Proactive

One of the top visible qualities of people with a vision in life is being proactive. Being proactive builds your confidence and empowers you to solve the problems. The opposite of being proactive is laziness. This is the number one killer of personal growth of a person. In tough economic times like this where opportunities are scarce learn to be proactive and solve the problems with confidence.

Quote of the day

Things beyond your control should not affect things within your control. I know the whole world is going through tough time and people are facing lot of challenges now and all the opportunities are going dreath but still if people believe that there is always a dawn after the dusk then you will have a bright future.

True meaning of Freedom

I know the whole world is excited about the new president of USA - Mr. Barack Obama. As everyone in America talks about freedom he also says so. But I would like to share a real story of someone whom I know very well. 

The story of a slave turned into a prisoner. This is the story of an immigrant who was a slave in his country and comes to the land of freedom and becomes a prisoner. Your comments are welcome.

A youth was brought up in a communist country (unofficially dictatorship). Everyone was literally a slave in that country. Everything was owned by government not many opportunties were provided to people to move forward in their life or dream big enough. The number of obstacles he has to overcome to get a good education and a good job was really thrilling. Finally a day came when his dream was about to come true. Yes he was getting ready to taste the freedom for the first time in his life. He got his permit to move to the land of freedom with his family. He had high hopes that he will make it in USA.

He landed in USA and smelled the air of freedom. He tasted the water of freedom. He found a good job to match his skills and started working. He saw how people around him were living. People around him were living beyond their means. They didn't know the difference between pleasure and happiness. The difference between pleasure and happiness is very simple. You do a right act with courage once and you feel happy about it everytime you think of it. Pleasure on the other hand is very simple you need to do it repeatedly to get the pleasure. The best example for seeking pleasure is smoking, drinking and all these anti-social habits. The best example for seeking happiness is to do something better for yourself and your family or help someone. Finally he fell prey to it and guess what happened  he started piling up a huge debt. Now is the climax, he ran out of money, he got divorced because he couldn't take care of his family and was living a life of solitude. Finally because of the huge debt he was not able to move anywhere outside the city he is living in. Thus he is a prisoner now.

Frankly this is the sad reality in most of the people's life in the western world. 

If there is one thing I want to say about freedom, it would be FREEDOM = RESPONSIBILITY. You need to be responsible for your life, your choices in life, your way of life. All I request everyone is to be a good example to the fellow citizen.

Happy new year 2009

I wish everyone a happy and prosperous new year 2009. Wishing all of your dreams to come true. I sincerely believe that Dream and Dedication is the unbeatable combination.

A good question to think

I just took some time off and thought of few things. I compared myself to my dad, my grand dad. I was asking why is that I am not having the feeling of satisfaction in life for my accomplishments. I figured out something.

Their life was simple without much of distractions. In today's world you have lot of distractions. Our life is now complicated and we need to deal with lot of things. The solution to this problem is to simplify our life. Eliminate unnecessary sources of distractions. Find out really what adds value to you and your family and give importance to that.

Finally I would like to quote Einstein's words. "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." This is going to be my motto in everything.

Organizing tips

Recently I bought a planner from Day Timer. The following links on their site gives some valuable tips for organizing.

http://www.daytimer.com/Time-Management Resources/home/C881AB9CC91A48C48B7C76B82211AA66/False#General

Dot Project

Recently I installed Dot Project, free and open source software for our company's project management. This is the most elegant and powerful software in the FOSS arena. We were able to save a lot of time and effort because of this software.

Mac OS X on x brand hardware

If you are in USA, you can try this product.

http://store.psystar.com/featured/open-osx.html

Beware that there is a settlement going on between Apple and PSYSTAR regarding this.