Disappointing Parents?

What my father wanted more than anything was grandchildren.

Do you know that deep yearning women feel, to be mothers? That calling?

I never felt that.

When I was a little girl I thought maybe that sensation would come later. I took for granted that when I got old enough I would find my soul mate, get pregnant, become a mother, and make my father a granddad.

I did eventually meet a wonderful man, and we talked about having children and just weren’t sure. Someday, we said. Sure - someday. Just not now.

My friends began having children and I could see the kind of commitment and dedication being a parent actually was. It felt wrong for me - so wrong.

The fact that it felt wrong felt terrifying.

I had never considered I would never be somebody’s mom. I had never thought possible that I would not give my father what he wanted the most.

But, wait a minute.

If I had a child, who would live with the consequences of this decision? Whose life would be forever altered?

My father would be involved maybe once a week.

The life completely transformed would be mine.

On one of the many times he asked me “When, Dushka? When are you going to tell me you are expecting my grandchild?” I finally said “Dad, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. I am so sorry, but I don’t want children.”

He stared at me. He frowned. Then he smiled. “Well” he said. “They are kind of a pain. They never do what you think they will. It’s like they are their own people.”

This is the most representative example of a time where I disappointed one of my parents. There were many others, both big and small: I was not a good student, I kept secrets, I did not go to a fancy college, I did not become a lawyer, I did not become an artist, 

I married a guy they didn’t think was right for me, my hair was always unruly, I got a divorce, I did not change the world. I could go on.

The summary is this - every time I disappointed them I chose to fully step into the fact that my life is mine and mine alone.

Disappointing people - your parents, your family, your friends and sometimes yourself - is necessary if you want to fully become the person you were meant to.

I hope you never stop disappointing your parents. I hope that with time it becomes less painful. And I hope that in doing so you fall in love with the incredible stranger who lives inside of you.

-Dushka Zapata

The biggest realisation I had about life is.......

The biggest realisation I had about life is:

“Life is what you make of it”.

There are people in this world who think life is hard, and guess what? Life will always be hard to them

There are some people who think life is full of opportunities, guess what? They will have most opportunities in their life.

Some people believe that life is unfair, and co-incidentally life can will be unfair to them.

While this might not sound logical but it actually is, and the reason for this is a lot of how your life will be greatly depends on your perspective.

You can have all the wealth and power in this world, but if your perspective of looking at your life is like “Man! I have all this but yet im not happy and I feel miserable” in that case you will be miserable no matter the amount of wealth or power you have.

On the contrary, if you are a person who is currently struggling in his/her life but if you have the perspective and attitude of a warrior and you think like “Yes, time is not in my favour and nothing is going well, I am in terrible circumstances but guess what? I am a strong person and I have the power and the will to get out of it”. 

Guess what, if you have such attitude you will eventually get out of it sooner or later and emerge as a much stronger person.

Let’s take an example which you might relate to:

Let’s say you are preparing for an exam, or a job interview.

There are two ways you can approach them.

Approach 1:

You can either say, I hate studying, its so boring and I hate prepping for exams/interview however I will force myself to do it and get it done ASAP so that I can later engage in more fun activities like hanging out with my friends.

Approach 2:

Or, you may take an alternative path like “Man! this material seems so interesting, I can get to learn new things, I cant wait to get my hands on that book.”

Different approaches give different results.

The guy who follows the first approach will not only score less or fail at the interview, but the whole process of studying will leave him frustrated.

On the contrary, the guy who chooses the 2nd approach will not only enjoy his work, but he will also ace his exam/interview and there is no chance of getting frustrated doing something you love.

This applies to almost everything in your life, be it work, academics, relationships etc.

The kind of outlook, attitude and perspective you have towards life will determine the kind of life you will eventually have.

-Saurav Sharma

Qualities Among Successful People

 

I have met and interacted with some exceedingly successful people in my life across verticals and industries.

This includes people that are just extremely successful in being happy or managing their homes/kids.

I love to observe them. Identify patterns in their behaviors.

