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January 2021

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You’re going to find the nay-sayers in every turn that you make; don’t listen. Just visualize your goal; know exactly where you want to go, trust yourself, get out there and work like hell, and break some of the rules, and never ever be afraid of failure.


California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered an inspiring and hilarious keynote address at Emory University’s 165th commencement ceremony on Monday, May 10, 2010. He received an honorary doctor of laws degree, his “first law degree.” Schwarzenegger pumped students up with the story of his rise to world-famous athlete, actor and politician, by never being afraid of failure.

As of today, I hope I leave you with a direction correction
away from the flaws you see in our reflection.
They aren’t flaws to me they are simply protection
So start today, take a good long look in the mirror and say
I am who I’ve been looking for’

You are who you’ve been looking for.

So stop looking for more unless you are looking in the mirror

because it is about time for you to see clearly that:

You are who you’ve been looking for.

And that empty feeling you got,

that hole in your chest

you only got that feeling because you think you are not blessed

with everything you need.

You see we live in a consumerist society

which means they need you to buy stuff

and the easiest way to sell it is to tell you

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In Motivation Manifesto, high-performance coach and trainer Brendon Burchard reveals that the main motive of humankind is the pursuit of greater Personal Freedom. We desire the grand liberties of choice—time freedom, emotional freedom, social freedom, financial freedom, spiritual freedom. Only two enemies stand in our way: an external enemy, defined as the social oppression of who we are by the mediocre masses, and an internal enemy, a sort of self-oppression caused by our own doubt and fear. 

The Motivation Manifesto is a pulsing, articulate, ferocious call to claim our personal power.

The Author identified three sets of people we should be wary of on our path to greatness and freedom:  The Worriers,  The Weakling, and The Wicked.  He highlighted some of our limiting behaviours such as fear, Loss Pain vs anticipation of hardship. Life Roles: Observer, Director, Guardian, Warrior, Lover, and Leader.

The 9 Declarations of the Motivation Manifesto

  1. Meet Life with Full Presence and Power
  2. Reclaim your Agenda
  3. Defeat your Demons
  4. Advance with Abandon
  5. Practice Joy and Gratitude
  6. Do not break Integrity
  7. Amplify Love
  8. Inspire Greatness
  9. Slow Time

Here are my favourite takeaways from reading “The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard”

One of the greatest truisms of life is that we are all going to DIE; that is our ultimate destination. A lot of us would not achieve our most cherished aspirations in life not because we do not know what to do, we know what to do but we wait for the perfect time, we say: “Someday I’ll“…….when I do…I’ll do this or that. Our time here is short as we are all living on borrowed time. The key to starting is to START, take baby steps. As Chinese Philosopher and Writer Lao Tzu famously said: “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” and as The Buddha quipped: “The trouble is, you think you have time.” 

Alfred D Souza. observed:

“For a long time, it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last, it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”

You do not have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. Many of us have misplaced priorities; we do what we are supposed to do tomorrow today and do what we are supposed to do today tomorrow. Hence we do not achieve our goals and aspirations. If you do what is hard and pay today, your life would be easy tomorrow, but if you do what is easy and play today, your life would be hard tomorrow. Garbage in, Garbage out, what you put in is what you get out.

“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” – Albert Einstein

A lot of us talk a great deal, but talk they say is cheap. At the beginning of the year, we are all pumped up about all the goals we will achieve in the year. Still, as the day goes by, we begin to renege on the promise we made to ourselves; we do this because of a lack of deciding what we really want and a lack of commitment and the integrity to follow through.

When it is time to execute, we do not follow through with relentless work habit, when you honour your word, you build pride and joy for yourself and respect from other others, but if you do not honour your words, you begin to lose pride and also lose respect from others. I am a firm believer in showing and not telling, let your results speak for you: Your Results would cancel the Insults. If you say you will do something, go ahead and do it: Honour your Word.

Here are some great quotes on Integrity:

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Reluctant entrepreneurship is based on the idea that you can start out slowly and proceed cautiously. You do your research and develop your business plan. And you keep your day job while you work on your side business at night and on weekends.

A reluctant entrepreneur is somebody who keeps his day job while he gets his ideal job going in the evenings and on weekends. He is willing to take the initiative to start his own business. But he’s not willing to quit his current job and lose the income. The compromise he accepts is that he will have to work 60 to 90 hours a week for several years before he can either abandon his great idea or fire his boss.

Here are my favourite take-aways from reading, The Reluctant Entrepreneur: Turning Dreams Into Profits by Michael Masterson

“History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes” – Mark Twain

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930s, beginning in the United States. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. The stock market crash of 1929 led to the Great Depression and was a prelude to World War II.

The Great Depression started in the United States after a major fall in stock prices that began around September 4, 1929, and became worldwide news with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, (known as Black Tuesday). Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession.

