‘Invictus’ the Victorian Poem that inspired a Nation
Invictus
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 bludgeoning 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.
Dale Carnegie Note#2 About Fear
Yesterday, was our tenth session in the course and everyone had to speak for 2 minutes about a stressful situation and how did he/she overcome it. Listening to other people’s experience about stressful situations, stories of difficult times and how they past through it was really inspiring. During, one of the talks, the presenter red to us this quote from Dune that he uses to remind himself that he can always be strong in the face of fear:
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Although I have not red Dune, I can relate to the quote, I red it in Psalm 27 in the bible 
The LORD is my light and my salvation whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life of whom shall I be afraid? When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall … For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock.
So always remember that:
“There is nothing to fear but fear itself” ~ Franklin Roosevelt
Dale Carnegie Note#1 Be In Control of Your Stresses & Worries
I have to admit, the Dale Carnegie course turned out to be a great unique experience. The uniqueness of the program comes from the fact that we are not only learning from the instructor or the reading material we are actually also learning from each other. Everyone is asked to do ~2 min presentation every session, these presentations have been so inspiring. I will compile some of these presentations and post them in an upcoming post. I am also going to post some of my notes here. The first note below is about 2 tools to control your stress and worries.
1. Focus on the present
The first tool to control your stress and worries is to focus on what is on hand, do not carry the burden of the past or load yourself with the stress of the future. As Thomas Carlyle once said “Our business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand”. I will quote this from the Dale Carnegie book “How to stop worrying and start living?” :
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the rose that is blooming outside our window today.
2. Face stress with a strategy
Once you are focused on the problem at hand, deal with it with a high level strategy to keep it scoped. This strategy is simply:
a. Determine what is the worst that can happen
b. Accept It – once you know what is the worst case scenario, prepare yourself to live with the worst.
c. It can only get better from there – once you are in peace with the worst case scenario, any improvement that can happen from here is an achievement.
“Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”
Dale Carnegie Note#0 The Starting Point of Improvement
Microsoft signed me up for the “Dale Carnegie: Effective Communication and Human Relations” course. I have not attended an offsite non-technical trainings for a very long time. Some people (mostly with technical background) are skeptical about the effectiveness of these kind of courses, which kind of shows in the background of the people attending the course (only 3 engineers vs. 17 finance background employees). I am a believer that you cannot not get something out of every training/course you attend (Although I am kind of skeptical that I will get a lot – Lets see how it goes). I just attended 2 sessions so far and I cannot say I am getting a lot out of it but I also have to admit that the course reminded me of some common sense things that can easily slip by in my busy schedule.
Besides attending 12 sessions, I will be reading three Dale Carnegie books:
- The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking
- How to Win Friends and Influence People
- How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
I will be blogging the notes I take while reading the books and in class, so watch out for more blogs here.
The first session reminded me that ATTITUDE is and always will be the starting point of improvement. No one can improve and become better, without wanting to improve and become better. No achievement can be accomplished without will and effort. Change doesn’t come without the attitude of change.
Winston Churchill once said:
“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference”
My MSDN Blog
I am starting a new blog on MSDN here. That blog will be my space to write about all the fun technical stuff, discussing programming languages, algorithms and the different Microsoft products I am working on and working with.
I will keep this blog more about my personal projects and thoughts. It is going to be hard keeping both blogs alive but lets see how it goes
Project Rainbow : My First & Only Photography Album
I am not a professional photographer and photography is not really my hobby. I usually take a lot of photos whenever We go out (especially on trips). A couple of days ago I started going through the 7 GB of photos I have and I figured out that there are a couple of photos that I am really proud of.
So I decided to start “Project Rainbow”. In Project rainbow I put together a collections of photos that I took either using my Cannon AS150 7.2 MP camera or my Nokia N70 2.0 MP camera (basically normal digital cameras that are not fancy). I did some minor photo editing using Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 as a learning project.
So let me know what you think.
You can find the out come of this project here.
Project Rainbow on Facebook
Hello World!
This is my first post world. I am starting a series of personal projects that I will be writing about here.
Coming up is Project Rainbow
