Is the habit of complaining a poor human connection skill?

Never tell your problems to anyone, 20% don’t care and the other 80% are glad you have them. -Lou Holtz

After a long time, I met one of my old friends in my old place, Philadelphia.
He was my dear friend and, of course, he still is.
He began to talk to me about how badly his career is going, he said that nobody gave him a tenured position after teaching seven years in a liberal art college. He said how difficult it was to publish papers in peer reviewed journals where nobody cared about his fundamental research.

He further explained that everything was so competitive, there was no funding for fundamental basic research from any organizations including government and private.
He gave me a chance to respond after saying this: public as well as private research funding moved to the cosmetic areas of science and technology where immediate returns became the prime importance.

He became a little scared and shared all of it with me because I was in his heart as one of his close friends, so I told him, why do you always complain?
And, in addition, when I meet you, you always start by complaining first every time.
What is the reason for your complaint?
Do you actually feel relieved after complaining of things that you didn’t get? Or is there something else?
This is my request, my friend, please, learn how to stop complaining if you can.
Complaining doesn’t solve our problems, actually it doesn’t solve anything at all, it just exacerbates our problems.

Complaining habit is one form of the fear of suffering rather than the suffering itself

Complaining is a deep rooted psychological habit of suffering, in many cases it’s a way to express our ego and dissatisfaction which is inside all of us.
The truth is, people don’t have time at all to listen to our complaints.
They have their own shits to figure out and settle in their lives.
They always have their own tasks to filter, organize, and solve.
We might think they are listening to our complaint, and they will save us, but they actually are not listening to us. Actually, very few have practiced the habit of listening in life.

We may feel that they might give something to us after they listen to our complaints, but in reality, people are listening to our problem just for a moment in front of us. Once we are gone, they will forget about what we just said.
They come back to their own world, they think about their own tasks to ponder, and they have their own things to figure out rather than ours.
This is the world we are living in.

There is nothing wrong here, but we have to understand how the human mind works.
People were like this in the past, people are the same now, and will remain continuously the same in the future too.
Except a few close family circles, people have no time for others.
People are centered around themselves, it’s not their fault, this is how we all evolve to survive.
People spend time for them, and for them only, this is science of the brain, and spending time for ourselves helps to reduce the fear of suffering.

So I like the quote of Paulo Coelho, the author of classic ‘The Alchemist’ “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.”

The skill of human connection is one way of knowing the rules of the game and breaking them intellectually

I met my friend after five years but in our first conversation he started complaining about his job and working situations without even asking me how I was doing.

Of course, it’s difficult to get tenured, it’s difficult to publish in peer-reviewed journals.
If it wasn’t difficult, everyone would be tenured and publishing all the time, and by this time it wouldn’t be special and creative to become a tenured professor.

To become a tenured professor, we have to either publish or perish, this is more than a slogan now in academia. Filter one out of twenty results, shine one and garbage nineteen to survive.

I looked at some people who got tenure before him. This is the world of human beings, the world of human experiences, and most importantly, the world of human connection.
Always, I found people’s connection, as a fascinating human evolution.
I’m not taking it lightly, I’m not saying just two words, human connection, it’s a whole lot of different games now.

Vivek H. Murthy, MD, the author of ‘Together’ explains the loneliness and social human connection and its effects in our lives in ‘Together’.

Murthy said, “ People are wired for connection and relationship. It is biologically in our DNA and any therapy, however valuable it is, cannot replace truly mutual connection.”

My friend, in the real world, your tenureship is decided by two or three people in your organization. It’s not about what you know and how much you know, it’s always about who you know.
Above talent there is connection and influence.
Talent is only a part of the process, everybody is talented in this world in some way, this is in our genes but connection means everything for any situation.
Michael Jordan isn’t talented in computer science, and Bill Gates isn’t talented on the basketball court. Talent is always specific.
Talent is an outcome of an over extended period of practice, dedication, and hard work in one specific area.

Anders Ericsson, the author of ‘Peak’ said that almost all of us have the seeds of excellence within us, it’s just a question of nurturing them by reducing expertise to a discrete series of attainable practices.

Ericsson said “The right sort of practice carried out over a sufficient period of time leads to improvement. Nothing else.”

Everybody knows Bill Clinton, the most popular and successful president of US history, but very few are aware of his human connection habit. He used to call one to two ordinary common people whom he met somewhere in a coffee shop or in concert before going to sleep every night for years and years. This is the power of person to person connection to build up a human connection machine for a grandiose purpose. 

Keith Ferrazzi, the author of ‘Never Eat Alone’ describes the impact of human connection to the world around us which is based on generosity, helping friends connect with other friends.

In ‘Never Eat Alone’, Ferrazzi outlines the success strategies shared by the world’s most connected individuals, from Winston Churchill to Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan to the Dalai Lama.

Once I attended a seminar by the late Nobel laureate professor Robert Grubbs, I remembered him saying that when he was assistant professor in Michigan State University, he was having problems with tenureship.
He said that many of his colleagues at the time suggested to him that he could change his career track.
After hearing their suggestion he said that he changed himself more to know the rules of the game than anything else.
We have to know rules formally and informally pretty well before breaking them effectively. The skill of human connection is one way of knowing the rules of the game and breaking them intellectually.