The Great Depression had devastating effects on both rich and poor countries. Personal income, tax revenue, profits, and prices dropped, while international trade fell by more than 50%. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 23% and in some countries rose as high as 33%.

Edward F. Stuart is a Professor Emeritus of Economics at Northeastern Illinois University, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1986. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Oklahoma, specializing in International Economics and Russian and Eastern European Studies. 

Capitalism vs. Socialism : Comparing Economic Systems 

The course covers the important economic systems in the world today. It also addresses the historical background and big ideas that created the different economic systems. 

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”

In Zen Buddhism, the beginner’s mind is called Shoshin (初心). It refers to the idea of letting go of your preconceptions and developing an attitude of openness and eagerness when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, With this approach to study, we can grow and learn faster.

Zen monk and teacher Shunryu Suzuki, In his great book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, shares some great insights on the beginner’s mind:

In 2014, Elon Musk delivered a great commencement speech to the Undergraduate graduating students of the USC Marshall School of Business. He delivered his great speech in five minutes and it was very insightful. Elon Musk is the CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink; and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI. 

Elon Musk 2014 USC Commencement Speech Transcript

“If you want your life experience to be bright, choose to contribute.”

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Life’s Golden Ticket by Brendon Burchard is a great book that is in an allegory format. The story teaches many life lessons, such as overcoming our fears, living life on our terms, and making a difference in the world. It is a book that I highly recommend; the storyline might not be easy to follow with the multiple characters and scenes, but it contains many messages for navigating life.

What if you were handed a golden ticket that could magically start your life anew?

That question is at the heart of Life’s Golden Ticket. Brendon Burchard tells the story of a man who is so trapped in the prison of his past that he cannot see the possibilities, the choices, and the gifts before him. To soothe his fiancee Mary, clinging to life in a hospital bed, the man takes the envelope she offers and heads to an old, abandoned amusement park that she begs him to visit.

To his surprise, when he steps through the rusted entrance gates, the park magically comes to life. Guided by the wise groundskeeper Henry, the man will encounter park employees, answer difficult questions, overcome obstacles, listen to lessons from those wiser than he, and take a hard look at himself.

At the end of his journey, the man opens Mary’s mysterious envelope. Inside is a golden ticket — the final phase in turning his tragic life’s story of loss and regret into a triumphant tale of love and redemption.

Here are my favourite takeaways from reading Life’s Golden Ticket by Brendon Burchard:

In his great book, Lead the Field, Earl Nathingale shares a great story about goal achievement:

The story goes that the president of a big steel company had granted an interview to an efficiency expert named Ivy Lee. Lee was telling his prospective client how he could help him do a better job of managing the company, when the president broke in to say something to the effect that he wasn’t at present managing as well as he knew how. He went on to tell Ivy Lee that what was needed wasn’t more knowing, but a lot more doing. He said, “We know what we should be doing. If you can show us a better way of getting it done, I’ll listen to you – and pay you anything within reason you ask.” 

Lee then said that he could give him something in 20 minutes that would increase his efficiency by at least 50 percent. He then handed the executive a blank sheet of paper and said, “Write down on this paper the six most important things you have to do tomorrow.” The executive thought about it and did as requested. It took him about three or four minutes. 

Lee then said, “Now number them in the order of their importance to you and to the company.” That took another, three, four, or five minutes. 

Then Lee said, “Now put the paper in your pocket, and the first thing tomorrow morning, take it out and look at item number one. Don’t look at the others, just number one, and start working on it. And if you can, stay with it until it’s completed. Then take item number two the same way; then number three, and so on, until you have to quit for the day.” 

“Don’t worry if you have finished only one or two items on your list. The others can wait. If you can’t finish them all by this method, you couldn’t have finished them with any other method. And without some system, you’d probably take 10 times as long to finish them – and might not even have them in the order of their importance.” 

“Do this every working day,” Lee went on. “After you’ve convinced yourself of the value of this system, have your men try it. Try it as long as you like, and then send me your check for whatever you think the idea is worth.” 

The entire interview hadn’t taken more than a half-hour. In a few weeks, the story has it, the company president sent Ivy Lee a check for $25,000, with a letter saying the lesson was the most profitable, from a money standpoint, he had ever learned in his life. And it is said that this plan was largely responsible for turning what was then a little-known steel company into one of the biggest independent steel producers in the world. 

One idea! The idea of taking things one at a time, in their proper order; of staying with one task until it’s successfully completed before going on to the next; of living one day at a time.

For the next seven days, try the $25,000 idea in your life. Tonight, write on a slip of paper the six most important things you have to do. Then number them in the order of their importance. Tomorrow morning, go to work on item number one, and stay with it until it’s successfully completed. Then move on to number two, and so on. When you’ve finished with all six, get another piece of paper, and repeat the process. 

