words ✍️

Addiction

• How Addiction Happens:
  • Ingredients
    • Lot to cope with
      • Who am I?
      • What is my identity?

Alone

• Living alone teaches you the importance of someone’s company

• “The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love.

  It may look paradoxical to you, but it’s not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person–without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.” – Osho

• “I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone, it’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel all alone.” – Robin Williams

Ambition

• Ambition is largely driven by self-actualisation, or the desire to become a more capable person. And when this happens, it’s only natural that good outcomes arise. You’ll witness bumps in your reputation, be offered higher salaries, and so on.
  • But these things happen as a byproduct of your ambition, and not because these outcomes were your primary desires. Greed, however, is when those outcomes become your primary desires.
  • When prestige, praise, and power are the reasons why you are ambitious, that’s no longer driven by self-actualisation. That’s when you lust for everything that is external to you.

Anger

• Memory of pain in the past
  • Messenger that shows you that something important to you is being betrayed, squashed, or overlooked. A boundary, a value, a desire. Don’t kill (suppress) that messenger (of course don’t react).
• Best remedy is to delay (any reaction)
  • Contemplate the allure of anger, the drawback of anger and the escape from anger and then practice for the escape from anger.
  • Remain calm and coolly assess your options before making any move
• Understand the source, when you get irritated, write and explain the feelings, it might help in identifying the source
• “The opposite of anger is not calmness, its empathy” – Mehmet Oz
• “Don’t get angry” is a not a good advice to someone who is angry at the moment
  • “Anger” is a feeling, you can’t control the feeling. However you can control your actions.
  • Better advice - “Don’t act upon your anger, take your time”.
• See:
  • Three phases of Anger
    • ANGER - The feeling of anger
      • Somebody provokes me, I feel angry
      • We don’t have any control over that
    • RAGE - your reaction to anger, or how you respond to it
    • RESENTMENT - how long you hang on to it
      • harboring a resentment is allowing someone who you don’t like to live inside your head without paying any rent
• Anger thrives on speed and it is fed by a tightening spiral of thoughts. Anger is very intelligent — always searching for rationalization. Patience (feeling the burn) cuts the speed of the thoughts. Even the old wives advice to “count to ten” before acting on anger is an application of patience as antidote.
• Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche in his book Light Comes Through talks about working with negative emotions, including anger. He says that the discipline — employing patience — is like working out at the gym and “feeling the burn” in your muscles. Moment by moment, as you feel anger, you neither indulge it nor do you repress or seek to avoid it. You simply open yourself to feel it — without feeding it or acting on it. This discipline is not easy. It can be very intense.
• Anger is a futile attempt to control the world.
• Anger is like poisoning oneself in hopes that someone else will die.
• RAIN is an easy-to-remember tool for practicing mindfulness & compassion using four steps
  • Recognizing
  • Allowing
  • Investigating
  • Not Identifying
    • Non-Identification with emotions is a powerful tool.
    • Taking the focus off the anger helps to diffuse it until we can deal with underlying problem.
• Read this sutta on anger
• Read sutta on controlling/relaxing thoughts
• Anger and Temper are different
• See conflict resolution.

Anxiety

• Worry about something that has typically yet to happen (future)
• Guilt causes anxiety (eg: lying, procrastination)
• Body’s natural response to stress
• Anxiety is not having clarity about what is within one’s control and what is outside of one’s control - partially correct?
• Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. ― Søren Kierkegaard

Argument

• “Behind every argument lies someone’s ignorance.”
  – Louis D. Brandeis.

