Archive for the ‘Learnings for Adults’ Category

The transformation of bad habits into productive ones isn’t an easy process – it’s a simple one.

The post discusses a recent study that suggests 40 per cent of what we believe to be “decisions” are actually habits and, as a result, are quite possibly unproductive actions.

To help break the cycle the following tips on habit change are offered:

• Redefine “must” – by evaluating the decisions we take for granted, we’re in a position to reconsider if actions must be performed in a particular way
• Understand the process – it’s claimed every habit follows a cue, routine and reward trajectory; understanding on the cue or trigger is the first step towards changing the routine
• Rethink your reward system – many habits are based on achieving the reward rather than the habit itself; if the reward is a positive one keep it and change the routine
• Document the process – writing down the habit and how you intend to change it reinforces the desire to change; if you document a good new habit enough times and it will become automatic

Despite his folksy manner, Warren Buffett is not a man who likes to share intimate details of his life. So that makes his April 17 announcement that he has early-stage prostate cancer all the more intriguing. After all, as the chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/B) stated, his doctors say the condition is “not remotely life-threatening or even debilitating in any meaningful way.” In fact, he stressed in the release, “I feel great—as if I were in my normal excellent health—and my energy level is 100 percent.” He has a point: By the age of 80, about 80 percent of men have some cancer cells in their prostate gland, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. If Buffett is like most men his age, he’s more likely to die with prostate cancer than from it.

So why bother? The answer, most likely, is to quash rumors that something more serious is going on. His disclosure is less an acknowledgement of his mortality than of his celebrity. As an investor whose every move is analyzed by people around the planet, the likelihood that Buffett could undergo two months of radiation therapy without anyone noticing is remote, if not impossible. Moreover, at 81, his mortality and succession planning—or lack thereof—is already the subject of much speculation. Any hint that he’s not thriving on a steady diet of steak and Cherry Coke could send Berkshire Hathaway stock plunging if the company’s iconic founder seems at all coy about his health. “It’s not a matter of his illness, it’s his age,” says Charles Elson, a corporate governance expert at the University of Delaware. Like a starlet caught touching her tummy near a fertility clinic, Buffett knows all too well that he needs to control the message before rumors put him on the defensive.

Disclosing a CEO’s health status is always tricky terrain. Witness Apple’s (AAPL) now-famous mishandling of founder Steve Jobs’s cancer and liver transplant. Even as Jobs became noticeably frail and took several leaves of absence to cope with the fallout of pancreatic cancer, investors were kept in the dark about what was ailing the leader, who died in October of last year. Apple didn’t even disclose that Jobs had a liver transplant in April 2009. Investors learned about that months later from news reports. Apple’s lack of disclosure about a man indelibly linked with his company became a textbook case on how not to handle a CEO’s illness.

But Apple is hardly alone. Former Sara Lee (SLE) Chairman and CEO Brenda Barnes didn’t reveal she’d had a stroke until weeks after it occurred. Charlie Bell was diagnosed with colon cancer just weeks after getting the CEO job at McDonald’s (MCD) in 2004, but struggled with it for several months before stepping down. (He died a few months later at the age of 44.) American International Group (AIG), on the other hand, promptly announced that CEO Robert Benmosche had cancer soon after it was diagnosed in October 2010—though it declined to reveal what kind of cancer he had. Still, the taxpayer-controlled company outlined a firm succession plan and posted an update on Benmosche’s treatment four months later. (He remains CEO today.)

That doesn’t mean investors should take comfort in Buffett’s cancer disclosure. If anything, Buffett’s illness is a stark reminder that investors remain essentially clueless about the board’s succession plan. That’s unacceptable at any public company, never mind one so strongly associated with an 81-year-old man. While Jobs was battling a much more serious form of cancer than anything Buffett faces, he was a relatively young man of 48 when it was first diagnosed. Buffett, on the other hand, has already exceeded the average male life expectancy in the U.S. And yet an octogenarian investor who’s made a good part of his fortune in the realm of insurance continues to defy the logic of actuarial tables by refusing to acknowledge or plan for his own mortality. While his “health situation might change someday,” Buffett stressed, “I believe that day is a long way off.”

