StartHabit - SelfHelp that works

Have you ever wondered what is the difference between accuracy and precision? Though they seem to be one and the same, there is an important distinction that separates them.

Accuracy is the degree to which your arrow hits the bulls eye.

“whereas”

Precision is how consistently you hit the target.

So which one is more important? I would say both. They complement each other. The greatest artists, musicians, athletes and entrepreneurs  mastered the dual of accuracy and precision to the highest levels possible.

I know there have been many people in the past who succeeded just because of accuracy. I will say it is just a stroke of luck or they might be lazy enough not to pursue their calling.

You can frequently see words like “young sensations and sudden geniuses” in newspapers and TVs and after a few months or years they suddenly disappear an never found again.

Their gift of accuracy may take them to the sky but they prefer not to reach the stars. To reach the stars consistent practice and significant sacrifice is required.

Whenever your work suddenly attracts praise and laurels, don’t stop and marvel at your own work. Instead work harder to improve and refine. Create better works. Taking praise to mind is the biggest enemy to precision.

Serial entrepreneurs earned the word serial because they consistently hit the jack pot no matter what business they start. In other words they achieved precision.

Alchemists can turn lead to gold because of precision.

Accuracy without precision is like tactics without strategy. It is the noise before defeat as the great philosopher Confucius calls it.

Similarly focusing only on practice without having a target in mind is also not correct. Repeating the same mistakes is not the point of trying.

Not repeating your mistakes and learning from them is precision with accuracy in mind.

Precision without accuracy is shooting the darts without a bullseye.

Keep in mind, whatever you do, first test your accuracy range and keep working on it i.e improve the precision.

Precision is continuous mastery whereas accuracy is its fruit or the result.

—Raviteja Visakoti

 

 

I believe everything happens for a reason. Every event that takes place in my life makes me realise who I am. Sometimes the smallest of conversations help me to solve some of the big issues that I face. I believe every obstacle I encounter is a camouflaged blessing for a greater cause. My belief reinforced when I listened to Steve Jobs in his prominent Stanford speech where he emphasised the concept of “Connecting the dots.” If you haven’t watched it yet please do watch and come back to this article, it is better to understand the essence of that by listening to the legend himself.

Some people always complain that things aren’t working out in their lives, in other words- they are not able to connect the dots. If you are not open to the clues that nature is trying to give then nothing can help you. Everything happens for a reason stands valid only if you are serious in pursuing your goals, only if you are truly committed to your ambitions. There is a power in this world and that always helps you when you give your best in that endeavor but not when you sit like a lazy brat and fiddle away valuable time watching Star Movies and eating mojos.

Be open minded and amenable, Be a good listener and open to correction, at the same time don’t get swayed away by others’ opinions.You should take the final call. Sometimes your likes and dislikes may change, but the “goal” and the “main plan” should never change. For example, if you want to become financially free in 10 years and travel around the world to explore life, you should not let that be compromised at any cost. There can be diversions in the path, sometimes you have to take detours and act according to the circumstances but the plan should be intact. The world is evolving at an exponential rate but there are some basic principles that are eternal and you can reach your destination more comfortably if you are in sync with those principles.

—Raviteja Visakoti

Last week when I met my cousin he was wearing the same pair of jeans that he wore 5 days prior to that week. But it was neatly ironed and looked like a new one. He said he washes and irons it himself everyday. I was fascinated by the idea that you can concentrate on important activities while not worrying about selection regarding routine and basic tasks. I do not think he knows that is called minimalism. For people who heard it for first time and if you google the term it is mostly related to architecture and art. But now the concept is applied to a wide range of categories.

The minimalism that I am talking about is different, it is about choices and thinking. Many people get confused between frugality and minimalism. There is a chasm of difference between being frugal and being minimalistic. In minimalism you use your energies, focus, time and even money only on what is really important in life and what which adds value to your self. A minimalist is willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a book he loves but does not waste even a dime on a candy or chocolate which is not conducive to health.

Being a minimalist means being an all-rounder in terms of overall well being. Practicing minimalism is the surest way to self respect and true satisfaction in life. I like to use the word refinement instead of minimalism. One refines what he/she wants to wear, eat or anything for that matter. It is the core of simplification of life. As a famous author said “when accumulation does not make you happy, try deccumulation”.

How to be a Minimalist?

The heart of minimalism is “de-clutterment.” It is the process of eliminating junk or redundant or unnecessary tasks/activities/things/etc so that one can focus on what is really important.

Consider the example of clothes, most of us do binge shopping and hoard stacks of clothes. In reality we use only 20 percent or at the maximum 30 percent of clothes in 90 percent of the times. We can eliminate nearly 75 percent of our clothes. You may worry that if you wear the same set of clothes you may be marked down as a boring person. Remember you can be neat and tidy with the same set of clothes everyday. People respect and adore you not by how many different outfits you wear but by the achievements and behavior of yours. You can be a role model not by the type and cost of your dress but by the commitment towards your work and endeavor. By simplifying the number of clothes in your wardrobe, next time you need not worry about what clothes to wear and get haunted by the paradox of choice. Your choice will be clear and simple to choose one.

