Nagesh Belludi

Inspirational Quotations by John Lennon (#653)

October 9, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Today marks the birthday of John Lennon (1940-1980,) English rock legend and co-founder of the Beatles, the most influential music band of the rock era.

A native of Liverpool, Lennon did not show much musical inclination as a child. He was smart but often got into trouble for his angry streak, petty crimes, and rebellious attitude.

At age 16, Lennon listened to Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and other rock-and-roll legends whose records were brought over by American sailors docking at the Liverpool port. Fascinated by rock and roll music, Lennon formed his own band with several friends and called it the Quarrymen.

Lennon met Paul McCartney at a church party in the summer of 1957. They became fast friends after Lennon learnt that McCartney could not only tune and play the guitar, but also recall the lyrics of the latest rock and roll songs. The two formed a legendary songwriting partnership that composed 180 songs. After McCartney’s friend George Harrison joined them in 1958, they formed the Beatals, which they later renamed Silver Beetles and finally the Beatles. Drummer Pete Best enlisted in 1960.

The Beatles played at various clubs around England and in Hamburg, Germany. They then returned to England and played at Liverpool’s Cavern Club where businessman Brian Epstein discovered them. After signing up as their manager, Epstein signed the Beatles with EMI records in 1962 and had drummer Pete Best replaced by Ringo Starr. By 1963, the Beatles were the most popular rock and roll band in England. The following year, they took America by storm with their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. ‘Beatlemania’ swept across Europe and America.

Lennon was the Beatles’most controversial member. His 1966 statement, “The Beatles are bigger than Jesus Christ,” instigated a religious counterattack in the United States. During the later ’60s, he used his celebrity to draw attention to various political causes and feminism. His vehement denunciation of the Vietnam War resulted in a protracted—but unsuccessful—effort by the Nixon administration to deport him from his adopted hometown of New York. His single “Give Peace a Chance” became the anti-Vietnam-War anthem in 1969.

Lennon married Yoko Ono in 1969. After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Lennon embarked on a successful solo career. After the birth of son Sean in 1975, Lennon retired from public life and stayed home with family. In 1980, he was assassinated by Mark Chapman who had asked Lennon for his autograph only hours earlier. A few days later, Ono organized over 100,000 people gathered in New York’s Central Park and thousands others around the world to observe a 10-minute silence to honor him. A section of Central Park is designated “Strawberry Fields” in his memory.

Inspirational Quotations by John Lennon

The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it’s unknown, and it’s plain sailing.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

It just was a gradual development over the years. I mean last year was ‘all you need is Love.’ This year, it’s ‘all you need is Love and peace, baby.’ Give peace a chance, and remember Love. The only hope for us is peace. Violence begets violence. You can have peace as soon as you like if we all pull together. You’re all geniuses, and you’re all beautiful. You don’t need anyone to tell you who you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace, think peace, and live peace and breathe peace, and you’ll get it as soon as you like.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock and roll or Christianity.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

Work is life, you know, and without it, there’s nothing but fear and insecurity.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

Survive Stress & Manage Time Better Using Parkinson’s Law

October 7, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Parkinson’s Law proclaims, “It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

This adage’s namesake is British historian Cyril Northcote Parkinson, who first detailed it as an opening remark in his famous 1955 The Economist essay.

Parkinson’s Law has spawned many serviceable corollaries:

A wardrobe expands to fill all the available closet space.
A hoarder’s corpus of unwanted items and junk expands to fill his available space—in closets, cabinets, attics, garage, etc.
Data expands to fill the space available for storage.
Boredom expands to fill the space and time available to an affected individual.
Meetings expand to fill the time available. (Appropriately, if you set an hour for the meeting, people will use the entire hour, in spite of how much is on the agenda.)
No matter how much money people earn, they tend to spend the entire amount and a little bit more besides.

Parkinson’s Law for Stress-Management and Time-Management

From a stress- and time-management perspective, the functional implication of Parkinson’s Law is that tasks take as much time as you allot for them. In other words, the amount of time that you have to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete the task.

For example, if you have two hours to process engineering data, clean your wardrobe, bake a cake, or build a birdhouse, you are likely to fill those entire two hours performing that task, even if the task need not necessarily take as much time if you were efficient enough.

Idea for Impact: Put Bookends on Your Activities

According to Parkinson’s Law, work can contract to fill in the time you give it. You can apply artificial limitations to your work in order to finish it more efficiently. Consider setting time limits on all your activities.

