ASHOK KURIEN – DYSLEXIC ACHIEVER

The oft-repeated principle, “Failures are stepping stone of success,” gets validated number of times when we look into histories. To further fortify the Universal Principle, we look into a life of man, who endured failures with determination all his young age to taste the sweet of success at later age. His failures which knock down him are listed below,

1. His educated mother was a teacher and the Head of the English Department of Bombay University, but, he was inept to even step up just one step higher from the lowest grade in his class.

2. His neural muscles couldn't understand simple arithmetic and he often made mistakes in simple spellings. He was not able to comprehend complex scientific concepts, principles and remember long numbers.

3. He repeatedly faced corporal punishments in his classes, at home, and even within his peer group leader, perfects. He was criticised dumb, stupid, useless, worthless, waste, etc, which killed his motivation to ashes.

4. Failing in his Seventh and Ninth grade, made him to study with comparatively younger students. Continuous abuses and punishments made him a rebel, aggressive and addict to alcohol and drugs. He was even placed behind bars for his negative social relationship.

5. In college, he was not able clear even single semester without bunch of arrears. So, he was able to graduate only at the age of 27.

6. In professional circles, he was not able to assimilate various marketing strategies discussed by his colleagues. So, they dumped down him as "useless and worthless," killing up his spirits.

With such negative profile, depressive experiences at his back of his definition, Mr. Ashok Kurien, now at the age of Sixties, is the founder of famous Advertising company, Ambience (famous for its Ad campaigns, like Thumps Up “Taste the Thunder”, Lakme, etc.). He was the co-founder India’s first private television entertainment channel, Zee TV. He was the motivating force behind the success of Playwin, India’s first online lottery and soul behind popular DishTV service.

How the phoenix, Mr. Ashok Kurien, was able to surge from the ‘ashes of criticisms’ to the ‘riches of achievements.’ The secret of success was due his attitude to configure his negatives into his strengths, which unfurl successes and riches. His stepping stones of success are listed below,

1. Though termed incompetent in terms of contemporary educational system, he was able to recognise and focus on his strength without caring his criticised weakness. His aggressive nature and acuity in sports made him the Gym captain, the boxing captain and the sports captain within his school sports circle. This sportive attitude helped him to look all failures and criticisms as challenges.

2. Before earning his degree, he performed several mundane jobs which helped him to understand the basic marketing tactics within various strata of consumer levels, from bottom poor households to rich industrial houses.

3. Understanding his impotence in learning complex concepts, he designed strategies to disintegrate complex terms into simple notions. For instance, he developed a strategy of clearing one or two papers in a semester in college examinations rather than facing all papers in a time through his “Break-it-down” strategy. He began to understand slowly his creative or lateral thinking abilities, which rarely endowed in other people. Rather than caught with his negativities, he was able to mull over his strengths.

4. With his knowledge of marketing behaviours, his “Out-of-Box” creative thinking, and “Break-it-down” strategies, he was able to provide solutions to various problematic phenomenons, with simple, creative and original solutions, which were rarely provided by others.

5. He recognised Partnership or Team Work. He never did anything alone, he performed task only with his partners. He believed that “If your partner’s strengths are your weaknesses and if your partner’s weaknesses are your strengths, then you have a team that is extremely powerful because there is no conflict or differences.”

Dare to face his negatives, critics, and failures, Mr. Ashok Kurien, after his unprecedented success, was identified as “Dyslexic” or “Learning Disability” by an expert in ‘Learning Disability.’ Thanked for delayed identification of his weakness, he replied enthusiastically, “All the drive to succeed in my life would have dried up, if I had known about the disability early in my life. Thank God! I owe all my success to my Dyslexia.”

