When I think of life, I can’t help but notice that it is very repetitive, and predictable to a certain extent. If you see with a curious eye and grasp with an open mind, you too will understand. 

I don’t mean that we can predict what things will happen. We don’t know whether tomorrow will be a good day or a bad day. We can’t say the same about the upcoming weeks, months or even years. But we can say with utmost certainty that no matter what happens, there will come some good times. We will inevitably encounter days that are going perfectly, we feel our best and even people around us are behaving supportively. And as certain as the sun will rise up tomorrow morning, there will also come some bad times. You will find yourself into a pit of emptiness, or chaos. Where nothing will seem to be working or getting better. Neither the people around you will be helping nor would you be feeling the energy to make things happen yourself. 

And as God is my witness, after some time, the good times will come back again. You WILL eventually find balance and sort through the chaos. You will create new structures in life that will help you solve the current problems. 

Dear readers, good times and bad times are cyclical, all throughout your life. This cycle is inevitable. It is prevalent all across. It’s almost like the seasons in a year. You can bet your fortune on the fact that no matter how sunny the summers are right now, winters will turn right up at your doorstep in some months. And will then pave way for the great spring to blossom. Just like in nature, our life also has seasons. 

BUT what does this mean? How is it helpful?

Here I would like to introduce the adage of a wise farmer. This poor farmer is diligent, hardworking and loyal towards his work and family, but he is subject to all the hardships that life brings with it. He too comes across good seasons and bad seasons. Some seasons are ideal for sowing seeds, good for the harvest. But some seasons are merciless and rain on his parade every time he invests his blood and sweat into the land. 

But the farmer is wise. He knows that he cannot always change the nature of things. But he knows that he can align his own actions with nature in a way that best benefits him. Therefore when the season is right for sowing, he blocks out every other impulse/temptation/commitment from his life. He moves out of his house and sleeps in a tent. And he pours all of his heart and soul into sowing as many seeds into the ground as his hours allow. This farmer knows that if he sows to his maximum potential when the season is right, he will not have to starve during the season; that’s merciless to all the other sincere yet clueless farmers. He knows the power of timing and the importance of investing all that you’ve got when you see the perfect opportunity. 

Moreover he also knows during the drought that no matter how bad the winds & the skies look, he doesn’t need to worry or judge his own capabilities. Because soon enough a favourable season will arrive. And until the time it doesn’t come, he and his family can feed off his labour from the last good season. That’s the definition of ‘wise’ according to me. 

So next time when you’re going through a rough patch, remember this adage. Remember, by keeping calm and not judging your capabilities, you can conserve the strength and energy you will need when times get good again. And times WILL turn around, for sure. 

When they do, roll up your sleeves, forget about the past and put in so much work, so much dedication, so much focus and sheer commitment that by the time that season is over, you will have created enough results to last you and yours for many seasons to come. 

Just remember, when it’s winter, some people hide inside their homes, unable to move about. While some people come out and play with the snow. 

“Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for fewer problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge, wish for more wisdom.” – Jim Rohn.

The ideas I’m about to elaborate here are a cocktail of different insights compiled from various sources. But I have recently come to a conclusion that the specific ingredients I’m about to mention below, are the right set of ingredients required to get the taste of ‘Achievement’.

First, taking a note from Robin Sharma’s book “The 5AM Club”, I will talk about the 3-step success formula.

Robin writes – Better Daily Awareness leads to Better Daily Choices which lead to Better Daily Results.

The beginning of transformation is the increase of perception. As you see more you can materialize more. And once you know better you can achieve bigger. The great women and men of the world – the ones responsible for the magical symphonies, the beautiful movements, the advancements of science and the progress of technology – started by reengineering their thinking and reinventing their awareness. In so doing, they entered a secret universe that the majority could not perceive. And this, in turn, allowed them to make the daily choices few choose to make. Which, automatically, delivered the daily results few get to experience.

You may ask, what does ‘Daily Awareness’ or the ‘increase of perception’ mean?

This means a profound and innate understanding of your own potential, the real opportunities that lie in front of you and the limited time you have left in this life – and having this understanding on a Daily basis. It’s that kind of a truth that which if you knew – you would automatically take action. No question about it. It’s like – if you saw a Rupee 2000 note (or a $100 bill) floating by in the air, you would automatically grab it, wouldn’t you? It’s a matter of ‘OCCURING’ or ‘CLEARING’ (distinctions from Landmark Forum), which means how something is perceived by you. If it is perceived as something important, urgent and within your grasp – no doubt you will go for it. If it is perceived as something pleasurable, you will do it all the more.

So the idea is if you have a better daily awareness of your potential to transform your life as well as the urgency to – you will inevitably make better daily choices and that would lead to better daily results.

If the above is pretty clear, you need to understand the concept of ‘Day Stacking’.

