deepcontemplator

thinking deeply about things that matter

Category: Self dev

  • Who are you in competition with?

    Knowingly or unknowingly we can sometimes fall into the trap of competing with others. Maybe when someone casually mentions they travel at least once a month, we take it as our own goal. Or we start following someone’s lifestyle of excessive workouts and try to live up to their definition of a good workout.

    As long as you are conscious about the competitiveness, or about you falling into the FOMO (fear of missing out) trap, its okay. You know what you are getting into! 😉

    Many times it’s so subtle that we lose track of our selves and what we want to do with our lives.

    How we wish to spend our time, energy and money.

    A more fulfilling approach according to me, is to spend the time and effort to understand what really matters to you.

    What your purpose in life is, what your values are and what energizes you.

    You can then do an audit if you are spending your time, energy and money in line with what matters to you, according to you.

    You can see the areas where you are just following someone which is taking away from the things which actually matter to you. And once you have this clarity, you can go out and find your community.

    Finding a bunch of people with the same interests as you can be fun and gives a sense of community, You could also indulge in ‘healthy’ competition sometimes so that all of you get a boost towards your goals.

    So the next time you wish you had some activity or item someone has, take a pause. Think why this thing feels so attractive to you. Maybe its really something you wish for, or maybe its just the way someone is projecting it which makes want to have it as well.

  • What is your definition of enough?

    One of the things to think about in life is how much is enough for you?

    How many friends do you want? How many meaningful friendships you can really maintain? Or how big of a house you need? How many countries do you really want to visit and so on!

    You need to draw the line between hustling for more and being content with what you already have, or achieved. Modern culture wants us to believe we are always ‘incomplete’. We can keep getting better or acquire more things in a never ending quest,

    But at many things in life, being good enough, or even average will just do.

    It might be the best even.

    This is specially important if you have been constantly striving and achieving in one domain of your life. You might have started off on that path as you sorely lacked initially, but then you might lose sight of your rewards and never get to enjoy them.

    In this post The Art and Science of Spending Money, Morgan Housel mentions how, many people get into the mode of making more money and get stuck in it.

    Never having a chance to relax and spend the money, long after they have reached their goals.

    There is ample flex in pushing the goalpost further and further when you reach one.

    But it doesn’t have to be so.

    You don’t have to be a constant work in progress.

    You can be growing, yet valid and complete at the same time.

    So revel in the light when you reach your goals. Pat yourself for how far you have come.

    And maybe if you want, push for an even bigger goal.

    Or realize that its enough, and choose something new altogether.

  • How easily can you adapt?

    A random fact about how humans can survive in the harshest climates of the Tundra to the Sahara deserts made me thinking. Though that’s an extreme example, humans are really quite adaptable.

    Unless we stop being so.

    Adaptability, resilience, openness to change are all interrelated.

    You can’t be adaptable unless you are open and willing to change. Resilience depends on how easily you can bounce back from setbacks and mold yourself to changed realities.

    Being adaptable is not a trait which comes easily to few. Once you get used to a particular lifestyle or even story, it can be really hard to change. Even when not changing is in fact being harmful or not working for you.

    I used to get flustered by even small changes. If my boxing instructor asked us to combine punches instead of following the set routine, I used to get frustrated. “Why can’t we just continue to do what we have been doing all this time?” 🙂

    However, understanding your own friction to change can hopefully open the doors for change as well. Just by realizing the difficulty and real work it takes to adapt to changes sometimes softens the problem.

    This podcast Why You Don’t Change (But How You Still Can) beautifully captures the difficulties involved in change and gently gives some suggestions. For me, the biggest takeaway was the realization was how change always entails giving up something, even if it was bad.

    Starting an exercise regimen, means you have to give up your old habits of eating junk food or not moving your body enough. By being aware of what the change entails, you can make a more practical decision if you want to pursue with the change. You realize that you are in control of your life, you can at any point decide to swap out these habits with healthier ones.

    Change is always hard. But by exercising change and being quite adaptable to changing circumstances, hopefully we get better at it with time.

  • The importance of being able to articulate well

    The importance of being able to articulate well

    Being a frequent listener of podcasts, I am both amazed and in awe of how effortlessly articulate few people are. It is a greatly useful skill to be able to clearly and concisely convey your thoughts and ideas and effectively land them.

    You need to have good ideas, but the aspect of having a great delivery associated with it matters. It decides whether your idea will be heard and come to reality or not.

