My travel stories and best personal development ideas.
And just like that, On My Canvas completed three thriving years on the internet.
Congratulations to us all who have been part of this budding platform through which I want to spread love, life, and hope. I cannot thank my readers enough for sticking with me all the while, for sending me immensely inspirational messages day and night, and for asking me to write more and more. On some hard days, I could not have done it without your endless emails and witty comments.
Did anyone ever tell you that you should read books to change your life?
I started reading non-fiction and fiction books sincerely only for the last four-five years. But in this duration, I read some books that shifted the course of my life. They exposed me to unbelievable facts. They laid open the science that I didn’t know exist. They told me stories I could never imagine. They made me cry like I hadn’t before. They made me laugh as if I had nothing to worry about. They accompanied me when I was lonely. They unfurled the greatest lives. They told me life can be lived in many ways. They reassured me that it was okay to be who I was. But also that I could grow.
You don’t know what is out there until you read. And then the ghosts don’t leave you alone, ever.
On my 30th birthday three years ago, I had written 30 life lessons my twenties had taught me. From exercising regularly to fixing a hung laptop before anything else to not running after money but finding my calling and chasing experiences were the core learnings of my 20s.
As I’m about to turn 33 in less than two weeks, I found myself riding the life lesson wave again. “How am I managing life in the 30s” question stared at me.
Contrary to how it might look like, I always say that age is just a number(as many of my friends told me when I asked them to contribute to this article). Ignoring my steeping age that rushed towards my 30th birthday like a break-less ambassador car and blocking my parents who looked at me as if the time for me to do anything good had gone by, I shifted my life gears in my late 20s — changed my career, left my apartment to travel long-term, found the love of my life, took physical health sincerely, and finally chose life skills over money and ignored short-term gratification.
Though my late 20s lifestyle has poured over into my 30s, life feels different now.
I don’t go out on dates with random guys or wait till Friday to meet my partner but I stop myself from pulling my hair when my husband says he doesn’t remember if he had to remember anything. I don’t wonder if I should become a chef or open a WordPress or Tumblr blog but I soak in the cold graveyard silence of editors. I ain’t figuring out which backpack to purchase but I keep a check on what I buy so I can pack and leave at a day’s notice. I don’t think about joining a gym but I do take my morning routine as seriously as a guy considers cologne on his first date and a girl her facial.
As the battles I fight and the weapons of war have changed, the life lessons from my 20s aren’t enough to ride this new decade with peace and grace.
Here I am noting down my most profound learnings and ideas I have stuck to since the turning of the decades from the twenties to the thirties. I also asked my friends — who have seen enough 30s— to comment on what has kept them going(and some in their early 30s). Let’s read.
1. Protect yourself from unwarranted negativity — draw boundaries.
While in the 20s you still mull over what others say or think about you, in your 30s, you can be more confident about yourself. You know yourself better.
After a conversation, you might wonder, Why was he so rude? Or she didn’t have the right to tell me that I don’t invest enough in my relationships or my decisions would make my father’s blood pressure rise.
You realize that the other person berated you or was disrespectful for no reason. Their behavior was uncalled for.
Trust that instinct. Even if you doubt you were at fault, you cannot let yourself be insulted or harmed emotionally —personal differences can only be solved by criticizing positively and not by soaking the other person in guilt and hatred.
Remember — “If someone’s ungrateful and you tell him he’s ungrateful, okay, you’ve called him a name. You haven’t solved anything.” — Robert M. Pirsig
And my experiences say close people damage more.
Be careful. I’m not suggesting you break up with these people(some strongly recommend the bye-bye route though). But you need to draw boundaries — the sooner the better. Else you would end up with so much leftover negativity that you would viciously circle in a toxic pool.
Create distance. Confront negativity. Embrace healthy conversations. Talk less. Meet less. See less. If the berating continues, you may have to cut off completely.
Listen to this song: I’m only human after all. Don’t put your blame on me.
2. You can finally stop putting yourself at the bottom of the ladder
I value myself the least sometimes just to be nice to others.
You don’t come last and now would be a good time to respect yourself.
3. Trust your instincts.
Experience turns into instincts. Intuition is that voice in the back of your head telling you to walk out now. Trust this new depth every now and then. You won’t regret it.
4. A lot of people will be jealous of you. Don’t mind.
Don’t let them hurt you. Walk as if you own the room even if everyone else hates your guts.
5. You will be influenced by the people around you.
The people you surround yourself with have a lot to do with who you can become. Treat people like treasure.
6. If you feel out of place, you probably are. But don’t leave, yet.
If you can learn or meet good people, stay. Complacency is a hurdle in growth.
7. Stop comparing yourself to others.
Friends’ priorities would have evolved by now. Someone is getting married. Your college friend shifts cities. A friend is struggling with her father’s sickness. Your best friend becomes a chef.
By 30’s we start realizing what we have and what we would probably never have. There might be other 30-year-olds sitting on cash pyramids or playing with 30 kittens or posting a daily video of their Antarctica cruise having lunch with humpback whales.
Their choices led them to where they are and your choices led you to where you are. Be happy for yourself.
As a 32-year-old IIT Delhi graduate and friend Shweta told me about her 30s wisdom, “You cannot have everything. Time is limited and you need to figure out the one or two most important things in life and go for them. The most difficult part of this idea is that you are not going to be great at the aspects you de-prioritize, and you need to accept that.”
Have faith and do what feels right rather than looking around and thinking, but he sold his startup to grow broccoli?
8. Believe in the choices you made. Focus. — The first thing on what to do in your 30s list.
The 20s were all about trying everything and finding those one or two things. I settled on writing and traveling. Now things to do in your 30s are: accepting the choices, sticking to the process, and focusing.
You can’t do it all. Stop evaluating. Do the deed. Breathe.
My 40-year-old friend Victor told me that one of the things that have helped him to manage his life is, “Setting objectives and goals for my life. When I achieve one goal, I have to set a new one or I start to live like a car without direction.”
9. When the going gets hard, believe in the process blindly.
Anything good takes time.
Remember driving down a hill with hairpin bends after sunset? While driving carefully, you trust the other drivers, right? You need a similar kind of unwavering trust while doing your best.
10. Your life is significant.
Even something as tiny as an electron has value or a purpose, actually the tiniest of the things might have just have created the universe. One electron attachment or detachment and you would find sodium turning into salt and iron turning into rust.
Question the purpose but never refute it.
11. Stop saying I will take the risk later.
When? 30s is still the best time to jump.
Find a career you love. Or start working towards one that you might end up loving. Learn swimming. Drive a helicopter. Take those risks.
I wouldn’t say it is now or never for everything is possible. But it is now or much harder later.
12. Opinions aren’t facts. Stop treating them that way.
An acquaintance once gasped when I told her I don’t believe in god. And I was shocked by her open mouth and wide eyes.
Never say how could someone say that. People, including you, say what they have to say.