Making our job exploratory and interesting means we never complain about it to anybody

I also have a unique experience of how human connection works in this world.
Right after finishing my high school, I applied for a sales assistant job in one electrical enterprise, but the manager rejected my application.
I called him if there was any way I could improve my experience to get the job.
He replied that I didn’t have enough sales experience, especially in the electrical appliance business.
I desperately needed a job so I asked one singer whom I knew through one of my extended family members, a kind of budding celebrity at that time, to tell the enterprise manager for the job.

I reapplied for the job.
The enterprise manager called me the next day.
I called the manager to find out what special qualities I have for the job.
The manager replied that for the electrical appliance business, fresh candidates do better jobs than experienced ones because we give them our own special training.
The enterprise manager had no clue that I was the same person applying for the job before.
I wasn’t angry with the enterprise manager at all, I was just learning how to grow wings by myself.

My friend, there is nothing wrong here in the process, any process never becomes transparent to everyone as long as humans are involved in the process.
The world was not transparent before, there are many dark stories from history, the world is not transparent now, and will remain the same like this for many many years to come.

If you are not tenured after seven years of teaching, then you need to have uncommon solutions, and for that you have to look in uncommon territories. Keep in mind that you already pass the common territories.
We have to learn to be proactively skeptical in anything but, in your situation, you are showing more of a defensively skeptical attitude.
When we become proactively skeptical, we become more aware of things and surroundings, and consequently, we see more choices and options.
Please, accept this as my pure private analysis.

I’m no guru by any way or any means, just my pure personal experiences.
My experience says we always like to do what others are doing but this works only if we are dealing in normal territories.
We have to learn to see the things that others are not seeing, especially when we are in uncharted territories like yours, and uncharted territories always look for human connections.

David Brooks, the author of  ‘How to Know a Person’ said “Searching for connection is a yearning to be understood. Experience is not what happens to us, it’s what we do with what happens to us.”

We need our position as a need, like a tenured person, but that only we need, nobody else needs because nobody sees what we see in our life.
I don’t know whether you need or you want this job as a tenured position.
Everybody has their own needs.
Everybody has their own wants.
But there is always a small overlap between this need and want, that is actually our exploration.
In the US, when a kid turns sixteen, they need an iPhone.
That’s not their need actually at the moment, that is their want.
But if we explore deeper, this want is a lot bigger in different ways, this want is their symbol to begin their independent adult life.
This exploration gives an emotional change for them, but when their life goes on, they explore a circumstance where this want converts into their need.

In the beginning, every successful person imitates past successful people in the same field by making a very good human connection before they explore and innovate themselves.

My past teaching experience says teaching is not easy, research is even more difficult, and getting tenureship is more like holding a hot rod in a bare hand.
Here is the hard truth, 99.5% of PhDs will not become professors.
According to a study by the Royal Society of Chemistry, only 0.5% of all PhDs will ever become professors because there are almost no tenured track positions.
I know from my personal experience in my life, I have done the longest time job is only teaching.
Don’t be discouraged, teaching is not easy in itself, and in addition, research is becoming more and more business in academia.
But if we need a tenured position then we have to make both teaching and research a lot more exploratory for us.
A lot.
If our job is exploratory and interesting for us, we will never complain about it to our best friend.

The general rule of life, I learned is, whatever we practice we will improve at it, only if the game is exploratory and interesting for us. Exploration always lies behind interest.

Conclusion

Twenty years of work experience comes only after spending twenty years of exploration.
But our mind is so powerful that if our game is exploratory to us, we can research, visualize, and calibrate the game.
Twenty years experience can be cut in ten years of exploration of interest.
This could be possible only if we can train our mind how to be curious through human tools, human experiences, and human connection.

Remember, human connection is one of the best tools to explore our interests.

People will tell us many different things including talent but the greatest truth behind human is: everything always moves only through person to person connection.

If the game is interesting to explore, we will become experts at handling any tool including person to person connection.

I wish you all the best, my friend.

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.”

My one thing when I was covid positive.

Saying no to multiple things can be the ultimate self-care. -Claudia Black

Last two weeks were really crucial for me, an important part of my self-nurturing and self-discovery in my life.
I was covid positive and my whole family was covid positive including my youngest two and half years old.
When I found my daughter was covid positive, I was suspecting myself personally because I was also experiencing a mild headache and chills on that day.
I was in the office but I didn’t want to give the covid positive information to my 10 years old daughter via message or phone, I wanted to be with her with the result.
I knew my daughter’s habit, she could be very reactive very soon.
I went home, she was constantly asking me the test result, and I told her you are covid positive.
She cried initially, I saw her scary eyes but I hugged her and said, “don’t worry, viruses will go away in two weeks, we all the family members will be isolated from the outside world for two weeks. We will expel this virus from us very soon.”
I couldn’t do anything except to strengthen the morale of my daughter, make her as positive as I could.
After knowing the test result of all the family members, we all did nothing except taking medications, resting, sleeping, drinking water, juice, soups and ginger tea.
I did a little bit of reading and writing completely out of science, my professional area, if I didn’t feel tired.
Most of the time, I felt really tired.
I couldn’t eat much so I was feeling very weak.
I could feel my weakness quite easily due to fatigue, dullness, and body pain.
My body is accustomed physically to running, which I couldn’t do. Even though I couldn’t eat solid food much, I drank plenty of water, juice, soups, and ginger turmeric tea.
When our body hosts contagious viruses, we start to think a lot.
I realized this for the first time in my life.
Thinking became my notorious tool even if I wanted to ignore it.
Thinking becomes more contagious than viruses, when we’re awake.
Why is this never stopping tool so corrosive?
I have no clue.

