The Consequence of following The Plan

Hello and welcome, dear readers. Hope you had an awesome week. If you didn’t have one, you should’ve.

Last week was great! So great in fact that I forgot about the blog. I was working more than I’d worked in a long time and I liked it. Then the weekend arrived. I worked and played on Saturday. It felt balanced. On Sunday, as per habit, these are the things that I did: –

• Woke up late
• Watched interesting(educational) videos on YouTube
• Bathed during mid-day
• Played games for a few hours
• …….oh snap! I need to sleep

This is how I imagine it goes for all gamers. I did enjoy the games, but I felt like there was a lot more work to do. I couldn’t have gotten here unless I’d followed the Plan. I couldn’t have followed the Plan unless I made the Plan. I couldn’t have made the Plan unless I had an objective.

Once the Plan kicks into action, if followed for a week at least, a consequence that arises is Momentum. You’ve reached a place where you feel you’re working, where you see quantifiable progress and you can plan ahead. Once you reach this point, you won’t feel like stopping.

Is it really necessary to have a break day, as in, Sunday? I found myself playing Computer games, but not really enjoying it and feeling guilty about not using the time to finish my work. The concept of having a Sunday as a day off isn’t really helping my conscience. I’d rather take smaller breaks between tasks than do them continuously and have large breaks. The problem is that it takes me time to get into the Flow state (and I’m guessing it does for everyone else), and having long breaks in between, breaks the flow. Also, generally I seem to be able to focus on a single task for not more than 45 minutes. We, as a humans, thrive on variety or uncertainty or chaos within the general order.

It helps to use the momentum gained during the week to continue working or at least do something else that will either contribute to the Plan or is a dominant interest. The mind wants to be engaged constantly. So it would be greatly satisfying to use it on tasks that serve the main life goals.

Whenever my interest in something wanes, I find it useful to take a short break of about 5 minutes and re-evaluate my task and the challenges I’m going to face. If I find it difficult, then I tend to look for easy solutions.

I’ve now realized that having the right amount of challenge is of paramount importance.

All our lives we strive for something more, taking up things that are mildly challenging and pursuing it until it is mastered, before moving on to something else. This highlights the innate need that we have, i.e. the feeling of having conquered everything. But at a given moment of time, there are an infinite number of things we can think of doing. And since we can’t do everything at once, we need to focus on doing one thing properly. If we accomplish that one thing, we feel different. We feel a little more than what we were. It’s for this one moment that we take up all these challenges.

So, is Life full of challenges? Or not? It seems to me like these are flip sides of the same coin. We seem to be hardwired to find challenges everywhere, a lot of the times when they aren’t even there. We even create our own challenges. But does it ever end? I’m guessing this question will either be answered by old and experienced people or at the time of death, when our life flashes before our eyes.

P.S. I’m guessing this is Life, not just our idea of Life, Life itself. Take plants for example. They manage to grow in every nook and cranny with minimal nutrition. Animals evolve over a period of time to overcome harsh climates. This is Life at its best. It is our very existence in the vast expanse of the universe.

If Life could have a motto, it would probably be “Defy all odds”

Hello! Anybody?

Hey guys! So, I couldn’t post today. I got caught up with work, you know. Deadlines!

I could complain and you could probably relate. But it solves nothing and has no use in the long run. So today I’m going to go freestyle.

So how are you? I always keep talking about my screw ups and ways to fix it.

Today morning I was wondering about what this blog means. I know I just begun. I’ve got a long way to go before I understand what it means. Primarily it would be, as I already said, about my screw ups and how I would fix them. I mean, the end goal is that I come up with a robust system to follow which will for the most part save me from embarrassing failure. But I thought about what other possibilities it could offer.

I’d definitely like to have conversations with you readers about whatever is either a current affair or is interesting. Maybe try my hand at writing again and create content for you guys. About Space, about History, about Culture, about Comics, about Sexuality, about God, you name it. I’m really curious to know other perspectives. I want to know your problems and how you solve them. Why you ask? Ah well, I’m just curious.

