Cecil Joel David

Imagine a potter, a person who creates pots out of clay. Most of us have seen him at work, sitting near a potter’s wheel diligently working away, with keen interest to create in his gleaming eyes and wet clay in his hands. He takes wet clay in his hands; first he kneads it, and then beats it and finally gives it the shape of his desire. But in case you have watched the potter keenly you will notice the following: He places the wet clay on the potter’s wheel, swings the wheel around and begins to give shape to the clay. As soon as the clay starts taking shape, the potter begins to gently beat the clay from the outside the entire time holding and providing strong support from the inside. Now take this example and place it plum in the middle of your everyday life. How many times do you feel that life is too tough for you? How many times do you feel that all your efforts are blown away? How many times do you feel that life is unfair? How many time do you repeatedly try, sometimes u...

Not a long time back, many people including myself, were giving examples of Tiger Woods as a champion, as a performer, as a man who kept sharpening his axe even though he had cut all the trees, as a model to be followed by one and all, as a man who could do no wrong. Numerous companies thought of him as not only a good role model but also as the best brand ambassador available and paid him many millions of dollars for promoting their brands. After the recent few months' events many things have changed specially in the world of Tiger Woods. You could safely say the Tiger has been put into the Woods. Mixed reactions came in a constant barrage from the voices that matter as well as from anybody worth his salt and every form of the media had been flush with not only new revelations but all sorts of comments and information on the Woods saga away from the greens. It would certainly be tough for any one in this situation. Now that the story has ended and the eyebrows have dropped bac...

Teaching is a noble profession. The respect and honor a teacher, a Guru receives, has no parallel in the entire history of mankind. From ancient Rishi’s to Guru’s and modern day teachers the one thing common in this profession is that a teacher is a person who always gives something to the student in particular and to society in general and they have always deserved not only the respect and the honor they get in return but much more than that. Till very recently, most of the people engaged in the profession of teaching have had to live a more or less frugal and meager life ( not that it has changed much for the majority of people in this profession) as the returns in form of financial rewards for providing one of the most vital of services on earth have been rather poor. Going back in history to the Rishi-Muni’s of Indian culture to teachers like Aristotle, Socrates, and Confucius all of them lived a very plain, simple and ordinary almost detached-from-worldly-objects sort of lifest...

Inertia, as you may be aware, is a tendency to do nothing or to remain in an unchanged state. Every person has to fight with inertia on numerous occasions in daily life. Suppose your car needs cleaning this weekend and somehow you just don’t feel up to it and put it off by giving some excuse, or your wife asks you to clean up your desk or book shelf or mow the lawn but you either procrastinate or give an excuse of having a backache or something else just to put it off for as long as possible. The funny thing is that finally when you do start doing the particular chore or activity you were avoiding, you actually begin to enjoy it and most of the times complete the task in the best possible way. If you start cleaning your car, you find there’s loads of dirt on the carpet and then you clean it up inside out, similarly if you do begin to start mowing down the grass in your lawn, as soon as you see some part of it after it’s been trimmed a little and feel the difference, it egg’s you on ...

Like No Other; One of a Kind: You A few years ago I read a famous book by Shiv Khera titled ‘You can win’,with the theme that still reverberates in circles of management and leadership, ‘Winners don’t do different things they do things differently’. Some time back just happened to see the book once again in my bookshelf and that very catch line,I mentioned above caught my sight on its cover and set me thinking. Are we all not different from one another in every possible and conceivable way? Do we not think, eat, speak, work, write, read, drive, play, walk, run, and do everything else in our own unique way? Every common task we do be it eating, sleeping, or writing, we do it in a different way from any other person.It could be safely said that in ninety nine cases out of a hundred, doing a task in the exact same way another person does it,is virtually impossible.Even the greatest artists who make fakes of classics are unable to match every single stroke of the brush made by the ...

Want Self-Motivation: Count Your Blessings The last couple of years have been testing in more ways than one. For millions of people around the world, it has literally been a life changing experience; to face the twists and turns of life due to various reasons. The state of the economy coupled with the activity of extremists being the prime causes of this situation. I myself have gone through a roller coaster year and the ride seems to be caught in a never ending loop for many others too. In these few months I’ve discovered numerous things I otherwise would never have realized or I may have not noticed. Many seemingly indispensable people have been laid off on account of the state of the world economy on the one hand, and scores of others have lost their lives either facing extremists or falling victim to their bombs and bullets on the other. The 26/11 saga has just completed another year and the memory of the horrific event still lingers in my mind, like it does in the mind of ...