12 Favorite Quotes and One Lesson from each

 

1. "Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person." -Mother Teresa (Take Responsibility for your life)  

2. I've come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that's as unique as a fingerprint - and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you."-Oprah Winfrey (Find what you love doing and then find a way to serve people doing it) 

3. “I know what I have to do now. I have to keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide can bring.” - Chuck Noland-Castaway Movie (Life Goes On)

'Try something new...Try the 'Fosbury Flop'

There was once a bee that was stuck inside a glass house. After getting in through the front door when it was opened by one of the residents, the bee was now in the house. Soon the bee wanted to get out. It then approached a glass window nearby and thinking it was transparent, it kept flying right into it. It taught the window would break and it would fly out free then. 

The bee kept trying and trying. The continuous banging on the window was causing the bee some serious injury. There was a pillar next to the glass window, and there was another glass window next to that with a small opening that the bee could get through. But the bee refused to try an alternative solution and kept banging into that one glass window only. Soon the bee injured itself so much that it fell to its death. All the bee had to do was realize that this path was not working, to reflect on the situation and to look for an alternate or new path.

The Fosbury Flop 

 (Fosbury trying his revolutionary new technique)

Treading Your Own Path like Forrest Gump

I loved the award winning movie 'Forrest Gump' (1994). Not only because of the great story, but also because of the tendency of the central character to tread his own path. 

Forrest shares his life story where he joins the Army, plays ping pong, falls in love, starts a shrimping company, meets the president and more. But one scene in the movie really caught my attention. It is the scene below and let me describe why.

One day he decides to start running. He runs to the end of his town and then a little more. He runs to the end of his city and then a little more. He runs to the end of his state and then a little more. He just keeps running, and doing what his heart told him to do. Lots of people ask him why he is doing it along the way. 

The Art of Educating Yourself

I write this post on morning of 15th August, 2013. It is India's 67th Independence Day. Sixty-Seven Years ago, India's First Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru announced a 'Tryst with Destiny' for the Indian Nation. He dreamed of a country with free and independent Indians. Let us work together to make this great dream come true.

Independence is also often seen as self governance of a nation. Our nation got independence but isn't it time we self govern our lives now. Isn't it time we shift the responsibility of designing our lives from the governments and institutions to YOU the individual. Today let us explore one aspect of this discussion...Education...

4 Blogs I Love

dream, discover, explore, think, understand, innovate, create, empower, inspire, reflect, appreciate, achieve, balance and most importantly love and love for no reason at all...

 

1) Zen Habits

Written by Leo Babuata. Leo writes about simplicity, living healthy, productivity, improved family life, living in the moment and facing challenges the Zen Way. I love this blog for its simple layout and very useful content.

Blog Link - http://zenhabits.net/

2) Derek Sivers

Written by Derek Sivers. Derek is a musician, TED Speaker and founder of an online CD Store for independent musicians called CD Baby. His blog posts are insightful. He writes about his life experiences and lessons, amazing life stories, creation, innovation and finding yourself. He also has a detailed 'Book Notes' section with a summary of the last 150 books he has read. This is a must read.

 

 Blog Link - http://sivers.org/ 

3) Seth's Blog

Written by Seth Godin. Considered the No.1 Marketing Guru in the world by many. Seth is an entrepreneur, marketer, speaker, published author of 11 books and new thought expert. He writes about creating world changing ideas, standing out, starting a movement, creating a tribe, managing change and understanding world trends. His 11 books and many videos available online also must be consumed because it is information worth gold and it will help shape your perspective on a fast changing world.

 

Blog Link - http://sethgodin.typepad.com/  

4) Robin Sharma's Blog

I attended Robin's Lead Without a Title Seminar in 2009.Ever since I have been a fan of his work. He writes about leadership, productivity, innovation, goal setting, creating good habits and more. A variety of free resources available on his website as well.

 

Blog Link - http://www.robinsharma.com/index.php 

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What are your favorite blogs?

Satchinanda
Let us Learn Together
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What I Learned from the Fantastic Mr Feynman?

Richard Feynman was described by many in different ways. Some of those descriptions went like this, a theoretical physicist, a nobel prize winning scientist, a life lover, an explorer, an artist among more. But what people will remember him most for was that he was such a great human being. 

 

Read his bio here. The You Tube video titled 'The Fantastic - Mr Feynman' 

 

The video started with a funny looking man playing the bongo drums. The video went on and then I found out that this man was also one of the greatest scientific minds of the twentieth century.

 

Being part of the Manhattan Project (that created the atomic bomb), designing lectures for undergraduate students at Caltech and revolutionizing physics with his theories on Quantum Electro Dynamics were some of his many achievements. 

 

But what amazed me most about him was his love for life, his fascination for the little things and his child like curiosity that he never lost even as he grew old. His Ode to a Flower best describes how The Fantastic Mr Feynman looked at life and all that is wonderful in it.

