My Guiding Principles for 2023

In my earlier post I wrote about the 6 lenses through which I plan to look at 2023 and also live by. Find a way that the important actions I want to take could pass through these lenses and tradeoffs better understood before I take them. That is the plan.

That said there are seven guiding principles I have for 2023 that might help me achieve this. As you know every year is a time to experimenting something. Not goals but some principles and lenses.

Focus on Building Habits: I have come to the realization that Habits are more important than Goals. We need to build habits that become part of our life. There are many habits that we have developed over time. The time we sleep, when we wake up. What we eat. How many meals. Simple routines and many more. The habits are in a way what makes us. So if we want to be something, building habits around that is a great path to get there. Also understand that there are some habits we have picked up that need a real makeover.

Don’t Waste Time: This is a known thing but one that we need to be reminded more often. In Care Sandburg’s poem ‘A Father to his son’ there is this line that goes against this idea.

In the poem Carl says “Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted; Tell him to be a fool every so often”. This poetic way tells me that don’t be in the rat race and take time to observe and feel.

Sometimes the busy world makes us believe that a Thinking, Observing, Feeling and caring time can be a waste. That is not what I mean when I say don’t waste time. While I agree with Carl that there is time that you should waste (because world says it is a waste). We should know where our time is really being spend. Think about what it gives us in return.

Sleeping 8 hours is not a waste. Taking rest is not a waste. Spending time with someone is not waste. May be we all should list things that can be a waste of our time. Writing this post is not a waste of time for me. I am not sure if it would be a waste for you who is reading it.?

Don’t Waste Money: Since I spoke about Time before and so the natural question is what is waste of money. There are many things I do which can be deemed a waste. Money used in buying something that is seldom used can be termed waste. May be we all should have a few questions to determine if a particular expenditure is a waste. And I don’t think the concept of waste would be same for each and everyone of us. We have our own perspectives about waste. So don’t Waste Money and define what is a waste.

Understand Expectations: Initially when I thought of this Guideline I wrote it as ‘Don’t Have any expectations from anyone”. But then it made me thinking. Expectations are part of who we are. Expectations from others, Exceptions others have from us. I have felt that Expectations from others are a burden for me. But at the same time if people don’t have expectations from us, we can also feel being less important and insignificant or even not being cared for. Sometimes we feel we matter because people have expectations from us. So having no expectations might be a problem.

For example if we don’t have any expectations from our kids that could impact our parenting. Same goes with our relationships with others and within a society or organization. So expectations are needed. But we need to understand expectations better. Expectations can be a tool for us to improve and have conversations in areas that are not otherwise clear. Understanding Expectations can help make things more transparent.

Be Available for others: Our availability is a commodity that others can have. There are so many people and (things) asking our attention and availability. Some are programmatic and some are human. Make ourself available for the human beings. Or make ourselves available or the living beings.

Personally I have a lot to work on this. I need to be more available to people who I personally know. I need to be more available to other living beings like our dog ginger. Plants also need our time. Though I am not much into it, but I think that is an area I can be made more available. We also need to be available to the important things in life. Be available for all that matters to us.

Retrospect Regularly: Retrospection is the way we can course correct. That said it can vary on what frequency we do retrospective. People do it daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and so on.

My take is do it on a weekly basis. I even started a podcast just for this. I decided to do a Podcast Every week where I would run through my week. Mostly to touch on learnings and findings from my experiences, reading and conversations I had.

I like to connect things I want to do with some form of content creation. I decided on a Podcast because that is more easy. It is also a bit therapeutic for me as I get to speak my mind. Sometimes the episodes are on one event. Sometimes they are more. The Podcast is called Hello Namaskaram with Vinod Narayan.?

I know that there would be things I might not want to say on a Podcast. Reflections I might only want to do for myself. That is important too.?

Embrace Change: Change is happening and we are all adapting. Sometimes we just don’t know. I think while embracing change we also need to understand the change. The nuances that come with a change can be different. So even before embracing the change see ourselves in that change.

I had always thought I accept change without any problems. But lately I have found out that it is not the case. We all have our resistance and inertia because that is what comes with our lived experiences.

I intend to look at change more closely and try to learn from it and understand it. That can help in embracing it.

Be Content; Be Penpositive !!

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