Courage

“Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow.”

With thee... to thee

To walk with God! O fellowship divine!
Man's highest state on earth-Lord, be it mine;
With Thee may I a close communion hold,
To Thee the deep recesses of my heart unfold!

--- H. Smith

Would you

“Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.”

Pic: FFO

Jump in

You can never learn to swim if you sit on the bank of the river and read a book about swimming. You might gather all the knowledge you want in the world about swimming but never would that theoretical knowledge help you in assessing what is out there and how it feels to kick for life. How easy it is to stay out of the water and keep preaching? Trust me there is nothing like learning it on the go.

Over the last few days I am working on a project as a part of my doctoral research and I see that my view about many things is quite different from what it was before when I was a fresh grad. I would try and share some of these learnings or musings as you might call them with you all here. While the material I am reading as a part of my literature review is similar and from the same time, the interpretation is varied, with a zillion possibilities. This just makes it more interesting.

Heraclitus is famous for his doctrine of change being central to the universe, as stated in his famous saying, "You can not step twice into the same river."

Plato(?) takes it to another level. You never enter the same river, even once!

Because by the time you decide to enter and you actually enter, the river has already changed. So if you want to learn and change from what you are to better, jump in.

Why me?

Arthur Ashe, the legendary Wimbledon player was dying of AIDS which he got due to infected blood he received during a heart surgery in 1983.

From world over, he received letters from his fans, one of which conveyed: "Why does GOD have to select you for such a bad disease"?

To this Arthur Ashe replied: " The world over -- 50 million children start playing tennis, 5 million learn to play tennis, 500,000 learn professional tennis, 50,000 come to the circuit, 5000 reach the grand slam, 50 reach Wimbledon , 4 to semi final, 2 to the finals, when I was holding a cup I never asked GOD 'Why me?'.

And today in pain I should not be asking GOD 'Why me?' "

Happiness keeps you Sweet,

Trials keep you Strong,

Sorrow keeps you Human,

Failure keeps you humble and Success keeps you glowing,

but only Faith & Attitude Keeps you going...

A good forward & pic

For everyone

New song!

Far away beyond the shadows,

There a bright and joyful throng

Wave their palms of holy triumph,

While they sing the glad New Song!

(Julia Sterling)

Visit StanleyonBible for motivational articles on christian life :)

Come to life!

Awesome isn't it? Check http://www.pomegranatephone.com for the firm behind it and Wiki for summary. Nice brand name :)

Self author

Shakespeare, the genius English playwright, once noted: "To Thine own self be true." Such powerful words. To lead remarkably. And to live richly.

More than ever before, the clients we do leadership development work with are embracing the imperative of authenticity as a means to build fast teams and grow real results. "Authentic" simply means to "self-author". To show authenticity at work is simply to be yourself. To stand comfortably in your own skin. To be real versus plastic. And to express your absolute best. In so doing, you will become the passionate author of an excellent career. And the wise scriptwriter of a life well lived.

--- Robin's blog

Private brands, Jai Ho!

According to the latest report from IRI Times & Trends, private label unit share has grown 12 points to 22.8 percent over the past 12 months, while dollar share has grown 0.7 points to 17.6 percent. Growth was highest in the grocery sector, driven by at-home food rituals and continued consumer focus on low-cost products.

Sainsbury's said sales of its 15,000 own-brand products were growing on average 6% on the year, while sales of branded goods were up 3%. The supermarket's own-label ranges now make up more than half of total sales. Some 163 of its own brands are 20% cheaper than their branded equivalents - which would translate into an average customer saving of £452 in a year, according to the market research group TNS.

Do I see a thousand middlemen scream?

Painless quick success

There are only two ways to win in the market.

You can create a breakthrough. A promotion so powerful that people can't help but engage. An innovation so remarkable, people can't help but talk about it. A pricing strategy or ad campaign that breaks the mold and is worthy of attention. This takes huge guts and substantial investment.

Or you can win with consistent benefits, delivered over time. You win by incrementally earning share, attention and trust. This might take years.

Almost all marketing attempts to do neither of these, and of course, fail. Painless and quick are rarely associated with 'successful.'

--- Seth's blog

Marketers and measuring social media

Marketers don't think they're very good at measuring social media. When my colleague Emily Riley asked marketers to rate their ability to measure the impact of their social media initiatives, the average grade they gave themselves was 4.5 out of 10. Not a great score -- especially given that accountability is one of the key selling points of interactive marketing. So I've spent a lot of time this year trying to understand why marketers aren't good at measuring social media -- and how they can do better.

The fact is, social media marketers are drowning in a sea of metrics. Every social platform and vendor offers its own metrics, and there are literally hundreds of ways to measure the success of social initiatives. With so many numbers to choose from, and so little insight into which metrics are important, it's not surprising that marketers feel overwhelmed.

