Software (SW) Inspections are used during SW development to remove defects from requirements, design, code, test, or documentation artifacts. A formal multi-step procedure is used and inspection meetings are conducted to ensure adequate detection and removal of defects. Otherwise known as Formal Inspections or Peer Reviews, they have been used for 3 decades and are considered essential for timely delivery of quality SW. Some companies have significant success with them. Many, however, suspect that they are not conducting them effectively. Why is this happening? How could such an accepted process fall by the wayside? As described below, there are fundamental issues that render SW Inspections quite a challenge to master.

To use an aircraft analogy, SW Inspections are aerodynamically unstable — they don’t fly smoothly ahead if you take your hands off the controls. It would be wonderful if a company could train its engineers on a SW Inspection process and then let them independently use it over time. Unfortunately it rarely works that way. Left on their own with a SW Inspection process, projects are likely to subvert the process till it loses effectiveness. Some fundamental reasons for this are explained below:

(1) the cost vs. benefit “pill” is hard to swallow;

(2) measurement difficulties;

(3) the nature of inspections; and

(4) the Death Spiral (which occurs when inspections are poorly executed).

1. The Cost vs. Benefit “Pill” is Hard to Swallow

Imagine that you are a SW project lead and a process engineer informs you that if you’ll commit more engineering labor to inspections during design you’ll achieve a 400% Return on Investment (ROI). The process engineer’s claim is likely valid. However, it would likely seem too good to be true. You would also find it difficult to commit to inspections during early development. You are comfortable committing labor to defect removal later in the project if too many defects are detected. Early in development, though, it’s a hard pill to swallow. You’d be paying for this up front, but would have to wait till project completion to see if you’re getting the promised ROI.

2. Measurement Difficulties

Engineering process organizations seek to ensure that Inspections are done correctly by measuring inspections – which often doesn’t work very well. There are two problems with measurement:

• Some factors that determine inspection effectiveness are too arcane or subjective to measure. Artifact maturity, for instance, is rarely measured, but plays a role in how many defects will be found in an artifact (inspect too soon and many defects are found vs. inspect too late and few are found).
• Most of the data for SW Inspection measures isn’t normally distributed, which increases the difficulty of establishing good control limits. There are statistical techniques for handling this, but it is nevertheless tempting to use rough, assumed control limits.

3. The Nature of Inspections

SW Inspections are an unnatural social interaction between SW development team members. Most are uncomfortable with sitting down with a team mate to tear apart his/her work. That team mate is likely even more uncomfortable! The rationale for this is usually covered during SW Inspection training. The problem occurs years after training as engineers gravitate to a more comfortable style of inspections that is more superficial (gathers fewer significant defects) but less effective.

4. The Death Spiral

Projects that lack SW Inspection effectiveness usually have engineers that dislike SW Inspections. This is a symptom of the Death Spiral. If engineers aren’t effectively conducting inspections, they soon realize that they are wasting time conducting them. Engineers hate to waste time, so they then find ways to avoid inspections by gaming the process. This makes inspections more wasteful, inviting more gaming and a continual cycle of declining effectiveness.

Summary

Consider the combined impact of these issues with SW Inspections. It’s hard to convince leaders to use them, and it’s difficult to measure effectiveness, which has a tendency to decline slowly or rapidly. Returning to the aircraft analogy: they are hard get off the ground, difficult to fly, and tend to lose altitude or crash! All is not lost, however. There are remedies for these ills. We just need to implement those remedies and keep our hands on the controls.

Rosario meditates, prays, and hopes everyday. The belief in God and divinities has long been instilled in her by her ancient parents. Rosario is religious with her divine practices yet she feels empty inside. She is lacking and barren. Rosario has lost touched with those outside her religious world.

This is a classic example of religiosity gone wrong. Many practicing religious people such as rabbis, priests, church volunteers and others feel spiritually wealthy because they serve the churches of their chosen gods. Therefore, they see their proximity as a path to gaining spiritual prosperity – the closer they are to doing church work and serving their congregations, then the more spiritually prosperous they feel. However spiritual prosperity goes beyond serving one’s church and practicing what has become traditional, like prayers and masses. It is more of an introspective viewing of one’s life and the serving of those who are much in need. I am not saying that we might as well drop all our religious acts- what I am merely pointing out is that spiritual prosperity goes beyond the walls of our churches.

Introspection for one involves looking deep into ourselves and knowing the purpose of our desires, whether they are for the gain of everyone or for personal materialistic achievement. If the purpose is geared towards the benefit of others, then such is an aspect of spiritual prosperity, although not the entirety of this wealth.

