Tuesday, June 28, 2016

IF YOU'VE NEVER FAILED....YOU'VE NEVER LIVED....

"If you've never failed, you've never lived." Though a simple yet quite an amazing quote. I really love the thought behind it because of its very intense and profound meaning. So when I heard it, I had to use it for my next blog. Let me start by saying that Failure is a boon...Failure is good to bolster you up for the future. Success without failure is doomed as it breeds too much of arrogance and overconfidence. I may have never failed during my student life but I must admit that I have failed innumerable times in my professional and personal life to thereafter emerge a better being. The dictionary will continue to describe failure as a negative word but in practical life, ''Failure is the basic foundation on which the edifice of success is built''.

Everybody wants to be successful and famous. However I bet, not at the cost of several failures. But why ? Does the risk of failure scare you ? And as such you've not been able to achieve what you had set out in life to achieve. Why at all are we scared of failure if we have given our best shot ? When we look at successful and famous people (here I measure success and fame not merely in pecuniary terms but also through an individual's extensive acceptability in his respective professional field by the public at large and his widely acclaimed and accomplished social responsibilities), we often compare ourselves with them. What is so special about great men which makes them more successful than others ? What
"special" do they have which many of us lack ? Please don't forget that they too are human like us and don't come from an alien planet. We only see their success and fame with a tendency of either completely ignoring or being oblivious of the failures and turmoils they had to encounter on their road to success.

THE VIDEO
Just recently, I saw an excellent motivation video (which inspired this post) about some very famous and great people like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison,The Beatles,Walt Disney,Michael Jordan et al and the failures/rejections they had to face in life before they became what they became.I would definitely like to share the link to this amazing must watch video

I hope this short video will inspire us and the posterity to emulate the 'positive approach' of all the successful and famous people sampled therein who were big failures more than once in their lives.

THE MESSAGE
There is only one message underlying the video...never ever get disheartened and demoralized with your failures....never succumb to them, be resolute in spirit and truth. Our trying times need not drag us down if we see them as doorways to new beginnings. These failures are just the stepping stone to success and only test our resolve to reach the summit. The refusal to succumb to their failures...rejections and their belief in themselves is the only common and special thread connecting all great men. "So Rise and Shine and never stop believing in yourself." That should be our sole motto. Even an infant taking his first baby steps, falls...rises...falls again...rises again and barely manages to walk, but never stops trying. If those famous men could achieve what they achieved in life despite their shortcomings and numerous failures, then why can't we. We may never become as famous and successful as them but our strong resolve would instil so much positive energy inside us so as to continue aiming at the best. I'm sure we'll reach there. However, the upsetting factor is that we never try to rise after a single or couple of failures and take it all to heart. Instead we should become more resolute after each successive failure and remain hungry for success. I'm sure you must have heard the old cliché : "Even God helps those who help themselves". We just need to implement it on a consistent basis.

GREAT MEN & THEIR FAILURES
For the uninitiated, the great 'Abraham Lincoln' faced innumerable failures in his life. He failed in business at 22, lost his job and was rejected for Law school at 23, became bankrupt at 24, had a nervous breakdown at 27, only one out of his four sons survived adulthood and he lost eight elections before finally becoming the President of USA. Even the great 'Mahatma Gandhi' was once thrown out of a first class train compartment in South Africa due to his colour and everybody knows what happened after that. And the great superstar actor 'Amitabh Bachchan' was rejected by the All India Radio for his famous baritone. So let us follow in the footsteps of these great men and keep striving to ameliorate with each failure....each rejection. Failures will definitely make us cherish the taste of success. "The more bitter the failure, the more sweeter will be the success." Therefore, I truly endorse the message from the above mentioned video : "If you've never failed, you've never lived." We will never truly value success until and unless we've been there after some memorable failures. The memory of those failures will always keep us grounded. Then, I bet success will never go to our heads. So when we fail...never mind...let us have the courage to rise with pride and a prayer in our heart...live again...and take a positive step towards success afresh....

Sunday, April 3, 2016

IS TECHNOLOGY MAKING US STUPID?

The title and the contents of this blog entry are inspired by a recent funny video posted by Lilly Singh (aka Superwoman) on YouTube but on a serious note I seem to quite agree with her. Though, I am no luddite and a true lover of technology but lately tech seems to be having dangerous and alarming effects on all of us. Let me delve and elaborate into some of the reasons causing stupidity in all of us and turning us into dolts.

