Education

Last week, a friend of mine Doug posted this tweet about a young boy in China going to school. Not only was he walking to school but he was also carrying his chair and desk. That picture touched me. I was reminded of my times growing up in India. I was a very fortunate child who went to a decent school. We had chairs and desks to sit on and never had to carry anything besides our backpack and eagerness to learn. More and more lately I have seen that kids take education for granted. I remember that when I went to school, it was considered a privilege to get education. We were told that we had the choice to make it the best we could. We could use the opportunities that were given to us and make our lives better or we could choose to waste our opportunities. Growing up surrounded by various sort of income classes in India, I learnt quickly that education and hard work are 2 important tools in your arsenal. Early on, I knew I wanted to make something out of my life, I had to do so on basis of those two. I don't believe I would have learnt the work ethics that I have now, if I had not dedicated myself completely to studying and working hard when I had the opportunity to do so.

Picture credited to ChinaDailyUSA

Story about Peter..

This is a story about man named "Peter". I met Peter in my early 20s at my first job. Pete used to be a NASA engineer who had transferred to this part of country to retire. He was a software engineer and I was a fresh out of the school employee. I worked in a lab and was supposed to design this lab based data management system. But I have never had any training in software design or databases. So, I started collaborating with Pete on database designs. We used to meet once every week. In our conversations I realized Pete was a genius in investing and stocks. He started talking to me about my financial future. Have I started setting aside my contributions to 401K? Do I have a Roth IRA etc? You realize until that point I never even knew what the difference in stocks and bonds were. He pointed me in the direction of different books, and sites such as yahoo and msn boards. This is way before we had our social media networks. What a huge blessing to me it was to run into someone like Pete. I always had a desire to learn more about investing and trading, but never had any guidance. He took the time and effort to guide me. He would regularly stop in to see if I had any questions or if he could help me. All it took was a little bit of his time and my eagerness to learn. Pete is retired and long gone and I have moved on too. But I will always cherish my friendship with him and what he has taught me.

How often in our lives we see someone with a need and just ignore it? How often do we take a minute of our time and help them? Sometimes we miss out on opportunities to develop new connections because we are in hurry. When I look back at my life it was Pete who had sown this seed in my life. Now, I try to be on the look out of sowing some seeds in someone else's life whenever I can. In the long run it all pays off.

Tillie Monster

Today, my dog of 8 yrs, my best friend "Tillie" died. The reason I am writing this post is to celebrate the gift that she gave me. In April 2004, she came in my life. She was a rescue dog abandoned because she was too energetic and the owner could not keep up with her. When I got her, she was just a small puppy dog of 4 months. She had a lot of energy, enough to tire me out in few minutes. None of my past dogs prepared me for the experience that I was going to have with her. I had to learn pretty soon, that she was not going to fit in my "Box" of ideal dog. I had to make a decision right then and there, can I keep her and be flexible enough and change my definition of "ideal" dog. Or will I give up on her? Pretty soon I realized I could take her hiking,swimming, walking and teach her obedience through properly chanelling her energy in the right direction. What I want you to see is many times, we have a defined "Box" in life our ideas of what life should be, what ideal career should be, who our friends should be etc. What Tillie taught me is to be open. Open my box up and accept the unusual. Cause most of the time, that unusual will enrich our lives and make us live our life to the fullest. So, here is to my "Tillie Monster", thank you!

Don't be afraid to look around the corner.

I have been in the process of selling a house. This house sits on an intersection of a main road and a side road. I always thought the side road was a dead end road, as the town map showed it to be leading to private way after a 1 mile public access. Since I am coming close to selling this property, I decided I wanted to take a drive down and see that house again and also drive down that side road. I told myself, "I can turn around if it indeed ends up in private way".

After driving for 5 minutes and passing through some old houses on the way, this road becomes much more scenic than I ever imagined. There are big evergreens lining the road, I almost feel like I am going into a beautiful magical forest, and of course the road ends into private access only at that point. But, then I see a side trail, which says "open to public". I stopped, parked and started walking this trail. The trail ended up on the ocean, a beautiful coastline of rocks and shells.

On my walk, I realized this, "I have been on this property quite a few times since I owned it. But I never even tried to take the side road to explore, just because I thought it was a dead end". How many times in our lives have we done that?? We think its a dead end! What is the point of even going that way?? Just around the corner, when things look like they are

hopeless, we say why even bother trying. Why should we take that extra risk, because the risk looks to be too much?

So I think its a good challenge to ourselves to take that extra step of faith, be more bold and look around the corner. We will never know what doors will open up, what types of beautiful relationships we could cultivate, what improvements we could make in our lives. If we don't look around the corner, we might just miss out on the beauty of life..

Investment

Lets face it, majority of us think of money or real estate when it comes to investment. But, couple weeks ago my writer friend Jennifer Hillier wrote "A friendship is an investment. Sometimes it's worth more than what you put in. Sometimes, much, much less". Hmm, investment in a person, now that is an interesting concept!!!

