Inspirational thoughts...

Here are some best inspirational thoughts :

"I'm not telling you it is going to be easy - I'm telling you it's going to be worth it" - Art Williams

"Do not wait; the time will never be 'just right.' Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along." - Napoleon Hill

"Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are." - Dale Carnegie

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Some men see things as they are and say, "Why?" I dream of things that never were and say, "Why not?" - George Bernard Shaw

"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending." - Carl Bard

"A small trouble is like a pebble. Hold it too close to your eye and it fills the whole world and puts everything out of focus. Hold it at a proper distance and it can be examined and properly classified. Throw it at your feet and it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump on the pathway of life." - Celia Luce

Gods message...

After seeing this image...i was thinking about it..what message "GOD" wants to give to his fans...finally i am able to decode it...

Let others lead small lives,
But not you.
Let others argue over small things,
But not you.
Let others cry over small hurts,
But not you.
Let others sacrifice there dreams,
But not you.
Let others forget honesty,
But not you.
Let others leave their future,In someone Else's hands,
But not you...

Stress Management...

In today's fast life many employees undergo mental stress, every employee in an organization tries to show his/her performance in different way. More Positive the performance more is the success...simple mantra!! but for that you need to face tremendous amount of mental stress, that's why we need to control and manage the stress to achieve highest performance.

There are three types of people in every organization :
1. People who can do anything and everything
2. People who don't have any goals, "Time fillers" at work
3. The average performs, people who "swim" with the flow

and when these different kinds of people come together, its necessary for the manager to study there work habits and abilities and think about "Stress management".

While working in the team, all people don't have same "Stress", there are also three type of people in the team :
1. Boss Fearful - People who are fearsome of Boss, they just start shivering once they hear boss's name, they cant even talk with the boss.
2. Boss Addicts - People who do boss's work within the time, they try to follow every order given by boss within time, they are the A+ cards of the boss
3. Boss Warriors - People who can fool boss, they can find out defects in boss working style and get him in the trouble and after that they help boss to come out of that artificial trouble and try to impress him with this image
All these people undergo diffrent kinda stress levels,Whenever person is under stress, his body and behavior shows following signs :

1. Depression
2. Fatigue
3. Insomnia
4. Nightmares
5. Emotional instability
6. Avoiding food
7. Blood pressure and other diseases
8. Insecurity, caring, instability
9. Alcohol and drugs
10. Increase in smoking

Following are the tips or mantras to control and manage the stress -
A. Give priority to right tasks:
There is no one on the earth who is 100% complete at work. Analyze work in front of you, prioritize it and then try to do it, this will help you in managing the stress.

B. Task Listing :
Analyze daily work, make list of it, there are few things which are negative or you don't like, try to fit them in your "happy-slot",try to work on them positively.

C. Sleep :
Sleeping is a source to increase energy of your body. Correct sleep is more important than less or more sleep. Think about your days work before sleeping, get up early in the morning and go through days schedule, it will be fruitful.

D. Big "I" :
Organization runs coz of "me", everyone should follow "my" word, "I" am the one who drives the company...mistake guys, you should remove these kinds of feelings from your mind, there are many who are more brillient than you in the organization, keep this in your mind.

E. Excersise :
Have a habit of walking daily for half hour in a free air, it will reduce fear, instability etc and help you to stay happy. Yoga,Gym and Pranayam are very helpful "Tools" in managing the stress, use them.

F. Diet :
Avoid oily food, give preference to green vegetables and fruits, do enough breakfast, good lunh and light dinner at night.

G. Family first :
Give importance to family, Give time to your parents, husband/wife and children, have a good conversation with family whenevr you get time, have dinner together.

H. Life apart from work :
Be social, listen to good music, involve yourself in art,dancing,games, have passion for skill improvement in areas other than working. Those get involves in these things are more happier.

Its your work, your mind and your stress...try to manage it, then see..life is all yours !!

Recession and happy life...

It's an interesting article by Yogesh Chhabria:

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the Lehman crisis. Spending money that they didn't have and going beyond their means is one of the main reasons for their situation today. In fact that is the cause for the current economic crisis in the US .

