Maintain a not-to-do list, create an uncomfortable log that keeps a record of what are the uncomfortable things that you did in a day, prepare an ingratitude list, write down bad mental models, dream about the anti-vision of your life, jot down how not to retire, document the 10 ways to embarrass yourself, plan the worst day of your life, sketch the 7 habits of highly worst people, dress in the weirdest way, think about the baddest diet to be on, note the easiest way to ruin your health, compose the ugliest tune and melody, watch and read all-time lowest rated movies and books respectively, find the horrible financial advice, send letters, put the worst picture on Instagram, discuss on the idiotic topics possible, start a difficult conversation, debate on controversial topics and ask silly and the most basic questions.
Improvement
One of the best tips I ever got is don’t reject what is already working. If reading a physical book is fine for you then don’t go for kindle or playbooks, no matter how cool they are projected to be, for the sake of upgrading your reading.
The mobile in your pocket can do everything you want. Wake you up at 5 A.M., play your playlist, make a call for you, screen videos, and take amazing pictures of your face. There’s no need of changing it. You are not missing out.
If you can do silent meditation then there’s no need for a Headspace subscription. I see people constantly changing pens to write even though they liked the previous ones. Why abandon something when it’s doing the job for you? Why update when there are no bugs?
Necessity
Friedrich Nietzsche in “Twilight of the idols” says that he who has a why to live can bear almost any how. We can apply this on a micro scale to reframe our goals and achieve at least a few of them. Post planning an action, whether it is going to the gym, writing, blogging, podcasting, painting, or building, we need to sit down and ask why we need to do a particular thing. Why should I save the money instead of buying the overpriced t-shirt? It might seem obvious but actually, it is not. If we don’t have any particular reason behind what we are doing, we might easily get influenced by great marketing or fall prey to poor pieces of advice.
New year resolutions like journaling and meditation too fall away after a week as they are not necessities for you. You could have simply wanted it as it is the new cool thing or read it in a newspaper. The consistent action that we demand from the body and mind also demands a consistent answer from you. My friend recently said he wanted to do cycling and bought a decent bike from Decathlon. After 3 days, he decided it quit as it was not “his type”. Likewise, why should you start a business? Is it for the freedom that money gives or Is it really bringing value to people or Is it something else?
The recent trend is complaining about the rat race of 9-5 jobs. However, If asked why people wanted to quit then many find it hard to give a solid answer except for the usual workload, creativity, fun, boss issues, and EMI answers. Having clarity on the “Why” gives you not just strength but also keeps away a lot of mental trash and negativity that you perceive from doing a task, either through conditioning or unconscious reasoning.
Fear
One of the biggest negative things about fear is it makes you blind to all the opportunities that are available to you at the moment. In fact, the solution in the form of a great job or money or person could be right in front of you and we may never grab it to pull ourselves out of misery. And also obviously, this limits our circle of experience and the actions we take daily. Without fear we see life with floodlights and with fear we look at it with a flashlight.
Life and Meaning
At some point in our lives, probably after a tragedy or so, for at least a brief moment, one stops and asks the damn question- What is the meaning of this life? Our consciousness somehow cannot fathom this wonderful existence without a grand purpose behind it. Maybe because we never trust someone especially when they give a free gift like life here without scheming something fishy. We always expect something in return when one does charity, despite what people say. Help always demands acknowledgment even if it is a humble thank you but how can god or someone up above give away something precious away freely or with a massive discount like in a china shop to us? The ego’s suspicion expects a solid answer for all this.
Speaking strictly from egoism, life is neither a blessing nor a charity given by someone. We are part of creation that somehow for some wild reason developed metacognition and consciousness that developed a fragile ego that could for a brief moment in time separate itself through an illusion and think that it is different and great. For the existence, we are in no way different from an asteroid moving randomly in space.
Arthur Schopenhauer for this exact reason warned us not to enquire about meaning in life, as it leads to disillusionment as everything in life and everything we value is transitory and vanishes away like a soap bubble as soon as we try to grasp and grab it.
It is correct. As long as we are slaves to time, change, and decay. It is not worth it. And moreover, what does one do even if he or she knows the purpose and meaning of his/her life? We get satisfaction and die. Hence we just long for satisfaction which roughly translates to the release of chemicals in the brain. How is it different from the satisfaction we get after watching a TikTok video or a YouTube short?