________

Ode to a Flower

    

"I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe… 

 

I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. 

 

The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts."

 

A few lessons I learned from this amazing person were:-
 

1) Don't take life too seriously - Laugh, play the bongo, fall in love, and look stupid once in a while. It won't hurt you too much. He would be seen playing the bongo drums, computing, painting, safe cracking, writing poetry or doing physics. He did what he enjoyed most and he truly lived a rich life...a life full of rich experiences

2) Make work your reward - When Feynman won the Nobel Prize he mentioned that the Nobel Prize was not so important, the real joy for him was when he discovered his theory and contribute to his field. For him that was the real prize. For him work was the reward.

3) Combine different Disciplines - Feynman taught himself art through his friend Jirayr Zorthian who was a renowned artist of the time. He told Jirayr he would exchange classed of Science for classes of art. He always looked for ways to connect fields and his thinking and contributions to the world reflected this as well.

4) Be the happiest, most enthusiastic person you know - His energy for life was just magical. He was just smiling throughout the video. He was like a little child jumping from one life project to another. Just looking at him would fill you with so many good emotions. Even with all the big scale projects he worked on, he never lost the love for life and all that is wonderful about it.


Henry David Thoreau once said, "I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die, Discover that I had not lived."Richard Feyman lived in a similar way. He lived life to the fullest, and took every experience with full enthusiasm for life and excitement for the present moment. He put his heart and soul into everything he did. He loved his craft and brought joy to so many doing it.

I leave you here with the thoughts of this great man

 "It is a great adventure to contemplate the universe, beyond man, to contemplate what it would be like without man, as it was in a great part of its long history and as it is in a great majority of places. When this objective view is finally attained, and the mystery and majesty of matter are fully appreciated, to then turn the objective eye back on man viewed as matter, to view life as part of this universal mystery of greatest depth, is to sense an experience which is very rare, and very exciting. It usually ends in laughter and delight in the futility of trying to understand what this atom in the universe is, this thing—atoms with curiosity—that looks at itself and wonders why it wonders. Well, these scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged for God to watch man's struggle for good and evil seems inadequate." 

—Richard Feynman The Meaning Of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist, 1998

Thank you Richard for being who you are, and thank you Richard for the happiness you brought in so many people's lives with the work you loved doing:)

Lionel Poilane - The Artist Baker

Today morning I read a wonderful Fast Company Article on a Baker in Paris. His name Lionel Poilane. Fast Company talks about Lionel's Love for Bread as such,

"Lionel Poilâne sells the most famous bread in Paris. In fact, he sells 15,000 loaves of bread each day -- 2.5% of all bread sold in Paris, by weight. But he doesn't think of himself as a mere baker. Most bakers simply mix dough, shape loaves, and shove them into the oven. And while for many years he did all of those things every day, that still doesn't make him a baker."

In an earlier blog post mentioned how people must study their craft. Lionel was a true student of his craft.  I love how Lionel used Retro Innovation to create Bread Magic. He combined the best of the old and new styles on Baking as mentioned in the article.

What amazed me most about this man was his love for the Art of Baking. When he took over the family business from his Father he contacted over 10,000 bakers and amassed a massive collection of over 2,000 books on Bread! That is commitment.

As Fast Company puts it in the article "In the early 1980s, Poilâne decided to tap into the memories of the oldest bakers in the country to see if they could give him advice on how to reproduce the older styles of bread. With the help of two students, he contacted more than 10,000 bakers over a two-year period. "I conducted an ethnography of my own business," he says. "Most of the bakers had only fading memories to offer, but some were thrilled that he was trying to revive older bread-making traditions and offered to bake him sample loaves. By the time he was finished with his study, Poilâne had tried more than 75 different types of bread that he'd never tasted before. He eventually wrote up his findings in a book -- a study that is still used today in baking schools throughout France. He also amassed a library full of books on bread, which today contains more than 2,000 volumes."

Do his customers love him...No...They absolutely adore him..

The article further describes it as such "Poilâne's bread has won him famous fans over the years: Frank Sinatra and Lauren Bacall used to enjoy a loaf from time to time, and Robert De Niro is a customer. The most devoted patron, however, is a gentleman in New York who wants to remain anonymous. In 1997, he agreed to pay Poilâne $100,000, asking that his children and grandchildren receive a loaf a week for the rest of their lives. "Can you imagine?" Poilâne says, with obvious pride. "In 50 years, he'll be dead, but his grandchildren will be feeding our bread to their children and explaining how they are eating the bread of their great-grandfather!"

We all have the chance to be artists in our lives, in our careers, in our daily tasks. Let us commit to being artists. To create not just to create, but to create to actually make a hell of a difference. It is time we brought out the Lionel in all of us. It is time we brought out the Artist in all of us.

Read the full article here - http://www.fastcompany.com/42557/give-us-day-our-global-bread