Courage
Topic: Quotable Quotes

"To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage or of principle."

Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)

After all said and done, courage does not matter if it is not accompanied by sound planning and timing. Tactless courage is suicidal. Courage used without proper timing is also suicidal. Without paying due attention to timing and planning, courage comes to nothing. We have seen so much courage and human potential go waste when we act in spur of the moment without taking time to count at least 10. It would be better if we can count 1000.

At the risk of sounding selfish, it is also necessary to listen to WIFM (what is in it for me?). Giving one's life, sacrifice etc. sound good but what is it worth to you. If you are principled enough to fall prey to the bullets of a terrorist when you see a bunch of terrorists committing atrocities, by all means go and confront the terrorist who is armed to teeth and you with nothing. People with smart courage wait for right timing. In this case, smart courage means to make a mental note of as much information as possible about the terrorists and surroundings, committing it to memory and then informing authorities so that they can use your valuable information to act smartly.

Gandhi is one of the best examples I can think of for sustained courage. If Gandhi were to act in a foolhardy way, he would have met the same fate of Bhagat Singh or other freedom fighters who chose violence as the means to get the freedom. They made one or two big bangs but by using their courage in a wrong way, their life was cut short. Gandhi followed a meticulous way of nonviolence. He would not give up but would not use violence to create a wrong public opinion of his objective. His courage changed the world opinion and turned winds against British empire.

Take more recent example of 'Intifada' or struggle from common people in occupied territories of Palestine. After PLO had retreated to Tunis after being driven out of Lebanon and before that from Jordan, people who were facing real problems took the struggle into their own hands. PLO leaders living outside of Palestine were out of touch. To make things worse they were getting only bad publicity by staging occasional acts of terrorism such as hijackings and bombings. Intifada was a struggle fought with rocks. It was not something as sane as Gandhi's completely non-violent struggle. But, considering that they were only using stones and rocks to fight Israeli army was a big shift from their terror tactics and yielded better results in less than 10 years than what armed terrorism had not yielded in 3 decades.They won the world over as the world could not approve of heavily armed Israelis using their fire power on people of all ages using only stones to fight for their cause.

Courage is good. Use it with right planning and timing to make the best use of it. "Planning without action is futile. Action without planning is fatal."

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Reflect and succeed
Topic: Quotable Quotes
"We should every night call ourselves to an account; What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift."

Seneca (5 BC - 65 AD)

We have some many fabulous experiences during the day. It is too bad that we do not take a few minutes to reflect on them to make most out of our experiences. We may occasionally think about the experiences. But, it is not very focused. Many times our thinking about the happenings becomes very subjective and swings between extremes of likes and dislikes.

Some people make it a point to maintain a daily diary or journal. It is one of the most effective ways to make most of your experiences and learn very effectively from good and bad experiences. When we start writing, our thinking becomes clearer. That's why they say - "when you start inking, you start thinking." Whenever we are confused, we should simply start writing. We may not go very far. But, at least, the questions start becoming clear. It is never easy to make initial progress because with every line you write, you will come up with 10 questions that need answers. You have to get answers from 20 people and they are not all available at the same time. But, it makes sense to capture all those questions rather than giving up work. Slow and steady is ok. Giving up in exasperation is not.

It is very important to reflect on our achievements however small they may be. There is no better way to boost our confidence. We can be humble and at the same time be proud of our achievements and our ability. It does not hurt to act confident till we are really confident. Most of the people suffer from similar self doubt as we do and in many cases many times worse that we do. Knowing this, when we act confident, things start falling in place. People like to be around people who come across as confident. Even if we have to admit some mistakes or some lack of knowledge etc., we should do with confidence. Confidence is the belief in ourselves that we are up to the task.

It is also important to remember and feel good about bad habits we have reduced or given up. It can be physical habits such as smoking or drinking or over eating. It can also be psychological bad habits such as anger, hate, greed etc. Even if our conscience warns us when we feel those negative habits, we have had a small victory. We should celebrate them. It only strengthens our motivation.