When I see all this happening, I can only remember the good old days. Then, karz (loan) was bad. People looked down upon those who took loans. Parents would not give their daughter's hand in marriage to a man with loans.

But of course, the times have changed now. Everyone I know has a loan. The buzz word is EMI (equated monthly installment) . Today, you can buy everything on EMI - a house, a television, an i-Pod. In fact I know of someone who just bought a fancy BMW 3 series on EMI, instead of buying a cheaper car outright with cash. I mostly prefer to take public transport, but then I am an old man with old thoughts!

Anyway, coming back to what caused the crisis. Imagine having Rs 200,000 in your bank account, no regular income, yet buying a house worth Rs 65 lakhs, in the hope of selling it for a higher price. Even if the price of the house fell by just 5 per cent (that is Rs 3 lakhs), you will go bankrupt. This is what Lehman Brothers did; with around USD 20 billion they went and bought assets worth over USD 600 billion. Isn't it suicidal and simply foolish?

I am sure things would have been different, had I been the head of Lehman brothers. But who wants an old conservative man like me to head a complex financial institution.

But there are a few lessons that we can learn:

1. Live a balanced life and avoid overspending.

2. Don't buy things we don't need.

3. Don't buy Branded goods.

4. Don't buy excess food, clothes, cosmetics, footwear, electronics and fashion accessories. Just think before you buy. The world still has a lot of growth ahead and the future holds immense opportunities for us. Let us make the most of it and save and invest it wisely instead of wasting our precious little on things we don't need.

5. Try to balance life with work (No one is happy to work in there professions) .

6. Don't stress out your self, after work try to do some extra activities like swimming, yoga, walking, running where you can divert your mind from stress.
A thumb rule: Health is more important than money.

7. Try to understand each other (Wife and Husband) in financial matters and help each other.

Tip: As soon as you get your monthly salary, set aside a fixed amount, usually 35 per cent, for insurance, savings and investments. You can then spend the rest.

8. Not all loans are bad. Loans that are 'need based' (home loans, education loans) can always find a place in your finances against those that are largely 'want based' (Credit cards, personal loans, car loans).

9. Borrow only if repayment is financially comfortable. A thumb rule: Keep EMIs within 35 to 45 per cent of your monthly income

In that respect, there is one American who I really respect - Warren Buffet. He has lived in the same ordinary house for over three decades, drives his own medium sized car and leads an extremely regular 'middle class' life. If that's all it takes for the richest person on earth to be happy, why do all of us need to take extra stress just so that we can get things which aren't even essential?

Keep the spark!!

Inaugural Speech for the new batch at the Symbiosis BBA program 2008

By Mr. Chetan Bhagat

Good Morning everyone and thank you for giving me this chance to speak to you. This day is about you. You, who have come to this college, leaving the comfort of your homes (or in some cases discomfort), to become something in your life. I am sure you are excited. There are few days in human life when one is truly elated. The first day in college is one of them. When you were getting ready today, you felt a tingling in your stomach. What would the auditorium be like, what would the teachers be like, who are my new classmates - there is so much to be curious about. I call this excitement, the spark within you that makes you feel truly alive today. Today I am going to talk about keeping the spark shining. Or to put it another way, how to be happy most, if not all the time.

Where do these sparks start? I think we are born with them. My 3-year old twin boys have a million sparks. A little Spiderman toy can make them jump on the bed. They get thrills from creaky swings in the park. A story from daddy gets them excited. They do a daily countdown for birthday party – several months in advance – just for the day they will cut their own birthday cake.

I see students like you, and I still see some sparks. But when I see older people, the spark is difficult to find. That means as we age, the spark fades. People whose spark has faded too much are dull, dejected, aimless and bitter. Remember Kareena in the first half of Jab We Met vs the second half? That is what happens when the spark is lost. So how to save the spark?

Imagine the spark to be a lamp's flame. The first aspect is nurturing - to give your spark the fuel, continuously. The second is to guard against storms.

To nurture, always have goals. It is human nature to strive, improve and achieve full potential. In fact, that is success. It is what is possible for you. It isn't any external measure - a certain cost to company pay package, a particular car or house.

Most of us are from middle class families. To us, having material landmarks is success and rightly so. When you have grown up where money constraints force everyday choices, financial freedom is a big achievement.

