DREAMER TO ACHIEVER

Rural India is not dearth of talent. A strong drive to achieve puts you on higher pedestal and treads a path to success. It is immaterial where you are born with a social and economic condition you have inherited. What matters is the quantum of fire in your belly.

Some people perish in the course of their struggle and only few will rise to dictate their destiny.

Dodde Anjaneyulu belongs to the second lot. This pride of Andhra achieved his father's dream of becoming IAS in  2010 Civil Service Examination (CSE)  and got 278th rank. His father who was a watchman in a sleepy village: Jammikunta in backward Telangana region  inspired his son to become Collector and the son took his father's dream to heart, despite abject poverty.

Anjaneyulu through arduous efforts shined in academics and thereafter completed his engineering graduation in 2005. He settled as a software professional for 2 years to accumulate the needy bucks  for the Civil Services Exam preparation. Though the sudden death of his father in 2007 somewhat crippled him, but it solidified his resolve to embark his goal.

Getting selected to IAS is no mean achievement. Every year, around 4 lac aspirants compete the CSE out of which only ten thousand aspirants clear their preliminaries and very creamy few i.e. 1000 finally gets selected for IAS, IFS, IPS and other allied Group A & B Services. So it is all merit and hard work that matters. Anjaneyulu through this covetous achievement, once again proved to the world that a fire in the belly do wonders.

After reading his story in a local Telugu paper Saakshi dated 19 Nov 2011,  I was totally moved. The way his mother broke down after seeing her son’s achievement would strike a chord with any reader. It is palpable to understand the emotions of a mother who wept out of ecstasy, but felt sorry because her husband was no more to see their son's grand achievement. It is a soul-stirring story I ever read in my life.

After reading about Anjaneyulu, I could not resist without congratulating him. But how? That question haunted me for a while. Had it been 20 years earlier, I might have crushed my desire. But the Information Age prompted me to find ways. So I jumped into action and searched for his email ID in the Google. Being an internet buff, it was not a difficult task and I managed to get his Facebook link through which I got his e-mail ID. Immediately, I sent an email congratulating him for his achievement. It was so exhilarating that he not only acknowledged my mail quickly but spoke to me over phone with a full of gratitude and humility.

I read somewhere that the great tragedy of life is not death, but what we let die inside of us (talent) while we still  live. Anjaneyulu deeply engraved his father's dream to become IAS by which he not only proved a darling child to his parents, but a shining star to the millions of aspirants.  

ARE U A GOSSIP MILL?


No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
                                    
                            - Bertrand Russell

A large chunk of leisure time is spent unproductively by majority of us in gossip. If two people meet, they talk less of themselves and more of the world.

If you involve more in gossip, you will be in utter  chaos. Indulging in such unproductive and futile talk not only seep your energies but also negativity corrodes your system. Instead, you could use those energies for self-reflection so that you can tread a path of
success.

Socrates gives a Triple Filter Test to overcome this problem:

One day an acquaintance met Socrates and said, “Do you know what I just heard about your friend?"

Hold a minute, Socrates replied. “Before telling me anything, I’d like you to pass a little test. It is called the Triple Filter Test.

Triple filter?

That is right, “Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be good idea to take a moment and filter what you are going to say. That’s why I call it the triple filter test. "

The first filter is TRUTH. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?

"No," the man said, “actually I just heard about it and ...."

All right, “said Socrates.” So you don't really know if it is true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of GOODNESS. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?

"No, on the contrary...”

"So, Socrates continued,” you want to tell me something bad about him, but you are not certain it's true. You may still pass the test though, because there’s one filter left: the filter of USEFULNESS.

Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me? "

"No, not really. "

"Well, concluded Socrates, “if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?

If everybody prevails on the wisdom of Socrates, we could channelize such unproductive energies for more
creative pursuits.

LISTEN !

 

Listening is  key to effective communication . If you see your sense organs, it is apparent that the Creator has given you two ears and one tongue for a reason: listen double to what  you speak.  

Research reveals that people spend 70 % of their work life in communication, and listening occupies a lion's share of 45%. Talking accounts second with 30 %, reading and writing rank third and fourth with 16 % and 9 % respectively.

A good listener is always superior in his actions than a glib talker who runs out of words as well as energies. Without paying much attention, they indulge in futile talk which may help enemy to ascertain his plans.  

Listening is obvious to increase your analytical  and judgemental faculties.  Listening skills benefit a lot in personal life, like having great number of friends and improved social networking and more importantly a high self-esteem.

The importance of listening need not be over-emphasized for a marketing professional  whose job is to connect more with his clients. If you are a good listener, it will give a lasting impression at personal level and contribute to both to your personal and organizational growth.   For
software professionals  this faculty is of paramount importance to know minutely the user experience for which they have to pay attention and this could be possible only through effective listening.

In nutshell, listening gives an unparalleled wisdom to know about the other person. So next time when anyone try to speak to you,  allow him/ her to do so, instead of interrupting in the middle. It is not only a good manner, but an intelligent way of tackling other person in consonance with his/her emotional needs.

WHAT IS ELEPHANT'S MEMORY ?

 

I was pretty amazed one night when I read that former Chief Election Commissioner of India T.N. Seshan had an elephant's memory and he could quote verbatim long passages, be it from scriptures, prose or poetry.  This former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer from South India was labelled as the  hardest nut to crack in the political circles of his times.

When I see my reading commitments with books piled up on my table, I wish that all information in those books should go into my brain instantly like Director S. Shankar's Tamil science fiction  movie Enthiran in which the hero Dr. Vaseegaran  creates a sophisticated android   that  astonishes the audience with jaw-dropping tricks like reading bulky books/magazines in a blip of second with it's X-Ray eyes.

I wonder whether that  is within human possibility or not.  I can't summarily dismiss that act as shown in that movie.  But there is enough evidence to prove the power of human brain through powerful personalities like Swami Vivekananda who is blessed with such photographic memory.

If we go into the mechanics of memory, it is said that our memory works basically on one cardinal principle : Interest is the mother of attention and attention is the mother of  memory.  If a thing ignites you enough and when you feel the need to memorize, you could do it effortlessly.

When it comes to Elephant's Memory,  I read that Former President of India Pranab Mukherjee is gifted with a phenomenal memory power.  Even in his ripe age, he used to  read a lot and write  journal/diary.     Why it is called elephant's memory because the elephant never forget.   It doesn’t have appreciable eyesight, but it never forgets a face.  The elephants in the group check one another out with their trunks.  Another interesting fact is that  elephants also recall routes to alternate food and water sources when their usual areas dry up. 

The elephant's memory is not an illusion and one could  cultivate it through self effort.