Watching others passively will keep you calm and help you co-exist.
13. Suggesting something ludicrous? The other person might not be outraged by the idea. Try before getting intimidated.
What if the unknown young boy from Wasseypur, Zeishan Quadri, hadn’t approached the successful director Anurag Kashyap with the story of the Gangs of Wasseypur(those who haven’t, need to see this movie)? Or what if Bradley Cooper didn’t approach Lady Gaga for the actress role in A Star is Born assuming she was just a singer? There is a Tamil Nadu farmer who grows half an acre of millets just for hungry birds.
Outrageous is the new normal.
While marrying a 6-year younger guy and contacting clients way out of my reach and hearing them request me to work for them, I realized anything is possible.
You cannot afford to think what if all the time. Try.
14. Anticipation is like constipation, only worse.
Anticipating future conversations and events is a favorite pastime of us all.
What if he doesn’t call or what if my boss doesn’t like my dinosaur figurine or what if the attendant doesn’t return my money? — We are living an imaginary future while ignoring the present.
When we anticipate, we think we are protecting ourselves. But the more we anticipate, the more we get sucked into the vicious circle of going over the same thing again and again, giving the topic much more time than it deserves and worrying endlessly. And our worse worries mostly never come true, and even if they do, we find a way to get out.
Have a rough plan for a rough day, then stop thinking. Deal with things when they happen. Otherwise, you will feel forever constipated.
15. Even if you are bursting with anger and can’t stop yourself from replying right now— don’t press reply.
We feel differently later.
This one habit can stabilize your relationships in your 30s.
16. Stop expecting others to understand your journey.
Most probably you don’t understand their problems and joys either. Quit feeling like a victim and walk on.
We must take responsibility for ourselves, and not expect the rest of the world to understand what it takes to become the best that we can become — Josh Waitzkin.
17. If a friend call after ten years and you are up to your neck in meetings — pick up the call. Leave grudges for elephants.
Or call back later. Screw that. Pick up the call.
Good buddies and rich biryanis should always be welcomed with open arms.
18. Don’t get guilt-tripped by parents
Many of my 30-year-old friends told me horrible guilt-inducing parental stories. Just one missed phone call or a life lived differently or a divorce or a work failure made some of them the most horrible son or daughter. I receive tonnes of comments on my Indian marriage conundrum article from many 30-year-olds who are depressed because their parents don’t appreciate their achievements as they haven’t married yet.
You aren’t a bad son or an irresponsible daughter unless you have tried to harm your parents intentionally. You aren’t a bad sheep for avoiding your parents. Well, who would want to call when a promotion or foreign trip would call for tears and blame gaming?
Do what you have to do to stay happy and worry-free. You live your life and they live theirs. Simple physics.
19. If you have a positive family, get closer.
Let go of old knots. Tie new threads. Be there.
20. Just because you live life on your terms doesn’t make you guilty undercharge.
In your 20s, you were still trying to explain. You can now stop justifying yourself and live.
If you don’t follow the ubiquitous customs or don’t do a conventional job or want to marry on your terms, or all of it together, you don’t have to feel at fault. You aren’t wrong or any lesser than conventional people some of whom at times won’t leave a chance to prove that you are an outlier and they are better. Remember — a lot of people don’t even know what they are doing.
You are a little ball of mischief. You are a little slice of hope. Treat yourself such. Accept you are different. And don’t give a damn if others don’t understand.
21. Working out is harder than before. But remember that the word exercise is Googled 1.2 million times every month for a reason.
In your twenties, a one-month gym membership could bring down your weight by five kilos and reduce your width by 1.9 inches. But our thirties body is more rigid. Even a 3-mile run cannot make up for a half-kilo prawn curry that we gulped down at dinner.
Exercising regularly and rigorously is the only way to stay fit, eat what you like, look good, feel better, and have energetic days and peaceful nights. There are innumerable benefits of working out but by now you have heard them all.
As a 33-year-old friend and senior from college Amit told me about his 30’s, “When we are younger, we don’t pay enough attention to our bodies and its well being. 30s makes us realize that our body needs attention. And when you start putting time exercising, eating healthy, and sleeping properly, you feel a different kind of energy. I feel more healthy in my 30s, and I wish I would have done it sooner.”
Don’t delay any further.
22. Nothing has to be wrong with you for you to meditate.
My lovely 32-year-old friend Shweta (whom I mentioned above) told me that when she talks to her other friends about meditating, they joke that she doesn’t need to meditate for there is nothing wrong with her.
Most of us think all the time. Meditation is an ancient Indian technique — approximately dating back to 5,000 to 3,500 BCE — and to meditate means to stop thoughts momentarily and be in the present. Nothing has to be wrong with anyone for them to meditate.
I overthink. First I thought that as a writer my job is to think. But when I took a ten-day Vipassana meditation course, I realized how much calmer and cleaner a mindful life is. Now I practice mediation frequently(still not regularly though).
I wouldn’t be exaggerating when I say I have found a weapon to deal with hard days and a reliable routine that helps me perform 197 percent on regular days. After meditation, I feel like my mind filter has been cleaned, and I become joyous — despite all my problems.
The Thirties is a good time to start meditating for our life starts stretching in multiple directions of marriage, startups, caring for old parents, et cetera. We don’t even realize how taut we feel sometimes. Meditation helps rebound back.
If there is one thing you want to take from this list, let it be that you will give meditation a chance.
23. Working on your personal development rather than grumbling about others will take you a long way.
How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing — Annie Dillard.
We gossip or we look inwards and grow. Now whenever I have to understand why my friend can’t stop smoking I don’t say how irresponsible he is but I look into books to figure out how can I help him (The Power of Habits — A life savior book).
This is the time to build a habit to read personal growth books/blogs a few hours every week. Reflect on your behavior. Make your life easy by understanding people (and yourself) rather than trying to change others or blame them all the while.
Start here with my personal development articles.
24. How you do one thing is how you do everything. Do one thing right.
Shortcuts leave us further from the destination.
25. Trying to find a real connection with everyone is an overkill.
Gone are those days when I wouldn’t talk to people I disliked and tried finding the best buddy in every walking human.
Get along peacefully for a tiny bit and then run for your life.
26. Not everything can be solved by talking.
Life is easier without explaining or talking sometimes.
27. Before worrying about anything, remember — everything is temporary.
Worries of today become memory vacuums of tomorrow.
I observed how frantic I was about who said what or losing some friends and egotistical boyfriends. But these things become past before we know. So now I try to give everything its due furrows.
How many things from your twenties do you care about now? You would feel much differently two years down the line so don’t fret much.
28. Rather than shouting at someone or getting angry, leave an honest business review. Or tweet.
I have, finally, learned from my bank and telephone network experiences that there is mostly no point in screaming your lungs out loud.
Stay calm but tweet that you are enraged.
29. Impatience cannot be dealt with impatience.
Block the hustle without losing calm. Else what is the point?
