Sunday 27 October 2013

How We Learn Things


When I was an infant I wasn’t able to crawl. Nature taught me how to do it. When I got a little bigger, I stood on my own feet. Later on, as I grew up, I learned how to walk then leap, and eventually how to run. I was taught how to utter a sound, and then I was able to speak a proper word before I could frame a sentence. After few years of practice, I was able to speak fluently. 
I was made familiar with 1, 2, 3...When I got strong grip on it,I was taught addition, subtraction, division and so on. As my brain developed, I started learning arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. Many years later, I was taught derivatives, integration, exponential, and advanced mathematics. What I am trying to point out here is: in any walk of life, we start from the very basics; from the zero level. Someone who is good in it approach us, or conversely we approach them, and they teach us. We start learning something new. As we stick to the same task with the desire of learning more, along with the time, we are given deeper understanding of the subject. We fail each time but we retry and we grow up. We gradually become better and sharpen the skill. But before we reach to that point, we have to pass through a series of failures, embarrassment, frustration, and disappointment. Our resilience, persistence, and hard work takes us to the next level. We overcome all the hurdles, with persistence and patience, and are left behind with certain skills and achievement.

 Way back when I was in the 7th standard, my father bought a bicycle for two of us: me and my brother. It was a blue coloured Atlas bicycle. We both started learning at the same time. When I would practice he would hold from the back. When he would practice I used to control the balance. That’s how we learned cycling simultaneously. I was unable to keep the balance at first; in fact, it took many unsuccessful trials before I could maintain the balance and feel confident. I failed badly and hurt myself few times. Sometime the cycle would go to another direction and hit someone else. We kept on practising and mastered the skill. Down the line, after 6 months or so, cycling became a real fun and we both used to enjoy it.

 Similar incident occurred while learning motor-cycle. I couldn’t control the accelerator. I would release the accelerator abruptly. Then the bike would go round and hit something. It took me several attempts to make a smooth and spontaneous gear-clutch-accelerator-break combination. I knew the logic, but wasn’t able to implement it. Eventually everything was learned properly and I was the king of the roads.

 I still remember the day when I took my first call in a call centre. Even after completing months of rigorous training and being supplied with sophisticated software, I was shivering, panicking, and sweating when I held the hand set for the first time. The superfluous support was outweighed by the lack of experience which was blowing my head. First day: a terrifying experience. Second day: got slightly better. One week later, I felt a lot more comfortable and after one month of span, I was much confident. I was rocking the floor in six months time.

 It gets better with time; it has to. No matter what the task at your hand is. When you keep sticking to it will eventually get better. This is a universal law. It applies to everything. What we think a problem is merely a state of the mind. When the mind is trained with a perfect solution, followed by adequate practice, the problem loses its strength, its intensity and the grip it had on mind.

 Not only technical things but non-technical stuffs like maintaining inter-personal relationship, improving personality, and strengthening specific skill sets are all learnable as long as the person is willing to put the effort into it.







Saturday 12 October 2013

A Self–Made Millionaire



One who rises from nothing and reaches the summit. We are talking about a person who has conquered himself; faced uncountable hurdles; overcame threatening challenges and is in a supreme state now: he is a self made man with millions in his pocket. He is not only wealthy but also living an exemplifying life.  

When we look into the past records we find many people as such. Most of the millionaires, the world has seen, are self made. Our books are filled with examples of the people who dared to conceive unthinkable, believed in them and achieved what people said earlier was insane. Needless to say, these brave men with their arduous effort created billions arising from dusts.  

He had humble beginnings, faced deprivation, fought poverty, ailment, had lack of support and finance but at the same time he displayed firmness in decision, consistency in action, tremendous faith in his goal and abilities; he achieved what it looked like a stupid idea.

 These victorious people keep the world going; the world is alive because of them. They have been an example; they have shown that no person, in whatever circumstance he may be, is doomed to live in mediocrity. They have proved that human can rise from any background with persistence and faith. Excuses are for lazy bones. Winners go after results not reasons. If you are extremely motivated then no force can hold you back.

Yes, they have been defeated many times; they have witnessed and overcame failures before they were declared victorious. They made sure each failure teaches them something for lifetime before it gets its treatment. They took a lesson, gained strength by strength and built success on the peak of failures. Failures have helped them more than anything else. Once determined what to do they put everything they have left into that task. They kept moving on. Never slowed down, quit, or surrendered. They show tremendous character with awe inspiring patience.

 A self made millionaire is a person who keeps learning all the time. He keeps reviewing. He is brutally careful in making decision. He is considerate and unafraid of taking calculated risks. He has the guts of taking decisions and following it through; he believes in himself. He creates the blue print of millions in his mind before he converts it into concrete reality.

It’s easy to keep going when things are improving or getting better, but it requires tremendous character and fight back to keep yourself applying when things aren’t appearing bright. They review, analyse and find out what was going wrong with their effort. They take a different approach, rectify the past errors, and come back strongly. They persist in spite of failures just like dark night penetrates all alone until it sees glimpse of sunshine. They end up being winner. They defeat the resistance and emerge splendidly.

At the end of the day, this is what separates the extraordinary self-made millionaires from the rest of the world: the ability to forge in spite of failures, fears, doubts, superstitions, negativity all around and the inability of many people who were unable to achieve the same task before. They persist, in spite of all these hurdles – this is exactly what makes them different – this is  exactly what makes them successful. It should be great lesson to all mankind. Whatever you aim or pursue go after it with all the vigor and give everything into it. Nothing is impossible – as long as you keep working hard on it persistently.

You never know, you may be one of those self made millionaires one day.
All the Best