An average life is basically made up of 25000 TODAYS. Or if I talk about myself, there’s about 15000 todays left. (I’m 30 years old). So every today is a microcosm of my real life. No joke. This can be daunting, but within this insight lies the most potent personal transformation idea. If I want to improve my life, I have to start by improving my days, in a very real sense. Own your day, own your life. Robin writes:

Remember that each of your prized days represents your precious life in miniature. As you live each day, so you craft your life. We all are so focused on pursuing our futures that we generally ignore the exceedingly important value of a single day. And yet, what we are doing today is creating our future.

What you need to do to pretty much guarantee a hugely successful and a splendidly meaningful life is Own the Day. Make those 1% course corrections and improvements over each 24-hour allotment you receive, and these days will slip into weeks and your weeks into months and your months will slip into your years. The main point is take your days very seriously. Concentrate monomaniacally on creating great days – and they’ll stack into a gorgeous life.

If you have read this post so far, then you understand that better daily awareness leads to better daily choices which lead to better daily results. And better daily results stack up into a transformed life. This all works like clockwork.

But now the question is how to cultivate better daily awareness, since that seems to be the first step of it all?

There could be many answers, and the perfect answer as per Robin Sharma is to install a rock-solid morning routine, preferably starting at 5 am daily.

While I agree that morning routines are essential, I am going to simply mention the two things that unfailingly work for me and my life.

1. Having slept a full 8 or more hours; and
2. Having conversations with Achievers (other people who’re going HARD at accomplishing big things in their life)

Doing these two activities, I have consistently seen an immediate and significant impact on my awareness of the possibility of life and my potential to seize that opportunity. I am immediately fired up and inspired as a result of the above two interventions. It works like clockwork.

There is good reason for the above to be true.

Having a fit body and a healthy brain does have impact on your mental clarity and general mood & focus. And being in the rested state is the necessary condition for creativity and imagination to flourish. Sleep just happens to be one of the pieces in the health puzzle. But it’s one that works the most significantly for me. If I must take it to the next level, I have seen similar improvements to my daily awareness when I’ve held a regular practice of healthy eating and exercise. The only difference is the results start showing after I’ve run the routine for some amount of time – few weeks or so. But it does have a big impact on the way I see life. I start seeing a life of more possibility.

And the other point on having deep conversations with Achievers is of course a testament of the old adage – “You are the average of the 5 people you spend most time with” OR “You become who you surround yourself with”. I don’t know for what reason, but countless of books and research and anecdotes have proven and demonstrated, that being in the presence of other people who are successful makes you successful. They don’t even have to be in the same industry or to be trying to achieve the same thing as you. They just need to be driven and be getting results. Success begets success.

If you have clearly understood the MONUMENTAL significance of better daily awareness and Day Stacking, and you are clear that managing your health and conversations can greatly impact the quality of your daily awareness, you are now ready to listen to the most elite level insight I have thus far on the topic of motivation and achievement.

It relates to Momentum and Inertia. Success is all about momentum. You want to achieve something big, start small, get small wins, that will propel you to take further action, thus setting the stage for bigger wins, and before you realize it, you’d be riding a wave, where taking action is easier than not taking action, you’re just in flow; things become simpler, decisions become easier, energy becomes available, and you make massive gains and progress.

All of this continues, of course, until you stop. And the moment you stop, Inertia sets in. You suddenly feel sluggish, you start seeing all the reasons why it won’t work, your focus goes towards your weaknesses and starting again becomes hard, most importantly your worldview or Occurring starts to change, you feel that the whole idea of trying to succeed was stupid or far-fetched, you feel all kinds of bad.

Depending on what kind of person you are, you can experience momentum and inertia for varying lengths of time. Some people ride the wave of momentum for weeks or months and fall back into inertia only couple of times a year. However I find myself going through momentum and inertia multiple times throughout every single day. The most important insight I have is that my worldview changes in accordance with which phase I’m in. The problem is that when I’m in inertia, not only am I held down by the natural forces of inertia but I also see the world in a way that suggests that there’s no way I can succeed in my goals even if I tried.

This experience remains even after having done various kinds of self-improvement trainings and learning various ways to maintain a positive outlook.

But the reality is that every thought that I get (every fear, every doubt, every conclusion about my impotence), every thought that I get while I’m out of momentum and not in action-taking mode, is unreal and a lie. It is not representative of the true issue at hand. It’s chatter of the mind. It’s where my psyche goes when it’s feeling most uncomfortable. It’s my safe space.

The best way I have found to reboot when I’m in inertia, is to ‘Break State’. This means to radically and often violently change the state I’m in (physically and/or mentally) and begin working on the task in front of me. Honestly, ‘Starting’ is the only thing that requires any energy, because when I’ve begun, I soon find myself riding the wave of Momentum.

