Chapter I

Life is to work for others

Mr. Mohan and Mr. Rajkumar are friends. They are equally competent in studies and personal
qualities. Both of them joined in a company as executives in a same day. After five years, Mr.
Rajkumar has become a senior manager and Mr. Mohan remains in the same position. When we
think why, we may say that Mr. Rajkumar is more talented than Mr. Mohan is. Many times this
is not correct. If we think beyond the talent, that is what has made Mr. Rajkumar more talented
than Mr. Mohan, we will get the answer. Shall we try?

What is life? Why have we born here? Why are we in a particular job/field? If you try to answer
these questions, you may not get an appropriate and acceptable answer. The answer may vary
person to person or religion to religion and even time to time.

However, one thing is common and true. We are here and we have to be. Knowingly or
unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly, purposefully or purposelessly, we are here and we are
doing something expected by somebody. Our family members, our manager in office, our life
guide, or our friend expect something what we have to do. Most of our efforts/works are for the
above said people.

If we live a life, which tries to satisfy the above said members, then this life is for others and not
for us. This is the common explanation to the fact that ‘life is to work for others’.

If we think in a different way, our understanding will be clearer. Different country people earn
different salaries in this world. Different sector people earn different salaries in a country.
Different cadre people earn different salaries in a company.

The salary difference is mainly depends upon the customer demand, quantity and quality of that
particular product/service we are providing to them. A general manager will cover more
customers, provide more quantity of service/product, impart or pave way for more quality
service/ product to customers than a new executive newly joined in a company. Therefore, a
general manager gets more salary than a new executive does. When the customer demand
combines to that particular product/service, then the salary will be very high. We can cite the IT
sector as an example to this category.

Temporarily leaving the salary matter for a while, we will think of something related to our
source of services/products that we are using every day. Almost all the products/services we are
using are coming from others. In our house, others manufacture all the parts. Others produce
even our food. Every minute we are utilizing the products/services of others. If we try to quantify
and qualify the services / products of others, we are utilizing, it will vary from person to person.
A person who is earning more will utilize the services/products of others more.
Now we will correlate the salary matter with utilization of service/product of others. Those who
give more service/products to others will get more service/products from others. What we are
trying to learn here is that if we extend our service to others, we will get the services from others.
It is the simple life theory.

At executive position, if we put more efforts on servicing others, automatically we will be

elevated in our career and we will get more services from others. If we are in marketing job, let
us put more concentration on the servicing part of our customers and try to cover more and more
customers through that quality product or quality service.

There are three kinds of situation comes in here. One is to extend more and more quality
product/service to more and more people and gets more and more service/products from others.
This we can see in the life of anybody working in a business concerns. The second situation is
that extending more and more service to others and purposefully avoiding services from others.
This we can see in non-governmental organizations and other purely holy service organizations.
In these organizations, they extend more service for a less salary. The third kind of situation is
that some of us will try to get more and more service from others but not willing to extend
service to others. This is the weak point of many of us. Suppose, when we are working in an
organization, if we are not doing our work of servicing others-customers, sometimes colleagues
and we are expecting promotion and good salary, and there by more and more service from
others, here arises problem.

The persons want to have the third kind of situation will always in trouble and try to blame
others for their failures. Even sometimes these kinds of persons, in order to achieve their goal of
getting service from others that is money, they may even enter in to an illegal ways and means of
things.

When we connect our life theory “LIFE IS TO LIVE FOR OTHERS” with the words of God, it
is always true that “WHAT WE GIVE TO OTHERS WE WILL GET THE SAME”, Bible says
and “WE HAVE TO DO OUR DUTIES AND SHOULD NOT EXPECT THE RETURNS”,
Geta says.

God has given us a duty to perform. It may be an attendant job or a general manager job. We
have to deliver the duties to others sincerely and God will automatically give us the services
from others. We can see many persons claimed the ladder of success in this way. Now we got the
answer to Mr. Mohan’s failure and success of Mr. Rajkumar. Do we want to be as Mr. Rajkumar
or Mr. Mohan that is purely up to us?