Spiritual prosperity is also believing and acting on the belief. The financial crisis that many experience today is so tangible that many are also in the conscious awareness of fear of losing everything. When asked what they understand about prosperity – they might answer money – and the lack of it is the opposite of prosperity. But money is not prosperity – the belief that you can have whatever you lack and the act that follows the belief is prosperity. It becomes spiritual in a sense that you are now getting in touch with the capacities you have – the capacities that are entirely modeled and made according to the likeness of your god. Because you are now aware of your capacities, you can practice these capacities by helping others – and thus gain spiritual prosperity in essence. Other people like you are made according to the image of their gods after all.

But how will you know if you are struggling with your spiritual prosperity? There is actually no one definite answer to that question. I rather believe that such struggles take in many different forms. Here are some of the few.

o You do yoga, meditations and prayers but you act negatively. But whenever you have issues you are cruel to the world although you do your daily meditation.

o Your breakfast is anger, your lunch is frustration, and your dinner is depression – although you are surrounded by your family and love ones. You act like this because you have unresolved issues with those around you and you hide your personal skeletons in your closet. That is, you’re not happy because you cannot achieve the goals they have set for you.

o You are absorbed in your own little world – and feel like you have no cause to help others since you have your own problems as well.

o You are very much into technology and gadgets that you’ve lost touched with the natural scene. You also become stressed by what you see in the media and what you lack according to the media. Material attachment is definitely out of sync with spiritual prosperity.

o You blame people when things go wrong, whether it was their fault or not. Instead of moving forward, you wallow in the blaming game and continue to pity yourself for being caught in the situation.

Now, if you find yourself in one of those situations mentioned – then perhaps you are struggling with your spiritual prosperity. Never fear though, these struggles can be addressed through practices of spiritual prosperity. Here is a list of such practices. These might not be everything that you would like to do since you, like other people, may have your own spiritual prosperity exercises but you really only have to get the gist of these means in order to understand how spiritual prosperity works.

o Work on the aspects of your emotional character. If you are still capable of giving more love, more care, more kindness – then do so. Enhancing your capacity for these positive attitudes enhances your likeness to your God’s image.

o Take happiness in every little thing, be it a small token of appreciation from another person, a useless gift or a single bud opening in the morning dew. Some people may have all the wealth but if they are not happy, then they are not prosperous at all. They may constantly worry about obstacles, thus they hinder themselves from gaining spiritual prosperity.

o Believe in something positive, no matter how minute it is. When you have something positive to believe in, religious or not – you become more positive towards other things. You influence other people to become positive as well. Positivity is contagious. Once you’re optimistic other people around you may become optimistic too.

o Stop blaming others and stop complaining about them too. Blaming and complaining are two negative behaviors. Spiritual prosperity does not believe in these. When you blame others and complain about other people, you are doing the same to their god as they are made in his likeness.

o Define your personal life. You are not controlled by external forces and you are not tied with strings to other people’s hands. You are the master of yourself. If others define prosperity in material things, then do not define your prosperity in such manner. Focus more on the definition you want to create around yourself. If you sweep the streets for your job, be glad – at least that is decent work. If you have twenty dollars in your wallet today, be happy because it may be more than what other people have.

o Believe that you need less. Simple lives create simple concerns. Similarly, complex lives create complex concerns. Remember the parable of the poor man and the rich man? The poor man is happy because he has no money and nothing to worry about, while the rich man constantly worries about thieves robbing him of his money at night, thus he misses his sleep. The simpler the life is – the better.

o Converse with your God. Take sometime off in a quiet place and talk to your god, in prayer form, meditations or yoga. Even communing with nature is conversing with your God. Take pleasure in your God’s wonderful creations specially because you are part of it.

These lists of situations indicating whether you are struggling with spiritual prosperity and what you can do about these struggles are only some means of finding spiritual prosperity. Although they are not the complete list, what is necessary is that you acknowledge the chance of finding spiritual prosperity or the loss of it in every detailed thing that you do. Perhaps it’s time to reevaluate yourself and ask – am I struggling with spiritual prosperity? How can I over come it?

Appointment of Ruth Porat, as Chief Financial Officer at Google, may be symbolized as an empowerment of women in tech marketing jobs. But, it’s sad that this glory is dimmed down with the actual data showing the decline in the ratio of tech jobs held by women. According to the study of the American Association of University Women, which is an NGO, on a mission to promote gender equality, the percentage of women in computing jobs has significantly fallen over last 23 years. The data reveals an uncomforting fact for the fairer sex; where women constituted 35% of the total tech workforce in 1990, the share dipped to 26% in 2013, painting a skewed image of tech jobs in the favour of male professionals. The study also alarms about the falling numbers of women earning computing degrees.

