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Saturday, September 5, 2009

Use Your Mind to Grow Professionally

When I was a kid, I saw plenty of goldfish in the houses of my friends, and I remember wondering why so many people would want to keep such small, unexciting creatures as pets.

Then one day, when I was about ten years old, I went on a school field trip to a botanical garden that had a pond stocked with fish. One especially large, brilliantly colored fish stood out to me.

"What kind of fish is that one?" I asked our guide.
"That's a goldfish," she replied.
I was confused. "Aren't goldfish supposed to be small?" I asked with a note of 9-year-old sarcasm.
"Not at all," she replied. "Goldfish will grow even larger than these. It really just depends on the size of their environment."

I took in the information and determined to never again show myself so ignorant about goldfish, but it was years before I understood the broader lesson.

How often have I been like a goldfish in a fishbowl? How often have I limited myself by my perception of my world? Worse still, how many times have I put others in a small bowl in my mind? How many times have I written off someone as insignificant or unexciting? How many times have I failed to see others' potential to grow?

How much more could I achieve if I forgot my perceived limitations and dared to swim beyond the boundaries I've set for myself? And what would happen if I moved others from their small bowls into the ocean of limitless possibilities?

Just imagine a world full of people with that perspective, who truly believe that anything is possible and reach out to claim it. Together we could do astounding things. Apply this same principle to your professional life and see how things around you will suddenly start to bloom with more possibilities and success.

You are no goldfish. Even the world is not big enough to be your bowl. The limitation of your mind is the only thing that sets you apart from a successful achiever. Will you be one too? All you need to do is believe that you can.

Source: Timesjob - HR Dialogue - http://www.timesjobs.com/Mailers/HRDialogue/sep09/landing/in_focus.html based on excerpts from www.activated.org

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

The Dell Story: Most Troubled Consumer Awards - Send in your nominations now!

Summary: Dell thinks that its customers are the most jobless and useless people in the world. Dell thinks that its customers are born only to call up the Dell customer care. Dell also assumes that its customers are as dumb as they can be.
Conclusion: I won't say think twice before choosing Dell. Don't ever think of purchasing anything Dell.

Harddrive Crash:

In less than 8 months of purchasing Dell Inspiron 1525 my harddrive crashed!!! It was a nightmare for me. Lost lots of office data, personal data. All my business plans and necessary information that I had prepared for starting own business venture was lost. Well! Dell did replace the harddrive with no help for data recovery.

Battery not charging:

My power adapter stopped working. It did not charge my battery anymore and the result was I was using a Dell Inspiron 1525 desktop of small size (without mobility due to zero power back-up a laptop is as good as a desktop) of small size. I think the desktop was actually better in many ways. With desktop after a sudden power cut you have UPS to save your work, with this laptop there was no such option available as battery won't charge.

Automatic system restart:

You seen magic, you believe in magic. No!!! Use my dell laptop I am sure you will have secondary thought. You leave the system ON for sometime, it will automatically restart and then re-restart. You click on hibernation, it will hibernate and start automatically, you again hibernate, it will hibernate and start automatically. Imagine this, you need to hibernate your system as you are about to move out of your house, you hibernate and hibernate and just hibernate for next 15 minutes till it does not stop starting automatically after a hibernation. Also, bear frustration of your friends waiting for you meanwhile.

Bluetooth Not Working:

Then comes the Bluetooth not working which did not allow me to back up my phone data. I would say this was a minor issue as more was to come soon.

Overheating & Hang:

Here, Dell offered me a new set of problems. Dell replaced the Heat Sink only to give rise to increased heating and frequent hang. Now, I couldn't keep the LAP-top on my lap just to avoid heat burns. Not to talk about the hang issues because all of us are aware how much it frustrates and puts someone in mental stress if the system you are working on hangs for a minute in every 10 minutes.

Power adapter stopped working:

The worst had not come yet. After adapter replacement, for a moment I started feeling that all electric sockets/ power outputs in my house had stopped working, but fortunately that was not the case. With-in a minute of connecting power adapter to any power output, the green light indicator on the adapter would go off and the system power supply would be cut. It was worse than battery not charging. It just meant that I could not use my system any more. No data recovery possible either. To continue working while traveling I had to resort to beg and borrow.

The smart-mover Dell Customer-care The Smart Cheater

First Dell told that they would do all the necessary required services to keep the system running. After explaining the obvious to one of their managers, Mr. Harinder, that it was not about Dell providing free service rather it was about the business downtime that I was facing and the hassles - time and energy it required to call up Dell every time the system breaks down, the manager in context promised for the whole unit replacement if the service provided this time wouldn't work. Having previous bad experiences with customer care, I demanded him to give me in writing, he said, "I have given my words for the whole unit replacement, you don't have to worry about it now. Be rest assured." And, all I was praying for that I wouldn't have to waste time calling Dell again for the whole unit replacement.
But not always, it happens as you wish. System broke down again and this time I did not even want a complete replacement. All I wanted was total refund for the money I had paid. The manager, whom I had spoken earlier, did not agree on refund but promised the replacement and told that I would receive mail from Dell explaining the procedure for complete replacement. It is already long enough time that I haven't heard back from Dell and after calling the customer care they have refused to give complete replacement. Moreover, the manager who made all the large promises has refused to come online.
In this whole procedure, since first time Bluetooth not working to power adapter not working and system hang, Dell wasted months, only to come closer to the end of warranty period. Such a smart firm, first they give you poor and temporary services only to pass the time and then when the time comes to full-fill their promise of complete replacement they retract by saying that you are at end of your warranty period.
Take a call, next time you want to be a Dell customer unless you are aiming at the Most Troubled Customer Award.
P.S. Thanks Dell for giving me an opportunity to write after a long time and thank you so much for playing memory games of remembering countless names of your executives.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Why some people have all the luck?

Why do some people have all the luck while others never get the breaks they deserve?

I set out to examine luck, 10 years ago. Why are some people always in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experience ill fortune? I placed advertisements in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me.

Hundreds of extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research and over the years, have been interviewed by me. I have monitored their lives and had them take part in experiments. The results reveal that although these people have almost no insight into the causes of their luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their good and bad fortune. Take the case of seemingly chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not.

I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities. I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had secretly placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying: 'Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $50'.

This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.

Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected.

As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs.

Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. My research eventually revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

I wondered towards the end of the work, whether these principles could be used to create good luck. I asked a group of volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. Dramatic results! These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck. One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80 per cent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier.

The lucky people had become even luckier and the unlucky had become lucky. Finally, i had found the elusive 'luck factor'. Here are four top tips for becoming lucky:

1) Listen to your gut instincts ^ they are normally right.
2) Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine.
3) Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well.
4) Visualise yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call.

Have a Lucky day and work for it.

The happiest people in the world are not those who have no problems, but those who learn to live with things that are less than perfect.

The author of `The Luck Factor' teaches at the University of Hertfordshire.


Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3896391.cms?frm=mailtofriend

Hence, "Opportunity is for Opportunists" - source: Moron Life Thoughts