Category: Social Upliftment

The answer to this question, at least for me, is anything I can do with no financial stress in my mind.
Reaching almost halfway through life assuming everything remains normal, what I learnt is that freedom is the best thing that we can achieve in this world.
Among many different kinds of freedoms, financial freedom remains number one in the modern world.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not free from payments yet, I’m also struggling to make them, but I can smell and feel the sense of what if I don’t have to make any payments.
This is just my answer but yours might be different, but I’m pretty sure that at least nobody hates freedom irrespective of its nature.
Humans are designed to love freedom from evolution.
That may be the reason that Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher and thinker, said “Every rational being has both an innate right to have and preserve freedom.”

No payments to make means more choices

I want to do whatever it takes to create that freedom because I know now that it unlocks so many potentials in our lives.
Not having mental restrictions, boundaries, and stress presents many choices.
And the fact is more choices obviously give more freedom.
More freedom gives peace in our mind.
Ultimately peace leads to joy.
And joy is nothing but the sense of fulfillment. Some of us might have somehow experienced it in some of its forms, fulfillment is what we all are striving for.

Author Deepak Chopra, MD, in his book “The Ultimate Happiness Prescription” says, “When we are happy and fulfilled, we make choices that naturally lead to success in various aspects of life.”

Restrictions, boundaries, and stress clutter the human mind.
No need to make payments is a big decluttering state, by which we will create more space in our mind.
When our mind isn’t preoccupied by limitations and financial stress, we can focus on things that we always put on hold, they were not important before but they become more important now.
Our priorities dramatically shift with intention.
You may ask what kind of priorities.
Like, we become more present with our kids, parents, and spouse at home.
We become more focussed even at our own work, projects, and any tasks that we really care about.
Words naturally come out of our mouth “I don’t have any obligations, this is just me, there would be no severe consequences of not finishing it as per specified date and time.”
Guess what happens, we enter into our creative zone.

Here is one example of what I experienced two years ago.
John Cleese, author of “Creativity”, explains about the power of the unconscious to solve creative problems from a creative zone.
Two years ago I was working on a research project at night, and couldn’t find a way to proceed. I gave up and went to bed.
Surprisingly, I discovered a beautiful way to proceed early in the morning.
I thought about what happened, I realized that my unconscious mind was working without me being consciously aware of it.
This kind of creativity pattern works at its maximum level when our mind is free from tension and stress.
Having the freedom to do anything creative that we like is the best success we ever achieve in this world.
But very few of us have this luxury.

No debts means deep goodnight sleep

We all have to make payments because we have debt in the name of mortgage, credit card, car payment, student loan, insurance, and personal loan, few major of them.
These are essential to survive but also the major life traps that we have in modern life.
Debt steals freedom from our paycheck.
Debt robs us our future freedom by demanding that we pay for the past.
Debt is our freedom killer.
Accept it or not, debt is a chief thief of our freedom.
Debt binds us in a certain situation, place, obligation, and we become a hamster on a wheel.

Stacy Johnson, author of “Life or Debt” says, “Destroying debt does not mean radically changing your lifestyle or giving up the things you love. It does mean taking charge of your financial freedom and making sure the money you earn goes to the things you care about.”

The harsh reality is that we will never win the time as long as we have to make payments for the decision we made in the past compounded with recurring interest.
Just today only, I had to skip my morning yoga because I had to attend an early meeting in my office.
I already compromised my health, my creativity, and my happiness for today.
These all seem intangible at the moment because I’m relatively young now, I can skip today, but they all become quite tangible pretty soon in my future life.
The hard truth is everything adds up in life, one piece at a time, that may be health, relationship, finance, and happiness.
It’s not just today or yesterday, they all will make a wheel and we will lose the battle over all of them.

As long as we continue justifying, rationalizing, and normalizing our life with these kinds of compromises we will always be suffering.
And suffering sucks.
In my view, normal is suffering.
Normal is living paycheck to paycheck all life.
Normal is working our whole life like a hamster on a wheel suppressing our inner desire.
Compromise is the worst form of suffering and it absorbs all of our mental energy, that’s what I experienced by skipping my morning yoga.
Skipping important tasks like building health and relationships is a compromise and gets us nowhere but in the zone of frustration and dissatisfaction.
Ask yourself, if you don’t have to make payments, do you skip the important tasks like yoga in the morning and your daughter’s parent teacher interaction?

No payments to make means more hope

Human psychology is amazing.
Every small win motivates us to keep going.
I started to believe in this process because I was getting this nice pat on my back called success.
As humans, this nice pat on the back is critical for changing our behaviours, habits, and to stay motivated.
When we do something difficult or for the first time, we need to see progress otherwise we’ll quit.

I always remember Florence Nightingale’s statement, “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.”

My personal experience, if we give or take any excuse in life, then there remains no more hope for progress.

We work on new things because there is hope that something will happen sometime in the near future.
Hope is psychology and it works.

Dave Ramsey, a finance expert and author of “The Total Money Makeover” says “winning with money is 80% behavior and 20% head knowledge.”
In my experience, winning in anything is 90 percent behaviour and habit, and only 10 percent knowledge.
I realized this only after completing multiple marathons in my life just by following daily habits.
I gained more hope for freedom once I reached the stage that there are no more car payments to make.

In my view, we notice at least four things when we achieve some level of freedom.
It could be something small like no more overtime work because we want to run in the evening or something bigger like no more car payments to make or something even more bigger like no more mortgage payments to make.

–We bring attraction. We become attracted to new people, new projects, and new places which are more aligned with our heart and mind. This happens because we have time to associate with them.
–We develop authority. We gradually develop authority because we learn a lot from our keen interests which we habituate from freedom. For example, I can teach beginner runners the different aspects of running like physical, psychological, physiological, dietary, and rest.
–We develop attachment. Now I have many runner friends with whom I’ve built a community.
–We take action immediately. Immediate action becomes our next friend. No waiting and no procastination because the key task remains very close to our heart. We decide quickly because we become serious about it.

No payments to make means more generosity

Each one of us has some kind of knowledge and expertise for what we do and what is important, no question about it, we only need consistent habits and generosity to show up.
Generosity is not a single word, it has physiological, emotional, and psychological consequences.
At the end of the day, if we have freedom to operate, we become more generous on anything that we want to achieve.

Stephen G Post, PhD, author of “Why Good Things Happen to Good People” found that when we become generous in anything, our brain produces happiness chemicals like dopamine and oxytocin.
Scientifically, it’s always better to give, to show up, to contribute than to receive.

Dr. Post’s research elaborates the astonishing connection between generosity and health.
It is so convincing that it will inspire all of us to change our lives in ways big or small.
A longer, healthier, and happier life awaits generosity and it can change each one of us in this world.

Generous attitude is inspiring and contagious.
It is the path of self-healing and growth for something larger than ourselves.
Research indicates that generosity lowers stress level because it is the main cause for chronic diseases and heart attacks.
Research also indicates that people who do volunteering at least four hours per week are less likely to develop blood pressure than those who don’t volunteer.
Volunteering is a generosity.

Conclusion

My daughter is in tenth grade and nowadays she does a lot of volunteering when time permits her and says “Generosity is human to human connection.”
I completely agree with her that humans are innately complex creatures yet always strive for simplicity.
Our challenge as humans is finding, understanding, and explaining our complexity in its most simplistic form.
Probably, that’s the reason Leonardo da Vinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Generosity is one way to make things simple in life.

I recently repaired my car in an auto repair shop.
I left the car all day in the repair shop, headed for the office to pick it up in the evening.
When I reached to pick up my car in the evening they returned my keys with a branded key chain encoded with their social media icon.
Excellent marketing, isn’t it?
But what I saw is a big generosity in marketing but I’am pretty confident it works because they are being very generous to their customers.
In my opinion, generosity is being entrepreneurial.
I love TedTalk from Adam Baker, his inspiring story: Sell your crap. Pay your debt. Do what you love.
I recommend to watch.

I don’t know who said it but it’s worth repeating here, “True happiness is a bank account with zero balance, not because you have no money, but because you have no bills to pay.”

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.”

Sometimes I look back to my life and what I see is very interesting but not quite satisfying.
All the time I was working on many tasks because somebody assigned me to perform.
Honestly, I’m still working on this model because I’m an employee. No question about it.
All the way back from middle school to now, I’m doing tasks because someone somewhere assigned me to do and I did them wholeheartedly.
So the question came to my mind is what did I assign myself to perform?
To be honest, a lot of time, nothing.
I didn’t assign anything to me.

Self-assigned tasks develop superpower

I wonder why our life is designed this way? Does anybody not like to assign anything for themselves?
Have you ever assigned any task to yourself and finished?
In my whole past life, somebody gave me a task, gave details on what and how to do, gave some scopes, responsibilities, directions, possible scenarios of outcomes if done successfully and, I obeyed them and finished all the time based on my capacity.

Now in this phase of my life, of course, I do what others told me to do as a part of my life for many reasons, but I also want to do something which is purely assigned to me by myself.