One hopes so. Then again, it may not be. One thing investors do know is that Buffett’s idea of a succession plan—which consisted of announcing in his annual shareholder’s letter this year that he has chosen someone to replace him—gets a failing grade from most board experts. The lucky guy (a scan of the senior ranks at least gives some clarity on the gender) doesn’t even know he’s been picked, and Buffett has consistently stressed that he has no plans to step down. So now anyone who doubts he’s the chosen one has been given an extra reason to leave, just as his boss is heading into chemotherapy. ISS Proxy Advisory Services issued a report on April 2 in support of a shareholder proposal by the AFL-CIO Reserve Fund demanding that Berkshire’s board adopt and disclose a detailed succession planning policy for replacing Buffett. The board opposes the resolution on the grounds that it has “identified the individual to succeed him.”

Now that the world’s most famous investor has decided investors deserve to hear about his cancer diagnosis, perhaps he’ll show similar transparency when it comes to talking about succession, too. Then investors can take comfort in knowing that the care Buffett takes when it comes to his own health also extends to planning for the day when his company must go on without him.

COURTESY : Brady is senior editor at Bloomberg Business week in New York.

Charlotte Beers, former chairwoman and C.E.O. of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, now runs seminars called “The X Factor” for female leaders. She says it’s vital to make self-assessments, and to include “the good, the bad and the ugly.”

Q. Tell me about your early management roles.

A. I was in my early 30s, and I was the first management supervisor at J. Walter Thompson who was female. I had been an account supervisor, but management supervisor was more people, more levels. I thought I was really doing well, and I certainly was comfortable with the business. But then a friend of mine told me that one of our colleagues described my management style as menacing. I thought of myself as a friendly, gentle Southern belle. But I began to watch myself — something I think we all have to do — and I realized that I did end meetings on a threatening note. I created urgency when there was none. I was taking on the persona of “I really mean business” that I had learned from an earlier boss.

So I learned to watch myself more. I had to self-correct about talking too much and interrupting other people. Now that trait can be very helpful when you have to make a decision, but I also interrupted the process and discussion in meetings.

Q. Was this something that you became aware of yourself, or was it explicit feedback?

A. That comment from one of my peers about me coming off as menacing was devastating. It was exactly the opposite of the way I pictured myself. Nothing’s more helpful than finding out how others see you. If you can conduct that exercise in an impersonal way, you have information you can’t get any other way. It’s like doing consumer research. I did mine inadvertently, but I’ll never forget how helpful it was.

Q. In your experience, do managers do that, or do they avoid it?

A. When you do have some power, you can lose the sense of how you’re behaving and who you are, and you don’t want to do that. It’s dangerous. It’s very addictive to be given some power. One of the things I watch in other people is how they use the power they are given. It’s very important to me when I’m assessing someone.

Q. Tell me more about that.

A. I’m trying to understand how they used the power to hire and fire and promote and make those kinds of invisible choices that really affect other people’s lives. If they don’t have some generosity of spirit and some quality of teaching, I worry that they’re not going to bring along a strong culture.

Q. And how do you tell whether somebody has those qualities?

A. I would probably ask them, “What do you think is the most important thing in deciding to fire someone?” They might go through some business-school buzzwords, and then I say, “Well, then, how do you actually do it?” If they send a note, or they delegate it or they arrange three people in the room with them, I know that they’re not prepared to take full, personal responsibility. When I had to fire someone, I did it one-on-one.

Q. So what is an answer you like to hear in that context?

A. What I’m looking for is whether they are able to assess the whole person, not just some failing of theirs at work, because sometimes a person can be in the wrong slot. We are all inferior people to work with in some way, including ourselves. The trick is to match your failings with somebody’s strengths. That’s the game. These are very important moments of leadership.

