Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
I have been very loud, across all my seminars, workshops on my radio shows, including this podcast on how books shaped my life. Books gave me the foundation books gave me the structure to do what, whatever little bit I do. And I’m a big fan of books, collected a lot of books. I saw this in my dad, my father collect a lot of books and I read a few I could have. I should have read all the books that I ever collected. But I read a few, a lot I could not read. I think I wasted my life by not reading. And a majority part of my life is now gone. And whatever little bit is there, I’m trying to catch up all these years, along these years. And in fact, in one of the earlier podcast episodes, I talked about this on how I used to read books, and take notes on loose papers, and lose them.
So today, as I’m recording this podcast, I happen to find a paper on which I took some notes. With the paper, I took some notes, I get excited when I find these papers, because most of the papers already scanned, and put them in the cloud. And I try to keep my environment very empty and very light. But then when I run into a paper in in one of the boxes, or as I’m cleaning, and all that, I get excited, oh, you know, it reminds me of the time when I read a book, it reminds me of my past. And obviously, I get the high this paper that I have in my hand. Now, I took several notes on this and I want to read those notes because every line is profound. And all these lines that come from books, I have not written anything. I don’t know if it came from one book or multiple books. But they’re profound. There are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 8 points I wrote down on this paper. And I want to walk you through these eight lines right before the recording of this podcast, I was just going through this and I was got excited.
Okay, the first one here, all gifts given to you at birth, can be destroyed by single curse. Number two, you may have all the gifts, but you can fail utterly. Why is that? Because we don’t take ourselves seriously. That’s why. Number three, you cannot make the genius but you can certainly improve or destroy it. Number four, we all possess the assets to be successful. Number five, success is partly predestination, and partly free will. The next one, a great opportunity may be lost and an irreversible error or mistake may be committed by a brief break in the lucidity of the intellect or in the train of thought. Next one, he who would be sees anywhere, must know everything everywhere. This is Rudyard Kipling who said that. And the last one, everything comes to a man who is always all there.
As I’m reading, as I’m reading this, I can see my entire life graph playing in front of my eyes. And things that I did not do some shortcuts I took some things that I overlooked eventually came back to bite me. I gave this example in one of my podcasts many years ago, autumnal radio shows and I’m going to say that one more time here today. As a sixth grader, I used to have trouble in doing a specific kind of math. And that is back in the day. In my sixth grade math, there used to be a concept of a train crossing the pole. Like one train crosses a pole at the speed, another train crosses another, the same pole at this speed and who reaches the destination or whatever. Something like that train crossing a pole is a kind of a math. And I used to avoid it all the time. I never could grasp what that math was all about and I never addressed it. And the doubt stayed in me for the rest of my life literally till I wrote the GMAT. And a similar question came in and I couldn’t answer.
You see, whatever situation you are in our situations are unique to us. But the rules of success are the same. A gift is a gift. When a gift is not worked upon, then the gift could be lost. Uniquely, we all have whatever it takes to succeed, it’s just that we need to bring that mindset of success into us. And that opportunities do come in. And some people are really leveraging the opportunities, but they have to be careful because one mistake, one error in judgment can take away 20, 30 years of hard work. If you are something here and something there, Rudyard Kipling is talking about this, you can’t say, I do what I do under these conditions. And if conditions change, and you give me a new set of conditions. I cannot perform that you cannot say that if you have it in you, you have it. If you don’t have it, you don’t have it.
And finally, this is the last one, which is I see people who go around and they say they’re doing things but they’re not getting results. The truth of the matter is when you are attempting something, are you emotionally physically, mentally, spiritually there. I can tell you this as I’m recording this podcast, I’m in it. I’m in it. I’m not recording this podcast for the sake of recording. It is hard I do this every day. It is hard. But every time I attempt doing this I am emotionally intellectually, soulfully, willfully here, willfully here, soulfully here. If not, this is a complete disconnect. This is going to fall apart. So things that you’re doing today. Are you all there? It’s a question you have to ask. I wanted to rewind and listen to this podcast at least one more time. Do it for me, like listen to this second time. I know it’s very difficult even listen for the first time. So listen to this second time if you are with me up till now. Don’t know where I got all this, but I’m thankful to all the books. I’m thankful to these books. You know books are a blessing from God. They come to your life somehow. It’s like you meeting people. You know, in one of the podcasts I talked about this, I said everything that you have around you is speaking to you. But everything doesn’t have life. Books. They have life. They want to talk to you. Go talk to them. Thank you