AM I THE RIGHT PARTNER?

During a seminar, a woman asked," How do I know if I am with the right person?" the author then noticed that there was a large man sitting next to her so he said, "It depends. Is that your partner?" In all seriousness, she answered "How do you know?" Let me answer this question because the chances are good that it's weighing on your mind replied the author. Here's the answer.Every relationship has a cycle...In the beginning; you fall in love with your partner. You anticipate their calls, want their touch, and like their idiosyncrasies. Falling in love wasn't hard. In fact, it was a completely natural and spontaneous experience. You didn't have to DO anything. That's why it's called "falling" in love.People in love sometimes say, "I was swept of my feet." Picture the expression. It implies that you were just standing there; doing nothing, and then something happened TO YOU. Falling in love is a passive and spontaneous experience. But after a few months or years of being together, the euphoria of love fades. It's a natural cycle of EVERY relationship. Slowly but surely, phone calls become a bother (if they come at all), touch is not always welcome (when it happens), and your spouse's idiosyncrasies, instead of being cute, drive you nuts. The symptoms of this stage vary with every relationship; you will notice a dramatic difference between the initial stage when you were in love and a much duller or even angry subsequent stage. At this point, you and/or your partner might start asking, "Am I with the right person?" And as you reflect on the euphoria of the love you once had, you may begin to desire that experience with someone else. This is when relationships breakdown.The key to succeeding in a relationship is not finding the right person; it's learning to love the person you found.People blame their partners for their unhappiness and look outside for fulfillment. Extramarital fulfillment comes in all shapes and sizes. Infidelity is the most common. But sometimes people turn to work, a hobby, a friendship, excessive TV, or abusive substances. But the answer to this dilemma does NOT lie outside your relationship. It lies within it. I'm not saying that you couldn't fall in love with someone else. You could. And TEMPORARILY you'd feel better. But you'd be in the same situation a few years later. Because (listen carefully to this): “The key to succeeding in a relationship is not finding the right person; it's learning to love the person you found”.
SUSTAINING love is not a passive or spontaneous experience. You have to work on it day in and day out. It takes time, effort, and energy. And most importantly, it demands WISDOM. You have to know WHAT TO DO to make it work. Make no mistake about it. Love is NOT a mystery. There are specific things you can do (with or without your partner). Just as there are physical laws of the universe (such as gravity), there are also laws for relationships. If you know and apply these laws, the results are predictable. Love is therefore a "decision". Not just a feeling.
Remember this always:
“God determines who walks into your life. It is up to you to decide who you let walk away, who you let stay, and who you refuse to let GO!!”

IT'S CALLED MINDSET

As my friend was passing the elephants, he suddenly stopped,confused by the fact that these huge creatures were being held by only a rope tied to their legs. It was obvious that the elephants could, at anytime, break away from the ropes they were tied to but for some reason, they did not. My friend saw a trainer nearby and asked why these beautiful, magnificent animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away.

"Well" he said, " when they are young and very much smaller we use the same size rope to tie them and at that age, it's enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free". My friend was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn't they were stuck right where they were. The powerful and gigantic creatures has limited its present abilities by the limitations of its past.

Like the elephants, how many of us go through life holding onto a belief that we cannot do something simply because we failed at it once before? How many of us refuse to attempt something new and challenging because of our so called Mindset?

Our attempt may fail, but still we should never fail to make an attempt.

AND

We should not choose to accept the false boundaries and limitations created by the past.

Why we need financial planning for parents?

Why Should You Plan for Your Parents' Retirement....!!!

One of the biggest mistakes people make now is failure to set aside money for post retirement needs. Most of us are not concerned about the life after retirement. Social Security is no longer a sure bet. This means that most of us have to rely on ourselves to provide for retirement, if you want to fill your stomach you have to earn nobody will come and help you. In simple terms saving money to make your retired life happy is called retirement planning. If you haven't made an effort to make retirement planning, make it now. A financial planner can help you in finding a better option for your retirement planning. You can do your own research also to determine what you need to do now so that you are secure in your future. In this article a try is made to make you aware of the importance of planning for your parents retirement.
Why should you Plan for your parents Future
Securing the future of your parent is your responsibility; we all have to realize this fact. Think for a moment how much money they have spent for us...! This is the time to give back all those golden moments that they have gifted to you. They have sacrificed many things to make you grow to this level. If you are able to read this article now, there is no doubt they have spent huge money on you. If they wouldn’t have spent money for your food, health, dress, education etc. now you wouldn’t have seated in front of system and reading this article. There are thousand things you can do for your parents. Old age is like childhood during this period they need care and love, if you can spend a minute with your parents when they are old, it will be a great happiness for them. There are many factors that disturb people when they are old such as;

Ill-health
Loneliness
Lack of care
Negligence by others
Lack of love etc.

