Stronger Than Yesterday!

How many times in life, our happiness or satisfaction has come to a halt by looking at peers? Sometimes, we are personally very happy on what we achieved but when sharing it, we show the pride only to people who have achieved less than us? I feel that our satisfaction quotient in life has come down and our happiness quotient has become relative to our surroundings. What should our comparison be on is the key to life and this blog!

Just imagine that you bought a second hand car. How is your tone of communication, when communicating it to a village man Vs a person who owns 2 cars? Say you score 60% on a paper in which you usually fail. You will express your happiness to other failure candidates with a couple advises to them on what they can do, to be you! But you might either not communicate to the class topper or pass it on to him as a news if you have to. Dont you think that we play low with people above us even though our own sense of pride is high on what we achieved?

In the facebook page of A.R.Rahman, I saw a post where an authority judges elephant, lion and monkey on their capabilities with a single test of climbing a tree. Though funny, it nailed a beautiful message. Is there a single measure that can grade all of us? There is no "One Size Fits All" in this world.

Why do we compare? Every living organism subconsciously adapts to the surroundings and thus it becomes law of nature? Our parents [or we as parents] usually compare children with neighbors and ask them to be [or not to be] like them? So it all starts there and we continue it for our life and we pass it on as a legacy to the next generation. Instead of complaining the law of nature, we as humans with the unique sixth sense can overcome it!

Believe in "Stronger than Yesterday"! In effect compare yourself with what you were yesterday. Do this to be safe and successful for the following reasons:

• You know what your life needs, to be better!
• Your surroundings/situations are not same as other person and thus you cant apply his way or doctrines!
• You are the one who knows your plus and minus better. So the only one who can balance your equation is you!
• Beware! A wrong upper limit of "Becoming Einstein" can make you run for your entire life without achieving it.
• Beware! A wrong lower limit of any other lazy/failure person, will take you "no where" as you will achieve your goal sooner and feel contended.

All life's EQUAL and each life is UNIQUE. Each of us have a job to do and we do it in our one way. It could be taking you UP the ladder faster/slower based on how you approach your tasks. Please note that I just mean NO to comparisons and not learning by seeing others. Life is not too long to punish ourselves for what we are. We will have to bring the best out of what we are, and in that journey make ourself and people around us happy. If you believe that you have that extra mileage to achieve, even if the people you used to compare with have failed, you will be able to do it.

A bird sitting on a branch doesn't sit there trusting the strength of the branch, but the strength of its wings! So, Believe in you! Believe that you are a unique formula. Introspect to see what you can do, to be better that the past! Set small milestones, achieve them every now and then, and always strive to be stronger than yesterday! You will incrementally reach great heights one day ... Observe others, get inspired and try it your way ONLY if you feel you can! This is the legacy that according to me, we should pass on to the next generation!

Happy New Year and Stay Spirited!

- MJ

Hunger – A Sign of Strength or Weakness?

Often, the word Hunger is linked to lack of something that makes one weak. But are we looking at it as an instigator to fill what we lack? What we achieve or would like to achieve is the result of hunger/craving/passion that we have towards it. Hunger is not a ‘lack’ of something, but if we don’t have it, we lack success. This is the crux of my thought process today.

Like an expert swimmer who doesn’t fear the deeps and like the phoenix, which doesn’t fear the fire, a person with a hunger for something doesn’t fear obstacles towards his destiny. Let us literally take the attitude that we demonstrate when we are hungry. Don’t we eat crazy like a glutton the moment we see food after prolonged fasting? Does that demonstrate the force that we have/exhibit when seeing our passionate food?

A spiritual digression to this topic can also be cited here. The reason why we follow fasting before we offer our prayers ... There is an unconscious activity or energy flow that happens in our body, when we are hungry. It is believed that when you starve for a very long duration and sit near a small tender plant for few hours, the plant droops down losing its vitality. It is because our body tends to absorb the vital energy around it, when it lacks/craves for energy. Scientifically I would say that energy flows from higher to lower concentration. Thus came the belief of praying in empty stomach that makes our body absorb the spiritual/positive vibes effectively. When every cell of our body exhibits this involuntary behavior, don’t we have a reason to believe that hunger is a sign of strength in us?

