‘Waking Up’ app by Sam Harris is free until 2020

There are few meditation apps as good as ‘Waking Up’. You definitely want to check it out. Right now, I am enjoying the ‘Metta Meditations’ inside the app.

This app also provides access to various theories and lectures on mindfulness. It’s completely free until 2020 as a gift from the developers.

Other Updates:

I just watched this video by Max Joseph. He’s a master video editor and an amazing film maker. Many of you may know him from the show ‘Catfish’.

This video will show you how to find time for reading, how to read faster and comprehend more, beautiful libraries across South America and Europe and a lot more.

I learned about two amazing blogs from here. Wait But Why and Barking up the Wrong Tree

Check them out!

What is the Purpose of My Life? (Part 2)

Story 1:

Death is certain, life is meaningless. We are running on borrowed time and might die at any moment. We don’t take anything with us. Soon, we won’t even exist.

Well that’s one story. We can choose to tell a different one. Maybe a more apt description is- we can tell the same story from a different angle.

Story 2:

Somehow big bang happened. Laws of physics started to reign supreme. Time began. Things condensed and stars, planets etc appeared. One planet got some acid and stuff that can pass its data to the next generation. Natural selection took in charge. Soon there were life everywhere. Humans appeared. They have feelings and everything else, things that the other animals have. But they also think. Which is simply learning from the past and planning for the future.

But, some of them started suffering from their haunted past or glorious past they no longer have (or stand to lose) and worrying about the future.

This defeats the purpose of learning and planning. We learn and plan to make our experience of the world better. Latching on to the past just produces unnecessary suffering. Worrying about the future is wrong as death is our future. Entropy is real. Everything, even life will be taken away from us. All we truly have is the present moment. And the lessons from our past and our ability to plan for the future.

This makes us human.

If the purpose of a shoe is to shield it’s owner’s feet from the ground and the purpose of a  dog is to be a dog, our purpose is to learn from the past and plan for the future. While we live in the moment.

They aren’t at odds with each others. The lessons aren’t in the past, they are with us now. They plans aren’t in the future- they are here with us right now. Now is when we apply the lessons and take action for the future. Life is now.

Then I conclude, the purpose of my life is to live in the moment while I apply lessons from the past and take proper action for the future. Because we can. Because this is our feature. The purpose of a pen is to write because- it can write. That’s its best feature.

Do I like this purpose? Well mostly no. I’d rather contribute to something that would last forever. But sadly, we haven’t come across any such thing that needs my help. Like, laws of physics may last forever, but how to I contribute towards it? It doesn’t need my help!

What is the Purpose of my life?

Spoiler: I don’t know.

Well the following may sound like philosophy, but it’s not. My aptitude for philosophy is nonexistent.

But that doesn’t stop me from asking difficult questions and trying to answer them.

This is the question that has been bothering me much lately: What is the purpose of my life?

Is it to take care of my parents? Possibly.
Is it to pursue pleasure? Why not.

Is it to be a leader and solve earth’s various crisis? Maybe.

I mean the possibilities are endless.

That got me thinking. Maybe the possibilities are endless because I can perform so many various functions.

So, lets leave humans for a second and think about a shoe.

What is the purpose of a shoe? Is it to be worn by its owner? To look shiny all the time? To kill cockroaches?

I’m inclined to say: none. Because, the shoe doesn’t have a choice. It can’t say no to anything. So there is no purpose of it’s life except whatever its owner decides.

Now let’s come back to humans. Humans do have a choice. But what shall influence my choices? Usually it’s my feelings. But are feelings the proper master to serve? What about the well being of others? But at the same time, why does the well being of others trump my feelings?

Well I am yet to find a proper answer.

Did Keto Diet give me a Spiritual Experience?

The short answer: No.

This is not to say that there were no mental benefits of going through keto diet. There’s plenty. Here’s how I illustrated the benefits in an earlier post:

The results were drastic. I found both physical and mental benefits. I lost 3-4 pounds every week. My body felt lighter and I was less lethargic. My sleep cycle was better and I woke up early in the morning with no sleepiness. I enjoyed this benefit the most. Usually it takes me a lot of time to truly wake up. But, when on ketosis, I seemed to wake up instantly. I felt fresh and focused.

