Skip to main content

Daily Journal of Life 13.05.23

 

Let Kindness be your North Star

In life, the concept of kindness is more important than success, money, fame, and power. Often, we forget to be kind and become selfish, rude, and harsh on others to achieve the latter.

I have noticed that whenever things don’t happen as I feel they should I get unkind. I get unkind to my driver for not doing a thing a particular way, a motorist gets my wrath for behaving like a dick on the road, and a subordinate may get shouted at for acting smart or disobedient. It is moments when I get irritated or frustrated that I get unkind to people.

We get unkind in our small talk toward our colleagues, bosses, and subordinate. We become unkind to our partners by not apologizing when we should. It is the emotion that is easy to give but difficult to accept.

Being kind is a conscious choice. It is not easy to not pass a slur at someone driving rashly. It is not easy to not get angry when someone gets rude to you. But it is important to know where the other person is coming from. If someone is aggressive in his tone towards you, you may have not acted in the way they expected from you. But by picking up a fight we reinforce their belief that you are at fault. It only leads to a deadlock.

In the book Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, Siddhartha is faced with the anger and wrath of his young son who doesn’t want to live with him. Siddhartha is kind, but he suffers from the torment of his son. He chooses to be kind but suffers. He is a sage who knows the importance of being kind and is ready to suffer than punish his son.

For mere mortals like us, we can choose to not suffer just for the sake of being kind. We can find an alternative to the situation. But being kind in our approach and not becoming embroiled with destructive emotions like anger and hate.

So, the next time you feel disgust and anger towards someone, remember, to choose the tough choice- kindness, over other easier but inferior choices. If all of us choose kindness, we can remove a lot of suffering from the world.

Learnings of the Day

Authority through Building Trust First

I am currently reading “Influence” by Robert Cialdini. Today the key idea learned was how to wield influence by first generating trust.

For a business, if a customer comes and says that the competitor is providing a cheaper product tell them that Yes! the rates may be better there but we are providing quality assurance. We are charging for what our products are- uncompromised quality.

In an interview, if you are faced with a situation where you do not have the knowledge of the subject, it can be stated openly that you do not know this aspect but that you are a quick learner and will perform as expected shortly.

A salesperson can say that yes, the competitor is good or even better in these aspects but then go on to show how his product is good. Now that the customer trusts the salesperson for his openness, he may push the aspects which may not even be true about his product. The customer having increased trust in the salesperson may blindly believe him.

I am reminded of a movie named “Pursuit of Happiness” in which Will Smith goes for an interview and when asked about the technical stuff related to the job, he flunks all of them. He then asserts confidently that he may currently not know this stuff but he will pick up everything in a flash and even be great at it. It shows acceptance of his current knowledge and determination that it is not a thing that he cannot excel at. The interviewer is firstly impressed by the honesty which builds trust and then by the confidence that ultimately influences him to hire Will.

Homework for life

Heard the great news of the permanent commission of Daljit in the Airforce. He got what he wanted. Stable and easy life to follow. Uncertainty goes. He can enjoy Golf, Fauji life, and of course Pension. Great for the family. He deserves it. Realized that stability and certainty are important aspects of life. Happy and proud of him.

Exercise

Strength: Rest Day.

Needed to rest badly as my body had become stiff after 6 days of Gym and Running. It is stiff from many years of workouts and no stretching. The mobility is badly compromised. Went to Dr. Amit at Gurgaon for adjustment. Pohap attended to my assessment.

He stated that I have a stiff hip area which is affecting the Lumber area thus causing pain in my lower back. he said that I have tight Hamstrings with a tight Iliopsoas muscle and restricted hip internal rotation which may be causing the Hip impingement pain. I need to do proper hip mobilization to squat better and get pain-free from Hip impingement. He showed 3-4 Hip opening exercises. 

Frog pose with widened knees and foot placed outwards. Seated Leg Split forward bend holds. Legs up against wall with ankle flexion. Bend legs in lying position moved to sides. Iliopsoas presses.

Rehab: Lock Big 3 at home.

Cardio:  Running

Zone 2-3 Training: 0 mins. For the week 91 mins. Last week 95 mins. Target 180 mins for the week. I will go to Sanjay Vann in the morning and do trail running. Try to complete the challenge tomorrow itself which may be a little challenging.

 

Anything I like to share/ Habit Tracker

Clean for 120 days. Yay  4 months.

Weight today: 87.45 Kg. Target weight 85.40 Kg by 31.05.23.  

Pic of the Day

Nusa Penida, Bali.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Index funds: How they can be a better instrument over Mutual Funds

  Over the years I have got exposed to the idea of Index Funds through reading some books and following the advice of celebrity investors on social media.  An index fund is a type of mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) that aims to replicate the performance of a specific market index, such as the S&P 500 in the U.S., the FTSE 100 in London, or the Sensex 30 or Nifty 50 in India.  Unlike the actively managed funds, which rely on the expertise of fund managers to select individual stocks, index funds passively track the composition and performance of an underlying index. Now the question arises what is an Index? An Index is a benchmark for evaluating the performance of an investment portfolio. In India, we have 2 major Indices- Sensex 30 and Nifty 50. In Sensex 30, we have the top 30 companies by market cap (Share price X No. of shares) listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange, and for Nifty 50 it is the top 50 companies by market cap listed on the National Stock Exc...
Post a Comment
Read more

Speak less than it is necessary!

  Often, we are engrossed in a debate where emotions take over the rationality of the usage of words. You forget that silence at times is the best antidote to increased conflict. Today in the office my boss was questioning the drafting skills of a junior who committed an avoidable error on the draft. The English language, apart from Hindi, is the main medium of correspondence in central ministries. You need to be well versed in either of these to be able to conduct the official work. All juniors are supposed to put up drafts in the language of the correspondence. But the junior was adamant in defending himself on why it was not his fault that the mistake happened. Boss further questioned each of his reasoning. He kept on giving witless responses. Finally, he ended up embarrassing himself. What I learned from another story heard from P.B. today was that it is better to own up to your mistake than to defend it. He is true to his word as he practices it in real life too. I have ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Daily Journal of Life 17.04.2023

Habits App. Habits Over the last year, I have been able to create some pretty strong Habits including abstinence from erotic indulgences on the Internet. I had gotten down the spiral several times in my life over this bad habit since my school days. But it prevailed throughout my life even in the phase where I was otherwise astute. It affected my behavior and conduct around the opposite sex. It brought anxiety and frustration whenever I relapsed after a concrete resolve. I always had this feeling that one day I would be able to ditch it and lead a life where there was no need to go through it. However, I failed year after year. I had started growing skeptical of my ability to ever be able to work around it. This time, the trick to observe and track my progress played the trick. This particular aspect of the Habits app has changed my life in the last year. It has created a chain reaction where I could stack one good habit over the other, be it abstinence from a bad habit or a positive a...
Post a Comment
Read more