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Based on those observations, and contrasting it with traits that I’ve observed in unsuccessful (unhappy) people, I’ve come up with the following distinguishing factors:

Quality of Association

Misery loves company. Unsuccessful people love to band together with people that are at the same level or lower level than them. It makes them feel secure and knowledgeable. Ah the joy of being the one-eyed king of the blind (translation of a Hindi proverb)

Successful people tend to drift towards people that are as or more successful than them. This provides them an opportunity to constantly learn and evolve.

Mindset

Let’s say you see someone more famous than you. You are 100% sure that you’re more talented than them but still can’t rival their fame. What do you do? Badmouth them? Envy them? Complain about life being unfair?

Successful people tend to appreciate their competitors and respect their methodology. Not everything needs to be fair. Not every success is well-deserved. But there is always something that sets apart an “un-deserving” successful person from a “deserving” unsuccessful person. Learn, get inspired, it’s not a race! There is plenty of space for all the big fish in the ocean.

Mind your own business

Unsuccessful people tend to look for the failures of others. It gives them pleasure. It makes them feel accomplished. Instead of nurturing their own growth, they criticize and follow everyone while wearing glasses of cynicism.

Successful people tend to not give a cr*p about what others are doing. They mind their own business and reach out only to learn, seek inspiration or mentor others.

Sheep vs lion

Unsuccessful people take the safe way. They do exactly what others around them are doing. Their definition of success is defined by their peers. They love to blame society and the rest of the world for holding them back. No wonder, as they stayed within those same bounds to seek safety.

Successful people tend to make their own way. They know their goals, or at least have a faint idea of it. These goals are not inspired by surroundings but are tailor-made for their own selves. They lack any concern for the opinion of the masses.

Whine vs Improve

Unsuccessful people tend to marinate themselves in their failures and everything bad that happened to them. They love being the victim in every scenario. The victim-complex starts feeling like a safe-zone. An excuse for everything that they couldn’t achieve. It is so easy to blame everyone else without doing an introspection.

Successful people fail too, but they make it a learning experience. Instead of whining, they identify the errors leading to that failure and improve that in the next cycle.

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There are a lot of factors that make one successful vs not.

Some of them are beyond our control.

We don’t decide the class and surroundings in which we are born.

But our attitude can set us apart.

And what’s there to lose by cultivating a “successful people mentality”?

At the very least, you’ll fail with a smile on your face :)

-Srishti Kotiyal

This Life is your Responsibility

This Life is your Responsibility.

You are responsible for everything you have in your life right now!

You chose to live where you are, you chose to get that job you have right now, you chose to do the things you are doing and you chose to be surrounded by the people that surround you; Or rather: You never chose anything else.

Of course it wasn’t all in your control, but you could have, at some point along the way, chosen a different action that would have lead you down a different path.

Remember that the things you choose right now have the potential to take you in a near infinite number of different directions. Where you are going to go depends on what YOU choose to do right now.

The only other option that you have is not to choose and to stay where you are. Is that really a good alternative for you?

Are We Alone in This Universe.........?

I don’t know, and neither does anybody else. Anyone who says the probability is high is making a computational error. And all the evidence from people who claim they were abducted by aliens likely comes from people who have difficulty distinguishing reality from vivid dreams. (Psychologists know that this is a fairly common syndrome.)

There is no evidence for advanced extraterrestrials, and Enrico Fermi asked the obvious question: if they exist, why don’t we have overwhelming evidence? But perhaps their home is too far away for them to actually reach us. That’s the thesis of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. There is a famous formula called the Drake Equation that argues that the probability of such creatures is high. But the Drake equation does not make a compelling case. The problem is that we don’t really understand one of the terms in the equation: the probability that simple organic compounds, such as amino acids, will ever come together to form a molecule that can reproduce, such as RNA. We have no idea how that happened. The probability could be as low as ${10}^{-100}$. In that case, we might indeed be alone in the universe.

I am reminded of a story about a silicon-based life form. Some time in the future a very smart computer baby asks its mommy and daddy, “Who was the first computer? How did our life form come about?” The daddy answers, “We don’t know. We can understand how microprocessors can evolve and become supercomputers and eventually a being such as you and me, but we can’t figure out how that original microprocessor came about. Maybe it was spontaneous, just a bunch of silicon atoms happening to come together. But calculations show that is quite unlikely.”

