Will you be part of the India growth story?

The bad news is that the world is going through the worst financial crisis ever.
The good news is it is not going to last for ever. The bad news is India is also affected the good news is it is not as badly affected as the USA, Europe or China.
If you will just visualize a little beyond the financial turmoil the real economy reveals itself as more robust than what the gloom and doom theorists will have us believe. Going by the long term trends and the way Indian economy is shaping up, India is all set to become the engine of the global economy especially now when the USA will be more than willing to share the burden of growth and development with other countries. India’s per capita income is expected to quadruple by 2020 despite the current lull. Now that is a good news. As India and China move to the center stage of world economy along with Brazil and Russia, it is time for all of us to look at our selves and think at the micro level. It is time to look at some hard facts, and answer some hard questions like...
What will my income be in 2020?
Will my income be four times what it is today and will it be enough to maintain my current standard of living assuming I am happy with the way I live today?
If not what will be my strategy to quadruple my income?
Even if my income quadruples in the next decade or so, will my family be able to live comfortably on that income or do I need to do better than quadrupling my income?
Do I have a strategy a better strategy than, ‘hope and pray’ in place to enhance my income?
Will I have a better lifestyle or will the high rate of inflation insure that my standard of living deteriorates?
As the India growth story unveils itself what will be my role in it? Will I just eke out a living or will I make a life?
Will i have a good life or will I have a great life Do I even know the difference?

According to very conservative projections there will be more than 100 million people with an annual income of over Rs.630,000 or $15,000. On a more micro and personal level two questions come to mind.
First of all, will you be one of them?
And second of all, will a mere Rs.50,000 ($1250) a month be enough to live comfortably in 2020?

The first question is easy to answer, you probably will be making that much or maybe even double that ... The second is a bit tough and sends a shiver down the spine. What kind of life will you have earning just Rs.50,000 in 2020, when that is the kind of money you need today to live just about comfortably. The words that come to my mind are miserable, sad, tough, dreary, and forlorn...Let’s not even go down that road
So, our aim should be earning at least $30,000 i.e. Rs.126,00,00 or at least
Rs.100,000 per month and not just Rs.50,000 per month. As the great Indian juggernaut economy shifts into the next gear, lot of people will be caught napping and be marginalized. That is the bad news.
The good news is, you could wake up to your financial needs and reality, and take effective steps to not only survive but thrive in the next decade.

So what can we do?

The number one thing to do is take stock of where you are today and then decide where you want to be in the next five years. Assuming, you are unemployed and earn nothing, or even if you are earning Rs.15,000 a month today, what are your chances of making Rs.100,000 doing what you are doing in the next five years. If you are 100% sure - and you need to be 100% sure or risk being marginalized - you could continue doing what you are doing. If you are not sure or you have doubts, you need to change direction because only by changing direction can you change you destination and your destiny.

If there is a gap between where you are and where you want to be, you need to set a goal, make a plan and take effective steps to bridge the gap.
You need to select the right vehicle to achieve your goal.
You need to choose the right people to associate with and form a winning team.
You might have to learn new skills to cope up with the changing environment.
You will need to work smart.

To conclude, the growing Indian economy will create opportunities for people who keep themselves abreast with the changing scenario but will marginalize many talented people if they do not change with the times. You need to be aware and benefit from the India growth story.

Its not the smile stupid...

The main thing is to maintain the main thing as the main thing. The main thing is not personality. The main thing is character. When we look around and see rabid mushrooming of personality development schools who profess to teach you how to dress up well, smile and shake hands to make you super successful in life we know that there is something wrong with the picture. Personality development though important is useless unless we focus on character. Shakespeare’s quotation from Hamlet, “ One may smile and smile and be a villain,” some how seems relevant. It is not what you do on the surface but what you are deep inside, that matters. What are your values and your principles will determine whether you will be a good person or a villain. Only a good person will make a good manager. Not only that, a good person will make a good spouse, a good parent, a good friend and a good son or daughter.

So your endeavour has to be to improve yourself on a daily basis. You can live by Emile Coue’s affirmation, “every day in every way I am trying to become better and better." Becoming better is an inside job. It is not the smile as much as it is the soul. You are not just working on the effect of power dressing on the interviewer you are working on the impact your character will have on the organisation and anyone who comes in contact with you. No body cares whether you know the capital cities of all the countries or their currencies and can even rattle off the exchange-rates if you are dishonest and lack integrity. That doesn't mean you don’t work on your general knowledge. What good is it if you have a very firm handshake and fantastic communication skills but you don’t think twice about cheating and are a habitual liar. Employers won’t touch such a person with a barge pole. Businessmen know you can’t do a good deal with a bad person.