1. Numbers: Yes, we all have become so bad and dumb with numbers be it remembering any telephone number (even our instant family's or best friends nos. for that matter as all are stored on the phone so why remember), important birthdays/anniversaries (FB will send us a notification so don't need to) or performing simple daily calculations involving addition and multiplication. We have truly become lazy in exerting our brains to memorise the important daily stuff and overdependence on mobile phones, computers and calculators seems to be the main culprit. Also the reason why kids detest math these days. If we do not have our phone/tablet on us we just tend to loose the plot.

2. Directions:  Over reliance on GPS (read Google Maps) has made us so weak with directions that we cannot reach a destination even two blocks away without GPS. We get lost easily and rather purposely as we seem to have online help in hand at all times. And if by any chance we donot have access to GPS then we are totally directionless and are bound to reach the dead end. In the video she humorously mentions that she always and easily gets lost inside a Hotel she is staying in. A day is not far when we might get lost inside our own homes:)

3. Brain Dead & Memory: We have stopped using our brains completely so much so that for every little bit of information we just "Google it" maybe countless times during the day. As an after effect our long term memory is getting poor since we have actually stopped remembering what we read during our school and college days as Google help is always at hand. Ours is a population that has grown up multitasking using technology, often compounded by lack of sleep, all of which results in high levels of forgetfulness. We have outsourced our memory to the Internet to remember things for us.

4. Spellings:  Too much dependence on auto correct/spellcheck has ruined our basic spellings. Instant messaging services like iMessage, What's App, Messenger, Hike etc. have also taken a toll on our spellings and basic grammar where brevity seems to be in fashion. Result: The current generation doesn't have any problem with incorrect spellings.

5. Reading Habits & Social Media:  Also the current generation seems to have very poor reading habits as technology and social media has reduced their attention span. When their crop has become so used to reading fewer characters a'la Twitter (where the character limit is only 140), What's App and even Facebook where stories, thoughts etc. are expressed in as many fewer words as possible, then who is going to read a good book or novel running into several hundreds of pages. People are becoming diametrically opposite in real life to the inspiring messages they post on social media. Just carrying a false facade. Blindly forwarding posts to wrong groups and brainlessly copying/pasting stuff on What's App resulting in repetitive boring posts proves that we are turning into morons. Nope, reading on Kindle or the iPad has hardly caught on in India atleast. And who reads newspapers these days, they are just passé. Result: Stupid and faulty English with a defeated and crabbed mindset.

6. Outdoor Activities: We all by now know that the addiction to video/mobile games has taken a toll on the physical as well mental health of our younger generation. They no more want to exert themselves physically as our kids are more comfortable in the living rooms sitting on the couch and shooting endless Zombies (with endless rounds of pizza and Coke) than playing a physical sport outside in the park. They are perfect in racing cars on the screen than in reality on the road. Result: Indolence, obesity and orthopaedic problems. 

7. Sleep & Distraction : Tech and Social media have really screwed up with our sleep. Studies have shown that the blue-enriched light, which is emitted by gadgets like smartphones, tablets and laptops, can suppress the body’s release of melatonin at night. Melatonin is a key hormone that helps regulate your internal clock, telling your body when it is nighttime and when to feel sleepy. If you’re not logging atleast seven hours of sleep each night, you might suffer from increasingly bad moods, decreased focus at work and problems with memory, not to mention a loss of actual brain tissue. Technology makes it much easier to get distracted, whether that’s stepping away from an important project to check your smartphone or flipping between multiple browser tabs without really focusing on any one. It has been proven that juggling between multiple tasks at once doesn’t actually work — in fact, you just wind up performing all your duties even worse.

8. The Future: They say technological advancements are always good for mankind in general but the advent of technology in certain areas could be harmful for us. First and foremost is driverless cars. Technology has already afforded us automatic transmission and no doubt it's a boon. However, driverless cars though could be a blessing for the physically challenged but what about the rest of us. If the comfort of a chauffeur was not already hampering our overall mental alertness perhaps an automatic car with no driver would render the poor chauffeur jobless and also lead us to more laziness and lesser alertness. Result: Brain and Body dead. Second could be VR (read Virtual Reality) headsets through which the upper portion of our bodies (read above our necks) would be virtually able to travel to anywhere in the world but our lower bodies would remain static in our living rooms. Since this tech is still in its fancy, so will have to wait for its stupid after effects...maybe to be touched upon some other time.
At the moment I don't seem to have much answers on how these tech effects can be reversed so that we stop turning into dolts and dumbwitted. If you do, then please write back to me or comment below.