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Get up and Get Going 7

September 21, 2012 by Ramneek Kapoor

A few of my friends while reacting to my suggestions expressed by me in my   different writings   that one should explore the possibility of finding avocation into new yet somehow a profession which could be related to our hobby or likings, have voiced their reservations on taking to a profession that is different from the one they had been working into for so many years.  I agree with them that we may find the same difficult if not impossible on account of recession/ lack of opportunities available in the existing field as well as the new area that we may propose to enter into. However many a times we give up the effort before even giving it a genuine try.  The general response from all of us for any fresh career move into the untried, unexplored and unchartered waters will be:

1. It is totally new.

2. I do not want to risk it.

3. I do not have the skills for it.

3. I have gone too old for this kind of skills up gradation.

4. Look at my age, do you expect me to take up learning again..

5. What will people say?

Yes we all agree that it is difficult to adapt to the change after having lived with a particular life style and thinking process. But it is not impossible. A man’s analytical and logical part of the thinking process has an inbuilt faculty that is always eager to learn the new and unexplored; provided we are able to challenge and awaken that faculty in each one of us and make use of the same at the appropriate time. We have always had some inherent ability and some of the skillfulness that we possess have been learnt by us out of our experiences in life, be it on the job, during the course of our study, on account of the training or at the time of the rearing of the family, man has always been learning all through his life.

The power of learning does not diminish when we grow up in number of years; on the contrary experiences earned with the passing of the age help us learn things faster. Or do we end up losing our interest in our mental development and intellectual growth because we find enough reasons to justify the kind of life that we have got used to. We do not want to create any kind of flutter or disturbance or dissonance in the easy life style that we have conveniently selected for ourselves. This reminds me of the story of a baby eagle and a poultry farmer, which I would love to share with all in my next write up.

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GET UP AND GET GOING -6

August 28, 2012 by Ramneek Kapoor

In my last write up   I had made a reference to presence of Elphi in our heart and mind that prevent us from shedding the fears inherited by our past misfortunes and negative experiences. The fear of losing gets steeped into our inner psyche and inhibits us from acting boldly. I had actually met Elphi in my city while it was walking on the roads. The huge pachyderm with its massive built and bulk had been ridden by a frail and emaciated looking mahout, who would once in a while poke the animal with his ankus as he prodded him to behave in the midst of chaotic traffic on the road.

More recently, these same methods were also witnessed by me in a circus where the trainer had  traumatized the captured  big wild predator lion  to perform certain acts, which otherwise this Panthera Leo would have made a man to perform before it actually ate him up. Any how we were discussing about the Elphi, our dear friend and representative of the great lord. My animal lovers’ instinct told me to speak to Elphi and ask him as to what he had been doing in a town and why he was  not in a jungle uprooting  trees with his trunk or getting into any other kind of elephantine game to entertain himself because that is what a young elephant is  supposed to do .

The massive mammal   stopped by for a while, looked at me as if he had been sizing me up and then he glanced at the mahout who had been riding him. The elephant assured that the mahout did not have the ankus in his hands, spoke in a conspiratorial tone to me, “you seem to be a man with a very low wisdom.  Do you not see that this man who is sitting on top of me carries a weapon that is mighty powerful than my entire bulk. Will he not kill me if I try to save myself and run away to jungle? Please do not ask me to do anything that could be detrimental to my health”.

“But you are so powerful, strongly built and muscular looking. This man who is riding you is only a small creature. you can throw him off your  back with one little push of your trunk and may be crush him if he tries to stop you from running away to the jungle”‘, I had told the elephant while at the same time I had been motivating him to get free from the slavery of labor and toil in the town. I had wanted him to regain his lost freedom and respectability. The elephant who had been behaving in a very   meek fashion under the mahout looked at me very apologetically as if he had been trying to feel sorry for his own condition.

“You can share your story with me if you want to”, I told him, and “it is possible I may be able to help you”.

