Sagar Shah

Eras have passed, thousand thoughts spared, hundreds of books written, and yet....it seems so difficult to find! Human beings and their ultimate quest for happiness.  What is happiness? What brings happiness? Can we define it? I think the meaning of happiness is unique to each one of us. Precisely why, no book, no person, no religion can show you the path to eternal happiness. And yet, if you observe closely, it's always inside us. Human beings are happy creatures the moment they are born. Ever looked at toddlers and kids! They are happy for smallest of reasons. That is the most powerful emotion they possess. No wonder we miss our childhood when we see them. So something is different, something changes. Or rather, is buried deep inside us, layer by layer. Happiness is so tender an emotion, it's easily overshadowed by expectations, material desires, fear, anxiety, frustration et al. And yet, it's so flexible, it manages to peek through this dense fog of emotions. Happy peopl...

Driving at the speed of 10km/h in the maximum city, with rains lashing against the windshield showing us our helplessness against it's ferocity. There I was, in the back seat of car, with my best friends. All annoyed with the endless traffic, winding up several kilometers and crawling at snail's pace. Adding to agony were the choicest of bad songs being played on local radio. Frustration slowly started creeping in. It had been almost 2 hours. We eventually came to terms with the situation and waited for traffic to ease. Suddenly things changed. We once again became the cheerful bunch of buddies that we were. So what changed? The traffic, the music, or the weather?? I guess our attitude towards the situation changed! We were more patient in dealing with it. We realized that all we could do is keep driving and wait for traffic to clear. And that's how it mostly works in life too. Keep working hard, come to terms with reality and be patient. Frustration fills in the void left ...

Here I was, wide awake, well past midnight. Listening to the pitter patter of rain drops in a new city. Trying to settle down, trying to make friends, trying to calm my nerves! We tend to hide our deepest emotions so well. It would all seem so normal to an acquaintance, to raise a suspicious eye on that aloofness, that disconnect. That weak side which each one of us have.  Why do we defend it so ferociously? Would heavens fall down if you admit you are weak at certain point in time? Guess not! And still we make futile attempts to cover that side up. How then will it become stronger if not in the eye of the storm?! Does it not really help to open your heart out to someone? To let someone in? Feel your true emotions as you feel them? Yet how foolish would we be if we open up to those we don't know! What a waste of time, energy and emotions would it be to discover that the person doesn't care to listen to your emotions! Hence the importance of friends and family in life. The impo...

  1. Fall and Rise   Today, when I slipped on the wet tile floor a boy in a wheelchair caught me before I slammed my head on the ground.  He said, “Believe it or not, that’s almost exactly how I injured my back 3 years ago .   2. A father's advice   Today, my father told me, “Just go for it and give it a try!  You don’t have to be a professional to build a successful product.  Amateurs started Google and Apple.  Professionals built the Titanic   3. The power of uniqueness.   Today, I asked my mentor – a very successful business man in his 70’s – what his top 3 tips are for success.  He smiled and said, “Read something no one else is reading, think something no one else is thinking, and do something no one else is doing.   4. Looking Back   Today, I interviewed my grandmother for part of a research paper I’m working on for my Psychology class.  When I asked her to define success in her own words, she said, “Success is ...

Vanilla Ice Cream that puzzled General motors’!!!! An Interesting Story Never underestimate your Clients' Complaint, no matter how funny it might seem! This is a real story that happened between the customer of General Motors and its Customer-Care Executive. Pls read on..... A complaint was received by the Pontiac Division of General Motors: 'This is the second time I have written to you, and I don't blame you for not answering me, because I sounded crazy, but it is a fact that we have a tradition in our family of Ice-Cream for dessert after dinner each night, but the kind of ice cream varies so, every night, after we've eaten, the whole family votes on which kind of ice cream we should have and I drive down to the store to get it. It's also a fact that I recently purchased a new Pontiac and since then my trips to the store have created a problem..... You see, every time I buy a vanilla ice-cream, when I start back from the store my car won...