 

Naturally one should ask next if this induced a spiritual experience or not. Because, many spiritual teachers have played with their diet. Some went through gruesome fasting whereas others chose to be vegan.

Well, in my case, it didn’t. I don’t know of anyone else who experienced it either. So, I guess if you want to try keto diet, you should only expect the physical and mental benefits. Which are a lot in the first place. Here’s my experience with keto diet- How I lost 24 pounds in 60 days (Keto Diet)

Here’s some ways to boost your brain (including ketosis) – This is how to increase your brain power

For spiritual experiences, I guess meditation remains the best tool overall. Doing ‘The Work’ with Byron Katie, listening to ‘The Power of Now’ audiobook, watching a river flow or just wandering alone in the city street at night could be other very potent ways of inducing a strong spiritual experience.

Who am I?

I was watching Shelly Kagan’s lectures on Death. It raised questions in my mind about who I really am.

Am I a soul? my brain? My personality?

I can feel 3 kinds of things existing inside me. First, I see my current thoughts and feelings.Then I see my memories. beliefs, attitude etc which are the building blocks of my personality.

There’s something else of course. The witness/ watcher.

Without this entity in me, I wouldn’t even be aware of my current thoughts and feelings.

I guess this is what Eckhart Tolle calls presence and other teachers call consciousness.

My first inclination is to regard this ‘watcher’ in me as the real me.

This part after all, has been the single most consistent thing that exists withing me.

My thoughts are random and often contradict each other. Same characteristics apply to my feelings. My personality on the other hand has changed at least 3 times since I have been alive. Only the watcher is untouched.

But, what differentiates my awareness with your one? We all have this awareness but isn’t it the same for all of us?

If I have a head trauma and lose the continuity of my experience, the watcher is still there.

But, my thoughts, feelings and personality will be drastically different. In that case, is it still me?

I am unable to answer that yet. I seem to feel like my awareness is me as long as there is continuity of experience. If my brain loses all of its memories then that will be the death of me. The watcher that used to identify with me will now serve someone else’s experiences.

But even that explanation sounds wrong. How can my awareness ever be someone else? If all about me is my personality then I could be extracted as data and uploaded to the cloud. But, is all that data (memories, beliefs etc) me? That doesn’t sound right!

Repetition is key.

Let’s say you a have a big gut.

But you want a six pack. So, you go online and look for an exercise that will help you.

There, you find that you will need to lower your overall body fat for the abs to show. You are intimidated by the prospect of going on a diet.

You tell this to one of you friends. He tries to cheer you on. He promises to join the gym with you.

You are sick and tired of having a big gut so you decide to start your journey towards having abs.

You join a gym and work your abs until they are sore. Your friend on the other hand doesn’t over work his abs like you do.

The next day you are surprised to see that your abs are still sore and you can’t work them anymore. Your gym coach tells you to give them a week of rest. That week, your friend went to the gym without you. After some rest, your abs start working again. The next day, you join your friend in the gym.

You ask your friend if he had similar troubles. He tells you that he didn’t. Rather he kept working his muscles throughout the week when you were absent. He also tells you that he can now do more reps than he could a week before.

You are tempted to over work your muscles again. But you’ve learnt your lesson.

You start giving some love to all your muscle groups- biceps, neck and shoulder, pecks, legs etc. You don’t over work a muscle anymore. You are more concerned with putting in more reps. You now realize that, you won’t see results after one day of hardcore training. Rather you will see results after you’ve put in regular work, day after day after day.

Here’s what James Clear has to say about it,

Everyone wants to make progress. And there is only one way to do it: put in your reps.