For example, this morning, I did fifteen minutes of breathing practice.
What I did was I inhaled oxygen from my nose and exhaled from my mouth.
Nobody told me to do it but I did.
I felt relaxed and felt really good throughout the day.
Remember the research proven facts of breathing exercise.
-Healthier blood pressure
-Lower inflammation
-Increase resilience to stress and anxiety
-Deeper focussed work

Do you know what is the number one regret that people have on death bed?
If you don’t know, here it is.
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

If we don’t care what other people think then we are developing superpower.
True superpower.
If we all harness this superpower, we will bring more peace, joy and satisfaction in life.
And, obviously, we will reduce a lot of stress and anxiety coming from this fast paced world.
If we practice this habit, I’m sure there wouldn’t be much regret on deathbed.

Most of the time the source of regret appears in later parts of life in different forms as follows.
-“I did things in the past which I never wanted to do actually, I don’t know why I did.”
-“I wasted my money, time, energy, and resources which I never wanted to waste but I did and I don’t know why.”
-“I did a lot of things to impress the people around me, most of whom left me a long time ago and some of them I left consciously.”

Bronnie Ware, the author of the internationally bestselling memoir “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”, says, “Once we acknowledge that limited time is remaining, although we don’t know if that is years, weeks or hours, we are less driven by ego or by what other people think. Instead, we are more driven by what our hearts truly want.” Bronnie Ware spreads purpose and meaning of life, watch her TedTalk ” Regret-Free Living.”

Writing and self-assigned task

Another example, this piece of writing which I’m doing at the moment, nobody told me to write but I am writing.
This writing is purely for me, for my satisfaction, for my curiosity and clarity, and for my peace of mind.
I am just doing it for myself.
Nobody gave me topics, objectives, scopes, outlines, timelines, and any other directions whatsoever.
It’s pure me coming out of my mind.
It could be anything in your life that you really want to do and enjoy doing.
If you are able to make it successful, create value and monetize it and make a profession; outstanding.
If not in that level, this would be amazing self-satisfaction, many of us rarely taste it.

Nowadays, I talk to a lot of people at my regular work. I talk to my family, friends, kids, customers, clients, boss, coworkers all the time.
I go shopping, do online work, meet people online and offline, sometimes on the street or on different occasions.
And somewhere somehow something triggers my mind, I find topics to write about which may not be interesting for others but for me it looks interesting.
This is my lifestyle now, this writing is assigned to me by me for my satisfaction, that’s it.
This is the only way I know we find happiness and joy in life, this happiness is purely personal, at least that’s how I’m experiencing it.

For me now, regular writing is becoming another part of a self assigned task in my life.
Writing for me is a combination of art, science, and storytelling.
It is the blend of my creativity, analysis, and data.
It is my mixture of emotion and intuition.
I’m a scientist so I lean more towards the science side of writing, it gives me more room to experiment and explore.

Writing in the world of FAANG

Writing is about connecting with people as one partner in society and current technology is helping to connect people in different ways.
Just think of the world now without FAANG, the term popularized by Jim Cramer, the author of “Get Rich Carefully”: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google.
You might feel the world is at a standstill and everything looks flat without FAANG.

There were, there are, and there will be people doing the work of writing even after the age of AI.
Some people are always writers and always trying to connect other people who are readers like you and me.
Through FAANG, the new writing on the web, the digital writing is very useful and sophisticated now, through one click message spreads across the globe instantly.
These new technologies are helping to make the human connection more and more faster and stronger if we use them properly.
They are checking our attention all the time, 24/7.
For example, Google Ads alone collects almost more than 30 billion impressions in a day.
These human relationships help to drive innovations and discoveries faster than ever.
So the key is that technologies are becoming a more and more essential tool to make human relationships productive and innovative to bring value and help solving problems.

As a writer, my job is not to understand the technology but to understand the people, synthesize my life experiences with them and help to solve their problems, if possible.

Remember, playing on the ground is more fun than thinking or watching from the side.
Because you become a doer not a bystander.
I used to read a lot and still read a lot, but just reading others’ content felt like I’m watching the game from outside.
Why not synthesize my own education, training, and life experiences with society and offer to others?

I started this self-assigned writing assignment by thinking how to make myself into the ground, not necessarily for winning.
Once I started this journey I found that it is way more fun than never having stepped on into the middle ground at all.
We always think of only the end result in mind, but the process of moving towards the ground and doing the actual stuff is more powerful.

Minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years. They pass by, and we never notice them passing.
The real joy is in the process without knowing how time passed by, and then we reach into a finished product.
I am connecting this not only to my writing task but also to my long distance running habit.
I run each mile slowly, enjoying what comes in my mind, no need to finish a certain distance by a certain timeframe, just true joy of moving my body, passing the trees on the side, just running at a comfortable pace.

Self-assigned task and life priorities

Different people have different priorities in life.
I had seven priorities in my life before: health, finance, relationships, family, passions, spirituality, and happiness.
But now, I have one more in the middle somewhere: writing.

Health is my first self-assigned priority, so I always assign some tasks related to health to myself each day and everyday.
Recently, I’ve developed one habit of walking and talking at the same time for brain-oxygenation to unlock creative ideas.
This is also helping me a lot in my writing.
I also like to read while walking in the living room for at least 30 minutes everyday when I find suitable situations at home.
I like to talk on the phone while walking, I never talk on the phone while sitting.
I like to listen to music while cooking, doing dishes, and laundry.
There is a difference between practical ideas and creative ideas.
In my experience, walking or running helps to separate these thoughts and ideas to make them more concrete, realistic, and useful.
Remember, when we walk or run
-It helps in our blood flowing throughout the body, especially the brain.
-It helps to lubricate the joints to improve our mobility.
-It helps to build strength all over the body.
-It helps to increase energy and improves balance and coordination throughout the body.
-It helps to enhance cardiovascular and bone health.
-It helps to bring new ideas and innovative thoughts to our mind because you are not sitting with your static mind.
-It helps to bring the slow thinking process ahead of fast thinking to avoid possible mistakes.

Nowadays, I am learning to take a day off on a regular week so that I can make a move in my mind to reject the traditional weekend mindset.
It’s the richest form of life teaching us how to move through the preoccupied mindset like weekend off as an example.

The other day I assigned myself one hour and thirty minutes to watch the documentary “Becoming Warren Buffett,” alone at home on midday Tuesday, a weekday.
I wanted to watch it as a focussed task, a self-assigned task, not as entertainment.
While watching the documentary, I emailed one of my friends to watch it and told him that if you want some nuggets from Warren Buffett this is your greatest resource.
After watching this, the biggest nuggets I got myself from the documentary are.
-We have to lead with competence all the time, not with mediocrity.
-Patience wins over haste in life.
-We have to engage with focus and deep work with solid facts in hand.
-Don’t blame others but conduct brutal analysis to know what went wrong.
-Always look for people who are self-motivated because it’s hard to motivate other people. If we have the right people they will always be self-motivated.

Conclusion

Do you know what is the antidote of confidence in life?
For me, it is humility, I learned from the documentary “Becoming Warren Buffett”.
Humility is the acceptance that I’m not the exception.
It is the reality check that I’ve limits and boundaries in life.
At the end of the day, humility wins over confidence.
That’s what Warren Buffett’s whole life is all about. If you really want to go little deeper on Warren Buffett, read an article by Bill Gates in Harvard Business Review.

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.” 

“Are we spending money on my dress or yours?” my wife said.
“On my dress,” I said.
“You’re so selfish, I knew that,” she exclaimed.
“You never cook, you never do dishes and house chores, this is why I’m always in tension and pressure,” she continued.
“Don’t use that tone and bring those things up with me now,” I reacted.
“Don’t even go with my tone, you silly.”
“If you roll your eyes one more time like that, I’m leaving this house,” she bombarded.

This was a small glimpse of my life fifteen years ago on Saturday morning.
After the heated argument, I left the room and entered another room, closed my eyes and started to count my breath in and breathe out for five minutes.
When we close our eyes, we see another world which remains a little more authentic and peaceful.
The problem was with me.

I realized multiple times before, but could not implement.
Why couldn’t I listen to her? My mind always asks me even today.
My internal echo answers, If I couldn’t show my wife I was listening, I probably wouldn’t get married in the first place.
My life is a little bit different now but still sometimes heated discussions and arguments with my wife have been a part of life.
Nowadays, I read everyday in the news that America’s divorce rate is skyrocketing.
I know the truth that every couple they fight, every couple has some kind of conflict.
But, for many couples, conflicts are storms that appeared and then dissipated, leaving behind only clean blue sky.
I also did a small research within my closed circle of friends directly and indirectly.
What I found is interesting.
I found that most unhappy couples fight for money, health, and alcohol and drug problems which are, I think, bigger issues for them.
But I also found that many happy couples also fight for reasons like attitude, sex, and miscommunication.
They also fight over matters like where to go for vacation this year and in which sport activity their son and daughter are supposed to be.
So, the truth is, most of the couples fight, and the reasons for fighting are inherently related to communication problems.

