age

I keep hearing age is a number. But in reality, it is a number till you take care of yourself. Our sedentary lifestyle is making me sick day by day. It has more to do with our actions than age.

What I have learned from people in the late years of their lives is simple 3-4 things.

  1. Eating healthy and eating less.
  2. Staying happy and forgiving.
  3. Mobility of body and bones.
  4. Company of friends and loves ones.

Before mass migration for jobs started, most of India lived in villages. We had the company of people we grew up with for eternity. The company had a healing power. We had less TV and more sitting together, talking, and sharing happiness and sorrows.

With the advancement in food technology, India has started consuming refined food more. As a result, we are more hungry, more sick. Our calorie intake and lifestyle both got a major shock.

All major philosophies talk about letting go, not worrying about the future, or keeping a grudge. But it is just in the textbooks and sculptures, not in life. We humans crave superiority, glory, and respect. In the process, we get angry and become sad due to our expectations from others.

In short, we can live a better life, age well, and die longer, keeping things in our control and actions.

Pain

In the last few years, many startups with big markets and growth as primary enablers have gotten funded. Currently, many such companies have shut. Mass layoffs are happening for cost-cutting, or unwanted mergers are taking place.

We have come this far because money was cheap, and FOMO was in its prime. The business fundamentals were missing. It was just go fast, kill competitors, raise as much you could.

Nobody cared about solving the pain.

chance

A founder’s most important job is to ensure the company does not run out of money. It pays the team on time. It requires a lot of focus and recruiting able leaders. The founder should aim to run a company as an orchestra, not in the hands of a single person.

As more efficient leaders get hired, the company’s chance of success increases.

Rewrite

As we grow old, we realize that our sanity matters most. As a result, we have to rewire ourselves and let go of many things of the past. It can be our relationships, experiences, and learnings. We can’t let our past bully us. We don’t have to hang up with artificial relationships.

Some people with all the money in the world and all the fame are shallow. They can neither handle the fame nor sudden wealth. They lose their sanity.

Supernatural

Have you felt the aura of some supernatural coming at times when you are in deep mess to rescue you or ensuring you get through the darkest face of life. 

Sometimes I feel there is someone above helping me sailing through the dark phases of life. It could be some supernatural, god, karma or whatever. 

I might sound delusional but it has happened to me time and again. I felt like sharing this.  

moments

We keep procrastinating and delaying things for the future. We feel we are never ready. The little moments of now have no importance to us. We keep building castles for the future. How much do we know about the future anyway? What does the future hold for us? How much do we know about it?

The little moments we have with our loved ones, we need to live to the fullest. We hardly know if they are alive tomorrow or not.

Epictetus, a stoic philosopher, said thousands of years back:

“Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our actions.”

Another stoic philosopher, Seneca, talks about the shortness of life:

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.”

Our allocated time on this planet is limited. We have to make the best of all the moments. We cannot delay things we have been waiting for because we don’t know what will happen tomorrow.

apply

We live in a world where many constantly seek for validation. As a result, many go out of the way and incur losses. The sooner we realize that we exist in our thoughts and actions. We start applying it to practice. It will save us from many modern-day pain and misery.

Against

Building something new from scratch requires a new way of thinking and executing. The new age of innovation is happening at a rapid pace with abundant availability of resources.

Many of us fall into the trap of building new in an older way. This rigidity results in no willingness to change.

I am witnessing this struggle when I enter sales to my potential customers that are traditional family offices. The old guards prefer the older way, no modernization with no willingness to pay.

The new breed of Ivy League siblings talk about all things opposite to it. They have a world view and understanding of wealth distribution and monitoring.

A few who will mold themselves and transform will reap benefits from it. The others will fight over accumulated wealth allocation and distribution for better returns.

straight shooters

I like straight shooters. Be it making friends or doing business. They mean no shit. They will act as they are. There is no makeup in their presentation. It ensures that you know what you are getting into.

Some pretentious people will say something and mean somthing else. These people are dangerous. It’s tough to partner with them because of their unpredictability. Be wary of such.

If you want a mental peace: partner, befriend, and do business with straight shooters.

Opportunity

We have become less thankful for what we have got. Most of us growing up in the metro and late 90s would not realize how we have progressed. The everyday luxuries we take for granted: electricity, internet, and mobile phones were luxuries for the rich. As a country, we have progressed.

Our country has limited power centers, and development is limited here. The world never looks beyond these limited cities. As a result, either you mass migrate to these concentrated megacities for work or die hungry.