A story of two friends...

A story tells that two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey, they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face.

The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand:
TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SLAPPED ME ON THE FACE .

They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him.

After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone:
TODAY MY BEST FRIEND SAVED MY LIFE.

The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?"

The other friend replied "When someone hurts us we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away.. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it."

LEARN TO WRITE YOUR HURTS IN THE SAND AND TO CARVE YOUR BENEFITS ON STONE!!!

They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.

Do not value the THINGS you have in your life. Value WHO you have in your life!

Management Stories (Humour)

DISCLAIMER: The stories are meant for self enlightenment and not to be taken as reflection of any event or work environment. Any resemblance is truly co-incidental & unintentional.


STORY #1
There’s an old story about a man searching for his lost keys under the light on a dark night, even though they were last seen elsewhere. When a passerby asks why he continues to search in the wrong spot, the man replies, “Because the light’s better over here.”

Too often, companies search within their own sphere of knowledge rather than seeking solutions wherever they may be found.


STORY #2
It’s a fine sunny day in the forest and a lion is sitting outside his cave, lying lazily in the sun. Along comes a fox, out on a walk.

Fox: “Do you know the time, because my watch is broken”
Lion: “Oh, I can easily fix the watch for you”

Fox: “Hmm… But it’s a very complicated mechanism, and your big claws will only destroy it even more”
Lion: “Oh no, give it to me, and it will be fixed”

Fox: “That’s ridiculous! Any fool knows that lazy lions with great claws cannot fix complicated watches”
Lion: “Sure they do, give it to me and it will be fixed”

The lion disappears into his cave, and after a while he comes back with the watch which is running perfectly. The fox is impressed, and the lion continues to lie lazily in the sun, looking very pleased with himself.
Soon a wolf comes along and stops to watch the lazy lion in the sun.

Wolf: “Can I come and watch TV tonight with you, because mine is broken”
Lion: “Oh, I can easily fix your TV for you”

Wolf: “You don’t expect me to believe such rubbish, do you? There is no way that a lazy lion with big claws can fix a complicated TV”
Lion: “No problem. Do you want to try it?”

The lion goes into his cave, and after a while comes back with a perfectly fixed TV. The wolf goes away happily and amazed.

Scene: Inside the lion’s cave. In one corner are half a dozen small and intelligent looking rabbits that are busily doing very complicated work with very detailed instruments. In the other corner lies a huge lion looking very pleased with himself.

Moral: If You Want To Know Why A Manager Is Famous; Look At The Work Of His Subordinates.

Management lesson in the context of the working world: If you want to know why someone undeserved is promoted; look at the work of his subordinates.


STORY # 3
It’s a fine sunny day in the forest and a rabbit is sitting outside his burrow, tippy-tapping on his typewriter. Along comes a fox, out for a walk.

Fox: “What are you working on?”
Rabbit: “My thesis.”

Fox: “Hmm… What is it about?”
Rabbit: “Oh, I’m writing about how rabbits eat foxes.”

Fox: “That’s ridiculous! Any fool knows that rabbits don’t eat foxes!”
Rabbit: “Come with me and I’ll show you!”

They both disappear into the rabbit’s burrow. After few minutes, gnawing on a fox bone, the rabbit returns to his typewriter and resumes typing. Soon a wolf comes along and stops to watch the hardworking rabbit.

Wolf: “What’s that you are writing?”
Rabbit: “I’m doing a thesis on how rabbits eat wolves.”

Wolf: “you don’t expect to get such rubbish published, do you?”
Rabbit: “No problem. Do you want to see why?”

The rabbit and the wolf go into the burrow and again the rabbit returns by himself, after a few minutes, and goes back to typing.

Finally a bear comes along and asks, “What are you doing?
Rabbit: “I’m doing a thesis on how rabbits eat bears.”

Bear: “Well that’s absurd!”
Rabbit: “Come into my home and I’ll show you”

Scene: As they enter the burrow, the rabbit introduces the bear to the lion.

Moral: It Doesn’t Matter How Silly you’re Thesis Topic Is; What Matters Is Whom You Have as a Supervisor.

Management Lesson In the context of the working world: It Doesn’t Matter How Bad Your Performance Is; What Matters Is Whether Your Boss Likes You or Not.

Life and Chaos

It becomes a debatable venture to find the meaning, and justify the existence of CHAOS. But the fact is that everything in life, other than chaos, is uncertain, random and mystical.