The next advantage is money, I need not state the number of dollars you can save if you stop unnecessary shopping. This is just one category, in the same way you can apply minimalism to every aspect of your life, be it foods, clothes, gadgets, books, etc. Perhaps the most important resource on which you can apply minimalism is “time.” Time is human being’s greatest asset(yes, even greater than money). Refine your activities for which you want to allocate time to it. Quickly eliminate “time thieves” in your life whether they may be people or activities arising out of your procrastination. Fill your time with the work you love, exercise, meditation and many more activities which add value to your life and persona. Steve Jobs always used to wear a simple black turtleneck and blue jeans. Yet he looked stylish and as an emblem of charisma whenever he spoke. When someone asked Mark Zuckerberg on why he wears the same T-Shirt everyday he replied “I really want to clear my life so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve this community. I feel like I’m not doing my job if I spend any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life, so that way I can dedicate all of my energy towards just building the best products and services.”  Now decide on yourself what you really want to concentrate on.

Remember the simple theme of minimalism: “Doing what is exactly necessary with what is exactly required”. —–Raviteja Visakoti

If you ask me what is the most essential ingredient for success, I would say it is belief. Belief that you can make it, belief that you can and will achieve it.

Belief triggers reactions in the brain and makes way for things to happen. Having said that, only belief does not move the mountains. The power of belief clears the way for you and makes the pitch ready for you to strike. In other words it creates the opportunity for you to execute your actions.

Once you believe that you can achieve your goal, then you need to take continuous action “that counts.”  I am an avid supporter of hard-work but I do not support unfocused perseverance. Bluntly put, hard work without a proper direction, focus and belief is useless. You need to optimize your efforts. Identify your strengths and weaknesses, do not worry too much about your weaknesses, concentrate on your interest and focus your strengths around it.

So the required qualities are

• Belief
• Focus/Optimization
• Hard-work/Perseverance
• Reason/Desire/Purpose(which is obvious for any successful endeavor)

The above 4 qualities are not steps and they should be working simultaneously and always in “on-state.”

While you are working on these 4 qualities, a 5th important but dangerous practice comes into place :

Visualization/Fantasy. I am not saying visualization is bad but it is a double edged sword. You should know how to use it or the sword will cut you. To the people who might be thinking what exactly is visualization- it is the deliberate imagination of the outcome of your process and deriving pleasure from it. In other words it is fantasizing about what might happen if you succeed. Suppose you want to become a sports star. Visualization is thinking about fan clubs, star status and partying around with sports cars and lavish hotels. Coming to the positives, visualization helps in adding confidence which in turn helps you strengthen your belief, it also reminds you of your goals whenever you fiddle away your time or procrastinate. But the problem comes when you visualize your result/outcome too much instead of the process it takes. By visualizing the process that it takes to success, you are actually chalking out strategies and mentally preparing how to overcome future challenges that are bound to crop up in your journey. In fantasy you only think about the positives but not about the challenges.

Visualization is good but too much of anything is dangerous.

—Raviteja Visakoti

“Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one”- Benjamin Franklin 

Everybody gets angry very quickly, its not something one has to be proud of. I hear people say in a pompous manner “You know I am very short tempered”, then immediately my inner voice says “what? who the hell in this world cares your bloody anger” but instead I laugh at those people and continue to shake my head to what they are saying. The size of a man is measured by the size of the things that make him angry. If you cannot control your anger you cannot control yourself which is an obvious chink in you armor. If you find yourself losing the strength of your temper strings then it is time to make some changes in your behavior. Let us explore how

Methods which will not work for sure

There are many theories on anger control and management but sadly very few are effective. One of the most common and dangerous misconceptions of anger management is “anger ventilation”. Some people(even a few psychologists) advise to vent out your anger on someone or something so that you will feel relieved , though this technique sounds quite seducing its advantages are far from the truth. When you vent your anger on someone/something you will not feel relieved( the relief that you get is instead pseudo-relief and its lifespan is momentary) and may also face disastrous consequences. Another common misconception is suppression of anger. To be frank this is a better option than the former and is very widely used by people especially when you have no other option and also in situations where even your minute display of anger can cause a calamity in your life( like before a higher authority, principal ,etc). The problem with suppression is our internal “anger-holders” are too fragile and even a slightest moment above the threshold can put a person into serious trouble.

Internal Mechanism

Before we get into the solutions part, let us understand the working of our brain during the moments of anger ( please do not get angry on me, I am neither a medical student nor going to bombard you with complicated chemicals and brain parts. I promise we will keep it simple ). As “Daniel Goleman”, the author of Emotional Intelligence, says  the universal trigger for anger is the sense of being Endangered. The threat can be both physical and symbolic. Some examples of Symbolic threats include a rude behavior by your colleague, a verbal brawl in office. Whatever might be the threat or trigger, two types of chemicals are released in the brain. For convenience’s sake let us call them    Type A chemical/Ripple and Type B chemical/Ripple. When Type A chemical is released, anger lasts for a short time and the energy surge fizzles out after a few minutes. When type B chemical is released it may last even for days together and slowly the anger gets accumulated and may act as a breeding ground for future angers (it is also called anger upon anger). Stress is a common factor which induces Type B ripple through the nervous system. A person is more likely to react angrily after a hectic and grueling day in office than a person who has come from a spa. That is the reason it is difficult to talk logic with some one who is angry. Slowly the anger gets compounded and reason decreases exponentially.

The Solution

Psychologist “Dolf Zillmann” sees two main ways of dealing with anger. One way is to change the frame of reference. Diffuse the anger by observing the thoughts which cause it in the first place and question the authenticity of those thoughts. Observe your thoughts from a different frame(perspective) and in an unbiased manner. Once we get to the cause of the problem or contemplate why we are getting angry , half the work is done. The reasoning part once again takes over the control and puts your thoughts in order. You may also contemplate the consequences of your anger and really question yourself what is the use of being furious. Second way is using distraction to your advantage. That is not allowing your anger to get compounded. This can be done by simply walking out of the situation to a more lonely place to cool off psychologically. Exercise and deep breathing also help tremendously.

“Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not easy” –Aristotle

–Raviteja Visakoti

Did you ever feel over whelmed by the number of unread mails in your inbox ? We tend to subscribe to every tempting service and end up cursing their automated mails later. I want to be honest and say “It happens to me every time I open my Gmail account”. A small correction, it happened to me until recently when I could not tolerate the pile of unnecessary emails and took some serious action to sort out and cleanse my inbox. I had noticed that my inbox had 8300+ mails and greater than 99 percent of them are not useful to me in any possible way. I selected all the mails, unchecked some important ones, took a deep breath and clicked the trash icon. Boom! It felt as if I was more lighter than before. I want to share those techniques with you people. Hope you release your anchors for a smoother sail .

Problems associated with clutter full inbox :

a. You may miss an important email (or emails) in the ocean of unrelated mails

b. As soon as you open your account in the morning, you may feel bogged down by the quantity of junk mails

c. Not all services are necessary (studies show that more than 98 % emails are irrelevant and redundant)

d. It eats up your most valuable possession i.e your time

and plenty more..

Managing  email-over-load and inbox better :

 Unsubscribe to every service that you do not require

This is the first step and it is a pretty easy task. Go through your inbox and open an unwanted mail.  At the end of the message there is a an option called “Unsubscribe”. Click that and you will never receive any mail from that company or service.

 Delete all the unsubscribed mails 

Never execute this step before the first step because if you don’t unsubscribe you will keep receiving junk even after deleting all their mails. Generally the default mails that a page shows is 50 in Gmail. To increase that go to settings and change it to 100 per page and save those changes. In the search box, search for that particular unsubscribed service(say amazon). You will get all the mails related to it(like amazon offers,etc). Then keep clicking “check(tick) all mails” option in the page and trashing them. Just kill them all. Have no mercy!

Time for unimportant mails

Congrats by now you might have cleared at least 90% of your inbox. Now time to decorate your room by sweeping away the dust. Unimportant mails are those which are not service or company related but those messages which you once required but not necessarily important now. Examples include the mail that you had sent to Pizza-hut for poor delivery feed back or a conversation with your ex-colleague,etc. Be selective while trashing them because some mails are required for evidence if any issue crops up all of a sudden. After the second step, keep selecting “check all” but before you trash them, once give a cursory glance at every mail and “uncheck” the important ones and then click trash. When you weed out bric-a-brac plants from your backyard it is equally important to save the healthy shrubs, wonderful lilies & beautiful roses

Release the fear of emergencies

Most people have the compulsive habit of checking and rechecking their mail every now and then. I call them mail addicts . They read every email , spend at least a couple of minutes to every non-sensical email and then preserve it. Avoid that, be ruthless with email. Damages can be reversible most of the times. Stars are not going to fall if you don’t read your mail. Keep a specific time in a day and read all your email at that point only. Practice the habit of opening your gmail or yahoo only once a day and that too for 5 to 10 mins only. Slowly increase that period to days and weeks. Seriously and Trust me. Nothing will happen. In-fact you will be 5 times more productive and a lot more relieved. You need not reply people instantaneously. Let them wait. After-all your life is more important than that of others. Simplify your life!!

–Raviteja Visakoti

If there is a Genie in front of you (Remember the good old days when we used to watch Aladdin) and if you could ask for only magical favor you should ask for immense and super robust health. Because if you are hale and healthy you can literally achieve anything. Without a healthy metabolism it is not possible to stay motivated and work hard even if you have indomitable spirits in you. In pursuit of success it is equally important to keep yourself in good fettle. So how do we do that because we don’t possess nor can have an Aladdin Lamp. I have tried some techniques which worked and the below ones are my favorites :

Include exercise : There is no point of following a diet if you do not include physical effort in it. What is the use of driving a silver BMW if you are a fat man? You should look pleased to your eyes. I agree we cannot change what God has blessed us with but I am not talking about the fairness or any other unchangeable physical quality. I am talking about what we can maintain and improve. For example physical fitness or more accurately a flat and fit belly. I can promise you that you will be 10x more confident and feel more worthy of yourself if you reduce your girth even by 20 percent. There are numerous other benefits with a good workout. Research proved that while exercising and after that brain releases something called “Happy Hormones” which can keep you cheerful throughout the day. Select any time slot and make a habit to stick to it. I personally stick to playing 60 to 80 mins in the evening of Badminton or Cricket no matter what. I cancel appointments or rewrite schedules to accommodate those wonderful minutes of intense gaming.

Chew Food : Never be in a hurry while you are eating. Though sounds archaic, always prefer dining table to eat even for the basic of routine consumptions like an evening fruit salad or oat cereal. The importance of doing so increases your mindfulness while eating and therefore better chewing. Enjoy what you are eating and relish every bit of it. The first process of digestion starts in the mouth so why not do it correctly. Body starts to assimilate the nutrients in the food only when it is properly digested and the food is properly digested only if it is properly chewed!

Stay Hydrated : Water is needed to keep the engines of metabolism running. Some people say drink water when you are thirsty and some say drink water at all times. There is little truth in both of them. You should drink adequate water (neither too much nor too little).  Allocate specific times and stick to it. My personal suggestion would be to drink 12 glasses or Approximately 3 Liters of water for a healthy adult.