The mommy and daddy have no idea that the first microprocessor was constructed by a former carbon-based life form. And I suspect that our RNA and DNA did not come together spontaneously, but resulted from some smaller organism, maybe a prion that after it evolved destroyed (ate?) all the other prions—just as the silicon-based computers in the story destroyed the carbon-based form that created it.

-Richard Muller

You cant Improve because of friends? Do this.....

I completly dropped everyone. I deleted all social media and I moved. Got a new car and kept my entire life from there on out private.

It's hard when your friends love you but they want to keep living a life of partying and drugs and fun fun fun.

Especially cause life isn't just a fairy tale, it's real world s***.

My friends couldn't understand that I needed to better myself and couldn't do so by partying every night and getting sloshed.

They wanted to hangout with me and got really upset when I told them I had to space myself to get my life in order.

It was hard and it was sad. I spent everyday with these people. And we had many fun adventures like one you'd hear about in movies. I miss my friends all the time too. But right now I'm doing better. I'm healthy and sober and I'm okay. And my friend's? They are still doing the same thing. Its been almost 3 years. And nobody from my old friend group has changed. I know I sat around wanting my life to get better and sometimes you have to do things for you to have that happen.

-Renee Hunt

They Make Me Feel Guilty

If other people are making you feel guilty because you have chosen to live your life in your way, the fault lies not with the people, but with you.

William Shakespeare said wisely, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”.

You have the choice to feel guilty or not.

If you have chosen to feel guilty, you are responsible for your feelings.

As long as you keep blaming others for your own feelings and emotions, you can never live a life of your own and never solve the problems of your life.

People will say what they wish to say.

It is their mind and their tongue.

How can you control them?

You must rather live how you wish to live and take the responsibility for your decisions.

Stop seeking their endorsement for the choices that you have made for yourself.

Once you stop seeking their approval, they would lose all their powers to make you guilty

-Dr.Awdhesh Singh,Ex-IRS

"Would you like one, Grandpa?"

"Would you like one, Grandpa?"

OK— it was not my child but my 3-year-old granddaughter, but I still think it counts.

I had read about the marshmallow test. You give a child a marshmallow, and then say that if she (Layla, in this case) could keep from eating it for 10 minutes, you'll give her a second. So I tried that test with my granddaughter (not with marshmallows, but with chocolate, which she likes much more).

According to extensive experiments, children who "pass" the "marshmallow test" are far more successful in later life. They have learned a fundamental truth in life, that delayed gratification can lead to a far better long-term outcome.

She sat and watched the chocolate. The 10-minute hourglass finally emptied, and she had succeeded. She asked for her second piece of chocolate. I gave it to her, and she now had two in her hand. That's when she looked up at me and asked, "Would you like one, Grandpa?"

Needless to say, from that moment on I would readily give my life for her.

-Richard Muller

I am not motivated...........

There are a hundred things we do every day that we are *not* motivated to do.

So why do we do them? Because…

Motivation is just an emotion, and it’s not required to complete an action.

I’m betting that even at your job, there are a range of things you actively *dislike* that you still do regularly…

• In retail that might mean folding shirts
• It might mean running expense reports

…you get my drift. We put up with people we dislike and do tasks we don’t enjoy all the time.

So the trick to keep yourself motivated?

Stop caring about it, waiting for it, or thinking you need it to get things done.

- Julie Gurner

There are 3 types of people that I tend to avoid as best as possible because they suck me dry of all my positivity, motivation and work ethic:

There are 3 types of people that I tend to avoid as best as possible because they suck me dry of all my positivity, motivation and work ethic: 

Blamers, Thinkers, and Settlers.

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People who do not take Responsibility for their Lives. These people are like negativity magnets. Whenever something bad happens to them it is always the world who is at fault. It’s never them. They just have a crappy life and they cannot do anything about it. These people are known as “Blamers”; always blaming some other event, person or thing for their misfortune.

Blamers tend to waste their entire life in the same job, are always stressed, angry or depressed, and never even think about making their life better because they do not think they have that kind of power, nor do they think it is their responsibility.

