Resolve to Resolve

 

 

 

The human being is an amazing mixture of emotions. Look inside the human mind and you see connections. Connections everywhere. It was when I was looking out the car window thinking about this that my mind wandered into the science behind making decisions.

Look around you. Yeah! Right now. Just take your eyes off the screen and look around you. What do you see?

A washing machine? A waste basket? A paperweight? Whatever it is, what you see is the result of a millisecond of decision making at some point in your life. Look where it ended up in your room. Take a look into how we live our daily lives. Decisions everywhere.

So, where exactly am I going with all this decision talk?

Good question.

I just wanted to introduce you to today’s topic.

I am talking about the world of resolutions.

We say ‘decision’ all the time. We usually save ‘resolution’ for a new year or for the ‘next-big-step-of-my-life’ moment. We like to keep it in the ‘distinguished’ box. But when you come down to it, a resolution is just a decision.

Many of us have stopped making resolutions. Somewhere  along the way we stopped studying the success rate of resolutions just because we got kicked out of consistency school. 🙂

Sometimes you’ve got to think different. Let’s look at resolutions differently.

Take out the time factor in resolutions.

We look at somebody who has done a great job at keeping a resolution and think, wow and tell ourselves,’ well new year comes in a couple of months’.

That’s how we look at resolutions.

The truth is taking a resolution is better than taking none at all. Just because you didn’t make it to day 2, doesn’t mean the resolution is a complete waste. Let’s look what that one day of resolution-keeping brought you.

Even a day of a resolution well kept has its share of advantages.

I started this post with an example how many decisions we make in life, we never even actually pay any attention. I love change a lot. I play with my room again and again, until a new combination is impossible. One day the wastepaper bin will be in one corner and the next it will be out of the room!

It was a change that lasted one day. But did it create change?

Yes, it did!

Take a resolution today. Don’t worry about how long you can keep it. Just take it one day at a time. After all an year is made up of a lot of days.

The art of resolutions have a lot more effect on daily life than we often give it credit for.

 

What about you?

What do you think about resolutions?

Comment on it! Be a part of the movement!

God bless and take care! 🙂

 

Whole lotta love!

‘All the world’s a stage’

Shakespeare?

Yep!

Life is a play, and we all have our exits and entrances.

A few days ago, I came across this absolutely beautiful story about a rattrap peddler by Selma Lagerlof. The message that easily came out from the story was how love and kindness can change hearts.

Can it?

We live in a world that is constantly questioning the power of the abstract forces that drive us. This inspired me to think about them in a new way.

So today, I decided to write about how we are all lovable in a very strange way.

Have you ever found yourself falling in love with the star character in a movie?

We can’t help it. All throughout the movie, we are there in front of that rectangular screen( I don’t know why all electronic screens come in rectangles these days. Aesthetics? Definitely something to think about but let’s get back to the topic), we sit there with our popcorn, rooting for them, justifying their mistakes and encouraging them on with your silent and undivided attention.

You see, one of the funniest facts about life is that there are more than 7 billion people on this planet right now and still we believe that our life is the most important of them all.

Why?

Every book and every movie has a main character and the whole world moves around him or her, just like in real life. We move on in this world everyday, creating another part of this really long movie, where we remain the main character and the whole world flips, jumps and rides around us. This is one of the greatest reasons why we love movies. A few minutes into a movie, you become the person on the screen, you recognise that element and you get lost in a new world, where anything could happen. You get to be somebody else for a while. No consequences. Just like a dream.

You see and travel with the person throughout the movie. You see the private and public side of the person’s life. You see the silent tears and the loud laughter. You see their secret life. You see how they think and so you know why he/she made that particular decision. This is why a movie can be influential. Even if you don’t like the character at the start , you are stuck with them till the end, that is, if you still choose to give the movie a chance. And most of the time, in the end, you end up just loving the character.

This made me wonder about the people in our life.

Are we one of those guys who pause movies midway and walk away because the character is not interesting?

Or are we the guys who choose to give it a chance anyway?