30. Don’t let external pressure filter through into your cozy inner self.
Mental protection is as important as physical.
A 33-year-old artist friend Mrinalini told me, “While working on a project, I dug up some ancient masks. And these old masks reminded me of all these crazy emotions we feel when we are in our 30’s. Sometimes we are angry, sometimes nonchalant, unperturbed, sad, and confused. The moods are always going to be up and down. But at the center of it all lies a calm monk. The idea is to balance yourself through these varying emotions and get to a state of neutrality. Don’t negate the states and never suppress emotions. Let them flow. But don’t get affected beyond a point.”
I see that state of neutrality as that cozy inner self. The external need to be processed before it could reach our interior where it can cause damage.
Like if I have a tough freelance client or a piece of news bothering me, I do feel all the above emotions but I resolve them before they could make me stay awake at night.
31. Tell all unimportant people that you are busy. And for all the important people, you are busy in the morning.
The above two make morning personal health routine and work set smooth sail every day. Do try.
32. A schedule gives a feeling of control. Invest in creating and following one.
A schedule might just change your 30s that seem to be going crazy with all the added responsibilities.
As a 36-year-old friend, Nimish said, “What has changed everything in the 30s is the habit of going to bed and waking up at the same time. My sleep cycle and sleep quality have improved. I am less tired and more energetic. I am also able to work in a much better schedule.”
33. Breaking the routine is important to get connected with our surroundings.
We lose touch with our surroundings when we run on habits. Breaking to reconnect is as crucial as automating.
34. Fighting with your partner about who they are is like crying over a salty ocean.
I have finally started letting go of my husband’s microsecond memory and his attention to salient only.
We all come in unique flavors, and even though we can change our irritating outwardly habits, we cannot change who we are. How can my partner remember things he doesn’t even care about?
If you need a whole wheat loaf, first you replace only 30 percent of all-purpose flour with wheat flour. Replacing the entire all-purpose for whole wheat would change the loaf and it might not even rise well. You might have to recreate the entire recipe.
The person you wish she could turn into is not the person you fell in love with. And your partner’s entire circuit would go haywire if you meddle too much with the wiring.
So quit fighting about basics and optimize what you can.
35. Appreciate even the tiniest of your achievements
That we aren’t on Page 1 of Hindustan times or can’t fly like Batman are stupid things to think and even stupider to say. Our achievements stand no less than anyone else’s. The trick is to try our best.
And even if we won’t pat our back on getting the project shortlisted or finally getting that lettuce thread out of our wisdom tooth, then what is the point?
These tiny pats and celebrations make us jump for the higher grape. So stock some wine and go out often.
36. A better tomorrow is today — The best mantra of all.
Whenever I worried about getting a job or publishing a blog post or my blog crashing down, I realized how the journey was the key. For when I arrived at the destination, I was already looking at the next stop. A job meant a good performance, a published blog post meant marketing, and an up-and-running blog meant going back to work.
Appreciate what you have so far. And don’t make it all about the things of consequence else you would be like a train that only departs and never arrives.
37. Blaming others never makes life easier, it makes everything harder.
With age, the emotional baggage seems to add up. But it is up to you to poke the blame bubble now and then.
38. Not everyone is against you
Every time a handyman shows up at my place, buried but disappointing plumber and internet service experiences wake up to life. But now I am learning that having some faith doesn’t hurt.
People might be scared or moody or querulous but they might not be against us or aren’t taking advantage all the time. So let go of that protective shield once in a while. Relax.
Don’t be scared to wipe your experience slate clean and start anew.
39. Say no often.
40. Empathy isn’t always good.
Stepping every time in someone else’s shoes might scare you of their reaction.
Step out. Wear your own shoes. It is their turn now.
41. Dance.
When was the last time you danced?
When I dance I become jello. Dancing can reconnect you to your body and is known to make us happier. Put on some music and go crazy often.
42. Expecting reciprocation of a gesture done with love is as ridiculous as a mango tree demanding lychees.
In our twenties, we expect our friend to gift us a notebook for we sent her Shantaram.
But the other person didn’t ask for anything. You did something nice for them because you felt like it. Don’t make your gesture anyone’s responsibility when finally now you can afford it all (I’m talking beyond materialistic gifts).
43. Let us accept that we mostly don’t know what is happening.
I’ve seen some 30-year-olds swaying in a swag of their new mansion or a bright BMW. And soon I see them crashing and taking a head fall.
Staying modest helps for we never know it all.
44. Investing in a good coffee machine is as important as getting a good house.
Well, for some of us at least.
45. A long warm shower or a cold ice pack on our face can fix more than we believe.
46. If a long warm shower, a good massage, a nature walk, and meditation haven’t fixed you, reach out to a mental health professional.
47. Love is not overrated.
If you give love a chance(or many chances), it will prove you wrong. Now is the time to hold onto it. Haven’t got it? It is never too late to find love. [Tips on approaching men and asking out women.]
48. But love can’t guarantee a peaceful life. That is up to you.
Giving adequate space to your partner is as important as filling the cake mold only up to its half capacity. Else the cake will rise and spill over, like your relationship would when things get heated.
49. Let go of small things.
I’m still learning how to do this one but seems like it is the secret to all peace. Damn it.
50. Save. Save. Save.
My savings save me on days when I can’t get enough freelance work or don’t have the energy to work after publishing heavily on my blog that is taking baby steps to earn.
Saving for the future is like jumping into the ocean with a lifejacket. Now you try to swim or float or stay, you won’t drown.
51. Want to alter your life in 30s? Read good books.
52. To run your life, keep the system running
Oranges won’t walk into your home. The bathroom won’t vacuum on its own. Families, offices, a nomadic couple — all manage their daily life because they do a set of things every day that keep the system running.
Don’t count the daily chores time as wastage. Instead, learn to find joy in these simple activities for at the end of the day sometimes those moments spent together are all we have. [Read what actually matters in this Le Petite Prince inspired piece.]
53. Be Kind to yourself.
The world won’t go upside down if you make one mistake. Don’t get stuck in the loop of what you could have done differently.
Remember — Every failure is one step closer to success.
54. Build habits. One word solution for it all.
The hardest of things becomes easy when turned into habits. If you haven’t tried, start with this piece on importance of habits and then go onto these tiny and healthy habits you can adopt in your 30s.
55. Sleep when nothing works.
56. Going into nature often can keep you hydrated.
57. The world doesn’t halt when we feel sad. But we can pause.
First, you will sulk, but when you take some time off and breathe, you will see your life in a new light. Follow that light. (Travelling in your 30s? No? You should. Read how travel can transform life.)
58. Be thankful when you can’t be anything else.
Say thank you. Soon, you will ask yourself, “what am I saying thanks for?” And you will realize how much you have to thank the universe for.
