Change is always challenge

Inertia is a BAD word. It can wreak havoc in your life. Sometimes getting out of bed and wearing your jogging shoes can seem to be the most difficult thing to do in life. Yet one day you are able to move yourself out of lethargy. You not only wear your shoes, you actually go for a 20 minute walk too. That day and the next day and the next day! You feel delighted. A sense of accomplishment engulfs you. The mega business order you bagged the previous week pales in comparison to the significance of this achievement! You tell yourself.. now only if I could continue this tomorrow and the day after and.. forever. And then disaster strikes!

The rain clouds appear out of nowhere. Or you sprain your leg. Or maybe you’re sent off on a week-long outstation tour. And you say.. “NO! After great difficulty I had gotten into this good routine and now it’s being disrupted even before I started following it properly! Maybe the morning walk won’t work out for me.. the evening gym routine is better..”. And guess what? You have to wait for another few months before you get into the evening routine!

Sounds familiar? Why is it that nature doesn’t seem to help us when we are all determined to change? It happens to us all the time doesn’t it? With great resolve, you decide to go on a diet and the next day you get an invitation for a mega party, one where you know the desert spread itself could send you into nirvana!

You’re a housewife and you finally decide you’ve got to get more active on Facebook and stay connected with your online friends. Barely a day after you start the routine the computer conks off. You decide that from today you’ll control your temper and be more calm and just then some bloke comes and does something so stupid that you find every reason to lose your cool and blow up on him!

You’ve heard change is difficult and now you understand why. You had probably bargained for your inability to fight inertia but didn’t factor in nature opposing every step of change you wanted to take. You feel helpless and tell yourself “This is unfair. I want to change and I can.. if only nature didn’t resist it so badly”. Worse still you decide to be happy with status quo “There’s no point” you feel, “I did give it a try, but things are not working out. Maybe I’ll try again some other day.”

Life is funny, isn’t it? And it doesn’t always seem fair either. Especially when it comes to change. As if it isn’t difficult enough to get into the change mindset, now nature wants to play spoilsport by resisting that change.

Your best bet is to accept this as another law of nature. And instead of labeling yourself as ‘unfortunate’, believe that the Universe has no prejudices against you. In fact the Universe itself is constantly changing. The world around us is a different place every second. Why would the Universe want to stop you from changing?

It wouldn’t. All it’s doing is testing you. Checking the strength of your resolve. Provoking you. Challenging you. Asking you if the change you seek is superficial or genuine. Assessing if you can endure the bigger challenges that lie ahead. Questioning your determination and shaking you up in the process.

The Universe wants a student that is ready. Whether you are or are not depends on how you respond to the resistance nature throws at you. You give up and it concludes that you’re not ready yet. It’s up to you to show the Universe how badly you want to change. If it rains, are you determined to replace your walk with an indoor workout? When you’re on a diet are you capable of turning down the party invitation or better still going for it and consciously skipping the heavy desert?

Yes, when you decide to change it will be a tug of war. Between you and Life. It may initially seem that Life has the upper hand. It is true that when you fight with Life, Life always wins. But remember, here the Universe is just playing a small game with you. It’s just pretending to be tough. Just stay put, remain focussed and very soon you’ll realize the resistance has disappeared and the process of change becomes so smooth you don’t even feel you’ve got to make any great effort.

You perhaps face these challenges everyday. The tug of war between you and the Universe is constantly on. Most of it is subconscious. And if you’re one of those busy stressed out people you probably won’t even pause and figure out what’s happening. All you’ll remember is that you kept trying different things and some things worked out and some things didn’t.

Next time you try something different, anticipate resistance. Be prepared for it. When the Universe resists, laugh it off. Pooh-pooh it! Don’t feel frustrated or angry or helpless. Feel amused instead. Put in that extra effort at staying put. Figure out your own way of tackling that resistance, consciously. Whatever you do, break the pattern of your usual thinking. If you can, enjoy the tug of war!

You do that, and this time you’re sure to win.. for a change!

Leap before you look

Look.. for the right job. Look.. for the right product. Look.. for the right relationship. Look here. Look there. Is life all about looking around? When will you stop looking and start doing?

You know what, sometimes it’s more exciting, when you have a good look.. RIGHT AFTER you’ve done something! So what if you end up saying “Look! What a mess I’ve created!” No problem. The world will respect you more for creating a mess and learning from it, than just fooling around watching other people create their mess!

True, life’s more unpredictable this way, you don’t know what might hit you! Well, you won’t know what might hit you anyway and life will always be unpredictable anyway, whether you look or you don’t. So why not skip the ‘looking’ part and straightaway cut to the ‘doing’ part? At least you’ll free up more time to DO more things!

Sure, when you just jump into something without really looking hard, you risk hurting yourself and making mistakes. But at least you’ll stop spinning around like a roulette wheel. And get down to making mistakes. And as long as you don’t hurt an arm and a leg, any mistake is worth making!

There is this ugly thing you may have heard of. It’s called ‘Procrastination’. It’s a more accurate way of expressing what you’re doing when you’re looking.. and looking. Looking for the right shoe to buy.. before you start jogging. Looking for the right gym to join.. before you start exercizing. Looking for the right day.. before you start Yoga. And when that habit bites you, you’ll realize that a month has passed away and you’re still looking.. and looking.

You might say, you need a little motivation before you start doing things. Till then you’d prefer looking. You need some adrenaline to get going. Right?

WRONG! You get the adrenaline by DOING, not by thinking. You DO things first and THEN you get excited about them. Let’s say you’ve been wanting to wash the car and vacuum clean it too! And you’re not too excited about the prospect. How do you get yourself to do it? Simple. DO IT! Don’t think. Don’t wait for the weather to be just right. Doing it will give you the energy. Doing it will break the inertia. Doing it will build the momentum. Doing it will give you the motivation to KEEP DOING IT!