Controlling someone vs controlling emotions

Fifteen years ago I had a different problem, I wanted to control my wife and this happened because I would lose patience.
But now, I know patience doesn’t come naturally, I need to practice it over and over.
I think, trying to control someone, not only the spouse but anybody, means it is an invitation for more battle.
In any conflict, everyone craves for control, this is a natural human tendency.
But trying to control someone is very destructive and toxic.
We humans are born to be free from origin, this is how we have progressed through evolution.
Research data shows that when somebody wants to control us, we want to confront it, our blood pressure can rise, our body can flood with stress hormones and we might start looking for ways to escape or fight back.

Over the years, I have developed more self control and self awareness by controlling my emotions.
I take breaks for deep breathing and I pause and speak slowly if I am about to initiate the verbal argument.
If I focus on controlling myself, my environment, and the conflict itself, then only I initiate real conversation.
And I learned that only real conversation leads to understanding rather than winning the fight.
Controlling our emotions is all about discipline and personal development more than anything else.

Marriage and communication

Marriage lasts longer if we know how to communicate with our spouse, sometimes practically and sometimes philosophically.
Why do you think people get married?
Just curious.
I’m sure you all have multiple answers for this.
Among many answers, one truth for me is we need somebody to witness our lives.
Remember, there are eight billion people on earth, and when we get married, we are promising to care for everything about our spouse, successes and failures, the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things, all of them all day and every day.
This is the promise of marriage.
Your life will not go unnoticed because your spouse will be your witness, he or she will witness and notice all of your life.

For the fast thinking mind, the answer looks philosophical but when you close your eyes, the answer makes sense to you, what we generally call slow thinking mind. Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner psychologist, has given us a phenomenal book, “Thinking fast and slow” about human mind and how fast and slow mind works when we operate.

According to my research and reading, one reason marriage crumbles is because we don’t know how to communicate properly.
Communication could be verbal as well as non verbal.
One of my non verbal communications is to try to be non reactive as much as possible, and ask permission from my wife for future time for more discussion and to go for an outdoor walk or run.

My perception on my wife hasn’t changed since joining the running club, but my approach to the house conversation definitely has.
I think conversations, especially deep conversation, is the key, it looks easy from the surface but needs a lot of homework, courage, and time.
I want to sit and talk and have these difficult conversations about our family all day long now.
Beside courage and setting aside time, the only skill we have to nurture is how to be patient with our spouse during conversations.
Just be a little bit more patient, that’s it, it gives rewards not only for us but also for our kids because they will gradually learn about a valuable asset of life.
Patience enhances our listening power, and that opens many more doors later on in life.

Listening to a spouse means letting him or her tell their story and then, even if you don’t agree with him or her, trying to understand why he or she feels that way.
It’s hard to metabolize another person’s perspective in just one or two conversations.
Husband-wife relationships don’t usually resolve quickly because we have known each other for a very long time.
Eventually conflicts resolve if we practice patience and time for deep multiple conversations.

Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of ‘Supercommunicators’ says, “There is a science behind how human beings connect to each other and we can all learn to be supercommnicators at work and in life.”

Differences bring more values

As we all know, it’s a complicated world.
We’re eight billion people on the planet with different genomes.
Obviously, we all are different by many many factors and, I think, that difference is our main asset.
If you want to figure out who you are as a husband, then you need a wife who is different from you.
Similarly, if you want to figure out who you are as a wife then you also need a husband who is different from you.
When we embrace how our spouse sees the world and their identities within it, amazing things start to appear in our mind.

When we listen to their specific stories and acknowledge their feelings, we start to understand why two of us, who otherwise agree about so much, might see some aspects of life so differently.
Because we came from different genomes, so obviously we have some dissimilar backgrounds.
We need to explore these things very frankly in a cordial environment.
I begin to appreciate how our world has been shaped by our upbringing, education, race, religion, caste, ethnicity, geography, and other identities.
Talking about our differences is important if we are to begin to move beyond these blights.

One thing I learnt over the years, it is not our differences that divide us but it is our inability to recognize, accept and celebrate those differences that divide us.

I think how we structure everything in life that makes the difference.
We all have different identities, and these identities become more important than husband-wife fighting because our identities are related to overall family prosperity.
The bottom line, I think, is we are all people who want to do the right thing for our families and societies, regardless of other differences, we have that in common.

I don’t know about you but my aim as a husband is not to be a perfect husband, my aim is for curiosity and understanding so that my family flows with our differences.
I am quite aware we can not make the goal of perfection, because if we are looking for perfection, we never become authentic.
My goal is to stay and continue my conversation with my wife so that I can find a space for learning and supporting each other.
Even though I disagree with my wife, I want to show I respect each other’s right to be heard.
We are not here to convince someone to change their mind.

Harvard’s research on relationship and happiness

By education, profession, and training I am a scientist so my mind always looks for evidence, data, and proofs. I am like that, so here is one.
Harvard university has seven decades of research data on relationship, it says “The people who were the most satisfied in their relationship at age 50 were the healthiest, mentally and physically, at age 80”.

Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School, says, “Human connection is our superpower. Good relationships help us get through life’s inevitable challenges, and they keep us happier and healthier.” His TedTalk is a must watch for everybody.
The most important influence for the most flourishing life is “deep love.”
Learning to love pays the most dividend throughout our lives.
The Harvard data from 2023 summary says, “Good relationships keep us healthier and happier.”
These relationships remain alive by long and intimate discussions and conversations.
These discussions can change our brains, bodies, and how we experience the world.

Conclusion

Beside all of these, still sometimes,
I half-listen to my wife.
I tell my kids not to ask more questions, the background is I’m still a little bit upset with my wife because she said something to me which I don’t like.
I ignore a good idea from my wife because I think I already have a good idea inside me.
I become a little reactive too soon too quickly on her statement.
But nowadays she always says, “I’m getting a lot better but still I have to go a long way.”

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.” 

First and foremost, I’d like to thank my younger brother who also flew from Copenhegan to home on my request.
We both wanted to visit our dad this time.
Though it was a short three week trip, it was very worthwhile.
For the last many years, I visited my home every year but this was a different experience for me to go back home from Chicago thinking a lot different about my dad than previous years.

My dad is very old now, he is 92.
By the grace of God, he is still active with all normal activities, not any chronic disease or any disorder except normal minor aging issues.
My dad was very interested in talking and inquisitive in many past years.

Neural simultaneity between father and son

But time is different now, he wanted to talk to us about many things but he had a hard time to finish sentences as well as synchronize what he was trying to say.
But still I was absorbing what he was saying.
I would comprehend what he said because my brain aligned with him all the time.
At many moments, I also noticed that his body, pulse, facial expression would synchronize with me, probably due to the same genes.
This all was happening due to the same body chemistry, and, of course, this was neural simultaneity between us.
Sometimes, I also felt, I would mirror his speaking and listening style.
I really felt the essence of dad and son bonding that nature has given to all of us, if we go deeper in our conversation and listening.
I felt like I was the happiest son in the world when he would stare at me with no words in his mouth.
I would ask do you want to say something?
He would nod meaning ‘no’.
I wanted to know how to live a more meaningful life from his life perspective.
And, of course, he was sharing many things by his expressions rather than words.
He would try to say a lot but his memory and mouth didn’t allow that much but I understood completely what he was trying to say.

On this visit, I couldn’t talk much to him because he was gradually losing a lot of his memories.
And, I also realized probably this is normal considering his age, I don’t know, I am doing some research on it at the moment.
I tried to remind him about trips, occasions, and activities that we had taken together.
I asked questions about my grandmother but mostly he replied with short but emotional answers.
I had no idea what was going through his mind.
The last time I had known about memory loss was when my maternal grandmother was reaching 100 years old.
I had read but never thought this before that when our brain becomes older, we forget things so fast.
And I am seeing this in patterns continuously with my old family members, at least I saw it in my paternal grandmother, my maternal grandfather, my maternal grandmother, and now slowly catching up to my dad.

Fatherhood and responsibility

At one point, my dad was talking about the challenges of juggling work and fatherhood.
“It was a continuous struggle,” he said.
He recalled his struggle to raise us and was trying to correlate this with my three kids that I am raising now.
He always felt as if he was letting someone down, having to choose between a good social worker or a good dad.

At that moment, I tried to correlate my dad to our former president Barack Obama’s journey into adulthood, his search for community and his place in that community that I read in his book.
In “Dreams from My Father” the former president and author Barack Obama says, “sometimes you can’t worry about hurt, sometimes you worry only about getting where you have to go.”

I quickly understood that my dad was indicating my mom and how much responsibilities she took to raise us.

