Why can’t we live as 1 world?

There are times when I wonder why do we even care to be nationalists. Why can’t we all just be citizens of this planet? Why do we need these boundaries created by noone but ourselves?

The answer to all these questions lies in the fact that humans have a tendency to self organize themselves. This is the reason why we came up with the idea of countries.

Also, we thrive in competition. So countries competing against each other actually helps the world grow at a faster pace.

But it is this time during the year that I start questioning nationalism. There is everyone saying don’t buy Chinese goods for Diwali. I may be wrong at this but boycotting Chinese goods just because we want to help our country’s economy grow doesn’t make sense.

It is only because China produces much better stuff at cheaper rates that we Indians buy it. If we were a part of 1 world. Noone would have had a problem with buying things from anywhere.

Rather can’t India try to employ the labour intensive technique as well as China and offer stuff at competitive rates.

Above all this, we should realize we are home sapiens and are sitting on a planet from this one solar system. There are so many more solar systems in this and other galaxies. The point I’m trying to make here is, we are an extremely insignificant part of this universe.

Still we are competing among ourselves just on the grounds that one country is ours while others aren’t. Why can’t we start living as a planet? Buy stuff from wherever it is best produced. Let’s forget the boundaries for once and for all.

And what boundaries are we talking about, the ones made by ourselves because God made this planet sphere to avoid the edges. But we humans made boundaries on an edgeless sphere.

Let’s start living as 1 edgeless sphere.

Maybe together we can do better.

-ChoubeySahab

Can you thoughtfully dream? (micro blog)

We all have dreams. But something that lacks in our dreams is thoughtfulness.

We have vague dreams. When we dream about something, we rarely go into the specifics. But science suggests that adding every bit of detail to your dream quadruples the chance of it turning into reality.

Have a dream job in mind? Imagine how you will dress up for this job, how will others treat you and what car you would use to travel to work. All these details give a solid structure to your dream and reduces the work God has to do to fulfill your dream.

But just thoughtfull dreaming isn’t enough. You need to do thoughtfull work to help you realize your dreams. You won’t reach from point A to point B without walking.

Thoughtfull dreaming coupled with thoughtfull work makes the right combination to transform even the most impossible seeming dreams into reality.

Don’t ever put a limit to what you dream for yourself. Just ensure that you are adding enough details in a dream for God to understand what you really want.

The law of attraction is real. The more details you add, the better it gets.

Happy dreaming!

-ChoubeySahab

The present could be more present

Yesterday I did a poll on my insta story to find out if people wanted to go back 5 years in life or forward. The response to the poll was overwhelming. This means that people get excited by the very proposition of coming out of their present situation.

Talking about people’s preference. Almost all the time the number of people wanting to go 5 yrs back was more than number of people wanting to go forward.

This essentially means that many believe that they could have lived and set up a better life for themselves. Most of the respondents are students which means that they believe they could have given attention to better things in previous school/college years.

To sum all these arguments we can say that the present could be more present. The present could feel more lively. But unfortunately the present doesn’t live upto the expectation and this compels us to try to come out of present either by going 5 yrs back or forth.

The ideal response to such a question would be to not choose any one of the 2 options. Because you are satisfied with your past decisions and excited to see how it all unfolds in the next 5 years (slowly and steadily).

But satisfaction is something against human nature.

Let me unveil the reality to you. There is no going back and no fast forward feature. Just take your past as a lesson to drive through an exciting future.

Don’t try to skip moments in life because each one counts.

-ChoubeySahab

Opportunity doesn’t knock (micro blog)

The false assumption that most of us live with is that opportunities will knock at our door and we just have to open the door.

Opportunity doesn’t knock. I know this because I waited for a long time for it to knock only to know that it doesn’t really work this way.

Real opportunities need to be created by ones ownself. Noone else comes at your door with a free opportunity gift, it’s not a Diwali gift.

It is only you who knows what your skills are and how best they could be employed. You know what kind of opportunities you want. Something you don’t know is how to create opportunities.

If say, your skill is to sing then you need to get yourself opportunities to hold a mic on stage and perform. If you are not getting any opportunity as no singing competition is being organized. Now you need to create an opportunity for you to sing, one way is to walk up to the stage and ask if you can perform while the there is still time for the actual event to start.

Sounds weird. Right? I agree but creating opportunities isn’t easy and it is worth the effort. This is the way I honed my public speaking skills. By getting on the stage whenever and wherever possible.

The whole point here is- don’t wait for the opportunity to knock because it rarely does. Learn to create opportunities.

If noone knocks at your door then go and open the door, find the right opportunity for yourself and then finally pull it into your door by hand.

-ChoubeySahab

Have your own beliefs

The society around us is changing fast. There are new concepts popping up every now and then. We don’t have to adopt and accept them all.

There are so many things happening which are majorly accepted in the present society as the new cool. But I seriously disapprove of them and always will. Call me old school if you wish to but I’ve my own set of beliefs and don’t need to accept all that is happening around.

To give you an example of this is the modern concept of friends with benefits. The concept makes me cringe, I don’t understand how can such a thing even exist.

Anyway I don’t want to get into that debate. The point I’m trying to make here is you don’t have to accept all that is considered the new cool. You are free to have your own set of beliefs. Rather it is essential to have your own set of beliefs, for it helps you create a line between what is acceptable and what is not.

It is ok to disapprove of societal happenings that you find annoying. You are under no obligation to accept all that the ‘modern’ society throws at you.

Have some good firm beliefs of your own and don’t let the outer environment dictate your thoughts and actions.

