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Current Success is always Small February 18, 2012

Posted by aglakadam in Children n Students, Management.
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Current Success is always Small

National Talent Search Examination, popularly known as NTSE, has always been an aspiration mark for school students. Recently results were declared for the first level examination of NTSE 2011. Approximately 13,000 students appeared for this test in Chhattisgarh. My daughter Mahima, who is a Class VIII student at Krishna Public School Raipur also appeared for this examination and secured a slot in the first 90 odd students to get through. We all in the family were overwhelmed with this success and surely this was an occasion for celebration.

Immediately after the results we went to meet the director of her school, Mr. Ashutosh Tripathi to convey our gratitude for extending the best academic support. He was elated with his student’s success and it was all showing on his face. He luxuriously lauded Mahima for the feet and expressed his happiness in smile studded words of praise. His words of wisdom were highly inspirational. What came thereafter from his coffer of knowledge is absolutely rich and valuable life skill. I take this opportunity to share his success sutras with all the readers of “The Hitavada”.

One step of praise and two stages of admonition was his strategy. Suddenly after the dose of appreciation the director made us wary and suggested no party for this success. We all were surprised, why no party when there is such a relevant occasion to celebrate! To elucidate further, Mr. Tripathi shared two success secrets with Mahima :

  1. Remember this for lifetime that “current success is always small”

                      &

  1. Make success a habit.

These are so powerful advises I feel every person on the universe should take cognizance of it. Let’s try and understand the depth of these sutra’s. Qualifying for NTSE Level is a recognizable achievement though it is just half the way through. The ultimate victory happens when the student qualifies in the final (national) level examination! Being selected in the first stage and becoming eligible for appearing in the national level NTSE examination is similar to having qualified in the league matches before the semi finals and the final match. When you have a larger goal in front of you, it is a vital success habit to always consider the current success to be small. Current success should be used as an inspiration to achieve bigger victories. Current success should enable an individual to steer aggressively towards higher goals.

It surly makes sense to target partying at a higher achievement point and not get complacent by celebrating the smaller success. Success at every stage should be treated as an investment bank account. To en-cash the current success you should only withdraw confidence from the bank of success.  Where is the time to rest when there are bigger challenges to test! A cricket enthusiast once asked Sachin Tendulkar “How do you celebrate every six that you hit in a match?” Came the reply, “I celebrate by focusing on the next incoming ball!”

Success breeds success. Getting habituated to success is good but getting into the habit of failure is worst! One should have the passion to be successful. When you do not make success as a natural tendency it becomes tough to align the mindset even when you are close to success. Here is an illustration from the world of cricket to put forth the point. The national cricket team of Bangladesh was in a phase of poor performance. They had lost a few matches in a row and the overall moral was very low in the team. At such a juncture they had to play a match with the then world champion Australia. To the shock and surprise of the cricketing world one new find bowler in the Bangladesh team spelled doom for the rival batsmen. The Aussies somehow managed to be at the crease at stumps. In the evening television journalist interviewed both the captain’s. The Aussie captain said, “To be in the game and to WIN it we will have to add 250 more runs tomorrow”. In the same interview the Bangladesh team’s captain said, “ we will have to ensure that we take all the wickets before lunch if we have to save this match!      Pl re-read the words… “if we have to save this match”!!! Where is the question of saving a match when you are in a favorable match winning situation? What went wrong with the Bangladesh team was that they got habituated to loosing matches. Due to this negative habit they missed to recognize the visiting victory. On the contrary the Australian team was in the winning habit and even in a stressful situation they were thinking of victory!

We all know that it takes no time for the current to become past. With every passing moment, the current success tacitly gets buried into history and future unfolds with more demands for success. Winning should then become a way of life. We should allow our thoughts and design our actions to be governed by the habit of success.

Lessons for Excellence :

  • Like failure, success should also not be counted as final
  • Milestones of smaller success should never tempt you to rest till you achieve the bigger targets.
  • Make wining a habit and you will never get distracted on the way.
  • Current success should lay the carpet to welcome the next success.
  • Always think success, to achieve success.

Feedback : Ajit Varwandkar

Email : md@fsindia.in

You cannot re-listen the spoken words February 15, 2012

Posted by aglakadam in Inspirational Story, Management.
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You cannot re-listen the spoken words

A police officer in a city stopped a motorcyclist who was speeding down the cricket stadium. “But sir,” the motorist begged, “I can explain the reason why I was driving fast…” “Will you please be silent?,” snapped the police officer. “I’m going to put you behind the bar until the commissioner is in here at the police station.” “But sir, I only wanted to say that …,” rebuffed the police man : “dear I asked you to keep mum! You’re going to jail and that’s for sure!”  

