Do you want to Die Rich or Live Rich?
Are you Authentic?
Dearest Darling Readers, 
Authentic is a very powerful word.
Being authentic is being real. It is being genuine. It also is a process of being honest to yourself. It is in finding alignment with our hearts’ desires, to our values and in ‘not pretending’. It requires courage. It is uplifting. It may be tough but it is worth every bit of it. It is in taking a stand point for our beliefs and in not escaping unpleasant situations.
It makes us love ourselves even if the world does not. We may ‘have’ less. We will still ‘be’ more. Isn’t that fantastic?
In my work, being authentic has meant different things at different times. Sometimes, it has been in forgiving. Sometimes it has been in making a new beginning. Sometimes, it has been in listening to criticisms without replying, waiting for my work to do the talking. Sometimes it has been in letting go while sometimes it has meant to hold on. I have experienced that following this path has always pointed me toward rightness, peace and flow…
With no offense meant to anyone, here are a few questions that might help you in being more authentic. If it is useful, please go ahead and answer them when you feel like. If nothing else, it will help you in understanding yourself. Let me warn you. This might make you smile too….And yes, you can answer them in any order you like…
1. What is your favorite word?
2. What is your least favorite word?
3. What sound or noise do you love?
4. What inspires you? Who inspires you?
5. What scares you?
6. Your comeback mantra in life?
7. Do you have a mantra for living, loving, leaving (death)?
8. What brings the best out of you?
9. What brings the beast out of you?
10. What is your weakness?
11. On your bed stand, what book will we find?
12. In life, if you lose all your money, whom will you find standing next to you? Are you doing justice to them today?
13. If you have to invite 5 people who are alive for dinner, who would they be and why?
14. Is there a talent you wished you had?
15. What work do you hate but you must do?
17. What will be the title of your autobiography?
18. If you have all the money in the world, what would you like to do?
19. What is your hobby? Do you regularly do it? Why not? Really?
20. When you are not working, what do you do with your time?
There! You see! You know yourself a little more now. May your answers guide you in making apt choices. May your answers bring the best out of you. All these answers have helped me to be authentic to myself. May it do the same to you too…
With loads of love, prayers and best wishes,
Narendra Goidani
As I Live, I learn.
You make me want to be a better man
Dearest Darling Readers, 
Jack Nicholson’s character ‘Melvin Udal’ famously said to Helen Hunt’s character Carol Connelly in the movie, ’As Good as it Gets‘: “You make me want to be a better man.”
The scene, the dialogue, the impact lingers fresh even today.
And I wonder who are those people who had similar impact on me?
My Teacher Ms Ela Mukherjee - I was 16. One day she looked hard at me and said, ‘You are not an ordinary boy. You will do something significant with your life.” I believe, today if she were alive, she would be proud of how I am living. In that moment, I could have said, You make me want to be a better man.
My mother - I was 18. All her jewelry was sold during a family financial crisis. I could do nothing to stop her from selling her gold. She was peaceful and determined. I was devastated. I was helpless. I was crying. In that moment I wanted to be a better man.
My trainer Rajan - I was about 26. After a session he hugged me and said, “You are a mountain of a man.” One day, in his home, he was in a pensive mood. He looked at me, looked away from me and said in a silent voice, “You are the only person who can do more than me. And he cried tears of joy.” Wow…a trainer I was looking up to says this about me!!! In both those instances, I decided to be a better man.
Dr Victor Frankl - I was about 28. I read his autobiography and my life changed. I believe, in their life time, every human being should read his autobiography, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’. It’s awesome! To even think of what he had to endure and yet emerge unscathed from the travails of the concentration camps is so very inspiring. And that too not for personal gains….that too for the sake of humanity. To make everyone believe, no one else controls their life, but, “They Do!!!” As I read his book, so many times, I had goose bumps all over. So many times, I was determined to live a ‘meaningful’ life. If he was there, sitting with me, I would have certainly told him, “You make me want to be a better man.”
A painter was asked, ‘which is his best painting?’ ‘The next one’, he answered.
The journey continues. Many more people and events, large and small, have re-enforced the desire and determination to be better than ever before. I have realised, there are no destinations to reach, only milestones to cross, with happiness and a sense of purpose.
Today, when I see selflessness, when I see genuineness, when I see sacrifice, when I see sharing and caring, when I see expressions of unbridled love, I get overwhelmed. Tears well up. To each one of them I wish to say “You make me want to be a better man.”