We feel that being pedantic and apposite is the key to success, being systematic makes life easy and being straightforward makes things simple. But surprisingly, chaos is the most systematic...

It is most flexible – no rules, no regulations, no sets, no targets. An amassed space focused only on self and not on things; Chaos is a key to originality. It opens floodgates to imagination and adds character to persona. Chaos is well defined and helps to draw inspirations from varied sources. It is fun; it fills empty spaces, and adds spunk...

Some go to the extent of saying that Chaos is what goes in my head as well. And I will tend to agree, because I believe that Chaos is all about my creative side. Basically my blogs and posts get rejuvenated by my daily encounters and accidents with life, which again is chaos...

We all need doses of muddle and chaos and disarray to add colour to our lives, since spilling colour on canvas makes more interesting and colourful paintings than regular point to point additions by the brush...

Chaos Rules... Hope you all appreciate it!!!

Pressure at Work !!!

Here is a beautiful story, which I received through a forwarded email. I liked it so much because I could relate to it, and understand what I am missing. Each of us have something to pick from this.
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I hired a plumber to help me restore an old farmhouse, and after he had just finished a rough first day on the job, a flat tyre made him lose an hour of work, his electric drill quit and his ancient one-ton truck refused to start. While I drove him home, he sat in stony silence. On arriving he invited me in to meet his family. As we walked towards the front door, he paused briefly at a tree, touching the tips of the tree. When opening the door he underwent an amazing transformation.

His tanned face was wreathed in smiles and he hugged his two small children and gave them a kiss. Afterward he walked me to the car. We passed the tree and my curiosity got the better of me. I asked him about what I had seen him do earlier.

Oh, that's my trouble tree," he replied. "I know I can't help having troubles on the job, but one thing's for sure, those troubles don't belong in the house with my wife and the children. So I just hang them up on the tree every night when I come home and then in the morning I pick them up again. "Funny thing is," he smiled, "when I come out in the morning to pick them up, there aren't nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before."

Rise - The Road Ahead Lies Within

This is a poem I wrote (taking inspiration from some other poems) for an internal competition, and I got a consolation prize for this...
Need to apply this in my life now...

If you gaze around, there's nothing to keep you behind...

Don’ be anxious, un-limitation and way ahead lies in your mind...

Conventional thinking needs a punt in the face,

It's okay to fail now, yes, it's no disgrace...

Break all those shackles put by those around you,

Explore all the alternatives, because that's how you grow.

With the no-limit spirit, Unlimit yourself,

Unthink your past, and Unprogram yourself...

Pull out the stops now, go right ahead...

Put your heart and soul into what you're doing today,

Feel the energy in you, as limits fall away...

Be a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Roaring and soaring, bear in the tide,

Keep a positive thinking in gloom,

And the joyous road to success will bloom,

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear,

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear...

You can Rise! Rise! Rise!

It's great till it lasts... But what next??

A day before my 25th birthday, I am penning this post down. Probably it was time for a quarter-life realization.

Picking up cues from the feelings I had while writing a few earlier posts, a silly question coming to my mind... What happens when u lose faith?? It can be faith in a relationship, faith in friendship, faith in someone, or faith in self...

Howsoever stupid it might seem on reading, but sometimes it does happen. I will describe what happened to me when I lost faith in a relationship...

NOTHING. Yes, Nothing happened. I didn’t even make out that I have lost something. I never felt the pain. Slight exasperation for few weeks, but that was all. I never noticed anything else. Even now I don’t feel any pain or sadness. But off late (after over one and half long years) I realize what I have lost. I lost most of my emotions and feelings along with it. I don’t feel anything now days. Happiness, Sorrow, Anger, Fear… They’re all superficial... Something inside stopped working.

Today at this instant I feel that it may change in due course of time. I may come back to my real self. But when frustration creeps in, I feel that that I won’t mind even if I don’t come back to my real self.

As it is, most people do not notice this change. For them, I am still the same. Thankfully, they can't look through my eyes, or read my mind. And so to me, this seems like a far better state, like attaining “Nirvana” without much effort. It’s funny. Life really is.