I wanted to shift my moving brain to something positive, something creative like sitting for longer period meditation.
I knew I couldn’t go out and do other activities so that I could only calm my active brain by indoor activities. I was locked physically but my mind was not locked.
In the past two weeks, I slept two thirds of the time to decelerate my thinking.
I forced myself to sleep even though I wasn’t feeling sleepy.
The only time I felt relaxed is immediately after I wake up from a deep undisturbed ibuprofened sleep.
When the body becomes weak, the only thing the body needs is rest.
Full rest is possible only if we go on deep sleep, our mind shuts its doors so that we can recharge and refuel.

I did some creative light synthesis work in the kitchen.
I made tuna soup for my family.
I fried some onion and tomato pieces with fenugreek, carom, and cumin seeds.
After two minutes of frying, I added tuna chunks and stirred for a few minutes.
I added turmeric powder, salt, and I stirred again.
I grinded ginger and garlic pieces and made a paste and stirred with tuna chunks for at least five minutes.
I added two small chillis, a little bit of cumin seed and coriander powder, and half spoon mixed spice powder again.
I poured 5 cups of water and boiled it for 10 minutes.
After that I transferred it in the bowl, squeezed the fresh lime on top of it and took a sip of it with my favorite spoon.
I felt really energetic with each spoon.

I used to drink the soup, and then I tried to sleep but I couldn’t sleep again.
This became a routine for more than two weeks.
What to do next, I used to sneak inside my daughter’s dark room, I checked them.
I also used to check my wife’s room, she was sleeping next to my two and half years old son.
I touched both of their foreheads.
My wife opened her eyes, a mild face, she held my hands for a few seconds but didn’t say anything.
No need to say anything, I could understand her eyes because I had been reading those eyes for the last 15 years.
I felt both of them hot, I checked their temperatures, both of them were around 101F.

When we have viruses in our body either our body will fight or flight depending upon our body immunity or strength.
I told my wife to take a few sips of cold water which was next to her bed.
She did but my youngest one was in deep sleep.

Every night was a new beginning for me, I knew that.
But I was forgetting it as I moved through pain and fever.
I needed to do one thing that was ahead of me, I didn’t know what was ahead of me, but I needed to do one thing: be calm and positive as much as I could, do meditation as long as I could.

Many nights, I couldn’t sleep.
Next to my bed was a book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron.
I used to read a few pages.
Julia was talking about our inner artist character which we usually kill very early in our life to avoid unnecessary hurdles and pain.
Julia’s book reminded me why we humans think so much about other people’s opinions to kill our creativity.
I also thought why am I so scared to share my own personal feelings?
Why do I need to share only formal words?
I’ve written many things in my diary but very few things I have shared with the outside world. Why?
Is my life only formal?
Don’t I have private feelings to share?
Then why am I hesitant to share it?

I know everybody has bad and good feelings depending on their personal journey.
Another thing I learned from Julia’s book is we have many things to do in our life, but we have only one thing to accomplish at one time.
This time one thing for me is to take care of my health and my family’s health, and get rid of covid viruses as soon as possible.
Filter every other noise and concentrate on one thing only.
Just one.
I didn’t want to surf facebook because I was not happy. Facebook is the place to share happy faces, nobody posts authenticity there, everything is edited, but our real life is always unfiltered.
I turned off facebook and thought about making chicken soup this morning.
I made chicken soup for lunch.

I always fight to make ginger tea or just drink plain water.
I couldn’t pick one quickly.
What was bothering me about making ginger tea?
I wanted ginger tea but I didn’t have the energy to make ginger tea.
Was I feeling tired or lazy?
Tiredness is different from feeling lazy.
Tiredness is my physical condition but laziness is procrastination.
If something takes less than 2 minutes to finish and if I don’t do it then I’m not tired, I’m just lazy.
Lazy because I’m thinking more rather than doing, I’m accepting everything that comes to my mind but not doing 2 minutes’ work, I am lazy.
I realized I’m lazy, I’m unable to distinguish one thing out of many.
I used to stop my mind quickly, I made ginger tea multiple times in a day, drank, and slept all day.

