Life in Balance: Amit Chaudhary's Blog
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I came across a speech by Martin Luther King, first an excerpt at Charity Focus and the complete speech\sermon called Unfulfilled Dreams at Stanford’s King Institute.

If you prefer to listen to it, you can download an mp3 from CharityFocus or as a part of an audio book called A Knock at Midnight.

It is sign of a great teacher that he took a verse from Bible to this Sermon.

Some parts specially touched me and I thought of sharing them here. See the complete sermon to find what touches you.

• Civil war within us

And in every one of us this morning, there’s a war going on. It’s a civil war. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care where you live, there is a civil war going on in your life.  And every time you set out to be good, there’s something pulling on you, telling you to be evil. It’s going on in your life. Every time you set out to love, something keeps pulling on you, trying to get you to hate.  [...] There’s a tension at the heart of human nature.  And whenever we set out to dream our dreams and to build our temples, we must be honest enough to recognize it.

• Total bent of our lives

In the final analysis, God does not judge us by the separate incidents or the separate mistakes that we make, but by the total bent of our lives. In the final analysis, God knows that his children are weak and they are frail. In the final analysis, what God requires is that your heart is right.  Salvation isn’t reaching the destination of absolute morality, but it’s being in the process and on the right road.

• Trying

And the question I want to raise this morning with you: is your heart right?  If your heart isn’t right, fix it up today.  Get somebody to be able to say about you, “He may not have reached the highest height, he may not have realized all of his dreams, but he tried.”  Isn’t that a wonderful thing for somebody to say about you? “He tried to be a good man.  He tried to be a just man. He tried to be an honest man.  His heart was in the right place.”  And I can hear a voice saying, crying out through the eternities, “I accept you. You are a recipient of my grace because it was in your heart.  And it is so well that it was within thine heart.”

I came across a very interesting podcast (basically mp3 files recorded by an Author or company) covering Health, Weight loss, Exercise, Motivation, Stress control, Visualization and Personal Development. It has been a revelation and I recommend you try it.
Inside Out Weight Loss: Aligning Mind, Body and Spirit for Lasting Change by Renee Stephens

Caveat: One has to be patient as it has ads and Renee has a slow pace.

Here are a few gems:

-Set a goal everyday. Small or big. From Melinda Gates. Renee’s inside out weight loss, #19: Success journal

 -My journey to health is with ease and enjoyment. Visualize the journey, not just the destination. Renee’s inside out weight loss.

-Move from saying and thinking I am tired, to expanding it. Feel it and say I am sleepy, I have pain, I am hungry. These are steps to awareness and what needs to be done. Renee’s inside out weight loss. Simple Snoozing techniques #1

I heard the audio version of the Book: Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand and Fighting to Keep It by David F. D’Alessandro recently. Following are notes from it.

Short Summary: It is a book on how to climb the career ladder while handling the hurdles and opportunities. The author covers anecdotes from his experience, making it even more interesting. For anyone in the work environment, I would rate it a 4/5.

Notes (They are from last chapter to first):

-Do not stop being a contender. Aka keep your edge from ages 30-60:
1. Don’t be a generic, be a Tylenol. Fear and sluggishness will settle in.
2. Get back on the horse. Go for the promotion.
3. Ask for a promotion. Never punch it at work.
4. Do not settle for cheap such as 5 percent rise, a better health plan. Field job with no raise, so they can come back. Latter you will make up more than this.
5. Moments of importance will happen, hard to control. Use the ones which are opportunities. Be ready and plan for them
6. Gamble shrewdly. Take risks, particularly department goals. No new job every 2-3 years.
7. Create a brain trust.
8. Tinker with success. Try to explain the reasons why.
9. Do not cross the lines of integrity.
10. Unexamined reputation is not worth it. Be conscious of what is your reputation.

-What do you want to be said at your retirement party?

-Do not let them see you sweat and you won’t sweat for long. HP CEO Carly fiorina and the proxy battle with Packard family.

-Keep an eye on when the standards have changed. At work, in public.