But it isn't the purpose of life. If that was the case, Mr Ambani would not show up for work. Shah Rukh Khan would stay at home and not dance anymore. Steve Jobs won't be working hard to make a better iPhone, as he sold Pixar for billions of dollars already. Why do they do it? What makes them come to work every day?

They do it because it makes them happy. They do it because it makes them feel alive. Just getting better from current levels feels good. If you study hard, you can improve your rank. If you make an effort to interact with people, you will do better in interviews. If you practice, your cricket will get better. You may also know that you cannot become Tendulkar, yet. But you can get to the next level. Striving for that next level is important.

Nature designed with a random set of genes and circumstances in which we were born. To be happy, we have to accept it and make the most of nature's design. Are you? Goals will help you do that.

I must add, don't just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order.

There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup. There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.

You must have read some quotes - Life is a tough race, it is a marathon or whatever. No, from what I have seen so far, life is one of those races in nursery school. Where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same with life, where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die.

One last thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. One of my yoga teachers used to make students laugh during classes. One student asked him if these jokes would take away something from the yoga practice. The teacher said - don't be serious, be sincere. This quote has defined my work ever since. Whether its my writing, my job, my relationships or any of my goals. I get thousands of opinions on my writing everyday. There is heaps of praise, there is intense criticism. If I take it all seriously, how will I write? Or rather, how will I live? Life is not to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It's ok, bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices.

I've told you three things - reasonable goals, balance and not taking it too seriously that will nurture the spark. However, there are four storms in life that will threaten to completely put out the flame. These must be guarded against. These are disappointment, frustration, unfairness and loneliness of purpose.

Disappointment will come when your effort does not give you the expected return. If things don't go as planned or if you face failure. Failure is extremely difficult to handle, but those that do come out stronger. What did this failure teach me? is the question you will need to ask. You will feel miserable. You will want to quit, like I wanted to when nine publishers rejected my first book. Some IITians kill themselves over low grades – how silly is that? But that is how much failure can hurt you.

But it's life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would cease to be a challenge. And remember - if you are failing at something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that's where you want to be.

Disappointment's cousin is frustration, the second storm. Have you ever been frustrated? It happens when things are stuck. This is especially relevant in India. From traffic jams to getting that job you deserve, sometimes things take so long that you don't know if you chose the right goal. After books, I set the goal of writing for Bollywood, as I thought they needed writers. I am called extremely lucky, but it took me five years to get close to a release.

Frustration saps excitement, and turns your initial energy into something negative, making you a bitter person. How did I deal with it? A realistic assessment of the time involved – movies take a long time to make even though they are watched quickly, seeking a certain enjoyment in the process rather than the end result – at least I was learning how to write scripts , having a side plan – I had my third book to write and even something as simple as pleasurable distractions in your life - friends, food, travel can help you overcome it. Remember, nothing is to be taken seriously. Frustration is a sign somewhere, you took it too seriously.

Unfairness - this is hardest to deal with, but unfortunately that is how our country works. People with connections, rich dads, beautiful faces, pedigree find it easier to make it – not just in Bollywood, but everywhere. And sometimes it is just plain luck. There are so few opportunities in India, so many stars need to be aligned for you to make it happen. Merit and hard work is not always linked to achievement in the short term, but the long term correlation is high, and ultimately things do work out. But realize, there will be some people luckier than you.

In fact, to have an opportunity to go to college and understand this speech in English means you are pretty darn lucky by Indian standards. Let's be grateful for what we have and get the strength to accept what we don't. I have so much love from my readers that other writers cannot even imagine it. However, I don't get literary praise. It's ok. I don't look like Aishwarya Rai, but I have two boys who I think are more beautiful than her. It's ok. Don't let unfairness kill your spark.

Finally, the last point that can kill your spark is isolation. As you grow older you will realize you are unique. When you are little, all kids want Ice cream and Spiderman. As you grow older to college, you still are a lot like your friends. But ten years later and you realize you are unique. What you want, what you believe in, what makes you feel, may be different from even the people closest to you. This can create conflict as your goals may not match with others. . And you may drop some of them. Basketball captains in college invariably stop playing basketball by the time they have their second child. They give up something that meant so much to them. They do it for their family. But in doing that, the spark dies. Never, ever make that compromise. Love yourself first, and then others.