The only thing they talk about is what happened to them. They will talk about all the crazy, negative things that happened to them on the weekend, talk about negative past events that happened years back and will rarely talk about what they did that was amazing in order to be able to complain and blame.

Avoid these people or run the risk of you becoming their next blame-scapegoat.

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People who are too Critical and Never try new things. The “Thinkers” are people that try to reason everything out before they start doing anything, often choosing to reason to such a point where they logically explain it the way that sounds best to them.

Thinkers will take everything they heard and everything that sounds reasonable to tell you why they cannot take responsibility for their lives or make their life better. These people are very dangerous because they are exactly what society wants.

If they hear something often enough, or if they cannot reason anything else, they will not believe it. Period. And it is hard to get them to change their minds as their beliefs are usually very ingrained and firm. Most of those beliefs come from things they have no knowledge of or of a fear based mindset.

Avoid these people because their logic will sound reasonable and it masks the laziness, apathy and depressed feelings they have inside quite well. Your parents are probably among them as they do not believe you can do it because they do not know how it’s done.

Thinkers are dangerous because they seem to make great points but do so without any actual knowledge of what they are talking about! Meaning all their points are only right by chance.

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People who do not Seek to Improve themselves. These people are just lazy, apathetic and selfish. They will not improve themselves not for lack of power, but just because it is too much work and they would rather sit in front of the TV.

These are known as “Settlers”, as they will always settle for “good enough” and never for anything more. Settlers are better than Blamers because they at least admit that they could do something, but they just choose not to, which is an excuse for living an easy life and not doing the extra work to make their life great: making them some of the most selfish people on the planet.

Settlers will always find excuses not to try and tend to avoid going for anything that is unknown. This comes from a fear that they may not be good enough, may not make it, or will lack the motivation. 

All of that comes from the belief that they are not good enough.

Avoid these people or help them, but do not get sucked into their own self-pity that they portray. This mix of selfishness and low self-confidence is a very dangerous mixture that is like a vortex that sucks you in. Avoid them if you can!

-Lukas  Schwekendiek

Source of Goodness......

Many human beings love eating fishes in different forms.

However, men live on land while fishes live inside the water.

Men want to have the fishes but they can’t go inside water and catch fishes. So they use fishing net with a bait to catch the fishes.

They conceal a hook inside the bait and offer it to fishes.

When fishes see the worm, their mouth start salivating and they can’t resist the temptation of eating the bait.

They have no knowledge that there is a hook that is hidden inside the bait.

It is due to their lack of knowledge, fishes are easily caught and eaten by men.

If the fishes would have the right knowledge, they would have never gone for the bait and lived their lives happily.

The source of goodness in this world is ‘right knowledge’.

A man without knowledge is no different than any animal.

An ignorant person is driven by his natural instinct as he can’t visualize the consequence of his actions.

Such a person can be easily fooled by smart people in the world using the right bait.

It is only when you have the right knowledge, you can become good.

A man with the right knowledge can’t be an evil man and an ignorant man can never be a good man.

If you wish to be a good man, acquire the right knowledge and learn the skills to use the knowledge in the right way.

A man who uses the knowledge in the right way to achieve the right results is called a wise man.

And a wise man and a good man are synonymous of each other.

-Awdhesh Singh

An Overheard Conversation Conversation about Myself

“If you go through with this, Anthony will end up dropping out of school and doing drugs.”

We have an older cousin in my family, who has credentials in psychology from a school that is unranked and questionably accredited.

Semblances of power, illusion of intelligence.

When my mom separated from my violent father, his side of the family—mostly the women—held a congregation about how to move forward with the situation.

I wasn’t there myself, but heard through others how events unfolded.

Most people saw my mom in the wrong—because women don’t divorce their husbands. Especially Armenian women, and especially Armenian women in our family. It wasn’t just taboo, it was disgusting. It was a stain on her life that would remain immortalized through twisted agendas and sinister manipulation of detail.

The women in that room flattened my mom.

The saddest thing is that my mom’s mom had done a fantastic job in lowering her self-esteem all her life.