EXPLAINING THE UNEXPLAINED – '3 IDIOTS' PHILOSOPHY

Social Psychology supports that, people, a main component of society, are influenced and influence the social environment. The influence occurs through the forces of relationships, culture, customs, social ethics, etc, and leaves substantial impact over every ingredient of our life. Though, social influence is a life-supporting factor and has positive contribution in our life, astoundingly, they are problematic too, if we are just a passive recipient of such social influence. Negative impact becomes obvious overtly, during selection of our professional career, when it is just based on social imposition of parents, relatives, friends, social factors, attractiveness, etc. This fundamental mistake we make at young age, spew out ill-effects that resurface frequently to disturb us rest of the life. This ‘ignorance’ holds the sole responsibility for the talent-crunch that has engulfed the Employment Sector and various others field in India. This lead to human resource with misgivings like: Workforce with mediocre performance, talents and knowledge; people afflicted with stress and life-style diseases; lack of interdependence (relationship problems); drug dependency and abuse; crimes, etc.

The solution to the problem dwells in proper understanding of human nature. Human Psychology edifies our intellect with ‘wisdom’ which subscribes that our career selection shouldn’t be just a social imposition through parents, relatives, friends, social factors, attractiveness, etc, but one that provides us joy, pleasure, satisfaction, and fulfilment. The appreciation of above concept requires understanding the innate nature of human mind. Basically, humans are satisfaction seekers. They have deep inner ‘urges’ or ‘drives’ or ‘desires’ and they interact with environment to satisfy it. Satisfaction of urges gives him a sense of pleasure or happiness or joy. The people strive to gratify their urges by performing various activities in their lifetime. The important feature is that ‘People differ in wide ways in satisfying their urges, and it is based on the difference existing in their Genes.’ For instance, some people enjoy reading and writing books or blogs, some satiate their urge by playing games or hard exercises, some derive pleasure by working on music or singing, some get mesmerised in their research works or engineering, etc. The action which brings us joy is called ‘Source of Satisfaction.’ Thus, every individual has unique characteristics of satisfying their urges and it differs from individual to individual.

Problem occurs when we select our career which is highly incompatible with our ‘Source of Satisfaction.’ The career, which is incompatible with our Source of Satisfaction, will never act as a source of pleasure or joy and thus, we start to allocate limited time in performing it and get ranked as ‘mediocre performers.’ Following this, majority of young people fail to identify their core ‘Source of Satisfaction’ and develop coping mechanism to derive pleasure through mundane habits or physical sensations. This will lead to talent-crunch in the field they could specialise, that is, their Source of Satisfaction activity. Others, small portion of population, fortunate enough to identify their Core Competence (Source of Satisfaction), divert their career into their Pleasure Source and get ranked as ‘super performers.’

The above philosophy forms the core idea of the 3 Idiots film, one of the best films in Indian film industry, released sometime back. Raju Hirani, the director of 3 Idiots, centres the film with the above “Career Philosophy,” which is engraved spectacularly in every component of the movie. The Career Philosophy is: “Never select your career on basis of social or family imposition. Rather, select the one which ‘you’ find the most suitable, matching and enjoyable. This is the secret behind every super-achiever.”

The above truth is validated, when we interact with star performers in various fields. It will be the source of their success. To quote one instance, a friend of Thomas Alva Edison, once asked Edison, “You must have worked hard day and night for making such a historical invention of Electric Lamp!” Edison replied, “You have mistaken my work. Really, I enjoyed day and night before inventing the Electric Lamp. Because, I love researching and working with materials.” Research was the ‘Source of Satisfaction’ for Edison and selecting properly his career begot success in form of 1,093 US Patents, which remains unchallenged by any other inventor.

PERCEPTION - CONTROLLER OF OUR DESTINY

“We are creator or destroyer of our own destiny,” the common phrase found in most books on Self-Development. It views humans as an active agent of his life and capable of constructing his own experiences out of external real-life experiences. Earthly experiences can be considered as an unprocessed sender of data but humans are active, process-abled recipients of the data. It means that world experiences before reaching us may be either positive or negative, but, once it reaches us, we have ultimate ‘decision making power’ to allow the influence to impinge us positively or negatively. Thus, the phrase “we are the creator or destroyer of our own destiny” validates itself.