Some people use 10 minutes before going to bed to reflect. That is a great idea, if you can follow. Writing a diary or journal is the best idea but requires a lot of commitment and time and perseverance to make any sense. As such we have very little time. It takes good 20 minutes to write something completely and meaningfully. Doing it day in and day out is not something that is easy. But, those who write daily and refer to those writings from time to time reap huge benefits as they can go back refer to lessons learned at their will and keep fine tuning their personal improvement plan.

Some people hesitate to write daily journal because of privacy issues. That's true if you think your writing can be used against you. It all depends on how well and how objectively you can write. If you record every small detail and focus more on actual details than the crux, it misses the point and can cause issues. It is possible to record one's day-to-day activities without making it too personal. Write like they report in news papers.

Important thing is to start maintaining a journal. Forget privacy concerns for a while. Why do successful people keep saying that their lives are like an open book? Are they not worried about their privacy? No, they are very secure about themselves. They know that even if they reveal everything, nothing can shake their security. If Gandhi were to feel like us, we would not have been lucky to read his 'My experiments with truth' in which he bares open himself and his idiosyncrasies. Although it can be awkward, if we are really secure and do not mind getting some remarks, living like a open book should not bother us at all.

Cheers!

Resourceful simpletons
Topic: Quotable Quotes

How often are you thankful to your steady and able hand that has served you for years? or to your car or to your doctor or to your admin or to many other things which hum ceaselessly to make our life comfortable.

Why is that we fail to acknowledge the value of things when they are doing just well? Why do we fail to take a moment to say 'thank you' when it is long overdue for a job done as expected?

What we do when something that has been working flawlessly for years fails suddenly for no fault? We just blow up and curse 1000 times more than we should have praised when things were going just fine.

"I did bad once and was blamed for ever. I did good many times and was praised never."

Not recognizing people and things, when they are doing well but without much fan fare, is one of the most important habits we can cultivate. It only makes them to deliver more. It always helps to have a small thanksgiving time everyday to list and say thanks to everything that we can come up with for that day to be thankful for.

It is an irony that quiet achievers get less recognition than pyrotechnicians everywhere. Have you ever seen a quiet, enterprising, meticulous, hardworking, dependable person getting praised as much as he should to be? Very very rarely. On the other hand, how often we have not seen people holding organizations to ransom because they are the only ones who can save the organization from crisis at that moment. In fact, in many cases, pyrotechnicians are the very reason the crisis started in the first place. If they were to cooperate with people who were planning and executing well, chances are this situation would not have happened. These are pyrotechnicians. They create all snafus because of their unwillingness to plan and execute meticulously and when things blow up in the face, work long hours, weekends to extinguish the fire which if not extinguished can take the organization down. Over time, these people tend to become more important than the organization itself. No rules apply to them. These kind people can be found in all levels in the organization. When these people become managers they create negative leverage. There are 10 people wasting their time because this hero manager is trying to do everything on his own which is making it impossible for him or her to spend adequate time with his or her people. Without the boss spending adequate time, people get frustrated to say the least and that's how you get negative leverage.

Many smart managers recognize the importance of not starting the fire in the first place. Jack Welch, legendary ex-CEO of GE, praises these worker bees a lot in his books. Ram Sharan and Larry Bossily titled their best selling book "Execution. The art of getting things done." These are excellent books. Both highlight how important it is to have people who may be intellectually mediocre but once you tell them what to do they can do it so well that it comes with all t's crossed and all i's dotted. Celebrate such people. Do not embarrass them as most of them are quite humble and shy. First learn whether if there prefer to be praised in private. Regardless make those people feel important at least a few times even when they are just delivering what is expected out of them. You can immediately see dramatic improvement in their productivity. It also helps the team.

These are also the people who need to be protected from corporate bullies. Like other people worker bees also make mistakes sometimes. But, when managers come down heavily on these poor souls for their mistakes, they lose confidence in their own abilities. That is really criminal. All these people had was their superb execution skills. Lack of confidence introduces diffidence and these people start thinking more and more before acting. Paralysis by over analysis is what follows and careers are destroyed and lives are wasted.

