Do you throw the kids into the air?

Ding dong, Ding dong ... the alarm went off. It was five in the morning on Aug 14th 2009. I hardly had 6 hours of sleep, but unlike usual alarm-snooze saga I woke up and got ready. I rehearsed the speech (The Three Wishes) for couple more times. It was my first speech from storytelling manual and 3rd speech at TGIF Management Club. I reached Coco's Bakery Restaurant few minutes early and did my breathing exercise in the car.

Even before the meeting has began and my heart began pounding faster and faster. First speaker was an experienced Toastmaster and began delivering her speech. The beginning of her speech was awesome. Midway through the speech she went blank. It was not that she forgot the speech, but her mind went totally blank. She was speechless for few moments. Once she recovered she told that her brain was injured TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) some years ago when the shower fell on her head. As a result she experiences a kind of epilepsy, where her mind will go blank for few seconds/minutes. Well, she gave an unintentional demonstration of the effects of TBI. As an advice, she mentioned that it is dangerous to throw the kids high in the air and catch them. Later, when I was chatting with my friends about this incident, one of my friend said that it is also dangerous to shake the kids forcefully. Well, that's a learning for me. I used to throw my daughter up in the air and catch her, because she loves it. From now on I would refrain from doing that with any kids.

Okay, back to Toastmasters meeting. She recovered from the disruption and concluded the speech well. Next, it was my turn. I was completely moved by this incident and my heart started beating even faster. Initially I planned to try unique voice for the characters in the story, but decided to keep it simple this time. In my opinion, I delivered it decently. Third speaker was a DTM (Distinguished Toastmaster). He spoke about the underlying issues with 401 (k) plan.

Finally, the meeting hit the "awards" section of the Agenda. Voila! I was awarded as the Best speaker for the day. I was thrilled, but the corner of my heart felt heavy for the first speaker. Had her speech was smooth, I would have been more joyful. But, I learned a nice lesson "Don't throw the kids into the air."

Textbook rentals to students

Numerous online (used) book stores and book rental are popping up and growing everyday. These Internet companies exert significant competitive pressure on the brick and mortar stores and the textbook publishers. Brick and mortar stores are affected by the inexpensive offerings from online stores. The publishers take a hit in revenues when the companies rent the books. The royalty to authors also takes a hit due to textbook rentals. In order to mitigate the threat, the publishers have woken up and are beginning to rent the books to college students. You can read the NYTimes article for details.

Now, why am I writing this? Well, for two reasons:

1. I believe this a nice business (competitive) strategy to tackle the "imitation" and "substitution" threats/challenges. Something to ponder about when your business is faces similar threats/challenges.
2. As a retired student, I believe this to be a sweet deal for students to save money and still get a good quality book. Check out my other blog for some tips for students.

Conquer your worries - Part 1

Preface

It's two months, since I am done with my MBA and I haven't read even a single book. Although I borrowed couple of books from library, it only costed me a return trip as I didn't allocate time to read them :-(. I was really concerned about wasting time without reading books and sipping few droplets of the vast literature ocean. This week, I vowed to myself that I would at least read few chapters of Dale Carnegie's book "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living." Now, that I have read few chapters (touch wood), I thought that the profound concepts in the book would be helpful to other souls as well. My current plan is to write only first few chapters of the book, as my intentions are to bring basic awareness to conquer worries and kindle interest to read the book. What I found really interesting was the alignment of concepts outlined in this book with the spirituality concepts that I heard/learned from my Guru, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. I'll compare both the concepts wherever applicable. The concepts as such as simple, but the challenge is to discipline ourselves to follow these concepts. Well, enough for preface, let me jump to first part of this sequel.

Fundamental facts you should know about worry (Part 1)

Dale Carnegie begins the book with a basic principle that would help us conquer our worries. Live in day tight compartments - he recommends us to shut the iron doors of past and future and just live the present day. My Guru and, I believe, all the enlightened people, also preach that to be happy one should always "live in present moment." Mr. Carnegie quotes numerous real stories to substantiate this principle. Sound simple? In fact it is not. If you notice young kids, they almost always live in the present moment. There is no concept of time at that age. However, when we grew older we have been conditioned about the past and future and we dwell most of our time in those. [Note: Neither I nor the author (& my Guru) advocate to stop planning for future. You should always have a vision/mission in your life.] If there is one take away that you would like from this blog, then that should be this basic principle: Be aware and live in present moment.

In the second chapter, Mr. Carnegie discusses the Magic formula that can help to overcome our worries. First, when you are worried about something ask this question: "What is the worst that can possibly happen?" Once you have an answer, then prepare to accept it, if you have to. Once you have accepted the worst, you will immediately feel better, relieved and relaxed. Now, calmly proceed to improve on the worst. That's the crux of this chapter. Again, Mr. Carnegie quotes numerous real life examples to illustrate this Magic formula.

The essence of the third chapter is "Those who don't know how to fight worry die young." Worry not only creates lot of mental stress, but also complex diseases such as high blood pressure, heart problems, stomach ulcers, etc. Though, this sounds silly, I could vouch for this as I am currently witnessing this personally. Perhaps, I would write about it some other time.

To recap, remember three things:

1. Live in present moment
2. Apply the Magic formula (What is the worst that could happen? accept it and act to improve it)
3. Those who don't know how to fight worry die young

Hope you find these concepts helpful and looking forward for to hear your experience about this topic from you.

Will write about the next part soon, until then "Be happy and make others happy." :-)