mental-health – Praveen's Blog

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 I}_{gnore 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.

From the beginning of evolution of life on this planet if there was one thing which remained consistent, it was the challenges it brought to the group that was trying to survive and thrive.

If you are someone who believes (or does not) in the Darwinian theory of evolution, you will know how the evolution came about and how human beings ended up here. The mechanism that Darwin proposed for evolution is natural selection “Because resources are limited in nature, organisms with heritable traits that favour survival and reproduction will tend to leave more offspring than their peers, causing the traits to increase in frequency over generations“

Something that was felt by and survived by all the organisms who thrived were the same challenges that their environment and the conditions threw at them. And on the other hand, the one’s which did not survive also had to face the same exact challenges but could not handle them well or overcome them.

The bad news is, we will also face challenges (if not already, which I highly doubt) as our ancestors did, and so would our future generations without any exceptions regardless of we liking it or not. But the good news is, we can overcome it and we have what it takes to adapt, survive and thrive. Let’s find out how!

Challenges can be broadly split into 2 types –
Internal – Mental
External – Physical

While most of the external challenges we face every day, every minute in our lives are external but how we react to them is based on our mental state and how we deal with them. It is that mental state that decides if we will survive, thrive or perish.

With ever increasing challenges in the world, it becomes harder for an individual to get back to his normal state as soon as it is ideal to do so. The connected world keeps throwing things at him to keep him in that negative zone forever, if he does not become aware of where it is leading him and takes charge of the situation.
Take any social media for instance, you constantly are bombarded with all the so called “great” things people are able to achieve and do in their jobs, life, family. And looking at all that you start to feel that you are not “there” yet and start questioning your abilities and life.

The challenge arise when you as an individual are already facing inner turmoil. Human mind has unimaginable potential to imagine whatever it wants to but is limited to its experiences, environment and situation at the time.
For instance, in his famous book “Man’s search for Meaning” Viktor Frankl writes “when someone becomes unemployed, they often suffer from their provisional existence, a deviation from the more well-defined path of an employed individual. This provisional existence can change one’s relationship to time, making days feel longer and filled with less meaning than the busy days of employment”

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” _{Viktor E. Frankl}

**Percentage of adults in select countries worldwide currently experiencing mental health conditions (e.g. depression, anxiety) as of 2022** – Statista

“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” _{Marcus Aurelius}

Our mental state is the ultimate decider. External factors such as financial instability, issues in our relationships, uncertainty in our careers, issues with our physical wellbeing or issues with the environment we live in, no matter what the situation is, it is our mental state that determines if those issues break us or we make them the building blocks of our strong characters.

Creating a strong mindset requires lot of practice and usually years of intentional work on it. Just like to maintain peak physical state one has to consistently put in the hard work at the gym.

It is easier said than done though!

And it is not all gloomy!

The good news is, as individuals we can keep trying to be better. We can try to be better professionals, we can try to be better parents, better spouses, better friends or better children and eventually we will be better than where we are currently at in whichever area we wish to get better in, and that’s a surety but…

It will take immense courage, courage to take the responsibility and own the situation we are in.
It will take immense planning, plan to get to where we want to get to.
It will take immense discipline, discipline to follow the plan we made for ourselves.
It will take immense adaptability, adapting to ever changing world and finally
It will take immense patience, patience to continue until you get what you want.

To make sure that this is just not another motivational rant you are reading and give you the the best ROI on your time, let me lay out 3 simple strategies (the ABC’s) to help you get started,
1. Acknowledge – Take a good hard look at yourself and come to terms with who you really are. Be true to yourself and acknowledge. You could be a good person or a monster, You could be a great communicator or a terrible one or you could be a great singer or may be its just a hobby. No matter what you conclude, make sure your are brutally honest with yourself.
2. Believe – Believe in whatever you concluded with in the previous step but also believe that you have taken the first step towards change already and now its going to get easier. Start by going back to your experiences and observe what you are good at, or even decent at. Let’s say you wanted to become a public speaker but are always shy to speak in front of large groups, you also realised that though you are shy, you have spoken in front of a group in the past and have received good or even bad feedback. The point you must focus on is, when you spoke, people listened and that’s why they were able to give you feedback. This should give you enough courage and belief to take up public speaking seriously.
3. Change – Change accordingly! Change your strategy if you have to, change your habits if you have to, change your environment if you have. The objective should be to adapt to the situation and change your response to it. If your objective is to become a good musician and you are already past your 50’s, you still can change your situation and become a good musician. Without changing your mindset or response or habits you will not be able to accomplish your objective. Take it from me in writing!

To sum it all, I will close this blog with C. W. Longenecker’s “The Victor”

If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you like to win but think you can’t,
It’s almost a cinch you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost.
For out in the world we find
Success begins with a fellow’s will.
It’s all in the state of mind
If you think you are out classed, you are.
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of your-self before
You can ever win the prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man.
But sooner or later, the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can.

Be Great!
Praveen.

Tag: mental-health

Rediscover Yourself: The Importance of Pursuing What You Love