My Thoughts

To bring harmony in one's life a person has to allow ‘change’. But change itself is preceded by a drive within 'to' change. There are only two drivers to change: one is fear and the other is love. Most of us change only when we are 'scared enough' into it otherwise preferring to stay within our comfort zones. People have experienced this fear most at 'crisis points in their lives' where they had to take the step they had been avoiding for so long. Now Love can also motivate one to change and does so most in the case of a child. A child is curious about things he comes across: a new room, a new toy, the first beard, the ability to hold things, the ability to crawl; he explores them all. The child does not resist change he welcomes it and grows by it. Unfortunately as an adult a person starts to think he has achieved a lot and therefore starts to ‘rent out’ what he ‘already has’ rather than grow. He rents out things he has acquired such as knowledge, skills, e...

To understand how significant the 'present moment' is, it is important to understand the concept of “time”. My understanding: Time is a limited resource and it must be 'economized' to gain maximum utility just like we use money as a limited resource and try to get the most of out it. Now the best use of our time has to be time spent in bringing 'harmony' in our lives. This we can do by addressing an issue that has been bothering us for a while such as 'getting a better job' or 'contacting somebody we haven't in a while', etc. Clearly it should not be too difficult to figure out what these things are because we simply need to focus on what is bothering us. It is however important to remember that nobody can take on the 'totality of reality' i.e no body can predict the future. Since we don't even know if we will be alive five minutes from now it is best to commit to the 'issue at hand' and resign the outcome and our fate to ...

Current times have provided us with a lot of choice. The effect that this choice has on us is the following: 1. Paralysis: There is so much to work out. 2. Opportunity Cost: Whatever we choose gives us a certain satisfaction. However, choice reduces this satisfaction by the amount of opportunity cost we have to contend with. [The more things you are not doing the more unsatisfied you are by letting go of those choices] 3. Expectation: Since you have now zeroed in on this particular choice, you expect a lot from it 4. Blame: When you don’t get what you expected you blame yourself. [These points are from "TED Talks"] This applies very much in the case of ‘finding a job’ as well. Even if for one moment we were to assume it is impossible for us to find the ‘ideal job’ i.e. the job that is a ‘talent fit’ for us, one would still have to decide between the large number of possible jobs he ‘likes’. In the end two things will happen: 1. You will either expect a lot from your job; or ...

I have discovered the duality within me and identify it clearly as the “Adult” and the “Child”. The “child” within me has the following character: 1. Wants to work hard but wants somebody to tell it what to do 2. Wants to love but wants somebody else to love back 3. Does not want to face aggressive people and tough situations and always wants to maintain the good side with people 4. Wants to be with girls but is shy to go to them 5. Wants everybody to be happy 6. Wants to cry when he is sad and wants somebody to console him [preferably that girl] The “adult” within me has the following character – in one word a “mentor”: 1. Has seen the world and can guide the child telling him what “home work” to do 2. Knows who to [emotionally] protect the child from and tells the child who he can trust 3. Has been in tough/awkward situations often and is not fazed by it. He knows he has to face it and chooses between fight and flight very conveniently. 4. Knows how to approach girls perhaps bringing...

I have been giving some serious thought to the idea of the ideal job. People have said: “Do what you love and it will never feel like work”. There are two things I concluded from this: 1. I have to find something I love 2.Something we don't like to do is work and when we're forced to do it, it’s Hard Work Now “love” as I best understand it is what the ‘parwana’ [firefly?] feels for the brilliant flame. It circles it and eventually [I think] dives into it. If that’s what ‘love’ is, I clearly don’t love anything! However, there are things I ‘like’ doing. In fact there are a lot of things I like doing. If I were to start listing them it would probably stretch from ‘flying a kite’ to ‘going on a journey on a ship’. So from where I stand, it seems to me the approach to that ideal job is really to: “make a list, prioritize and go for what gives you most utility’. And this utility is in whatever form that works for you [fun, money, respect, etc] Work then is just this – a new definiti...

Allama Iqbal said: “Power is more divine than truth. God is power. Be ye, then, like your father who is in heaven.” Which power is he talking about? I think he is talking about the power over our self. Why is power over our self 'divine'? A rule says: “If you change the rules on what controls you. You change the rules on what you can control.” As Darwin said: “The fittest of the species is not the strongest, nor the most intelligent but the one that is most adaptive to change” So how do you change the rules that control you i.e. how do you gain this divine power? 1. You do this by identifying what it is that you "Love doing". 2. Don’t accept any excuses you offer to yourself as to why its not possible. 3. Gain clarity on what steps you need to take and go forth. Decide on one thing e.g. getting up early in the morning and Go for it! You can go step by step in identifying more difficult things [that you love] or go for a really big thing/goal [that you would love to do...

It has always seemed to me that there are two ways to grow: 1. Growth by self negation 2. Growth through Love I have always thought that these methods are mutually exclusive. Let me give you the following example to explain this better: Waking up early in the morning close to sunrise to go for a walk is always something I thought I ‘loved doing’. In order to wake up in the morning the first method [self-negation] would suggest I get up in the morning however tough it is. To do the same somehow through a message of love should mean an ‘argument’ of some sort that would ‘win my heart’, a ‘secret lore so to say’. This method should incite such an emotion in me that I would not need to ‘negate myself’. The two methods clearly seem to diverge and here I try to reconcile the two: If I love to wake up in the morning I will not wait for an ‘argument’ to convince me, for an argument that always seems elusive. If I love it I will ‘just do it’, I will not care ‘even if an argument exists’! This I...