A friend Veronica — in her late 30s — said: “Focus more on the positive of life and learn to be happy with simple things. And the motto should be don’t worry, be happy. The most important is to accept each stage of life, live it, and, most of all, enjoy it. Every day, every year is a gift, and we should not focus on getting old.”(translated from Spanish)
ना हार में ना जीत में, किंचित नहीं भयभीत मैं — Neither am I scared of losing nor of winning
— is the best message for this decade. Courtesy a 32-year-old friend Himanshu.
Starting over in your 30s? Read my narrative on finding my passion and changing careers from engineering to writing.
Thanks to all my friends who contributed to this article.
Let me tell you a story.
“He Sleeps in a Storm” from a sermon by Rabbi Albert Lewis, 1975, as read in “Have a Little Faith” (page 93) by Mitch Albom.
I woke up feeling low-spirited today morning.
As my 7:10 am alarm rang, I extended my arm and fumbled for my phone on the floor, where it lays at night. I switched off the alarm. Then I pulled my arm inside my white duvet again and closed my eyes. My partner shut off his 7:20 am alarm, too.
While he pushed his phone under his crumbly pillow, we took a peek at each other, and then our eyes closed.
Though we all want to make someone happy or smile, we get so caught up in our work and lives and travel that we don’t bother to be any nicer or do beyond what is expected of us.
I am no different and I openly talk about how my husband and I loosened up on being sweet to each other during the beginning of the lockdown to vent out a bit of pressure. But then we realized, hey, now we only got each other. There is no traffic, we can work together from home, and food is still abundant. We should sing don’t worry, be happy all day long.
I have put my computer aside more than once to cry over an unjust email or to get my fair share in a fight with my partner or another close friend.
I have had bad days. I have sometimes taken off on those hard days. Instead of writing, I went out on a drive and bought tiger prawns or cried and slept or read Charles Darwin while drowning myself in chamomile tea.
These bouts of sulking in my misery or fighting followed by pampering and sometimes spending time with the other fighter of the duel leading to exhilaration and then to that moment of clarity where I justified the time spent crying as just another day lived and felt that life was as clear as a night sky have sometimes lasted for an hour and up to a day or even more.
One young summer of my life, I was living in Himachal, the home of the Himalayas. While learning the flute, practicing yoga, working on my blog, and trying to stick to Vipassana meditation techniques, I didn’t realize that I had buried myself under a lot of pressure to be the perfect Bohemian. Ironically, I was on a laid-back mountain staycation.
One Friday, my abuse of self-expectations pushed me to the abysmal depths of moroseness. I didn’t even want to lift my feet to walk to the bathroom. I spent two to three days lying in bed and weeping and sleeping and avoiding everyone and then hiking to a mountain alone.
In the two days of nothingness, I ignored all work, didn’t practice the flute, and put the yoga and meditation aside for wiser people. And on the third day of the rendezvous, I hung out with my travel friends and chatted away in the sun while eating palak paneer with garlic naan.
I needed that break because I had tired myself while learning new skills and working continuously in a new environment for almost a month. I needed to relax. I needed to just be.
The break from the routine did me good.
But when I am neither overworked nor under any kind of pressure and still spend hours or days brooding about how I don’t want to work today or do anything else, I try to correct myself.
I say, hey, this time will never come back. You should use it well. Don’t be sad. Smile and chirp.
To manifest my ideas about how to get motivated to work and laugh, I have even written an article on how to make the most of the bad days. In the piece, I emphasize why we should get out of bed even when we don’t want to — we should acknowledge our feelings first, and meditate or read or do something else we enjoy and then slowly get back to work if we can.
I may sound like someone who expects life to be as perfect as an abstract Turing Machine.
Or to some of you, I will appear like a mature person trying to channel her emotions and downfalls so that she can pick up herself faster than before.
Well, I don’t want to stay fallen on the floor. Do you?
Also Read: Why we should keep climbing even if our hands bleed
I love the idea of working even when we don’t feel like working to get our energy back. Working towards our goals irrespective of how we feel doesn’t signify that we are insensitive but shows that we are professionals who deliver what the world is waiting upon us for.
If you don’t go to work, maybe your presentation would get delayed and no one else would be able to step in your shoes. Or you might lose the opportunity of getting the project lead position because you didn’t take leadership initiatives. That conversation thread with a potential client might die for you didn’t follow up with your portfolio. If I don’t do anything for a few days at a stretch, not only would I feel a void, but my blog readers and clients wouldn’t be happy either.
We don’t always have to perform, but a continuous slack in our work attitude will show.
Or, instead of either moping or working, I would rather enjoy my time. Won’t we all? I would go out and buy more tiger prawns and cook them with bottle gourd. Or I will go cycling with a friend and revel in the fresh air.
Roaming around free on one or more bad days sounds better than working, especially when we don’t have the motivation to go to work.
But truth be told, our mind doesn’t let us tame it that easily.
If I don’t engage in an activity that grips my attention, I keep revisiting the micro-nuisances of my otherwise beautiful life.
I would be putting the scrabble alphabets together but crying intermittently about how the real estate agent was an incorrigible male-chauvinist unable to move on. But when I write, I am able to layout my emotions through my words (or any other work) in a wholesome way rather than mulling over them in my mind.
Though the healing process could be different for everyone, most of us need something more capturing than entertainment to direct our thoughts.
Mark McGuinness, a coach for creative professionals, said in the book Manage Your Day to Day, “Treat your work as a refuge — an oasis of control and creative satisfaction in the midst of the bad stuff. Don’t beat yourself up if you are not on fire creatively every day — give yourself credit if you show up for work and make even a small amount of progress. When you put down your tools for the day you may even see your personal situation with a fresh eye.”
The above lines are true not only for creative people but for most of us. When we divert our attention from personal issues to our profession, we would not only progress on the work front but we may end up understanding our issues better.
How many times has it happened with you that while going through incessant meetings you forgot about that morning quarrel with your partner or an investment gone wrong? And when you do shake up work and drive back home, you realize how stupid the fight was or that one investment is bound to go bad in ten years of financial planning.
By dumping our energy into work we put ourselves into the driver’s seat of our life. We feel in control, at least professionally. Though our day might have started with an unexpected emotional speed breaker, we drive through the valley of work almost smoothly. Even if the drive isn’t that easy, the motion sets us for progress.
We should keep walking to become who we can in spite of the suffering, Nietzsche said. Or in other words, pain doesn’t mean that we should stop.
If you hate going to work or just do it for the money, you might find it harder to use task lists as a distraction. In such cases, I suggest you read these three pieces in which I talk about changing careers, finding passion, and how to build a career we love when we can’t find passion.
But if you enjoy even some aspects of your work, chances are that you will be happier doing it and moving on rather than just sulking. Your service would be your anchor to positivity and growth.
When I immerse myself in editing a piece or scheduling Pinterest, I stay on the top of my work deliverables. Personal thoughts still come and go but rather than becoming the main thread of my brain they spawn on the side randomly. My work doesn’t let these unwanted notions take the full processing power of my brain, the unsettling threads die hungry, and I continue writing and researching about ancient caves and Marketing Analytics methods for dependent clients.
