The goal shouldn't be to earn $1 million and retire. It should be to achieve financial freedom. Let's say you need $1,000 daily to meet all your needs, and when your passive income can consistently provide you with that amount for life, then you're essentially free to pursue anything you want. That's financial freedom.
You can either reduce your expenses to zero or work towards reaching that estimated amount to attain financial freedom.
Commit to the process, end result will be achieved as a byproduct. Not once but multiple times, you’ll lose count of it! Because you’ll enjoy the process more than the end results.
It's so fun and calming to watch ourselves and everything happening as a third person. With this point of view, everything seems to pass in front of us instead of happening ON us.
I have a habit of spending time on things that matters. Mainly by reflecting often and reducing time spent on things that doesn’t matter much in long span.
Yoga helps release stored traumas and free the body through stretching. Meditation helps to distance and observe activities of mind. When both practices are done, they provide a better chance to align oneself with the energies we desire.
No matter how long you've been in a state you didn't like, once you begin to make changes, you'll notice that the world around you shifts more rapidly than you might expect.
Realising the purpose of existence takes away the anxiety of immediately finding a specific purpose. However, we still need to make the most of the amazing life we have. Here's the problem: it's not as simple as it sounds. Finding something you genuinely enjoy doing, which can also provide enough financial stability, can be challenging. It's a combination of factors that work together to help you find your path:
1. Follow your inner voice. 2. Explore as many interests as you like. 3. Don't worry about what others are doing. 4. Be cautious about taking too much advice (a controversial topic!). 5. Start early when you have fewer responsibilities and baggage.
Remember that your mere existence already serves a purpose in the universe. Keep experimenting with things you think you might enjoy until you discover the one (or more).
As for staying disciplined in your pursuits, it's important to recognize that the majority of success stems from scheduling habits rather than innate talent.
Intentions play a major role in whether you’ll get there or not. Clearer and purer the intentions, easy it becomes for universe to throw right opportunities.
People take any type of drug (or alcohol) either to calm or escape the mind. Instead, focus on mastering the art of the mind; it's a continuous work in progress
Work on creating a natural pull for doing things and avoid getting pushed. If your pull is not strong enough then you’ll always be pushed to do things.
Push: Something that forces you to do certain thing. For example: Going to a job simply to pay your instalments.
Pull: A natural desire and excitement to do something, simply because you enjoy it. It will eventually create more wealth than any kind of push.
Focusing on quality work becomes very difficult when we set overly tight deadlines for ourselves, forcing us to rush through tasks. It becomes tempting to apply a quick patch rather than addressing the root of the problem when we are moving too quickly. It's like putting a band-aid on a wound without treating the underlying injury. Quick fixes often come back in the form of critical problems that will take up more time to solve than it would have taken earlier during the initial build. I'd say, resist the temptation and spend that extra day to deliver quality work. Ask for some extra time. It'll save many days later!
I'm on a constant journey of self-improvement. I'm making a conscious effort to become more aware of my actions and behaviours. I commit to the process of becoming better than I was yesterday. I believe that everything else that I desire will naturally follow as byproducts. I envision this journey as a stack of glasses forming a pyramid, with the top glass representing ‘self’. By continually filling the top glass, I think that one day it will overflow and naturally start filling all the other glasses.
When someone familiar is part of a group performance, it's almost impossible not to focus on them, oftentimes exclusively. This predisposition can distort your judgment of their actual performance.
Those who have witnessed a close friend or family member's dance performance can easily relate to this phenomenon. Your eyes naturally seek them out in the group, causing you to unintentionally overlook the other performers, thereby impairing your ability to evaluate objectively. I refer to this as the 'Bias of Known.'
This bias is prevalent in various aspects of life. For example: businesses evaluating their products. Small businesses, at times, treat their product as if they were their own offspring, fostering this known bias and hindering their ability to objectively compare their product with others in the market. While protecting something like a child is natural, in the business world, it must face the harsh reality of competition.
I believe that practicing the avoidance of the 'Bias of Known' is essential when aiming to create something that truly stands out and matters in the lives of people.
Every situation, whether it's good or bad from your perspective, is destined to reach its conclusion. No matter how never-ending it may seem, it does have an end. The key is to channel your efforts towards gaining something meaningful along the way.
When you reflect on your life ten years from now, what you'll recall is not the sheer difficulty of specific situations, but rather, what you gained from them—lessons, experiences, friendships, and relationships that still endure. Let's consider a simple example: school, something everyone can relate to. What you remember about school isn't how hard a particular subject or exam was; instead, you cherish the lessons learned and the friendships formed.
In the same vein, apply this perspective to any situation and think long-term. You'll come to realize that what truly matters is what you've taken away from it.
Let’s try to make the most out of any situation by focusing on what genuinely matters.
Something I have believed in and started practicing more recently is the concept of scheduled habits. I found validation for this belief in the book Atomic Habits. There are things I want to achieve, whether in work, health, or something else. I have noticed that year after year, the things that get achieved are not the ones I worked on for 48 straight hours but rather the ones I consistently worked on, no matter how tiny the amount of hours at once.
So, when I have a thought that I really want to achieve something, I start finding time in my schedule to fit it in. It can be as little as half an hour every day or every other day, or something similar. Because small steps compound and eventually surpass a giant leap.
Another important aspect is sticking to the schedule you have made. That's discipline and a commitment to oneself. However, the self is emotional; sometimes, you may feel like saying 'Hell yes, let's do it,' and other times, you may not feel like lifting a finger. In this case, allow your schedule to accommodate these emotions. Schedule 'Do nothing' time slots and do what you feel like during that time (p.s: I mostly go for walks).
In the end, the idea of fitting the things I want to achieve into my schedule and following it religiously (taking tiny steps) gives me a strong hope that eventually, they will be achieved, no matter how distant they may seem.
As said in Bhagavad-Gita:
Doing your Karm (work) religiously and not worrying about results is a real prayer and religion.
We're ants, looking for purpose in everything, but our existence itself fulfills a purpose, a purpose much greater. We just need to zoom out and look at our lives from a bird's-eye view. For example, an ant searching, struggling, and picking up food from all sorts of different places might wonder what it's doing, what its purpose is. But, actually, it's fulfilling the purpose of sustaining the Earth's ecosystem. Similarly, we ants (in comparison to the universe's size), eating, sleeping, working, might question our purpose. But perhaps our simple existence is fulfilling some purpose of the universe that we can't see, much like an actual ant can't see its own purpose.