There you go. I've told you the four thunderstorms - disappointment, frustration, unfairness and isolation. You cannot avoid them, as like the monsoon they will come into your life at regular intervals. You just need to keep the raincoat handy to not let the spark die.

I welcome you again to the most wonderful years of your life. If someone gave me the choice to go back in time, I will surely choose college. But I also hope that ten years later as well, your eyes will shine the same way as they do today. That you will Keep the Spark alive, not only through college, but through the next 2,500 weekends. And I hope not just you, but my whole country will keep that spark alive, as we really need it now more than any moment in history. And there is something cool about saying - I come from the land of a billion sparks…!!

The Apple CEOs story

Steve Jobs-Standford commencement speech

Dear All, Wonderful and insightful speech by Steve Jobs. Do take time to read through if you already haven’t – its worth it! This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixr Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Justa three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK.
It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5c deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky ? I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me ? I still loved what I did.

The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death. When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything ? all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes. I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery.
I had the surgery and I'm fine now. This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous.
Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Fooli sh. Thank you all very much.

Pursuite of happiness...

Is your glass half-empty or half-full? How you answer this age-old question may reflect your outlook on life and whether you're optimistic or pessimistic...Be positive: Live longer, live healthier we have heard this many times but have we applied this in our life??...i think no...

every time anything happens around you...Our mind always talks with himself..we can call it a Self-talk. It's the endless stream of thoughts that run through your head every day. These automatic thoughts can be positive or negative. If the thoughts that run through your head are mostly negative, your outlook on life is likely pessimistic. If your thoughts are mostly positive, you're likely an optimist....some negative thoughts if your employee then...why am not getting much needed recognition at work even if i am doing my job best? why boss never gives compliment for my work? why he always neglects me? why everybody in my team is selfish? the friend whom i trust blindly at work is not trustable anymore...why he is also selfish????
Some of your self-talk comes from logic and reason. Other self-talk may arise from misconceptions that you create because of lack of information...
if you clear out misconceptions and irrational thinking and challenge them with rational, positive thoughts, your self-talk will gradually become realistic and self-affirming...

following things usually happen -

You magnify the negative aspects of a situation and filter out all of the positive ones. For example, you had a great day at work. You completed your tasks ahead of time and were complimented for doing a speedy and thorough job. But you forgot one minor step. That evening, you focus only on your oversight and forget about the compliments you received...

When something bad occurs, you automatically blame yourself. For example, you hear that an evening out with friends is canceled and you assume that the change in plans is because no one wanted to be around you.

You automatically anticipate the worst. You refuse to go out with friends for fear that you'll make a fool of yourself. Or one change in your daily routine leads you to think the day will be a disaster.

You see things only as either good or bad, or black and white. There is no middle ground. You feel that you have to be perfect or you're a total failure.

You see everybody is selfish around you. everybody want to make you unhappy including the people who are always with you in your good and bad times.

You can learn to turn negative thoughts into positive ones. The process is simple, but it takes time...Throughout the day, stop and evaluate what you're thinking. If you find that your thoughts are negative, try to find a way to put a positivity in them.

few examples :

There's no way it will work - I can try to make it work.
It's good enough - There's always room for improvement.
I am not going to get any better at this. - I will give it one more try.
Everybody is selfish here - i will talk with them and check whether there is any misunderstanding.

If you tend to have a negative outlook, don't expect to become an optimist overnight. But eventually your self-talk will automatically contain less self-criticism and more self-acceptance...well there is one line in song from TPZ...
"Hum jaise dekhe ye jahan hai waisahi...jaisi najar apni...khulke sochon aao..pankh jara failao..rang naye bikhrao...chalo chalo naye khwab bunalein..."!! :)

Do i love you?

Do I love you because you're beautiful, or are you beautiful because I love you?
Am I making believe I see in you, a woman too perfect to be really true?
Do I want you because you're wonderful, or are you wonderful because I want you?
Are you the sweet invention of a lover's dream, or are you really as beautiful as you seem?....