Always remember - ideas do not move mountains. Bulldozers do. For every good idea, you will need 10 solid executioners to realize it. Corporations need more and more flawless executioners. With people working hard and smart, you can achieve great leverage from your visionaries who are your idea factories. They deliver solid ideas by dozens and you have an army of flawless executioners who can get the things done.

Take time to be thankful to all those people and things which if stop humming can literally mean end of life for you.

How often we are thankful to our heart? If it only errs once, we are dead or almost dead.

Slow and steady wins the race. We should celebrate people who win the race.

Heroes create big splashes. Many times their splashes accomplish nothing more than getting people around them soaking wet. How often such people are a wet blanket on rest of the team with their bad attitude, lack of team spirit, my way or no way attitude? Many smart managers have gotten rid of such people even when it meant short term pains. You have to amputate your leg if is infected with gangrene. Otherwise, for the sake of leg, you would lose your life.

There should be a 'world worker bee' day.

Cheers!

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People, problems and attitude
Topic: Quotable Quotes

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Patience / Gentleness
Topic: Quotable Quotes

"When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time."

Saint Francis de Sales (1567 - 1622)

"Lucky are those who are flexible. Inflexible are damned to be bent out-of-shape." We seem to become inflexible on things that are not important to us but which matter to our solely to inflated ego.

It indeed is worthwhile to stand firm for things we truly believe. But, standing up does not mean being obstinate and thus risking bent out of shape. Standing up means firm resolve to achieve the end goal even if that means letting go of a few things on the way. "Pick right battles to fight if you want to win the war." "Life is a war won by choosing intelligently battles NOT worth fighting." "Marathon runner focuses on 26th file and not on first 100 ft".

With time and patience, everything works out. Not that we have to become complacent and do nothing. But, trying something too hard to achieve instant results does not work. It is like trying to lose 50 pounds in one week.

It's amazing to observe how rich the rewards of the habit of not giving up and plugging along pays of eventually. In a survey they found that a large percentage of high level executives did not reach that position because of their IQ but because of sheer perseverance. That is not to discount the importance of IQ but over certain threshold what matters is being able to patiently wait for opportunities to make a killing. "Good luck is the perfect timing of preparation meeting opportunity."

Some of the highly successful investors simulated their trading strategies for years before they invested a single penny in the market. They would apply complete rigor of the investigation and all analysis as though they were investing millions of dollars. It just is not easy to develop that kind of seriousness.

The above quote also talks about gentleness. What does that mean? First of all gentleness is being gentle to ourselves first. It is very easy to get into self-guilt, self-pity in no time. Some hard skinned or confident people may be able to defer feeling inadequacy and hopelessness little longer than ordinary mortals but despair does not spare them as well. If we have to be
able to have any energy left to carry us thru temporary problems, we should make sure that we do not become victims of despair. Every time we despair we suck up all the energy that we desperately need to remediate the situation.

How do we avoid being despaired? There is no better alternative than being able to do something you really like. I think Dale Carnegie mentions of a person who used to smoke cigar leisurely for a couple of hours when serious worries hit him. Okay, ignore the cigar part as using nicotine to fight stress is not a good strategy at all. But, the essence was that he was
purposely defocusing from the problem at hand to think about other things so that subconscious could work on the problem

Even those who are doing admirable things such as meditation and yoga etc. to get mastery over physical and mental responses, need to be careful not to be too harsh to body and mind. I think Buddha says somewhere in 'Dhammapada' or
in one of the jataka tales that he practiced severe austerities for several years which only made him terribly weak and hindered his spiritual progress. Same goes with mind. It should not be over elated using nicotine, caffeine or other drugs. It should also not be over depresses ed with brooding, sense of failure etc. It should maintain a status quo. Buddha recommended 'madhyama marg' (middle path) which emphasized moderation in everything to attain your goals.