Just leave a topic in the comments or chat up, I’m welcoming all.

P.S. – I’ll keep referring to you guys, until you become real.

Expectation vs Reality

Hello and welcome, dear readers! Hope you had a great week.

Ever made a Plan, followed it dutifully and something went wrong after a while? What was your reaction to that? Stress? Diversion? Self-sabotage? Or try again? I know mine certainly hasn’t been the last one.

You were very diligently following your Plan and then suddenly someone offers help. You trust them and they seem helpful. After a while, they suddenly have to attend to something else and their part of your Plan obviously goes on the second priority. All this time you wait up for them to finish up their part so that you can finally finish the project. But with no fault of theirs your project gets hung up.

Isn’t it frustrating?

But come to think of it, in my case, I sort of expected my project would “magically” be over when they did their part. If I’d really thought about it, maybe I wouldn’t have just assumed it’s over and passed time. It was my fault to assume that someone would take a project that I consider as mine and finish it considering it was theirs.

This isn’t the first time it has happened. But I surely have noticed it. And I will not let it slip by me again. My mistake was that I expected everything to be smooth.

If it is one thing that people from all walks of life have said, it is this.

“Life is never easy. There will always be ups and downs”

But I’ve also heard this.

Sort of makes sense, right? Every damn single thing that we do in our lives as a human is ridiculously cyclic in nature. For example,

Cycle 1: Daily routine

• Wake up in the morning
• Get ready
• Go to work
• Come back tired
• Pass time
• Go to bed
• Repeat

Cycle 2: Self defeat

• Come across a problem
• Search for an easy way around it
• Fail to find one
• Give up
• Move on to something else
• Repeat

Cycle 3: Life cycle of all animals (humans included)

• Eat
• Sleep
• Procreate
• Die
• Repeat

Cycle 4: Life cycle of Businesses & Civilizations

• Birth
• Growth and Maturation
• Peak state / Golden Age
• Decline
• Death
• Repeat(New one)

Cycle 5: Breath cycle

• Diaphragm contracts[Diaphragm: The muscle that helps us breathe]
• Lungs expand
• Inhalation occurs
• Diaphragm expands
• Lungs contract
• Exhalation occurs

If we live and breathe in cycles, then it could be a fair guess to assume that we make mistakes in cycles. It may sometimes be some genuine bad luck involved, but again for someone persistent it is just another challenge in the journey. They don’t see bad luck. Or good luck. All they see is the goal and the people, situations and decisions that would aid them to overcome obstacles.

The only uniqueness about us humans when we compare to other millions of species on this planet is our awareness. We can be conscious about everything we do. Yet we choose not to.

All right, maybe I’m doing ‘we’ too much?

Slowly but surely, I’m becoming aware about so many things I haven’t been aware about myself. I’ve noticed that if something interrupts my Plan, I tend to give up and not take responsibility for my actions. I settle for having an option to put the blame on. And when it happens, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. I get distracted and I repeat the whole “watching YouTube” cycle all over again.

I need to be more in the present.

Reduce pointless distractions just to see how much energy I have left.

Do what is required.

I mean all this applies to me. I’m not imposing this for any reader. But if you found yourself in a similar situation, what would you do? I could guess. But I’d rather know. So if you could, write them down in the comments below. On that note, see you next weekend. Happy weekend!

Grinding Grievances

Hello again and welcome, dear readers! I hope you had a good week. For those who are actually reading this stuff that I’m posting, I thank you. You guys just reading this motivates me to challenge myself to do more things. As time passes it feels as if I’m trying to entertain people, even though I’m actually not. But anyway, I don’t mind writing for you guys because I like to write.

