Consistency & Focus

Let me start my answer with a beautiful poem by famous poet Mirza Ghalib:

Hazaron ḳhwahishen aisi ki har ḳhwahish pe dam nikle,

Bahut nikle mere arman lekin phir bhi kam nikle,

English translation:

I have thousands of desires, each so big that I can die for it.

I have fulfilled some of them, but they are very few.

We are all filled with numerous desires. These desires pulls us in every direction. We run from one desire to another as we wish to fulfill all. Instead of moving onwards any direction, we move in the Brownian motion like in this picture.

The result is that we reach nowhere even though travel a lot of distance and spend a lot of energy.

If you wish to focus on one goal and one desire, you must forgo all others. This is the most difficult task for any person.

We simply don’t want to lose anything and always think of gaining everything.

In our attempt to have everything in life, we end up getting nothing of any value.

You have to decide yourself as to which desire is the most important in your life not only for present but also for future. You must decide what you wish to be after five years, after ten years or after twenty five years from now. Once you've fixed your goal, drop all other goals and follow that one goal with full force and passion till you've achieved it.

Swami Vivekananda once said-

“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, and live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success that is way great spiritual giants are produced.”

If you can follow one goal and discard all other goals in life, there is no reason why you won’t be able focus on your goal and achieve consistent good results.

 -  Awdhesh Singh ,Author Essay & Ethics book for IAS Exam | Ex-IRS | Educator

Helplessness

You can kick this thing in the tail and I’m going to show you how.

Usually people get *stuck* in the feeling of helplessness when life sucks - but to me, these are the most motivating situations of all.

Here’s how to get to a place of motivation….

First - Look at The Evidence

When nothing is going your way, you have *evidence* that if nothing changes, this is where you’ll be for the long run.

It has to change, or you’ll be in this horrible place for the foreseeable future!

**Acknowledge this truth. Know that if you stop here, and don’t try and move beyond it…this is your life & YOU ARE CHOOSING IT.

Curious as to what the other choices are, but not yet a believer? Keep going….

Second - Dare to Imagine What You Want

If you want to find motivation, you have to create something compelling, something exciting!! What would you genuinely like for yourself? What kind of future would you want? So many people never even *dare* to think about what *they* want…but now is your chance!

The holdup? People start getting stuck here, thinking it will *never* happen, that they don’t deserve it, etc… DO NOT FALL FOR THIS. DREAM ANYWAY.

Third - Call Yourself on Your BS

If you are like most people, you’ll find reasons why you can’t have the life you want. You’ll find a thousand excuses.

Remember: Telling yourself why this “can’t” happen is exactly the reason you are in this mess. You are making a decision to be better than this.

You are making a decision right now to take a chance…maybe you have never taken a chance like this in your whole life. Allow yourself to actually *feel* what a different life might be like, and get excited about the new possibilities.

Allow yourself to believe and try.

Step up, take the chance, and see what happens.

Fourth - Brutally Challenge Yourself

Ask yourself: “What is stopping me?” “Why do I keep putting up with this?” “Why am I settling?”

Get real with your answers. Look at what patterns or beliefs are holding you back and why you keep dealing with this *same crap* over and over again in your life.

Examine what you’re scared of, what you fear…but also what *could be* on the other side if you took the chance and tried!

Set One Task that gets you to those goals - just one.

It should be small (sending an email, reaching out by phone, doing some research online), but the very first step in getting to that life you want.

Fifth - Take the Leap

This is going to scare the S*&t out of you…but it will be the biggest rush of your life. Time to start actually ACTING on that one task…follow through!

Getting started is the hardest part…now that you’ve acted, you started *momentum!*

As soon as you complete the first task, set another that is the next step for tomorrow and go for it…your motivation will continue to grow as you take action.

NOW GO GET IT!!

 

-  Julie Gurner

#7 Build Momentum Smartly. Think Big, Start small

People tend to overestimate what they can do in a day, but underestimate what they can do it a year. Becoming the best version yourself is a marathon, not a sprint. If you sprint, you’ll be gasping for breath pretty soon.

Think big, start small. Stop thinking about starting. Just. Start.

-Dylan Woon

#6 Be 1% Better Everyday. After a Year, You’ll be 3700% Better

Do the math. It’s 3778.34%, to be more accurate. People aim for unrealistic growth over the short term, especially when they’re super motivated. The problem is, that’s not sustainable.

Since you’re looking for long term improvement, consider making compounding effect your best friend.

-Dylan Woon

There Must Be Something Wrong? Right?

There’s been a dramatic rise in children diagnosed with autism in the past decade.

The divorce rate across the American population is similarly rising.

Mental illness diagnoses are climbing.

There must be something wrong? Right?

---

During World War II, the Allies tracked bullet holes on planes that were hit by Nazi fire.

The result looked like this:

They were looking to strengthen the planes, reinforce heavily hit areas so they could withstand even more.

Their immediate thought was to build up the places with clusters of red dots and on the surface, it was a logical deduction. After all, these were the areas getting hit the most.

But Abraham Wald, a mathematician came to a different conclusion: the red dots only represented the damage on planes that came home.

Instead, they should reinforce the places where there were no dots, because those are the places the plane wouldn’t survive being hit.

This phenomenon is called survivorship bias. At its simplest, it’s when we look at the things that survived when we should be focusing on the ones that didn’t.

---

Maybe there was never an increase in children with autism, instead the higher prevalence stems from increased awareness or decreased stigma. Or as with mental illness it is just actually diagnosed today, whereas years ago the child was just ‘disturbed’ or anti-social.

Maybe the divorce rate is high because people are better able to leave toxic and abusive relationships.

Maybe there are more people with mental illnesses because we’re actually diagnosing them.

-Lindsay Kent

Everybody Wants Free Stuff Yet We...............

Everybody wants free stuff — yet we rarely ask ourselves what it means to receive something for free.

Let me spoil the party: There’s nothing free in life!

Do you enjoy the extraordinary web search capabilities of Google? What about amazing Gmail? Can you live without Google Maps? YouTube is flawless! Google Docs … unbelievably reliable!

But wait … all ‘FREE’ services?

What about Facebook and Instagram? Do you enjoy these FREE social media platforms?

To answer your question, what’s a good example of strategic leverage?

Think of Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram as examples.

Google generated $134.8 billion in 2019, (just from ad revenues). Facebook sold $69.7 billion, and YouTube $15 billion in 2019 in ads.

Free? LOL!

A good example of strategic leverage is having billions of addicted people investing their time (for free), feeding content to your platform, while they’re also consuming other users’ — free — content.

Meanwhile, while we’re strangely giving away our valuable time “working” for the platform, they make billions selling our attention to other companies who are super desperate to sell us something else.

Actually, to date, Facebook is worth over 620 billion USD. Not a bad business, is it?

-Hector Quintanilla

#5 Acknowledge Your Fear. Then, Tame it Like a Master

Most people are unable to even take action because of fear. Don’t let it limit you. Admit that you’re fearful, but proceed anyway. Anyone who say he has no fear is not telling you the full story. The full story is, he has tamed his fear.

The things you’re looking forward could be just right at the edge of your comfort zone. Be courageous. It’s okay to make mistakes - as long as you don’t make the foolhardy ones.

-Dylan Woon

Succeeding in Life

Yesterday Danyal, who's 11, finished his A-levels, which are typically taken by 18-year-olds.

He taught himself Mathematics mainly from YouTube videos. Last year he did his Physics A-level and got an A.

He’s homeschooled.

This morning we went for a run and discussed what he might do next with his life.

He’s thinking about a combination of:

1. Play football up to 3 hours a day to see if he has a realistic chance of playing in the Premiership one day.
2. Try to get his squash to national-level.
3. Try to break the world record for 5km for an 11-year-old - he’d have to go damn intensive as he’ll turn 12 in 4 months.
4. Become damn good at coding - to start a tech startup.
5. Brush up his 6 languages - some have been very low priority in recent months due to exams.
6. Spend a lot of time loafing around with friends.