I’ve seen this same pattern repeat so many times that I’ve come to understand that there’s nothing like potential or lack thereof, it’s only ‘how much time you can spend in the Flow of Momentum’. That’s what determines success, the hours you were able to put in. Nothing else.

This also means, all the downer feelings I feel when I’m not working, or am in inertia so-to-say, all those feelings are meaningless. Because they’re not real, they just come along with the package called Inertia. They don’t mean anything. I need not attach any significance to those constant bouts of self-doubt, fear, guilt, shame etc. I just need to snap myself out of it by breaking state, and getting back to work, where I’ll find momentum.

And if I can find enough momentum, then my results snowball into something larger than I could imagine.

Summary

So in the end it’s simple. If I wish to have a great life, I need to stack up great days. And great days are a result of right daily choices which naturally follow better daily awareness. And in order to make sure that I am in touch with (Aware) my potential and the shortness of life DAILY, I must sleep for more than 8 hours (or lead a healthy lifestyle, generally speaking) as well as strike conversations with others who’re on the same inspired path as I am (surrounding myself with Achievers). With the above insights as context, I need to follow the simple method of breaking Inertia and finding Momentum to actually follow through on my actions.

This, plus some luck, should do the trick!

Not that I’m too old now (as I write this blog post), but the last 5 years have come as a surprise. A surprise I would have been better off without.

I think no matter what age we are, we always think that we are very wise and have learnt many good lessons about life. But in reality we are very naive, and we realize this only after a few years pass by. Wisdom is mostly realized as an afterthought.

But anyway, my 24 year old self was not too far behind either. He was a smart guy. Quick with the words. Heavily committed to everything he was involved with. A romantic. An idealist. An apprentice in many disciplines. I was in my Masters program at that time. An MBA was the dream and I was living it. I literally believed that I had made it. Well, I had definitely made something, it was just not ‘it’.

Knowing now what I know, this is what I’d say to my younger self. If only he’d listen…

1. You are not going fast enough. I know you think you are doing a lot of things and juggling a lot of balls in the air. Whatever it is, it’s not enough. At least, it’s not focused towards a specific meaningful direction. It’s scattered. I know there are so many things and experiences you want to explore. But listen, you have a tendency of getting lost into your own bliss. And that ain’t good for the wallet. Keep a mean face on, learn the hard skills, get involved in tricky projects, be humble and learn from others. Later in your career you will spend a good amount of time loathing the phrase “when rubber hits the road”. Well, you can’t avoid it, you can just delay it. But don’t do that. Become focused voluntarily (even if it comes at the expense of some things)
2. There are some things that you can do better than most others. These are your talents. The unique gifts that you have. DO NOT underestimate them. You must not undersell them either. You have something that the others don’t, and that’s damn special in and of itself. You would be well served if you took these talents seriously. And while we’re on this subject, don’t be afraid to monetize your talents. You display these talents all day long anyway, so might as well be paid for it. Think. You’re an MBA grad. Use your brains. This makes a lot of business sense.
3. Try and be more sociable. I know you don’t struggle in this area. You party often enough and you have no difficulty in making or keeping friends. But you also know that you open up to only a few people. Your inner circle. And to the others you are only a character. A character that they indeed are fond of, but not the real and complete you. Let them see you. Expose yourself. Because only then you can give them the comfort to expose themselves. And no matter what you believe, you can learn more from other people than you can learn from all the books in the world.
4. Love sparingly. You are a lover by nature. You give it your all. Once you’re convinced that you love someone or something, you see no distinction between yourself and the one you love. While this is a beautiful thing and I don’t want you to lose this side of you, it is also one of your most vulnerable facets. Many a times, people who are ‘givers’ are subject to indifference (at best) and exploitation (at worst). I know this is a bleak worldview but the best thing for you would be to love yourself equally as you love others.
5. Money and physical fitness will always slip out of your hands if you don’t keep your fists clenched. So, start early. Develop a rock solid fitness routine and never ever miss a day. Similarly, start saving money. I know you don’t have much of it right now, but it’s coming your way. And when it does, it’s important for you to hold tight to it. Because it’s not important how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep.
6. You have a yearning to be free. And to find yourself. Travel will be your saving grace whenever you are down and low. You will experience such things on your travels that normal city life will never even come close to. Hence it is important that you keep travel as a central part of your life. Any money spent on travel is returned in multi-folds.
7. It is possible that the career you begin with, right out of college, will not be the career you’re involved in after 5 years. Be ready for such a change. You will find that not all MBA grads become CEOs. Some become dancers, some open hippie cafes or beach hostels, and some continue to try different things in search of the perfect role/project. This is fine. Don’t be vary of it. The way of the future is to have multiple careers anyway. Embrace it. Make yourself ready for it.
8. Your identity, your interests, your perceptions and views, values, motivations, dreams and desires will keep on changing every few years. This is normal. This happens with almost everyone. So don’t be too attached to who you are today. You will inevitably change. The trick is to change in a direction of your choosing. That’s the game. Few good habits to cultivate – Read quality books, do journaling, take a few personality assessment tests and become an expert on your self, learn to network and learn to negotiate.
9. You are a ****ing amazing guy. Don’t ever let anyone make you believe otherwise.

