Loud Thinking

Archive for 2013

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

Melody Beattie –
author, journalist

Set the Standard for Great Leadership

One proven way to develop effective leaders is to focus on the behaviors you expect them to display. Spell out these activities personally with your top team—not through consultants, facilitators, or how-to books. In these conversations, discuss what a leader in your organization should do—for example, act as a role model or motivate others—and describe each behavior with enough specificity to inform selection, training, and evaluation. Be precise, real, and action-oriented. By describing these qualities as behaviors (rather than as character traits) you’ll underscore two messages: It isn’t worth much to have an attribute that you don’t display; and if you fall short of what the best leaders do, you can still close that gap. Emphasizing behavior over traits also opens the door to style differences, as long as leaders maintain the standards you’ve set.

Adapted by HBR from “How Should Your Leaders Behave?” by Kevin Sharer

RJ Tucker didn’t gave out LBW to AB de Villiers, on an appeal from Saeed Ajmal, when the TV footage showed that the ball was really missing the leg stump, but alas..! It was hitting the middle stump.

It looks for ICC, any illegal act done by the foreign players and foreign umpires with CLOSED eyes, are PARDONABLE acts and they can get away, even with murder.

However, the eyes of the umpires are always wide open to warn Pakistani players for overstepping on the pitch, for which even the third umpire, constantly reminds over wireless communication, to the on field umpire.

They say love is blind…. It looks so is the ICC (Indian Cricket Council)… When it comes to dealings with Pakistan.

In this connection, till date, no action has been taken against South African captain GC Smith, for claiming a false catch in the 1st Test played at Abu Dhabi, on the pretext that when he took the catch, his eyes were closed, notwithstanding the fact that after taking the catch he immediately claimed it, by raising his both hands (in hands up position) in the air and jubilantly ran towards the umpire. But then who will dare punish captain of the Proteas team, as both GC Smith and the ICC CEO David Richardson, are from the same country i.e., South Africa.

Under the situation the word “APARTHEID” comes to mind very painfully, which is very appropriately defined as below, by the www.vocabulary.com

Apartheid was a racist political policy in South Africa demanding segregation of the nation’s white and non-white populations. This law requires separation in all forms, reminiscent of parts of the United States before the Equal Rights Amendment.

The law of apartheid came into being with the South African election in 1948. So it makes sense that the word’s history goes back to that date, from the Afrikaans word for “separateness.” It comes from the Dutch, with the “heid” part meaning “hood,” for “apart-hood.” Many people referred to it as “apart-hate,” an apt description for a policy that brutally oppressed an entire people based solely on their skin color. The system was ended in 1993.

Link:- https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/apartheid

The Power of Positive Attitude – Ahmed’s Story!!

Ahmed is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”

He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Ahmed was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.
Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Ahmed and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?”

Ahmed replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, ‘Ahmed, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.’ I choose to be in a good mood.

“Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it.
“Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life.”

“Yeah, right, it isn’t that easy,” I protested.

“Yes, it is,” Ahmed said. Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. “The bottom line is: It’s your choice how you live life.”

I reflected on what Ahmed said. Soon thereafter, I left the tower industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.
Several years later, I heard that Ahmed was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Ahmed was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.

I saw Ahmed about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Wanna see my scars?”

I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place. “The first thing that went through my mind was the well being of my soon-to-be- born daughter,” Ahmed replied.
“Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?” I asked.
Ahmed continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the Emergency and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ‘He’s a dead man.’ I knew I needed to take action.”

“What did you do?” I asked. “Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said Ahmed. “She asked if I was allergic to anything. ‘Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Gravity.’ Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I want to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead’.”

Ahmed lived, and passed through the difficult phase because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, makes a big difference in Life.

“If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine.”

— Morris West

Motivation is the reason one has for behaving a certain way.

It is very strange why the ball is not kicking up and turning sharply for the world famous Pakistani spinners as it was doing for Imran Tahir, the SA spin bowler?

“Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.”

Nido Qubein (born 1948);
Businessman, motivational speaker, educator

When our umpires commit a mistake it’s a cheating and when Western umpires cheat, its a human error…. Ian Gould.. How can we ever forget your giving not out out to GC Smith, on a plumb LBW appeal, by Saeed Ajmal?

Missile shield for Pakistan….

If Turkey can get missile shield from China and India from Israel, why not Pakistan should also purchase a missile shield from China?