Archives for January 2017

Inspirational Quotations #666

January 8, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you expect nothing, you’re apt to be surprised. You’ll get it.
—Malcolm Forbes (American Publisher)

Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and pure and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.
—Phillips Brooks (American Episcopal Clergyman)

The dignity of man is vindicated as much by the thinker and poet as by the statesman and soldier.
—James Bryant Conant (American Chemist)

Often it is just lack of imagination that keeps a man from suffering very much.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

The great difference between those who succeed and those who fail does not consist in the amount of work done by each but in the amount of intelligent work. Many of those who fail most ignominiously do enough to achieve grand success but they labor haphazardly at whatever they are assigned, building up with one hand to tear down with the other. They do not grasp circumstances and change them into opportunities. They have no faculty for turning honest defeats into telling victories. With ability enough and ample time, the major ingredients of success, they are forever throwing back and forth an empty shuttle and the real web of their life is never woven.
—Og Mandino

You don’t become enormously successful without encountering and overcoming a number of extremely challenging problems.
—Mark Victor Hansen (American Public Speaker)

Competition Can Push You to Achieve Greater Results

January 6, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

“A Great Rival is Like a Mirror”

The competition between American tennis stars Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi became the dominant rivalry in tennis during the ’90s. With their remarkably different styles and temperaments, the two produced a great number of remarkable games. Between 1989 and 2002, Sampras won 20 of their 34 head-to-head matches, of which Sampras won four of the five Grand Slam finals they played. Sampras also held the world No. 1 spot for a record 286 weeks whereas Agassi held it for 101 weeks.

Asked how his rivalries helped and hurt him in the October 2015 issue of Harvard Business Review, Agassi (who is married to tennis legend Steffi Graf) recollected:

A great rival is like a mirror. You have to look at yourself, acknowledge where you fall short, make adjustments, and nurture the areas where you overachieve. There were times my rivals brought out the best in me; there were times they brought out the worst. They probably helped me win things I never would have otherwise; they also cost me titles. I don’t know how you quantify what it would have been like without a rival like Pete Sampras. I would have won more. But I think I would have been worse without him.

Idea for Impact: The risk of being outdone by a closely matched rival can push you further

A certain amount of competition can be helpful when it motivates you and doesn’t result in stress or hurt your personal relationships.

Push yourself past the familiarity and safety of your comfort zone by pursuing some healthy competition. Leaving your comfort zone helps you grow, transform, and feel stronger from the experience.

Doing Is Everything

January 3, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Many people know what they should do: lose weight, start exercising, stop smoking, get serious about managing careers, find a romantic partner, start saving money, and so on. Yet they can’t seem to make themselves do.

You know what to do, but you don’t do it!

It is told that long ago in China, a reclusive monk climbed up a tree in a forest. He settled comfortably and sat there in deep meditation, undisturbed by the outside world.

That became his everyday routine.

People from hamlets in the vicinity adopted him. They approached him with offerings and discussed their affairs. And he imparted his wisdom.

His fame soon spread everywhere. Visitors from far-flung towns trekked to the forest for his counsel.

Folks started calling him Birdsnest for the reason that he perched high up his tree.

On one occasion, the local king learned of Birdsnest and set forth to see him. After an arduous journey, the king located Birdsnest’s tree.

The king hollered at the monk trying to seek his attention. “O wise one, I have an important question to ask of you.”

The king waited for Birdsnest. No response came.

The king tried repeatedly to evoke Birdsnest, but didn’t succeed.

The king grew impatient waiting for Birdsnest.

Eventually, the king became irritated and shouted out, “I can wait no longer! Here is my question. Say, what is it that all the wise ones taught? What is at the heart of all the teachings of the great masters? What is the most profound thing the Buddha ever said?”

The king lingered around Birdsnest’s tree for a long time.

Finally, Birdsnest summoned the king. Holding a meditative poise, Birdsnest declared, “At all times, do good things. Don’t do bad things. This is all the Buddha said. This is what the wise men instructed.”

The king became infuriated.

Birdsnest continued to meditate with a gentle half smile behind his eyes. He was obviously toning down the power of the Buddha’s wisdoms.

