Beautiful piece on life and success by Thoureau

From: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/07/12/thoreau-on-success/

If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal — that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Knowing how far you actually progressed and killing the old persona

You could sit and day dream that you have become a perfect human, or you could assess yourself realistically and see how far you have improved.

I had thought I had become quite calm...but situations showed me that I am still far from that goal.
So, when you assess yourself and know that you have more to go, what do you do?

Get depressed? No.. that was the old me.
The new me, acknowledges that there is work to be done and "I can do it".
So, a long way to go to achieve calmness, but I do acknowledge that I have made progress.
The calmer you are, the better decisions you take.. the more careful you are with words (you don't hurt others unintentionally, like I did yday)...the sweeter you can be.

Being centered and calm is essential.

So what I actually found is, while I am transforming and taking in a new set of beliefs, ideologies, way of thinking and perception - which will take a while to sink in and become a part of me, I have no way to erase what's done.

When I was very sensitive, and when I was the old me, a few things happened. They are etched in memory in a certain way. There are regrets, worries, anger and resentment, hopeless relations.. everything. Since these things happened when I was a different person, I had taken them in. I have bad memories. They are stored somewhere. They pop up without notice. They cause chaos. So, it's getting challenging to deal with that - unconscious memories. I am ensuring that today, no new memories - of any kind - happy or sad, get etched, but I have the old baggage to deal with. The fears, regrets, helplessness, injustice - all of it pops up and it makes you go mad.

I need to cut off or cause a death of the old persona. That is not me anymore. That baggage is to be disowned. It's not easy to do that. Maybe I need help. But, it's essential for the old self to die so that the new changes can be installed properly. You have to die and be reborn every moment. One who does that, has a different life. He has no memories. He views the world afresh with whatever lenses he wears then. Is this what the Tibetan book of the dead says?

There is a beautiful quote from the bible.
For if a man is in Christ he becomes a new person altogether; the past is finished and gone, everything has become fresh and new.

So get rid of your old self, which made you live as you used to, the old self that was being destroyed by its deceitful desires. Your hearts and minds must be made completely new. You must put on the new self, which is created in God's likeness and reveals itself in the true life that is upright and holy. 

Maxwell's growth areas

Principles of Personal Growth:

Attitude

Character

Relationships

Goals

Priorities

Communication

Teamwork

Initiative

Thinking

Leadership

Mentoring

Faith

Discipline

Learning

Perseverance

Resourcefulness

Responsibility

Servanthood

Robin Sharma

If your mind is full of worries, there is no space for creativity to show up, to show up game changing ideas that can be acted upon to achieve world class.

Purpose of education

Education should be the process of helping everyone to discover his uniqueness, to teach him how to develop that uniqueness, and then to show him how to share it because that’s the only reason for having anything.

From http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/05/19/leo-buscaglia-love-labels/

Education from a child's angle

Leo Buscaglia's unique experience from his own childhood:
From http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/05/19/leo-buscaglia-love-labels/

I was born in Los Angeles, and my parents were Italian immigrants. A big family. Mama and Papa were obviously great lovers! They came from a tiny village at the base of the Italian Swiss Alps where everyone knew everyone. Everyone knew the names of the dogs, and the village priest came out and danced in the streets at the fiestas and got as drunk as everybody else. It was the most beautiful scene in the world and a pleasure to be raised by these people in this old way. But when I was taken, at five, to a public school, tested by some very official-looking person, the next thing I knew I was in a class for the mentally retarded! It didn’t matter that I was able to speak Italian and an Italian dialect. I also spoke some French and Spanish — but I didn’t speak English too well and so I was mentally retarded. I think the term now is “culturally disadvantaged.” I was put into the class for the mentally retarded, and I never had a more exciting educational experience in my life! Talk about a warm, pulsating, loving teacher. Her name was Miss Hunt, and I’m sure she was the only one in the school who would teach those “dumb” kids. She was a great bulbous woman. She liked me even if I smelled of garlic. I remember when she used to come and lean over me, how I used to cuddle! I did all kinds of learning for this woman because I really loved her. Then one day I made a tremendous mistake. I wrote a newspaper as if I were a Roman. I described how the gladiators would perform and so on. The next thing I knew I was being retested and was transferred to a regular classroom after which I was bored for the rest of my educational career.

The animal school story

The animals got together in the forest one day and decided to start a school. There was a rabbit, a bird, a squirrel, a fish and an eel, and they formed a Board of Education. The rabbit insisted that running be in the curriculum. The bird insisted that flying be in the curriculum. The fish insisted that swimming be in the curriculum, and the squirrel insisted that perpendicular tree climbing be in the curriculum. They put all of these things together and wrote a Curriculum Guide. Then they insisted that all of the animals take all of the subjects. Although the rabbit was getting an A in running perpendicular tree climbing was a real problem for him; he kept falling over backwards. Pretty soon he got to be sort of brain damaged, and he couldn’t run any more. He found that instead of making an A in running, he was making a C and, of course, he always made an F in perpendicular tree climbing. The bird was really beautiful at flying, but when it came to burrowing in the ground, he couldn’t do so well. He kept breaking his beak and wings. Pretty soon he was making a C in flying as well as an F in burrowing, and he had a hellava time with perpendicular tree climbing. The moral of the story is that the animal who was valedictorian of the class was a mentally retarded eel who did everything in a halfway fashion. But the educators were all happy because everybody was taking all of the subjects, and it was called a broad-based education.