I realized that father-son conversations are the most powerful thing on earth.
This conversation between us was not just a fun and formal conversation.
It was an act of humility and respect, a pure learning experience for me.
It was also a conversation of pain and suffering along with time and progression of our family.
Once he talked about Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, though he couldn’t remember these names, I was amazed.
The beauty of electricity, electric lights, the telephone, the radio, the refrigerator, and the automobile, all the buzz and the news, his life went through.
He was pointing to my smart phone that I used everyday to talk in video calls from Chicago.

He said, “The world was changing the way in which I went about my life, and the population was soaring to unimaginable heights.”
According to him, since the early 1800s, there had been waves of immigration, but the trend was now accelerating like it never had before.
He was trying to connect his intention to me and my younger brother’s movements as we both live in America and Europe now.

During this trip, I spent the whole three weeks at home in Jhapa with my parents.
I asked my dad many questions which were kind of short and they often had a conversational dead end after a sentence of his answer.
I asked him questions like which place is best to live, Jhapa or Terhathum?
Do you remember your school?
I completely understood that these questions didn’t create any values or experiences for him.
They didn’t invite any vulnerabilities.
But when I asked him, “What do you like about our family to live in Jhapa?”
He said, “friendship and struggle.”
That question excited him to share his preferences, beliefs, and values that he nurtured with our family in Jhapa.
It made him emotional.
He went with a long answer with back and forth conversation.
I asked him, “how many of your friends are still around?”
He replied, “most of them already became dear to God, I don’t remember anybody now.”

Emotions and father-son bonding

Emotions are critical for any lasting conversation especially between aging dad and son.
This was guiding me what he was saying and how I was hearing and in a lot of cases without me realizing that we both were emotional.
I was in his emotions so that I was purely listening.
I was listening to what he was not saying so that I was revealing beneath the surface of his words.

I was recalling Elaine Clayton, an artist and the author of “The Way of the Empath” where she says, “an empath’s life is not an ordinary life, it requires the strength of a lion, because it takes real courage to be empathic.”

I was reading my dad’s expressions and gestures, not words.
I don’t know why, maybe from experience I was listening without thinking about what my dad was saying because he was talking about very intimate things about our family.
He was trying to join all the small pieces of our family together.
The lessons I learned from this visit from my dad are immense.
It’s almost impossible to express in this small piece of writing.

Conclusion

But one learning that I would like to share with you all is this: If you want to connect with someone, especially with old people like dad or mom or granddad or grandmom, ask them what they are feeling at the moment, and then reveal your own emotions with them.
This conversation with my dad became a tool by inviting him to reveal his vulnerabilities and then I also became vulnerable in return.

Charles Duhigg, author of “Supercommunicators” says “if we acknowledge someone else’s vulnerability, and become vulnerable in return, we build trust, understanding, and connection.”

Exactly the way Duhigg mentions, I also revealed something about me as my dad’s son which I never revealed before.
I revealed we humans are amazing creatures.
We all crave for real connections whatever our situations are and how far we are.
We all want meaningful conversations whatever the age is especially when we are retired and stay at home with our family.
Thank you so much dad for everything that you have done for our family.
I love you and see you soon.
Happy Father’s Day everyone.

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.” 

Whoever you may be: step into the evening. Step out
of the room where everything is known to you already….
-Poem by Rilke

When did you feel happy last time?
Have you ever realized or experienced it?
You never know when and how it appears.
The truth is, enlightenment of happiness doesn’t come only with philosophical reading, it might come with a very short conversation with our friend with the quality of tea in the tea shop.
It’s amazing when our subconscious mind recognizes it.

I’ve had some experiences with it.
I’ve found some unusual inner realization about happiness and, of course, it’s not about monetary, prestige or any grand achievement in life.
It’s happiness not in something I gained material but in something I lost.
You might be surprised once you attain it.
I’ve found the most happy moment when I lost myself in something else, actually, when I lost myself in something to find myself.

Running and my happiness

Here’s how I found one.
When I was thirteen years old, I started running in middle school.
I had no athletic gift, nor family history in running, nothing like that.
I just started to run, teachers pushed me a little bit with encouragement, that’s it.
I ran in many school competitions, I didn’t win a lot but I felt really good when I used to run.
I ran through middle school to high school and local tournaments.
No one around me including my family and friends asked me to run, no one wanted it actually.
But the sense of happiness I felt during those years remains resonant to this day.
I didn’t understand back then because I wasn’t mentally mature to understand.
It’s hilarious when I reflect back and visualize those moments.

Through my undergraduate to graduate school, I didn’t run at all but jog a lot due to various reasons.
I would say life happened so I became busy with many other things.
Actually, I didn’t find any environment in college to run, I kind of forgot about running.

Fifteen years later, I am not a much better runner now than I was then, but something followed me constantly inside without my pure realization.
I don’t know why and how I resumed my running again.
I realized that what sustains me in my life is my moment of interiority when I run and finish it.
What excites me in my present running is the moment when I forget other tasks of my present life or give up some tasks just for running regularly.

You might not believe I’ve read Haruki Murakami’s book three times “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running“. Such a fantastic book, if you love running, don’t miss it. What a gem!

In the book, Haruki Murakami says, “All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.”

Sometimes we think that getting something tangible will make us happy.
What do you think?
Maybe it won’t be for some people.
Or maybe it will be for others, I don’t know.
I think for many people, maybe it’ll give them more power because they just might feel pride for taking some control on something they like.

One thing I’ve noticed is that doing something hard that interests us can still be rewarding for us.
Hard remains hard only in the beginning after that it becomes our ritual and if we follow that ritual then comes immense pleasure.
I can correlate this when I ran my first half marathon after a few 5Ks and 10Ks.
I had never run 13.1 miles before.
But the feeling of pride and satisfaction after finishing the run changed everything.

Habit is a muscle: an origin of happiness

Gradually, I developed a running habit as a muscle.
More I work on it, the stronger it becomes.
I believe it applies to any activity that we do in life regularly.
The pride inside us pushes us further when we finish it and forces us to repeat it again.
The more we feel pride about it, the more we become sensible and responsible, and we become a part of our routine and ritual, which I realized is another ingredient of happiness.

When I run I feel pride in my mind and a kind of rushing in my body.
I make many of my mitochondria, the batteries of our body, a lot happier by running.

Remember, all the mitochondria in a cell are in contact, communicating with each other about what is going on in their part of the cell.
They know everything, they know what we are doing: sleeping, eating, running, relaxing.
They know all the activities, they influence the activity of the cell and get it to send signals to our body.
Running has become my self-directed accomplishment, no matter how absurd it may sound to outsiders, it has become a foundation of my sense of self and sense of happiness.
Losing myself in an all absorbing running, I’ve become myself.
The feeling of accomplishment by running, becomes another truth in my happiness.
As I move in my age, I feel this sensation more potent.

You don’t know your happiness until you try

Nowadays I always tell the younger generation that we should always be on the lookout for right opportunities for body and mind, and we always stress getting what we’re worth.
When was the last time that you were presented with an opportunity to try something you liked but you didn’t try for some reason?
What’s something that you have always wanted to learn about but never try?
If you are turning something down because you’re not good at it or you know nothing about it.
Then you are not only cutting off any opportunity to learn or get better at it but also blocking your own inner growth and happiness.
Because you never know where your happiness is.
And to grow inside is to be happy.

What is supposed to be the habit of being happy?
I think it is a habit of mental growth in any area, personal, professional, vocational, hobby, whatever?
Habit of mental growth means we troubleshoot, pivot, fail, we try again and troubleshoot again because we love to do it.
Every attempt becomes a lesson to help us in the next adventure, no pressure and no time bound.
For example, when I started running, I didn’t know how to breathe from my mouth which is essential for long distance running, but eventually it became normal.

We just have to risk failing but still it gives us inner satisfaction.
There could be something on the other side of our fear that will be so damn great, that I experienced when I passed the finish line of my first marathon.
We just have to start doing what we like and then have tenacity to stick with it.
Giving up midway would be like turning the stove off just before the water boils.
The one thing we can rely on in life is the force of doing and repeating things that interests us as we get older, and as we age.

There is a difference between achievement and accomplishment especially when we age.
Ambition is a good thing at all times, especially if it is the drive that lets our accomplishment turn into a vocation.
We all have to make a living doing some work, and one of the worst things in life is making a living doing something we hate to do.
This would never be the happy ending of life, this would be the only thing to talk about as a regret later in life.
This is not my personal experience because I’m not there yet, but I’ve heard, read, and experienced multiple such stories when I talk to older people.
They look depressed and sad when they share their past stories.

There is no ending in happiness

There is no such thing as happily ever after in real life.
There is just after.
And more after if we’re lucky.
It’s up to us to face every moment with a challenge and joy to do our best and to make the most of it.
Every attempt is a chance to recalibrate and reflect.
Sometimes, especially in the ups and downs of life, all of us forget what will truly make us happy.
That’s ok, it’s normal.
It’s in the mistakes and in the challenges that we can discover and rediscover our happy hormones.