He does a great job at explaining this idea. He cites multiple studies that prove this effect. I highly recommend you read his post. You can find it here- https://jamesclear.com/repetitions

Surest way to beat procrastination| Getting out of Power saving mode

One of the worst feelings in life is the feeling of wasting life away. No body wants to feel like their precious time is going by while they are in a power saving mode. Sadly, power saving mode is the default mode for any organism. Without good reasons to do otherwise, you and everyone else will always chose the path with the least effort and instant rewards.

Yet, it remains true that delaying gratification is what makes us humans. At least it is one of the core aspects of human ascension. The latest addition to organisms by evolution- the central lobe, tries its best to make us sacrifice instant reward now to get bigger rewards in the future. We ignore its voice at our own peril.

Do this thought experiment with me. Let’s say you have decided that for the next three hours you can only do one of the following:

1. Draw something
2. Study for the upcoming test
3. Exercise and
4. Watch your favorite show on YouTube

 

This is what is going to happen. Your mind will quickly glance through all the options. It will think something like this: “Hey I’ve always wanted to sharpen up my drawing skills! Let’s draw something! But wait, what do I even draw? It’s not like I have a syllabus or anything… I have this test coming, I should better study. But studying is so boring! I guess I’ll first do something else. I don’t feel like hitting the gym either man. I don’t even remember where I left my shoes and trouser last time. Let’s just watch YouTube for now. I can’t wait to see what (your fav YouTuber) has uploaded today!”

One video will lead to another and soon your 3 hours will be up.

Unless for an extraordinary burst of motivation or rare case of extreme self-control, this is how we function.

What would have happened if you didn’t have the choice of Watching YouTube?

Yes, herein lies the answer. ELIMINATE.

Eliminate the possibility of doing things that you know are your weakness. Things that you know waste your time. Here’s the thing, you don’t have to do it for the whole day.

Block 3 or more hours of your day. Choose only a handful of tasks that you really want to do and eliminate every other possibility.

You will be surprised to see what happens then. Some magical wizard stuff will guide you to the things you’ve always wanted to do. Because that’s how we work. We always look for the highest reward with least amount of effort. Choose the activities you’re allowed to do and your limbic brain will be tricked into thinking it chose the most fun thing with least hassle.

Keep doing this 3 hours a day, 7 days a week and see how your life satisfaction shoots up.

A Template for Writing Short Stories

Here is a template that I made for myself. The inspiration came from Stephen Pressfield’s book ‘Nobody wants to read your shit’.

I think the template is pretty self explanatory. But I’ll try and talk about some of the terms that you may find alien. If you still have questions,  feel free to ask them in the comment box.

Theme is the overarching message of the story. Is it good vs evil? Justice vs Injustice? Discipline vs serendipity? Heroism vs villainy? Love vs ego? The options are endless. You get to chose what theme your story will embody. But there has to be a theme and it has to have an opposing counter theme.

Your hero shall embody the theme. Whereas, the main villain should embody the counter theme.

Climax is when these two forces clash. Stephen Pressfield urges his readers to solve the climax first and then write the rest of the story.

Inciting incident is what starts the story. Maybe hero meets villain or hero gets shunned by someone she loves- it will be unique to your theme.

Narrative device is one of the harder things to master. It asks the following questions-

Who is talking to the reader? Is the reader getting a first-person view? Or is the reader getting a 3^rd person view from someone related to the protagonist or the writer herself? Is the story being told in past tense? Is the narrator stoic or biased?

OCEAN is an acronym for the big five personality traits. The characters in your story will need unique personalities and everything they do should stem from that. The big five traits are- Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Characters generally will be high in one trait while low in others.

All character should have some kind of flaw. This will make them more humane and relatable.

Characters should also have some kind of agenda and goals that they yearn to fulfill.

The last part of the template is just the ‘Heroes journey’. This is to help you with structuring the story properly.

Tests are situations where your characters’ will have to make a difficult choice. This is crucial for character development.

