Goal Setting and Planning

There are times we are confused about the direction of events in our life. Then it is relevant to emphasize on our goals and purpose

Not having a goal in life is equivalent to not knowing where to go when we hit the road. For some it may look adventurous. Nevertheless, on a worst case scenario, we may reach a place where there is no way back and you have to contend what you get for rest of your life.  Many of us do not want to reach this kind of situation in our lives. Unfortunately, many people see no way out of their present less than desirable lives and go on to suffer throughout their lives.  Albeit, little they know they can always can come out of the misery and lead a life of abundance and happiness.

Imagine that you are planning a trip to a sunny beach; you will start preparing everything that makes the trip not only pleasant but also memorable. Your entire family or friends who are going to accompany you would be excited about the while trip and anticipate the merriment at the beach. You might even notice that the time fly off like; hours look like minutes and minutes look like seconds.

In contrast, imagine you and your friends leave on a road trip without planning as to where to go. Like your worst nightmare coming true, you may end up nowhere and you lost your way and stuck in a place where there is nothing you can do. Your friends start cursing you to bringing to this dreadful excursion. You feel helpless and ashamed!

Everyone needs planning and should have a definitive goals in their life as to what they intend to achieve in short term and long term. Imagine where you want to be in five years from now and start dissecting your five-year plan into chunks of one-year short term plans.  Having shorter plans helps you in monitoring your progress and take necessary and appropriate corrective measures along the way.

As an Entrepreneur, you must focus on setting your goals and doing everything in your capacity to reach those goals. Moreover, you must also abstain from doing anything that can halt or reverse your progress. Entrepreneurs must develop habits to continually monitor their progress almost daily basis and continue to do what is working and discard what is not working.

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Safeguarding Your Car From Thieves

The cases of stolen cars have been increasing at alarming rate. Due to tight economic situation, people are losing their lively-hood by losing jobs, and going bankrupt in business. Therefore, crime rate is going up and is not expected till the economy turn around and provide means to earn a living. It is important that vehicle owners safe guard their assets aggressively.

A recent event during a night happened to me that should have deprived me of my brand new Toyota Innova. It seems the car thieves have been keeping tab on our movements for quite some time. Indeed, the modus operandi of thieves is the target a certain car and keeps a watch on it for some days or weeks before they get into their act. The obvious fact is that they had opened the front gate lock without much effort. In other words, they had even observed what kind of lock I had used to lock the front gate. In fact, we do not have the garage and park our car in front of our house and off course, within the compound. Many people park their cars out side their homes due to non availability of garage.

Apparently, car thieves had stuck at our house around 2 AM! Many people are fast asleep and people rarely are on the street. We live in a residential area and the people movement becomes sparse after 12AM till 3AM. Mostly people return home late till 1AM and other early birds start preparing by waking up at 4AM. The time in between is very ripe for thieves to get and run off with their booty. Two people had broke into our compound by opening the gate lock and one of them could successfully disabled the car alarm by cutting wires by reaching from below the car. It seems the people involved here are expert mechanic(s) and they knew what they were doing. Luckily, our car had another horn hidden beyond for anyone to access without opening the bonnet. When thieves thought they had quietly disabled the horn, and they tried to open the car lock, apparently, by using a duplicate key, the second hidden horn beeped twice loudly as if the car lock was to open. This unexpected event startled thieves and forced them to take to their heels. Our car was saved to live another day.

When our thieves were thick in their action, the early bird rag picker got suspicious of the persons who were in our compound and saw a car parked near our house in the shadows and another person was inside. It was obvious that the person inside the car was ready to whisk away his partners in crime if anybody spotted them. In fact, we had a security guard patrol our street and couple of streets in our area. Unfortunately, the security guard failed to notice the thieves and got to know only when the rag picker told him about the people in my compound/fence. By the time security guard reached our home, thieves had got wind of their grave situation and fled the scene. The wide open gate welcomed the security guard when he arrived at the "crime scene!" The hapless security guard was speechless; thieves could have gotten away with the car right under the nose of the security guard had the alarm not went off.

