Wealth isn’t success.

The capitalist world that we live in has made us believe that a person’s net worth is what determines if a person is successful or not.

But this is a false belief, there are many who are making a lot of money but aren’t happy with what they are doing. Would you call them successful? No, you just can’t, because if a person is himself/herself not happy then what good is that wealth.

If wealth isn’t, then what is a good indicator of success? Firstly, you should be happy doing it. Second, people should get value out of what you are doing. Value as in getting benefits out of your work. Thirdly, if there are some people who tell you that you inspired them to do something or brought a healthy change to their life. Then, my friend, you are successful. Even if you aren’t making much money, I’ll still call you successful.

And this is the success that I myself seek. I don’t want to be the wealthiest or the richest person on planet. Rather, I’d like to be the most loved person on this planet. I don’t want a bite out of your purse, I want a small space inside your heart and if I manage to get that I’ve done my job.

I’m sure many of you must be having dreams about being the most wealthy and it’s fine, I don’t hold that against you. Because we’ve grown in a society that values wealth over anything.

But looking beyond what the society teaches us is extremely important. Because the society has it’s purpose to fulfill but you have your own.

You need to start thinking about what is it that makes you happy while you do it, what are you good at, how can you benefit people through that and most importantly how can you get a small space in the heart of many.

That’s real success. That’s what I seek. That’s what you should seek too. Wealth is temporary, that space that you get in someone’s heart is permanent.

Seek success, not wealth.

-ChoubeySahab

Kids need more freedom.

The world is moving forward. Or should I say, the world is moving in some direction because I’m not really sure if it’s forward.

One aspect where I believe we have gone backward as a society rather than forward is child liberty. The freedom of a kid to live life in his/her own way.

I’m not talking about the teenagers here. This is about <12 year old. Or the pre-teens.

Our parents were allowed more liberty and freedom in those years. They were allowed the to time to be on their own. Mothers would let their children play at a nearby place for much longer hours.

Today, however parents are ever more protective of what their children are doing. Going un-inspected even for 10 minutes for a pre-teen today is a luxury.

But why do we need more freedom in the pre-teen years? We need it because it allows us freedom to make mistakes. Mistakes we can learn things that parents could never teach.

This over-protectected attitude of parents these day breeds children who are risk averse. They always seek orders rather than thinking what’s best for themselves.

This extra care keeps these kids separated from the real world for a much longer period of time. Even college students these days have little clue for what it is like to be out there in the good-bad world.

Then what should parents do? Allow the kids more un-scrutinized time to make mistakes. These mistakes would teach more lessons to them than the parents themselves ever could. Let them fall today, if you want to see them rise tomorrow.

-ChoubeySahab (author of a future parenting guide 😉

Einstein did nothing.

The great scientist has some amazing discoveries to his name. He discovered the general theory of relativity, the relation between mass and energy and a lot of other things.

We know about these things because these changed the course of history and our knowledge of physics altogether. An interesting fact about Einstein is that he made 4 such groundbreaking discoveries in a single year 1905.

Before 1905 was a normal person, much like you and me. Then what suddenly made him make these discoveries?

It was because of his ability to do nothing. Einstein strongly believed and even vocally supported the power of solitude. The power of being disconnected from everything, so that he gets enough time to think.

Even though Einstein is known for what he did, in reality, all his fame is owed to the countless hours he spent doing nothing but thinking.

If it’s as simple as doing nothing then why haven’t we produced another Einstein then? As it turns out the world is getting ever more distracted with each passing day and with the advent of smartphones, things just got worse.

Staying away from our phones is something we just can’t just pull off for long. This is probably the reason why the Einstein in you is still sleeping. To be awakened it needs nothingness, idleness, a calm state of mind.

But that’s too much to ask from us dopamine addicted humans.

For the modern Einsteins (us) the equation is LIKES, COMMENTS, FOLLOWS > E=MC^2.

This new equation right here is our discovery and the legacy we will leave behind. Are we proud of it? I don’t feel so.

-ChoubeySahab

Should I pen this down?

This question budges me a lot. Atleast when it’s about my feelings. I feel afraid that maybe someone will find that diary or piece of paper then I’m busted.

