A Beginner's Mind

At some point our need to support a party that matches our ideology will be shadowed by the fact that we aren't getting what we are paying for. The goal of politics is power, not people. It never has been, it never will be. The sooner the junta realizes this, the sooner it will be disillusioned of charismatic leaders and mass movements. For a democracy to perform best it's people should keep making attempts to break this illusion every few years and ask the most important question - what's in it for me and my family? Only when everyone is thinking about this, can the collective gain from democracy, else we will only be dictated by the ideas of any party's propaganda.

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A lot has not been done because of the fear of failure. But if you think about it clearly, in the grand scheme of things failure is irrelevant. So let’s think about Failure. We are afraid to fail because of two reasons: Social Pressure - If you fail publicly you will end up hurting your pride which to most people is more important that money or any other loss. Pride, in my opinion is an ancient reptilian mental construct that either results in conflict or what's even worse -   ineptitude. Result of a negative outcome - In this case you are projecting the outcome of your failure into the future. What if I don’t get a high score in SAT, what if I don't clear that interview, what if my business partner ends up cheating me? These are all scenarios that haven’t happened yet, and in the pressure of an immediate result your mind is conjuring up the worst case scenarios with complete disregard for any reasonable predict...

Do not feel absolutely certain of anything. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your spouse or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try...

Tired of looking at posts from people drooling over the latest gadget from Apple - a watch - I tried to cobble a few insults that would remind these man-boys of the message in this ancient proverb - All that glitters isn't gold. But I couldn't.  Despite my best efforts to put together, what seemed like the longest 140 characters I'd ever written, I was still swinging between the odious and the futile.   Exhausted of cursing my ineptitude as a writer, I decided to look for inspiration. I picked up  Hitch Hiker's Guide to Galaxy  and as soon as I read the opening paragraph, I experienced my very own 'Eureka'. The answer wasn't an insult at all. It was satire. And I decided not to waste a moment reinventing the wheel and wrote this post.  Here's the passage that changed my mind and might even teach us all some humility (more below): "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy...

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education - Mark Twain As a lifetime believer in the value of education (not schooling) its hard for me to understand why some of us don't read. I am reading for as long as I can remember. And as far as I know, when I started reading no one in my family was doing it. I just slipped into it. Maybe it was because I wasn't interested in anything else - such as sports. But whatever the reason, in today's world reading can no longer be thought of as a hobby or a chore but as an essential part of life.  Its almost every week I meet someone who complains that he wants to read and has tried several times but never caught on to it. Some say its because of time constraint (I know it must be very difficult for guys with kids and families), others say its due to the lack of energy and some even say its because they feel sleepy as soon as they open a book (my answer to them is "you are very lucky, some people ha...

This post was first published on LinkedIn Pulse : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rosser-reeves-principle-contrast-marketing-devesh-tiwari Do you know who is Rosser Reeves? Rosser Reeves was an advertising executive from the fifties who has 3 important contributions to the world of Marketing: He coined the term “Unique Selling Proposition”, the idea that any product or service in the marketplace has to specify what differentiates it from its competitors. He was the first to create ads for presidential campaigns. Including a 1952 ad for Dwight D. Eisenhower. The ad was called “ I like Ike”. You can check it out  here He is the protagonist of the one of most famous stories in advertising, one that exemplifies enduring power of clarity. And also highlights the principle of contrast. This is how the story goes: One afternoon, Reeves & a colleague were having lunch in central park. On the way back to their Madison Avenue office, they encountered a man sitting in the ...