Like a river. Are You Flowing?!

Are you flowing ?

"Every time you learn something, you change. Old You dies and New You is born."

"The more you die, the more you live. Births and deaths are fractal."- Naval Ravikanth

Photo by Eric Smart from Pexels

People change all the time. It is just that they forget to inform you.
Have you heard of saying ' you can never step into the same river twice'?It means that water that flows is never the same even though the river bears the same name.

Everything changes. your body cells are completely renewed after every 7 years . This means you have a new body in every 7 years. Everything changes.

Look how many times you changed your opinions on big ideas in the last 5 years

Are you flowing ?

Are you embarrassed by your few years old social media posts?

Have you ever been accused of changing your stance by your close friends?

If yes and you can back it up with sound reasoning . congrats. you are flowing!

If no and you take pride of sticking to whatever you were convinced,I have a bad news for you. You are stagnated .

Soon a fowl smell will emerge and others will sense first. It is not a nice feeling when you realize it!
Find out a way to get unstuck!!😊

Things learned in last 10 years - Justin Kan

It’s been a wild ten years for me. Here’s a bunch of things I’ve learned in the last decade:

1. Things that seem disastrous at the time can happen for a reason.
2. Some of my most important learnings came from failures that I thought were the end of the world in the moment. 
3. The most important success factor in your work is who you choose to work with.-This has been more important to my success than having the right idea, the right resources, or anything else. Having the right people around you is the difference between success and failure. 
4. No matter where you are at, you are probably giving up too early. Big things take time to succeed at. 
5. No one does everything well. You are not an exception.
6. Focus on your one superpower and be excellent at that, and the universe will take care of the rest. 
7. There is an endless treadmill of goals.-10 yrs ago we had a small startup called Justin.tv. I thought if I could just make a little $ I’d be set. Thus followed a decade of trying to raise more money, achieve skyrocketing valuations, start bigger cos..it never ends 
8. Achievement of goals won’t deliver lasting happiness.-After hitting many of the goals I set for myself, some beyond the wildest dreams I had 10 years ago, the satisfaction never lasted. It was there in the beginning, but never created a permanent state change. 
9. You can be anxious no matter what your situation is.-I thought my anxiety and fear was situational, but it turns out I’d just map the same level of fears on to whatever difficult experiences I was going through at any given time. 
10. There is no antidote to your fears.-I tried to escape from my fear lots of ways (alcohol, travel, tv). None of those methods delivered anything other than temporary distraction. I learned instead that meditation is key to sitting with your fear and accepting it. 
11. I don’t need to attract people to me to connect.-All my life I longed to connect meaningfully to others, but felt I didn’t know how. Instead I tried to be successful to attract other people to me. But that’s not necessary: I‘ve learned to start with vulnerability and curiosity 
12. Lasting happiness comes from connection to other people, gratitude, and the release of self-tortured striving.

Nothing else. 

Pain vs Gain

Are u a self improvement junkie? This one is for you.

Wondering why you always give up on self help routines after few days?

you are not alone. I myself have these questions too.

One good thing though is I never stopped trying new routines.

So I decided to figure out myself. I observed myself on the next few occasions and got it!

So here is how it goes !

I normally start with a self improvement routine when I am not satisfied with something. For example, a weight loss routine when I thought  I look fat in photographs . 

My resolve to follow the routine quickly fades away almost all the time. I did try to nail the cause. But only managed to find a nice concept to put the blame on -That poor thing is called  'The law of diminishing intends '.

But deep inside I know I am fooling myself. 
These questions keep coming. 
why they did not work ? why do I chicken-out every time?

I went back to books, blogs , tube videos and every place I usually go to pickup ideas. As usual, came out more confused...

So sat back and did another round of introspection...

 Aaha , few routines did stick. like Badminton , Surya Namaskar and meditation... okey!  I looked at the reasons for sticking to them.

 Is it the fun factor? or 
 Is it the sweat that gives the sense of competing well? or
 Better body shape ? or 
 The joy of becoming calmer? 

In fact all of them. So a pattern was emerging. Here is what I found out .
I stick to improvement routines only If I gain something and feedback loops that give near term positive results.

Now.. Round 2 of books, blogs and youtube videos. Finally zeroed in the right word 'Gain Motivation'. 

Let me explain,

I gave up those improvement routines that I took up to avoid pain. I gave up as soon as i felt little better. 

yes!That is right.. on some occasions just a little improvement all that I needed! 