Q. You mentioned earlier the importance of doing a self-assessment. Can you elaborate on that?

A. I have made that a big part of my teaching for women in the executive world. Don’t let someone tell you who you are. Keep your own scorecard, and it has to include the good, the bad and the ugly.

Q. What other lessons do you pass along?

A. For most of us, it’s a mistake to just let the quality of our work speak for itself, because sooner or later the quality of your relationships will prevail over the work. That was a watershed insight for me.

You have to recognize there will be a moment in time when you will not be able to be represented by the quality of your work but rather by the relationships you have. If you’re in a crisis, what matters is what you’re made of and what you believe and how well you can express that. What I say to people is to get ready for those moments by practicing every chance you get to take the lead, to step out in front of the work. Don’t hide behind it.

When those moments come along and you need to draw on resources that are internal and your personal belief system, if you don’t know what they are, others will tell you what they are. People can then come to you and say, “Well, you just don’t know how to lead from the front,” a critique I’ve never understood

Self-knowledge is so obvious-sounding that I hate to use it like that, but in fact you can be masterful at doing the work and you can be good in team relationships, but one day you will be called on to have difficult, complex relationships and a different part of you has to be used for that.

Q. How did you get that self-knowledge?

A. In my case, I was forced into it because I hit a wall, so sometimes the most useful way is just to get blown apart and have to step back and say, “What can I learn?” A lot of times it’s something you can learn, and I think that mistakes are great teachers. Sometimes a company’s culture is a big influencer in how you see yourself, and you have to sift through that and see if it’s a fit. Part of it is knowing yourself so well that you know where you fit, and knowing yourself so well that you know why you work.

Q. What about lessons from your childhood and teenage years?

A. I don’t recommend it, but I think adversity in childhood is pretty useful. I had two brothers who were a bit older than me, and my sister’s 10 years younger. The three of us grew up feeling like our back was always against the wall. We grew up too young. My father was an alcoholic, and he was volatile. You learn coping mechanisms. You keep your expectations real, and you learn what you’re made of.

My mother was not a cuddly woman. They never knew what my grades were. They assumed I did fine, so we had a kind of a take-care-of-yourself game. It wasn’t so bad, but at one key time, my mother said: “Anyone can get married. What are you going to do?” And I remember thinking, “You mean I can do almost anything?” I was influenced by the fact that it looked like we would have to do a lot on our own. It all helped me develop emotional self-sufficiency.

Q. Other management lessons?

A. This is an art form, but you have to understand that the more diverse people are, and the more uncomfortable they make you, the more likely you are to create something new together. Entertaining a certain amount of discomfort is a very important management tool.

Q. Can you elaborate?

A. In the digital age, people put too much stock in logic, data, the facts. But all the excitement and innovation is in the illogical, and the interpretation of this data by someone who’s still breaking the rules. So you as a manager have to be able to entertain chaos. Otherwise, you’ll never get close to the creative process. I worry that more and more today we lean toward that which is provable, when all the excitement is in the hard-to-prove.

Q. Other thoughts about culture?

A. I remember being on a panel, and the moderator asked all of us to complete the sentence, “The hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do is … .” Every single person said, “Change the culture.” It’s an illusion that you can really change a culture in a highly dramatic way in any hurry, and the strongest companies are those that have deeply layered cultures, unless of course they’re driving them into the ground. Then what you can do is change the edges and the top and keep the stuff that matters and strip away the rest.

It’s like a brand. There are some things about a brand that you can’t afford to change. So culture is about how we do things around here, and I have found that most of the time the culture is informal and interpreted by instinct. The most dangerous thing is a company with no culture, where one guy speaks of it one way and one woman speaks of it another. Then you’ve got a company that’s rudderless. So there are worse things than a deeply entrenched culture.