The reasons of this decline can be discovered in the untold stories of inequality and discrimination, women face in their everyday professional life in tech world, be it for the promotion list or appreciation for their hard work. Although, the society applaud women for scaling heights in every sphere of work and their substantial contribution to the world economy, still millions of success stories, though scripted by women, were grabbed by the “boys club of silicon valley”. Of all such cases, only a few are raised. One such case is of Whitney Wolfe, who has worked hard to promote a mobile dating app (called Tinder) with different marketing strategies and executed them herself. But at the time of recognition, when Tinder’s profile was written, there was no mention of her hard work.

The Hurdles Tech Marketing Women Face

Gender Pay Gap

The study conducted by Glassdoor on 25 leading tech companies shows a remarkable gender pay gap. In most of these companies, men are reported to get a higher salary package in comparison to the female employees (with similar skills and experience) working in the same capacity. The difference in median annual base pay of men and women working in leading IT companies ranges from +$4,192 to -$25,104, which shows a yawning gap in salaries wherein the boys club of Silicon Valley continues to bag the lion share. Although, at entry-level the gender pay gap is not visible but in the course of rise through the ranks, the women are left behind.

Fit to Follow, not to Lead

According to the latest Grant Thornton International Business Report, the share of women in senior management roles globally is only 24 percent. Women are considered to be good for retail or background services but not for high designations making big and impacting decisions. When it comes to promotion or assigning a profile with many responsibilities, women are not included in the candidature. Using the shield of “with all other responsibilities that women have, they should be given easy work”, the women in tech marketing jobs are not given the opportunity to come up.

Sexual Harassment

Heidi Roizen, co-founder and CEO of software company T/Maker, was working on a deal with Sr. Vice President of a leading PC manufacturer, in 1985. The deal failed because, Roizen did not respond to the lecherous advances by the senior executive during a meeting over dinner for some paperwork. After a long time, she has shared this experience on her blog. Although this is one case to cite but if this happened with a CEO, the probability for women in a hierarchy can be easily estimated. Tech valley is not an exception in considering women as a sex object.

Culture UN-fit

The “she” candidature is kept on lower priority with a plea “not a culture fit”. This jargon lacks a clear definition but has certainly reduced the number of women hired for tech profiles. Since this is a totally self-created criterion with no standard or transparency, chauvinist decision makers conveniently play this card in gender biased hiring.

Social Prejudice

The “Society Earth” has some widely accepted prejudices about men and women, across the borders. Few of them are critical obstacles on the path of success for women in tech jobs. According to social norms, “Technology is thought to be a man’s strong point”. For instance, in May 2009, Dell unveiled a new website with the classic “make it pink” conviction. It is believed, that women, in general, have no worthy knowledge about technology and buy gadgets or laptops solely on the basis of their looks. Social norms relating to women’s intelligence in science and mathematics also curb their growth in the IT sector. It is said that women cannot take crucial decisions or handle pressures of deadlines. To add, people think that the Silicon Valley is extremely dynamic, and for a woman to cope up this speed is an unrealistic challenge.

Yes, there are many barriers obstructing women in the tech world, but there are role models too, to look up to. With reports revealing these hidden aspects, the leading tech brands are now making serious efforts to secure women power in the IT Jobs. Once such initiative is taken by Google wherein the company has conducted workshops on unconscious bias. Women just need to be more assertive and vocal and learn to brag better, to diffuse the power of boys club at Silicon Valley.

Counting calories or carbs. Consulting a good foods/bad foods list. Controlling food intake with painful “no’s.” Traditional approaches to weight loss rely on watchfulness and self-discipline, which involve stress, effort and almost inevitably, disappointment.

A different approach transforms the inner, personal landscape of motives and rewards. Done right, this new approach effortlessly changes the eating patterns and other behaviors that piled on the extra pounds and kept them there.

Why Are We Overweight?

The diet industry and medical community completely miss the point on this question. If we want to lose weight, we first need to address the reasons we got fat in the first place! But all that is discussed is the method of weight gain – excessive food and lack of exercise, but not the reason.

By failing to address the reason for weight gain, diets keep failing. In our society we are lead to believe that if we do not lose weight permanently at a diet, then it is our failure. But the opposite is true! It is the diet failing us.

When people genuinely want to make a change and can’t, there usually are what we call secondary gains going on – indirect benefits from the behavior they’re trying to eliminate. With overeating, for example, the secondary gain might be feeling protected by the extra pounds or avoiding conflicts with a jealous spouse.