Most marketers fixate on easily-available measures like followers or fans -- regardless of whether those metrics are important. Many others fail to measure obviously useful numbers just because they're not on the first page of a report. A marketer focused on talking [video] should have a radically different definition of success than one focused on embracing [video]. But marketers are much more likely to tailor their social media measurement to the tools they're using than to the objectives they're trying to achieve. Have a look -- most marketers measure pretty much the same metrics, no matter what their objective:

It's obvious that marketers need more clarity into which social media metrics they should be tracking. So we've developed a simple three-step process to help marketers better tailor their measurement strategies to the objectives they're pursuing. Walking through these three steps will help you cut through the clutter on your marketing reports and measure your social media initiatives more effectively:

• Step 1: Think back to your marketing objective. Go back and find your notes from when you were first planning your social marketing effort -- and remind yourself of the objective you were pursuing. If you don't know what your goal was, you'll never know what you should be measuring, or if you succeeded.
• Step 2: Consider what types of metrics signal success. Don't think about specific lines on a report yet -- instead, think about what types of consumer behaviors and sentiments match your objectives, and focus your measurement on those categories of metrics. If your goal was energizing, success is defined as lots of people saying positive things about your brand; if your goal was supporting, you want to know if users were providing good advice to each other -- and whether it kept users from having to ask you for support directly. Again, this isn't about specific metrics, it's about how you hoped your social initiative would change your relationship with consumers.
• Step 3: Look for that category of metric in the social technology you're using. Once you've identified the type of metric that will signal success, then you can look for ways to track those metrics within the social platform you're using. This is when you should get into the specifics of which lines on the report Facebook or Jive gives you are most important -- and which other vendors you need to use to find the exact numbers you're looking for.

Via Forrester Research

Monday blues: A very happy monday!

It pays to wake up to good music and greenery, always. Trust me it would help setting your mood and a good start for the day. This is the view outside my guest house window in Calicut, Kerala. Wonderful isn't it? You should see when it is raining and birds and butterflies flock under the leaves!

Today is Monday, which happens to be my favorite day of the week. I set some personal goals to achieve this week like diet, reading, posting blogs and catching up on things I have been neglecting the whole week. On the work front too I have certain goals lined up and targets I personally want to achieve. This helps in knowing where I am, what needs to be done by when. I recently picked up a Blackberry curve 8520 using which I took the above pic which helps me to be in touch and in control about what needs to be done when. Among the various reviews that are pending here are my new mobile, Blackberry and a wonderful book titled My Story by Arti Honrao which would be done this week.

This works for me and should work for you too. Try setting your goals, time lines, prioritize and achieve them. 2009 is zooming towards the finish line, what have you achieved this year? Think...

Happy successful Monday and have a great week ahead.

Psyche... huh...

Sad but true.

Buy now

Loved the concept. What do you think? Good job eBay!

Beyond hope

I couldn't post for a few days as I was traveling. You would find frequent posts here from now on. Thank you for visiting.

Happy reading :)

Where are my slippers?

Change is so unexpected but happens in Cricket. Read an interesting observation by Mike Browning on the missing relevance of slip position in Cricket over the years.

The popular saying goes, “Bowlers win matches.” In the longest form of the game they can’t without help. First-class and Test matches are also won by guys who are usually the least athletic members of the team. They are the fieldsmen who don’t run much and stand with their hands on their knees; sticking out their backsides at the spectators. For these are the “slippers”, the unsung heroes of Test cricket.

As a quality pairing though Australia were never in better shape than when Mark Taylor stood at first and Mark Waugh at second slip. They were equally brilliant catching spin or pace and added pressure to opposing batsmen who must have believed any mistake would be their last. Taylor like Colin Cowdrey and Greg Chappell at one time topped the tree for Test catches. In one of the greatest fielding feats of all time he won the Man-of-the-Match award in a one-day international against West Indies at the SCG in 1992 for taking four slips catches.

Mark Waugh, who has now be pushed to second spot in the Test catches list by Rahul Dravid, has said, “Slip is a position where you have to be a natural at it. Really, you’ve either got it or you haven’t. You have to have reflexes and the ability to concentrate every ball. You might be in there all day and the ball comes to you once and you have to be ready for it. It’s a tough spot.” Waugh’s spectacular ability was best demonstrated with the low right-handed horizontal dive when he caught Alec Stewart at Leeds in 1993. It is available on recorded vision and one of Waugh’s own personal favourites. The anticipation, speed and flexibility will leave any viewer gob smacked.

Criticized? Handle it this way

Listen, learn and keep moving forward!

Know Magic?

We are back in November, I like to call Know-ember! So start exploring, learning, understanding things around you. Personally I have learnt so much from this blog as I had to read a lot and then post thing that you would love to read and take home some. While I keep doing that you can help me by reading, commenting, referring to your friends, colleagues about this blog.





Here is a video of some amazing tricks with football. The search for perfection is a never ending one. You never stop getting better. Just keep at it and when you have surpassed all your competitors, you compete yourself. Good luck and happy Know-ember.