“Well if you are keen to “, said the elephant to me, “but you will have to crawl along with me through this grueling traffic.  I find it difficult to raise my voice for the fear of the punishment that will be awarded to me for blowing my natural trumpet in this town inhabited by humans”.

“Of course I will walk along “, I encouraged him.

“you see when I was a very small and innocent baby elephant I used to be a free bird oops sorry ….a free elephant like any other of my brethren in a jungle. I used to enjoy my pranks and baby elephant games with mud and water. I would sprinkle water over my body and then lie down into mud to again cover myself with dust so that my mother could shower more water on me with her trunk. I just loved all such mischiefs as it gave me a chance to listen to sweet admonishments of my elephant parents. But life had not been such kind to me for long. One day    some friends of this mahout had come to jungle hunting for the ivory teeth and trunks of elephants. They killed lots of my relatives to gather huge catch of ivory and elephant bones.  I really do not know why you humans like the bones and teeth of dead animals. Any how I really never will never understand. Perhaps someday my bones will also be  ……” he left the sentence midway.

“but we were discussing about your parents “, I had wanted him to continue.

“Yes, yes, let me speak”, “My parents were also amongst those killed by the gun tottering friends of this mahout. My life however had been spared by them as I did not carry enough bones in my body and teeth in my mouth. They just bundled me into a van, after they had put me into strong iron chains, and brought me to your town. Thereafter whenever I had raised my trumpet to tell them that I wanted to go back to, my own home in the forest, they would beat me with this ankus on my forehead. This thing really hurts. Even the thought reminds me of the pain that this ankus can inflict. In addition the iron fetters that these people had tied to my tiny elephantine feet would hurt me whenever I had tried to free myself from the pole to which I had been secured.

‘Yes that happened when you were very young. Today when you have grown so big and you have a massive body and built, you can certainly get yourself freed from this slavery and go back to the place where you belong”, I talked to him in a very sympathetic mode.

“My friends from jungle also say so. But you have to understand that the fear of the ankus and the iron fetters hurting my ankles   had settled deep into my heart and mind during my childhood days. The horror so settled in my brain has altered my very basic personality. I am no more an elephant even though I do look like one to you.  I am happy with the state in which I had been forced to live from my enslaved childhood. Please do not disturb me any further ‘, Elphi had been trying to hide his tears of pain and sufferings.

“But let me share a secret with you”, he brought his trunk closer to my ears, as if he did not want anyone else to become privy to this secret. “I am not alone in this town. I find many of my creeds living into the very heart and minds of all the human beings in this town”.

“Well but that is impossible. I do not see any other of your creed in here and then how is it possible that such enormous living beings can get into the hearts and minds of us humans without anyone ever noticing them. You must be just befooling me”, I laughed aloud at the statement recently uttered by Elphi.

“NO I am serious. You humans carry the symbolic self created Elphis in your minds, the same way I have adopted my terror of fetters and ankus from my   childhood. You get befuddled by one negative experience in your life and give up trying the same thing further. You too have taken to all kinds of negativity and self denial from the early childhood. The ghosts of past bad experiences always haunt your mankind with the result that the humans are never able to disassociate themselves from the fearful complexes .These apprehensions and doubts on your own capability given to you during your childhood and parentage, become colossal Elphis when you grow up physically ,  though mentally you still remain steeped in your self- woven anxieties . I think you should first try to emancipate your own creed from the massive elephants that occupy their thinking and doing faculty and then possibly I should also move out of this town and go back to my forest abode, till then let me enjoy the company of the Elphis  living within all of you’.

I obviously had no reason to further cajole the biggest mammal living on the land. I knew the urgency was to ask my fellow beings to throw away the elephants of self doubt,   the   elephants of past bad baggage’s, the elephants of some negativity experienced in life earlier and get up and get goingwith a renewed vigor and self determination to follow and realize the dreams of their lifetimes.

