Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements – code for life and personal development

Agreement 1: Be impeccable with your word

Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

Agreement 2: Don’t take anything personally

Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering

Agreement 3: Don’t make assumptions

Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life

Agreement 4: Always do your best

Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

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Frugal To the Max

When you are starting your own venture, be frugal. Whether you are putting in your hard-earned savings or have investor backing, take care of every penny you spend.

Cut down on:

• Fancy office setups & employee facilities
• Expensive hardware, software, equipment and gadgets – you don’t need to flaunt
• Number of employees – work with small number of talented, all rounders
• Traveling and related expenses – use VoIP / Video conferencing
• All expenses!

Staying cashflow positive should be the number one priority for a startup. Bootstrapping is the best entrepreneurial model. Do whatever it takes to generate your monthly cashflow from the business. Set a limit for yourself – you will never go cashflow negative for more than 2 months.

And once you get the cash, be even more watchful. It’s easy to waste money on promising opportunities / people / technologies.

Avoid temptation.

(Image courtesy Buster Benson)

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I do not believe there are traditional qualifications which make a business owner a winner. Drive, common sense and intuition count for a lot more. Even inventors and technical experts who start businesses tend not to be organisational types. They are often mavericks who want the freedom of self-employment. And although entrepreneurs have a reputation as wild risk-takers, in reality they judge the downsides carefully – because they have their own capital at stake, and they have learned about the dangers of the marketplace first hand.

…

Typical entrepreneurs would have never been hired by these corporations – or indeed understood the complex modelling upon which the financiers based their entire business model. But the bankers placed far too much faith in such artificial worlds of computer programs and clever buzz words – and completely lost the plot.

Rajesh Patel, a client who’s starting on his own after an impressing career, suggested a Financial Times article about entrepreneurs and why top companies failed. It was a very interesting reading. My belief in entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship just got thicker!

Entrepreneurs take decisions on gut instincts. They of course study the background and numbers, but more often than not, their decisions are based on their intuitions. It’s managers who decide by spreadsheets!

What’s your take?

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A theory says that international bankers control almost all of the cash in the world. They have control over printing currency and the flow of money that circulates in the economy. And they have been controlling it for over a century now.

This 3.5 hour, fast-paced, non-fiction, historical documentary explains how international bankers manipulate America. It was produced by Patrick Carmack, directed and narrated by Bill Still. This video shows how the European and American banking systems have been taken over by the Rothschilds and other families.

The full video is available from Google for Download. You can view it from here as well.

Checkout the official site and some updates on people behind the video.

What do you think? How do you feel?

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• Leadership = People around you producing expanding results.
• First step is taking responsibility. Responsibility = Ability to Respond. You have ability to respond to any situation, any person. Responsibility is not a burden. It’s a grace you give yourself.
• How do we listen to our people? People show up as we listen to them. If I listen to someone as a loser, he will always do things like a loser. Are we listening to our people as if they are leaders?
• Be a lifelong student. This does not come easily, you have to practice and allocate time to learn. Not just to learn technical skills, but also leadership.
• Keep your battery charged! Disempowering conversations drain your energy. Replace them with thoughts that give you energy.

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• Mind Blowing – Rajesh Gaikwad (professor in charge)
• Awesome – Brijesh Joshi (professor)
• I have attended other seminars, but this was the best ever!
• Where were you two months ago? (internship project planning started two months ago for the college, and many people repented the session did not happen two months ago)
• Superb – as usual – from you!
• I created some great project ideas by the end of the session.
• Excellent. Thank you!
• Truly motivating. This will help us a long way in our projects.

I am thrilled by the results! And am looking forward to see what projects the students do!

Here are the slides from the presentation.

World’s Best Presentation Contest

Would you like me to speak at your organization? Contact me at nirav at mehtanirav dot com.

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We work on outsourced software development projects. One of the biggest challenges in that is to communicate effectively. We started having weekly telephone calls with customers to improve project execution. Here are some tips on drastically improving your effectiveness of handling conference calls with customers.