Well, there it is. Some nuggets of wisdom I’d give to my younger self.

I wonder what advice I would get today, from my older self!

We all are living these fast paced, caffeine fueled lives, tempted by countless distractions and real or pseudo emergencies that it is very common to find ourselves in a situation where we are saying “Where did the whole day go?”

Or for some of us the phrase goes like “Where did the whole year go?” It is not that uncommon.

What I have noticed is that life has a momentum of its own and it is always running at full speed. But the key question to ask here is: Is it going where we want it to go? The most frustrating thing is when I work my ass off and at the end of the week I haven’t accomplished even a single thing I’m proud of. It’s a bummer.

One recurring problem due to which you’re often swayed away is because there isn’t any set agenda.

If it isn’t on your calendar, it isn’t real.

I began making to-do lists and list of goals. Started putting them in the order of priority. But what ended up happening was each day I used to have a different overall agenda, and it was often determined by how my previous day had gone.

If your to-do list is made up of many small & immediate actions, a daily to-do list is fine. But mostly what you want to accomplish entails a combination of actions, many of which are dependent on someone else’s reply, many of them can’t begin before the previous ones are completed. It’s all too complex and time consuming. In such cases, having a weekly visibility over your agendas and goals is a much better option.

If you think about it, life is just a bunch of weeks. If you spend your weeks great, your life is automatically lived well.

And that is why I have begun the practice of planning my weeks in advance. Every Sunday I get up a little early, go for a bike ride for a few hours and then stop by at any cafe that I like. There, I sit down for at least an hour and write in my journal.

Right now I’m following Tony Robbins’ ‘Time of Your Life’ system for planning my weeks. It’s a time management, albeit Life management system that helps you make time for those goals that are most important to you. Robbins says that you don’t need to manage time, in fact you can’t do it even if you wanted to. Instead you need to manage energy and focus.

Where focus goes, Energy flows.

And how the system works is each week you begin by focusing on what your true goals in life are. What are your passions, what are your motivations, what’s the purpose you want to strive for, and what will bring you to life! (rhetorically speaking)…

By doing this you put yourself in an energized state. With the momentum caused by getting into the state, you then focus on key areas of your life – whether it is fitness, your job, friends and family or your finances. You think about how you want to be in each of these areas, what results you want to accomplish.

Once you have the Results you want to achieve, you then focus on the ‘why’. That is the purpose behind wanting those results. One key question to ask is “if I manage to get this result, what will it do for me and my life?” Will it give me more freedom? Will it give me the feeling of control? Will it open doors for me? Why is that particular goal important to me?

After focusing on the Results and the Purpose behind wanting those results, you then chalk out a Massive Action Plan to execute.

This action plan should be detailed. It should consist of small steps that you can take with ease. Then you put all these action items in your calendar and you commit to following your calendar through the week.

During the next week, on the Sunday morning, you look back at what results you achieved and you take the time to really celebrate. And celebration can mean many things. Maybe buying yourself a Creme Soda would do. Maybe throwing a party would be more suitable. It all depends on how big results you achieved and how fulfilled did that make you feel.

I have followed this process for last 3 weeks and have seen many long pending tasks vanish in front of my eyes. I also could gain more control of my work life and felt at ease after a long long time.

And more importantly I stay in sight of my real goals. Things that really matter to me. My own agenda. My own purpose. And that feeling is precious to me.

I know when I truly master this form of weekly planning (which I think I’ll be able to do after 5-6 weeks of practicing it), the next step would be to graduate to monthly planning. Or perhaps even yearly planning. I know many people who plan out their whole quarters or years in advance. And these people are always those who seem to be doing everything out there. Both in their personal lives and their professional lives.

I share this with you all because I know many of you want to live an organized life and accomplish big goals. The system I talked about is powerful. And I am committed to explore and master it till the time I can easily say, that I’m having the ‘Time of My Life”.

Like I said earlier, Life is just a bunch of weeks. And if you spend your weeks great, your life is automatically great.

So go out there and build a great life.

Cheers!

I work in the Corporate sector and have been part of various growing professional organisations.

Such companies are filled with really smart and meticulous people who are driven and single-mindedly focused on making the company succeed in whatever goals it has. I see that such companies have different people taking care of different things, it has a start time and an end time, a set of policies, a code of conduct, a properly defined charter of goals and vision and a clear understanding of its resources and challenges. Such companies are called well organised. They have numerous hard-working people who show up every day and invest considerable amount of time, energy, emotion and attention on getting the job done.

