yamtimsina

More than a decade ago when I was an undergrad, I joined a music class.
I liked singing, I spent a significant amount of time on singing because I wanted to become a professional singer.
I also sang a few songs on stage in various school and college programs.
Many of my contemporary friends used to compliment me that I sang pretty well and my voice was very solid, suitable for many modern sentimental songs.
Actually, similar types of words from many of my friends catalyzed me to pursue my music journey.
I believed at the time that music could be one of the reasons to live a purposeful life for me.

I used to attend music class in the evening after school.
My teacher taught me classical music very thoroughly.
My music teacher always told me to practice classical songs because he was a firm believer that classical music only produces a good vocalist.
I still think I wasn’t a bad student at least, I might be an average student but I’m sure I wasn’t meeting my teacher’s expectations as I could imagine.
I was clearly unaware what his expectation looked like.

After about six month’s music class, one day my teacher asked me a very thought provoking question.
That question was a heavy load for me to rethink my music passion.
I still to this day have no clue why he asked me such a question and what he saw on me on that day.

He asked me, “Is this singing your dream or goal?”

I didn’t know what he meant then.
I didn’t understand upfront so I was confused about what to say.
I’d heard that many of my friends used to say about their dream job, dream car, and dream house.
But I’d never heard about any goal for a house or car or job, at least by people whom I was surrounded by.
I also thought the same way and said to my teacher, “singing is my dream.”
He didn’t say anything except a silent soft laugh.
To be honest, I didn’t know the difference between dream and goal, so I told him, I wanted to become a singer.
I told him that I wanted to become a professional singer, singing was my passion, it was a kind of dream but I wanted to make it come true for me.

My teacher added, “Most of the time dreams are fantasies in our life, dreams don’t come into reality because they are very volatile.
We see so many dreams at night during sleep but most of them we forget by the time we wake up in the morning.”

“But the goal is different, it is a stepwise concrete rational process of achieving something.
Goal is not a dream, goal is something we can only see when we are awake,” my teacher further added.

I didn’t respond to anything he said except I greeted him and said, “bye”.
This was my last conversation with my teacher regarding music class, after that I never returned to the music class.
I still to this day don’t know why I didn’t return to the music class because I wasn’t offended by what he said.

I talked about this conversion to one of my close friends during lunch time the next day.
My friend told me, “Dreams may come from your goal too, but you have to pass the goal threshold.”
I asked him, “What is the ‘goal threshold’?”
What he said about the ‘goal threshold’ on that day stuck in my life through today.
My friend made me understand what goal is and what dream is.

Goal itself is also just imagination if we keep this inside us but if we take action and finish 5 percent of the goal then we pass the ‘goal threshold’.
Our goal could be anything but we must finish at least 5 percent of it in the beginning, if we want to see our goal in our dream.

My friend added, “Dreams evaporate in the morning, but goal condenses in the morning.”
Evaporation is disappearing from us but condensation is reappearing in more visible form.
We never visualize the dream in the morning, we never try to remember.
But all the successful people always visualize their goals.
Goal setting is a visualization process to make impossible possible for them, but always stepwise.
When we have the habit of visualizing the goal, we don’t have to compete with others, we will compete for ourselves, and also win for ourselves.
Winning to yourself is the best win ever.
My friend said, “once you finish the 5 percent goal threshold, you create the habit to anticipate more than to react. This is really important for any kind of goal in life.”

My friend gave me a very simple example of how things work out when we process any goal in life and how the 5 percent threshold works.
He shared his goal of being healthy in life by adopting this technique.

He told me, “I always start the day by drinking one glass of water in the morning immediately after I wake up.
When I drink one glass of water immediately after I wake up, I win over my dehydrated body that gives energy to win my day.
This is a very small task but worth doing every single day if I want to become healthy. This is my 5 percent threshold for the day.”

Keep in mind, small tasks matter the most to achieve any big goal in life.
If small tasks are done consistently over time, we will achieve the big goal, it’s only a matter of time.
Drinking a glass of water right after we wake up is the first step that we are ready to battle the day.
It also provides a sense of pride to us, because this is another indication that we love our body which is our incredible engine in this life.
It’s so easy to snooze the button and sleep five more minutes rather than go to the kitchen and drink a glass of water.
Once we get up and move out of bed, it is less likely that we come back to bed to sleep again.
This is another advantage to make a habit of early rising to benefit from a miracle morning.

This looks like a small task but many of us rarely do it because walking to the kitchen is an initiation step for our goal that needs some mental energy to begin.
Going from bed to kitchen is a motion that produces energy.
Drinking water is an action, remember, action produces emotion and that is what drives us to accomplish any of our life goals.

Truth to be told, the majority of us don’t drink enough water during the day, not because of any specific reasons, but only due to our busyness.
We forget to drink.
Many of our everyday discomforts like headache, dizziness, and tiredness also happen due to dehydration in our body.
Keep in mind, the majority of kidneys, liver, and brain diseases start due to dehydration in our body in the very beginning.
Drinking a glass of water immediately after we wake up is a less than a minute task, but it changes life if done consistently everyday.

The consistency in action is the first step to achieve any life goal whatever small the action might be.

To make our body and mind healthy, we don’t have to do big and difficult tasks but we have to do small tasks everyday regularly.

Life is a battle of winning small things everyday.

We all want to be happy, we all know what we need to do to become happy and healthy.
We’ve read about how to be happy and healthy, we’ve seen about it in books and movies, we think we know how the happiness steps work in our life.
But the problem is we never make a clear goal to achieve it and take action consistently.
We have no idea how the ‘goal threshold’ works in the case of our happiness.
If we don’t do anything small consistently everyday related to the big goal then we don’t have any goal, and if we don’t have any goal then we never experience happiness.

Happiness is the internal feeling of satisfaction of doing something regularly.

I believe inconsistency is what my music teacher realized and saw in me when I was doing music class. I was not consistent in any of my work.

Happiness is an unseen but felt emotion which releases gradually while moving towards any goal in life with consistency.

Having a goal is like starting a wall with a single brick or stone you know nothing about in the beginning, but eventually a wall is made.
Happiness is like how it feels by increasing the wall 2 inches taller everyday.

But, having a dream is a little different as we know it, we’ve read it, and we’ve seen it, but unfortunately, never translating it into reality.
The problem is every night a new dream appears and vanishes in the morning.

Goal of being healthy, happy, and wealthy should never be complicated.
Complication is in our laziness.
Complication is in our only thinking habit but never to start.
Complication is in our only saying habit but not doing.
Complication is in our only postponing habit.
Complication is our only procrastination habit.

We don’t want to spend 5 minutes on small but important things everyday early in the morning right after we wake up which passes our ‘goal threshold’ for the day.
Drinking one glass of water takes less than 1 minute.
Early meditation to clear our head takes less than 2 minutes.

