Being Thyself

One common trait that connects many successful people in various disciplines is that they were pursuing their passion and through out their lives they remained their true self.

Hurdles: 
Before blaming others, the first of all one must put major responsibility on him/herself for not being able to be yourself. We take self inflicted, peer, family, social pressures as excuses but if one believes in something these pressures cant really change it. Self inflicted pressures include pressure to impress, fear of failure, conflicting priorities on passion verses needs. As we watch peers pursuing something or traversing a lucrative path in career or life, we get tempted to imitate or follow them, with a fear of looking stupid or a fear of missing the bandwagon.

How ever this doesn't mean the external pressure do not exist. People from orthodox and conservative families get pressure if they try anything out of the ordinary. Social norms of the day prevent at certain times the innovative and path breaking trends. Peer group, at times, will directly or indirectly ridicule if you fail by pursuing the passion. If one is not innately from well-to-do family, he/she faces pressure of earning daily bread and supporting the family as soon as graduation.

Advantages:
Being yourself is less stressful as you continue to pursue the thought process, ideas, reactions that come naturally. It eventually brings out best self out in all the endeavors. Also being yourself makes you feel happy, content and comfortable.

Who is a Friend?

With the advent of facebook revolution, we all are entitled to freinds list exceeding 100s for less social people and exceeding 1000 for social people. Gender will also play a significant role in the number of friends you have on facebook. Old times definition of friend is summarized by statement " A friend in need is a friend indeed!!" Have you ever wondered how many of those 100s of friends in fb list will turn up when you need? If you were to think honestly,  may be 4 or 5 out of 100+ will come to your rescue in toubled times. Then what about other friends in the fb signify ?

Acquaintances - These are the folks whom we know by face and probably have met couple of times on business or personal front. We just want to keep in touch as any social animal would want to.

Relations    - These are next-of-kin who are technically not friends usually spread across various age groups. But some of them could be friends depending on the closeness and affinity.

compulsion friends - Lets take case of a girl who is studying in college or working and she receives a friend request from her lecturer or boss. Even though it is not a hard and fast rule but many a times she accepts it out of compulsion. This explains it.

Benefit friends - We befriend some folks in power with a hope to get some benefit from them or some favors from them in future.

Gravity Friends - Lets take a pretty looking girl or a handsome male, there would be many folks in opposite sex who want to be acquainted at the least and keep sending friend requests. Some like such attention and that explains the huge friends list.

Alumni Friends - For school/college passouts, their alma mater is very close to their heart. They try to keep in touch with the gang who went to school/college.

Courtesy Friends - Be it a neighbor in the place you live or a staff from the place you work, they are your facebook list because you don't want to be rude enough to decline their friend request. They are courtesy friends per me.

Same situation friends - we connect ourselves with people going through similar stage in life like parents of your kid's classmates, your prospective neighbor in apartment you plan to buy.


I would like to conclude that a true friend need not be on your facebook, need not wish you luck on your life events, need not like your pictures/videos shared, need not respond to your status messages but he/she would be there when ever you are in need.  Also don't count your friends by looking at friends list in fb.

Systematic Investment

There are some fundamental principles that can be applied everywhere and they dont fail us. There are many manufacturing principles applied in electronics and then in software and industry benefited from thus. So irrespective of the field of operation, the knowledge and application of such principles are beneficial to us. Here is my 2 cents worth from me on one such principle.

Principle: 
Systematic Investment is one principle that I guess will benefit many of us if applied in our lives. We have heard during childhood slow and steady wins the race. Systematic investment is nothing but a polished version of the moral that is taught to us.

Application: 

Personal Finance: 
Mutual fund industry is vouching on the principle to lure retail investors. Its definitely a win-win for customer as well as the AMC (asset management company ie., Mutual Fund company). Lots of people want to be rich but they want to be rich overnight and keep worrying about the possible jackpot options that can fulfill their dream. Systematic investment is one sure way of making people rich through disciplined, focused , regular (monthly in most cases) investments. Investment can be made in different avenues depending on person's risk appetite but the using power of compounding, its certain that benefits can be reaped.

Reading: 
Who ever want to be knowledgeable in focused area or various subjects, can start doing systematic investment. Yes!! Systematic investment of their time. It is a slow but sure way towards knowledge acquisition. Even though its difficult to measure the knowledge progression quantitatively, qualitative progress is typically reflected in behavior, personality and confidence levels.

Health: 
Two aspects of health needs to be inspected in this context. Firstly eating a balanced diet which includes needed proteins, minerals , vitamins and other needed essential nutrients. At least who can afford should try to eat appropriate portions of fruits avilable and possibly reserve one meal a week for fruits.

Second aspect of health is regular exercise. Exercise not just to be viewed as a mechanism to build six pack or zero size body. Lets leave them for our film stars who  ought to look special. For other mortals, exercise is a means of maintaining good health. Through systematic investment in the form morning walks, evening strolls, yoga, participating in some sports as convenient to one, one can build a healthy body that helps when we reach ripe age.

The list can go on but I think I will stop here for now.