Ways to distinguish yourself #110 Contribute to the growth of your entire network
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 09 Mar 2006, 9:49 PM – 1 Comment
Yesterday I had the privilege of sharing the stage with Dr.Prasad Kaipa at an event organized by SIPA. Dr.Kaipa talked about several interesting topics on that evening. One story that touched my heart was about giant pumpkins of Half Moon Bay in California. Every year there is a contest and whoever grows the largest pumpkin wins a prize. Dr.Kaipa talked about one person who won the contest and did something very interesting. He gave away half of the seeds from the winning pumpkin to the neighbours.
Incidentally their neighbours were also his competitors that year and would be competing with him next year. Everyone around him (including his family members) were surprised by his action. When asked, he mentioned that pumpkins grow by cross-pollination and if everyone around him was growing healthy and large pumpkins, he had higher chances of growing healthy and large pumpkins. He wanted everyone surrounding him to succeed and in the process his chances of success were higher.
It was an interesting story and I am sure you would have got how this applies to our own lives. If we are in the company of smart people, chances are that you will become “smarter” than what you are. How about approaching life in a way that you are consciously contributing to your entire network and ensuring that everyone is growing? Wouldn’t that increase your chances of growing faster than you are currently growing? I bet it would!
If you think this is all hard work, I can prove to you that it’s really not. All you have to do is to make small changes in your behaviours that will provide high-leverage to you and your network. Let me give a few examples:
* Next time you find a great resource on the web, share them with your network.
* Next time you watch an inspirational movie, share with your team what you got out of the movie
Yes, the above items look trivial for some people. Think about it. If someone in your network was consistently sharing such ideas with you, wouldn’t you find that valuable?
Note: If you would like to read the other articles in the same series, please take a look at the lens I have created on Squidoo: Squidoo Lens: Distinguish Yourself
Related Articles:- Ways to distinguish yourself #106 – Increase investments in personal growth
- Ways to distinguish yourself – #54 Expand your “100% Trust Network”
- Ways to distinguish yourself – #100 Get OFF the way!
- How do you get business from your social and professional network?
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Anonymous on March 11th, 2006
This is a very good example. It also gives you an idea of what Open Source can do if countries started implementing it on a large scale — not just for software projects but every project where more eyeblls and collective intelligence would help. Spread the knowledge — there’s no better charity one can do.