Behaviour

• Behaviour is the external manifestation of your character that is visible to others

Bureaucracy

• Administrative process of the system

Character

• Character is your thought process that helps you take decisions on how to behave
• We ought to define ourselves and limit ourselves within the boundaries of our own definations, we can do everything and anything. We are unable to imagine, when we see

Compassion

• Requires detachment and serenity

Confidence

• Confidence is not “they will like me”, it’s “IDGAF if they don’t like me”
• True confidence comes with the knowledge that knowing yourself is enough. No more doing or not doing things because if you do(n’t) do them you feel shame. Only doing things because you like them.
• Confidence comes from practice, a constant pursuit of passion/work builds confidence (of your identity).
• Traits of an under-confident person
  • overcompensating for their insecurities, eg:
    • putting yourself down (say how ugly i am) before others could
    • constant bragging and competing
    • overdressing to hide your body
  • envy
  • constant apologising, zero boundaries enforcement
  • fear of change or challenges
  • not looking people in the eye
  • being hyperactive (eg: constantly checking phone)
  • looking for others for approval

Cool

• Being “cool” means being able to adapt to any circumstance, any situation

Creativity

• The difference between the creative and the uncreative mind isn’t, therefore, that the creative person has different thoughts, but that the creative person takes what is in their mind more seriously. What enables them to do this is a quality very dear to Emerson: a capacity to resist the fear of humiliation.
• Create

  

Culture

• Culture is how we all behave together as a team, way of doing things
  • Culture is a collection of customs and values which our previous generation collectively practiced. The previous generation need not be 10-20yrs older, it could be our immediate seniors (as in office or college).
• Values which are celebrated flourish, and as a culture it becomes part of the community
  • You celebrate the outcome for which a certain skill/value is required, which you want everyone to have in your community.
    • Eg: you celebrate production releases (with afterparty), which mean we celebrate even small wins (work hard party harder?).
    • Eg: if you want a culture of innovation - this means you will have to find a way to identify and reward (in a way celebrate) the engineers who do innovation.
  • Customs (religious, ancestral, national etc.) are celebrations which promote certain values or ideas
    • Eg: Patriarch is celebrated via various customs.
    • Ideas evolve with time, with society. And hence customs which celebrate a regressive idea needs to be evolved too.
    • Sometimes in the name of the value (which the community celebrates), people go extreme (maybe to get rewarded - with fame, respect, financially etc.).

Depression

• Anger turned inward often results in self-hatred, which causes depression

Education

• “A good education is one where kids graduate being extremely aware of what they are good at, having had plenty of experience creating and building different things, failing and then trying again and getting feedback until they nail something, and having that desire to keep learning”
  – Ana Fabrega
• “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think”
  – Albert Einstein

Ego

• Ego holds while love liberates
• Ego is you thinking what others think about you, and then comparing it with your own version of yourself.
  • Self esteem is what you want to do, whom you want to meet. Its about you thinking about yourself.
  • Nice way to think is - Ego is when you want to win over others to feel good, the competition is in your subconscious head. You are not trying to find shortcomings or improve, you are fighting to defend your argument, your identity.
• Karma originates from a false belief in an ego, which prompts a chain reaction of defending that false sense of self and trying to maintain some security. However, there is no security anywhere and people can find no resting place. There is nothing substantial in the world of Samsara.
  • People are ignorant of their true nature, and that ignorance causes them to suffer over and over again
• See Identity and humility

• We want to massage our ego and we don’t leave any opportunity to do so, sometimes we hide it behind our intellectualism or our false belief/truth.
• “इंसान जो कहता है नाह की मुझे किसी बात का घमंड नहीं है, तोह ये सबसे बड़ा घमंड है की तुझे घमण्ड है की तुझे किसी बात का घमंड नहीं है”
  • ++
    तारीफ शैतान की जुबां होती है, इंसान के अंदर तक्कूबार (घमंड) पैदा करती है. तक्कूबार पर आपका control नहीं है. आप जब फ़क़ीर को भी पैसा देते हो नाह, उसके आँखों में मत देखो, उसकी आँखें शायद तुम्हारे अन्दर घमंड पैदा करदे की मैंने इसकी help की.
• Read notes on ‘The Ego and The Id’
• Never let go of your self-respect but always let go of your ego. There is fine line between the two.