A few hours later the police officer looked into the innocent eyes of the prisoner and said, “Did you know there is a marriage hall on the way where you were driving so fast? There were children playing near the hall and with your speed you might have surely hurt someone.” The lamenting man replied from behind the iron grill, “Yup, I know it the best, actually I’m the groom!”

Good listeners always give others a chance to speak. They allow the communication to happen.  A good listener has a huge amount of patience. We all might have observed at one time or the other that people tend not to have the patience to listen till the end. You start telling some story and chances are that half way through someone might barge into the communication stating he also experienced something similar once upon a time and start narrating that experience. Not listening is one of the biggest barrier to communication. Anger is the first enemy of good listening while impatience is the second.  Many of life’s failures and tragedies happen because we cease to listen.

Here is one more example. Ramesh’s boss, was known to be a hard task master in office. Once he was instructing his subordinate on some business issue. Ramesh actually had more updates about the subject matter and hence tried to interrupt his boss with that information but was harshly rubbished by him. In spite of his best intervention efforts the facts could not be communicated to his boss. Ramesh was compelled to work as per the imperfect directions of his boss. Eventually the strategy proposed by his boss failed and the plan backfired. The company had to incur loss. A post loss repent does never correct the past. Unfortunately there is no undo command for not listening!  

Those who can listen and comprehend can only be successful in life.  Listening is different to hearing. You ‘hear’ sound which might not make any sense to you. You hear noise, you listen words. Noise might not have any sense while words have the power to move the world! Listening is an art inherited by the wise. It is one of the most primitive arts learned by mankind. It helps individual to connect with other people and the world. When you listen properly you pay attention.

Listening is also about caring. Children grow up and parents grow older, what does an old parent need from its progeny?  A patient listening can many a times ease of high levels of accumulated stress.  You need to be a very good listener if you wish to become a good parent, a good spouse, a good teacher, a good boss or a spiritual person. Listening breeds result when caring follows it because you care only when you empathise with the other person. You can empathize only when you listen properly.

Think of a seriously ill patient lying on the bed by your side. What do you think the patient needs the most? Nothing but an attentive listening is desired by the patient. Just try to recall what did you share with your friend when the friend lost a near and dear one? The friend was upset and very sad, actually crying a lot. At such times and caring ear is what maximum can be offered by any human being.

You cannot re-listen the spoken words, hence it is better to listen it right the first time. When you pay attention to what is being said you actually give the most precious reward to the speaker.  Sometimes inspite of having listened properly you do not get the right meaning of the words. On such occasions one should request for elucidation. You are listening only when your heart is in synchronization with the rhythm pouring in from the ear.

Are you listening?

 Lessons for Excellence :

  • Learn to listen, not just hear or else you might miss out on the essence of life.
  • Always give full opportunity to the other person to speak out before you take a decision.
  • Listening properly is a mandatory ingredient for being successful.
  • Those who do not listen thoroughly, repent later.
  • Each one of us should learn to be a good listener.

Ajit Varwandkar

Feedback : md@fsindia.in

Stress is the shadow of wrong imagination February 6, 2012

Posted by aglakadam in Management.
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Imagine this situation: 

You are in a happy holiday mood. You plan to have a joyful day with your family as such you decide to go on a long drive. You start driving your car on a highway where there is almost no traffic. You are tempted to explore the odometer and you press hard on the accelerator. The madness of speed invariably brings obnoxious consequences. As you approach a traffic signal square, you do not stop at the ‘red traffic signal’ but zip past it since there is no other car on either side of the four-way.  All of a sudden you get alerted by the sound of a police car siren. You see in the rear view mirror that the police car is approaching you at a still faster pace. You know that you have just committed a mistake and somehow the traffic police might have taken a note of it. The police car is at a distance where it would soon overtake you and ask you to stop. You feel stress mounting inside. You start imagining the consequences. What if you do not stop and rush at a still faster pace? Oh but the police might ask for more troops to stop me at the next turn! If they ask me to stop, I should obey them, says your inner voice. I am sure I will be fined for trespassing the traffic rule as well as for the rash driving. Oh God, please help me, they should not take me to the police station, I have no wrong intentions for sure. Your heart rate has increased and the effect seen as sweat drops on your forehead. You loose focus on the road and you’re only concentrated on the incoming harassment from behind. By now the police van is almost parallel to you. You have already started feeling very low, restless and insecure. Suddenly what happens is unbelievable for you. The police over took your car and went ahead,  probably they were chasing a different target. Oops, all the while you were thinking that the police was running after you!