Parent’s Investment on you
If your parents don’t have money to fulfill their retirement needs, don’t ever degrade them instead you should realize the fact why they don’t have money. To mold a kid as a perfect citizen, his parent has to invest huge amount on him/her. While investing this amount they will expect “I am investing on my kind, in future whenever I need money my kid will take care of me” 80% of the parent will have this expectation, now it is our responsibility to take care of our parents. Following are some of the spending they have done for you;

Food
Dress
Toys
Entertainment
Health care
Education, etc.
Needs to be fulfilled
Basically there are three kinds of need to be fulfilled such as;

Financial Needs
Medical needs
Moral Needs
Financial Needs
Nothing is possible without money, leading a life without sufficient money will kill the mental health of people. When our parents are old it is our responsibility to provide them enough money to take care of their small needs.

Medical Needs
Old age is the time during that all kinds of health problems will follow us. During this time we need to spend huge amount of money on our parent’s health like how they have done we were small. Taking a health insurance plan on your parents name will help you to find a simple solution for this problem.

Moral Needs
Moral support is the most important thing that we have to provide for our parents when they are old. It will help them to be mentally stronger. Moral support can avoid many problems such as depression, ill health, etc.

How can you plan for your Parent’s future?
There are many ways to do retirement planning. Following are some of the major ways in which you can plan your parent’s future.

· Reverse Mortgage
· Health Insurance
· Pension Plans (ULIPs)
· Immediate Annuity
· Annuity

Reverse Mortgage
Reverse Mortgage can be well defined as “a scheme under which a bank or financial institution permits the owner of a house to leverage the future value of the asset into a steady source of income”. Reverse Mortgage allows elderly people to have a steady stream of income by mortgaging self occupied property to banks or eligible financial institutions while continuing to live in and hold the title of the house till he is alive or sells the house or moves out.

In this case it is completely parents’ desire whether to go for reverse mortgage or not. But being their children we can do something for them. Normally parents will write their property in their children’s name even if they don’t have enough money to lead a peaceful life. Instead of making advantage of this situation we can advise them to go for Reverse mortgage, later if you want to retain the house you can pay back the money to bank and do it.

Health Insurance
Health care costs are high and getting higher day by day. As the age of an individual increases the health care costs increase manifold and become a burden on the individual. Senior citizens have to pay out of their hard earned savings to meet the expenses. Health Insurance Plans protects old age people in case they need expensive medical care. You get cashless benefit or medical reimbursement for hospitalization expenses due to illness or accidents.

It is our responsibility to take care of our parents’ health when they are old. But it is very difficult to manage this situation without proper financial planning because you might need huge money to take care of their health. Health Insurance is a better solution to overcome this scenario, it will take care of your parents health related expenses all you have to do is buy one health insurance plan and pay the small premium.

Pension Plans (ULIPs)
The first point to note is that there is no insurance in an ULPP, though the product is offered by insurers. Even if an insurer offers insurance cover bundled with pension, such a product is best avoided. Insurance is best taken independently from pension planning, through what are called term insurance plans. ULPP is very much an investment product, competing on costs, benefits and returns with Mutual Funds, deposits, share portfolios, and so on. In the accumulation phase, the amounts invested go towards purchase of units, at prevailing market rates. At retirement, the policyholder is provided with a certain portion of the accumulated fund as a lump sum payment. The remaining amount is used to purchase an Annuity scheme to provide regular monthly income post retirement.

Immediate Annuity
Immediate Annuity is aregular income stream purchased with a lump sum investment, where the income stream starts immediately after the purchase. Immediate Annuities are usually provided by a life insurance companies. The major difference between “immediate annuity” and “annuity” is that in immediate annuity you have to make a lump sum investment and you will start receiving the annuity immediately after purchasing it but in “annuity” you will start receiving amount only after a pre-determined period.