So after making my Plan and putting it to use, I followed it for two days. On the third day, I faltered. I spent all my time on YouTube, entertaining myself. All through the day I watched videos, trying not to feel guilty but obviously feeling the same. I got really angry at myself. People thought I was sick. I felt addicted to movies and stories. I had this since I was a kid. I love stories. I have my grandmother to blame for that, but I guess I wouldn’t be writing now if it wasn’t for her telling me all those stories and me deciding to pick up a book to read.

So I got curious as to why I had such an addiction and I decided to look into it.

Why was I addicted to these videos?

I knew I was getting distracted from my goals. But I couldn’t control myself. Or was it that I didn’t want to? It was probably that.

You see I had placed too much value in the entertainment that I was getting for free over the number of hours that I would have to spend in trying to achieve my goal. I had given too much importance to a short term gratification in the expectation that I would “eventually” get bored while pursuing the third step a.k.a. The Grind for the long term goal.

Why did I place more value in this activity that did not contribute in any way to the goal I set? Couldn’t I have made my goal more interesting? The way I see it, the only way I could make it through The Grind is if there is a genuine interest in the goal. If I set a goal but I don’t like it, no matter what happens I will fail to achieve it. So only if it is an activity I love doing will I complete The Grind. I can’t exactly call it a step because it isn’t. It is a repetitive action. It doesn’t end. Ever.

Conversely, if I need to know whether I would love an activity, I’d have to set a goal, make a Plan with the goal in mind and start doing it. If I can make it through the Grind and achieve my first milestone and I still like doing the activity, then I could say that I have found something I love doing.

But eventually it does get boring after a while doing the same activity again and again. So how do I sustain my interest when my Drive is running low?

Some people exist who don’t have something called “giving up” in their dictionary. It may entirely be possible that they want to. But they are pushed by an invisible force to do more. They just don’t know how to stop. The only thing they see is the goal.

My current favorites among these kind of people are: –

• Elon Musk
• Will Smith
• And this guy

Check out each of their responses to the thought of giving up.

Now I haven’t read any other great stories. So these are whom I stick with for now.

The way I choose to make it through is to either read or just watch one of their videos like the ones mentioned above.

For the most part they are willing to keep going until their body says stop. Otherwise they don’t know how to stop. I just keep reading it over and over again wondering how it’s possible. Then I get curious and set for myself a more challenging task than what already was and get back on track.

It isn’t really as easy as it sounds though. But me being more emotionally driven, I get easily influenced. And frankly how difficult something is seems to be the limit of the mind and not an actual limit. So I imagine being in their shoes. They don’t question the goal. They set it in full awareness and then follow it through all the way till the end.

Recently I started doing this thing that sort of wakes my body out of a state of laziness, i.e. bathing with cold water (I used to bathe with warm or hot water). When the first splash of water touches the body, the hesitation or fear that is felt before starting is quite similar to what it feels when starting something new. Quite like the illusion that we create in our minds before we start an activity that we consider to be difficult.

For the most part this shakes up the sluggishness and I feel more focused while doing the Grind.

This is what works for me but may or may not necessarily work for you. So you could try and see if it does work. You could experiment to see what works for you. Anyway it’s working for me. So for now I’m good since I got back on track the next day. My life has definitely become more interesting since I started this blog. Every week I prepare and make notes while travelling and every weekend I look forward to putting it together in a meaningful way and publishing it. I’m trying to make this into a habit.

Thank you for those who stuck around till the end. Tell me what you feel. Tell me if you use any other way to push through challenging times. I’m interested in knowing how you solve problems in your lives. Until next week then. Ciao.

Getting the Pre-requisites in place

Hello again and welcome readers! As much a journey as it is for me, if it is helping you, dear reader, let me know through likes, comments or sharing. It would mean a ton to me. I’m aware that I’m not the only one in this world facing such problems. So if you feel the same way, please do let me know. I’d be motivated to work more on myself and this blog, to make sure what I put out is genuine and valuable rather than just do it for the sake of ‘some’ improvement in my life.