The king screamed, “I can’t believe this impertinence! Is that all you’ve got for me? Do good things and don’t do bad things. I knew that when I was three years old, you blithering fool!”

The afternoon sun filtered in through the trees as Birdsnest looked down from his perch. His compassion and matter-of-factness radiated out from your heart. He sympathetically acknowledged, “Indeed, the three-year-old knows it. Yet the eighty year-old finds it very difficult to do!”

The Knowledge-Action Gap

One of the most insidious obstacles to your success in life is the chasm between knowing and doing—between thinking about something and acting on it, between ideating and implementing.

Your ideas may be impressively simple, but accomplishing them with discipline and steadiness can be very, very difficult indeed. This is the knowing-doing gap.

Ruminate about what stops you from accomplishing the things you need to do, want to do, and know how to do, but can’t get to do. Usually, your alleged obstacles—your boss, parents, spouse, children, colleagues, situations—are but excuses. When you sincerely unearth the reasons for your putting things off, you’ll realize that, by and large, it’s you who are sabotaging yourself.

Yes, occasionally, you may face a few genuine external obstacles. Nevertheless, in the grand scheme of things, you usually have the power to overcome them or work around them.

Procrastination is a Breakdown of Self-Discipline

As I have stated in my previous articles, procrastination is weakness of will. Chronic procrastination is a recurrent breakdown of self-discipline.

The overpowering emotion associated with chronic procrastination is guilt. These feelings of guilt are not just specific to the task you’re dodging, even though, at the time of procrastination, your mind may be full of qualms and repentance under the direct influence of your putting off the dreadful task. More accurately, the guilt you feel about your chronic procrastination is the outcome of not living up to your full potential and not authentically engaging in the many possibilities life presents you.

It takes courage to face your anxieties, to forge ahead despite your feelings, and to act. Self-improvement begins with self-reflection. And self-reflection derives from self-compassion. The renowned Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön wrote about self-compassion in her wonderfully reassuring classic When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, “The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”

Don’t hunt for motivation. As I’ve asserted in previous articles, motivation is glorified as a personal trait. While it is beneficial to be motivated, folks who actually manage to get things done are those who find a way to work at whatever they are interested in even when they do not really feel like doing it.

Idea for Impact: Make 2017 the Year of Getting Things Done

Transform your thoughts into action.

Put your ideas into practice.

Don’t let excuses, apologies, indolence, or a lack of motivation get in the way.

Knowing is nothing.

Doing is everything.

Inspirational Quotations by E. M. Forster (#665)

January 1, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Today marks the birthday of E. M. Forster (1879–1970,) an influential British novelist and short story-writer.

Forster published Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), The Longest Journey (1907,) and A Room with a View (1908.) He hit literary success with his fourth novel, Howards End (1910,) about the class system in England as exposed through the pursuits of three families.

During World War I, Forster worked for the Red Cross in Egypt and traveled all over the world. During a visit to India, he was inspired to write his masterpiece A Passage to India (1924.) Set during the British colonial rule in India, this best-selling, much-debated novel is about a young British schoolteacher who imagines being sexually assaulted by an Indian-Muslim doctor. She accuses him of attempted rape, but later retracts her charges. Considered one of the great novels of the 20th century, A Passage to India exposed the undercurrent of conflict and prejudice between the British and Indian cultures.

After publishing five novels before age 40, Forster never published any other novels during his lifetime. He subsequently wrote numerous short stories.

Forster wrote his sixth and last novel on the eve of the First World War and considered it among his best writing, but did not want it to be published in his lifetime because of its homosexual themes. Maurice (1971) was published posthumously to great renown.

Inspirational Quotations by E. M. Forster

I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

Lord I disbelieve—help thou my unbelief.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due—she reminds us too much of a prima donna.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don’t believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art’s sake.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

Art for art’s sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden… it is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

Failure and success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

We are willing enough to praise freedom when she is safely tucked away in the past and cannot be a nuisance. In the present, amidst dangers whose outcome we cannot foresee, we get nervous about her, and admit censorship.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I’d like to be.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

Death destroys a man, the idea of Death saves him.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

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