I have also often seen that while I work the things that have been bothering me keep untangling themselves in the background. And I feel a growth, both, personally and professionally.
“Depth of style can only spring from a deepening of our emotional life.” The greatest artist N. C. Wyeth once wrote in a letter to his youngest son Andrew Wyeth (Courtesy the book Posterity).
But if I was playing scrabble, the troublemakers would have overpowered the less-demanding gaming brain threads, and instead of winning with words such as conscientious and concomitant, I would be loosing with lost and found. I would be playing to beat my partner but my chain of thoughts would be, in turn, defeating me.
Work helps us channelize our thoughts, gives us control, and allows us to look at our problem in a new light, all three contributions are helpful when our emotions might otherwise drown us.
Our focus on work shouldn’t be deterred by our mood for another big reason.
How we feel change more often than we think — our emotions are not created just by our inner bodily reactions but also by our surroundings — an idea extensively discussed in the book How Emotions Are Made, by the famous psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett. A sunny morning invokes a gush of positivity but a dark evening brings along the clouds of doubt.
We never feel the same all the days of the week. We don’t even feel the same throughout a twenty-four-hour day.
As we are constantly faced with volatile emotions, we cannot depend on them to guide our mood, our professions, and thus our lives.
We can neither resolve our doubts nor our problems by sitting on our hands. But by working even during hard times, we would not only direct our energy but also get better at our job, while feeling more in control. And when we are more skilled we enjoy our work more and are less hesitant to do what we do even when we are not motivated to work.
As Cal Newport writes in his book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, forcing the skills to come is the hardest phase. And then he shares the story of a bluegrass musician who plays 3-4 hours straight for a month to master a new fast tune.
A study conducted at Yale University proved that the more time we spend at work, the better we get, and the more we enjoy it. (I have written more about what makes for a good career in this article about following our curiosity rather than chasing the passion.)
Self-Determination Theory (SDT) also tells us that we need competence, the feeling that we are good at what we do, and autonomy, control over our day, to feel intrinsically motivated for our work.
To digest the idea of working to feel better, think of the difference between learning to swim and then swimming to relax. While we learn, we almost want to skip the lesson every day. But once you know the strokes, swimming is fun and helps us feel better.
“Life is or should be full of doing things you would prefer not to do,” John O’Hara wrote in a letter to his daughter, Wylie O’Hara. O’Hara was a popular and successful writer and his commitment to writing was at the peak even at the peak of his career. (Courtesy Posterity)
As I said in a piece on creative rituals, I let my mood expire.
Instead of deciding whether we should go to work or not, we should just work. We can take the day slow, do some self-care, and then head out to work irrespective of our mood. It is like any other day but we would be easier on ourselves. Rather than criticizing ourselves about our emotional turmoil, we should pat ourselves on the back for going through the tough times like a warrior.
The trick is to not think of work as an enemy but to perceive work as a savior. Something that anchors us. That holds our hand when we are falling. When we feel bad about everything or our heart is broken or we are facing a financial problem, we can still pick up that pencil or pen or get on a project that can add value to not only ours but others’ lives too.
Steven Pressfield, the author of The War of Art and Turning Pro, said in the parting away notes of the book Manage Your Day to Day about which I have talked above and which has inspired me to write this article,
“What is a professional, anyway? A professional is someone who can keep working at a high level of effort and ethics, no matter what is going on — for good or ill — around him or inside him. A professional shows up every day. A professional plays hurt. A professional takes neither success nor failure personally.”
He adds, “In the end, for me, it comes down to the work itself. A pro gets younger and more innocent as he or she ascends through the levels. It’s a paradox. We get salty and cynical, but we creep closer, too, to the wonder. You have to or you can’t keep going. Any other motivation will burn you out. You develop a practice, and the practice gets simpler and less self-oriented over time. We rise through the levels of professionalism by a process of surrender. We surrender to our gift, whatever that may be. We give ourselves up to the goddess and to the process.”
And then he ends his thought with a rhetorical question, “Is this a path you want to travel? Did someone say it was easy? Do you have a choice?”
But it is easier said than done.
When I am sad or feeling low, I still spend a couple of hours agonizing here and there but then I also look forward to opening an empty document and writing. Or I do some other admin work. Or something else. Or something else.
Slowly I forget about the problem and the dark clouds and the inconvenient conversations for I have submerged myself in the fictional world of words.
No matter what profession we are in, we all have our fictional worlds. We just have to get inside them.
When you get into the habit of embracing work rather than pushing it away in hard times, you will be able to surrender to it when you need the distraction the most. And if you practice enough, the distraction would have taken its own independent form. It would have become something larger than life. It would become your gift.
Try working when you don’t feel like it. It isn’t as bad as it seems.
Or to say,
“When the fields get sodden, let’s not retreat to our homes. Let us put ourselves in the yoke. Let us pull harder. Let us sow. Come rain or thunder, we tend. Finally, we reap. And we see that the rain doesn’t make us sickly cold and the process doesn’t hurt us. But these are the things that keep us sane.”
If you want to know what really matters, read this: 30 Life Lessons I Grasped From My Twenties
I remember a quote that once said, ask the right questions. Over the years I have realized that questions are much more important than answers as without asking the right queries we can never hope for the right knowledge.
But it took me a while to even understand what questions I should ask of myself. Some of those doubts were always there in the background, hovering, emphasizing that I didn’t understand life. I had a vague feeling that I was dismaying over things that didn’t matter while ignoring the universal realities that would pull me out of my little problem bubbles. But I wasn’t sure. And I never took out time to pin those deep questions about life, and, hence, could never answer them.
The process of questioning deepened when I started writing and reading full-time. As I had redesigned my life from a corporate cycle of drudgery, I was too eager to question everything and to be better at the things I had failed at before. It was like I had found vigor again. The more I read, the more I understood, the more life questions I had, and the more incomprehensible it seems now.
As Franz Kafka once said, “Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.”
The effort continues.
I am putting down some thought-provoking questions that have hitherto found me here. I have followed a natural course and have clubbed thematic questions together.
I have answered all the questions to keep an account of my thoughts on the matter. As you will see, I have some answers, but some of the questions to life still dodge me. You can completely ignore my responses and find your own.
Along with the important questions about life and their answers, I am also putting down the books that have helped me understand the matter.
I plan to update these self reflection questions and answers year-on-year or whenever my understanding changes.
Till then, I present to you the questionnaire of life from my lens.
Let me recite a story from Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habits. This is a true story of a woman named Lisa(as per the records) who was the subject of a scientific study for understanding behavioral change and habits.
Please note: Though the story is the key to appreciate this article, I am summarizing the story for those readers who don’t want to read it. If you want to read the story, go to it here. Else continue reading the summary.