I will confront all those feelings in this one. Though only vaguely. But yes let’s give it a try.

There are times when I feel like I’m the best, I’m better than most. Then there are times I feel like a dumbass who has an insanely high opinion about himself.

At times I feel like I’m being arrogant. Sometimes I feel my self respect being threatened. I don’t know the line between them. I really don’t.

Sympathy is what I feel when someone is unjustly being made to suffer.

I feel Love for my people. Hate for a some.

Anger for myself not doing/trying enough. Hopelessness when the tide is against me.

Loneliness when I have so many around but I don’t feel like sharing my issues with them. Because obviously they must be having their own. So I keep it to myself.

But every now and then, I feel blessed. For the family I got, for the people who care, for having the resources to function without restraint.

Ahhh I think I would go on because thats the issue, there is so much I feel but these are mere words. They won’t do justice. But well it was worth a try. Wasn’t it?

-ChoubeySahab

Make your days better.

We chase long term big ambitious dreams. But we ignore the micro unit of our life. The days.

Our life is a string that connects the days together. If we want a dream life then we should be working on our days. For days, no doubt are small but they are the SI unit of life.

The mistake that most of us make is that we think that the unit of life is years. We judge what we can and can’t do by the number of years we have lived.

While in reality, what counts are the days. If you make your days better, it will make your weeks much better, months even better and years super best. If you focus on optimizing your days, you won’t sit regretting every end of the year feeling sad for not having done enough.

How do we optimize days? You ask.

It’s simple, when you go to sleep each day, pen down the productive things you did that day and the things which you should have done but didn’t.

Doing this will help you know what areas you can do better and helps increase self awareness. Try to make compunding habits like reading into your day. Take my word for it.

Once you start getting the best out of each day. You’ll start feeling better. You will have a higher sense of self which would help you take shot at even bigger riskier things in life.

All in all your life would proceed faster than your age. Remember when you die people remember the number of years you lived but the quality of your days while you were alive marks their fond memory.

Make your days better, everything else is just a number!

-ChoubeySahab

It’s not always the way you see it.

This is a serious issue in all of us. We see things a certain way and assume that it’s the right way to see things. We ignore the possibility of us not knowing the whole story.

If a person is irritable, annoying, negative then we hate this kind of person. Quite obvious. But maybe, this person behaves the same way, not just to you but everyone else. Maybe this person grew up in an environment which made this person irritable and annoying.

You see how many times I’ve used the word maybe in the above para. That’s because we don’t know the whole story and the only thing we can do is make assumptions and maybe is the word we use for that.

But do we really try to think about reasons for someone’s behavior. No we don’t. Because thinking about that would take time. What do we do instead? Judge, this doesn’t take time at all.

You get annoyed, are a creep, don’t like people-you are bad. Simple. You talk well, are friendly, always smiling-you are good. Simpler. I’m the best. Simplest.

This is how we judge people in split seconds. Never do we take the time to reason out someone’s behavior. But this is how it’s always been and thus will be because it’s human nature and not much can be done about it.

But I want you to recognize our ignorance for the actual full story. We judge based on what we know, not on what we don’t. You need to know that there will always be things you don’t know about people.

Then what do we do? Don’t make rigid opinions about anyone. Don’t hate someone very badly. Because hate is bad, it can burn you inside. But love, love is good. Though love can again burn you inside. But that’s the same with hate.

-ChoubeySahab

Chill the fuck out!

With the national elections coming closer with each passing day. The hate, trolling, shaming, mocking and all that has started. I know, it is very much in the spirit of democracy to put your points forth. But isn’t there a certain way, a certain decorum in which it needs to be done.

It is all too often, I see people on social media hurling personal attacks on political leaders. I won’t totally blame people for such behavior. It is very much in our nature to cross the line to prove ourselves right when things get heated up.

The only solution to curb the hate is to chill the fuck out. It’s good that you support a party or a leader and even better that you’ve good reasons to back your choice. But it’s not good to fight and demote what you don’t support.

In a democracy, all are allowed to have their own opinion. You can’t interfere in someone else’s opinion or way of thinking. If someone is supporting some other party which you don’t like then you can have a healthy discussion with him/her where both put their points forward.

