To Live, To Love and To Leave a Legacy

To be successful you need to get things done. To get things done you need to know what to do, what not to do, when to do and how to do it. Prioritizing and planning both play an important role.

One of good things about this whole MBA business is that it gets you thinking about organizing life. In the past few months as I have been planning on my MBA program I have also been spending time organizing my life. I have been asking the tough questions as to what is important to me and why? I am trying to understand what is that I like and how to work more in those areas.

I have started by observing the thinks I do. For example, on my bloglines RSS reader I looked at the feeds that I have subscribed to. I strated seeing a lot of feeds related to the social software field. Without actually planning I have been involved in this field. This infact was consistent with the non-job activities that I performed in the last year. Blogging, Yahoo groups, Information portals, Wikis, Collaboration tools etc. And it struck me how much I liked this field. I read the people in this field on a regular basis and loved the things that they were doing.

The next step was figuring out my main passion "rural development". My weblog, WorldisGreen.com, has been a pioneer in the small Indian blog world concentrating exclusively on rural India. The blog acted as a knowledge base, a networking tool and created my online identity. The biggest benefit has been that after working and thinking about the field of rural development coupled with my love for business it made me realize my lifelong goal.

"To create products and/or services to the bottom of the pyramid and enhancing their ability to live a fuller life."

To actionate this process I created a new category called the Green Pyramid on my blog which will drive this project.

The third passion for me has been "manufacturing", more specifically automobile manufacturing. I love the whole idea of creating products, products which can make life easier, better, happier. The other aspect of manufacturing that I like the most is Deming and his quality revolution. I am not sure how I am going to be part of this industry but I will always keep my ideas and options open. One of the opportunities in this field is that my MBA program will be conducted in the city of Adelaide. Of other things, Adelaide is the capital of the manufacturing industry in australia, especially Automobile manufacturing. Thats' some coincidence which can help.

The fourth passion is education. For a lot of years I have been thinking about education. Education is I believe a very impotant aspect for a human being. The ability to read, write, talk, listen, understand, communicate, argue, think, and create will help people in appreciating life and ultimately make life more meaningful to each one. Luckily, I have been married to a wonderful person who has selected teaching as her profession. This has enabled me to be in touch with "education" on a consistent basis. Education will be one field I will try to make a difference in.

To live my passions I will need to be self-aware, calm, strong willed, clear thoughts and empathize with the people in the world. The teachings of the Buddha provide me hope that here is a program for living life better. The four noble truths and the eight fold path provide guidelines on how I can lead my life. I call myself a Buddhist from now on.

In all this, people become the most important aspect. The people I love, the people I like, the people who have influenced me, the people whom I have influenced, the joys and sorrows that I have shared, the friendships that I have fostered, the relationships that I have created...the connections between the various dots that I have been able to create and nurture, ultimately will determine if I am living life to the fullest.

The vehicle that I have chosen for this is Entrepreneurship. It provides me the satisfaction, the experience and the control to live the life I want to.

The actions and consequences that I create around my passions and the relationships that I create and nurture will determine my legacy, if there will be one.

* To Live, To Love and To Leave a Legacy has been first used by Stephen R. Covey.