In short, one should not waste this brief time on earth over this useless question when it is nothing but ego playing a trick on us for mere chemical reactions.
Change
Heraclitus, an ancient greek philosopher commented that life is always in flux. He was simply pointing out that nothing
is permanent in life. In other words, this too shall pass. Marcus Aurelius too in Meditations noted that everything is
destined to change, to be transformed so that new things are born. The wheel moves is what the wise have noted.
But, yes there is a but to almost everything. As people age, they seldom welcome change. The older we get, the more stubborn we become. Everything is about ego when the bald head and bottomed belly kick in. When someone targets our political party, we target them. If some random teenager mocks your favorite movie, then you are ready for a fight. In fact, a lot of us become conservative and believe superstitions, stupid medicines, and rumors that even tabloids are envious of. As we age, our ability to welcome change with open hands decreases. At least, we should be able to acknowledge this.
Freedom
Being free doesn’t mean partying till 5 A.M. in the morning, and definitely not traveling to a god-forsaken place
on a motorcycle. It also doesn’t mean doing a job you like or should I say pursuing a passion.
It’s not about not having problems related to health, sure it helps but still doesn’t count. Does it?
For a while, I thought it means to have decent wealth and savings. It for sure helps to live a comfortable life
and also offers independence to do what you have an interest in, no matter how bizarre it is. And even accountability
crossed my mind. Maybe freedom means not having responsibilities and not being answerable to anyone for our actions
and their consequences.
However, of late it hit me that freedom is about the quality and the state of the mind one has in a moment.
I am free if I can experience a moment(time) without any conditionings of the past, illusions, burdens, fears or
any frame of reference/images.
It means being available completely in the present with an empty slate to write and ready to wipe it off for the
next moment without any longing for what happened or anxiety and anticipation for what will happen.
if it sounds spiritual then maybe it is.
Life is impersonal
The fates neither favor you nor fight against you is the lesson that I learned very late. We don’t know why
a 7-year-old girl gets an inoperable brain tumor whereas a 56-year-old rapist walks away scot-free. A man or woman wins 3-4 consecutive million dollars lottery while the man or woman next to them lives in a gutter living on a state pension or charity of Insta-celebrities.
It is what it is. No one is cursing or blessing up above. In fact, what the other planets did so as to not have life and what earth did so as to have life in terms of karma/prayers is a big existential question. This whole universe is
a cold system operated on chaos and randomness. It is not cruel, it is plainly objective and has no intention either
to give a gift or take away one. Neither happy nor sad endings.
The Mandela Way of Life is What we need.
Nelson Mandela is the first black president of South Africa. But that’s just a Wikipedia fact. What we should think about Mandela is how well he lived his life, how he could heal his hating heart, and how he faced his fears despite life’s grueling setbacks and a prison term that would crush him and throw his dreams into an impossible pit.
His “Long Walk to Freedom” teaches how to be optimistic, how we learn to hate others, how a nation should act, and how to lit the kindness flame that burns in all our hearts. His life is a valuable book that one can learn if one opens the mind a bit. Here are the seeds that I value—
- 1)Courage and Fear are twins.
One fundamental error in our thinking is that we assume being courageous means no fear and showing a spartan face. But that’s far from true. Courage is coping with fear and waging a constant battle that we never win but only make sound peace with it.
It’s an honorable pledge that we take. Yet we cannot defeat. The example is the man himself we’re talking out. When Mandela was flying on a plane. The engine failed and everyone was in panic mode. His bodyguards were running around with fear. But Mandela was reading a newspaper with courage. But here’s the thing Mandela after the emergency landing admitted that there was a fear but he merely did not show it.
This shows that being courageous is a choice that we need to make and can never defeat like a big Hercules.
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear—Mark Twain.”
- 2)Contradictions define life.
We never get
Either this or that
But
A choice hanging
In between.
We never get
Neither this nor that
But
A paradox moving
Up and down.
We never get
A personality or
An individuality
But
A docile identity
Buttered by both.
We never get
Kinky morals or
Dinky ethics
But
A badly blossomed conscience
Or deeply twirled dilemmas.
We never get
A hulky heart
or
A bony brain
But
Just a sad belly.
Ah—
Black or white?
I wish it were that simple.
—No black and white
This is a poem I wrote a while back that captures the idea well. Life is neither black nor white but grey. We need to accept the contradictions, the ifs, and buts, and tread along.