All of our thoughts, feelings, diets, and habits are interconnected. Understanding this connection is key in life.
In my past life, I would think I have nothing to be excited and I would never get better at anything.
This thought would bring me feelings of sadness, frustration, and sedentary life.
Then rather than go for a run or walk, I would decide to stay home and bring more unnecessary harmful thoughts in my mind.
The more I would avoid physical activity outside, the weaker I would feel.
My thought would say, “I will never get better.”
And then would come my feeling- “Sad, angry, frustrated, lazy.”
And then I would change my behavior and habits, “I would stay at home instead of going out for a run.”
This is a glimpse of my past life experience, a vicious cycle of life-trap.
If you have a similar life-trap, you need to disrupt this feedback loop to be happy in life.

Charles Duhigg‘s book “The Power of Habit” is one of the best resources for how habits are formed, how to kick bad ones out and hang on to the good ones.

Conclusion

Remember, being happy isn’t all about adding positives for better results, it’s also about nullifying the negatives wherever possible on the life road.
Life doesn’t come with traffic signs and exits, it’s a freeway without any speed limit, traffic lights and signals, we have to make those all of them ourselves.
By sharing this joy of riding with others, we’ll always be happy.
First we must be happy ourselves and we have to make happiness a mutual thing with others.

Mutual happiness teaches us mutual reliance, what matters most to our happiness is the strength of our connections to family and close friends.
The good thing is happiness is an adhesive and an expander.
First we share happiness with our parents and spouse or children, just within a family,
then with our close friends,
and then with a small group of people around us,
and finally with a bigger audience circle.
Ultimately, we go outside and make the world happy.

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.” 

“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.”
– Jim Rohn

In March of 2020, my whole family including me had Covid.
Then, about six months later, I again had Covid.
Then, about one year later, Covid invited me again.
I don’t understand why Covid attacked my body so much even though I consider myself a pretty healthy person.
After this I began to have a new experience of minor pain in one of my internal organ spleen, I suffered from partial thrombosis in the spleen.

I consulted many medical professionals including hematologist and oncologists, they cured my partial thrombosis but nobody found out the cause despite many medical tests and interventions.
My emotional state was being impacted so I started to become more curious about what’s going on in my body.
I started researching and reading many different books and medical journals, basically related to medicine, exercise, physiology, mind-body relationship, and nutrition.
Reading many books had a very deep positive effect on my knowledge, thinking, habit, and most importantly, the perception about health and life.
If we become unhealthy and ill then nothing remains important in life, every other achievement or success in life just becomes empty.

After reading many books, I realized there are only certain things that we can control but many things are beyond our control, for example, genetic diseases.
Sometimes, genetics is also contributed by environment, personal history, education, poverty, and community characteristics.

Moreover, I understood that our healthcare system is misguided in treating illness as an isolated case and taking medication for an isolated case only approach.
In reality, any illness responds best to treatments that consider the whole body and underlying causes.
But, in many cases, especially in finding causes and origin of illness, science is not there yet, we have to wait and see how fast we can make progress because our biological body is inherently complex.
There’s just so many unknowns and limitations.

Good habit is a compound interest

Eventually, reading multiple books written by specialists helped me to develop many different habits.
I started doing yoga regularly.
I used to run long distances everyday before which I changed to walking and running every alternate day.
I started doing ten to twenty minutes of meditation practice everyday no matter what early in the morning before starting my day.

I looked at how I became a different person after coping with Covid and health challenges that I’d been dealing with.
And I just try to remind myself of the knowledge, tools, and skills that I learned from different books written by specialists.
Utilizing them by taking action in life, especially by making a simple habit change is the key, and it is very powerful.
Any good habit in life contributes tremendously because we compound its benefits over time, but practicing these activities collectively is what makes a big difference.

We overestimate what a tiny good habit can do in a week or month but we underestimate what it can do in years from now.
I always say a good healthy habit- I don’t say just habit, I say a good healthy habit, if we follow everyday, shows an astounding compounding effect on the whole body in the future.

James Clear, the author of the “Atomic Habits” says “Success is the product of daily habits-not once-in a lifetime transformations.

I can share a simple personal experience.
If you have poor sleep, that obviously increases inflammation in your body and that eventually becomes chronic if not taken the proper steps on time.
But as a simple solution, if you start to take a more plant based diet as a simple habit change, then inflammation decreases gradually, it doesn’t happen overnight but it will happen eventually.
This is the power of daily habit which compounds over time.
If we make small positive changes to our daily habits, thoughts, and routines; that can have profound effects on the well being of our body.

Habit, value measurement and price

We take everything for granted in life.
We try to value everything in life as much as we can.
But, it’s harder to quantify being a healthy dad or healthy mom or a healthy son or a healthy friend.
How do you quantify these values?
I am a scientist so I want to quantify these values otherwise it is just a vague idea.

One way I do this is compare the progress with time like day, month, year whatever it could be.
We have been hypnotized into the thinking that we can measure the value of our lives by our net worth.
If we look at the empirical evidence, people who make $1 million a year are only incrementally happier than McDonald’s workers who make less than 30K a year.

This statement is not from me, this is from research finding.
Sometimes we find that some people have a lot of money but they don’t have anything else except money because they value everything on money, they sacrifice everything including health for money.
I have worked and experienced these types of people in my life, this is the life trap we should be aware of.

Last month I met one of my high school teachers in a hospital and he said he loved traveling and spending time with loved ones and the family.
He loves to read inspiring stories, biography and history books and wants to travel but he can not do so now because he has to be in the hospital most of the time.

My teacher said, “I didn’t see the value in free things in life. I didn’t value napping, walking, running, and reading when I was young. These were free when I was young. I can’t do all of these now because my ill body doesn’t allow me to do that anymore.”
“Any long illness like mine can mean a demanding life struggle to survive only, this struggle is my full time job now and it’s hard for me,” he added.

Neural connections and positive thoughts

When we become positive, we turn into more positivity as the saying goes positivity creates more positivity, this is another secret sauce of life.
The longer we focus on a positive thing, the more we linger on a happy moment in life.
Then more likely our brain will create a neural pathway for more positivity.
The brain is a superhighway system in our body, the neural network that controls emotions, pain, and movement are like roads.

We generally think of these networks as isolated roads, but they are actually highly interconnected.
So we need more positivity inside us to be healthy.
We have a natural inclination to obsess more over negative thoughts especially of past events, but it’s our evolutionary gift to keep us alive but it doesn’t make us happy and healthy so we have to practice positivity regularly.

For example, research says for every negative thought that you have, think of four good things you’ve accomplished in life.

Life learning experiences and introspection automatically teaches us how to be happy and healthy in life.
Sometimes these experiences would be different on an individual basis but the theme is the same: enjoy the present moment and cherish it wholeheartedly with good healthy habits.
Experience the results physically, mentally, and spiritually by taking actions.

Life is one step at a time

These are some of my personal experiences to explore life and create habit.
Be kind and generous.
Read many different kinds of books that you like, by reading many books we live more than one life which is the essence of living.
Spend time with your family as much as you can, these are the only people on the planet who care about you.

Talk to your real friends more often and do activities with them frequently, learn to know the difference between real and fake friends. Surround yourself with uplifting, supportive friends. Some friends bring you down, they are fake.

Go to the beach and play volleyball with your kids.
Go long distance running or hiking with your loved one or spouse on Sunday morning, you both live different lives on that day because of the hormone produced by exercise.

Kiss your cat or dog and talk to them with eye contact, they respond to your feelings with universal language and unconditional love.
Surprise your grandpa and grandma with their favorite food, and watch the overwhelming love and care in their eyes for you.
Meditate five minutes for seven days if you have never done meditation before and feel the differences in your body and mind.

Take little time and effort to connect with another human being especially different from your profession or society.
These are nothing but the ingredients for a happy life which eventually lead to a healthy life and they don’t cost a lot of money.
It’s just a way of living and a choice of a happy lifestyle.

Remember, we invest a lot in our careers and pursuit of wealth, but we don’t care about our body.
We need to invest more in our health otherwise all the careers, wealth, stocks and vacation homes won’t be of any use.
We need to be happy in the face of work, career, life pressures, and it is possible only if we take better care of our body and mind.
And, one more time, it doesn’t cost a lot of money, it only needs a little bit of self-discipline and intention.

In today’s modern technology world, we are sleepwalking through life and ignoring the most valuable thing about our life: being happy and healthy.
We just have to start and go with the momentum of the body and mind.
At some point our body and mind speak with us, we just have to understand that language, for that we have to listen very carefully to what they are saying.
After listening, changing just one small bad habit into a good habit can create a chain of reactions in a positive way affecting so many other habits.

Any new habit looks like restriction in the beginning, but eventually it can provide freedom, the value of which can not be measured.
Freedom for us to be true to our life goals.
Freedom for us to see our life without any guilt.
Freedom from debating every little life issue that we encounter.
With a small right habit, our life will get a purpose and meaning.
We will be living, enjoying, and cherishing life with intention bringing well-being, content, and prosperity together.