I have heard of a story where a man goes to Swami Vivekananda to know the secret/tip behind achieving what he wants.  Vivekananda takes this man into the nearby water body and immerses him inside water. When the man somehow manages to come out and takes a deep breath for his survival, Swami says that one should be that desperate like how desperate he was to get that one breathe of life while he was under water. That’s the hunger that can also be called as desperation to achieve.

Hunger gives us the drive to run for what we want. It sets us on fire and helps achieve greatness. Its only when we don’t act upon this intensity, it starts to develop weakness in us.

Stay Hungry and Stay Tuned towards your goals!

-         -  Mani

Sustaining Vs Stagnating

I was supposed to pen this blog a couple months before, when I completed 10 years in IT. It took some time for my brain to connect my fingers to the keyboard. So here it goes...

The months of May and June, usually puts me into many questions towards my career, every year. Every May, I complete 1 extra year in my company and Every June I complete 1 extra year of experience in IT. This year I was checking myself against "Stagnating Vs Sustaining".

There is life, when you say that you are sustaining on your goodness and success. It means that you get past your previous milestones and constantly maintain a pace in the race, to meet new laurels. Sometimes your successes and your comfort zone make "Stagnation" look like a Sustaining Activity. Appreciations from known colleagues, people praising you wherever you go, setting goals to your comfort and laziness can cause this delusion.

As life changes and you get into more commitments, it is difficult to have the same vigor in you that you had when you were a bachelor. Everything in this world is bound to wear-and-tear and thus we slow our pace too. But, it is always good to check if you are stagnating at a level. Sustain and Stagnate means staying in a level. But as you can see one is lively and flowing and the other is stale.

Making smart moves to sustain your success is very important as we get into a lot of personal commitments. Work hard Vs Work Smart is again a key. One can work hard and get the same results as working smart. But as you progress in your career and get into a higher role with lots of professional and personal commitments, we will have to choose the smart way to enjoy success. We can't run fast and work hard, when our hands and legs are fettered with too many commitments. Are we just concerned or cautious about the steps that we take during this transition? Again, both "Concerned" and "Cautious" shows your worry towards a happening. But, as you can very well see, one is of superlative in nature. I feel being 'cautious' begets actions from your end towards careful planning of your career.

Being 'Cautious' about what you do, to 'sustain' your success is the simple message that I wanted to convey. Again you can either think about this or meditate on it. You know what I am going to say here ... :-) Both 'meditate' and 'think' create a thought process. But when you meditate, you give life to the thought process and make it flow through your smart deeds!

Innovate, Inspire and Get Inspired always!

- Mani

FRIENDS - Old Poem Revisited for Friendship's Day!

This can be fine-tuned a lot now. But I wanted to leave it like that. A baby's prattle should be admired and not corrected. I see this poem that way. Takes me back to my memories of 2002 and my naive in it, as an amateur poet ;-)

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In the hectic world of worries,
There are some queries,
What gives us pleasure?
That is hard to measure.
Sure, Friendship is that treasure.

It is that love and care,
That the friends mutually share,
The feelings that are relished,
Forever, to be cherished.

In any field of battle,
They stand together with mettle,
Throw their arms out,
And put their enemies to rout.

Keep in mind,
They are one of the kind,
Who are really hard to find,
Sure, it is a lifetime bind!

Composed By: Mani Jayaram
Date: 23rd May 2002.
For: A dedication to all those who respect Friends and Friendship.

The path might end;but the journey continues ...

A borrowed thought from one of a tamil film song but it meant a lot to me. Isn't it the fact that whatever happens in life, time heals the good/bad and life moves on. Even if we are at a dead-end, we turn around to find our next way. Whether willingly or forced, we have to find our way until time stops us.

Time/Destiny is so authoritative that it doesn't wait for us and on top of it, it makes us wait for it one day or the other. Being a winner always, it never stoops down and makes us look for it accepting our defeat. Nobody or nothing stands the testimony of time.

So what it means to stand against Time. It needs courage, diligence and more than everything, THE FAITH. Believe in what we do, do it sincerely, pierce through the barriers, put all of you into it and you shine. When you put all of yours into a thing, you in turn give LIFE to it.

But, is giving LIFE just enough to stand against time? Life needs to survive/sustain against its mighty opponent, the Time. So how it happens? It needs followers, people who look upon it, get inspired and follow it. Thats how it stands against time.