Among many ways, one way not to feel lazy is to pick one thing that takes less than 2 minutes, and just do it.
Pick one small thing.
Just do it.
Due to weakness, I have been sleeping a lot these days but I always keep one notebook with a nice pen and one of my favorite reading books next to my bed.
I always leave one book on the dining table too.
Whenever my daughters come to eat, they read the title and they also read about the author if the author is female, If the author is male, they rarely read. I don’t know why?
I have noticed this but have not mentioned it.
Once I sit at the dining table, I read one page or maybe two if I feel so.
The book I have right now at my dining table is “The Big Magic” by Elizabeth Gilbert.
I’m reading 73 pages of it.
Today morning, when I opened my eyes, I went to the kitchen, I still had pain in my body, and made ginger tea. I didn’t read the book but I saw only the picture of Elizabeth Gilbert on the back cover.
Of course, she was older than me, she is a white lady, attractive, and has an amazing face-cut but I was in love with her finger and mind connection more.
I asked her, “ what’s in your mind?”
Your genes are chemical engineer’s genes but how do you portray my feelings, my words, and eventually my stories?”
How did you know that I have all of these in my mind?
You are a genius mind reader, I love you Gilbert.
I’ve eaten you, I’ve prayed for you, and I’ve loved you.
Keep shining us through your beautiful words and keep writing, keep inspiring us.
I will keep looking at your passport picture everytime on the book cover when you publish something new and love you always.
But please keep updating your picture in every other book so that I feel I’m getting older too.

I wrote one sentence in my diary.
I wrote, “why do some people become such good artists?”
I was still thinking about Elizabeth Gilbert.
It was 7am.
I wrote “why do I have a headache again?”
Why do I take ibuprofen to kill my headache?
Because I have no other options.
But why?
Because I don’t want to think when I have a headache and body pain.
There is no option, Ibuprofen works only when I sleep.
This is my routine now.
Why cannot I break my routine?
Because I am accustomed to my routine.

What happens if I start something really small to break my routine?
I started to accumulate my personal diaries.
I am hoping to compound everything one day.
That’s the beauty of one thing.
I want to compound not to think much, nowadays the fancy name for this is focus.
Today my one thing is to make chicken soup, one small thing but little different than before.
I’m compounding my soup skill too.
My wife told me I can make nice chicken soup too.
She told me it’s easy, whatever I did for tuna soup, repeat exactly the same, just exchange chicken pieces instead of tuna chunks.
That’s it.
Wow, how do people become so creative?

I realize that life doesn’t need to change a whole lot of things at once, it needs only a small one thing to change at a time.
Today there is just one thing to do, chicken soup, completely different recipe and different taste with only one small tiny change.

If we compound one thing for a 5 percent increment for 10 years how big would the number be?
Guess.
This is the power of one thing compounded over time.
No plans, no time management, no priority, just one thing, that’s it.

I don’t know how to be happy but the sure way to be unhappy is to do many things at one time, to please many people doing many things for them at one time.
We spend too much time doing many things to make a living in our life rather than building one thing by doing one thing everyday.
To make a living by doing many things in life is a circle but to build one thing by doing one thing in life is an uptrend line.
Spending quality time to build one thing by doing one thing is a responsibility.
Building one thing by doing one thing requires a solid appointment each day and every day.
Make your appointment with one thing everyday whatever it is.
Mine is tuna soup, chicken soup, my midnight diary, Julia’s book pages, Gilbert’s words, Buchwald’s new article, Hartwig’s book, one hour nap on Sunday afternoon, just a few but one thing at a time.

Let’s be serious even though I still have a mild fever.
Let’s see the proof.
Twelve American writers have won the Nobel prize in literature since 1901.
Not one of them had a formal Masters degree in creative writing.
Four of them never even finished high school.
Then how come they got the Nobel prize in literature, well, because they had one thing in their mind.
The only one thing.
They wrote something everyday, maybe less than two minutes everyday.
Maybe one sentence everyday.
They made an appointment with writing for two minutes everyday.
Their one thing was maybe one sentence, or two or maybe five sentences.
If you compound one page for a five percent increment every year for 10 years,
could you guess how many books you could write?

I am formally a doctorate, somebody somewhere gave me this degree by spending five years on one thing only but I assure you all this.
When we pass a certain age in life, no matter how we are spending our time, we will certainly earn a doctorate in how to live a life.
Living a life comes from individual personal experiences.
Any two people’s living experiences’ rarely match.
Let’s make one thing for living a life, whatever it is.
Let’s make an appointment with this one thing, everyday or every night.
My whole body is in pain due to covid, but I would like to make mushroom soup today, my one thing for today.
I will change one thing today, mushroom pieces instead of chicken or tuna pieces, which I made before.
Just one thing but a completely different recipe, every other thing will remain the same.
Gordon Ramsay became the most famous chef in the world by changing just one thing at a time in his recipe.

I hope my whole family will be virus-free soon.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

My new year resolution: whatever happens but I want to be a dad forever.

“My father didn’t tell me how to live. He lived and let me watch him do it.”
-Clarence Budington Kelland

Look around us.
What do we see?
Things made by humans and things not made by humans.
All of these things made by humans are inspired from things not made by humans.
All of the natural things like water, air, earth, oxygen, animals, and plants carry immense pontential for us.
Always use them for good purpose, education, and motivation.
Whatever things human made which we see around are not made by people smarter or better than us. These people are the same as us.
The only thing they did differently is they spent time studying nature and, most importantly, the complex relationship of it to humans.
They just developed better daily routines and habits to study nature and evolution of human beings, which after a while became automatic and required less conscious energy.

