Guilt

Here it is:

List of guilts, possible action plans:

• That I have not done anything in the past.
• Everytime you remember that you have not done anything in the past, do also remember that it can only be alleviated by doing something NOW. There cannot be any better way of healing the past.
• One more thing to not feel bad about this is - to think of building yourself by making use of as many things from past as possible like reusing goal list - for example.
  
• That I cannot achieve anything - a direct corollary of the above one.
• Think about the work done during the canned project. Think about the work done as a part of TA ship. Think about the script you wrote to your friend. It all shows that you too can do anything, provided you completely believe that you can achieve it.
  
• That I don't plan my day and even if I plan my day - I don't stick to my plan.
• Get the nearest goal and clearly define its ends. Now for each end, which is defined clearly, prepare a set of actions. Store all these in a place that you are sure to visit time and again. You fully know what your nearest goal is.
  
• That I keep committing the same mistakes again and again.
• Every time you become conscious of the same mistake committed again, goto your log and increment the counter for that mistake. This is the best way to become fully aware of doing the same mistake again.
  
• That I am sitting on the fence between atheism and religion.
• Ignore it for the moment. It will take time to understand this.
  
• That I am not interested in anything and don't find meaning in anything.
• No, this is a lie. You are interested in a lot of things. You are interested in programming, you are interested in problem solving, you are interested in getting organized, you are interested in becoming a critical thinker, you are interested in hacking, you are interested in knowing something about everything, you are interested in achieving a balance in life, you are interested in a strong body, you are interested in photography, you are interested in travelling, you are interested in meditation, you are interested in humor, you are interested in building trustworthy relationships, you are interested in becoming a professional, you are interested in getting a beautiful {l,w}ife, you are interested in sex, you are interested in GETTING THINGS DONE - WHATEVER IT TAKES, you are very much interested in seeing the best of you.
  
• That I waste my time a lot by futile gestures.
• Having something solid in plan to do - will not give you time for futile gestures.
  
• That I feel inferior to almost all others.
• No, this is also a lie. You are not inferior. You care about somethings that others generally don't care, you are generous, civilized. You are not consuming too much in this world.
• The best way to take away this feeling from you is - to do something concrete.
• That I don't have a goal to achieve in my life.
• It is high time you get a goal for yourself. Have different facets of life and achieve goals for those different facets.
• Go read past books where you have written goals and re-use them. In that way you will feel positive that whatever you have done in the past has not gone waste.
  
• That you don't work in office and don't like to, either.
• This is partly because of lack of planning, because of lack of respect for work, because of hate for both work and people.
• Think of the things that would make you feel good after you finish the work. Think of the ways of looking at work that will let you get both generic skills as well as get the work done in the work's context.
• A sudden sense of forgetfulness, depression and solitude.
• A lack of confidence in self.
  
• Feeling weak at the sight of exercise problems.
  

On Motivation

The author says, at the very beginning, these powerful words:

Powerful motivation comes in understanding that you can achieve anything you truly desire in your heart. It is the knowledge that you are destined to fulfill your every goal, which drives you to change. It is the action behind the attraction that makes the wish comes true.

Some tips on motivating oneself:

What & Why? - “Start with the end in mind.” To achieve a goal, it’s important to define clearly what that goal is. How do you know when you’ve achieved it? Define a measurable end.

Break it down to small achievable tasks - It is very easy, and human, to be overwhelmed by the sheer effort and energy involved in achieving a big goal. Especially if the goal consists of many unknowns or a long-drawn process. We tell ourselves it’s impossible or it’s too much work, and then we give up even before we take any action towards a goal. I’ve found it very helpful to always split the main goal into several milestones. Then breaking each milestone into a series of steps to achieve that milestone.

Take a Small Step - Even the smallest first step will help create momentum towards change.

Rewards & Celebration - Give yourself small rewards for each completed step or task. Then celebrate when you reach each Milestone! I use ice-cream, Chai, reading and internet browsing time as rewards for myself.

• Visualize yourself in 5 years without taking the actions to reach your goal. See yourself in pain. Do this for a minute, and then intensify the feeling. Feel the heaviness on your back. Do this for a few minutes, and then relax.
• Now visualize yourself having achieved your goal. What do you look like? How are you celebrating? See and feel the benefits it’s provided. Now, let that feeling intensify. Do this for a few minutes as the feeling intensify some more.

Being around these people can be infectious, and their energy will impact you.

On Meditation, Again

The author starts with:

However intellectual and sophisticated the term is, and when we express it, what we are all seeking is nothing but achieving peace within ourselves and the feelings of blissfullness.

As quoted by some people:

“Meditation is nothing but a preparation to rediscover the state of Bliss that is already inside you,”

“Every moment of conscious breath is meditation.”

Some of the benefits of meditation, the author (as well as the research) claims are:

• Clarity and Decisiveness. With reduced ‘mind clutter’ and confusion, I was able to make quick and firm decisions.
• Slept Less Hours - To achieve a restful sleep, before I use to need more than eight hours of sleep. While I practiced meditation regularly. I would sleep for six hours and it was plenty. Often, I sleep less than that.
• More Energized - With meditation, I felt more energized even though I was sleeping less.
• Saves Time - even though time was used to actually do meditation - but because I was sleeping less, I had more time to do other things. And I was doing them with more focus.
• Blissful and Relaxed- I felt genuinely happier with everything else going on. Sometimes I could feel my face flowing from contentment.
• Centered - I felt more connected with my core and inner being.
• Health - which is the only proven “side effect” of mediation.
• Awareness and Creativity - People tend to be more alert to their environment and become more conscious and aware. Not to mention, you become more pleasant around other people.

The author asks a fundamental question, later:

We would waste hours browsing on-line or flip on the tv, but we would not spare 5-10 minutes of quality times with ourselves?

The author warns:

What I learned from this is that if we allowed ourselves to make even one excuse (no matter how minute), it’ll be a lot easier to buy into excuses the next time, and it’ll snowball from there. The trick is to form daily routines and do whatever it takes to “protect yourself” by not allowing your habit to be knocked off.

Another Great Suggestion

Whenever you get depressed or disappointed at your ridicule or doing the same silly thing again and again, say to yourself:

under construction and calm down.

Mine would be:

Michael under construction

:-). Thanks to Reason4smile for the suggestion.

Feeling Guilty?

In a nutshell, this is what causes disappointment - when you regret something, you are feeling guilty. And this guilty feeling has eaten so much of me that whenever I sit to do something, I feel guilty of the possibility of not doing it properly, guilty of not having done some other things, guilty of this confusion - quite an amount!!

Somebody has made an attempt to tackle this guilty feeling. It basically starts with all the symptoms that I have got:

Have you recently felt guilty for something you didn’t do? Guilty for not replying to emails? Guilty for not reaching all your goals for the day? Guilty for having spent hours browsing the web aimlessly and not having enough time to do something important? Guilty for telling someone you’d call, but never returning the call? Do you beat yourself up for it?

What happens with this guilty feeling:

Thoughts like these have the power to bring you down. They carry an energy that weighs down on your mind, because part of you is constantly thinking about it. The guilt begins popping up in everything you do.

The author observes the nature of the guilt:

Self Inflicted - All guilt is self-inflicted and created by the mind.
Open Issue - Guilt is often caused by open issues that were not addressed.
Feeling of Debt - Often times, we feel guilty out of a debt in our lives. Whether it’s social debt, monetary debt, or unfulfilled responsibilities.
More Beneath the Surface - The perceived problem causing the guilt is just on the surface. Typically, there are unresolved issues or other meaning beneath what we see on the surface.