The Artist is no other than he who unlearns what he has learned, in order to know himself — E.E. Cummings
While writing full-time for almost three years now, I have spent a lot more time looking inwards (and would continue to do so) than I did before. When I reflect on myself, I am able to look outwards with more compassion and a deeper understanding of life. And this growing insight into the external world and my own form the roots of my personal growth and my art, both of which, in turn, feed the soil of the two with the dew from their leaves.
Learning paves way for more learning.
In this piece, I share everything that I have learned so far as a writer and from before. I believe that all that was important must have made itself available to my mind and heart while I was writing the article. And if I have missed something, either I do not care about it enough or it will appear in some form later and is not crucial until then.
Though this is more a cheat sheet for me and less an article for a reader looking for the wisdom of life, I hope I have shared some experience that will help you sail along this immense sea of life with a bit more ease. I am 32 years old, and this list of life learnings is long so you can skip ahead and read a section (all are randomly arranged with short titles) or go grab a coffee and then come back later to continue from where you left.
By Caspar David Friedrich / Public domain
Quoting Galib or Bukowski or Edison doesn’t make anyone a poet or a writer or a visionary. Ideas hit hard as a hailstorm by living a dedicated life. 1
You will have to put in immense effort to create a remarkable life. There is also a teeny-tiny factor of luck. 2
Things take their course. Hydrate yourself with patience. 3
You can only shift the world right now, not in five minutes. 4
In simple terms —The quality of the 10,000 hours you spend to build skills is significant. The number of hours I sit on the chair to write is important, but the number of hours I don’t know if I was on the chair is even more important. Don’t pretend, do. 5
A tiny bit and one more tiny bit and another tiny bit matters̶ more than one large bit. The sum of many small things might not be greater than one big one, but several intangible forces start working in your favor when you are consistent. 6
Your honesty aids you more than it benefits anyone else. 7
Honesty is a formless invincible savior. 8
A good life is not defined by work or relationships. The size of your bungalow or the freshness of the kingfish at dinner doesn’t quantify happiness either. Though these things might affect your mood or make you more comfortable, none of these alone or together can keep you happy and fulfilled. 9
Your temperament decides if you would live a good life filled with happiness. Temperament is the mesh that holds everything together. 10
If you get upset at small things, you will stay unhappy and guilt-prone. 11
Having a bad temperament doesn’t make you a bad person. But people around you would feel like using you as a punchbag every full moon. 12
You can always improve your nature but you will have to lift heavier weights¹ than you do in the gym. 13
Every day, the smallest of the things that you do make up who you are and what you would become. 14
If someone talks about work-life balance, tell them they are lying. 15
Work-life is not different from personal-life— You don’t enter into a new realm after breakfast. It is the same world of your ideas, your cat, your husband’s messages, your ginger tea, and your books. 16
After work, you don’t migrate to a new realm of personal life, but you get access to a more freely flowing time. It is the same world of your thoughts, interests, and temperament unless you hate your work. 17
The more fluidly work and personal life flow into each other, the easier it is. And then one day you can’t tell the difference which is which. 18
Passion is the remedy for some people. 20
In the absence of passion, there is still always something that you can be good at. Find it. 21
Practice abstinence from following people unless you want to always walk behind. 22
How you do one thing is how you do everything. 23
How to know if you are doing the best? A constant judgment of your choices or results would leave you more confused than a cat looking at her reflection. Your best efforts aggregate over a period of time when you work with compassion, dedication, patience, and maneuver your path every time you realize you have made a mistake. 24
You can always do better, but you don’t know how, yet. 25
Rueing over a mistake is worse than trying to unfry the salmon. 26
You shouldn’t care about that Friday in 2014 when your ex Italian boyfriend threw your cashmere sweater out of the balcony as you would lie to yourself to fill the gap of memories³ and would hurt yourself by thinking imaginary things that are not winning you the best humor-book award either. Past is a fading star, and your reality is that milky moon up in the sky today. 27
The more you think about the past, the more habitual you become of thinking about the past — You start thinking to justify your actions and life so far but every time you feel you are done you will find more things to defend. You increase your reasons to worry rather than reducing them, ironically. Now you are watching the past from behind a hazy screen while your present is hazing away, too. 28
Letting go is the key to fulfillment.29
Small things are small. To keep them small you will have to stop obsessing over them. 30
Remove the phrase “it wasn’t fair” from your vocabulary and act as you deem correct or else get ready to unfry the salmon again. 31
Don’t be burdened by things that don’t seem to go your way. Things happen on their own accord, and it is hard to say what would do us good or what would do us bad. 32
You start to lose your understanding of yourself over a period of time. But remembering your roots is important to stay kind and compassionate. As they say, keep those old clothes hidden in the back of the closet. 33
The easier it is to bother you, the more you will be teased. 34
The world doesn’t care if you are in a bad mood or a good one even if you are Amitabh Bachchan. 35
No one is responsible for your happiness. 36
Self-pitying people always create a reason to pity themselves. You are not a reason for anyone’s unhappiness or the heart attacks they tell you they might get. 37
If you want people to care, tell stories that they care about first. 38
People are waiting for you to cheer up so that they can laugh with you. 39
Laugh and make people laugh to keep it light. 40
People will always tell you to do what they think is right. And they all think they are right. 41
The more you try to please people, the difficult it becomes to please them. 42
People accept criticism better once you have appreciated them. 43
People like you if you put yourself below them. Put yourself on a lower pedestal a few times but don’t get used to it else you will always find yourself crawling on the grass. 44
People like you more if you let go of small things. 45
If you banter with people and show that you understand where they are coming from and you are like them, too, you have them. 46
The day you stand up to lead, people will follow you. But they will only continue following you if you bring conviction and relentlessness. 47
Everyone – even the richest and most popular people – get scared of missing out. Everyone gets jealous. 48
Worry is constipation for the mind. 49
You worry more than you need to —You always overestimate the amount of effort or pain required to complete a task. When the time comes, you don’t quantify the effort and only care for the thing to get over. Later on, you always feel that it wasn’t that hard or it was different from how you had imagined it. Worry less. 50
Bad days won’t leave you alone. Someone who doesn’t have bad days is playing PubG on Google Pixel or binge-watching Money Heist. 51
Instead of brooding on bad days, do something you enjoy, whatever gives you pleasure or brings clarity. Get to your deliverables when you stop wishing the world to end. Now you don’t have a bad day but a few relaxing hours. 52
Sometimes doing nothing and watching squirrels frolicking around should be your g̶o̶a̶l̶ essence of the day. 53
Fun is not the coolant but it is the fuel. Or: Don’t play to work better — Play to play. 54
Enjoyment doesn’t mean instant-gratification — You don’t have to grin every second, but the idea is not to cry to sleep every day either. 55
Instant gratification does refill our willpower. Now manipulate the willpower to do whatever you like. 56
Language needs to be changed with the company like one changes socks as per the wind of the day. 57