Has anything stood against time for a few centuries? And even if it is, is it looked upon with the same level of exuberence like how it was looked upon when it was born? I dont see many! Its due to lack of followers that this unfortunate thing happens. For example, there are many architectural master-pieces that were built centuries ago but I always feel that most of them stand as a dilapidated piece without LIFE. How many of us know why it was built, how many laborers were involved in that and how long it took to build them. Only when all of these information exist and gets passed on, we see the architectural piece and the life behind it. And for those pieces for which, we know these answers, life/glory still exists. We lack followers to propagate information and make the life behind anything survive beyond time.

A religion without followers slowly perishes. If we dont cultivate our tradition/goodness/beliefs to our offspring, heritage is gone. According to me 'Marriage' is coined for the same fact. Marriage is a tradition/concept that acts as a follower-factor to reinforce love to offsprings. We follow marriage to make love survive. If it is just about sex and children like in primitive ages, would 'Love' have survived? Anything without followers, gets wiped off eventually.

What do we leave for the next generation? Is our value-system strong enough to raise the next generation. Whether you follow a nice path, or create a new path justify on what you are doing, make sure you are right 100 times and most importantly see if there is a strong following to it.

Ending my thought here ... By slightly twisting the heading of this blog to 'Your journey might end; But the path should continue to exist', I see a new beginning to my above thought ...

Take Care!
Mani Jayaram

And miles to go before I sleep ...

These famous words of Robert Frost, kept moving through the grey and white matter of my thinkcenter for a long time now that I wanted to drain this thought off my brain into my blog ...

In general I was thinking of 'destination'/'destiny' and what role it plays in us! When I was waiting for my shuttle bus to go to office, I was watching a man walking across the street here and there. It looked to me that he had nothing to do and just simply standing out on the streets. So I was thinking what happens to life without objective, aim or destination. Even for Robert Frost, Sleep [or his death as this was one of his last poems] was the destination and he wanted to do a lot before reaching the destination.

We come to office and work for a well defined time just because we know, we have to reach home at some specific time. Imagine there is just work and no home. What defines our work timings in that case? Every thing that starts needs an end. Without this end for every start, life becomes traggic! Lets take 'end' optimistically as destination/completion.

The good and the bad have a start and end. When we face the bad we should be optimistic that it will end sometime. Ideally, when we face the good we should be prepared that it is not ever-lasting. After all, the cliche says 'All good things come to an end' ...

Without end to man's life, what happens! Is there a thrill if it is a bright day always without a night or the vice versa? Even an active day is followed by a peaceful rest/sleep. Isn't it? Nature and Life teaches us the same lesson. It is the crest that defines the trough and vive versa. An end begets a new beginning. It is just that we fail to understand this.

We either go mentally down facing failures or wish to always bask on the success. Lets take the odds and evens positively. Destiny comes for our rescue in ending things that we start. What it means to be successful always? Will we have a target if we are alone on the top. What drives us to go further exploring and unravelling new limits. It is a destination for every source that sets the next level of standards for us.

Will a statement with only COMMAs and no FULL-STOP have a well defined meaning? There is an completion to all things that start. Do we like people who keep on talk without a pause? So it is, for this writing too :-) I stop it here for you to ponder ...

Yours,
Mani

All Life Equal ; Each Life Unique

Crispy yet Powerful! It meant a lot to me the moment I read it. I happened to read this somewhere and liked it so much to place this in my blog.

I would consider this a balanced saying that enforces on both individuality and concern for others. How often do we express the concern for others? Do we respect every being the way we would like to be respected? In this busy world the benevolence, respect and concern for others looks to be slowly fading away. It is also about respecting the feelings of others.

At the same time I also strongly believe that one cant please everybody in life and individuality is an important trait for every being to make him/her prominent in the society. Everybody is unique and that is what makes us visible amidst of million of beings around us. We should not compromise our individuality for others too.

When I mean not giving up on individuality, it is the individuality that is good for ourself and to others. We cant of course be holding a quality that is not good for us or others and say that is our individuality :-) So caring for others the same way you care for yourself gives the balance. Striking a balance between these two is the challenge.

Practice this in any relationship and see the difference it brings to the relationship.

Regards,

MJ