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. The main thing is to focus on your character. The main thing is to follow the golden rule. The golden rule implies that people will treat you the way you treat them. You treat people well they will treat you well. You respect them they will respect you. You give them love they return the compliment. You care for them they will care for you. People do not care how much you know till they know how much you care. Companies are no different.

Positive Thinking

One of the most involving discussions we had in our ‘Saturday Special’ was on attitude and positive thinking. It was sparked off by my rather casual introductory comment that the finest outcome of having a positive attitude is that you begin to think positive. The discussion went a bit overboard as a raging debate ensued whether positive thinking was an outcome of positive attitude or is it the other way round? Is it possible to have negative thinking and a positive attitude? Is it possible to train oneself to think positive or learn to have a positive attitude? We had to wait till the next session for everyone to calm down and have a meaningful discussion. We decided that for our purpose it does not make a difference as long as we ensure that we have a positive frame of mind because negative attitude and negative thinking can be major hurdles in the way of happiness and success.

Remember, successful people take their sunshine along wherever they go. As Robert Hastings said, “Places and circumstances never guarantee happiness. You must decide within yourself whether you want to be happy. And once you have decided, happiness comes much easier.” It boils down to ownership again. You decide. You fashion your own environment with your thoughts, your beliefs, your philosophy, your attitude and above all by your actions.

People who will be successful do not wait to feel positive before they act. They act and feel good about having acted. You can see people’s attitude only through their actions. In that sense attitude follows action. Once you get into the action mode you will begin to have positive thoughts. People who start of with negative thoughts for whatever reason are crippled by fear. The only remedy for fear is action. Action cures fear. Action leads to positive thoughts. Positive thoughts lead to positive attitude. You see it comes full circle. So we need not worry whether positive attitude comes first or positive thinking. For people who want to be successful action comes first and everything else follows and everything falls in place. Your action will start a chain reaction and slowly you will exude confidence, energy and positive attitude making you very attractive.

Attitude

The first impact of owning your life and taking responsibility for all your actions that you will notice will be on your attitude. You can’t complain you can’t blame. If you are late for the class or a meeting you cannot blame it on a flat tyre or bad traffic. You cannot postpone the date of submitting your assignment because you fell ill. You cannot even blame a bad teacher for the low grades you get. In school you perhaps could have because the teacher was responsible for making you learn. Not at this level. Now you are responsible. So you figure out how are you are going to learn. One of the first things I tell my class right at the beginning of the new session is that I am a bad teacher and that they better pull all their resources to get good results. It scares those who have not yet taken ownership of their lives. Others know better.

You cannot complain that you were born poor or that you did not get to go to a renowned school or that you were a sickly child and that your friends bullied you. That time has passed. That time is over. You cannot weep, wale or whine. Today is the first day of the rest of your life and you can take the first step towards achieving whatever you set out to achieve. That is the attitude you have to have because you are only an attitude away from success. You cannot go through life thinking about your past failure. You have to count your blessings and make the best of the hand you have been dealt.

I am sure none of us have been dealt a hand as bad as Victor Frankl. Victor E. Frankl was a Jew born in Vienna, Austria in 1905. A brilliant student he grew up in Vienna and studied psychiatry and medicine. In 1930 he joined a hospital there as a young doctor. When Germany seized control of Austria eight years later, the Nazis made Frankl head of the Rothschild Hospital.

Frankl got married in 1942 and nine months later, he was arrested for being a Jew along with his parents and wife. They were deported to a concentration camp near Prague. Even though Frankl was in four Nazi camps, he survived the Holocaust, including Auschwitz in Poland from 1942-45, where the incoming prisoners were divided into two lines. Those in the line moving left were to go to the gas chambers, while those in the line moving right were to be spared. Frankl was directed to join the line moving left, but managed to save his life by slipping into the other line without being noticed. Other members of his family were not so fortunate. Except for his sister his entire family perished in the in the concentration camps.

One day, naked and alone in a small prison cell, he realized that the Germans can torture him and take away every one of his material possessions but one thing they cannot take away is his freedom - freedom to respond to what they did to him. He determined that he and he alone, not his captors, will decide how his circumstances will affect him. He decided that he will choose the response to whatever is done to him. “The last of human freedoms,” he said, “is to choose one’s attitude in any set of circumstances.” Even in extreme cases while he was being tortured by the Nazis he would retreat into his mind and picture himself as lecturing to his students or examining a patient. He grew so much in stature because of his confidence in himself and his thinking that his captors just could not conquer his mind. He not only survived the Holocaust but went on to lead a very successful life, influencing millions of people not only by his example but also as a mentor and motivator.