When I see all of this happening at such a remarkable scale, I often wonder “why are people not so efficient at running their own personal lives?”

Same people. Hard workers. Move mountains for achieving the company’s goals. But take one good look at their personal lives and you will see an embarrassing display of neglect and disorganization. Most of them don’t even know what are their goals in their own personal lives. It’s probably too much to ask them to show their plans to attain those goals. They definitely have wishes. In fact they have plenty. But goals, they got none. How interesting.

Same people. Remarkable managers. Have the capacity to get dozens of people to work towards one common vision. But ask them to enlist 5 people who they talk to about their own personal development and you will find a dazed look on their faces. The concept of growth is very innately in-built into the fabric of companies and commerce. They are all in the race of year-on-year growth, quarter-on-quarter growth, growth over industry average, growth over economy forecasts, incremental growth, exponential growth. Say no more. But ask the employees working in these companies about how they plan to grow as humans, athletes, friends, husbands, wives, parents, members of the community, citizens of the country; and they won’t know. See they will argue that you always have someone you are accountable to when you are in the company, in personal lives not so much. But see, you can’t use that. It’s true but it’s a disastrous excuse for not having any agenda of your own personal growth and development. It’s colossal.

I have often admired the CEOs of the companies I’ve worked in. This guy or gal is the fore-runner of the enterprise. The guy who basically directs the path the company will go on. He also runs the whole ship as a captain. He is as involved in the high level 30,000 ft. decisions as he is in the day-to-day operational concerns. He takes help from a team of dedicated people, but he also sets up an environment in which these people are rewarded to do the good things that they do for the company.

The CEO is the master promoter of his own enterprise. He is also the one who has ultimate responsibility whether the ship sails or sinks.

I have often wondered that what if we ran our lives as if they were our personal company, our enterprise, our business (which they are by the way) and acted as if we are the CEO of it. The one who is ultimately responsible. Whether the ship sails or sinks.

What if we also had a board of advisers who we would periodically turn to for advice and discussing about the long-term future and vision of the enterprise?

What if we also had a team of people who were committed to partake in our company’s (life’s) growth journey and played different roles that collectively made sure that our enterprise thrives, and not just survives?

What if we also had an overarching purpose for existence, a vision statement, a mission statement, a need in the world that we were fulfilling with our gifts of production, a problem that we were committed to solve through our ingenious efforts; what if?

What if we also had a list of Assets, an annual budget, a monthly budget, a plan on how we will spend our resources (money, effort, attention, time) to produce results and we often held meetings to review progress on those plans; what if?

What if we also had performance appraisals every year wherein we’d look back into the previous year and analyze very objectively that where we produced the outcomes we had intended to and where we fell short?

What if we would reward ourselves with performance bonuses and off-shore trips that would be followed with even bigger challenges and better prospects?

What if?

I don’t know whether it is right or not to be so meticulous and calculative in the matter of your personal life. But I do know this; as much as life is about being carefree and relaxed, it is also about the rush of the pleasure received by going after your big goals and the joy of achieving them and sharing the great feelings with loved ones.

And such great achievement towards life’s big goals would most definitely require you to get organised, manage your focus, go after the challenges with all the resources you got, and monitor your performance and progress on a routine basis so that you can course-correct. These are all ethos of how a classic CEO runs his company. With proper organisation, pacing towards his big vision, so that there is growth and there is prosperity, so that all can thrive and solve bigger and better problems.

Hence I am of the opinion that every once in a while we should step into the shoes of an imaginary CEO and look at our life as if it were our company. Run it with the same tenacity that that the CEO would bring, and grow this enterprise called ‘life’ towards success, prosperity and fulfillment.

A similar article written in the Inc. Magazine @inc.com

Here’s what Happened when I started Running my Life like a Business

I write this article as a note to myself. But is also something that is almost certain to be of interest to you. Yes, you the reader. Whoever you are, I can bet my fortune that you are interested in health, fitness and vitality. You may call it by a different name but you are interested in it.

Well why wouldn’t you be? Your body is the vehicle in which you experience the magic of life, the good the bad and the truly remarkable. Wherever you go, your body will be with you. You can’t leave it behind.

So I, like all other people in this world, deeply care about my body and health and spend a lot of time exploring how to keep myself fit. Fit for an athletic challenge, fit for a physical adversity, fit for a fight, fit for being on a beach in my trunks and most definitely fit for taking those trunks off for a spicy senorita 😉

At the same time, I am a guy who best understands a concept by breaking it down into manageable pieces. I like putting things into categories. I like finding out what the levers are to move something. Let’s be clear, if you are driving a car and you try to steer it with the rear view mirrors (instead of the steering wheel) you would not reach anywhere you want to reach. So in life I am always looking to find what the steering wheel is in a particular situation.

