Tag: quarantine

Life, Success

When you have a terrible life problem

Someone in my circle, is going through a tough time in their life.

They have been going through a lot of tough decisions that they want to take.

Last couple of days, we got to spend some time together.

I spoke with them on some days, and they were okay the next day.

Today they’re back to square one, wishing and wanting the world to change.

Here’s the secret about the world: It will change the moment we change.

In order for us to change, it will:

a. initially require focussed effort

b. an effort to leave your bad habits

c. the belief that in order to change your life, you need to change your life.


The dependency on people is short lived. You get to spend your entire life with yourself. What you choose to do when no one is watching, is what you get to become when everyone is watching.

Meditation

The Magic Wand

Meditation is not just to “feel good”.

When we practice a dedicated practice of meditation, we hardly face issues managing our time and focus.

It’s not just for monks in the Himalayas. Fully effective for corporate ninjas like you and I.

Here’s the best thing meditation has done for me:

The ability to complete a two-hour task in 20-30 minutes. As exaggerating as it may sound, if you have practiced meditation consistently, you know this is as true as water.

You need more time, right?

Life

The easiest way to change your life

If you look at your day, you’ll find several things to make the radical shift.

And to look at all of them might sound demeaning.

So here’s the way to change your life:

Change just one thing in your day that causes you most pain.

Just one. Not three. Not five. Just one.

Maybe you check your phone just for ten minutes in the morning and it may get your schedule haywire.

Maybe you have your dinner quite late.

Maybe you get distracted easily in your environment.

What is it that causes you the most pain?

Tackling just one thing will lead to domino effect of life altering habits.

Decide now.

Success

Candy Crush rules

It is hard.

The easiest thing is to sit on the couch and eat French fries. Or play Candy Crush.

Waking up in the morning and working out relentlessly didn’t come easy to Jordan as well.

It is going to take a lot out of you to get there. Yet if you don’t make the efforts to get there you will get to a place it would be very difficult to get back from.

Working requires hard work.

Doing nothing requires hardest work to deal with yourself.

You get to decide.

Happiness

Appreciation

A day will come…

When you will enter a crowded metro

Take out a snack from your bag and eat it there, and clean hands with your jeans.

And then you’ll smile at finally having reached there.

It’ll make you appreciate the metro crowd.

And when you do it, you’ll realise this solitude was all that you needed.

The best time to appreciate what you have, is now.

People

Oprah was right

For several years, I’ve seen Oprah repeat Maya Angelou’s words:

When people show you who they are, believe them!

I for the longest time used to think that this was not right.

And proved myself wrong over and over again.

Oprah was very very right about what she said.

When people show you they’re mean, believe them.

When people show you they’re kind, believe them.

When people show you they’re angry, believe them.

And while you do believe them, continue believing in your own power to be super focused and powerful to what you radiate out to them. You be you, perhaps they will show you a better side of themselves.

Knowing Yourself

Split personality disorder

It is a disease not restricted to a few people.

Rather, there are very few people who don’t suffer from this.

Well, what to do if you want to be one of those few people?

a. Being kind even when you have the right to be unkind is an unprecedented advantage.

b.      Replacing “you’re an idiot” with “I think there is a miscommunication” lets the other person know that they’re not unwanted.

c.       More than anything else, when we move around the world with the backstory that we are the hero and our role is to make others rise, instead of being the villain who wants everyone to fall down.

Split personality disorder is real and more rampant than we ever thought. What we need is a decision to have a personality we would be proud of.

And to live to that personality when things inevitably don’t go vanilla.

Knowing Yourself, Life

Will they support you?

One of the best learnings that covid brought to us is not to put all your eggs in one basket.

Warren Buffet has been saying it for years.

Not only for finances, also for our emotions and sources of income.

More than anything else, we have learnt never to depend on external validation (malls, restaurants, movies,etc.) for making us feel.

Will they support you is not the right question.

The right question is, will you support yourself?

Action, Process

The cooking compound interest

When I had initially learnt to cook, I’d multiply the amount of water and spices by the number of people who were eating the food.

Since I knew the perfect ingredients for my dal rice, i.e., what I cook for myself in Noida – while cooking the same for my parents at home I’d just put 3X water and salt.

Thinking it would work.

Except that it didn’t.

It requires lesser water than 3X of a single person’s water. It is just building up.

In life if we want to do something that seems humongous, we just need to begin the difficult process. As we keep taking small steps, we realise in the latter half of the journey that later you don’t have to make those 3X or 4X of efforts at the start.

The compound interest of your efforts will be more than enough to make you reach the destination.

You just need to start. Will you?

Knowing Yourself, Truth be told

The limit

The limit is the quality of content and people you surround yourself with.

The limit is the books you don’t read.

The limit is the empathy you don’t give to yourself.

The limit is the chats you have while you shouldn’t.

The limit is the DMs you don’t send.