"This too shall pass." is not the attitude of a lazy person. It is the attitude of a mature battle scarred person. You can make out the wisdom content by two things 1) who is it coming from 2) what experience this person has with the situation that he is commenting about that this too shall pass.

Cheers!

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Consistency
Topic: Quotable Quotes
"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

Is consistency creativity killer? If shoved down creative people without due consideration, it can certainly be a deadly killer of creativity.

This is very visible in big corporations. A bunch of creative people start a skunkworks project in dark and when it comes to some stage, it does become visible to management. If the management is not creative, they impose all sort of process on creative people in the name of consistency. They have a point too. Without due process, it makes several things unpredictable and that is not comfortable to people who are responsible to shareholders and other external entities.

Clay Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, developed a full theory around such phenomenon called disruptive technologies. Christensen shows how beneficial such disruptive projects are and how to manage them. He gives a framework to encourage innovative projects within existing companies and how to make best use of them. The trick is to treat skunkworks as a small incubating company and leave them alone and give them a lot of independence and treat them as a black box. Give them enough budget, recognize it as R&D expense, isolate them from corporate bureaucracy and let them turn some new stuff.

Biggest challenge occurs is when these skunkworks team develop something useful and it is time to turn them into mass production for company's financial benefit. Instead of imposing already working process, it makes sense to take a critical view of the process and see if still makes sense for this product. If not, it makes sense to revise the existing process for that new creative product line. More importantly people who worked on skunkworks project are indeed a creative lot and should not be restricted to follow process. That is the time for formal handoff from creative to consistent people and let creative people start to work on something new. That's the way companies can continue to innovate and survive.

Christensen's several books are really useful for managers struggling to manage disruptive technologies which are important but hard to manage.

Is consistency unimportant? Not at all. "Ideas do not move mountains but bulldozers do." For every creative person, you need 10 high quality consistent people to attend to minutest details to make the product successful in mass market. If the creative person is the idea, these consistent folks are your bulldozers.

When the product matures, to introduce incremental benefits, process needs to be fine tuned. Consistency scales better than creativity. Smart mangers know how to manage both aspects of product life cycle and how to staff them.

Cheers!

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Excellence
Topic: Quotable Quotes
"I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business."

Michael J. Fox (1961 - ), quoted by Lorne A. Adrain in 'The Most Important Thing I Know'

"Do your best. God will do the rest."

The most dangerous effect of striving for perfection is not that if you fail you deliver substandard work but it is very much possible that you will become immobile and do nothing thinking that nothing perfect will come out of you. It is irony that it is those sensitive souls who are prone to this perfection syndrome. Those go getters do not care. They just start banging around and somehow generate something close to Homers's 'Odyssey'. We worrying about perfection produce nothing and keep staring when the works of people who did not worry rise up to win all laurels.

Get started. Do something. Give your best. Excellence is bound to follow sooner or later. Perfection like everything else is in the eyes of the beholder. Many things in life are so hard to judge that even we are not able to determine at the end if what we made came close to our own definition of perfection.

What else is in the eyes of beholder? Beauty is one. Contact lens are also in the eyes of the beholder :)

Cheers!

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Courage
Topic: Quotable Quotes

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."
-- Mark Twain

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear."
-- Ambrose Redmoon


Courage does not mean foolhardily taking on challenges without thinking or more importantly without planning. "Planning without action is futile. Action without planning is fatal."

Courage means there is a overriding goal which prompts us to keep that in the sight and rest all on the side. We consciously decide that the goal is worth the risk that we are going to take. All the wood that we put behind that arrow is the courage. Courage works best when focused. As ordinary sunlight when focused using a lens generate enough heat to burn a paper, same thing is true with courage. Courage scattered is no courage.

Does being courageous means inflexible? Not at all. Courage means being focused on the goal not on the means so much. The means have to be right of course. Once we have made sure that means are right, we do have to be flexible about the means. If we are not flexible, all the courage might come to a naught.

Courage is not fancy rhetoric such as "we are willing to die for our cause." Courage should be able to take objective a look and be able to say "I will kill for my cause if required."