Remember, meditation is a purposeful silence which is way more powerful than busy, hectic, and rush in life.
Busy, hectic, and rush are common words in our everyday life.
These words have been created by our own circumstances, people around us, and personal choice.
Our life is way more important than these few selected words that we throw around all the time.
If we play the busyness card only on the treadmill and never learn how to put a ladder, then we reach nowhere. We make a circle over and over again and end up in the same place in life.

Purposeful silence heals the body permanently but medication heals the body temporarily.

Stretching our body early in the morning takes less than 2 minutes which regulates our metabolic activity and blood circulation.
Not only that, by stretching our body or by doing little physical workout, we also enter into a little higher state of mind where our thinking becomes different than before to start the physical workout.
But we never do physical workout consistently because we are in a rush, we don’t have time to do it.

All of these aforementioned tasks take a maximum of 5 minutes and this is what gives a healthy, happy, and wealthy life in the long run.

Whatever weird the goal is, if we stick to the goal and battle the small humps everyday, we will win the race.

I don’t know how this system works but the result appears automatically once we are in the process.
I believe this is how any of our life goals translates into reality, slowly but surely.

People without goals are more likely to be depressed at some stage in life and generally have terrible mornings because their mind is relatively quiet in the morning.
Quietness is the enemy for those who are depressed in life.
They have to bring stuff from the past, maybe from the previous day or a few days before to run their mind.
They also don’t sleep at night because their mind is constantly buzzing from the whole day’s activities or by old past activities.
They never practice how to clear their head before going to bed or in the morning after they wake up.

Depression generally happens when we focus more on us rather than our meaningful goal.

Once we have a goal in life, things run smoothly and we are less likely to have a depressed mind.
Our days and nights run very smoothly.
We sleep well.
And ultimately, this is the secret of our happiness.
When you have a goal, when you sleep well at night, when you become healthy, you learn how to reduce time on things that you hate the most.
This habit automatically generates more time on things you love the most.

Remember, who you are is what your goal is.
Goal is not what we know, what we tell others, and what our plan is, the goal is what we do everyday consistently.

In the end, the goal of a goal is to change it into a smooth system and live a happy life.

By the way I’m so thankful to my music teacher for such a thought provoking question that helped me to shed my life.
Thank you teacher.


Thank you everyone for your time.
-Yam Timsina

I said, “you are a very good friend to me, I know, but I’m interested in her for a different reason. Do you understand?”
He wasn’t happy with what I just said, he nodded without any reaction.
I didn’t understand why he was constantly interfering in my personal life even though he has been my genuine friend for the last 7 plus years.
I needed some personal space, some privacy, and some lonely time to plan my future life.
I wanted to go to dinner with her but he wanted to join us. How could I say don’t join the dinner with us? He’d been one of my best friends through all my undergraduate and graduate school.

When he said that he wanted to join us for dinner with the two of us, me and the girl of my choice, I felt that he’s no common sense. I told myself, “why don’t you understand?” For the first time in my life, something different was going to happen. I was going for dinner with a girl of my thoughts, I needed to go alone with her for some breakthrough talks.
I couldn’t understand my friend’s behaviour, I was quite confused.
“What’s wrong with you?” I screamed to myself in my room.
For a long time he’d said that he would help me in various junctures of my life because we’d fighted many causes together.
Later I felt that he was quite unusual, I couldn’t clearly understand his motive, I was only thinking whether he was doing this knowingly or unknowingly. I needed some private time to settle my life but his action was creating trouble for my plan.

Why did he always want to associate with me everytime?
Was he crossing the fine line of friendship?
I never understood.

I remembered, 2 years ago, he told me, “I’m 28 years old now, I feel very awkward, and insecure. I don’t know why I’m not happy with my existence.”
“There is something wrong inside me, I never told you about this awkwardness, insecurity and suffering. I’ve been having this insecurity for the last several years, I’m being weaker and weaker every single day.” he added.

Being one of his close friends, I told him, “you’re strong, you’ve an Ivy league MBA, you’ve just started a corporate job, your life has just started, but your problem is you take everything very seriously.”
“You think a lot, I would say, you do unnecessary thinking, designed thinking is good but excessive unnecessary thinking 24/7 isn’t good for our healthy body and healthy mind, that’s your problem, you’ve to fix it.”
“You have to make things a little bit easier in life so that our body and mind communicates, life takes its shape the same way as every other living thing does, life matures itself with time, everything takes time to reshape.” I showed positive vibes.

I remembered his response, he said, “Sometimes I feel more rebellious with my family and society, I’ve this scary feeling all the time, I don’t know why?”

When I heard the news that he is in hospital, I couldn’t move, what happend, and later knew that he attempted to committ suicide.

“That’s beyond my imagination, what’s going on in his life” I screamed.
I couldn’t believe this. I helped him in so many ways to see things in life and he helped me in the same way.
We used to share a lot of things, both good and bad. But why this time I’m in the corner and he made such a horrible decision to abandon everything including his own life.
Anyway, I knew that he survived, he is recovering well gradually. I’m happy.
I talked to his family members but nobody knew anything on how and why he took such an unthinkable terrifying step.
My mind was bogging me all the time to know why he attempted such a heinous crime.
I decided that I will go deeper and will find it out.

He was in a hospital bed, he was recovering gradually, and the doctor said that he would be fine after 2 to 3 weeks, he needs a lot of physical and mental rest.

I went to the hospital and told him, “if you think I’m your good friend then you can’t hide it from me. Please tell me what is inside you that is eating you everyday all the time.”
Please tell me.
I saw tears in his eyes.
He said in one sentence, “I’m gay, but I want to live.”
Silence.
No words.
I filled the gap of silence, “so what?”
“I have gay friends, I occasionally chat with them in social media. They are very genuine and responsible, they are living happy lives, they’ve contributed a lot for society.” I said.
“Is this the only reason that led you to take in such a heinous crime to kill yourself?” I asked.
“I would say this, my friend, you attempted to escape from your own suffering but you’re about to give incurable long-lasting suffering to your family, you didn’t do justice here by not sharing with me about your suffering, I knew you were in pain but you chose to fight alone and wanted to have a trophy of suffering.” I further added.

He grabbed a napkin and wiped his tears.

My friend, we all will die one day so we need to plan our death, then only we live this life freely.
If we don’t plan our death or if we forget that we will die one day in future then we are not living.
You are gay, you accepted it, but I don’t know what bothered you so much to let the world know about this?
This your gay life isn’t your choice.
God made you gay, so where is your fault here?
You cannot change your genes, you cannot change your hormones, and you cannot change your brain.
You have no power to change the complexity of interconnectedness between your genes and hormonal biology.
Biology is a natural force which is beyond our control, but culture, religion, and other beliefs are human-made myths so they keep changing.

