Tag: love

The Power of Learning: Lessons from a Caveman

There was a caveman who lived in a forest all by himself. He was leading a decent life and was content with whatever he had and whatever he could find to eat. Until one day, an explorer came by his cave and showed him a mobile phone. The caveman was initially scared then astonished and then started using it and eventually he started loving it. He watched videos on how he could cut tress efficiently, videos on how he could hunt better and he even learnt the concept of preserving food for the rainy days and finally returned the phone to the explorer as they said their goodbyes.

The caveman started doing the things the way he had learnt from the videos. The days passed and turned into week, the weeks became months and eventually months became years. After around thirty years, the same explorer was going through the same exact forest. Suddenly he heard a yell from the distance, when the explorer looked around he was surprised to see the same caveman running towards him and when they finally met, the caveman started thanking the explorer for saving his life. The explorer confused, asked the caveman how he could have saved the caveman’s life when they did not even meet for thirty years.

The caveman explained, before he met the explorer all he could do was live on a daily basis. He would hunt everyday, eat what he could hunt and sleep with an empty stomach on the days he could not. But after watching the videos thirty years earlier, he started to hunt better, he started to use wood and fire to his advantage, he started to store food better which he could use in rainy days and because of all this, he started to live a healthy life and his lifespan increased. His forefathers had not learnt the skills he learnt and due to harsh weather, hunger and illness their average lifespan was only only around thirty years, whereas he is now forty seven and still strong to live another twenty odd years easily. Had he not watched the videos he could have still learnt them from his experience or experiments however it would have taken years or even generations to learn them.

  • Caveman using technology to get a better life

The story is my imaginary creation but the relevance and the moral of it is real and timeless. This is how we all are, this is how the human kind has progressed. One thing that sets us apart from all the other creatures is our ability to learn and implement those learnings quickly.

In today’s fast paced and ever changing world all of us are busy, busy with our jobs, busy with our scholastic work, busy with our daily chores and somewhere between all these, we have let go our ability to keep learning consciously, some think they have learnt everything there is to learn or worse yet, some think only they know all the right things and everyone else is in some way inferior or less experienced than them.

The capacity to learn is a gift, the ability to learn is a skill, the willingness to learn is a choice. Brian Herbert

Learning can happen in different forms like reading, reflecting, observing, experiencing, listening, watching and the list can go on but the point is, we have to continuously keep learning no matter who we are, what we do or what stage of our lives we are in and we have to use the best effective means to do it.
If I am someone who spends a lot of time watching videos which don’t serve me in any way, I can start spending at least 10% of that time watching some quality videos on the new skill I always wanted to acquire. If I am someone who is thinking of taking up something which can help me get in good shape and I don’t like the idea of going to the gym everyday, I can enrol in a sport training which I like and still achieve my objective while also acquiring a new skill.

Some things can be learnt only through experiences and this statement while true, has been used by many of us to avoid learning anything at all. We resist learning through books or people. You tell them to pick up a book or a biography or watch a documentary and they say they rather deal with life themselves and learn that way. The truth is, while the statement itself is true and life teaches us a lot of lessons in its on way, the idea to pick up a book or watch a documentary is to learn from the other individual and his mistakes to do the things that must be done and avoid the things to be avoided. Let’s say, I read Steve Jobs’s biography I would not only do a crash course on how to become great in whatever I am trying to build but also I will learn what one must not do to be a good leader. If I listen to a podcast where the guest is Naval Ravikant or Ryan Holiday, I will not only learn the philosophical view of life but also will learn the effective ways to manage time, energy and get better at relationships.

Information is everywhere but its meaning is created by the observer that interprets it. Meaning is relative and there is no objective, over-arching meaning.” Naval Ravikant

A lot of times, it also takes courage to challenge what we have already learnt. In his best selling book “Think Again” Adam Grant writes “We all have blind spots in our knowledge and opinions. The bad news is that they can leave us blind to our blindness, which gives us false confidence in our judgment and prevents us from rethinking. The good news is that with the right kind of confidence, we can learn to see ourselves more clearly and update our views. In driver’s training we were taught to identify our visual blind spots and eliminate them with the help of mirrors and sensors. In life, since our minds don’t come equipped with those tools, we need to learn to recognize our cognitive blind spots and revise our thinking accordingly.”

Finally, let us get back to our caveman (who was patiently waiting until now)

He could have remained scared and could have chosen not to learn new skills but to his credit, he did.
He could have chosen to do the things the way he and his ancestors always did, but he changed and changed for better.
He could have chosen to stick to his outdated learnings, but fortunately he challenged them and got new perspective on the things he had been doing for long.
He could have chosen to die young like all his ancestors, but he chose to live healthier and longer than all of them.