Last time I’d talked about a system that defined what “Hard Work” was. It’s a pretty good system with the exception that for someone who is used to spending time in movies and TV series, which seem to have so many life lessons, incorporating such a “sacrificial system” into the daily routine seems daunting. How do you let go of something that is actually valuable and might help in life? I say this because in every movie I watch, I almost always seem to take away something from it. I become the character I root for and feel everything that he/she feels. Well, almost. So how do I apply these to my life?

Applying these newly found principles requires the old habits to be gone so that space is created for them. To unlearn an old habit entails a constant and incessant awareness about one’s own thoughts and actions. That, my readers, is hard.

Here, I’d like to add that although it isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, meditation helps in feeling more balanced and having more control in the face of temptation or distraction. I’d say that’s just me, but I think it’s worth a shot.

In our daily routine, we do so many things in unawareness. Waking up, getting ready, eating, getting to work, etc. are all activities we do every day without actually thinking about them. We do so because for such basic activities, our body automatically stores the required information in the muscle memory. This frees up thinking space for more important matters (or at least that which is perceived as more important). But in that process we are denying ourselves complete presence in a particular activity that could lead to feeling fulfilled.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are times when multi-tasking is necessary. But, when we focus on doing an activity solely and completely, by the end it feels like an achievement, however small it may be. So if at any time, we feel stressed, I believe it is mostly because of divided attention.

Quoting Tony Robbins,

“Where focus goes, energy flows”.

This proverb clearly explains to us where our power lies. When the only thing in our control is our focus, then we must be conscious about how we are using it. It is the very thing that decides the quality of our work and by extension, our life.

“What we choose to focus on will ultimately decide the quality of our lives.”

The very reason why magicians and mentalists have a career is because they know how normal minds work and they know how to play with our focus. It’s just that they play nice because of which we feel entertained. Even advertisements are designed in such a way as to keep your attention on them for as long as is possible. They give you information packaged with reassuring or beautiful or sexual imagery. They are using your inherent need for security, adventure and physical attraction in order to keep your focus on their ads.

Now if I have to sacrifice my entertainment for my work, I need the work to be of equal value in my mind. I am primarily motivated by the “Value to Life” factor. If what I do adds value to either my life or someone else’s life, I find it motivating to do.  If however, it is just meant for “being done” because of the situation I’m in, I don’t feel any drive towards it whatsoever.

Speaking of Drive, the different types of Drive are: –

Source: www.primermagazine.com

For the most part, I see my drive coming from the positive side. I do feel passionate and validated when I want to start an ambitious task.

So how do I give it up? And if I can’t seem to be able to give it up, how can I reduce the time devoted to it? The answer to this lies in the second step, the Plan, as was discussed in the last post.

Oh and here’s the infographic…

The car analogy that I had in my previous post took this form and it feels complete.

The Plan, or the body of the vehicle, holds everything together, so if the crucial nuts and bolts are either missing or loose, it will all fall apart.

Like fuel, The Drive is in limited supply and will have to be refuelled at some point. I’d say it should be done immediately after waking up. Doing or listening to something that refuels our Drive is essential to having the impetus to Grind.

The Grind is like the engine of a car. It uses the Drive-fuel in order to supply power to the wheels to move and keep moving forward.

The Sacrifice is the friction between the wheels and the ground, much like the friction that we feel in our minds when we are supposed to give up something that we value. The more the friction that the tyre bears, the more will be the grip on the road at higher speeds and the lesser will be the chance of spiraling out of control.

The Payoff would be the momentum that we acquire in due time. And like the engine needs to keep going for the momentum to be sustained, we need to keep Grinding in order for the Payoff to be consistent.

So what was the point of this post?

It was to know what is the crucial step is to let go of the past habits.

“The crucial step is to sit down and make the Plan.”