If I look back at my life, I have seen people who have invested in me. Thank God for that! We all have the ability to invest something in someone's life. It may be through mentoring, through our time, through our words. But like any investment we have to be selective where and in whom we want to invest. There are people that are really hungry in this world for your encouragement and mentoring. Be on the lookout for them and when you see them, make sure you take that extra effort to reach out. Too often we are so self centered and self focused that we lose that investment opportunity. We often think "I am so busy, I don't have time right now". If you wait for the appropriate time, it will never come. Just do it!! You will find like any good investment, it will pay you off in life. You may not see the rewards of it right away but in due time, benefits do come back. Some of those benefits, you cannot put a $$ amount on.

But like any investment, you have to be wise and make sure you are investing in the person who really needs it. Sometimes we go out of our way and help someone and find out that it was a waste of our time. That should not deter you from learning from that experience and moving on to the next investment opportunity. Its all about being open and willing. Its not your ability that counts, its your availability. So are you available??

Maintaining the right perspective

Few weeks ago @chessnwine wrote a blog emphasising keeping the right perspective regardless of the market conditions. If you are in finance and enjoy reading great educational blogs, definitely worth checking him out http://ibankcoin.com/chessnwine/

After reading his post, I started thinking more on "perspective". In life, we have to always maintain a bigger picture. Things will never go as planned for us, because its after all life! Nothing will ever go as planned. We have to step out of our situations that we are going through and look at it in the context of the bigger picture. Positive things happen to us everyday of our lives, they may be small but they are there. We have to learn to focus on them. Often we let one negative thing that happens to us during the day capture our thoughts and allow them to ruin the entire day or sometimes even weeks. Granted some of these negative things can be really difficult to handle but more often than not, allowing yourself to be swept away by them will only cloud your judgement and ability to deal with them. No way am I trying to undermine the difficulties of our lives. Sometimes we have to train our selves just to see the obvious. So what are some of the positive things in your life that we can take for granted? Good health, family, food, shelter..... Take a moment every morning and be grateful for the small positive things in your life. Capture your thought life before a negative moment captures you.

I much rather choose to believe that my life is like a painting. Its never going to be complete until the end. There may be shades of colors that I don't like but in the context of entire painting, they all fit in quite well. I will never know until the end how those small negative things help develop the entire positive picture of my life. So maintaining the right perspective even though can be difficult is very well worth the effort :) It is all about taking a moment and stepping out and looking at your life's bigger picture.

Making a difference with simple things.

Something happened to me over the last week that made me think. A friend of mine gave me a compliment in the afternoon. Guess what, it changed my whole day, I was so happy to hear that she thought so highly of me.  But it made me think, did she realize that by just giving a compliment, she made a difference in my life that day?

How often do you get a chance to make a difference in someone else's life? I am not talking about heroic events such as savings one's life. But I am talking about our ordinary every day lives. Do we think about how we can make a difference with our simple small actions? Often we forget that the simplest gestures are the most powerful ones. They are our smiles, our compliments, our words of encouragement, and believe it or not, just a moment or two of our lives to stop and listen.. If you pay attention in your daily life, you will always find opportunities to bless someone. Most of the time, it will only cost you a smile or a moment. Sometimes our memorable moments are made that way. So don't loose out on the chance to make those moments.

One of my favorite quotes on giving is by Oprah Winfrey:
"I don't think you ever stop giving. I really don't. I think it's an on-going process. And it's not just about being able to write a check. It's being able to touch somebody's life."

How do you see yourself?

Recently I had a chance to travel. I love travelling, always have and never can get enough. It does not matter where I go, I usually find that experience very refreshing and end up doing a lot of self reflection. This trip, it made me realise, no matter where we go, we cannot get away from our own selves. That is one person you cannot run away from :) So, my question is how do you view yourself? Do you like yourself? Do you view yourself as champion? My friend Demetrick tweeted something quite interesting earlier.. He mentioned "I started viewing myself successful person before I became one". This is a very good point. Its easier said than done. I know in my life, I have had to capture my thought life to align with the right thoughts about myself to move in the right direction. Its very easy to be negative about our self. It takes practice to view yourself with the right attitude. So when things go wrong, are you quick to jump on yourself and criticize your self or do you take time to applaud the things you do right and then focus on things that need improving?

We all can do more but we have to take time to enjoy who we are in the process of what we want to become..

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."  Mark Twain

Things...

This was a jacket that I purchased in Vegas, one of the things I wanted!

This weekend I was going around doing my chores, actually folding laundry. I thought to myself "How many clothes do I have?" Do I really wear them all?  Do I really need these all? Often we go and buy things because we want them.  Made me remember there is a big difference between wanting and needing things. Don't get me wrong, I want nice things, we all do! But I want a balance in my life between want and need. Everything in life has to be in balance. So, I have decided for every one new item I am going to buy such as clothes, I am going to give away 3 items. Not only will it help me reduce clutter, but also provide me with the joy of knowing, I know how to part with things. After all, things are just temporary.

Leaving the City..

At one point or the other in our lives, we all move. Either we move out of our homes, our jobs, or from one city to another. This is just part of life. Same is true in our lives, we go through experiences and we decide to move on from things. Not all our experiences are great. Some indeed are very disappointing. But what we choose to do with those failures is in our hands. Its calling leaving the city of regrets! Do we choose to learn from our mistakes and try to become better? Do we choose to go over failures and just keep living those over and over again and beating ourselves with? Or do we learn from it and apply that new knowledge to become better? I see a lot of people who complain and remain where they are, so to speak. I want to be one of those who chooses to leave the regrets behind and move to a better city.