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New Journey New journeys are interesting. Not only the ones you travel around the planet but also the ones that travel around you. Moving to a new school, a new house, a new bike, a new city. Any of those might be what you are thinking of and that always excites you. But, the more you cook it the hotter it gets. One disappointment and all that excitement fall apart. Then, how to experience the joy? Just to make it clear, let's take an example. You and your friends plan for a trip. Everything's packed and ready to rock for the next couple of days. Started your trip with your friends on an overnight journey. Had a lot of fun on that ride chatting about the good old days. Morning, all of you checked in to a preplanned hotel. It is then you have come to know that the food isn't good. Your mind unknowingly takes you down the path of thoughts about eating the same food the whole trip. Fun, which you all were expecting fissile out. Though you people are visiting places, you keep d...

Multiple Factors We consider factors while picking an option from a list for a problem. If you want to go out to eat, you might consider the Weather, Traffic, Time of the day, etc. We always filter out using factors that influence our mood. The issue arises when it is a difficult problem and a hell lot of factors are involved. Why is that an issue? Let's say you would like to pick a course to study. The list of factors might be "Do you like the course", "Will the course be helpful for my career", "Should I be picking a different course for the career I'm currently pursuing", "Should I change my career as per the course", "Am I even capable of changing the course later on". The list goes on and on. In such cases, we tend to strip[ everything down to one factor and move on. That works fine in certain situations as we humans tend to simplify stuff. But, Is that fine always? For example, you see an accident happen to a stranger whil...

These days, I keep reminding myself that... Things Take Time Time. We all think it is of abundance, but in reality, it is finite. Seconds pass by without reminding us that they don't come back. I don't want to talk about the things we do for fun, but the things we would like to get done as soon as possible.  Of course, we all have at least one thing that takes a hell of a time and we hate it. Either it's your exam which goes on for weeks making you bear the stress for that long, or it's your career which is taking years to grow. The finite time keeps rolling down in front of your eyes without showing any visible progress. It's hard and tiring. We don't have a choice. But, do hold on. Walking on a path for 8 years and you taking a daring step to picking a different one now will be difficult. Backlash, self-doubt, and fear are all consequences. But, hold on. Time is what you'll have to pay to get the things to settle down. There will always come a day when eve...

The Best Decision This is the pathway to pick the right decision in any circumstance. Once you complete reading the blog, the right choices pop up everywhere you go and can easily be differentiated from wrong decisions. And, that starts which scraping off this paragraph. Yes! The above paragraph is pure fantasy cause there is no right decision. There never was and there never will be as there will always be a better decision than what you have picked. Always. If you would like to eat healthily and pick one, there will always be a healthier food you have overlooked. Pick a course to pursue, there will be a better one out there. Whatever you choose, there will be a step ahead of you that you haven't climbed. So, what to do. We tend to move away from such seemingly impossible tasks and let others choose. One choice at a time, we move away. In no time, others start controlling everything. The very first thing you should do is Choose. Whatever it is, however scary it might look, Choose....

There had been a long gap. I did break the WEEK-IN project. Yet, it was huge learning in these couple of months. Change We are living beings who thrive on this planet. Living beings evolved for billions of years and will keep evolving for another billion. But, this is not as if we change every 100 years. We change every day. We adapt to what's happening, to sustain an unexpected tomorrow. That is what happened to me in these previous couple of months. A drastic change that my brain couldn't handle. Is change necessary? Absolutely. But, how come we don't accept it. Cause we are scared of a future being created by a new self. So we hold onto our existing thought process and to our old beliefs. Yet! This world is always moving forward where you are holding yourself back to an unchanged self. That's scarier than jumping onto a new side. I held onto my old self for so long that once I go to know that I'll have to change to adapt, my brain couldn't process stuff. Anxi...

Incremental Development We all have goals which we would like to reach one day. But, building a path to it is what most of us are lacking. That is why we are unable to digest the fact that we are nowhere near it. We might actually be on the right track, but get demotivated quickly looking at how much more is left. This is where Incremental Development comes in.  Your goal is not to run 6km today. Your goal is just to run 1km at any cost. Run the same 1km every day for a week till your body makes it a habit. Next week, increase 10%. That's a small 100m upgrade. Absolutely fine. Run 1.1km that whole week. Next week, add another 10%. Your goal is just to run that target distance for that week. Takes time to reach 6km, but once you reach it, no limit is unthinkable. Cause, you have made it a habit. Similarly, if you would like to lose 10kg, make a goal of losing 1kg every week. Of course, you can decide on the threshold and stick to it. So, by the end of every week, the moment you see ...

 Consolidate These days, we all love to do a bit of research before buying a product or making a decision. Even if it is a protective case for your phone, you would not make the decision on buying it before reading some comments at the bottom of the page. That all works fine until you try to consolidate everything into a summary, cause you don't. Here's why. Every human being is biased. Whichever the topic might be, we are always biased. If you are an Android fan, you would like to read articles that are negative towards IOS. If you are Vegan, you search for reasons why it is unhealthy to eat meat. But, research doesn't work that way. To get the best out of anything, you'll have to consolidate all the information unbiased. In our research, we don't even consolidate. We search for an article that best suits our interests and thoughts and we stick to it. If someone else asks for a suggestion on that topic, you blindly suggest that particular article. Yes! There are ar...