My friend, we still have a caste system in hindu community, we still have untouchable humans in this world, we still have a race system in American society.
We still cannot prosecute husbands in more than 50 countries of the world even if they rape their wives because they don’t have such legal mechanism, husbands still think wives are their properties, things, they own them.
These above facts are only ‘tip of the iceberg’ of human myths but sexuality is pure biology, it’s not a myth.
Eventually biology always wins, it’s only a matter of time.

My friend, you and I had the same biology until puberty but after that, god gave you a different path to go and me a different path.
Though we say all humans are created equal, in reality, we are born with different genes and we gradually evolve unequally based on those different genes, hormones, brain, and external environment. But I am sure we both can live our lives in our own way.

Why don’t you accept who you are and show the world who you can become and what you can offer to the world?
You might be depressed because you are not like me. You want to be like others, you want to be like the majority of us. My friend, this is BS. Your biological identity is your authenticity.

The meaning of life is unconditional but you are making it conditional by attempting to commit suicide.
If somebody is killed by some external factor then death has some justification but if we kill ourselves then our death has no meaning, no justification.
Suffering and dying are inevitable in our lives but if we kill ourselves by our own weak thoughts then we’ve not understood death.

My friend, you don’t know what you can offer personally to this society yet, but if you become weak to fight against the social myths then you’ve not learnt anything from Tim Cook, who leads one of the most powerful companies, Apple, as a CEO on the planet.
He is a gay.
If you become weak, what do you learn from Anderson Cooper? He is a gay.
Every aspiring journalist on the planet wants to be like Anderson Cooper in the field of journalism.
What do you learn from Tammy Baldwin, she is a US senator, one of the highest public offices of the most powerful country on earth.
She happened to be a lesbian.

My friend, this world has given to all of us a special quality in a special form. In this world there are many buildings, they all have unequal size doors. If you are stuck in one door and can’t go through then you have to go around to find another door through which you can go. But this is your job to keep looking at various doors.
This also applies at your home and if you can’t go through then you might have to take the initiative to modify the doors at your home.
In fact, your house is your home, remember all houses may not be homes, you stayed there for 28 years, that place isn’t only home for you, it should be a heaven for you.

We are Homo Sapiens, this means we are social animals. All of our social features including happiness and suffering originate from family.
Our biological identity should not be characterized by hostility and mockery.
My friend, you must start the conversation about your biological identity with your dad or mom or sister or brother about who you really are, and what you really can offer to this world.
I request you to start the conversation with one person first whom you trust the most and move ahead in life.
Once you start the conversation in your family as who you really are, they start to make space for you, this is how our identity revolution begins.
Remember, Claudette Colvin was 15 years old when she refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus but this incident led Rosa Parks to revolt again and now we all know the history of the 1950s civil rights movement in the USA.
Any movement needs space to wiggle and it also needs time to wiggle but somebody should start somewhere to make a move.

Life shouldn’t be complicated but it doesn’t mean it has through road-signs all the way to the end.
My conversation with my friend suddenly stopped once I saw his dad entering the hospital room.
His dad sat next to him and comforted his son’s forehead with his hand.
His son closed his eyes but I saw tear droplets in his eyes.
I greeted ‘goodbye’ to both dad and son and assured my friend to come tomorrow again in the evening.

My whole life with him from high school to this day was revolving in my mind. I reflected back, I saw so many things correlated now, every single incident is making sense now which I couldn’t understand then.
I felt bad for what I said and did for him in the past, what other friends did and said to him, and what society did for him. Of course, it’s past now, it’s gone, nothing can be done. I learnt, realized and murmured to myself why God offers life so mysteriously.

I promised myself that I will do whatever I can, I won’t let my friend die again.

I used to read books randomly when I was undergrad, I wasn’t a systematic and aggressive reader then, but when I started my graduate career, I became very interested in reading books far from my core expertise of chemical science.
I became an aggressive reader. I joined book clubs. I knew that I developed my mental faculties broadly to understand human values and society by reading diverse books written by priceless minds.

After returning from the hospital I was looking at something in one of my old boxes but my eyes caught a book on the shelf by Dr Viktor Frankl “Man’s Search for Meaning”.
I remembered that this book I had received from one of my friends as a birthday gift.
I’d also discussed this book in the book club in the past.
Inside the book, there was a written note from my friend who gave me the book “this would be a nice companion when you are suffering in life.”

I reread a few pages from Viktor Frankl’ book. I read, “The meaning of life always changes, but it never ends. The meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than search within oneself.”
I realized that probably my friend searched the meaning of life within himself but never tried to discover, as a result, he chose a route to committe suicide.

Viktor has a vivid explanation of an individual’s experience in a book as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. The most important aspect I like in the book is the view of an author, who is a doctor, for love, hope, responsibility, freedom, and beauty. These all can be found in both nature and art as tools in suffering and depression.

I told my friend that you are gay but this shouldn’t be the reason of your suffering.
There is nothing wrong with it, and it is given to you by another force, nature or God whatever you can say.
When you were a child, your dad made everything for you, he made a roof for you, he provided food on the table, he managed clothes to wear, you received all the love and care but now why do you think that your dad won’t accept you as a gay son?
Ultimately, your gay gene is an extension from your dad. Isn’t it?

Next day I handed him the book “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl and said to him that this book could be a nice friend to you while recovering in the hospital bed.

I asked him a series of questions intentionally, I thought this might help him to reveal more who he really is.
Why are you afraid to open up your identity now?
What is the worst that can happen if you open up your identity?
Why are you depressed now?
Who do you think is the most helpful person in your life now?
What is the meaning of your life?
These might be difficult questions to answer for him but I’m sure he can tackle all of these hurdles one by one.

When we remain depressed we always feel like we are not being treated fairly in this world. We always think that this world has done something wrong with us.
We always assume that we don’t understand things even after taking a long time of study but other people will understand things quickly.
If we start to think this way then what happens to those tens of thousands of others who are gay who have no education, no jobs, but struggling in society every single day?

My friend, this world is neutral, this world isn’t biased, this world doesn’t recognize rich and poor, strong and weak, educated and uneducated, gay and straight.
This is our duty to find out which role we are playing and where we fit. This understanding is critical to lower depression in our life.

Once we become depressed, we not only become unhappy ourselves, we make so many people unhappy around us.
Depression is like gas in an empty room, it doesn’t matter how much gas flows inside the room, it will eventually fill the room.
If we are depressed for any reason, it doesn’t stay only with us, it ultimately spreads like a virus all over our family, our relatives, and our close friends.

We have to understand that suffering and happiness both are byproducts of our life journey. They are basically not the targeted end products. These both must occur during our lifetime. We cannot keep only happiness and exclude the suffering or vice-versa, this is not going to happen at any time.
Think of this way, our body loves good and nutritious food but our body also stores feces until it can be defecated.

