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