    I do want to build on my articulation skills and am working on it. It does take effort and practice. This post is not about how we can build the skill, but about why it matters, as seen from the outside.

    Firstly, being able to convey your ideas effectively saves a lot of energy. Incomplete and haphazard communication can result in back and forth. If your message is not clear, it can lead to unwanted deciphering and misconstruing of the message intended. Prevention is better than cure applies even in communication!

    Effective articulation, be it spoken or written word is an art in itself. Of course the greats novelists of the world of literature have honed this to the maximum. They can build entire layered inner and outer worlds of a character beautifully and masterfully. A lot of aspects are deliberately left out to make room for interpretation.

    Good communication or storytelling helps in building trust and cooperation. Of course the content matters, but just having good intentions and useful information is not enough. A lot rests on how well we are able to effectively articulate why the idea matters and how its relevant.

    Hence it is a worthwhile endeavor to constantly improve your articulation skills.

    And get your ideas heard, loud and clear! 🙂

  • Be generative

    Be generative

    In the current times, it can be so easy to passively live away your life consuming content. There is nothing wrong with this. However to achieve anything worthwhile, you need to assimilate and integrate your learning and lived experience and generate energy, ideas and work from it.

    Being generative and producing work performs many functions –

    You find your voice

    Actually going and doing something consistently helps you discover your voice. Constantly putting yourself out there signals to yourself that you matter and your ideas matter.

    You build the momentum of creation

    By forcing yourself to be generative, you are constantly looking for ideas which you can use and bring to fruition. This builds on itself and creates momentum to sustain and grow further.

    Its a way to teach yourself

    Its always said that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone. By teaching someone, and in the process generating words, notes, conversations puts into test how much you have understood the topic.

    It might be one thing to abstractly understand algorithms, but actually writing it down and explaining it step by step to someone and convincing them why it works is totally different.

    So go ahead and weave in moments of being generative along with learning and growth.

  • Word of the month – advocate

    Word of the month – advocate

    advocate (v) – to speak in support of an idea or course of action

    The past month I was thinking of how advocating for what you believe in and stand for is so important. It might come naturally for a few of us, and for others it might be tough to build this skill.

    We might find it easier to advocate for someone or rally for a cause someone else starts fighting for. You might find it comfortable to hop on a bus which someone else is already steering.

    However, we get the most scared when it comes to advocating for ourselves.

    And we matter. Our ideas matter.

    At times, it might be us who needs an advocate the most.

    To be able to advocate for oneself, we firstly need to be clear on what matters to us. It takes reflection, questioning and self awareness to understand our own core values and beliefs.

    If you are prone to self doubt and low self esteem, it might be particularly hard to self advocate and drive results in the direction which best suits us.

    The journey of self advocating is bound to have failures, embarrassment and disappointments. Just accepting this can make us more resilient and realistic about the effort involved.

    We need to slowly and compassionately persist.

    Consistently stand up for ourselves and what we believe in, and how we view the world. Having allies and learning from people who are good at advocating for themselves will be helpful.

    In the end, we owe it to ourselves to make us and our ideas be heard and seen in the way we deem fit and right for us.

  • Striving vs living – finding the balance

    Striving vs living – finding the balance

    It can be sometimes be addictive to keep working on ourselves and strive to be a better version. Never living the life which we currently have as a result.

    It is important to be aware of areas where we need work. Where there is room for growth. And we can consistently work on these aspects.

    However, we should not forget to live the life we already have, as we strive to be better.

    It is a delicate balance.

    On the one hand you are fully aware of your challenges and rough edges. On the other, you fully embrace your present self providing yourself validation and compassion.

    In present times, its easy to fall into the trap of constant striving. There are many signals from media, society hammered into us on how we are not smart, beautiful or social enough. Many of them are based on completely false narratives, but its a hard task to avoid this constant humdrum.

    So remember to live your life completely even as you continue on your growth journey. .

  • The limits of to do lists and planners

    The limits of to do lists and planners

    There is the oft quoted
    Failing to plan is planning to fail

    So we end up planning our days by the minute with things to do. There are many apps and planners which help you do this (to the extreme sometimes). You are asked at the start of the year/month/week to meticulously plan ahead, tack your daily habits like water intake, reading, watching shows and all. In return, at least implicitly, the promise is that by becoming an ultimate task slayer, you become a happier person.

    I have had my trysts and multiple false starts with such planning apps and planners. You firstly spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect app or planner which is customized to you. Sad news is – there are none which will perfectly fit you. There are many apps though which can work for you. 