Emotions

• Thoughts that are linked to sensations in our bodies
  • emotions are feelings - we “feel” sensations
• Arise in the context of relationship (always ?)

Empathy

• Compassion
• “If you aren’t humble, whatever empathy you claim is false and probably results from some arrogance or the desire to control. But true empathy is rooted in humility and the understanding that there are many people with as much to contribute in life as you.” – Anand Mahindra
• Sympathy Vs Empathy
  • Sympathy is looking down at someone in a hole and saying “it sure is dark down there”, and empathy is climbing down into it and saying “it sure is dark down here”

Enthusiasm

• “Beware of enthusiasm and of love, both are temporary and quick to sway” – Hunter S. Thompson

Envy

• Sadness at the blessing of another

  • Envy is sorrow which one entertains at another’s well-being because of a view that one’s own excellence is in consequence, lessened
  • Admiration is different in sense that you are not sad, you are inspired

• Result of: Attitude of scarcity

  • Scarcity refers to the inherent limitation of resources. It is a fundamental economic concept that implies there are not enough resources to fulfil all desires and needs. In the context of envy, a scarcity mindset occurs when individuals believe that there is a finite amount of success, recognition, or happiness to go around. This belief can lead to envy when they perceive others as having more of these desirable qualities or possessions.
    • Zero sum game
  • Attitude that is numbed to the fact that I have an abundance of blessings in my own life
  • Remedy: gratitude, count your blessings
  • Check this quote by Louis C.K.
    

    

• Insecurity can intensify feelings of envy

  • Insecurity refers to a state of being uncertain, vulnerable, or unsafe. It can stem from various factors such as economic instability, social comparison, or existential concerns.
  • When individuals feel insecure about their own worth or abilities, they might be more prone to comparing themselves with others and feeling envious of their apparent successes or advantages.

• “Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun with,” says Charlie Munger. “There’s a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?” Jealousy is a corrosive, counter-productive, and pointless waste of time. Just say no to the green-eyed monster.

• Grass is always greener on the other side

Enlightenment

• When does one seek enlightenment? Or he has sought it? When he is fulfilled, when he doesn’t strive for hunger, when troubles of work doesn’t bother him, when he understands that the path, he is walking on, only can push him forward.
• The end of suffering is enlightenment, Nirvana.
  • Enlightenment cannot be described, only experienced.
  • All human beings have experienced glimpses of enlightenment

Equality

• None is equal to the other, everyone is unique. So, what is equality?
  • Equal opportunities
    • So, when we talk about equality, are we mostly referring to equal opportunities?
      • People feel they are being discriminated against (because of some bias) and hence ask for equality (they mean equal opportunities)
    • Opportunities are also presented equally only if the candidates have equal capabilities required for the necessary opportunity. Providing opportunities equally to candidates where one of the candidates is far less eligible than the other is not fair to the more capable candidate.
      • We should strive to remove biases and prejudices from the selection process, but we should not compromise on the quality of the candidate for the sake of equality.

Ethics

• Ethics is right Vs wrong in a social context
  • Morals is right vs wrong in a personal context
• Eg: Where do you each the line with lying and when it’s wrong, what is considered disrespectful, how do you determine fairness, what cultural rules do you adhere to etc.
• Ethics is a long term game. In a short term, your insecurity, your lazy-ass might stop you from following your ethics.
  • Eg: your genuine advice might push someone ahead of you (say your junior), but insecurity.
    This is a small term game. You don’t control his/her success, you control yourself. Play by your ethics, play the long term.

Failure

• “When my brother and I were growing up, my father would encourage us to fail. We’d sit around the dinner table and he’d ask, “What did you guys fail at this week?” If we had nothing to tell him, he’d be disappointed. The logic seems counterintuitive, but it worked beautifully.
  He knew that many people become paralyzed by the fear of failure. They’re constantly afraid of what others will think if they don’t do a great job and, as a result, take no risks. My father wanted us to try everything and feel free to push the envelope. His attitude taught me to define failure as not trying something I want to do instead of not achieving the right outcome.” – Sara Blakely
• See Success.

