Does it really matter?

I finished a chips packet the other day, walking on the road and searched for a dustbin to throw the empty packet. My friend suggested – “Just throw it in the corner. Anyway so much waste is dumped there”. So much waste being dumped there already was exactly the reason for me NOT to throw the packet too!

My little cousin served extra food the other day at a function and wasted the whole thing. What was worse? His aunt telling his mother – “He’s still a kid. It’s okay!” Really? Isn’t that exactly the reason why they should teach him not to waste food?

I was sharing with my uncle few days ago that a few volunteers of IUY2C went to a government school and taught about a 500 students, basics of hygiene and my uncle says “You can do that in one or two schools. How will that make a difference? There are thousands of government schools in the country” Thousands of government schools being there is exactly the reason we have started approaching scores of them!

I left a job that paid me almost half a lakh per month and my relatives said, “So many people are unemployed! You were fortunate to get such a job and you left it?” So many people being unemployed is exactly the reason I left the job and now giving all it takes to become an entrepreneur, dreaming of providing employment to hundreds of them.

It’s interesting to know how people think that the ‘little’ negative contribution of theirs (AND the ‘little’ positive contribution of others) doesn’t really make a difference. It’s like asking a drop of water how important it is, like asking a grain of rice if it can fulfill your hunger, like challenging a speck of dust to create pollution, like wondering how one electron can generate electricity. Each drop of water, each grain of rice, every dust particle and every electron matters! So does every small action of any person on earth – negative or positive!

I know you got the point. So, next time don’t step back when you have the smallest of chances to do a good deed. It might be as small as turning of lights in your house/office when you aren’t using, pushing someone not to waste food, carrying empty food packets or chocolate wrappers in your bag till your find a dustbin to drop them, sharing positive news with friends over tea rather than talking about who got murdered or robbed and so on.

At the same time, please be watchful of not discouraging someone who’s already doing his/her bit. Even small phrases like – “Showing of eh?!”, “Big deal dude!”, “What’s wrong with you?”, “Chalta hai yaar” can discourage. It doesn’t hurt to say “Good job”, “I really appreciate what you did”, “You just inspired me” or at least pat on the back!

I just tried doing my bit today, by writing this piece of article not knowing how many people this would impact. But I sure know IT MATTERS! Now if you’re thinking whether your comment on this or sharing this link would really make a difference, you don’t need to think again :) IT MATTERS!

Estimate your hunger. If you can’t, read on…

I went to a restaurant with my friend one day. As soon as we saw the menu card, we felt like hogging all of the dishes there! Without giving it a second thought, we ordered 4 dishes we felt like drooling over. The moment the first dish went in, I was no more “extremely hungry”. The second one almost filled my tummy. I loved the third one, so finished my share in the same momentum. Then! I looked at the fourth one and felt, “What was I thinking when I ordered this? But never mind, my friend is here to finish it”. But oh, my friend was equally full! We kept pushing the dish towards each other forcing the other one to complete!  Somehow we managed to complete half of it and that’s it! It felt like my stomach is gonna burst if I take in one more spoon. The rest of it went a waste.

Happens with you? This was me, about 2 years ago. Until one day, when I heard that a staggering ‘one billion people’ in this world sleep hungry every single night! There must have been days you’ve not had food and tried sleeping. Could you sleep? Not easy, right? Imagine the plight of those unfortunate kids who might have never tasted a candy! They never know how “Oh, I’m full” feels like.

When you order an extra dish at a restaurant that you can’t finish, it’s not the 100 odd bucks that you are wasting, it’s the resource! It’s the resource someone somewhere in the world is dying for. You can afford to waste 100 bucks, but not the food that’s keeping you alive. Most of us empty our plates at home, almost all the time. Why doesn’t this happen at restaurants? We fail to estimate our hunger may be, or we are too lazy to wait for the dishes to be prepared & served, so we order all at once. Or sometimes, it just doesn’t occur to us that we are ordering more food than we need.

Let’s try and keep this in mind next time we go to a restaurant - “Take all you want, eat all you take!” To mark a beginning to this, support this brilliant initiative – “Empty Plate Campaign” by 36meals, happening this weekend - March 23^rd and 24^th. You don’t have to move out of your house, it doesn’t take hours. All it takes is a photo of your empty plate after your meal and uploading that on 36meals Facebook Page or Twitter. Here’s the FB Event Page to join.