Reduce Junk : People damage their valuable blood pumping machine to satiate a mere 3 cm tongue. There is no more dangerous enemy to health than junk food. Pastries, Pizzas, French Fries, Doughnuts and Burgers  undoubtedly tantalize your sensory buds on tongue but simultaneously reduce the life span your most important organs. These foods not only have abnormal levels of oil in them but also have salts and sugars in dangerous amounts which should be avoided like poison. It is also known that foods with high salts and sugars cause premature ageing and wrinkles. After all why does your skin want junk ?. Replace highly dangerous junk with their healthy and natural counterparts. For Example- Drink sugarcane juice instead of artificial sugar-stuffed carbonated drinks.

Keep a Cheat Day : You cannot continue to practice strict regime without a break in between. A cheat day is a time which you should allocate periodically to rejuvenate your taste buds. It is impossible for any body to continue with zero junk for years together until he is a sage of kind. Gap between cheat days generally varies from 7 days to 200 days. I advise you to start with a 4 day gap. As I always advice, never try to do too much at first . On your cheat day eat and drink anything that you want so that you do not loose motivation to continue your health regime. Slowly increase your power to allocate more number of days in between successive cheat days. The greater the number of days in between the greater your self-control and more importantly the better your health. Famous WWE wrestler and Hollywood actor Dwayne Smith(also called “The Rock”) waits for 173 days for a cheat day, no doubt he has an awesome physique!

–Raviteja Visakoti

(Continued from part-1)

Be Unconventional : One book I can advise you on living an unconventional life is The Art of Non- Conformity by Chris Guillebeau. He is an avid supporter of unconventional life style (If you have not heard of him, I would strongly recommend to google his name, you will be amazed about what he has achieved). Just remember there is no fixed pattern to success, if you believe something will work and it is against the normal structure, just do it. You need not fear until your gut feeling is with you. The same is in the case of regime following. No need of inflexible and rigid plans have a simple overall plan and keep your main objective to not to waste time.

Routine is boring but stick to it : Many people do not taste success because the path which leads to it is monotonous and boring. (Hey! if it is entertaining everyone would go after it). You have to realize that it is going to be extremely boring in the journey towards success. There will be tiny countless efforts which people don’t even recognize but are vitally important. You have to go through many hardships and insults before you touch the flag of glory.

Keep expanding your comfort zone but slowly : The measure of success is not by the size of your leap but by the duration of your stride. Before you want to jump start to walk first. Start small and progress continuously, slowly expand your comfort zone. You can stick to the regime only if you feel good by your advancements. And one more thing- please do not be in a hurry because this is not a race. Identify your strengths (so that you can enhance them) and weaknesses (so that you can go beyond them).

Be wary of feedback : Taking feedback is important but not at the cost of others’ opinion drowning your spirit. I seriously believe we are what we believe and think we are. If someone criticizes or gives feedback to you analyse the information carefully, think for a while and verify the genuineness of it with your sensibility(Generally, people who love you criticize or give feedback so as to help and make you better). Then decide whether that person is trying to help or destroy you. If it is help then listen and improve accordingly otherwise discard immediately.

–Raviteja Visakoti

 

Jump into the content

Do not try to Perfectionate : When you want to achieve something just go ahead with the process, do not think about the minority of the cases and worry. Consider the example where you want to loose weight in the next 120 days. Inadvertently you will encounter days where you have to go to a function or a get-together-brunch and end up eating against the diet plan and let us assume there may be 10 days of unexpected events of the total planned 120 days. Implying, the total available execution time is approximately equal to 92 percent. Some people constantly consider the unexpected 8 percent and try to perfectionate their plan and fail to execute the major pie. So rather than worrying about the 8 percent why not execute the 92 percent correctly.

Forget about the outcome and concentrate on the Process : If there is one biggest enemy to success then it is too much positive fantasizing. The disadvantages to it are many fold. Firstly if you build castles in the air without actually achieving them, there is less motivation to do it because you feel you already achieved it and you tend to do less work than actually needed. Next if you only concentrate on the outcome (mostly positive one) you are less likely to deal with the obstacles that are sure to come in the process. From next time imagine the process not the outcome.(to be continued tomorrow)

-Raviteja Visakoti

Sometimes you feel completely powerless. It is as if you are under a curse, you start to doubt your gifted abilities and hard work. You think someone or something deleted your powers. Nothing works out, you vile away tons of time worrying doing nothing, nothing and nothing. Simultaneously the combination of guilt, regret, anger and frustration starts eating you from inside. Resistance kicks in. The devil starts playing with you. You “feel” you have no choice but to become a slave of it. Fear starts snowballing.

I am in the same position from the last 20 to 30 days. Somethings did not work out as planned. I started to cower. I felt this is not the true me. Failure, health attacks, personal problems- one after the other ransacked me. I felt like giving up and thought of going into the comfort zone. I was unable to motivate myself. I felt so incapacitated I could not even update my blog. I was deeply discouraged. Words did not flow out from mind to my fingers so I can type them. Something stopped me. I felt totally powerless. I know it is the evil resistance which is haunting me down right. It has the perfect battlefield where I am falling.

Wait ! …(A deep voice inside me told)  “You are not this”…” You are powerful”.. “All this is happening for a reason and in fact a good reason”.. “Defeat that evil now… be courageous … now is the perfect time”…”There is no courage unless you are scared”.  I listened to my inner voice. I closely observed what happened to me. There is a lot of positive in it. And so much to learn. I waged a war against Resistance and its allies. I felt good. I feel a lot more better. I could write now and I could do all the things I know I can do. I know the war is not over.

But I am fighting.

-Raviteja Visakoti

When surmounted by insuperable difficulties, take cognizance of some important things, God is trying to show you the way, recollect Nietzsche’s words “What Does not kill me makes me stronger.” There is always light at the end of the tunnel. It is not a bad phase, it is the golden phase that is embedded inside, but you have to search inwards, you have to dig deep, you have to understand what the almighty is trying to convey you.

