28th December 2010
What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.
Lao Tsu
Last week I was invited to speak to a group of employees are to retire from their services. Except a few, most of them were not comfortable to retire and felt kind of insecure. Some even wanted the Management to consider extending their services. For many of us, security means getting an assured income every month and we don't want to imagine a world without the support of the organization. While it is true that we need people to support us, we have to accept the fact that everything has a beginning and an end.
I explained to them that many of my friends were looking forward to retirement and started a new life. In fact some of them were actively preparing to meet their post retirement life than be passively waiting and decide what to do after retirement. We need to believe that what ultimately give us a living is our innate talent and self confidence and not the external environment. Just think : what would have happened if Walt Disney had not been fired from his job for lack of creativity? What would have happened if Albert Einstein had not lost his job as a patent clerk?
Have you heard of Colonel Sanders? He ran a restaurant at Kentucky and had a `secret chicken recipe' which gave him popularity and money. But he had to close down his restaurant since the traffic on the road where he ran his restaurant was closed and he was paid a social security compensation of US $105! At that time he was 65 years.
But that day was not the end of his business, but the beginning of his fantastic business career and he founded the Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation. In 1964 he sold his company for US$ 2 million!
N C Sridharan
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