A Business executive was deep in debt and could not see any way out. Creditors and Suppliers were demanding payments. He sat in the park, wondering if anything could save his company from bankruptcy. Suddenly an old man appeared before him and asked, "I can see that something is troubling you seriously". After listening to the executive the old man said, "I believe I can help you". He asked the...man his name, wrote out a cheque and put it into his hands saying, "Take this money, meet me here exactly one year from today and you can pay me back at that time". Then he turned and disappeared as quickly as he had come. The business executive saw in his hands a cheque for $ 500,000 signed by Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the world. "I can erase my worries instantly" he realized. But instead, the executive decided to put the uncashed cheque in his safe knowing that it might give him the strength to work out to save his business and to use ...

One of the mistakes many of us make is that we feel sorry for ourselves, or for others, thinking that life should be fair, or that someday it will be. It’s not and it won’t. When we make this mistake we tend to spend a lot of time complaining about what’s wrong with life. We commiserate with others, discussing the injustices of life. “It’s not fair,” we complain, not realizing that, perhaps, it was never intended to be. One of the nice things about surrendering to the fact that life isn’t fair is that it keeps us from feeling sorry for ourselves by encouraging us to do the very best we can with what we have. We know it’s not “life job” to make everything perfect, it’s our own challenge. Surrendering to this fact also keeps us from feeling sorry for others because we are reminded that every one is dealt with a different hand, and everyone has unique strengths and challenges, according to Law of Karma. The fact that life isn’t fair doesn’t mean w...

A kindergarten teacher decided to let her class play a game. The teacher told each child in the class to bring along a plastic bag containing a few potatoes. Each potato will be given a name of a person that the child hates, so the number of potatoes that a child will put in his/her plastic bag will depend on the number of people he/she hates. So when the day came, every child brought some potatoes with the name of the people he/she hated. Some had 2 potatoes; some 3 while some up to 5 potatoes. The teacher then told the children to carry with them the potatoes in the plastic bag wherever they go (even to the toilet) for one week. Days after days passed by, and the children started to complain due to the unpleasant smell let out by the rotten potatoes. Besides, those having 5 potatoes also had to carry heavier bags. After one week, the children were relieved because the game had finally ended. The teacher asked: "How did you feel while ...

There was a millionaire who was bothered by severe eye pain. He consulted so many physicians and was getting his treatment done. He did not stop consulting galaxy of medical experts; he consumed heavy loads of drugs and underwent hundreds of injections. But the ache persisted with great vigor than before. At last a monk who was supposed to be an expert in treating such patients was called for by the millionaire. The monk understood his problem and said that for some time he should concentrate only on green colors and not to fall his eyes on any other colors. The millionaire got together a group of painters and purchased barrels of green color and directed that every object his eye was likely to fall to be painted in green color just as the monk had directed. When the monk came to visit him after few days, the millionaire's servants ran with buckets of green paints and poured on him since he was in red dress, lest their master not see any ot...

Just as we can weatherproof a home by looking for cracks, leaks, and imperfections, we can also weatherproof our relationships, even our lives, by doing the very same thing. Essentially, weatherproofing means that you are on the careful lookout for what needs to be fixed or repaired. It’s finding the cracks and flaws, and either trying to fix them, or at least point them out to others. This tendency encourages you to think about what’s wrong with everything and everyone --- what you don’t like. You begin to notice little faults about your colleague (or friend, whoever), that you feel could be improved upon. You bring it to their attention. You might say, “You know, you sure have a tendency to be late.” Or, “I’ve noticed you don’t read very much.” The point is, you’ve begun what inevitably turns into a way of life --- looking for and thinking about what you don’t like about someone, or something that isn’t quite right. Obviously, an occasional ...

Many hundreds of years ago in a small Italian town, a merchant had the misfortune of owing a large sum of money to the moneylender. The moneylender, who was old and ugly, fancied the merchant's beautiful daughter so he proposed a bargain. He said he would forgo the merchant's debt if he could marry the daughter. Both the merchant and his daughter were horrified by the proposal. The moneylender told them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty bag. The girl would then have to pick one pebble from the bag. If she picked the black pebble, she would become the moneylender's wife and her father's debt would be forgiven. If she picked the white pebble, she need not marry him and her father's debt would still be forgiven. But if she refused to pick a pebble, her father would be thrown into jail. They were standing on a pebble-strewn path in the merchant's garden. As they talked, the moneylender bent ove...