Five more lessons from Peaceful Warrior

As I wrote in my previous article on Peaceful Warrior and the lessons from it, I watch this movie quite often. It tend to dissolve my doubts and questions and give me a new insight every time I watch it. And there is a lot more to learn from this movie than what I wrote in that article. Hence in this article I am penning down five more lessons to be learnt from it.

Knowledge and Wisdom

One of the most important phrases in Peaceful Warrior is “Knowledge is knowing, wisdom is doing it“. It highlights that knowledge and wisdom are not the same. We might have all the knowledge in the world, but it is only worth if we apply it in the real world. And that is wisdom. Most of us know exercising is good for health, smoking is bad for health, and so on. But how many of us apply this knowledge into actions. We can learn and gather knowledge, but the same is not true for wisdom. Wisdom is for the soul whereas knowledge is for the mind.

Be Here, and experience This Moment fully NOW

Be Here, and experience this Moment fully NOW

Learn to Meditate in Every Action

This movie depicts that a Peaceful Warrior learns to meditate in every action of his day to day life. Meditation is not really about going to the Himalayas and sitting in peace but learning to fully experience each and every moment of our busy and turbulent lives. Meditating in this way helps us to slow down the pace of our life while being able to fully experience the love and joy in the smallest of things, like the sound of birds, the different smells around us, or the different people we see.

Not knowing is a Great Realization

In the movie, Nick Nolte says that not knowing is a great realization. It is a very ambiguous statement but at the same time, very powerful. There will be times in our lives when we will not know what is happening or which direction our life is heading. This ‘not knowing‘ phase is perfectly ok to be in, and it is during this phase that we often make great discoveries about our life and its purpose. There is a popular quote by Joseph Campbell which sums up this point wonderfully well, “You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.”

Live and Decide Consciously 

Many of the times, we live on auto-pilot. We normally take our decisions based on some set rules or customs and rarely use our rational mind. We must always be conscious about our choices and then responsible for the consequences. We are very good at taking a decision because of the norm and then blaming the norms when things didn’t go well. When we take a decision, we must be brave enough to own its outcomes, both positive or negative. And we must really strive to make each decision we take our ‘own‘.

Life is a Mystery, Dont Waste Time Trying to Figure it Out

Nick Nolte says in the movie, “The mind is just a reflex organ. It reacts to everything. Fills your head with millions of random thoughts a day. None of those thoughts reveal any more about you than a freckle does at the end of your nose.” It might look like a simple statement, but it has a very deep message too. That we are not our thoughts. Our mind is always filled with guilt about some past mistake, blame for others or just worries about the past or the future. But realizing that this is not us but only a function of our mind can give all of us freedom.

Now that I look at what I have written, I think I can write down even five more lessons (or words of insight) from this movie. But I will leave it to another time and article. You will certainly have to watch this movie multiple times to discover the different hidden messages in the words of Nick Nolte. Everytime I watch it, I get something new based on what my mindset and life situation is at that time.

The Most Important Thing in a Startup – Avoiding Distractions

From whatever little experience I have with my own startup and working with a few others, I can say that the most important, and difficult task in any startup is to maintain focus and avoiding distractions. Nothing kills startups like distractions. Distractions may be a side project you start doing for some extra cash, or a new idea which suddenly pops in your mind and you want to have a shot at it.

Do One Thing

If a startup can do one thing, and do it as good as nobody else can do it, your job is half done. Doing more than one thing is fine in big companies because firstly, they have the resources to spend, and secondly, they can afford a little distraction. But a startup can’t. So do one thing at a time, and do it fantabulously well.

Can you focus on what is REALLY important?

Can you focus on what is REALLY important?

Innovate

Startups are often credited with innovation, but it is very critical to innovate in the main focus area of your business. If you are working on creating a product, and somebody comes up with a great innovative idea to market it, you have to say NO to it (for now) and continue focussing and innovating in your most important task, which is developing the product. Because once you have your hands and head in two different areas, you might end up with two half-baked implementations instead of one great one.