A short message Friendly reminder I'm here to say that it is fine not to be extra-ordinary at everything you do, it is okay to fail and not to think too much to cry. We are not superhumans to bump up our capabilities whenever we need them. We are not in our best mindset all the time. Days, weeks, months pass by happening nothing in your life though try to push yourself to the limits. Don't feel depressed that you have missed an opportunity, as there are hundreds more to come. Just, keep looking for those opportunities and be yourself every day. Until then, do what you are doing and smile at everyone else. You might not know who needs that smile of yours!

Half-Extrovert Introvert, Extrovert. We all fall into one or the other. Depending on the people we talk to or the situation we are in, that might change. But, we all lock onto one of those based on how we converse with a stranger we met. Conversing doesn't mean what you talk about, but how to take that talk forward to make it a two-way conversation. I am not an Extrovert but have seen some interesting conversations on how to talk comfortably with an Extrovert (I still don't have the answer for the other half of conversing with an Introvert. This might at least help for half of the problem.) It's simple, yet feels complicated for an Introvert. When an Extrovert asks you a question, answer genuinely. That's it. Problem solved. You might be thinking," Ah! We already do it. That doesn't solve anything." Nope. You answer those questions, but not genuinely. There's a difference. Let's say, you have met one of your friend's friend for the first time a...

Down to Earth This is not about space exploration. Being down to earth means you never bring up your pride while making decisions. Of course, we all need to be proud of ourselves and we also like to show off the stuff we are good at. But, the moment you will have to make a decision, you have to become a blank slate and that's tough. I try to be down to earth while I talk to anyone, but my pride kicks in once in a while. Even I am not sure how to be a plain slate every time and I am not even sure if it is possible. I would just like to explain why it is needed. This whole world s a multiplayer game. No two people are at the same levels, and those levels change every second. That says you have millions above your level and millions below your level. But how to know the levels of everyone around us. We don't have a cursor to hover upon a person to get the level of the person. So, we judge starting from the point we look at the person. We subconsciously change our body language and...

Privacy I did talk about loneliness a while ago, and I've thought that being lonely is being private for a really long time. Slowly, these two split into two categories. Let's talk about what privacy is and how to embrace it. Privacy defines itself. Being private. Does that mean you don't share your thoughts publicly. Well, to some extent. We all have a public life and a private life. Public life to collaborate on your thoughts and actions with everyone around you. Private life to work on your thoughts by yourself. As I've already said, we have our own individual consciousness to process stuff by ourselves if needed. So, not being public doesn't mean you are lonely. It's just that you like to analyze on your own at times and that of course leads to better cognitive ability in the longer run. But, what does it mean to give people their own private space? We all have seen people asking us to share everything so that they can help us if needed. We ourselves do it t...

Pain Today, I was watching a video called  HAPPINESS  where every single person is a rat running behind Happiness. Every single company's advertisement is mentioned as Happiness. Well, that's true. All the companies are basically selling us happiness. So, we (rats) drink soft drinks mentioned as happiness, buy everything mentioned as happiness, drive happiness, eat happiness, get sick on the way and take medication for happiness. So, of course, pain is inevitable. But,  How much? How do we embrace the very thing we hate? One day, I and my friend were discussing the reason for some having more pain and some having it less. We have concluded to a point that it is not the pain but is related to how happy you are. As per our old saying, "The more you laugh now, the more you cry later." The pace of events is mostly the same for everyone around us. But the happier ones will get hit more due to an undetectable event, and the graph just goes into negative more. This might be ...

We are our surroundings People change. We morph ourselves into a different person than what we were as a kid, as we can't be jumping and playing all evening. But, does that mean we are becoming the person we are not aiming for? Does that mean you are a completely different person from a decade ago? Let's talk change. As I've already said, we can't be jumping every evening, cause we adapt to what we live in the moment. We also change the way we talk, eat, smile, sleep... everything. We don't do this consciously, but our sub-conscious rythms observe everything around us and morph us accordingly. That's the point. We become what is everything around us, and that's scary on a lot of occasions. Let's say you've been a smart kid at school, and now you've become a maniac of all the wrong things. You don't know what went wrong and your trial of bringing back the better of you might not be happening. We change what we are, to blend into our surroundin...

Redemption We all do mistakes. Some we recover from, some which made a mark in our life, and some which made a huge impact on the society. For the last option, we have Laws. These laws are designed to punish those who plead guilty for their mistakes. But, this kept me thinking, are these designed for what people have done, or what people should be doing. This topic is gonna move on a controversial valley real fast, so try to keep all your lingering thoughts on hold and read with a blank slated mind. Let’s take it from the base. Our laws are designed to forgive the most, is what we generally listen to. There are little to none who accept the forgiveness part, as we think punishment should be the way. The constitution is not one person writing a book in his/her bedroom. A team worked on it for months, discussing the best actions possible considering all our ethics and culture. Changing all that in a snap to punish everyone is not that easy. Of course there is an argument of “This had bee...