    The important aspect however is how much pay off can you expect from tracking your days as a series of To Dos.

    As with many things in life, we go through seasons and cycles. There might be times when you are in the productivity mode and the whole month is filled with ticking off items on your to do list. Then there are extended periods of slump, where maybe you get 2-3 things done in the entire week. And that is okay.

    We do not have to be chained to never ending to do lists. 

    Our worth is not determined by how long the to do list is or how many items we are able to tick off.

    My experience with planners have been lackluster to say the least. I realized I am better off without them, and a simple to do list for the week, quarter, year suffices and mostly gets the job done.

    However, like any other tool in your life, be open to trying something new. Something which probably can make your life simpler. If it works for you, adopt it, even in a big way maybe!

    But the tool should not become an end in itself. Its a mean to achieve something greater. Definitely there are many worthwhile and important things in life, which you go ahead and do anyway, and may not figure in your to do list!

  • How to be less uptight

    How to be less uptight

    You want to things to be always prim and proper. With proper decorum. You get frustrated with minor inconveniences. Life problems can be stressful to handle at the best.

    The truth however is that life’s difficulties touches everyone in their lifetime. Isn’t the whole growing up, being mature, about being more resilient when life happens.

    1. Understand that things go wrong (and more often than you think)
      Even with best intentions, best plans, sometimes you get punched in the face. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean you are a failure. It doesn’t mean everyone around is constantly judging you. When things don’t go as expected, accept it, and continue anyway.
    2. Its not your responsibility
      Yes, most things you are fretting about, let go. They are not your responsibility. Unless you are fully responsible of taking care of another living entity, like a child, pet or someone sick. You don’t need to get the house in order before guests visit, you are not responsible for always having to put up a cheerful and happy persona. You are allowed to have human emotions, and its healthy to show them in a safe space.
      So stop taking blame and apologizing for everything which goes wrong.
    3. Learn to be adaptable
      Things keep changing all the time. Try to be as adaptable and accommodating as you can. If any situation or person does expose your rough edges, give yourself enough grace and compassion to fully accept it. Think about how you can learn more about the situation and react better next time.
    4. Read, travel, meet people
      Learn, interact (and live their life vicariously via fiction) with people different from you. You learn how things go bad even with the ‘perfect’ people or circumstance. The more you can expand your worldview, the softer you become to yourself and those around you.
    5. Understand the finitude of life
      After all, an average person has around four thousand weeks in a lifetime! So is it really worth worrying and stressing about how the waiter irresponsibly doused a whole glass of mango milkshake on you.
      Many a times, its best to be just amused on how life can be so unpredictable and in the most random ways.
    Laugh at the minor misfortunes and live beautifully anyway.
  • Time is a container

    Time is a container

    Time feels so real and yet fleeting at the same time. Usually it feels as though we have an unlimited supply of it. However, all of us need to work with this rigid container of twenty four hours in a day.

    There is a lot of pressure to maximize the output from this container. The loud productivity brigade calls us to extract the most from limited time. Thankfully for us, we have books like Four Thousand Weeks which have established how getting on to a productivity treadmill is a futile endeavor.

    Like many other things in life, your relationship with time gets better once you let go of your desire to control it tightly.

    Recently I came across this insightful podcast episode featuring Laura Vanderkam, the author of the book Tranquility by Tuesday. It is filled with great, easy to apply steps which can help you get a better hold of our never-failing-to-overwhelm-life.

    The author gives us a simple tip on how to work with this container – time.

    Have a set bedtime!

    It can be easy to believe that we can extend our supply of time by forgoing our rest or leisure time seeping into our sleep. Revenge bedtime procrastination is becoming more common now – a long tiring day would drag well past midnight with scrolling through Instagram or watching Youtube.

    Of course this means that you don’t feel your best the next day, as you still need to wake up on time to get on with your day.

    I have started to apply this principle, and honestly am quite surprised how a simple change can improve your overall wellbeing. Having a set bedtime ensures I put myself to sleep around that time. Even if I stretch by twenty or thirty minutes, I am somewhat clearly aware of how this will impact my energy the next day.

    Earlier it felt like it was my right to continue entertaining myself well into the night, because I have had a tiring/boring/exciting/<insert any emotion> day. But now you understand how delaying bedtime can impact you.

    Eventually you feel indebted to your future self and go to bed early! At a time you had chosen for yourself.