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.