Annuity
An annuity is an investment that you make, either in a lump sum amount or through installments paid over a certain number of years, in return you will receive back a specific sum every year, every half-year or every month, either for life time or for a certain number of years. After the fixed period of annuity payments expires, the invested annuity fund is refunded, possibly with a small addition, calculated at that time.

Annuities differ from all the other forms of life insurance discussed so far in one basic way - an annuity does not provide any life insurance cover instead, offers a guaranteed income after your retirement. Usually annuities are meant to generate income during one’s life after retirement that is why they are also called pension plans. Annuity premiums and payments are fixed with reference to the duration of human life.


Types of Annuities
There are four major kinds of annuities such as;
· Life Annuity with purchase Price
· Life Annuity without purchase Price
· Joint Life Annuity with purchase Price
· Joint Life Annuity without purchase Price
· Life annuity guaranteed for 5, 10 & 15 years

Life Annuity with purchase Price
In this kind of annuities the person receives annuities for as long as he/she lives and his/her nominee receives the purchase price of the policy after demise. The purchase price refers to the value of your investment corpus at the end of the accumulation phase (it is the amount with which the annuity was purchased).

Life Annuity without purchase Price
In Life Annuity without purchase Price the person receives annuities for as long as he/she lives his/her nominee won’t receives anything after his/her demise.

Joint Life Annuity with purchase Price
In Joint Life Annuity with purchase Price both you and your spouse will receive annuities for life. After his/her demise the purchase price will be returned to the nominee.

Joint Life Annuity without purchase Price
In Joint Life Annuity with purchase Price both you and your spouse will receive annuities for life. After the death of concerned person nothing will be returned to the nominee.

Life annuity guaranteed for 5, 10 & 15 years
In this type of annuities you receive annuities for a minimum term i.e. 5, 10 or 15 years. Annuities continue for life thereafter. If death occurs before the end of the pre-determined term, the company will pay the annuity till the end of that term to his/her nominee.

a Quote.....

no matter where you read it or who said it... no matter if I have said it...beleive nothing...unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense - Gautam Buddha

STEVE JOBS "APPLE'S OWNER"

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs saysThis is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.The first story is about connecting the dots.I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.My second story is about love and loss.I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.My third story is about death.When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.Thank you all very much.

BEING IN TWENTIES - SOMETHING... :)

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know andmay not like.You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely knowwhere you are now.
You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly thegreatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don'trecognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren't really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.
You look at your job... and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job andrealizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you.
Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly yourealize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and whatisn't. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure.
You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy andyou try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothingto do but stay where you are or move forward.
You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder whyyou can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else tooand cannot figure out why you're doing this because you know that you aren't a bad person. You want to settle down for goodbecause now all of a sudden that becomes top priority. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.You begin tothink a companion for life is better than a hundred in the shack and for once you would not mind standing tall for that specialsomeone which otherwise you had never thought of until now.You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, andtalk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, thefuture and making a life for yourself... and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!
What you may not realize is that every one reading this relates to it.We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying ashard as we can to figure this whole thing out. Send this to your twenty-something friends.... maybe it will help someone feel likethey aren't alone in their state of confusion.

Tis is called the "Quarter-life Crisis"

LIFE- a simpler prespective.....

Life is one of those races in nursery school where you have to run with a marble in a spoon kept in yourmouth. If the marble falls, there is no point coming first. Same with life, where health and relationshipsare the marble. Your striving is only worth it if there is harmony in your life. Else, you may achieve thesuccess, but this spark, this feeling of being excited and alive, will start to die. One thing about nurturing the spark - don't take life seriously. Life is not to be taken seriously, as we arereally temporary here. We are like a pre-paid card with limited validity. If we are lucky, we may lastanother 50 years. And 50 years is just 2,500 weekends. Do we really need to get so worked up? It's ok,bunk a few classes, goof up a few interviews, fall in love. We are people, not programmed devices.
"Don't be serious, be sincere."
Start Enjoying from moment................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Speech given by Chetan Bhagat at Symbiosis.