Let’s say all you want to do is take your family out for a special dinner. But you don’t know where to take them. The choices are too confusing! There are over 25 places to choose from and they’re all over town. And they’re all very good! And you still don’t know if it’s better to do this next weekend or this weekend! Use the golden rule. Stop thinking. Stop looking. And START DRIVING! Just keep driving. As you drive you’ll start feeling good about the plan. And the place you’re going to spend the evening at will just emerge!

Or maybe you want to ask your classmate out for a date. And you’re thinking.. Should I? Should I not? Should I.. The roulette wheel begins! And before you realize, you would’ve thought of a hundred different ways of approaching her. Forget it Dude! Don’t think. Don’t rehearse. Just dial her number! She comes on the line.. just blurt your heart out.. spontaneously! There are only two things that can happen. Either you would’ve just hit it out with her. Or you’ll have one less way of approaching someone for your next date.

When we were in school, we were taught something else “Look before you leap!”. Sure, suit yourself! In real life we learn teamwork is indispensible. In school, they called that cheating. In real life mistakes are invaluable to learning. In school we were penalized for making them. Most exams in school were based on how well we memorized the answers and the methods to solve the problem. Real life on the other hand is one big open book exam!  School did teach us a lot of valuable things, but sometimes it helps to improvise on that learning and also learn from what the Classroom of Life has to teach us.

Just remember one thing. Life is always a Win Win game. Always! You do something. It works out. YOU WIN! You do something. It fails miserably. You become wiser. YOU STILL WIN!

Where does the looking part really fit into Life? I don’t understand! Tell me, if you know. Honestly, that’s the only thing I’m looking for..

All the time in the world

Why is it that some people are always cribbing about lack of time and there are others who seem to have it in abundance? They say people who crib about lack of time are actually disorganized, inefficient, lazy. I thought – shouldn’t it be the other way round? People who have lots of time probably have it because either they have nothing to do or are actually disorganized, inefficient and lazy and are not doing what they’re supposed to be doing!

In fact I went one step ahead – I felt God ought to give the first group MORE time to finish the things they want to do. Like maybe an extra hour every day. Isn’t that a pretty fair thing to expect? Ya, they are the ones who are working hard. And they could do with some extra time. They need it Man! Believe me, I even know what these people need more time for.. I happen to be one of them!

To begin with, I definitely need 10 more minutes to sleep. And I’m always late for meetings – strangely every time by about 15 minutes. And when dinner is served I usually need at least 5 more minutes to finish work and shut down the Laptop. And hey, I forgot – what about the extra 10 minutes I need to finish my game of Sudoku! Thank goodness I remembered that! Now let’s see – that’s forty minutes in my case, but I think an extra hour is pretty reasonable to expect.

And never mind those people who say that nobody has ‘less’ or ‘more’ time and that everyone gets exactly twenty-four hours a day, nothing more, nothing less. I KNOW THAT! That’s exactly why I’m asking for an extra hour.

Guess what? I already discussed this proposal with God. And he told me “Are you nuts? That’ll be an HR nightmare!”. It was impractical, he thought. He said, what about the folks who need, like an extra day every month? And those who need an extra month, every year? They’ll all start making demands too, won’t they? It’ll never stop there either!

So I asked God, if there was an alternate solution. And he said, there is one which a lot of people use. And that is to stop fooling yourself into thinking that you have no time to do something and start accepting that you don’t actually want to do that thing. And then the next step being to DECIDE to not do that thing, rather than crib about not being able to do it. I tried that, the next time I felt the lack of time.

It was my daughter’s birthday. She was turning two and we were supposed to decorate the house with typical party decoration material for a birthday party that evening. At first I thought – “I need to finish preparing this presentation today; I don’t really have the time to put up all this decoration!”  Then I rephrased it. “I want my daughter’s birthday party to be really fun, but I consider finishing my presentation far too important to inconvenience myself by taking a break and putting up the decoration.” 

And that really showed me how much I was bullsh*tting myself. That pause to think, that comparison helped me understand my priorities. And I’m not saying your child’s birthday has to be more important than your work. I think it’s perfectly fine if you choose to spend time doing your official work all day on such an occasion. As long as you’re actually doing the work. And you think it is really important. There’s no golden rule there. You know best what you want to do with your time.

What’s important is to not pretend to be busy, in your mind. And not kid yourself into believing that there is something called a shortage of time. And please don’t say that you don’t have time to pray to God! I’m telling you that’ll really upset HIM!

Just say “I want to pray to God, but I’m choosing to skip the routine because I consider at least a hundred other things (like playing Sudoku) more important to be done in that time.” Or whatever you think is the reason. I think HE’ll be fine with that.

Use your Brains. All Three of them

Next time someone asks you ‘Do you have brains?’, tell them you have THREE of them. Yes you really do. We all have three brains, one in the head, one in the heart and one in the gut. No kidding! It’s a proven fact of neurological science. And it’s also proven that the brains in the heart and the gut are far more powerful than the one in the head!

Tomorrow is an Illusion

Life is far too precious for me to put off to tomorrow. But I did try.. mind you. Many years ago, I convinced myself that there are a million other things more important today than living my life. And I promised myself that I would live life to the fullest.. tomorrow! And I waited.. and waited.. and waited. But tomorrow never came! While I was busy working and worrying and fire-fighting, Life kept waiting for me.

very very good

NICE

Hey Sumit.

Great going.

Keep it up.

 nice

Thanks for Sharing such wonderful thoughts...

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