DUST

Most shops choose to have transparent glass partitions as their front facades. They not only make the space look bigger from inside, but they also showcase the wares to the people walking outside. Besides they help the people inside to see the world outside.

The owner of a café would keep an eye on his competitors and share his critical observations with his customers. His favourite condemnation was about the lack of cleanliness of the shops across the road. He would point out to their dirty windows to illustrate his point.

While most customers would avoid entering into a debate with the very opinionated personality, a visiting tourist was appalled to hear the man’s criticism. He dragged the café owner to the outside and showed him that it was his own panes which were dusty while the others were spotlessly clean. The dust he noticed was on the window panes of his own shop!

Too often we find fault with others and quite often we are wearing coloured glass. To BE BETTER is to notice one’s own shortcomings and work on areas to improve. Being judgemental about others is easy. We should strive to be developmental about our own situation.

The dust that we see is quite often in our vision…
To BE BETTER let’s be careful about condemnation

regards
Pravin-da

DECISIONS

This chronicle is about the famous personal development guru - Napoleon Hill. Born to a poor family, he fought his way out of his backwoods Virginia town with a burning desire to be successful. He was always searching for ways to improve himself and was involved in numerous ventures, including managing a coalmine, practicing law, and becoming a business journalist.

His big break came at a meeting with Andrew Carnegie, the "Steel King". Carnegie asked Hill if he would take up the challenge of devoting 20 years of his life in order to prepare a formula of success for helping others to become successful. Carnegie would provide him with letters of reference to meet hundreds of successful people in the likes of Woodrow Wilson, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Theodore Roosevelt and John D. Rockefeller.

Hill chose to take up the challenge in less than 60 seconds. Later he came to know that Carnegie had given him only 60 seconds to make up his mind, failing which he would have lost his chance of undertaking the important assignment. After 20 years of dedicated research, Hill compiled the best seller, Think and Grow Rich, in 1937. Imagine, history would have been different if Hill had procrastinated.

Effective people make up their mind fast and are slow at changing their mind once they make their decision. Others tend to be slow at making up their mind and quick to change after the decision is made. In fact, most people do not make their own decisions, because their decisions are made for them or influenced by others. To be better at taking decisions is not just about choices, but more importantly it is about making timely choices.

That timing is crucial to decisions is a fact we find
Let’s strive to BE BETTER at making up our minds

regards
Pravin-da

REFORM

We are seized by a spirit of rebellion at different times… some as a child, some as a teenager, some as a youth, some for life, some for occasion and some for emotion… Such rebellion moves from disobedience to actions more severe… Invariably, the rebel seeks to challenge the situation as it is and change it in alignment with his own perception as to what is better.

Reform is rebellion with a noble purpose. It is about positive change. However, it can include a reversion to the basics to what is distinguished to be an unadulterated, original state. While rebellious revolutions seek radical change, the scope of reformation is careful not to throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater. Given such an affirmative outlook, reform is rooted in the principles of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity… all familiar words. They are penned in the preamble to the Constitution of India by the person whose birth anniversary we celebrate today.

Dr B R Ambedkar with a Ph.D from Columbia University returned to India to lead what is today considered to be the greatest battle for human dignity on planet earth. He could have launched a violent revolution. Instead he asked people to find dignity, strength and prosperity by converting to Buddhism and its tenets of rationalism and humanism. He described his movement thus… "Ours is a battle not for wealth or for power. It is a battle for the reclamation of human personality."

50 years after his death, Ambedkar’s vision of for reclaiming the human personality remains far from being accomplished. And the reasons lie with the rest of us. We speak about reform, yet we do not begin reforming our own regressive attitudes which are born out of social conditioning. Never mind how much we progress technologically, we must halt our regression as human beings by personal reformation followed by social renovation.

Reform is an expedition to BE BETTER as human beings
First we have to transform ourselves… then, other things

regards
Pravin-da

HOPE DAY

Diye humare ashaaon ke kabhi bujh naa paye
(May the lamps of hope never wane)
– Mitwa song from the Hindi film, Lagaan

All over the world, 7 April is celebrated as Hope Day. UNESCO dedicates this day help prevent and treat child abuse. The day is meant to give hope to children who have suffered from child abuse and neglect. Hope Day is an occasion to share your hopes and dream with your friends, family and community.

Hope is a potent sentiment that empowers us and facilitates us through demanding and tough times. Hope makes us believe that things will get better. It instils in us the courage to keep persisting. However the emotion of hope is not the same as joy that things are heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good and we want it to be better.

In a world seized by furious pace and the immediate gratification of every desire, we now regard “waiting” as an unbearable ordeal. We tolerate no time, not even a second, between desire & fulfilment. However patience is integral to the quality of hope. Look around and you will see impatient people frequently getting alienated from the emotion of hope.

The real power of hope is when it invests in others. Hope converts our belief into trust for ourselves and into enabling confidence for the other person. Hope is like the candle that lights up the darkness not just for the person who holds it, but also for the others in the vicinity. Hope therefore is an act of sharing. It transforms not just the owner of the sentiment but every person with whom it is shared.

Hope empower us and others to BE BETTER with persistence
Remember that it goes hand-in hand with the virtue of patience

regards
Pravin-da