I think...

I found one key reason for my disappointment, dissonance, depression etc. It is unnecessary, unwanted, meaningless, worthless thoughts, feelings and visualizations.

If such things are replaced by necessary, wanted, meaningful, worthy thoughts, feelings and visualizations, life would be more happy, fulfilling and thriving.

Keep this in your mind.

There are somethings

that I am not able to overcome or achieve:

• To plan things properly
• To venture into new things
• To manage my time and activities properly (related to the first one)

These things are there for a long time. How come I am going to transcend all of these?

OCD

is what I have. It is not depression. It looks like depression. It is not autism. It looks like autism. But in reality it is OCD. I need to be aware of this and control it myself. Because I know I can do this.

I Think

My current work is not so bad as I imagine. There are some good items worth working on. I just have to gather courage and move on.

If I assume that I am not going to move in another 5-6 months, then I will have to do my work faithfully, should not hate it and at the same time have an agenda for getting myself prepared well. That should be a solid unshakable agenda.

Anything can be done, but time should not be wasted.

I think there some kind of chicken and egg problem for me to break and move on. I envisage that I will change when I am in a new environment - new house, new city, new job, new friends etc. But To be in such a new environment, I first have to change myself. Then the current environment will also look new to me. I have to start changing. It is all in me.

I am in this environment for a reason. They are in such environments for a reason. Because we all deserve our respective environments. If we are better, we deserve better environments. If we demand more from ourselves, we get more. Otherwise, we will just be travelling along the direction of wind. There has to be a change. Change should come - in thoughts, in life style, in habits, in work, in mindset. Everything has to be new. But the new-ness should start from within. Then automatically new-ness will start without.

You need to have

that stubbornness to solve a problem at any given cost. This just can raise your level of thinking a lot - both emotionally and logically.

Vision

What do you want? Happiness. What keeps you happy? What makes you happy? My vision is pursuit of happiness. Short term happiness can be had, but not at the cost of long term happiness.

• A strong and healthy body makes me happy.
• Myself doing some research and hence contributing to the field of knowledge makes me happy.
• Playing a musical instrument makes me happy. Preferably saxophone or flute.
• Being a pucca engineer makes me happy. I strongly believe that engineering gives us a lot of values, skills and attitudes that help us a lot in leading our lives properly, efficiently and happily.
• Being a good critical thinker and be able to tackle complexity makes me happy.
• Being frank makes me happy.
• Being helping in nature to people makes me happy.
• Being emotionally stable makes me happy.
• Being fit(physically and mentally) enough to get a beautiful spouse makes me happy.
• Listening to some good songs makes me happy.
• Being able to make my mum happy makes me happy - to some extent.
• Being able to concentrate for long times makes me happy.
• Being able to read quite a few books makes me happy.
• Not getting addicted to Internet makes me happy.
• Being able to drive properly makes me happy.
• Exercising an open mind makes me happy in the long term - even though it results in stress/low esteem in the very short term.
• Getting things surrounding me organized makes me happy.
• Having a solid plan for execution makes me happy.
• Executing a solid plan with little deviations makes me happy - this is further testimonial for the engineering skills that gets developed in me.
• Eating healthy food and eating in a controlled fashion makes me happy.
• Not entertaining futile gestures and thoughts makes me happy afterwards.
• Working hard makes me happy in the long term, but definitely makes me sad in the short/immediate term.
• Being able to resist my temptations, through reasoning, from doing things that give short term happiness at the cost of long term happiness makes me happy.
• Being S.active makes me happier. :)
• Not getting afraid at the sight of new/challenging things makes me happy.
• Being a patient listener always makes me happy.

No Stupid Thoughts

No bullshit thoughts. Only vision oriented, goal oriented thoughts that to courageous and happy, humorous ones.

Just keep on rejecting futile gestures and futile thoughts from you and your mind will automatically become empty.

