2019 - 21 reflections from a Reset-Year

For the past few years ( five, to be precise) , somewhere during the last quarter, I have been transferring the lessons jotted in my journal to my blog with the intent of archiving them electronically and stowing them away where I may visit them occasionally in future. I have discovered that this is a good time to add momentum to your life by starting to act on it instead of observing it act on you. And if necessary, course correct yourself before you hit the first of January. As you grow older, you learn to replace resolutions with reflections, largely because you realize that ceremonial resolutions seldom work, and making too many resolutions is like playing a standup comedian to the Gods. Life largely chugs along as it has to, unfairly accelerating year after year. You are eventually an insignificant speck in the larger scheme of things.

Things get different as you cross half time. Your heroes change. Your priorities get shuffled. Your reading content and habits change. You trash old favorites and discover newer loves in print . Management and self-help books begin to amuse you. Autobiographies don’t . Obituaries suddenly interest you . They keep you grounded, remind you that death is the biggest leveler ,equalizer and forgiver. You become less cynical, cautiously ambitious , more tolerant . You realize that you have made a fool of yourself enough by now & can now safely suffer other fools with a lot more empathy than what you did earlier. You stop making new friends. You forgive old enemies. Your learning slows down, but gets more deliberate. You lose your photographic memory of your 20s and need to write down phone numbers ( sometimes, even names). You are still in love with life as ever, but you also make peace with your mortality .The fear of death changes form . You fear more for the handful of people who you call your own, and pray more for more for them than you pray for yourself . These days, more ghosts surround you than they did earlier, people who walked with you during the later part of their lives and who have now drifted off to their next destinations and yet are conspicuously present somewhere in your self, through that odd chain of conversation that lived on, through that quirky habit you did not forget , or through that lesson of theirs that left you a better or a worse person thereafter. You outgrow your man-made Gods of yesterday which were thrust on you . You finally stumble upon your own version of God and befriend Him ( or Her) . You know how (S)He functions and admire Him / Her that in spite of having cracked his code, you still fail to go error free. (S)He jeers at you , catching you slip every now and then, and keeps reminding you that you are just a human, an ordinary human. With limits .With limitations. Having 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 ceases to surprise you these days. You stop passing judgments. You observe. You smile. You move on. And you scribble in your journal through your year, summarize them around mid-October. And brace for another January.

Here are mine, for the year that was. 2019 – My year of reset. The year where I stepped back to lose myself a bit. So as to find myself better. Some are repeated. Which only proves that I am getting older. And more consistent. Closer to the finale.

1. 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.
2. In good cycles , perform. In bad ones , persevere, prepare and practice. Cycles change. Your time will come. And also go.
3. If you must, read only the last few pages of the newspaper. The sports section reflects the victories of mankind. The front pages – it’s failures.
4. Lift someone else up every single day . EVEN when no one seems to be lifting you up. Other people’s Karma is none of your business.
5. Punctuality, loyalty, gratitude, love, service, courtesies – Stay old school about these. Trust me, they are still in fashion as they were , a hundred years back. And will continue to be so, a hundred years hence.
6. Success is relative and temporary. Significance is binary and permanent.
7. Don’t surrender your spirit to the impotence of critics and cynics.
8. In this age of overkill by social media where people customarily show up in their pajamas on Instagram, go contrarian. Vanish from social media. ( Believe me – I have disappeared from my high octane social media life for the past eleven months. And I am still alive. And kicking !)
9. 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 mostly does.
10. Don't give, or fall for elevator pitches , a disturbing trend in today's instantaneous world. No matter how much we try to encapsulate life (our own, and others’) and events around it in a coherent, start-middle-climax form – while it is a good tool to extend the life of our memory, a story is almost always tripe. Life happens randomly without a predefined rigor and a rounded finale. So free yourself from the chains of conjuring stories when none exist. Take life as it comes without eulogizing or demonizing anything or anyone. Including your own self.
11. Time, energy and focus are the resources we deal in as we make our life. Of these, focus is probably the most slippery of all, especially with today’s distractions that come disguised as technological blessings. Dramatically subtract the chatter from your life. Turn a deaf ear (and a blind eye) to noises ( or images) that keep jostling for your attention. Un-group yourself from all WA communities. Avoid anything that comes for free, simply because they are financed by advertising, meaning that they are trying to sell you something that you don’t need. As Daniel Goleman explains in his book by the same name, Focus is indivisible. The span of focus you give to that ‘cute dolphin picture’ shared by your FB addict friend, is a span of attention you are taking away from your limited life. Sticking to these simple steps saves you from getting sucked into the trappings of group think , or a community of knowledge standing on a base of shortcuts , making your life-view narrow and shallow and setting you up to fall prey to ideology pits of con artistes and crooked politicians.
12. Most people confuse happiness with pleasure. Don’t be most people.
13. Practice deliberate minimization. Abundance spoils us, makes us soft. Simplify your life clutter . Zero down on fewer choices to let your mind work on.
14. Be anchored in the present moment. Focus where you are. Today is NOT next Monday. Today is today. Live today fully.
15. Leadership is not a title. It is just being the most collaborative and cohesive consensus builder in the room. In every room that you walk into.
16. Earn your Endorphin. Be a finisher. Be known as someone who is a finisher.
17. Keep score. Write your own obituary, the way you would like to be remembered. Read it every night before you go to bed.
18. Every now and then, dribble with your other hand . Explore within. You might still have a trick or two buried deep inside, lying dormant for fear of ridicule.
19. Eventually, the things you say ‘No’ to, will define you more than the things you say ‘Yes’ to. Say five ‘No’s to yourself every day.
20. 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. Go ahead. Try it. You will sweat, I swear.
21. Say Sorry only when you are wrong. Say Thank You as often as you can.

Have an amazing rest of the year !

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My Sunday Blogpost ( 13/10/19)

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