In the advent of being sincere and poetic and philosophical, you don’t have to don Neitzsche’s countenance or stop forwarding cat memes. The greatest philosophy is in knowing and accepting who you are. 58
You can not only alienate yourself from others by being too solemn, but you can also miss out on intersecting with the free wavelengths of life. 59
Be sincere, not serious. 60
If you know a little bit about everything, you are better placed than a lot of other people. 61
The easiest way to learn a lot about a lot of things is by reading books. 62
Don’t learn to be better than others. Learn to understand better. 63
Money can’t buy happiness or wisdom or well-being or relationships or anything valuable. But no-money buys unhappiness. 64
You are precious if you are not running behind money like everyone else. If you have skills, the money will come. 65
Money can buy flight tickets to Colombia and peri-peri french fries and these come close to happiness on some days. 66
Every act of kindness has the power to multiply like water hyacinth. 67
Kindness flows back. 68
Being kind sucks sometimes. 69
Ask everyone who shows up at your home for water. You never know who is drying in the drought. 70
You shouldn’t depend on your partner to do all the benevolent deeds — If he is softer than you, you still have to keep your flame of compassion and kindness ablaze. 71
Everyone can write. But you can only write well on the things you care about. 72
A lot of things can be only done well if you care. 73
Don’t shun something you aren’t proud of. See how you can improve. And that might make all the difference. 74
Lack of focus might not have anything to do with the quality of the result— Maybe it wasn’t the right time for that idea. Try it later. 75
Believing in a secret ingredient can delay you from forming your own magical formula. 76
You cannot be there before you are there. The process is the result. 77
The road only shows up when you walk ahead. 78
We feel, and that is why anything matters². 79
You can never feel anyone else’s experience or happiness so don’t pity them or hate them. 80
Everyone is figuring out something or the other. 81
The people you think got it easy never had it easy. Even a white, well-educated American male struggles in deciding how to handle the privilege. And his experience counts. 82
If you want to get something that someone else has, you should try exchanging your genome to theirs, living their past life, and getting in their head first. If you haven’t had enough, try following their routine for a month. Start with Elon Musk. Now notice how absurd the idea was. 83
The more we try to become like someone, the further we go away from becoming ourselves. 84
If you are doing something because others are doing it, then the only thing you are doing is copying. 85
You don’t have to avoid something because others are not doing it. 86
You can forgive people or you can reproach them about how they hurt you — But it is not about them anymore, it is about you. 87
Instead of a reprimand, a gentle nudge in the right direction can do more good to everyone. 88
Experience helps but being a novice at something could be lucky sometimes. 89
People don’t mean everything they say. Stop taking everything literally. 90
Not everything is about you. 91
Instead of defending yourself, hit a joke with another joke. Have fun. 92
Crime isn’t committed by bad people — It is committed by people. You could have been one of those people if things didn’t work out for you the way they did. 93
Good looks leave a better first impression. Sorry, the world is biased. 94
Close friends can heal you faster than a cup of tea. Create healthy relationships for they carry you when you cannot walk. 95
Friends won’t wait for you eternally — Their life is going on while you are busy creating yours. You can either be in both lives at the same time or you can see yourself disappearing slowly from their story. 96
Don’t try to do it all . 97
If you can’t resist doing it all — do it one at a time. 98
Multitask in things that aren’t that important. 99
Blogging or writing or cartooning or doodling or Youtubing comes from a space within. It is not about how much you know, it is about how less you know and how curious you are. 100
No two blogs can be the same — people behind them are driven by different things. 101
A dilettante can’t win long-term by pretending. 102
The world is a jungle book — and you can be the man-cub. Being different could be your way. 103
Not everyone cares for your stupid examples. 104
If you are thinking about the same problems over and over (the dictionary of Obscure Sorrows describes this weariness with the same old issues as Altschmerz) it doesn’t mean that you haven’t made any progress. Progress reflects in how you struggle with those problems. 105
It is okay to not know about the art classics as long as you know about the classics of life. 106
There are fewer things better than love. Let yourself fall in love. 107
Love will come and go but don’t forget to work on yourself while you are floating in the pool of love. Else you will sink soon. 108
Your partner is your portable home. 109
If you are on the wrong path, you wouldn’t miss it because you were not thinking about it. But if you overbear yourself with the same thoughts, you would definitely end up tumbling. 110
When something becomes really boring, then we are in a position to change the rules. 111
This constant tug of war between work and recreation cannot be always justified by spending more time at work — it can be only pacified by being more aware while working. 112
Doing laundry is not a waste of time. Rather than detesting the household chores, you can be open about learning something new and giving it your best as life isn’t only about the time you spent typing on your Mac. Instead, you type because you live a life away from the keyboard. Remember that work and life aren’t disjoint. 113
It is okay if you don’t remember high school science. But high school science does make adult life better. 114
Keep your basics right. Visit the dentist. Get that checkup done. Now shift to autopilot and free yourself for other stuff. 115
Don’t get married or have a baby as absentmindedly as you switch on the television every night after returning from work. Getting married or having a child is a personal decision in spite of what the world tells you. 116
Television is designed to engage you in brainless activities that keep you hooked. Unhook and pick a book or play cards with friends, you will be more fulfilled. 117
Habits can kill you or make you. Go back to the time when your mother used to discourage you from eating chocolate solely by making a statement about it being a good habit or not. 118
Worrying about forming good habits is paradoxical. Don’t do it. 119
Life could end anytime. But you live like it won’t until the last moment. 120
Most probably people would judge you, but it has nothing to do with you. 121
Keeping a gun isn’t about personal protection. 122
Democracy is a pretense. 123
Don’t let any relationship define you. 124
Banks never care about the customer. They only pretend to. Think for yourself. 125
It is okay to feel lonely. 126
Parents are jealous of their children. Your life always seems easier than theirs. Don’t hold it against them. 127
Getting the best every time is only worth it if you are unaffected if you don’t get the best. Worrying over perfection is paradoxical. 128
If you can think about it, someone else can, too. If you feel it, someone else has felt it, too. What makes you different from others is what you do then. 129
Life isn’t like a book, but more like concentric circles. 130
Creativity is larger than life because it creates life. 131
A day is made up of good time, okay time, and bad time. 132
Every day is different from the previous one, even though it seems like exactly the same. 133
Not everything can be resolved by reading an article about it. 134
Stubborn, egotistic, and relentless avant-garde people shift the world. 135
You like to hide things deep inside. Then you think about those things to comfort yourself in the hour of need, and that is okay. 136
You would feel like hurting people at times. Especially if they are more successful or more beautiful or they have hurt you before. But don’t do it. 137
Ethnolinguistics should be a subject in school. So should be emotional intelligence, personal growth, sex education, writing, arts, speech, gender identity, international relations, communication skills. If they are not, study them on your own. 138
Learn new words to express the best you can. 139
Studying a subject meticulously doesn’t take the poetry out of it. You would know the concepts and patterns so that you can identify them and use them or refuse to use them on your will. 140