You’ll be astonished and delighted by the order this brings into your life – and by the rate of speed with which you’ll be able to accomplish the things that need doing, in the order of their importance. This simple but tremendously effective method will take all the confusion out of your life. You’ll never find yourself running around in circles, wondering what to do next. 

As you use this method, remember to live the best you can, one day at a time. You need not worry about tomorrow, or the next day, or what’s going to happen at the end of the month. One day at a time, handled successfully, will carry you over every hurdle; it will solve every problem. You can relax in the happy knowledge that successful tasks make successful days, which, in turn, build a successful life. This is the kind of unassailable logic no one can argue with. It will work every time – for every person.

The reason for writing down what you consider only the most important things to do is obvious. Handling each task during the day successfully is important to the degree of the importance of the task itself. Successfully doing a lot of unnecessary things can be pretty much a waste of time. Make certain that the tasks you take time to do efficiently are important tasks – tasks that move you ahead, steadily, toward your goal. 

A human life is really nothing more than a collection of minutes, hours, and days. These are the building materials. And it’s left strictly up to us to determine the kind and size of structure we build.

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Success is a matter of sticking to a set of commonsense principles anyone can master. In Lead the Field Earl Nightingale explains these guidelines: the magic word in life is ATTITUDE. It determines your actions, as well as the actions of others. It tells the world what you expect from it. When you accept responsibility for your attitude, you accept responsibility for your entire life.

Success or failure as a human being is not a matter of luck, or circumstance, or fate, or the breaks, or who you know – or any of the other tiresome, old myths and clichés by which the ignorant tend to excuse themselves. It’s a matter of following a common sense paradigm of rules – guidelines anyone can follow.

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.” – Earl Nightingale. 

AWS Educate recently announced the release of five new learning resources and badges for students to jump-start their learning goals and for educators to teach in a virtual or blended environment. The resources focus on robotics, innovation, and Amazon Honeycode.

AWS Educate provides students, educators, and U.S. veterans with no-cost access to self-paced cloud content, training, collaboration tools, and the AWS Educate Job Board. Students who use AWS Educate get access to hands-on learning experiences for the most in-demand cloud jobs through 13 specialty badges and 12 AWS Educate Cloud Career Pathways.

Each badge takes participants through about 10 hours of learning content and focuses on specialty areas of the cloud-like gaming, Internet of Things (IoT), or startups. Each pathway maps back to an in-demand job role like software development engineer or data scientist and includes 30-50 hours of learning per pathway. Badges and pathways feature quizzes, knowledge checks, and projects to ensure students are on the right track.

Upon completion of an AWS Educate pathway or badge, students earn a digital credential in their portfolio. Then, they can check out the AWS Educate Job Board to explore job and internship opportunities from Amazon and its customers around the world.

Upon completion of an AWS Educate pathway or badge, students earn a digital credential in their portfolio. Then, they can check out the AWS Educate Job Board to explore job and internship opportunities from Amazon and its customers around the world.

New AWS Educate badges include:

  • AWS RoboMaker Badge Series: Introductory cloud robotics courses designed to help students, educators, and entry-level developers build robotics applications with robot operating system (ROS) and AWS RoboMaker. There are currently three courses in the series:
    • Course 0: Fundamentals of Robotics – In this course, learn how robots work, what problems they need to solve, and how they’re controlled.
    • Course 1a: Getting Started with Ubuntu – In this course, learn which development environments robots use, how to set up the environment to run the ROS, and everything you need to write programs for robots in ROS.
    • Course 1b: Getting Started with AWS – In this course, get started setting up the development environment on the cloud using AWS RoboMaker.
  • Innovation Badge: Designed for students and educators to help build innovation skills to augment and amplify innovation around the world using Amazon’s innovation process. In this badge, you’ll learn the phases of design thinking, the culture of innovation at Amazon and the Amazon Leadership Principles, organizational criteria for application of innovative thinking, and major mechanisms used to innovate.
  • Honeycode Badge: Amazon Honeycode can transform the way teams and businesses track and monitor the work being done. In this badge, you’ll learn to build your own productivity app and improve it using Amazon Honeycode’s feature-rich interface. As you move through this badge, you’ll be introduced to prerequisite information you should know to be successful with Amazon Honeycode and knowledge and activities for creating apps.

AWS Educate provides its members with free access to learning content and AWS services designed to build knowledge and skills in cloud computing. It is available globally to students who are 14 or older, with the exceptions of China, Switzerland, and European Economic Area countries (16 or older); and Algeria, Lebanon, and Portugal (18 or older). The AWS Educate Terms & Conditions govern participation in the AWS Educate Program. Use of AWS Promotional Credits are subject to the AWS Promotional Credit Terms & Conditions.

To enroll in an AWS Educate badge or pathway, sign up today.

Source: AWS Public Sector Blog

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