Achieving Permanent Weight Loss

When someone tries to lose weight and just can’t keep it off, the secondary gains are often buried in the subconscious. This is where hypnosis comes in. Hypnosis addresses self-sabotaging habits at the level of their root motivation and substitutes healthy coping mechanisms for the unhealthy ones.

Once the secondary gains are resolved, the struggles end, and the person easily and naturally makes choices consistent with their goal.

People can painlessly transform their behavior to reach their weight loss goal. Hypnosis helps the listener exchange counter-productive eating habits for healthy eating habits. Then the listener learns to let go of their need for emotional eating, then build a positive body image. And the listener becomes motivated to exercise, which reinforces the other changes.

Within a short time, these become permanent life style choices, which lead to a healthy body, lean figure, increased energy and a calmer state of mind.

A New Style of Hypnosis

A good quality hypnosis audio program for weight loss includes four components that help someone struggling with weight issues: eating habits, emotional eating, body image, and motivation to exercise.

This is a breakthrough in hypnosis for weight loss programs. There have been hypnosis for weight loss available for many years, but most of them work only in the short term. They teach the listener random associations, like seeing the color red triggering fullness.

But these associations don’t last forever, especially since there are so many associations we each already have when it comes to eating.

Furthermore, the authoritarian style in most hypnosis programs are counterproductive and don’t work on many people. Not everyone responds to authority the same and many ingrained eating habits are a result of some sort of subconscious rebellion against an authority to begin with.

A new program, “Automatic Weight Loss Program” can be previewed and purchased at MindBody101.com as a four-CD set for with free shipping, or as a downloadable set of four MP3 files. Both formats include a lifetime money-back guarantee.

Since the eruption of conflict in 2013 between South Sudan’s government and rebel forces, the business sector is one of the most affected. Businesses struggle to stay afloat in what is considered a “war economy.”

Smart businesses would flee, fearful of what might transpire next. In a conflict-torn area, stories of businesses being ransacked or owners abducted are not taboo. They really happen. However, there remains some business owners that are brave enough to continue with their business, even establish new ones.

The number is expected to increase following the signing of the peace deal just last Wednesday. Of course, there are still jitters about it since the last seven peace deals have all failed. South Sudan President Salva Kiir maintains that though the conflict has killed thousands and displaced even more, there are still willing entrepreneurs who have risked to help the economy regain balance.

Let’s take a look at some of the problems these brave entrepreneurs face in South Sudan.

“Very Expensive”

Business is not stable if there’s conflict so you can expect prices to increase. In fact, the prices have soared so high that entrepreneurs decide to outsource their services. For instance, a printing company would choose to have their products printed abroad then shipped to location instead of printing locally.

You can attribute such soaring prices to the scarcity of hard currencies like the US dollar. You can’t rely on the South Sudanese pound either because it has fallen quite sharply already. The official exchange rate is coined at 2.96 South Sudanese pound per dollar.

But even the prices of the usual commodities have increased significantly. These days, you’ll have to pay almost double for the same lunch menu and public transport. That’s a lot of adjustment not only for business people but for the ordinary citizens too.

What happened to all the oil?

It must be remembered that before the war took place, South Sudan earned 98% of its government revenue in selling oil. But when the war broke out, the production has been halved when rebel forces took over some of the oil fields. Some even destroyed the infrastructure there, making harvesting oil impossible. And although there are an average of 160,000 barrels being produced, they won’t do much given the fall of the global oil prices.

Worse, part of the agreement reached dictates that the South Sudan government must pay for the oil transported using its pipelines. That’s additional expense without income in return. There is still hope, it seems, because officials will tackle this part of the agreement when the talks resume this month.

The seeming “resistance” to banks

Another problem existing in the war economy of South Sudan is that the central bank is not getting enough access to dollars. This is because many of the foreign workers and businesses prefer to send their remittances through centers, not commercial banks. It’s actually justifiable because the exchange rate in the black market is at 14 South Sudanese pounds per dollar, that’s 11.04 more than the official exchange rate.

But why do big businesses stick around?

Well, with so many other businesses afraid of the war economy in South Sudan, competition becomes weak. But of course, the government can’t celebrate for too long. Some big companies are already threatening to close down because the government has spent too much of its revenue fighting off the rebels than actually protecting businesses. Meanwhile, a big chunk of the government money has been fearfully corrupted.

The peace deal signed is a required by the IMF and World Bank for financial aid. With that, help could be coming and felt anytime soon.