Watching that molten sunset could be one of the most fulfilling things of the day. 141
Don’t do something just because someone else asked you to do it. Run on reason. 142
Until you think right you are compromising. 143
Find the fuel that your creativity demands. To begin with, live, laugh, run, cry, talk. 144
When you don’t understand something, pause. Or restart. 145
You don’t need to justify why you want to travel alone. (the linked article is only an expression of how I feel when I travel and not a justification. )146
The beginning of a solo trip is always a little scary. You feel that it is you against the world. You imagine that everyone is watching you or laughing at you because you are wandering alone. But if you let the fear go for a second and look up, you will see that people are minding their own business and not staring at you. Trust the universe. 147
You would have to step out of your comfort zone if you want to grow. Travel is the means to this end. 148
A cat, or anyone else, is yours because of the time you give to each other⁴. 149
Everyone gets scared. But in spite of the fear, you should let yourself walk, make a mistake, receive feedback with open arms, and do it again. Break that wall of fear brick by brick. Now you are free to face another fear. 150
You would never be able to win the approval of negative people, so the earlier you show them the way out, the less emotional baggage you will carry. 151
The show goes on. Participate. 152
Everything is connected — The work we do, the way we treat people, the way they talk to us, the appreciation we get, the food we eat, the people we hang out with, the places we want to visit, the guilt we carry, and the memories we relish. Don’t have disjoint expectations from each part of your life. 153
The world is a continuum. The better we can interconnect ideas, the more easily we can float in life⁵. 154
Only experience can tell if something will work. 155
You can’t win by always playing hard to get. 156
No one has the power to upset you unless you give it to them. 157
It is not always easy to differentiate the cause from the result. 158
You would forget that it was about having fun. Remind yourself frequently. 159
Our ideas, promotions, commitments, financial planning, relationships all are there to make life better. So if something goes down, don’t despair: its presence was to keep you good, but its absence doesn’t mean hell. You will get everything as long as you can breathe peacefully. 160
Things always work out if you just hold on a little longer. But they may come to you in a different form from how you recognize them.161
Intuition is the collective consciousness of the life we have lived so far. Don’t ignore it. 162
Any good service or product or writing or art starts with being about you but then it is all about the people. 163
To forgive someone might seem unfair to you, but when you forgive, you soak in peace — thus getting your fair share. 164
There is always an option. 165
Art breathes inside each one of us. 166
Smile for you feel how you act. 167
Don’t just respect someone for their age, respect wisdom and kindness, and all such noble dispositions. 168
There is art in science and science in art. Once you connect the two, you have found infinity. 169
To create, first understand the rules, and then break them. 170
At some point, you start limiting yourself — Maybe when your mother first tells you that you can’t go out alone or when the neighbor comments that his son could do better than you or when the teacher scolds you for trying to understand the basics rather than repeating her answer or when you see an advertisement for a fairness cream that suggests you get fairer to have a better life. But the truth is inside the box of reason. Open it. 171
The background noise sounds louder when you are having a hard time. 172
You can do anything that you set your mind upon. 173
Without goals, you are as directionless as a sunflower is at night. 174
If you are ready to receive what comes along the way, you start moving in the direction of your goal little by little. 175
Give what it takes. And then some more. 176
Don’t be scared to lose yourself, for you might be on the path of discovering yourself. 177
Think deep, not wide.178
Most of the things have a simpler solution than you think. 179
Society is judgemental police. 180
Don’t let anyone else write your story. 181
Everything has an expiry date. 182
Sometimes you do your best work when you are tired —You would only make the effort to write that sentence if it is too good to let go. 183
Soak inspiration from the universe. 184
Words are wings. When not wings, they are swords. Choose your flights and battles wisely. 185
Your brain would expand into the time you give it to do something. Too less, and it hurries up. More, it stretches out. 186
When you feel angry or dejected, eat. Eventually, it is all about some curry and rice. 187
Walk on dewy mountain trails fringed by pines trees often. The joy is unbridled. 188
If you let go of boundaries set by others, you can tune into infinite wavelengths of freedom and choice. But be careful to not tune into noise again. 189
You need much less than you think you do. 190
Climbing stairs is always better than taking an elevator. Move your body as much as you reflex your brain so that you can climb that mountain when you want to. 191
Eventually, everything gets done. So instead of worrying, pause and breath frequently. Or kick a punching bag. Or restart your laptop to first get rid of those annoying notifications. Fix the basics. 192
The best way to live is to act as if no one is watching you. 193
If you see a longer piece of work taking time in spite of your best efforts, stand in front of a mirror. 194
When you think you have given it all, the universe will ask for more, and you will find yourself giving it more. 195
Sometimes you get into something so deep that you forget that you are inside. Let love find you at those times. 196
Footnotes:
1-Benjamin Franklin made a record of his everyday routine and checked if he worked on his vices.
2-Daniel Gilbert says in his book Stumbling on Happiness— Feelings don’t just matter, they are what mattering means. Are war and peace more important for any reason other than the feelings they produce?
3. We don’t remember our past as well as we think. You will find enough proof of this in Daniel Gilbert’s monumental book Stumbling on Happiness.
4. If I could suggest one book to anyone, it would be The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
5. I don’t think I can put better than this: There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion― Donella H. Meadows
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I hadn’t thought about doing something that I loved until I was 22 and on my first software engineering job in Bengaluru, the Silicon Valley of India.
I remember the taxi ride from the Bengaluru airport to the apartment my would-be roommate and old friend had rented in a residential complex. As the taxi cruised through the traffic, I looked out of the rain-soaked windows and wondered if the city would backdrop my life the way I had dreamed about it — like a deep blue sky sprawling vast for the young iris to spread her wings.
I was thrilled about my first job. I had imagined myself scuttling away on high heels in a crisp black trouser and a maroon shirt from one meeting to another in glass-faceted skyscrapers. I would always be solving important engineering problems putting a dent in the world.
As a Computer Science graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT), I couldn’t expect anything less — we are told we are the cream of the growing world-superpower India1. At the time I joined IIT, the institute selected 4000 applicants out of 348k — that is a 1.1 percent selection rate.
My excitement for work was coupled with the oncoming financial independence, cosmopolitan lifestyle, and social freedom. I hail from a small town, and though I had been studying away from my parents in Kota, Delhi, and Mumbai for the past seven years, I depended on them financially. (In India, youngsters don’t pick up part-time work to pay their way through college). But now, like the rest of the fresh Indian graduates, I could live independently for the first time.
But I was too young for a happy ever after. Within a year, I got bored with my job.
Coronavirus has slowed everyone down. People are staying indoors. Schools and colleges are shut. Offices have been closed down, and employees have been asked to work from home.
Borders are getting closed. Travel is forbidden, somewhere by law and somewhere by conscience. Some are still traveling and facing the wrath from the strangers on the internet.