I thank you readers, if you have reached all the way down here. Obviously, I’m writing all this as I’m discovering it. So I’m off to making my Plan. If you like this, if you find it helpful in any way, or even if there are any flaws, please let me know in the comments section below. And see you next week.

5 NOT SO EASY steps of Hard Work

Hello again and welcome, readers! If you are here, it means you have taken out time from your life to read this. I sincerely thank you for that.

So last time I’d discussed about what I thought about “Hard Work”. Today, I’m going to briefly summarize a very elaborate blog post on “Hard Work in 5 easy steps: Understanding Perseverance in the Modern Age”, published in the website www.primermagazine.com and written by Jack Busch.

The very first line of the post says, “Hard Work isn’t physical, it’s emotional”. This line brings into light what we perceive as ‘hard’ when we do the ‘work’.

Most successful people have probably given advice like, “Work hard and you can achieve anything” when asked how someone else might do it. The problem with this though is that it is a vague definition. If for one person it might be giving relationships a wide berth, for another it might be the sacrifice of a secure source of income. Also, if someone goes to work at 9:00 a.m. and returns by 7:00 p.m., and comes home tired and frustrated, it might feel as if they are working hard. This definition is flawed in the way that it relies on comparing yourself with others who most probably have a different routine or with themselves when they had a less taxing routine.

It would be hard work if, apart from doing what we are supposed to do, we find time to do more. For example, a father coming home after a laborious day at work and the physical exertion of travel, to warmly greet his wife and children could probably amount to working hard.

“But what is he sacrificing here?” you could say.

He would be sacrificing his urge to complain and rest in order to interact with them and complete the family with his presence. And if the child is a toddler, he probably wouldn’t have a sound sleep. Better yet, imagine if the same routine was to be followed by a mother. I think we could agree that that would be it. That is clearly a superhuman task.

So let’s look at the 5 steps.

In Busch’s own words,

1. The Drive– This is the motivation, the inspiration, the entire reason you work hard. This is the engine that pushes your efforts forward.
2. The Plan– If The Drive is the heart of your hard work, then the plan is the skeleton. The plan maps out your course of action and helps plot your progress and keep you on track.
3. The Grind– The Grind is the point when working hard stops being fun and exciting and starts becoming tedious, stressful and perhaps even discouraging. How you handle the grind is often what separates the winners from the quitters.
4. The Sacrifice– This is the crux of hard work, and the one thing that makes hard work truly hard. Any ambitious goal requires significant personal sacrifice. Enduring the strain in your relationships, finances and comfort level is the real test.
5. The Payoff– This is the brass ring. In order for hard work to be worthwhile, you have to define a number of goals and milestones and recognize when you’ve achieved them. And once you do, you have to up the ante and keep going.

So at least I was on point with The Sacrifice.

Jack went on further to elaborate each point, but I’ll keep it short.

The Drive or the Motivation can be classified based on whether it is positive or negative and on whether it is internal or external. I will shortly post an infographic image showing the same. This is an important component because it gets us started on our goals. It helps us bypass the phase of inertia, initially.

The Plan, as described, is the skeleton. This is one of the crucial pillars of Hard Work because unless we have a plan, we won’t have a direction to move forward in. Having a plan makes the work involved, quantified. It helps in setting achievable goals. In the past, the mistake I’d made a lot of times was in this step; I made my plan and started executing but quickly burned out and gave up. The mistake was that I’d set impossible goals for myself, goals that I couldn’t possibly have accomplished in the set time frame.

The Grind is the second most important component of the process. The result of following even just this step can lead to developing skills that can’t be rivalled easily. Even if we practice doing what our goal requires us to do without actually working towards our goal, we’ll get halfway there. The other half is The Plan. This is probably what Will Smith calls, ‘A Sickening Work Ethic’.