Writing meaningful sentences to put across ideas was another area that needed attention. This skill had been difficult to acquire and more difficult to retain. It was many years later (seven to be precise) that I began to address this problem in right earnest.

I knew no one who spoke English in my immediate circle or in my neighbourhood, not to speak of a native speaker of English. The alternative was to listen to the All India Radio news bulletins. Hindi news bulletin was followed by English news bulletin. The latter was roughly the translation of the former. This was great in tuning up to the accent and correct pronunciation. The newsreader spoke in British accent, which I often tried to mimic in private. The problem, however, was that I had an old dilapidated valve radio that needed to be thrown in the garbage. Its sound was hardly above the audible level. Therefore, to overcome this handicap, I often sat outside the window of my first (ground) floor neighbour, requesting him not to switch off the English news bulletin that immediately followed the Hindi bulletin. Hindi news started at 8:45 p.m. while the English news followed immediately afterwards at 9:00 p.m. This was-off and on-my daily ritual in the evening for a long time. However, I must take this opportunity to thank my neighbours who missed a good 15 minutes of Bollywood film songs programmes being aired by numerous other radio stations.

I had no money to buy a daily English newspaper from the hawker. The alternative was to trudge to the nearest library-because I had no bicycle-and sit for an hour or so, either in the morning or evening. New English words always remained a problem because other competing readers waiting in the wing would freeze anyone with their cold stare who was seen taking copious notes from newspapers; therefore, the meaning was always understood in the context of the sentence or the paragraph.

Reading an English newspaper was a laborious exercise to begin with, because my reading speed was abysmally slow. Any attempt to artificially quicken the speed resulted in poor understanding of the prose. The alternative was strategic reading. After scanning the front page I headed straight to the editorial page and then went to op-ed page, and finally moved to sports news. Sports news often reflected the positive side of life, and it was one bright spot in the morning.

Home to sheep and cattle stations larger than many European principalities, the State’s graziers and wheat farmers were desperate for labour. Maritime unions tied up Australia’s wharves for five months in 1890, the Miners’ unions cut production at Broken Hill for six months in 1892, and the Shearers’ unions renewed their protracted strikes in 1893.

To the travellers, just as desperate for paid work, rural Queensland offered a lifeline. Getting there meant a train journey of three days from Sydney. Once landed in Brisbane, the State capital, the hopefuls faced a trek, on foot, to the towns where they could sign on at the Roll Call for station hands.

• Across this enormous territory – twice as big as Texas – the country towns were few, with many hot and dusty miles between them. Because of this, the men had to carry their own supplies of food and water in a bedroll slung across their sweaty backs. In Australia, the arrangement of ground canvas and blanket, rolled around the traveller’s provisions, earned the nickname of ‘swag,’ giving its bearer the name ‘swaggie.’

As union bodies stepped up pressure on governments to introduce social reforms, activists used terror tactics against the big landholders. Bush workers were bailed up on the roads by union militants on horseback and forced into the camps of the rebels. Miles of barbed-wire fences were destroyed. Paddocks of feed-grass were destroyed by fires started with kerosene. Wool sheds were burnt with the season’s baled wool inside.

• The body of a union shearer called Samuel Hoffmeister was found shot to death by his own revolver, beside a waterhole – or ‘billabong’ – near the town of Winton, central Queensland.

It was a dangerous time to be tramping the back-country roads.

For reasons lost to history, the practice of wandering country roads in close company of nothing more than the bundle across a swagman’s back became known as ‘waltzing Matilda.’ It is also the title of Australia’s unofficial anthem.

The words to the song were written by poet and journalist A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson, who visited the rebel camps and wrote first-hand accounts for the readers of Sydney’s leading newspapers. A close friend of one of the region’s biggest landholders, Paterson understood both sides of the argument and is credited with helping to convince both parties in the struggle – landholders and union leaders – to meet and work out a peaceful end to hostilities.

• In 1894, the three-year conflict known to historians as ‘The Shearers’ War’ finally came to an end.

In 1938, Paterson wrote, with tongue in cheek, of his delighted surprise to hear that there ‘really was’ a Man From Snowy River. Dozens were claiming themselves or a relative as The Man the poet had invented. Later, a similar compliment was accorded his now-famous swagman. From the time of settlement, the only record of fatal drowning was at Combo Waterhole where George Hamlyn Pope, a wool scourer, drowned after a night of heavy drinking, in September 1891.

Still the legend grew…

Early in the 1990s, a party of sincere tourists from Marine City, Michigan USA, was filmed for television as they returned to Combo Waterhole on Dagworth Station, scene of a shoot-out between station owner and rebels, the final act of violence during The Shearers’ War.

