What to do when someone is refusing to learn their lesson

Are you well-fed or hungry? – Master Yourself

A must-listen for a very important ingredient for growth in life.

1. Are you well-fed or hungry? 06:13
2. An inspiring story of hope in the corporates 05:53
3. When life's not fair 04:39
4. What to do when someone is refusing to learn… 06:54
5. Knowledge is not power unless you have this 07:49

7th anniversary special :D

7 years and counting. Today it is 7 years since I published my first blog. When I started, I had no idea how long or how many will I post. But that’s the beauty. I covered the distance unknowingly, and effortlessly. Without anticipation, life seems to go more seamlessly. When we anticipate, there’s too much that goes into planning, and most of the planning is often around what might go wrong. We complicate simple things. When I look back, I see the transitions.

• Initially, I used to never post unless it was proofread by someone, to make it error proof. After sometime, I figured mistakes aren’t going to kill me. I was more open to learning from my mistakes rather than being hell bent on preventing them or perfecting something. I realised I was able to flow freely when I did that.
• In the initial days, I used to wonder how many reads, how many likes, what should I do to get more traffic. Today, I post because it feels like my diary of sorts, albeit an open one. Anyone who wants can read. So there’s no inner noise about numbers and views.
• I used to compare with others too, when I was new. I used to wonder how someone else was getting more traffic than mine. Today, I am not looking at anything else. I am just very focused on what I want to do and giving it my best. I found my love for writing. And everything else is just a blur.
• I used to think I was as good as the likes and views that I got. Today, I realise that everything is a perspective. Mine is one, a like or a dislike is one. Perspectives are perspectives. There are no goods and bads in it. Unless we use them in counterproductive ways. There’s a free state of mind.
• The biggest thing I realised is to keep going. Sometimes I know where, sometimes I don’t know too. But I keep going. I have reached here today. When someone first told me write a 150 blogs, it seemed like a mountain of a task. Today I don’t even realise how I moved past the numbers to reach where I have reached today.
• Last year I embarked on a challenge to write everyday. I did so for 100 days. It was a huge learning for me. I got the structure of commitment and discipline that even today helps me in so many different areas of my life.

My learning is, just to focus on one step at a time. One day at a time. Trusting myself. Being in touch with why I do what I do. And to challenge myself regularly. That’s all! The rest will be taken care of.

Thank you for stopping by and reading. Thank you for your feedback. It’s very kind of you to do so. It’s a diary that has connected me to the world that was earlier beyond my reach. Thank you for staying connected. 🙂

There are no good deeds?!

Should you search for yourself?

We have access to more than what we need today. And yet we feel incomplete. We have a lot but yet, the heart searches for something. Many are in search of something, some are in search of finding out themselves, who they are! It’s a great question. Ramana Maharshi, a great Indian philosopher, and saint also said, the most important question to ask ourselves is, “Who am I?” Constantly discovering ourselves and avoiding getting too attached to any of the labels, judgments, roles, or identities that we don in life. I think it’s a powerful search. 

In the process of this search, how are you being is worth considering perhaps? If one is irritable, impatient, judgmental about the rest, this search might take a mighty long time. And it might create a lot of chaos for self and others. Are we being grateful for whatever we already have in the pursuit of what we want to find? If not, we may be completely missing the point. Without gratitude, we not only miss understanding how beautiful this life is and misunderstand people but also go further away from finding anything meaningful or worth finding. 

To find abundance, one needs to be tuned to abundance, and believe in abundance. Likewise, to find anything, you gotta appreciate and believe in it. Our subconscious mind is more powerful than anything else. It will help you find only what you believe in. If you believe in miracles, it’ll help you locate more miracles. If you believe in the devil, it will help you find more of it. If you are fearful of what you may find, if you are resistant to opening up to the truth, you might just find more masks to shy away from it. 

If you are too particular and have too many criteria on how you want to find what you want to find, then there’s an implication: 

• If you are already sure of what it is
• If you are unable to appreciate other lives and others’ efforts around you
• If you see people as a hindrance to your search
• If you feel you need something else other than what you have

You are complicating the entire process.