And proposes some ways of dealing with guilt:

Fully Experiencing the Feeling - As with overcoming any emotion, the best way is to fully experience the feeling. Spend a few minutes in uninterrupted space, close your eyes, now fully and deeply feel the guilt surge over you.
Seek to Understand Why
Focus on What You Can Do Now - Focus on things you can do now, instead of things you have not done.
Brainstorm Action Items - What are some tasks you can do to remove this feeling of guilt? Write them down.
Prioritize - Once you have your list of action items, prioritize them in order of importance. What will cause the greatest relief of your pain?
Planning and Scheduling - Once you have your list of action items prioritized, schedule them into your calendar. Plan to tackle each one of these items, with the high priority tasks first.
Be Realistic - Realize that you only have a set amount of time each day. Be realistic with what you plan to get done. Please be gentle with yourself.

Then the author finally proposes a 6-step action plan for dealing with guilt (I am writing everything down here for my reference):

1. Create your guilt list: List out all the things you feel guilty about. Keep writing until you run out of guilt-related thoughts. Do not edit your thoughts. Write down whatever comes to mind. By having them laid out on paper, we can see them clearly, and come face-to-face with our self-inflicted guilt thoughts.
2. Brainstorm your guilt battle plan: For each guilt, ask yourself, “What can I do about it?” Describe the actions that you can take to eliminate or reduce this guilt. You might have to break the actions into smaller steps. If you’ve tried, but can’t find a resolving action, then list out positive and realistic statements to reason with this guilt. (Especially for the things that are in the past, which cannot be changed)
3. Create your values list: List out things most important to you, starting from the most important. I used the term things broadly, which can be replaced with people, feelings, opportunities, actions, and commitments that you value.
4. Fuel your values: For each item you most value, list out action items you would like to do which contributes towards that item.
5. Create a guilt reduction action plan: Scan through the action items from both lists. You might find some common action items that exist from both lists. Write these action items out on a separate sheet of paper. These are the higher priority action items that will give you the biggest return for your time, since they contribute towards things most important to you as well.
6. Habituate these changes: Put a weekly schedule beside each item from step 5. Even if you don’t do follow it, this will create the space in your awareness which will allow positive change to happen. (Using outlook calendar to keep track of schedules is a very good thing)

And finally, the author essentially says what I have told in my previous post, but in a better way:

Regardless of what we think the external circumstances are, the real cause of guilt lies within ourselves. We have the power to choose what to focus our attention on, but we often react instinctively and forget to control our perspective. And in the reactive patterns, we unconsciously give attention to guilt and accidentally welcome it into our inner space.

It is possible to stop yourself in your reaction, and witness your inner space as you react. With practice and conscious awareness, it is possible to undo our conditioning for instant reaction, and eventually eliminate guilt completely.

Came to Know About Quite A Few Things Today

Got a perspective on why meditation is important. Generally it is the impulsive reaction to things that causes stress, disappointment, depression - for example, we may feel like saying something (or not saying something!!) but later regret for it. We may feel like beating up somebody but regret for it, we may feel like doing it, but regret later. In all these examples, it is the impulsive mind that causes us to spring into action (or inaction!) which we would not have done if we are conscious and controlled about what we are doing.

That is where meditation comes in. Meditation is just active consciousness. Meditation is basically focusing on something intensely. If we diverge, we calmly bring our minds back onto the thing we are focusing. By repeatedly doing this, we become quite aware of ourselves as to why we do somethings (or not do somethings). We begin to slowly understand ourselves and learn to be at peace with ourselves. All it takes is some practice.

And one more revelation is that meditation need not be allocated some time for it. Meditation can be done while you are on move, can be done while you are working, can also be done while you are talking or about to get to sleep. But these won't be peaceful meditations as bringing focus onto something becomes a bit difficult in these cases.

So, the point to be carried away is that I should learn to meditate.

Psychology Today

on attention, meditation:

"Meditation is about paying attention," says Kabat-Zinn. Cultivating concentration doesn't just stabilize and clarify the mind, it can also improve creativity and productivity while enhancing relationships. Imagine if you actually paid attention 100 percent to your spouse!

The strategy that starts you on this road is mindfulness, which means both cultivating nonjudgmental awareness of a specific object and seeing deeply into things. A common approach is to focus on an object or on the sensations of your own breathing, noting every inhale and exhale, and patiently returning your attention to your breathing each time it wanders.

...you use the self-monitoring process that psychologists call metacognition: awareness of awareness. It's what lets you know when, on the one side, you're starting to drift off and need to muster fresh interest and, on the other, you're getting distracted and need to bring your attention back. As you gradually fine-tune your concentration, you notice the habitual chaos of your thoughts and, gradually, the calm that lies behind them. "Awareness trumps thoughts," says Kabat-Zinn, "because you can be aware of your thoughts."

Even among novices, studies show, a brief meditation session can be more effective than a nap in improving performance on tests that require concentration. But its benefits don't stop there. Meditation can radically transform emotion.

Meditation, however, promises to break this apparent chain reaction by allowing us to recognize "the spark before the flame." Through many hours of quietly observing the customary tyranny of the emotions, you may gradually familiarize yourself with the quiet of your mind—the part that one day might choose not to be tyrannized. Says Ricard, "You become familiar with the way emotions arise, how they can either overwhelm your mind or vanish without making an impact."

"Awareness gives you your life back. You can then decide what to do with it."

Some Revelations?

Today while I was about to sit for supper, I felt that everybody arrogantly asserts themselves. I was reading a blog and got this feeling.

I don't need to impress anybody. I don't need to worry that I am not like other people on this planet. I am unique in every respect. And I deserve it. I don't need to agree, I don't need to conform, I don't need to worry.

I am free, I am free.

What Chemicals?

I can explain myself in terms of these chemicals:

• Lots of Seratonine (which means loads of sleep)
• Very little Neropinephrine (which means lots of apathy and not interested in anything)
• Moderate Dopamine (which means some interest in getting excited and feeling good)

These are the three main chemicals that influence our feelings and emotions in mind.

Ways to Improve Learning

Scott H Young has an interesting piece on how to improve learning. He suggests some ways to improve our learning capabilities:

• Use holistic learning - relate what you have learnt with the things you already know. This will enhance our neural network connections.
• Visualize - even if it is difficult to visualize, persist and visualize. Visualizing information, by far, is the most efficient form of storing information, knowledge and its connections.
• Mindmap - where you take a pen and a paper and visualize it more concretely.
• Metaphors - try to find analogies - not only will it create Aha! moments, but also allows us to apply all those that is applicable to analogy.
• Test it - this is religiously followed in almost all the educational institutes - exercises.
• Teach it - explain it to some virtual person or to some actual person who wants to listen. It will really make you rethink in your terms which is what one should actually be doing while learning.
  

Some Techniques to Cope with ADHD

For those of us suffering from ADHD, there are some good techniques available to overcome it. Basically everything boils down to variety and curiosity to the mind.

• Play games - a good way to focus attention, divert from addiction etc.
• Think pictorially or visually - a good way to stimulate the brain.
• Solve Crossword Puzzles daily - a good way to stretch the brain.
• Take deep breaths - not only does it give more oxygen supply to the brain, but also increases awareness.
• Avoid toxins - like coffee, tea etc. as much as possible, Drink water instead.
• Practice multitask - this advice is different from other similar ones which say do multitask. Practicing always helps.
• Have a good posture - sit up straight.
• Think stretchingly - pick any two random objects and try to connect them. See as many relations as you can.
• Relax - do nothing.
• Do something new - like picking new routes, learning a new skill, doing an existing thing differently etc.
• Walk - increase the physical activity and keep yourself active.
• Eat often and in little amounts - eating large meals shunts blood to the digestive tract.
• Listen to different kinds of music.
• No substitute for practicing.
• Besides avoiding fat, avoid carbohydrates - as it ends up in sugar.
• Take a lot of Vitamin B

Some things

that I have realized today.