Of course that’s not the last day we follow it, but that’s the beginning for many people. Those of you who never waste a morsel of your meal, take lead and inspire the people around you. “All empty plates look good. It’s the plate with food left over that looks ugly”. So go ahead and post your photos!

Thank you.

It's 'Now' or 'Now'

A couple of months ago, just when everything seemed to be going great, I gave a visit to my grandpa's place. My grandpa, who was all healthy for his age, was on bed when I saw him; he had stopped responding all of a sudden. He was trying really hard to breathe. We put all our efforts to make him respond for half an hour. His condition only got worse. For the first time in my life, I saw someone close to me being taken in an ambulance not knowing that he wouldn't return back alive.

Few months ago, I heard from a friend that her mom is in critical condition in the hospital. She had cancer, which was diagnosed only in the last stage. No medication would work. She passed away within a week.

A couple of weeks ago, my aunt slipped and fell down; she ended up having multiple fractures. It will take her months to start walking normally again, for something that happened in a split second!

Could she have done anything about it? Could my grandpa do anything about his life? Could my friend save her mother's life in any way? Can any of us avoid something like this happening to our near ones or us?? The answer is an obvious 'no'. That made me think for a moment - We get all stressed and all worked up trying to control our lives 3 - 4 yrs from now! Is the very next moment in our control? 

Someone who's in 12th is worried about getting a job 4 yrs later. Someone who has a 5yr old kid is worried how she'll fare in her 10th grade. Someone who's getting married is worried if she'll be happy in her new house (No, that's not me) Someone having a daughter is worried every moment if she's coming back home safe. Someone at job is worried about promotion two yrs later and this and that and the list goes on. Planning, anticipating and working towards it are justified; just "worrying", getting tensed and stressed out aren't!

While you are spending those few moments in worries, you're losing your precious present which was "future" few moments ago. I don't even know if this article is gonna reach my blog, so is there a point in me worrying how people are gonna take it? Instead, I can give my complete focus to what I'm writing and how I'm writing this very moment and be sure that I've given my best, enjoying the whole process of penning down my thoughts!

All I wanna say is, the next time your mind tends to worry, ask yourself if that's gonna help your present or future in any possible way, unless your favorite pastime is to worry and get worked up! Since the answer is 'no', give a smile and say "I'm gonna live this moment and not the next moment which I'm not even sure if it's gonna be mine!"

Relax and have a happy weekend :)

Seeds of Retrospection

Flashback! Rewind and fast forward every two weeks of your life fortnightly, take the juice from there and you’re sure to have the best fruit punch in no time to share with the world. So what’s the juice I have taken from my last 2 weeks?

Feed the side of your brain that’s starving!

A year ago I would go around telling everyone “I’m not creative! Give me an idea and I can work as hard as it takes to implement. But I cannot generate ideas!” I laugh at this statement of mine today (Proof that I could create something out of the world: www.iuquotes.com design). They say creative people use the right side of their brain. I tried to tap that hemisphere of mine for a long time, but all my attempts went futile. What can I tap out of the side of my brain which I’m not feeding at all? What you SOW is what you reap.

S – See

O – Observe

W – Watch

You might say they’re all the same. I’ll elaborate here.

See every element around you like you’ve never seen it before. See more of it, and see it more often than you think is necessary.

Observe what makes it so beautiful, so eye-catching or so enticing. If it doesn’t appeal to your eye, observe why it didn’t. Think what could have been better.

Watch out for what you can create from there. Nothing gets created out of nowhere. There’s an inspiration every creative person draws from a lot of things around him.

So go ahead and start sowing. In some time you’ll have enough and more ideas than you can ever implement.

Feedback on this small write up of mine is most welcome!

Shruti Balasa

Chief Web Designer, IU Web Solutions.

(eMail me @iu.shrutibalasa@gmail.com to get your website LIVE!)

Organize your Workspace to Organize your Work.

Have a PC or a laptop? You download a document or transfer a photo to your system, and where do you first place it? “Ah for now, let me put it on my desktop, I’ll move it later!” And it remains on the desktop till the number of icons on the desktop makes you go crazy! Then you make a folder ‘Desktop files’ or if you are like me ‘Others’. And then comes a crucial time when you need ‘that very file’ and “Oh God! Where did it go? I have 5 – 6 folders by name Desktop Files!” I’m sure you can empathize with the above situation. So what do you do?