Here, their tour guide told them, was the very place where the poor swagman had drowned. So, with some ceremony and much goodwill, they set up a brass plaque to his memory and sang a chorus of ‘Waltzing Matilda.’

When I finally had my first full-time job at 17 years old, I wondered why I later found myself a few years later in my early twenties, broke and struggling to make ends meet. After all, making more money while getting promoted up the “food chain” would solve my problems right?

Why did I shortly find myself living paycheck to paycheck. Chances are… it had to do with my upbringing and ethnic culture.

Does it really matter if you are a minority in the US as it relates to your level of financial literacy and ability to make money smart decisions? Does being raised on the “other side of the tracks”, factually matter?

According to several reports it absolutely does.

1) Lack of Financial Education and Awareness

Back in the late 90s, I was in the middle of my second enlistment serving on active duty in the United States Marine Corps. Coming back from a counter-drug deployment in the Bahamas, I walked into my home located in military housing on Marine Corps Air Station El Toro to a stack of credit card bills. Oh joy.

My wife at the time had charged up over $15,000 between 3 credit cards. As a Corporal, this was close to one year’s worth of annual salary. Needless to say, this was a major area of arguments between us which eventually led to our divorce and two years of child custody battles. (Inside military joke, but not really, is that you can’t leave active duty without getting married, have a kid… then get a divorce. Ask around, it’s sadly true.)

What was my attempt to get financial help? I would ask fellow Marines, senior leaders who happened to be Black and Hispanic, just to discover they too faced the same financial difficulties just on different levels. Bottom line, they had no answer. It was the blind leading the blind.

I learned my first rule in personal finance… stop asking for financial help from your broke friends (and even family).

Had it not been for retired Master Sergeant Carleton Enloe, who I happened to meet in a bathroom of a Best Buy in Laguna Hills (don’t laugh), I would have never started a journey on learning how to win the money game. He worked at a financial firm that opened my eyes and took me under his wing.

My solution beforehand to get out of a financial pit was just to find ways to make more money out in town, off-duty, as a Jiffy Lube hood technician and bartender at the Officer’s Club on base.

When I share this story at financial conferences and even our weekly financial workshops, I find that this scenario hits most everyone in the room… even non-minority caucasians who also where raised on the same side of the tracks I was.

2) Underserved, Abandoned and Biased by Financial Services Industry

The fact is, if you are Black and Hispanic, you are deeply underserved by the financial services industry. Most financial firms will not even extend a conversation to help a potential client unless you have at least $250,000 of liquid investable assets or lacking the one-time planning fee of $500 (some as high as $5,000) to pay a Certified Financial Planner/ Investment Advisor just to tell you that you… “you’re broke!”

I spoke at a Women Diversity Conference and I be-friended a financial planner who was the ONLY Black financial professional in the ENTIRE state of Illinois for their national firm. And yet, her office was in the suburbs… no where close to the city.

Think you can find a minority financial professional that you can relate with and understand your cultural struggle and desire to get out of the financial rat race? They are not very common. The American Council of Insurers expose a significant gap in pass rates just for minorities passing a simple life insurance exam as an entry point to the financial services industry

3) Upbringing and Cultural Financial Ignorance

Does it have to do with cultural trends and parental upbringing to handling your personal finances? Comedian Kevin Hart threw out credit score jokes towards dark-skinned women, which he later apologized for, relating to a commonality of poor credit.

Sure, it’s comedy, but could it possibly be true? When was the last memory of your parents teaching you the value of credit and how to build your credit score over the kitchen table?

You know the answer.

Just like me, you’ve had past experiences holding your breath while eating out with friends hoping the server doesn’t come back asking for another form of payment.

Over the past two years, I’ve taken pride in helping build a financial movement where we’ve recruited and trained a new breed of financial professionals entering the money business.

The level of connection with our audience, relating to their financial struggles and finding solutions to transform their financial lives have been nothing less than transformational.

We’re helping close the considerable gap of minorities making $100,000 per year, where today, less than 5.9% of six-figure income earners are Asian, 5.6% are Hispanic and 5.5% are Black. (Source: Wikipedia.com)

Of the 43 financial professionals I have mentored as a marketing consultant and trainer, 35 are either Black, Hispanic or Asian. 8 are bi-racial couples raising bi-racial children. Already, we have a six-figure earner who is a Hispanic woman and a retired-Filipino nurse who cash flowed over $13k last month.