Bad Habits

I am slowly starting to sense how difficult it is to get rid of bad habits. Today, I dropped my relatives at the railway station and was returning home. While I was in the railway station, a thought occured to me that I could go to crossword and have a look at the new books. Two things here - I could not resist myself from entering crossword and once I was in, I was feeling bad to come out without buying any book. Without much thought, I spontaneously asked for a book, bought it, came out and sat in an rick. This is bad. This is really bad. I need to improve self control.

The other thing is that. I woke up and forcefully did it. It has become a compulsion for me. Clearly this is addiction. I need to get myself out of it. I will get out of it.

I am currently reading As A Man Thinketh and it repeats again and again that we are what we think. But, I kinda disagree with that. The actual thing is - we are what we thought and we will be what we think.

So, think good thoughts. Imagine yourself talking to yourself about getting rid of bad habits and seeing yourself not doing such things. Imagine yourself of doing problem solving, thinking about a vision, being a friendly guy with everybody, doing programming extensively, doing exercises etc. Then it will automatically become a reality.

Imagine what you want to be and believe that you are it. The habits won't let you do it, but you have to overcome them. It is through active thinking and imagining that old habits gradually fade away. To get some confidence, you can think about some of the past old habits that were ridden of. That way there is some positive outlook.

If I am to get any better, if I am to get any use of my reading the book, then I have to think new thoughts.

You see

It is just practice. Whether a chess grand master recognize a configuration in a flash of a second, whether somebody types fast, whether somebody codes a lot, whether somebody thinks some thoughts that others might not be able to, whether a cricketer throws a ball straight onto stumps, whether Federer incesstantly pours aces on his opponent, whether somebody is able to talk fluently, whether somebody is pretty disciplined, whether somebody is a master in the art of living...it is all just practice.

That is it, it is just practice. Only by doing practice will we become perfect. Otherwise we are effectively concentrating on the end instead of focusing on the means. Keep practicing..whatever it is..keep practicing.

My mind

is completely confused and utterly directionless. I have written about this before. But I am doing it again. I want to get hold of everything. I dont want to specialize in a particular thing because I seem to have insecurity. I am inherently insecure. I should do something to get out of this insecure feeling. I dont know this is the cause for zero state or the zero state is the main reason why I am insecure. I am not able to figure out.

Also, I need to have a solid vision. I need to get my past right. I mean whatever is haunting me, I need to fix it up. Otherwise, it seems like it will continue to haunt me forever. How am I going to do that? How am I going to fix it up? I dont know. But I have to do it.

I need peace of mind. I should not be disturbed by fellow beings. I should be inherently peaceful. That is the first and foremost thing that I should strive for. Next, I need to have a vision. A vision as to what my ultimate goal in life is, how am I going to achieve it. This is not just in professional case, but also in all other aspects like personal, financial, mental etc. But it looks like professional is the most significant things that needs to be achieved. I need to get peace of mind. May be it is not that difficult to have a peaceful vision and solid committment. I can do it. I believe strongly that I can achieve such a state of utopia. It is a positively reinforcing state of me. How good will it be if I have it. That world consists of just me and nobody else. Serenity is of atmost importance.

Addictive Thinking

I found a couple of documents that talk about addictive thinking. The author says that the key feature of addictive thinking is denial. That is, we deny whatever we don't want to consider. Another reason for addictive thinking is a feel good factor. It feels good to get into patterns of addictive thinking - and addictive behavior thereof. Just for that feel good factor, we deny the rationality, we deny the reality. In the end, we just become addicts.

There are some addictive thinking patterns:
Self-pity stance: We pity ourselves and wait for others to come and pity us - this is just wanting a reinforcing behavior externally, so that we can continue to keep ourselves in that stance.
Good person stance: We just focus on the good things that we do and ignore the bad things that we affect either directly or indirectly.
Unique person stance: A stance where one thinks that s/he is unique in facing such circumstances and so whatever s/he does is right or OK.
Fear of exposure: It is fear of self knowledge, excessive or inappropriate trust, addict pride or zero trust. I seem to have this zero state problem. Zero state is one that consists of the beliefs that - a) one cannot change, b) everyone also believes that s/he is worthless and c) the worthlessness will last forever and cannot change.
Lack of time perspective: This is a state where we neither learn from past mistakes or plan for the future. We want big success with little or no effort. We make choices based on what we want to be true rather than what is true. This is another pattern that seems to be the most common in me.

