You are imprisoned.

Do you ever feel that you are caught in a prison of thought. What you think is shaped by the people around you, your experiences, your genes.

You actually have very little control over what you think. I call this imprisonment because your surroundings, experiences and biology should not determine what you think. The people around you can be wrong, the experiences you’ve had may hardly relate to what generally happens, your genes maybe one of the worst which make you think about the wrong in everything first.

This is imprisonment because all the above factors confine your thinking to a limited area just like a person in prison lives in a small cell limited by 3 walls and giant bars.

If the people around us, our experiences and our genes imprison us then the next rational question is how do we break free from this prison?

We all know the answer to this but rarely do we acknowledge it. The key to break out of this prison is reading. Reading exposes you to views of people much beyond your near surroundings, it makes you learn from experiences of others, and has some impact on your undesired genes as well.

Reading can help us come out of the prison of thought we live in, and if you are thinking that oh ok I read my curriculum books, so I’m out of the prison.

No you are not, your curriculum books are what you need to stay stuck inside the prison forever. They give you the same set of learnings as many others and hence discourages you to attempt running away from the prison.

Then you start thinking that it’s fine to live in this prison because so many others are in this and noone seems to have a problem. Something that you need to know is that the others are staying in for the same reason. It’s like saying, it’s all fine in hell till the time we all are in it together.

Breaking free from this prison will require you to read books not prescribed by your teachers. Books full of learnings, books full of varied experiences.

Being inside this prison is the default state, we were born imprisoned, our surroundings influenced our thinking since our first second breath on this planet. Breaking our of the prison is a choice we make in the later years of our life.

Some people spend their entire lifes inside a 10 by 10 thought prison. The question is are you one of them or will you break free from the cage?

-ChoubeySahab

Whose advice do you take?

As teenagers, one thing we never lack is advice. Everyone has some advice to give even if you don’t need / want any.

People will tell you what subjects to study, what jobs you should aim for, what dreams to have, how much can you deviate from the conventional path.

Honestly, I hate going to visit another family with my family because then I’m almost certain that I’ll be sitting and nodding my head to all the unsolicited advice they throw my way.

The abundance of advice in the teenage years is what asks for the skill of taking the right advice only. Not all advice will be bad, neither will all advice be good, it is something that you get to take a decision on.

How best to see if an advice is good or bad? Generally speaking, the people you look upto and those who have gone and accomplished something in the direction that to want to go into. Are the people who would offer the most relevant advice for you.

Also remember, a banking employee advising you what to do after taking science in high school is non sense. This is an advice I’d rather just nod my head to and leave it then and there.

The advice you take is important but no less important are the advices you thoughtfully ignored by sensing the ineptness of the people advising.

Whom you take what advice is of supreme importance in this era of abundance of unsolicited advice pouring on us 24/7.

Your elders always want the best for you but that doesn’t mean they know what’s best for you. You are responsible for yourself. Noone else, not even your parents.

-ChoubeySahab

Don’t follow the lead.

Wanna be a leader? It’s pretty simple, ensure that you are the one directing your actions and noone else. The first step in becoming a leader is to take your own orders as if they came from your boss. This ain’t easy at all because a boss can scold you, even fire you if you aren’t up to the mark but you can’t do it to yourself.

Once you start taking your own orders seriously, you’ve climbed the first step to becoming a leader. Next comes, making others take your orders seriously. Doing this is easier than the first step. You simply need to display great hardwork and passion towards the mission. If you are working harder than the people then they would happily follow your lead.

Leading by example is the best form of leadership. The people who listen to your orders should be adequately inspired by your work.

The last and the most important characteristic of a true leader is one’s ability to make more leaders like himself/herself.

But by all this I’m not saying that you should be a leader or trying to glorify being a leader. It comes with responsibility and not everyone likes so much responsibility. It’s totally fine to follow someone else’s lead. It’s totally fine to work for someone who is already working for a cause you strongly relate to.

Not being a leader is fine. While being a leader is difficult and a heavy responsibility duty.

Lead if you can, follow someone better than you if you can’t but don’t stay put.

-ChoubeySahab

What is disillusionment?

You must have heard the word illusion. One is said to be in an illusion when one doesn’t see reality the way it is because of societal prejudices that shape one’s thinking.

