Great Moments

By Prakasha Shanbog

We have seen people often making the statement, ‘That one moment made the difference in my life.’ There are moments in one’s life which have made a big positive impact on the individual and on the people associated with that person. There are other moments which add to the positive impact of earlier moments. There are moments which did not make any impact on the individual and just passed off unnoticed. Maybe we can call these as neutral moments. People also experience moments which created some negative impact.

The great moment was the one when you took ‘that’ decision which turned out to be the best decision. It changed your life and made enormous changes for the people associated with you either in your professional or personal life. this book is about such moments. Why does a moment become great? Who makes the moment great? Is it the individual experiencing it? Is the surrounding ambience responsible for the great moment or is it the people with whom the individual is associated? These are the questions to be debated.

This book does not really teach you any technique or skill to make your moments great. The book is a collection of essays on divergent topics. The essays as you read through will trigger a debate in you through which you will develop some unique insights of your own. Insights are purely individual's experience and derivatives. These insights will be responsible to lead you to the arena of great moments.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pustaka Digital Media
• Release date: Jul 9, 2022
• ISBN: 6580556108631

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Great Moments

Author:

Prakasha Shanbog

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Table of Contents

1. Prologue

2. We are ambitious

3. Reality

4. We live by Values

5. Success

6. Puzzle of decision

7. Mystery of time

8. Mind the mind

9. Wisdom

10. Karma – Universal Ledger

11. Purpose

12. Epilogue

1. Prologue

Like drops of water making the mighty ocean, series of moments one go through makes one’s life. After all life is a finite span of time, at the micro level it turns out to be simply collection of moments. It’s difficult to quantify the size of a moment, its both individual and context dependent. For some one in one context a second could be termed as moment, and for the same person in a different context ten minutes can become a moment. The impact of the moment is independent of the size of the moment.

We have seen people often making a statement ‘That one moment made the difference in my life’ There are moments in one’s life which has made big positive impact on the individual and on the people associated with the person. There are moments, which added to the impact of earlier moments making a big span progress. There are moments, which did not make any impact and just passed off, may be we can call them as neutral moments. People also experience moments, which created some negative impact.

People experience some special moments, which made big positive impact to the individual and may be to also people associated with the individuals. Such moments are called as the great moments and the book is about such moments. Why a moment becomes great, who makes the moment great. Is it the individual experiencing it? Is it the ambience responsible, or is it the people with whom the individual is associated? These are the questions to be debated and there are no precise answers for these questions. The objective of this book is to trigger such questions in the readers rather than answering such questions.

Why at all we read a book that to say a book in printed format in this age of Internet, laptops, tablets, i-phones and smart-phones. I heard from some one that the most relaxing thing for him in life is holding a book in the hand and reading. This guy is techie guy in a high position in a high-tech company. As I have heard from others and also experienced, reading takes you into a different world. Your mind enters the beta state when you get engrossed in the reading. This state of mind brings you natural relaxation. At the same time the contents of the book etches new insights, beliefs in the mind, triggers new debate with in you and that’s how you are becoming more knowledgeable and skilled.

No doubt advancement in technology has brought in new things, new comforts. It has brought in the concept of e-book with some software tools, which claims to have made reading easier. With all these advancement the print media continue to exist and even going stronger. How to get most out of reading a book? You will get it when you catch the theme of the book, debate on it and develop your own insights. There is no standard way of presenting the theme, each author has his own style of presenting the them.

I have experienced most easy and effective way of presenting a theme is through story telling. When audience hears or reads the word ‘story’, they become more receptive. The child personality with in them wakes up and opens to receive the information there by the information is received effectively and in total.

When beads are threaded in to a chaplet both pearl and chaplet gets more value. That’s what one of my friends said when I sent the preliminary version of this book for review. The theme presented in each chapter is good and thought provoking but you should thread the chapters together so that the readers are at ease in getting the overall theme of the book, the comment was valuable. I was bound to provide the common thread for the readers and readers would assemble chapters together as they read through.

As you read through the chapter introspect yourself with the thoughts, ideas, and the stories presented. Recollect the incidents happened in your life or in the life of near ones or dear ones, which are closer or similar to what is presented. Debate with in you on the action or reaction one involved in the story depicted. Analyze the consequences and imagine the different routes and consequences that could have resulted if person involved has acted or reacted in a different way.

The reading of each chapter is only a trigger. You will realize a bigger real value of the contents of the chapter when you introspect on the content. This introspection will thread the chapters together. When you have done with the book you have a fine chaplet of contents to wear on and reap the benefits. What is next after the reading the book? Is it just keeping it back in the shelf, or lending it off to some one else or disposing it off in old paper mart. Either of this is ok, after all you may have problem in storing and keeping track of so many books, your bookshelf may be already full.

Imagine that the chaplet you have assembled when you read the book is always on you. The chaplet will influence you in all your activities going forward. It will make you more responsible, it will make you more fair. It will make you more honest and you will respect yourself and will give respect to others. This imagination will get you the best out of reading this book.       

Introspect for a while, there were moments when your decisions, actions, communication were at top. Your best talents, skills came out, your knowledge base was put into best use. The results were phenomenal, you were really excellent in those moments. These are the moments to be branded as ‘great moments’ for you.

The great moment was the one when you took ‘that’ decision which turned out to be the best decision. It changed your life, made enormous change for the people associated with you in professional or personal life.