For a seeker who is keen, every situation, every interaction, and every person is seen as an opportunity to further their search. They are open, kind, and considerate. 

A dismissive mindset unfortunately dismisses the very thing that you are searching for from right under your nose. 

In a quest to find something that you don’t understand, know, or have, don’t be dismissive of all the people, and blessings that you already have. It might just be a regret later. All of life is designed to help us find what we need. So, we can’t wish for all of it to go away.

May you find what you are searching for, and may you cherish what you already have. 

What are you reflecting to the world?

Do you know who you are becoming?

Whether you want it or not, whether you like it not, you are turning into that person whom you have a lot of emotions for – doesn’t matter whether it is love or hate. The more intense the emotion, the more likely you are becoming that person unconsciously. 

Ironically, for a lot of humans, negative emotions are held much stronger than positive emotions. For example, dislike for someone might be much more intense than love for someone. In which case, we might time out to become the one whom we dislike more than the one whom we like or idolize – if our negative emotions are stronger and more intense that is. 

Similarly, what or who do you talk about most often. People who inspire you or people who irritate you? Incidents that make you better or things that annoy you. 

What do you think of most often?

• Your misfortunes or your blessings?
• The strengths that helped you survive or what you don’t like in yourself?
• Your mistakes or your learnings.
• About your problems or finding solutions?

Whatever you do more of, is what you’ll be more of, find more of. Your present is determining your future. Not your past. The choices that you are making in the present, in terms of what you are paying attention to, what you are thinking about, and what you most often talk about is shaping who you are becoming. Watch out! And pay attention to what you are paying attention to!

Do you need to love someone to be kind?

Is it necessary to love someone to be kind to them?

Perhaps we need to love ourselves to be able to be kind to others. We may love many, but we are unable to be kind because we aren’t we aren’t kind to ourselves.

You need to know this if you have the fear of losing someone you love

As kids, we live mostly in the present. We don’t usually tend to have responsibilities or many cares to get carried away with. Hence, we tend to be more in the present and enjoy the simple pleasures of life. However, as we grow older, things change. We have responsibilities, dreams, future, and past to think about. And as we grow and get into strong attachments, the thought of death or loss seeps in too. Not so much our own death as much as the death of someone we love or losing someone we love. That thought becomes an acute fear for some of us too.

I had a friend who once made an SOS call to me. His father was diagnosed with a rare kind of disease and didn’t have much time to live. Perhaps a year was what the doctors had said. All hell broke loose for my friend. He was very attached to his father and couldn’t bear the thought of his death. He called me thinking I had lost my father already and dealt with that loss. So, he wanted to understand what’s that entire process going to be like.

Honestly, death and life mean different things to different people. Even if I go through a ton of deaths personally, I can never explain to someone how it would be like for them when they go through something similar. Each to their own is best applicable here. In fact, even though I dealt with one, I truly wouldn’t know how I would, the next one. I can imagine, dream, prepare, but nothing would be like the real experience.

Why is that? Because we have something called the ‘impact bias’. We over-estimate the impact or intensity of future emotional states based on our current understanding and current life situations. But when it finally happens, our estimation might not be even close to reality. That’s because as humans, we tend to rationalize anything that happens to us. As a result of it, we learn acceptance and understanding of the event. And hence, the emotions that we feel towards that incident, significantly reduce over time. The feeling might not go away but the intensity certainly comes down. We can’t hold on to the intensity of any feeling beyond a point because we tend to rationalize or add logic to make sense of whatever has happened to us. Hence, impact bias is called a bias. Not a reality. It is a misguided perception.

If someone means a lot today, I spend significant time with them and they make my life easy, I obviously cannot imagine living without them tomorrow. The thought itself may send shudders down my spine. But the good news is, god forbid, even if that happens one day, I won’t be as devastated as I imagined. I’ll quickly come to terms with reality and grab hold of myself. The time taken might differ from person to person. And how they make sense of it might differ, but we do tend to change the way we view it.