Q. Let’s shift to hiring. What do you look for?

A. Well, I think as a C.E.O., one-third of my time was spent on hiring the one right person, because that hire could shift the future of the agency. It’s time-consuming and it’s courtship. What am I looking for? I think it’s very hard to measure the weaknesses in people. They’re hidden, and sometimes they’re hidden from themselves. If you don’t know the weaknesses, you can’t allow for them. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to hire them. We’ve all got weaknesses. I can tell you mine in 3-D, but I want to know theirs, and I have to stay with them until we both discover it, so I know that it’s not a killer if they come work for us.

Q. How do you do that?

A. I say to them, “Here’s a time when I made this kind of mistake and what I learned about it,” and then I say, “I want one like that from you.” And they really try, they reach back, and most people say, “Well, I work too hard and everybody got mad at me.” If that’s all they’re going to say to me, then we’re not going very far in the interview. I’m asking for a real sense of revelation and personal understanding of their capacities, because then they won’t be blindsided.

I’m always reaching for the intangible and the invisible. I really don’t look at résumés about sales increases and that sort of thing, although I’m happy they had some productive results. I’m trying to find out if they have confidence about the things that matter, their own ability to think and to get to the true center of things.

So you try to learn things about them. Let’s say somebody has a very short fuse. They’re not going to discuss this with you, so what you do is you keep asking about their experiences, and say: “Give me an example. What’s an example of that?” That will lead you to understanding more about them.

Q. Sum it up for me.

A. I’m looking for something that allows me to see all of you, the interior tensile strength — which I know you have — and then how that can trap you sometimes, because I know it will. What you’re looking for is the ability to deal with the unknown, and the other thing you’re looking for is some kind of longer-term potential. I’m trying to understand emotional and intangible assets. How is their tenacity? What’s their energy like? What’s their optimism and belief system? For instance, I have quite a bias against people who are naturally cynical. It can be amusing in certain situations, but in fact it’s very derailing. I once gave a speech at the Association of National Advertisers and said, “The way I see things at many companies is there are one or two people originating and the rest are sitting in a semicircle, critiquing.” Boy, were they insulted.

In the last few years, psychologists and researchers have been digging up hard data on a question previously left to philosophers: What makes us happy? Researchers like the father-son team Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener, Stanford psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, and ethicist Stephen Post have studied people all over the world to find out how things like money, attitude, culture, memory, health, altruism, and our day-to-day habits affect our well-being. The emerging field of positive psychology is bursting with new findings that suggest your actions can have a significant effect on your happiness and satisfaction with life. Here are 10 scientifically proven strategies for getting happy.

Savor Everyday Moments

Pause now and then to smell a rose or watch children at play. Study participants who took time to “savor” ordinary events that they normally hurried through, or to think back on pleasant moments from their day, “showed significant increases in happiness and reductions in depression,” says psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky.

Avoid Comparisons

While keeping up with the Joneses is part of American culture, comparing ourselves with others can be damaging to happiness and self-esteem. Instead of comparing ourselves to others, focusing on our own personal achievement leads to greater satisfaction, according to Lyubomirsky.

Put Money Low on the List

People who put money high on their priority list are more at risk for depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem, according to researchers Tim Kasser and Richard Ryan. Their findings hold true across nations and cultures. “The more we seek satisfactions in material goods, the less we find them there,” Ryan says. “The satisfaction has a short half-life—it’s very fleeting.” Money-seekers also score lower on tests of vitality and self-actualization.

Have Meaningful Goals

“People who strive for something significant, whether it’s learning a new craft or raising moral children, are far happier than those who don’t have strong dreams or aspirations,” say Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener. “As humans, we actually require a sense of meaning to thrive.” Harvard’s resident happiness professor, Tal Ben-Shahar, agrees, “Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and enjoyable.”

Take Initiative at Work

How happy you are at work depends in part on how much initiative you take. Researcher Amy Wrzesniewski says that when we express creativity, help others, suggest improvements, or do additional tasks on the job, we make our work more rewarding and feel more in control.

Make Friends, Treasure Family

Happier people tend to have good families, friends, and supportive relationships, say Diener and Biswas-Diener. But it’s not enough to be the life of the party if you’re surrounded by shallow acquaintances. “We don’t just need relationships, we need close ones” that involve understanding and caring.