• Human beings, though have formed allegedly great societies, do not seem to be good at having a long term vision. Especially the mass Indians. Whatever they do is only for short term benefits and almost always leading to long term sorrow/pain to either themselves or others. That is the reason why, with only basic human instincts, it is difficult to sustain given the fact that a man can do a lot more in this modern age than in the stone age where is more challenged.
  
• Practice makes a man perfect. Look at the timing with which you do it. Look at the neat way in which you drive your bike. It is all just practice. If one keeps on practicing, then it will make the man indeed perfect. We don't sustain practice because we want instant gratification. Discipline is necessary to transcend basic human desires in order to achieve a much bigger feat which only a disciplined person can see better.
  
• While we are changing our habits, our minds give a lot of resistance. A hell lot of resistance in fact. Either we can succumb unconsciously or we can be conscious and endure the pain in opposing our neural network signals. Again, discipline and consciousness is necessary to do this. The moment we lose consciousness, we will be doing what we were doing. Also only through consciousness (of the fact that enduring the pain is the only way to break habit), things can be fun. It is a challenge to ourselves. We are fighting against ourselves.
  
• We are given a fixed time on this planet - say 70 years. How much of ourselves we can expose, how much of learning we can do and how much we can achieve is very important. We can either live unconsciously in the current societies with all the matrices shown by it or we can live consciously within our matrix. Yes, everything is a matrix. Instead of getting influenced by other matrices, its much better if we can be in our matrix itself. That will give long term happiness - of having achieved the things that we always wanted to.
  

At This Moment

When I am feeling like I have not felt before too often, when my mind seems to be free of some worries that hog me generally, when my mind has some confidence, a sense of sudden yet not fully comprehendible clarity, I have realized some things:

• It is very important to have a mind that is not used to routine. An open mind, a creative mind.
  
• Such a state of mind is necessary because I think it is a state that knows no hatred. It is a state that knows no jealousy. It is a state that has curiosity. It is a state that has some puzzlement. All these factors interplay and gives enough energy for us to focus on something intensely without being distracted by other external, ephemeral factors. And the more we concentrate, the more we understand and the more we understand, the more our revelations are and the more our revelations are the more is the joyous perspective towards life. And that is all what is needed.
• Do the things that are fun and only fun. What is fun for others may not be fun for you. Approach things with joy and an inquisitive mind.

To quote from Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory, it is very important to balance the id and super ego so that a sense of satisfaction is pursued.

Four Things

that are the characteristics of a great person - quality, care, meticulousness, exactitude. How does one get these attributes? Do they come naturally? What motivates a person to have/develop these attributes? Is it just a habit? Or a conscious decision to have it?

If it is just a habit, then how do those who don't have those habits start to inculcate them? What motivates them to cultivate those habits? What is that intrinsic motivational factor that keeps the spirit/soul kindled? How does one go about start answering the question?

So, for the nth time I have asked. :-) I have been leading an unconscious life for quite sometime in my life. Then suddenly, not sure when, I have become conscious. Then all the past seemed like a nightmare to me. Some amount (or rather a significant amount) of damage has already been happened. A great amount of effort has to be put in to overcome this past state and establish a healthy state. For that one should not worry. One should keep the mind relatively peaceful. One has to be at peace with oneself. Ditching old habits take time.

It is True That

you will see the same good old things daily around you, so it will raise the same bad old impulses, thoughts and hence the same bad old states of mind, but only if you are less awake.

But if we are more awake, things will change. Of course, you will still see the same good old things around you, but YOU WILL NOT ALLOW THE SAME BAD OLD IMPULSES AND THOUGHTS TO RAISE. You will force yourself to interpret the things in a different way - that wont hurt your mental health and helps you move forward. We have to make sure that we are more aware or more awake. Buddha, the illustrious one, used to say I too am a human, but I am just more awake than others.

How can we be more awake? More aware? For that do something weird. Wear a watch on the other hand, mark something on your hand, wear a band and such other crazy thing that will raise your consciousness anywhere, anytime. That way, you will remember that you have to be awake and want to interpret things differently.

Some Good Advice On Worry

I have finally found some good advice on worry. He has some very valid, yet common sensical (as usual), to make. Worry is a neurosis and it is a habit. It is not rid of by spending money. A habit has to be consciously gotten rid of. So whats the trick here?

Very simple - tell yourself "Let me worry later about this, for now let me do my job. I will, definitely come to it later, though". Silly as it may sound, it is very clever trick. I have been doing this since yesterday and the results are positive.

Contrary to the popular perceptions, the guy says that happiness is gotten by working hard is a myth. You are entitled to happiness no matter who you are and what you are. Nobody can deny that. Another popular perception that worrying serves a purpose is also a myth, says the guy. I myself believe both alleged myths. But it can be false.

Some bad habits

that I have noted earlier, but still lingering with me:

* Inferiority complex
* Low self esteem
* Attention deficit
* email addiction
* Carelessness
* Fear and hesitation
* Depression for no reason

I was wondering how will I push myself to get out of this. How to have a god damn positive outlook in life? I am convinced that having a positive outlook in life will definitely give me a lot of energy and open up a lot of options.

How to calm the flying mind and give it peace and optimism? To have a good world view. But seeing all the insanity around me daily, it is very difficult for me to have a positive outlook.

Free Your Mind

I need to free myself. Free thyself of what? Free thyself of old habits - of thought, of actions, of feelings, of emotions.

You are more self-conscious. Self consciousness is a gift not gotten by many people. If you can exploit/leverage it rightly, then you are the one. :-)

You take the work as burdensome so it becomes difficult to raise above your current level of imposed apparent limitations - whatever they may be. You need to see the work as fun.

How would you see the work as fun? Ah!! I think I have asked myself a very important question after a long time. Infact this question can be asked more generically. How do you see things as fun?

Not a Bad Job

If I look back on my blog, I realize that I have realized quite a few important things. :-) I also realize that it is worth continuing selfchat i.e. chatting with thyself. The only problem, as ever, is that things tend to get out of my mind very easily.

You Need To

have a goal, believe in it completely that it is an end worth achieving and have courage to achieve it. Courage - also means confidence in oneself. That is the most important form of courage necessary.

Or, does courage means only confidence in oneself?

Start with the fundamentals

What are the fundamentals upon which layers and layers of knowledge/skill/wisdom is laid? What is the most fundamental element of human advancement?

Emotional competence. Then concentration. Then thinking. Then critical thinking. Then creative thinking. Finally Responsible thinking.

Skills should develop in the given order. Otherwise, the layers of skills that develop will not sustain.

How to stick to new habits

I saw a good posting on lifehack.org today that says how to stick to your new habits and ditch the old ones. They are mostly common sensical, but they say the commonly overlooked ones are the obvious.

I am writing some of them here so that I don't lose track of them:

• Make it a 30 day habit.
• Keep it consistent - the environmental factors.
• Keep it daily - a lesser frequency won't make it sticky.
• Start simple - don't be overambitious in the beginning.
• Keep a remainder - this is the most common sensical thing.
• Use but - this seems to be a technique: when one is in a train of negative thoughts, interrupt them with but.
• Remove tempting elements from the environment
• Associate with role models
• Run it as an experiment - don't worry about the end result from the beginning, just continue with it for 30 days.
• Swish - a technique where one visualizes the -ve habit, then interrupts it with the +ve one and then at the end finally feeling very positive.

These are really good techniques - or hacks, to be precise. In fact it is also not wrong to keep all those one minute motivators handy so that it gives us some instant energy. I am gonna collect them and keep them somewhere.

What I am currently?

It looks like I am more unhappy about things, than I am happy. Why is it so? I am unhappy about the unconscious lives of the people surrounding me. Atleast that is what is my perception. I am unhappy about my unproductiveness. I am unhappy about the way morons keep progressing, while honest, straightforward people remain at the same level as they were. I am unhappy about the way people are so selfish without any care for the pain they inflict to others.

