Jessica Cox - Not Just Motivational

Jessica Cox can tap dance. She can brush her own hair. She wears her contact lens all by herself. She can ride a car.

“Hey, this is common. Even I can do all of that”

Jessica Cox is a certified pilot.

“Ok, I am not a pilot. But I know many who are.”

Yes, all these are common things, but what makes Jessica a super woman? She does all of this without arms.

Yes, Jessica Cox, was born with no arms. Her mom raised her as a normal child and never let Jessica feel that her disability would trouble her. Soon Jessica learned to use her legs to play with toys, to write, to brush etc. In one of her videos, she tells that she was a bit nervous when she had to dance on the stage for the first time. But once she finished her dance and left the stage, she was already longing for her next chance to get on the stage.

Today, Jessica Cox through her hard work has owned two Black Belts in Karate and can drive her car all by herself just by using her legs. Not just that, she can play piano and does all her day to day activity by herself. She leads her life as a motivational speaker. Jessica explains to the world when you combine fearlessness, creativity and persistence, nothing is impossible.

Jessica took up the test for acquiring her driving license. She cleared the test with flying colours and she got her license. But a couple of week later, her driving license was suspended stating that it would be dangerous for someone without arms to drive the car. So she had to take couple of additional tests to get her license back. Today, Jessica Cox drives her car in roads without any additional extensions fitted to the car.

Not just that,

Jessica Cox was always feared of heights and she wanted overcome that. When she was provided with the opportunity to fly a flight she eagerly accepted it. She was ready to fight her fears. After three years of hard work and consistency, she is now a licensed pilot and currently the only armless pilot in the world.

Jessica Cox has just proved one thing to all of us. Everyone has problems. You just have to figure a way out of it. Jessica might had difficulties in driving her car, piloting a flight etc. But she figured a way to do them all.

Now, when someone without arms can do this much, can’t we achieve something in this world? She has already become my role model.

Hardwork has no substitute.

There was a aloof college boy who never cared about his education. He took the books only the day before the exam. He fell in love with a girl when he was in 3rd Semester. He only came to college to see her. Once he makes eye contact he went to the nearest entertainment center and spent his time.

By the time he finished his 5th Semester he had about 16 arrears. He never worried about the arrears until one day he sat in a shop with his friends. Suddenly one of his friend came with a discussion to know who has the most number of arrears. By the end of the discussion our hero came to know that he was the topper and all his friends only had very few. Now he understood where he was standing. He had became the worst student in the class. His hall ticket came in, he had to 2400 rupees,100 for each paper, the highest being paid as examination fee. He was in no progress with the girl he was in love also. His world went into dark, he had no site of his future and he was scared to death. He even considered sucide. When he went to pay the fees, the co-ordinator was shocked.

"What the hell happened?" the co-ordinated asked suprisingly.
"No, mam. i never knew I would come to this point in my life" he replied.
"But this is a mess." the co-ordinator was still confused.
"I know mam. My life is screwed". he was about to cry.
"Hey, Its not like that. You still can do that. You only work hard. It is very easy" the co-ordinator replied confidently.
"Thanks mam. I will put my effort", he took the hall ticket and left the room.

From that day he started looking into his books and made a plan of how he is going to study. He started a new life.One day he was sitting in the same shop with his friends, when they started discussing what they learn and all that and finally one of his friend conclude "It is hard work and hard work alone" and he gave a example from his life.
His friend started with his story,

"Till today I don't know much about the EC paper, but I cleared it. Because I kept reading that book again and again and tried to understand it. But it was grey area for me. After I wrote that paper, I thought I am going to fail, but when the results came, I cleared it. What does it mean? It means God only looks into how sincere you are and how hard working you are and only based on that you get your results"

By this time our hero was ready to improve his effort to one step further. He started reading all his books again and again and did everything he can. The exams came near and the confidence he had was unlimited because of the hard work he did.

The results came, he had cleared 17 Papers that semester alone. He completed his other papers in the subsequent semesters and came out of the college neatly.

And finally that he understood what his hard work. So you want to achieve something work towards it blindly but sincerely. You will win.

Never Give up

Sir Winston Churchill took three years getting through eighth grade because he had trouble learning English. It seems ironic that years later Oxford University asked him to address its commencement exercises. He arrived with his usual props. A cigar, a cane and a top hat accompanied Churchill wherever he went.

