10 Rules for Being Human by Cherie Carter-Scoff

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.
2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.’
3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and
experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work”.
4. Lcssons are repeated until they arc learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6. “There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”,you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”
7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10. You will forget all this.
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This one spoke to me. Thanks KD

The sign of a great experience is..

Withdrawal symptoms.
The next day, you feel that bit of emptiness that is difficult to express. Depending on how great the experience was, the void is only harder to fill.
I am feeling one such void after our annual a-connect meet. Sigh, I miss Eynsham Hall and the a-connect team.
And I can clearly remember the last few times I had withdrawal symptoms – Sparkz, RealAcad(s), Agnee, Europe Trip, Cameron Highlands Trip..
All of a sudden, this has given me a new way to measure trips now – Make a trip with HUGE withdrawal symptoms! And I have one coming in 3 weeks – RealAcad Stanford’11. That one never fails to disappoint.
But, here’s to planning many more, then!

On Keeping and Visualizing Dreams

This week’s learning draws inspiration from ‘Success Principles’ by Jack Canfield

Monty Roberts, the son of a horse trainer, was asked to write a paper about what he wanted to do when he grew up. So, he wrote a 7 page paper describing his goal of owning a horse ranch. He even drew a diagram of a 200-acre ranch, a detailed floor plan of the house on the ranch, the location of the stables, buildings and track and handed in his paper.

2 days later, he received it back. On the front page was a large F with a note, “See me after class”. The teacher then said, “This is an unrealistic dream for a boy like you. If you re-write this paper with a more realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade.”

Monty went home and thought long and hard. Finally, he turned in the same paper with no corrections. “You keep the F and I’ll keep my dream” – was all he could say to the teacher when she asked him for an explanation.

20 years later Monty was the proud owner of a 200-acre horse ranch and has the school paper framed over the fireplace.

Visualization is the first step to realizing our dreams. How many dreams do we visualize the way Monty did? And how many times have we responded to a scathing comment by just moving on, and keeping our dream anyway?

Maybe it’s time to start doing both..

Here’s to keeping and visualizing our dreams this week!

Google Translate app power

I was just standing in a hotel helping my uncle with some ticket sales for a ‘Bollywood Night’. And an Italian gentleman walked by.
He spoke in Italian and said ‘no english’.
My response was pretty simple. I whipped out my phone, opened up the app and asked him to speak into it.
Within a couple of iterations, we were soon having an excellent conversation. (albeit a slow one, but well!)
And by the end of it, he was so impressed that he made me write down the name of the phone, how much it cost and how he could get this cool translator going.
Powerful stuff. Apple – you owe me 1. (literally)
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And that aside, I’ve been inactive this week by usual standards and that’s thanks to a great 4 days spent with my colleagues in the UK. TONS of learnings – can’t wait to share. Food and sleep beckons for now.