I am unhappy about the way I lead my life. I am unhappy about the way I spend my current moment, I am unhappy about thinking what to do in my current moment, I am unhappy about whatever I will do in the next moment. This way, I am not clear what I want exactly. Whoever I see/talk/encounter, I get a feeling that I am missing or have missed something in my life. Whatever comes to me I want it, but I don't care about it after sometime. I set some goals just like that and forget about it the next week. I have too much inferiority complex. I don't have commitment and discipline.

I am always unhappy about the present and crave for future. It was in my alma mater that I thought work life would be good, now here in work life, I am thinking some other kind of work life will be good. I am always chasing some vague dream, shaped only by some random impulses.

I keep thinking about all these things, yet I again think about them.

Endless desire

is the root cause for all the unhappiness. Be it in acquiring wealth, be it in having sex, be it in acquiring knowledge, endless desire is not worth it. At some point in time one has to be complacent with the knowledge.

Slow learning guy has posed an interesting question: will happiness lead to success or will success lead to happiness? May be it is either way round, provided that the end result of success really makes one happy.

There is some...

...insensible desire in me that makes me desire something which is not practically possible. I want to learn all things in a very small time. And I do somethings ostensibly.

Because of this desire, I have been wasting my time. Seeing all things at once, not sure what to start, get overwhelmed, get depressed and go to sleep. This is, in short, my vicious circle. I have to come out of this circle.

Also, no matter whoever says you can do something, you will have to experiment with it to find out. It is only by experimenting that one finds out whether one can do something or not. Atleast in this respect, what your instincts say may be wrong. Because instincts are, by nature, conservative. Instincts try to preserve your state so long as it is stable. It is you, with your consciousness, who have to push yourself. Can the meaning of life be framed like this?

Have patience in yourself. As usual, have some solid goals and move towards it.

I think

I have found my immediate goals:

Professional: To become a solid and highly professional software engineer. To be fast and dynamic and able to learn quickly.

Mental: To exercise critical thinking, creative thinking and independent thinking.

Physical: To flatten the stomach and exercise regularly.

Financial: Read up a lot of things and plan for future.

Social: To continue at the same pace for the moment.

What a disgusting day

Today was the most disappointing day. Shows some careless, shabby attitude that one is internally from. He kept seeing me. I really don't know why. Nevertheless, he was superb. He was fantastic. He was very caring. I was not that caring. I was jovial. I did not prepare well for the demo.

Something to think about. If one is really that shabby, then what use it is of a person in a project?
If one wants to rise to such heights, then one has to be really disciplined, committed and highly motivated enough.

First stop hating the job you are doing. That will ease the psyche off some tension and gives more joy. You are running a rat race. In fact, you don't even know which race you are running. That is a very bad thing. Whatever you see, you want it. Like a child. This is the big sucker of your time and energy. What should you be doing about it? Have goals. I was reading Robin Harris and he said analyzing the architecture is not his competence and requested someone to do that. He is clear about his job. He is clear about his core competencies. I am not clear about my goals. I am not clear about my core competencies. I should have some solid goals and need to have courage to follow my goals. For that you need to be very caring at your work. Do whatever you do with utmost care and love. It will give a lot of happiness. Start doing that first.

Vision (Contd...)

What is vision? Is it a description of our future? Is it our desire of a world view? What kind of mental object is vision? You see something in your mind. It feels very good to see it. It feels even good to have it in reality. So that becomes a vision. And we act upon ourselves and our surroundings to make it a reality only to feel good about it.

As I already mentioned, there are different facets to life. Each contributes on its own to make a man happy.

• Physical: Be physically strong. It keeps a person healthy and is the foundation for other pillars of life. Should flatten my stomach completely in another 2-3 years and have a strong body frame with muscle around my bones. It serves many purposes. Once I am healthy, I can concentrate my energies on other things and get them done easily. It also gives some kind of confidence and self esteem which boosts my ego and make me feel good. Whenever there is a drive to stay away from this actions, I should remember my vision reinforce it strongly in my mind, gather energy and start doing things. For this the vision should be appealing and feeling very good.
  
• The immediate goals are to make it a habit not to live without walking and Surya namaskarams in the morning except for the 10th,11th and 12th days in the fortnight. I think that is OK.
  
• To gradually stop eating junk food and resort to fruits vegetables and seeds.
• To practice some body stretching exercises while I am at my desk sitting for long long duration.
• To use stair case no matter whatever it takes at office and at home.
  
• Mental: This one is necessary and perhaps the most important one. Because this is the main driver of life. Hence it is of utmost importance to make sure that proper levels of mental health is maintained so that I don't lose control of myself. Once we lose control of ourselves, we become slaves of others, whoever that may be.
• The immediate goals are to improve my critical thinking, creative thinking and systems thinking skills. For that there is a need to short list some reading/learning material.
• To meditate deeply, no matter whatever are the distractions, at the time of prayer.
• To develop emotional competence so that the mind always stays in some form of positive state so as to carry with other aspects of life painlessly.
  
• Spiritual: What keeps my spirit high?
• To have some sense of control of us and our surroundings.
• To be very organized in life.
• To help others as much as possible.
• To contribute the best possible to the society.
• To dwell in some small small things that gives us short term happiness and relief.
• To have self discipline and to see it in action consciously.
• To perform my duties and responsibilities without any incident.
• To be very productive in getting things done.
  
• Professional: What are professional goals? I will have to think about this one.
  
• Ability to write solid code and a lot of code, quickly
  
• Ability to work with solid commitment
• Ability to think clearly
  
• Social:
• Personal:
• Financial:
• National:
  

Vision

What is my vision? (Now I have asked this question a lot of times and has cribbed about it a lot of times too). Or probably, the question I am asking is wrong.

If we use a divide and conquer approach, then there are many facets of life - professional, personal, social, physical, mental, spiritual. I can set vision for all of these facets. And recently I have given myself a 5 year time frame to change myself completely.

I find it rot to set a boring vision statement and move ahead. And whenever I think that I am 26, I don't find it so exciting to move into 30s, 40s and further into future. Because the future looks blank to me. I don't see a clear roadmap for my life. It seems mechanical to set a mission statement and set corresponding goals and move ahead. Lets analyze why I am so. Whenever I see somebody who is more stronger, having a good face, more fairer, having a girl friend, I feel very inferior to that person and wish I were that person. I know it does not make sense, I know my life is unique in every sense, but still I do that and feel depressed. May be it is because of strong neural network patterns, but that is the case.

Which aspects of your life are shallow? Which needs filling? If I may say so, everything. All aspects are shallow. This may not be a reality, but atleast that is what my mind perceives.

Things should always come top down. The big picture should be clear, first. Then we need to define goals that set us for the journey to that destiny that we envisaged.

After all, ultimately a person wants to be happy. If he is not happy, then there is no point in doing anything. There is a big difference between short term happiness and long term happiness. To get long term (and lasting) happiness, we need to give up short term happiness. If there is something that is finite in our lives, then that is time. Time is the only limiting resource that persuades us to make a choice among a set of possible alternatives.

I know that somethings can make me happy. Somethings can make me happy in the short term and somethings can make me, in the long term. But as I already said, achieving/pursuing short term happiness will trade long term happiness. By suffering to avoid short term happiness, we get long term happiness. Long term happiness cannot be gotten without a vision in life. Where as short term happiness can be gotten without a vision. I mean I can watch a movie, can have fun, can sleep well for long hours, can squander away my time without any incident. But long term happiness is something different. It is achieved only if man finds the purpose in his life, achieving which man accomplishes a sense of meaning for his life. Identifying that purpose and striving to achieve that purpose is what gives happiness. That happiness only/alone is worth it.

Man always finds a voidness in his life. That is just felt. It wont be so clear to him has to what is that voidness. That voidness returns as soon as the short term happiness fades away. If we try to fill that voidness by pursuing more short term happiness, then it will bring more voidness that leads to more disappointment. Once the mind is in a low vibration state, it continues to be in that state, unless some external force is applied. The external force should not be short term happiness, but a striving effort to find the long term purpose that fills the voidness in life.