It is extremely difficult to hold on to your ideals and beliefs when everything is falling apart. You doubt your own power, your caliber, your decisions and all that is associated with you. That is where courage comes into play – you cannot be courageous unless there is fear that is passing through your spine. Remember anyone can be a hero, be happy and hopeful during normal times and when everything is going fine but only a true champion of life is hopeful and strong when the odds are against him.

This is a one way journey to the path of legendary victory, if you give up now all your efforts loose value within no time-it is an insult to your hard work and commitment. Channelize your energy, channelize your anger – anger due to loss, anger due to the things which are not in your control, anger due to a failure which you felt was not fair. Keep channelizing and focusing. Look at what God is trying to show you. There is magic in situations.

– Raviteja Visakoti 

Today “StartHabit” has reached readers from 65 countries across the globe. Thank you very much for this amazing love and support. This victory is yours, truly you the readers (3,400 subscribers) have made this blog an amazing place to get motivated and feel energised . You made me to write, you made the flow of articles from my heart.

When I first started this blog, I never thought it would reach a reader base of this size and this diverse range of countries within a short span of time, slowly starthabit transcended frontiers and continues to do so.

I hope you continue to repose faith in me and also starthabit continues to inspire people all over the world. This is just the first step of a life time journey and I assure you, I will keep publishing articles till the end of my life. StartHabit never stops!! .
Thank you once again..

– Raviteja Visakoti

6. Decide now itself what’s truly important – Jot down all the activities that you do in a typical day . Now trust me and be ruthless for a minute . Keep only the 10 most important things and strike out the rest , do them only if those very important 10 are completed.

7. Save time for yourself – We are so busy and trapped in your day to day over loaded schedules that we don’t have a couple of minutes to spend in serenity. Allocate 1hr everyday for yourself and don’t let any person or activity disturb it . Use that time for relaxing, contemplation and reflection.

8. Don’t let the focus of your life get disturbed  – Keep exploring the world but never let your focus get ruptured or affected in anyway .Be wary of  emotional disturbances in relationships and personal problems, manage them effectively and ensure that they don’t spoil your focus .

9. Stop comparing and contrasting your progress – Every painter is unique and so does his painting , similarly every person is unique and so is his/her beautiful life and his/her works. Acknowledge and appreciate your strengths. Identify your weakness so you can go beyond them. Embrace your uniqueness and achieve greatness with it.

10. Don’t try to do everything by yourself – There are some powers which are far too powerful than us. Take their help . God and nature will help you . Do your best and rest leave it to them , they will take you to the destination for sure and also more quickly than you expected.

– Raviteja Visakoti

Have you ever thought you are being bogged down by too many tasks and still felt incomplete? I know you know the answer : it is because the moment the alarm clock starts waking us in the morning we are compelled to do many tasks and in this over busy schedule we forget to identify and complete the main tasks. As I already mentioned in my previous articles that only 30 % of our tasks are crucial and the rest are way too trivial or in other words “sky is not gonna fall if you don’t do them”.
Now let us examine the 10 main things which I believe that can drastically simplify and enhance the quality of your life , if there are any which you feel that are missing from the list please feel free to drop them in the comments section below ..I would be delighted if you do so

1.Cut down social networking by half and keep doing that – I am not not averse to social networking and I do really love some of its splendid features, also I appreciate the way it has revolutionised the way we communicate but there is a flipside to it as well ,when you are social networking you try too much to be other than your natural self and while doing so you dissipate a lot of internal energy (which is neither measured in joules nor calories but can only be felt ). For example you feel a lot more empty when you social network in Facebook for 1hr than doing something worthwhile. Just cut it down now and feel the “you”

2.Spend quality time with your family :
Next time instead of watching TV while having dinner or breakfast , shut it down and talk with your family , share the past happy moments , talk about the silly fight between you and your little sister . Whatever might be the topic just sit around the table with your parents and siblings and spend quality time . I can assure you that you will be far more satisfied than glancing at random channels.

3.Learn to say No: Don’t feel guilty when you say no to a request. If you feel that it comes in your way and eats up your time just reply them with a polite and clear NO. I am not saying you to be selfish , be helpful but do not impose others tasks on you and get consumed. As Steve jobs said your time is limited and don’t spend it living some one else life.

4. Identify urgent and important tasks and first do the important ones : Sounds contradictory? let me explain you with an analogy – suppose it is 30th of a month and morning 9 am and say a person named ABC has to pay the electricity bill by evening 7 pm , but he also has an important project which has to be submitted in a week’s time. Now project work is the important work and bill payment is the urgent one. I think I need not explain further !

5.Have a direction and a sense of purpose and associate all activities towards it :
Don’t live life just like that , have a purpose or meaning. In other words have a direction and concentrate all your efforts in that direction and enjoy that journey towards your goal.