As I write the LSMs, I ask myself, reading this, will someone want to be a better man (or woman)? Dear friends, I ask you, does reading LSMs make you want to be a better person? If yes, then the time we invest to write, edit, format, design, the few lakhs we invest every year on resources to release the LSMs, is all worth it. If no, I need to know and I am willing to improve. Help!
Darling friends, LSMs have completed 3 years in the same format. Would you like to see/read something else too in LSMs?
Would you like a particular aspect (parenting / marriage / sales / business / stories / quotes etc to be covered in LSM?
Would you like videos / audios to be presented in LSMs and make it more complete?
Would you like to write for LSMs?
Is there any other suggestion you would love to make? Your thoughts are welcome and needed.
In the coming month, based on your sharing, we will bring about changes in the content, design, format and presentation to make your LSMs more ‘lively and inspiring’.
Some of our readers regularly send us their thoughts. Their feedbacks are our HUGE motivation and a constant reminder of how much your thoughts mean to us. Thank you so much…What can we do in turn? What else but “Be better in connecting with you.”
Personally for me, as always, as Jack Nicholson would say, ”You make me want to be a better man.”
With loads of love, prayers and best wishes,
Narendra Goidani
As I Live, I learn.
Questions Are Powerful - Think About it.
Work place helps us grow intellectually and professionally.
People who are growth seeking, love their workplace.
This is the opportunity to tell us what you feel about your workplace.
Use an adjective to tell us how you can describe it best.
It could be ‘growth’, ‘teamwork’, ‘cooperation’ or anything else…
Waiting to know your answers…
Dancing with Insecurities Part II
Dearest Darling Friends, 
‘Things’ people want, change from time to time. But, how they want to ‘feel’ remains the same. In relationships, it is the feelings and not the things that we need to focus on. When the feelings are not right, we feel insecure.
In the last LSM- Dancing with Insecurities, my dear friends, we had discussed about what happens when we become insecure. I was thrilled with the feedbacks we received for that LSM. I had promised we will discuss about solutions this week. Here it comes…
I believe, there are five possible ways to deal with the insecurity we feel.
1. Inspiration -Inspired people achieve more in life than those who are ‘not’ inspired. Like a bird, who flies over the fences on the ground unmindful of the fences, inspiration makes me feel I can conquer everything. I sort of shrug off the doubts and hurdles on the path of my dreams. There is an inner force that sharpens my focus on what is to be done and makes me ignore what cannot be done. Even in the worst of times, an inspired person can see options. They never feel insecure.
2. Selfless Contribution – When I give without expecting anything in turn, I feel ‘powerful’. I feel ‘self worth’. I feel ‘I am good’. There is no possibility of insecurity. There is only ‘My life is worth living’. This makes me search for opportunities to give (When I feel secure, only then I can give without expectations). This is the opposite of ‘I am scared of giving as I may not have enough for me’ (which is insecurity).
3. Improve – Every time I find someone is better than me, I can either feel inferior or I can decide to improve. As I improve I KNOW I am becoming better. This gives me a sense of control over life. Insecurity makes me feel out of control. Hence, improvement is one of the easiest ways of tackling insecurity. After improving, so often I feel it was not worth feeling insecure. I realise this insecurity was a mirage. Ironically, this mirage makes me see what I am capable of. It is a wistful, funny, embarrassing truth and always implementable.
4. Count Your Blessings – This used to be my favorite. There are always some people who are worse off than we are. There are always some people who have much less than what we have got. There are always enough people who are happily willing to exchange what we are complaining about. Yes certainly, things can be better. However, things are already much better than many lives. I used to tell myself, “Don’t be greedy. Be content with what you have. And work harder than ever before to get what you want. Don’t Complain. Don’t Blame. Don’t carry excuses.” It always used to work. It always used to put me in the proper frame of mind to realise, this is indeed the truth. I would then smile, say a sorry to the creator and carry on.”
5. Whole and the role -Ahaa…this is a little mystical one. This is also my current favorite. This is what is working for me ‘big time’ today. I believe all of us are ‘one’. In this oneness, all of us have a role to play. The way the body is one and all the body parts have a role to play, all the parts are different, yet all of them are important. Similarly, each person belongs to the same force, the one force, the ONE. Each one of us have a role to play. Let’s focus on our role and not get concerned about my role being bigger or smaller. Big or small, the role is important. In being insecure, our focus shifts from our roles to ‘I want that role’. Imagine the tongue wanting the role of the leg and the leg thinking the throat is doing a more important work. There is no iota of truth in that. I am a part of the whole and I will focus on my role. It makes me feel important, valuable and determined.