Mostly, we remain depressed because we have fear in our mind, fear of not becoming somebody, fear of not achieving something, fear of chronic disease which we don’t have yet, fear of the future which we don’t know yet what it looks like, fear of losing something which we actually don’t possess yet, and most importantly, fear of not being accepted by society.
Fear prevents us from living in many many ways.
But if we really want to see the other side of the fear, there is nothing, it’s a clean slot but we cannot see it until we jump on fear first.
Fear is such a brutal and chronic emotion that we completely forget that we can live by eating only rice and beans in this life.
We completely forget that we can live by eating only oatmeal, by drinking only water throughout our lifetime if we want.
We completely forget that we can live by wearing two jeans and two shirts for many many years to come.

We always remain depressed thinking of something negative in our lives but our mind actually stores nothing negative if we practice only positive in it.

Last year, my friend sent me a birthday card via email, he’d written on the card, “God broke my power of love for opposite sex but I always strengthened my power of love for the same sex. I’m happily married, a mom now with two wonderful kids. Thank you so much for everything that you did for me. Happy Birthday to You”

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

Two years ago I read a book “What I talk about when I talk about running” by Haruki Murakami.
Different people have different tastes and different perceptions on other peoples’ experiences but many core values always remain the same.
That’s the reason all 8 billion people on the planet have unique experiences to live and share with the world.
Many times each author expresses his or her emotional, intellectual, and physical experiences in their writing.
Haruki’s book is one of the best books I have ever read where he portrays his life sincerely as a writer and a runner.
I rarely repeat the book but this Haruki’s 175 page book is one of them.

Though this book is based on his running life, the nuggets in the book are extremely valuable in every aspect of our normal life.
One such nugget, my personal favorite, is: “the most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.”

This book reminds us many times that we are limitless in life.
The author Murakami is a tremendous human being, a novelist, and later turned into an unstoppable long distance runner.
He’s run dozens of marathons in many places around the world including ultramarathons.
He started his running at age 33, which is already a huge inspiration to all of us.
At this age many other people, especially in sport activities, generally start to think about retiring.
I remember from the book, at one point he was running an ultramarathon in Japan, thinking about 62 miles to finish which he was running for the first time in his life.
In the middle of the ultramarathon, he passes the finish line of the marathon, 26.2 miles, and he reads the words on the side of the hoarding board.
The hoarding board says, “this is the finish line of a marathon.”
This was the first time Haruki was running beyond a marathon finish line in his life so that he was having a unique experience of post marathon run.
After passing the marathon finish line he says to himself, “I’m not a human, I’m a piece of machinery.”
He was running to finish 62 miles but he kept saying the same words again and again, “I’m not a human, I’m a piece of machinery.”
He finished 62 miles comfortably.
As we all know, any machine doesn’t bear any pain but produces only beautiful products, the Murakami machine produces only beautiful experiences.

After absorbing Murakami’s life, I realized there are many things that are inevitable in life but pain and suffering is a personal choice.
He talks about forced pain and desired pain in our lives.
Forced pain is something different and in many cases not beneficial, but desired pain is amazing, it is a real pain indeed but makes us happier once we start to love the process of pain.
Marathon running can never be a forced activity, it can only be an individual’s desired activity.
Not many people can run a marathon, only very few selected people can run.
And running a marathon multiple times is unthinkable for many ordinary people.
It’s not only strong will power that is required for marathon running, it’s the love of the process that makes marathon running beautiful.

Once we know how to release the pain from the body, the void appears inside us and is very beautiful, that’s what Murakami says life is all about.
There is so much physical and mental pain to finish a marathon but once we pass the finish line, there remains only joy.
No words how to express the feeling.
There is only joy.
Murakami said, “The only thing that comes to mind after finishing a marathon is how I can run better next time.”
The mind becomes more repetitive, more patient, and a lot more disciplined.
Think about this, if this becomes habitual in life then where do we find the pain?

Another runner, Phil Knight, founder of NIKE, author of ‘Shoe Dog’, was also famous in track running, though he was a middle distance runner, he used to run 7 miles every morning from his work to home in his early life.
Phil Knight also says that runners have no destination, their destination is their path where they are running.
Phil Knight started running at a time when people used to tag ‘weirdos’ for them.
It wasn’t a socially accepted athletic activity then.

Murakami and Knight both agree that to make pain beautiful, we have to follow the motto: “be yourself.”
‘Be yourself’ means be far from the crowd, be far from competition, be far from comparison, and be far from rejection.
Murakami had a decent restaurant bar business before giving up everything to become a professional writer and professional runner.
Phil Knight revolted to his family, especially to his dad and visited dozens of countries around the world before giving up his father’s decent media business.
When he was visiting Japan for his shoe business concept his mother dropped him off at the airport and wished him saying ‘be yourself.’

When we become our own uniqueness, as the slogan ‘be yourself’; pain and suffering no longer bothers us, it only becomes the motivation for the final destination.
Amelia Boone, one of our all time heros says, “I’m not the strongest. I’m not the fastest. But I’m really good at suffering.”
If we cherish suffering, life becomes marvelous.
Learn how to cherish the suffering.
Kudos to Murakami, Knight, and Boone!!!

In my own personal experience as I also run quite often, people who love running and run regularly have keen attachment to a few things.
In reality nature has given us two healthy feet to move our body, in that sense we all are born to run whether we run or not.
In addition, when we run we also become grateful to our two healthy feet so that our pain of running turns into a beautiful destination.
When we run we become grateful to oxygen in the air so that our pain turns into a beautiful breathing resource.
When we run we become grateful to our healthy body and healthy mind so that our pain turns into a beautiful thought.
When we run we pass objects, pedestrians, trees, and many other things, these passing things make us a connection which is humanity so that pain dissipates from the body.
This may be the reason there is a saying that if we run a marathon in our lifetime, we will never die from a heart attack.
I’m not sure whether it’s true or not but it definitely has some validity.

Many years ago I had a friend from India, he was a graduate student in computer science.
One evening many of his close friends gave him a party in his apartment, it was his 31st birthday.
I also attended his birthday party.
Few friends offered him different kinds of alcoholic drinks so he drank quite a few mixed drinks.
He was fine at the time when we all left his apartment around midnight, he greeted us good night.
The next morning his mom was coming to see him all the way from Bangalore, India.
He was excited to pick her up at the airport, he was constantly checking the flight time to make sure her flight was on time so he also set an alarm clock to remind himself that he doesn’t oversleep.
His diabetic mom was travelling alone because his dad expired 3 years ago due to a chronic kidney disease.
She could barely read in Hindi, an indian language, she couldn’t speak English, she couldn’t make telephone calls by herself.
After arriving at the airport at 8am in the morning, she took help from airport people and called multiple times on her son’s cell phone.
Her son didn’t pick up the call.
Due to a mixed alcohol hangover and probably by an alcohol reaction, he wasn’t fully conscious at around 8 am and woke up only at 11 am.
Though he knew the night before that he had to go to the airport to pick his mom in the morning at 8 am.
He saw more than 50 missed calls on his cell phone within a 3 hours period from 8 am to 11 am.
He was very sad but anyway he drove towards the airport.
He was devastated at this point not by anything but by his own irresponsible behaviour.
He told me, “he had so much pain in his body, he was shivering due to pain thinking about his diabetic mom.”
He said, “his mouth was dry, his headache was moving all around his head.”
He had a panic attack, his body pain was so severe that he pulled over on the side of the road for a couple of minutes.
He drank water because his body was dehydrated due to excess alcohol and he also washed his face with cold water.

