Nothing Worth Having Comes Easy

      Successful people in every field are often said to be "Blessed with talent" or even just lucky. But the truth is, many worked harder than the average person could ever imagine. From Executives like Howard Schultz to the athletes like Michael Jordan, these people are known for waking up early and working towards a goal while other people are still in bed, and staying later than everyone else too. Here are some examples of the successful people who have worked hard in order to achieve their goal,


      Michael Jordan, though he has got prodigious physical gifts, it was hard work that made him a legend. When he first entered the league, his jump shot wasn't good enough. He spent his off season taking hundreds of jumpers a day until it was perfect. Also in a piece at NBA.com, Jackson(Jordan's long time coach) writes that Jordan's defining characteristic wasn't his talent, but having the humility to know he had to work constantly to be the best.



      Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz works from home even after putting in 13 hour days. Also, he continues talking to overseas employees even later at night from home. He goes into the office on Sundays and reads emails from thousands of his employees on Saturdays.






      Steve Jobs left incredibly big shoes for Tim Cook to fill. However, the man got the top job for a reason. He's always been a workaholic, Fortune reports that he begins sending emails at 4:30 in the morning. Also, a profile in Gawker reveals that he's the first in the office and last to leave. He used to hold staff meetings on Sunday night in order to prepare for Monday.





      Carlos Ghosn runs two of the world's largest automakers(i.e. Nissan and Renault), which should tell you something about his work ethic. A profile in Forbes describes how Ghosn works more than 65 hours a week, spends 48 hours a month in the air, and flies more than 150,000 miles a year. His turnaround of Nissan is the subject of many case studies. Within a month he deployed a system that completely changed ingrained practices, helping save a company many though irredeemable.




      Now, one of the most powerful and well known women in business, Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi worked from midnight to 5 A.M. as a receptionist to earn money while getting her masters at Yale. In an interview for a speakers series at Pepsi, she describes coming in to work every day at 7, rarely leaving before eight, taking home bags of mail to read overnight, and wishing there were 35 hours a day in order to do more work. She did all of this while raising two young daughters.



      It is not always the talented people who are successful. People like these, work so hard in their life that no one can stop them from being successful. They make no excuse for their failures or problems, instead they overcome their problems and learn from it. There is a time  in everyone's life when you are not affected by your failures. At that point of time, no matter if one or one lac people come to stop you from achieving your goal, you will stand in front of them and will overcome all the obstacles. Also, many of you, give up when you get a lot of work or face a lot of pressure, but this is the actual moment where you're been tested by life and if you passed this test then no one can stop YOU.

At the end, I would like to share one of my observations through the following quote,

Rice Bucket Challenge

      Yes, you read it right - it is Rice Bucket challenge and not the Ice bucket challenge. A lot of people including, celebrities around the world have been donating to a good cause, for ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) disease through the Ice Bucket Challenge. But here in India, as the country is suffering from high levels of poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition, some people came up with an idea of Rice Bucket Challenge. This challenge is really simple. You don't have to fill a bucket with rice and pour it on your head; all you have to do is cook some food or buy some food and donate it to the poor and hungry people on the streets.

      It is estimated that 32.7% of the Indian population live on less than US$ 1.25 per day. So, taking up this challenge will not only make you feel good but it will also help those poor and hungry people who don't get enough food to eat. Statistically, India accounts for One-third of the total poor population and also it is found that undernourishment kills more people than malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS combined every single year. This brings us to the conclusion that the cause which has much more importance has been ignored. By this I don't mean that I'm against any ALS donation. The point here is about our priorities; we can't ignore those 1.2 billion poor people who are undernourished for the sake of 100,000 people. Donating some food to these people will not affect us and our pockets. If people around the world start feeding the poor, then the world will be different from what it is now. How? well, people who are poor are misguided by the bad people around the globe, and those poor people are carried away by them, but it is not their fault that they are poor. They do it just to survive. They are the easy target for criminals. So, think about it. Your small act of kindness will not only feed them but will also save them from doing wrong things.

      I'm not telling you to feed hundreds of people, you can even start small by feeding one or two. A lot of you maybe thinking that feeding one or two won't make a difference at all, so why feed poor people? Well, every drop in the ocean counts. So, helping one or two is also enough. If people start promoting this challenge and if by any chance this becomes viral, then a big change can happen. Now, your question will be that how much time will it take to reduce the undernourishment population to almost zero and surprisingly it will not take years, but those billion undernourished people will be healthy in a matter of few months. My humble request to all the people will be, to take this challenge and feed some poor people. It really feels good inside.

My family and I have completed this challenge and will do so again and again. Now its your turn to take on this challenge, complete it and share it with your friends on social networking sites, so that more people become aware.

The Power of Storytelling

      If I told you that there was a guy named "John Montagu" who loved to play cards and he was so much into it that at the time of eating also he used to play cards with one hand and eat with the other. This was one of the problems that he used to face because he can't eat properly with only one hand. So he came up with an idea to eat meat putting it in between slices of toast, which would allow him to finally eat and play cards at the same time. Eating his newly invented "sandwich", the name for 2 slices of bread with meat in between, became one of the most popular meal inventions in the western world.

      John Montagu was a British politician and aristocrat in 1748. You will notice that you will never likely forget the story of who invented the sandwich ever again. Or, you are very less likely to forget it and if it would have been in bullet form or presented in other information based forms then you are likely to forget it faster. That's the power of storytelling. For over 27,000 years, since the first cave painting were discovered, telling stories has been one of our most fundamental communication methods.

      Here is the science around storytelling and how we can use to make our decisions better.

How our brains become more active when we tell stories:

      We all enjoy a good story whether it is a novel, book, movie or simply anything one of our friends is explaining to us that they've experienced. Why do we feel so much engaged when we hear the narrative about events?

      In fact if we see it is quite simple. If we listen to a powerpoint presentation with boring bullet points in it, there are certain parts of the brain which gets activated and that is Broca's area and Wernicke's area, which is used for language processing. It just connect words with meaning and that's it, nothing else.

      When we are told stories though, things drastically changes found researchers in Spain. They found out that not only does the language processing area of the brain gets activated, but also the other areas of the brain which would have been activated if you had actually experienced the events which are told to you. A story can put your whole brain to work. And yet, it gets better. When we tell stories to others that have really helped us shape our way of thinking and way of life, we can have that same effect on them too. The brains of the person telling a story and the person listening to it can actually synchronize, says Uri Hasson from Princeton:

“When the woman spoke English, the volunteers understood her story, and their brains synchronized.  When she had activity in her insula, an emotional brain region, the listeners did too.  When her frontal cortex lit up, so did theirs. By simply telling a story, the woman could plant ideas, thoughts and emotions into the listeners’ brains.”

      Anything you have experienced, you can get others to experience the same. Or at least, get their brain areas that you've activated that way, active too. Why does all that happen? The simple answer to this is: We all are wired that way. A story, if broken down into the simplest form is a connection of cause and effect. And this is exactly how we think.

      Storytelling is one of the most powerful techniques that we as humans have to communicate and motivate. And lastly, I would finish this post with a quote and here it is,