About Marketing and Sales

Marketing and sales are no doubt important. But while creating the product, you have to make sure you build a great product first. If you have only limited resources, it is better to have a great product first and a sales team second, than to have a sales team ready to sell a half-baked product. Many people talk about social media marketing on websites like facebook and twitter. My advice to them is that people are already talking in social media. Give them a reason to talk about your product by making the product exceptional. Nothing else is required.

The crux of the matter is that time is your most important asset in a startup. And since you will always be busy and occupied with the startup, when you agree to do things which are a little different from your focus area, you are sowing the seeds for trouble. Maybe in the short term the new idea looks promising, but in the long term your main focus area will end up suffering.

This is what Twitter co-founder Ev Williams has to say –

“After my first company died, I did an inventory of the projects I had worked on in the last year. There were something like 30 projects that I had started on and not finished. My total weakness was focusing on things.”

Now, the distractions I am talking about does not include the time off you take as a break to recharge your batteries. So if take time out to practice guitar in the evening, or watch a movie, or read a book, by all means do that. Leisure time is very much important so that you give your best in your work time.

My weekly tweets archive for the week ending 2011-11-21

The Two Kinds of Choices and Decisions

Life throws us many choices at different times. When we pass school, we have a choice of college. After college, we have a choice of jobs. And so on. How we take decisions based on these choices decide what future results we will reap, and the consequences we might have to bear. All choices can be broadly classified into two types, one with multiple options and one without such privilege.

Let me explain further. Decisions like choosing a college or a job, or buying new shoes are the ones where we have multiple choices. We might choose between two or more colleges, and then based on some reasons and criteria, we decide on one. In such choices, we actually use our rational minds, measure the pros and cons of each option, and then choose the one which suits us better. For example – when I had to buy my bike, I took a look at Bullet, Thunderbird, Machismo and the Bajaj Avenger. Then, based on criteria like money, reason of buying, my ability to handle the bike, I decided which one to buy and went ahead and bought the Royal Enfield Thunderbird.

But life presents us with another kind of a choice too. The one where there is only one option. Yes, you read it right. Only one option. And we have to choose it, whether we like it or not, whether our reasons or criteria are met or not. There is no other way. If we choose it, we can be happy for what life has given us, be glad for it and look ahead into the future. If we don’t accept it, we can keep fighting with ourselves or with life, but there is no way out as there is no other option.

Now if I have confused you, that was not my intention. Let me explain by giving an example. Some of us are born in rich households, some of us in poor. When we are born, life says “Here are your parents, choose them!!”. It doesn’t present you options of what kind of parents you want, so that you can choose between a few of them. There is only one option, whether you like it or not. Now it is up to us to accept it or not, but that doesn’t change anything?

You might say that this is not a choice. It is something fixed which we can’t change, and I can’t put it under choices. You might even say that a choice is only when we have multiple options. My take is that even here there are two options, to accept it or not to do so. However this acceptance doesn’t change anything as we can’t change what life has chosen for us. The only thing our acceptance changes is how we move ahead in the future.

The most difficult choices are those when there is only one option for us

The most difficult choices are those when there is only one option for us

 

Let me give one more example. My mom is a cancer patient. I didn’t want her to have cancer. Nobody would. But life threw this at me, “Your mother has cancer. Choose!“. That shook me, and I couldn’t accept it at all. How can this happen to me? How can this happen to my mother? I blamed one and all, got angry and frustrated, and just couldn’t believe what all was happening? I believewe all have been in such situations where we don’t know what hit us. And we don’t know how to react. Why? Because there is no other option!!

Yes, no other option. Life has chosen this option for us, and presented us with a choice to accept it or not. But the option (cancer and our parents) is ours to keep. We can do nothing to change that. We can give reasons, fight or blame whomever we want, but we can’t choose another option as there is none. The only option we have is to accept it or not. And we must choose, even in this case. Let me explain why?

When I could not choose the fact that my mother has cancer, I was angry, frustrated, sad and dejected at the same time. This doesn’t change the reality a bit, but it impacted me, my surroundings and the people around me. All this frustration might have been coming out of my want to have a good life and caring for my mother, but it ended up doing the opposite. By being resentful, I only made things worse. For myself, and for others around me.

