iCharts Discussions

[vinay28]

guys, this is NOT intended to cast any aspirations on what you have been posting, which is good. BUT when we post/forward such poignant/exciting stories/photos, we must understand that many of them are fake. The best way to find out is from a website (snopes.com), which is famous for advising whether any well circulated story/photo is true or fake. Take example of "a glass of milk - paid in full" posted by Buffet. It is true but only partly e.g. Dr. Kelly was never poor. So for your info and benefit, I am giving below the weblink

http://www.snopes.com/glurge/milk.asp

so keep posting as these stories, even if fiction, do have some message. But also check whether it is true. I always do.

[g_kab35]

[buffet71]

[size=18]A Nice Story with Good Morals [/size]:---
A kindergarten teacher has decided to let her class play a game.

The teacher told each child in the class to bring along a plastic bag containing a few potatoes.

Each potato will be given a name of a person that the child hates,

So the number of potatoes that a child will put in his/her plastic bag will depend on the number of people he/she hates.

So when the day came, every child brought some potatoes with the name of the people he/she hated. Some had 2 potatoes; some 3 while some up to 5 potatoes. The teacher then told the children to carry with them the potatoes in the plastic bag wherever they go (even to the toilet) for 1 week.

Days after days passed by, and the children started to complain due to the unpleasant smell let out by the rotten potatoes. Besides, those having 5 potatoes also had to carry heavier bags. After 1 week, the children were relieved because the game had finally ended....

The teacher asked: "How did you feel while carrying the potatoes with you for 1 week?" The children let out their frustrations and started complaining of the trouble that they had to go through having to carry the heavy and smelly potatoes wherever they go.

Then the teacher told them the hidden meaning behind the game. The teacher said: "This is exactly the situation when you carry your hatred for somebody inside your heart. The stench of hatred will contaminate your heart and you will carry it with you wherever you go. If you cannot tolerate the smell of rotten potatoes for just 1 week, can you imagine what is it like to have the stench of hatred in your heart for your lifetime???"

Moral of the story: Throw away any hatred for anyone from your heart so that you will not carry sins for a lifetime. Forgiving others is the best attitude to take!

[pkholla]

Vinay: True story from Sudha Infosys Murthy's book " The day I stopped drinking milk"


It was the beginning of summer. I was boarding Udyan Express at Gulbarga railway station. My destination was Bangalore. As I boarded the train, I saw that the second-class reserved compartment was jam-packed with people. I sat down and was pushed to the corner of the berth. Though it was meant for three people, there were already six of us sitting on it...

The ticket collector came in and started checking people's tickets and reservations.. Suddenly, he looked in my direction and asked, 'What about your ticket?' 'I have already shown my ticket to you,' I said.

'Not you, madam, the girl hiding below your berth. Hey, come out, where is your ticket?' I realized that someone was sitting below my berth. When the ticket collector yelled at her, the girl came out of hiding.

She was thin, dark, scared and looked like she had been crying profusely. She must have been about thirteen or fourteen years old. She had uncombed hair and was dressed in a torn skirt and blouse. She was trembling and folded both her hands.. The ticket collector started forcibly pulling her out from the compartment. Suddenly, I had a strange feeling. I stood up and called out to the ticket collector. 'Sir, I will pay for her ticket,' I said.

Then he looked at me and said, 'Madam, if you give her ten rupees, she will be much happier with that than with the ticket.'

I did not listen to him. I told the ticket collector to give me a ticket to the last destination, Bangalore, so that the girl could get down wherever she wanted.
Slowly, she started talking. She told me that her name was Chitra. She lived in a village near Bidar. Her father was a coolie and she had lost her mother at birth. Her father had remarried and had two sons with her stepmother. But a few months ago, her father had died. Her stepmother started beating her often and did not give her food. She was tired of that life. She did not have anybody to support her so she left home in search of something better.

By this time, the train had reached Bangalore. I said goodbye to Chitra and got down from the train. My driver came and picked up my bags. I felt someone watching me. When I turned back, Chitra was standing there and looking at me with sad eyes. But there was nothing more that I could do. I had paid her ticket out of compassion but I had never thought that she was going to be my responsibility!...

I told her to get into my car. My driver looked at the girl curiously. I told him to take us to my friend Ram's place. Ram ran separate shelter homes for boys and girls. We at the Infosys Foundation supported him financially. I thought Chitra could stay there for some time and we could talk about her future after I came back from my tours.