Finally after 45 minutes driving he reached the luggage claim area at the airport, he saw his mom laying down on the bench.
He sighed, his eyes became teared.
He walked closer to his mom, he saw his mom’s face from a little close distance, he reached to his mom but couldn’t speak, mom also didn’t say anything, she only smiled.
Once he saw his mom on the bench at the airport and when she smiled, he said to himself, “Why is pain so beautiful?”

Few minutes ago, his body pain was excruciating, his headache was moving all over his head but once he saw his mom’s smile everything became clear, he had not even an ounce of pain in his body and in his head.
He only experienced beauty now, the whole pain is gone.
Once he approached his mom, he bent down, he touched her feet, and started to cry.
He sat flat on the bare floor at the airport and broke down, he couldn’t control crying.
His mom didn’t ask any questions, she wrapped his head around her arms, she didn’t ask why he didn’t pick up the phone, she didn’t ask why he was late, she didn’t ask what happened?
Finally he drove his mom to his apartment.
When they reached the apartment, he asked his mom, “‘Maa, can I tell you something?” ‘Maa’ means mom in indian language.
His mom replied, “sure, beta.” ‘Beta’ means son in indian language.
He touched her feet one more time and said, “Maa, I promise you I would never ever drink alcohol in my whole life from today onwards.”
His mom replied, “beta, I’m 62 years old now, I’m illiterate, the only degree I have in this life is trust. I trusted your dad and lived the fullest life when he was alive. I gave you birth, you are my everything now in this life, if I don’t trust you then who do I trust?”
Both mom and son smiled with teary eyes and entered the kitchen.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

Recently I attended a virtual scientific conference.
I usually participate in these kinds of conferences when time permits me.
I work on science so I make a living doing it.
One of the speakers in the conference, a business management guru, said, “never ever talk about politics, religion, and sex in business networking session.”

I grew up in a society where people blindly follow politics and talk about it as a pastime.
I have seen a conflict between brothers, between sisters, between aunts, and uncles within a close family circle due to the favor and disfavor of their political affiliation.
I remember one particular incident regarding this between two brothers which is still fresh in my memory.

Both brothers were claiming that each of their political parties is the best one out of many others.
Both brothers were claiming that their political leaders are the best.
Their dad was an ordinary countryman, not highly educated but an literate, occasionally used to ask ‘why do political parties make us fight?’
He used to reflect and think, ‘is politics always bitter and divided?’
“What kind of lacking I had to raise my sons?” I frequently heard this whisper from his mouth.
Dad was unaware how politics enters into our life and ruins the profession of our living if we are not careful about it.
I was also quiet and just observing the argumentative political fight between two brothers with no verbal expression.
Elder brother was saying, “my political party liberated more people than any other political party so it deserves to form the government.”
The younger brother was saying, “my political party has made the most progress and development in the country than any other party in the history of government. My political party protected the country during many difficult junctures of foreign interventions so it deserves to make the government.”

It’s worthless for me to spend time on who is wrong and who is right and this is not my intention here because both brothers were not politicians by profession.
They didn’t make a living doing politics because the elder brother was a high school teacher and younger brother was an accountant in a private firm.
I didn’t say anything to either brother during this heated political debate.
I simply said, “each of you are saying I am right because each of you has a huge ego; ego of severe political addiction.”
“You are not saying I am right, your ego is saying I am right.”
“When you are addicted to something your ego always bolsters,” I added.
“You are not saying your brother is wrong, your ego is saying your brother is wrong because addiction suffocates the judgement.
I just added to the elder brother, “Hey brother, you’ve shared many things with your younger brother, you shared the same house and same parents with him, if you can’t align your political thoughts with him in a family, then how would you align so many other thoughts in your professional life?”
He didn’t respond.

Interestingly, during the middle of this intense argumentative and corrosive political fight, the elder brother’s daughter ran over and said to her dad, “dad, why don’t you say ‘sorry’ to uncle?”
Her dad paused, looked at his daughter and became speechless.
His daughter was just 13 years old.
The whole verbal political fight turned into silence.
His daughter was still insisting to her dad to say ‘sorry’ to her uncle.
Eventually, her dad said ‘sorry’ to his younger brother and both daughter and her dad left the scene.

When the word “sorry” comes out from our mouth in any situation, amazing things happen.
Serotonin produces and stabilizes our mood.
It also helps to change our behavior to make us feel good or at least comfortable.
Most importantly, we win over our ego when we say ‘sorry’.
Our relationship whatever it is, in this case brotherhood, wins over ego.
The word ‘sorry’ teaches us that family relationships are way more important than a conflict due to mere political ideology.
Not to mention politics, religion, and sex are the most sensitive and divisive part of people’s lives but they shouldn’t disrupt our family values and relationship.
We learn to create human values from inside the family to promote and uplift one another in the society.
Remember, the best time to make our family relationship stronger is actually before we need it.
We have to create value in an existing relationship rather than just capture the value from it.
Always nurture the value of brotherhood by thinking of small actions that you were involved in the family when you were young, this helps to push the edges of the relationship further.

There are many things in life that we have to prioritize but there are very few things which we can not prioritize and have to take in parallel, our relationship with family is one of them.
Think of this, your son is 4 years old and you are in medical school. You can’t prioritize your medical school over your son and say once I finish medical school I would start to love my son very much.
You can’t do this, if you do this you will regret in life even after having your medical degree.
Whatever happens in our life, our relationship with family should move in parallel.

Grudges and divisive arguments in the family are for those who are very short-sighted and can’t control their emotions.
People who forgive and say ‘sorry’ are generally far-sighted and can control their emotions in the family.

I requested both brothers who were fighting over the choice of political parties to go home and change the question to “is any political party wrong instead of saying my political party is right?” “Ask yourself, does any political party have a wrong manifesto?”
Always remember, no political parties are bad, each one has only a different path to reach the best society.
Similarly, no religions are bad, they are only the different forms of expression of human beliefs.
Quote, I am pondering, “Your well being, success, and humankind is reflected in the religion you are practicing right now. Don’t change your religion,” -Dalai lama, an author, spiritual leader, and nobel laureate.
In the similar way, we all know what sex is, how it works, and why we need it.
Do we really need to go deeper in it?
I don’t think so.