1. Get organized from Day 1. (Don’t get disheartened if you’ve already been disorganized. It’s still not too late. :) )
2. Trust me, doesn’t take too much time to keep your system neat and organized (I agree my room is not clean enough, but my laptop definitely is)

Let me first introduce you to the culprits who make you lose files – or rather keep them so safe that you yourself can’t find! Meet them here

• Downloads – You quickly download something and put it on your desktop, or you open it directly from downloads folder and it remains there forever.
  How to avoid this? If you’re using Firefox browser, the default setting is to save the downloaded files to ‘downloads’ folder. Change it to “Always ask me where to save files (Firefox menu -> ‘Options’ -> ‘Options’ -> ‘General’ tab is where you’ll find this setting)
  For Chrome – Chrome Menu -> ‘Options’ -> ‘Under the hood’ -> ‘Downloads’ -> ‘Ask where to save each file before downloading’ and so on for other browsers. Now when it asks you each time you download, kindly do not choose desktop, create a folder if need be and dump it there. A stich in time saves nine remember?
  Not to forget to rename the file to something that makes sense to you while saving it. If you’re downloading too many softwares, you’d usually install them right away and forget what they were named or where you saved them. Maintain a ‘Softwares’ folder and remember to download every single software into this folder and rename them. Trust me, your friend or colleague might ask you for the same software and they’d be impressed at your speed of finding them :)
• Files transferred from a pen drive or external hard disk – General tendency yet again is to put it on the desktop. Be cautious. Choose a relevant folder or create one. You’ll love yourself for it another day!
• Word documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations or any newly created file – Here, apart from choosing the right folder, it’s equally important to name the file correctly instead of naming it ‘New’, ‘Sample’ or leave it ‘Untitled’.
• Photos and videos – B drive, C drive, D drive, E and F also may be, will contain at least one photo, or worse even, contain a folder ‘Photos’ each. Best way to solve this is to keep each drive for a different purpose. One entirely for college/office or anything related to college/office (Yes, even if they are your photos with college-mates) Another folder – completely personal – which has nothing to do with college or office.

This should do, for a start. One tip to conclude – The best way to compel yourself to keep your desktop clean is to put a desktop wallpaper (Stretch) so beautiful that you wouldn’t like to dirty it with icons and icons all over. I suggest a photo of someone you admire…. Could be yourself as well! So here’s me, wishing you luck! Do let me know in your comments if this helped. If you can catch hold of few more culprits, do pour in your thoughts. :)

Inspiration Unlimited

It's been long friends I wanted to share with you all, about our Venture and platform Inspiration Unlimited. Just covering this write up about the same.

Inspiration Unlimited is a vision, founded as an answer to the present scenario in the world. The need for training is higher than ever in every manner. Values have to be restored. This time the felicitous process is hammering. The values need to be hammered into masses & potentials incarcerated inside need to be brought out. The masses stand in need of training in some or the other form, right from school level to the level of CEOs.

As is rightly said, Any & every form of success has its root in training and then success stems from execution. IU believes in passing the right training in every arena of life, from personal development, to mental abilities, to staff training, to self motivation, to leadership, to sales training, to art of relationships, to training for teachers, to better parenting & lots more.

IU is backed up by the founder's profound experience of dealing with people from different occupation, places, age groups & different intellect levels. People eulogize his training & the kind of change it brings about in the participants. He has a spark in his speech that can bring a dead man alive. He has a practical approach & is not a speaker or trainer who has emerged from mere reading of a few books, as you find many such individuals in the market today.

Our vision is to empower masses to follow their heart & experience life of full potential. We envision to help everyone live, not just exist. We also believe in seeing a better world with human race in greater levels of harmony by converting peer pressure into peer pleasure.

We have forayed into hand-made greetings under the banner of Aaslesha. All details are available on the following web links.

To avoid confusions and so that you are able to reach us right here are some links on web:

www.iuindia.com
www.facebook.com/iuindia
www.twitter.com/iuworldwide
www.youtube.com/iuindiaonline

Our magazine links:
www.twitter.com/iuemagofficial

Our Social Initiatives (each one would be covered in other blogs):
www.facebook.com/iuy2c
www.facebook.com/iunewspaperbag

To join us as a speaker or marketing executives from your city, district, state or country. Mail us at iuworldwide@gmail.com and we shall take things further!

Thank you. Hope it helps all those who wanted to know more about about IU.