Be Inspired – Inspire Others

Can you recall a moment in life where you were motivated or inspired by someone? Do you recall feeling ecstatic by seeing something that brought you immense joy and which brought incremental learning to your existing knowledge.  Did someone, even your school or college teacher or an elderly person from the family, pat you on the back and appreciated you on your achievements.  Was this the defining moment of your life?

The world is round and symbolically, what comes to you from somewhere, ultimately, passes on to others.  This happens in two ways.  You encourage others or pass on the inspiration at a conscious level or people get inspired by you without your knowledge.

Sometimes, mere encouragement of others can be the defining moment in someone’s life.  When people meet and interact, there is some exchange of information, and those seeking knowledge actively, will be the wiser, no matter how short the interaction is.  It is important that in all our interactions, we exude a positive attitude, especially when you find that the other person is going through a lean time in his/her life.  Ensure that you have positive words not directly targeted at him but all your communication and messages must carry messages that convey enthusiasm and that lifts up his/her spirit.  You never know how it will inspire him and give him that source of encouragement that he is looking out for.  Offer help and direction to help him sort out his/her problems.  It is not always money that helps resolve issues.  Sometimes, mere guidance helps him clear his mind.  Ask any person and he will tell you that he was inspired, encouraged and motivated by someone at some point of time in their life.

You don’t have to be a parent, teacher, coach or guide to encourage others.  You do not have to be a subject matter expert to do so.  You need not have attended the top B-School somewhere in the world and a wealth of experience to guide others.  Life teaches us a lot of things during our daily interactions.  Social media has been a great avenue for learning.  Everyday, you receive messages that someone sends to inspire you.  It is your life’s experiences, your own learning's and own failures which leave a lot of learning for you.  Bring those to the fore and lend a piece of knowledge at the most opportune moment.

You do not lose anything by staying motivated.  It actually rubs on you. You will feel charged and see things in positive live.  You only share knowledge and that knowledge will go further down from generation to generation.  No one will remember you for a specific act or advice given but it will have a multiplier effect on the betterment of this world.

Therefore, always stay motivated, look at the positives and the moment you see someone at the edge of life, help him cross over to the better side. 

Is craziness the template?

I have been thinking a lot on the recent success of new age entrepreneurs and that process took me back down to the industrial age when the real development of technology started happening.

There are numerous instances of people with ideas who converted them into products and services for the public good.  Amongst those that can be included are Graham Bell, Edison, Henry Ford, Johannes Gutenberg who invented the first printing press right upto Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg and a long list of individuals who have to their credit some invention or a creation that has help public lead a quality of life.  I do not want to exclude from list this, people who have help revolutionise the service industry as well and that includes the McDonalds, the KFC, PizzaHut, Dunking Donuts, Cafe Coffee Day, Uber, Ola, etc. because they have made good quality food and quality services accessible to us, in the vicinity of our homes.  I include every entrepreneur, every risk taker who has either failed or succeeded.  It is a different thing that a failed person never stood up again to rise like never before but they also deserve a mention.

Come to think of it, what were the top qualities that they possessed.  Yes, they definitely had a vision and a zeal to achieve it. But... Did they have the resources to achieve the success? Did they have the knowledge to acheive what they did? Did they have mentors to guide them in the process? Did they see it growing to where it is today? Did they have knowledge of SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats like it is now taught in B-Schools)? Did they have Financial Planning skills? Did they have knowledge of goal settings and factors that should be considered whilst goal setting? Did they fear failure or have any other types of fears? Were they confident of their success? Were were they ready to bear the scorn of their family and closed relatives?

