The wait was over long back !

Recently, like most of you, I’ve had all 99 of Sachin Tendulkar’s 99 international hundreds tattooed onto the inside of my eyelids.

It’s the ultimate mark of respect for Sachin, and only non believers would do less. But every time I went to sleep, something bothered me. One hundred seemed to be missing. Sometime in 1998 I seem to remember Sachin making a hundred against New Zealand in NewZealand. It was about 107 off 144 balls on a pitch that was slower than you’d think, but Sachin had the requisite skill, patience and courage to get through it.

I seem to remember some exquisite drives, awesome work off his pads and he was particularly harsh on the spinners. Yeah, you remember it too, don’t you. It wasn’t the best innings of his career, nor the worst, it was just a purely forgettable ODI knock that for some reason, was never put into the ICC database. Things like that happened all the time, Ian Harvey’s 7 wicket haul against South Africa was never recorded either. There was a lot of meaningless cricket in the late 90s, unlike now, and things got missed.

The good news is, with this hundred rightfully recognized, it means that Sachin has made 100 international hundreds. I knew you could do it, Sachin, or should I say, I knew you’d done it, Sachin. What an achievement, imagine how old and good you need to be to do that, pretty good, very old. Now Sachin doesn’t need to feel awkward from the moment he raises his bat at 50, web site designers don’t have to change the formatting of stats pages to have number of international hundreds on them and the rest of us can go back to not caring how many international hundreds batsmen have. So, it’s all-good now, yeah.

Hail Sachin, the king of kings, the 100 of hundreds, the grand pooh bah of the willow, you are statistically freaky in the best possible way. But no need for too much celebrations, because you scored your 100th 100 ages ago, and it was grand against South Africa in World Cup 2011.


--Sahil (16/01/2012)

Positive Attitude

Having and maintaining a positive attitude is vital for success in life and business. Zig Ziglar gets it right when he says, "It is your attitude, not your aptitude, that determines your altitude." Sure you need skills, but you can learn skills - in fact a positive attitude will make it much more likely that you will learn the skills necessary to succeed. If you take two people with an equal skill set the person with the better attitude will win. Unfortunately it is not always easy to stay positive and keep a good attitude. As things go wrong throughout your day, it is easy to let negative thoughts start to take over. Thankfully there are many things that you can do to help maintain a positive attitude. These are things that you can do on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to make sure you keep your positive focus.

1.      Read Positive and Inspiring Books
One of the best ways to maintain a positive attitude is by reading positive books. These books serve to encourage you, inspire you, and teach you. Reading requires that you sit still and focus, and by focusing on something positive it helps you to keep a positive mindset throughout the day.

2.     Exercise
Very few things in life leverage your time as much as exercise. Obviously it makes a difference for your physical health, but it also has significant benefits to your mental health. Exercise is useful to combat depression and to improve overall positive mood. Further, if you exercise early in the morning you can go through your day knowing that you have already completed the most valuable activity you had to do!

3.     Plan Your Week and Day
Having a clear plan to your day and to your week can go a long way to helping you maintain a positive attitude. By knowing what you want to accomplish you will be able to focus on your important life priorities. A weekly plan allows you to match your long-term goals to your weekly accomplishments. Your daily plan allows you complete the activities you need to do so that you meet your weekly goals.

4.     Understand that Things Won't Always Go as Planned
If you plan and expect everything in life will go as you planned, you will be quickly disappointed. One of the keys to maintaining a positive attitude is to understand that things will go wrong. If you expect things to go wrong, you won't be phased when they do. So have a plan, but understand that things won't follow the plan. The plan allows you to adapt to what went wrong and move back towards what is important.

5.     Surround Yourself with Positive People
The people around you have a big impact on you. They impact who you are, how much money you will make, and what you value. They also impact how you think. If you surround yourself with negative people you will be negative as well. You can't help it. Hearing negativity all day leads you to negativity. The opposite is also true. Surround yourself with positive people and you will be more positive.

--- Sahil (10/01/2012)