Today’s fast changing world has taught us to chase and spend money in the pursuit of happiness.
But once we become exhausted with plummeting blood sugar, the pursuit of happiness changes into a chronic problem.
Health does not become wealth in our twenties and thirties, but when we touch forty we realize it.
Once we realize it, it is already late, then the only time we have is to regret, we know regret does not solve the problem.

Conclusion

We know that science doesn’t have the answer to every problem yet, but there are many common lifestyle habits that can minimize many life risks.
Many times, healing is not only dependent on pharmaceuticals but on the understanding of the body, mind, and spirit.
Body, mind, and spirit asks nothing else, just a little extra time with us.
This is nothing but becoming aware of our body, also called “mindfulness”.
Just keep in mind, good health is nothing but a good lifestyle and ongoing journey.

A good and healthy lifestyle is a process created by many tiny habits, not always a destination.
A good healthy habit is about reclaiming our identity, managing our thought process, and becoming empowered to build the life we deserve.
Our health is an investment and worthy of our effort and long term planning.
Let’s figure out where we are now and where we want to be.
Remember, for most humans, any kind of change is hard, but it’s normal, gain confidence by starting.
Just take a small action step, give it a try.

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.” 

“Intentional living is the art of making our own choices before others’ choices make us.”
– Richie Norton

Many years ago, I was with my wife in a mall to buy a wool coat to escape the winter in Columbus, Ohio.
My wife asked me, “Is that wool coat really worth $100?”
“If you decide to buy it, the answer is yes; If you decide not to buy it, the answer is no,” I replied.
“Your decision is based on your feelings about the coat, its price, and the money that you have at the moment. You make the decision by incorporating your feelings and these other factors about the coat,” I added.

Whether or not we’re conscious of it, we compare our precise benefit of anything from owning it with its price.
We always seek a balance of a few factors to make a decision which is beneficial for us.
And we come up with anything’s value to us by posing a simple question.
What’s the most I’d pay for it?
When valuing anything in life, the question turns into: what’s the most I’d pay for it?
We make decisions by being really intentional.

Intention is precursor for joy and growth mindset

Intention is a precursor for our actions.
It means we only ever take action on things that we believe bring us joy and satisfaction.
Actions means taking risks, there are many types of risks in life.
I have gone through many of these, bigger or smaller, and I’m pretty sure you have also gone through many of these.
Sometimes, we fail, sometimes, we succeed, but always learning and moving.
When we start to live with intention, we start to enjoy our life, at this point, the lines between work and play begin to blur.
We start to do what we love and we start to love what we do.
Everything becomes a learning experience and a part of lifestyle.
This is not only my experience between work and play but also from many other happy people around the world.

Strengthening our capacities in life is a continuous process.
It’s a practice, not a one time and done deal.
We can always revisit, refresh and retune, if we have intention, and there will not be a pop quiz next month or next year like what we did in the school.
At the end of the day, it’s not just about learning how to be better at something that we are working on.
It’s all about building our sense of what’s possible and bringing it into our sharp mental focus.
It’s all about changing ourselves from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset and understanding that we can always expand our capacity, no matter what.

Dr. Carol S. Dweck, PhD, Stanford Professor and author of “Mindset” says, “People with the growth mindset know that it takes time for potential to flower.”

Dr. Dweck’s TedTalk “The power of believing that you can improve” is around the research of fostering success.

When we start to live with intention, by doing some internal homework as I told in my wife’s coat purchasing process, it’s about knowing and trusting ourselves better, and valuing things properly.

In most cases our life goals change every five years on average.
Remember, life is the thing that always seeks intention and happens between our goals in different stages.
The specific steps on our predetermined goals might look different, depending on what we’ve been taught primarily on how to see “success”.
But whether the steps are high school, college, grad school, beginning career, better career, settling down, getting engaged, getting married, having kids, getting early retirement, or fishing in Thailand during retirement, there’s always something laid out.

Micro moments and compounding effect

This is all about being proactive and intentional.
Even as we’re working to achieve small things like getting kids ready for school, or cleaning the bathtub, or saving a little bit extra money for house downpayment or taking a course for weight loss program.
We still have to go through an intentional life one moment at a time, these everyday moments which look mundane but are what make memories in life.
These are nothing but the micro moments of positivity with intention.
Small changes with intention are the beauty of life that are sustainable which for most of us does not cost even a penny.

Let’s take one example of how small things accumulate over time.
The average person eats approximately one ton of food in a year.
If we think about sitting down to eat a ton of food, there is no way it’s going to happen all at once.
But bit by bit or piece by piece or meal by meal, by eating food every day for 365 days in a row, we can eat one ton without even imagining the final amount.
This is compounding and compounding is a macro effect.
Compounding happens faster if we start to live a life with intention, not only in money, in everything, the only thing that makes it very special is our awareness that compounding is playing a profound effect in our lives.

Darren Hardy, business leader and the author of “The Compound Effect” says “success does not come from radical shifts or big breakthroughs but from the accumulation of small choices and behaviors compounded over time.”

Life by default doesn’t bring joy, stability, and freedom

As we realize, life with intention serves three core purposes- joy, stability, freedom.
When we rely on only past life stories without questioning them, we aren’t making our highest and best decisions.
We’re not making decisions at all, not really. We’re living by default.
And default life is not a life actually, it is just an automation without any joy.
And, no one lives their best life by default.
Do you?
I don’t.
We have to live with intention, not by default.
Because we only get one life to live, we have so many aspirations to fulfill.

Then why don’t we go to seek joy, stability, and freedom?
Because, we have beliefs and attitudes that have developed over time inside us.
The experiences of growing up with our parents, our friends, our community is rooted with us.
Many things that were taught by parents, teachers, friends, community, and things that we learned through personal experience are with us.
We still have an echo of “you can’t do that from our uncle” when we were 12 years old.
Something happens good or bad, and it becomes incorporated into how we see the world.
It’s all wrapped up together into a mental pattern that influences how we think and act about everything in life.
But the reality is everything can be changed gradually, if we start to live with intention, one step at a time.

Our path to a life with intention is open and out there, it doesn’t have traffic signals, but only we can drive it. No one else can or will drive it for us.
If we want to raise the odds of living with our dreams, then we have to design our life with intention.
And only then will whatever tools we have for us will truly serve us in creating joy and freedom.

As I said, life with intention is a pure independent life.
If we don’t live our life with intention then we start to live in excess.
In reality, excess of anything can be a problem, a long lasting problem.
It doesn’t matter if it’s money, or sex, or alcohol, or drugs, or facebook, or parties, or rice, or broccoli, or sugar, or exercise.
Even excess water can kill us.
Even excess exercise can kill us.
Even excess broccoli can kill us.
Everything in life is designed for intention, because everything requires balance and balance is achieved by intention.
Used smartly, as a tool, intention is a vital resource, an essential component for survival.

How far we go in life depends on how soft and tender we are with the young.
How compassionate we are with the old, how sympathetic we are with the suffering, and how tolerant we are of the weak and strong.
Because in life with intention, we have to go through all of these, it’s just a matter of time.

Awareness of bigger picture is intention

Let’s take one example related to health of how things are interrelated and why we need intention in life.
This is from Dr. Michael P. O’Leary, professor of surgery, Harvard Medical School.
Blood vessel problems are the leading cause of erectile dysfunction.
Erections serve as a barometer for overall health and it can be an early warning sign of trouble in the heart or elsewhere.
Erectile dysfunction affects more than 18 million men.
Over half of men with type 2 diabetes also have erectile dysfunction.
In reality, men with erectile dysfunction have higher risks of having heart disease, memory loss, dementia, or stroke as their arteries are often clogged throughout the body.
So the fundamental question is almost everybody with the problem goes to a doctor to treat only erectile dysfunction.
Why?
Because they are not aware of what’s going on, they are not aware of power of simple exercise in life. Awareness is a synonym of intention.

In reality, the same biological mechanisms that control blood flow to our brain and to our heart also control blood flow to our sexual organs.
There is a word called “macro”-that means we always have to look for the bigger picture, the truth is we are just a dot of a bigger picture.
The bigger picture at this time is the whole body, the machine, and whole body mechanism.
If we don’t want to be aware of what’s going on in our body in today’s technological age then we are not living with intention.
Remember, most of us aren’t trained to live with intention because it needs a little bit of extra effort.

Let’s take another example which is also related to health and diet.
I learned this late in my life when I started to live with intention.
I learned that we need to be healthy in life, and good health doesn’t come free, we have to be intentional on what we do and what we eat.
But I also learned that we don’t have to go too far to seek a healthy life, it’s again awareness.
It’s about building our sense of what’s true and bringing it into our sharp focus for our benefit.

A lot of people, especially Asian people, don’t see the benefit and value of our everyday food, rice and beans.
They always look for something exotic food outside where they see value.
Here is the hidden truth.
There are 22 aminoacids.
Out of 22, 9 amino acids are essential, our body cannot make, we have to eat as diets.
Out of 9, 3 are kind of not available everywhere: they are lysine, tryptophan, and methionine; but rest are found in many different foods that we eat everyday.
Legumes like beans are high in lysine but low in tryptophan and methionine.
Grains like rice are high in tryptophan and methionine but low in lysine.
Look at the meal that we eat everyday of rice and beans- you got the point, it is ideal if we broaden our horizon of understanding at a macro level.
But, of course, we have to eat it in balance.