20 years of abuse from her mother.

17 years of abuse from her husband.

This congregation functioned to remind my mom the things she has heard all her life:

She’s an idiot.

I knew from the earliest moments in my childhood that both sides of my family had issues. Some clearly severe and some mellow—like a soft consistent current only sometimes washing over you unexpectedly.

But my focus on this life going forward had nothing to do with me. My focus had been on my mom and sister.

The purpose of this congregation was to determine, to some capacity, the family’s jurisdiction over her own children. Without the courts. It was to tell her that she couldn’t take the kids. It was to remind her that she’s an idiot, and her kids belong to her husband, whether she divorces or not.

And then, the last few words as a reminder of what would happen to me.

If my mom did this, and ended her relationship with her husband, that I would end up on the streets, homeless, on drugs, without direction—probably dead.

A reminder to an already confused 37 year old soul, filled with mixed messages all her life.

My mom hasn’t really known to make a stand for much in her life.

To this day, I feel like if I don’t shield her from disgusting people in my own family, they’ll consume her on the spot.

That if I don’t shield her from her own mother, she’d be tossed to the wolves yesterday.

But that year was different.

She ended her abusive relationship with my father.

We ended up in a tiny apartment in the San Fernando Valley.

Me and my little sister both ended up attending UC Berkeley, and we both ended up in great careers.

My little sister even graduated from college a year early, and traveled Europe for 4 months each summer.

We didn’t become drug addicts.

We didn’t become homeless.

We absolutely struggled. We had really bad days.

We overcame.

I became the opposite of what my cousin had in mind.

Hell, I don’t even smoke or drink.

While I wouldn’t wish my path on anybody else, it didn’t isolate me from the world. It opened me up to love and ultimately catapulted me to succeed.

Her words motivated me, not because I was ever going to become a drug addict, but because it hilariously represents how detached some of my family members are from actual reality.

I’ve always known who I was. I’ve always known how loved I am by my mom and sister.

The whole situation gave me insight.

You can’t teach perspective. Two people looking at the same thing can conclude two diametrically opposite things.

Overhearing those words taught me that you can’t fight reality into someone’s mind.

Sometimes, the contingency of your success requires you to leave your current environment permanently.

-Anthony Andranik BS Mathematics-UC Berkeley)

I cant understand probability and combinatorics, even if I think that I understand the fundamentals............

I have to smile at this question.

For a long time, I considered myself in the same boat. Hell, I still consider myself in the same boat, even if I know a lot more probability and combinatorics than I used to. My knowledge in this area has always been grossly disproportionately small when compared to my knowledge in any other area of mathematics.

If you’re still early in your mathematical journey, perhaps I can help a little. I have a two-part suggestion:

First, slow down and figure things out by first principles. Use formulas and algebraic manipulations only as a last resort.

In other words, if I asked you how many ways there are to make a committee of 5 people from a class of 30 people, you shouldn’t think 30!/(25!⋅5!)$30!/(25!\cdot 5!)$. You should think (305)$(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{30}{5})$. And maybe even to take even a further step back, you shouldn’t instantly think (305)$(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{30}{5})$, but instead kind of think about what that expression means, and whether it really is the right tool for the job.

Another fundamental question that sometimes trips people up is when to add and when to multiply. I won’t attempt to explain it here (even though it’s straight forward). Instead, I just want you to sensitize you to that question.

Then do a bunch of problems. You’ll be really slow. Go back and check your work, and hopefully learn from the solutions. Flag those problems as problems you missed, and do them again in a few days after you forgot at least a little bit about the solution.

Where to get the problems? This might be a little old fashioned, but:

I’m a big fan of this series of books. I don’t know how old they are, but I loved them in the early/mid-90s. I doubt they have been updated much, except maybe for the typography.

But they’re really great books, because they have a ton of problems and solutions that are “parsed” very well. What I mean is, you’ll see at least one problem that features every line of thought (or outright trick) you’ll need to know. And many more that you don’t.

If you hunker down and do every problem in this book, you’ll be a master. If you hunker down and do half the problems in this book, you’ll be an expert.

-Charles Slade