1. Connection: Have the number to call handy. And an alternate number to call in case the first does not work. Understand the timezone difference. Where will the client be when you call? Get connected 2 minutes earlier than scheduled.
2. Accent: Just as our clients have accent, for them, we have an accent. Indians have a variety of accents (per their cultural background) and that makes it even difficult for the client to understand what we say. Speak slowly, make sure each word is clear.
3. Disturbances: If there are disturbances on the line, don’t keep saying “are you there”, “can you hear me”, “i can hear you” etc. Keep going slowly. If you did not understand something because of the disturbance, tell the client “I didn’t get what you said (about …)” and let them answer.
4. Echo: Mute your microphone when you are not speaking. You may be on a speakerphone in a conference and the client may get echo of what he is speaking if you are not on mute. The same may happen to you if the client is on speakerphone. You can request them to mute their line while you are speaking. This will even save you some bandwidth if you are using VoIP.
5. Homework: Be prepared for the conference call. A conference call is a meeting. So be prepared with the agenda, be ready with your status updates or questions.
6. Culture Difference: Be aware of the culture difference. Your client’s expectations and understanding will not be the same as yours. The slang will be different. Some clients will be very demanding, some will be easy. Watch for this and act accordingly.
7. Cutting Long Conversations short: You or the client may keep on talking. Cut this short – unless it’s contributing. If the client is repeating himself, check whether you understood what they said, and if you reiterated that to them. Go ahead, explain the client what you understood. This will most probably reassure them that you got what they wanted to say. When needed, remind the client about the agenda and time limit for the meeting. And get back on track. Tell them you “would love to get to work on what’s been discussed. And will give an update at the end of the day”.
8. Correct Grammar: Speak good English. Incorrect grammar can upset the customer. It will not only make it difficult for your client to understand you, but will also give a bad impression of you. Practice speaking.
9. Greeting and Closing: Greet with a “good evening” (or similar, depending on the client’s time). And close with a “Thank you”. At the end of the meeting, summarize the actions to be taken now, and provide an update on when can the client expect to hear from you.
10. Listening: The most important thing on any call, is to listen to the other person! Listen actively. Repeat what the client says in your head. This will help you understand it. If you don’t understand, say what you did, and request the client to explain the rest. Practice listening! This is one thing that can elevate your performance anywhere!

What do you say about this? Are there any other tips you’ve got? Any experiences you want to share? Feel free to comment!

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Most of us will try to do more and be better if we could relive yesterday. We desire to accomplish more. Like we saw last month, you can be more productive by creating good habits and rejecting bad ones. But then, with all the right intentions, why do we keep practicing bad habits? What’s the bottleneck in achieving what we desire?

The problem is that we do not do what we said we would do. You can become what you want, if you do what you said you would do. We must continually review ourselves and stay in action. Keep practicing the good habits and keep rejecting the bad ones. This persistence will pay off!

But there is another fundamental question we got to ask ourselves. The question is: “Do I want to be great? Really?” Read further if your answer is “Yes!”

There is some good news! You can become great. All great people started like you and me. They had some traits that made them great.

Richard St. John, a millionaire marketer was puzzled when a small girl asked him, “What really leads to success?” Even though he achieved success, he couldn’t tell her how he did it. To answer her question he spent 10 years interviewing over 500 successful people, including Martha Stewart, Richard Branson, Russell Crowe, and the Google founders. After analyzing all the data, Richard discovered the 8-Traits that lead to great success. What he found surprised me with its simplicity! And I had no doubt that following those 8 traits will make anyone successful.

I want to share those 8 traits to become great with you. The picture below depicts the 8 traits. Clicking on the picture will take you to a video Richard made to explain the concepts. The video is wonderful and I strongly recommend watching it, and sharing it with everyone on your team.

8 Traits To Be Great

You can also find a nice summary of these ideas on Richard St. John’s site.

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Overall, the experience was great. Taught many things about health and fitness. And rejuvenated the mind and body!

Here are the core principles of Naturopathy!

1. All disease, their cause and their treatment are one.
2. The basic cause of disease is not bacteria. Bacteria develops after the accumulation of morbid matter when a favorable atmosphere for their growth develops in body. Basic cause is morbid matter and not the bacteria.
3. Acute diseases are our friends not he enemies. Chronic diseases are the outcome of wrong treatment and suppression of the acute diseases.
4. Nature is the greatest healer. Body the capacity to prevent itself from diseases and regain health if unhealthy.
5. In Naturopathy patient is treated and not the disease.
6. In Naturopathy diagnosis is easily possible. Ostentation is not required. Long waiting for diagnosis is not required for treatment.
7. Patients suffering from chronic ailments are also treated successfully in comparatively less time in Naturopathy.
8. After emerging, suppressed diseases can be cured by Naturopathy.
9. Nature Cure treats physical, mental, social (moral) and spiritual all four aspects at the same time.
10. Nature Cure treats body as a whole instead of giving treatment to each organ separetely.
11. Naturopathy does not use medicines. According to Naturopathy “Food is Medicine”.
12. According to Gandhi Ji “Rama Nama is the best Natural Treatment”, means doing prayer according to one’s spiritual faith is an important part of treatment.

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And found something Robin calls the “Mirror Test”. Stand in front of a mirror in the morning. Ask yourself: What is it that you can do today, that will take you to the next level of greatness? Personally and professionally? Think through the action, go through it in your mind. Then go ahead and do it. Be bold.

It’s the daily small improvements you do that will get you to greatness. Discover a new level of greatness everyday, with the mirror test!

I am going to take myself to the next level of greatness by pushing through the sales game we created and inspiring the Ahmedabad team today.

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