The treasure within

You are the person you choose to be. So choose to be the person who fulfills and brings to life the values you hold most dearly.

Today is your opportunity to express yourself to the world through the life you live and the actions you take. The challenges of this moment provide a rich canvas upon which you can paint the highest vision you have.

Listen to the yearnings of your heart and keep pointing yourself in their direction. By focusing on what is truly meaningful, you will cause much real value and richness to spring forth from the life you live.

Choose to glide right past the shallow concerns that hold so many people back. Keep your eye on the big picture, and create new positive substance as each moment passes.

Go beyond merely appearing to be happy, and dive into the authentic joy of making a positive difference. Give the best that you have to life, and you'll find each day to be even more fulfilling than the last.

There is a treasure within you that is yearning to weave itself into the fabric of life. Go ahead and let it come shining through.

-- Ralph Marston

Live like a man

Pay attention

A big part of achieving success is simply paying attention. Life has so very much to tell you when you take the time to listen.

The natural reaction to pain is to resent it and to get away from it as quickly as possible. Yet when you pay close attention, there is wisdom and value to be found in even the most painful, unpleasant experiences.

As you go through each day, your mind is filled with all sorts of things that you're thinking and saying to yourself. Choose to regularly quiet those thoughts, to just listen, to look, to pay attention.

Pay attention and you'll discover incredible opportunities in even the most mundane circumstances. Pay attention to the way the world works and you'll find powerful strategies for improving your own performance.

Growth and learning stop when you reach the point where you think you know it all. However, you can choose to never reach that point.

You can choose to pay attention. And it can quickly bring great value, wisdom and effectiveness into every corner of your life.

-- Ralph Marston

Service is the rent you pay for room on this planet.
-Shirley Chisholm

Being Unreasonable

Be True to yourself

The value of failure

Failure is a normal and natural part of achievement. When the failures come, learn from them and then move quickly along.

Failure is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing that can happen is to let the fear of failure prevent you from ever doing anything.

If your top priority is to avoid all failure, then you will surely fail. For only by accepting and living with the possibility of failure can you succeed and achieve.

Failure is not the end of the world. It is merely another step on the pathway to fulfillment, wisdom and achievement.

Though you would never intentionally set out to fail, when failure does come the best thing to do is to gracefully accept what has happened. That will enable you to gain the most positive value from it.

Then you can move right along to the next step, and soon you'll be a long way past the failure, filled with more wisdom and experience. Let failure be, and achievement will surely come.

-- Ralph Marston

Various phases of Blogging !!

I read the following nice article on gundanjoshi.com


Want to blog, but cannot" virus

I have a confession to make. Off late, I have not been a responsible blogger. I feel that personal blogging is a true test of self-discipline. Am I disciplined to frequently update my blogs? I did not want to fall into the trap of "Start blogging - Stop blogging - Start blogging" cycle. However, I did.

Unless, you are committed and self-disciplined, this is how your blogging cycle will go:

Excitement Phase: You install the blogging software on a server.
Commitment phase: You write your first blog entry. You even go to Google and add your blog to the search index. You update your blog every day.
Marketing phase: Now, you go and check the traffic on your site. You even check bloglines to see how many people have subscribed to your blog. There are few clicks here and there, but not many. You find that only people commenting on your site are spammers and viagara salesmen. Well, you are still dedicated. You also mention about your blog to your friends and they even subscribe to your blog. Finally, you include a link to your blog in your email signatures.
Infected phase: Now, comes this dreaded phase. The “want to blog, but cannot” virus infects you. All of a sudden, your frequency of blogging decreases. You want to update it, but do not feel like it. This is the turning point for most blogs. Either, your blog starts dying a slow death or you fight against the virus and come back.

Well, I want to fight back. In addition to agile software development, I will also be blogging about my other learning experiences as Vice-President of Product Development and Process Excellence at Community Connect Inc. I have changed the focus of my blog from agile software development to continuous learning and growth. Let us see, how long it takes for the “want to blog – but cannot” virus to infect me again.

Accept your conditions but not fate

Accept your conditions, but not your fate. -- Rod Walsh & Dan Carrison