January 5th, 2009 
Vijaianand I am sure many of you, either read books or heard about this topic from lot of self development preachers. As this new year rolls around with lot of expectation and emotionaly challenging (for investors like me!!), Thinking Positive is a must-to have mantra especially for this year. I was reinstated by an incident of this mantra just before the new year. So I decided to share the story and want to reinforce to you all while its fresh from the oven.
Here is how the story starts.
RING, RING….
My wife calls me at my work on the new year eve (yep, you heard it. I was working!!) and told me, our Laptop wasn’t booting up. I asked her to give it couple of tries but it didn’t look like getting any life. So I told her to just leave it and I will get to it when I am get back home. It happened before because of loose power adapter. I thought it might be an easy fix to just plug it right.I never knew there was shock news waiting for me.
As soon I got home, I applied my trick fixing the power adapter but that didn’t work. The laptop powers on but it fails to load the windows shutting down with blue screen. If you are savvy Microsft user, you might be familiar with blue screen death. It is a system crash and it might be very bad.
Since it is the only computer at home, I had everything both personal and business information. I am worried of losing the data as its been a month since my last backed it up. I was especially concerned about the pictures and video’s of my son which we took last few months. I was bit upset and frustrated asking questions, “Why on the new years eve? Why to me?”. I immediately started working on checking out whether I can access the data and luckily Hard disk didn’t crash and its in tact. I was like “Thank God!”.
That evening, I went to my friends place for the planned new’s year party with my laptop so I can brainstorm the problem with him. I shared my concern with friends and they tried to help me out a bit. As he saw me bit upset, he mentioned about few incidents which made me realize a point. He told me, “You are frustrated about your laptop crash. There are people who have bigger problems than yours”. He started listing few of the incidents from his friends circle. My wife also stressed the same point later that day.
I was totally taken back by hearing those incidents aboutf friends kid with no heart beat, friends kid with less platlets etc., They are real life stories and not just news. It is the struggle for life or death. It really opened up my thoughts and made me to see the broader picture. My problem is afterall a computer crash which can be fixed easily. I still have backup of data and might be just missing 2 months worth of it. So I started to Think on the positive side and just stopped my work right there. I went on to join the enjoyment and fun with friends and family. We had a good New year celebration mid night.
I am a optimistic person and I do think positive but sometimes problems has the tendency to immerse you in it not allowing you to see the bigger picture. Thats what happened to me but I got out of it. In today’s financial mess, we all need to “Think Positive”. Just imagine investors who lost millions of dollars when you only lost hundreds. You can get it back .
Moral: Everybody got problems small and big. Don’t always thing just inside your own box, get out to see the broader picture. Your problems will become miniscule.
The ending for my story, I was able to fix the problem in a week and back on track from yesterday. So it wasn’t bad at all.
Mahatma Gandhi who talked about people and their character once said,
For a lighter note, 
“A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.”
Those are wise words as always. You are who your thoughts are.
Always, Think on the positive side like the guy below on the lighter note. You will make the right decision to go on right direction at the right time.
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