As Churchill approached the podium, the crowd rose in appreciative applause. With unmatched dignity, he settled the crowd and stood confident before his admirers. Removing the cigar and carefully placing the top hat on the podium, Churchill gazed at his waiting audience. Authority rang in Churchill's voice as he shouted,

"Never give up!"

Several seconds passed before he rose to his toes and repeated:

"Never give up!"

His words thundered in their ears. There was a deafening silence as Churchill reached for his hat and cigar, steadied himself with his cane and left the platform. His commencement address was finished.

Generosity

This story implies multiple morals to us. Read on

Mahatma Gandhi went from city to city, village to village collecting funds for the Charkha Sangh. During one of his tours he addressed a meeting in Orissa. After his speech a poor old woman got up. She was bent with age, her hair was grey and her clothes were in tatters. The volunteers tried to stop her, but she fought her way to the place where Gandhiji was sitting. "I must see him," she insisted and going up to Gandhiji touched his feet. Then from the folds of her sari she brought out a copper coin and placed it at his feet. Gandhiji picked up the copper coin and put it away carefully. The Charkha Sangh funds were under the charge of Jamnalal Bajaj. He asked Gandhiji for the coin but Gandhiji refused. "I keep cheques worth thousands of rupees for the Charkha Sangh," Jamnalal Bajaj said laughingly "yet you won't trust me with a copper coin." "This copper coin is worth much more than those thousands," Gandhiji said. "If a man has several lakhs and he gives away a thousand or two, it doesn't mean much. But this coin was perhaps all that the poor woman possessed. She gave me all she had. That was very generous of her. What a great sacrifice she made. That is why I value this copper coin more than a crore of rupees."

The two moral I can frame this story are

1. Being Generous is not only in money, but also in the attitude.

2. God not only values you based on number of hours you work but also based on your willingness to work.

For example: Raja is free the whole day and spends only two hours on studying for exams and Rakesh works in hotel and can gets only two hours to study, God would value Rakesh's effort more than Raja's. Because he spends the only two hours he is free on studying.

Motivational stories - Hardwork

Everything I have narrated below is my understanding of how and why my life reacted to my actions.

I am 26 years old now and I cannot say that I have not achieved anything; I also cannot say that I have achieved everything. But I can be sure of one thing, when I invested hard work on any thing it always resulted in Success. Be it how I did or what I did, if I put in hard work, it always resulted in success. The below is a short narration of one such moment in my life, when I realised “Hard work never fails”.

This happened in the year 2004, My sixth semester university exams was nearing, I had at least a dozen of papers from the previous exams apart from 6 papers from my current semester’s. On one fine day, just before the study holiday’s begun I was sitting with my friends in a snack shop and discussing about how to face this exam. And suddenly one of my friend quoted something new to me,

“It is all the hard work you do, no matter how tough the question paper is or how much of your answers are correct. God knows how hard you’ve worked and will answer to it definitely.”

This sentence rang in my mind again and again and the next 30 days, I was always seen with the books. Only this time I went through some books for the first time in the past three years. I tried and tried to understand many of the concepts for the first time. I sorted help from some of the studious in my class and they helped me a lot. But even before I could complete 50% of the chapters, time ran out and my first exam of sixth semester came nigh. Guys who had cleared the papers on time would get a day holiday between each exam, but for me it was like a Test Cricket Match. I would have two exams per day, six days a week for three weeks. On one such day, I had tough exams on both morning and afternoon, so I decided not to care about the exam on the afternoon and concentrate for the one in the morning. Next day morning I was in the examination hall and I opened my question paper for which I thought I had concentrated fully. But the questions looked like some complex alien language. I was not sure I would even able to attend at least two questions. However still having the hard work never fails concept in my mind I started attending all the questions with what ever I had learnt. By the time I finished the paper my world was covered with full of sorrow. I heard a voice in my head telling me “I am gonna fail this paper”. Everything went black and I cried. My mom called me to ask how my exam was and I was not able to control and I cried.

