Minds Wide Open

my young friends

it is a statement of abdul kalam

who said that the youth can actually

transform

india my guru dada jp vaswani

always said that the future of india

lies in the hands of the youth

all this concentration keeps us to say

what is it that the young people must do

they must keep their minds wide open

wide open to change to new things

and all the things that we will have to

learn

in order to bring about that

transformation

in our minds what is it that

abdul kalam’s history story

tells us coming from a poor family

studying his engineering a muslim

gentleman

who was appointed by the bjp as

the president of india was the missile

man of india

kept his mind always open when he had to

do the missiles

he was told that the budget for his

missile

is only 10 of what nasa had spent

did he hesitate did he think again

no even with all his limitations

he went right ahead because he kept his

mind

wide open i remember

the visit that i did with mr mukesh

ambani

when he was going to jamnagar and there

was

a cyclone it hit the construction

of jagnagar factories and

there was a devastation was there a

hesitation because of the problems that

he had

none whatsoever all the devastation

apart

within 30 days everything was put back

to normal

and the factory was completed on time

that is the difference when you keep

your mind

wide open young people

let me tell you indians have ruled

all over the world they have today

when you go to america the advantage is

that the ceo of ibm

krishna an indian origin person

ceo of google is sundar richway

again in india ceo of

microsoft satya mandela also indian

origin

and the ceo of adobe shantunu

all people who came from ordinary

backgrounds

in india originally and achieved

the highest positions in the united

states of america

in the top most companies so

what is it is your background important

is your educational center important

is what you are doing important or what

is it

that you do all of them

kept their minds wide open wide open

to new ideas new thoughts and changes

that needed to take place

it didn’t matter what background they

came from or where they lived or how it

was

or what was the affordability of the

factory

but what they had was an aspiration

a goal an idea that they would reach to

higher limits

much higher limits wanted to have

positive thoughts at all points of time

never say diet never felt that they

would not achieve

what they wanted to do so

they read and did and took risks

which were difficult to do

naturally because they aspired for much

higher goals but did any one of them

hesitate about what they were doing

never

did they ever feel that they needed to

pull back from that position

not whatsoever did they actually have

setbacks

of course they did so what is it that

actually made this wonderful change for

them to reach

the aspiration that they desire to do

one was that keeping the aspiration

informed

they disciplined themselves to see that

the daily tasks that they did

meant one more step towards raising

that goal that they aspire for

never hesitated on that even when they

fell back

or what in fact every time they had a

setback

and i’m talking about all of them which

we have talked about today

they learned from their setbacks what is

it that went wrong

what is it that they needed to do

differently

what is it that they made a mistake

about

got up again and tried again in order to

see

that their goals and aspirations will

down

did abdul kalam fail in many of the

missile

rockets which were fired of course they

did

but that was not the end of it

ultimately

he went on and on and on figured out his

mistakes

and made him the designated missile man

of india this is what we need to learn

from

all these great leaders another common

factor

among all these people who keep their

minds wide open

is that they are very humble

they want to learn they want to learn

from people of

all ages from the people on the ground

to reading at autobiographies

of big people two ideas which can come

from any

side and position all of them did it

another factor which they were common to

most of them

that i’m talking about is that they work

harder than the rest when people

i want to sleep these people

continued to work because they never

felt

that it was enough to do what it is

because they always aspired

to do that little more that do that

much more to do much much more than

anybody else

and they never went backwards for this

part

the second which i really noticed among

all these

people is the fact that they were always

dissatisfied with success

what do i mean by that how can you be

dissatisfied

it’s because every time they reached a

goal

they’d already set up a new goal for

themselves

so why they did get a sense of happiness

with whatever

they achieved at that goal they never

thought that

that was the pinnacle of success so

from hill to hill to hill to mountain

tops

to the top of the highest mountain in

the world each one of them moved ahead

in order to move on the goal so

what is it that we really need to do

young friends

all these great leaders you can be

one of them in the future what you have

to do

is focus on a vision an aspiration

a goal go ahead with determination

never worry about the setbacks that you

have or

the qualification that you do not have

to achieve that goal

or the fact that somebody else has more

resources

it didn’t bother any one of them who

have achieved the goals that we talked

about

so i’m certain that my young friends

you will also have a vision and

aspiration

you will also work hard in order to do

this

and you will achieve and be one day a

great

person who will have achieved the vision

which you aspire for i wish you

and every one of you the youth of india

great success in order to achieve

the impossible