In some ways, I can trust my instincts. If my instincts says that something is wrong or something is missing, then if not believing it blindly, I can atleast put some effort to verify such a claim (put forth by my inner me). Now why I am saying this? Because, I think I can use my instincts to guide my life. I can listen to what my instincts say about my vision and can follow it. May be I will be happy if I listen to my inner me and follow its instructions. In short, I can use it to set my vision.

There is some other thing in our minds called the spirit. Happiness is tied to it. No amount of non-spiritual stuff can make a person happy. I somehow suspect that spirit is closely tied to meaning in life. Once the meaning is accomplished, spirit is also kept high and it gives a lot of happiness.

If I want to trust my instincts, then I should not get swayed by others' actions. I will always have to trust my instinct. I should do what it says.

Something is missing

..in my life. I get swayed by things very easily. I have made my mind sponge for the entire duration of my past. It absorbs things very easily. It kind of tries to apply things onto itself. This is not good.

Like everybody else, I want recognition. I want to be recognized. Thanks to my culture, I never get to spend time with a girl and share myself before my marriage. That is one shallow thing in my life that continuously bugs me. After all isn't it in our instincts to mate? What else satisfies our egos more than mating with the opposite sex? Why is it recognized as a bad thing in our society? Why does the Indian society suppress it so badly? At least in this respect, most of the western societies have matured a lot. That suppressed feeling comes out in different ways (and the business sector cashes it in different ways too) and does not let an average minded Indian youth to give importance to education and his own life in the teenage. This has some serious implications.

Apart from that, I need to consistently chat with myself for some considerable amount of time. I want to pen down my thoughts vividly. It helps me to clear my mind and form a vision for my life. Yes, a vision is necessary. As the saying goes, plans are of no use, but planning is essential. I need to have a vision. Only with a vision, only with some precisely set goals can I act consistently. Just today, I saw a quote by Benjamin Disrael, the secret of success is the consistence of purpose.

Psyche

A bloody too many things are sitting in psyche. They keep dragging me down from doing what I want. I will have to slowly lessen the power of them and get rid of them. There are some wisdom things said over a period of years, but it just does not make its way into my head so easily. Probably because wisdom comes from experience. Anyway, the wisdom that directly matters here is that Thinking more than once about something is not worth it, unless you like to have that thought. What an enlightening thought!! Yet, I keep thinking about things more than once now and then.

These and some others are some tricks that has the potential to increase our productivity manifold. We only have to be patient enough/conscious enough to imbibe such tricks into our lifestyles. It does make a lot of difference to have these tricks in place and experience the magic they are doing.

I am responsible for what I am

I know this is a good old statement that has now lost its heat, I am looking at it from a different perspective. I create systems for myself with a hope to use them and then ditch them. Gradually all the systems lose their importance and become useless. In this way, all that I setup is being wasted just because I don't use them.

So, I think that setting up systems without critical thinking, will make it useless. Also, one needs to change something in his daily life consistently for him to see a change in his life.

Monotony is killing you

Schedule different kinds of activities and cherish.

1+1 = 3

This is not a mathematical equation. This is an investment equation. Or a systems equation. Two or more things come together and the result is something more than what the two can accomplish together. We know this all.

Every time I sit for doing something at home, I don't do it with a stress free mind. That, I believe, is because of more than one reason. I mean the causes are more than one.

• One is because lot of things are stuck in my psyche which is eating up time and energy.
• Because of my old neural network patterns.
• Because of some fear that I am not doing the right thing at the moment (related to the first one).
• Frequent visits to Mars.
  

She does everything she can

Yes!! She does everything she can. And she expresses her interest to live her life like something. Is it not in my hands to make her dreams true? Shouldn't I be assuring her that she will lead her life like the way she wants to? She has been facing a lot of difficulties since her childhood and even then she has successfully brought us up.

Yes, she has some taboos, yes she is strongly biased towards somethings, so what? I love her for what she is. I love her for whatever she will be.

I will make her dreams true. I will. It is only me who can do that. So, I cannot afford to waste my time. I have to be courageous, I have to be daring and I have to be confident. I need to have these traits in me, then only I can get what I want.

What do you learn from the fact that....

He read only 18 books this year? That slow and steady eventually wins the race.

So, remove those dissatisfactory set of thoughts and feelings from your mind and start reading things. You will be amazed to see the things you have achieved once you start doing this.

18 books in a year means close to 1.5 books in a month. Hmm.

Eshwar

This is Rajni Kanth's character in the film Chandramukhi. It is a very mature character. I can feel that character but not able to express it in words. Let me try to do some.

A logical person; uses reason. An astute observer of things happening around. Master of his subject. Yet a funny, humourous person. Gives importance to critical things and not to the silly things (I like this part). And an intelligent problem solver.

Rant

It seems that I think of something that I want to do that will make me happy, but then I dont have the self discipline to make it happen. That is all there is to it.

Apart from that I don't have a peaceful, healthy and quiet mind that can concentrate on one thing at a time. This wastes a lot of my bandwidth.

I should also collect all the wisdom given by others at one place. Like Arindam said, Keep all your eggs in one basket and watch the basket. It is very true.

Another thing is that I need to get things done. Irrespective of what my habituated mind says to me, I need to get things done. That alone makes me happy. That alone can get me forward.

You do what you must

I always keep trying to be somebody else, but if I think about it deeply, I realize that it is not possible. It is not possible to be somebody else. The mind with its neural network configurations - is US. It is not somebody else. You can only simulate/emulate somebody else upto some extent - uttering their statements, making their body movements, thinking about them day long etc. Apart from such wasteful moments, one cannot really be somebody else.

Self-consciousness is something that will make you or push you into doing somethings that you are not supposed to do if you were not conscious. I think, I now kind of understand this nugget. - you do what you must. That alone will make you happy. Other things cannot make you happy. Stop being somebody else and be yourself. Stop being afraid of being yourself. Be your friend, like yourself and grow yourself. Your life will be much much stress free.

Need to get priorities right

I need to get my priorities right. Nothing will happen if I stop making coffee at home.

I need to fill my jar with stones before filling it with pebbles or sand or water. I can see how the GTG system helps me in getting myself concentrate on filling with pebbles while leaving the rest of the things. This is very important. I realize it. Because of a lot of stress, I get tired very quickly. I need to get the stress out of my mind. Then only I can concentrate on other things.

So, from tomorrow onwards I will be starting out with what should I be doing in getting the stress out of my mind. I need to have proper systems in place for these things to work.

I want to liberate

I want to liberate from a lot of things that hold me back from realizing my full potential. I want to liberate myself from girls. I want to liberate myself from emotional fatigue. I want to liberate myself from all those stupid comparisons with others. I want to liberate myself from immature childish things (many) on which I waste time a lot. I want to liberate myself from hypocricy. I want to liberate myself from mediocrity. I want to liberate myself from depression. I want to liberate myself from fear. I want to get liberated. How? How do I get liberated? How do I become free of all these things?

I believe liberation comes from:

• Getting things done. That will liberate mind from a lot of things that have been hiding ever since.
  
• Good meditation. It will decrease the emotional fatigue to some extent.
  
• Reading fictional work. It will improve the concentration skills as well as not allow one to diverge to futile things.
  
• Exercise. It will supply more oxygen to the brain and let it work and think effectively, thus preventing one self from falling into the trap of melancholy.
• A TON of positive thinking in life.
• Socializing with people and opening up yourself with an open mind.

Having said all that, it seems a bit difficult to overcome history and move ahead. More practice and concentration needs to be put into this.

Two problems I found today

in me are:

• Attention syndrome
• If I take up something for doing, then I don't seem to be thinking well about it before committing it. If I end up aborting that job, it feels like hell sometimes.