Set a timer for each task you’re trying to get done. If you reckon something may take 90 minutes, set a timer for 90 minutes—or better yet, challenge yourself to be more efficient by setting a timer for 60 minutes. During that time, allow no interruptions and distractions. Keep your nose to the grindstone, apply yourself thoroughly to the task, and get it done.

For habitual procrastinators who tend to put off looming tasks to a later time and exert themselves at the “last minute” prior to an imminent deadline, one other corollary to Parkinson’s Law may be helpful: “If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do,” possibly producing mediocre results.

Beware of Advice from the Superstars

October 4, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Steve Jobs’s Eschewal of Market Research

Apple’s Steve Jobs said in a 1985 interview, “We built [the Mac] for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research.”

Twelve years later, he famously told BusinessWeek: “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

Throughout his illustrious career, Jobs eschewed market research and relied on his intuition. The aforementioned two quotes have become as legendary as the highly opinionated man himself. Reiterating Steve Jobs’ talent to see the needs of consumers before they themselves could, Apple’s Chief Design Officer and co-creator of Apple’s iconic products Jonathan Ive stated, “We don’t do focus groups—that is the job of the [product] designer. It’s unfair to ask people who don’t have a sense of the opportunities of tomorrow from the context of today to design.”

Take Away: Alas, many people who venerate Jobs have taken his message as a pretext to downplay the need for consumer research. Jobs may be correct, but his assertion is perhaps confined to the kind of pioneering products and services he introduced at Apple and Pixar. Most people who claim to be inspired by this lesson from Jobs’s career neither work in the narrow consumer electronics domain nor have their hero’s brilliant intuition and an extraordinarily gifted creative team to sidestep market research and customer input.

Stephen King’s Disdain for Outlines in Writing

In the bestseller On Writing, celebrated American author Stephen King famously states that he never uses an outline to organize his thoughts. He describes the routine of outlining as “the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice. The story which results from it is apt to feel artificial and labored. … I don’t take notes; I don’t outline, I don’t do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamn thing.” King advised other writers to keep from using outlines.

Take Away: Legions of King’s fans assumed that since this technique works so well for him, it must work for them too. Alas, they were mistaken: they aren’t as talented as him and cannot work without generating a detailed outline for a road map of creative writing. What works for writers—amateurs and professionals—is the advice of Terry Brooks, another famous American author, who wrote in his Sometimes the Magic Works, “Perhaps the best reason of all for outlining is that it frees you up immeasurably during the writing process to concentrate on matters other than plot.”

Sheryl Sandberg’s Privileged Work-Life Balance

Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg wrote a prominent career advice book and feminist manifesto called Lean In. Sandberg urges women to fight for gender equality and be assertive to achieve career success.

Sandberg’s writing has been criticized for being out of touch with the reality that most women face. She establishes much of her “you-can-do-it-too” counsel on her own experience as a successful woman who’s balanced her career and family through high profile jobs at Google and Facebook.

Take Away: Few people come from as privileged a socio-economic background as Sandberg to obtain two Harvard degrees, get an illustrious mentor at college, work on prestigious research projects at the World Bank, and acquire hundreds of millions of personal wealth by their mid-careers. Few women can aspire to be as fairy-tale affluent, talented, and privileged as Sandberg. Few can afford to hire assistants and domestic help to help balance the demands of personal and professional life. Few people have the benefit of working in the upper echelons of progressive corporate environments such as those at Google and Facebook that make it as conducive to “lean in” like her.

What Worked for Them Won’t Work for You

If you read about how successful people get successful, remember that the career advice that works for the superstars is not necessarily what will work for most ordinary folks. So, don’t be misled by their “it worked for me” advice.

If a specific technique worked for Steve Jobs, Stephen King, Sheryl Sandberg, or anybody else who gives you advice, don’t assume it will work for you too. Alas, you are likely not as naturally brilliant, gifted, endowed, or disposed as they are. Neither are you as privileged to have access to the resources they can tap into.

In addition, in giving advice, superstars tend to understate—perhaps intentionally—the role that circumstances played in their success. On balance, much of success in life is a product of luck—being at the right time, at the right place, with the right people. Alas, what worked in their circumstances may not work in yours.