This is not a human formulated principle. It is innate, natural, universal phenomenon of human science. Ancient Indian Rishis and Gurus have recognized this super-competence of humans and reflected it in their writings. Recently, Psychologists acknowledging the above concept have described the complex phenomenon in terms of “Perception.” They portray Perception process into various stages as step-wise process.

Human Perceptual Experience can be divided into three stages: 1. Sensation Stage, 2. Attention Stage, and 3. Perception Stage. Each stage performs specific functions and the external experience (data) reaches our consciousness after traversing through the three stages in an orderly manner. The data flowing through ‘mental medium’ is considered as a complex mixture of the basic forms like visual images, sounds, taste, feelings, smell, etc. These basic constituents form a complex aggregation called Gestalt in our consciousness, thus creating complete, real world experience. (E.g. Reading – visual images of letters, Success – sound of appreciation and images as our status in ranking list)

External world experiences (i.e. Data) reaches our sense organs in an uncontrolled manner forming the Sensation Stage Process. The basic sensory receivers represent our sense of vision, smell, taste, sound, etc.

The Attention Stage, second stage of processing, can be compared with “Control Valve” in mechanical terms. Even though, we have the ability to control the valve, the control is partial and many times captivating data easily passes through the control valve to reach third stage. In reality, hundreds of data reach our senses every second, but, attention process limit the number of data to flow to next stage.

The third stage of human perception, the Perception Stage is a complex process, and it is a prerogative of individual. It is the most important stage that distinguishes Humans from other animals. The Perception process invoke our intelligence, our memory, our learning, our motivation, our attitude, values, beliefs, etc, stored in our Brain and act on the incoming data to form “well processed information.” This processed information in our conscious mind represents our understanding of our world.

Since, intelligence, memory, learning and motivation differ in quantity and quality across individuals, the interpretation of incoming data varies across individuals in quantity and quality wise. Because of highly subjective perception process, two individual encountering similar life experiences view it differently. For example, a person with pure knowledge, positive attitude, and purified memory, views even a negative experience in a positive manner.

Thus, our memory, our intelligence, our learning, our motivation, our attitudes, our values, etc, has to be enriched with positive principles based on pure knowledge. For this, initially, we have to control the basic elements of sensual inputs i.e. images, sounds, smell, feelings, etc. Later, our brain can be enriched by reading books with positive outlook on life, avoiding captivating images and sounds, meditation (which helps easier control of senses), relationship with noble people and minds, etc.

With this knowledge, we could assert intelligently that “We are the creator or destroyer of our own destiny. Since the prerogative of selection exist in my mind.”

GLOBAL FINANCIAL DOWNTURN – OPPORTUNITY IN DIFFICULTY

Global Financial crisis has crippled literally every sectors of the world ranging from Manufacturing to Media. It is considered as one of the severest economic crisis in the world in past 70 years after the Great Depression in 1929. The financial horror has its roots in the deregulation of United States financial system in 1970s with focus on achieving wild growth rate. Because of Globalization, the US financial downturn has spread over most of the major economies of the world. But, our prudent Reserve Bank of India (RBI) with its remarkable, regulated, centralised financial system has well insulated our Indian economy from the vicissitudes of the world economy. We took pride in stating about the less influence of the crisis on our growth. But, multilateral sectors like trade and export, automobile manufacturing, tourism have faced the slump. For instance, World Bank predicts that world trade is expected to decelerate to 2.9 percent in 2009. Also, Our Indian economy gross domestic product (GDP) fell to 6.7 percent compared to previous year’s achievement of 9 percent. These tremors further leave influence in other sectors too. Though, US Government had announced bailout package of $700 billion to replenish US economy from recession, the responsibility of India to recover from its downturn is vested on us. Yet, we don’t hold the responsibility of causing it.
The great theoretical physicist, Albert Einstein says, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” With optimistic and growth-centred attitude, we can see economic crisis as an opportune time for India to recreate a perfect platform to bring its “Super-Power” dream into reality. With a dream of empowered India, we discuss various pivotal sectors which require special focus by striking it economically, technically, strategically and inclusively:

