Striving towards Excellence

A kindergarten teacher has decided to let her class play a game.

The teacher told each child in the class to bring along a plastic bag containing a few potatoes.

Each potato will be given a name of a person that the child hates,

So the number of potatoes that a child will put in his/her plastic bag will depend on the number of people he/she hates.

So when the day came, every child brought some potatoes with the name of the people he/she hated. Some had 2 potatoes; some 3 while some up to 5 potatoes. The teacher then told the children to carry with them the potatoes in the plastic bag wherever they go (even to the toilet) for 1 week.

Days after days passed by, and the children started to complain due to the unpleasant smell let out by the rotten potatoes. Besides, those having 5 potatoes also had to carry heavier bags. After 1 week, the children were relieved because the game had finally ended....

The teacher asked: "How did you feel while carrying the potatoes with you for 1 week?". The children let out their frustrations and started complaining of the trouble that they had to go through having to carry the heavy and smelly potatoes wherever they go.

Then the teacher told them the hidden meaning behind the game. The teacher said: "This is exactly the situation when you carry your hatred for somebody inside your heart. The stench of hatred will contaminate your heart and you will carry it with you wherever you go. If you cannot tolerate the smell of rotten potatoes for just 1 week, can you imagine what is it like to have the stench of hatred in your heart for your lifetime???"

Moral of the story: Throw away any hatred for anyone from your heart so that you will not carry sins for a lifetime. Forgiving others is the best attitude to take

-Karthik Gurumurthy

I’m fascinated by the concept of success. Of course, success can be defined in many different ways, depending upon the context. From Earl Nightingale’s “the progressive realization of a worthy ideal”. When someone had asked a very successful entrepreneur what changes he made in order to succeed.

He responded,

I changed. I changed my thoughts. I changed the people I paid attention to. I changed my mind. I changed my habits. I changed my attitude. I changed my clothes. I changed my opinions about me and about you. I changed what I read, I changed what I watched on television, and what I listened to. I changed those deep-rooted decisions about who I was and who I would become.

At some point in their lives, people who advance from average to successful recognized that there was something about them that had to change. Life didn’t have to change. Other people didn’t have to change. Circumstances didn’t have to change. They had to change. They made the decision to do so. And, they did it. No exceptions, no excuses. They simply did it.

The Law of Value: Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.

The Law of Compensation: Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.

The Law of Influence: Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other peoples' interests first.

The Law of Authenticity: The greatest gift you have to offer is yourself. The most significant way you have of adding value to others' lives is by honoring your own nature—by being genuine and not trying to be someone you're not.

The Law of Receptivity: The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.

-Karthik Gurumurthy

You can see your marketplace as being limited, a zero-sum game, a place where in order for one person to win, another must lose. Or you can see it as unlimited. A place where talent creates growth and market increases in size.

What is Poverty mentality?

If I give you something, it costs me what I gave you.

The more I share, the more I lose.

How long have you had an approach to stuff or ideas or time that sounds like this?

We've been taught this poverty mentality for a long time.

When you give something away, you benefit more than recipient does. The act of being generous makes you rich beyond measure, and as the goods or services spread through the community, everyone benefits.

But that's hard thing to start doing, because you have been taught that what's yours is yours. If you don't have enough  and then how can you possibly give away what you have? And everyday, successful people race to give away their expertise and to stead their ideas.

Here are some notes from this phenomenal Book:

• The only way to differentiate yourself and your business is to become exceptionally skilled at leading and persuading others.
• A couple of simple tests that you can make to prove yourself how easy it is to make people like you instantly:
• Starting tomorrow morning, you smile at the first five people you see at work every day for a week. A good, broad, genuine smile and a hearty good morning.
• Pick out just one person every day for a week, one person who has never meant very much to you, and become genuinely interested in him/her and show that you are interested in him/her with a smile and some friendly comment.
• If you want to be liked instantly, do as the puppy does: Become genuinely interested in other people and show it.
• Principles will never change; it is how they are applied that will change.
• In the past, an order from the boss may have given the employee enough want.  Today leaders must create that want by engaging others in the mission with same goals but by different processes.
• Leadership, like any other skill, is not something you are born with; it must be learned.
• Leadership is no longer for the Chief Executive Officer, the President, the General, the Boss or the Mom and Dad.  Leadership is available to each and every one of us at every level or Organization, be that Society, Business, Government or Family.
• Keep your mind Open to Change all the time.  Welcome it.  Court it  -  Dale Carnegie
• In today’s world, the quality of leadership is both respected and revered, but it is also subtly devalued.  We celebrate the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln, great leaders of the past, yet we are deeply suspicious of those who occupy leadership positions in the present day.  Perhaps it is because we know too much about them in our present media-dominated environment.
• We usually evaluate leaders in terms of how much they do, not how they transition to doing less.  There is a lesson here: What Leaders mean to us changes with time just as the leaders themselves change.
• Leadership masters goes a step further by transforming followers into other Leaders.  For true leadership masters, this process includes not just everyone in an Organization, but literally everyone they meet.
• It requires personal qualities beyond traditional leadership virtues: Qualities like toughness and Decision-making ability, Flexibility, Innovation and the ability to Accommodate sudden change.
• The purpose of Leadership Mastery is not to show you how to order people around, or to manipulate them with fear of failure or promise of reward.  Instead you will focus on giving people the tools to lead themselves in the direction of what they do best