Some how I completed all my exams and my results came after a month. I still remember my friend informing me the results over the phone, that I have cleared many of my papers. But all I cared was about the one paper which made me cry. I had cleared that paper. Yet this time it made me cry again but this time , tears of joy. Also on a whole I had cleared 18 papers, which was a college record. I would like to attribute all of these to god who handled the situation. So don’t pray to god for success, pray to him to give enough strength to work or fight hard. Success is just product of hard work.

Motivational Personality - Chris Gardner

Chris Gardner(yes, the one you know from Pursuit of happiness) was born on 1954 in Wisconsin. Gardner’s childhood was not as good as ours. His stepfather was physically abusive and was rage. Intolerable with her husband Gardner’s mother tried to kill her husband by burning the house with her husband inside, for which she was imprisoned. She was the only source of inspiration or motivation to her son, Chris. She believed in Chris and asked him to believe in himself, which induced Gardner’s self reliance.

Gardner quotes his mother’s words

“You can only depend on yourself. The Cavalry ain’t coming.”

Gardner always learned from his experience and he understood he should avoid alcoholism, domestic abuse, child abuse, illiteracy, fear, and powerlessness in his life in future.

His dream job was to become a Stock Broker and achieving it was not very easy. He had to run behind lots of manager, his cars constantly amassed parking tickets, he was homeless and still willing took custody of his son. His road to success was not smooth; he had to stumble upon lot of issues and had to solve them on daily basis. But he never gave up. He stood up against all the problems and now he is a millionaire. What is that he had that led him to success? It is Self motivation. He constantly told himself that “he can” and finally he did it.

This is just a heads up about the motivational personality, Chris Gardner. Please visit the Wikipedia page about Chris Gardner to know more about him. Also don’t forget to watch the movie, Pursuit of Happyness.

Motivational Speech by Rocky

One of the best Motivational Speech by Rocky in the movie Rocky V.

It ain't about how hard you could hit, it is about how hard you can get it and move forward.

Weight Loss - Motivation

I have been browsing through the web for weight loss tips. I found a wonderful piece of article here...

Motivation is one of the most important factors which determines how successful we are at what we do. It is the driving force that gives us the will to accomplish tasks and eventually succeed at reaching an ultimate goal. Motivation levels can vary each day depending on how we feel, or how we view certain experiences. For anyone to succeed at slimming motivation will be the most important part to work at, it will provide us with the determination to get up and exercise even if we don't feel up to it. Motivation also drives us to stick to the low fat selections and recipes required to keep our progress moving.

Read the rest here: http://www.weightlossforall.com/motivation.htm

Inches Speech - Al Pacino - Any Given Sunday

I don't know what to say really.
Three minutesto the biggest battle of our professional livesall comes down to today.Eitherwe healas a teamor we are going to crumble.Inch by inchplay by play till we're finished.We are in hell right now, gentlemen, believe me andwe can stay hereand get the shit kicked out of us or we can fight our wayback into the light.We can climb out of hell.One inch, at a time.

Now I can't do it for you.I'm too old.I look around and I see these young facesand I thinkI meanI made every wrong choice a middle age man could make.I uh....I pissed away all my money. believe it or not.I chased off anyone who has ever loved me.And lately,I can't even stand the face I see in the mirror.You know when you get old in life things get taken from you.That's, that's part of life.But,you only learn that when you start losing stuff.You find out that life is just a game of inches.So is football.Because in either game life or football the margin for error is so small.I mean one half step too late or to early you don't quite make it.One half second too slow or too fastand you don't quite catch it.The inches we need are everywhere around us.They are in ever break of the game every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us to pieces for that inch.We CLAW with our finger nails for that inch.Cause we know when we add up all those inches that's going to make the f***ing difference between WINNING and LOSING, between LIVING and DYING.

I'll tell you this, in any fight it is the guy who is willing to die who is going to win that inch.And I know if I am going to have any life anymore it is because, I am still willing to fight, and die for that inch, because that is what LIVING is.The six inches in front of your face.

Now I can't make you do it.You gotta look at the guy next to you.Look into his eyes.Now I think you are going to see a guy who will go that inch with you.You are going to see a guy who will sacrifice himself for this team because he knows when it comes down to it,you are gonna do the same thing for him.That's a team, gentlemen and either we heal now, as a team,or we will die as individuals.That's football guys.That's all it is.Now, whattaya gonna do?