Faith

• Any belief, which does not have any rationale/logic behind it, is faith
• From reason, faith is another word for stupidity

Fear

• Phobia -> anticipation of pain in the future because of the pain in the past
  • Here, the degree of pain in unknown
• Fear is anxiety of unfamiliarity
• “Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity. Do not misunderstand me danger is very real but fear is a choice.” – Will Smith

Feminism

• Tries to liberate anything and anyone that is feminine or that is perceived as feminine.
  Every human being has both feminine and masculine traits but our society is designed to look down upon the feminine and make it secondary to the masculine.
  For example, a man shouldn’t cry.

  Harmony only when we embrace both these sides of human psyche, unless we do we find ourselves constantly at war with ourselves.

  • Essay on “Kumbalangi Nights” talking about Feminism

Forgive

• “Forgiveness means giving up hope for a different past. It means knowing that the past is over, the dust has settled and the destruction left in its wake can never be reconstructed to resemble what it was. It’s accepting that there’s no magic solution to the damage that’s been caused. It’s the realization that as unfair as the hurricane was, you still have to live in its city of ruins. And no amount of anger is going to reconstruct that city. You have to do it yourself.” – Heidi Priebe, This Is Me Letting You Go
  • Forgiveness
  • Is this really forgiveness? This is self created closure, a relief, a way to move on.
• See Game Theory.

Freedom

• Freedom is not - being able to do things you love. It is free will, to be able to choose.
• Freedom is not free, it comes at a cost
• “Inherited Will, The Destiny Of Age, The Dreams Of Its People.
  As Long As People Continue To Pursue The Meaning Of Freedom, These Things Will Never Cease!” – Gol D. Roger
• “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

Friendship

• Measure of friendship is directly proportional to time, best/close friends are those tested over time.
  • No one is truly your friend until they have seen he worst of you and still stayed. A long time makes sure they have seen different shades of you.
• “All the benefits in life come from compound interest - relationship, money, habits - anything of importance.” - Naval
• How to make friends
  • Share your thoughts, your POV, talk about yourself. If the other person cares and wants to be friends he/she will listen, and eventually he/she will also want to talk about his/her perspective, his/her life, then you listen carefully. This is how you make connections.
  • You don’t have to talk about meaningless things, by meaningless I mean things which are neither constant nor does hold any importance (preferably long-term) to you or the other person, example: pop culture. Things you talk about defines your relation.
• “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Karenina_principle

Genius

• “Persistence and variety. These are the two primary ways to develop great ideas or to solve important problems.

  Keep leaning your head against a topic for a long time. Certainly for weeks, possibly for years. And along the way, try many lines of attack. Continue to generate options, explore paths, and propose silly ideas. Copy and paste concepts from widely different disciplines and see if it gets you anywhere. All the while, continue to refine the best solution you’ve found thus far.

  What looks like genius may simply be the byproduct of persistence and variety.”