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GET UP AND GET GOING -5

July 25, 2012 by Ramneek Kapoor

“Everest is not a mountain you climb in a day” said Krushna Patil second youngest Indian woman who had summitted the highest peak. She had said this   in her interview to HT. And we got to trust and believe her because she has achieved what many cannot even dream of. Similar sentiments can be echoed for any other project that we want to achieve in our life.  Our dreams and desires, our aspirations and ambitions can be achieved provided we know what we want and how do we approach life to go for it. It may not happen in a day certainly but if and when we are able to achieve this, it will give us a great high as it must have given to Krushna when she had summitted the peak for the first time.

It is an agreed fact that a positive and objective mind set is the prerequisite to high achievements in life but besides the positivity of the mind it is also the preparation of the spirit and body to put in our best of toil, sweat and tears in the achievement of any task that we set out to do for ourselves in our lives.

They say that Rome was not built in a day but they should also say that Rome was built by intelligent planning and foresight, by deploying men and material who had toiled for years together to build a town we commemorate as Rome today. The beauty of Rome obviously attracts all of the mankind today also to utter such epithets for its praise.

I am tempted here to borrow another sentence from the article of Colleen Braganza (the article appeared in Hindustan Times June14, 2009) where the author writes about the summiteers of the Mount Everest,” You do not conquer Mount Everest .The mountain allows you to climb her “. Life too allows us to live it the way we want to live. A good, healthy, peaceful life full of happiness and mirth for all. However as the mountain does not allow any climber   to take to it lightly, same way the life expects some seriousness from us . The mountain wants climbers to have respect for its highs and lows, the peaks and slopes and walk over them with a climbers’ discipline; same way life too tells us to develop a healthy attitude towards the ups and downs, the stills and the   movements that our day to day living brings into our folds. It wants us to adopt a   salubrious attitude that displays neither overt exhilaration nor jubilation over the minor achievements nor a depressing passivity and submission to the major upheavals. The life will then expect us to get into the nascent hope of climbing yet another of its peak after coming out of the previous palate of high or low served by it to us on the platter. The climbers many a times have to strategically assess their position on  way to the peak of the mountain and decide whether to stay put at one place , to move forward, or even take a step backward to let the weather clear up before they start climbing again . The same way   we too have to devise our strategies to meet our career and life’s ambitions. Moving forward appears   good and keeps everyone associated with us happy except possibly our healthy rivals. But it is always the stagnation or the need to take a step backward that causes ripples into the society in which we live and spend our 24 hours every day. It could either have raised eyebrows or the depressive sounds of false sympathy.

But the warriors of life and the climbers of the peaks should not pay heed to such sounds and ripples. They should rather rededicate themselves to the task of building up bridges and tunnels again to clear up their road to success and glory that life allows them to achieve .And to do   that we will have to first of all take out the fear of losing out. We must not allow our minds to get colored by the elephis of suspicions and doubts on our own capabilities .We must  clear all kinds of cobwebs of non achievements from our mindsets by believing that we and only we are capable of bringing  magnificence and greatness back into our lives by the solemn commitment to build up our lives again.

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A HUMBLE GRATITUDE WILL TAKE YOU FAR IN LIFE

July 25, 2012 by Ramneek Kapoor

People who have achieved success in life have always expressed their gratitude to the ones who have been helpful in their journey to success. These people do not forget to thank their God, their good luck and their  families and friends. for otherwise how and who will relish their   success if not their family, friends and colleagues.   Successful people  approach life with a sense of gratitude and they make theirs  as well as the life of their friends wonderful .The  success that .has been acknowledged with gratitude  will always attract more success because positivity will  bring in more positivity with additional goodies to share with others  and make their life positive too.

Any success without gratitude will always   be very short lived because others will not be a party to it and on the contrary their jealousy and rivalry will become the cause of negative anxiety.  The success that is accompanied by anxiety can never be enjoyed in its true value.   The success will not be enjoyable and the failure will cause a very bitter attitude .