Attention syndrome is too much in me. I have to meditate deeply from now-onwards to have focusing power. Having said that, I know that :

• I can do anything
• I need to be slow and do one thing at a time.
• Need to have some sense of priority.
  

Remember

to be:

• slow. No urgency. No hurry. Be cool and get things done in your pace.
• YOU.
  
• feeding a variety of things to your mind. Start reading a lot of fiction and watching a lot of different movies. You make your mind more flexible with that.
• Love what you do.
• sane in your mind. Don't imagine stupid things. Keep yourself busy most of the time so that your mind does not digress.
• Meditate and become stress free. Emotional fatigue is the cause of all problems.
  

Habits

I find that I am, now-a-days, starting to incorporate some good habits. Some of them are:

• Get up in the morning, on an average, at 6:30 AM
• Do exercise daily
• Stop eating junk food to an extent
• Stop drinking tea too much
• Eat nuts and seeds at night for dinner

I find this as a positive change. I have to do it more so that I can inculcate them into my lifestyle permanently.

But, I find one thing eating too much of my time and energy. It is too much self-consciousness. Another one is Ostentatiousness. I cannot seem to be without these for a consistent 10 minutes, which is very sad. What should I do to completely get away from it? Of course, I will have to progressively get away from it.

For the moment, I really don't see any solutions. But, I will sit on this one. I will think about it intensively and finally find some way out.

One way is to really focus on the subject at hand, contemplate what Atanu said (for every hour I spend, I will have to spend many more hours to really understand what I should learn from it) and apply it in this context.

Disappointment

Disappointment comes from either expecting too much from the self and not getting it or not committed enough to achieve the things planned. Disappointment comes from the sudden appearance of unexpected things and our sporadic reaction to them. This can take many forms. A seemingly unfitting one would be to have idle time, seek out things randomly, see/experience an unexpected one and behave sporadically. An idle mind (not able to see what next) is also a cause of disappointment. Spinning things in mind without getting them done is another cause for disappointment. Every time if comes to the mind, it reminds us that we are the same old person that we used to be and that there is no apparent change. The things can be anything. It can be bad habits, it can be fears, it can be pending todo things, it can be inferiority complexes, it can be bad memories so on and so forth. Of all disappointment comes from the lack of emotional intelligence. Our ability, or rather our inability, to respond appropriately to an impulse. The impulses are the ones that are mentioned above. The response is disappointment. So long as our response it bad, bad things cherish in our minds. Some way has to be found to change our response. One has to create a really good state of things(us, our things, our people) and convert all our responses to impulses as leading to our desired state. In that way all our thoughts, feelings always create positive energy in our minds as well as body. The challenge lies in taking all the seemingly (with the current state of mind) negative things and convert them (or rather reconfigure our minds' neural networks) to look like positive things ending up with a grin on the face. It is like using the same neural networks to change themselves. That is the power of consciousness. I will have to start thinking about these reconfigurations.

Emotional Intelligence

I have seen many books/articles/whatever that talk about emotional intelligence a lot and say that it is very important for success etc. But I have seen not a single source which talks about what to do, when things shove i.e. when without our consciousness, we tend to be taken over by our emotions wanting to meet some urge. At that time, our neo-cortex seems to lay dormant, not able to take control. What happens exactly at that moment? How do we get into doing those same things again? - the answer is naturally. Because, you were doing it till yesterday, you will do it today also. And if you don't resist it, you will do it tomorrow also. Probably it is as simple as that.

When the emotions are taking us up, hypnotizing us and letting us into doing what it wants to do, something has to be done. One rule of thumb is that if one can't find a generic solution, take up special cases and handle them separately. Eventually, you may find a pattern.

That said, I am tempted to write some general thoughts about it. :-) Whenever we are about to decide (either voluntarily or involuntarily) to do something that we regret later doing it, it is because of a lot of factors:

• As already said, it is because you have been doing it.
• The first thing is to become conscious about the fact that you are about to be entrapped.
• The next thing is to try to resist it. It can be through many ways:
• Through will power. It ceased to work for me.
• Through diversion. You strongly focus on something else that you completely forget about the current urge to give into it.
• Through reasoning. This is the most professional way of preventing one from giving into it, IMO. But it is very subjective. I mean, what reasons are you going to give? Say, take that habit for example. The moment has come when you started feeling the urge to give into it because you envisioned, heard, saw, touched, felt something that has invoked those hormones and is compelling you to go for it. What do you do? Emotions have completely taken control over you. Will you even have the consciousness to realize that you can invoke reason to get away from it?

What a beauty is it!! Emotions give control to reason and reason, once takes control, can tune emotions. How do we harness the power of it?

Office time

I was thinking that I, on an average, spend about an hour for teas/lunch/snacks/breakfast. If I stay in office from 10 AM to 6 PM i.e. for 8 hours, then 7 hours will be my work time. In that, if I work for 4 to 4.5 hours, the rest 2 to 2.5 hours will be for me to do some other work - lets say it is purely MissionA work. For that I need to collect somethings and read them during those times. I have created a tag called officeBreak in del.icio.us so that I can pick one and start reading them.

My timings for reading officeBreak items are:

• 10 to 12:30 PM is office work.
• 12:30 to 1 PM is officeBreak work.
• 1:45 to 2:30 PM is officeBreak work.
• 2:30 to 4:30 PM is office work.
• 4:30 to 5:00 PM is officeBreak work.
• 5:30 to -- is office work.

The Persistent Vision

I want to understand the world. I want to explain the world in my own terms. I want to propagate critical thinking in this world. Because I know that is how the world can be saved from our own insanity. I also know that I must be the change I wish to see in this world. I myself want to become a critical thinker. I want to become a brilliant, systemic thinker. I want to show by example how the world can prosper and things can improve by doing responsible and critical thinking. I can show that only by becoming a teacher. I want to be a teacher. Because I think that is where the true sharing of knowledge and more importantly wisdom takes place. I got it from a lot of my (direct or indirect) teachers.

I want to become one, but for that I need to improve myself. The current avatar of me is an avatar where I am being a Paarth asking questions, interpreting answers and understanding the world. There are a lot of Krishnas in this world from whom I learn. To me, everybody is a Krishna. I learn something from everybody. All the Krishnas teach me silently by doing, acting, talking, behaving. They all teach me either how to do something or how not to do something. Whether it be charm, courage or love or whatever, I learn a bit from everybody and everything - be it an object. I am in search of my knowledge and wisdom. I am constantly exploring my limits and pushing them. While all this is taking place, I am very cool. I am persistent. I know that true learning is not a trivial activity and that I need to be patient. I know that the bigger, better and wiser self is always just a second away from me. I am not overwhelmed by the vast amount of information or knowledge in front of me. I know that a man cannot learn all by himself. I also know that it is the basic principle behind all these specialized economies which has created miracles. I am in search of my specialized knowledge tree. I have not yet come to terms with it, but I know that I am going to, one day. I am like Socrates, always questioning. I never stop questioning and only by questioning, I like to pass on knowledge and wisdom.

I always wears a smile on my face, that reflects the peace inside me. That small, simple and great smile acknowledges my humbleness, my dignity, my maturity, my aplomb, my confidence, and my patience.

I meditate very deeply. I reunite with all of my energies during the meditation and becomes energetic. Whenever I see myself in a mirror, I get reminded of the fact that I have been sent down for a mission and I need to find it with full self-discipline.

I eat healthy foods and avoid junk food. I eat a lot of vegetables and fruits and nuts and seeds. I exercise daily. Every morning, I get up and deeply breathe. I then sit for about a couple of minutes, cools my waking evils, smiles and then starts the ritual.

Whenever a negative thought comes to my mind, I acknowledge that only through suffering that true growth happens. I asks what is it that I have to learn from those set of thoughts and how am I going to incorporate the newly realized knowledge.

