Thoughts

An ancient Indian sage was teaching his disciples the art of archery. He put a wooden bird as the target and asked them to aim at the eye of the bird. The first disciple was asked to describe what he saw. He said, "I see the trees, the branches, the leaves, the sky, the bird and its eye.." The sage asked this disciple to wait. Then he asked the second disciple the same question and he replied, "I only see the eye of the bird." The sage said, "Very good, then shoot." The arrow went straight and hit the eye of the bird.

What is the moral of the story?

Unless we focus, we cannot achieve our goal. It is hard to focus and concentrate, but it is a skill that can be learned.

KEEP YOUR EYES UPON THE GOAL

On July 4, 1952, Florence Chadwick was on her way to becoming the first woman to swim the Catalina Channel. She had already conquered the English Channel. The world was watching. Chadwick fought the dense fog, bone-chilling cold and many times, the sharks. She was striving to reach the shore but every time she looked through her goggles, all she could see was the dense fog. Unable to see the shore, she gave up. Chadwick was disappointed when she found out that she was only half a mile from the coast. She quit, not because she was a quitter but because her goal was not in sight anywhere. The elements didn't stop her. She said, "I'm not making excuses. If only I had seen the land, I could have made it." Two months later, she went back and swam the Catalina Channel. This time, in spite of the bad weather, she had her goal in mind and not only accomplished it but beat the men's record by two hours.

Why are Goals Important? - Must read

On the best sunny day, the most powerful magnifying glass will not light paper if you keep moving the glass. But if you focus and hold it, the paper will light up. That is the power of concentration.

A man was traveling and stopped at an intersection. He asked an elderly man, "Where does this road take me?" The elderly person asked, "Where do you want to go?" The man replied, "I don't know." The elderly person said, "Then take any road. What difference does it make?"

How true. When we don't know where we are going, any road will take us there.

Suppose you have all the football eleven players, enthusiastically ready to play the game, all charged up, and then someone took the goal post away. What would happen to the game? There is nothing left. How do you keep score? How do you know you have arrived?

Enthusiasm without direction is like wildfire and leads to frustration. Goals give a sense of direction. Would you sit in a train or a plane without knowing where it was going? The obvious answer is no. Then why do people go through life without having any goals?

Actually People confuse goals with dreams and wishes. Dreams and wishes are nothing more than desires. Desires are weak. Desires become strong when they are supported by

direction
dedication
determination
discipline
deadlines

That is what differentiates a desire from a goal. Goals are dreams with a deadline and an action plan. Goals can be worthy or unworthy. It is passion, not wishing, that turns dreams into reality.

If you have something which you can not fulfill then that is not goal. That is just a desire and we can turn a dream into reality by:

1. Have a definite, clear written goal.
2. Have a plan to accomplish it.
3. Read the first two twice a day

SMART Goals

If you ask most people what is their one major objective in life, they would probably give you a vague answer, such as, "I want to be successful, be happy, make a good living," and that is it. They are all wishes and none of them are clear goals.

Goals must be SMART:

1. S--specific. For example, "I want to lose weight." This is wishful thinking. It becomes a goal when I pin myself down to "I will lose 10 pounds in 90 days."

2. M--must be measurable. If we cannot measure it, we cannot accomplish it. Measurement is a way of monitoring our progress.

3. A--must be achievable. Achievable means that it should be out of reach enough to be challenging but it should not be out of sight, otherwise it becomes disheartening.

4. R--realistic. A person who wants to lose 50 pounds in~30 days is being unrealistic.

5. T--time-bound. There should be a starting date and a finishing date.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

MEANINGLESS GOALS

A farmer had a dog who used to sit by the roadside waiting for vehicles to come around. As soon as one came he would run down the road, barking and trying to overtake it. One day a neighbor asked the farmer "Do you think your dog is ever going to catch a car?" The farmer replied, "That is not what bothers me. What bothers me is what he would do if he ever caught one." Many people in life behave like that dog who is pursuing meaningless goals.

Life is hard by the yard,
but by the inch,
it's a cinch.

THE MIDAS TOUCH

We all know the story of the greedy king named Midas. He had a lot of gold and the more he had the more he wanted. He stored all the gold in his vaults and used to spend time every day counting it.

