Build your Character

I devote this entire post to the most important practice of life which most of us fails to do. If you have read my previous post “why aren’t you happy” you have had known by now the purpose of life for which we all should strive (refer https://buildyorcharacter.blogspot.in/2017/12/why-arent-you-happy.html ). Pursuance of self actualization & transcendence needs is the ultimate source of happiness & satisfaction in human life. Abraham Maslow in one of his statements said that, every human has a need to grow & use highest of his potentials in the right direction. This need if hindered by any way, leads to a sense of guilt & unworthiness in one’s life. But there is a major difference between knowing things & doing things. So how to devote oneself to achievement of such needs? In the words of Stephen R. Covey “you can’t build a house, if you don’t have a map of it”. Thus planning combined with action is the prerequisite for achievement. We can’t lead a useful ...

Long long ago… Oops! It’s actually not that long ago. I just heard most of the fairy tales in my childhood this way, so I thought it might ignite your interests too. Anyways. A week ago I was travelling in metro. I generally choose second coach of metro & stand on the bridge between the first & the second coach (only quirky ones will understand the reason). It was a Sunday, so there weren’t those middle aged pushy uncles or “thoda to adjust krlo” aunties. But still my peace was disturbed when I found an old school friend shouting at me “Dhruv, How come you here?”. We greeted each other with a hug. Than those same old general questions started – what are you doing? Where are you going now? Ooh! Now you are a big man? Whether is nice na? blaw blaw blaw…… Suddenly he said “Dhruv you are just the same man. You always seem to be happy? How the hell you do that?” Without giving it a thought I just said “because I am very optimistic”. He accepted the answer but didn’t seem to be...

“Give me six hours to chop a tree & I will spend the first four sharpening my axe”. This famous line was being said by the sixteenth US President Abraham Lincoln. What actually he had in mind while speaking those lines? While thinking of this I made my very own version of his quote. Yaa you got it right, I am a bit lazy kind of a person who always look for shortcuts. I actually found it very difficult to remember those 15 words so I divided them with my lucky number 5 to cut them into three magical words – “Plan Before Move”. Okay I will explain the concept to you with a short story. In school days, there used to be a friend of mine. He was orphan from birth & he lived next to my house. We used to go to school in the same bus & that’s where our friendship started. How exactly we met that’s a different story which I won’t tell you now as it will consume 3-4 pages of this post. His name was Chintu (please don’t laugh on his name, as it was being kept by his mother when ...

If we ask a student of today that why he does study, he will give answers like – to secure good marks, to earn a degree, to gain respect in the society, to make their parents happy etc. But these are really subtle answers, they aren’t well thought of. We as humans are in a habit of not going too deep to a question as it requires efforts, it takes time, it threatens our present schemas. We just do things without thinking much of their actual aim and consequence. The ultimate aim of education is to build both Intuition & Conscience. Intuition is the ability to predict future. By having the knowledge of past & present happenings we can reasonably predict what will happen in the future. If we can predict we can plan for it. If we can plan, we can prepare ourselves for it. Conscience refers to the ability to judge between right & wrong. Better a man is educated, better he will distinguish right from wrong. The more right decisions he make the better character he wi...