Many times in our life we become illusioned by originality, or quote and quote, something new for the first time. Nothing is original in this world.
We first invented black and white photos but we still had blue sky, light rays, seven colors, brown clouds, green trees, and blue ocean, just to name a few.
These are originals, yes, exactly originals.

Nature is only original, the rest of all is synthesis from it.
Originality only happens if we exactly know what are the edges of reality, and the reality is nature and human beings.

It’s very hard to understand the value of originality if we only listen to a Harvard MBA, a tobacco company CEO, but ignoring a primary school teacher and a forest conservationist in Nigeria and Nepal.
Originality is directly or indirectly connected to us, humanity.
What impact do these people have for us?
If we dig a little deeper for the cause of humanitarian efforts, everything would be clear.
We are living in the age of bubbles, we don’t go deeper because we don’t have time to make a human connection.
Is there any difference between hard-core bribery or corruption or making money by selling tobacco?
I don’t believe the original idea from a Harvard MBA, a tobacco company CEO, there is no such thing, what I believe is derivative of the originals from a primary school teacher or a forest conservationist in Nigeria or Nepal who are devoted to making human beings healthy and happy. Inside the derivative is the human picture that translates the originality into humanity.
There is nothing special, new, and clean except human connection to nature.
We have to clean our house everyday to make it dust free otherwise in no time the house looks crappy.
That everyday cleaning brings originality into the house, the same applies to nature.

Nature has amazing things to offer: we can plant, we can grow, and we can harvest. Plant means to start, grow means to take care, and harvest means to take advantage.

Nature is also an amazing therapy.
It cures a lot of things which modern medicine can’t cure. Of course, it’s slow but way more effective.
Think about the situation where you and your spouse had a severe verbal argument. One of you said sorry and offered a walk in nature.
You tightly hold your spouse’s hand and offer to see the sunset tonight from a rocky mountain. While watching the sun set, what comes to your mind?
Why do you forget everything that you had a few minutes ago?
Imagine the whole universe, observe the sky, look at the horizon, feel the flow of gentle wind.
Are you still stressed with your tomorrow’s goal or weekly goal?
Of course not, you both feel amazingly different.
Why nature settled you both is because it has immense power which we don’t know yet.
If you are planning for a marathon run, a marathon coach instructs you to walk barefoot on grass for 30 minutes every week, why?
Because nature provides strength to your feet.
If we only eat the kind of food which gives life if we throw it on soil, for example, plants, seeds, or grains etc then we never become sick.
Why?
Because soil is nature, grains and plants are also nature they provide strength to our body.
Nowadays, our everyday breakfast has sugar and doughnuts, they are against nature.
Our grandmother doesn’t recognize them as food.
By the way, our grandmother is also nature.

Remember, if we are healthy then only we make thousands of dreams in life but if we are unhealthy then we have only one dream in life: how to get rid of the disease.

If you are a person to believe in magic diet pills to be slimer and beautiful rather than the daily 7am run in nature then you have not understood the power of nature.

Always look a few steps in front of you before looking too far too quick.
Right in front of us is oxygen to breathe, water to drink, trees to get shades, soil to plant, and animals to pet.
We have sunlight that converts our cholesterol in the skin into vitamin D3 in our body.
These resources are interlinked with our mind and body, and they communicate with us constantly.

Accept it or not, nature gives energy, strength, and freedom to us.
But for that we have to think a little deeper, learn at least a little bit from Galileo, Aristotle, and Henry David Thoreau.
Freedom provides creativity if we try to understand the complexity of nature.
Amazing things are amazing the first time when they happen but this amazing wanes with repetition.
But nature never wanes.
Think of the moment when your wife or girlfriend tells you for the first time that she is pregnant, a true gift of nature.
Think of the sentence ‘I love you’ when your partner said it to you for the first time.
You both represented nature at the moment.

Politics, peace, love, hate, jealousy, money, marriage, sex, status, birth, death, disease, and religion, each is a powerful source of human emotion.
Do we actually know whom to marry, where to work, where to raise a baby, and where to retire. Of course not, but we are still worried all the time about them and become emotional.

Remember, happiness and success aren’t found when we are emotional, we don’t become happy by buying things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we won’t know in 5 to 10 years from now.

Many of our emotions cloud our judgements. This is a severe weakness for human beings. Nature has an aesthetic power to control our emotions. Scientifically how it works I don’t know but it works.
I feel tired, I come home, I sit on the couch, I take off my socks, my cat knows I am at home, my cat sits next to me and stares at me, my cat comes and snuggles my feet, I feel relaxed.
If I’m overwhelmed, I also come out in my garden, I touch the ground with my bare feet and I feel different.
I feel calm and relaxed.
I feel connected to all the human beings around the globe through earth because every human being is touching the earth.
Isn’t it power?