Indeed, when the car horn beeped twice around 2AM, my wife woke me up from my slumber and asked me to check out our car. I casually peeked out from the front window and saw none. I returned and told my wife about no one being seen outside and we thought the car alarm might have been set off by a cat. We did not know about the incident till the security guard woke us up at 3.30AM and reported. We were shocked. Our casual approach to our car's security would have cost us the car.

I cannot imagine and no way accept that someone stealing my car. I have an emotional attachment with my car. If someone steals my car, it is like I have lost something very important in my life. My car has very important place and role in my day-to-day life.

Many of known people have lost their cars and motor bikes, they were all shocked and traumatized and scar has never left them ever since they lost their vehicles. From what I have heard from people, more often than not, the car once stolen is mostly never found. There are set of groups who are specialized in dismantling the stolen cars and distribute the parts in the second’s market, or transport the stolen car to far off place and change the number plate to sell it at very handsome profits. The stealing a car is very much an organized crime and any car or bike owner can succumb to it.

It can happen to anyone, anytime. It is in our interest to secure our lives during these tough times. If you own a car or bike, remember, a little precaution can save you lot of headache.

What we did to save our vehicle from thieves:

Once we realized we were lucky due to unsuccessful attempt to steal our car, we took the incident seriously.

First and foremost was to ensure safety of our car, second, to tighten the security around our home, and lastly, improve the security around our locality as preventative measure.

How to improve the security of the car:

1) Make sure that the car alarm is always active and get it repaired moment you see it not functioning. Every night before you retire, check the car is locked and security alarm is active. For older models, thieves have found a way to get around the alarm system, make sure that the alarm system is placed beyond the reach from below your vehicle. Talk to your mechanic to see the alarm is tamper proof.

2) Use the steering lock and position the longest part to face to the wind shield. This will delay the thieves for few precious minutes and discourage them from breaking the lock. This will create a physical warning and discourage the scheming thief from even attempting. This is good measure that works well even you park the car in the public places either in day or night.

How to create security around the car during dark or in the night time

1) Do not Position the car near to the fence or compound to block the view of the gate, so that you have a clear view of the gate in the night.

2) Use hardened chain locks to lock the gate

3) Car parking area should be well lit during nights. Cars parked in dark are prime and easy target.

How to improve security in the locality

1) Talk to the local representative or the leader and bring the security issues to her/him

2) Make the municipal office to fix and improve the lighting systems in the street. Dark streets invite thieves!

3) If possible, get the municipal office setup barricade during night in the main entrance and exits of your locality that can be manned in the night

4) Talk to your neighbors and make them aware of the risks and encourage them to do what you have done to safe guard your vehicle (as in point 1 and 2)

Other personal measures to prepare for the unexpected situation:

Do not take the car thieves lightly. They are prepared for the worst and they are increasingly becoming violent. They may even carry firearms!  So be careful when you notice someone or some people are trying to steal your car. Do not open the front door and immediately rise alarm by shouting loudly to alert your neighbors and foil thieves’ attempt. Call the local security guard on his cell phone. So do not forget to carry the emergency number(s) with you in case you need it most.

If anyone save our loved and well looked after cars from being stolen, it is only we the car owners. Nobody else can replace you in saving your car. Even police force has its own limits. So better be prepared when thieves strike you when you least expect them!

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Persistence

Budding Entrepreneurs almost always face many obstacles: lack of experience, lack of funding, lack of unconditional support from family and friends. Nevertheless, experienced Entrepreneurs are mentally attuned to those obstacles and find ways to overcome them. Indeed, over period one can overcome obstacles and one may even enjoy obstacles. However, this is not necessarily the case with budding or new entrepreneurs.

Young entrepreneurs especially that normally start their business from scratch would be facing most challenging situations. Unless one has a family support, or already have a family running business, upcoming entrepreneurs would have to navigate through toughest terrains of business mostly alone.

Entrepreneurs should develop mental skills to overcome any situations and able to think clearly. Especially, when under stress one should be able to take appropriate decisions keeping both short term and long term needs of the business.  Being persistent is an essential attribute of a businessman. Without this attitude, one can hardly survive in the tough world.

I have come across many situations in my life when I started new businesses and struggled with it. One thing is common for all business startups. It is always hard to take a business from startup to self sustainable venture. By the time a business become break even let alone profitable, if at all, the business owner could have tried to abort his mission and shut down the business. Frustrations and obstacles are common thing in a new business. Most bow down to the pressure of a new venture.

