What is something worth remembering on a daily basis?
I often believe productivity follows a poised mind…
Amm, wait.
Before I reveal what’s important for me to remember on a daily basis. Let me tell you something.
Well, I am not a self help guru who can turn the tables for you like “Napoleon Hill” could, even posthumously. By the way almost every self help book that is ever published goes along the narratives of “Think and Grow Rich”. If you have just started your book reading journey, you will cross roads with the title by the self proclaimed rags to riches guru(very very controversial), read this “The Untold Story of Napoleon Hill, the Greatest Self-Help Scammer of All Time (https://gizmodo.com/the-untold-story-of-napoleon-hill-the-greatest-self-he-1789385645)”. ***TLDR***, For those who are uninitiated, at least try searching for “The Secret”.
This idea/philosophy(the secret) got popularised around 2006, made a marketplace for almost all the self help gurus and their books, and it in turn stems from philosophies of Napoleon Hill. In these scripts, the basic premise would be to think and absorb your dreams as if you have already attained them and one day the world will conspire to bring that dream into reality for you.(Sounds like a “Om Shanti Om” dialogue, eh?)
Motivating and scintillating isn’t it? Ask that to yourself, a year or two after successfully finishing any self help book. As subjective and contextual it might be, many a time it turns out that we can’t fit our lives into the same formula that was developed by them. Guess what, reality hits you in your gut!
So, If I were “Napolean Hill”, I would have begun by narrating to you a personal real life story. In this story, surely the first chapter would begin with a title like “Wake up before everybody else, win early”. This chapter will have a seemingly true (although plausibly concocted and twisted from reality) story based on my practical experiences, crafted to pick up a very common weak spot of any reader who seeks secrets to success. Which would lay emphasis on the transformation in my life after adopting so and so principles. Once that chapter reaches its climax, I will come up with a secret sauce (or rather mathematical formulae which are nothing but illusions of compounding like 1.01^365=37 vs 0.99^365=0.01, “the wonders of working 1% extra every day”)
And if you pay attention to my catchy phrases and equations of life, at first they will allude you to the flashy life you had always aspired to live. It makes you happy that you have finally found your roadmap to success, all that remains is driving down till the end of that road. It is only in due time when you realise that if it was really the chemical “X”, the propaganda of the same would have helped you and me to eradicate acute disparities in the world.
I don’t claim that it never helps though.
What I intend to highlight here is that it is only you who can set up your own blueprint of success. Even success is subjective, so is your surrounding where you want to succeed. Gauging your context within which you want to establish your goals is very important because only then you can gauge what all other peaks are there for you to climb( Damn it! I couldn’t even pull out a quote properly, I guess it was “You can reach the highest peak, but first you must learn to succeed climbing mounds and local hills”)
It is indeed important to remember how your efforts on a daily basis help you to aim the greater scheme of things that you have planned out. It is important to finish what you have started no matter how boring or disheartening the journey might get, unless there is a strong logical fallacy in pursuing it. You have to embrace boredom, it is the part of a disciplined life. Cherish happiness in the incremental gains that you achieve but you must remember to not fall for complacency in your pursuit. A very basic mechanism to deal with self doubt that occurs to me sometimes once in a month or even more frequent, is to acknowledge my journey in the past. During days of self doubt, I resurrect myself by remembering all those small things that I have acheived so far amidst the challenges and the social settings of which I was always a part of. It quickly helps me retain back the balance and controls the itch of comparing myself with people of my age who are supposedly doing better than me.
Ironically my cynicism towards these self help readings have brought me to pith myself into the line of these self help gurus. I won’t lie, I also sometimes buy the lies these guys sell. And then craft my own lie that suits my taste and help me realise how important I am, almost important as if the whole world centres around me. Well that’s kinda funny, but you gotta trust me, cause I am the author you know :p.
At last let me end this by tracing back my prologue that was something about a balanced mind. You must remember that balance is a two way connection. Connection of your mind to your body and vice a versa. In the long term we are all dead, that’s why I focus specifically on my present, where I must do something in order to connect the mind and the body to produce balance in life. And again you gotta trust me exercising and catching up with a hobby on a daily basis is quite underrated yet pertinent.
Thats all Folks!
Happy reading.