People who will be successful do not wait for the weather to be good before they go out they take their sunshine along wherever they go. They do not wait to feel good before they act; they act and feel good that they took action. They do not whine that they have been given a raw deal. If they get lemons they make lemonade. What kind of an attitude are you going to have now that you know that you are just an attitude away from success.

OWNERSHIP

You are responsible for being where you are in your life today. Congratulations if you are successful and living your dream life; you get the credit for creating your dream life. But if you are living a mediocre life and consider yourself to be a failure or are anything less than successful, you and only you have to be blamed for it; no one else shares the blame with you. Maybe you are too young and have just joined a professional course and are pretty happy with what you have achieved in life up to now but are not very sure how life will pan out and are perhaps a bit apprehensive about it too. Let me tell you that the most important thing for you is to brace up to reality and take ownership of your life and take responsibility for the consequences of all your actions. You have to tell yourself that if you are successful in life you will create that success and if you end up on the monumental pile of mediocrity no one else is to be blamed except you.

So first thing you got to do is to take ownership of your life. You will, from now onwards design the life you want to live and not just drift with the wind. Where you will be in life five or ten years from now will depend on the decisions you take, the company you keep and the books you read. But most important of them is being capable of taking decisions for your self. You cannot begin to take decisions for yourself till you own your life and say to yourself that I am responsible for my actions, my success and my failure. You will have to grow up and it takes a decision, a conscious decision, to grow up. Maybe you can take that decision right away. Maybe this is your first independent decision and you want to mull over it. But do not read further till you take this decision. I don’t care if you are fifteen years of age or fifty ; till you take this decision you are still a little boy or a girl. I am writing this for men and women; for ladies and gentlemen; not boys and girls.

Congratulations if you are still reading because it means you have taken the all important decision and crossed the first hurdle to success. Taking ownership of your life is both scary and liberating. Scary because now you know you are on your own and responsible for whatever you do in life. It is very liberating because you have now empowered yourself to achieve whatever you set out to achieve. There is a very illustrative saying: “ To the person you give responsibility, you give power.” Now you are in a position to script your success. Nothing can hold you back. Neither your negative friends or relatives nor any adverse circumstances can stop you from achieving every goal you set yourself because you know you cannot blame them. You have to find a way in spite of them. You cannot make excuses, you cannot blame, you cannot complain. Your attitude will change because you took ownership of your life. You still will not be able to control what happens to you but you will certainly be able to respond the way you want to, to what happens to you. You will become more proactive because you have your own agenda and goal in life. You will create your own circumstances rather than be a product of the circumstances. You will consciously and deliberately inculcate success habits. You will pay attention to details. You will get the results because you own your life. You have now starting to live out your story and it is your responsibility to insure that, at the end of it, you have a great story to tell

Saturday Special

It started as a bit of a banter with a small bunch of students who surprisingly showed up in the last period of the week on a hot sultry Saturday afternoon in August.
"What are you doing here?" I asked the stunned scholars who were as stupefied by the question as I was stumped by their presence. They were perhaps expecting to hear a word of praise. After all they had proved to be the disciplined ones who opted to attend the class at that stifling hour when everyone else had either gone home or decided to start their weekend early and had either hit the bar or gone for movies. My query was only half in jest; I was pretty serious.
Most students have the same perception about 'Soft Skills' classes in a Business School as the domain faculty - an unnecessary appendage. Soft skills faculty does precious little to allay the impression. Who wants to sit through another lecture on, ' how to make an effective presentation' or on, 'how to write a cover letter for your resume' anyway; that to at the fag end of a tiring six day week? My sympathies are actually with the students in this regard. I don't blame them too much if they want to travel to their home town to meet their parents or watch a good movie or even an ordinary one. 'Soft Skills' they reason is not even a credit course.

Not wanting to do anything from the syllabus in the absence of majority of the students, we decided that we will have a freewheeling discussion on whatever topic came up randomly. We actually had a very lively and enjoyable session. Surprisingly we had a bigger number of students who stayed back for the class the next week. Slowly our Saturday sessions became more and more rewarding and the class began to fill up till we had more students on Saturdays than on week days. We continued with discussing topics picked up randomly by students rather than anything from the syllabus. Everyone participated in the discussions and we had a lot of fun. I knew we had a good thing going when one day a student came to my cabin and said,
" Sir, I have to go home because it is my younger sister's birthday but I do not want to miss the Saturday Special."
The series of articles I am writing are a result of the wonderful time we had on these special Saturdays.