Try harder - it doesnt hurt giving the best.

Mediocrity is one of the worst things to accept. All of us have the intention of achieveing big things in life, we want to do a lot of things, but don't quite achieve it primarily because of the hard work we need to give to achieve it.
Giving the best under every circumstance is perhaps the hardest thing to do. Consistency is hard to attain too. Giving 100% each and every time you try to do a work is one of the best challenges one can set for oneself. It needs almost all the ingredients.
However, any person is able to raise from the satisfactory level which is generally accepted and reach the levels of mastery, its only because of the hard work, patience, discipline that this ha been possible. But an important question arises... if I keep doing the same thing wont I get the same thing, they why should I try doing the same thing again.
Well, the whole point is that it doesnt have to done the same way; even if we assume the environmental variable are all the same, what differs it the commitment we give to the task each time. We need to be a greater state of alertness in every attempt. When we are more alert than the previous attempt we are raising our creativity, our levels of hard work, our dedication, our devotion to the task at hand.
With all the Ds and the Ps in place its inevitable to give successful results, but doesnt guarantee any. Its the process which taught us all that we have learnt, its not the result. The result is only a measure of how much we have learnt. Its thorough our efforts that we gain experience; the reward of the hardwork is the experience which stays with us. This is one thing which cannot be robbed away from any one of us, will stay with us for life.
So it never hurts giving the best so lets try harder.

Learn to Learn

Learn to learn, and then there is nothing more to learn....Well this is what I would say!!! This seems to be one big bulls eye that any one can hit... learning how to learn... It seems to be the mother of all the knowledge any one can obtain in a life time.
Once an individual learns how to lean; then everything else becomes a end product of this mastery. The skill of learning how to learn is a hard nut to crack; but its not impossible to do it either. I only know some key ingredients in this process of learning how to learn which are absolutely essential - discipline and patience. These are two key things that any learning process will possess, patience to understand the process and discipline to give equal importance to the ingredients of the process.
If we find a very knowledgeable person, he/she has found his own discipline in learning and possesses infinite patience while learning.
To learn how to learn there is no big theory as I see; its all in getting practical. The biggest challenge any one would face is the laziness in approaching the challenge. How ever a person who has the will to command his mind wins the major battle in learning how to learn. Once the mind is made up its only a matter of working with discipline, un-evaluative and un-perturbed to reach the set destination.
Sounds simple but hard to implement rt, its exactly like the hard nut I told you - hard to crack but very tasty inside.

Read Regularly

Reading is one of my hobbies; I was a strict academic book reader till graduation days. I dont remmeber reading any other books except may be a couple or three of them, just becasue they were lying around in the hostels.
As I joined my job, and being the restless guy that I am, I felt completely guilty of wasting my travel time when I neither drive, nor putting the travel time to any worthwhile use. That is when I started reading books which I had purchased from some book store - some of these purchases were just because I had heard the name of these books some where. Initially I was very apprehensive about reading fictions, so would buy only the non-fiction scientific kind of books. I began reading books in the travel time and helped me know a lot of things.
In an otherwise boaring and monotonous habit as a software engineer this hobby opened up a new stream to learn the things I never knew before, or increasing my understanding on the ones I knew. I read books on Philosophy, history... well loves each one of them...
This is one of the most terrific hobbies I have ever cultivated has opened my eyes to a whole plathora of things. I have taken a lot away from this hobby... try it and you will realise what you have been missing all the while if u arent one reading freak... You manynot like all the books you find... so choose and stick to ur interest...

Single step at a time...