Considering a car for analogy, if the Drive is the fuel, the Plan is the body, and the Grind is the engine, then the Sacrifice could be considered as the friction between the tyres and the concrete that makes the car move forward. Greater the sacrifice, greater will be the friction and keep the vehicle from skidding out of control at high speeds. The first three steps will enable to reach a general achievable level of success. But it’s the Sacrifice that will truly challenge us to the maximum of our capabilities and reveal to us what we really are capable of doing.

“True hard work has a disruptive effect on your life, which is exactly the intended effect”, i.e. it takes you out of your comfort zone and forces you to grow.

Also, it is “the act of surrendering something of value for the sake of a greater purpose”.

Finally, the part of success that everyone tends to focus on, The Payoff. This is the step where celebration is due. Whenever a big task is ticked off of your checklist or an important milestone has been reached, it is essential that we celebrate. A celebration doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be a party. It could be as simple as doing something that calms your nerves or something that makes you peaceful, if not happy. It could even be just a powerful and loud “Yessss!!!!” with fists raised in the air.

Celebration can mean different things for different people, but it is important to recognize that it shouldn’t be some activity that would derail you from your plan and cause you to lose the momentum built up in reaching there. Celebration is required because in that moment we acknowledge the progress we’ve made and give ourselves permission to feel proud in knowing that the Hard Work and Sacrifice has paid off.

If you, the reader, have come all the way to the bottom of this post, I can’t say enough how thankful I am. This is not only for you, but also my journey of discovering what works and what doesn’t. Also, that doesn’t mean that I’m doing all this flawlessly. I do make mistakes and have occasional slip ups. But I keep reverting back to the Plan. So thank you for sticking with me.

In a day’s time, I’ll be posting an infographic, attempting to connect the steps and concepts discussed in this post. Until then, see you later.

Hard Work has a secret sibling!

Hello again and welcome, readers! I’d like you to brace yourself as it is going to be quite a while before I finish my rant. So get comfy and then pick this up, because it is longer than the previous one.

In my previous post, I’d mentioned a few moments that were meaningful to me and perhaps, to you.  In this post, I’d like to talk about doing something that makes life meaningful. Now when I say something like this, I don’t actually mean I have the answers to all sorts of life related questions. It’s just my take on the problems, beliefs and conundrums I face daily.

How many of you have had the experience of the age old phrase, “Work Hard!” being told to you, to which you mentally reacted like “Yeah sure!” I know I have. This was probably because at a young age I had, because of movies, associated ‘Hard Work’ with this…

This was probably because I rely on images to remember things. I have a visual memory.

So I thought, “Why would I want to push boulders up a mountain?” The more I thought about it, the more it made no sense to me. But since it was a norm and everyone was doing it, I thought it was cool. So even though I would work hard, I wouldn’t be satisfied.

Time passed by and I kept believing it more and more firmly.

Then one day, I came across a fantasy novel called ‘The Sea of Monsters’ by Rick Riordan. If you are into young adult fiction, I’d say it’s worth your time. This is how I was introduced to novels and fiction. Then some old friend showed me poems he wrote. I thought it was interesting, so I decided to try. So one day as I returned home from college and sat watching a program on TV about The Big Bang Theory (the actual scientific theory, not to be confused with the TV show), I kid you not when I say this that I had an uncontrollable urge to pen down a poem on the very topic. I literally went to my room, grabbed a pencil and paper and jotted down a poem on “The String Theory” (whatever I understood of it anyway).

That is how I started writing. I know it sounds a bit unrealistic, but that is probably because I was trying to live a fairy tale then. I was the most unrealistic person I’d known. So I developed a habit of writing poems and started enjoying them to the extent that at a point I’d written 2-3 poems in a day. And later I began venturing into stories. I actually started doing hard work without even knowing it because writing was the only thing on my mind, day-in and day-out. But, this caused me to stay inside a bubble that I’d created which was hurting my academics.