Gossip

• Group-ism promotes gossip

Guilt

• Blaming yourself
• Causes shame, humiliation

Happiness

• “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Askaban
• Joy (and satisfaction) comes from pursuit, pursuit of whatever you like to do
  • “The journey is what brings us happiness not the destination.” – Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior
  • Life is not about chasing happiness, its about finding happiness along the way.
• Somewhere in the process of maturing into adults, most humans misunderstood comfort for happiness.
• Happiness leads to numbness, sadness opens your eyes to lot of things
  • “The suffering or the bad memories are as important as the good memories, and the good experiences.
    If you sort of, can imagine life as being 99% of the time quite linear, and most of the time you’re in a state of neither happiness nor sadness. And then that 1% of the time you experience moments of very crystallised happiness, or crystallised sadness, or loneliness or depression. And I believe all of those moments are very pertinent. It’s like I said to you, that for me it’s mostly those crystallised moments of melancholy which are more inspirational to me. And in a strange way they become quite beautiful in their own way.
    Music that is sad, melancholic, depressing, is in a kind of perverse way more uplifting. I find happy music extremely depressing, mostly - mostly quite depressing.
    It’s particularly this happy music that has no spirituality behind it - if it’s just sort of mindless party music, it’d be quite depressing. But largely speaking, I was the kind of person that responds more to melancholia, and it makes me feel good. And I think the reason for this is, I think if you respond strongly to that kind of art, it's because in a way it makes you feel like you're not alone. So when we hear a very sad song, it makes us realise that we do share this kind of common human experience, and we're all kind of bonded in sadness and melancholia and depression.” – Steven Wilson

Hate

• Strong word, often used weakly.
• Hate is often disguised as Anger.

Home

• A sense of belonging
• Home is where your existence matters, where people notice when you are not there.

Hope

• Hope is what keeps us going, what keeps us alive, if not for hope there is no point in living.
• “When Do You Think People Die?
  When They Are Shot In The Heart With A Pistol? No.
  When They Are Ravaged By An Incurable Disease? No.
  When They Drink A Soup Made From Poisonous Mushrooms? No.
  It’s when… They Are Forgotten!” – Dr. Hiriluk

Humility

• “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.” - CS Lewis
• “We all have a certain streak of arrogance in us. I would like to think I am not as arrogant as I could be, but we are not. None of us are as humble as we should be.” – Omar Abdullah
• See pride, ego, empathy

Identity

• Our identity is wrapped up in what others think of us—or, more accurately, what we think others think of us.
• Most of the world’s conflicts are because of the attachment of identity.
  Eg: religion is not a problem, problem arises when one attaches identity with it.
  Paul Graham on Identity
• See Ego
• “It’s not who we are underneath, but what we do that defines us. " – Batman Begins

Inspiration

• Does Inspiration come from accomplishment?

• Qualities get admiration, Journey (or destination) inspires

Intelligence

• Thinking one level deeper than the current level of operation, it could inference, experience, enlightenment

Introvert

• Fear of people is social anxiety which translates into shyness, Introversion is different.

Jealousy

• Jealousy is desire, it is a directional signal for you to take that step. Desire is blocked by fear or comparison or insecurity or stress.

Karma

• In the Indian religions (Hinduism, Buddhism), karma refers to action driven by intention which leads to future consequences.
  • The term more specifically refers to a principle of cause and effect, often descriptively called the principle of karma, wherein individual’s intent and actions (cause) influence their future (effect)
• Many games have used this concept to create morality systems: Karma points
• “Instant Karma”: as the phrase suggests you get instant results based on your action
  • Enjoy this instant karma compilation

Kindness

• 

• Kindness is evidence of intelligence, and patience is evidence of understanding

Leader

• “Having been brought up in a serf owner’s family, I entered active life, like all young men of my time, with a great deal of confidence in the necessity of commanding, ordering, scolding, punishing, and the like. But when, at an early stage, I had to manage serious enterprises and to deal with [free] men, and when each mistake would lead at once to heavy consequences, I began to appreciate the difference between acting on the principle of command and discipline and acting on the principle of common understanding. The former works admirably in a military parade, but it is worth nothing where real life is concerned, and the aim can be achieved only through the severe effort of many converging wills.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/923421-having-been-brought-up-in-a-serf-owner-s-family-i-entered
• Embrace your first few followers as equal, if you do that, it becomes about them (about the movement) and is not about the leader anymore

  • First Follower:

    • Underappreciated, needs guts to be the first follower
    • Leadership is over-glorified, it is the first follower who transforms a lone nut into a leader
    • Courageously follow and show others how to follow
    • https://sive.rs/ff

  • Be public, be easy to follow

  • People follow the one who shows them the light and guides through darkness, and they eventually unfollow if the light goes dimmer or doesn’t shine anymore. Leader is the one who in tough situations says I will get this fuckin done. Courage, taking responsibility of one’s decisions.