The beauty of democracy is that it accomodates different views. If all were forced to see the world through the same lens then that would be dictatorship and that’s totally not what we want.

What we seek is peace and harmony which can only be attained once we chill out and learn to respect others opinions and choices.

Give your vote to the best, but remember what is best as per you may not to be best according to the rest.

-ChoubeySahab

Unlearning takes a lot of time.

We all know the importance of learning. Something that we don’t know about is unlearning. Which is as important as learning or maybe even more.

But why is unlearning important? Because a lot of what we are taught in schools and colleges doesn’t really work well in the real world or instead works against us.

I’m saying this from experience. My 12th got over around March last year and it was then that I told my parents that I don’t want to go down the conventional path of college. They asked me for how much time would I need to show results in what I do. I told them one year would be good.

But now it’s almost a year, the results didn’t show up as I thought they would. Why is this so? Because the real world is so much different from the school life. I had to unlearn a lot of things taught in school to start doing good in the real world.

For eg. In school there is always someone telling you what to do, a syllabus to tell you what to study. While in the real world you yourself have to think what you have to do and why and see if you do it the best of your ability. In school they tell you that failure is bad while out here in the real world, failure is good and should be sought for.

I can go on and on telling you the differences because there are just so many. But the problem is unlearning all that takes a lot of time.

It is because it took around 15 years for the system to program us according to the school. Now getting away from this program is difficult because it has gone deep into our subconscious mind.

I hope my parents read this and understand why the results didn’t show up as quick as they wanted. The unlearning is important and takes time.

If you ask, have I unlearned all that I should? No, I’m still unlearning and it’ll still take much time. But once I unlearn all I need to, it’ll be uphill from there. Let’s hope it’ll be uphill from there.

-ChoubeySahab

Put yourself on airplane mode.

I’m not talking about your smartphone. I’m talking about you. Putting your smartphone disconnects you virtually from the rest of the world and no signals are allowed to come in or go out. Thus airplane mode gives a rest to our virtual selves.

Imagine if you had a button for yourself with which you could put yourself on airplane mode. You won’t be bothered by anyone, and you could just sit and introspect.

Before smartphone came into existence, we had plenty of time to think about our own selves. What we are doing right? Where are we going wrong? All of it was known to us because we had ample time to think about the things that matter. Like our ownselves.

Today, our sense of self is determined by the likes and follows and not by what we really are. The only solution to this is putting ourselves on airplane mode.

When we are on this mode we won’t touch our smartphone. Meanwhile, we can read, write, think, introspect and observe our surroundings. This would help us a great deal in becoming better version of our ownselves.

You can call this “me time” or the classier “airplane mode”. But ensure that you switch this mode on for a few hours everyday.

Airplane mode for you can be the fuel you need for your own flight.

-ChoubeySahab

What gets us hooked?

I’ve pondered over this question for a long time. What makes us get hooked? Or what makes something exciting to most of us, even though we all have very different personalities.

Like, for example, most teenagers get hooked to Instagram after they start using it. Why is this so? Why is everyone so excited about Instagram? Or why did most people like The Game of Thrones series. Everyone around was talking about GoT.

This intrigued me a lot. What makes something exciting to the masses? I read about it quite intensively and now I have the answer for you.

The answer is unpredictability. This is what the makers of Instagram or GoT leveraged to get their audience hooked.

But how? The answer would be clear if we see it the other way round, don’t you lose interest in a movie or a daily soap if you see it getting predictable. You stop watching a show when you know what’s coming up next.

But with unpredictability, you are always excited for what will pop up next and that’s what keeps us hooked. In the case of Instagram, we don’t know who is going to post what and when, it’s just not predictable. In GoT everyone would make predictions for what will happen next but more often than not these predictions went wrong.

We humans love unpredictability. Also, if you are not sure if your girlfriend is losing interest then there is a high chance you get more hooked because there is unpredictability for if she’ll stay or not. (Excuse me for this one)

Anything that keeps you excited for a long period of time has unpredictability at play at one point or the other.

In other words I can say, unpredictability is predictable in anything that gets us hooked.

Also, I try to inculcate unpredictability in my blogs by writing on a wide range of topics. Hope you getting hooked. Are you?

-ChoubeySahab