-Do something that reminds you there is a world outside work. Garden. Travel. Hike.

—-
Be gracious, but pick a fight if needed.
Be aware of your competitors.

It’s always showtime
Be on watch all day. There might be career altering opportunities.

Meetings are the stage where you build your brand. Or show your worst qualities. Use them well.

Work where you are learning and your brand is thriving. Do not get stuck. Note, he has worked at John Hancock for 20 years.

4. Use the pickle fork
-do not embarrass yourself. Toilet VP guy.
-dress well.
-do not judge another person by looks.
-about maintaining tact including at parties.

——
The idea is to learn from a boss, make contacts and grow.

If you stop learning and get lulled into mediocrity, you might end up on your 40s-50s working for someone 10 year younger and wonder what happened.

Types of bosses: patriarch, wimp, mentor, one way, paraiah.

Rule 3: Put your boss on the couch
—–
Rule 2: your mgr is your co-brand.
Your image with his peers is due to your boss.
Hierarchy and credit taken is often the way of corporate career. Get use to it.
Never criticize your boss. Ever.

3 types of employees. Sycophants, Contrarian, Balanced.
—–
Five attributes for success.
-bring company money
-tell the truth.
-keep your promise. Deliver on time.
-be discrete, use information, do not pass it along.
-have people want to work for you. People are your project. Use stick or just sweet talk.
———
-Promotions, decisions happen in a casual environment. Based on your brand and in minutes. What Is the first thing people think when they think of You?

-Rule 1: develop an external perspective to your actions.
Take humble tasks to be noticed by Execs.
Strive to put everyone in a good light.
-Get noticed.
Interesting example of exclusive restaurants. How by putting their reviews, he got access to seats there.
Finally

-Manage your brand. Like a Mercedes you are expensive and are expected a high performance.  

Architect Moshe Safdie’s Poem:

He who seeks truth shall find beauty

He who seeks beauty shall find vanity

He who seeks order shall find gratification

He who seeks gratification shall be disappointed

He who considers himself the servant of his fellow being will find the joy of self expression

He who seeks self expression shall fall into the pit of arrogance

Arrogance is incompatible with nature

Through nature and the nature of the universe and the nature of man we shall seek truth
If we seek truth, we shall find beauty.

-From TED Talk by Moshe Safdie: What makes a building unique?

Bio & Links to his buildings in the talk

Comfort of feeling safe with a person

Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out,

just as they are — chaff and grain together — certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,

keep what is worth keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

-George Eliot (pen name of Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)

Wisdom and Enlightenment

Knowing others is wisdom;
Knowing the self is enlightenment.
Mastering others requires force;
Mastering the self requires strength.

-Tao Te Ching, Translated by Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English

New Paradigms for Full Engagement

Old Paradigm                         New Paradigm
Manage time                            Manage energy
Avoid stress                             Seek stress
Life is a marathon                    Life is a series of sprints
Downtime is wasted time       Downtime is productive time
Rewards fuel performance       Purpose fuels performance
Self-discipline rules                 Rituals rules

-The book, The Power of Full Engagement, page 6.

Photo of Golden Temple, Amritsar India courtesy voobie on Flickr.

Success

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

-Winston Churchill

Doing Things

We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.

-Southwest airlines CEO Herb Kelleher

Keep pounding

Most people are going to tell you to give up, to just be normal, to quit being a dreamer. I want you to never listen to any of them and keep pounding away at your vision.

-Greg Prow, VC at Mobius

A way to arrive at your grave
The object of life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting, Holy shit, what a ride!!!

-Mavis Leyrer, age 83.
The above quotes are from the book, My startup life by Ben Casnocha.

• Nothing is ordinary or not useful, we just do not see it yet. Probably because it does not apply to ourselves yet.

• Quotes create a small ripple of good thoughts which in turn stay and many times increase in our day. This is no different than meeting a cheerful or upbeat person in the morning.

• Yes, there are things better than Quotes. Quotes are not doing, for example, Reading about clearing your mind does not clear your mind. After ways and methods which tell you “what”, come ways and methods which tell us “how”.