My advice? Continue to love on your friends and family but unfortunately, facts point that they are not the ones to help you lead a path towards financial freedom.

From what you learn about money, bring that back to your community and be that change-agent within your family… regardless of their negative opinions towards you. Stand strong, stand firm, stay focused, stay disciplined.

Reach out, seek and earn the mentorship and association of people who want to have more, be more and willing to DO more. Look past the color of their skin. After all, money has one color and desires to hang out with those who know how to take care of it.

Your children, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren will be glad you did.

Part 1: Power and Psychology of Beliefs

You’ve all heard the adage “If you keep on doing what you’ve been doing, you’ll keep getting what you’ve been getting”. So if something isn’t working for you, the first place to check would be your beliefs about that subject. Let’s take money for example, shall we?

Raise your hand if you grew up hearing the message that money is hard to come by, the root of all evil, never enough, doesn’t grow on trees etc. I bet there are quite a few hands raised there! I know mine is. Look closely now, is this the message you still send yourself? Are you even aware that you do?

Now I know you’re quite LOA savvy, know how to manifest your desires and have had quite some successes to with it. But I’m also guessing most of them aren’t permanent and no matter how many affirmations, visualisations, positive thoughts, mind maps and other techniques you’ve used, you feel like you’re kind of back where you started. Well not quite back there but not that far ahead either.

Does this sound like you?

So what’s going on? More than you can imagine. The “secret” isn’t just about changing your thoughts and being positive. It’s about changing your vibration and energy. And what lies beneath. That’s right, I’m talking about Beliefs!

Simply stated, Beliefs are assumptions we make about ourselves and others and how we expect things to be. They are also how we think things really are.

Which can often be quite different from how things really are, btw. Often they are not yours, they’re something you’ve taken on from what other people around you taught or influenced you to believe.

As we were just talking about earlier. Now here’s the dealio and listen real closely – most of what keeps us “stuck” in the same pattern over and over again, are our subconscious beliefs. The ones we aren’t even aware of, that affect our attitudes, thoughts and actions.

Take for example a headache. When you have a headache, the natural reaction is to take a pill, right? But that doesn’t help the cause, just the symptom. The cause could be stress, poor eating habits, lack of sleep etc and until these causes are dealt with and changes made, chances are the headaches ain’t going anywhere either and will keep coming back to visit like a bad penny.

To make a lasting change, you’d have you look at the root causes and act on changing them. Figure out a way to distress, eat better etc.

Well guess what? It’s the same with manifestations! What blocks them is a belief that you may not even be aware of. So it kinda makes sense to get to the bottom of that – identify, acknowledge and replace negative beliefs with those that serve you. Instead of taking pills like affirmations, positive thinking etc.

Now hang just on a minute – I’m NOT dissing any of these methods, heck I use them all the time. BUT I also know that just words aren’t enough. If your beliefs aren’t in alignment with what you’re saying you want and are creating, no dice.

You can affirm and chant till you’re blue in the face but if you don’t know and believe at a core level that you will get what you want, it’s not gonna happen.

Let’s play with a few facts n figures here..

The Conscious mind vs the Sub-conscious mind: Did you know that the conscious mind processes an average of 2,000 bits of information per second while the subconscious mind processes an average of 4 BILLION bits of information per second?! WHOA Nellie!

You aka your conscious mind are a 2000 bit processor pitted against a 4 billion bit one when you’re not on the same page. Who do you think is going to win that contest unless you’re both working in tandem? Yep, good call! Think of the SCM (sub conscious mind) as a computer program running on outdated software (old beliefs).

When you believe something, you’re saying that is what you know and think to be true. Beliefs and reality are often poles apart and yet we let them rule and shape our daily experiences.

It’s no secret by now that you create what you think about, talk about, feel and expect in life. Little of what happens in your life is “happening to you” though. Most of it is being created by you thanks to your subconscious beliefs. Look I don’t know about you but if I’m creating my reality I want to darn well make sure I’m being conscious about it.

Gregg Braden says in the Spontaneous Healing of Belief: “We are what we come to believe ourselves to be. To change our beliefs is to change our identities. That’s why it can be so hard to change our ingrained beliefs. To rewrite your reality, you must give yourself a reason to change what you’ve believed in the past.”

How then can you go about questioning and changing them these beliefs as needed? It’s not as hard as it seems. There are wonderful tools like NLP (neuro linguistic programming) and Psych-K to help. Hooray!

They, especially Psych-K, help install new software (new beliefs) into your mind so that you don’t keep flapping your wings like a fly against a window pane.