When there is ‘terror alert’ announced by the intelligence agencies, the overall administration & police is on its toes. What happened with you in the above illustration was something similar, your mental mechanism was all of a sudden put on high alert. There was a temporary phase of worry, stress and shock for you. Did you realize that all this was fictitious and hypothetical? Nothing of what you had imagined was actually true? You were not the target of the police van and they never intended to put you behind bars. However it was you who negatively extrapolated the imaginary consequences and started palpitating.

Can you get back to the first few words of the above imaginary situation. You were in a happy welcome mood which eventually translated into anxious and nervous state of affair for you. All this happened only because of you. It was you who instigated the negative thoughts in your mental backdrop. The world outside was the same even when you started the day in a happy mood and when you got into the stressful situation.

I share yet another situational example for you here. There was one family which was on to start a holiday tour. They had to board the train at a particular scheduled time known to them in much advance. Due to certain household chores they got delayed to start from home. Unfortunately for them, that day, the train was scheduled to arrive on time. Father – mother and their kids were tight-fisted and had their fingers crossed while they were rushing to the railway station in the car. The angry husband was all the way shouting at his wife & scolding her for being slow in arranging travel preparations. Although they intended to be on a holiday mood their journey started with stress. The poor children were close-lipped somehow wanting that they should be able to board the train. Finally, it was a touch and go situation and they somehow managed to get into the train. Friends, wasn’t it true that even if the gentleman had not behaved in a stressful manner they would have been able to board the train? What actually happened was the head of the family imagined all negative consequences and got stressed out. 

We get exposed to similar situations many times in our daily life. In the process we sometimes unnecessarily invite a lot of stress and sadness into our life. The difference between stress and sorrow lies in the man’s perception. When you think bad, you feel bad. When you start feeling bad, it turns out to be worst for you personally.  Stress is like friction, it is a necessary evil.  Elementary level of stress is in-fact necessary for human being to survive. Stress is an energy & enthusiasm catalyst. It provokes a person to get into action mode and perform. Like you can store only a limited volume of fuel in your vehicle, human body is also designed to store a limited quantum of stress. As the stress grows more than the defined limit, it starts spilling and warns danger. It is our responsibility to disallow stress to walk along our life as soon as it becomes a liability. Finally it is our judgment to decide till what stage we would allow Mr. Stress to walk along with us in our journey of life!

LESSONS FOR EXCELLENCE :

  • Never allow stress to be blown out of proportion because of unrealistic imaginations.
  • Stress is like a small stone found under the shadow of a huge mountain.
  • Invariably stress is created inside the human mind, it should be cured there itself.
  • We should learn to be good to stress and in return stress will always be good to us.
  • A basic amount of stress is must for us to excel in our ventures in life.

 

Ajit Varwandkar

Feedback : md@fsindia.in

For SUCCESS : commitment is more important than speed January 21, 2012

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FROG in the milk pond

Efforts never die

Your commitment is more important than your speed

I retell the story of a few frogs which lived their life happily near a dairy farm. Once while they were in search of food, a few of them inadvertently jumped into a milk bucket. Milk bath was an entirely new experience for these frogs. Eventually they realized that the side walls were too slippery and it was not possible for them to jump out of the vat. They could do nothing but to swim around hoping for some help. They were unaware of the fact that help comes to those who try a way out on their own first.

God helps those who help themselves. Almost all the frogs that

…………………..  Complete write-up in my forthcoming book…. for announcement on the book title and launch, pl keep visiting www.aglakadam.com  ……………………………………… 

In the journey to success, your commitment is more important than your speed.

 Ajit Varwandkar

Feedback : md@fsindia.in

Kites fly highest against the wind, not with the wind January 14, 2012

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Lessons from Kite

Kites fly high against the wind

When we see thousands of kites flying in the air demonstrating a kaleidoscope of patterns, shapes & colors, it surely spreads pure happiness and rejuvenation in the air. The galaxy of kites put you in an awe and you think if life could get any better? A deeper look into the sight of kites soaring high into the sky can instigate spirituality and give you lessons in life. It’s really amazing to know what a kite can teach us. If we are open to get lessons, anything around us can teach us – even a kite!  I summarize few lessons that can be driven out of this festival of kites.

…………………..  Complete write-up in my forthcoming book…. for announcement on the book title and launch, pl keep visiting www.aglakadam.com  ………………………………………  Ajit varwandkar                                            

Feedback : md@fsindia.in

PS. An appeal : It has been found that some birds get killed by the string of the kite. Request all not to apply sharp edge materials to the kite string. This might harm a bird. Also fly a kite in such open areas where the birds are less likely to fly low.