All prospective moms know the nine months pregnancy would be troublesome.
Every mom knows the pain and suffering of delivery but still they are very happy to give birth to a baby.
All prospective parents know they have to clean up poops, change diapers, they have to spend time on their kids’ homework, they might have to cut their sleep time, they have to spend their life savings for college tuition but still they want to go to become dad and mom.
Why?
Because parenthood is nature, there is something incredible inside it.
I’ve seen a billboard with just the words ‘dad’ and ‘mom’. Do we need any sentence to complete these words?
I don’t think so.

Recently, I asked a 77 years old man, who was smoking outside of his office building, “you always seemed relaxed, what is the reason for it?”
He said, “my son finished college, my daughter gave birth to a healthy daughter last month, I’m a grandfather now, isn’t it enough to be happy?”

I just smiled without any comment, I don’t know why but his answer touched my heart.

“I also look at my marriage. Yes, I’m a father, I’m a grandfather, I’m uncle, and I’m a friend. Wait, I’m boss too in my office, but at my core, I’m just a human being doing my best to create a life for my kids and grandkids that makes me proud,” he further added.
“I should mention this, if you want to be relaxed in life, always wear nice and comfy underwear and socks, never compromise on these things, two thirds of your life time you wear those, I’m serious, do the things whatever makes you happy, healthy, and comfy,” he said laughingly but seriously.

Isn’t this 77 years old man a student of nature?

We can become whatever we want in life for a very short period of time but we have to be either dad or mom forever.
Being dad and mom is nature; no, no, I’m not saying natural, I’m saying nature; but any other role in life is temporary and easily interchangeable.
The strength that you generate being a dad and mom is immense, that needs to be preserved to transfer in generations to come.
Being a dad or mom, never ever talk about yourself more in front of your kids, let them see your activities more.
The only way they learn more is by mirroring you.
Let them see you walking on the grass, let them see you running in the morning, let them see you watching the sun-set, and let them see you eating only whole grains.
You must be a very good student of nature yourself first to be a dad or mom forever.

Our adult suicide rates have tripled over the past forty years, the most selling drugs at present are for depression, anxiety, and stress.
Anxiety starts at age 11, depression starts at age 14, obesity and diabetes are at epidemic level at the moment.
Do you really know, why?
Because we forgot to plant, we forgot to grow, and we forgot to harvest.
The biggest problem, as a dad and mom, we forget because we don’t have time to teach our kids about these activities.

Remember, a tree doesn’t speak, it remains calm and serene but it gives flowers and those flowers turn into fruits when time comes.
Parenthood is nature: let our kids see how to plant, grow, and harvest.
If we learn patience from a tree, we become dad and mom forever.
Silence is also power; it also comes from a tree.
As Brene Brown, an author of ‘Daring Greatly’, says: talk less, listen more. This is a secret sauce to become a great dad and a great mom forever.

Time is a non-renewable resource in our life.
Let our kids know that time is nature, it is a zero sum thing, we cannot make more of it.
The most important thing in life is time, it has no color, no shape, and no size, we don’t see or feel it, it doesn’t wait for anybody.
It is not an object but it is an abstraction, treat it as such.
Respect for time is respect for nature.
The human being is the only animal that thinks about time, thinks about past, present, and future.
As a human being, the donation of time for any human cause is more powerful than the donation of money for the same cause.
As a dad and mom, let our kids see where we donate our time.
Donate our time to teach computer science in rural public schools so that they know why information is power, donate our time to teach chemistry in rural public schools so that they understand why we have to make more medicines to cure diseases.
Donate our time to build a local library in your community so that they will know what knowledge and wisdom are hidden in the pages of a book.

Donate our time to teach young generations about nature so that they will know why we should live our life happily.

Learning to donate time to humanity is learning to be a best dad and best mom forever.

I wish you all: a very happy, healthy, and prosperous new year 2022.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

Do you know the secret of happiness? It moves.

To be happy means to experience that we are alive. -Anonymous

I was reading a newspaper in a coffee shop.
Suddenly, I saw a couple at the corner table with espresso coffee and banana muffins.
I wasn’t in a good mood, I don’t know why, a bit depressed, thinking about a lot of things in my life: my unfinished projects, no time for family and kids, mundane career, no time to travel, and not enough money. Name a few of them.
In addition to that, I was also worried about my legacy for my children.
What was I thinking at the coffee shop?
Maybe I was a bit overwhelmed.
I wasn’t happy at all.

Suddenly, the same couple sitting at the corner table approached me and handed me a Christmas card.
On the back side of the card there were five very important quotes from very influential people.
One particular quote from Anne Frank is still in my head: “think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”

After reading those five quotes, I wasn’t the same person as before entering the coffee shop.
I smiled to myself, a little bit excited, at least I was happy for a moment due to the momentum brought by those quotes.
Quotes are creative human expressions, and a lot of times we try to live by them based on our lifestyle. Sometimes it’s possible to live by these quotes, sometimes it doesn’t.
Quotes not only speak our inner voice they also speak what is outside of our life.
In my case, those quotes which I read were real and took me to a higher energy level for a moment.
I don’t know why but I felt a different kind of happiness when I finished reading them.
I am pondering now, did the couple transfer little happiness to me?

