Carpe Diem

On a couple of occasions, my friends have tried desperately to read all the quotes on my T-Shirt. Today I received a Whatsapp message from a friend.

“Can you share the quote which you mentioned yesterday?”

I shared that quote and realized that I made a  mistake. I figured out that I had told him that it was Scott Adam’s quote but it turned out to be James Clear’s. This has happened to me several times. But that has not stopped me from sharing quotes to fill in my conversations. After all, we have google to fix it. RICH conversations are facilitated by quotes that add richness to the story.

My dash with quotes in the last month has been very high. I recollect in one of those podcasts we were playing in the car,  we thought my daughter was listening to her band of music. She said, “That was a great quote”. My wife and I were pleasantly surprised as I thought my daughter was not interested in quotes. That made me realize the power of words. Also, I recollected how she noted all the quotes from her TEDx experience.

In a zoom call on branding a couple of weeks for a TILT team, I immediately asked my friend to share all the quotes she had used in her talk. She shared it immediately. The best for me were these:

“ Life is one big pitch, so you better start practicing.”

“If you don’t know what you bring to the table, you don’t get a seat there.”

I feel good when I get a response like the way I got from my friend. I realized that quotes are powerful in conveying messages. This made me go down the memory lane. I still have the journal (200 pages notebook) where I had started recording quotes in the late ’80s. My first quote was recorded on the notebook on 14th Sept 1989. It was really nostalgic to see my old handwriting. I guess it was quoted from competitive success magazine, readers digest, and maybe a newspaper and  TV shows. Today you see quotes every day on social media and T-Shirts. I am an avid “quote keeper” that today I have volumes of notebooks and in today’s day and age, it became easy with searching for words and getting to the right quotes through google. My iPhone has become heavy with the “quake quotes” and my google sheet is bursting with “knock out quotes”.

Today when I read books the first thing I look for are the block quotes on each chapter of the book and how it is connecting with me to read the remaining part of the chapter. I finished reading 5AM club recently and I thoroughly enjoyed this quote from that book:

“Own your morning. Elevate your life.”

My quote keeping instinct got better when I met Sunil Nair who introduced me to the world of books in 2011. It was in a “Spell & Bind” book shop in Delhi where I was “spellbound” with his recollection of quotes. He asked me to read “Drive” by Daniel Pink and “Unlimited Power” by Anthony Robbins. Since then I am on an “overdrive” as I have seen numerous videos and read books and in each book, I have got different quotes. In his signature, I noticed “Carpe Diem”. At first, I did not get the meaning. But later I realized how powerful that is when you sign off your day by ” Seizing the day” and that you do with your word power.

I’ve read a number of books since then and that has led me to meet a whole different universe of people and I have changed for the better. Last year I had a routine of posting quotes every day under different catchwords like Monday Muse, Tuesday Thunder, Wednesday wisdom, Thursday Tweet, Friday Flow, Saturday Stroke and Sunday Statement. It was very inspirational to see how a lot of my friends liked the quotes and shared their perspectives.

I recently had an opportunity to conduct multiple blogging sessions for people who wanted to start blogging. I had prepared some quotes which had driven me on this blogging journey. All the participants were worried that they would be judged. This particular quote came as a sigh of relief:

“Your value does not decrease based on somebody’s inability to see your worth”. 

Research states that one-liners which rhyme are considered to be 76% true and my mind starts believing in the same.  Sample this from William H Johnsen’s ” If it is to be it is up to me” and my favorite by Simon Sinek ” To Inspire people to do what inspires them”.

Words have power and it is up to you to harness their power. Next question is how do you unleash “word power” and make it part of your “power words?” I decided to create my own RICH quote. As Simon Sinek says, you should start with your why. I decided to create a WHY statement:

“Lead a R.I.C.H life by enR.I.C.Hing others”

So what is your Why statement or What is the quote that defines you? Create your defining quote, Carpe Diem!