The old Carpenter Inspirational Story

Your life today is the result of your attitudes and choices in the past. Your life tomorrow will be the result of your attitudes and choices today!

This is a story of an elderly carpenter who had been working for a contractor for many many years. He had built many beautiful houses but now as he was getting old, he wanted to retire and lead a leisurely life with his family. So, he goes to the contractor and tells him about his plan of retiring. The contractor feels sad at the prospect of losing a good worker but agrees to the plan because the carpenter had indeed become too fragile for the tough building work. But as a last request, he asks the old carpenter to construct just one last house.

The old man agrees and starts working but his heart was not in his work any more. He had lost the motivation towards work. So, he resorted to shoddy workmanship and constructed the house half-heartedly. After the house was built, the contractor handed over the front door keys to the carpenter and said, This is your new house. My gift to you. The carpenter was shocked and upset. Had he known that he was building his own house, he would have done a better job! Now, he would have to live in the house, which is not worth staying.

Think of yourself as the carpenter. You work hard every day but are you giving your best? We put our least to the work we don't like or do not have interest in. Later, we get shocked at the situation we have created for ourselves and try to figure out why we didn't do it differently.

Enjoy your tasks and carry on your responsibilities with pleasure and not with pain. Life is a do-it-yourself project. Do your job enthusiastically and with devotion, a positive output and a pleasing life will certainly be on your way.

Time and love - love story

Once upon a time, there was an island where all the feelings lived: Happiness, Sadness, Knowledge, and all of the others including Love. One day it was announced to the feelings that the island would sink, so all repaired their boats and left.

Love wanted to persevere until the last possible moment. When the island was almost sinking, Love decided to ask for help. Richness was passing by Love in a grand boat. Love said, "Richness, can you take me with you?" Richness answered, "No, I can't. There is a lot of gold and silver in my boat. There is no place here for you."

Love decided to ask Vanity who was also passing by in a beautiful vessel, "Vanity, please help me!" "I can't help you Love. You are all wet and might damage my boat." Vanity answered.

Sadness was close by so Love asked for help, "Sadness, let me go with you." "Oh....Love, I am so sad that I need to be by myself!"

Happiness passed by Love too, but he was so happy that she did not even hear when Love called her!

Suddenly, there was a voice, "Come Love, I will take you." It was an elder. Love felt so blessed and overjoyed that he even forgot to ask the elder his name. When they arrived at dry land, the elder went his own way.

Love realizing how much he owed the elder and asked Knowledge, another elder, "Who helped me?" "It was Time," Knowledge answered. "Time?" asked Love. "But why did Time help me?" Knowledge smiled with deep wisdom and answered, "Because, only Time is capable of understanding how great Love is."

Stress in work or life - moral story

A group of working adults got together to visit their University lecturer. The lecturer was happy to see them. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

The Lecturer just smiled and went to the kitchen to get an assortment of cups - some porcelain, some in plastic, some in glass, some plain looking and some looked rather expensive and exquisite.

The Lecturer offered his former students the cups to get drinks for themselves.

When all the students had a cup in hand with water, the Lecturer spoke:
"If you noticed, all the nice looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal that you only want the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. What all you wanted was water, not the cup, but we unconsciously went for the better cups."

"Just like in life, if Life is Water, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold/maintain Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change."

A related quote:

"If we only concentrate on the cup, we won't have time to enjoy/taste the water in it."