(to be continued in second part)

– Raviteja Visakoti

Continued From Part-1 Resistance is all pervasive, it immediately pops up whenever you want to answer your inner voice . Whether you want to eat healthy food, complete your assignment or attend to the most important task, resistance comes into play, unleashes its powers and tries its best to ensure that you don’t succeed in doing so . In the most basic terms, it is a crushing force – a demon set to stop us from pursuing and completing our important goals and duties . Some people call it laziness, some call it procrastination but remember these are just the various manifestations of the parent body “Resistance”. Playing golf when you have an exam tomorrow is also resistance . Whatever may be the name , understand the essence and acknowledge its presence in you . It is an evil more dangerous than your most dangerous enemies, it is more poisonous than cyanide .I can confidently say resistance is the root cause of all the problems in the world , literally “all” . Many people say to us, do what you love and do it often , but how to identify what we love ? Here is a simple technique – The Greater the Resistance to do it , the greater the love and greater the inner calling . Sounds contradictory right! but it is an absolute truth . let me cite you an example , I love writing and I think it is my inner calling to go on and pursue it but I feel the greatest resistance towards it , sometimes I even doubt whether I am really a writer or not -here resistance has come with its army to discourage me and destroy me . Sometimes I surrender to it and that is the reason I don’t update my blog for days together but sometimes victory is mine like today where I have beheaded that demon. Resistance comes everyday, every second but there is good news, we can defeat it , we can kill that blood sucking vampire but again you have to enter the battlefield everyday (to be frank every minute) to conquer it .In a very concise way “Life is all about defeating resistance and pursuing you inner passion” . Even players like Sachin Tendulkar and Tiger woods are terrified when they get into the field but the difference is they conquer their fears and defeat resistance. There is nothing called fearlessness , it is a fairy word , if you are fearless you are not human it is about acknowledging your fears and conquering them , if you bluff yourself saying you are fearless then you are lost . First acknowledge and feel your fear and then face it head on . I remember an interview of cricketing legend Rahul Dravid who once said “my heart beats faster and I tremble when I get on to play but I immediately condition my mind and conquer my fears and anxiety” . It is not easier to become a  pro and to do what you truly love. Initially you have to do what your pleasure sensors in your body hate to do , then only you can relish the beauty in your work . You believe it or not , but I believe it , there are higher planes of life above all this materialistic humbug , that is the place where people like Beethoven, Picasso and Tiger woods live(at least for sometime) by pursuing their passion and doing the work they love . If you truly want to experience those higher planes immerse yourself in a task you love without worrying about the ramifications. A professional knows it .

A professional knows there is no bad day to start a good thing and ( to be continued in subsequent parts)

– Raviteja Visakoti 

Today’s afternoon nap was something different. I was able to feel that

I could feel the consciousness closing the gates in front of me. I was happily lying in the gardens of subconscious and mischievously looking at them and the process that is going on which finally results into deep sleep. Even though it was just a 20 minute sleep, I could feel infinity in it

Strangely my face with closed eyes got attracted towards the opaque mixed translucent glass framed to the window which is shooting continuous cones of bright sunlight passing through it and my eyes could feel the firendly warm, even after they passed through an inch-sized glass and a decent protection of eyelids, my pupils relished them and I could literally feel it

The rays were making me sleepier and comforting me in utter tranquility accompanied by a beautiful silence in the room & surroundings and disrespecting to not to mention, the nicety of refreshing and bracing weather. There was transcendence to a new level, a higher plane  which generally cannot be expressed in words but must be felt !!

– Raviteja Visakoti 

I have recently completed reading the second installment of “The War of Art”  by Steven Pressfield, it is “Turning Pro” . I felt that I should communicate the essence of those two books with as many people as possible, so I have decided to put my understanding of those books in a sequence of articles for better conception of my expression. In-fact what I write in the next few articles is the hybridization of Pressfield’s ideas, my understanding of them, and my own ideas also.

Steven Pressfield is a legend, a pure legend and more importantly a professional(for conciseness’ sake let us call it Pro). This article and the next couple or more of them are exclusively related to analysing the qualities, differences, similarities of an amateur and that of a pro. Just for convenience let us explore the lexicon meanings of them first.

Amateur :-   Inept or Unskillful /not an expert /a person who engages in a pursuit, especially a sport, on an unpaid basis.

Professional :-Engaged in a specified activity as one’s main paid occupation rather than as a pastime/skillful/expert

When I was in my 9th Grade, my chemistry teacher told in the class that whatever you do, don’t crave for appreciation or recognition, if appreciation and fame automatically follow be happy but if nobody appreciates your work and somebody takes credit for your work then be happier because, she explained, you know the importance and greatness of your work and God knows it and you need not explain that to anyone. I can say that it is being professional. A professional knows what he does, he doesn’t crave for fame, he does any work out of love. An amateur does the opposite, everything that he does is to get recognition, to feel important, he concentrates only on the end-product and not on the process, he needs others’ approval, he just cannot live without that.

Achievement is a relative term but many people think that earning a greater than or equal to 6 digit paycheck per month, fame, power and the like are the only things which can be called as achievements . What is achievement to one person may not be nothing to the other . Understand your deep emotional wants and don’t wants, they are in a multitude ways different from those of the person sitting next to you. If you ask me what an achievement is I would say that anything that would take you from your current level to a next level of personal mastery is called an achievement and that next level can be very slightly higher or very higher, here also the improvement and consistency counts and not the speed and size of your leap. Meditating for 15 mins everyday for 1 year is an achievement in itself (in fact a great achievement), exercising everyday for 1 hour, reading books, writing articles, dismantling bad habits, adding new good habits, following a healthy and productive timetable everyday consistently for a period of time are all achievements. A professional knows this, an amateur doesn’t. An amateur is purely materialistic and sybaritic.

An amateur always operates in a hierarchy, he doesn’t have a zone or region of his own, he gets happier and excited when he is above someone in the hierarchy and gets bogged down and depressed when he is below and that is the reason an amateur is always jealous, he cannot see people rise above him – he gets terrified by the thought of it. A professional is never jealous, in fact he encourages others because he knows his turf, he knows his battlefield, he knows he has to fight his own demons like laziness, procrastination, and more importantly he knows he is not in this pseudo race .