If anyone would have guessed, that a hard core emotional and sentimental guy like me would change like this, I would have definitely laughed at him/her at that time. But now, let me see how long this will go… Maybe I can emulate a saint and share some pearls of wisdom when this period is over. Or maybe I am en-route the path of Enlightenment... Who knows ;-)

Jokes apart... I really want to get out of this phase, and be the person I was... This is the testing time, and I will strive to get out successful and victorious... :) Pray for me...

Things I am learning from my boss...

I recently read a blog post that started with a tale of a lousy supervisor doing a truly horrific job of relaying negative feedback to a subordinate. It got me thinking about how some bosses can be so miserable. Not wanting to linger too much in negativity, I tried to conjure up some of the points from the various bosses and managers I see around at my workplace. A good manager is hard to find, but when you have one, you often get to learn valuable lessons.

Here are some things I have learned from my boss.

Maintain a blame-free work environment
Finger-pointing is a highly toxic and counter-productive behaviour, but there is more to it; in a relatively new organization it is essential to move forward at a fast and efficient pace. A no-mistakes pace is simply too slow. To survive, we have to move at a speed that guarantees a certain rate of error. We must accept the fact that mistakes will be made and corrected on the fly, simply because a pace that yields no mistakes will not bring us to takeoff before the end of the runway.
In a typical organization where a culture of “no mistakes” prevails, everything is gold-plated to death. Time is regularly wasted on unnecessarily perfect performances, and on cover-ups when things didn’t go according to plan.
“No blame” does not mean “no accountability”. My boss has clearly spelt out, “It’s OK to make a mistake and you will not be judged for it. Making a mistake and not learning from it is a different story”.

Don’t confuse “urgent” with “important”
You plan your day, week and month. You focus your efforts in a calculated effort to achieve very specific goals. Then someone rushes in screaming that the sky is falling and all progress is put on hold until the oh-so-urgent issue is resolved. There’s a hero’s aura about riding to the rescue and saving the day, but when the day is done, you are still a day (or a week, or a month) behind your schedule. The fires you are putting out may be real, or they may be artificial emergencies conceived to manipulate your priority list. Don’t let the moment’s glory distract you from executing your plan for too long. It may not be as urgent, but it is far more important.

Manage your personal productivity
Productivity is a complicated issue. First off, the disparity between individuals is huge. It is not uncommon for a star performer to be 3-4 times as productive as an average, good employee. On top of that, there are many subjective and even random factors at play; the estimates that we use to measure productivity are always partially subjective.
Improving your personal productivity is a great way to get better at what you do, but as an individual, you are the only one who can tell how productive your day is. You can expect your manager to measure your productivity over time, but when it comes to your day-to-day personal productivity — you’re on your own. You’re the only one who can do it, and you’re the one to benefit from it.

A Fact, hard to accept for me

This is a post which I have taken from my personal blog, and was written on April 17, 2010. almost after an year not, I was finding it too relevant again in my life right now, so thought of bringing it up here.

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There is a fact of life which so far in my life I have encountered quite a few times, and every time I lost something in the process. But even till date, I have not been able to accept this particular actuality, because somewhere at the back of my mind, I hope and pray that ‘it’ is not obvious to happen. And that is why I want to question ‘it’. Whoever reads this, would wonder what the hell I am talking about.

I have many examples to explain, but I am refraining from putting them here. But because of some incidents, a strange feeling has crept inside me, suddenly making me feel that things change. My feeling of loss stems out of such drastic changes concerning my very close friends. It’s a mixed feeling. This happens with a friend of the same sex, as well as the opposite sex. Whatever the case may be, I feel that post marriage, people view friendships in a different light. The losses always begin subtly and impact gradually. But is it necessary?

I am not saying that it is the married/engagement friend who is at fault. Relationships certainly do change after marriage/engagement. While he/she is trying to adjust to the new environment, his/her friends find it difficult to adjust to the new person he/she becomes. Insecurity, protectiveness and missing the old times become very prominent. Everyone needs company, and when the company seems to be drifting apart, it is obvious that a feeling of rejection sets in. And this is especially difficult for people like me whose world revolves only around a few friends, and finds comfort in the company of that friend.

I just get scared because my world is shrinking fast. Most of my close friends would get engaged/married before me, and I would be left all alone. I get anxious whether I should make close friends, leaving an open area to get shattered time and again. I commit myself totally to my friendships, and I give in everything for it. I don’t want my close friendships to get wilted and put myself in the position of saying, “Our friendship was great till it lasted.”