  • Absolute justice and impartiality: By this way you may not be liked by all but be respected.

  • Qualities must possess:

    • Influence: Most of the time we are stuck in opinions and never come on a common ground, this affects productivity. A leader must be able to influence in these times to move a certain way.
    • Courage and thick skin: Needs guts to stand alone and look ridiculous

  • “Organisations should reward risk-takers, even if they fall short once in a while. Let them know that promotions and glory go to innovators and pioneers, not to stand-patters who fear controversy and avoid trying to improve anything.” - fs blog

• “Praise by name, criticize by category.”

Life

• Give yourself a second chance

  • “I know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance.” - Jeanette Winterson
  • See hope

• Life is an experience, and how come an experience be better.

• “Life has three rules: Paradox, Humor, and Change.

  • Paradox: Life is a mystery; don’t waste your time trying to figure it out.
  • Humor: Keep a sense of humor, especially about yourself. It is a strength beyond all measure
  • Change: Know that nothing ever stays the same.”

  – Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior

• “Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

• Purpose of Life

  • “To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life.” – The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Loneliness

• Loneliness is a feature of life. It is not a bug that is to be debugged. It’s an ingrained part of life. It does not matter whether you are single, married, dating, have multiple wives or husbands, have multiple girlfriends or boyfriends, loneliness is here to stay.
• Lonely people are hyper-vigilant. Imagine being in a desert, you will be constantly vigilant.
• See Alone

Love

• Love is a habit, an addiction
• Love liberates
• The highest form of love is “self sacrifice”
  • Love is selflessness, attachment is selfishness
• “Love is not a relationship, love is a state of being; it has nothing to do with anybody else. One is not “in love”, one is love. And of course when one is love, one is in love – but that is an outcome, a by-product, that is not the source. The source is that one is love.” - Osho

• “You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
• Fear based decisions have no place in something as wild, wonderful and delicate as love.

Loyalty

• Two-way street, one can rightfully demand it from subordinate if he/she is also loyal to them. Also if I’m asking for it from you then you’re getting it from me.
• Does need for loyalty stems from loneliness? Is this an insecurity?

Maturity

• Having independent thought and following your own path, taking actions and confronting reality with compassionate answers
• Loss makes you mature?
  • Lack of something makes you appreciate it, in that sense, does loss make you mature?
  • We often say “Maturity comes with age”, does the loss of age makes the person mature?
  • कौन सीखा है सिर्फ बातों से, सबको एक हादसा जरूरी है।

• We mature with the damage not with the years.
  • Neither one knows how much damage one has taken (from outside perspective) nor damage can be quantified, so age is a good universal metric (better than nothing) to judge maturity/experience

Morals

• Morals is right Vs wrong in a personal context
  • Ethics is right Vs wrong in a social context
• Rules you live by: do you cheat, are you generous, are you patient, are your truthful etc.
• “If you crush a cockroach, you’re a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you’re a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria.” - Nietzsche

Networking

• “Networking is overrated. Become first and foremost a person of value and the network will be available whenever you need it.” - Naval
• How to network
  • Help
  • Ask for help
  • Talk about your thesis (or your talking points, your essays)
    • What is that one thing about the work that you know that the world doesn’t agree with you or the world doesn’t know that.
  • Ask them about their journey, their unique experiences
  • Listen: To be a good listener, you have to stop talking and be interested
  • Questions:
    • What is the one thing that you know that others don’t?

