Nature is never good. The tsunami and earthquakes don’t bother about the lives they take away nor does the cyclone care about the crops it damages which puts hundreds of families in misery. Likewise, the lion doesn’t pity over the life of a deer baby. It hunts mercilessly and eats belly-full. In fact, the viruses and bacteria families kill millions of humans every year, and not even kids are spared. We never judge and question the character of nature. However, humans are judged left and right and are given the highest form of judgement.
Learning
Battlefield is the greatest teacher. Training sessions give basic knowledge but not crucial and critical insights on mastery. Coding competitions, Exams, Marathons, Wars, and Businesses instruct more than the lessons we learn within four walls.
Putting yourself in the game and waging your life on the line with 100% accountability and everything to gain and nothing to lose attitude will speed up the process of evolution and improvement.
Forcing
People often force their worst personality traits onto others. If they are liars then they demand you to tell a degrading lie on their behalf to others. For instance, a friend goes on an exotic and enjoyable trip and then portrays it as work stuff and make you a part of their lie when he/she needs convincing it to boss or partner, to give a simple enough example.
Our loyalty and friendship then are dependent on us mirroring and adapting to his/her bad personalities.
Restrictions
Once you devised a plan, try to put as many restraints as possible in terms of time, money, place, infrastructure, people, technology, and others that you can think of. This actually improves your plan and subtracts unnecessary deviations and extra resources we added without any need.
If you have put the time restriction and are forced to complete much sooner then automatically a smart idea pops up in the mind suiting the constraint. Try to go as hard as you can and increase the pressure on the plan. In the end, you can’t help but improve the original game plan you had on the board. Restrictions move the needle!
Architecture
How people build houses, what they put in them, and what colors they use reveal a lot about their personalities. The artistic decorations or the minimalistic styles show what kind of lifestyle they choose. Likewise how they organize space, arrange toys, and clean windows show the importance they give to the details. The green-minded ones putting plants, the film geeks displaying classic movies, and other such bizarre tastes tell the stories of people. The things we own reveal what we are. For instance, a person having a great audio setup at home or vintage paintings convey their hobbies and the balcony chairs exhibit the philosophical bent of the people living there. The smell, the marks on the floor, and the dining table all give clues about the individualities and their preferences. Next time when you visit someone’s house, try to pick the life they created in these items. of course, this is not to judge but to better understand them.
Plans
Jiddu Krishnamurti in his work “The book of life” remarks that reality is simple but escapism is complicated. The boring day is pretty normal with coffee sipping, book reading, and sleeping on the couch. However, we won’t let that happen. We won’t let simplicity flow into our lives. The escapism we seek on Sundays further exhausts us. The constant screen switching, partying, surfing everything on the internet, traveling to mosquito-ridden places, and shopping don’t give space for relaxation that we hanker. These weekend plans are so complicated that in the end, we have to figure out what exactly made us happy and if not, carry on the dissatisfaction to Monday. Neither body nor mind is well rested.
Putting aside these weekends, in real life too, the book, walking in the park, conversations with loved ones, cooking and eating tummy-happy foods, and ending with the reflection on life are far better than the above-mentioned list.
Don’t break the chain
Once you have built momentum, don’t break it. Save it at all costs. Avoid the empty-zero days where you do nothing. If the task that you are supposed to do is damn hard, then at least do 10% of it. The 100 push-ups are hard but we can pull off 5 push-ups that day when the motivation is quite low. Sickness might not push you to write a lengthy essay, however, try to aim for 50 words. The point is not to make you proud but sustain the work so that you can pick it up tomorrow.
Talking
Everybody is shy to start a conversation but everyone wants to talk. People find it awkward, embarrassing, and weird to initiate a chat. Hence they won’t make the first move and simply wait and expect that the other guy understands this. But the others too think alike and in the end, only silence is shared. Avoid this and by all means, you take the so-called initiative, the train/flight/bus journey for the rest of the time will be at least exciting and entertaining, if not enriching. And you might learn something about something. You never know where the wisdom that you need at that point in your life comes from.
Work
A lot many people and especially so-called successful people usually downplay the hard work they have put in or over-exaggerate the effort that went into it but no one hits the sweet spot per se. This creates either anxiety or gifts overconfidence to the listeners. It is understandable that it is subjective and cannot be captured by words. However, deliberate misguidance is dangerous and toxic which is done by the biographies written under the handheld mentoring of marketing and PR agencies.
Next time the founder of a start-up says his/her story, take it with caution. The garage origin stories are all usually lies.
Inverted
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.
Thy Vox 