On contrast to this you also had occasions where you did not feel you were excellent. For some reason your best skills, talent, knowledge was not put to use. These occasions were routine, trivial it wasn’t even recorded in your mind as an important occasion.

Probably you also have experienced occasions of crisis, it was go/no go situations. You were compiled to show your best talent, apply all knowledge you posses, use the best skills you have. This occasion demanded your full attention, focus and probably you kept all other things aside. You came out of the crisis successfully and you felt you were on the top of the world.

You are the same but your behavior, throughput was different and dependent on situation. You have performed at the peak, came out as a winner in crisis situation. But in the other trivial situation you just brushed it off with what minimum you can do to pull on. When you were in the crisis best of your knowledge was applied, best of your skills, talents were utilized. Your full potential was used. On the contrary in trivial situation your talent, skills, knowledge were kept in background. You navigated out in least resistance path with minimum effort. It is possible to put your best knowledge, talents, skills to use in a trivial situation. The results will be amazing and by this you will make more and more moments as great moments. Conscious changes in the approaches need to be made to make most of the moments as great moments and experiencing the fruits of great moments.

First change to be made is move out of comfort zone to result zone.  Adventure beyond familiar zone to pursue new outcomes, new ventures. The comfort zone is safe, familiar but it will make one a mediocre. Comfort zone keeps you in reactive mode, move to zone beyond the boundaries of comfort zone, it will make you proactive.

Next change is to move from self-focused mode to others focused mode, look at the bigger picture, aim for collective cause. Put your personal interest to back ground. The organization needs to be prioritized above the personal needs. This change can bring more trust, respect, and cohesion.

The next change to be made is to be open to external environment, becoming more sensitive to the stimuli, signals coming from outside. Generally we miss stimuli, which are against our own notions putting ourselves in self-deception, self-protection mode.

Finally believe in your self, be confident in making decisions, and believe that decisions are coming from your inner self. Clarify your core values, believe in them and apply them.

The great moments are the moments remembered by both individual and the people associated with him or her. The individual is the primary cause of that moment. What made that moment so different than other moments, or why all other moments cannot be like the great moment.  Root of all moments can be traced to thought. It probably starts in a faint way, slowly the thought becomes clear and clearer, strong and stronger. Then it leads into a decision followed by an action and the moment of the decision becomes a great moment.

The next level of questioning could be what caused that faint thought to come up. We get thoughts every second or may be even more frequently, but why only this particular thought lead into great moment. Thinking about this complex mechanism of thought process provides a thread to sew together the contents of this book.  Each chapter in this book presents some perspectives on a topic, read these perspectives, debate with in you. This will enables new insights within you and your thought process is reformed. This new refined thought process would lead you into more and more great moments.   

2. We are ambitious

Ambition is the driving force in life, despite no facility, no help and no aid ambition drives one to make great achievements. Just mere living is not enough, something has to be achieved to make one's life interesting or make interesting things, worthy things, best things and noble things, ambition drives one towards such things

Ambition is an impulse in human behavior, which drives the individuals to aim for the bigger pie than what they have. It’s difficult to explain why some people have more ambition than others. An anthropologist says Ambition is evolutionary and no matter how social status is defined, there are class of people in every community who aggressively pursue ambition than others.  Ambition is energy and determination but it has to be coupled with goals for better results. People with only energy with out clear goals just dissipate energy in haphazard projects one after other. People with only goals but without energy spend days and days saying ‘One day I am going to do a miracle’. The Ambition comes in human beings because human beings are prestige conscious. This nature does not allow people to rest just with the food and housing. It drives them to get more, make them to work for more and more.

For simplicity I will refer to the person who is in top position in the organization and who responsible for managing the organization as leader, the position may be called by different names like CEO, President, VP, MD etc.

What is the impact of ambition in the organization context, how the ambition levels of Leader affect the organization. How the ambition levels of the Leader affect the employees of the organization. What is the impact of ambition levels of each employee on the organization? It’s interesting to analyze the complex situation arising out of the combination of ambitions of the people of the organization. During my tenures in different organizations, I have seen employees with both extremities of the ambition. One side there are the highly ambitious people, who are eagerly waiting to grab the opportunities. They compete, indulge in influencing in all possible ways to grab an opportunity. The other side there are employees with out much ambition or no ambition, they are happy to be doing bear minimum required to survive.

Both the extremities are not very productive, over ambition leads to unhealthy competition, tension and stress. Low ambition leads to feeble enthusiasm and low energy ambience. As one of my friends who has landed in an organization which is full of low ambition guys said In this organization every thing moves in slow motion. It is the responsibility of management to create a balanced ambience, which is not either extremity, this leads to more productive, collaborative and creative environment.

Lets look at the impact of ambition of leader on the organization. The leader’s shoulder is burdened with responsibilities. He is responsible for performance of the organization, career of the employees, welfare of employees etc. In fact what ever happens and what ever doesn’t happen which was supposed happen in the organization is finally the responsibility of the leader of the organization. In an Organization scenario there are expectations set at personal level, professional level by both Internal and external stakeholders. Organizations operate in the boundary of a social environment. The products and services delivered by Organization may be put to use in the same or different social environments.

Leadership in organization context in simple terms is defined as ‘establishing direction, aligning people, motivating people. Leadership is creating environment with adequate resources to move