In the endeavor to achieve and maintain a fit and healthy body I have found that there are 4 levers that make the needle move. Four spokes to the steering wheel of the car called ‘Health and Vitality’. And I want to lay out those Magic 4 for you, my audience, so that you too can organize your mind and your life around it such that you can achieve and maintain a healthy and fit body yourself. That having been said, here are the four levers:

Exercise

This is the no-brainer. Our body was meant to move. We are predominantly hunters and gatherers. And sitting on a chair, stooped low and staring into the abyss of laptop screens for 8 hours daily pretty soon turns into disaster for the once fit and energetic body.

Exercise is a must. End of story. Do it daily if you can. If not, at least 3-4 times a week for at least an hour. Exercise can mean different things to different people. But here are the most common forms.

• Strength (also called Resistance) training – Lifting heavy things at the gym, or lifting your own body weight at the functional gym
• Endurance training – This means relatively low stress physical motions repeated hundreds or thousands of times, includes running for long distances or swimming
• Balance or Calisthenics – This recruits a little bit of strength training and little bit of endurance training; this most often includes people standing on their hands, hanging sideways by poles or jumping over heightened obstacles (roughly speaking)
• Stretching & Body Posture training – This would include exercises that perhaps you’d do during warm-up or exercises your physiotherapist will ask you to do if you sprained your back (while they seem low-grade in terms of effort required but are on my top priority list)
• Yoga Aasanas and Power Yoga – A brilliantly calibrated combination of movements discovered by ancient Yogis that are proven to have a cascade of positive health benefits
• Walking – Honestly I don’t consider walking as exercise. I mean that’s lowering your standards way too much. But if you don’t move your ass at all, walking is a great place to start. Maybe start with walking and graduate to hiking.

Nutrition

Nutrition is the elusive ingredient that is simultaneously the most important to your health and the most difficult to master. Everybody knows they should eat clean, lean and healthy but the marvelous taste of choco fudges and wheaty pizzas is just too incredible to pass.

Well one of the lessons I learned was you don’t have to give up tasty food in order to eat clean. You just need to find out dishes that are both healthy and delicious. Another lesson I learned was it’s in your own benefit to fantasize and glorify the good-for-you foods and focus on their taste along with their health benefits in order to ensure you actually eat them consistently. So I’m constantly looking for restaurants that serve awesome and creative salads. But nutrition is also very confusing. Everyone has an opinion. And each one seems to differ from the other in one way or the other. Articles are many and it’s too much too keep up with. There was a quote that said:

As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

So I want to lay out some principles that I’ve found out along the way.

• Don’t measure or track weight, track body composition and inches (Body composition means how much % of your body weight is fat and how much is lean muscle mass)
• If you want to lose weight, first way to go is maintaining Caloric Deficit for a few weeks. If you want to gain weight, first way to go is maintaining Caloric Surplus for a few weeks. It’s when you want to lose fat but gain lean muscle mass is when you must get into specifics of Macro-Nutrients
• Don’t count calories, count macro-nutrients i.e. count Proteins, Fats and Carbs (and fiber for that matter)
• Generally speaking, simple carbs and processed carbs do you no good (simple carbs basically means Sugar; processed carbs mostly mean things like donuts, pastas, cookies etc. but also include white flour and bread)
• If you are buying a food item that has come in a packet or a container, it has INSANE amounts of sugar in it (no exception; even ketchup has loads of sugar)
• Eating raw, eating fresh does you all kinds of good; So go for veggies and fruits and water as much as you can
• There is a minimum amount of proteins and good fats that you must consume on a daily basis
• Fasting is very good for the body, if you can’t fast for full days try intermittent fasting
• Micro-nutrients are often neglected but are the most important piece of the puzzle; eat lots of fruits and variety of colors in your plate and don’t shy away from taking supplements every once in a while (especially Vitamin D as it’s not readily produced in the body)

Sleep

This is one that mostly polarizes people. If I randomly pick any group of 100 people, half of them would be who have no issues whatsoever with sleep and don’t even find it as an issue to talk about. The other half would swear that their sleep habits are doomed and are disastrous, not to put too fine a point on it. This second group would also try to convince you that they can never change, because they’ve already tried everything under the sun and nothing works.

I’m not talking to the first half here. I am trying to speak some sense into the second half.

I know you have irregular sleep. I know you go to bed late and keep fiddling with your smartphone. I know you can’t wake up early even if your life depended on it. I know some of you are so overworked (albeit ambitious) that sleep seems like something that comes in the way of your days. You would rather not have it at all. Or some of you sleep so much all the time that you are fed up of it now.

