Archive for the ‘Philosophy’ Category
Understanding vs. Doing
Posted on: October 22, 2011
- In: Philosophy
- 4 Comments
One of the lessons I learnt in life is that ‘understanding is not doing’. If you observe keenly ‘understanding’ and ‘doing’ requires different attitudes. However, many times it is required to understand to do something, though it is not always essential.
At most schools, people understand a subject than be able to do something in it. Most people will be able to understand a subject that they study in college or school, but they will not be able to use it or do something with the understanding. In fact, almost all interviews and entrance tests test you on understanding than on doing. More dangerous is the graduates from top schools mistake ‘understanding’ for ‘doing’. The top B-school or Tech-school graduates come out and think they understand everything about an area and they can do anything, only to later realize that they only understand it and it is not enough to do something in the subject area. To come up with new innovations one needs to have a ‘doing’ attitude apart from a lot of other requirements.
Some of the finest professors will have difficulty managing big businesses, because understanding a game is very different from playing the game on the field. You can give your expert opinions about how to play, but playing on the field is a very different ball game.
Understanding is more linear because there are no interferences and obstructions. On the other hand, doing will face a lot of obstructions and interferences. However, it can be reasonably taken that good understanding helps doing, and doing helps in understanding.
Attitude cannot be copied
Posted on: August 21, 2011
attitude
“Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us.” - John N. Mitchell
” It’s not what happens to you that determines how far you will go in life ;it is how you handle what happens to you. “ - Zig Ziglar
Oh great! I got it. From tomorrow morning, I will have a positive outlook towards everything, I’ll have a positive attitude and I am happy. It isn’t that easy, isn’t it? If it were, all people would have read autobiographies, self-help books and developed great attitudes that make them the next leaders and the innovators.
Unlike other qualities, Attitude is something that cannot be copied, it can only be developed. By closely observing or by reading a book, one may copy the behaviour of the likes of a Gandhi or a Richard Branson, but that is not attitude. Attitude is the layer beneath your outlook and all your actions – proactive and reactive – in your life. Attitude is something that comes from your inside. It is what determines the skeleton of one’s character. Attitude is only developed with real life experiences and the learning that feeds back into the system. It is under constant change, and the way it changes also depends on the attitude towards the change.
Truth as an attitude
In my view, attitude is the most important element of life. Because, your attitude determines your actions, your attitude determines how you look at a situation. One of the things that I learnt in life is – the best way to live life is to follow truth. A mind of truth is always open, because you’re craving to know the truth and learn the truth. One cannot have an open mind without being true. It is very easy to get deceived that one has an open unbiased mind without being completely true, because your mind can deceive you of truth as what you believe as true.
What is Humanities?
Posted on: August 20, 2011
In my view beauty can be broadly defined into two types:
External Beauty: I feel external beauty is about clear skin, good BMI, glowing skin, fairness, good facial features, physical features, eyes, hair, and grooming.
Internal Beauty: I feel internal beauty is about the reflection of your character. It is about your actions, your knowledge, your thoughts, empathy, goodness, the goodness that you feel about yourself. It is about how you think about yourself.
What is Real Beauty?
One may find a person to be beautiful at the first instance. On the other hand, sometimes one may not find a person to be beautiful at the first instance, but after spending some time one may find the person to be beautiful. So, the parameters of judging the beauty changes based on the context.
Real beauty is something that you define for yourself, and you follow or you aspire to follow the real beauty. For example, if for a person the real beauty is fairness, then the person will try to maintain and improve their fairness of the skin. Similarly, if for a person the real beauty is about being good and being devoid of feelings like jealousy and hatred, then the person will aspire and try to maintain such goodness. So each person has their own definition of their real beauty.
My definition of real beauty
My definition of real beauty is a combination of both the internal and the external beauty. For me, internal beauty takes the priority over external beauty with a ratio of around 65:35. I would say somebody to be beautiful, only when somebody is beautiful internally and also externally with internal beauty taking priority over the external priority.
This is the reason why people take so much time to find the right partner to come in their life. Some people have the priority that it is okay if the person takes care of one’s parents, and one would need a fair and attractive women. On the other hand, some people would say it is okay if she is not so attractive, but she should connect with oneself
With respect to the priorities of external beauty, it is more about the clear skin, physical features, eyes, good facial features, good hair, good body mass index(BMI), not necessarily fair but not dark, well groomed manners and how one carries oneself.
With respect to the priorities of internal beauty, it is more about the actions, knowledge, thoughts, being devoid of feelings like hatred and jealousness, and being good and true to oneself.