Then I got stuck in a self-fulfilling cycle of doing lesser and lesser work every day, all the while losing interest. Until one day, when I stopped working altogether. That was the day that I had assumed defeat to what I assumed was what life was all about. I was depressed. At this point, my question had changed from “Why should I push boulders?” to “How do they do it? How do they keep working hard?”

I kept wandering in Dream Castles and Fictional Universes because the real world stopped making sense to me. Time passed by and somehow I pulled myself out of the ditch that I had trapped myself in. I started to pursue topics that gave me purpose, something that was lacking in the things I was doing on my “Set Path”. Here is a quote by, me….

“A person without a purpose is equivalent to a starving lion.”

“What?!”

Let me explain. If a starving lion sees any living, breathing creature, even if is an offspring of that lion, it won’t care. All it cares for is its stomach. Similarly, if  a person goes too long without a purpose in life, he will either be eternally wandering, achieving nothing in life or will achieve everything in life and yet be unsatisfied. Even if one lives a short life, they would definitely want it to be satisfying. That’s why people do what they do when they discover that they have cancer or will die soon. The desperation to live arises in them in the face of death.

So coming back to what I was saying, all of the false reasoning broke down and I started to see no purpose in what I was doing. I searched online and probably even stared at the answer to my question, but I never realised it would be something really simple.

Somehow I finished all of my academics and put it in the past. After tons of research and introspection, I contradicted my own belief system and with a lot of self-doubt and the lowest level of self-esteem I’d ever had, I told my parents that I wanted to do Game Design. By that time I’d changed what I wanted to do so many times that I lost track.

Now fast forwarding to a few months ago, I was wasting my time on the internet. There was nothing really bad about that, except that I was entertaining myself when I was supposed to be working. I was watching one of my friends, a gamer, who had a task at hand which was more important than playing games. Even though he loved playing games, he did what was required rather than what he loved doing for fun. He did what was necessary for him to progress academically and he was pursuing what he loved. It was in that moment that I realised what “Hard Work” really meant. It wasn’t working endlessly that was the key ingredient. It was sacrifice. The moment that I realised that, I saw what was required for me to achieve anything. It was sacrifice. I had to sacrifice anything that didn’t contribute to my set goal. Ultimately, only if it contributed to achieving that goal there would be meaning in doing it, otherwise I would be throwing away my time and energy. The sacrifice makes the activity for which it is made, seem valuable.

It took me a while in getting used to that, but now I see why it works.

“To achieve something, you need to sacrifice something that you assign an equal importance, if not greater.”

It’s the same reason why we value money. In exchange for money (the sacrifice), we get goods or services. And in exchange for our time and energy, we get money! Funny how that works though!

After going through all that, I got just this much.

“Hard work requires sacrifice!”

Seems like a bit of a stretch, isn’t it?

If we take these two words literally, generally speaking, any work isn’t really that hard (there might be exceptions here though). It’s really the mental effort involved to push beyond our comfort zone and keep going until the task at hand is completed. We feel motivated to do something only when we find that it adds value to our lives. No value, no motivation.

Now, there are countless other people who have written blogs, books, given lectures, spoken in podcasts, etc. So this is my take, my understanding of what “Hard Work” means, at least for now. I’d like to now take a look at successful people’s definition of what Hard Work means and possibly take away something useful as I’m not interested in re-inventing the wheel any longer. Now I’d like to improvise on what works.

So thank you readers for making it so far, if you have made it, and see you next weekend! (Yes, this is going to be once in a week)

Kung Fu Panda Wisdom

Disclaimer : In order to fully understand this post, you, the reader, should have seen at least one part of Kung Fu Panda because I make a lot of references. Also, in this post I’m not trying to amuse anyone. So it would get boring if you were looking for anything like that.

Hello and welcome everyone!

A few days ago I was watching the Kung Fu Panda trilogy and at certain moments I cried.

“Wait, how is that possible?” you’d ask.

Or perhaps, “Why?”