Each of these categories; politics, religion, and sex has extreme ends, we don’t have to go there, we absolutely don’t need extremes if we don’t make a living on these things.
If we make a living on these things then it would be a different scenario, for example, professional politicians, religious leaders, or adult movie makers.

Keep in mind, the beauty of politics, religion, and sex is always in the middle for those of us who don’t make a living on these things.
If we start to consume every piece of information regarding politics, religion, or sex, we surely become addicted and its very difficult to break.
Trust me, this is garbage, we don’t need it.

After coming to the USA for my higher studies, I experienced and saw some of the very unusual things.
On presidential election day in the USA, the entire country works and remains active on its business, it’s not a holiday. It shocked me initially.
I went to the grocery stores, and people were working as usual.
I visited public and private offices, people were working as usual, public transportation was as usual.
School and colleges remain open as usual. Nobody talks about the ongoing election. If you bring that subject up, people smile and say “let’s see who will win.”
Only during election night, we will see how people are divided into two parties almost equally half as democrats and republicans.

Donald Trump, the former president, wanted the supreme court to overturn many states’ election results so that he could stay as a president in white house for 4 more years.
This is the country where the supreme court denied the petition filed by former president Donald Trump to overturn the state election result with one-line ruling as follows:
“The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.”
Amazingly, the general public has no interest in the inside business of the supreme court.
There are no phones, no cameras, and no journalists allowed in the supreme court.
One line final decision by the judge.
This was also a big surprise for me to know how the judicial system works.

I’m bringing these aforementioned two cases here just to smell the perception of ordinary people with various other professions towards politics and the judicial system.
How does it happen? I have no clue, I’m still studying this.
This may be one of the reasons that american economy is still so vibrant that none of the organizations or businesses are politicized.

My one line understanding is this: if we politicize the workplace where we work for a living then it is highly likely that we become addicted to politics.
And same applies to religion and sex too.

One way to get rid of addiction from politics, religion or sex is twist a question away from “I and my.”
Once we do this we generally get completely different answers because our ego doesn’t control us.
If we reorder or rephrase the same question excluding ‘I and my’, we get a distant view of life, even though the motive of the question still remains the same.
With this approach, in many cases we solve very difficult problems, especially political and religious problems, there are many examples of it.
When we are angry or in disagreement with someone, we have to change the question and ask ourselves a different version of the same question.

Problems are not always solved by just asking the correct question to others or ourselves because there is no question which is wrong.
Problems are generally solved by reordering the same question so that we see different parts of the same problem.
Once we reorder the same question, different parts of the brain trigger and we get completely different answers.

Remember, when we argue or when we confront, we lose our control, this is normal and natural.
In life how we react to what happens determines who we are.
By the time we react, we already rearrange our thoughts, we rearrange our expressions more than what we initially had.

Once we take a question or answer away from us personally, we become more free and accepted.
Why does Elon Musk, founder and CEO of Tesla, think such a humongous and unpredictable task?
Why does he think 200 or 500 hundred years from now?
He thinks of colonizing mars for human settlement, because he is taking both questions and answers far away from him, because 200 or 500 years from now, he won’t be alive. We all won’t be alive. Legacy also comes into play when we go far personally from our question and answers.
The world we are living in right now is made by those who twisted the existence then, who ventured the unknown question, and those who thought about the uncomfortable question in their own new way.

When we reorder things, creation appears.
Rearrange the sofas in your living room, your mind says, wow, it’s gorgeous because your mind identifies the new creation.
Renew, refresh, reshuffle, reselect, reshelf, redecorate; all they have amazing things in common.
They change the dynamics of our brain.
They help to see things from different angles.
The Pareto principle also indicates the same: only 20 percent of anything produces more value, 20 percent comes from reselection.
20 percent of words of any language are mostly used in any conversation.
20 percent of stuff in our home we use again and again.
20 percent of products of any company sell over and over.
20 percent of spices the chef uses again and again to produce amazing dishes.
20 percent of our questions have the best answers.
The remaining 80 percent of all of the above are mundane and can not produce valuable outcomes.
Remember, when you say “I and my,” it’s mundane, it doesn’t produce the most valuable 20 percent result so that reselect your question.

Think of it this way, sugar is an essential ingredient in our life.
We need it to survive. But if we over consume it then it converts into more fats and that is the main culprit of our many health problems in modern life including cancer.
Overconsumption of anything is bad, including sugar.
Overconsumption is against the principle of reselection.
Don’t over consume anything in life including politics, religion, and sex.
Reselect the same so that we don’t over consume.
Let’s start by using one spoon of sugar instead of two spoons in our morning tea or coffee.
Let’s consume coffee or tea only two times in a day instead of four times.
Let’s consume the news only once in a day rather than to follow every piece of news during the day.

There is also one reason why we hesitate to reselect because we are social animals.
We tend to be skeptical of new questions and uncomfortable with change.
We are likely to stay with the same old question about anything.
We are likely to challenge anything new.
This is our nature.
We feel so comfortable living in a small echo chamber: the same old friends, the same colleagues, the same road to go home, the same food everyday, and the same kind of entertainment shows on TV everyday.
We are afraid of reselection.
If we have any new information coming in our mind, we have to trust it but we always have to verify it.
Verification is the reselection of the same old with new eyes.

Remember, we all will die sometime in the future, sad but true, and the desire to make us important all the time is just human nature.
That’s the reason we always say, ‘I and my.’
Accept this fact that we have to reselect our statement excluding ‘I and my’ even if we are right.
When we start to develop this skill we make a habit of saying “sorry” to the people.
To say ‘sorry’ is an acceptance that I’m accommodating you for my mission, you are more important than me, and I listen more than I talk.
We can’t beat human nature unless we know how to accommodate other humans.

There is another misconception out there that academically sound people are always right and they know more because we see these people leading in many places, we see these people on the stage, we see these people all over the places trying to control others.
Forget about their academic degrees; PhD, MD, or MBA if they are not using their expertise in the field where they make a living.
I’m sure you’ve also seen and worked with so many of these people who have these degrees but are the most absurd and polarized in society.
I have personally seen and worked with so many of these people who have PhD, MD, and MBA but are the most argumentative, short-tempered, arrogant, corrosive, and politically motivated.
I’m not saying all are bad, what I’m saying is, don’t follow them blindly.

Just believe, our formal education never prepares us 100 percent in the real world.
I believe I have some credit, at least, to say this.
I’ve spent 5+ years in my PhD and 4+ years in my postdoctoral training.
We must have real world experience to be successful in the real world.
This is not only by me, this is also by those who are successful in the real world who don’t have PhD, MD, and MBA but are generous, collective, and logical.
Apply the principle of reselection for these people too if they are influencing your lives directly or indirectly who have these tags of PhD, MD, and MBA after their name.