One day while he was counting a stranger came from nowhere and said he would grant him a wish. The king was delighted and said, "I would like everything I touch to turn to gold." The stranger asked the king, Are you sure?" The king replied, "Yes." So the stranger said, "Starting tomorrow morning with the sun rays you will get the golden touch." The king thought he must be dreaming, this couldn't be true. But the next day when he woke up, he touched the bed, his clothes, and everything turned to gold. He looked out of the window and saw his daughter playing in the garden. He decided to give her a surprise and thought she would be happy. But before he went to the garden he decided to read a book. The moment he touched it, it turned into gold and he couldn't read it. Then he sat to have breakfast and the moment he touched the fruit and the glass of water, they turned to gold. He was getting hungry and he said to himself, "I can't eat and drink gold." Just about that time his daughter came running and he hugged her and she turned into a gold statue. There were no more smiles left.

The king bowed his head and started crying. The stranger who gave the wish came again and asked the king if he was happy with his golden touch. The king said he was the most miserable man. The stranger asked, "What would you rather have, your food and loving daughter or lumps of gold and her golden statue?" The king cried and asked for forgiveness. He said, "I will give up all my gold. Please give me my daughter back because without her I have lost everything wo rth having." The stranger said to the king, "You have become wiser than before" and he reversed the spell. He got his daughter back in his arms and the king learned a lesson that he never forget for the rest of his life.

What is the moral of the story?

1. Distorted values lead to tragedy.

2. Sometimes getting what you want may be a bigger tragedy than not getting what you want.

3. Unlike the game of soccer where players can be substituted, the game of life allows no substitutions or replays. We may not get a second chance to reverse our tragedies, as the king did.

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE REMEMBERED?

About a hundred years ago, a man looked at the morning newspaper and to his surprise and horror, read his name in the obituary column. The news papers had reported the death of the wrong person by mistake. His first response was shock. Am I here or there? When he regained his composure, his second thought was to find out what people had said about him. The obituary read, "Dynamite King Dies." And also "He was the merchant of death." This man was the inventor of dynamite and when he read the words "merchant of death," he asked himself a question, "Is this how I am going to be remembered?" He got in touch with his feelings and decided that this was not the way he wanted to be remembered. From that day on, he started working toward peace. His name was Alfred Nobel and he is remembered today by the great Nobel Prize.

Just as Alfred Nobel got in touch with his feelings and redefined his values, we should step back and do the same.

What is your legacy?

How would you like to be remembered?

Will you be spoken well of?

Will you be remembered with love and respect?

Will you be missed?

IT IS THE LITTLE THINGS THAT MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE

There was a man taking a morning wa lk at or the beach. He saw that along with the morning tide came hundreds of starfish and when the tide receded, they were left behind and with the morning sun rays, they would die. The tide was fresh and the starfish were alive. The man took a few steps, picked one and threw it into the water. He did that repeatedly. Right behind him there was another person who couldn't understand what this man was doing. He caught up with him and asked, "What are you doing? There are hundreds of starfish. How many can you help? What difference does it make?" This man did not reply, took two more steps, picked up another one, threw it into the water, and said, "It makes a difference to this one."

What difference are we making? Big or small, it does not matter. If everyone made a small difference, we'd end up with a big difference, wouldn't we?

Life Happens Now, and Other Lessons from a 500-Mile Walk

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/life-happens-now-lessons-500-mile-walk/

We cannot experience life when we focus on graduating, getting a raise, getting married, having the baby, sending the kids to college, waiting until retirement, or any other future moment.

Life happens now. On this magic path, I was sucked into the now. Each day was a new mystery and nothing was arranged or planned. Living in this manner does not allow for time to be wasted on the past or future.

Friday, November 22, 2013

The Most Important Question You Can Ask Yourself Today

Everybody wants what feels good. Everyone wants to live a care-free, happy and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when you walk into the room.

Everybody wants that -- it's easy to want that.

If I ask you, "What do you want out of life?" and you say something like, "I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like," it's so ubiquitous that it doesn't even mean anything.

Everyone wants that. So what's the point?

What's more interesting to me is what pain do you want? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives end up.