Be Great!
Praveen.

Rediscover Yourself: The Importance of Pursuing What You Love

Throughout our lives, we often design our personalities in a way where we are constantly trying to impress everyone but ourselves. It all starts with our teachers, our coaches, our parents, our siblings, our bosses, our social circle, our neighbours, our relatives, then the people whom we don’t even know, the list can go on.

And in the process we slowly forget who we are and what we are meant to do in our lives. We could be great at singing but we keep our passion aside to impress our calculus teacher, we could be great at Tennis but we keep that aside to impress our parents and study hard to crack that engineering entrance test. We could even be passionate about making documentaries but we keep that aside to end up taking “more safer” jobs to impress the society. The cycle starts from there and in a matter of time we are lifting the weights of our family’s endless responsibilities and forget about what we were passionate about and what made us happy when we were young. Eventually a day comes when we have to leave everything and everyone, staring at our last moments.

The opposing but equally valid view is, most of us are not sure of our passion for the most part of our lives. Most of us take life the way it comes until a particular moment. So, passion is actually a made up phenomenon by the so called self help gurus who usually ask us to “follow our passion”.

In my view, both are partly right and partly wrong.

Let me explain, It is true that most of us do not really know what we could be good at for most part of our lives (except a few, who are really aware of it and are encouraged to pursue it from early days) However, it is important for our own satisfaction and fulfilment, we act on it once we do realise what we really want.

Let’s say, I was raised in a middle class family where all we know is to study really hard, get a decent and steady job , get married, raise family, build a house, have a bit of savings for my retirement and leave all that to my offsprings once it is my time to go. Though this life is ideal, it is not how it ends up being for the most part. Life has it’s own way to deal with every individual. It is not always all rainbow and sunshine and it is definitely not easy. We face heartbreaks, we face layoffs, we face financial emergencies, we face health emergencies, we face sudden loss of loved one’s, the list goes on. And in the midst of all this something else comes up and we really are tested beyond what we can handle and we somehow try to survive them.

Unfortunately, we really cannot avoid any of the challenges we encounter but we still fight them and come out stronger and in the process sometimes, we realise what our potential is and our real passion is. The objective then should be to act on the learnings and our realisation of the passion. If we discover what our true passion is, we must acknowledge and start working towards making that happen.

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let’s say I am a car mechanic and usually spend most of my day at the workshop, I love coffee and I am usually told by my friends that I make great coffee. What I can do is, work 9-5 or even longer at my workshop to continue getting a steady income to support my family and on the weekends instead of spending time aimlessly, I set up a shop and sell coffee. This will get me started on the thing I am passionate about and I get to test waters before going all In on the business plan too. During this process, I also have an advantage of working on 2 separate things I am good at which allows me to be flexible with my future aspirations. Over time if I start liking mending cars, I can continue that for rest of my life or even set up my own workshop and become a workshop owner. And in due course, if I start to enjoy making coffee and liking the business prospects of it (probably it is starting to make enough money due to my weekend hustle) I can shift to this as a full time job. Either way, I am setting myself up for success because both will teach me something valuable. One will teach me getting better at fixing cars and the other the business side of things.

If I stick to just mending cars throughout my life I might end up being a disgruntled employee who just comes to clock hours and soon I’ll be staring at my end disheartened with a unfulfilled life. And on the other hand if I go all in on the coffee business idea, I might later come to know it is not enough for me to survive financially and end up getting frustrated and lose interest completely.

“Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.” Cal Newport – So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Now if you haven’t realised your “passion” yet, think of some of your life’s experiences. Go to your memory and try to remember something that you are good at. I can guarantee you that all of us have something that we and only we can do better than most of the people. Is it drawing? coding? good with people? farming? fixing cars? It could be something very small but you know you are good at it. Then make conscious effort to get better, be relentless in your effort and have lot of patience, because building something valuable takes immense patience.

I’ll conclude by saying this, no one’s life is similar to another individual. So, write your own story, own it, make changes to it when required. But most importantly do the things you love (even part time would do, if full time is not feasible)
Some might call it passion, some might call it a weekend activity and some might say it’s just work I am meant to do and will do with all my heart. If you do the things you love even for short intervals, the satisfaction of doing it will have ripple effect in all the other areas of your life positively and suddenly your life would seem (and will be) fulfilled.


Be Great!
Praveen.