In Pursuit of Wisdom

I finished  Think and Grow Rich  by Napoleon Hill yesterday. This is arguably one of the most popular personal development books of all time. In this book, Napoleon emphasizes that success comes to those who are success conscious. He lays out 13 principles to get rich which can also be used for any other goal than money. Burning Desire  - Wishing alone won't bring money. fix your mind on the exact amount of money you desire determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money establish a date you want it to achieve create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and putting into action write out the exact amount of money you intend to acquire and what you are willing to give in return for it read our your statement out loud twice daily Faith  - When you truly have faith in a desire and believe that it will come true, it starts manifesting its own physical self. Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Auto-s...

Stanford University Psychologist  Carol Dweck tells us about the power of mindset in this fascinating book. She figured that people use one of two basic mindsets in their lives - fixed mindset and growth mindset. People with fixed mindset believe the abilities are largely fixed while people with growth believe that abilities can largely be developed with effort over time. If you think your capabilities are coded genetically and you can only vary to a certain degrees no matter what you try, you are applying a fixed mindset. On the other hand if you see that it's not just your gene but your environment, your overall context and how you utilize that will determine where you will end up, you are applying a growth mindset. Do you remember the Denim aftershave ad where it says  for men who don't have to try too hard ? This is a perfect example of fixed mindset. People with fixed mindset put themselves into an imagined box and think that is the overall boundary within which ...

We had a quick Portland trip during the labor day weekend of May. I had lot of works pending in office and hence I didn't want to take extra day offs for the trip. Also Amin would have been able to join us only if he wouldn't have to take any leave. Considering all these I decided to fly to save time as well as not put much pressures on Shusmita at a time when she came just came out of first trimester. I purchased air tickets from priceline by a bid as tickets were sky priced at the very last moments for this long weekends. I took Holiday Inn through my citibank thank you points. Amin joined us shortly. Shahriar, sachi and safwan drove to Portland at the same time in Saturday so that we could join the train ride together Sunday. Wali Bhai dropped us to san francisco airport Saturday afternoon and n we reached Portland airport, we found Shahriar there outside the airport. I took a toyota camry from airport and then had dinner together with sharij restaurant. The next morning ...

Our preparation can now be declared as complete for hiking Half Dome of Yosemite this Weekend. Below is the image of Half Dome that kept me day dreaming about this time for last 2 months. It has been a relatively long wait before the day is so close now. My first hiking experience tells how I came into this whole thing 2 months back. During this time, except a short break last month in Ramadan, I have been hiking every weekend in different trails of bay area, mainly in Mission Peak. It turned out that hiking is not as tough as I used to think initially. However, make no mistake, it's tough enough to test all your endurance. I have lost 4 pounds of weight during these preparation which is even a lot considering I am under-weight and there was no fat at all to loose. Interestingly, my 2 other partners lost a huge amount at the same time. Nitol lost almost 12 pounds while Shahriar lost around 30 pounds (well, even after loosing that much he is slightly over 200 pounds now!). ...

This June 2009 is a special month for gadget lovers. Yesterday Amazon's Kindle DX was released and 18th of this month Apple's iPhone 3G S will be released. While I and my wife Shusmita already have our iPhone 3G, I am particularly in favor of Kindle to consider as the best gadget I can ever have. Amazon's Kindle DX is an electronic book reader, the third of it's kind after it's successful debut in late 2007 with the first generation followed by early this year with second generation also known as Kindle 2 . Like I waited for iPhone to mature a little bit before I bought that, I also waited for Kindle platform to mature before I made up my mind to buy the latest generation Kindle (DX). I love reading books, both in English and in my mother language Bengali. My decision behind buying the new larger size Kindle DX is primarily because it has a native PDF reader and hence I will be able to read Bengali PDF books which I won't be in the case of Kindle 1 or 2. My onl...