It is much nicer to have conversations while walking. The consistent change of scenery brings freshness and adds to the pace of the conversation. I met friend, Parth Joshi today over a cup of chai and ended up walking and talking for over an hour.
I ended up adding a few new books to my reading list:
Your soul is imperishable; repose in the self
In a Guided Meditation YouTube Video, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar mentions a phrase - Repose in yourself. It has resonated with me and I find it powerful.
I am relatively new to meditation albeit - I can only do 10 minutes of guided meditation without getting distracted or affected by sounds around me. But I enjoy those 10 minutes - they are totally mine and I feel relaxed or deeply relaxed after it. Days when I am deeply relaxed are usually clubbed within a week and symptomatic of lesser stress around work.
We are invariably stressed or tense for one thing or the other. It is human nature and in my experience, a healthy amount of stress, leads to out-performance. For the duration of meditation, letting go of all the tension around the 4 aspects of life - work, personal growth, health and relationship is liberating.
I am alone with myself, my thoughts and nothingness. Coupled with deep breathing, it leads to a feeling of pure bliss and joy. The oneness of your mind and body - brims you with a longing for the moment to never end.
We have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate - Bruce Lee
Self actualization - the realization or fulfillment of one's talents and potentialities, especially considered as a drive or need present in everyone.
Bruce Lee adds:
Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like, rather than actualizing themselves. This difference between self-actualizing and self-image actualizing is very important. Most people only live for their image.
Where some people have a self, most people have a void, because they are so busy projecting themselves as this or that. This again is the curse of the ideal. The curse is that you should not be what you are. Every external control, even internalized external control - "you should" - interferes with the healthy working of the organism. There is only one thing that should control the situation. If you understand the situation that you are in, and let the situation that you are in control your actions, then you learn how to cope with life.
Carl Rogers believed that for a person to achieve self-actualization they must be in a state of congruence. This means that self-actualization occurs when a person's “ideal self” (i.e., who they would like to be) is congruent with their actual behavior (self-image).
Alone is state of being or body, whereas loneliness is state of mind.
I have many Sundays when I do not have a conversations with more than 5 people face to face. A conversation is something meaningful and more than just exchange of instructions or tasks. Many a times, I only have conversations virtually, i.e. not face to face.
In the last 2 years, I have learnt to celebrate my time alone. It is liberating and empowering - calms you down and you can get a lot done with focus.
Today, I ended up spending my time with 2 km swimming, catching up on sleep, reading a book cover to cover, 10k steps and listening to an audio book.
Netwon's First Law of Motion states that - An object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force.
We are all creatures of inertia - in our daily lives, work, relationships and goals. Typically, a sudden change will lead to a loss of balance. Let me elaborate:
Inertia works similarly in both directions - upwards and downwards. Ofcourse there are boundary conditions i.e. rock bottom and plateau after gains.
Gradual changes in status quo happen on a daily basis. Slow changes are usually irreversible and hard to break. They usually happen because of identity shift and a change in how we view ourselves.
We should change the momentum and change it consciously when we either hit a plateau in positive momentum or when we realize that it is a negative momentum. It takes a while for the negative habits to reveal themselves.
We all have days where things just don't seem to go our way, and it feels like we're constantly getting into arguments with people around us. Whether it's a disagreement with a coworker, a fight with a friend, or a shouting match with a family member, dealing with days with lots of arguments can be incredibly draining and stressful.
Dealing with days with lots of arguments can be tough, but by staying calm, practicing active listening, looking for common ground, setting boundaries, and taking care of yourself, one can get through even the toughest of days.
We check our phone around 150 times a day (~ 10 times every hour awake) and half of our phone time is reserved for Social Media
My observations have been:
Since yesterday, I have been distracted with adhoc, abrupt problem situations, firefighting, pokes from competitors. Such days happen every now and then, but it is always nice to fight distractions and focus back on the short term (i.e. weekly) and long term goals (i.e. 1 year).