This is where seasoned professionals standout as successful business builders. A seasoned professional is hardened to the grind of managing a budding business. An upcoming business is essentially resource hungry and it demands lot of attention from its owner in terms of capital, personnel, personal time, marketing, materials, management structure and system to name a few. To be successful one should develop right mental attitude of persistence and perseverance. By persistence means going forward even in the face of failures and opposition, or criticisms from others.  It is easier said than done. Nevertheless, one can develop those qualities and become successful in building a successful business venture.

How should one even begin a journey to develop these characters?  Unfortunately, there is no magic bullet that can instantly change you into tough, confident business man woman. Rather, one must begin a journey of self exploration and by creating self awareness that creates a strong character base upon which a new belief system can be build by replacing obsolete, dysfunctional belief system. Remember, unless you change yourself internally no measure of external changes would make you what you wanted.

I recommend that Outrageous Mastery can help you to begin your inner exploration and developing strong self awareness.

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Negativities of Mind – Spoiled Garden

Many learned masters say our mind is like monkey. I prefer to call our mind is filled with little nasty gremlins! Jumping from on thought to another, our mind never ceases to circle in infinite loop! Such a mind obviously takes control of our daily existence and overpowers every effort to stop the never ending loop. Metaphorically, if a software program inadvertently enters into infinite loop, soon the memory becomes full and program crashes and in older operating systems the computer was said to freeze or crash.

Surely, our mind is occupied with trivial and unnecessary chatter with barrage of information flowing from our senses and, indeed, from our memories. Our mind is a very fertile ground. Without conscious efforts, our fertile mind is only growing weeds that are of no value whatsoever. For example, if a farmer is growing paddy in his farm, then he would naturally remove any weeds that crop up in his paddy field. He knows by experience that if weeds are left to grow along with paddy, soon after weeds destroy his paddy crop, therefore, financially destroying the farmer. Similarly, if we leave the mind to its own function, we only expect weeds to grow and inherently bring us nothing but poverty! Indeed, it is hard to believe though, you will have a better understanding if you read the timeless book 'Think and Grow Rich' written by Napoleon Hill. So, we must remove uncontrolled, trivial thoughts from our mind and fill it with productive thoughts. It means one should indulge in conscious thinking and become continuously aware of one's own thoughts.

By becoming aware of our own thoughts, we can analyze and understand what is going on in our mind and thereby effectively eliminate destructive mental chatter. We should let good, creative thoughts to develop in our mind by being self aware. For many who have not developed awareness of their thinking, their mind is like a black box. They are completely ignorant of their thoughts and they unconsciously let the weed to grow in their minds. For someone who is trying to break the cycle of poverty, it is like an untouchable fire. To break from poverty, one must develop conscious, and apparently, controlled thoughts and consistently free his mind of weeds. Developing self awareness is critical to achieve one's goals in life. Unfortunately, many people fail to understand the simple, yet powerful fact of life. Many people are blind to the fact that they should look inward for their failures in achieving worldly success instead of finding external reasons for their failures. Answer lies within them not without. One must conquer the world within before going onto to conquer the world outside!

Developing self awareness is a continuous journey. One must undertake it in any point in life and discover the true potential or power within. Without self realization we are not reaching anywhere in our lives.

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Life Driven By Ego

I can say without hesitation that my life so far was driven by my ego. Thus far, I was always under the impression that I can control what I can become and how my life runs or what I wanted in my life. I wanted to become an executive in a large multinational company, have big bank balance, own a house, buy a luxurious car etc. Nevertheless, I am only reflecting what most people want in their lives since we are driven by almost similar needs.

To achieve my dreams of making big in the corporate ladder, I built up a impressive resume by working in different corporations to acquire good experience, attended seminars, earned professional certificates to name a few. I spent most of my career in trying to beef up my resume with good credentials. I was under the impression that nothing would go wrong in my career or life in general. I was totally unprepared for changes that have unsettled my life completely and put the life in totally a different path. It only meant whatever I did for the last 20 years to build up my career, did not really put me where I wanted to go. On the contrary, I am shown an entirely new path that possibly is the right path and, perhaps, I could do better. Nevertheless, my ego was deeply hurt as the circumstances did not satisfy its needs.