Sharemarket - How to maximize your returns

Many of us invest money in share market, coz its very easy for any software engineer who seats in front of computer for 10 or more hours and have good net access. The stock market specially Indian market is bit fluctuating these days, many say its roaring, It has crossed 18500 mark, all of us have seen the crash of market on 21 and 22 January 2008 and many investors lost great deal of money. We should learn from these kinda experiences.
It is common for everyone to scream from the roof tops that they lost money in a market crash. It is always not true. There are a minority who are just waiting with cash for the market to fall.

For maximising your returns you can follow the guidelines metioned below:

• Research a stock before entering -- We should not buy the stocks which don't have any track record.
• Keep a buy price -- buy only when the shares you have identified are available at the price you wish to purchase them.
• Sell on reaching the target -- selling is key to making money if you do not sell you gain nothing
• Do not sell on a weak day -- when all the stocks are falling never ever sell
• Buy in weakness -- these are days when the Sensex loses 5 per cent on either side so buy when market is losing
• Sell in strength -- When the market goes up by 10 per cent or so it is time to sell
• Keep at least 25 per cent of your portfolio in cash
• Research and apply in initial public offerings, IPOs
• Do not listen to what they say on TV channels -- they are paid for it
• You will lose more money in day-trading and gain more if you can have a one-month holding capacity
  

If you do not have time, patience and energy to research then it is not advisable to enter the market directly. The chances are that you will lose more money than you make! The best option then could be investing in ULIP policy's from LIC and mutual funds which in any way give higher returns than the normal bank interest rates plus insurance cover!!

Global vision, local win - Story of alibaba.com CEO

Friends after trying my "W-skills" on poems and philosophical articles, I thought of hosting some new things on my blog, so here I am with one of the most successful entrepreneurs story…I have read this one on the net and posting it “as it was”!! This is the story of an entrepreneur from china…Mr. Jack Ma who is the CEO of world-famous B2B website Alibaba.com in his own words!!.

When I was 12 years old, I got interested in learning English. I rode my bike for 40 minutes every morning, rain or snow, for eight years to a hotel near the city of Hangzhou's West Lake district, about 100 miles southwest of Shanghai. China was opening up, and a lot of foreign tourists went there. I showed them around as a free guide and practiced my English. Those eight years deeply changed me. I started to become more globalized than most Chinese. What I learned from my teachers and books was different from what the foreign visitors told us.

The other event that fundamentally changed me was in 1979, when I met a family with two kids from Australia. We met and spent three days together and played Frisbee. We became pen pals. In 1985 they invited me to go to Australia for a summer vacation. I went in July, and those 31 days changed my life. Before I left China, I was educated that China was the richest, happiest country in the world. So when I arrived in Australia, I thought, Oh, my God, everything is different from what I was told. Since then, I started to think differently.

I flunked my exam for university two times before I was accepted by what was considered my city's worst university, Hangzhou Teachers University. I was studying to be a high school English teacher. In my university, I was elected student chairman and later became chairman of the city's Students Federation.

When I graduated, I was the only one of 500 students assigned to teach at a university. My pay was 100 to 120 renminbi, which is like $12 to $15 per month. I always had a dream that when I finished my five years, I would join a business--a hotel or whatever. I just wanted to go do something. In 1992, the business environment started improving. I applied for a lot of jobs, but nobody wanted me! I was turned down for secretary to the general manager of a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Then, in 1995, I went to Seattle as an interpreter for a trade delegation. A friend showed me the Internet there for the first time. We searched the word beer on Yahoo and discovered that there was no data about China. We decided to launch a website and registered the name China Pages.

I borrowed $2,000 to set up the company. I knew nothing about personal computers or e-mails. I had never touched a keyboard before that. That's why I call myself "blind man riding on the back of a blind tiger."

We competed with China Telecom for about a year. The general manager of China Telecom offered to invest $185,000 to do a joint venture. It was the most money I had ever seen in my life. But unfortunately, China Telecom (NYSE:CHA) got five board seats. I got two board seats. Everything we suggested, they turned us down. It was like an elephant and an ant. I resigned. Then, I got an offer to come to Beijing and run a new government group to promote e-commerce.

