How can I stop being average in life?

How can I stop being average? A great answer is possible for “How can I be excellent at anything?”

~ A practical guide to creating excellence in daily life ~

• Do work you love to do. That is the indispensable first condition.
• If you are stuck in a profile you hate, leave. Or, begin loving it. No third way.
• Everyday, try to be a bit faster and more efficient that the earlier day.Consciously. Don’t ask your boss, do it on your own.
• Constantly imagine what you desire others should say of your work - “average”, “chalta hai”, “professional”, “wow!”, “reliable”, …
• Make formats (small and big) that you can replicate the next time - for everything possible. It saves amazing amounts of time and makes you very fast.
  
• Organize your stuff. Files, papers, software, hardware, everything. Acid test - how much time you take to retrieve anything.
• Read about your area of work regularly. It keeps you alarmed enough to never lose the incentive to learn new things.
• New skills take time to learn and master. Be very patient, but aggressive all the while. Find an accomplished guru who’s willing to mentor you (fastest and surest way, but very difficult to find)
• Inquisitiveness killed the cat, but it’ll build your excellence. Ask, inquire, search, sift, collate, reject, edit, absorb.
• Keep your silliness at bay - don’t smirk when someone points out your shortcomings, don’t laugh when someone fails, be willing to dish out money on great books/literature (of immediate use), etc.
• Don’t envy the accomplished. Praise them whole-heartedly.

And if you find all this tedious and useless, there’s no compulsion at all. Just don’t complain the next time you miss the pay hike or bonus, and are unable to achieve your material goals. Settle at a lower orbit, and if you can be happy with it, perfect.

Life does not expect excellence for survival. It is stuff dreams are made of.

~

How can you tell a person is rich just by looking at him / her?

I will tell you six tricks I use. Allow me to use a personal definition of "being wealthy".

FIRST - Look at the contentment on the man's face. It usually cannot be faked. A man who is content in the moment now, is Alexander the Mighty!

SECOND - Look at the number of brands the man is wearing and using. The more the number and the more blatant the good(s), the poorer the person is. He needs a lot of external support to project his personality - a frail, weak, hollow individual. Remember the Naga sadhus - naked, all powerful, one with the divine. (OK, that was an extreme one!)

Find the light - it's not too difficult

THIRD - Look at his company. Family, Friends, Kids, Acquaintances. The more crooked and twisted they are, the poorer the guy is. The more simple and loving that group is, the richer the guy is. They are both reflecting upon each other. A man is known by the company he keeps.

FOURTH - Look at his typical day. If reading a variety of stuff and forming informed opinions on multiple issues is a core part of his life, you are staring at a very rich person, who can add immense intellectual value to everyone around. I think, therefore I am.

FIFTH, find out what diseases he is suffering from. If he was born perfectly healthy with no defective genetic baggage, and has managed to pile up loads of beautiful diseases with big names and bigger bills, oooh! A poor man. The treadmill he couldn't slow down enough.

and FINALLY, try finding how he feels about the poor, the destitute and the needy. If he is moved from within and wants to help them even with a bare minimum to spare, you are looking at the richest man in the world. Man - human - humanity.

For, of what use are the billions stashed away in those tax havens when you are crooked, jealous, stingy, diseased, can't laugh, are full of hate and envy and useless for mankind at large? Human life is a speck, practically meaningless, in the vast expanse of this time-space. Make it meaningful.
~

What are the most important things I should teach my child?

Well, there are many, and these can form the top list -

• Be a great learner.
• Listen to wise people with an open mind and closed mouth.
• Read an hour daily.
• Don't hoard stuff.
• Don't be a brands person. It's the quickest route to spiritual death.
• Discover new perspectives without losing your own.
• Read two hours daily.
• Write something with a pen on a paper daily. Have a good handwriting.
• Walk.
• Laugh a lot. Laugh like mad!
• Fail. Enjoy failure. Emerge with lessons.
• Respect others' success no matter how much you detest it.
• Read a lot daily.
• Don't be a jerk, meet and talk to people.
• Help someone in need regularly.
• Learn about the Universe; it's the most mysterious thing you won't ever get out of!
• Love science and its approach. But don't hate religion and spirituality.
• Learn Sanskrit shlokas even @ 2 or 3 per month.
• Cry when you need to. Don't be ashamed of it.
• Don't expect a smooth, hassle-free and scratch-free existence. Enjoy the tumbles. Love life!

And guess what - these lessons apply to all of us! 

~

Life's bare truths!

As we get entangled in our daily busyness, we rarely find time to think about the bigger aspects of life itself. Here's an attempt at unravelling some truths of life. The joy lies in realising these, and yet striving optimistically to improve oneself consistently.

Seriously speaking -

It goes on, with you, or without.

• It will all end one day - No matter who you are, how mighty or resourceful your position is, or howsoever intelligent and positive you are, you die one day. All your movements cease to be, the blood stops circulating, and you change from a person to a dead body that needs an almost immediate disposal. And within days of that happening, you become a bookmark in history, that too for just a few years. It all ends then. There will be a day in the future when your name will be taken one last time and your face and deeds remembered for the last time.
• Nature does not care - Nature / Prakriti / The Universe / The Multiverse ... no matter what name you use, it just does not care what you think (of it). Nature moves with its own rhythm, bound in its own cycles, driven by its own instincts, and your presence or absence hardly matters. And we are tied inside it, and despite being blessed with the powers of analysing and rationalising its presence, cannot escape its clutches. It's a state of permanent bondage for most, unless spiritually freed.
• There are very few true friends - No matter what you do for others, the number of people who stand by you in your toughest moments can be in lower single digits! This can be rationalised by the Law of Karma spanning multiple lives, which indeed seems to be working for many.