To become a professional the first step is you have to listen to your true calling. Whenever you are embarked to pursue your true calling, there comes the most dangerous evil – the demon responsible for almost all misfortunes in the world -Resistance. Resistance is all pervasive and ( to be continued in Subsequent parts ..)

– Rithish Visakoti, Raviteja Visakoti 

During my childhood I used to constantly fight with my sibling highlighting the strengths of my favorite super hero and showcasing the weaknesses of his favorite one and he did the same thing and obviously we both would not budge that easily towards a common consensus. Exactly 2 years ago I watched the movie “Batman Begins” (starring Christian Bale and directed by the legendary Christopher Nolan ) and totally got all my opinions changed , prior to that I watched a lot of  super hero movies but none kindled me the way this movie did .Generally super hero movies (including our Superman) tend to showcase the person in lead in such a way that he is gifted with super powers and there by greatness automatically accompanied with it but Batman is not like that . Batman represents hope and responsibility , anybody can become a batman, there is a famous dialogue in that movie which goes like this “it’s not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you” . Bruce Wayne(the character which represents Batman) is like a normal kid except that he comes from an extremely wealthy family and also has a lot of weakness and fears too but after his parents die , comes a dramatic shift in him that he goes in to explore the world leaving all his riches to find himself and in the process he gradually overcomes his fears, learns new skills (rather than being gifted) and finally achieves the purpose he had initially been committed to . As I said already there is batman in everybody but it has to be unleashed and for that requires huge internal commitment, perseverance and purpose in life . Finally not everyone can become superman but one become a batman if he commits to it !!

–  Raviteja Visakoti 

Almost everyday in our lives we are confronted with a litany of situations where we have to take decisions to improve our state in one way or the other and/or in some cases we need to take a decision to simply push forward in our lives or there may be scenarios in which our decisions simply mean life or death or it can change the course of your life completely.The question is not about what the situations are but how to take the apt decision for a situation. I will try to solve this conundrum to the extent I can in the next couple of(or may be more) stanzas.

As always(and also a matter of habit), I will first dissect the problem into parts and analyse one by one . I believe categorization helps in better comprehension and simplification of anything and also if a person cannot explain something in simple terms then he/she did not understand it.So let us get into the crux of the matter: According to me, there are fundamentally two types of decision making involving –

a)Simple Decisions(Life Improving)

b)Complex Decisions(Life Changing)

Simple Decision making – Unlike its sound it’s really not simple to take simple decisions,[similar to-to rephrase a cliche “Common sense is dangerously uncommon”]. But the name “simple” is chosen because the answer to such situations is generally yes/no , agree/disagree, accept/reject ,etc . For example tomorrow there is an exam for you and your friend(presumably other college guy who doesn’t have exam tomorrow) invites you for a movie at midnight the answer to it is either a tempting yes or a “categorical No” but your call on it depends on the commitment to the cause and thereby decides the status of your life improvisation . Other common cases where simple decision making plays a pivotal role are :when your friend or colleague offers you a drink or cigarette , when you are asked to eat something that you had previously not eaten, your ‘pleasure-self’ asking for social networking but your brain is suggesting you to study , your mouth and tongue asking for tasty food but your heart is telling you to exercise so that it stays healthy , resisting the urge to comment back , etc . As I already said , the solution to such a situation would be the strength of commitment you have towards your beliefs and causes , so whenever you are in this simple decision making state analyse for yourself whether it is really good for you to do so , whether what you are doing is in accordance with your ethics and customs or not!

Complex Decision making – These are situations in which the decisions to which can change your life in a dramatic manner . Some common examples which involve complex decision making are selecting the right job for you, rejecting a girl/boy who cheats you continuously ,career change , whether to set up an enterprise by yourself or not and so on. So how do you take a decision  , for example you have got a very high paying job and lots of benefits like job security,bonuses,etc as an engineer which your heart doesn’t like it and also a job as an artist which you love to be with a comparatively and significantly low salary and few benefits . In these cases please do not compare by the values, do not weigh the pros and cons instead add value to the option you love , if you love to paint then it has an infinite value by itself . In complex decision making it is not about comparing values of unequal quantities but rather about adding value.

In Conclusion : We crave to improve our lives but very few people really take hard and bold decisions that can really change their lives and the rest live in their cages simply adhering to the conventions, running the never ending “rat race” and these cage dwellers criticize and ridicule the brave and good ones watching them rise to greater heights !!

–  Raviteja Visakoti 

What do you mean by courage ? How do you define it? Well , it depends on the perspective you look at it from . I believe-from my experience and understanding of situations – there are two types of courage : the first and essential one the Internal courage and the next one and the less noble one the External Courage . Before I articulate further on this topic of courage I need you to perform a simple task or activity(whatever you call it) .Take a plain paper and pen and note down the things that you ever wanted to do but you are not able to do because of some reasons , simply put , note down all your fears that are inhibiting your personal mastery and the road to freedom and happiness. Go to the next para only if you have completed the above task ,it is ok if you feel the list is not perfect , let it be, just jot down the things that come to your mind instantly.

I believe there is fear in every exciting thing that we do, even  a professional speaker who has given 100 seminars is terrified when he gets on to the stage for the next time or even the great Roger Federer is terrified for the next Wimbledon. Fear develops internally whenever we do a thing we love to do or an important task , there lies mastery , as Susan Jeffers beautifully put it “Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway” , first acknowledge that there is a fear lurking inside and next just kill it , the fear gets washed away i.e it is always a mental battle between your action and inaction -action kills fear and inaction breeds fear . The reason I explained what fear is and how to defeat it on the face is because it is essential for the understanding of internal and external courage.

