Loud Thinking

Posts Tagged ‘My Views’

• Persist no matter what.
• Endure discomfort.
• Request help.
• Steadfastly hold on to your beliefs and values.
• Envision triumph.
• Very consistently keep at it.
• Embrace adversity as your teacher.
• Refuse to give up.
• Enjoy and celebrate every tiny bit of progress!

Driving the Road to Success in a Pink Cadillac

The Best Way Out is Always Through

by BJ Gallagher

Mary Kay Ash banged her head on the corporate glass ceiling one too many times. Working for several direct sales companies from the 1930s until the early 1960s, she achieved considerable success. She climbed the corporate ladder to become the sole woman on the board of directors of the World Gift Company—quite an accomplishment for a woman in the 1950s.
But life wasn’t rosy at the top. Even though Mary Kay had the title and the track record, she was not taken seriously by her male peers. In board meetings, her opinions and suggestions were ignored, dismissed, or even ridiculed. Male board members minced no words in their judgment, pronouncing her guilty of “thinking like a woman.”

Since the sales force was almost entirely female, Mary Kay thought that thinking like a woman was an asset. But her fellow board members disagreed. Finally, in frustration, she retired in 1963, intending to write a book to assist women in the male-dominated business.

Sitting at her kitchen table, she made two lists: one list was all the good things she had seen in the companies where she’d worked, and the other list was all the things she thought could be improved. As she re-read her lists, she realized that what she had in front of her was a marketing plan for her ideal company. In just four weeks, her “book” had become a business plan, and her retirement was over.

Both her accountant and her attorney did their best to discourage her, warning that she would be throwing her money away on this venture. But Mary Kay had heard enough male nay-saying in her corporate years—she ignored her advisors.

Her husband, unlike her accountant and attorney, was very supportive. With his help, Mary Kay developed cosmetic products, designed packaging, wrote promotional materials and recruited and trained her female sales force.
Then the unthinkable happened; her husband of twenty-one years died of a heart attack. Another woman might have dropped her plans, or at least delayed them, but Mary Kay was a strong Texas woman. She stayed on track with the help of her twenty-year-old son, Richard Rogers, and rolled out her new business in September of 1963.

Beginning with a storefront in Dallas and an investment of $5,000, Mary Kay Cosmetics earned close to $200,000 in its first year—quadrupling that amount in its second year. When Mary Kay took her company public in 1968, sales had climbed to more than $10 million.
Mary Kay’s unusual corporate motto, “God first, family second, career third,” was unconventional, to say the least. But she understood the need for women to have balance in their lives, and she was committed to providing unlimited opportunity for women’s financial AND personal success.

Mary Kay authored three books, all of which became best-sellers. Her business model is taught at the Harvard Business School. She received many honors, including the Horatio Alger Award. Fortune magazine has named Mary Kay Cosmetics as one of the Ten Best Companies for Women, as well as one of The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America.

At the time of her death in 2001, Mary Kay Cosmetics had 800,000 independent beauty consultants in 37 countries, with total annual sales of over two billion dollars. Never underestimate the power of a woman with a mission!

No doubt ZA Bhutto was a statesman

Indira Gandhi ordered a gold hunt in 1976; Pak sought share

A TOI news published today.

NEW DELHI: The last time an Indian government, led by the redoubtable Indira Gandhi, went looking for hidden gold among private property, Pakistan also jumped on to the bandwagon.

In 1976, at the height of the Emergency, Indira ordered the Indian Army to march off to look for hidden treasure in Jaigarh fort, which was still a property of the Jaipur royal family. Legend had it that Man Singh had stashed away huge amounts of treasure from some of his campaigns. That legend persisted after India’s independence. With Gayatri Devi imprisoned during Emergency, Indira thought it fit to search Jaipur royal properties for the treasure.

The correspondence finds space in an invaluable work of history, India-Pakistan Relations (1947-2007), edited by Avtar Singh Bhasin, released earlier this year and is mandatory reading for any student of history.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, then prime minister of Pakistan, heard about the treasure hunt and decided Pakistan should not be denied its share. In a letter to Indira on August 11, 1976, Bhutto said, “As your expedition of locating the treasure proceeds, I would urge you to remain cognizant of Pakistan’s claim to its due share of this wealth. This is an asset which was not known at the time of partition between the two successor states (then called dominions) of India and Pakistan.

“However, the order that was enforced with the agreement of both governments did not fail to provide that any property or benefits can be shared between them where such sharing is just and equitable. The historical provenance of this treasure, regardless of the location of its physical discovery, makes it the joint patrimony of our two countries and I am confident that, with an approach based on equity, we will dis-countenance any usurpation and amicably arrive at a formula for the division between us.”

Indira did not dignify Bhutto’s claim with a response until December of that year. By then, the Army division sent to unearth the treasure returned empty-handed after three months of fruitless search. Responding to Bhutto on December 31, 1976, Indira said, “I had asked our legal experts to give careful consideration to the claim you made on behalf of Pakistan. They are of the clear opinion that the claim has no legal basis. Incidentally, the treasure has turned out to be non-existent.”

Bhutto complimented Indira on abolishing the old royalty, saying, “Both our countries have taken the same view of the rights of the princely order and, with complete justification, abolished it as an appendage or association of the colonial regime. I am certain that no one can maintain the argument that your government’s action involves confiscation of the private property of any individual or dynasty.”

The Pakistani PM justified asking for a share of the riches. “It is clear that the treasure is a historical inheritance of the subcontinent which was bequeathed to it by its pre-colonial sovereignties, especially the Mughal emperors in coalition with their Rajput allies. That, before or during the anarchy which ravaged the subcontinent and invited foreign domination, these assets were misappropriated and hoarded by a particular warlord has no bearing whatsoever on their legal or moral ownership.” Indira, however, would have none of it.

Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
—Balzac
Author of “The God Father”.

“Life can be difficult sometimes, it gets bumpy. What with family and kids and things not going exactly like you planned. But that’s what makes it interesting. In life the first act is always exciting. The second act, that is where the depth comes in.”

— Joyce Van Patten

Gratitude is being thankful.

“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.