I am still reflecting now, getting a bit emotional remembering the past incident at the moment.
Am I crazy to think about that small moment again?
But wait, life itself is the combination of many small moments which we don’t get time to cherish.
Do I feel happy right now?
Well, how to know?
My mind is still not accepting the present reality that I’m happy because I’m constantly searching for something.
I’m very anxious because I’m worried about the future.
Why do we need a constant push to remain happy at the moment?
Do you have any clue?
Have you ever experienced something like this before?

I know happiness is a subjective experience, it’s difficult to describe because your happiness could not be mine, and my happiness could not be yours.
Could I read the happiness of the couple sitting next to me? They seemed pretty happy, laughing and talking together, cuddling to each other with sips of coffee and bites of muffins.
Hell, no, I couldn’t read their happiness externally from my mind.
I told myself, the experience that I was having at that moment was different than that of a couple, the couple couldn’t have the same experience as mine, we were two different emotional creatures.

As Daniel Gilbert, the author of ‘Stumbling on Happiness’ said that happiness cannot be measured but we can only either participate in it or be aware of it.

What I have seen from movies and read from great books is: happiness is internal, it is being.
Many great spiritual leaders and great authors have said that calm is also happiness.
Many social scientists have based their research on this topic.
The common saying is we attract happiness, we don’t search for it.
Then, why am I searching for it?
Because this is our human nature, we always search for happiness.
I remember one of my mentors who told me that whether the person is happy from inside or searching for happiness, always look for two simple characters.

These two characters are: unhappy people always argue, they argue a lot about anything, big or small, and most importantly, they argue to win.
The person who argues has ego, it suppresses happiness.
They don’t care about facts, figures, and knowledge.
Ego comes when you are not happy with your life, you have a lot of dissatisfaction inside you, mostly created by self centered confinement.
When ego is gone, humility comes, then you smile naturally, this is how happiness emerges.
If you are happy then you discuss things with positive intention but you never argue.
Discussion is not an argument, discussion is sharing with others, when you show a sharing attitude, your mind glows and you become happy.
Always share or transfer your happiness whatever it is, small or big, it always multiplies in ample quantities.

Know this, you only become happy when you make others happy.

The second characteristic of unhappiness is gossiping.
If we are not happy with our life then we talk about other people.
This is hilarious but a fact.
Remember, if we gossip with somebody, somebody also gossips about us.
Gossiping is the elongation of our dissatisfaction about our own life in a fake happy appearance.
We are just taking time to avoid our unhappiness for the time being.
Unhappy people mostly gossip to compare things, appearance, and habits showing the hidden motif that I am superior.

Remember, happy people always talk about ideas and experiences, they don’t gossip about things, appearance, and habits of other people.

Nowadays, happiness has been contaminated by things; money which never becomes enough, big house which never becomes big enough, big car which never becomes luxurious enough, and many others.

Our happiness never becomes happy enough if we constantly look for things to possess.
Possessing things consume us very quickly if we are not aware of their nature.
In reality, happiness is peace with whatever we have.
This ‘have’ ridiculously becomes ‘want’ if we don’t practice peace in our lives.

Few years ago, I met a man at my family friend’s house. He said that he made one million dollars in five years going the extra mile in his business.
He said that he is very happy because he made that money after a long struggle in the medical equipment business as a sales representative.
Few months ago, I met him again in one conference and he shared his mom’s undiagnosed health issue. He was very worried thinking about his mom’s health condition.
I became familiar with him through our professional connection because I am also involved in the medical research area.
Few days ago he called me and shared the good news that a doctor in Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City identified his mother’s disease.
But the doctor said it would cost upto one million dollars in total to cure the disease. His mom was suffering from a very abnormal cancer.
My friend said to me he was so happy that his mom would be alive.
He added that finally God saw him and helped to save his mother’s life.

After our conversation, I was very happy for him that his mom’s disease got identified and will be cured soon.

After seeing my friends’ stages in life, I became quite unhappy about one thing.
Why does this happiness move in our life so quickly?
My friend was so happy with one million dollars in his bank account, but now he is happier to spend the money to save his mother.
What is so unique about our happiness?

One day I met the same friend in a Barnes and Noble book store, he shared his mom’s health and told she is free from cancer now.
He told me that only peace can bring happiness to us.

He further added, “if we want to have a happy life we should anticipate a lot in life but we should never react. We humans always blame other people or things for our own suffering or unhappiness.”
“In fact, we ourselves are the cause of our suffering and unhappiness. If we develop a non reactive attitude, we bring peace into us that is essential to remain happy,” he further added.

If you aren’t happy then your unhappiness doesn’t remain isolated within you, you will send this unhappiness to all of your family members, loved ones, and colleagues. They never become happy with your unhappiness.

Life is too short to be unhappy.
Happiness doesn’t come as an end product, happiness is the series of small moments we pass every single day.
We have to learn to be happy in those small moments, we have to practice to cherish those moments.
Therefore, choose happiness and always practice happiness.

Shahrukh Khan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Lady Gaga aren’t happy because they are famous celebrities and they have millions of strange followers; they are happy because they also have life like us, they have family and loved ones around them like us, they can breathe and smell this wonderful world as we do.
We don’t always get what we want in life, but if we practice happiness we always get what we need in life.
‘Need’ gives us a sense of fulfillment but ‘want’ doesn’t.

