Manoj's Review on Books

Morihei Usehiba (1883 to 1969) was a master martial artist and founder of Aikido. The principle behind Aikido is to utilise the momentum and energy of the opponent, eventually neutralising their opposing force. In simple terms, Aikido means the way of a harmonious spirit and Morihei believes that the ultimate victory occurs in a state of peace.  Art of peace is a collection of over 160 different quotes by Morihei, which focuses on aligning with the energy of the universe, understanding that every human soul is a part of the universe and how to arrive at a state of peace with opponents. The quotes are originally written in Japanese and have been translated into English by John Stevens.  I have mentioned some of the quotes that I had liked from the collection.  “Those who are possessed by nothing attain everything” “Conflict between material and spiritual worlds creates exhaustion in both physical and mental aspects. The solution lies in setting both of them in harmony.” “L...

When we can bring in coherence and orderliness in our respective inner world, the universe aligns the outer world accordingly, making our life happy, joyous and fulfilled. It's the crux of what Joe Dispenza has tried to elucidate in his book ‘Becoming Supernatural’ and by the end of his narrative, I was fairly convinced on the wonderful path laid by the author.  Joe begins the first chapter of his book referring to the story of Anna Williams, a married and settled women with two adolescent kids. However, one day life takes a traumatic turn when her husband decided to jump off the tallest building in the town, killing him on the spot. The incident sent shock waves within Anna mixed with tornado of negatives emotions ranging  from sadness, guilt, hopelessness, victimization, grief, isolation, betrayal and anxiety. An obsessive recall of her horror moment countless times meant that she kept pumping her body with a never ending stream of cortisol, a stress hormone.  In 9 mont...

  Not many would have heard about spontaneous remissions in cancer patients, less than a few dozen cases are captured in medical literature each year and hence largely underplayed or rather unknown. Spontaneous remissions means that the disease has reverted itself to normal conditions without treatment and the reasons for reversal can’t be explained from a medical standpoint. Well, I am just giving a gist of the immense powers of the mind and for the curious one’s do check Sam J Shelly’s ‘I don’t dwell’ book wherein he explains how he got out of cancer without formal treatment. Our mind operates or dwells in one of the 4 category of brain waves  (i) Delta (±0 to 4 Hz) (ii) Theta (4‐8 Hz) (iii) Alpha (8‐13 Hz)  (iv) Beta (13‐20 Hz) Most of us operate in the Beta zone during our active time period which can comprise a range of activities like walking, working, eating, driving or any other form of physical pursuit. However, to tap into the enormous powers of mind, an individ...

In Jan 2010, Steve Jobs unveiled iPad, a device that provided incredible digital experience. For a gamut of digital activities right from niche keyboard to draft mails, using social media apps, iTunes or even to play high resolution games, the iPad proved to be a league above the rest. However, there was a catch, Steve never allowed his kids to use the device. The Apple inc CEO was only following the golden rule, never get high on your own drug. The only difference is that when drugs can be banned, digital media is deeply intertwined in our lives with 7.2 billion smartphone consumers as of 2024. About four decades back, the predominant hooks ranged between cigarettes, alcohol and drugs, maybe even a game of cards on a lighter level. However, during the digital age, the common man is exposed to instagram, facebook, amazon shopping, email, netflix and the list is practically endless. To compound the problem, digital media over the years has evolved to provide a deeply addictive experienc...

In the fag end of 20th century, when single tenant proprietary software was widely prevalent, Marc came up with the idea of multitenancy architecture delivered through internet as a medium. The approach of several customers running on the same server on a concurrent basis came to be known as multi-tenancy, resulting in efficient resource utilization. The approach was widely adopted and cloud terminology was born thereby creating an industry in itself.  Salesforce happened to be a revolution in the software industry, turning out to be one of the fastest SaaS companies to scale from zero to billion dollars in revenue within 10 years time. Marc would have felt that managing such high speed growth would have been a massive but delightful problem to have. The problem of high growth will always be a desirable proposition rather than stagnant or gloomy forecasts.   Marc’s bold marketing initiatives are worth taking a note, for instance the no software logo was a path breaking pi...

My life in full is a sparkling biography of how much an individual can accomplish despite humble middle class background rooted in a city of Chennai, India which is not known for corporate women leaders. From a US citizen perspective, Indira is a women of colour from a third world country and practically possess no chance of a seat in a leadership position in fortune 50 company, let alone the possibility of attaining the crown.    Indira, true to the title of the book, narrates her entire life right from childhood days, born to deeply cultural brahmin couple who emphasized on education, her grandfather who stimulated her intellectual thought process, growing along with siblings who were exceptionally bright themselves, masters in IIM Calcutta, initial stint in an organization focused on wholesale textiles market, moving over for her second masters in Yale, meeting her husband Raj and driving through her experience in BCG, Motorola, ABB and finally her point of destiny whi...

A tightwad is someone, largely gender neutral, who refrains from spending on essential products or services wherein he or she should have while a spendthrifts opens up their purse on unnecessary items pushing themselves well beyond what was needed. In short, tightwads experience pain in spending while spendthrift are carefree to a point of even going bankrupt. The expenses in consideration includes the entire spectrum ranging from food, clothes, housing, education and entertainment as well. As per research, the combination of tightwad and spendthrift forms 40% of the spending diaspora while the remaining 60% fall in an unconflicted zone of being at a relative balance in their expense factor.  For a start, such an analysis is extremely hard to conduct since a meaningful conclusion can only be unearthed after considering a wide sample covering different geographies and observed over a long longitude dimension cutting across decades. Scott's reasoning is based out of secondary researc...