Toastmasters Competent Communicator Project 8

 Start your day with a Positive, says the famous author of book ‘You can Win’ Shiv Khera. As of now, the thing that I like to start my day with is reading couple of pages from yet another famous book ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’.  The second habit of this book has left me spellbound, it has touched my soul. TMD, fellow toastmasters and guests, today I am going to talk about the learning that I have taken from Habit 2 of Seven Habits and that is about importance of relationships in our life.

Before explaining Habit 2, Stephen Covey has asked the reader to do a visualization exercise. And I would request all of you present here to forget about everything for a while, get rid of all thoughts that must be pondering in your mind and listen efficaciously to my words and try to visualize the situation.

Imagine you are going to a funeral, you feel the shared sorrow of losing. As you move forward to offer your prayers to the lost one, you suddenly come face to face with yourself. You suddenly realize it is your funeral, God knows how many years from now.

Now imagine there are going to be couple of speakers on your funeral and they are going to share how they associated with you, what kind of individual they think you were. And what kind of words would you like to hear from them? What character would you like them to have seen in you? What contributions, what achievements would you want them to remember? Look carefully at the people around you.  What difference you like to have made in their lives? Sure anybody would want to hear good words about themselves. But are we investing enough in those relationships that would lead to appreciation for ourselves flow naturally from our loved ones. Are we are just too caught up in our activity trap. I would like to discuss some relations that I feel are extremely important to invest time in:

    1.       Parents – We came in this world through our parents. Our parents love us unconditionally. No matter what we do, our parents' love for us will never change. And I think though we love our parents, we are not expressing it enough. The older our parents grow, the more love and support they expect from us to make them feel wanted. We learned to walk by holding our parent’s hands.

 

     And when they grow old, it’s our turn to offer our hands for them to hold and make them feel secured. Love your parents, don’t be so busy growing up, that you forget they are also growing old

    2.    Sibling(s) – 

    Remember those ugly fights we used to have with our siblings. It used to be so much fun. Sure we cannot stay together forever, but even staying apart we should make sure we have enough moral support for each other. Though we grow mature with time, we should be as open with each other as we used to be while we were kids.

   3.     Your spouse –

  Your spouse is the one I feel provides utmost security to you. He’s the one who knows all your strengths/weaknesses. He’s the one who can predict how you are going to behave in a particular situation. Though we stay under same wall, sometimes it’s good to get rid of the routine life, go on an exotic location to spend quality time with each other to revive your relationship. If you keep doing so, your love for each other will keep getting stronger no matter how old you grow.

     4.       Your kids –

    It would be such a beautiful feeling when you get blessed by a child. I am going to experience that moment very soon. Touch wood! The true meaning of ‘Love at first sight’ is I think when you get first glimpse of your child and feel the soft touch of those tender hands. But I think as kids grow, parent find it bit challenging to raise their children in an effective manner. As a parent, we should take care of delivering our message to our kids in their own way, that would make them understand yet don’t hurt their feelings. You can't behave toward them in ways that undermine their self-discipline or self-esteem.

   5.       Friends –

   There is no fun in life without friends. No doubt these advertising campaigns of airtel are creating such a boom in India. Whenever you feel low, no matter what hour of day it is, you know you can always count on your friends who are always there to provide you shoulder of support. And it’s not only about sharing our sorrows, celebrating our achievements with our friends is a separate fun in itself. And it’s only with friends you can just be yourself, play whatever pranks you want. But even this relationship I feel needs regular nurturing. If your friend gets busy, it’s your responsibility to get him back. Reminds me of a message one friend sent to the other – ‘I miss your smile, but more than that, I miss my own smile’.

     Relationships play a very crucial part in our life. And we should keep investing in relationships that we value. If you carefully consider what you wanted to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success. It may be very different from the definition you thought you had in mind. Perhaps fame, achievement, money, or some of the other things we strive for are not even part of what we desire.

And if you take care of all your important relationships, this is how you’ll be surrounded by your loved ones. Would like to conclude with a short and sweet quote on relationships:

‘The quality of your life is quality of your relationships’