Self-Assessment

Example Situation- I
Assume that you are working as a sales boy/girl in a cloth shop and you are attending one
customer. Your customer is selecting one cloth, which is an old poor quality stock in the shop.
You know very well that cloth is not good. However, your owner has ordered you to see all the
old poor quality materials with out telling the truth. What will you do now?

1. You will obey the order of your owner that you have to sell all the old poor quality
materials to customers with out telling the truth.
2. Whatever, it may be the order of your owner; you will try to sell the poor quality material
to the customer, thinking that clever selling is business.
3. Whatever, it may the order of your owner; you will never sell the poor quality material to
your customer with out telling the truth.

There are three different answers are given. Please select any one answer, which your heart says
correct. Be genuine with you. Let us analyze your answers.

We can get two derivations from answer number one. First is that you may be against your wish
of not to sell the poor quality material to customers and in contrast, you have sold the poor
quality material only to obey your owner. Here you may be in a situational trap- your financial
needs or want of job. Second is that you and your owner wishes are same and you are selling
poor quality material with out telling the truth to customers.

If you have selected answer number two or three, it shows that you are not under any situational
trap but you are under attitude trap. You are giving importance to your values and principles.
However, the difference is that in answer number two, your attitude is negative, and in answer
number three, it is positive.

When we are coming to our point of ‘Life is to live for others’, the people given answer number
three will be at top and they will certainly spread their services and products to more and more
number of people and get services from more and more number of people. In the second place,
the people with answer number one will come, provided they change their situational tarp. The
people with answer number two will have to change their attitude.

Example situation- II

Assume that you are working as a Technical Manager in a company. Under you, there are five
executives working and taking up different assignments. One of your executive, who joined
newly, is in euphoric stage of relationship development with you and your company. One day a
fine morning, he comes out with an idea in his domain and he wants to tell the matter to you
immediately. He calls up you at early morning over your personal phone. What will you do?

1. You never like calls from employees other than official hours especially in the morning.
Therefore, you will not attend the call.
2. You will attend the call, but you will not listen to him. You will cut off the phone after
saying that whatever it may be, please come and discuss in the office.
3. You will attend the call and listen to him carefully. After that, you will ask him to come
for more discussion in the office.
 4. You will attend the call and listen to his ideas carefully. Immediately you praise him for
his innovative idea and ask to come out with detailed preparation to discuss it in the
office.

We hope that you have selected only one answer from the above four. Some of you are saying
that the decision will vary situation to situation and mood to mood. Please do not confuse
yourself. Here we are taking about normal situation.

Here we have to see your subordinate as a customer. When we are in business, the product end
users, our suppliers, our traders/dealers, our staffs and our other stakeholders like bankers,
transporters etc, has to be seen and treated as customers.

As you are a manager, your customer satisfaction will be the priority at all times and if you do
so, you will get more and more customers to serve. Then automatically you will climb in the
career ladder and you will get more service from others. Here the objective of your subordinate-
a customer to you is that he has to get good opinion and praise from you. With this objective
only, your subordinate has called you.

In the four answers given, the fourth is more appropriate, third is appropriate, second is not good,
and first is bad. With the people given first and second answers, there is a problem with attitude.
They need to change.

Chapter II

Believing Ourselves
The General Manager, Mr. Ashok Kumar is conducting a meeting with his five production
managers came from different production units. He describes about one of the new projects of
the company. While he explains about it, he tells that the project is on experimental basis and it
may pose challenges but it is possible to do it. Finally he asks towards his managers that who is
ready to take up the projects. After a few silent moments, one of the managers, Mr. Srikanth
raises his hands and says that he is ready. The general manger praises him and asks to come for a
separate discussion.

After the meeting, Mr. Saravanan, a close friend of Mr. Srikanth tells to him that you are going
to suffer a lot with that new project. Mr. Srikanth replies that he will manage it. Again, Mr.
Saravanan tells that whatever you tell, you are going to suffer because of the new project.

If we compare both the managers, we can easily say that Mr. Srikanth has more self-confidence
than Mr. Saravanan does. Why and how has self-confidence come to Mr. Srikanth? Can we go
for an analysis?
What is self-confidence? Is it being inside us or is it coming from outside? If you like this, you
will get the answer that self-confidence is nothing but a confidence on us. It is a self-belief that
we can do it. Then why somebody believes that he can do and in contrast, somebody thinks that
he cannot do even though both are being in an equal place. If you take both Mr. Srikanth and Mr.
Saravanan, both are working as managers in a same company. While Mr. Srikanth believes that
he can do the new project, Mr. Saravanan believes that he cannot do it.