Balanced Life

By Chetan Bhagat.

Don’t just have career or academic goals. Set goals to give you a balanced, successful life. I use the word balanced before successful. Balanced means ensuring your health, relationships, mental peace are all in good order.

There is no point of getting a promotion on the day of your breakup. There is no fun in driving a car if your back hurts. Shopping is not enjoyable if your mind is full of tensions.

"Life is one of those races in nursery school where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in your mouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same is with life where health and relationships are the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve the success, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die. ……………….

One thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. Life is not meant to be taken seriously, as we are really temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may last another 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? …………….

It's ok, bunk a few classes, scoring low in couple of papers, goof up a few interviews, take leave from work, fall in love, little fights with your beloved ones. We are people, not programmed devices........." :)

Note: I received this forward from one of my friend and not sure if Chetan is actually the narrator of this message. However since it made a lot of sense, i have posted it here. Enjoy.

Why Some People Have All the Luck ?

- By Professor Richard Wiseman, University of Hertfordshire

Why do some people get all the luck while others never get the breaks they deserve?

A psychologist says he has discovered the answer.

Ten years ago, I set out to examine luck. I wanted to know why some people are always in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experience ill fortune. I placed advertisements in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me.

Hundreds of extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research and over the years, I have interviewed them, monitored their lives and had them take part in experiments.

The results reveal that although these people have almost no insight into the causes of their luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their good and bad fortune. Take the case of seemingly chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not.

I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities. I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had secretly placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying: "Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $50."

This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.

Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected.

As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties’ intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs.

Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. My research eventually revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

Towards the end of the work, I wondered whether these principles could be used to create good luck. I asked a group of volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person.

Dramatic results! These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck. One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80% of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier.

The lucky people had become even luckier and the unlucky had become lucky.

Finally, I had found the elusive "luck factor".
Here are Professor Wiseman's four top tips for becoming lucky:
1) Listen to your gut instincts - they are normally right
2) Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine
3) Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well
4) Visualize yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call.
Have a Lucky day and work for it.

Note: I Sincerely thank the sender of this mail.

Obstacles

Don't be lake and get stagnated, Be a river and take 'em all down.

I remember the day when my cousin’s baby stood up for the first time. My cousin’s house was just a 10 minutes’ walk away from my home. So generally every day morning I used to go and play with her for some time. That day, I spent some time playing with her and then got busy reading my newspaper. I suddenly noticed that one of the dolls she was playing with had sharp edges. So I took it from her and placed it over the tea table next to the sofa in the living room and started to drown myself again in the newspaper. After few minutes I was shocked and amazed to see the baby trying to stand up by one of the leg of the sofa. Eventually I understood she was trying to walk across the sofa and reach the tea table to get her doll back. She was struggling to stand up. Before I could go and help her she fell down to the ground a little hard and started to cry. From next day there was no doll, but she was still trying to stand up and walk across the sofa. Each day she did a lot mistakes and fell down, but she never gave up. Every time she improved and it was apparent that each time she fell, she learnt what she should not do next time in order to successfully stand up. Within three days she reached the other end of the sofa. To celebrate her success she clapped and laughed summoning all of us to join her celebration.

Now when I think of that day, I can remember my mother telling me a similar incident about me. And I am sure that you would have a similar story about you. As babies, we all had the ability to learn from our failures and we never gave up. We learned that fire is hot; ice is cool and lot more things. We successfully walked and talked and did much more than that, all by ourselves. But slowly those abilities diluted in the ocean of negativity. Now when we fall, we are terrified to try it the next time or we did not care to analyse what was wrong in the previous failures and kept failing again and again by doing the same fault. When you face obstacles in life, thank god for what he has given for us to learn. Learn from it. Try again and again and again. Remember No Pain, No gain.

World is not a guest house for you to come and rest. It is a workshop. You want to be happy, you should work for it. You want to lose weight; you have to work for it. Money! Work for it. Never give up until the goal is reached. Be determined. If the baby did not have the determination to stand up and walk, it would have never stood up. All we have to do to overcome these obstacles is just to go a little back to days when we had all those abilities. Remember, what and all you did to make your parents shake their heads for your first bicycle. Now you have to be that adamant again, not with your parents but with yourself.

Regards,

R.K