The limit is the smiles you knew you could spread.

The limit is your decisions.

Knowing Yourself

How you doin?

Your idol is doing something you don’t want to be doing.

The world is telling you to do that just doesn’t feel right!

Someone in the extended family is teaching how to betray others.

Everyone has their opinions and what they say is right where they are.

You do your own thing. Not because it’s hard. Rather because it’s difficult to be like someone else. When you are you, you will work harder than it is required, and you will feel zero fatigue because you are living by your own values.

Even if it is the same boring stuff every time, you know when you know.

Thoughts

Some beautiful quarantine learnings

1. Watering plants makes you feel humbler and happier.

2. Your parents need nothing other than your presence.

3. Cleaning with wiper is both abs and back workout, sweeping the floor is a great cardio.

4. Home cooked chocolate cake is super delicious.

5. Life is wonderful without TV serials!

Life, Uncategorized

Insurance documents bro!

People will not understand you. They will expect from you, yet they won’t probably reciprocate it.

What to do then?

Should you also reciprocate?

Well, we all have tried it and it never worked.

The only thing that could be the solution for everything, every single thing is to keep yourself strong from inside. It’s an insurance no one could take away.

Like every insurance, you have to pay consistent premium (aka learning) in order to actually avail the benefits.

Like every insurance, you will have to stop frivolous spends (hanging around with those people) to be able to pay premium without fail.

People

I agree, Your Honour!

Agreeing with people is great. Every single human needs validation more than anything else.

However if you want to go ahead in life, you need to learn to tell what could be better – in a way that it does not offend the other person.

Everyone wants to get better. And if we see something that could help them get better and conceal it, we are making them worse. Nothing could be worse.

Easy versus critical, yet the truth.

People

Let’s shout out loud

Shouting out loud works.

And then it says the trust of the person shouted at.

Our goal is to go far, together. Not fast and lonely.

Letting your life and lifestyle make its imprint, instead of shouting to get things done – is a great thing to begin with. That never made ends.

Life

Rejection.

Rejection.

No one wants to be rejected.

Yet we do get rejected all the time – in relationships that didn’t work out, in jobs where we didn’t find our happiness, in childhood when we were scolded for no fault of ours.

It’s like someone inserting a scalpel into your eyes without giving you the anaesthesia.

Even the thought pricks a hole in the heart.

Yet it’s impossible to find a successful person who was not rejected. Not one ever.

Rejection does not mean we were wrong or we were not accepted.

It simply means we were not aligned.

Relationship rejection – love yourself now.

Job rejection – your work you love is shouting out loud at you to be noticed.

Childhood rejection – don’t do the same to your kids (and your parents).

Rejection never stops anyone. Unless one is ready to be stopped.

You get to decide.

Success

A bad day.

Set myself some goals for today.

Work goals, reading goals, phone-call goals, meditation goals.

Accomplished none of them fully. How much did I actually accomplish, doesn’t make sense because incompleteness is incompleteness.

Also I used social media for 1 hour! It was a big big wastage of time in the morning immediately after breakfast.

Lesson learnt: Own your morning ritual and the day falls into place.

Lesson I still need to learn: You get to decide. You control your day. If you focus, it’s possible in 25% of the time.

Lesson I must learn: No one loves you basis social media comments and likes. Sharing content is good just because you want to. Opening multiple tabs is equivalent to eating food without washing your hands – unwanted invitation.

Looking forward to telling you a success story tomorrow. Till then, keep rocking!

PS: I am strong, healthy and with my family. Life is fab. Utterly grateful. Will just raise it higher tomorrow:)

People, Success

Better

No one ranked better because they shouted more. Okay, in the short term, they did.

No one became great because they took away credit for someone else’s creativity.

Absolutely no one ever won because they were great at making others feel like losers.

The way to getting better, is to get better.

The way to rising higher, is to make others rise as well.

The way to eternal goodness, is the eternal goodness for all.

Thoughts

Is new the gold?

Recently a new version of a popular song was launched in India.

The old version was a super hit, and was composed by one of the renowned names in the music industry.

Almost every Influencer on social media posted about how they adored the old version and the current version was lame. Yet the new version, as of this writing has 32Mn views on YouTube versus the old one having 26Mn.

If the old version was rightly more melodic, and everyone so rightly agreed to it, why is there a dramatic difference in the number of views they have?

Is it because it is easier to criticise and people were just exploring the facts to be rightly sure of it?

Or is it because we realise the importance of something great when we are served with something worse?

Or maybe, the mind loves consuming dancing cat videos more than a great inspirational talk – because consuming great content requires responsibility?

It could be any or all of them, yet it shows how much power we as humans are blessed with.

We can twist the wheel in any direction. The question is, which one we choose today?

Thoughts

I dream of a world…

I dream of a world…

where we would love each other,

respect each other,

talk with each other,

irrespective of what they have done.

Just out of humanity.