If any body says that he cannot do it, he may not know that job and sometimes there is no
relevance between that person and the job. For example, a biologist can say that he cannot do a
rocket technology. This is due to the reason that he does not have the enough knowledge on the
subject. This is not the thing, which we are talking here. Here we are talking about a belief,
which a person has on a particular thing or act, which actually he can do it. Here we are relating
ourselves with a thing or act that because of us, there is some change is going to take place in a
particular thing or act. We believe that we can bring that particular change in a thing, act, or
both. We believe that we have enough tools like knowledge, time, energy, skills etc to make a
change in a particular thing, act, or both and finally we can make a new thing, act, or both. If a
person does not believe that he has knowledge, energy, or skill enough to do a thing, then he will
have disbelief in doing that particular thing.

Why this variation in belief between person to person is there and what determines the level of
belief. Now you can feel that the experiences and the knowledge gained out of that experiences
are very important in deciding a belief on something. If the experiences are good, the belief is
positive and if the experiences are bad, then belief is negative. In the life of any person, if more
experiences are bad, then he or she may be a negative person with less self-belief and
confidence. When these kinds of persons see a new work or situation, they will either fear or
avoid that work or situation. This is the difference between Mr. Srikanth and Mr. Saravanan.

The experiences in childhood also can affect a person’s self-confidence in latter age. How to
overcome this is the question now. If we have to develop our self-belief and confidence means,
first we need to experience good and positive things in our current period. Once we starts to
experience success, then our self-belief will automatically increase. The following two things are
very important to overcome the problem.

1. First and foremost thing here is that we need to self-praise our small successes.
2. We should never compare ourselves with the success of others.

If we follow the above two rules in our work and life, then there will be a change in our self-
belief and confidence in a positive direction. Once we start to come out, nothing can stop us.
Even our failures will not affect us now. In your targeted work, if you see your small successes
and praise yourself then really you will see a big success at the end.

If after all of our efforts, we are not able to belief ourselves, then we need to think about
changing our path way or work. May be our core competency is different from what we are
doing now.
One message is very clear here that all the persons are capable to achieve a peak provided they
believe themselves. What ever we believe is our life. These believe are there in our subconscious
mind and operate our movement towards success or failure. What is about you? It is totally in
your hand.

Self-Assessment

Example Situation- I
Assume that you start a business. As business is in initial stage, you do not have much staff. You
are doing the order-taking job. You approach around twenty clients and get no order. With many
clients, you get ill treatment also. That day evening, you are alone and think about it. What will
be your thinking?

1. You feel very much dejected, worry about your selection of business, and think about
closing the business immediately.
2. You feel agitated and think that you will try for another one month and if not getting
order, then you will close the business.
3. You feel happy that you could able to get some answer of “ok we will see” from two of
your clients.
4. You will feel very happy that you have covered twenty clients in a day and put the seeds
of your business.

The objective of your journey to your clients is to get order. In the four answers given, the
objective has not met out. However, in first two answers, the failures are taken in to prominent
mode and in third and fourth answers; successes are taken in to account.

If you remember the first rule, you will understand that you have to see your small achievements
and praise yourself. This is the indication that you are self-confident and the success is nearing
you. If you start to see your small successes rather than your failures coming in the way, then
you have already started to believe yourself and will reach the success.

Example II

Assume that you are working as an accounts executive in a firm. Your manager has assigned
some work to you and a same kind of work to one of your colleagues. The deadline to finish this
job is ten days. After seven days, your manager calls you, says that your colleague has completed
the work, and asks you whether you will complete the work with in the remaining three days or
not. Further, he says that if you are not able to do it please give it to that person and let him finish
it. What will be your reaction and answer to your manager?

1. You will try to be in safer side and tell that let your colleague to handle this work and
finish it with in next three days.
2. You will say that you will try to finish it with in three days.
3. You will assure that you will finish it with in the target period.
 4. You will say that you will get the help from your colleague and assure that you will finish
with in a day.