Nick Vujicic Lessons – Prick the fog of disbelief January 11, 2012

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Prick the fog of disbelief

aglakadam.com

Nick Cijicic Lessons

We all come across problems in our work and life. In most of the cases it is not convenient for us to bypass these disruptions and ride further on a smoother track. You can only avoid difficulties by facing it. In the journey of life there would surely be potholes and roadblocks on the way. It is best to treat roadblocks as perseverance enhancers and not as demoralizer. Smooth roads never make efficient drivers, rough roads do. The path to success has to be crafted on one such terrain ahead. An impasse on road should never be considered as a failure or a dead-end.  

…………………..  Complete write-up in my forthcoming book…. for announcement on the book title and launch, pl keep visiting www.aglakadam.com  ……………………………………… 

 

  • Love living life always and embrace any impediment whatsoever may be with belief.
  • “The challenges in our lives are there to STRENGTHEN our CONVICTIONS. They are NOT there to run us over.”

Ajit Varwandkar

Email : md@fsindia.in

Next Time December 31, 2011

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Next Week, Next Level

Happy New Year 2012 to all the readers.

Life keeps moving, irrespective of the days and the dates. We keep accommodating our wishes and actions as per the current realities. You surely have dreams to achieve. What looked achievable and easy at the start, sometimes becomes elusive way ahead.. What was a desire some months back gets thrown out of the priority list. A friend of mine quipped yesterday, “This year no resolutions for me. Enough is enough, I am now scared of the avalanche of false promises accumulated year after year. I won’t have this monkey on my back anymore.”

…………………..  Complete write-up in my forthcoming book…. for announcement on the book title and launch, pl keep visiting www.aglakadam.com  ……………………………………… 

 

Happy Next Level to all of you…

Best Wishes. God Bless You all.

 Ajit Varwandkar

Feedback : md@fsindia.in

Cut short that Short cut December 26, 2011

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Cut short that Short cut

Computing in the new age is evolving every new day. A new invention today renders yesterday’s technology obsolete and a modish tool becomes tacky in no time. All those who use these devices surely have experienced the insidious nuances of virus infection. A media report tells that there are more than 75 lac computer viruses in the cyber world. Almost a ton of new furtive viruses take birth on the net every day. Still more heartening is to know that there are certain miscreant techies who not only misuse their grey cells to create new formats of viruses but also simultaneously develop virus protection tools for commercial use. Sounds over smart, and also short term, isn’t it?

I am reminded of an anecdote

…………………..  Complete write-up in my forthcoming book…. for announcement on the book title and launch, pl keep visiting www.aglakadam.com  ……………………………………… 

 

Ajit Varwandkar

Feedback : md@fsindia.in

FDI – Future Deserves Innovation December 17, 2011

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       FDI – Future Deserves Innovation

A lot has been talked about and discussed regarding the introduction of FDI ( Foreign Direct Investment ) in the Indian retail segment. A media research report states that out of 125 crore plus people living in India not more than 0.75% of this population is likely to be in the business of small size trading / grocery or retail store business. Almost 50% of the nation directly survives on agricultural revenue in our country. What farmers sell at rupee 1 gets sold to the end customer at about Rs.4/- on account of the long drawn delivery chain. If the multinational retail stores are allowed to operate in India (under strict monitoring & guidelines), they would help farmers get a better return for their produce and also the common man is likely to save a lot in terms of monthly grocery budget. However this is not happening now. There has been myriad reaction to the proposal and the government has suspended this decision for the time being. Please note that through this article I do not intend to either support or criticize the decision on multi brand retail FDI related policy. Sometimes resistance to change ultimately converts into compulsion to react. Idea is to read between the lines and understand the vital importance of change and innovation in today’s business lifestyle.

…………………..  Complete write-up in my forthcoming book…. for announcement on the book title and launch, pl keep visiting www.aglakadam.com  ……………………………………… 

 

Ajit Varwandkar

Email : md@fsindia.in

When opportunities knock, don’t be sleeping on the couch November 26, 2011

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  When opportunities knock, don’t be sleeping on the couch

Recently news about a reputed airline company cancelling flights occupied the media headline space prominently. This aero business company suddenly realized that it was in a horrendous loss of more than Rs. 1000 crore. The high-profile chief executive of the company approached the government heads requesting bailout! It was as if the airline was unaware of the impending crisis! …….

 

…………….  Complete write-up in my forthcoming book…. for announcement on the book title and launch, pl keep visiting www.aglakadam.com  ………………………………………  Ajit Varwandkar

Feedback : md@fsindia.in