If anybody says meat is required instead of rice and beans for strength, remind the person with the elephant.
The elephant is vegetarian.
I am bringing these examples just to show you the macro picture of life, if we really want to live with intention.

Conclusion

If we become too much intentional, it might be harmful, we always seek balance: good intention and easy approach.
What is your understanding of stress in your life?
We have to find the right balance of stress in life.
We, of course, need enough stress but not too much like a guitar string.
If it’s too loose, there is no music, if it’s too tight, it breaks, and there is no music.

When stress becomes chronic, out of balance, it increases inflammation in our brain which exacerbates depression.
Once we’re depressed, our immune system is also depressed.
Keep in mind, chronic stress shortens our telomeres.
Telomeres are the ends of our chromosomes that regulate cellular aging.
When our telomeres get shorter, our lives get shorter.
Chronic stress also adversely affects our gene expression and has a harmful impact on the balance of the trillions of cells in our microbiome.
Again, we have to live with intention but not with over intention, otherwise, our guitar string will break.

There is a basic truth about a life with intention.
If you go only to other people’s carved path based on their mission then only they will enjoy the ride, not you, so live with intention.
We need intention because it creates macro understanding and that brings balance in life and that ultimately provides happiness, health, and prosperity.
Remember, we only get one life, so live with intention, enjoy the present and look forward to the future.

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.” 

“Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.”
-George Bernard Shaw

Few years ago, I was in my home country to visit my family.
I met the CEO of a startup company in the USA on one occasion, as he said, he was there for vacation with his family.
I asked, “How long is your vacation?”
He said, “four months.”
“What?” I was shocked.
His plan of scaling the various peaks and embarking on treks within the Himalayas in Nepal was monumental.

If you ask many people how they can increase their results in life, they’ll tell you by working more.
By hearing this new CEO’s vacation plan, I realized that either I’m not understanding something or there is a huge problem with us.
I’ve seen some of the ultra-performers statement that more work will not necessarily increase more results.
Ultra-performers mostly say that more of the same usually results in more of the same, when what we actually want is better than what we already have.
I learned from this new CEO that effectiveness wins over effort and we eventually lose if we start to do a lot of things instead of the right things.

Richard Koch, the author of “The 80/20 Principle” says “how we can achieve much more with much less effort, time, and resources, simply by identifying and focusing our efforts on the 20 percent that really counts.”

During our conversation I said, “I’ve read your book. You say that you want to add value to people’s lives through sustaining innovation, but that’s not easy in my home country.
People don’t trust business people and entrepreneurs.
General public has a good reason for this: they say business people, especially classic business people are corrupt, don’t add value to other people’s lives here.”
Then I added, “I’m sure and hopeful that you can help them in some ways.”
In the meantime, I asked him, “what does your company do?”
He said, “we are developing a drink which can replace the sugary coke type of drinks that people can enjoy without much concern about their health status.”
“Awesome.”
“What inspired you to start this beverage company?” I asked.
“Because my whole family is obese and diabetic. Somewhere somebody has to start because we are 21st generation people now, we can’t just sleep with coke and Mcchicken,” he added.

I said, “Maybe obesity and diabetes are in your family genes.”
He said, “nope.”
“The culprit is our daily food.”
“Remember, only in America and the most developed world, the unhealthiest foods are the tastiest, the cheapest, the large portions, the most available, and the most fun foods.”

Modern CEO and vision for future

He said that he is unconditionally convinced that the quality of any 21st and future company is a direct result of the quality of smart CEOs and the vision they pursue.
As a civilized human being on earth, the general public must focus their attention and analysis on the quality of products and services in any organization that they are using and investing in.
It is the CEO who creates the sustainable business plan that endures for the next generation, who build the processes that work, who create the technology that simplifies our lives, who execute the tasks that deliver the quality healthy products and services to ordinary people, and who determines the success or failure of a business based on the value they provide to the general public as a whole.
It’s the CEO who captures vision and resources to generate other healthier next generation people on the planet.

“People are suffering from wrong foods and wrong lifestyles, people are dying by consuming wrong and unhealthy foods.
Eventually, people will pay for brands and they will pay for quality and health, there is nothing more important than people’s health.
People will pay for their health and quality lifestyles no matter what, only time will tell them when to start.
If you go back to 30 or 40 years ago, Whole Foods was not a place to shop. Today, Whole Foods is the place to shop, it’s picking up.
Sometimes we need a little bit of a kicker and that kicker is a little bit of education,” he continued.

“Many professionals in any field still employ esoteric language to make their job appear more difficult than it is.
For example, take an investment officer, accounting should not be complex, it is the language of business.
It accounts for what a company owns and what it owes, and it helps companies keep track of the money that’s coming in and the money that’s going out.

It should be different for any 21st century CEO, don’t use esoteric language, show everybody what the product or service it provides to the public is, is it making the public more healthier or less healthier.
We need judgment to run a company as a CEO, and judgment is qualitative rather than quantitative and, most importantly, judgment can not be searched in google,” he said.

Desire, customer emotion, and its impact

Desire is a powerful emotion and many durable and valuable businesses of the past have been built upon it.

There is an article published in Harvard Business Review that tells about the new science of customer emotions for better way to drive growth and profitability.
As an example, Coca-Cola began in 1886 and has a market value of $260 billion.
Coke’s main ingredients are sugar and water, and the company has habituated consumers to believe that “coke is the pause that refreshes” and it is a “real thing”.
But in today’s world, soda and sweetened beverages are one of the main causes of inflammation in our body.
Researchers have found that sugar can also disrupt healthy functioning of the immune system by causing inflammation.
Eliminating soda from our diet is one of the quickest and simplest ways to protect the public’s health.

Not only those, many refined carbohydrates, white bread, pastries, processed meats like hot dogs and sausages, french fries, and any fried foods in general are inflammation booster foods.
So, the question is who will start and who will replace Coke, who has that responsibility for the next generation healthy society?
Mark Twain says beautifully, “it ain’t what you know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Remember, more than 34 million Americans have diabetes, about one in ten, and approximately 90-95 percent of them have type 2 diabetes.
We have to create a desire not to be diabetic in the 21st century and after.

As we all know, highly processed or refined carbs like white flour, white bread, and pasta are not our friends.
They behave almost like sugar in the body.
According to David Ludwig, an endocrinologist and author of “Always Hungry” “Highly processed carbohydrates are among the lowest quality components of the food supply, accounting for the majority of diet-related diseases in the United States today.”
As the new slogan goes, “sugar is a new poison.”

To a great degree, we are what we eat and what we do everyday.
Losing weight rejuvenates critical insulin-producing cells in the pancreas known as beta cells. And regenerating those cells can actually put type 2 diabetes into remission.
We have to promote healthy fats instead of coke to actually stabilize our blood sugar.
The fastest way to lower insulin levels is to substitute fat for processed carbohydrates.
But the question is how.
The biggest challenge is not how to develop these healthy food habits but how to replace these old junks which are everywhere with new healthy ones.

Convenience is value at modern time

Let’s take one simple example, how we become habituated with business.
Shoppers don’t go to Walmart because they love the experience, they go to Walmart because the company acquires everything from wine to broccoli to indoor plants to school supplies more cheaply than competitors and then passes those savings on to the customers.
Walmart sells convenience at a cheaper price so we go to Walmart.

Let’s take another example of a different company.
Google is not selling a status symbol or a fizzy drink, it’s selling a reliable search engine that consumers have become habituated to in their daily lives.
Because Google’s brand has nothing to do with creating just desire, it’s more likely to endure very long because it’s creating value to the general public’s own professions.
Because they need information for their daily work and they do it by sitting on the comfy couch in their living room.

One of the reasons I am optimistic about next generation CEOs is that they must demonstrate an ability to disrupt themselves before a competitor does.
Google should disrupt itself with driverless cars and artificial intelligence so that we can read in the car while going to the office in the 21st century.

Amazon is a leader in e-commerce and cloud computing now but it must disrupt itself for the whole food business so that we can eat healthy food and snacks at home at the price of Mcdonald’s McChicken.
By the way, McDonald’s does not only sell McChicken, it sells franchises, which is a system not a product.

Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel and author of “Only the Paranoid Survive” says, “there is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next performance level. Miss that moment, and you start to decline.”

Conclusion

Toys R Us filed for bankruptcy in 2017 but it doesn’t mean that parents are not buying toys for their children. Similarly, it’s not that Brick-and-mortar stores didn’t have the stuff in their store that we needed but the same stuff people started buying from Amazon without leaving their comfy couch at home.

For 21st generations, companies’ CEOs must disrupt themselves to keep obsessing over the public and putting them first for their health, healthspan, longevity, time, and fulfilling healthy lifestyles.