Smile Even When You Don’t Feel Like It

It sounds simple, but it works. “Happy people…see possibilities, opportunities, and success. When they think of the future, they are optimistic, and when they review the past, they tend to savor the high points,” say Diener and Biswas-Diener. Even if you weren’t born looking at the glass as half-full, with practice, a positive outlook can become a habit.

Say Thank You Like You Mean It

People who keep gratitude journals on a weekly basis are healthier, more optimistic, and more likely to make progress toward achieving personal goals, according to author Robert Emmons. Research by Martin Seligman, founder of positive psychology, revealed that people who write “gratitude letters” to someone who made a difference in their lives score higher on happiness, and lower on depression—and the effect lasts for weeks.

Get Out and Exercise

A Duke University study shows that exercise may be just as effective as drugs in treating depression, without all the side effects and expense. Other research shows that in addition to health benefits, regular exercise offers a sense of accomplishment and opportunity for social interaction, releases feel-good endorphins, and boosts self-esteem.

Give It Away, Give It Away Now!

Make altruism and giving part of your life, and be purposeful about it. Researcher Stephen Post says helping a neighbor, volunteering, or donating goods and services results in a “helper’s high,” and you get more health benefits than you would from exercise or quitting smoking. Listening to a friend, passing on your skills, celebrating others’ successes, and forgiveness also contribute to happiness, he says. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn found that those who spend money on others reported much greater happiness than those who spend it on themselves.

Idea_bulb Convincing someone that an idea – perhaps your idea – is the best one can sometimes be more difficult than actually developing the idea itself.

From my experience, there’s five rules to follow (more or less in order) to make sure your ideas are given the proper attention they deserve as you move from brainstorming to implementation.

1. Link the idea to its purpose.

Show or demonstrate why this specific idea will help to achieve the goal and/or address or eliminate the problem. This rule grows in exponential importance to the ‘unusualness’ of the idea. In other words, the more bizarre the idea, the more you need to anchor it in reality.

2. Make influential friends.

Involve key internal/external people throughout the creative process, if possible, sooner than later. Get a clear agreement on the goal or purpose of the idea. What do they expect? What criteria will they use to the judge the best ideas? Do they have any initial ideas (even if bad) which might suggest a tone or style? Can they help contribute to the creative brief? Can they join the brainstorm, or stop by after it’s finished? Can they help select or judge the ideas?

3. Sell the sizzle, not the meat.

Some ideas simply can’t be conveyed in words, no matter how eloquent the writer. The very best ideas need to experienced just as the intended audience might see it. Most of us can’t avoid using PowerPoint altogether (and no reason to, if you use it properly), but follow this guideline: use more pictures than words. Use mood boards or hire an artist or cartoonist to show the idea ‘in action.’ Make samples or hand-outs to put the idea in the hands of the person buying it.

4. Give it time.

Some ideas need to rise, like yeast in bread. Most ideas are rarely form perfectly from the start, and given the urgency of the situation or the passion of the brainstormer, many ideas are sold too early. They might need (more) research, or an expert needs to be engaged to help adapt an idea to a situation without homogenizing it. Often it’s better to sell an idea to one trusted and influential friend to get an initial reaction than to sell it too early to the widest possible audience.

5. Protect it.

From what? Criticism, politics, internal or personal agendas, inflexibility and assumptions.

Or, in a word, negativity. This is an entire topic unto itself, one that I’ll tackle here.

“A Picture Is Worth …”

But, before I go … I can’t speak enough about how important it is to sell ideas visually. In his book Memory Techniques, James Manktelow says 65% of people learn visually, 30% learn through hearing, and 5% through simulation (kinaesthetic). If you agree, then your best presentation should have elements of all styles to engage all members of your audience.