I try to engineer focus during the day by doing the following:
I am missing on some effective things even after repeated reminders:
Around 10:30 PM last night, my bed started shaking. I was reading a book in bed on my Kindle and felt them. It took a few seconds to orient and realize that they were earthquake tremors being felt across Delhi NCR. Tweets from people were witty even during the confusion after the tremors.
I live in an apartment complex, and 10 seconds into the tremors, I thought of leaving my bed and going down using the stairs and away from the buildings. It was a deer in the spotlight moment for me and after a few seconds, I decided to stay inside. Attached are the tips for Earthquake Safety for Apartments.
Today morning, I marvel at the limitlessness of nature and the random iterations that happen daily. As much as we dig ourselves in our daily routine, digital life and alternate reality. The nature has its ways of surprising us and unfortunately at times, destroying us. Every day of life, breath and mindfulness is a gift from the nature - cherish it.
The hard part isn't knowing what the right thing to do is. The hard part is doing it
If I break a tough problem into atomic sub-problems, the order of difficulty reduces drastically.
Let's take an example, if I want to run a marathon (which I do not enjoy), I know that I will not be able to start with 21km running. If instead I break it down to training routine like below - thanks to Puneet Yadav for breaking it down, I have a greater chance of picking it up:
The above conversation with Puneet was from Mar 2022, an year ago. It is one thing to know the right thing to do and another to do it.
I have found committing to a plan works well if the following conditions are met:
Below is a cheat-sheet for some of the important qualities that bring a lot of structure to life. It can be termed as a Personal playbook and should be relevant in most personal situation.
The following aspects build my playbook:
A clear sense of direction about the following 4 aspects of life - work, personal growth, health and relationship.
Everything has tradeoffs, all choices come with a cost. At an annual frequency, determining what I want is very important and pre-paying the cost of the choice adds to clarity.
Over time, I have accepted that following the gut is who I am fundamentally. My personal mantra has become - not all decisions in life are optimizations or need to be rational. I discuss important decisions with people who I respect, but the final call is always mine.
I have taken some important decisions by fast-forwarding life over two timelines - 2 years & 5 years. In these visualization grids, I run scenarios of the final outcomes being - good, average or bad. Visualizing life in such a grid helps in thinking about upside vs downside in a more long term manner.
Humans are like apes, we subconsciously copy the 5 or so people around us. We tend to gravitate towards the same usage of time and attention.
I have struggled to maintain and make friends who can interact regularly and be a positive influence.
Setbacks are part of every aspect of life - work, personal growth, health and relationship. Yes there will be days and months when:
Planning for setbacks and visualizing life in absence of these aspects makes me more stoic and prepared.
As naive as it may sound, I do not feel good about myself if I do not work on any day including Sunday. Work brings structure and purpose - being an entrepreneur - the scope of work is really broad and beyond the conventional working from office routine.
I wasted a good 5 years in not learning regularly. It made me stagnant as a person. It influenced my mindset negatively and over the last 2 years, I have found learning from the following sources satisfying:
Life is ups and downs. Embrace the downs with open arms as I embrace the ups. The negative emotions and feelings are as important and natural as the feeling of joy. When things are going well, protect the downside and build skills for the next peak.
If you have to bounce, don't break.
Our daily awareness of reality is like - problems, problems, problems and crisis. Responding to crisis defines the orbits of life. These are moments where I need to be calculated, enterprising and logical. They define the trajectory of life in the long run.
An average human in current times has more luxuries than the average king 500 years ago
Life is beautify and beyond the thoughts in your head, people around you and your fears. Optimism is contagious and has an upward spiral to it. It is limitless.
Ability and willingness to face my fears is my courage. The fears have and will change over time as I get older. Courage is the spirit of moving forward, taking decisions, owning outcomes. An important learning is:
The more I chase security, the less I have it.
Self discipline comes with persistence or rather persistence is self discipline in action. The ability to make myself do, what I should do - especially in the long run - 2 years or 5 years is a superpower.
In conclusion, I am not playing a game of life where I choose the outcomes that matter to me and I get to decide how to focus my time and attention around it.
Life is like microeconomics and we tend to live it like macroeconomics.