Month: July 2011

Brownness

Food For Thought for Monday, July 18th, 2011

Sanjay Sabarwal

I can make you rise or fall.

I can work for you or against you.

I can make you a  success or failure.

I control the way you feel and the way you act.

I can make you laugh…work…love. I can make your heart sing with joy…excitement…elation…

Or I can make you wretched…dejected…morbid…

I can make you sick…listless…

I can be as a shackle…heavy…attached…burdensome…

Or I can be as the prism’s hue…dancing…bright…fleeting…lost forever unless captured by pen and purpose.

I can be nurtured and grown to be great and beautiful…seen by the eyes of others through action in you.

I can never be removed… only replaced.

I am a thought.

Why not know me better?

Brownness

Food For Thought For Friday, July 15th, 2011

Sanjay Sabarwal
A number of years ago, I had the rather unique experience of being backstage in Madison Square Garden, in NewYork, during the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus.  To    say the least, it was a fascinating experience.  I was able to walk    around looking at the lions, tigers, giraffes and all the other circus    animals.  As I was passing the elephants, I suddenly stopped,    confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a    small rope tied to their front leg.  No chains, no cages.  It    was obvious that the elephants could, at any time, break away from their    bonds but, for some reason, they did not.  I saw a trainer near by    and asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away.    

"Well," he said, "when they are very young and much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and, at that age, it’s enough to hold them.  As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away.  They think the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free."  I was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but, because    they believed they could not, they were stuck right where they were.

   Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief  that we cannot do something, simply because  we failed at it once    before?  How many of us are being held back by old, outdated beliefs that no longer serve us?  Have you avoided trying something new because of a limiting belief? Worse, how many of us are being held back by someone else’s limiting beliefs?  Do you tell yourself you can’t sell  because you’re not a salesperson?

Brownness

Food For Thought for Thursday, July 14th, 2011

Sanjay Sabarwal
The Temple       


About 1000 years ago, a sage was drawn to a construction site. He watched from the edge of a clearing(?) in the forest as the workmen bent over their individual tasks.Finally his curiosity drove him to one workman at the edge of the site, whom he asked "What are you doing, my good man?" The workman looked up briefly and went back to his work "I’m working" he said curtly.

Not satisfied with the answer, the sage approached a second workman to ask him the same question. "You can see I’m breaking stones" he replied.

The sage was made of stern stuff and he wasn’t leaving without an answer, so he walked over to a third workman with the question. "I’m building a temple" replied this workman smilingly.

The incident opened the sage’s eyes, because all three of them were breaking boulders into smaller stones, but in their minds they were not doing the same jobs.

The third workman was working for a cause much larger than himself and it showed in his approach to work.

You can just do a day’s work, or build a career, a team, an organization, or a nation
An individual’s overpowering ambition can be the glue that holds together and powers forward a team, an army or a country.

Brownness

Food For Thought for July 13th, 2011

Sanjay Sabarwal
Once upon a time, there was a king who never wore shoes. He was forever bruising and scraping his royal feet. One day, completely exasperated with this problem,

           

  
he turned to his trusty minister and ordered: “I want you to carpet the entire kingdom by tomorrow morning, or it’s off with your head!”

The poor minister sat up half the night thinking about this impossible task, and knowing full well that he would surely lose his head come morning. Suddenly, just as the sun began to rise, his fear turned to joy. He had an idea. Bounding from his bed, he ran to the royal carpetorium.

When the king awoke the next morning he jumped quickly out of bed and hurried to the royal window to view his carpet covered kingdom. Seeing not one inch of carpet anywhere he began bellowing for the minister roaring wildly. “Minister, Where’s my minister? I’ll have his head!”

At that very moment, the minister appeared at the king’s door clutching a pair of very foreign objects in his hands. “Oh your highness, please be so kind as to try these first,” he begged. The king agreed, and in the wink of an eye the minister slipped the world’s first pair of carpet slippers onto the king’s royal feet.

Instantly the king’s anger turned to delight. Shuffling around the room with the softness of the finest carpet in the kingdom beneath his feet, all he could do was smile with every step.

The moral of this story relates to effective listening and finding something to get interested in. It is about listening for more than we are accustomed to, and turning every interaction into a challenge. Throughout life we often find ourselves in situations we don’t like and can’t change; we can, however, learn how to change our own experience and gain valuable insights along the way. Most of us do not realize the importance of listening as a communicative tool. Yet studies have shown that we actually spend 50% more time listening than we do talking. We often take listening for granted, never realizing that it is a skill that can be learned.

Brownness

Food for Thought for Tuesday, July 12th, 2012

Sanjay Sabarwal

 Value

A well known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20 bill. In the room of 200, he asked, “Who would like this $20 bill?”

Hands started going up.

He said, “I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this.” He proceeded to crumple the dollar bill up.

He then asked, “Who still wants it?”

Still the hands were up in the air.

“Well,” he replied, “What if I do this?” And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe.

He picked it up, now all crumpled and dirty. “Now who still wants it?” Still the hands went into the air.

“My friends, you have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20.  

Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way.

We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never lose your value. You are special – Don’t ever forget it!

 

Sent from my iPhone

Brownness

Food for Thought for Monday, July 11th, 2011

Sanjay Sabarwal

 GENEROSITY

Mahatma Gandhi went from city to city, village to village collecting funds for the Charkha Sangh. During one of his tours he addressed a meeting in Orissa. After his speech a poor old woman got up. She was bent with age, her hair was grey and her clothes were in tatters. The volunteers tried to stop her, but she fought her way to the place where Gandhiji was sitting. “I must see him,” she insisted and going up to Gandhiji touched his feet. Then from the folds of her sari she brought out a copper coin and placed it at his feet. Gandhiji picked up the copper coin and put it away carefully. The Charkha Sangh funds were under the charge of Jamnalal Bajaj. He asked Gandhiji for the coin but Gandhiji refused. “I keep cheques worth thousands of rupees for the Charkha Sangh,” Jamnalal Bajaj said laughingly “yet you won’t trust me with a copper coin.” “This copper coin is worth much more than those thousands,” Gandhiji said. “If a man has several lakhs and he gives away a thousand or two, it doesn’t mean much. But this coin was perhaps all that the poor woman possessed. She gave me all she had. That was very generous of her. What a great sacrifice she made. That is why I value this copper coin more than a crore of rupees.”

Sent from my iPhone