-ChoubeySahab

You can be wrong

Do you know the fact that sometimes you are wrong on what you think? Ofcourse you know but do you acknowledge this fact? Very few do.

I want you to not just know but start acknowledging that you are/can be wrong at times. The reason why most don’t do this is because we think we know the right thing about everything that we have read about.

But something you don’t know is did the writer of the piece you read did proper fact check before writing. Or maybe he left some blindspots on questions that he didn’t know much about.

However well read you might be, these limitations to your source of knowledge will always be there.

This is the reason why you should always invite and seek constructive counterarguments to your own. It exposes you to the other side of the coin and your blindspots after knowing which you’ll be better equipped to form a perspective about anything.

Start openly accepting that you can be wrong and encourage others to point out faults in your knowledge.

I’ve learnt so much just by the counterarguments people give to these micro blogs. They feel that I may get offended but I always make sure to thank them for doing so because it’s all about plugging the holes in my tank of knowledge.

I want you to start doing this because even your tank of knowledge has plenty of holes. The sooner you plug them the better off you are.

-ChoubeySahab

Postponing happiness (micro blog)

The title is somewhat self explanatory. We are naturally programmed to postpone happiness. First we wanted good marks in school, then when we got good marks we still didn’t celebrate, we thought we will celebrate when we get into a good college and once we get into a college we start waiting for a job to celebrate.

All this while there were so many instances when you felt joyous of your achievement but crushed it down either by yourself or a relative did the job for you.

I’ll give you a recent personal example. I was called by an amazing startup for an internship interview. I was super elated about being shortlisted for the personal interview and was hopping around at my place in excitement of getting shortlisted. Then someone reminded me that I was not yet selected for the internship and there is 1 more round to go.

This is when the whole concept of postponing happiness hit me. I told that person that I agree that I may or may not get selected for this but is the fact that I got shortlisted for the interview cool enough to celebrate. I was totally comfortable with the fact that I may not get selected but I wanted to live this moment and not postpone this happiness.

As it turned out, I did not get selected in the personal interview. But I came back home and told my family that it was good that we ate the celebratory pizza that day because if we had postponed it to this day then the pizza and those happy moments would have never happened.

Celebrate the present moment. It won’t leave you regretting of putting off your own happiness. Go order a pizza right away for your most recent accomplished that you didn’t recognize as big enough to celebrate.

-ChoubeySahab

Copying is a skill (micro blog)

I can’t stress this fact enough that 90% of all learning happens through immitation (copying others). When a child is born,he knows nothing. But after spending some good time with a family, he starts to make sounds and body movement which are meaningful.

If a child is left in isolation after birth, so as to prevent any “cheating” from others. Then it is pretty obvious that the child will not develop any of the physical and verbal skills at all.

It is always through copying from better individuals that a person has ever learnt anything new.

But copying is undermined as a way of learning in our education system. Not just undermined but almost made a crime.

I agree that they just want to know how much you can do after you’ve learnt how to do something. Meanwhile, no efforts, as such were made into telling children what all benefits immitation has in the real world.

Copying is important to be meaningfully influenced and inspired by someone. You should always to add your flavor to everything but if you know what works well there no wrong in trying to copy it.

Copying is the fundamental way homo sapiens learn. It should not be put into our children as something that’s bad. For it is one of the most effective and fastest way of learning.

Don’t be ashamed to copy something from someone better than you. But don’t forget to add your flavor to it because if you copy it as at ease that’s when the teacher (life) cuts marks.

Copying is a skill. A skill difficult to master but a skill worth learning.

-ChoubeySahab

Investment (micro blog)

We all are business persons in a way as we all have to deal with several kinds of investments in our life. The investments we make are ultimately responsible for the results we get.

There are 3 levels of investment that one has to do in life:-

1. Money

2. Time

3. Thought

The first one is obvious. We have to decide what deserves our hard earned money and what does not. But money can always be earned back even if lost.

The second level is something which can’t be earned back once lost. It is the time you invest in doing something. It can be researching about something or trying to help a friend. All these activities involve investment of time which is a more difficult than investment of money.

The third level comes with thought. This is the highest level of investment that can be made. Your thoughts are extremely important and valuable. What you think about is what you become. People don’t realize it but 90% of their thoughts are wasted on meaningless things like thinking about the past which can’t be changed.

These are the 3 main levels of investment that every human being needs to master to live a prosperous life. They are increasingly difficult with each level.

Screwing up with money investment has a scope for revival, while time can’t be earned back but can be made up for by working extra hard and last thoughts if not taken care of can break you beyond repair.

The sooner you start to think about each of these investments in your life the better life you will lead.

Life is a business and you the investor.

Invest wisely!

-ChoubeySahab

You’ll live 3x more than your parents

I’m not talking in terms of number of years lived but the variety of experiences had.

This is do with the fact that the world is changing at an accelerated rate. Which is because this generation is building upon the previous generation which built upon their previous generation. All of this is compounding and is reflected in the way the world changes.

The amount of development that has come up in the past 20 years grossly outweighs the development that happened in the 20 years before that. We can say that the past 20 years were more enriched with varied experiences than the 20 prior to that.

If we try to see this trend in the future. Then we can say that the next 20 years from now will be even more ashtonishing in terms of speed of development.

You see how we are not just moving forward but at an accelerating rate. This means we get to see 50 years worth of changes of 20th century in just 5 years of the 21st century.

By this logic the present generation will get a lot more to see in life than the previous generation. In a way, we will live 3x worth life of the previous generation or maybe even more.

Our life spans may not be increasing but the experiences we get while living surely are.

-ChoubeySahab