AGRICULTURE:
Agriculture and Agri-allied activities are life-line for most of the citizens of India. Nearly 65 - 70 percent of Indians depended on agriculture and related activities for their livelihood, but, it just contribute only 22 percent of GDP. India stands high in the parameters of irrigated land, but, its yield per hectare is at sub-standard level. To solve, the achievements of our Green Revolution during 1960s and 1970s have to be revived and we require another Green Revolution during current century to compete globally and to achieve the objectives of National Food Security Mission – to provide 25 kilograms of Rice or Wheat at Rs. 3 per kilogram for Below Poverty Line (BPL) citizens. We should make our Agriculturists and Researchers to learn the incredible achievements of Israel and Japan in farming industry. We have to show intense effort to introduce following measures in farming like SRI (System of Rice Intensification) technology, promotion of precision farming, micro-irrigation, restoration of soil health, supply of quality seeds to farmers, distribution of farm machineries, etc. for the betterment of farmers.

INDUSTRY:
Under current economical downturn situation, the industry has been affected the most, because of droop in trade and exports. Stimulus packages introduced by government should promote long-term investments along with the focus on short term goals. Long term activities include those like infrastructure development, training skilled workers, research and development, etc. Our investments in industry should strive to produce products which cause less strain on environment, biological friendly, recyclable etc. This has dual benefits: One, it helps in achievement of objectives placed by India before Copenhagen. Second, Eco-friendly products will enjoy less customs taxes in importing nations. Thus, it is helping in the blooming of trade and export of Indian state. Further, our government should follow special policies while importing bulk products from Industrial superpowers. Our import policy should insist the exporting foreign companies to procure at least 30 percent of their product’s components from native Indian companies. Such policies provide multinational partnership for lagging Indian industry sector and guides towards the birth of indigenous Indian technology.

SOCIAL SECTOR:
These are public goods to improve quality of life. The key social sector programmes needs to be concentrated are education, employment, urban poverty alleviation programme, rural health etc. Nearly 77% of Indian population are still vulnerable and deprived and our Human Development Indices are one of the lowest in the world. To eliminate poverty and satisfy vast social requirements, we require a sustained growth of at least 9 percent for next 25 years. If not dealt with urgency, the financial crisis turned economic crisis might lead to food crisis and cumulatively into security crisis. So, to recover and accomplish, we require shrewd planning of new policies in this humane sector which require vast investments, centralised control, accountability, and inclusiveness. Government over-conscious rural poverty elimination programme has failed to concentrate on urban poverty. The rise in urban poverty is fuelled by economic crisis compared to declining rural poverty. To rectify efficiently, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) requires new amendments to make it inclusive for urban region also, while retaining its success in rural areas.
Our policy towards education should be revamped with Dr. Abdul Kalam’s educational attitude which strives for transforming less-competent students into super technocrats, imbibe character to uplift Below Poverty Line (BPL) people, and realign their religious thoughts into a spiritual one to achieve social harmony.
National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) which provides health insurance to all families Below Poverty Line (BPL) can be implemented in a fast manner. Thus, Primary Health Centres (PHC) can get advanced medical facilities without financial disparities through public-private partnership (PPP). We should provide better sanitary conditions and an improved microenvironment in the habitat and workplace.
In an environment of slowdown, we should initiate our action through public spending on development of basic infrastructure such as roads, bridges, power, ports and airports for urban and rural development which also revive the construction and allied industries. This will help to achieve 12 Million new work opportunities per annum and to manage growing unemployment in India side by side.

