Unlock Your Real Personality

Personality is that magnetic & mysterious something that everyone can easily recognize but difficult to define. It is a whole combination of physical, mental traits ,tendencies &temperament. Everyone among us carry a personality of his own. An Individuality determined by the Inheritance and the environment in which he / she grew up.
During my schooling, my teacher used to reward the student who used to be the most quiet one in the class. Being a shy & introvert myself, It was not difficult for me to get those rewards year after year. However, as I entered a career, it was quickly made known that there are no rewards for being silent. I had to speakup or be left unheard.
Now there are people who are at the other end of the spectrum- Those who have very little inhibition. You can easily identify them because they talk at a decibel level that can be heard around radius of 5 cubicles.
A creative self-fulfilling personality is a course between too much inhibition and too little. Just as a bicycle chain that can neither be too tight or too loose for a comfortable ride.
Participating in a Toastmasters Session (http://www.toastmasters.org/)will help you irrespective of type of your personality .If you are tongue-tied, you have a platform to practice speaking before an audience. If you are tongue loose , you also have a role to play- the role of a listener which may be as Evaluator, Grammarian or the “Ah” Counter. So, Practice the are of communication with in the 4 walls of the Toastmasters club regularly and apply the skills learnt you learnt in your everyday personal & professional life.

the 80/20 way

Over 100 years ago , an itaian economist got a real shock. Prof. Vilfredo Pareto was investagating wealth in britain. He found a curiously lopsided picture. Fewer people had larger share of the money.And he found 20% of the people had 80% of the wealth.And thus 80/20 principle came into existence.
It would be interesting to know that 80/20 rule is not only applicable to business, but also to every aspect of our daily life.For ex.,
-Check your wardrobe. only 20% of clothes are being used 80% of the time.
-Only 1 in every 5 slides that you present generates useful discussion
-If you draw a wallchart of your expenses 20% of items cost you 80% of the money
So seek out to find the High Impact activities and act upon them. Do More Woth Less. If your objective is to develop High Life-time pay-off habits : Prepare a list of Good habits; Then be very selective and pick only one or two of those habits and start implementing them. It would be a highly rewarding exercise in terms of the time spent against the benefits reaped.
Some of the habits that i could think off is :
- 30 minutes of exercise per day
- 30 minutes of meditation per day
- 30 minutes of Reading a book of choice
- 30 minutes of Writing etc.,
Learn to do more with less by the 80/20 way

Cook like your mom!

I wish I could cook like my mom

Take One  cup of rice….Add 2 cups of Water…..wait for 3 whistle sounds from the pressure cooker !!! Dear friend you have just cooked the rice. I wish you a very happy married life"…So goes the WhatsApp joke I received recently.

It’s not only the newly married but also a Single and the working couples who face this problem in daily life : where will my next best meal come will come from? Inside each one of the person, lies a deep desire “I wish I could cook like my mother”. Dear friends Good afternoon to you all.

Are you feeling clueless inside the kitchen? Then I would like to share my wisdom on how to tap your mother’s cooking skills, leading to kitchen empowerment: Ready…here we go

Cooking boils down to two aspects:
A) Doing the right things
B) Doing the things right

Sorry for sounding like abstract like a management guru… Allow me to deconstruct by beginning with the right things to do inside a kitchen.

Set up Your Kitchen:
The bare essentials for cooking are : cooking gas connection and cutlery. Getting a cooking gas connection is tougher than getting an US-H1B visa. So Beg, Borrow or Steal a gas connection in your hometown and transfer to the place you live in.

Regarding Cutlery, The lesser the better. Do not clutter your kitchen with cutlery. this is   because you would have to clean up the mess that you generate inside the kitchen.

Safety Precautions: In a kitchen you are playing with fire , literally Any oversight can be harmful to self, family & neighbors. I just stick a big photograph of my apartment owner kitchen and everytime I start cooking I chant a mantra:  I am  not going to burn down his house..

Now comes the most challenging part. How to start cooking? Get the recipe from the World’s best chef. It’s none other than your mother or even better your mother-in-law .Ask them to write down a step-by-step recipe for day today cooking. No cookbooks. No cookery shows at this point of time. They give only recipe for disaster.

Ask your mother who will give the right recipe for the right dish. Based on the recipe Procure the ingredients and store in a container. Now.. Print a name tag and attach to the container.Many beginners can hardly distinguish between salt & sugar and that too by tasting it.