I realized that I cannot control my destiny and I am only an actor on stage. It took some time for me to understand a meaning behind life and I also come to understand that most of our desires were ego driven. It was indeed the cause for my fears, stress, and worries. I was not able to feel happy and always chasing my desires without seeing an end to it. One day it dawned to me that I can be free from stress, worries, and disappointments, if and when I decide to go with the natural flow of life, instead of chasing my ego driven desires. There is a universal force that takes care of our physical and psychological needs. Having faith in the power would not only bring happiness but also contentment. One must learn to unlearn and ready to accept new and unexpected. Be spontaneous, accept the life as a gift, and live in present moment, and finally enjoy every moment of your life.

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Life is a gift – Celebrate and Live.

Life is a gift

What GOD has giveth

We squander it squarely

Because we understand it barely

When we understand it finally

We know we lived in illusion

Live it fully and celebrate daily

For everything GOD has given us

In Abundance

Somehow I was inspired or rather told to write the above poem about life being a gift to us. How surprisingly everyone is missing it. Incidentally, when I was taking a morning walk, I was full of thoughts, albeit, I was trying to enjoy the present moment by being aware of my surroundings. Masters call it living in 'Gaps.' In one of such gaps, a thought appeared in my mind that told me that life is a gift and I should celebrate it for what the universe has given me and an assurance that I was cared by it.

One of the learned masters said, my thoughts are my guests and silence or gaps between such thoughts are representing me. In those gaps, we can listen to life changing messages that are delivered to us in our silence. Moreover, when we can voluntarily put a thought in such silence; our thoughts are manifested in the physical realm!

I was surprised for the message and I realized at that moment that the universe is telling me to relax, live in the present moment, and trust in universe’s way of providing us everything in abundance. Indeed, most of us neither have courage nor patience to relax in our ultra competitive world for the fear being left out or considered a loser or a failure. This is real. We all feel this way. Practically, no one can escape this mindset that easily. Perhaps, this is what we are all told about the way the world operates. It seems there is no obvious escape for our never-ending race of life.

Just like I mentioned in my poem, so is our life is an illusion and if we can look beyond the curtain of 'Maya' or illusion of life, we can finally understand the beauty of life! When we realize this, we can learn to relax and go with the natural flow of universe to attain everlasting peace within, and happiness.

So free up your mind, relax and get ready to receive divine messages to come into your life. If you practice this you will never feel lonely, depressed, and unhappy.

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Power of Mind

Mind is a very powerful creator. It silently manifest whatever is fed and kept focused in your mind. Most of us most of the times keep worrying thoughts in  our mind. So what would you expect? All those things that we wanted to avoid starts happening to our horror. I did not realize the massive impact my thoughts had in influencing in my day to day lives. It is like we are creating our own problems and we are using our own mind to create troubles. I could hardly imagine I was directing the fateful events in my life that I hated to live. I was self-destructing!

Interestingly, all thoughts are treated equally by our mind. Both good/Positive and bad/Negative thoughts are treated equal and are not differentiated. All the thoughts that are fed freely into our conscious mind are piped freely into subconscious mind. Once any thought that enters into our subconscious mind will be taken up for execution. In other words, whatever thoughts that can get into our subconscious mind it takes shape in real, material world. So be careful what you allow yourself to think.

Be aware of your thoughts and allow only positive thoughts. Develop mental strength to allow what makes you happy and simply disallow any kind of worries and thoughts. Like there is a popular saying 'What you don’t mind, does not matter.' If you are not thinking of something it does not materialize on the physical realm of life.

Mind is an extremely powerful machine, it has the capability to build beautiful things or bring destructions. We are the masters and creators of our destiny. If we allow our mind to wander freely without reigning, we blame our life on unknown punishing force called fate. Fate is nothing but our own unconscious creation. Everyone can create a life one wants by just practicing good and constructive thoughts. Just practice this, and simply see how miracles start happening in your life.

One book that immensely changed my perceptions is (OM) Outrageous Mastery by Sasha Xarrian