a crushing time.”

As a result, Schwab finally turned to economics; numbers were the one thing he could understand. “I never perceived of myself as stupid; I can’t explain why,” he says. “I just thought that if I worked harder, maybe something would happen.”

After receiving his MBA, Schwab became a mutual fund manager and excelled. But a few years in, he was craving for more. In 1963, Schwab launched Investment Indicator with two other partners. It was an investment advisory newsletter that quickly grew to have over 3,000 subscribers. At a cost of $84 per annual subscription, Schwab was making a handsome income on the side. But still, he wanted more.

Finding Success in Stocks: Schwab Launches His Company

 Schwab was ten years into his career when he decided to venture off onto his own and start his own company. He had a vision for a business that would shatter the investing world. Schwab wanted to break down the barriers to Wall Street and make it easier for the average American to invest. How could he do that? Schwab had figured out how to lower the fees for buying and selling stock.

Schwab approached his uncle Bill, a fellow entrepreneur, who agreed to finance his nephew’s dreams. With a $100,000 loan, Schwab founded First Commander Corporation, whose philosophy was that the stock market should be open and accessible to everyone. After its first two successful years in business, Schwab bought out his partners, assumed all of the company’s debt, and changed its name to Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.

The young company quickly began to make a name for itself, especially in 1974, when the SEC initiated a 13-month trial period for the deregulation of certain brokerage transactions. While other brokers were using the time to raise commissions, Schwab decided to go the opposite route. He would create a discount brokerage firm. When the trial period was over, the SEC officially approved negotiated commissions, and the discount brokerage industry was born.

With that, Schwab branched out of San Francisco and opened an office in Sacramento. Advertisements began running across the country, portraying Schwab as a working class broker. By 1979, the company boasted over 33,000 customers. From there, Schwab began to introduce new features, including a 24-hour weekday quote service, and a state of the art computer system.

In 1981, Schwab made two prominent acquisitions and opened its first office in Manhattan. Two years later, the company was bought by the Bank of America for $57 million and celebrated its 500,000th customer account. Schwab continued to improve its services with the introduction of new online products like The Equalizer, and the touch-tone quote system SchwabQuotes. But in 1987, Schwab managed to buy back his company for $280 million and promptly went public. Its IPO of eight million shares sold for $16.50 each.

By 1994, Schwab had reached over $1 billion in revenues and $100 billion in customer assets. Its further growth was the result of an early focus on online technologies. Schwab launched Internet trading in 1996, and in just two years, it had gained over 1.8 million online accounts.

The collapse of the market would hit Schwab hard. Between 2000 and 2002, profits fell from $718 million to $109 million. In response, the company, which was under different management then, cut some 6,500 jobs. Then, after it did not bounce back as expected, the company called back its founder.

In 2004, Schwab returned as CEO to the company he had founded. Schwab hired outside consultants to assess the situation. After agreeing with their findings, he decided to cut $600 million in expenses and another 2,000 jobs. He also reduced fees and commissions, and closed down divisions that diverted attention away from the company’s original goal of serving individual investors. International offices were also closed.

Schwab wanted his company to shift away from being solely dependent on commissions to being a full-service broker. “We brought prices down, down, down so they are now essentially commodities,” says Schwab. “So if we want to succeed in this business, we have to move in a direction of adding other value to the relationship with our clients. And so where I might have said 15 years ago, 'We want to be the best discount brokerage,' today I want to be the best 'relationship company' in financial services.”

The company bounced back. Client assets rose from $942 billion in 2004 to $1.2 trillion just two years later. And now, Schwab wants to do it all again.

Can You Evaluate Your Own Abilities?...omg! its undoubtedly one of the toughest question to answer and also one of the hardest thing to implement in real life...isn't it?

A Cornell psychologist explains why it’s almost impossible to judge your own competence -- and how to overcome the blind spots

• Employee Engagement
• Performance Management

A GMJ Q&A with David Dunning, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Cornell University

Here it goes....

How good of a driver are you? Pretty good? Pretty great? Maybe the next Jeff Gordon, if you only had some training and a jumped-up Chevy? Well, perhaps -- but probably not, and you'll probably never know.