I was about to say goodbye and I asked the CEO of new startup company, “do you succeed in beating coca-cola?”
He said, “Everything looks like failure in the middle.
We cannot make tasty mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner without getting the kitchen messy.
Halfway through a heart surgery, the operating room looks like a battlefield of murder.
If you plan to send a rocket to space, about 95 percent of the time it becomes off-course and it fails.
But finally, all of these works give results by making mistakes and correcting them.
I’m just trying to be that CEO, that’s it.”

I noticed that the new CEO was still doing the work of creativity which is thinking at the banks of the Himalayas in Nepal, and he innovates once he goes to the USA which is doing the real work.

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.” 

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”    -Victor Frankl

Progress and meaning of life

A relationship with our boss is toxic if our well-being and dignity is threatened and we suffer emotionally, psychologically, and even physically.

“Belonging is a strong feeling which I never had in my last job. Belonging comes from developing and maintaining close relationships either with family members, friends, coworkers, or bosses,” he said.

Personality and a right job

Harvard study has found that the only thing that really matters in life is your relationship to other people.

“Of course, we have to accept that many short twists happen in everybody’s life, the only thing we have to do is step back and take a different path,” he continued. 

Self-reflection is a vigorous power, it is an introspection.

“Education could be formal or informal, both have the potential to increase one’s power to lead a fulfilling life with freedom of choice” he said.

Conclusion

“Life is a cause, a calling, a mission, and most importantly, a transcendent commitment beyond our self-interest, ” he added.

Stay educated and stay healthy everyone.

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.” 

“I have had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” -Mark Twain

When I visit my parents now, every morning I celebrate daily rituals with my mother.
Rituals are very normal for her: celebrate the tulsi puja in the morning, read a few pages of Gita, The holy book of Hindu, worship the sun, and repeat the same in the evening.
When it turns dark, generally after dinner, we sit in the living room area and talk about her past years growing up in Solma, Tehrathum. We talk about her schooling, household chores routine, and her interest to join a religious community recently.
My mother always say these moments in her life as listening to the voice of God but I say it is the tuning of her life to live in the moment.
She is happy in going for long periods of time in complete religious worship.

My mother, her rituals, and my rituals

When my mother was sixteen years old, she met my father, they got married, and together they created four children.
My mother has studied up to grade six formally but she can read fluently and write in moderation in our native language.
My mother and father had an amazing relationship, but through it all they maintained a deeper connection to their god.
It wasn’t always fun, there were a lot of problems and scarcities in the family, I saw them growing up but my mother was good at living in the moment to cherish what she had.
I learned the lesson: cherish what you have, live in the moment and move forward.

It all sums up with Ernest Holm Svendsen, the author of “How to Live in the Now” says “This moment is it. It is everything. It is all there is, and the solution to any difficulty in your life is to be found here and here alone.”

I am sharing my mother’s story with you because her story might not be similar to your mother’s story but it reminds you your story.
Happiness and satisfaction always comes from the connections we build around our family.
Ritual is what binds a family together.
Ritual is what makes a family differentiated, unique, and memorable.
We each nurture an essential quality that evolves with sharing and listening to the rituals.
When we have rituals in the family, we pass on to our future generations, that help them to live their lives with conviction.

When I was in high school working on the farm, I used to daydream about the things that I didn’t have.
I didn’t know then but I know now, that was my ritual without me knowing.
Even daydreaming during that time inspired me because I didn’t have an electronic gadget then like today’s smartphone in my fingertip.
It doesn’t really matter what we do and what we achieve in life, if we don’t live with our rituals everyday, life becomes complex.
Once we adopt ritual, we don’t worry much about the past, and not much time worrying about the future too.
In other words, staying in the present is the way to live, cultivating the focus on the here and now and avoiding unnecessary concerns about the future.

Michael Norton, PhD, Harvard professor and author of “The Ritual Effect” says ” All intention-filled acts that drive human behavior are rituals and create surprising satisfaction and enjoyment.”

Ritual is living in the moment that just proliferates us in many directions.
When we live in the moment, we broaden our thinking, we see the world in different eyes.
At least, I view the world this way.
Sometimes, I used to think and still feel that I couldn’t become wealthy by this time, probably, one of my regrets occasionally appears inside me. But after reading Hans Rosling’s book “Factfulness” I realized why I should be happy even though I am not wealthy.
Because I am living with my rituals, and in the moment now.

Wealth, gratitude, and dissatisfaction

I had won little money in the past which was twice as sweet as the money that I earned.
I thought I could be wealthy.
But I also lost that won money immediately.
After certain times, I felt that money has a way of creating stress when there is no harmony how it comes and goes through my life.
I realized that it doesn’t matter how much I make or how much I spend, I must maintain good relationship with it.
If money creates only stress and takes my energy, then I must stop stressing about more money, I must live in the moment.

I remember David Rubenstein’s advice, an author of “How to Invest“, “find areas outside of investing that can enable you to broaden your scope as a human, and experience things other than the pursuit of money and professional success.”
I still don’t understand how to apply this in real life.

In the moment of dissatisfaction and unhappiness, I envision the world with my thoughts and gratitude.
I think about one billion people even today struggle everyday to find clean water, they work all day just to eat a meal at night.
There are another one billion people with an income that fulfills for most of life’s necessities.
Probably, I am in that category now.
And the remaining 6 billion are struggling to make the transition to get clean water to fulfill life’s necessities.

As I learnt from my mother, living in the moment gives us very different things about why we should enjoy what we have.
Let’s see the operation, how our mind works.
First we want to get clean water.
After this, we want to get nearby clean water.
After this, we want to get clean water at home.
After this, we want to get hot water for showers at home.
After this, we want to get hot water for showers attached in our bedroom.
The essence is that the pursuit of a better life will never end.
It keeps moving, this is another reason, living in the moment is so crucial.

The great enemy of our truth is not lie.
It’s dissatisfaction inside us.
Generally dissatisfactions are persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
The only way dissatisfactions will settle once we start to live in the moment.

Start something as a ritual

One of the ways to live in the moment is to make something a ritual in our life.
For anything we do or want to build, we have to start somewhere.
We have to make it our one ritual.
Just start and see what happens.
See your internal clock that runs through your mind.
Make small adjustments in your task as you progress along the way.
When we do adjustments, it inspires us to move ahead further with more refinement.

Do it again whatever time interval is suitable to you.
Do it again when you feel doing.
You may not accomplish anything substantial but you sleep well, you feel happy and satisfied. You enjoy each moment of your involvement. I’m sure you live in the moment.

Living in the moment teaches us one more thing that nobody makes a perfect thing, and you will never create a perfect thing, because it doesn’t exist.
However, the thing you create, whatever it is, will reflect the life you want to live, that is what we all want.

What matters most is creating harmony with our desire, embracing the life of abundance, and making small progress every day.
You, your family, your mundane work, your ritual. Just think.
We have to slow down our life to live in the moment.
We must celebrate our daily mundane work, the more we celebrate these works throughout the day, the more we live in the moment.

Over the last few years, one ritual I have developed is reading books that interest me beyond my profession.
Sometimes I read one page or few pages in a day, sometimes I don’t.
But I always keep the book of my interest in the house in my access, maybe in the living room or bed room or dining table, or in the bathroom.
This ritual helped me learn a lot about life and purpose.

Recently, I have been reading a book by Dr. William Li, MD, “Eat to Beat Disease” that explains about food as a medicine, and various research labs across the globe are working on it, where I found out about prostate cancer.
I found that tomatoes decrease the risk of prostate cancer by 30 percent.
I am amazed that I am a chemical scientist by training but I had no clue what tomatoes do in our body.
I knew that tomatoes contain a bioactive lycopene that inhibits angiogenesis, blood supply to cancer cells.

This is just one example of how we transform our and other people’s lives just by cherishing our mundane ritual.
One question that should continue to come up is how can the global community continue to move to the next level by nurturing a ritual.

Conclusion

I am relating one example of my family friend who is suffering from cancer now.
I came to know this when I was involved in running a campaign for awareness of cancer.
I can feel how painful this disease is.
If you have cancer, or have ever had it, what would be your ritual in life?
Of course, your number one focus would be to kill those cancer stem cells.
But how?
I know there’s no medicine that can kill cancer stem cells yet, but there are a growing number of foods, and their bioactives’ roles in our body.
Many of those bioactives of foods are being studied for their suppressive effects on cancer stem cells.
Fortunately, foods that target cancer stem cells don’t harm beneficial stem cells.
My friend’s current ritual is to read about those foods and their bioactives that might suppress the cancer stem cells.

Once we cherish our ritual, we have to learn to get in touch with the silence within ourselves, and we must know that everything in life has purpose.

One thing I learned growing up in a farming family is that there are no mistakes, coincidences, and regrets, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
Just cherish those moments and move forward.

Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.

Disclaimer: “Please note that some links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through them, at no extra cost to you.”