As we have discussed earlier, if we compare our work with others, then there will come some
doubt on us. It will erode our self-confidence and you may not get success. Here, the first two
answers are the examples of such a kind of comparison with our colleagues. It has raised some
doubt on the self-believe and led to negative answers. In contrast, third and fourth answers are
showing independency and high confidence level.

Repeatedly we need to understand that if we have to erode our poor self-belief registered in our
mind, we have to start to avoid the comparison of our achievements with others and to praise
ourselves for our small and tiny achievements. This will really go to our sub conscious mind and
direct us to think positive with high self-belief and confidence.

CHAPTER III

THE POWER OF DREAMS

Mr. Kathir Selvan, and Mr. Isaivannan are friends and all belong to a small village called
Kamatchipuram located in rural Tamil Nadu. They came from socially and economically more or
less equal family background. They studied in the same school and college. After college, Mr.
Kathir Selvan joined in a pharma company as Sales Executive and currently he is working as
AGM-Marketing in a reputed pharma company at Chennai and earning Rs 50,000 per month.
Mr. Isaivannan joined in a company as Sales Executive in cattle feed company and worked for 2
years. After that, he resigned the job and started his own business. After doing 3 years of
business, he left it because of heavy loss. Then he had joined in a tailoring institute and learned
tailoring. Currently he owns a tailor shop at Kamatchipuram and earning Rs 4000 per month.
Now he thinks to start Amway business to increase his income. Why these much of variation in
their life? What made their life different? Let us think.

What do you think about dreaming? Dr. Abdul Kalam says that all need to dream…dream…
dream… What is dreaming? What we have to dream? If we start to think about dreaming, we
will understand that it is nothing but thinking about what we do not have now but what we want
to have in future.

How the dream happens? From our child hood, we are seeing, hearing and feeling many things.
What ever we experience, they all get stored in our brain. Dreaming is nothing but organizing
our recorded things in to structure and storing it in our mind.

Here we will try to understand the various stages of structuring the dream and to analyze what
will happen to the dream thoughts came out of our brain. The dream building is like a house
building. When we build a house, we are arranging so many materials from different parts and
organizing it in to a well-structured house. The major point here is that the dream building
should be complete and it should be like a finished house. If a dream building stops in middle, it
equal to semi-structured house with out roofs. It may demolish at any time. Another type of
dreaming is that it will not have any foundation. It equals to a house with out foundation. It may
also demolish at any time. It means that before these dreams come true in your life, they will
vanish from your mind. In other words, they will never come true in your life.

Most of us are building houses with out foundation or with out roof. The most important thing
here is that after starting to build a house, we are leaving the first house unfinished and start to
build a second house. Some time, we are building many houses continuously but no house is
finished. These kinds of dreams will never come true in our life.

We will see what will happen to a structured dream. The structured dream can have two kinds of
lead. To understand this, again we will compare it with houses. If we build a structured house,
then we need to live in the house and always we need to be along with house. Then only, the
house will get life and it will become a home. In the same manner, we need to live along with
our dream to make our dream a true in our life. If we do not live along with our dream, the dream
cannot become a true. It equals to that of leaving a well-built house abandoned and start to build
a new house. Here what will happen is that we will not get enough resources to build a second
house. So neither we are living with first house nor finishing the second house. This kind of life
is miserable.

Simply we need to understand that the achieved dream is equal to that of home and unachieved
dream is equal to that of empty house. To make a true home, we are doing a lot of thing, starting
from arranging things neatly, decorating it and living with loved ones. Like that if we want to
make our dream a true one in our life, we need to live along with and decorate it with things.

What we need to do to make our dream a true one? We have to live along with our dream. What
will happen when we live along with a dream? Our dream thoughts will go to our subconscious
mind from outer mind. What is the difference between storing our dream in outer mind and in
subconscious mind? When our dreams are at our outer brain, it equals to an ordinary document
file stored in desktop of a computer. When our dreams are at our subconscious mind, it equals to
that of a programmed file stored in the C drive as hidden. Now we can understand the power of
dream stored in our subconscious mind. It will lead our life as the programmed file lead the
computer.