Many people get confused between the different connotations of courage and their varied applications . I can better explain this with an aid of an example.  Riding bike with 100 + speed on a highway to appease the opposite gender is not courage , it implies the person is not valuing his life properly and it is not internal courage either it is useless external courage .Smoking a cigar in front of everybody is not courage it is just external  courage again and the list goes on .Take risks “in life” not “with life” .

Some of the important things/acts that require internal courage :

• Asking for what you truly want (to whomever it may be)
• Being Honest with yourself (the most difficult one)
• Following your passion
• Being “out and out dissatisfied” with the status-quo
• To Quit the job who you hate
• Standing out from the crowd
• Delayed Gratification to achieve a higher purpose
• Believing in your self and intuitions
• To do what you love.
• To achieve financial freedom
• To have self discipline
• To exude confidence
• To control temper ..et cetra

All the above things require courage , true internal courage to win the inner battle with fear and to come out victorious
It doesn’t mean external courage is not required , external courage is ‘sometimes’ a by-product of pure internal courage, it is a manifestation of internal courage working inside you . So from next time don’t worry about the external one and concentrate more on developing the “True Courage”

– Raviteja Visakoti 

Many people say that there are basically two types of people in terms of sleep- the majority type i.e Early Birds and the minority type(believe me the margin is very less) Night Owls . Before I get into what I want to say, a little intro about early birds and night owls would be helpful for people like me. An early bird is a person who gets up early in the morning and sleeps early in the night and on the other end of the spectrum is the night owl who sleeps late at night (you can call it morning!!) and may or may not wake up until it strikes 10 or 11 o clock (and sometimes it can go beyond afternoon).

Everyone of us was a type one sleeper until a certain point i.e we were forced to get up early in the morning, get ready , have breakfast and go to school reluctantly . But not until college starts the night owl in us gets awakened ,the complete internal clock cycles start to change in the body and insomnia kicks into each one of us . At this stage many think that they are night owls and continue to be awake at night even though there is no useful/important task to be done , and one fine day when the family members admonish him/her for staying late at night , they simply declare themselves a Night Owl(a highly stylish word) and continue to follow the unhealthy sleeping habits for years later on .I myself thought I was a night owl (and I am still not able to come out of that vicious cycle) because of my engineering before-the-exam study habits but the truth is I found it better to be an early to bed and early to rise type guy than an improper timing night owl ,it is wonderful to sleep by 10 :30 and get up at 5 or 6 in the morning and look at the sunrise and listen to the chirping of birds than watching some James bond or Liam Neeson movies at night (not criticizing anybody and the truth is I had done the same and I am terrific fan of both of them and thoroughly enjoy watching ’em ).

Don’t listen to the unnecessary jargon of psychologists who say that night owls are better than early risers,their creativity is more ,bla bla bla and all such nonsense , be a non conformist observe what is really working for you what is not working ,don’t follow the herd. Of course there are times when you have to stay all night and do your works, but what I am trying to say is that do a night out only “if you have to” or “if there is any necessity” to do so ,in all other cases put your phone on the table,shut down your infotainment devices and go to bed. When I say this to “myself” , my internal planning system cheats by showing me numerous things that have to be completed and it keeps telling there are many works and you cant sleep now , but the truth is , as I have said it in my earlier articles also -only 20 to 30% tasks are essential , others are damn trivial, cut down the garbage now itself and save yourself some valuable night time !! Enjoy sleeping

– Raviteja Visakoti 

If at all you wanted to read a self help book and got demotivated by the size of it or if you are struggling to complete a big book ,this is the article for you .

Frankly speaking I have not read a self help book until I was into my second year of engineering , even at that time the pace at which I completed books was very slow , I used to take around a minimum of 20 days for completely reading a novel – I personally don’t like the habit of reading a book at a stretch for hours together , it is not bad but I don’t like it – and a minimum of 1 month for a self help book . But back to 8 to 10 months , I completed books (especially self help) at break neck speed even with my 10 day per book speed . That said it was 10 books in 100 days !!

Here comes the important distinction, I did not complete all the books that I bought or borrowed , I left nearly 30-40% books incomplete – the range of “incompleteness” may vary from 5 pages to 500 pages . What I am trying to express here is that it is really not important whether you complete a book or not and it’s not also about the speed ,it is about getting the main essence out of it or understanding what the author is trying to convey . In Tibetan self help books the authors have the habit of writing a poem in the first page of the book, if you understand the poem completely and the wisdom related to it you need not read the whole book ,the same is true for a majority of self help books i.e focus on getting the theme of author’s point and not on completing the number of pages or the speed at which you are completing.If at all you are not satisfied even after understanding the theme of the book , then for the remaining chapters read the chapter names and summaries , that would be fine

There is a book called “Think and Grow Rich” , I call it the mother of all motivational books or like optimus prime in transformers-in that the author says,in the preface , when you understand what this book wants to convey whether you are in the first chapter or last chapter close the book and party yourself for finding the secret. I understood the essence of the book by the completion of second chapter (it is about the power of belief) and proceeded no further , suddenly I had a surge of confidence in me and felt as if I have read the entire book , the same is for true for anybody.

I am not saying you to leave your book incomplete, I am just saying you to concentrate on the theme rather than speed and number of pages , it is really good to complete a book but do it slowly and consistently because each point in that book needs to get absorbed by your subconscious mind and internal belief systems and in fact some books have to be completed end to end but once you have got the essence and/or found the point repetitive then just move on to the next book . (caution -(On a lighter note) This doesn’t apply for novels 🙂 )

– Raviteja Visakoti