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them," says Henry David Thoreau. Though, India’s past accomplishments may be without perfect foundations, but, we can utilise this opportunity to perfectly lay foundations below constructions as Thoreau says. Our current growth rate of 6.7 percent during 2008 – 09 has placed our economy at top notch in world ranking. While world super powers are crippling under crisis, India is rising against crisis. Our successes are being recognized, our accomplishments are being appreciated, our growth rate is viewed remarkable and world has created a gap to fill ourselves as super power India. To end, we imbibe in our thoughts and actions following words, “Strength of nation is in strength of people and strength of people breeds in his strength of mind. Bring the minds in unison to conquer the world with empowered India.”

SHORT STORY - UPLIFTING FAITH ON GOD

I don’t know where I was walking. I don’t know where I started and where I am going. But, I continued my walking. The surroundings were filled with complete darkness and I couldn’t observe even the way, I was traversing. As I was moving, suddenly, a hand touched me at back, and after which, a flash of light showed me that one forward leap might have made me fall from a steep abyss (a deep hole). With the new guidance, I shifted to new direction.

But, by the action of my reasoning, I became panic with reference to my past experience of encountering a deep abyss of death. I stopped in my position and feared to make further progress. I was stagnated with fear and stood without movement.

But, something, deep inside my intellect spoke out motivating, “Don’t fear! The same hand might help you in future, as you encounter the deep hole of death!” This small faith moved me forward again in the new direction. My movement was slow now, because, “fear of depth” was having upper hand over “faith on hand.” After sometime, the assisting hand touched me again to apprise me about the steep depth of death. Again, I turned my direction, but with boosted faith and I started to walk without retardation, because, now the “faith on hand” took upper hand over the “fear of depth.” I continued my movement forward using the series of unknown guidance.

After thousands of similar experiences on the way, a superior enlightenment arose in my mind, which edified my intellect with new wisdom. The new knowledge allowed my intelligence to understand that the path I was traversing was “raising path of life.” Every time, when I was about to face life troubles, the guiding hand which helped me was the stimulus from the God. With faith on the hand, I raised up. But, at my current position of top intelligence, I was even able to observe other men life-paths with newer clarity. It exposed, “How people with finite intelligence are getting stagnated in their position, “with fear” about future and “without faith” in the guiding hand or God’s saving touch!”

This story has expressed truth about life: With faith we get accelerated, with fear we get retarded.

QUOTE: "What you are is what you have been, and what you will be is what you do now." - Buddha

INTELLECTUAL MOTIVATION

When we work for success, we get energetic. When we work not to fail, we get lethargic.

There may be hundred of books in our shelf, but, a book will find its way to our hands, only those that trains or motivates us to think and those that reflect our lives.

Every human has a magical intelligence (thoughts), through its “black magic,” he destroys his life (negative thoughts) and through its “white magic,” he develops in his life (positive thoughts).

If success is solely depended on intelligence and talents, world might not have evolved.

If we don’t what to change, even hundred of books or lectures or people can’t create a change. If we intend to change, even a single sentence will make a change. Change represents realignment of character, thoughts, etc.

Great men create great thoughts and great thoughts create great men.

QUOTE:"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." - Albert Einstein

INSPIRATIONAL THOUGHTS

Management is a cruel game where we have to kill ourselves sometimes for other’s benefit and kill others sometimes for our benefit. Understanding the balance when to kill ourselves and kill others will make us a “Perfect Leader.” (Kill ~ getting work out)

World will always spread its way for us, if we take a new initiative to express our competence.

Success is not achieved through the perfection in preparation of a plan, but, through the perfection in execution of the plan.

A perfect glacial mirror provide perfect facial reflection, similarly, our perfection is character is exposed by “good” men’s evaluation.

Strong stones break not only by the physical strength of men, but, also by their mental strength.

If we think of footsteps, we have left behind, we won’t move forward.