-Mother Teresa

Sage and the prince - moral story

A sage presented a prince with a set of three small dolls. The prince was not amused.
"Am I a girl that you give me dolls?" he asked.
"This is a gift for a future king," said the man. "If you look carefully, you'll see a hole in the ear of each doll."
"So?"
The sage handed him a piece of string.
"Pass it through each doll," he said.
Intrigued, the prince picked up the first doll and put the string into the ear.
It came out from the other ear.
"This is one type of person," said the man. "Whatever you tell him, comes out from the other ear. He doesn't retain anything."
The prince put the string into the second doll. It came out from the mouth.
"This is the second type of person," said the man. "Whatever you tell him, he tells everybody else."
The prince picked up the third doll and repeated the process. The string did not reappear from anywhere else.
"This is the third type of person," said the man. "Whatever you tell him is locked up within him. It never comes out."
"What is the best type of person?" asked the prince.
The man handed him a fourth doll, in answer.
When the prince put the string into the doll, it came out from the other ear.
"Do it again," said the sage. The prince repeated the process. This time the string came out from the mouth. When he put the string in a third time, it did not come out at all.
"This is the best type of person," said the sage. "To be trustworthy, a man must know when not to listen, when to remain silent and when to speak out."

Boss always first - funny moral story

Junior Software engineer, a senior Software engineer
and their Project Manager are on their way to a meeting. On their way through
a park,they come across a wonder lamp.They rub the lamp and a ghost appears.

The ghost says, "Normally, one is granted three wishes but as you
are three, I will allow one wish each".

So the eager Junior Software engineer shouted, I want the first wish. I
want to be in the Bahamas, on a fast boat and have no
worries."Pfufffff, and he was gone.

Now the Senior Software engineer could not keep quiet and shouted "
I want to be in Florida with beautiful girls, plenty of food and cocktails."Pfufffff,
and he was also gone.

The Project Manager calmly said," I want these two idiots back in
the office after lunch at 2.00pm"

Moral of the story is :
Always try to hear the other person out.

Be thankful for what you have - moral story

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which said: 'I am blind, please help.' There were only a few coins in the hat.

A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, 'Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?'

The man said, 'I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.'
What he had written was: 'Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it.'

Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing?

Of course both signs told people the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind. Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?

Moral of the Story: Be thankful for what you have. Be creative. Be innovative. Think differently and positively.

Invite others towards good with wisdom. Live life with no excuse and love with no regrets. When life gives you a 100 reasons to cry, show life that you have 1000 reasons to smile. Face your past without regret. Handle your present with confidence. Prepare for the future without fear. Keep the faith and drop the fear.

Great men say, 'Life has to be an incessant process of repair and reconstruction, of discarding evil and developing goodness?. In the journey of life, if you want to travel without fear, you must have the ticket of a good conscience.'

The most beautiful thing is to see a person smiling?
And even more beautiful is, knowing that you are the reason behind it!!!

Relax & Enjoy - moral story

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?"
Answers called out ranged from 8oz. To 20oz.
The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it."
"If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm.
If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance."
"In each case it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."
He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on."
"As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden"
"So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work/life down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow."
"Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can. Relax; pick them up later after you've rested"

Life is short..... RELAX & ENJOY

**Image source

Beauty Of Love

A man and his girlfriend were married. It was a large celebration. All of their friends and family came to see the lovely ceremony and to partake of the festivities and celebrations. A wonderful time was had by all.

The bride was gorgeous in her white wedding gown and the groom was very dashing in his black tuxedo. Everyone could tell that the love they had for each other was true.

A few months later, the wife comes to the husband with a proposal: "I read in a magazine, a while ago, about how we can strengthen our marriage." she offered.

"Each of us will write a list of the things that we find a bit annoying with the other person. Then, we can talk about how we can fix them together and make our lives happier together."

The husband agreed, so each of them went to a separate room in the house and thought of the things that annoyed them about the other. They thought about this question for the rest of the day and wrote down what they came up with.

The next morning, at the breakfast table, they decided that they would go over their lists.

"I'll start," offered the wife. She took out her list. It had many items on it enough to fill 3 pages, in fact. As she started reading the list of the little annoyances, she noticed that tears were starting to appear in her husbands eyes.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "Nothing" the husband replied, "keep reading your lists."

The wife continued to read until she had read all three pages to her husband. She neatly placed her list on the table and folded her hands over top of it.

"Now, you read your list and then we'll talk about the things on both of our lists." She said happily.

Quietly the husband stated, "I don't have anything on my list. I think that you are perfect the way that you are. I don't want you to change anything for me. You are lovely and wonderful and I wouldn't want to try and change anything about you."

