The Right Attitude

A young girl walks on the lonely street, unhappy with herself. She is not beautiful like others are. "My friends have boyfriends

and I do not. They are happy. Since I am not beautiful, I have no boyfriend."

A strong breeze blows against her face and her silky hair starts dancing. It says to her: "Be like me my child

, go with the flow and you will glow." The breeze teaches her to have an attitude which will lift her beyond mere physical beauty.

The breeze is constantly moving; so to move with the vastness of life without getting stuck, be like it, constantly move. The breeze says to her: "I do not move for happiness but out of happiness. I do not dance for happiness but out of happiness. A youth should learn this art to operate from happiness and not for happiness. Happiness is an attitude. To be a winner in life is also an attitude."

Your attitude is more important than facts for the right attitude can empower you. When you are empowered, you are bigger than a problem rather than a victim to a problem, and living in such a space makes you a winner. An easy task becomes difficult when you have a poor attitude. A difficult task becomes challenging when you have a good attitude.

Change your body posture. A trainer talking to students on the subject of public speaking told them: "When you talk of heaven your face must be glowing and radiating joy. Your eyes must shine and lips should reflect heaven." "What about talking of hell?" asked the student. "Your normal face is enough," replied the trainer.

Change your mind. Always entertain healthy thoughts. Positive thoughts are a great asset. A pessimist sees difficulty in an opportunity and an optimist sees opportunity in a difficulty. Understand that when one door closes another opens. Trust life. Insecurity invites you to be alert and not worried. It tells you to be creative and not complain. One has to know how to take it easy and float in life and not fight with life. You can't fight with the waves but you can learn to float.

Change your emotions. The quality of your life is the quality of your consistent emotion. When your emotion is low, just change it; think of a happy incident. Change your values. Have values that connect to goodness and connect to people.

Follow these psychological exercises: Always stand and sit erect. "If you want to be a colonel, walk like a colonel," is an expression in the army. Keep the body posture like that of a winner. Fill your mind with positive thoughts. Keep your emotions on the top of the world. Exercise and keep the above alive in you; see and picture yourself doing this.

Lots of people fear failure, death, insecurity and rejection. Come from a commitment that failure is only postponed success. Failure is the fertiliser for success. If you bring this energy into your life, it will give you methods of handling fear of failure. Also understand that fear is a movement of thought. Thought is nothing but a movement of the mental word.

If you get identified with a fear which is actually just a thought, which again is just a word, then this identification makes you a prisoner of fear. Also, this thought-fear unconsciously pulls in the previous memories of fear and with the past fears, a snowballing effect happens.

So when fear happens, just become totally aware and don't get identified with that thought. With wordless awareness, just watch. This watching will not allow the previous fears to have a snowballing effect. This is called objective watching. You feel insecure because you have a concept of what is security and from that concept you are seeing life. Anything that does not fit that concept makes you insecure.

If you have the spirit of adventure in you then insecurity is a great adventure for you to explore. You will have fun with that insecurity. Learn to trust that insecurity is inviting you to be creative.

Why criticize Slumdog Millionaire ?

Many critics in India have called Slumdog Millionaire as “porn of poverty”, and they criticize the western media as not seeing the positive and affluent sides of India and just paying too much attention to its soft underbelly. Well, when I was in Ahmedabad, (and had not seen western world) I also never thought there was poverty, I saw only big shopping complexes, multiplex etc but never paid attention to small 2 or 3 year old child knocking at my car's window asking for some money. I thought this was mere aberration. Things changed when I came down to Australia and lived for 2 years and again went to Ahmedabad. Suddenly I started noticing poverty and human misery around me. What struck me was that while living in India, I had seen those things for so long, that I had accepted it as part of life, I was desensitized of my surroundings, this is exactly like when you are in house, you cannot smell leaking gas but when an outsider enters the house he can smell the stench.

Because Indian elite and intellectuals are too westernised, It is good that western media criticize us so that at least we start noticing the poverty around us. As long as we do not become aware that we have problem in our hand then how can we make changes.
The problem of poverty in India can be blamed on the economic theory which had been taught to me when I was in class 8th. This theory is called “VICIOUS CIRCLE OF POVERTY”- This theory goes like – because parents are poor they cannot give education and food to children so children remain illiterate and undernourished, so children remain poor and so on”. So this theory assumed that circle of poverty cannot be broken and assumed that India will remain poor till parents do not become rich, now this is classical Egg and Hen theory that what came first.

The stupidity of this theory is self evident and shown to be false, by economic miracle of Singapore, South Korea, East asia. These economies were poorer than India in 1947, but now these economies are First world and we in India are still languishing as third world country. Now this shows that economic management goes to the core of development of any nation.

Now the question arises where did India go wrong and how can we change it.

1)Education for the masses should be made compulsory and accessible.
2)Open more orphanages and take the street children in care of theses Orphanges so that they can be provided food, education. ( this may not be perfect solution but it is better then leaving them on streets)
3)Implement free market economics with government filling the gaps which cannot be filled by market forces, like implementation of laws, effficent police.
4)Efficient and time bound judiciary, which gives fast justice and does not drag cases for 100 of years.


Indian government has done everything other than governance during last 60 years of independence. Indian government opened industries in almost all sectors of economy and were called commanding heights of economy. This policy was nothing but commanding height of stupidity. Government should have focussed on Police, Judiciary, Universal education and economy should have been left to Tata and Birlas.

It is still not too late, we may have lost 60 years since independence but we can now make the changes now, so that atl east our future generation can be proud of new India.

Hoping against Hope

Hope, like any emotion is double edged sword, too much of it and you are doomed into inaction, inertia . Take egs ,of Jews who were exterminated in Germany during world war 2, their genocide had all to be blamed on human emotion of hope. Long before Jews were killed, Germany passed series of laws which banished Jews from practising their chosen profession like medicine, law, owning and running business; in short they were thrown out off the mainstream of society. Now, take eg of Peter who was a Jew, practising medicine in Germany during the time these racist laws were passed. He thought Ok, I will not treat patients and will conform to law so that me and my family is saved (Hope). Then after some time Germany passed law that all Jews will be transferred to Ghettos (specified areas where Jews can live). Peter again thought of self preservation, he said ok, I will loose my property and wealth but me and my family can live together and survive. Then during world war 2 Germans said that men, women and children will be separated and sent to different labour camps, again Peter thought ok, if we follow this then there is hope that me and my family will survive even though we may be separated.

Guess, what happened to Peter and his family, they were thrown into gas chamber and killed. Had Peter, thought differently, and said at the time of passing of laws when he was banished from practising as a Doctor that this is a slippery slope. One thing will lead to another and another and then thought of raising voice or arms he may still have died but at least there was positive hope (thats the paradox) that 6 million Jews would not have died in Holocaust and may be world history would have been different.

So Hope, like any other human emotion like fear, love, ambivalence, hatred, anger, jealousy is double edged. Right quantity of all emotions are required, emotions are like salt in food, if you add salt in right proportion you enjoy food and add too much salt it ruins food. Same goes with emotion, they are fleeting but add spice to life.