Learning to cook is like learning to swim. You should know how to bail out to safety, before you take the dive. Doing right things such as Mother’s recipe, knowing your kitchen will facilitate that.

Now it’s time for real action inside the kitchen; doing the things in a right manner.
Prepare a mental checklist of what you want to cook for the day. Is it Sambar,Rasam and Potato fry or Roti, Dal, and Curd rice;

Once you zeroed in on the menu, Cross-Check with you mother’s recipe if you have all the ingredients. If not procure them. Else you have to change the menu. This is essential because there are no shortcuts to a palatable dish.

Having got the ingredients in the right proportion, it’s a green signal to light the burner.
From now on Timing is the all important factor. The patented aroma of your mother’s sambar is simply due to the timing. Keep an eye on the clock and act swiftly according to the recipe. Remember there are no undo options in a Kitchen gadget.

Finally Preparation & Timing rest on important human factor: Focus. Imagination at work is great. Imagination while you cook is not. Avoid mobile calls, Television or chatting during cooking. Cooking is a multi-faceted exercise by itself requiring your utmost attention. Let the world wait till the oil boils inside your kitchen.

In summary, mastering your mother’s recipe along with preparation will put you on path to kitchen empowerment. With cooking skill added to your resume, “Singles” need not worry where there next best meal would come from ; If you are married and if you would dedicate your cooking skills to their mother-in-law , you will be absolved of all the mistakes
Wish you a happy time inside the Kitchen

 

Dont Gulp Just SIP

I am not rich because My dad is not rich and I don’t earn enough. That’s what I used to tell myself. If I only earned a little more, I could save and invest better. The problem with that theory was I was probably making exactly the same argument before my last several raises. Fellow Toastmasters and Dear guests ,Your probability of becoming rich depends not on how much money you work for,but on How much does your Money Work for you? .Today I am going to talk about a financial instrument that will make you a millionaire irrespective of how much you make . The Pill I prescribe is Mutual Fund.
Lets look at what is a mutual fund : A mutual fund is a company that combines, or pools, investors' money and, generally, purchases stocks or bonds.Its run by an expert team that know to read the balance sheet and invest in them. It’s a vehicle for investing in Equity forFinancially lay person like me.. If you have got that ability . Please go ahead and invest in Stocks directly instead of a Mutual Fund.
The next question is How to Choose a Mutual Fund Scheme : In India there are 32 Mutual funds companies that mange around 370 schemes .Huh!!! . It’s mind-boggling to pick a fund . is it not ?
Outlook Money is a simple finance magazine that you could follow to get the top rated funds. You could also follow the website : moneycontrol.com to get the top-rated funds.
Once you have chosen the scheme , Its now time to invest. According to Superstar of Stocks, Warren Buffett “Stocks markets work on two sound principles fear & Greed”. We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.” In simple terms, Buy Less when the Market Soars& and Buy Lot when the Market sinks.One way to accomplish this easily is by signing up for systematic investment plan whose acronym is SIP with the chosen mutual fund. So what is SIP ? As the name suggests you register with the mutual fund to invest periodically over atleast an year in the chosen mutual fund. Let me show you how with my personal example. See Graph1

I invested monthly over a period of 18 months and this is the picture of share value over the 18 months . Seeing this graph : Where do you think I stand ? Am I at loss or at least break-even or at profit ? anyone….
One more clue : this is the shares that I accumulated each month .See Graph 2 You could clearly see that at peak share values which are “Greed” points I bought a fewer shares. When the share values bottomed out ,which are “fear” points I bought more.

This is how the story looks like as of today. See Graph 3 .Blue line indicates the investment. Brown line indicates the actual value.Until more than an year I was more at loss with my investments as the share value kept on going down. I persisted despite severe domestic pressure. Because I knew that I am adding more value in terms of number of shares ,and they will help me one day.So as the share proce began to rise again , I returned to break-even in a matter of two months . As it stands today my investment is returning a cool 20% per annum.
You may ask a question, what if the market collapses tomorrow. Yes that’s a distinct possibility. But I will still continue to invest as I consider it an opportunity to buy more value . Fear and Greed operate in the short term and will help in over a longterm of 3-5 years which I consider to be when the Sanity prevails.
Finance has less to do with money and more to do with discipline. So you need to invest regularly.You should not Gulp it all at once. Just SIP it. As long as you do that , You can go into a deep hibernation without worrying if the market is soaring up or sinking down. Be rest assured that The money that you earn will work for you and will return you at least 15 % year after year over a long term.