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GET UP AND GET GOING -4

July 5, 2012 by Ramneek Kapoor

Practically there is no one who has not been hit hard by the recession. Its vagaries can be seen from the  dwindling crowds  on the shop floors of shopping malls, to the  shortening of the  queues on the airlines check-in counters, to the shrinking of the kitchen and household shopping of many families  on account of  their  reduced incomes.  The economies of not only the businesses but even the common families have  gone hay wire. The salary slips suddenly vanishing  lead to bank balances and savings vanishing in no time , but giving in to the pressures and adopting a passive attitude can further aggravate the problem and one can get into depression. So what do we do ? Many of us will obviously pose  this question .

The best thing that we can do is to take it in the correct perspective that it is time to either  upgrade or to diversify our skills . There must be  many things  we had not done in life before but have always talked about  doing , to  our friends and families.  It could be expanding on some hobby, taking to some other  profession related to our skills or it could be even upgrading our academics . But that can be organised only if we remain positive and objective in our approach towards every thing in our life.

I have always spoken about getting into teaching in a business  school to my family and friends during my long career of 28 years in  marketing.   Yet  I did not have the courage to quit  the well heeled and oiled job.Though I had been adding my own bit to the education field by writing seven  books on Marketing and getting them published by the best publishers of the world ,  as a hobby . All this had been done during my tenure as a corporate manager. I had also picked up an additional  degree in management almost ten years ago more to satisfy my curiosity about new concepts in management rather than anything else.

Recently when I had faced challenges  in my  corporate career, I looked at this juncture in my life as a God sent opportunity to convert my talks into practical action. I had prepared myself to take life head on  and fight back  the negativity of a depressing  recession. The first thing that I have done is to adopt  a positive attitude. This  positive attitude is all prevading . I do not allow my family   also to get into any kind of negative reminiscensing of the life that we have just had and left behind. The result is that I have got a great opening for myself   into   a profession that I had always wanted to get into i.e. teaching in a good business school.  I also have another book of mine ready for release withing a week or so. It is obvious life has turned better once again.  It is  definitely the positive thinking that has activated the law of attraction in my life. I wish all of us get inot the positive thinking and attract the best things of our choice into our lives.

Think positive , get up and get going is all I can wish all my friends . Believe me  that every good  thing that you have ever wanted will start materialising the moment you turn positive. Just get going.

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GET UP AND GET GOING – Part 3

June 30, 2012 by Ramneek Kapoor

Mankind has always courageously and fearlessly faced all kinds of extremities, annihilation, natural calamities and man-made disasters. Many a civilizations have gone down the mounds of earth or into the annals of fire on account of atrocities committed by one tribe over the other. Many a nations have been virtually eliminated from the surface of this earth by the cruel hands of time.  Yet man has existed and grown from the pre-stone age to the modern jet age due to his resilience, the stronger willpower, steely determination and the fortitude   to get back yet stronger and more powerful. The human minds have been made all the more potent and effective by each stroke of adversity. In this entire game of playing hide and seek with death and destruction man has never stopped empowering himself with the inbuilt armament of resolve and tenacity. The recent upheavals of financial misfortune are nothing when we all think of the wealth each nation possesses today. We today have in abundance the wealth of young and inquisitive minds, the wealth of shared knowledge and the wealth of international cooperation in construction and rebuilding of the disintegrating institutions. What we need to have is the faith in humanity, the love for individual and the respect for human capacity to put back in place the lost kingdoms.

I am reminded of a small incident of my early childhood days when we used to live in houses with lots of half open ventilators in each room. Young birds and sparrows will find it very convenient to build their nests in small nooks and corners of the rooms in our home flying in and out of the half open ventilators. Their chirping and singing the bird tunes always sounded like a sweet music to our adolescent ears. But these birds were also creating a nuisance for our mother who used to be very meticulous and fastidious in maintaining cleanliness all around the house.  Each season it used to be a constant fight ensuing between the young birds and our mother. Our mother will direct the servants almost once a week to throw away many kind of tidbits, the cloth cuttings, the broomsticks   and the small paper shreds that the birds would collect to build their nests behind the curtain rods, the ceiling fans’ canopies and the top of the  wooden cupboards. The poor birds will look at my mother and her retinue of servants pitiably and sadly asking for some kind of mercy to spare their small worlds so that they could lay their eggs and bring into this world their inheritors. But to no avail. Does that mean that the birds will fly away? No way, these birds will stay put in our house and with a re-determination will begin bringing in more material   discarded by the denizens of the man’s land to build with it their nests again. Within a few hours, next morning these birds would build their shell again and look chidingly at our mother. Eventually mother had to give in and allow them to stay in there till their youngest ones were hatched out of the eggs and had grown strong enough to fly out of the windows. She would in due course start the same exercise all over again with other pairs of birds the next season.