The point is, when we make quick conclusions, when we shut people out of our lives because we believe they are ‘unlovable’, we are actually pausing the movie and walking away.

There are no ‘unlovable’ people in this world. There’s a piece of us in the people around us. It helps us to bond, trust and understand each other.

But unless we show the patience to try and find that missing piece, this world will remain the same. We need a whole lotta love in this world. Our jail cells are filling up so fast, it’s hard to even imagine the rate. We need to start fighting with our hearts.

Look around you. There are lots of people who show absolutely unconditional love to people who don’t even deserve it. There is only one thing that can bring back that touch of emotion a man has lost. Love, unconditional, undeserving, pure love. The kind of love that God shows us everyday. We call him names, we put all the things that go wrong in this world on him when he made us creatures with free will. But still he chooses to love.

Won’t you try to love someone today. He/she may not deserve it. But don’t pause the movie yet, the DVD still has miles to run. In time you’ll understand why.

Won’t you love?

 

 

 

A Productive System

I just pulled off an all nighter!  I am a bit dizzy but I think I can do this. I am a night time kinda guy. I don’t know if there is any particular word to describe people who like to work at night.

Nocturnal, maybe?

Nah…that’s not it.

Anyway, with my strange humor sense out of the bag, let’s get into this post.

Today, I am going to tell you something important. I know that’s a cliché line but I really mean it. Not that it’s going to change the world or anything, but it will help you when you do a team project or, if you want to think extremes, when you start a new company.

People taking business advice from 17 year olds!!!???

What has the world come to!?

I know. But let’s move on.

We have all gone to a get-together programme at some point in our lives. If it’s a family get-together, there is a good chance that there will be some games in the end. How many times have you ended up in a get-together were you didn’t know jack squat about any of the games. Remember that feeling when you got so embarrassed you just wanted the thing to be over. You don’t ? Am I the only one? No of course not! That would be weird. We have all felt that feeling at some point in our lives. That feeling when you felt like you didn’t fit into the group.

If I ask you why you felt like you didn’t fit in, one obvious answer would be:

‘It’s not my thing, bro’

Did I guess that right? Okay, good!

You see the reason why you didn’t have a good time at that party was because the games asked you to be somebody you’re not.

This is where the title of this post comes into play

‘Productive Systems’

Technical term. I know.

Take that situation at that get-together as a system of which you were a part. Now lets give you a quality. Let’s say you are an introvert. Which simply means high exposure stuff like say, jumping rope in front of your family in the living room as part of the ‘game’ will never be your thing. Bingo is our lifesaver.

An introvert is shy and might not be able to make many friends but they make great public speakers.

What!!!??

I know that makes no sense at all. The thing is public speaking, in my opinion, creates a secure space where an introvert feels like it is okay to be outgoing and strong. I believe one of the questions that introverts always ask themselves is : is this vibe right for this situation? The touch of formality to such cases, therefore has a huge impact. Whereas in the informal day to day life, an introvert is shy. This is my theory on it and it could be ridiculously wrong. So, I apologize in advance to all the psychologists reading this post.

What we just saw was the same quality producing contrasting results in two different situations. Introverts are often misjudged to be not that productive. They can be productive, when they are in an environment they feel comfortable in. But the problem is our workplaces, our educational systems all are shaped very similar to the family get-together games environment. This is based on the belief that extroversion is better or maybe because of the larger number of extroverts. But the truth is no quality is greater than another in this case. Productivity here is very much based on the environment.

Introversion and extroversion is just one pair of qualities I used to explain this effect. There are a lot of quality pairs you can think up yourself that can affect the outcome of a group in terms of productivity. There is nothing wrong in having to work with people who have absolutely different ways of functioning as long as you recognize and take the appropriate measures.

Your group or your team can attain the maximum productivity if you give importance to how everyone in the group is wired. Let us take a point, X and another point, Y. Let Y symbolize maximum productivity and let X be anything below the maximum productivity. Everyday we travel from X to Y( work hard to attain maximum productivity). Now all I am saying is instead of everybody taking the same path, leave the option open for the use of another path given that it also ends in Y. In other words, our systems have to be modified in a way that a group can work as a group even when the approach of the members within the group shows difference.