See it’s simple. The science is in. For some reason, not entirely understood by researchers yet, sleep is a single stone that kills dozens of birds each night you fall into that carefree trance.

• Sleep gets your body to recover from all the wear and tear of the day
• It integrates recent memories into your psyche and consolidates long term memory
• It cleans up your skull of all the toxins that get accumulated around your brain due to the heavy mental activity throughout the day
• It aids muscle growth and regeneration
• It helps your psyche sort through problems and priorities and keeps your bodily functions in homeostasis
• It puts your body in relaxation mode and induces overall healing, almost to the cellular level

They say that if you go 2 nights without adequate sleep, there’s not even one single cell in your body that’s not adversely affected (totally paraphrasing here)

But my intention in telling you all of this is to just push you to take sleep seriously. Sleep is simple, it doesn’t take too many strategies. Just a few simple steps, as follow:

• Go to sleep and wake up at roughly the same time every day (whatever that time is)
• Try to sleep 7-8 hours every night, each one has a different optimal number of hours they need. One good way to find out is to not put any alarm and wake up when you naturally wake up. (Obviously if you have a 9-5 job you’d need to keep buffer to implement this)
• Don’t have caffeine or excessive alcohol few hours before bed time
• Try to stop work or heavy mental activity by 7-8 pm so that you can gradually ease into relaxation mode
• Don’t look at bright blue lights (including your laptop and smartphone screen) at least for the last 4 hours of your evening because that signals your brain that it is still day time and screws up your circadian rhythm
• Pro tip – get a night mask, listen to relaxing sounds or night guided meditation before sleeping, keep the room especially dark and ideally a little cold for ideal sleep

Relaxation

This is something that perhaps I’m most guilty of violating. Worry and stress is the number one killer across the world. Long term sustained stress directly leads to Chronic inflammation in the body and chronic inflammation has been called to be the leading cause of all-cause mortality by World Health Organisation. (so I’ve heard)

Stress hits you from a thousand directions. The problem is that in today’s world you cannot entirely eliminate stress, though any steps taken towards choosing an environment with comparably lower stress is always a wise move on your part.

The good news is you don’t entirely need to eliminate stress. You can counter-act on it using the arch enemy of stress i.e. Relaxation. The Stress Response or the Fight-or-Flight response that animals (and humans) experience in the face of danger, threat or possibility of conflict has some very remarkably distinguishable physical responses. Your heart rate goes up, your pupils constrict, you start perspiring, go tunnel visioned, your breathing becomes faster and shallower, blood flow increases to the extremities to prepare you for the battle or escape and consequently that blood is restricted from flowing to your brain into the pre-frontal cortex i.e. the rational and reasonable part of the brain shuts off temporarily. Adrenaline is secreted and Cortisol, the stress hormone, shoots up through the roof. All of this happens automatically in an instant whenever we foresee any threat or danger or conflict. It is a remarkable set of responses that are hard-wired in the human biology as it prepares us to adequately respond to the situation and increases our chances of survival and even success in battle.

The problem is that the body cannot bear to be in this emergency and panic state for too long. By definition this mode should only be turned on when the situation demands it and immediately be turned off when the danger is averted. Unfortunately we have created our lives and our lifestyles in a manner that we’re always stressed and we’re always in fight-or-flight mode. We are always in pressure and we’re always inflamed.

The antidote is the Relaxation Response, which is a remarkable state in itself. Heart rate mellows down and becomes more even and rhythmic. Pupils dilate, the skin relaxes, your shoulders drop, forehead becomes un-crumpled. You breathe deep and into the stomach. Blood is pumped evenly throughout your body systems and your Parasympathetic Nervous System takes the reins of your body. This is that part of your nervous system that propels all sorts of healing processes in the body. Most likely you secrete hormones that make you feel happy; Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin and Endorphins.

In short it is called a beautiful state. It not only makes you feel great but heals the body in ways you can’t imagine. If you are any at all concerned about your long term health and vitality, you should give yourself a consistent dose of the Relaxation Response.

Few common ways you can trigger this marvelous Relaxation Response are:

• Meditation
• Being in nature (beaches, mountains, woods or parks; take your pick)
• Doing something you love and getting lost in the process
• Watching a heart gripping movie, play or reading a classic book
• Visiting live music concerts
• Prayer (in the place of worship if you’re religious or anyplace that’s relaxing if you’re not religious)
• That feeling after an intense work-out session
• Sex (albeit good sex)
• Great conversations with people you love
• A moderate dose of good booze

So that’s it. Those are my thoughts. I’m wrapping this up with this quote which is the best encapsulation of what I’m trying to say.

Your health and the shape that your body is in, is the single-most direct expression of your love for yourself and your love for life.

Stay healthy. Stay in love.

They say “The world is full of magical things, waiting for you to get smart enough to notice them”.

They also say “When the student is ready, the teacher appears”.