But what message my immature mind could understand and imbibe was that a small frail bird had more firmness, persistence and tenacity than many of the humans. It did not get discouraged. It would not get disheartened and depressed even when her or his entire world had been destroyed. It would simply get up and get going without giving the catastrophe a second thought, because it knew that the life is too short and beautiful to be allowed to be destroyed in dismay and despair. One must just get up and get going …………..

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Get Up and Get Going – 2

June 20, 2012 by Ramneek Kapoor

Do we really remember how often had we fallen when we learnt to crawl, walk and then run in our childhood? Most probably not because we had all along been  focusing on the organic growth of  our lives when we moved from infancy to childhood to young age. Each time we would fall  while learning to pedal a bicycle, we would come back with a determination to succeed this time and eventually we learnt the tricks. Remember we would then enjoy the same trick of pedaling our tiny bicycles with both our hands free from the handles of the bicycle. But what kept us going after each fall was the encouragement we would get from the protective hands of our parents or elder brothers and  sisters . Their pepping up always encouraged us to do better.

We now wonder as to where has this pep talk that could tell us to get up and get going vanished . Believe me it has not vanished anywhere. It  exists today also . Possibly today it  can be seen in the eyes of our young sons  and  daughters. Just look into their eyes and onto their confident faces when they see their parents fighting out the challenges of life with yet another strong determined mindset and  bounce back after having had  a  set back in life. The support system of doing better once again  can be found in the comforting words and gestures of the life partners and good friends when they tell you to forget the vagaries of life and try an alternative route that could take you to greater  glory  of success.

I once saw a convoy of ants moving in a very disciplined manner in a straight line to their hive. The ants were lead by the leader of the pack and they were all running to reach  the comfort of their  hive after a day’s hard work . They were clutching small tit bits into their tiny mouths, to be hidden away from the other predators. Out of sheer curiosity and to check whether I could disturb and dissuade the disciplined run of  ants’ convoy I  just sprinkled a few drops of water  on the floor . I had expected ants to give up going in the direction that they  had been following.I was sure  they would now   get lost as the straight line that they had been following behind each other had been disturbed. But to my utter dismay all  the ants instead of getting lost or dissuaded from their  path became more determined to reach their  destination. They would just take a detour away from the wet patch on the floor  and rejoin their  companions who had moved ahead  of them . A few of the ants even climbed the wall high up to avoid the water thrown by me on their route and after covering a good height will climb down to join the straight line of their friends moving forward.

Life beckons us to move ahead in the same way. Come highs or come lows the route to glory should never be abandoned .We must  find  a detour every time we come across the obstacles and continue   our journey to the destination.  There are enough support systems available who tell us to get up once again and get going. The caring hands of God the Almighty are always with us to protect us from any fall  that we might comprehend or be apprehensive of. Let us just get up and get going. Success is just round the corner……..may be just a step ahead.

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Get up and get going – Part 1

May 30, 2012 by Ramneek Kapoor

Many a times, life becomes a difficult hill to climb. It poses so many uphill climbs and downhill slides full of rocks, pebbles and stones that the mind gets boggled and goes numb. But then the same life also presents the challenges that men and women will love to surmount. Has the mankind not been pleased by defeating any and every obstacle that comes in its way to the progress of life. Can we imagine for a minute the sense of achievement and the heavenly bliss and the excitement Sherpa Tenzing and Edmund Hillary must have experienced when they had hoisted the national flags of their respective countries after having reached the top of the Mount Everest? Did they for a minute ignore the obstacles and the difficulties they had faced while climbing .or for that matter does Bachhendri Pal not remember the avalanches and the snow storms when she dares to conquer the mountains again. I am sure she must be remembering all the tough times, the turbulent weather and the impediments, the life threatening moments and the life saving graces while climbing those daunting mountains again And again. It is the thrill of overcoming the difficulties and the obstructions
But how many of us can look at life as a challenge and take a vow every time we go downhill to bounce back again. We mortals get overawed and deterred by the insignificant obstacles conjured and made big by our fearful minds. We do not try with full faith in ourselves and complete trust in God almighty, because of the negativity controlling our minds. The negativity forces us to negate our own powers, our own objectivity and positivity. The result is that we concede and give in even before the skies above could give us the results of our sincere efforts. Just think of those Olympians who having lost the chance to win a gold medal in one Olympics , do not give up but continue with their practice for next four years with the hopes and determination that next time they will make it.
These truths are not mere stories to motivate but experiences to be shared with men and women to tell them that you still can do it. Just get up and get moving the mountain top waits for you .

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Secrets for keeping your marriage young thriving and throbbing –now and forever

April 27, 2012 by Ramneek Kapoor

Some more secrets: 

10.A soft loving touch can really have long lasting impact on   the couples tender feelings towards each other. A gentle   caress  on your spouse’s hand, or pecking lovingly on the  cheek or hand while driving, rubbing  shoulders  sitting  next to each other  are some of the gestures that can convey the feelings of love ,affection and care for each other. 

11.  Appreciation  and   positive compliments    have always been welcome   by humans in all ages.   Paying compliments on the efforts   made by your partner to prepare a good breakfast or a good lunch, complementary   nods and smiles  on   something your spouse is wearing go a long way in establishing better understandings and relationships.

12.  Keep the communication   going  at all times . The busy  job schedules not withstanding ,  let your partner know that you always care and think of her or him.Call from the office desk and text once in a while to share a story you thought was interesting or whispering just plain endearing nothings will do the trick.

13. let your spouse   understand and feel great  about the fact that you value him or her and that that if you had to do it allover again, you’d choose him or her as a partner all over again.

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Secrets for keeping your marriage young thriving and throbbing –now and forever

April 6, 2012 by Ramneek Kapoor

Some more secrets to keep your marriage……………
1. A spouse will often get angry if the other partner expressed doubt on the decision taken by the other partner. We will advise you to go with your partner’s decision and confidence in one of your spouse’s decisions at the first instance. The decision can be subjected to some discussion though at a later stage if need be .

2. Newly married couples often share food from the same plate when they are invited to family and other public functions during the initial days of the marital bliss. But the love tends to wane after a few weeks or may be months. Couples should make efforts to always  share   a dessert with one spoon or a fork so that the sweetness of the dish passes on the moods too.

3. Remember how you used to woo her or him with the favorite tune and the song. Pick up that tune again during romantic moments and sing to her/ him the same “our song” whenever and wherever you can. Do not feel inhibited ever . Call your spouse on his cell phone in the office and sing it to her or him. .

4. How long has it been when you had been to the office/workplace of your partner. Surprise your partner one of these days. Visit your partner at his or her office and get out for a quick bite around the corner coffee shop and don’t forget to give a peck on the cheek or a brushing kiss when you depart.
5. The touch therapy works wonders. Play footsie while watching television or when you sit together post dinner and have itsy bitsy discussions.

6. Bring about some humor in your companionship. The partners sharing and laughing together present a perfect couple picture. Sharing jokes, little idiosyncrasies , and mirth and merry should come into usual habit naturally.

7. When both partners work the office and the job related anxiety aggravates at home. This can be brought down by asking the partner, ” how was your day “… and do not pretend but actually listen and show real concern.

8.The early morning touch acts as the mood elevator. A hug and a kiss given to the spouse upon waking just does that.

9.Caressing and light massage before sleeping will work as the soother to any tensions of the entire day . Just do that to your partner before you kiss the good night to each other..

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