When this illusioned person finally comes in contact with the actual truth, it is called disillusionment. This phenomenon of disillusionment is bigger than stronger than you can imagine. Few experience this in their lifetime but those who do go through some serious emotional trauma trying to cope with the fact that what they believed to be right up until now was actually wrong.

I’ve fortunately or unfortunately experienced disillusionment when I was in the last couple of years of school. I had been a consistent academic performer up until then but suddenly I started questioning myself how is this education, which is same for all and is primarily based on rote, capable of setting me apart and making me successful.

It was then that I came face to face with the truth, that many of you might get uncomfortable listening to it, that this education system was designed to produce workers not leaders.

When this hit me, it proved to be a serious debacle in my academics and this reflected on my performance. It was not easy to cope with this lie that I had been made to believe by the society that education is the sole determinant of success. Which it is not.

This is just my personal experience with disillusionment and there are many more examples like you trusted a person for a long time but then it turns out that that very person was lying to you for so long. It immediately breaks the trust. It causes you sudden disillusionment. Then the feeling you get is not of anger on this person, it is a mixed feeling of happiness and sadness. Happiness for finally getting to know the truth, sadness for trusting the wrong person for so long.

Disillusionment, is difficult in the short term and good in the long term. One needs to seek getting disillusioned because the society has made us believe many lies. The only way to uncover these lies is to constantly question our thinking.

Think about what you think and then think-Is it right to think what you think?

-ChoubeySahab

Stories sell.

Many researchs and even successful people have agreed to the fact that stories are immensely powerful. Our whole society stands on stories.

To prove this let me ask you a question, what religion do you follow? You would most probably answer something like Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christianity or Buddhism or some other religion. Irrespective of what your answer, there is 1 thing common in all these religions, A Story.

We believe in some religion because we believe in the story behind it. Like the Hindu religion has the stories of Mahabharata and Ramayana, Muslims have a story about Muhammed, Christians have a story around Christ. Similarly all religions have an interesting story that people believe to be true.

Today, even in the practical and logic backed world we live in, religion is something that still stands strong. Why is this so? Because each of these stories were sold and spread across the mind of millions of people by missionaries. By definition missionaries are people who believe so strongly in one story that they feel duty bound to tell others the story and make them believe it too.

Even in the modern age of today, we buy stories not products. Do you ever wonder why do people still buy iPhones at such unrealistic prices? It is because people believe in the story that Steve Jobs told them back then. He told people that an iPhone is the best thing an American can own. He made owning an iPhone a feeling of pride.

Today, when Steve Jobs is no longer here to sell us iPhones, his stories that still remain alive in people’s mind is still making Apple make billions in profit despite the widely acknowledged fact that Apple isn’t innovating enough.

It is very evident from the Apple case how stories can make you sell products.

Wait! Even you are a product. When you sit in an interview or an investor meeting looking for an investment in your company, you essentially sell yourself.

What is your story?

-ChoubeySahab

Quest for happiness leads to sadness.

The perpetual state of unhappinss that most of us live in has a reason behind it. It is not that our ancestors were not unsatisfied and content with the way things were back then. But it also can’t be denied that our generation is worse in respect of general happiness.

The reason for this unhappiness is that we are caught in a cycle of want>>fulfill>>happy>>want more. We have wants and we believe that once these wants get fulfilled, we will be really happy, while what actually happens is as soon as a want gets fulfilled instead of feeling happy about it and celebrating, we start thinking about the next higher want we need to accomplish and attach our happiness to that thing. Once we even accomplish the higher want, we start thinking about the next higher want in line. Hence, we are never satisfied and in a perpetual state of unhappiness.

It should be clear to the reader by now, that our constant and never ending quest for happiness is itself keeping us unhappy and unsatisfied.

Then the question arises, how do we get happiness then?

Start counting your blessings, start appreciating yourself for what you have achieved so far, try and make others happy, go out of the way and compliment people, try to make someone’s day, be selfless when possible. If you can make the people around you happy then this has an influence on you and your state of happiness.

Stop trying to find happiness in future endeavors. Try to make this moment beautiful. Celebrate the moment and remember that the collective happiness of the people close to you is equal to your happiness.

-ChoubeySahab

You can be wrong.

