Things I Did By Design In My Life

Alright this list may not be comprehensive because I realize the mind is either too chaalu or too selective. But I'll start with my childhood onwards.
1) Searching for my little Willys jeep toy and finding it - Age 5 (man I searched the heavens and the earth for it)
2) Age 7, Vying for the attentions of Sister Mercy who was a very good looking teacher and scoring over that skunk Pradeep son of an IPS officer on the last day in Nellore (she gave me ten lovely stickers and gave the others only one and that too on the last day, Yeahhhh)
3) Age 10 - Got myself a football despite my Dad being his stubborn best, no money, no transport - easy I broke into my Kiddys bank and blackmailed my mom by suitable crying so she made Dad drive - foot ball achieved for Rs. 27 (never thougth Dad would be so tough an opponent)
4) Cracking the Kiddys bank was a great job in itself, needed money to buy chikki in the petrol bunk near Dad's office (figured it out by carefully observing the movement of the dials and noticed the little grooves which helped it open)
5) Age 11 - Walked into the cricket team in St. Gabriel's - wanted to badly
6) Age 12 - Traveled from Hyderabad to Warangal by evening train all by myself and took the bus home. Mom was surprised and shocked. What if I got lost! (But I had a strong motive - I wanted to play with Ajay who was a cute little baby then)
7) Age 12 - Made it to the state table tennis double team almost (broke table tennis racket and stayed put, too scared to ask for a replacement)
8) Age 14 - Cracked the school cricket team in my tenth which I had been hoping to for the past three years (completely by design)
9) Age 14 - Match against Sanjeeva Reddy Nagar and chasing 65 or so against a fearsome bowling attack led by Sudheer. I had decided that I will not get out come what may and stuck it out defending stoutly. Was not out 31 and we won. Most satisfying batting performance.
10) Age 14 - Put in my all to pass the SSC exam studying by myself into the late hours of the night. Did a good job considering I missed most classes due to two tours to Bangalore and Calcutta, both 15 days each. (Passed with 70% yeaahhh)
11) Age 16 - Bowled Mallesh of Syndicate bank by bowling him an inswinger on his pads - he played on - as he did innumerable times in the nets. he was one of the five victims of mine in my famous five wicket haul against Syndicate Bank which we won
12) Age 16 - Got Khurshid caught off a short ball outside the off stump (designed by MLJ) and then Khalid caught off another against SBI (designed by Vicky)
13) 5 wicket haul against Allwyn (actually turned into 6 but I had targeted 5 that day) and a 5 wicket haul against Arts and Science (as planned)
14) Age 18 - Got 158 against VST after vowing to my team I shall get the 128 runs that I conceded while bowling. Easily the best performance by design.
15) Age 18 - Got a 100 for OUCE as planned (168 against VV College), won the Endeavour for OUCE, got a 100 for Civil versus Electronics as planned, 100 against VST in a lost cause but I had decided to get a hundred that day, 109 against Nizam College after deciding to just hang in there with the last wicket
16) Passed all exams in the second year (18 papers and 4 practicals) at one go (I had aimed for 14). Slogged by myself for more than a month getting hold of experts in each area - Krishna Reddy for GD, Vinod for Physics, Ram for Maths
17) Planned the Inter varsity win with my skipper Vijay and others and played to win. We won after 12 years and I returned the highest wicket taker. We won the Vizzy as well. This was a period when I was competitive and was enjoying the spirit of winning. And as you can see we were winning several things by design. There were more things that I cannot attribute to design but they we won and we were brilliant
18) Planned to win the league championship for MCC and we won in 1994. We won again in 1998. The first win was a well planned, executed campaign that lasted six months
19) Carried the spirit of ownership into work. At ITW Signode I was the star salesman for the year for my product after selling exactly what I had committed (I was blasted in the sales meeting for my low projections)
20) Got married as planned. There was no doubt in my mind though I think there was some skepticism all round.
21) In IDBI Hyderabad I got new (and star rated) business worth Rs.300 crores all by my own effort
22) In IDBI Hyderabad I vowed to outperform previous issues after one issue went for a six. What we did was turn it around by a concerted action where we left nothing to chance - we reactivated 600 agents who were to be removed, brought all previous investors into our ambit and contact almost every single person who might want to invest - we did one of the best issues for our centre beating Chennai and Bangalore. And with the momentum we built, we kept increasing our amounts raised for the next few issues.
23) Bought car as planned for Mom who was sick and needed constant support to move to doctor and back
24) Decided to write and get published and wrote four books. Before the first got published after almost 4 years after the decision to turn writer (The Men Within)
25) Became workshop facilitator. motivational speaker by design. Hugely satisfying.


I am sure I missed out a few which I shall add as I remember. Next, a list of YES factors where I stretched myself beyond my limits.