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

CLEAR?

An Italian priest, Fr. Gatti who taught me just for one year in school, was my guiding muse for over three more years. His influence on me has been a part of earlier posts of Monday Muse. His stories opened my thinking to see both the larger picture and the intricate detail. One such story literally cleared my vision.

A shopkeeper was forever disparaging of his competitors' storefront windows. "Just look at them”, he would say, “Surely, they are the dirtiest windows in town.". Everyone was tired of the man's continual criticism and fault-finding remarks about other peoples’ windows.

However, one day over coffee, when the man carried the subject just too far, his smart customer suggested the man get his own windows cleaned. The shopkeeper followed the advice, and the next day at coffee, he exclaimed, "I can't believe it. As soon as I washed my windows, my competitor must have cleaned his too. His windows are clear and you can see them shine."

It was all very clear. The problem was with HIS windows. Since they were dusty, the others appeared shabby, too. Too often we are seized with identifying drawbacks and weakness of others, but the reality remains that our own minds are in negative condition or conditioned negatively. So before we categorize others as worse, we must discover how we can BE BETTER ourselves. After all, Confucius once declared, "Don't complain about the snow on your neighbor's roof when your own doorstep is unclean."

The singling out of the worst in others must go
Lets’ BE BETTER ourselves and may our actions show.

regards
Pravin-da

SOUP?

Job Interviews are conducted to assess a potential employee to see if he/she has the required competencies and attitude. And in recent times, innovative situations are created to assess the reflexes and responses to find out who is better than the rest. Just consider the following case:

All the candidates for managerial positions are educated about the organisation’s vision, mission and systems through a striking audio visual presentation. Next the presenter announces, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the interview shall commence after a 30 minute recess. Till then, help yourself to some delicious soup.”

Everyone begins to queue up at the serving table… even those who do not want the soup, choose not to be part of a slight. The atmosphere is one of discipline… no pushes and shoves… smiles flash around… everyone knows they are being watched and hence the best behaviour is out on display.

The bowl is gracefully lifted… a prompt “thank-you” is uttered as the waiter pours the soup… One moves further, to gracefully add a series of additives that await… chilly sauce, vinegar, pepper, salt, etcetera. The assessment is complete! Everyone who adds without tasting and checking out whether the soup actually requires add-ons find themselves in hot soup as far as the interview is concerned

In the quest to assess who is better, the ones who fall aside are the ones who use resources without considering whether they are needed. To BE BETTER than the rest, we must ensure that our behaviour is based on situational thinking instead of perfunctory behaviour. And we have to start with unlearning habits and embracing a responsive approach that shuns the mechanical unthinking.

We must unlearn habits of mechanical inclination,
To BE BETTER lets indulge in responsive action.

regards
Pravin-da

ANALOGY

My favourite orator, Dr Oscar Rebello was speaking at a public meeting about the land grab taking place in Goa and the complicity and connivance of the Government in aiding the illegalities… He could have rattled off facts and figures to buttress his argument. However, he once again exhibited his genius in connecting his communication with his heterogeneous audience. He spoke thus…

Consider the case of our lovely mother who is a nice human being. She is caring and has done only good to others. Now consider our father who is an aggressor against our mother. He abuses her and worse, snatches her jewellery and household things and gives them to another woman. What should we, as children, do to our father who is brutalising our mother? The audience roared to say “teach him a lesson”…

Oscar immediately made his analogy… Our lovely mother is our motherland, Goa.
Our father is the Government that rules us. The other woman is money bags out to circumvent the law and loot Mother Nature of her precious possessions. Nothing more was required to be said. The message had been communicated in all its clarity.

Analogy is the expression of the cognitive practice of transferring the message as understood by the speaker to the listener in a way that the listener can understand. It is based on the principle that effective communication is all about keeping it simple. The hall mark of a good communicator is the ability to BE BETTER at using the power of analogy as against the agony of wordiness.

To BE BETTER in getting our message across,
The use of analogy can sure reduce the fuss.

regards
Pravin-da