Your Friendly Philosopher & Guide

For about 6 months he neither wished anyone a good morning nor did he say a good bye while leaving the office. His physical presence was hardly noticed, but his work was appreciated among peers and seniors.

One fine morning he came to my desk, patted me on the back and said Good Morning Kennedi. I was a bit taken aback. I was wondering why is this person behaving abnormal today? Then another person entered the office – and he said Good Morning Rajan. And the 3rd person entered the office – and he said Good Morning Rekha. I was able to gauge artificiality in his otherwise honest smile that day. And as usual my mind started pondering about what could be the possible reason for his put up transformation. And my hunch helped me this time too…

I went close to him, and whispered in his ears– are you reading Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence people” book. He asked how on earth did you know? And I said your ugly put on face shows it all!

Optimism is not about trying to do what others have done to be successful in their lives, but it is about knowing your own limitations, and using your inborn talents to serve the purpose you are born for.

I personally am bad at marketing – I cannot open my mouth in front of a stranger to sell anything. Hence I never wanted to get into marketing, and struggle there to succeed in life. I am bad at sports, I cannot run fast for God’s sake, I cannot climb trees, and I cannot climb ropes – hence I always saw to it that I made myself absent to school on sports day. I am bad at corporate office politics – hence I decided to quit and do astrology, which kind of comes easy to me by God’s grace.

There are many training programmes that are organized by motivating people about how to enhance your personality, how to stop worrying & start living, how to perform better at work, how to manage your time, how to create harmony at office so on and so forth. To be honest the fire of any training programme remains in human minds just for a couple of days, and people are back to square one sooner or later. And there is another training programme hatching already. I don’t know whether the people who attend benefit by it at all - but then the people who organize them benefit a lot! They succeed in making thousands in the process.

Many of my friends attended The Art of Living course. And all said it is awesome. After 6 months I asked them how ‘IS’ Art of Living, and they say it ‘WAS’ awesome.

There is a term called Svabhav – an intrinsic quality any individual is born with, and this cannot be changed at all with any amount of training, meditation or prayers. That is what YOU are, that is what YOU are born with, and that is what that will come with YOU till you reach your graveyard. Once you touch base with that YOU in you, you start accepting yourself completely and become more natural in behaviour. Your presence is accepted even without any efforts of yours, and you are loved without taking any attempt of yours. With time you stop imitating others, you stop reading self-help books, and you stop applying or experimenting what you have read in the book on others for your own personal selfish motives and growth.

Yeah, the friend I was talking about lives happily in the US with his wife and a kid. And when I think about him today a smile comes to my face, and all those good memories flies to my mind in microseconds - and I am glad that he is not saying a ‘hi’ or a ‘bye’ to me these days, which was so unnatural of him.