I imagine that they all had these shortcomings.  They all feared, every moment, every day.  Yes, they learnt something everyday and persevered with their goals.  Two things can happen to you every day.  You meet failures everyday and you get success everyday.  When you meet with one success, it eggs you on to do better.  But not all days are the same.  Sometimes, a small failure pulls you down relatively faster than a major success because we are trained to think like that.  However, successful people know that they have two options – either to learn from the failures and keep going or to give up completely.  Those that give up at a few obstacles are weak hearted.  That alone is not the factor that deters them from going further.  There are constraints like staring at complete bankruptcy after having invested everything that they had.  They stare at the sad fate of hunger, poverty, shame, having to live with that past and so many other aspects. Very rarely you have friends that support you during such times.  No body supports you with their money during your downward spiral.  Everyone wants to be with the winner.

When we analyse how people overcame their miseries to emerge successful, there is just one trait that tops the chart and that is craziness.  When you have that crazy streak of mind that is full of self-confidence and belief in their work that they are able to see beyond the immediate shortcoming.  Bring the “Law of Attraction” into the picture and you have the complete image of a success that pulls all the universe’s resources and help at your disposal.  Craziness is not something that is short-lived.  It is a sustaied effort that keeps you going ahead, no matter the size of the hurdles.  Craziness is the ability that allows the person so see, even at the begining of the tune, the light that is far ahead in the tunnel.  It is an imaginary process and not everybody is able to relate it.  Not everyone is blessed to visualise that.  We all are equally gifted with such abilities but not all people are able to invoke them at the right time to become great.  The same logic applies to eternal lovers like Romeo and Juliet, Laila and Majnu, Shreen & Farhat and so many others who had vision for their love.  Everyone has a foresight about something or the other.  Not may are themselves convinced about them.  Only a handful of people have a strong conviction about their vision and the road-map that leads them to success.

Can you develop this streak of craziness?  Do you aleady have this streak of craziness? Can anybody help you identify this attribute? I am not too sure if there are any ready made answers to the above.

Can you learn this from others? – Yes and No.  No matter how much classroom theory lectures you attend to learn this, you will probably not learn unless you have a strong conviction about a story or an idea or a vision.  But yes, if you have an idea, however, small and you mentally prepare yourself by observing their behavioural pattern, then surely, you can imbibe those habits and maybe even do better.  But this calls for a dedicated pursuit, close study, investment of time and resources. 

And lastly, do not aim to copy but seek inspiration.

Sarfaraz Lakhani

Free Your Hands to Succeed

You have been gifted a pair of hands.  Not all people are lucky.  Some are born without it.  Some lose it in their life time due to accidents or health reasons.  We take them and all our other natural gifts for granted ever so often because we did not pay or it and were given without having asked for it.  It was a natural progression.

Take a flashback to your childhood early years and remember that you used your hands to crawl and started moving forward.  Have you ever seen a child that has used his hands to move backwards?  Why don’t we take inspiration from this little but such an important milestone of our lives that we must move ahead by making use of our hands.  Internally, our brain works and externally, it is the hand that translates that thought into action.

If you wish to succeed in life, you have to make the best use of your hands like how I am doing now.  In this mobile generation, we have limited that use of hand to our left and right hand thumb.  We are using these gifted these resoures but to a far limited extent.  The thumbs enable us to make use of mobile phones to communicate, send mails, further our business communication but imagine how little we are putting them to use.

If you dwelve deeper, you will realise that each hand has been gifted with five fingers each.  The lesson that we learn here is that as we stretch our resources, God has multiplied them so that we can achieve more.  The power in our arms, translates that power into our fingers enabling us to achieve action orientation.

We have never seen a sprinter being able to run with his hands in his pocket.  Try climbing a steep mountain or a flight stairs with your hands in your pocket.  Possible but probably very difficult.  Similary, if you want to succeed in life, make good use of your hands.  All the power is in the hands.  Use them to write down your plans, to shake hands with people, to buiild new relationships, to accomplishing something, to design or create something, to maintain something and so on.  Success in business is very much like climbing the stairs or going up a steep mountain.  You can only go higher if you make effective use of your hands.

Having your physical hands free but they are mentally tied also does not help.  It is as good as having none.  Find creative uses of your hand and achieve success.

Sarfaraz Lakhani