Real world education means starting a grocery store, traveling far from home without much money, driving a taxi to survive, and running 5K for the first time if you’ve never run before.
Real world education means studying your mind about what comes in the middle of your 5K run.
Real world education means trusting the gut and intuition and applying the feeling of that 5K run that never comes by sitting on the couch at home.
Just one living example, John Paul DeJoria, an entrepreneur and the founder of the Paul Mitchell line of hair-care products, started his business career with a loan of just $700 with a high school degree. He now owns a business empire worth $3.1 billion.
If we are involved in real world education, it owns us and we are more likely to quit the different forms of addiction in our lives.
Our gut, our intuition, and our real world experience is more powerful than the advice of PhD.
Asking many questions in life is a choice but tweaking the same old question over and over to get the new result is a decision.
Real world education is nothing new, it is the application of tweaking of the same old question to see our lives with a new lens.

Reorder the same old question in different forms and avoid things which are not important in life. This is called focus.
There are two types of real work we can do in this world depending on our personalities.
We can either work as a CEO of our own company or we can work for a CEO’s company.
If you drive your own taxi or if you own a grocery store, then you are CEO; if you are accountant or lawyer in a firm then you work for a CEO.
Both are equally important, choose what suits you the best.
We have to choose where we fit the best depending on our own personality.

Similarly, we can also select to work in two sectors: public or private.
Both are equally important, also depending on our personality.
Be either a public servant or work in private firms; be kind, be generous and always make a habit of saying “sorry”.
I personally prefer the private sector because it teaches us entrepreneurship in life.
If we know entrepreneurship, we can live freely wherever we go.
Keep in mind, we spend the 1st half of our life time learning and the 2nd half in working based on 1st half’s learning; this isn’t going to work in the 21st century and after.
This concept of education has already stopped working because it is based on the 19th century education system dictated by the industrial revolution.
Entrepreneurship is one of the tools to win over this old education system. The important thing is that it teaches us how to adapt to the fast changing environment. More than this, it teaches us how, where, and when to say ‘sorry’ to others.

Always remember, “sorry” doesn’t mean you are wrong, it only means you might not have reordered your old question.
The best time to say ‘sorry’ is when you realize that you are only a single dot in a sea of billion other dots, if you realize this at your core you never get addicted in anything including politics, religion, and sex.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

He was in high school in grade twelve, so called intermediate second year then.
Our other dear friend was also in the same class but she was a little bit quiet.
She used to talk only about classes, teachers, subjects, home assignments, and exams, nothing more than tidbits about school life.
Occasionally, she used to go for snacks during break but only in a group of friends.
He was my dear friend and was interested in talking beyond that boundary of school tidbits, he was interested in talking about life, relationships, and future plans.
But it never happened because he was unprepared, he was scared, he didn’t have any maturity on how to express feelings or love to somebody else.
As far as I know, he never expressed his feelings to her, he always kept inside himself until he left the school.
Occasionally he shared his feelings with me but not with her.
He absorbed his feelings internally, I am not aware when and how he released it out.
I don’t know how he’s living his life nowadays but recently I made a connection with him via Facebook. Thanks Zuckerberg.
I’m sure there are many people out there who are in the similar situation as my dear friend.
I hope this content will help them.

Feelings convert into pain very quickly if it doesn’t get space to sprout.
After more than two decades now, I figured out how somebody’s feelings and love towards another person dissipates and infects the person internally.
If we live carrying the unexpressed feeling in life, this would be the road to disaster, this could be one of the root causes of our unhappiness.
Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse and an author of “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” a phenomenal book which is translated into 27 languages talks about unexpressed feeling as a number three regret of dying person.
Number three regret the dying: “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”

Few months ago, I remembered that my younger daughter insisted that I go to play with her in the park.
She told me to leave my cell phone at home. I was a little surprised but I could understand.
I asked her why to leave phone at home.
She said that you don’t interact with the park and you don’t enjoy it if you have your cell phone with you.
At that moment I told her, sure, I will leave the phone in the car and I will engage fully with the park.
I spent 30 minutes with her in the park without my cellphone but I saw her cheering face which I’d rarely seen before.
When I came home, I re-evaluated and mostly regretted how I spent the past years with my daughter.
The main reason I was happy that day was because I made my daughter happy by tweaking my small habit to allow her feelings to express.
She expressed quite a number of concerns and feelings during our 30 minutes park tour.

Like it or not, we are living in the world of instant gratification.
Our cell phone has become a tool of instant gratification.
We are caught up in the hustle and bustle of modern life.
We need everything instant, we have e-tickets, we have express check-outs, we have fast food drive-through.
We have microwaves and we need food in a few seconds.
We expect anything to happen in a few seconds to a few minutes.
We don’t expect to wait.
This pattern of life is making us more unhappy than ever before because we are losing the grip of life slowly, we are losing patience very fast.

I’ve also observed the other reason for our unhappiness, “the culture of more.”
We are living in “the culture of more.”
We have one nice house, we need a couple of more including vacation house.
We have one bike, it is working perfectly for our purpose, we need at least two more of different styles.
We have one car, working nicely, but we need one more luxurious car.
I am not against these luxurious things, I personally love them but I’m against the sense of their control in our lives at present and regret when we turn older. I wish I could have lived differently.

What we forget here is we have only 24 hours in a day, we can’t stretch it, we have just 24 hours, that’s it.
When we have more things to take care of, obviously we need to earn more money to maintain these things; a vacation house, a second bike, and a luxurious car.
We have to sacrifice more time to earn more money, not only that we have to also give extra time to maintain these extra things regularly.
Buying is just a first step, major responsibilities come after buying. We have to renovate the vacation house, we have to change the oil in the second bike and second car regularly.
These extra things are soaking all our personal time, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly.

When we create a little free space in our mind then only happy hormones roll the ball on us.
All our emphasis is going more on changing oil in the car rather than changing oil in our body.
Oh, today, I can’t go to the gym, I have to change oil in my car.
Oh, today, I can’t make dinner, I’ll eat frozen pizza because I have to finish the wall painting in my beach house.
All of these “more things” are making us stressed out, remember, we’ve only 24 hours in a day.
We don’t eat nutrient food because food is not our priority, we don’t drink enough water because dehydration goes unnoticed.
Our health is crumbling down because all the time we are hustling out for more things.
We easily become tired due to all of the above, we slept less, we spent less time with our kids and spouse.
If you don’t spend more time with your kids and spouse, you remain unhappy. This is a fact.
For those who don’t have kids or spouses, have a pet and spend time with it, a miracle happens in your life.
Keep in mind, more is not always better. If you know how to distinguish ‘the culture of more’ with ‘culture of enough’, you will remain happy throughout your life.