Here’s the template:

(Click here to download it in MS WORD)

 

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Theme:

Concept:

Climax:

Inciting Incident:

Narrative Device:

OCEAN:

Flaw:

Goal:

Test:

 

1. Hero Starts in Ordinary world:
2. Hero receives call to Adventure
3. Hero rejects call:
4. Hero meets mentor. Mentor gives hero courage to accept call
5. Hero crosses threshold enters special world
6. Hero encounters enemies and allies, undergoes ordeal that will serve as his initiation
7. Hero confronts villain, acquires treasure.
8. The Road back. Hero escapes special world, trying to “get home”
9. Villain pursue Hero. Hero must fight/ escape again
10. Hero returns home with treasure, reintegrates into ordinary world, but now as a changed person, thanks to his ordeal and experiences on his journey.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Let’s replace social media with books

I was unhappy with how my days went. I always thought I can do so much more. But I didn’t know how to.

Then I got an idea. I called it the productivity challenge. I had to stop all my social media activity and digital entertainment until each evening. I also had to work in Pomodoros while never taking a break longer than 15 minutes.

This did sound impossible to me. Nevertheless, I gave it a shot and my day went well! I tried it the next day too, but couldn’t keep it up for any more days. I knew I was on to something. But it was still a work in progress.

Then I found out how Dr. Jordan Peterson would lock himself up for 3 hours every night to finish his book. Stephen Pressfield does something similar every morning. Neil Gaiman does this. Stephen King writes 6 pages everyday no matter what.

This lit up an idea in me. I couldn’t do it for a whole day, but I could do it for 3 hours. That’s where my idea of 3 sacred hours came for. For the last 12 days I have put in 3 hours every single day, except for one minor hiccup.

But, the pull of digital entertainment is always there. It’s easy to do my 3 hours and then waste my whole day on social media, YouTube or some streaming service.

That’s when another idea struck me. There’s something I always wanted to do. That is learning about new things from masters of that craft. I just love it when someone talks about something that she is very passionate in.

So, I decided to replace digital entertainment with books and lectures from different Universities. I guess all of you know that Stanford, MIT, Yale and Harvard have their own YouTube channels where they upload full lectures on numerous subjects. Then there’s the Joe Rogan Experience, The Origins Podcast, The Artificial Intelligence Podcast, The Portal and many other podcasts where I get to see people talk about their views and their passion.

The lure of social media, random YouTube videos and streaming services are still there. It’s a conscious choice that I have to make every day to read a book, watch a lecture or listen to a podcast instead.

But at the end of the day, this is what makes me happy. I urge you to try this for a day and see how it goes. You can start with this course about ‘Death’ (!) by Shelly Kagan that I’m watching right now.

My Unfortunate Fascination with Motivation Porn

I usually disagree with people who say that self-help is crap. But I understand where they are coming from. It’s not that self-help is crap, but motivation porn is.

Some people tend to think that they are the same. But they are not. Self-help can range from a book that helps you to learn a new language to YouTube videos whose sole purpose is to shout at you and tell you that you are a loser.

I hope you can see the difference.

Well, I didn’t when I was a teen. I used to read all kinds of stuff. And I fell into the rabbit hole of motivation porn.

But something in me kept bugging me that there must be more to it. On hindsight I know there are fake gurus out there who put out contents without substance, who pretend as if motivation will see you through the finish line. But I didn’t know it then.

So, I nevertheless kept trusting these motivation gurus. And it’s no surprise that my life was stuck in stagnation for a long period of time.

Then I found some real gurus. There was a stark difference between them and the fake ones. They didn’t talk about amazing possibilities. They rather preferred to talk about scientific consensus. They didn’t try to motivate you, they urged you to research on your own and try their ideas to see if they hold.

Thus, I cut all my ties with the motivation industry. I would still sometimes see one or two of their videos just for the fun of it, but I don’t believe that they would solve any of my problems anymore.

Because procrastination is not about lack of motivation, it’s about lack of clarity. As James clear states in his amazing book ‘Atomic Habits’-

Many people think they lack motivation when what they really lack is clarity

That led me to appreciate the works of real teachers and researchers out there. People like Charles Duhigg, James Clear, Malcolm Gladwell, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Barbara Oakley etc. have helped me improve my skills and attitude.