I was not sure if Chitra would even be there. But to my surprise, I saw Chitra looking much happier than before. Ram suggested that Chitra could go to a high school nearby. I immediately agreed and said that I would sponsor her expenses as long as she continued to study. I left the shelter knowing that Chitra had found a home and a new direction in her life.

I got busier and my visits to the shelter reduced to once a year. But I always inquired about Chitra's well-being over the phone. I knew that she was studying well and that her progress was good.. I offered to sponsor her college studies if she wanted to continue studying. But she said, 'No, Akka. I have talked to my friends and made up my mind. I would like to do my diploma in computer science so that I can immediately get a job after three years.' She wanted to become economically independent as soon as possible.. Chitra obtained her diploma with flying colours. She also got a job in a software company as an assistant testing engineer. When she got her first salary, she came to my office with a sari and a box of sweets.

One day, when I was in Delhi, I got a call from Chitra. She was very happy. 'Akka, my company is sending me to USA! I wanted to meet you and take your blessings but you are not here in Bangalore.'.

Years passed. Occasionally, I received an e-mail from Chitra. She was doing very well in her career. She was posted across several cities in USA and was enjoying life. I silently prayed that she should always be happy wherever she was.

Years later, I was invited to deliver a lecture in San Francisco for Kannada Koota, an organization where families who speak Kannada meet and organize events. The lecture was in a convention hall of a hotel and I decided to stay at the same hotel. After the lecture, I was planning to leave for the airport. When I checked out of the hotel room and went to the reception counter to pay the bill, the receptionist said, 'Ma'am, you don't need to pay us anything. The lady over there has already settled your bill. She must know you pretty well.' I turned around and found Chitra there.

She was standing with a young white man and wore a beautiful sari. She was looking very pretty with short hair. Her dark eyes were beaming with happiness and pride. As soon as she saw me, she gave me a brilliant smile, hugged me and touched my feet. I was overwhelmed with joy and did not know what to say. I was very happy to see the way things had turned out for Chitra. But I came back to my original question. 'Chitra, why did you pay my hotel bill? That is not right.' suddenly sobbing, she hugged me and said, 'Because you paid for my ticket from Bombay to Bangalore!'

[buffet71]

PKHolla,Great...and Pls going on...

[pkholla]

[buffet71]

The Praying Hands :--- Back in the fifteenth century, in a tiny village near Nuremberg, lived a family with eighteen children. Eighteen! In order merely to keep food on the table for this mob, the father and head of the household, a goldsmith by profession, worked almost eighteen hours a day at his trade and any other paying chore he could find in the neighborhood. Despite their seemingly hopeless condition, two of Albrecht Durer the Elder’s children had a dream. They both wanted to pursue their talent for art, but they knew full well that their father would never be financially able to send either of them to Nuremberg to study at the Academy.
After many long discussions at night in their crowded bed, the two boys finally worked out a pact. They would toss a coin. The loser would go down into the nearby mines and, with his earnings, support his brother while he attended the academy. Then, when that brother who won the toss completed his studies, in four years, he would support the other brother at the academy, either with sales of his artwork or, if necessary, also by laboring in the mines.
They tossed a coin on a Sunday morning after church. Albrecht Durer won the toss and went off to Nuremberg. Albert went down into the dangerous mines and, for the next four years, financed his brother, whose work at the academy was almost an immediate sensation. Albrecht’s etchings, his woodcuts, and his oils were far better than those of most of his professors, and by the time he graduated, he was beginning to earn considerable fees for his commissioned works.
When the young artist returned to his village, the Durer family held a festive dinner on their lawn to celebrate Albrecht’s triumphant homecoming. After a long and memorable meal, punctuated with music and laughter, Albrecht rose from his honored position at the head of the table to drink a toast to his beloved brother for the years of sacrifice that had enabled Albrecht to fulfill his ambition. His closing words were, “And now, Albert, blessed brother of mine, now it is your turn. Now you can go to Nuremberg to pursue your dream, and I will take care of you.”
All heads turned in eager expectation to the far end of the table where Albert sat, tears streaming down his pale face, shaking his lowered head from side to side while he sobbed and repeated, over and over, “No …no …no …no.”
Finally, Albert rose and wiped the tears from his cheeks. He glanced down the long table at the faces he loved, and then, holding his hands close to his right cheek, he said softly, “No, brother. I cannot go to Nuremberg. It is too late for me. Look … look what four years in the mines have done to my hands! The bones in every finger have been smashed at least once, and lately I have been suffering from arthritis so badly in my right hand that I cannot even hold a glass to return your toast, much less make delicate lines on parchment or canvas with a pen or a brush. No, brother … for me it is too late.”
More than 450 years have passed. By now, Albrecht Durer’s hundreds of masterful portraits, pen and silver-point sketches, watercolors, charcoals, woodcuts, and copper engravings hang in every great museum in the world, but the odds are great that you, like most people, are familiar with only one of Albrecht Durer’s works. More than merely being familiar with it, you very well may have a reproduction hanging in your home or office.
One day, to pay homage to Albert for all that he had sacrificed, Albrecht Durer painstakingly drew his brother’s abused hands with palms together and thin fingers stretched skyward. He called his powerful drawing simply “Hands,” but the entire world almost immediately opened their hearts to his great masterpiece and renamed his tribute of love “The Praying Hands.”

