Category: Everything else

Before we take decisions, we make it out life’s purpose to ‘create options’. The bigger decisions, the more the options we like to have.

Yeah. I took that job and turned down blah, blah and blah. or

Yeah. I had great difficulty choosing that school. I had all these great schools to choose from.

Options make us feel good. They make us feel like we’re not desperate. Probably most importantly, they feed our illusion of control.

They don’t make our decisions easy by any stretch of the imagination unless we have one clear winner. If they are all equal or sort of equal, then choosing becomes a very difficult process. We end up consulting everyone relevant looking for a rational, logical reason and then end up taking a decision based on our emotions anyway..

That said, they still make us feel good at least for a little while. And nothing good comes without it’s share of challenge.

Paradoxically, the moment we make a decision and decide to plough ahead is the moment when options become like spoilt food in the fridge. Keep them for too long and they begin to stink. They remind us that they still exist and make us think of what life might have been if we had chosen them.

Sometimes, as a result of our visceral emotional reaction to losing things we have, we aim to keep as many options as we can open for as long as we possibly can. People do this with jobs, schools and often, even with relationships!

The issue here is that while options may give us a bit of joy the moment they appear – in the long run, they don’t really make us happy.

In fact, feeding them has exactly the opposite effect.

Predictable irrationality.

It probably comes down to our definition of success. We think of success as having an array of options and then choosing the most logical/rational option that would give us maximum benefit.

The big question, of course, is – Is that really success?

Every once in a while, I think about growth and learning.

A friend put it nicely the other day ‘I know what I need to improve. In fact, I know exactly what I need to improve. Getting me to do it though is the challenge.’

We all laughed. We all could relate.

It seems like we know but somehow, when push comes to shove, we don’t like to admit what we know. When it comes to deciding what we deem most important as this part of our lives, we push learning and growth away. We don’t seek help. We don’t spend time doing what it takes to change.

Why?

What would make us prioritize it higher?

I see the problem fairly clearly. The big problem here is that change is long term. The benefits are long term. And our elephant can’t live with long term. Our emotions love instant gratification even if it gets in the way of us doing good in the longer term. Why else have chat applications taken off like never before?

All this emphasis on social is living proof of that. Email, likes, retweets, push notifications have made it extremely hard for us to focus on the long term. We live in the now a lot more than we used too. ‘

And therein lies the biggest problem with bringing about change and with learning and growth. It’s akin to building. It takes many months, sometimes even years and we can only do it brick by brick. There’s no instant building. In fact, the greatest difficulty here is that the building calls for a change in foundation. So, it’s many months before something visible even happens. It calls for questioning, introspection, understanding, acceptance and then action. Who in the world has time for all that these days?

Why, even piling stones, one on top of each other would be a tough task. It really is the age of the instant.

The other surrounding problem (which, in my view, is probably the biggest of them all) is the lack of inspiration. Constant notifications and distractions make it really hard to spend time with ourselves and to ask ourselves the kind of questions that inspire growth.

The other source of inspiration is role models and mentors. While in the old days, we would struggle to have access to successful folk, now we have access to more potential role models than we could imagine. It is the age of abundance. Yet, what do about it?

What would make us do more about it?

It’s obvious that in the age of instant and social, self discipline and will power will become the most needed attributes of them all.

These are muscles at the end of the day. How are we going to be inspired enough to exercise them?

What can help?

There’s a lot of talk of changing the education system. It’s an idealist trait. Spot a problem with society and blame it on the education system. The biggest problem, though, is that the education we receive in school is not relevant for our times.

The real education we need is in developing the traits and the character to be able to handle the age of the instant and abundant.

Back to us and the most important question here – What would help us change? What would make us prioritize change, learning and growth?

Looking forward to your thoughts..

I think of TED Talks a bit like traveling. There are way too many good ones out there to watch them all. No, I’m not making time excuses. They’re just not high enough priority in the day to squeeze anything else, at least for the moment.

I rely on friends pushing in TED talks to watch them. And these days, I end up watching one only if a friend pushes them and tells me why they loved it so much.

The last 2 TED talks I watched were both very very good. The first one was Paul Zak’s talk on Morality and Oxytocin – it had a simple takeaway. We can change the world with 8 hugs a day because hugs stimulate the release of Oxytocin, which in turn, makes the world a better place by ensuring morality. As is the case with these things, simple concept – but hard to do. And I’m saying that as a very ‘hug-gy’ person (i.e. a person who would prefer a hug over a handshake if we know each other).

The next one that recommended twice by two different friends in a short period of time was Shawn Anchor’s talk on ‘The Happiness Advantage’. This is also a wonderful talk and Shawn makes us laugh almost all through the 12 minute duration.