The Buddha taught prudence in such matters. He asked disciples to do what he taught only if it worked in the context of their own lives. He encouraged disciples to listen to his ideas, mull them over, try out what made sense, subsequently adapting what worked, and discarding what did not work.

The best way to educate yourself is by exposing yourself to a variety of success principles. Observe the top performers in your field. Then, identify, emulate, and adapt their effectiveness techniques to your circumstances. (See my previous article.)

Idea for Impact: Expose yourself to many success principles and consider what qualities, attributes, mental models, or approaches to life you may want to assimilate into who you are, even in part. Don’t expect to blatantly imitate a hero and expect the same outcomes: BE YOURSELF.

Inspirational Quotations by Mohandas K. Gandhi (#652)

October 2, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Today marks the birthday of Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948,) the apostle of peace and non-violence who said, “My life is my message.”

Around the world, this “Mahatma” (great soul) is idolized as a modern saint not only for his extraordinary public life as the leader of India’s peaceful struggle for independence, but also for his enduring philosophical contributions to humanity.

Gandhi was born into a family of modest means in the state of Gujarat. He was educated in British schools and earned a law degree in London. While working as an attorney in racially divided South Africa, he suffered discrimination in its full force. As dramatized in Richard Attenborough’s superb Gandhi, Gandhi was pushed off a train when he did not relocate from its first class coach. That particular incident made him politically active. During his 21 years in South Africa, he found his calling, experimented with nonviolent resistance, and vehemently fought against anti-Indian legislation in South Africa.

Gandhi then returned to India and organized peasants and workers against land taxes and subjugation. He led a series of nonviolent campaigns as the leader of the Indian crusade for home rule. He frequently resorted to hunger strikes not only in protest of British colonialism but also against hostility between India’s Hindus and Muslims. When Great Britain granted independence in 1947, the partition of India along religious lines led Gandhi to declare his life a failure because India could not govern itself as one nation but instead gave in to the division.

Within months after India’s independence, a Hindu fanatic assassinated Gandhi while he was on his way to evening prayers in Delhi. At his funeral procession, American radio journalist Edward Murrow broadcast, “The object of this massive tribute died as he had always lived—a private man without wealth, without property, without official title or office. Mahatma Gandhi was not a commander of armies nor ruler of vast lands. He could not boast any scientific achievements or artistic gift. Yet men, governments and dignitaries from all over the world have joined hands today to pay homage to this little brown man in the loincloth who led his country to freedom.”

Gandhi is one of the most-biographed people in the history of the world. Physicist Albert Einstein once said, “Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”

Gandhi inspired Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, the 14th Dalai Lama, and political leaders who resist oppressive regimes. He was also a prolific writer; his most famous work is his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1940.)

Gandhi is the political and spiritual father of modern India. Beyond the common reverence of Gandhi as a freedom-struggle leader, he is also venerated for his philosophy of life. He advocated virtue, simple living, nonviolence, and vegetarianism. He expounded a nonviolent way of life in which people can recognize themselves as God’s children, irrespective of religion and culture, and live the life of absolute truth, universal love, and righteous justice. He presented this as an alternative to a Western culture overflowing with consumerism, individualism, competition, and inequality.

Gandhi said, “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always.”

Inspirational Quotations by Mohandas K. Gandhi

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Nothing can be more hurtful to an honourable man than that he should be accused of bad faith.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

In judging myself I shall try to be as harsh as truth, as I want others also to be.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Today I know that physical training should have as much place in the curriculum as mental training.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

A man of truth must also be a man of care.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

For me the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

The cry for peace will be a cry in the wilderness, so long as the spirit of nonviolence does not dominate millions of men and women.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it, when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it, even if I did not have the ability in the beginning.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

The weak can’t forgive. Forgiveness is of the strong.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

One golden rule is to accept the interpretation honestly put on the pledge by the party administering it.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Always believe in your dreams, because if you don’t, you’ll still have hope.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Nothing is impossible for pure love.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different road, so long as we reach the same goal. Wherein is the cause for quarrelling?
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall—think of it, always.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his whole soul. Disobedience of the laws of an evil state is therefore a duty.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

If one has no affection for a person or a system, one should feel free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite violence.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to coyer impotence.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Faith is not a delicate flower which would wither away under the slightest stormy weather.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Providence has its appointed hour for everything. We cannot command results, we can only strive.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Jealousy does not wait for reasons.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

One of the objects of a newspaper is to understand popular feeling and to give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be inseparable part of our very being.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Avoid the Lectern in Presentations

September 30, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Standing behind a lectern while presenting can make you seem stiff, unemotional, and disconnected. A lectern creates a barrier between you and your audience—it not only blocks out two-thirds of your body, but also restricts your natural hand gestures. The lectern may even entice you to lean on or hold it, making you look tense and uneasy.

By walking around the room and getting closer to your audience, you establish a bigger presence in the room and are harder to ignore. You encourage your audience to move their heads and eyes to follow you around the room, so they’re less likely to doze off during your presentation. Your watchful eyes may also prevent them from using their tablets and phones.

Walking about can make your presentation appear like a natural conversation and thus help you overcome any public speaking anxiety. You can also better gauge your audience’s reactions.

Always present standing up, even if you’re presenting to an audience of one or two. Standing while presenting not only lets you make better eye contact with your audience, but also helps you breathe and project your voice more clearly. You will appear to have more influence since your audience will be literally “looking up to you.”
Move around naturally. Mix it up to avoid looking nervous. Don’t always walk from the front to the back or from side to side.
Make your movements look relaxed and confident. Do not tap your foot, rock, sway, swing, or dance on the spot. Don’t try anything over-the-top, dramatic, or flashy.
Keep an open posture at all times; avoid crossing your arms or creating a symbolic barrier between you and the audience. Use hand gestures selectively for emphasis—do not gesture so much that your body language poses a distraction.
Stop moving and pause briefly after making each important point. As I mentioned in a previous article, pauses can help you emphasize your message and gather your next thoughts. In addition, the audience gets a chance to absorb your point.
When responding to a question, move closer to the person who asked the question.

Idea for Impact: When presenting, walk around the room naturally and interact with your audience. Moving around the room not only helps you keep eye contact with the audience, but also emphasizes an air of confidence, openness, and authority. You’ll also look more conversational, interesting, and memorable.

How to Handle Employees who Moonlight

September 27, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Moonlighting—working a part-time job or having a business “on the side”—can pose a challenge for employers. Moonlighting can lead to divided allegiance, conflicts of interest, and poor job performance.

Employers expect employees to be present and prompt at their jobs. If employees are hustling to attend to multiple commitments, fatigue, lack of sleep, poor attentiveness, tardiness, and absenteeism can become problems. When an employees’ moonlighting hurts their on-the-job performance, employers are within their rights to discipline and terminate employees. For these reasons, some employers limit or prohibit moonlighting.

The proactive approach to moonlighting

One way to head off moonlighting problems is to have a policy about part-time jobs and running side businesses. Institute a policy that sets performance expectations, protects proprietary information, avoids conflicts of interest, and averts divided allegiance. Your moonlighting policy cannot regulate employees’ off-duty activities or prohibit employees from having other jobs. But it may expect employees to disclose and get approval for supplementary employment. A moonlighting policy may also require senior managers and leaders to disclose directorships and financial interests in other companies.

Tell employees they can’t mix their business with your company’s business

If you find an employee doing side work for pay from your office, tell him that this is a clear violation of office expectations; he should conduct no business other than your company’s during work hours. Tell your employee, “You can’t mix your other business with our business. Your time at this job should be exclusively for this job. Our company resources are for our company’s purposes only.”

If your employee gets occasional calls that he needs to attend to, reiterate the above expectation and encourage him to answer the calls during break time and away from his desk. Encourage him to respond to those calls with “I’m at my other job right now. Let me call you back later.”

Discourage employees from selling stuff to other employees

If you find an employee selling stuff to other employees or soliciting outside business during paid working time, discourage it as soon as you discover it. Explain how this interferes with your office’s work.

Discourage your employees from turning your office into a showroom and making customers of other employees. Selling merchandise could impair work relationships when a buyer is unhappy with a product or service. Worse yet, side-businesses can easily grow unmanageable in case of network marketing programs (e.g. Amway, Herbalife) that encourage upselling or getting others involved as salespeople.

Employees can involve their colleagues in side-businesses outside your office, as long as such activities don’t harm at-work relationships.

Idea for Impact: Managers can forestall many employee problems by being proactive and setting expectations

In general, moonlighting is neither unethical nor illegal. It may become an issue when the employer specifically prohibits it and/or where the other job is with a competitor, supplier, or customer and is therefore a potential conflict of interest. The only time you really need to challenge an employee’s moonlighting is when it can affect your business in terms of conflicts of interest and deficient work performance.

Bear in mind: don’t overlook or disregard such concerns until they become major problems.

Inspirational Quotations by William Faulkner (#651)

September 25, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Today marks the birthday of William Faulkner (1897–1962,) the American author of novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and screenplays. He won not only the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature, but also the Pulitzer Prize twice and the National Book Award twice.

Faulkner dropped out of high school and took a few courses at the University of Mississippi where he got a ‘D’ grade in English. He worked odd jobs as a house painter, dishwasher, and bootlegger. While working as an overnight supervisor at University of Mississippi’s Old Power Plant, he wrote The Sound and The Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying (1930.)

Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in just six weeks between midnight and 4:00 AM while working at the power plant and sent it to his publisher without changing a word. Regarded his most famous novel, As I Lay Dying portrays a poor white family that accompanies a mother’s body across the state of Mississippi for burial.

Faulkner also worked as a Hollywood screenwriter for more than 50 films including To Have and Have Not (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946.)

Inspirational Quotations by William Faulkner

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

The salvation of the world is in man’s suffering.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

People need trouble—a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don’t mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

The end of wisdom is to dream high enough not to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

A writer needs three things: experience, observation, and imagination—any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

The past is never dead, it is not even past.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That’s how he finds that he can bear anything.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

All of us have failed to reach our dream of perfection, so I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

I believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among the creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of kindness and compassion.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantly is having to accept it.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

A man’s moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

Fear is the most damnable, damaging thing to human personality in the whole world.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

Being Underestimated Can Be a Great Thing

September 23, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

This spring, I attended the 2016 annual meeting of shareholders of Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited in Toronto. Fairfax’s chief executive Prem Watsa opened his remarks with the following joke:

A young boy enters a barbershop.

The barber whispers to a customer, “This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.”

The barber puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other. He then calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?”

The boy takes the quarters and leaves.

“What did I tell you?” says the barber to the customer. “That kid never learns!”

Later, when the customer leaves the barbershop, he sees the same young boy coming out of an ice cream store licking a wafer-style ice cream cone.

He summons the boy and asks, “Hey, son! May I ask you a question? … Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?”

The boy licks his cone and replies, “Sir, because the day I take the dollar, the game is over!”

Although the barber sought to characterize the young boy foolish, the joke was really on the barber.

The barber never suspected the boy’s recurring motivation to seem stupid. Additionally, the barber never learned his lesson or questioned his own assumptions.

Idea for Impact: As the above joke attests, being underestimated, underrated, or misjudged can often have its benefits. Don’t sweat when others think less than you actually are. Don’t let them make you feel small. Embrace their misjudgments with equanimity. Believe in yourself with humble confidence. Then outthink, outsmart, and outperform. Surprise them.

Stop Trying to Change People Who Don’t Want to Change

September 20, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Change is seldom as easy as we think it will be

Consider how many people engage in smoking, obesity, problem drinking, procrastination, rage, and other self-defeating behavioral patterns. Despite being fully aware of the negative consequences of their behaviors, these people tend not to change.

Many people are unsuccessful when they try to change their own behavior. People are creatures of habit, and habits evolve over time. They become so deep-seated and instinctive that people are often oblivious to the behaviors and consequences that their habits drive.

It is therefore very hard to change old habits even when they’re bad. Consequently, people find themselves incapable or reluctant to make essential changes in their lives. They discover that habits are persistent and necessitate many consistent repetitions to change. Even when they are motivated enough to change, long-lasting change entails much commitment, consistency, and discipline.

When do people change?

The American self-help author Tony Robbins once wrote, “Most people are unhappy with some area of their life, but are not unhappy enough to actually do something about it. Unfortunately, 90% of people fall is this category.”

People typically don’t change because someone tells them that they need to. Many people change from their own accord as the result of physiological vicissitudes in their lives or from psychological impositions of external circumstances: transition to adolescence, retirement, becoming a parent, a job loss, or the death of a spouse, for example. Nevertheless, very few people change from within—deliberately, willingly, and on-purpose.

People don’t change until they think they need to

The Italian astronomer and philosopher Galileo Galilei once said, “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” Helping people change involves helping them want to change, instead of trying to persuade them through guidance, counsel, urging, social pressure, or other forms of inducement.

Therapists (and mentors, coaches, and managers) are most successful in bringing about long-lasting change only in people who are intrinsically motivated to make the change. Therapists have little success with people who have no interest in changing.

Effective therapists explore, understand, and tweak their clients’intrinsic motivations toward change. They understand their client’s motivations, listen to any reluctance about change, and sensitively try to fortify those elements of their clients’ intrinsic motivations that may favor and hence facilitate the intended change.

Idea for Impact: When people do not want to change, don’t try to change them

As children, spouses, parents, friends, managers, and colleagues we are continuously attempting to point out others’ errors and expecting them to change. Even when our concerns are genuine and our attempts to change others are sincere, we often fail to bring about real behavioral change because people don’t change until they think they need to. So, don’t try to change people when they do not want to change.

They may change in a short time, but unless there is a compelling reason or a significant emotional event that astonishes them to change, people go back to their natural state.

Harboring expectations of being able to change can only lead to frustration and futility. Therefore, as the Buddha taught, lower your expectations of people, appreciate people as they are, and thus raise your own joys. Alternatively, find the people who have the behaviors you want and teach them the skills they need to be productive.

Inspirational Quotations by Samuel Johnson (#650)

September 18, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Today marks the birthday of Samuel Johnson (1709–84,) the British writer who made lasting contributions to English literature. Often referred to as Dr. Johnson and regarded as the greatest intellectual in British history, he wrote many famous essays, sermons, poetry, biographies, literary criticisms, plays, and novels.

Johnson started writing in his mid-20s, publishing essays, poems, and prose. During his 30s, he contributed more than 200 essays to magazines and launched his colossal undertaking: an authoritative Dictionary of the English Language (1755.) With the help of six mechanical assistants, Johnson completed the lexicon in nine years. Published in two volumes, it contained more than 42,000 entries. This dictionary made Johnson famous, and it remains his most enduring accomplishment.

Despite his prodigious literary output, Johnson is most remembered not for anything he wrote, but for the biography that James Boswell (1740–95) wrote of Johnson. Boswell idolized Johnson and kept scrupulously detailed diaries of his mannerisms, characteristics, routines, decisions, opinions, and everything else about his life. Boswell used these notes to write a comprehensive biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). Owing to its thorough portrayal of its subject as a complete person and not just as a catalog of events and achievements in his life, The Life of Samuel Johnson is regarded the definitive precursor to modern biographies. Boswell’s records of Johnson’s numerous aphorisms also made him one of the most-quoted writers in the English language.

Inspirational Quotations by Samuel Johnson

The future is purchased by the present.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Where there is no difficulty there is no praise.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A desire of knowledge is the natural feeling of mankind; and every human being whose mind is not debauched will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The best of conversations occur when there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm quiet interchange of sentiments.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Men are seldom more innocently employed than when they are honestly making money.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A man may be so much of every thing, that he is nothing of any thing.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

To convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is justly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of human abilities.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Whatever enlarges hope will also exalt courage.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Life admits not of delays; when pleasure can be had, it is fit to catch it. Every hour takes away part of the things that please us, and perhaps part of our disposition to be pleased.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

I am inclined to believe that few attacks either of ridicule or invective make much noise, but by the help of those they provoke.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a year.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, of sickness, or captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable; nor does it appear that the happiest lot of terrestrial existence can set us above the want of this general blessing; or that life, when the gifts of nature and of fortune are accumulated upon it, would not still be wretched, were it not elevated and delighted by the expectation of some new possession, of some enjoyment yet behind, by which the wish shall at last be satisfied, and the heart filled up to its utmost extent.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is worth a thousand pounds a year to have the habit of looking on the bright side of things.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour way.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

One of the aged greatest miseries is that they cannot easily find a companion able to share the memories of the past.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Try and forget our cares and sickness, and contribute, as we can to the happiness of each other.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is always observable that silence propagates itself, and that the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find any thing to say.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The first years of man must make provision for the last.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seeds scattered by chance. Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A wicked fellow is the most pious when he takes to it. He’ll beat you all at piety.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

No man is much pleased with a companion, who does not increase, in some respect, his fondness for himself.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Getting money is not all a man’s business; to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Hell is paved with good intentions.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

He who praises everybody praises nobody.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A jest breaks no bones.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

It is better to live rich than to die rich.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Many things difficult in design prove easy in performance.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

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