In the next part of this 3 part series I’ll talk about how we use muscle testing and Whole Brain Integration to quickly install new beliefs. That’s right; the emphasis is on fast results and programming our minds to function more effectively. If 99% of our cognitive activity is unconscious, isn’t it time we looked into changing that?

This article sheds light on the dynamic female entrepreneurs in India and how they have chose to make choices that have been socially relevant and highly impactful.

To everyone who is still blissfully ignorant about what double burden is, I suggest you take this time out to get attuned with the reality of women. Of women and their stories that display triumph, courage, persistence, kindness, love and above everything, passion. When we talk about women in India, we mostly ignore the second shift (another name that double burden is commonly given).

Unpaid labour is a social construct, a very typical one at that and in most cases, grossly called “a women’s duty”. For if you don’t shackle yourselves to the social conventions of domestic oppression, you get accused of being “unladylike” (the horror) and we all know that’s not a label that Indian women should strive for.

This is an ode to women, of women who have consciously chosen to overcome those struggles, past all the accusations, flying above all the offensive comments and more importantly, constantly giving the Indian society an existential crisis. Don’t be mistaken, this is not just for the women who have successfully become entrepreneurs.

It is for the women who have been employed and unemployed, for the financial independence and for battling financial oppression, for the change of social norms and for the struggle, for being amazing by not just choosing to exist, but actively living, seeking, fighting and winning.

1- Aditi Gupta

How many times have you felt ashamed for menstruating? How many times do you check your “that area”on “those days?”. Aditi Gupta has answered our prayers. Menstruation is as taboo as women’s rights in India, in that it’s better off pretending like both of them don’t exist. Aditi Gupta has made it her mission to clear the darkness surrounding this common issue by introducing Menstrupedia.

It is a friendly guide for women to stay active, healthy and aware during periods. It aims to explore this issue from various standpoints- hygiene, awareness, feminism and culture, to talk about a few.

2- Anu Sridharan

Anu Sridharan had this unquenchable thirst to combine technology and society in order for us to be able to harness the full potential of staying informed. She founded NextDrop with a simple vision- “we want to rid the world of its water problems”.

With rapid urbanization and development constantly resulting in water scarcity, her tech savvy platform helps people stay aware of the access to water, the quality and the quantity associated with it. They use real time data to disperse information about status of water services, inconsistencies with the supply pattern and the time of supply etc.

3- Padmaja Ruparel

Padmaja started Indian Angel Network in 2009 and it has grown to be an integral part of the entrepreneurial ecosphere in India, ever since. Back in 2009, she saw an opportunity to tap into a culture that did not support nor finance the entrepreneurial spirit.

“VCs started investing in startups in India over a decade ago but they always invested money raised overseas. The trend is changing but still VCs raise money predominantly overseas. This amount was huge and as an early stage startup, it wouldn’t know what to do with those huge sums of money and VCs wouldn’t even invest. Hence I thought investments in the early stage to be a gap and hence started IAN,” says Padmaja.

4-SocialCops

Prukalpa founded SocialCops along with Varun Banka in the hope of using data to solve critical global challenges. Having had a background in investment banking, she realized how impactful data was when it came to financial banking. However, she kept drawing parallels about how healthcare, education, crime, environment and in general, the development sector didn’t quite have relevant data to be leveraged in the same way. Interestingly enough, crowdfunding helped this project to become a reality.

We hope that these 5 women have started inspiring you already. Being your own boss was never an easy job, additionally with the society clamping you down on all fronts, the journey will definitely not be an easy one. Nothing worth having comes easy, let’s all strive to beat the odds and stay rooted to our vision.

“We learned that governments and other organisations have been collecting a ton of data from citizens across the country on different issues. The problem is not that there’s no data; it’s that the data is really hard to access and use. It exists on numerous government websites, which are difficult to locate and navigate. Once you access the data, it’s difficult to use because it is inconsistent and unstructured. One big component of our work has been finding all of these obscure government data sets, cleaning them, and matching them with other data sets to make them reliable and usable,” she notes.

5- Elsa Marie D’Silva

If every 20 minutes, someone is raped and not all rapes are reported, can you imagine the number of women who get harassed on the streets everyday?” questions Elsa Marie De’Silva.” It is this horrifying thought that made Elsa, Surya and Saloni set up safe city. It is a GIS (Geographic Information System) mapping and uses open source technology to facilitate crowdmapping of information. It is a platform that documents that translates personal experiences of abuse and and sexual harassment in public places into hotspots corresponding to location-based trends. Women can choose to stay anonymous while reporting, the primary focus lies towards reportage and awareness.