It took me a long time to finally choose this. And when I did, there were no questions like why or how to answer. There was complete freedom. Now I am able to spend quality time with my mother (knowing that it might be scarce), and also am able to find the best possible treatment option for her. But all that was not possible until I had completely chosen it. There was a new found peace, and all the things which mattered to me, my health, joy in life and giving my best to my mother, all automatically fell into place.

It might be difficult to grasp as a concept, but it is a fact. Sometimes life will take away a loved one, sometimes you will suddenly meet an accident and suffer heavy injuries, and the best we can do at that time is to happily choose them with faith. 

That doesn’t mean that I would want myself to get injured, or want a loved one to die, but at the same time, it is only wise to realize when life has made a choice for us. There is only one way we can move ahead in life and that is by choosing such choices. Or else we will be stuck in life while time moves on, and this causes friction. And this friction shows up as anger, sadness, blame and resentment. Choose it and you will be free and start moving ahead with peace and freedom.

People are the best investment

Throughout my life, I have seen my parents struggle for money due to some business decisions gone wrong or for health reasons. Due to this, we never had money to spend on anything which was ‘not necessary‘. Most of what my parents earned were spent in our (the two brothers) education and other long term investments, and rarely on movies, entertainment or traveling. Maybe due to this lack of financial resources, all of us made up for that by focussing on little things like spending quality time together, always helping anyone who is in need and getting connected with people on a personal level. I have seen and observed my father chatting and getting along very well with one and all. I very vividly remember my father taking me to his office sometimes and everybody, from the security guard to the peon to the street vendors outside to the receptionist inside, greeting him warmly. It felt like my father was friends with everyone in the building. This article is about people, and how they are the best investment opportunity for us.

Acknowledging and Greeting

Normally, as we go through our life we tend to focus only on what is important and ignore everything else. Think about how many people we passed through today from the time we left our home till we reached office. And to how many of these people did we stopped and said “Good Morning”. It is such a simple thing to do, and a good morning wish leaves both parties smiling, still we ignore it most of the times. Very often we forget that how good it feels when somebody appreciates us and believes in our abilities. So isn’t it natural that we should thrive to do the same to others?

It Always Come Back

We invest our time and money in our jobs, stocks, mutual funds and real estate. We buy cars, phones and other gadgets and take pride in owning them. But I have always believed that the best investment we can make in are people. You might or might not get your returns from the stock market or the real estate market, but investing in people always come back. If somebody needs our time and attention, nothing can be a bigger investment for us to help that person with honesty and compassion. There is no better sight in this world than seeing somebody smile and knowing that we are the reason behind it, that we could be of some help. And even if we talk in terms of returns, investment on people always tend to come back in life, and in proportions we can’t imagine. I am a witness to how many different unknown people have come forward to help my parents in times of need, without even their asking for it.

 

Myself and friends at Noida in 2008

Myself and friends at Noida in 2008

It is a Challenge, but a Very Rewarding One

Now it is easy to say that we must invest in people, but it can get really challenging and daunting in real life. Many times we will come across people who are very easy to ignore, or who trigger our temper and we might want to shout and yell at them. But on the other hand, empowering someone and taking time to listen to them can sometimes surprise even them. Many a time people will realize this and thank you for the extra effort you are putting, and that is always a very rewarding experience.

Have Fun, make Them Laugh

If we try to remember the times when we have been angry, upset, frustrated or just unhappy, we will realize that we have been taking things too seriously. All the life’s so called problems occur mostly when we are lost in a moment and lose the bigger perspective. If we look at things in perspective, an annoying boss in office might not be as important in the picture of your ‘whole life‘ as important as we might have made him/her. So it’s always good to loosen up, and treat people as human beings first, rather than good or bad resources. Have some fun, crack some jokes and laugh. For many, this period of fun might be the best part of their day, and you can be glad you were a part of it.

Be Genuine, Truthful and Trustworthy

All what I have written above is not some trick and people are smart enough to find out whether you genuinely mean your affection or if you are bluffing. So what I am advocating is to really become the person who cares about others, whom others can trust and who doesn’t break promises. It takes effort to ingrain these features in our character, but if we can do that, we will reap the rewards. As I said before, compared to our bank balance, stock portfolio or real estate, if our investment in people start giving results, it can dwarf all other investments we might have.