I am very persistent in asking questions. I know that only questions can unlock the whole wealth of knowledge that is hidden from the human mind. So I persist in asking different kinds of questions, until the task gets done. I understand the importance of questions and respects them a lot.

I come along, have a majestic gait. I focus on anything like a laser. When I talk, I talk clearly, to the point and with an authoritative voice. I am very conscious about the things happening around me and am an astute observer. I plan everything properly and does the work accordingly. I have a very strong muscle body. I sit straight. I look like Michael Mukherjee. I am very courageous. I am not afraid of the little things. I am very confident. I believe in myself completely. I am fast, dynamic. I quickly grasp things, though at times I am slow only to understand things properly. I strongly believe in "Do whatever you are doing perfectly" philosophy. My schedule is like a black hole. Everything can go into it. I do a lot of things, yet after all done, I am still active, kicking and screaming with a lot of enthusiasm. I am not moved by the small little hyped things happening around me. I do everything properly and with full discipline. I have minimum common sense and expects the same from others. I see fun in everything I do. I care a lot about the nation. I never waste time. I keep thinking about something because I have a lot of things that I do not know and keep asking questions about them.

Beyond Positive thinking, 2

The future can only be changed by our thoughts and actions in the present.

Seize the day and put as little trust as you can in the morrow.

Unfinished business is a drain on your mental resources and a major source of time wasting worry.

For yesterday is a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision; But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day!

Your thoughts and actions inevitably create your future as well as your past.

Many people find that they are able to write about life events and feelings which they are much less happy to talk about. Write all of them down, which makes you feel less happy, regularly.

The only place where past still has any reality is in your mind.

If we could develop our abilities to remember all these sensations - the visual, the auditory, the kinesthetic - equally well, and choose which memories to recall at our will, how much richer will our lives be?

When you are immersed in it, depression does not seem to be like a choice. It feels much more like being "taken over" by something over which you have little or no control.

What activities of feelings have given you the greatest feelings of self-worth? Where are the good feelings, associated with them, located in the body?

The events of our lives are just things that happen. They only have a meaning, if we decide to give them one and we can choose what they mean. Each event only has the meaning you have decided to attach to it.

Empowering set of questions

• How could I use possibility questions to increase my creativity
• What must I do to make sure I remember this?
• How could I find new ways to enjoy being my true self?
• What must I do to feel good about myself.
• What new beliefs could be most useful to me?
• Which beliefs do I most need to change?
• How could I put more attention on my highest values?
• What do I need to do about this right now?
• How could I most enjoy developing new habits?
• What must I do to have more empowering thoughts?
  
• How can I easily let go of the past?
  
• What must I do to create a happy and inspiring future?
• When could writing my thoughts down be most useful?
• What must I do to remember to let go of less-than-useful feelings?
• How could I most easily release old feelings?
• What must I do to feel fulfilled?
• What new meanings can I find for things that I used to feel bad about?
• Which beliefs are most helpful to me right now?
  
  

I want

• to be a normal person
• to be always happy
• to feel always good
• to be with people as much as possible
• to be courageous
• to be fully confident of me
• to be free from "it".
• to focus on things other than me
• to be strong and muscled
• to be a clean, nice faced perclson
• to be able to concentrate on a thing for a long time
• to feel superior about myself
• to be free of my egotistic feelings
• to be active and vibrant
• to care for my near and dears
• to care for myself
• to be completely responsible for myself
• to see order and discipline in my life
• to be able to see and show what I am
• to be determined about my course of actions
• to believe in things only after careful judgement
• to be a very critical thinker
• to be a creative thinker
• to be able to socialize freely
• to be frank about my thoughts and actions w.r.t others
• to make decisions for myself aptly and quickly
• to have a good, empowering world view
• to respect all people and their opinions irrespective of who they are
• to get emotional with people at needy times
• to be open minded and willing to learn anything from anybody
• to mingle with people very easily
• to have some solid goals and a specific direction in my life
• to be a mature person giving right importance to things at right times
• to have reasonable expections about myself by consciously recognizing my capabilities at any given point of time.

I am

• an autist
• a melancholic
• am depressed
• feel lonely
• fearful
• not confident
• an addict
• too self conscious
• fat
• ugly faced
• always wandering
• feel inferior
• feel too much high about myself always
• am lazy
• have a wavering mind
• dont care for near and dears
• dont care for myself
• irresponsible about my future
• a mess
• an ostentatious person
• travel with the direction of wind
• believe in everything
• not a critical thinker
• not a creative thinker
• lacking in social intelligence
• a hesitant person
• indecisive most of the times
• not having a good world view
• am rude towards some people whom I dont like
• not emotional
• not open minded
• cannot mingle with people easily
• a person with no goals or direction
• immature
• have too much expectations about myself w.r.t output and performance

Beyond Positive thinking

A book, that I have started to read just today. So far, so good, but I have to do the exercises in the first chapter. I will thoroughly capture the salient points in the first chapter Who are You?:

The first chapter by asking that question, kind of makes you reveal the following things:

• Your thoughts and feelings about yourself
• Your beliefs
• Your values
• Your habits
  

Real security not lies in possessions or with people, but in the knowledge that whatever happens, you can deal with it.

Beliefs are a matter of choice. They can be held quite independently of facts. Choosing which beliefs to have is largely a matter of selecting suitable evidences from your experience of life.

The mind and body are part of the same system. If you change your mind, you change your body. If you change your body, you change your mind.

What you focus on, will increase in your life.

There is no such thing as a failure. There is only feedback.

Long term success requires commitment.

Self-empowerment means feeling in control of your key elements of life, being able to make sound and effective decisions, being clear about your core values, being able to create and maintain worthwhile relationships, having most of your attention on the present, dealing confidently with challenges.

Repitition with belief is one of the master keys to personal development.

The empowering questions are of two types: possibility questions and necessity questions which open up the thinking process and direct them respectively.

Your mind-body cannot tell the difference between a real event and a vividly-imagined one, so one can take that to advantage.

The way you think directly affects the way you act.

Everything we do because we put a greater value in doing it than in not doing it.

Habits happen out of our consciousness and that's why they are potentially dangerous. To first take control of a habit, one has to get fully conscious of what one is doing. Having got conscious about the habit, the important questions to ask about it are: What do I gain by doing this habit?, What would I lose by doing this habit?, What could I lost by not doing this habit?, What could I gain by not doing this habit?, Which of the important values does this habit violate or contradict? And at its place what would you choose to support your important values?

There is no need make any effort to break the old habit as long as you remember to keep bringing the new image (of doing the new habit or not doing the old habit and seeing/feeling all the advantages that come out of it) in mind.

Attempting to change the habits by will power alone is inviting failure.

Be patient with yourself, change one habit at a time and put your attention on how you want to be?

Review #2

This is review #2.

I completely forgot that I have listed some very low-level fundamental goals to achieve and just started spending the days in depression again. Thanks to my consciousness, I get to write this review reminding myself about the goals that I set for myself. Obviously I have to pick a couple or three to get started. I pick the following:

• GTD thing.
• To develop emotional competence.
• Setting SMART long term goals.

As for the GTD thing, I have already bought the necessary things, all I need to do is proceed further with the GTD chapters. I am going to continue jotting down the notes from the GTD book into the Kaizen book and review regularly.

And I am going to start reading the Emotional competence book by Goleman and see whether I find any nuggets in it.

The Intelligent Investor

I was reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. He contends that one who keeps his temperament and invests is more intelligent than the one who knows a lot more but gets swayed by the market fluctuations.

That kind of struck a chord in me (I say this everytime, don't I?). He who keeps his temperament is not only an intelligent investor but also an intelligent survivor. That is probably the real intelligence needed in today's world.

Time to remember?

Those horrible moments at IIT?