Nitpickers

• Littleman - Contribute to nothing and try to bring other people down, they don’t like the words you use, they don’t
• Eg: “Vulnerable - Oh I don’t like that word, it doesn’t fit, what you mean to say is open, human and natural”

Nostalgia

• Best and worst feeling (of a past memory) at the same time

Objectification

• What is objectifying? What is the measure of it? If you do it in a relationship, is that fine? What sort of objectifying is bad? You cannot stop objectifying completely, see the racism example.

Opinion

• Everyone is entitled to have an opinion, but not every opinion is informed by evidence & should not be weighed equally.
• Strong opinion, weakly held

Parenting

• We are already like our parents, if not by genes then by cloning their small-small habits (learned behaviour). Imitation is the highest form of flattery.
• We collectively think of
• Read Kahlil Gibran’s notes on “On Children”

Party

• Doing stupid fun activities, intoxicants are enabler

Perspective

• Perspectives have/are assumptions (biases)

Passion

• Deep and intense enthusiasm or emotion towards something
• Not limited to creation. Even with consumption, it involves a deeper active engagement rather than just passive enjoyment.

Politics

• Politics happen when there are more than 2 people are involved, it could be a discussion, a game, anything.
  • ‘Twolitics’ is when 2 people are involved, a term coined by Amitu.
• Holding information to oneself makes other dependents, twisting/hiding it for selfish needs makes it a game
• Happens in absence of availability of information
• “Engaging in politics habituates and rewires the brain to value agreement and signalling. It weakens the ability to reason independently and clearly”. – Naval

Pop, Popular

• Short for popular
• popularity = high visibility
• You become popular, not by being a good creator, you become popular by visibility, quality is secondary, shit-posting is one way
• Being popular is just one quality, often overvalued, bringing bias in judgements

Power

• It’s the ability to direct or influence another’s behaviour or course of events
• Power is influence over external events, Peace is influence over internal events.
• • Power is the ability to “make others do” what you would have them do
    • Family, Workplace, Relationships
  • Civic power
    • Physical Force
    • Wealth
    • State Action
    • Social Norms
    • Ideas
    • Numbers (collective interests)
  • How power operates? 3 laws of power
    • Power is never static
      • Either accumulating or decaying in a civic arena, so if you are not taking action you are being acted upon
    • Power is like water
      • Politics is like harnessing the flow you prefer
      • Policy is power frozen - flows in a certain direction
    • Power compounds
      • Compounds under the limit of Rule 1 and 2
  • What you can do?
    • Learn how to
      • Read power
        • Pay attention to as many texts of power you can. Understand who has what kind of power, why it turned out this way, who made it so, and who wants to keep it so.
        • Example:
          • Workplace politics
          • Organised labour
          • Corporate Influence
          • Government Suppression
        • Study the strategies
          • Frontal attack
          • Indirection
          • Coalitions
      • Write power
        • Read first
        • Believe you have the right to write, to become an author of change
        • Learn to write and speak up, express, by being an authentic voice
        • Organise ideas, then organise people
        • Practice consensus, practice conflict
        • Expand, see what works, adapt, repeat
• Power + Character = Greatness

Propaganda

• Propaganda is sophisticated half-truth, selective truth, truth out of context

Racism

• How would you describe a person if you don’t know his name? by his physical outlook, right? In this case calling a black person black is justifiable? why or why not?
• Racism as a mean to oppress/bully is incorrect/unjustified

Random

• Randomness is lack of information. Randomness is the apparent or actual lack of definite pattern or predictability in information.
• True randomness can be defined as the lack of any knowledge that would allow you to favour one result over another.