It's difficult, almost impossible, for us to accurately evaluate our competencies. So says David Dunning, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Cornell University and author of several books and papers on accuracy and illusion in human judgment.

Dr. Dunning focuses on the difference between people's perceptions of their abilities and reality -- a gap that can make all the difference in business. Why? Because our own incompetencies blind us to our incompetence. Employees are often asked to tackle something new at work; some will excel while others will fail. Is there a way to predict that failure in advance and avoid it? Furthermore, decision makers must have confidence in their fundamental ability to do their job, but when that confidence is misplaced, even once, the whole organization can suffer. Most business missteps and mistakes are essentially errors in judgment of judgment.

There are ways, however, to objectively evaluate your competence before you fall on your face. In this interview, Dr. Dunning discusses how to work around blind spots, how to make critiques more effective, and what to do when a coworker fails to accurately assess his or her competence.

GMJ: Why do people tend to overestimate their abilities?

Dr. Dunning: There are many, many reasons. The first is the spin we tend to give the feedback we receive about ourselves from the outside world. That is, we claim credit for our successes and lay blame for our failures elsewhere. Second, what people tell you to your face is never exactly what they're saying behind your back. That will give you an inaccurate idea of your abilities. And finally, people just don't have all the information they need to be able to see themselves accurately, and what they miss tends to leave them overconfident.

When we're incompetent, we're not often in a position to recognize that incompetence. Often we make errors of omission because we're not aware of how we could have done a task in a better or a different way. But because we are unaware of these alternatives, we think instead that we've done just fine.

So there are just a whole host of reasons why people generally, but not always, are left with a sense of confidence that may not be justified.

GMJ: There's a lot of research into gender differences in self-appraisal of competence. For example, some research shows that men tend to overrate and women under-rate their ability to pick stocks. Both views are inaccurate, though. Is that same gender dichotomy true in other aspects?

Dunning: No. At least in American culture, you find that both genders tend to be overconfident, but the tendency will differ depending on what area of life you're talking about. So it may be true that men are overconfident about their ability to pick stocks, but if you move to, say, knowledge about literature or aesthetics, the gender difference may go away or reverse.

If you take a look at teenage kids, boys will be more positive and overconfident in their ability to deal with science than girls are. But if you move to English, that gender bias goes away. In the North American culture, if there's going to be a bias that people on average tend to have, it's to be overconfident, though that obviously doesn't happen all the time. And that's not necessarily true in other cultures.

GMJ: What's the danger of being overconfident? What's wrong with being wrong?

Dunning: There are some areas where it could be right to be wrong, but I think we all can easily imagine areas where overconfidence can certainly get you into trouble. I wouldn't want to be an overconfident gambler. I wouldn't want to be an overconfident airplane pilot. I wouldn't want to be a doctor who doesn't know when he or she has to call in a specialist for a consult.

There are a number of areas where overplaying your expertise can have bad effects for you and the people around you. Now there might be some areas, and I think this is under explored in psychology, where being overconfident and being unrealistic may actually be helpful. Those areas tend to be where people are facing the extremes of life -- like you're putting your life together after your country has gone through a civil war, or you're facing a cancer diagnosis.

GMJ: Shelley Taylor [a professor of social psychology at UCLA] recently won the Clifton Strengths Prize for, among other things, researching just that -- she studied breast cancer patients and found that positive illusions are enormously therapeutic.

Dunning: That's right. I think the way to think about psychology is that everything is true -- but only in its specific context. So my take is that there are areas where overconfidence may be helpful. Something that energizes you, even if it's unrealistic, would be good for you in a difficult situation.

On the flipside, though, there are other contexts or situations where the exact same tendency is not something you want to display. I would not want to be a person with foremost confidence in my poker ability going up against a professional like Gus Hansen, for example. That's a situation where you're much more likely to be dead money than a winner. The consequences of overconfidence do depend on the exact situation or the exact task you're facing.

GMJ: People need to accurately judge their abilities, sometimes more than others, as you said. How can you figure out what you can't figure out?

Dunning: One of the pet phrases I have is "The road to self-insight runs through other people." Other people can often give us invaluable feedback that can really correct an illusion that we're suffering from.