To conclude, I would say the whole concept of real beauty is subjective to the context and the life-stage of a person. The same person at different life-stages would give different priorities to the internal and external beauty.
Thank you.
- In: Philosophy
- 2 Comments
I always observed that many people cry about the world. Some people complain about the inequality in the world, and some people do their bit to bridge the gap.
A few years ago, I was also one of them who were deeply thinking about the existing inequality in the world. A lot of my thinking was triggered by one uttering of my friend, Krishna Survi, who once said “If all the people in this world adhere to perfect truth, then there are no problems in this world.” The thought behind this sentence lies in the single most powerful word Truth. We concluded that almost all the problems in this world arise only because someone doesn’t adhere to the truth. It may be bribery, war, exploitation, anything that causes problems to humanity.
Most people think it is the hierarchy in the society that is creating the problems. No, it is the exploitation (not adhering to truth) of the people is what that people don’t like. Most people are willing to work very hard and truthfully if there work is heard and done justice. So, we thought of imagining an ideal world, where everybody is adhering to truth. People get exactly what they are to get for their deeds.
The Hidden Role of Chance
We could conclude that even this ideal world completely adhering to truth will not survive for a long period. Because in life there is some randomness, chance or fate that imbalances this system. For example, assume the ideal world is adhering to perfect truth. So two boys from a rural area are practising for a running competition. As these boys were walking together, a car bumped on one of the boys and in the process he lost both his legs. This is a chance or randomness or fate happening. The problem is these things create jealousness, vengeance, and other emotions which disturbs the ideal truthful world. Though the world is working correctly, the underlying carpet of chance/randomness/fate still disturbs it. One may say that these emotions like jealousness, vengeance are emotions of untruth and falsity. So how can these emotions come in the first place in this ideal world. But remember these are emotions, reaction to a stimuli, if you say these should also be controlled. What we are essentially asking is not a world of people adhering to truth but a world full of Buddhas.
In this world, you will always have somebody crying. If you want to cry along with them, you will always have somebody to cry with. It is better to do your part in life for justice and help the people than to cry for people at the bottom.
- In: Philosophy | Psychology
- 1 Comment
Every person has some intelligence. As you all know, it doesn’t matter how intelligent you’re what really matters is how you use your intelligence. Now, people use their intelligence in different ways. Some use their intelligence to earn more money, some to learn more, some to create something, some to change lives and society. Now, society assumes you always use your intelligence to earn more money. This is exactly why society measures intelligence in terms of success and success in terms of the paycheck.
Every smoker is a marketer
Posted on: February 7, 2010
- In: Business | Marketing | Philosophy | Psychology
- 7 Comments
A smoker is extremely loyal to his brand. A smoker feels that the brand resembles him and he acts as if he resembles the brand. One of the biggest advantages with tobacco companies is it has a process of network marketing for free. Most of the people who smoke would’ve been taught how to smoke by other smokers. This is the way they have a sense of oneness and they feel happy as a part of a group like cigarette brothers. This is why I say ‘Every smoker is a marketer’.
Sometime ago, I had an argument with my friend over the packaging changes to cigarette packs to make people aware of the problems of smoking. Finally we decided that may be the tobacco companies will not let any changes be done in the packaging as any minor change is going to make the consumer conscious about smoking. But we were wrong.
Three months later, the Supreme court ordered for all cigarette packs to carry a ‘Smoking Kills’ pictorial warning which covers at least 40% of the front of the pack. I went to a few stores in Hyderabad and found that the retailers are displaying the cigarette packs on the other side, the side which doesn’t have the warning. This seems to be nice marketing gimmick by the retailers and the tobacco companies.
BRANDING THE CIGARETTE PAPER
For the ‘Smoking Kills’ campaign to be more effective, I think it should also be extended to the cigarette paper. I think we need to brand the cigarette paper with something that the consumers really cares for, wherein they don’t like it to be burnt as they smoke. The immediate question is: what is it? My answer is YOU. Yes, brand the cigarette paper with the word YOU vertically. As and when he smokes he will be burning the word ‘YOU’, which is a direct indication of what he is doing to himself by smoking. It may not be effective immediately, but gradually it makes a subconscious impact on the smoker. Unlike the picture on the cigarette pack, the smoker will be forced to see this text as long as he smokes the cigarette. Though I don’t have any proven results, I think this will be more effective at the subconscious level and it will more effective.