So, next time you’re having  Friday night games with your family, bring a chessboard for the introvert or try bingo for a change. What’s the harm? If you have an extrovert too in the house, try that jump rope thing I made up. Who knows it could turn into a trend or something.

Anyway, thanks for dropping in. Write a comment. Be a part. I would love to hear from you. God bless and see you guys in a few days.

 

 

Limited Influence

We all love blank spaces. The white blank walls, the white blank paper, the clear blue sky are all examples of blank spaces. We just love blank spaces. Why? Somehow it incites creativity and toys with possibility, attracts a lot of resources and makes what I call the ‘creativity cocktail’ for the bored human being. As a kid you are drawn to the blank walls and when you run out of paper, the walls seem to be a perfect substitute.

What I’d like to tell you guys today is that life in itself is a blank space and it incites creativity and toys with possibility in ways that man cannot even begin to describe. It is perhaps the uncertainty of what ends up filling this space that make us push ourselves to the limit.

When we start our journey on this earth as mere infants, we are the most joyful and excited. For us then, that paper of life not yet lived is blank and full of possibility and at its peak level of ‘blankness’. But as time passes on we realise that what we had imagined is a lot harder to transfer to the paper than we thought. When we realise that, we become discouraged. I love to paint and though I never went for classes it has been one of my hobbies for a very long time. Before I paint I imagine a picture in my mind and everytime I do that I  get so thrilled. But my paintings are never like the ones I imagine.

A long time back in the 19th century, painters would line the streets of Paris with trolleys filled with giant canvases to get approval from the jury for the Salon, the greatest art show in the world, so that they could display their work. The work had to be without blemish in every sense. The paintings accepted then were nothing like the modern art we have today. The lines were perfect and you couldn’t spot one mistake in those precious pieces of 19th century art. They would be hung for a day or two at the Salon. Many were rejected. The rejected left  discouraged, vowing never to look at a canvas again. In many ways I feel that’s what life’s like for many of us. A chance to showcase ourselves in front of the world. Though we may hang in there, in the spotlight only for a very short time, we are ready to make the effort. But when we get rejected, we stop trying.

Are what we have on our once blank papers worth anything to others? Is it worth starting a youtube channel to publish our new songs? Is it worth it trying to write that book? Would we be rejected again?

Sometimes what we often don’t realise about our lives is the number of people influenced by it. There are people all around you who look up to you, even without you knowing it. Sometimes people are astonished when others come up to them and tell them that they are inspiring. This unknown admiration has in many ways now been taken to a new level by the digital connections we have.

We often believe we have to be famous and rich to influence. We often underestimate the influence of a person who may not be famous or rich. We live in a very socially connected world. As a result people could be living normal lives one day and become pop stars and famous youtubers the next. Though fame and wealth brings with it resources to polish your talents and better yourself at what you do best, the influential people we see today were a very significant part of who they are now when they were not famous or rich. They just chose not to underestimate their seemingly ordinary influence when they had it. They made the most of it. It is very possible that we have better singers and artists out there than the ones we see. What takes them to the next level is how they look at the influence they have in that moment in time, however insignificant it might be.

We sometimes evaluate our worth based on all these scales of popularity, wealth, success etc. In truth, that is not at all what gives you worth. The very fact that God gave you a life on this planet shows that you are worth something. It is ultimately what you think of yourself that will bring you to greater arenas. It is what you think of yourself that will radiate from you and on to the others around you, the limited influence you have.

As a Christian, I find my worth in how God looks at me. Though I am flawed, he looks at me with acceptance and love through His son. I choose to remind myself that everyday. You have to always have a stronghold in life, where you know that you are loved. That is why you have to be careful who you are around with. Are you around people who choose not to value the limited influence they have? Or are you around people who believe in you and in life. Your family, your friends, they can all be your stronghold in hard times.