Both these statements place a certain responsibility on the individual, which is ‘you’, to be ready and willing to expand his horizons and take learning from all of life’s experiences. And once you become ready to receive learning from any and every experience life has to throw at you, you will be delighted to see all the unusual places these learnings come from.

I wish to share one such learning experience with you all. This experience might not sound like a big deal to you maybe, but it was one such experience that taught me the most beneficial lesson of my life.

Many years ago, while I was still in school, I was a shy and introverted young boy. I had this fear inside that if I open up in front of people, they won’t like me or accept me. I had a few good friends but was always afraid to make new friends because of this fear that I had.

One day, when I was at my home, it started raining. And as I stood at the house’s window looking outside at the delightful weather, I saw the other kids of the locality get outside their homes and launch off onto the streets with their friends on scooties and bicycles. This made me sad. Because even though I had friends, I often stayed inside the home fearing that they don’t like my company a lot. I still remember that I spent at least an hour inside my home that day, brooding over my sad situation.

But maybe, I had had enough. I couldn’t stand staying inside and I just put on my slippers and moved outside. I didn’t carry my phone, or any money. I just started walking in the rain with no destination in mind. I just kept walking and walking wherever I felt like. Maybe I was trying to escape the feeling of sorrow and inadequacy that was gnawing at me back at the house. I didn’t actually plan on finding anything remarkable when I had decided to walk in the rain alone; but this is where this enigmatic life threw an opportunity at me.

As I was walking past an unknown park, pretty far away from my locality, I saw a few other kids playing there with a football. I was especially fond of playing football and was rather good at it. But I was scared to go inside and ask to play because of the same fear I had, that “they won’t like me”.

I was immediately flooded with all the negative emotions I was trying to walk away from. But this time I had an insight, an opening. It’s like an external voice spoke to me. I suddenly knew that if I want to move past my fears I have to dare. Dare to talk to new people, dare to put myself out there, dare to connect when there is no prior connection.

With this new insight brimming inside me, I walked inside the park and asked those kids if I could play. To my surprise, they were elated to see me. They obviously wanted more people to play so that everybody could have more fun and they were glad that I came over. That old scared me had never thought from this perspective. That maybe, just like I was craving for connection but was afraid to ask for it, other people were feeling the same thing in their lives. They too wanted the company of other people and were afraid that they won’t be accepted. But anytime someone else reached out to them, to connect, to play, they were delighted to have that opportunity.

That day I played with these new friends for hours and had the best time possible. I also moved past my fear of people because I started empathizing instead of being afraid.

That day I also learned two lessons. I got out of the house even though I didn’t know I was going to find anything good outside. I still made the decision to keep walking in the rain till the time I came across something good. Another turning point was when I was presented with an opportunity, I dared to seize it. Spirit and Daring, these were the two lessons that I learned that day.

That fateful enigmatic experience taught me that “In life, whenever things are not right; just keep walking. And when you see something that you want, have the guts to go for it”. Spirit and Daring!

I work as a corporate professional. And I also participate in a lot of public speaking.

In both arenas, the word motivation comes into a lot of conversations. It seems like an important concept for people in both these circles but often I’ve noticed people having a very loose understanding of what motivation is.

In the corporate world, I’ve seen that people believe motivation is something you can manage by rewards & recognition and punishments & consequences. It’s a basic ‘carrot & stick’ model. But it’s too bad for old school bosses that men have evolved from being mere donkeys and the carrots & sticks are not working so well as they used to. I argue that in this carrot & stick model, the people who’re trying to motivate someone are missing a very important characteristic of motivation. That motivation is not just generated by extrinsic factors, but also by intrinsic factors. That maybe last century’s factory workers would have rejoiced at the prospect of an overtime pay but today’s knowledge workers need things like alignment of values & purpose to feel motivated & take consistent action.

Now if we take a look at the world of public speaking, the moment someone says motivation, 99% people would confuse it with positivity. When I say ‘motivational speaker’ don’t you automatically think of a charismatic man up on the stage, giving you a string of positive life affirming messages through an up-beat speech? That is ofcourse the stereotype. But here also, I argue that people who think motivation is synonymous with positivity are ignoring a whole aspect of motivation, which is called negative motivation. It’s been scientifically proven that people are more likely to avoid loss than going for gains, when given a chance. Loss aversion is a powerful drive in human behaviour, and some of the most powerful motivational speakers I know, utilize this drive to the very best.

All you need to know is that motivation is ultimately an emotion. It is an internal drive that makes you want to take (or not take) an action. And it’s a subject worth reading & understanding. Because over a long period, your ability to motivate yourself & others around you to take favourable actions, will be the single most determining factor in your success. {However you wish to define success for yourself}

PS: Watch this fabulous talk on motivation by Daniel Pink (time 18:36 min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y