Some times it looks as though the target I set for myself is very far, not achievable - almost next to impossible for sometime. I sit back and think of it for a moment; i realise its not really difficult - its only a long one. It is just that I dont have the patience to wait for that long a time...once I realise this is the problem it gets easier for me to fix.
There is a Chinese saying - "The jouney of a thousand miles begins with a single step". Infact a golden rule - keeps us away from the thought of giving away easily; sticking on when it matters the most. In my earlier article on patience, I have defined patience to be some what similar - the ability to keep ones cool all through the process; not reacting before it is actually necessary to react. I have made this rule for myself - "One second more..."
Following the rule, I am able to improvise in that last second where I am able to get to a better decision. That once second more of information; the once second more of patience, the once second more of work which we give to our brain, provides us ample time to work on the necessary decision.
My friend Sumanth S K had once told "If you can postpone making a decision, it is better to do it; if its a bad thing that you would be venturing into, you might change your mind and abstain from commiting the bad thing. If you are making a good decision then it will help making a better decision as you get more information."
The key message in this is - if you can push deciding if possible by some more time... use it...
Think about each thing and get into the details make yourself comfortable and then get ahead... every single step that we take is a decision process. So take one proper step each time and you will reach the peak.... just need to be patient.

Joy in Giving

There is a unique joy in sharing... in giving people what you have. The joy is what I recently experienced... it was almost the fist time I shared some thing selflessly... the joy was enormous...

It started with an initial hesitation... which had prevented me from sharing whole heatedly till date... but some how I decided to give it and the joy on the face of people who received the gift was enormous....

You need to experience the joy if you are really haven't tried it... and for those who have experienced it... hats off... I am a new entrant into your arena...

Try out somethign new often

If I try to do the same thing, I get the same thing - then why should I try to do the same thing... with each attempt I need to improve. I need to "experience" and take the "learning" and use it to improve.
We are not going to improve or realize any of our talents if we keep the status quo; the status quo is only a temporary fix... we need to break the status quo and get to the next level. As the japanese ideology for the same - Kaizen; which signifies continues improvement; we too need to learn to focus continuously on improving ourselves and reaching a greater height.
Steve Jobs once mentioned that we need to ask ourself if we are doing something new daily; and if the answer to this question is no for a long time; then it means we are not going on the right path. So, great people realize the importance of improving constantly - lets be wise and learn from them, we need to improve constantly.
Every one of us are born with a lot of talent, there is a certain set of talents that we are aware of, as kid we experimented a lot and discovered our talents. With each talent being discovered within us we were so excited and happy; but now when we are grown up - neither do we know of the joy we had nor do we experiment to find our hidden talents. We loose ourself in the crowd some where...we consciously don't want to come out and try something different. We try for security all the while, but if I don't take the risk I wont get the reward.
By this I don't say quit the job your doing and focus on your search for the talent only; I would suggest develop a discipline to constantly look at ourself, search for avenues which we haven't explored earlier and go search for them. It may be about learning a new instrument, painting sketching, trekking... anything - anything that you don't usually do.
I keep trying to do something that I haven't done earlier very often - I wait for such a chance... each time I challenge myself with something I haven't done earlier... experiment and then seek avenues to improve upon it till I am satisfied with it. The approach I would have initially taken might not be the best; but definitely its the start of learn by experience....
Go get the experience of what you are!!! that is the real you... enjoy the journey...

Patience...

Patience is definitely one of the most precious things to possess; given that we are all in a hurry to finish things; and in the process we tend to do many things simultaneously. Does patience mean not getting angry? As I see it patience is much more broader than that; not getting too excited and reacting to something just another part of the game.

Patience is the energy which keeps us composed when things are not our way; it is the energy which helps us work with a clam mind. The end effect of being patient is clarity of thought and the determination to wait till we complete the work we take up.

Patience has worked wonders, while for me it not just increases the time to clearly think and compose myself, it also lets me make better moves than I would have otherwise done in a reactive mode. As I see it, there is hardly any difference between composure and patience - the most important thing when we are composed or calm is that we need to use the brain.

We need to learn to use the brain more consciously, which gives us a better control of what we do. Definitely through practice, the conscious execution of any activity over a period becomes a second nature. The conscious application will let us master the techniques better, the tools better and there by ensure that we reach a higher level of expertise in the domain.

Of late I have been practising this, and I feel this a better way to do things rather than the same old usual way of doing things. I feel more lively and happy this way...