• Advanced Compilers course - The worst that could happen in my life.
• MTP - The most pathetic that could happen to my Prof.
• Bunking classes and sleeping - The most worthless phase of my life.
• Boasting in newsgroups - The most ostentatious phase of my life.

Just today, I found a quote from my Prof:

Life is all about achieving right balance - work, fun, duty towards others. Hope all of you achieve the balance that works best for you.

The three things to sincerely follow

• Always seek out truth by yourself. (Ryu Kunn also says this). Let not others' opinions/behaviors/actions flay your emotions.
  
• Have fun in everything you do. If it is not fun, then don't do it. Pursue happiness by looking for fun in the things you do.
• Constructing a world view is not a one time task. As one's knowledge and experiences grow, world view changes. So, to keep improving one's world view is to keep improving one's knowledge and experiences.
  

Review #1

So, I remember that I have set some goals for me to achieve and am working towards them. I kind of realize that among the C,P,O,R,D phases of getting something done, I have been seriously missing on the R (review) phase. I just don't seem to be reviewing the goals that I have set for me. Because of this, I keep forgetting them. When I look at them after a long time, it would already have lost the importance, rigor in it and thus gets lost from the conscious mind. This has happened a lot of times, in fact all the time.

The chapters from David are really simple yet eye opening. I am done with the third chapter and moving into further ones. I will finish that book, buy whatever containers that need to be bought and implement the system.

After all, it is in my hands to live the way I want to.

The List

The time is ripe for me to zero in on a list of things to do and be disciplined enough to achieve them. And I am confident that I am starting with really low level things that will act like pillars upon which I build other things.

• Clean up stuff and get a working GTG system up and running - do whatever it takes and buy whatever it needs. Just do it that's all - it's worth it. This is going to take some time.
• Read GTG and take necessary actions.
  
• Imbibe some timeless principles that works for success and keep practicing them.
• As of now, shortlist from The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.
• Also Beyond positive thinking book.
  
• Set some really long term goals that are convincing to me and make a solid plan to reach them.
• Think about what you want to become. Begin with the end in mind.
  
• Develop and master emotional competence.
• Read and understand the Working With Emotional Intelligence book.
  
• Set and develop some discipline.
• Decide what to do about it.
• Master time management.
• Decide what to do about it.
  
• Develop a dialog of positive thinking.
• Read The Power of Positive Thinking book. Buy it. Atleast read the soft copy for a while and after you like it, buy it.
  
• Develop a self-dialog to cut that.
• Decide what to do about it.
• Buy a good book on investments and economics and read them. This is very much necessary.
• Research and buy good books.
  
• Develop inclination towards some technical subjects in the field.
• Decide what to do about it.

Because, ideas do not flow all at a time, I should be prepared to fill these things at a later time also.

The day is coming, but still no progress

I have been planning to work hard during these lonely days and finish off some of the things that have been bogging me for long. But I still don't have a plan before me. I am going to do one now.

One logistic thing to do will be to get rid of all the distracting things surrounding me and keep only the things that I want to focus on.

Lets start with the end in mind. What are my goals? Say in this profession of computer science, what is it that you want to become? What are your area of interests? What interests you? Programming, Architecture, Linux, Security, Algorithms and Data Structures, Databases, Storage systems. But then, having too many things at a time has been confusing me for long. So, what are the things that I want to achieve during this one and a half months?

I , Myself

This post is about me. My noble me. My superior me.

This is just a stub

Positive Thinking, an Attitude

Yes, it is an attitude. It is a way of looking at things. It basically means seeing good in all the things that come across in my life.

This is a stub

Make yourself comfortable

This really matters. If I make myself comfortable, then I can concentrate on the work at hand with no distractions. Will continue on this. This is just a stub.

What If Today is Your Last Day?

This is one of the questions asked by all those self-improvement book authors. They don't help one in answering the question, but what they do is say Live your life as if it is the last day. Live it to the fullest. I sometimes wonder whether this question makes sense at all. Because when I think about answering this question, I start feeling sad..I am sad that this is my last day. I won't get a feel of living it to the fullest. I just get depressed. Even if I try to think what must I do, I don't get any answer. Stephen Covey has said Begin with the end in your mind. Kind of makes sense here. A couple of quotes flow in my mind to make this feel more important: Also, Design is getting here to there. Also, People with goals succeed because they know where they are going, it is as simple as that.

This is a topic, that I have been struggling with myself for so long. But I am not gonna leave it. I am gonna hold this and fight till I achieve success.

The Australian Cricket Team

There is something unique about their team that I don't see in any other team. First off, whenever they play cricket, it always seems that the other people are playing bad. Or my perception has to change. They always play good. Their body language, their commitment to cricket, their vibrancy, their care to not underestimate any team etc. all fascinate me without end.

Whenever they are batting they always make sure that they get as many runs as possible from every over. When they are bowling they always make sure to bowl as many dot balls as possible. That is a kind of micro-focus. Probably they have proved that it is necessary to achieve excellence. They never postpone things during match. Their principle seems to be that coming from vedas: The current ball is the only real ball.There is no previous ball and there is no next ball. Play the current ball fully as if it is the last ball. Wow!! I have heard this somewhere! In the book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari.

Anyway, Australians are undisputedly the champions of the world (in Cricket, of course). We, Indians are really second rate people.

Yes, Emotional Intelligence

Emotions have a very strong overriding effect on other mental activities. Out of the outcomes from an impulse - actions, thoughts, emotions - it is emotions that majorly pre-occupies the human mind, because it requires the least of energy to be applied. Emotions are our second nature. We can readily have them. Actions require physical energy to be applied and thoughts require mental energy to be applied. Emotions require almost nothing. :-) So, they easily to take over our minds.

I am not sure whether emotions and consciousness can co-exist with each other. May be they can. But I suspect that it is emotions that make us lose our consciousness. Thoughts and actions do not affect our consciousness, instead they try to keep/focus our consciousness further. Why do we lose consciousness when we feel? I have no answer.

So, I see emotional intelligence is a very very important part of our lives. We have to have it to achieve anything concrete.

Having fun

I recently saw this on Raganwald:

I’m just going to keep trying to find interesting problems to work on, and if one of them happens to change the world, then great. And if not, at least I’ll have had fun trying to solve some hard problems.

Fun trying to solve hard problems. That is the key sentence that shows the attitude of the person who makes the above statement. Often, I find that it is the attitude towards something that matters the most. How do we have the right attitude? To get an answer to this question, we should ask some more questions: how does we develop good/bad, right/wrong attitude towards something? It is the reponse for the impulse (or the input) that ultimately determines the attitude. It is a mix of things, actually. I mean the output from the brain for the imput(impulse) is a mix of things. Emotion, thought, action etc. each of which generates their own impulses and comes further outputs. We can leave that matter. How do we get the reaction or response to some impulse? It depends. The impulse can be new in which case, it depends on the current situation. If the impulse falls into one of the patterns, then associative memory comes into action. This applies for both conscious and sub-conscious mental activities.

The point that I am trying to drive home is that, if I can control the response to some impulse, then I can control the attitude that eventually comes out. Controlling responses to impulses require consciousness, discipline and courage especially if an impulse and its associated, unsolicited response is so automatic.

So, the question How to have the right attitude? kind of reduces to How to control the response to an impulse?. That is where Emotional Intelligence comes into picture. It is roughly defined as the ability to aptly reason with one's emotions and understand them and control them. Intelligence is the key word. It requires consciousness. Anything that lowers one's consciousness is probably not worth it.

So, having fun entails having the right attitude (I haven't defined it yet :-) ) which entails controlling ourselves.

Writing Something Concrete

Writing something concrete requires a continuous chunk of time filled with silence. It should bring home the point that I am trying to make. It should be about one and only one thing.

What are my interests?

I think I have the following interests:

• Science
• Philosophy
• India
• Economics
• Energy

I will update the lists and populate the sublists as time passes.