As the programmed file in a computer can contact with a file stored in another computer or
server and take information necessary to lead the computer, our dreams stored in our
subconscious mind can contact with another person or the universe and take information required
to lead our true life. In other words, the dream thoughts stored in our subconscious mind can
become true in our life.

The thoughts stored in our mind are in electro-magnetic form. The thoughts, which are at outer
brain, will have a long wavelength and high frequency and those thoughts stored in the
subconscious mind will have a short wave length and low frequency. As we, all know very well
that the low frequency short waves can travel more distance. Likewise, our structured dream
thoughts with low frequency coming from our subconscious mind will travel and reach the
specific places and persons and it will get the information needed to make the dream true. If a
person wants to serve rural poor, he may meet a person with same dream or he may get a job in a
rural development organization. Our subconscious mind will find the ways and guide us reach
the destination. Many of the successful people would have experienced it.

Simply, what we think is our life. If we have a dream today and we are living along with the
same dream, it is sure, one day we will achieve it. However, we need to be patient and firm in
our dream. It may take several years to bring a dream true.

Now we can understand why Mr. Kathir Selvan and Mr. Isaivannan have different life. Mr.
Kathir Selvan has built only one beautiful house and he lives along with it. Nevertheless, Mr.
Isaivannan has built many houses and he is not able to live along with them. This is the reason
for success of Mr. Kathir Selvan and failure of Mr. Isaivannan. Still Mr. Isaivannan wants to
build another house. He may not get success as he expects. The reason we know very well. So
have it in your mind that what you dream today is your life after some years. We need to build
firm dreams to make our life good after some years

While setting the dream goals, we need to take care that the dream should have relevance to your
experience. Then it is very easy for our subconscious mind to programme your dreams towards
success. If we take up the new things, it may pose some difficulty. If we want to become a
scientist, then we can think of such a kind of new dreams. Other wise for a common person, it is
important to select our dream goal very related to our current work where in we have good
experience.

Self-Assessment

Example Situation I

You have been working in a company as Marketing Executive for the past 4 years and earning
Rs 10000 as salary. One day your friend who is working in a software company calls you and
both of you are sharing your lives. He tells that the software field is very good and he earns Rs
40000 per month. Further, he suggests that you can also study some software course and come to
software field, so that you can also earn a good salary. Now what will you do?

Here, there are four options available to you. Please select one option, which you feel correct and
good for your life.

1. You resign your current job and immediately join in a software-programming course with
the goal that you can earn more.
2. You continue your current job and simultaneously join in a software-programming course
with the goal that you can earn more.
3. You will continue your current job with out satisfaction thinking that it is our fate.
4. You will set a goal that you will come up in your same field of marketing and become
GM Marketing.

If you have chosen number one answer, then you are trying to build second house while
abandoning your half-finished first house. Here you may not be able to finish both the houses. If
your answer is second, you are trying to build two houses at a time. Here also you may not be
able to complete the houses. If your answer is three, you are not trying to build a house at all.
You want to live in a platform. If your answer is four, you are trying to build a well-structured
house.

Example Situation II

Currently you are working as Accounts Executive in a poultry company and earning Rs 10000
salary per month. Your brother is doing business and earning good money. He owns a car. One
day while you were driving the car, you made a small accident to the car. Your brother scolded
you like anything. At that moment, you have decided to purchase your own car. In this situation,
what will you do?

1. You will work hard to get promotion as Accounts Manager either in the same company
or in any other company of same field, so that you can purchase a car at the earliest.
2. You continue in the same job and try to do some extra business to earn money to
purchase car.
3. You will resign your job and try to do some business to earn more money in a shorter
period.
4. You will try to change your working field where in you can earn more salary.

If your answer is three or four, you are trying to abandon the half-built house and try to build a
new house. If your answer is two, you are trying to build two houses at a time. None above given
three dreams may come true in your life. If your answer is one, you are trying to build a firm
house. This dream will come true always.

Here, our final understanding is that

1. We need to have dreams

2. We need to live along with dreams
3. Our dreams should be in the area where in we have experience
4. We should not switch our dreams frequently
5. We should not have multiple dreams at a time and
6. We need to be patient to achieve dreams.