This holds true for our so-called good incidents or dreams coming true as well. We attach more significance to them and imagine ourselves being super happy when we would achieve something. But when it finally happens, we actually don’t feel as excited as we thought we’d be and the effect runs down pretty quickly too. That promotion that you always dreamt of, might have created happiness but only for a shorter period of time – until your mind finds something else to run after. The wedding that you always dreamt of too, has its effect only until a certain point. Once that effect wears off, you wake up from the fairy tale and may find reality business as usual for the most part.

So, rather than living in the fancy dreams or fears, if we recognize that this is the moment to seize since this is the only moment that’s real, life’s going to be quite stress-free. Also, you won’t save your happiness for a later date or postpone it for any reason. You will experience life in its full bloom right now.

Nothing is ever as good or as bad as we think them to be. Don’t try to prepare yourself for what might happen – life is preparing you anyways. Live this moment to the fullest. If you give it all you have, you won’t have the past to regret or the future to be fearful of. People come and people go, life continues to go on!

Some people have this black hole effect unconsciously. Are you one of them?

For the purposes of this article, we are going to use this particular definition of a black hole – which refers to a place where things are lost never to be seen again.

Which, in human terms means – are you one of those who commit and forget all about it. Or anything that comes to you can be forgotten since one cannot expect you to remember and return (in case of an object), or reply/respond appropriately (in case of communication), or realize (in terms of feedback). And all of this, not because you didn’t want to. You have the best of intentions always. But you may not be paying attention to some things in a manner that matters to people.

1. This means – if you borrow something, you are very less likely to remember to return it. Not that you intend to keep it, but just that it doesn’t occur to you to return it unless asked. And sometimes, not return it even upon asking since you may have misplaced it or damaged it.

2. In terms of phone calls, emails, messages are you one of those who follow one-way traffic rules? Where you can get in touch with people whenever you want, but it doesn’t hold true the other way? Again, not that you intended it that way. But you have unconsciously become one of those who only communicate when you are open for it and might miss calls from friends and family and forget to call back too. Another way is, regardless of what they say, you mostly have the same expression/response. So, they may find you unreadable and hence be led to assume that you don’t really care or understand.

3. In terms of feedback, any feedback that comes to you – it doesn’t affect you in any way. Your shell has become too thick over the years for various reasons. So, you continue to be the same despite several reminders and feedbacks from people. So, people may get frustrated trying to communicate with you. That’s because they do not know if there’s any point to it at all since there’s no response or reaction from you at a deeper level. Every time they talk to you about it, you give the same/similar response like the previous time and continue to repeat the same thing again in the future.

The next step in either of these cases is quite self-explanatory at one level – that you lose credibility. But that’s something we all are aware of, aren’t we? There’s more to this though.

The other repercussions are,

• You may miss out on important people you love.
• You might end up being alone, not because you don’t care. But because you never explicitly communicated and showed that you truly cared.
• You may either be over-confident of yourself as you don’t remember any of the things that matter to others. So, you may not even realize you are unconsciously hurting others.
• Or, you may lose confidence in yourself since you repeatedly keep hearing from people that they don’t trust you at some level. Whenever you commit, people might laugh it off and say, “As if that will ever happen. It’s okay! I know you!”
• You may feel bad that people find it difficult to trust you. Or people misunderstand you often despite your best intentions.

Hence, it is so important to not be a black hole – which means people should never feel communication with you is a lost cause or a pointless affair. It’s necessary to be more transparent, open, communicative, and expressive. It is not others’ responsibility to understand us. It is our responsibility to make ourselves understood. Secondly, if you think you have a chance of forgetting either keep reminders or ask to be reminded by the concerned person. Give importance to what matters to others. Only if it matters to you, will you keep your word at it. And the only way you can make it matter to you is respecting and valuing what people value – especially the ones who you care about. No matter what intentions we have, if we make it painful for others, we will be left with much pain eventually!

What’s the difference between loving and pampering?

It’s an important question to ask ourselves regularly if we are loving or pampering people in the name of love. As much as love is great, pampering has counter-productive efforts. Watch this video to know more about the difference between love and pampering and how you can play a better role with your loved ones: