Category: Life

I was walking back from the shopping center when I saw two girls sitting against a shop window playing a song through their mobile phone. A piece of cloth was spread before them for money.

They seemed to be from a good home. Well-dressed and well-fed.

I went past them, disgusted, thinking they must have found busking an easy way to raise money to afford something they wanted to buy.

I had only gone a few steps when something made me stop. The music they were playing was beautiful and sad. It was not the usual boisterous kind of music teenagers would listen to on their mobile phones.

I turned and had a closer look at their faces. They looked solemn. What if something is going wrong in their lives? What if someone is sick in their home and they need the money? I opened my wallet and placed a few dollars on the cloth in front of them. Their faces lit up, and they mouthed thank you. I smiled back and went my way of feeling better. I had done my act of kindness for the day.

Then a thought stopped me in tracks.

It is easier to be kind to strangers than to our loved ones.

I once read an article where the writer lamented that she was disgusted by the way she was treating her children.

If someone bumps into me in shops, we both say sorry, smile, and go our way. But at home, when my kid bumps into me in the morning rush, I get angry and lash out. Can’t you see where you are going? Look what you have done; you have made me spill tea all over my blouse.

We are much harsher, unforgiving, and cruel with our own than with people we meet on the street.

Relationships are frail. The reason they break because we start taking them for granted. We stop giving each other the common courtesy we so easily extend to strangers.

We need to be extra kind to our loved ones.

Do you know who else we are harsher with?

Ourselves.

We reserve the harshest judgment for ourselves. We remember all our faults. We blame and shame ourselves all the time.

We abandon ourselves and admire everyone else. We readily accept other’s mistakes, but we can’t seem to forgive our own. We play them in our minds over and over again.

We don’t mind others being lesser beings but can’t accept anything less than perfection from ourselves. No wonder we suffer from depression, anxiety, and fear of failure.

Like charity, kindness should start at home.

It is easy to buy food for a homeless person, and many people do that, but it is hard to ring your estranged sister and tell her that you miss her, and you love her.

We all like to think that we are kind at heart, that we don’t do any harm to anyone, but by default, our mind is finding faults in others. We only see flaws, bad traits, and annoying habits in others. Yet people never forget if you have been kind to them.

Kindness is the only thing you remember about people.

Let’s do a little test to prove that.

1. Tell the names of the five wealthiest people in the world.
2. Who were the five best football players last year?
3. Tell the names of the people who circumnavigated the globe.
4. Who conquered the Everest last year?

Most people can’t answer these questions. Now let me ask you another set of questions.

1. Tell the names of the five best teachers in your life.
2. Who believed in you when you didn’t believe in yourself.
3. Who forgave you when you did something wrong.
4. Who guided you when you didn’t know what to do?

How To Be Kind To Those You Love

Kindness is such a big thing that sometimes it is hard to know what it exactly is. And yet kindness can be portrayed in small gestures.

Kindness is to listen to someone. Really listen to them.

Kindness is to smile at someone and say hello and wait for their response.

Kindness is to tell your loved one that you love them.

Kindness is to give an honest compliment.

Kindness is to tap on someone’s shoulder and saying, “Nevermind.”

Kindness is to offer a helping hand to those who can’t pay you back.

Kindness is to connect with someone’s soul and to make them feel that they matter.

Kindness is to be accepting; not only of others but of ourselves too.

No one knows kindness better than Orly Wahba, who took it upon herself to make kindness viral.

In 2011, a young middle school teacher started a movement, The Kindness Boomerang, to inspire and motivate people to make the world a kinder place.

Orly Wahba began her career as a middle school teacher, empowering children to embrace unity, build self-value, and use the power and magic of kindness to influence the world for good.

Her award-winning Kindness Boomerang film went viral receiving 100 million views.

We are all striving to become our better selves. We are trying to become better employees, leaders, teachers, doctors, nurses. But being a kinder-self surpasses them all.

A goal worthy of striving for is making sure anyone who comes into our contact remember us for our kindness.

Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash

After being stuck in the house for seven months, we made an effort to go to the coast on the weekend with a couple of friends. Even that little break from the monotonous routine was enough to clear my head and have a new perspective on old problems.

I forever seem to be faced with one dilemma or another. A perpetual loop of the famous Shakespearean conundrum “to be, or not to be.” It keeps taking different forms. To do this or that. To continue with this or to start something new. To follow the routine or to be spontaneous. The questions appear mammothal in the four walls of the house, but as soon as you get out in the open, they become trivial and futile.

But the best advice to make decisions came from Oliver Burkeman’s last column for The Guardian:

When stumped by a life choice, choose “enlargement” over happiness. I’m indebted to the Jungian therapist James Hollis for the insight that major personal decisions should be made not by asking, “Will this make me happy?”, but “Will this choice enlarge me or diminish me?” We’re terrible at predicting what will make us happy: the question swiftly gets bogged down in our narrow preferences for security and control. But the enlargement question elicits a deeper, intuitive response. You tend to just know whether, say, leaving or remaining in a relationship or a job, though it might bring short-term comfort, would mean cheating yourself of growth. (Relatedly, don’t worry about burning bridges: irreversible decisions tend to be more satisfying, because now there’s only one direction to travel – forward into whatever choice you made.)

Oliver Burkeman in The eight secrets to fairly fulfilled life

I wish I had known this a few years ago. It would have saved a lot of agonies. Not that I have chosen happiness over enlargement in the past, but I would have had the framework and that would have made the decision-making process less painful.

Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

I wake up, from a fretful sleep. It is a wet, windy and depressing morning. I settle down in the bed as usual and start writing. For the next two hours, it is just me and my words. My husband is not allowed to interrupt me. He gets ready and leaves for work.

I sit in the folds of doona – laptop notebooks, and books scattered around me – I am in heaven. Today is 27 July. I am feeling nostalgic and make a deliberate trip to memory lane. Two years ago, on this day, I was miserable. I had no clue where my life was going. Although I was in a well-paying job earning a high six-figure income, I wasn’t happy. Something was missing. I didn’t know what it was.

On a whim, at lunchtime, I bought a domain under my real name. I had been writing for some time but didn’t publish anything. I was too scared to put my name on what I wrote and severely doubted my ability to become a writer. Yet that is all I wanted to be. I thought blogging would ease me into a writing career. I had started a couple of blogs before, but they didn’t last long. My self-doubt and lack-of-time to devote to my passion were tearing me apart.

The same evening, as usual, I visited my father in the nursing home. He was a bit unwell. His infection was back. He should have been put on antibiotics, which my brother had bought and left with the staff since morning, but they hadn’t started the medication due to a discrepancy in paperwork. As my brother and I were still sorting that, he took his last breath. One minute he was there, next he was gone. Forever.

A few days later, when the shock of his departure subsided, I wrote my first post Why I started this blog. It was more of a tribute to him. Writing it comforted me more than anything else. I couldn’t express everything I was feeling but I felt I had finally found a place to express myself.

My own words comforted me then. Even after two years, they are still able to comfort me. For some reason, writing seems to be the right way to remember my father.

This blog started on the same day my father passed away. In a strange way, they both got connected. As if he had reincarnated in the form of a blog. In my eulogy, I wrote that my father had big hands, the kind of hands a father should have. It feels like he has put his hand over me through this blog. Could something technical and virtual be someone’s solace?

This blog is the place where I could be myself. This is where I pour my heart, talk about my fears, share my lessons, and inspire others. This blog taught me a lot, not only about writing but life itself. Last year, on this day, I wrote an article listing 10 learning from the first year of blogging to mark the day.

This year I have created a book of inspirations – 31 Tips to Unleash Your Creativity. It holds the words that inspired me and kept me going through this journey. Click the link and download it.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you, my dear readers. You stood by me all this time and witnessed my progress from an unsure scribbler to someone who is living the life she wants to live. I will continue to write for you and for myself, sharing my learnings and solving the mysteries of life.

Thank you for your support. I love you all.

Photo by Zach Kadolph on Unsplash

Imagine if you were a woman who was cat-called — and you decided to interview your cat-caller. 

This is exactly what Eleanor Gordon-Smith, an Australian journalist, did.

Cat-calling or eve-teasing is nothing new to women. Every one of us has so many stories tucked away in our memory vaults. 

Why men cat-call? What they hope to get from it? Eleanor decided to confront her cat-callers to find out. What she discovered left her dumbfounded.

Most of them didn’t mind being interviewed. When she thrust her mean-looking tape recorder under their faces, they gave her inconsistent reasons behind their motivation. 

“A guy just does it for attention,” said one. “I am looking for a reaction, any reaction,” admitted the other. “I am looking to meet someone, start a conversation, try to see if she is into it.” claimed the other. 

Then she came across the most bizarre one, “They love it. They have to love it.” His conviction was absolute so was his irrationality.

But was he any more irrational than anyone of us? 

We like to think that we are reasonable, while others are unreasonable. But is that the truth? Is it in itself an unreasonable belief in itself?  

Much that we like to think we are rational beings; we are all irrational.

Take the process of decision making, for instance.

We like to think we make our decisions rationally. But we don’t.

 A rational way of decision-making is to assess a problem from all its angles, weigh pros and cons, and then decide. 

How many of us do that? And even if we do, how many we have followed the logical conclusion?

I have often drawn a line in the middle of a sheet of paper, written down the pro and cons but rarely I have made the decision in favor of most ‘pros’ on the table. My mind had already reached the decision. All I was doing was discovering what it was. I was justifying myself to myself. 

Is that rational?

Rational persuasion is the right way of changing our minds, but do we actually do that?

No, we don’t. 

The reasoned argument is the currency of persuasion sounds good in theory. The fact is we hate being persuaded. Right or wrong, we like to hold on to our beliefs. Changing our beliefs means putting aside ego and admitting that it is time to change our ill-informed beliefs. How many of us do that?

I have been trying to get my husband to do flexibility training for years now. He walks each morning, at least five kilometers, sometimes even more. He is doing enough cardio-vascular workout but nothing to keep his muscles flexible. He can’t squat, can’t sit on the floor, and have trouble picking up things he drops. But he refuses to do any flexibility training. He believes a walk is all he needs to stay fit. All the rational persuasion (and the evidence that he is losing flexibility) is not enough to change his mind.

Very few of our life decisions are based on rationality.

When we base our decision on rationality, our mind is calm. We know we have made the right decision when we have listened to reasoned arguments, considered all the facts, and didn’t get dissuaded by the people around us. We have been able to set aside our ego and emotion to make a choice. That is why we feel at peace with ourselves. But that happens only a few times.

When I decided to take early retirement to devote my time to writing, it was one of those decisions when my mind was totally at rest. It took six months of planning, considering all the options, fulfilling financial obligations, and choosing the right time to resign. Not even once, I regretted it.

But soon after, I made a series of decisions that left me frustrated, angry, and led to so much mental turmoil, that I wondered if I was the same woman who so calculatedly embarked on a new career.

If we don’t make decisions rationally, then how do we make decisions.

The fact is our decision-making process is as unpredictable as our beliefs are. Both happen somewhere deep in our minds.

We make decisions subconsciously. 

A common agate in marketing is that we buy with our hearts and justify with our minds. It is true with our decision making too.

We make decisions based on our belief system. 

The more aligned our decisions are with our belief system calmer, we feel. When a decision is in alignment with one belief but conflict with another, we enter the world of turmoil.

Sometimes we make decisions in a split second, and it just feels right. 

Although the reasoning is not clear to us, there are thousands of subtle clues that our mind picks up and uses them to reach a decision.

Why do we find our own decisions rational but other people’s decisions irrational?

Other people make their decisions the same way as we do. 

Their belief system is different than ours, so what is rational to them is irrational to us. 

We can justify our own decisions to ourselves, but we can’t do that with others. So we start thinking they are irrational.

I find it hard to believe that my brother has spent so much money to buy a second-hand car for which he could have bought a new car. For me, a new car is a new car. It is less hassle and has a manufacturer’s warranty. But my brother finds it hard to believe that I would go for a new car that depreciates as soon as it comes out of the showroom. We both think of each other being irrational.

Can we make other people act rationally?