I’m writing this because I for a big part of my life believed that I can’t be wrong. I believed that I’m a good logic oriented person and no decision of mine can go wrong.

But as it turns out. I found my decisions to be wrong on a few occasions. Then I realized that noone can always be right, however practical can their way of living and thinking is. They are bound to make some bad decisions as well.

Looking at those bad decisions of mine closely, I saw that they weren’t really practical, instead were motivated by hormones. Few of us know this but a big part of our decisions is based on hormones or how we feel at the moment of taking the decision. If we are angry and pissed off then that can influence the decision.

These hormones ensure that you make a fair share bad decisions, despite being a logic oriented person.

I have now acknowledged and accepted the fact that I can be wrong. Accepting this now decreases the power of such hormones on my thinking.

The more you deny the truth, the more it bothers you and the more control it has over you.

Accept it right here, you can be wrong.

-ChoubeySahab

Deep work vs shallow work.

We all do work throughout the day. We can say this because we are busy from the morning to night. But still in most of our cases, we get little done even after working/being busy throughout the day.

The reason for this is that we all indulge in shallow work. Shallow work is work in which you are doing one thing but your mind is thinking about some other thing.

Shallow work gets the work done but it takes more time and the quality of the output isn’t up to the mark.

On the other hand, what we should do is deep work, work in which we are totally into what we are doing at the moment. If you are reading then you are not thinking about checking social media and your full attention is in reading.

Deep work isn’t easy to accomplish. The reason being our phones and the apps on it are addictive in nature. We are compelled to check the texts, social media and other app notifications. It is extremely difficult to resist the urge to not pick up the phone.

This infringes with our ability to be totally into one thing at a moment. The mind frequently wanders off and as a result we are busy morning to night both physically and mentally without getting much work done and the quality of the work we do is nothing to be proud of.

One solution to this is to get yourself some peace of mind by switching off the internet of your phone when not required. This would sound weird to many and the question popping in your head is then how will my friends contact me?

You need to understand that if it’s urgent then they’ll simply call you. Trust me this will be worth the effort.

Deep work will increase the quality of work you do and more than that it will make you enjoy the things you do.

You will start living a real life instead of the fake digital life we all live at this moment.

-ChoubeySahab

Be your own playlist.

By being your own playlist, I mean singing for your ownself. I believe everyone should sing whether they are good at it or not. Even if the people around you get annoyed by your singing skills, you should still sing whenever you feel like.

I’m saying this because I’m aware of the benefits singing has on your physical and more importantly mental health.

Singing strengthens the immune system. Singing is a workout. Singing improves your posture. Singing helps with sleep. Singing is a natural anti-depressant. Singing lowers stress levels. Singing improves mental alertness. Singing can widen your circle of friends.

In my opinion, singing is better than listening to music because finding the right songto listen for your mood can be difficult while in case of singing, you can simply sing the song who want to listen. You can be your own playlist, curating your playlist according to your mood in real time.

The best place to sing, if you are not a good singer is the bathroom. No one can stop you from singing there. You can even dance to your own tune and no one would know.

Singing is the best way to express your deepest emotions without actually expressing any. Sing despite all adversaries, there a song to justify every situation in life.

-ChoubeySahab

Breaking it down.

Do you have huge ambitions and goals? I’m sure these goals seem really hard to accomplish, because the difference between what your life is today and what it will be after the goal is huge.

Then how do we achieve these big ambitious goals. The answer is simple yet difficult- by breaking it down.

Whenever you see a dream, next thing you need to do is plan the steps you will have to take to get there. Planning these steps is what is called breaking it down.

Steps are easy to follow and you don’t get overwhelmed while taking a single step of a giant staircase but all in all you are still moving closer to your goal with each step you climb.

How do we plan these steps? These steps are almost all similar, so as to avoid much thinking before taking a step. Much like habits, the things you do everyday which have a compounding effect on your trajectory towards you goal.

Suppose if you want to become a good singer then practising singing everyday for an hour is breaking down the big dream into smaller achieveable chunks.

After a time period, say 1 year, the difference in your singing ability will be evident to you yourself and the people around you.

Breaking big dreams down into smaller similar chunks is what allows me to see larger than life and sometimes crazy dreams.

Dream big, it doesn’t cost anything!

-ChoubeySahab