Everybody wants to have an amazing job and financial independence -- but not everyone is willing to suffer through 60-hour work weeks, long commutes, obnoxious paperwork, to navigate arbitrary corporate hierarchies and the blasé confines of an infinite cubicle hell. People want to be rich without the risk, with the delayed gratification necessary to accumulate wealth.

Everybody wants to have great sex and an awesome relationship -- but not everyone is willing to go through the tough communication, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings and the emotional psychodrama to get there. And so they settle. They settle and wonder "What if?" for years and years and until the question morphs from "What if?" into "What for?" And when the lawyers go home and the alimony check is in the mail they say, "What was it all for?" If not for their lowered standards and expectations for themselves 20 years prior, then what for?

Because happiness requires struggle. You can only avoid pain for so long before it comes roaring back to life.

At the core of all human behavior, the good feelings we all want are more or less the same. Therefore what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire but by what bad feelings we're willing to sustain.

"Nothing good in life comes easy," we've been told that a hundred times before. The good things in life we accomplish are defined by where we enjoy the suffering, where we enjoy the struggle.

People want an amazing physique. But you don't end up with one unless you legitimately love the pain and physical stress that comes with living inside a gym for hour upon hour, unless you love calculating and calibrating the food you eat, planning your life out in tiny plate-sized portions.

People want to start their own business or become financially independent. But you don't end up a successful entrepreneur unless you find a way to love the risk, the uncertainty, the repeated failures, and working insane hours on something you have no idea whether will be successful or not. Some people are wired for that sort of pain, and those are the ones who succeed.

People want a boyfriend or girlfriend. But you don't end up attracting amazing peoplewithout loving the emotional turbulence that comes with weathering rejections, building the sexual tension that never gets released, and staring blankly at a phone that never rings. It's part of the game of love. You can't win if you don't play.

What determines your success is "What pain do you want to sustain?"

I wrote in an article last week that I've always loved the idea of being a surfer, yet I've never made consistent effort to surf regularly. Truth is: I don't enjoy the pain that comes with paddling until my arms go numb and having water shot up my nose repeatedly. It's not for me. The cost outweighs the benefit. And that's fine.

On the other hand, I am willing to live out of a suitcase for months on end, to stammer around in a foreign language for hours with people who speak no English to try and buy a cell phone, to get lost in new cities over and over and over again. Because that's the sort of pain and stress I enjoy sustaining. That's where my passion lies, not just in the pleasures, but in the stress and pain.

There's a lot of self development advice out there that says, "You've just got to want it enough!"

That's only partly true. Everybody wants something. And everybody wants something badly enough. They just aren't being honest with themselves about what they actually want that bad.

If you want the benefits of something in life, you have to also want the costs. If you want the six pack, you have to want the sweat, the soreness, the early mornings, and the hunger pangs. If you want the yacht, you have to also want the late nights, the risky business moves, and the possibility of pissing off a person or ten.

If you find yourself wanting something month after month, year after year, yet nothing happens and you never come any closer to it, then maybe what you actually want is a fantasy, an idealization, an image and a false promise. Maybe you don't actually want it at all.

So I ask you, "How are you willing to suffer?"

Because you have to choose something. You can't have a pain-free life. It can't all be roses and unicorns.

Choose how you are willing to suffer.

Because that's the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have the same answer.

The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain that you want to sustain?

Because that answer will actually get you somewhere. It's the question that can change your life. It's what makes me me and you you. It's what defines us and separates us and ultimately brings us together.

So what's it going to be?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-manson/the-most-important-question_b_4269161.html

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

5 HABITS YOU MUST QUIT TO BE HAPPY

1) Avoid negative self-talk and self-doubt.

2) Start taking small steps to accomplish your goal or, in other words, stop procrastinating.

3) Stop criticising other people.

4) Quit comparing yourself to others and quit trying to be someone other than yourself.

5) Stop taking everything you have for granted and start being thankful instead!

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Top 10 Activities that Make Good Karma

10. Don’t get angry

9. Be Religious

8. Donate

7. Be Compassionate and Kind

6. Think Positive

5. Help an Elderly Person

4. Love Others

3. Love your Family

2. Love Thyself

1. Smile

Thoughts

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Thursday, December 12, 2013

Focus and Concentrate