[umesh1]

Great going buffet and prakash
Regards
Umesh

[umesh1]

Once,in a town,the frogs decided to have a competition,the challenge was :To climb the tallest tower around,the news spread swiftly and people turned up in large numbers to witness this rare event
S cores of frog had come forward to participate in this competion,the people had lined up on the two sides,when they saw the dizzy height of the tower their immediate reaction was "These silly frogs are kidding,they will never be able to make it to the top"
The Race began
The crowd began to scream "Impossible! you cant! Give up give up!"
The frogs tried their best but the screaming of the crowd was so loud and deafening that it dampened their moral,so one by one they gave up,quitting the race in discouragement,they accepted their defeat
But one of the frogs held the fort,he decided not to give up and reached to the TOP,Come what may
Cheers
and He did
The spectators couldnt believe their eyes,the tiny creature had proved all of them the skeptics,the doom-sayers wrong,now outwitted and awestruck by this go getters gutsy will they were giving him a standing ovation! After the medal ceremony,one of the quitters approached the winner-frog ,and wanted to know the "Secret" of his success,What the quitter discovered was:The winner -frog was deaf.Totally Deaf!
So,my dear young frogs if you aspire to reach your goals..the top of the high tower.plug your ears to all those negative voices around...
Be a Go-Getter;Be a deaf frog
Cheers

[pkholla]

Good one, Umesh. Like you have said 100+ times, switch off your emotions, switch off your TV, switch off "Tulsiyan and Group" and concentrate on your trade. Jai Hind, Prakash Holla

[buffet71]

Why Failure is Wonderful :-- Often in life, events occur that we truly can't control. The company we're working for "downsizes" and we get laid off. Our spouse leaves us. A family member becomes ill, or someone close to us dies. The government cuts a program we've depended on. In these situations, we may feel as if there is simply nothing we can do to make things better.

Maybe you've had the experience of trying everything you knew to get a job, to help your family, to find your soulmate, or just to feel happier. But nothing seemed to work. When we try a new approach, try our best, yet we still fail to reach our goal, often we fear trying again.

Why? Because we all want to avoid pain! And nobody wants to fail again. Nobody wants to give his or her all, only to be disappointed. Often, after many of these experiences of disappointment, we stop trying! We get to the point where we believe that nothing will work.

If you find yourself at the point where you're not even willing to try, you've put yourself in a place called "learned helplessness".

You've literally learned - or taught yourself - that you're "helpless." The good news is that you're wrong. You can make things happen! You can change anything in your life today by changing your perceptions and changing your actions.

"I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."

- Thomas Edison

The first step to turning your life around is getting rid of this negative belief that you can't do anything or that you're helpless. How can you do that? Often the reason that people say they can't do something is that they've tried things in the past that haven't worked. But remember - and I've used this phrase again and again throughout my life:

Your past does not equal your future.
What matters is not yesterday but what you do right now. So many people are trying to drive into the future using a rearview mirror to guide themselves! If you do that, you'll crash. Instead you must focus on what you can do today to make things better.

persistence pays

Many people tell me, "I've tried millions of ways to succeed, and nothing works!" Or, "I've tried thousands of ways!" Think about it. They probably haven't even tried hundreds of ways to change things, or even dozens. Most people have tried eight, nine, ten ways to make a change, and when it hasn't worked out, they've given up.

The key to success is to decide what's most important to you and then take massive action each day to make it better, even when it doesn't look as if it's working.

I'll give you an example. Have you ever heard of a guy named Colonel Sanders? Of course you have. How did Colonel Sanders become such an unbelievable success? Was it because he was born wealthy? Was his family rich? Did they send him to a top university like Harvard? Maybe he was successful because he started his business when he was really young. Are any of these true?