A smoker spends 99% of his time with the cigarette, not with the cigarette pack. Moreover when the text YOU is burning it actually makes a subconscious impact on the people. A smoker is very conscious about the anti-tobacco advertisements which makes life more difficult. If you are consciously ignoring something it is very difficult to make you do it consciously, which is how the anti-tobacco campaigns ask the smokers to quit. For the anti-tobacco campaigns to be effective, the best way is to attack the sub-consciousness.
WHAT THE TOBACCO COMPANIES SHOULD DO?
If you are a smoker or a marketer, ask yourself ‘What is the biggest and the most common problem for a smoker?’. Yes, lighting the cigarette is the biggest problem. So I feel the tobacco companies should provide the dotted striker material on one side of their packs, with a few match sticks in their pack. This removes the dependency of the smoker and it may actually make people prefer your cigarette pack. Many people who smoke don’t like to carry lighters, match-sticks or anything that would indicate that they smoke. This is the best solution to address such problems.
All the above views are completely my individual opinions. Thank you.
Intelligence and Passion
Posted on: January 11, 2010
- In: Philosophy | Psychology
- 6 Comments
For all people there are two primary views of their life. One is the way they see themselves, and the other is how the ‘rest of the world’ sees them. Ofcourse, in this “rest of the world” there will be many people who have different opinions about you.
Intelligence
Let the way you see yourself be a circle. People who are close to you know enough of that circle. One of the key things in this self viewpoint is ‘Your viewpoint on your intelligence’. Everybody has their own circle of intelligence, and the ‘rest of the world’ circle of their intelligence.The difference arises because the rest of the world rates you by your achievements whereas you rate yourself by your capacity to achieve. The first one is the function of the mind alone, where people see a person’s achievements and rate his intelligence. This is quite straight for example if you are from a premier institute the ‘rest of the world’ rates you intelligent.But, the second one is the function of both the heart and mind where very secretly your heart rates your capacity saying ‘You can do this’ or ‘You cannot do this’. This is why you rate yourself higher or lower than the ‘rest of the world’ opinion.
Many people think it is the mind that wins over the heart. No, it is always the heart that wins over the mind. Because it is the heart that generates the will power to accomplish a task. It is the heart that lets u be awake all night and achieve things. It is the heart that makes you work hard. Most importantly your heart raises the bar of your intelligence as required for the task if your heart truly says ‘You can do this’. So that is why some people who believe that they can do what they want to will prove the ‘rest of the world’ intelligence rating wrong. Because their heart raises the bar of their intelligence and uses their complete potential. So, it is very important to know what your heart feels like when you do something.
Please travel with me from here on…
Let us talk about the case where your heart says ‘I can do this’. At this point what your heart knows is ‘I am intelligent enough for a task, I can do this’. So, your heart asks for challenging tasks. This is the reason why people like to crack tough exams, do tough jobs and more challenging tasks. Their heart doesn’t ask for something specific rather it asks for challenges. So they fulfill their heart by cracking exams, and doing tough jobs. The problem is they will constantly be in pursuit of challenges, which itself is a challenge. Most people in this don’t like the pursuit of challenges but they like challenges. Simply, they would like if somebody comes to them and gives them a tough puzzle to crack. They will crack it. But they don’t like to go in pursuit of the puzzle. Simply they cannot create the puzzle, they will stop at the last toughest puzzle in this world. Because their heart doesn’t like to create puzzles, their heart wants challenge in solving the puzzle.
Passion
Now comes one level above. In your journey of life, sometimes your heart finds what it is. You encounter something at which point you heart says to you ‘This is it’. This is what I love, and you will produce tremendous energy to do that because you love it. If you love something, you will automatically produce enormous amount of energy to do that, energy to stand alone against the whole world. This is what I call as PASSION. Love is the center of all this, as you love something automatically everything comes in place. It makes you do everything that needs to be done. The greatest achievers in this world are not the smartest, they are the people who loved what they did and hence produced enormous amount of will power to do it. In this state of mind, you will never lose because the way you go in is itself what your heart wants. It doesn’t want the completion of something, it wants that path towards it. This is the reason why these people don’t bother about the result and they work with complete energy because they are succeeding every moment in that path. This is the reason why they are the creators, they create the next big things. As they are in love with that path, they will make their own path leading to the most important discoveries and inventions of mankind. They will be in that eternal state of love. Even if you beat them to death, they will still be laughing because they have already succeeded.
Somehow, some people realize what their passion is pretty early in their life. I say they are very lucky. Because there is nothing better in your life than knowing what your passion is. If you haven’t found what your passion is and you are still in the domain of ‘asking for the next challenge’ please look for it. I know you don’t have time for it, but it will help you truly discover what is love.
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