Our body stops communicating with our mind when we have no clue what meditation, gratitude, and mindfulness are, and how they balance our life.
We never dedicate any time for these things because all of our time is consumed by noise around us.
Meditation, gratitude, and mindfulness teach us a secret of life, here it is: our past is already gone, our future has not been written yet, the only thing we have is the present, so be happy and enjoy it to the fullest.

After a certain time we start to look outside for happiness, outside of our inner life.
By the time we know there is something imbalance in our life, it’s already too late.
Happiness is not outside, it is inside us.
Remember, outside may bring pleasure but it doesn’t always bring happiness.
Understand this fact, happiness is not pleasure, you can certainly buy pleasure for a certain time but you cannot buy happiness.

Think of the time, in school, asking your teacher why you had to learn national geography if you had no intention of using it in real life. Probably, your teacher might have said that you need to learn national geography for your brain development or college preparation or harsh case scenario, “because I said so.”
Now you are an independent adult with a fully mature brain.
Your teacher’s answer doesn’t apply to you any more.
Therefore, you don’t need to fill your mind with useless information.
Always believe what you see and what you do or plan to do, not what others tell you to believe.
You don’t need other people’s approval all the time in your life.
Information is already overloaded due to finger tip’s digital access.
What kind of value are you producing by remembering the names of all the rivers and forests of your country in 21st century’s education unless you are participating in a national quiz competition?
Now you are an adult, if anything that isn’t interesting to you or relevant to you by any means, don’t consume it.
Only consume what is relevant to your life.
Create an extra space in your brain by taking only things or experiences that are relevant to your life.
Don’t let junks walk all over your mind.
Happiness comes from things that matter to you, not from junks.

Happiness is a state of mind, to be happy we have to change our mind.
The interpretation of happiness is highly subjective and it is not an exact science.
Some people read Playboy to become happy, some people read physics to become happy, and some people read companies’ legal and financial reports to become happy.
Some people sing songs to become happy and some people do fishing to become happy.
You get the picutre, why there is so much variation in happiness because it is internal, it has nothing to do with other people’s choices.
We cannot find any good tool to quantify the level of happiness.
If I get my thing then I would be happy is basically an illusion.
If you are not happy now before getting the thing, you will not be happy after getting that thing also.
You must be happy first to get things, otherwise you will stretch your expectations all the time that never end. If it never ends then you never become happy.

Many people think that a lot of money makes them happy.
But in reality people who don’t have money think this way only that a lot of money makes them happy.
I am sure you have seen many people with a lot of money but still unhappy, they are unhappy because they still want only more money, I have certainly seen many of these people.
Here is the fact.
Money itself doesn’t make us happy, it is just a paper with pictures on it, but it gives us freedom and security.
We can utilize money to get freedom according to our interests that make us happy.
If we have nothing to do during our free time, then we again become unhappy.
Money is an amazing tool, one tool out of many, that provides us things and experiences that make us happy, treat it as such.

Happiness also comes from growth, it comes from trying new things, it comes from taking educated and calculated risks in life.
Learn to take big risks, learn to survive big failures. But most importantly, learn how to win big in life so that we can give back to society even bigger.
When we give to society, we become the happiest person because we make other people happy.
Think about your happiness level when you make your kids or your spouse happy, what do you feel? Just go a little bit further to make your neighbor or your community happy, you feel a rush of flow of dopamine and serotonin in your body.

Why didn’t my dear friend propose to our classmate in grade twelve?
Because he didn’t have courage to ask, he didn’t have a risk taking attitude.
Worst of all, what could have happened if he had proposed to her, either she would say yes or no.
Either answer would produce no harm to both of them, but by not taking the risk of asking he got only regret.
Imagine the movie industry and stock market, which movie is going to be a blockbuster and which stock is going to be a 100 X multiplier, nobody knows.
Nobody knows what’s going to work. We can just guess, an educated guess. We can be lucky by an educated guess.
But people who dedicate themselves to making movies or people who invest in the stock market keep doing the same thing. They just don’t expect only the best result, they enjoy taking educated and calculated risks, and when they win, they win big.
Remember, regret of not taking risk is permanent but risk itself is temporary.

People always doubt what you say because these are words but people always believe what you do because these are actions. Happy people love actions not words even though actions are risky.
We all have innate observational and investigative skills for any kind of actions, the only thing is we have to explore by using it.
Once you start exploring, you become more interested to explore more, you start to make flow of your exploration.
This flow institutes a happiness inside you.

Many celebrities are brand-conscious and we have a culture of following them on social media.
I’m not against following the ideal person but I’m against following blindly.
They all wear Gucci items and we try to imitate their persona.
They wear Gucci because they get paid from Gucci to attract the poor and middle class.
This comparison doesn’t make us happy because we are not celebrities, their personal values and our personal values are different.
I have seen former first lady Michelle Obama wearing a pair of J. Crew sage green leather gloves to hold the bible for her husband before a worldwide audience of 140 million plus on TV to be sworn in as America’s first ever African American president.
She could wear Gucci but she didn’t, she wore items from an ordinary retail store.
She did this because she is real, she is not a pretender.
I have seen Barack Obama also wearing J. Crew bow ties many times.
The Obama family declined brands, they showed their love for mass consumer retailers.
Only Louis Vuitton and Gucci don’t show our personality, they are just symbols of luxury.
Remember, luxury is not happiness, it is only pleasure.
To become happy, we must be authentic based on our priorities and values, not by comparing ourselves with Gucci wearing celebrities.

Understand this, you don’t possess happiness, you have to create it according to your own standards.
It is absolutely internal based on your personal expectations and reality.
If you are unhappy, immerse yourself in life with some passion.
We, as humans, came to earth almost 1.2 to 2 million years ago before the modern humans, Homo sapiens, appeared. At that time, there was earth, dirt, soil, rocks, and some plants on the continent.
Many animals appeared and disappeared but why did we humans always thrive?
Because we have a passion for progress, but animals don’t.
We have an amazing brain in our head which other animals don’t have.
The science about our brain is still mysterious, we barely know how it works, but when we associate our passion with it, it works fabulously. Don’t ask me how.
Passion ignites us, passion gives us a reason to live.
Once you have passion to live, you start to marry to yourself first before you marry anybody else.
Now you find a reason to live, you always remain happy.

Connect and engage your passion with your family, friends, and colleagues.
Start small, but start now, once you start, you will know exactly what to do, how to do, and when to do.
This passion would be your happiness project.
We have seen many happy people buying time with their passion but unhappy people waste time complaining about everything.

The mother of John Lennon, the evergreen artist of the Beatles, once asked her son, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”
John Lennon replied, “I want to be happy.”

Remember, if you love somebody, just propose today, take the risk and ask, don’t wait for the day that never comes in reality, the so-called tomorrow.
Accept the result and move on, you won’t regret, you feel proud that you asked, you will remain happy irrespective of the answer from the other side.
Good luck everyone, always be happy.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina