Third Week -2 (Class)

Procrastination: My greatest weakness of all times!

It looks as if procrastination is almost embedded in human nature by default. Still somehow few succumb to it more than others do. I am one of the victims of heavy procrastination.

The worst part is: even after identifying my problem, I am not able to improve upon it. That is mostly because I blame myself for the procrastination I do, instead I must view it as a problem generated from events in life. This is the only way to improve upon it.

We learned in class, how we must avoid procrastination in order to plan our act and then act on plan.There are many techniques I learned in the class and then from my search on internet I found many tools which can help me with avoiding procrastination.

I also learned one more thing about the social and competitive approach of Indian parents which must change now so that we can produce better and more efficient minds. Indian parents always refer to the person, while dealing with their kids in case of time management, instead to the problem. Indian families are nit very closely, which has advantages and disadvantages. A child grows up in a healthy and family oriented environment and learns better with friends among the family. The disadvantage is the unwanted pressure of competition among cousins which makes it difficult for an average kid to cope with. Indian parenting style always foster the competition and builds the pressure and which in the end unintentionally pushes the child into a nexus of high competition-fear of failure-procrastination-failure. This, over a period of time, develop into a vicious cycle and then in the adult age, procrastination becomes a subconscious or almost unconscious attribute of an average Indian mind.

Its high time now that future parents must study this pattern before hand so that they can divert this vicious cycle into a virtuous one.

I am very determined to improve on my habit of procrastination and then removing it finally in the end. I am using all the tools for time management so that I get used to them and then can improve my performance. No doubt, it's very difficult, but constant effort is the key.

"Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."
-- Winston Churchill

Third Week -1

Mid terms are round the corner and Diwali has passed us by.

The very Idea of having a class on the eve of Diwali brings chills in my body. According to Indian customs, we don't study on Diwali, it's inauspicious, which sounds a bit irrational but thats how some customs are.

This class was again a fun ride as always, the presentation on India filled me up with a sense of proud and may be with curiosity towards India in others.

I'm an avid follower of Gita - the Gospel of life given to us humans by Lord Krishna which is a part of world's oldest and longest mythological document named as "Mahabharat".

It was really nice to find out that Sir Albert Eienstein was a believer in Gita, which turned into a search and I landed on this document :

Bhagavad Gita of Hinduism... the most sacred of all scriptures existing on Mother Earth... the doctrine given to mankind by Lord Krishna is without a parallel! This is the first and only scripture available on Mother Earth that makes it possible for human beings to reach the stage of enlightenment (kaivalya jnana) and finally salvation (moksha).

Bhagavad Gita can never be understood literally. One needs reading in between the lines to understand the essence of Wisdom contained in Bhagavad Gita. Mounted with a bloated ego, wanton desires and greed for materialistic riches most human beings on Mother Earth try reading Bhagavad Gita literally! They remain wherever they are always and ever!

Bhagavad Gita gives the gist of life for both the ephemeral and the inner world. Whenever we get stuck in our day-to-day affairs of life it is Bhagavad Gita that comes to our rescue. Mahatma Gandhi relied on Bhagavad Gita most of the time. In the present times E. Sreedharan the man behind Metro in New Delhi follows the Sacred Bhagavad Gita considering it sacrosanct!

Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Maharishi Ramana... both gained enlightenment in their lifetime by following the Wisdom contained in the Sacred Bhagavad Gita. Both started in search of God through the path of Bhakti yoga. At a certain stage in life the path of Bhakti yoga finally merges with the path of jnana yoga!

Truthfully spirituality is much beyond the fold of science. Spirituality starts from the place where science ends. It is something beyond proofs that paves way to understand the sacrosanct Bhagavad Gita! And that something is the power of absolute faith (aka Shraddha in Hinduism).

In the last moments of his life when Albert Einstein realized his folly... he let go his ego, the search for proofs and Bhagavad Gita started unfurling before him slowly. But it was too late by then. Albert Einstein had grown old and in spite of all his serious desires and wishes in the later stages of his life... he could not assimilate the Wisdom of entire Bhagavad Gita!

Albert Einstein throughout his life wanted to follow Bhagavad Gita from the angle of science. He bitterly failed. Science is necessary for living our day-to-day life. The Sacred Bhagavad Gita makes us reach our true inner self... our soul atman within! The moment one realizes the truth of life... one finally gains enlightenment and then salvation!

Albert Einstein is the only scientist in the world who used his brain 4%. Most human beings never use their brain more than 1%! All enlightened ones use their brain hundred percent! Albert Einstein was far above normal human beings... other scientists of his era! Whatever little he deciphered from the Sacred Bhagavad Gita... he felt absolutely elated!

http://www.vijaykumar.org/albert_einstein_and_bhagavad_gita.html

“When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous.”- Albert Einstein.

Life is nothing but a right mix of everything.

I have realized lately that out of the box thinking is basically about thinking about the odds.

Life is a right mix of everything, so we cannot ignore every thing and we cannot be caught up in everything either. It's a perfect combination, yet so imperfect that it's always missing of that one more right ingredient to carry on. It is the yearning of that missing ingredient that keeps the life going on.

We had a party last night, a turkey dinner (I'm a Vegetarian although) for thanksgiving thrown by a really cool classmate of mine. I really enjoyed the night, it was fun hanging out with some like minded people who had same concerns as mine : MBA! The party was really fine and the thanksgiving weekend came to a halfway halt...and then moved ahead into the next phase....the study phase.

Some times I think, how hard it would be to not have parties, saving some extra cash and studying instead. I guess, it's not really hard, but is it the right way to go about it? People can have different opinions on that, with different resources and funding, but I had probably the last party of the semester. It will be work, work and work for a while now, but that's what the point is: The Right Mix!

May be it's a mix of unanswered questions and unquestioned answers, but that's how it's going to be for a while.

"What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it, that's another matter."

Peter F. Drucker

Some reflections are just.....Reflections. Just Neutral, neither positive, nor negative.

So I am continuing the mixing in the pot of life.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING CANADA!

Second Week - 1

Saturday has always been a half day for me because I am from India where six days working culture is more prevalent. Still, reaching the class 45 minutes earlier than anybody makes you feel a bit miserable and critical about the bus services. Never mind, sun shine helps me to ward off any ill-feeling in the morning.

So it happened that our class was already occupied by some other group, we re-organized ourselves in the nearby class (with no windows so no sun shine).

Paul's lovely gesture of bringing tea and chocolate for us is always a nice feeling and a percentage of it brings me to class on every Saturday.

1. We started with a 'thinking out of the box' exercise. A case was given to us and we had to present it in more reader friendly text and then in Pictorial form according to BCG (Boston Consulting Group) Matrix. I didn't knew about BCG Matrix, so I made my own thing.
2. What I discovered during the exercise that thinking out of the box means closing your mind to other trivial activities happening around you and the information trash in your head. This is the only way by which you can really think out of the box. I also learned about the importance and essence of reader friendly text and Pictorial depiction of information.
3. Then we moved ahead with some examples on adaptation of local preferences and culture by a product in order to have a proper and smooth induction in the market. We did an exercise in which we tried to adapt and market a product in a foreign land. The decision necessary for this specific exercise was, Do we really need to adapt something or to what degree we have to change the product? My group had Bandana as our product to be marketed in Japan. We made a Kotler's Diagram for the Bandana and then gave appropriate responses according to the adaptation possibilities. I learned about how a product can identify the possibilities of an entry in to a foreign market without hurting its companies global goodwill. It can be done with the help of culture and preference study of that foreign market.

All in all a nice week and good stuff to work on for the team project.

Cheers!

First Week

It's almost the middle of October and sun is still shining on Nanaimo. What more can you ask from life...well may be a class on Saturday!

"The first and the best victory is to conquer self." Plato

I already mentioned about our first 'double' class on Saturday with a barbecue lunch in my first blog, so lets move ahead. A soccer match followed by a long class is not exactly my idea of a perfect weekend but alas, here I am. It was tough and I really ran hard and noticed to my surprise that I have weakened my stamina over the period of time by not taking part in any games or physical activity for long. This ringed a bell in my mind that I am 26 now and have crossed more than a quarter of my useful life, and I must do something to preserve the remaining. Instantly I made plans with Nikolay for a weekly workout but have not been able to trigger it yet. Still, I am alarmed as my body should support my goals.

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. ~World Health Organization, 1948

I will start pretty soon with the workout regime so that I can gain on my Stamina and feel young because I still am young!

CHEERS!

Vibhor.