My dream was to set up my own e-commerce company. In 1999, I gathered 18 people in my apartment and spoke to them for two hours about my vision. Everyone put their money on the table, and that got us $60,000 to start Alibaba. I wanted to have a global company, so I chose a global name. Alibaba is easy to spell, and people everywhere associate that with "Open, Sesame," the command that Ali Baba used to open doors to hidden treasures in One Thousand and One Nights.

There were three reasons why we survived. We had no money, we had no technology, and we had no plan. Every dollar, we used very carefully. The office opened in my apartment. We expanded when we raised money from Goldman Sachs in 1999 and then Softbank Corporation in 2000.

We're in China today because I believe in one thing: global vision, local win. We designed the business model ourselves. Our focus is on helping small and medium-size companies make money. We never copied a model from the U.S., like a lot of Chinese Internet entrepreneurs did. We focused on product quality. It has to be "click and get it." If I can't get it, then it's rubbish.

I call Alibaba "1,001 mistakes." We expanded too fast, and then in the dot-com bubble, we had to have layoffs. By 2002, we had only enough cash to survive for 18 months. We had a lot of free members using our site, and we didn't know how we'd make money. So we developed a product for China exporters to meet U.S. buyers online. This model saved us. By the end of 2002, we made $1 in profits. Each year we improved. Today, Alibaba is very profitable.

The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you've got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision. Also, if you don't give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.

Going public is an important milestone for Alibaba. The time was right. Our B2B company is established, market conditions are healthy, and management is strong. The reception proved a mainland Chinese company can list in Hong Kong and still get a very strong valuation and global investor interest.

My vision is to build an e-commerce ecosystem that allows consumers and businesses to do all aspects of business online. We are going into search with Yahoo and have launched online auction and payment businesses. I want to create one million jobs, change China's social and economic environment, and make it the largest Internet market in the world.

I'm just a purist. What is important in my life is that I can do something that can influence many people and influence China's development. When I am myself, I am relaxed and happy and have a good result.

Jack Ma hit pay dirt when his Chinese business-to-business start-up, Alibaba.com, went public, in November. The offering raised more than $1.5 billion and gave the company a valuation of $26 billion. Ma, 43, grew up during China's Cultural Revolution. He taught himself English, then caught the Internet wave as China's economy opened in the 1990s. Today, Alibaba is China's largest B2B site and a favorite among American and European companies that are buying from Chinese suppliers. The site earned $39 million on revenue of $129 million in the first half of 2007. Ma has also taken Alibaba into search, through a joint venture with Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), and his Taobao online auction site has become bigger than eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) in China.

The meaning of life...

Death...why? when? where? how? many questions will come in your mind...but its a destiny of a journey...journey which starts from your birth...1yr..2yr...3yr....many more...and now your here at the end of your life...you tried many things in your life...many times succeeded...many times fallen but the zest to live life helped you to reach here...We all live in the shadow of the fear of death, we believe that life and death are opposed to each other. This feeling causes us to miss life and we miss death as well. When we are born, death is born with us...Every day changes into night, and every night changes into day. The present elapses into the past and the future dawns upon the present. This cannot happen without the element of death. This process of change is death. If you want to die peacefully, live totally, completely. Death is the crowning glory of life lived intensely and fully.

Our life is wasted in searching for the meaning of life...The meaning of life is in life itself. No philosophy, no scripture, no cause can give meaning to life. You have to seek your own meaning and nobody except you can come upon it. Osho said, "It is your life and it is only accessible to you. Only in living will the mystery be revealed to you. Once you know what life is you will know what death is. Death is not the end of life; in fact, it is a completion of one life, the finale. A man who has understood what his life is, allows death to happen; he welcomes it. He dies each moment and each moment he is resurrected. Each moment he dies and is born again.

So understand what life means and it will keep you live longer. Many people came in your life to make it meaningful, Some of them are with you, few walked away but your still here...A rock solid,with the same energy and passion for life, many dreams came true,few hasn't and many dreams are waiting for you. Your moving ahead to achieve them. Recall all those moments of your life when you laughed,when you enjoyed,when your were on top of everest for your achievements. Those moments will give you strength to achieve your dreams...fulfill your wishes...life is for that only..so smile and live it with zest!!