Asking does not reduce me nor does it take away from my friendship.
Asking requires humility, something I am always in need of.
Asking is how I learnt as student and how I remain so.
Asking is how I learnt my trade and how I continue to ply it.
Asking is how I get customers and how I keep them.
Asking is how I got my wife and how she remains so.
Asking is the basis of prayer.

It is the only way to the Lord.

If I have no expectation and no fear asking can only make me stronger.

EVERY PERSON ought to have a great vision. You have to get to where you want to be by not accepting what ever has taken place but by often questioning the current state of things.

Did you know that one can create a vision in a 'future backwards' manner, rather than the conventional 'present forward' manner. Try it out. You will come out successful. Companies like Motorola and Toyota have emerged successful after implementing this.

Great vision always reserves room for providence and lends itself to the power of emergence. If you have thought through how to execute the vision in fullest detail; you probably do not kow that you do not know. Great vision is an apparition of the future - not the future itself. Even when you lose your sight, there is no need to give up you vision.

We all have with us the potential for greatness or for failure. Both possibilites are an innate part of our character. Whether we reach for the stars or plunge to the depths of despair depends in large measure on how we manage our positive and negative potential. It is doubtful that, if left unchecked, your virtues will rage out of control. Unfortunately, faults have a way of multiplying until they eventually choke out your good quailities and more importantly your past good deeds. The surest way to control your faults is to attack them moment they appear.

Move on people; The world is waiting for you.

Confront before you conflict.  Only way to avoid conflict is to confront. As human beings we are different and hence,  conflict is inevitable.

A forest can exist because the trees learn to confront. Trees, as they grow up, realize that if they do not learn to confront essentially their air space, they cannot exist. There are trees which grow within 6-12 inches from each other when they are seedlings. Only one gets beyond the others, and the little ones eventually die in the shadow of the big one. Then, the seedling 12 feet away from this one, will eventually come into space where they have to give in to each other. The forest can appease this whole series of confrontations happening.

And that is essentially what we need to do—learn from nature. Confront before you conflict. And you have to confront early, so that even when the tiny little branches from two opposing trees come close to each other, the saplings touch each other, they recognize each otherand that is a confrontation.

 
Confrontation is never personal, conflict is always personal.

Confront issues.

One doesn’t confront the person. One is in conflict with the person.

It is not about addressing you. One can confront on one’s methodology, one’s philosophy, one’s psychology or any of this without confronting the person. A confrontation should be as beneficial to the confrontee as it is to the confronter. If the issue to you is relevant to you as a learning process, you don’t care where you learn it from.

It is like learning a language. You want to say it right, and in that process if you have someone saying to you…”No, that is wrong. You have to say dosti and not doste, the t is pronounced this way.” Are you insulted by that? It will be foolish of you to be insulted by that. You have to recognize that you do want to say it right, your goal is to say it right. The more you use the language the more people can correct you.

In confrontation it is always about the issue. You present your issue and say: “Do you think this is right?” Then you must be open to the fact that it could be wrong. But not to speak up and confront will always lead to conflict. The more you keep you keep quiet, the longer the time bomb is ticking.

But, you have to do your homework. Otherwise you will find that in every confrontation, you are proved wrong. You basically sit back and wonder – ‘why is it that I am always wrong?’  If you don’t do your homework, naturally every confrontation is a battle you are losing. That is the first aspect in the art of learning.

Read also : TAPS

There is no purpose to our existence if there is no dream. We all start off with a dream before we meet success—a dream or a reason which keeps you awake every night, and not something which you have when you are asleep. A dream which keeps you going—which keeps you out there pushing yourself, not making you feel tired—because you are so focused on what you are doing.

If this dream is not compelling, you will not do anything to achieve it. It should push you forward to do something.

If you are looking at the predicament of an impoverished village, or of a dying best friend or of a homeless child,  it evokes so much compassion and pity in you, , so much that you feel: “I want to do something for this person. I want to build a hospital. I want to give them a school…” There is a reason first, and then it compels you, it drives you.  Compelling reason is something that makes you get up every morning to do something you strongly believe in.

The first step towards achieving success is in understanding yourself and finding that compelling reason to reach your dream. Identify the driving force which will take you out there everyday, face rejections, come back home and take you back the next day.

Most of us are not sure what our compelling reason is. If we don’t have a reason pushing us forward, nothing can be achieved. No one else can tell you what your compelling reason is.

You have to BE more before you can do, and you have to DO more before you can have. Compelling reason defies logic; it does not allow you to be tired. It makes your think bigger. Because you know that there is something to be achieved.

The only secret to achieving your dreams is to help people around you achieve theirs, giving hope to people who lost it. It is in raising yourself to help mankind. If your compelling reason is beyond material needs, it is even more compelling.

Trespass is something which is fundamental to the art of communication. You need to have it to speak to someone else.  If it is not there, you will not make any impact. It has to be obtained, and if you have it today, it does not mean you have it tomorrow.  It is a process. It is something you have to work upon to obtain and maintain. It has to be constantly maintained.

Without trespass you have no communication, you have only a lecture.

Communication implies understanding and there should be something reciprocal in the process. Communication is beyond information being transferred from one person to another. It is knowledge, and at the highest level, it is wisdom. In order for that to happen, it cannot be a process of somebody hammering something through your skull.

It is a process of you seeking and  someone else guiding. Ultimately wisdom is not something from without, it is from within. You can only seek it from within, but the person has to be without to guide you.

In the learning process, who are the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’?  Academicians do not acquire wisdom unfortunately. All that they have become is a walking library. Being a professor doesn’t make you any smarter. How many professors of finance are millionaires? Being academic unfortunately only teaches one to hoard. It gets in the way of acquiring more knowledge.

Because, you are then like the monkey with its hand in that jar of peanuts. It can’t release its hands. It can’t acquire anymore peanuts. The fact that it is trapped by the peanuts shows that it is blind. But when other monkeys come close to the peanuts, it becomes aggressive. It wants to protect the jar. It is afraid that they want the peanuts inside. How foolish is that? The same peanuts have enslaved the monkey, the monkey is enslaved because of that jar. It is triumphant and is holding up that jar as a sign of victory and is protecting it aggressively. That is greed. Greed for knowledge is not a thirst for knowledge. Greedy people acquire not because they are hungry. They acquire for the sake of acquisition.

You have to recognize that the only way to reach that person is to establish trespass and without establishing trespass you cannot communicate.

Trespass is something that has to be constantly maintained. It is a garden which requires pruning. If you overlook it once or twice, you have overgrown the garden. It then becomes a jungle.

Without clear pathways, there is no communication. Without trespass, there is no communication. Mandatory trespass is not something that automatically leads to voluntary trespass. In the guru-shishya (teacher-student)equivalent, the shishya not only gives the trespass, he maintains it. The onus is on him, not the guru.

It is because you live in the foolish illusion that you will live a hundred years, that you will not give your trust for trespass. If you think you will die tomorrow, who will you give your trust to?