Rejection

• Rejection (by someone else) is nothing but projection of someone’s own fears and insecurities onto another person

Relation

• Respect, Trust and Communication are the core mutual values for any relation to prosper

Respect

• In loose terms, respect can come for anyone (whom you “look upto”) who he/she displays the qualities you would want to inculcate in yourself
  • Respect for a person comes from his qualities:
    • Hard-work and Persistence
      • Hard-work is quantified by the distance (not displacement) one has covered to reach the current situation.
      • Understanding the circumstances a person has navigated to reach the current situation may influence one’s perception and respect for their resilience and choices in the face of challenges.
    • Ethics
      • Consistent displays of integrity, accountability and ethical behaviour contribute to a positive assessment of an individual.
    • Kindness and empathy
      • Treating others with dignity, empathy, and consideration tends to foster mutual respect.
  • Respect is recognition (of your qualities)
• Respect doesn’t come directly from your past/journey (indirectly via qualities), inspiration does. Respect comes from how you behave in the present moment, how you deal with matters in hand.

Salary

• Selling freedom
• “I don’t care how rich you are.
  I don’t care whether you’re a top Wall Street banker.
  If somebody has to tell you when to be at work, what to wear and how to behave, you’re not a free person.
  You’re not actually rich.” - @Naval

Sales

• Always start fresh. If a discussion is not reaching anywhere and both parties are stringent at some point, close the discussion.

Self Esteem

• The sense of self-esteem is strengthened in the same environment where
  • personal differences are respected
  • there is tolerance for mistakes
  • there is transparency in communication
  • there is absence of judgment
  • there is potential for advancement
  • equality is protected
• Self-esteem is a state of confidence in not only how you feel now, but how you will feel in the future.
• See ego

Shame

• “Intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” - Brene Brown
• Superego kicking the shit out of the ego
• It is an auto-vivisection of the soul. As we are all well aware the painful flush of shame feels terrible. But there is something specific in this terribleness that you might not have noticed. It’s in your inner dialogue - shame is self-directed. With shame you are the problem; you are the crux of all that has gone wrong.
• Shame Vs Guilt
  • Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behaviour

Skill

• “There’s a quick and easy way to test whether an activity involves skill: ask whether you can lose on purpose.”
  – Michael Mauboussin, The Success Equation
  • You cannot lose on purpose at Roulette, or the lottery, which makes them all about luck. But, you can lose on purpose at Chess, which means there has to be skill involved. Being able to lose on purpose proves that an activity is not all about luck and that some skill is involved.

Sophist

• A person who reasons with clever but fallacious and deceptive arguments
• different meaning from etymology

Spirituality

• Is this the outcome or the idea - Having control over your feelings ?
• “The great paradox - when you are outwardly rich only then do you become aware of your inner poverty” – Osho

Strategy

• an overall plan to reach your goal
• Tactic: the individual actions that support your strategy

Stress

• “Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over” - Jeff Bezos
• Procrastination is the mother of stress.
• It is the gap between our expectations and the reality, the bigger the gap more the stress. Expect nothing and accept everything

Success

• A person is successful if they know where they are and they know where they are going and they are progressively moving in that direction.
  “Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy goal or ideal.” - Earl Nightingale
• “Success hugs you in private but failure slaps you in public.”
• “A warrior does not give up what he loves, he finds the love in what he does.” – Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior
• Never let people know how hard you are working, make your success look effortless.
• Magic happens when you do not give up, even though you want to. The universe always fall in love with a stubborn heart.
• Measure of success could be anything, a few examples:
  • how many lives have changed for the better by the time you die. there is no hierarchy of change, making a person at the mall laugh when they are having a shit day has as much values as gifting someone a car.
• See Failure.

Suffering

• “If you don’t get what you want, you suffer;
  if you get what you don’t want, you suffer;
  even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever.” – Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior”

Talent

• Talent is nothing, it is simply enthusiasm. Whatever you are enthusiastic about, you read more about it, you write or engage with it a bit more. And over a period of time, you will know more than the others.

Target

• target vs goal vs objective
• ecstasy vs exaltation vs elation
• psychosis vs neurosis

Trust

Wisdom

• Wisdom is proactive, not reactive. Wisdom opens your mind to the most viable options given your specific situation and enables you to act appropriately to help avert dire situations.
• See wisdom tagged pages