The wife, touched by his honesty and the depth of his love for her and his acceptance of her, turned her head and wept.


In life, there are enough times when we are disappointed, depressed and annoyed. We don't really have to go looking for them.

We have a wonderful world that is full of beauty, light and promise.

Why waste time in this world looking for the bad, disappointing or annoying when we can look around us, and see the wondrous things before us?

Lessons to Learn from This Message:

I believe that WE ARE HAPPIEST WHEN we see and praise the good and try our best to forget the bad. Nobody's perfect but we can find perfect ness in them to change the way we see them.

Nice Conversation - must read

I found this in .rediffisland, thought of sharing here in all-mixed

A real story ...In Shatabdi Train .........

Vivek Pradhan was not a happy man. Even the plush comfort of the air-conditioned compartment of the Shatabdi express could not cool his frayed nerves. He was the Project Manager and still not entitled to air
travel. It was not the prestige he sought, he had tried to reason with the admin person, it was the savings in time. As PM, he had so many things to do!!

He opened his case and took out the laptop, determined to put the time to some good use.

"Are you from the software industry sir," the man beside him was staring appreciatively at the laptop. Vivek glanced briefly and mumbled in affirmation, handling the laptop now with exaggerated care and
importance as if it were an expensive car.

"You people have brought so much advancement to the country, Sir. Today everything is getting computerized."


"Thanks," smiled Vivek, turning around to give the man a look. He always found it difficult to resist appreciation. The man was young and stockily built like a sportsman. He looked simple and strangely out of place in that little lap of luxury like a small town boy in a prep school. He probably was a railway sportsman making the most of his free traveling pass.

"You people always amaze me," the man continued, "You sit in an office and write something on a computer and it does so many big things outside."

Vivek smiled deprecatingly. Naiveness demanded reasoning not anger. "It is not as simple as that my friend. It is not just a question of writing a few lines. There is a lot of process that goes behind it."

For a moment, he was tempted to explain the entire Software Development Lifecycle but restrained himself to a single statement. "It is complex, very complex."

"It has to be. No wonder you people are so highly paid," came the reply.

This was not turning out as Vivek had thought. A hint of belligerence crept into his so far affable, persuasive tone. "

Everyone just sees the money. No one sees the amount of hard work we have to put in. Indians have such a narrow concept of hard work. Just because we sit in an air-conditioned office, does not mean our brows do not sweat. You exercise the muscle; we exercise the mind and believe me that is no less taxing."

He could see, he had the man where he wanted, and it was time to drive home the point.

"Let me give you an example. Take this train. The entire railway reservation system is computerized. You can book a train ticket between any two stations from any of the hundreds of computerized booking centres across the country.

Thousands of transactions accessing a single database, at a time concurrently; data integrity, locking, data security. Do you understand the complexity in designing and coding such a system?"

The man was awestuck; quite like a child at a planetarium. This was something big and beyond his imagination.

"You design and code such things."

"I used to," Vivek paused for effect, "but now I am the Project Manager."

"Oh!" sighed the man, as if the storm had passed over,

"so your life is easy now."

This was like the last straw for Vivek. He retorted, "Oh come on, does life ever get easy as you go up the ladder. Responsibility only brings more work.

Design and coding! That is the easier part. Now I do not do it, but I am responsible for it and believe me, that is far more stressful. My job is to get the work done in time and with the highest quality.

To tell you about the pressures, there is the customer at one end, always changing his requirements, the user at the other, wanting something else, and your boss, always expecting you to have finished it yesterday."

Vivek paused in his diatribe, his belligerence fading with self-realisation. What he had said, was not merely the outburst of a wronged man, it was the truth. And one need not get angry while defending the truth.

"My friend," he concluded triumphantly, "you don"t know what it is to be in the Line of Fire".

The man sat back in his chair, his eyes closed as if in realization. When he spoke after sometime, it was with a calm certainty that surprised Vivek.

"I know sir,..... I know what it is to be in the Line of Fire......."