You can bring people up or throw them down with your limited influence. A single word is enough to change the course of the world. It is up to you whether you are going to carry your fellow human beings in this journey of life or throw them down.

Look at Anne Frank. She never even knew that what she wrote in that precious little diary during the passing fearful days of the war would be one day, sitting on the shelves of millions of people around the world. Time pulled out her limited influence and showed it to the world.

You might be reading this today and you might be going through that phase in life where you are thinking: Am I worth something?  Are you that person whose new book did not get published?

I hope I can make you realise how much a human life is worth and how dramatic and powerful the limited influence is. It is explosive, powerful and the underestimated key to many of the doors that have been shut in your face.

The question is whether or not you are going to use what you have now. God is out there full of love for you, cheering you on and I am here cheering you on as well.

Take a step of faith and try again.

Good luck and Godspeed!!!

The Way We Think

Hello there!

It’s been such a long time since I wrote on this blog. I just got out of school( wow! ) and I realized that I had not written a post for a long long time. So here I am. It’s the same old me. I replaced my 10 year old laptop with a new one. That was some change.

Even though I did not get the time to sit down and write a post, I made sure I made sticky notes of every idea that passed my mind. My bedroom wall has a lot of them. So, I was thinking of what I should write about and after some thinking (which literally took me less than 5 mins ) I am ready to go.

We are all familiar with the developments in Artificial Intelligence. Sophia, the new robot citizen that has captured all our attention has increased our interest in AI by a significant amount. We are fascinated by robots and we are also afraid of them in a very strange way. With all the movies of robots taking over the world, I believe that is a very normal reaction. Will robots take over the world? Will robots destroy us? are all questions we all like to discuss. At least some of us.

Before I go any further I have to say that my technical knowledge on AI and robots are not at all worth mentioning and it is not about that part of the equation that I would like to talk about today. In fact this was just a way of introducing my topic.

We all say that robots can’t think creatively like we do. Could be true. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t think. It could very well be that they think differently. Not putting our way of thinking as the ‘right’ and ‘only’ way of thinking and looking at it from a broader perspective will help clarify this statement. This could also mean that their way of expression is also different and so on.

Over time I have seen many things that affect our way of thinking. If I go watch a movie with people from the other side of the planet, it is very possible that it could be one of the most awkward moments of my life. They could laugh at things that I might not find very funny while I could laugh at things that they might not find funny. Some things are polite in some parts of the world while they are rude in other parts. All these things I believe have something to do with the differences in our way of thinking.

So what influences our thinking? Well it could be lots of things. Language, culture are some of the important ones. How does language affect the way we think? Well how do you think? When you think, you are in a way talking to yourself in a particular language. This could be English, French, Spanish or any other language there is on this planet. Since you are talking silently when you think, the number of feelings your vocabulary is able to define affects your thinking in a colossal way. Some languages address feelings that other languages have no words for. This is why translation of texts( accurately ) can be a bit tricky. The knowledge of that word will help you notice that feeling when it comes by, leading to a difference in the way you think. How does culture influence the way you think? Traditions, moral values, family all of these make within us, with the passage of time, a scale on which we measure actions, words etc. Our measurements based on this ever developing scale is what drives our expressions, opinions and reactions. As a Christian, I believe that there is a moral scale that God has given us according to which every man has to align himself for a peaceful society, based on which our actions could be wrong or right. If there was no such stable moral scale, it would be a total catastrophe.

How does this information help me?

Well, though it may seem unimportant, it is very important to recognise our unique ways of thinking in a world that is getting more connected day by day. Our differences will be magnified. In such a situation it is important to realise that it is our unique sets of information that shapes the way we think. One more reason to travel and read. Today, we respect a person’s uniqueness. It is just as important to respect a person’s unique way of thinking.

This will lead to better discussions, faster solutions and healthier relationships.

So, next time you get into an argument, take into consideration the other person’s way of thinking. It will help you to respect their arguments more and consider them from a wider perspective. A nice talk will also help you to understand which piece of information is missing from the puzzle.

God bless and have a great week, guys!