I also see an extraordinary amount of PowerPoint documents in my workshops on “How to Write in PowerPoint,” and it’s amazing to me still that so many documents are in black & white. If you still use colour only as a template element in PowerPoint, you’re removing the single most important element to draw the eye to your key messages. But key tip: don’t put the words in colour. Put the words in white in a darkly coloured box. Much easier to read, and will work no matter the quality of the data projector.

As the Olympics wind up, I find myself reflecting back especially on Shaun White’s amazing performance. When he won his well-deserved half-pipe gold in Vancouver under a blizzard of media coverage, even a sober academic like me was jumping up and down, watching the excitement on television. It strikes me now that the business and academic communities can learn powerful lessons from this young Olympian.

In Shaun, a restless spirit that seeks to create its own destiny, not by settling for “good enough,” but by being the best ever.

Let’s examine the management lessons:

Ambition. Successful organizations sometimes become complacent, and, over time, they decay. Remember Polaroid? Shaun didn’t rest on his laurels after he won the gold. He set himself a nearly impossible goal — a perfect score — similar to JFK’s ambition to put a “man on the moon.” When White didn’t have to, he tried a double McTwist 1260. Why is a huge ambition important? Because the thought of climbing a mountain lifts us up in a way the idea of scaling a molehill does not. Does your organization have a huge ambition?

Passion. Obviously, Shaun loves what he does. When you love your work, excellence isn’t an afterthought, it is the only thought. Is your organization passionate about its purpose?

Results. Shaun’s obsession is based on results. He invests the time to create new moves that set a new standard. Does your organization focus on results and doing what it takes to create them?

Innovation. Shaun is an entrepreneur and innovator par excellence. He constantly pushes the boundary and invents new tricks. For him, innovation isn’t a luxury, it’s a way of life. Is innovation part of your organization’s DNA?

Talent. At an early age, Shaun’s talent was recognized by one of his sponsors. He turned pro at 13, before the Olympics even had a snowboarding event. Does your organization pursue talent, attract it and nurture it?

Humility. Even while soaring high on achievement and adulation, Shaun has kept himself grounded, surrounded by family and close friends. The more humble you are, the more you know what you don’t know; you seek to learn. Is yours a learning organization?

Mind-set. This is as important as ability. Shaun exemplifies this, as evidenced in his recent backstage interview on Oprah:

“I wish I could say it was really intense training but it’s a lot of mental preparation. A lot of my sport has to do with mentally being ready to do these tricks and convincing yourself it’s okay.”

Does your organization have the right mind-set for excellence?

America didn’t achieve greatness by tucking in its shirttails or by taking the safe road. This nation wasn’t built by bean counters, insurance companies, or financial institutions. It was built through an unquenchable thirst for innovation. Sure, we praise Steve Jobs and the lads at Google, but we need more of them.

Where are the Shaun Whites to tackle health care or the green challenge?

Politicians and business leaders, it’s your turn. Where you will be in 2020?

Management Training on Analysis of 3 Idiots Movie

http://www.drshaileshthaker.co.in/blog/index.php/management-lessons-from-3-idiots-movies/

In a public lecture at IISc in Bangalore, Venkataraman Ramakrishnan who won the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 2009 recalled that he appeared for the IIT entrance test in the reputed CMC (Christian Medical College), Vellore but did not get a seat.

Ramakrishnan also recalled that years later, in 1981, after his post-doctoral, he could not initially find a job even though he had put in 50 applications in different universities (overseas) without success. He remembered his journey from Baroda where he went to school and college before moving to Ohio University for his Ph.D. He shifted to Baroda from Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu when he was three.

“My parents were somewhat old-fashioned; they did not believe in coaching classes (for preparation in entrance test),” Ramakrishnan told a packed J N Tata Auditorium, where many could not even enter because it was crowded. They (his parents) thought coaching classes were “nonsense”.

Also, giving an explanation for not qualifying the entrance tests for the medical college, he said that those days, there were only small number of seats for men.

STREET INTELLIGENCE IS MORE POWERFUL THEN UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE. LIFE  IS NOT KNOWING BUT WILLINGNESS TO DO.

