2016 - My Top 20

In the third installment of the iconic Rocky series, when a battered Sly sits languishing in his own private hell after being clobbered in the ring , his once-sworn adversary Apollo Creed pays him a visit and gives him the famous talk , “ ..We held the greatest title in the world Baby ! And you lost it for all the wrong reasons..... When you and I fought, you had the eye of the tiger....... And the only way to find it back, is to go back to the beginning…”

If you have crossed forty, chances are that you might identify with the enormous contextual familiarity that  the above scene offers . At a certain stage in the middle of our life , we all hit a wall at some point of time or the other, and when, tired of warding untimely curve balls , we start questioning our very core & start slipping into an undesired limbo . It then becomes extremely important to harness our good learning during the year and snare it on paper so that we have enough positivity to carry into a new year.

 For past many years, I have tried to jot down the summary of my learning from the year on my blog ( Here was my last year’s entry that I had also shared on Linked In – (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/adieu-2015-my-top-21-takeaways-ayon-banerjee?trk=mp-reader-card). Curiously, when I revisit my own post after a year, I am amazed at how different my reflections from 2016 turned out to be, when compared to 2015 . That’s the beauty of growing up, I guess.

I am past half time. My yesterdays now outnumber my tomorrows. I see more younger people around me than older ones these days. I eat less, yet pile on more .It takes half the number of beers to get twice as drunk . I run marathons, lift weights , punish my body in my own queer way of mocking at nature and getting back at the unfair pace of life.

I am past half time. My heroes have changed. My priorities have got shuffled. My reading has trashed old favorites and found newer loves. Management and self-help books amuse me these days. I read more autobiographies. And obituaries. They keep me grounded, remind me that death is the biggest leveler ,equalizer and forgiver. I have become less cynical, less ambitious , more tolerant .I have made a fool of myself enough to suffer other fools with a lot more empathy than what I did earlier. I have stopped making new friends. I have forgiven old enemies. My learning has become slower but more deliberate. I no longer have my photographic memory of my 20s and need to write down phone numbers (& sometimes, even names). I am still in love with life as ever, but I have also made peace with my mortality .I no longer fear to die. I fear more for the handful of people who I call my own, and pray more for more for them than I pray for myself. These days, more ghosts surround me than they did earlier, people who walked with me during the later part of their lives and who have now drifted off to their next destinations and yet are conspicuously present somewhere in my self, through that odd chain of conversation that lived on, through that quirky habit I did not forget ,or through that lesson of theirs that left me a better or a worse person thereafter. I have outgrown my man-made Gods of yesterday which were thrust on me. I have finally discovered my own version of God and have befriended Him. I know how He functions and admire Him that in spite of having cracked his code, I still fail to go error free. He jeers at me as He watches me slip every now and then, and keeps reminding me that I am just a human, an ordinary human. With limits .With limitations.

 I am past half time. I have seen my share of the world, travelled far, wide and enough to have realized that we are all made out of the same stuff, the same fears, the same idiosyncrasies, the same trappings and the same dreams, beneath the varying colors of our skins and passports. Human nature has ceased to surprise me these days. I have stopped passing judgments. I observe. I smile. I move on.

 So here goes - my top 20 reflections from 2016 . Not that I have been successful in mastering all of them as yet. But I am trying. And I hope I shall get better at them before I write my annual note for 2017. The ones that are repeated from my posts on previous years, are lessons that have stood the test of time and circumstances. I continue to believe in them -

1.      As goes the Dwight. D. Eisenhower quote -  “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.” Find your fight. And your ‘eye of the tiger’. Then, don’t lose it - no matter what.

2.      Respect the energy of youth and the wisdom of the elderly. You don’t possess enough of either now.

3.      The window of opportunity between a stimulus (temptation) and a response for a human brain is exactly 0.25 seconds. In this interval, we make most of our decisions as we go through our otherwise ‘auto pilot’ days. And yes, each of these responses has the cascading power to alter our lives permanently and take it in a completely new direction. Permanently so.

4.      Eat less . Wake up an hour before your competitors do . Start your day while the world still sleeps.

5.      Things that are scheduled are things that get done. Sloppiness is not cool. Make a plan for every day the night before, snare it on paper in order to enable it to work on your subconscious mind while you sleep and allow it to slip in delightful insights when you rise the day after. Start your day by doing your most dreaded task for the day. Don’t check your email before 10 AM. Set aside blocks of time to do your emails. Ditto for returning calls. And yes – you really do NOT need to respond to every email , return every call or rise to every unnecessary provocation . Take it easy.

6.      Work all the time you work. Start a little early. Finish a little late. Don’t pay attention to fads that ask you to have ‘fun at work’. Work is not fun. Work is work. Get back to work.

7.      “Masterful consistency” – I recently read this term somewhere . I love it. Growing up is being known to be consistent – in speech, in actions, in opinions & in values.

8.      Practice deliberate minimization. Abundance spoils us, makes us soft. Simplify your life clutter . Zero down on fewer choices to let your mind work on.

9.      A mediocre plan that is well acted upon, is better than a brilliant one on paper. Be known as the most action-oriented workman, rather than the stationery genius in the corner room.

10.  Your worst days call for your best efforts . When going through a bad day or a lean year – lie low, step on the pedal and work hard. Your time shall come.

11.  Simplify your greatness modules. Greatness often starts with pretty straightforward and small changes in your value system. For instance, try going through an entire week without complaining or criticizing even once. Trust me, it is easier said than done.

12.  The extra mile – where life changes gears.

13.  In the end, the things you say ‘No’ to, will define you more than the things you say ‘yes’ to.

14.  The whole concept of setting daunting goals is a myth. Master achievers work on the ‘PROCESS’ till they master it. They execute 10-12 'tiny -yet- sexy' goals every day. That makes for > 3000 accomplishments in a year. Awesome, isn't it ?

15.  It takes 66 days to overcome the escape velocity of an old habit and create a new one. Most people try a new habit for 5-10 days, and give up. Science has established that you need this minimum period of blind belief in a new idea for it to take root in your psyche and for you to see enough results to believe in it.

16.  Don’t give up on your rituals even when you might have temporarily given up on your faith. Stay with your rituals. Faith shall come back. It always does.

17.  Make friends with changing technology. There is nothing cool in being the dinosaur in the room.

18.  Stop watching the news. Deactivate your Facebook for two weeks ( Try it ! I guarantee you shall survive !) . Read ( and not just browse) for at least an hour a day, the old fashioned way. Five years from now, you shall be a sigma ( a sum) of the words you chose, the (real, not virtual ) friends you made, and the books you read. So – your clock starts now !

19.  Thrice a week , go for a 60 min walk by yourself. And don’t carry your phone on you.

20.  “ Here is someone who didn’t give up !” – Write this on a post-it and stick it to your bathroom mirror.

Have an awesome 2017 !