Some of the best examples courage come from the biographies of decorated soldiers. One that comes to mind is by veteran Israeli commando Moshe Betser. Betser was part of many daring operations including 'spring of youth' in which crack commandos burst right into the bedrooms of top Palestinian guerrillas in Beirut and killed them in retaliation the role those people had played in Munich 72 massacre. Another operation was that of rescuing hijacked plane which had been routed to Entebbe, Uganda. Betser describes both operations so meticulously and makes several good points such as what was real courage and what was sheer foolhardiness.

Cheers!

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Egg to Omleette while preserving egg shells!
Topic: Quotable Quotes

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Memory malady
Topic: Quotable Quotes

"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it." - by Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 1592)

Is it not common that we think more about things (or people) we dislike, fear, hate? It is hardly once in a blue moon we remember people who we like so much. Even this remembrance starts with some bitter incident and suddenly we remember this person we like so much and how s/he had acted in the past which had made similar bitter situation whole lot better.

By thinking more and more about things that we wish to forget, we drive it deep into the subconscious. Once a thing gets into subconscious it lives there for a long time. It is also hard to take out. What is the purpose of subconscious? Subconscious exists as an area to store all that we can not deal at the moment. When something becomes overwhelming for the conscious, it simply pushes it into subconscious. It does for a reason as it temporarily gets rid of the problem. But, deep rooted feelings in subconscious keep raring ugly head from time to time. It is like something bad in our system that our system is trying flush out but it has to go thru conscious and as soon as it reaches conscious, conscious dwells on it, feels agitated and in order to feel temporarily good, it pushes it back to the subconscious and the cycle continues.

This may be one of the explanation for why bad experiences from childhood impact for a long time when much worse experiences later in life do not even bother us. Say, something really bad that happened when you
were 4-5 years old, may bother you even today. But, something even far worse happened when you were, say ,25-26, you hardly remember. Even when you remember you tend to dwell more on that much older experience than the one in the recent past.

During childhood, our ability to bear harsh experiences is very limited. So, conscious pushes harsh experiences into subconscious in no time. As we grow older and experience new things, our ability to squarely face things increases. With this, less our conscious pushes things into subconscious and more it deals with it then and there. The damn experiences that are there in the subconscious haunt us for long time. Many of us remember chastising and scolding and humiliations we got from elders especially the ones that we really did not deserve or was far too much for a small mistake or was delivered in front of many people which was way too much for us. This is what becomes childhood trauma if it gets out of hand. People with untreated childhood trauma grow up to have all sorts of mental problems. Spilt personality is an extreme case of that. Split personality is not a fancy behavior picked up to look different or escape from legal system It indeed is a mental transformation and a genuine problem.. Watch the movie "Never talk to strangers" starring Rebecca DeMornay and Antonio Banderas. It is one of the finest movies depicting some effects of split personality.

If the thing that we trying to forget goes only deeper into subconscious, how do we avoid it? Thoughts operate in a common framework. Only way to replace a thought is to think another thought. Power of substitution. Substitute a thought with something else. Use techniques such as repeating a holy name, getting into something physically engaging etc. That's the only way to stop the mind from idling. Shut the devil's workshop for good.

Cheers!

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Useless
Topic: Quotable Quotes

"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean
it's useless."

Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931)

History is full of inventions which ended up being used for entirely
different purposes than originally intended.

Let's start with a bit of humor. Viagra, the virility increasing pill for
men, was developed because the drug composition showed promises to address some
heart ailments. During the development, things changed. It started become
clear that this drug was not going to be very useful to treat heart ailments. Some
innovative souls experimented and found that it could treat some other
'organ' very effectively. They changed the direction of their research.
After a few year, viola, one of the most successful drugs in medical
history to address some real problem of certain people.

Other example is "Post It" notes that have become so ubiquitous. The adhesive
that is used at the back of "Post it" notes was considered as a failure as it
did not meet the required criteria when developed. It did not have enough
strength. But, lack of adhesiveness was exactly what makes "Post it" so useful.
3M company created a long lasting cash cow.