It could have been something very trivial. I couldn’t recognize it either until I got motivated to start this blog. It wasn’t that I was moved or I was emotional at that moment, which I was anyway, but some part of me was feeling a sense of freedom, something I hadn’t felt in a long time. I was crying but at the same time feeling joy. Inexplicable! But I’ll try my best anyway.

After going over the same moment again and again, I think I now know why.

In the first movie:

Whenever I saw Po, the panda, struggling with learning something that he loved doing, I cried. I believe it wasn’t because he was failing or that I sympathized with him. I believe it was because the struggle that he did to learn something he loved was what I aspired to do, but never did. The kind of struggle that would impart meaning to life and make one feel worth something. I wanted to do this, but I never did. I ignored that part of me. I cried because I finally felt a sense of freedom to whole-heartedly pursue what I really wanted to do.

When Master Oogway, told Shifu, to “believe” in Po before he departed from the scene, I cried. It was because, for a long time I stopped believing in myself, in what I could do in order to fulfill conventional expectations. I was trying to follow a path that was set for me. I always dreamed of a life I never had, with the complete belief that I would never have it. Now I believe that I have freed myself from that bond.

In the second movie:

Po gets defeated for the first time. He is taken into the care of The Soothsayer, a goat, who heals him of his injuries. He then recollects his memories and feels sad knowing the truth. The Soothsayer then tells him, and I quote,

“Your story may not have such a happy beginning, but that doesn’t make you who you are. It is the rest of your story, who you choose to be”

I choose to be truthful and honest. Even if not towards someone else, at least to myself. I mean it’s just a fictional movie, right? It is. There’s no denying that. But could its implications not be applied in our lives. I definitely see applications which could probably even lead to a happier and fulfilling life.

Later in the movie, the panda is fighting the villain alongside whom he considered as his idols before he even knew how to fight. This is clearly shown in the scene where he tries to free other masters from the jail. He fought for them to accompany him. Later he felt grateful for the fact that they stood beside him as a family in times of need. The family aspect is what struck me. I felt I’d been neglecting the support for quite a few years. I was looking for support everywhere and neglected what I already had.

In the third movie:

“Who are you?” is what Kai, the villain, asks Po.

To this he replies “I’ve been asking the same question. Am I the son of a panda? The son of a goose? A student? A teacher? Turns out, I’m all of them”.

This was an epiphany moment for me. I didn’t cry here though. Po assumed different roles to suit different situations. Even though he is a panda, his way of thinking is very much like us. So if we’re really searching for who we are or what we are meant to be, I don’t think there is a set role that we would fit into. Depending on the situation, we can choose whoever we want to be. Although, spiritually speaking, the question “Who am I” opens up a million possibilities, this is what feels real to me now. So until I have a profoundly different experience, I choose to believe in this. Plus, that is another whole topic of discussion.

For everyone who made it this far and are still reading, thank you. This is the kind of stuff that I am aiming for, something that means something, something that provides value, something that makes it real.

I hope to have a proper discussion on this topic. So let me know what you think in the comments section below.

P.S.: One quote worth mentioning is in the third movie, when Shifu tells Po,

“If you only do what you can do, you’ll never be more than you are” – a kick in the rear for whenever we start feeling comfortable with ourselves.

Hello World

Hello guys. I’d like to call myself a wanderer, but basically I’m just confused. So I’d like to use this platform to explore really what interests me and who I can generate interest in. I’ve almost got a degree in Mechanical Engineering but my thoughts were always at a tangent to how everything was being taught in college. Thus, I had lapses in attention and focus. So for whatever be the reason, I’ve decided to not make a career in that field but rather as a Game Designer. It’s been one year since this decision was made and I do not regret it. But it’s going to be a long way before I can call myself a Game Designer.

I had tried writing, but wasn’t motivated enough to pursue it. This was about four years ago. Now I’ve decided to try again. I hope to keep you readers, well, reading! Thanks for your time.