Nations accept this. For example, it cannot follow ruthless capitalism or ruthless socialism. Hence they balance out like China by following Market Socialism.
Life is an ethical dilemma with not a yes or no. But a yes-no. No wonder, Soren Kierkegaard remarked—
“I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.”
- 3)A literate tongue or pen matters a lot.
We know the famous quote of Mandela—
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
But the idea of Mandela is much more than that. Education brings out the best in you. It’s the best weapon we can use to battle against the raging hate in our hearts and purify ourselves.
That’s why he inspired many prisoners to read and as they say— He turned the cell blocks to study halls and made Robben Island a university.
And education, Mandela believed, saves democracies, protects the rights of people, and tames unethical leadership of so-called good men and women. As hatred of immigrants, blacks, and the vulnerable are on the rise and people easily fall prey to a demagogue, education is the stick to control it.
and about education and personal development, here’s what Mandela says—
“Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”
Pick out that book on the kindle or if you prefer the old way, then the shelf.
The Hidden Habits of Genius—By a Yale professor
Craig Wright is a music professor at Yale University. Despite a good work ethic and crossing 15000 hours of practice, his piano career didn’t take off as he expected and didn’t end up becoming a genius. He couldn’t become a Mozart, so he studied him. Trust me, he studies for over 20 years. Then interested in it, he started to look into other geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci and the list went on. This led to his now remarkable book—The hidden habits of Genius.
Here’s the wisdom of it—
- Who is a genius?
Craig came with a formula to define genius. It is G= S*N*D, G equals significance(S) of the degree of the impact or change affected times the number(N) of people impacted times duration(D) of the impact.
It is clear that Craig classifies a person as a genius only when his/her idea impacted millions of people and the wide world for a long time. In other words, he prefers Alexander Fleming over Kim Kardashian.
Habits of Genius
- 1) Both Nature and Nurture Matters.
Gifts are given and you might have innate talents but they automatically won’t make you a genius. Becoming a genius takes an immense amount of hard work and discipline to use your talents.
“If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.” —Michelangelo Buonarroti.
In short, there are no lazy geniuses.
- 2)Resilience is needed.
This is because when you are a woman or from a minority community. You need to cross social barriers, no matter how insanely gifted you are. This can disappoint people but this is the truth. Jane Austin had to publish Pride and Prejudice anonymously to get through. This is not some old societal notion but a modern one too. J.K. Rowling was told to disguise herself as a man.
“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.” —Virginia Woolf.
Things are changing but upcoming geniuses need to cultivate mental resilience to face the world that is not a bed of roses yet.
- 3)Creating new stuff.
“The difference is that geniuses create. They change the world through original thinking that alters the actions and values of society. Prodigies merely mimic.”— Craig Wright.
The point is geniuses create new and innovative things, solutions or a groundbreaking theory. Einstein, Mozart, Darwin, Gandhi, Picasso, all were “the originals.”
Work to create something novel and connect the dots like never before and you will be on your way to be a genius.
- 4)Be Imaginative and Open your wings like a child.
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” —Albert Einstein.
Why child-like imagination especially? It’s because their imagination has no barriers. Mary Shelley, J.K.Rowling, Einstein, Picasso, Darwin, Walt Disney all built castles in the air and played with the ideas with insane imaginations and visuals. No wonder Charles Baudelaire commented that Genius is only childhood recovered at will.
- 5)Lust for learning, Being passionate and Curious.
Leonardo da Vinci has been called the most relentlessly curious man in history, Marie Curie was puzzled by radiation and Nikola Tesla even shocked himself.
Benjamin franklin, Charlie Munger were all bookworms, book-eagles who hungrily devoured the knowledge. And Elon Musk ran out of books at the school library and neighbourhood library at age 10. Sometimes he use to read 2 books per day!!!
So sign up for that EdX course or take that masterclass subscription you have been thinking about and be a learning machine.
“The education of a man is never completed until he dies.” —Robert E.Lee
- 6)Other such Habits discussed in book.
Geniuses are rebels who try out new ideas and can diverge from popular opinions of the time and they have cross-disciplinary thinking.
They can mix STEM with arts and humanities and cross-pollinate different fields and their ideas. This allows you to have multiple tabs open in your mind and we can draw different gems from different mines.
And finally, don’t just concentrate but also relax. When you relax you get so many eureka moments. Hence showers are the best!
“All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.”—Grant Wood. Go, take a walk.
Thy Vox 