I saw this the other day while my associates and I were looking for some plants to add ‘colours’ to our plain looking office. I was elated to see the little ladybird and immediately took out my Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot camera phone to take a few shots; the few shots turned out pretty decent. It sure is good to have a camera with us always - we never know what surprises we will get in life.

Simple thing like this makes me happy. When we learn how to appreciate life, it is easy to be happy with everything and anything. Life’s goodness is in abundance all around us. I appreciate and am grateful for all these goodness; be it the blessings that came along the way or be it the challenges that came my way.

It has been challenging for the past few weeks with lots of brick walls to be cleared. Brick walls which seemed impossible to break down initially all came down eventually. Just as Randy Pausch said, “Brick walls are there for a reason…” They are there to test how much we wanted what we want. In his own words, “… The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.” The good news is, the greater the brick wall, the bigger the opportunity for growth.

It was an amazing experience to see how each challenge eventually cleared and the limiting belief which I had of myself broke down. It was as if the Universe conspired to make things happened; all issues were ironed out with the assistance of family, friends etc around us. A simple realisation, “When we truly believe and hold the faith strongly that all will work out great, the Universe will respond in the most magical way.” This is the law of attraction.

However, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that all we need to do are to believe and have the faith that all will go well. We need to take action to make things happen too!

However, the author mentioned something which brought me to a new level of appreciating quotes. I have always like collecting quotes for the wisdom we can find in them, from my own interpretation, my own understanding, my own experiences and my point of views. It may or may not have anything to do with the great and famous people who uttered those words.

The author mentioned, “We cannot fully understand the beauty and power of certain quotes unless we understand both the context and the experiences of those who uttered them.” How true isn’t it?

Most who have undergone personal tribulations and challenges in life may understand that the world does not stop just because of them. The people around them would offer love, consolation, support and sympathy but end of the day, these people would have to move on with their own lives. The planet still continues to revolve around the sun. Nothing stops; changes are taking place all around us in the next nanosecond. This realisation usually comes later for some; for a while they may stop moving in their lives and thought likewise that their lives have ’stopped.’

If only all will realise one day as what Robert Lee Frost had experienced that ‘Life goes on,’ then moving on and letting go would be much easier, smoother and faster.

A look at Robert Lee Frost’s personal life, one would realise that his life was plagued with grief and loss. At the age of 11, his father died of tuberculosis, leaving the family in financial distress. From Wikipedia:

Frost’s mother died of cancer in 1900. In 1920, Frost had to commit his younger sister, Jeanie, to a mental hospital, where she died nine years later. Mental illness apparently ran in Frost’s family, as both he and his mother suffered from depression, and his daughter Irma was committed to a mental hospital in 1947. Frost’s wife, Elinor, also experienced bouts of depression.

Elinor and Robert Frost had six children: son Elliot (1896–1904, died of cholera), daughter Lesley Frost Ballantine (1899–1983), son Carol (1902–1940, committed suicide), daughter Irma (1903–1967), daughter Marjorie (1905–1934, died as a result of puerperal fever after childbirth), and daughter Elinor Bettina (died three days after birth in 1907). Only Lesley and Irma outlived their father. Frost’s wife, who had heart problems throughout her life, developed breast cancer in 1937, and died of heart failure in 1938.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

“Invictus” is a poem written in 1875 by English poet William Ernest Henley. The word means “unconquered” in Latin.The last two lines were repeated on several occasions by Morgan Freeman in his performance as Nelson Mandela in the film “Invictus,” about Mandela’s efforts to unite his country around hosting and winning the 1995 rugby World Cup. It was said that Nelson Mandela had this poem written on a piece of paper he kept during his years in a South African prison. According to Mandela, the poem helped him cope with the pain of injustice and imprisonment.

In the movie, Mandela gives the “Invictus” poem to his national rugby team’s captain Francois Pienaar before the start of the Rugby World Cup. In reality, Mandela provided Pienaar with an extract from Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena” speech from 1910. An excerpt of the speech from Wikipedia as below:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

I hope that the poem “Invictus” can give you the strength to overcome whatever challenges that you may be facing and can inspire you like it has helped Nelson Mandela to survive 27 years in imprisonment.

We started walking intuitively and probably from seeing our parents and other adults doing it; we imitated them. We fell and we picked ourselves up repetitively and fearlessly. Pretty soon we were walking steadily and the daring ones were already running. Through sheer hard work and encouragement, we had not only mastered the art of walking but also doing it with ease. Had we ever questioned the hard work we put into learning to walk?

Are there something which you are hoping to do well? I have an interesting news for you. With hard work and I mean a lot of hard work, you can achieve excellent in what you hope to do well. And not just hard work, “But work of a particular type that’s demanding and painful,” according to a report by CNN on the Secret of Greatness.

“I do not have the innate gifts to be successful.” From the above mentioned report, British-based researchers Michael J. Howe, Jane W. Davidson and John A. Sluboda conclude in an extensive study, “The evidence we have surveyed … does not support the [notion that] excelling is a consequence of possessing innate gifts.” The first major conclusion is that nobody is great without work.

A lot of people are working hard and yet not many are achieving excellent results. Where did it go wrong? The biggest challenge is that most people are just blindly charging ahead. A friend of mine shared his Cycle of Excellence with me a few years back. It is a simple feedback system he uses for his students so that they can constantly monitor their own results through feedbacks. Through the system, the students can pin-point what produces positive results and do more of that.

Besides monitoring which of our hard work produces positive result, a paper published by professor K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State University and two colleagues in 1993 notes, “Elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends.” Thus, we also need to put in consistent hard work.

Many would have spent the weekend otherwise. Not many are willing to go the extra miles and that is why not many can achieve greatness. At least we know now that achieving greatness is not only for the privilege few but available for you and I.