The idea of this blog post struck me when I was reminiscing my college days. I felt it would be encouraging if I write how life in college is, based on my experiences. I come from a small town, located roughly one hours drive away from the city of Nizams. There are a number of colleges from where I come and the passage of rite for every school passing student is to join one of these engineering colleges. Inclination or the passion for the subject has the least to do it with it. It is the de facto norm in the community. The result is the feeling of disappointment when the initial feeling of euphoria on joining the college passes.

How about we do a little highlights show of your 2012. 12 incidents that marked this year for you. Can you think of them clearly in your head? Think of all that happened to YOU.

Half full or half empty? We have heard this oh-so-often! If the glass is half full, or half empty? If a certain situation is in favor or against..? Or how do we react to a certain something, positively or not? Does it really matter? Its time to look at what the glass is filled with though.

An attempt to describe an essential state of mind which is necessary for the success of anything ‘NEW’. This mindset is most relevant, as these four components are critical to the success of something ‘NEW’.

It is extremely important to have a balance of openness, to iterative learning and being naive. Don’t be too emotionally attached to your idea as that might take away crucial opportunities for you to find the right model.

It amazes me to have people say this all the time. I always wonder—how can we measure effort, be it 50% or 100%? Aren’t we evolving as individuals and isn’t our capability to do something being enhanced with time? The extent of our capability is just a state of mind—it’s a thought, a perception of ourselves, what we are doing and what we can do.

Let us completely ignore the idea of “percentage of effort”. Let us, instead, focus on getting something done or in more specific words “giving what it takes to get it done”. In retrospect, you can measure by your own means whether the effort you put in was your 10% or 200%. It is just a mere statistic that you can use to further develop and enhance your skills.

Life is about what we are. Isn’t it? Unlike most other living creatures we are the only species called human “beings”. I personally have never heard of a cat being or a dog being. Give or take, my logic says it is this way simply because we as humans have the choice to “be” the way we choose, hence we are aptly called human “beings”. The power lies in our hands to make what we do of our lives.

Another interesting fact, and this has been observed by experts, is that human beings do better when they are competing against someone rather than performing the same task by themselves. Obviously then, competition brings out the better in us, in comparison to an ordinary non-competitive situation.