From Effectiveness to Greatness

From time to time, we do need our own motivational boosts. This is where i seek my answers and spiritual well being. Every time I read such books it makes me want to jump forward. I guess people called it "empowering".

So yeah this is my current read. The 8th habit from Effectiveness to Greatness. I have only read 4 chapters already and it has change me in small ways of how I think and what actions I have to take.

The Bangladesh who helped others..founder of Grameen Bank.

This is an amazing story which was included in the first chapter of this book. It tells a story about a Bangladesh Economics Lecturer, Muhd Yunus who initially did not have any vision of his own business, all he wanted to do was help others.

One day as he walked around the streets he met a lady making bamboo stools. He sat down and chatted with that lady. He found out that she was earning only 2 cents from the beautifully crafted stools and that she was not able to earn more due to the lack of funds. So what she did was made a deal with a trader that market the stools to give her the raw bamboos and in return she sells the stools at 2 cents and she was only able to sell the bamboo stools to the trader. No else can buy it from her . The trader was selling it at 20 cents which in Muhd Yunus eyes were not fair and how that trader has manipulated her.

The next day, he brought along one of his students and they went to interview all the people who suffered the same situation as the bamboo lady and they ask them about the basic cost of operating their mini business. They eventually found 42 of them and to their surprise they only need $27 in total. He felt ashamed and thus he fork out that money and told his student to give it to the 42 skilled workers and told them to return the money whenever they can.

Later he decided to approach the bank. The bankers thought he was mad to implement such a loaning system which he proposed. All of them gave the same reasons that the poor people do not have collaterals and such tiny amounts were not worth lending. Eventually he decided since this was the case, he offered himself as a guarantor to these people.

It started out with a few villagers. The idea about the money coming back to him wasn't really in his head but soon after the villagers gave him back every penny that he loaned to them. Every time he went back to the bank, he tell them "See they returned me the money".

Soon after he started loaning out money to more villagers. It started with one village, then two, three and soon there were 5.

"So i did in 5 villages, and it only showed that everybody paid back"

"And so it became a contest between me and the bank. I came up with the results they could not deny because it was their money I was giving, but they would not accept it because they are trained to believe that poor people are not reliable. Luckily I was not trained that way so I could believe that whatever I was seeing, as it revealed itself. But the banker's minds, their eyes were blinded by the knowledge itself"

Eventually he got tired convincing the bank and decided why not he started one himself. After two years of proposing to the government, October 2nd 1983, Grameen bank was formed.

Today Grameen Bank operates in 46,000 villagers lending more than $4.5 billion to poor, the beggars to start their own livelihood. The money lend to them allow them to make changes and insyallah Bangladesh can prosper with such aids.

To read more about the Grameen organization. Visit http://www.grameen-info.org/


That is just the first chapter, Stephen R Covey was trying to highlight the visions developed by such people. He says "I find that vision comes as people sense human need and respond to their conscience in trying to meet that need. And they meet that need , they see another, and meet that, and on and on..."

The first chapter was about feeling and sensing the pain. From there solutions are created to help solve the painful issues.

I'll end it here for now. Do come back and read on more updates from me..

My Life Mission: I enable others to discover purpose in their lives and empower them to pursue their dreams and live life to the fullest with God's blessing.