To sum it up, each one of the above points puts you in the zone of ‘peace, self worth and performance’. It makes you realise no one can have it all. It makes you realise, no one ever NEEDS it all. It makes you realise there is so much that can be done with what we have, there is no point in being insecure.
Japan with hardly any natural resource is the second biggest economy of the whole world. With no offense to all my friends in Africa, with all the natural resources in the world, their economic and social status today is a tragedy. Be a Japan that we have today, and not the Africa that we have today.
With loads of love, prayers and best wishes,
Narendra Goidani
As I Live, I learn.
Questions are Powerful - Think About It
When things don’t go the way we expected, it is easy to be disheartened.
At that crucial moment, do we show courage to go on or do we give up and stop seeking happiness?
Think about it and share with us @
http://www.lifeschool.co.in/what-is-it-that-stands-between-you-and-your-happiness/
Dancing with Insecurity.
Dearest Darling Readers,
Imagine yourself in front of a person who makes you feel insecure? How do you feel?
Do you feel a freeze?
Do you feel threatened?
Do you feel like a loser?
Do you feel like escaping?
Do you feel like screaming and no voice comes out?
Do you stay quiet and hate yourself for doing so?
Now, I ask you a crucial question. To change how you feel, can you do something right then, ‘within’?
If you can’t, lets delve a little deeper into insecurity.
Insecurity makes me uninteresting. Insecurity makes me possessive. Insecurity makes me panicky with imaginative negatives. Insecurity makes me unfriendly. Insecurity makes me jealous…..and much more.
Besides all of that, insecurity destroys my ability to connect.
People give us opportunities not only because we are talented or hard working or meritorious. People give us opportunities because they feel ‘connected’ to us.
Sometimes insecurities makes me do things going out of my way, thinking, it will please someone I want to appease. Sadly, I end up getting ridiculed or taken for granted. That makes me even more insecure.
Sometimes, I go on a crash diet wanting a glance of appreciation from someone. Sadly, I end up as the butt of jokes.
Sometimes, I pass up opportunities wanting to prove my genuinity. Sadly, I get taken as an idiot.
Every time, my sense of inadequacy ‘remains’. Ironically, my insecurity seems to have a life strength of its own that refuses to weaken.
Why is it so difficult to shake off this insecurity?
Clear your head and read on!!!
Everyone wants to feel like a hero. When we see inside, we feel weak, we feel inadequate, we feel low willpower, we feel we are not strong enough. In other words, we feel secretly ashamed of being ‘me’. There is no hiding here. There is no cheating here. There is no pretending here. There is only truth.
Immediately, we look outside for own sense of worth. Remember, we want to feel like a hero, we want to feel desirable.
This becomes our need for validation / approval / appreciation / acknowledgment.
Example…Have you noticed the madness to be around celebrities? To touch them, to be photographed with them, to collect their autographs, to throw their names in our ‘friends list’, etc is our way of increasing our self worth.
Another example…the advertising industry has exploited our need for acceptance by spending billions of dollars paying celebrities ‘preying’ on our naivety.
Sadly, this creates a belief that self worth can be purchased / acquired just like a car / music system / phone / fair skin / bigger home / designer brands / holidays abroad to exotic destinations etc.
The trouble is —- “No approval from the world can make us feel WORTHY”. No validations can ever eliminate self doubts.
On the contrary, it makes us more fragile / arrogant / snobbish / anxious. At the same time, when we crave for approval, we give the control over our lives to ‘others’. They are appointed as valuers who determine your value. A cobbler is asked to value a diamond. A fish is judged based on its ability to climb a tree. So sad!!!
How to overcome this? How to escape from this trap? How to ‘be’ secure?
Please bear with us. The answers follow in the next ‘Life School Message’. Sorry for the wait. On a lighter side, I have become influenced by our TV serials. Honestly speaking, this LSM was becoming a tad too long. Besides, I want you to think about this LSM, reflect it with you life and contemplate on the answers….
See you next week..
With loads of love, prayers and best wishes,
Narendra Goidani
As I Live, I learn.
Questions Are Powerful …Think About It
Leaving behind everything, when you live in the present day ‘greatly’, you will create a great tomorrow. Live each day full of life.
For some people, when they live a day fully with hard work, devotion, love, cheerfulness, joy or positivity, it makes ‘great day’ for them.
Ponder and share with us
http://www.lifeschool.co.in/what-is-it-that-makes-a-day-great-for-you/
Always observe carefully
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65sZgLu0Gt0&feature=player_embedded
Watch this Video for: The importance of OBSERVATION in Business.
Duration: 00:2:18
Language: English.