After having realized these kind of things, some companies such as 3M,
Rubbermaid, Google and many others encourage people to try out a lot of
things even if they do not seem to be in line with company's strategy. It is
also not uncommon among drug companies to have a plan B for intended use
right from the beginning. It only makes sense as the money goes into new
drug development is in billions of dollars.

Always look for utility value. Recycling everything possible should be the
motto.

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Humor
Topic: Quotable Quotes

"Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood"

Mary Hirsch

When used effectively, humor is indeed a very good tool to make your point.

Although it may act like a sword that does not draw blood, do not ignore the
fact that it may cause more hurt to emotions and sentiments which can last
longer and more painful than a sword wound. External wounds heal faster.
For internal wounds, time is the only remedy. They only heal with time.

Best form of humor is to make yourself the center of humor. Nobody is going to
feel hurt if you do that. Some of your near and dear ones may get upset with
you for making fun of yourselves. Other than that, it is pretty harmless. If
you have some idiosyncrasy or a drawback or a handicap, is it not a good idea
to bare it open rather than someone speculate and make fun of you in your
back? We have to make sure that we do not take it to extreme and keep
deprecating ourselves on even things that people won't even notice.

One of the best things I had read somewhere was - once a person going to the
interview got soaking wet when rains started unexpectedly. It was not
possible to go back to get alternate set of clothes. It was a very
important interview too. He showed up and said, "nature probably thought I
needed another shower before the interview. I really did not but did not
have a choice.". That's the spirit.

"It is better to make fun of ourselves and rather than let others do it." In certain
societies, humor can be very personally attacking. Making fun of ourselves
when we find ourselves in the midst of a group in which we know there is
at least one person who can use humor to attack us personally, we may want to
crack one or two jokes about ourselves thus taking away any ammunition from
that person. After that, chances are, other people will shut that person up
when he tries take jab at you.

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Manager v/s Leader
Topic: Quotable Quotes

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Worry
Topic: Quotable Quotes

"What's the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile." - by George Asaf, O Magazine, October 2002

One of the best quotes to illustrates the worthlessness of worrying goes like this -"worrying about a problem is like trying to solve an algebraic equation by chewing on the pencil."

Another great quote which highlights how expensive worrying goes like this -"worry is like paying interest on a loan that you never took."

Does worrying solve any problem? Not mere worrying. Little bit of initial worrying about the enormity of a new challenge is normal. But, worrying about uncertainties and all probable consequences is not useful at all. Hurry, worry and curry is a deadly combination. Fire burns a dead body. Worry burns a living body.

One of the best ways to deal with worry is to set up a worry register and worry time. Worry register can be a simple notebook that you can carry with you all the time. Size does not matter.

Whenever a worry strikes you, do this. First do not dwell much on it. All that you should spend is to develop as clear understanding as possible about the worry. Impose say 5 minutes limitation on the act of developing the definition of the worry. Once you do that capture your worry in 2-3 sentences. If you like, put date, time and write briefly the state of your mind. Then try as hard as possible not worry. If you can not stop worrying, start documenting worries about the worry not worried. You should stop writing only when you realize that writing about worries is no fun or less painful than to worry..

Then, set up a fixed 'worry time'. 1 hour per week is optimal. But, in the beginning it is just not possible to stay away from worrying that long. If it helps, set up 15 minutes per day to begin with. During the appoint 'worry time', you go thru your notebook and review every worry that has not been dealt with.

Take one worry at a time and see if it is still applicable. It is impossible that you would laugh at yourself for having worried about something that is no longer a worry at all. With practice a lot of worries vanish this way. Cross each such proudly with a red marker to symbolize the ceremonial slaying of the worry. This ritual helps and fun. This not necessary but if it helps, go for it.

To get best results, your "worry time" should be as spaced out as possible. This is because in a week's time a lot of things change. A lot of new facts emerge which change the definition of the worry. This will help you to address the problem. You will be able to crystallize a better definition of the worry. Don't they say "problem well stated is problem half solved"? This also applies to worries. When you can really put you finger on what exactly worries you and are able to phrase it, solutions naturally emerge. It takes good amount of work by your subconscious mind to mull over the worry to hint a solution. Let the subconscious do it for you and you stay away from worries.