One of my favorite, but most chilling, findings is from a study that surveyed surgical residents. They were asked about their surgical skills, and then they were given the standardized board exam. The residents' views of their skills didn't predict at all how well they did on the exam. But the impressions of their peers and their supervisors strongly predicted how well they did. Thus, there are times when what other people think of you can be an invaluable source of what you need to work on and what you're already good at.

And it can happen in different ways -- you don't always necessarily need formal feedback. If you just observe other people and see how they handle situations that you come across as well, you can more accurately judge your own skill in that situation. It's called benchmarking. I mean, it's no secret. Often you find different or better ways to deal with situations that you just hadn't thought of.

As I mentioned, people can't be expected to be aware of their errors of omission. But if you see how other people handle the same situation, it may clue you in to things that you didn't know you didn't know. And that can make you more accurate about yourself and more competent.

GMJ: Are there other ways to become better at self-evaluation?

Dunning: You can self-test, though it's easier to do it in some areas than others. When you're doing a task, evaluate yourself, and then try to get an evaluation from some outside source just to see if your evaluation agrees with more objective evaluations from the outside world.

One interesting thing for organizations to consider is, when employees are being trained, such as in technical skills, give them tests to evaluate their progress, but also have them estimate how well they did on the test. That may go a long way to alerting people to deficits that they didn't know that they had -- both in their skills and their ability to judge those skills.

You really do need some outside agent to point out that you have a deficit that you weren't aware of. You can't depend on your own devices; you really do have to seek help to get a better, accurate image of where your shortcomings lay.

GMJ: When you critique others, particularly people who work for you or maybe even peers, what do you do? Do you give an accurate critique or a tactful one?

Dunning: Giving feedback is a tricky business, and nearly 40% of feedback programs actually demotivate people. There is a skill to be learned here, and there are two things we can do to give feedback that's motivating, accurate, and tactful. The first thing is to give feedback that is concrete, as opposed to feedback that's about the person's character. You want to talk at the behavioral level. Feedback should not feel like a character attack, but rather a helpful suggestion. The other thing is to not only point out the bad, but point out the good, at a behavioral level.

So when you give people feedback, give them feedback that's both positive and negative. If all the feedback is just negative, negative, negative, they might develop some psychic calluses against that feedback.

The last thing I would mention, though, is that feedback becomes more risky and the consequences are higher if you receive it only rarely. Instead, to the extent that feedback is a small event that happens frequently, every piece of feedback carries less of a threat. You don't want managers and employees to be giving everybody feedback every five minutes, but giving feedback often and in small doses removes or reduces the threat level associated with it. You might want to spend more time with employees, giving them explicit goals for the week, the month, and the year.

GMJ: Because everybody hates annual reviews, right?

Dunning: Oh, everybody hates reviews -- giving as well as receiving them. And that creates a problem that managers have to avoid, which is waiting until you're angry to give the feedback you really want to give.

Think of what it's like to hear feedback from an angry person. Why on earth would a person listen to you when you're yelling at him? You're a crazy person; you are not giving objective feedback. One of the reasons to give feedback in frequent small doses is so you're not waiting until you blow.

GMJ: How do you measure improvement in subjective areas? How can you tell whether you're getting better at things like social situations or thinking creatively?

Dunning: That's a very good point, because social situations are subject to a lot of nuance. Those are inherently difficult areas to judge yourself, but even a little feedback can be tremendously helpful. And so even in these difficult situations -- and they are difficult, and people should just recognize that they're difficult -- getting outside feedback can still be very, very helpful.

Ninety-five times out of one hundred, seeking outside sources of feedback probably is going to be more helpful than confusing. Now, mind you, it's not going to work in all instances, but over the long term with a lot of people, it will be helpful. Even though it's stressful to go through, it can be some of the most useful information that we ever receive.

Nothing is ever going to be a panacea that works perfectly in all subjective circumstances. But we have things that can, even in the face of all that, make us better and make our situation better.

GMJ: How should you deal with someone who has gravely overestimated his or her own abilities and made a horrible mistake?

Dunning: Avoid something that can be read as a character attack. We're all prone to see a character attack -- that's a human tendency -- even if none is meant. You want to talk about the specific behavior, the specific consequences it created, and then point out, unless you're firing them, what they can do differently in the future. Suggest a way of improvement or a way of repair.