 A short one. Loneliness We all love hanging out with Friends/Family and enjoy our time. But, we all have been at a point where we would like to be alone all by ourselves. There is too much noise around us which battles with our thoughts every day. So, we like to be alone, just breathing, doing nothing. But why? Well, I don't know. Maybe cause we are not Quantum computers to gather terabytes of data and process all that in milliseconds. If we were designed to work collectively all the time, humans would have had telepathy as a sixth sense to share thoughts. That would've been much simpler than conveying our thoughts through words or actions. We do need to collaborate to bring out better results. But we all have another self that keeps talking in our brain, and that self needs rest too. I'm here not to explain the science behind all this, or to guide you through the doors of the unthinkable. I'm here just to say that it's fine to be alone once in a while. You need pe...

Psychologist Psychologist lives in a wired place in our thinking space. A psychologist is the one who deals with mentally unstable people, is what we think. That is true, in some aspects. What we are incorrect about is, who is mentally unstable? Are you? Am I? Saying no to such a question is convincing ourselves for the most part in my generation. So, what might be the answer? You, just like me, lead a happy life on weekends and a disturbed life on weekdays. In other words, lead a happy life while having fun and a disturbed life while doing work. That means you are unstable on weekdays? Unstable at your work? Finding that spot is tricky. On the contrary, being happy doesn't mean you are stable, and being disturbed doesn't mean you are unstable. So, where do we stand? This is where a Psychologist might help you. Having such confusion is a pain, and easing that pain is what such a doctor does. Every one of us is unstable in some aspect, and that single aspect festers in the back ...

 Green surroundings I love having plants around me. It's not that they give oxygen and replenish the air. It's just that, looking at plants makes me feel more alive. And, I'm here to explain why you should consider it too. Of course, plants give us filtered air to breathe in. But, we have built our infrastructure so bad, that even if keep planting millions of trees, we cannot compensate for what our infrastructure had been pushing out into nature, at least for a century. I'm not telling you to be pessimistic, but all this is just stressful to think. So, I make it simple. I'd like to give a fraction of my day to bringing new life around me. That feels simple, yet solves the much bigger problem. But, why do we ignore such simple things. We humans would like to do something new every day. Those new tasks keep our enthusiasm high, so we tend to ignore the repetitive tasks. Adding to it, if that task gives too little to make an immediate difference in your life, that...

 The Blessing of what we Eat - 2 We all have learned from our ancestors that we'll have to put at least a couple of grains of our cooked rice aside before we start eating, and we should do it in every meal. This blog is to explain the reason behind it, and also to explain why that isn't needed in the present generation. What we general citizens don't realize is the importance of maintaining the stability of the ecosystem. We are not the only living things around. Insects, Birds, Animals, Plants live too, to name a few. If we humans want to live a happier life, letting other living things grow is crucial. In the early days (way before we have started cultivation), small groups of human beings used to live in forests. They used to have an ample amount of food and resources, cause the group is small and they wouldn't disturb the ecosystem. But, we've started building villages, and agriculture came into the picture to feed the masses. Everyone observed a shift in the ec...

The point in me about which everyone is astonished. The Blessing of what we Eat I never throw away food. NEVER. Even if I'm full, I'll take my time to eat whatever's left. That astonishes a lot of people. Most people think that it is enough to eat how much we can. That's true, but most throw away whatever they can't eat. I know I overeat, but I do have reasons for not wasting food. Whatever religion you pick in India, Food is one of those few things which we pray to and also which we pray for. Most of us have forgotten that what we eat is literally priceless, and we have to respect it. In today's world, everything is compared to how much we've spent. You've bought an Rs.150 movie ticket, watched half, and didn't like it. We don't hesitate to walk out, cause watching the other half might be impossible and we might only lose Rs.75 worth of movie. That seems fine. We apply the same logic to food. Leaving out food feels easier, and if it's homema...

The Misconception about Enjoyment  We all have our own answers about what enjoyment means in life. Trips, Going out for a movie, Long drives… But, that’s confined to what you think as fun and might not apply to everyone else.  People judge fast. You reject the plan of going to a movie, you are not having fun in life. You don’t go on long drives, you are not experiencing life to the fullest. You are not doing drugs ….. Ok! That’s not what I thought of saying. We all have our own needs and ways of boosting our own emotions. That doesn’t mean everyone around you are gonna feel the same about it, and that’s fine.  Whenever someone asks me about my way of having fun, I say that I’d like to sit at a peaceful place with a cup of coffee and my Kindle. I wouldn’t even bother anyone for days. For most, this feels strange cause not all like to read books or to be alone. But, that’s what I am right now. I could try to force myself to change it, but doing it against my will doesn’t me...