The answer is no. Colonel Sanders didn't begin to fulfill his dream until he was 65 years old! What drove him to finally take action? He was broke and alone. He got his first Social Security check for $105, and he got mad. But instead of blaming society or just writing Congress a nasty note, he started asking himself, "What could I do that would be valuable for other people? What could I give back?" He started thinking about what he had that was valuable to others.

His first answer was, "Well, I have this chicken recipe everyone seems to love! What if I sold my chicken recipe to restaurants? Could I make money doing that?" Then he immediately thought, "That's ridiculous. Selling my recipe won't even pay the rent."

And he got a new idea: "What if I not only sold them my recipe but also showed them how to cook the chicken properly? What if the chicken was so good that it increased their business? If more people came to see them and they made more chicken sales, maybe they would give me a percentage of those additional sales."

Many people have great ideas. But Colonel Sanders was different. He was a man who didn't just think of great things to do. He put them into action. He went and started knocking on doors, telling each restaurant owner his story: "I've got a great chicken recipe, and I think if you use it, it'll increase your sales. And I'd like to get a percentage of that increase."

Well, many people laughed in his face. They said, "Look, old man, get out of here. What are you wearing that stupid white suit for?" Did Colonel Sanders give up? Absolutely not. He had the # 1 key to success; I call it personal power.

Personal power means being persistent in taking action: Every time you do something, you learn from it, and you find a way to do it better next time. Colonel Sanders certainly used his personal power! Instead of feeling bad about the last restaurant that had rejected his idea, he immediately started focusing on how to tell his story more effectively and get better results from the next restaurant.

How many times do you think Colonel Sanders heard no before getting the answer he wanted? He was refused 1,009 times before he heard his first yes. He spent two years driving across America in his old, beat-up car, sleeping in the back seat in his rumpled white suit, getting up each day eager to share his idea with someone new. Often, the only food he had was a quick bite of the samples he was preparing for prospective buyers.

How many people do you think would have gone for 1,009 noes - two years of no's! - and kept on going? Very few. That's why there's only one Colonel Sanders. I think most people wouldn't get past twenty noes, much less a hundred or a thousand! Yet this is sometimes what it takes to succeed.

If you look at any of the most successful people in history, you will find this common thread: They would not be denied. They would not accept no. They would not allow anything to stop them from making their vision, their goal, a reality.

Did you know that Walt Disney was turned down 302 times before he got financing for his dream of creating "The Happiest Place on Earth"? All the banks thought he was crazy. He wasn't crazy; he was a visionary and, more important, he was committed to making that vision a reality. Today, millions of people have shared in "the joy of Disney," a world like no other, a world launched by the decision of one man.

When I lived in my crummy little apartment, washing my dishes in the bathtub, I had to keep reminding myself of these kinds of stories. I had to keep reminding myself that:
No problem is permanent.

No problem affects my entire life.

This, too, shall pass if I continue to take massive, positive, constructive action.

I kept thinking, "Even though my life looks terrible right now, there are many things to be thankful for, like the two friends I have, or the fact that I have all my senses, or that I can breathe fresh air." I constantly reminded myself to focus on what I wanted, to focus on solutions instead of problems. And I remembered that no problem affects my entire life, even though it may look like it right now.

So I decided I would no longer believe that my whole life was screwed up simply because I had financial difficulties or emotional frustrations. I decided that there was nothing wrong with me, but that I was simply in "lag time." In other words, I knew that if I were to continue nurturing the seeds I had planted - continue doing the right things - I would make it out of this winter of my life and into spring, when I would reap the rewards of years of seemingly fruitless efforts.

I also decided that doing exactly the same things over and over again and expecting a different result was insane. I had to try something new, and I had to keep on until I found the answers I needed.

My message to you is simple, and in your heart you know it's true: Massive, consistent action with pure persistence and a sense of flexibility in pursuing your goals will ultimately give you what you want, but you must abandon any sense that there is no solution. You must focus immediately on the actions you can take today, even if they are small ones.

This makes sense, doesn't it? So why don't more people follow the advice of the Nike ad and just do it? The answer is that they've been shut down by fear of failure. But I've discovered something wonderful about failure ...

[p_wangdu]

buffet71 ... good article thanks . "A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new."

[mogili]

Really, failures are stepping stones to success.

Cheers.

[Thordisida]

Another good thread, please continue to make them so, I see you stopped like 6 years ago, but all I want is to obtain something else here. Some more wisdom for those who still need some inspiration. Me personally for sure comes trough many life challenges already.