My Thought Nuggets

Topics starting with A, B, C & D

Adversity

• When the hours are the darkest and trials are their greatest, only patience, perseverance and tenacity can help you get on top of the situation.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Aspirations

• In order to lead a meaningful existence, it is important that we must try hard to nurture our abilities and manifest our aspirations. Many a promise shown during the early years remains but a dream. The regret of ‘what might have been’ can cloud ones life forever.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Attitude

• Your thoughts influence how you react with your environment.
  If you think negatively, you will act negatively and the environmental response will be negative. This will further reinforce your negative thinking, and over a period of time you will be engulfed in the spiral of negativity and failure.
  Positive thinking will make you act positive, and the probability of positive results will be higher. One positive result, and you will be acting towards achieving more such results. This is an upward spiral that will lift you heights of success.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Brand Psychology

• Brand management is all about effectively associating products with parameters of self worth. Brands are created in the mind! “I wear designer perfumes- I am irresistible.” “I possess a BMW- I have arrived.” “ I have only exclusive single malt scotch- I am classy.”
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Complacency

• The path to success is a mix of ambition, hard work and environmental sensitivity. But once achieved, success can make us complacent over time. We tend to lose the humbleness and flexibility with which commenced our journey, and, that, can become the beginning of our downfall.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Creativity

• Creativity is the epicentre of growth.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Dreams

• Dreams without action will never actualise.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Topics starting with E, F, G & H

Embarrassment

• No doubt, when you do something stupid, you feel embarrassed. Now, you have some options- you can feel really bad and get angry with yourself. You can feel really bad and get angry with everyone else. Or, you can laugh at yourself and move on.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Emotions

• Emotional reactions are like pop-up windows; they come up automatically when your buttons are pushed!
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Everybody feels. In fact, it is impossible not to have feelings, and it is perfectly alright for you to be happy, sad, angry, resentful or even feel hopeless. It is how you perceive and understand emotions- your own as well as others’- and to use this awareness to pause, be flexible and purposefully direct your behaviour.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Life is a moving stream. If you do not dump excess emotional baggage before you get on to the boat, you will sink.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Employee/ Employer

• Every company has certain objectives. Every person has certain personal objectives. It is the job of the employer to make sure that both the objectives are aligned, so than an employee can reciprocate with commitment and conviction.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• It is important to eliminate people with a wrong work attitude from the system. If you turn a blind eye to or make allowances for such people, the good workers get demoralised.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Etiquette

• Not returning calls is one of the most ungracious social acts you can commit.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Faith

• It does not matter whether God exists or not. It does not matter if some supernatural power exists or not. What matters is the faith that you will prevail. It may be a belief in God’s will and blessings or a belief in your own will and fortitude. What matters is the strength of your belief!
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Family

• Family means conflict! There is no ‘CRM Package’ or ‘How-to-do-it Manual’ or even a ‘Road Map’ for nurturing a family. It is largely a management of expectations and lots of negotiation. 
But the fruit is worth the effort! In the end, the only people who will love you, no matter what.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Friendship

• Opening your heart to a friend is the most vulnerable yet freeing thing.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• The word ‘friendship’ connotes honesty, companionship, and mutual respect. Love is definitely important in a relationship, but, for lasting bliss, it should be coupled with friendship between partners.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Gossip

• One who backbites an absent friend, does not stand up for the friend when in company of others, solicits laughter in order to be considered witty, cannot keep a secret- that person, dear God, give me the sense to recognize and the prudence to avoid.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Health

• A sound body equips you to face life’s challenges with better self-confidence! You can give more of yourself to your loved ones and, consequently, you experience complete joy and harmony in all your relationships.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Topics starting with I, J, K & L

Indiscretion

• Take a look at history and you will see. It only takes a small act of indiscretion to take a powerful man down
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• You may bite your tongue in hindsight, but cannot swallow runaway words!
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Insult

• Bullies are like dogs- they smell fear! Show your tormentor you are not afraid. The next time your tormentor insults you, insult him back instantly, looking straight into his eyes. Half the battle is won when your eyes lock, and you don’t look away.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• No one has ever escaped insult, not even very successful and confident people. The only thing is that, they never accept an insult. They are either able to rise above being insulted at all or are able to nip the insult perpetrator’s audacity in the bud.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Leadership

• Where there is a conviction in the mission and respect and appeal for a person leading it, a following starts. And when there is a following, a leader is born. A leader does not have to set out to be one, but becomes one by the fervent dedication to his intent, the calibre of his actions and the integrity of his conduct.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Learning

• Continual innovations in technology have ensured that the environment around us changes very fast. Hence our mental faculties must always be ‘Work In Progress’. If our mind tools are not sharpened at all times, we will quickly be extinct.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Life