All possible because my wife and I just decided to TRY to homeschool our 3 kids 5 years ago. We just gave it a two-week trial after which all of us loved it.

If we hadn’t tried Danyal would still be learning algebra at school and I’d have no story to tell you.

To succeed in life you need to try. Trying usually gets you nowhere but if you keep at it, you keep trying in all aspects of your life, it will make you succeed in ways you never imagined possible.

-Asim Qureshi, Masters in  Physics from University of Oxford,    Former Investment Banker Now Entrepreneur

Healthy relationship with your.....

#4 Prioritize output over input. Don’t get trapped in eternal study!

You can never consume all information, strategies and tactics available. Gathering input is necessary, but it means nothing without output. On the other hand, scarcity creates value. What are scarce? Massive action. Shipping. Delivery. Impact.

In short, outputs are scarce. Be conscious about your input/output ratio.

-Dylan Woon

{Blogger's Note: Read and take action then optimize }

#3 Be Ready to Shred Your OLD Self Completely

Becoming the best version of yourself means that you’re going to move away from where you are, so you must be willing to shred your old self. When you’re raising your own bar, you’re essentially creating a gap between you and people around you. Your old self is going to resist that - don’t let the resistance get its way.

Let go of certainty and embrace uncertainty instead. Nothing is certain, after all. The earlier you realize this, the more you can improve.

-Dylan Woon

I ran away from home

I ran away from home.

It was 2 am. Barefoot. Blood dripping from my feet. In tears. Hurting, unbearably.

I was 25 when my Maa and Baba died. My relatives got me married one week after I turned 26 to the guy I was seeing then.

Initially, it was all magical and wonderful, as they almost always are.

He was my lifeline.

He became my one last chance at having a normal family again.

However within a few months things started changing drastically.

It began with the little things. He was rude. Irritated. Busy with work. He needed personal space.

Never wanted to be around me. Wanted to go on trips with his friends/colleagues and I was always barred from meeting them or talking to them. He came home whenever he wanted.

Would lie to me about going to his office and disappear. Anxious whenever I'd be around his phone.

This was just the beginning -- the beginning of the sad, miserable, and heartbreaking tale that was to follow.

Then came the blame game.

I was not pretty enough. My sense of style wasn't good enough. I wasn't able to satisfy him as and when he wanted. Be what he wanted.

Then, he crushed my soul as I was barely getting by.

He said that he didn't even want to get married.

Sympathy was the reason for our union. He felt suffocated. He wanted to be alone. He didn't want a family.

Finally, emotional torture. Mental abuse. I wasn't worthy. He was doing me a favour. I needed to stop crying for my parents.

I was weak because I couldn't get over my parents’ death quick enough and pretended to be sad because I wanted attention.

By this time I was completely broken.

I wanted to kill myself.

I could neither eat nor sleep. I was declared clinically depressed and was on therapy and heavy medication for 5-6 months.

Since this is India, relatives and in-laws got involved.

Everyone advising me to be patient --

A wife's duty is to be patient and adjusting. No one would want a divorced woman. Again and again and again until I started to question my sanity.

Then one fateful night, he lost it completely.

He hit me -- he hit me again and again and again and again.

I started to bleed. I thought he was going to kill me. In one final act of desperation, I ran.

Barefoot and bleeding. He took away my phone and purse so I couldn't contact anyone.

I ran over pebbles and mud with my bleeding foot. My survival instinct had kicked in.

I did not feel pain. Just blinding rage and determination to leave this godforsaken "holy" matrimony.

I was taken to a hospital and had 10 sutures on my right foot.

I was bedridden for a month. Everybody came to know about the incident.

I had had enough.

I applied for divorce and now I live alone with my pets.

My relatives have abandoned me. I'm shamed. Mocked. Talked about. Laughed at.

But, I'm happy.

I've found peace. I'm independent. Earning. Whole. Full and enough.

My life, this chapter in this long and heartbreaking story has taught me something.

Something, that took years and months and days and hours and minutes for me to learn and understand.

If you can't save yourself, no one else will.

-Pratiti Guha

Public Relations Department at South Eastern Railway (2017–present)