On the contrary, if I am motivated by gain, the positive feedback loops kept me in the game longer.

Ureka!!!! 

It may seem so trivial for you. But this little insight will save you many fruitful years.

More on this later.. 

Simplify... simply.. simplify...

Eurozone is in trouble; Sachin hits 100th 100 but the match is lost; AIADMK registers a thumping by-election win amidst the entire state reeling under darkness due to power cuts; Saina defends her swiss title but Indian cricket team is out of ASIA Cup; Tamil cinema stares at another big budget flop and  Meanwhile few more MLAs caught watching forbidden stuff.

When I think of my countryIndia now, these news came to my mind .Though no connections among these events except they belong to same time capsule. . It probably reflects my state of mind as well. While I am happy with some events in the past one year or so, I also had my share of disappointments and defeats. But my mind is so cluttered that I am so scared to introspect. I am not sure whether I am happier than last year or the year before. Why all these are so complicated!.. . Randomness in my life is so stricking

Happiness , Joy are the words to be seen only on greeting cards now a days. Shame!!These words looks alien even when I wrote that previous line. I was so tempted to delete the line for a moment because I felt as it might inject some kind of fakeness in what I intend share with you. As I grow older, I am really moving away from all the fun stuff.

If you asked me what I liked when I was in my 20s , my list would have run into pages. They were many which are close to my heart. The music, paintings, friends , movies - I found fun in places where it’s abundant. But now a days, I seek to have fun in ‘acquiring’. Even the simple pleasure of reading a good book is getting complicated by the desire to buy the kindle or nook. Scarcity seems to be defining the degree of ‘Fun’.

Just got me thinking of why not get back to the simple pleasures of life… and a big ‘WHY NOT’…

And Simplifying could be the start!!! But where to start ? Gonna google first and tell you next…. See ya till then!!!

Meanwhile.. have you simplified anything lately??? Care to share….

The Thing about complaining

“ Your problem is…. you expect everyone around you to think like you. Obviously they have opinions different from yours. It makes you upset and you start complaining about them”

– These were the judicious words of my wife few weeks ago. I was about to retaliate with my side of the story but instead kept mum like all peace loving husbands in this world do. You can’t risk your dinner, can you?:-)

I should have seen this long time coming. After all, it is she who had to put up with my constant complaining all these years. But I got tell you, It was one of those light bulb moments(as you see in cartoons, a sign of enlightenment). I knew for sure, it just touched a weakest, rusty part of my belief system .

My quest for answers began then onwards. After couple of days, I tumbled on a blog and the following was shining like a brightest star.

“We give so much energy and value to our expectations that we rarely let them go without a fight. And yet when we do, there's such a lightness of being and ease that we wonder how we ever managed to carry that burden around with us for so long.

In a way our list of expectations is an agenda that we impose upon the world and it acts as a filter for our attention. We see things not as they really are, but as either good, bad or indifferent, judged in relation to what we want.. and our attention goes to whatever we've deemed significant. It's this filtering process that allows us to create personal meaning, from a world that on the face of it seems random and meaningless. But because this filtered vision is the only way we now know of looking at life, we assume that what we are looking at is reality. ”
You can read the article here

There you go… Blink!!!!(Another bulb).I felt that haziness in mind had cleared just a bit but still I required some more evidence to really convince myself..

But would you believe this…, Today I got an email (from one of my positive quotes subscriptions ) which exactly said what I should do..

“My days of whining and complaining about others have come to an end. Nothing is easier than fault finding. All it will do is discolor my personality so that none will want to associate with me. That was my old life. No more.
- Og Mandino"

Hmm, I am not so perfect as Mr (or Ms) Og and I don’t expect to stop complaining straight away as it seems so innate but atleast I know now my cure. I will attempt to change.. That is all I can promise.. This IS one hell of a decision !!! Phew!!!

Then it occurred to me, Isn’t it the same as ‘ The universe conspires to teach you something’ theory or as one wise man put it( I forgot his name) ‘ Teacher will appear when the student ready!’?

In any case, I know what should be done!! That is the end of the story. But, Will I accomplish ??? that is a different issue altogether…perseverance…law of diminishing intent ….etc...etc…

Hey pals! moral of the story here is ‘ listen to your wife!’. I know... Believe me , I know , that is too much to pay for the so called “personal improvement”.

But , like they say , Choice is yours! ….

Photo credit