Other addicitive thinking patterns include - selective effort, use of deceit to control, seek pleasure first (the one that I can see in me), ownership stance. I don't seem to have the second and the last patterns. Will have to carefully observe how the first one manifests in me.

In short, I see that I have succumbed to my thinking patterns. I need to raise above them. Whenever I get at these things, I need to think and feel differently. I had, in the past, captured this particular thought in my remember notes:

When you feel inferior, when you feel dejected, when you feel disillusioned, when you feel anxious, that's when you have to feel different. That's when you have to gather courage and move forward. Thats when you grow, thats when you learn, thats when you mature.

Some more thoughts

about me.
Today I was observing the solution to the modified binary search problem. I thought that I was thinking why a binary search won't work, but I was not at all thinking how to modify the binary search. I saw it. Great to see that solution. So, I think my dont focus my energies on how to obtain a solution, but rather focus on some arbitrary things.
Another thing is my overwhelming at the sight of complexity. It just bogs me down. I fail to take control over such situations. I fail to acknowledge that to tackle complexity, the two necessary things are - abstraction and divide&conquer. With them, I can tackle anything.

Three keys to achievement

They are belief, action and timeliness.
This link puts beautifully what belief is. I have never seen such a beautiful definition anywhere.

Belief combines your thoughts and feelings, which go out before you, drawing those things to you that reinforce your essential beliefs.

The author goes on to say how the goals are affected by our beliefs. Again beautiful words, that I have never heard before:

Having set yourself a goal to achieve, you can just "believe" your goal into existence. If you totally and absolutely believe that whatever is needed to achieve that goal will manifest itself, then your goal will be achieved. The trick is in how well you "believe" - this requires absolute and utter conviction, absolutely no shadow of doubt, not the tiniest "if". It requires you to "know" the goal is true is sure as if you are seeing it now. It needs not just your thoughts but also your feelings aligned in "believing" that the goal already exists for you.

Believing is necessary, but action is even more necessary to make the belief a tangible reality. Ah, how fragile is reality - we can make it easily and we can break it too easily.

There are still some things..

that I am not consciously realizing...which I think I should have realized long before, if I concentrated on it. They are:

• Lack of fire in the .
• Setting non-SMART goals for each day
• Lack of courage
• Lack of planning
• Lack of emotional intelligence
• Lack of composure and calmness (mentally)

I was reading an article today in the morning, it says that the source of all illnesses is mind. With a proper frameset of mind, miracles can happen, with lack of proper mindset disasters will happen. It says that stress results not because of being busy all day or getting tired, stress results because of presence of contrasting beliefs in the mind pulling us in opposite directions. The article also cites a clean example - if you think that you will have to wake up for long hours and sleep early, there is stress. If you think that you will have to keep studying to get through in an interview and dont do that, there is stress. In that way, when we do something and we believe we should not be doing it, there is stress.

If I look back, there is just this in my life ever since I started doing that and became conscious about it. I always do something and later regret for not doing it. This IS what I keep doing all day long. No wonder, I get heart pains now. There is a lot of stress now in me. I need to free myself of it. There is a need to look at things differently. There is a need to be happy. There is a need to think positively.

There is also a need to have a proper goal. There is a need, before having a proper goal, to have fire in the belly. What is the sole purpose in life? What is the most important thing that you want to achieve before you die? You need to think about it.

There is absolutely no discipline in life, because of which things dont get done.There, there is some dissonance between the expected state of things and the actual state of things. Stress. Somtimes it is because of fear. Sometimes it is because of pessimism. Sometimes it is because of habits. Sometimes it is because of lack of discipline and sometimes it is because of over expectations. Whatever it is, there is dissonance and hence there is stress. So consciously, you have to get things done. Remember this.

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.