Only as much as they can make us act rationally.

Irrationality is the space between what is expected of us and how we respond.

If the two align, we are considered rational. If they don’t, our behavior is considered irrational. But alignment happens less often than more. And it frustrates us.

I used to spend my weekends helping friends make up their minds. And my weapon of choice was — reasoning. It used to frustrate me how they would come back to the same position the day after. The reasoning is not enough to make us act rationally. What makes us think it will be enough for others? I now keep my weekends free to read a good book or go for a walk.

Telling the cat-callers that women don’t enjoy indecent remarks and providing them ample evidence with not make them act rationally. Not encouraging them and leaving clues to leave you alone will surely discourage them.

Summary

Let me recap the points I made. 

1. We think we are rational while the people around us are irrational.
2. Even though we like to think that we are rational, we make decisions irrationally.
3. Rational decision-making at the conscious level might sound good in theory, but our subconscious mind picks up many more clues and reach a conclusion on its own, which is better than the conclusion we can reach consciously.
4. Other people’s decisions feel more irrational than our own because their belief system is different than ours.
5. It is hard enough to change ourselves, let alone the others.

Let’s not try and change others when it is so hard to change ourselves.

Photo by heyerlein on Unsplash

Bronnie Ware is a hospice nurse from Australia. Her work involves caring for patients who are terminally ill and may pass away within 12 weeks. A few years back, she started recording the dying epiphanies of her patients. She asked her patients if they had any regrets or if they would have done anything differently. And she found a few common themes recurring again and again in all the answers she received.

The number one regret people have is, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

Who knows better the price we pay when we succumb to the pressures of life than the generation X.

Remember us, the generation born between 1960 and 1980 (roughly), known as the sandwich-generation. We are cracking under the pressures of raising the millennials (the most demanding generation so far) and parenting the parents (the baby boomers who are living longer and longer)..

Have we missed the opportunity to live our lives forever?

We were the generation raised to change the world. We were to become the leaders, the inventors, the entrepreneurs. Instead, we were bypassed by Generation Y and the Millennials.

At work, our own children became our bosses while we stayed in the 9-5 jobs to keep the steady income flowing. At home, our parents took over our lives while we skipped holidays and cut our social circles to provide care for them.

We lost touch with our dreams. We forgot what we wanted. Life became a drudgery.

Now the first wave of us is reaching the retirement age.

I am one of those. Retirement brings its own challenges. It is supposed to be the time of leisure and fun. But to the on-the-go-all-the-time-Generation-Xer, retirement could be a state of purposelessness. No one needs you. Parents are gone, and children have left. One could go back to work but work becomes suddenly unsatisfying.

But we are still in good health. We need something worthwhile to bring purpose to our lives. We need to get in touch with our dreams.

Retirement is an opportunity to fulfill those forgotten dreams.

We finally have the time and opportunity. Thanks to advancements in medicine and awareness of health, we are going to live at least thirty to fourty years in retirement. That is a hell of a long time to do nothing.

Rather it is a time to do make a real difference. Never before in our lives, were we in a position to do so. You have two to three decades of life experiences to draw from. We don’t have any financial pressure, at least not like when we had big mortgages, school fees and age-care bills.

We have the confidence, enthusiasm and ‘I-don’t-care-what-people-think’ attitude. And we have an amazing network of people around us, who have a different set of skills than us, to help us. And guess what, they are in the same age group as us which means they now have fewer responsibilities and more time to give us a hand if we need it.

Chances are they are also looking for an opportunity to fulfill their potential.

Fellow Generation Xer! your time has come.

Let’s not waste it walking the poodle and weeding the garden. Let’s not use this time to babysit grandchildren.

It is your time. Use it to become the person you always wanted to become. Write that book. Enroll in Artificial Intelligence courses. Invent the next generation of solar engines. Become the entrepreneur you always wanted to become.

Don’t let the age limit your choices. Your choices will help you live a longer and more satisfying life. Don’t let the lack of energy to become your excuse. Your purpose will generate more energy than you need.

Live your life in a way that when you are on your deathbed you don’t have the regret that “I wish I’d had the courage to live my life rather than the life others expected of me.”

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