He was staring blankly, as if no passenger, no train existed, just a vast expanse of time.

"There were 30 of us when we were ordered to capture Point 4875 in the cover of the night

The enemy was firing from the top.

There was no knowing where the next bullet was going to come from and for whom.

In the morning when we finally hoisted the tricolour at the top only 4 of us were alive."

"You are a...?"

"I am Subedar Sushant from the 13 J&K Rifles on duty at Peak 4875 in Kargil. They tell me I have completed my term and can opt for a soft assignment.

But, tell me sir, can one give up duty just because it makes life easier.

On the dawn of that capture, one of my colleagues lay injured in the snow, open to enemy fire while we were hiding behind a bunker.

It was my job to go and fetch that soldier to safety. But my captain sahib refused me permission and went ahead himself.

He said that the first pledge he had taken as a Gentleman Cadet was to put the safety and welfare of the nation foremost followed by the safety and welfare of the men he commanded... ....his own personal safety came last, always and every time."

"He was killed as he shielded and brought that injured soldier into the bunker. Every morning thereafter, as we stood guard, I could see him taking all those bullets, which were actually meant for me . I know
sir....I know, what it is to be in the Line of Fire."

Vivek looked at him in disbelief not sure of how to respond. Abruptly, he switched off the laptop.

It seemed trivial, even insulting to edit a Word document in the presence of a man for whom valour and duty was a daily part of life; valour and sense of duty which he had so far attributed only to epical heroes.

The train slowed down as it pulled into the station, and Subedar Sushant picked up his bags to alight.

"It was nice meeting you sir."

Vivek fumbled with the handshake.

This hand... had climbed mountains, pressed the trigger, and hoisted the tricolour. Suddenly, as if by impulse, he stood up at attention and his right hand went up in an impromptu salute.

It was the least he felt he could do for the country.

PS: The incident he narrated during the capture of Peak 4875 is a true-life incident during the Kargil war. Capt. Batra sacrificed his life while trying to save one of the men he commanded, as victory was within sight. For this and various other acts of bravery, he was awarded the Param Vir Chakra, the nation"s highest military award.

Live humbly, there are great people around us, let us learn!


BE POLITE EVERYONE U MEET IS FIGHTING A HARD BATTLE

Serving or Working - motivational learn story

One evening a scholar was addressing the participants on the concept of work culture. One of the participants asked the following question :

"I am a senior manager of Materials Department and I joined an organization 25 years ago as an Engineer Trainee and over the last 25 years I have gone through every experience in the organization.

During the initial part of my career, the job was very challenging and interesting.

However, all those exciting days are gone since I do not find my joy any more interesting because there is nothing new in my job. I am now feeling bored because I am doing a routine job.

However, Sir, I am living in the same house for over forty years, I am the son for the same parents for over forty five years, I am the father for the same children for the past ten years and the husband for the same lady for the past twenty years !( the toughest job!)

In these personal roles I do not feel bored Please tell me why I am bored of the routine in the office and not in the house?"

The response from Scholar was very interesting and convincing. He asked the executive the question:

"Please tell me for whom does your Mother cook ?"

The executive replied that obviously the mother cooks for others.

Then the Scholar said that the mother "Serves" others and because of this service mindedness, she is not feeling tired or bored. But in an office,we "Work" and not "Serve". Anything we consider, as service will not make us feel bored. That is difference between Serving and Working.

He asked the executive to consider his work as service and not merely a work !! This was a very interesting analysis!! Whenever you put a larger context around your work and see a broader meaning for your work, you will take interest in your work and it will make a very big difference in your internal energy.

Attitude Matters !!!


If you think you are working for the organization you will get frustrated.If you feel you are doing a service and getting some service charges you will feel happy.
After all -doing what you like is freedom But liking what you do is happiness!

Corporate lesson 1 - moral story

I have made the pPrtSc from Exclusive Corporate Lesson - Pictorial Moral Stories -- Created by IIM Kolkata hosted in slideshare