Always carry the worry book, promptly record worries, limit worrying to worry time, promptly slay worries, plan responses for worries which have become clearer. This is a good framework to manage worries.

Of course, we all have to mature to realize that there are something about which worrying or doing anything does not help. "If there is a solution, find it. If three is not one, then do not mind it." "Grant me the will and courage to change things that I can. Grant me patience and fortitude to put up with things that I can not change. Grant me the wisdom to know the difference between the two and act accordingly." (May not be exact wordings but close enough)

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Right response
Topic: Quotable Quotes

http://www.catholic-forum.com/saintS/pray0027.htm

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Gaza Strip
Topic: Movies

From www.netflix.com:

The embattled Gaza Strip is the setting for this stirring documentary from American filmmaker James Longley. Initially intending his film to be a straightforward look at the Palestinian intifada, Longley headed there in January 2001 for what he thought would be two short weeks. Instead, he stayed for three months, logging over 75 hours of film that tracked a number of momentous occasions, including the election of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Nice documentary movie capturing the details about 'Intifada' movement that was a grassroots movement started by Palestinians living in occupied territories after they became disenchanted with their leaders living away in Tunis and ignoring their plight. Their action plan was to pelt rocks and stones at every possible moment at Israelis. It was difficult for Israelis to use heavy force on people using such crude and comparatively less harmful arms. Moreover, children were so actively involved that any violence on children worked against Israel.

A newspaper boy is the central character in the documentary. His day-to-day life has been captured very well.

3 stars.

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Showing up!
Topic: Quotable Quotes

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BLUF in Communications?

What is the last thing we want to do if we want to have effective communication? We certainly do not want to bluff. But, there is a different kind of BLUF that is very useful for effective communication especially in written communication.

BLUF stands for Bottom Line Up Front. This is same as the phrases people use cut the crap, cut to chase, coming to point etc.

In BLUF, you mention the most important thing first and then provide clarification. If the bottom line has shock potential then you can prepare a bit but still must get to the bottom line quickly. Once you communicate the bottom line and then time to provide explanation, explanation sinks better than it would if you spend a lot of time in the beginning to explain and then provide the bottom line at the very end.

Picked it from one podcast from www.manager-tools.com. This a great source to gain a lot of management insight. Two people who host these podcasts have accumulated a lot of knowledge from experience and from several sources. It is like getting nice summary extracts from all good management books. Check that out.

Cheers!

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Darna Zaroori Hai
Topic: Movies

Darna Zaroori Hai - Hindi movie from Ram Gopal Varma camp. RGV and his disciples make a sequel to 'Darna Mana Hai'.

Decent movie. 6 stories. Spooky ones. Some nice ones and some not so good. The ones involving Rajpal Yadav and Randip Hooda are really gripping . Others so so.

Photography and editing which have become the highlight of RGV productions are good in this too. They know how to capture in right angles. In one of the last scenes when the last kid is desperately trying to get out of the spooky house, camera alternates between frightened kid and a haunting balcony at the top floor with a single light. That is simply mastery.

Time pass. 3 stars.

Cheers!

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36 China Town
Topic: Movies

36 China Town - Hindi movie with big star cast - Shahid Kapur, Kareena Kapoor, Payal Rohatgi, Paresh Rawal, Akshay Khanna, Upen Patel (debuting).

Abbas-Mastan, directors, disappoint. They try to create a mystery where there is none. They nail some totally impossible people as perpetrators of some crime which nobody can understand how it happened.

So, what is left in this? Nothing much. Upen Patel, of course. Looks like he is building a nice golden bridge from modeling to movies. Smart thing to do as dudes do not last long in modeling. In movies, they last little longer.

Music - first song is good. Otherwise, do not know what Himesh Reshimiya these days itna-bhav-kha-raha-hai.

Waste.

2 stars!

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