• Every event in your life, perhaps, is not how it was, but how you remember it.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Of course I am bullish on life! After all, does one really have a choice otherwise?
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Life is a gift of consciousness. It must be experienced with full intensity, with all your senses wide open, with your antennae tuned. This consciousness is given to you once and must be made to count, to make a difference that you lived at all!
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• They say, one day, your life will flash before you; make it worth watching. Hark! Not SO worth that you daren’t sell the family parrot!
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• What we do and what we say are very small parts of our lives. No one knows anything about most of our lives that we lead in our heads- all the more reason to create the kind of self that we will be happy to live with all our lives!
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Topics starting with M, N, O & P

Morality

• Assumption, exaggeration and misrepresentation have no defence, regardless of intent.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Moving on

• The difference between giving up and moving on?
  When you have a chance to change things, but you think it's too difficult and you stop trying, is when you give up.
  When you realize that you can't change things, so, perhaps, it's better you redirect your energies, is the time when you move on.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• People change. Sometimes, people we were once close to become distant. We must accept that life is a journey, and that some people were only meant to walk part of the road with us.
  Letting go and moving on is the only way forward, though the memories stay with us forever.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Nation

• On each Indian Independence day, we must resolve to stand up for our rights and fight courageously against all the things that threaten the ethos of our freedom struggle, that is, to create a free and fair society offering equal opportunity without prejudice.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• We are a nation where we will cross the Himalayas to guard our frontier but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Personality

• All said and done, people do judge a book by its cover. It’s human nature. If I want to be read, I’d rather be perceived readable.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Fascinated by the uniqueness of the colours of every single personality! Also, exasperated by each persons unique streak of grey.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Politics

• All politician's are 'ek hi thaili ke chatte batte'. Just that, in India, the Cong has been in power longer, so has bigger bellies with bigger appetites, and hence bigger scams!
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Cabinet shuffle/reshuffle...what's the point? It's the same cards and the same jokers! What we need is a political catharsis!
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Everyone has to carry his own cross. We are doing it to! Politicians are our bane, our burden and our cross! So be nailed! Amen!
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• India has the means and the capacity to deal with its problems. There are educated and competent statesmen in both the Congress and BJP, as also other political parties. But there is lack of political will. Self-interest and greed, coupled with vote bank politics have taken the nation to dogs.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Indian politics is a cesspool; good people don't get into it. The penalty- governance by worms that multiply and extend their habitat!
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• The political scenario in India is like, “The Phantom is dead! Long live the Phantom!” Does it matter who comes to power? All are the same.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Psychology

• When things happen to you for a reason, then you can be at peace with the way things are, even when you're unhappy. When things happen to you for no understandable reason, you're bound to be left with unresolved issues.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Topics starting with Q, R, S & T

Racism

• Racism - the most hatred with the least cause.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Relationships

• Most of our emotional hurt comes from a fractured relationship. Our healing, really, can only come from forging another strong relationship.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Relationship building is fundamental to human existence. Life remains unfulfilled without meaningful relationships.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• The most essential life skill is the ability to cultivate relationships. They are support systems that are not built in a day. They are to be built brick by brick, day by day, so that when we need them, the pillars are in place.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Semantics

• 'Yeah, right' can mean exactly the same as its opposite, 'No way', as also 'No, way!' can mean 'Oh, wow!' 
It's all in the tone! Only humans can be this ambiguous in speech, yet be absolutely clear in intent!
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Success

• Formulating long-term success entails taking a life-long view- the sum of your wins must exceed the sum of your losses, with the endeavour to maximise the wins and minimise the losses.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• In the pursuit of your dreams, you will, at times, be ridiculed. The more you rise, the more you will encounter people who will try to drag you down. Remember, it is the fruit-laden tree that receives the shower of stones, and that the branches of the mightiest of oaks are hacked at by small axes. But the fecund tree continues to yield fruit and the strong oak continues to sprout new branches.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• My personal notion is that, whatever the vocation or calling, a successful person is one who lights up people’s eyes and brings a smile on their faces when he walks into a room, regardless of their backgrounds, status or relationship with him.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Successful people are generally busy. Yet, they always seem to have time for everybody!
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Sure, there will be roadblocks in the path to success. But the dauntless find alternate routes.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• We are all born in this world as blank sheets of paper. All of us must strive to write a best seller
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Teachers

• Each one of us, who remembers our own education, remembers teachers, not methods and techniques. Most teachers can never fully know how they have, in many unseen, unknown ways, done their part to transform ordinary kids into the persons they have become.
Let us, on this day, Sep 5, remember the teachers who influenced us. Our memory of them is the best tribute we can give them.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Topics starting with U, V, W, X, Y & Z

Winning

• A competitive spirit coupled with rational realism can go a long way in creating winners.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Winners are passionate about winning; they thrive on the blood-rush of a tumultuous environment.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Winners assess the playing field correctly; they know the competition’s strengths and weaknesses as well as their own.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Winners are perseverant; they are willing to persevere on, even when the going gets tough.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Winners are pragmatic ; they believe in ‘winning the war’, and hence are willing to take a few ‘battles lost’ in their stride.
  ~ Sujata Khanna
• Winning is an expectation that can be met, but not exceeded.
  ~ Sujata Khanna

Woomanhood

• You are a the mother and substance of nature! Live your womanhood to the fullest!
  ~ Sujata Khanna