Speech by Chetan Bhagat at Symbiosis...

 
Don’t just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order. There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup. There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.
 
"Life is one of those races in nursery school where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same is with life where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die. ……………….
 
One thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. Life is not meant to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? …………….
 
It's ok, bunk a few classes, scoring low in couple of papers, goof up a few interviews, take leave from work, fall in love, little fights with your spouse. We are people, not programmed devices........." :)
 
"Don't be serious, be sincere."!!

 

 

 


 

 

River of Thoughts....

The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work.  Hard work is the price we must pay for success.  You can accomplish anything if you're willing to pay the price.

 

Stop asking if the glass is half full or half empty.

Instead ask "What's in it?  How did it get there?  What can I do with it?

True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in their worth and choice.

In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy.  And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you. - Warren Buffet

Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future.

 

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers' gardens.

 

Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worth while achievement.

 

It is difficult to know what counts in the world. Most of us count credits, honor, dollars. But at the bulging center of mid-life, I am beginning to see that the things that really matter take place not in the boardrooms, but in the kitchens of the world.

 

If you treat an individual ... as if he were what he ought to be, and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.

 

On no account brood over your wrongdoing.  Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

 

If you don't like something change it.

If you can't change it, change your attitude.

Don't complain.

 

 

The future belongs to the risk takers, not the security seekers.  The more you seek security, the less of it you will have and the more you pursue opportunity, the more security you will achieve.

 

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths.  No man or woman really know what perect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.

 

Love is like the perfect Rubix Cube.  There are countless number of wrong twists and turns, but when you get it right, it looks perfect no matter what way you look at it.

 

Fear less, hope more.  Eat less, chew more.  Whine less, breathe more.  Talk less, say more.  Love more and all good things will be yours.

 

It is time for us to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever, and the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it.

 

 

 

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed.  Happiness is the spirtual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.

 

Don't rely on someone else for your happiness and self worth.  Only you can be responsible for that.  If you can't love and respect yourself - no one lese will be able to make that happen.  Accept who your are - completely; the good and the bad - and make changes as YOU see fit - not because you think someone else wants you to be different.

 

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.

 

Success comes from taking the initiative and following up ... persisting ... eloquently expressing the depth of your love.  What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life?

 

If you develop the habits of success, you will make success a habit.

 

THE WOODS ARE LOVELY DARK AND DEEP BUT I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP …………………… AND MILES TO GO BEFORE I SLEEP.

 

Darkness cannot put out the Light.  It can only make God brighter.

 

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.

 

Remember, success is not measured by heights attained but by obstacles overcome. We're going to pass through many obstacles in our lives: good days, bad days. But the successful person will overcome those obstacles and constantly move forward.

 

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence.

Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear.

Perhaps the action you take will be successful;

Perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow.

But any action is better than no action at all.

 

You cannot change anything in your life with intention alone, which can become a watered-down, occasional hope that you'll get to tomorrow. Intention without action is useless.

 

There is no such thing as can't, only won't. If you're qualified, all it takes is a burning desire to accomplish, to make a change. Go forward, go backward. Whatever it takes! But you can't blame other people or society in general. It all comes from your mind. When we do the impossible we realize we are special people.

 

Wise are those who learn that the bottom line doesn't always have to be their top priority.

 

The difference between extraordinary people and ordinary people is a simple as the difference between the two words.  Extraordinary people are committed to doing the extra things that ordinary people won't.

 

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

 

I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.

 

To admit you were wrong is to declare you are wiser now than before.

 

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light, which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.

 

You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

 

 

Success doesn't come to you.   You go to it.

 

You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

 

The future is not some place we are going to but one we are creating. The paths to it are not found but made.

 

If you're still hanging onto a dead dream of yesterday, laying flowers on its grave by the hour, you cannot be planting the seeds for a new dream to grow today.

 

One's objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out, and get it over. You see, your problem won't improve with age.

 

When you get right down to the root of the meaning of the word "succeed," you find that it simply means to follow through. F. W. Nichol

Use what talents you possess:  the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best.

 

The tongue is the only tool that gets sharper with use.

 

The secret of success is consistency of purpose.

 

The patient should be made to understand that he or she must take charge of his own life. Don't take your body to the doctor as if he were a repair shop.

 

Life is like a ten-speed bike.  Most of us have gears we never use.

 

 

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

 

It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants.

The question is, "What are we busy about"?

 

You never will be the person you can be if pressure, tension and discipline are taken out of your life

 

Determination gives you the resolve to keep going in spite of the roadblocks that lay before you.

 

"The World is a book and those who do no travel read only a page" - Saint Augustine