A Passion Leads to Excellence based on Latest Block Buster Movie 3 Idiots

Dr. Shailesh Thaker – A Seminar on Learning a lesson from 3 Idiots Movie for Professors, Teachers, Students and Professionals at HL College Campus, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad – 380009.

Next Session coming soon at AMA

I work in a restaurant that has a program working with ex-cons and the homeless. There is a guy who started working with us as a dish tanker and he told me his story one day.

He lived in Florida, (we are in Ohio now) and he received information that he owed child support on a 6-year-old boy. Well this was news to his ears because he didn’t even know he had a kid! He came to Ohio to clear this matter up and took a DNA test that determined that the kid was his. He was PROMPTLY put in jail for owing over $19,000 in back child support. He stayed in jail for 9 months and when he was released, he was homeless, jobless.

Instead of giving up on his kid and going back to Florida where he had plenty of family and help, he stayed in Ohio and used assistance from the Government to get into a program at the YMCA. He got a job at my restaurant and 3 weeks after getting his job, he met his son for the first time. So, I asked him, “What’s it like living at the YMCA and knowing you have a boy out there?”

He said he stayed in Ohio because he could not bear to leave a piece of himself here undiscovered. He liked living at the YMCA because they were helping him have a relationship with the boy. The only thing he did not like was that he didn’t have a T.V. or a microwave. Therefore, I got on free cycle and I found him a T.V. and a microwave. My friend, Chuckled, gave me a ride to pick up the microwave, and a nice Chinese lady dropped the T.V. off at my house. I took them to work and made this guy’s day. (Eric, is his name BTW and he was grateful.)

A month later, I got called into the office at work the other day. My general manager and an assistant were sitting there wanting to have a “talk” with me. Of course, I was nervous, as you have two people present to get fired, and I was thinking, “What could I have done wrong?”

The general manager, Steve, went into his speech. “Melanie, there was an incident that occurred here around December that involved you. Can you think of what I’m talking about?” I was thinking, and shaking my head, No? In addition, Steve said, “Well it involved you getting a microwave and a T.V. for Eric, do you recall that?” I said, “Yes?”

Steve said, “Once a month we pick an employee who has gone above and beyond to help out a fellow employee or customer. We put their names in a pool and write up reasons why we think this person is deserving. I picked you, because I just thought it was so awesome that you thought of helping someone out just for the sake of being helpful! The General Managers vote on the person they think is most deserving, and you won!”

At this point, I was about to faint because I thought I was getting fired and Steve presented me with a name tag, with MY name especially made just for me!! You may ask, “Why is she so excited that she got a name tag for giving someone a T.V. and a microwave?” My answer? Because it felt good to help someone in need and in the end no matter WHAT the recognition, the point is I was recognized! My good deed produced another one! Good Deeds are contagious!

m/` 
Xed some more stuff that I was carrying. Still the satisfaction was a little less. Hence, I decided to buy a good meal and find someone, and give it to that person. I decided to buy dinner for myself but give it to someone needier and miss out my dinner for the day. This was an inspiration I never had before. But, somehow it clicked.

There weren’t any beggars around for the next three or four blocks and I was wondering whom I would give the food to. I found one but he refused to take food, as he needed only money. I found another person, but by the time I could approach him he went away.

But, I had a feeling someone would come. Then, I found a lady sitting on one corner of the road. I asked her if she would like to eat something and she agreed. I told her I would be back just in a moment.  Just opposite to where she sat, I found a good place to buy food. I purchased nice pizza and cake. I went back and gave the entire package to her. I assumed she would be excited and start eating at once but instead she just kept the package and started asking for money. I added some money as well and went off.

After this as I walked home and later I felt a surge of satisfaction I never experienced before. I didn’t feel hungry though I hadn’t eaten much the whole day. This was a unique, deep feeling, I felt a little uplifted from my normal self and very peaceful within.

This is what happens when we give what we actually need. I never got that feeling by doing any other action and I am sure those beautiful moments are worth any sacrifice. What I got was much more than what I gave.