The 99 Club Story

Once upon a time, there lived a King who, despite his luxurious lifestyle, was neither happy nor content.

One day, the King came upon a servant who was singing happily while he worked. This fascinated the King; why was he, the Supreme Ruler of the Land, unhappy and gloomy, while a lowly servant had so much joy.

The King asked the servant, 'Why are you so happy?'

The man replied, 'Your Majesty, I am nothing but a servant, but my family and I don't need too much - just a roof over our heads and warm food to fill our tummies.'

The king was not satisfied with that reply. Later in the day, he sought the advice of his most trusted advisor. After hearing the King's woes and the servant's story, the advisor said, 'Your Majesty, I believe that the servant Has not been made part of The 99 Club.'

'The 99 Club? And what exactly is that?' the King inquired.

The advisor replied, 'Your Majesty, to truly know what The 99 Club is, place 99 Gold coins in a bag and leave it at this servant's doorstep.'

When the servant saw the bag, he took it into his house. When he opened the bag, he let out a great shout of joy... So many gold coins!

He began to count them. After several counts, he was at last convinced that there were 99 coins. He wondered, 'What could've happened to that last gold coin? Surely, no one would leave 99 coins!'

He looked everywhere he could, but that final coin was elusive. Finally, exhausted he decided that he was going to have to work harder than ever to earn that gold coin and complete his collection.

From that day, the servant's life was changed. He was overworked, horribly grumpy, and castigated his family for not helping him make that 100th gold coin. He stopped singing while he worked.

Witnessing this drastic transformation, the King was puzzled. When he sought his adviser's help, the adviser said, 'Your Majesty, the servant has now officially joined The 99 Club.' 

He continued, 'The 99 Club is a name given to those people who have enough to be happy but are never contented, because they're always yearning and Striving for that extra 1, saying to themselves: 'Let me get that one final thing and then I will be happy for life.' We can be happy, even with very little in our lives, but the minute we're given something bigger and better, we want even more! We lose our sleep, our happiness, we hurt the people around us; all these as a price for our growing needs and desires.

That's the "Club 99"

Also:  Is the Grass really green on the other side?

The ART Of Following your Dreams

I wish I had known this.....

If you have any questions, you can contact me at apekshaha@gmail.com

Is the Grass really green on the other side?

Have you often found yourself wondering how lucky other people are and how simple their lives have been? 
 

I have more often than not found my mind wandering in this space and realized again and again that it's a futile and wishful thinking. Grass always looks greener on the other side and that is why we always think that the other person's life is more interesting than ours.  What we don't know at times is that the other person might also be thinking the same about you.. 
 

I was watching Elon Musk story on TV today. From outside, his life appears to be the perfect life one can have. To all those who doesn't know who he is, he is the founder of Paypal, Tesla, Space X and SolarCity. A simple google search will show his net worth to be in excess of 6 billion $.Phew, sort of perfect life .Right? 
 

This was my thought until I watched his documentary and realized one simple thing: Life on the other side is always not as rosy as we might think it to be. To put things in perspective, here are few pointers: 
 

1. While his first company was sold for 307 million$, there was a time when he had to invest all his savings in Tesla to ensure that it was not shut down. Remember, no one else wanted to invest in Tesla and everyone predicted it to be a doomsayer. 
2. He had a week worth of cash left for his other company SpaceX* and was on the verge of collapse.  
3. His personal life story has not been great either. 

*For people who don't know about SpaceX, to give an idea it was started by Musk so that humans can travel to Mars and Moon easily and live on inter planetary colonies.   

*Tesla is an electronic car company which was established in Silicon Valley to take on the likes of General Motors, Toyota etc.  
 

Many times during his fascinating career, Musk had to take decisions that meant his  entire earnings collapsing in front of his eyes, but still he put all in risking everything and even admitting that in 2008, he was closest to getting a nervous breakdown. 
 

So as soon as the documentary finished, I was lost in my own thoughts. I kept wondering wow, what will I do if I was asked to put all my investments on what I believed in? I guess I am too much of a chicken to do something that he did because all along life, we have always been taught how to save for future and be risk free.  
 

The two lessons that I learnt was that although things might look glamorous to us as an outsider, the truth might be far from it. 
 

Also in order to become more successful, you really need to be gutsy and have the courage to go all in. Tough times comes in everyone's life but only those who persist on  their road, ultimately go on to be the Famous people that we end up seeing on television. If you are ready to take the risk and dive 100%, then congratulations you might have a chance to appear on TV but if you are not, then be happy to live a life full of things that doesn't involve the turbulent times of the riches:).
 

If you have any questions, you can contact me directly on apekshaha@gmail.com.

Tim Kennedy on kids learning from training

UFC middleweight Tim Kennedy speaks on the positives learned from mixed martial arts training:

Get your kids in the gym. They will have to find solutions to problems on the mat. Those skills of overcoming adversity will stick with them

Ronda Rousey: You're training to be the best in the world on your worst day

Ronda Rousey's mother had a great line which she fed to her daughter when she was coming up in Judo:

One of my mom's best lines is...You're not training to be the best in the world, you're training to be the best in the world on your worst day.

Michael McDonald on loving MMA

Michael McDonald speaks about loving the sport as opposed to loving just winning:

A lot of people say they love MMA but they love winning. It's a completely different story. You have to love the martial arts, just like you love anything you do. It it's baseball, go do it. If it's fighting, love fighting. Don't love winning because you're not going to win all the time.