QUOTE: "Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance." – Samuel Johnson

ANDREW CARNEGIE - RULES TO SUCCESS – ORGANIZED BY NAPOLEON HILL

There are certain natural laws which when applied, success will be definite. Andrew Carnegie, a rich American steel maker, described these rules of success to Napoleon hill which he had utilised in his life achievement. Any person who likes to rise above average living can follow these laws in order to conquer his destinies. These laws are universal and applicable to anyone who likes to earn $100 or $billion through his capabilities. These are simple laws which are easy to comprehend and they bring endless joy and successes in our life, when we apply. There are 17 qualities for success and those are described below, which will help us to travel towards any destination:

Definiteness of purpose: It is process of designing or identifying an ultimate and pointed goal in our life. The purpose or goal is intentionally accumulated in our mind by continuous thinking process. It is an important step in self-development process, because, every rule described below are based on this principle.

The master mind: It involves grouping in harmony with like-minded, talented friends and colleagues in focus with our objectives. It is through this method, talents and character spread across men are utilised for our objectives through heart-based relationship.

Attractive personality: It involves development of good character and personality which is imperative for our accomplishments. Good character includes courtesy, empathy, communication, mental attitude, sincerity, decision making, sense of humour, etc.

Applied faith: It is a habit of having complete belief in our capability and in our objectives. It is otherwise known as self-confidence which helps us to rise after every failures (or delayed success).

Going the extra mile: It helps us to attain position and recognition within men. It is a natural law involving a habit of doing more than needed. For instance, as students, it is sufficient to attain pass marks in subjects, but, when we try to achieve centum, we are gain applause and fame – this is called “Going the extra mile”.

Organized individual endeavour: It is through this rule, we know, “How an individual can make purposeful and profitable use of his right and responsibility for the exercise of personal initiative, in focus with his objective.”

Creative vision: It includes usage of creativity skill (inherent in every human) towards our definite objective. It describes techniques like active and passive creativity. Active creativity means conceiving new creations and passive creativity means combination of active creations, leading to new creations.

Self-discipline: It involves manoeuvring our positive and negative emotions in accordance with our objectives. It is a habit involving perfect control over our stimulus and response.

Organized thinking: While previously described, “Organized individual endeavour” is applicable for actions, this law applies to our thinking process. It appraises ways for making our thoughts to stay on our objectives by repetitive thinking.

Learning from defeat: In reality, a defeat is just an identifier that teaches us: “our path towards our objective is deviating or wrong and needs correction.” Failures are a sign which guides us to redesign our way towards success.

Inspiration: It is also called controlled enthusiasm. We should be enthusiastic and desire to achieve our objective. It warns us with, “over-enthusiasm is as dangerous as no enthusiasm.”

Controlled attention: It is the act of combining all the faculties of the mind and concentrating them upon the attainment of a definite purpose.

The golden rule applied: It describes a habit of doing something to others before we expect things from them. It is an investment made for everlasting relationships.

Co-operation: We should deal with ourselves through our head, while others should be dealt with our heart – a basic rule for enchanting relationships.

Budgeting of time and money: It involves proper utilisation of money and time, by avoiding unnecessary dissipation of this powerful energy. With 24 hours of time in hand, we can distribute: 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for work and 8 hours for leisure or self-improvement – a best time table to succeed.

The habit of health: Health tips like consumption of proper level of food, exercise, sleep etc. acquaintances are important. It states that we should comply with complete avoidance of medical drugs, since, the food we consume acts as a drug for health problems. If a headache occurs, we try to stop it with drugs, but, the root cause of headache may be improper digestion. So, without removing cause (indigestion), we can’t remove effect (headache). There is more possibility of headaches to continue, when indigestion is not taken upon.

Cosmic habit-force: Similar to Newton’s gravitational force (how objects are attracted towards earth centre); cosmic habit force is the natural process by which habits are formed and planted in our life. Deep and continuous thinking with avoidance of unnecessary thoughts will make needed habits to get rooted in our character.

QUOTE:"The better part of happiness is to wish to be what you are." - Desiderius Erasmus