A Self Made Leader And King.

Bharat were under the rule of Mughals in 17th century. People were distressed, going through unimagined torture, conversion, our culture was under threat of getting destroyed. Suffering had become a common day-to-day lifestyle. People had lost faith in their abilities and became servants and mute spectators. Volumes can be written on this account of state of suffering and torture which is still unknown to common readers.

A 16 year old boy stood against all this in 17th century.  He took an oath of “Hindavi Swaraj” – the land to be ruled by our own people with a just system. The dream of this young boy was looked upon by the people as a joke. Many laughed at him. Why wouldn’t they! The situation of India – a legacy of 5 Sultanates, an ongoing 400 year old tyranny and Mughals had the best army in the world. Taking on to such an onslaught was obviously looked upon as madness. But this child chose the madness for his own countryman. His readiness was result of teachings and values nurtured by his mother through spiritual upbringing. He was inspired by our culture – Ramayana, Mahabharata .

He started from zero and rose to a phoenix making people wonder. Fight was against one of the best armies of the world. With him – determination and abundant grace!  Every fight he fought has become a legend. His army did wonders. He lead from the front sometime entering into army camp of 50,000 with just 400 soldiers and making enemy leave the city in a weeks’ time. Many such happening happened around him.

Later he even lost his 70% of the hard earned kingdom to Mughals and had to give up the fight. He was arrested in enemy stronghold in Agra. He escaped and came back with a bang – regrouped, regained and established more than before within a short period. This feat in history is unmatched, unimagined and unparalleled. Even in this consistent war period he kept his people happy with perfect administration. Besides a perfect warrior, he was a skilled administrator, statesman and the best leader ever.

 He was a visionary who dreamt and created leaders. He raised peasants, farmers, downtrodden and poor people to glory and instilled confidence which changed the course of our history. He turned the mice into lions. And for generations to come those lions were ready to die for the cause of country even after he left his body.

Yes you might have guessed the name of this superhero .
He is none other than Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj!

He managed from the age of fifteen to free his small jagir of Poona and based his future greatness on that small beginning, entirely relying on his own effort and initiative.He welded the scattered elements of his people into united body and with their help accomplished his main object.
He established an independent kingdom of his own stretching from Salher and Ahiwant in the West Khandesh to Tanjore on the Kaveri, with unchallenged supremacy, erecting for its defence hundreds of forts and several sea bases with extensive market places.
He created his own regiments of 40 thousand paid troops, in addition to about 70 thousand shilledars or hired troopers and an infantry of some 2 lacs, a treasure which could be counted by crores, choice jewelry and material provision of every indispensable article.Thus he elevated his Maratha nation consisting of 96 clans to an unheard of dignity, crowning the whole achievement by occupying an exalted throne and assuming the title of Chatrapati. He plunged the most powerful Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb into an ocean of grief.

काशीजी की कला जाती , मथुरा मस्जिद होती |
शिवाजी ना होते तो सुन्नत होती सब की ||
(Had not there been Shivaji, Kashi would have lost its culture,Mathura would have been turned into a mosque and all would have been circumcised.)

A Person who won’t stand for something will fall for anything..

In Zig Ziglar’s world, the morning alarm rang on the “opportunity clock.”
And “if you aren’t on fire” when you get to work, “then your wood is wet.”
And you have to remember that “money’s not the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen.”

And there will be setbacks, but “failure is an event, not a person.”
Few messengers of prosperity have been able to sustain a relentlessly upbeat and lucrative career for as long as Mr. Ziglar. Zig Ziglar! A human exclamation point! The world’s most popular motivational speaker, as he was often described, was always excited because “you never judge a day by the weather!”
He was a presence at corporate retreats and conferences for firms such as IBM and J.C. Penney. For the general public, some people paid $49 to hear him live or $1,595 to buy his complete written and audio package. He won over crowds with his faith-filled proverbs and earnest metaphors about setting goals and facing down adversity.
“If you’re going to have to swallow a frog,” he said in his Southern drawl, “you don’t want to have to look at that sucker too long!” Or
“You can get everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want!” Or “Have you ever noticed that people who are the problem never realize it? They’re in denial. They think denial is a river in Egypt!” Or
“The more you gripe about your problems, the more problems you have to gripe about!”
What his words lacked in depth, they made up for in conviction.
“I’ve asked myself many times how Zig can say the same things people have been hearing all their lives, and instead of getting yawns he gets a tremendous response,” his friend Fred Smith, the former FedEx chief executive, told Texas Monthly in 1999.

“I think he’s a little like Billy Graham, who has never really departed from the same sermon he was giving back in his 20s yet who’s never lost any effectiveness,” Smith said. “After all these years, Zig still devotes every day to living this life he talks about, to applying some eternal truths about character, commitment, hard work and self-determination.”

For his most fervent admirers, Mr. Ziglar was an inspiring leader who every morning leapt out of bed to the opportunity clock, bussed his wife (“Hey, Sugar Baby”), and willed himself into a positive mindset by seldom lingering on crime stories and celebrity gossip while scanning his morning newspaper. Texas Monthly described Mr. Ziglar’s love of comic strips, stories about sports teams and human-interest tales. He clipped them out and stored them in a file cabinet brimming with anecdotes about people who overcame disabilities and poverty and made it to state championships and the executive suite.
“Isn’t it amazing,” he told Texas Monthly, “how we are designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness?” Advancement in all its forms appealed to Hilary Hinton Ziglar, who was the 10th of 12 children born in rural Coffee County, Ala., on Nov. 6, 1926. He was raised by his widowed mother in Yazoo City, Miss.
He described his mother as the foremost influence on his life; she was a strict and devout woman whose mental storehouse of adages (such as “The person who won’t stand for something will fall for anything”) remained a cornerstone of Mr. Ziglar’s speeches and writings.
After Navy service at the end in World War II, he was married in 1946 to Jean Abernathy. He attended the University of South Carolina, but he was a middling student and left school to work as a door-to-door cookware salesman. As he was promoted through the ranks of the company, Mr. Ziglar became drawn to the power of self-help speakers and their ability to influence others. He began giving talks at church and Rotary Club meetings, often reprising his mother’s advice and relating his own experiences of smiling through setbacks and grief.
He settled in the Dallas area by the late 1960s, initially for a job training workers at a direct-sales company. The business soon folded, but the demand for Mr. Ziglar’s speaking had intensified. He launched a business called the Zigmanship Institute, now simply known as Ziglar Inc.

His first book, “Biscuits, Fleas, and Pump Handles,” published in 1974 and later retitled “See You at the Top,” urged readers to re-evaluate their lives with a “checkup from the neck up” and to quit their “stinkin’ thinkin.’

“ Mr. Ziglar, who sometimes earned tens of thousands of dollars per speech and other times waived his fee, kept up a rigorous touring schedule until retiring in 2010. He adapted his maxims to every aspect of his life, not least the golf course.
Every day, he sought to break 70 but never did.
“Yesterday ended last night,” he liked to tell himself. “Today is a brand-new day. And it’s yours.”


- Courtesy The Washington Post.