Some mistakes are so big that the person has to be fired; there's just no way around it. But if you're going to keep the person on, don't wander into character attack, especially if there's an angry undertone to your voice. I think the thing that you want to do is be concrete and behavioral as opposed to, "My God, you really screwed up big, didn't you?" That just won't do.

-- Interviewed by Jennifer Robison

This is one of the beautiful piece of writing which shared by one of my friend with me on the other day…..

It’s really worth reading…

I salute all those brave souls who have gone through the same what this letter is going to say:-

Here it goes…

 
Abraham Lincoln's letter to his son's teacher----------------------------------------------------

He will have to learn, I know, that all men are not just, all men are not true. But teach him also that for every scoundrel there is a hero; that for every selfish Politician, there is a dedicated leader... Teach him for every enemy there is a friend, Steer him away from envy, if you can, teach him the secret of quiet laughter. Let him learn early that the bullies are the easiest to lick... Teach him, if you can the wonder of books... But also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun, and the flowers on a green hillside. In the school teach him it is far honourable to fail than to cheat... Teach him to have faith in his own ideas, even if everyone tells him they are wrong... Teach him to be gentle with gentle people, and tough with the tough. Try to give my son the strength not to follow the crowd when everyone is getting on the band wagon... Teach him to listen to all men... but teach him also to filter all he hears on a screen of truth, and take only the good that comes through. Teach him if you can, how to laugh when he is sad... Teach him there is no shame in tears, Teach him to scoff at cynics and to beware of too much sweetness... Teach him to sell his brawn and brain to the highest bidders but never to put a price-tag on his heart and soul. Teach him to close his ears to a howling mob and to stand and fight if he thinks he's right. Treat him gently, but do not cuddle him, because only the test of fire makes fine steel. Let him have the courage to be impatient... let him have the patience to be brave. Teach him always to have sublime faith in himself, because then he will have sublime faith in mankind. This is a big order, but see what you can do... He is such a fine fellow, my son!

‘Second Chance'

           If i might have a second chance to live the day's once more. 

And rectify mistakes i made to even up the score. 

If i might have a second chance  to use the knowledge gained, 

perhaps i might become at last as fine as God ordained. 

But though i can't retrace my steps, however stands the score, 

tomorrow brings another chance for me to try once more. 

Yes, I Can Do It.

I'll Win For Sure.

© naresh

'BURN your boat. Chuck your parachute. Only then can you move forward', says Dan Ariely in his new book Predictably Irrational. Taking potshots at our tendency of keeping options open to minimise risks and optimise success, Ariely recommends peremptory action like that of Xiang Wu. The legendary Chinese General took his troops across the Yangtze into enemy territory and performed an experiment in decision-making. He crushed the troops’ cooking pots and burned their boats. Blocking your escape, he told the disbelieving (and disgruntled) troops, was done to help them to focus completely on the present goal of moving forward, to capture enemy territory. With nothing to lose except their lives or shirts (or both), the soldiers fought like never before and the General was completely vindicated in his defiance of ‘cover-your-base’ survivalist strategies.
                    Conventional wisdom does suggest that he who runs away lives to fight another day. But the General reasoned what it does not spell out is that running away costs you that particular battle. This is conveys the message as : stand up and fight. Don’t even think about whether you are going to win or lose. Do whatever needs to be done in a spirit of complete surrender to the cosmic principle of oneness without having to worry about success and failure. Such is the fight against vacillation, against dispersal of energy from necessary action into futile imagination. Narrowing our escape options concentrates our minds. But psychologists have also found that people find it extremely hard to exercise that option, perhaps because we may be hard-wired by evolution to look for escape routes for the survival of the species.
                   Research involving hundreds of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has found, for instance, that they could not bear to watch options vaporise even when it became apparent that it was pointless. The students couldn’t care less about future prospects, the scientists found. What goaded them was an intense desire to avoid immediate pain of having to let go of escape options. Closing a door was experienced as a loss, and people were willing to pay a price to avoid facing up to that emotion, Dr Ariely said. This is also borne by Daniel Kahneman’s Nobel-Prize research.

The moral: Get irrational. Or get ‘divine’ advice to transcend innate human tendencies.

*This post consist the some of excerpts directly taken from excellent thought provoking article which was  found on net .