Last week, I was in the Wal-Mart self-checking counter, behind me was an old woman waiting with a gallon of milk and some apples. That would probably cost less than five dollars.
I smiled at the lady and asked her, “Mam, you have just two items, I have many, could I scan your milk and apples first and let you go?”
“And mam, don’t worry, I will pay for you.”
The woman looked at me straight in my eyes first, she smiled and said, “God bless you.”
I still have her smile in my head.
I hope I transfer a very small happiness to her.

Remember, Socrates taught Plato, Plato also taught Aristotle, and Aristotle also taught Alexander the Great.
What do these great people have in common?
Each of these great people were transferring their happiness in the name of knowledge and wisdom.

By the way, if you know any other secrets of happiness, please share with others. Let’s make this world a little happier together.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina




Who are you: worker or networker?

Get lost first and then find your destination, you get a completely different perspective of life; if not get lost now, then when? -Anonymous

There is a saying: doers learn to see but others learn to search.
My grandfather used to tell me, always associate with the people who actually have done the real work and gathered the real work experience rather than with those who actually teach but have never done the real work.
I wish I would have applied my grandfather’s words long back.
We cannot start a business just by listening to a lecture from a person who has spent years teaching business education in academia but has never run a business in real life.
Thinking about business is one thing but go and start a business is a completely different thing.
We never become good swimmers only by reading books on how to swim well, we become good swimmers by jumping in water and practicing swimming.
The difference between doing the real work and teaching the same means we excite the different parts of our brain.
This is really fascinating to me from my own personal experience because I’ve spent many years teaching the students but actually rarely did the same myself.
I have noticed that doers have three dimensional thinking but teachers and observers, most of the time, have two dimensional thinking.
I have also experienced that many times doers do more actual work and utilize their time very judiciously but teachers and observers do more network.
Work is way more important and powerful than networking for those who are especially involved in any kind of creation.
In reality, any type of creative work eventually itself makes a network, no need for extra time for networking, creation flows in different directions with invisible medium.
Work and networking have common misunderstandings among us because we always think that we have to network to show our work.
The truth is: any creative work always follows the network wherever we go.
Real creation speaks in itself, it attracts networks because it actually becomes the real reason for networking.

Remember, if networking doesn’t work, then only work will work.

One of the most important habits doers have is they always quantify anything in their lives.
This is so powerful to improve and upgrade anything in their lives.
If we know exactly how many glasses of water we drink everyday, then it has a huge effect on tomorrow’s drinking habit and overall health.
This is just one example.
If we know exactly how many times we become upset in a day and on what moments then it has a huge influence on tomorrow’s mental mood and overall lifestyle.
If we don’t quantify things in life then we reach nowhere, and we have no way of knowing how things are moving in our lives.
We have no measurement of ourselves.

Do something and make a habit to quantify. Quantification is our required qualification for self-improvement.

As far as we can experience and understand, there are three types of minds: thinking, doing, and being.
Thinking mind or our thought only doesn’t guarantee that we do the task. We certainly can teach and transfer thoughts to others by utilizing it.
Doing mind is different, it captures some of the features of thinking including positive thinking and thinking belief as well as some part of being mind.
Being needs actual work done in reality, only actual work done.
This is one of the reasons that doers have an edge over observers and teachers because the former are one step ahead in the mental process of the task than the later.
If we are on the stage of doing, we can see both sides, thinking and being, because we are on the edge.
Remember, if we are on the edge, we can see clearly what is on the outside but if we are in another place then we may not see things outside.
Edge is actually the rearview mirror of life, by looking at this we can see how we can go where we want to go.
If you are a doer, then you certainly can quantify the distance between how you can go to where you want to go.
In the process of doing actual work, our brain produces different chemicals than just thinking or teaching. When we associate more with the doer, our brain also anticipates the doer’s mindset.

Teacher performs the job by teaching the material to others but the doer does the same for herself or himself.
What doers do is they show up and do the work. They prepare for themselves, they read for themselves. They enjoy the process without expecting anything in return.
If we enjoy the process, we become a different individual every single day.

Author Austin Kleon has written a must read book “Show Your Work” and he shares about the importance of process rather than product, and the benefit of doing something small everyday.
This book is a must read book for those who are in the business of creativity.
Doer actually has the habit of looking at the minor details of the task they care about.
The key point for them is how to develop foresight and patience.
They develop these characters unknowingly with practice.

Doers also have a secret weapon they never tell to anybody but they just increase their knowledge themselves just by doing a little bit every time.
They are always honest with themselves, but don’t tell all of their secrets to anybody.
It’s essential to keep some of our secrets to ourselves as catalysts. Our little treasures, nobody knows outside.
Thoughts and big ideas are our own treasures to preserve to inspire us. Sometimes it’s better not to say anything about them, but to tell ourselves, and just do the work.
Doers are wise enough to recognize these precious moments.

It is true that doers may not get the desired goal all the time but every day they satisfy their inner thirst, they improve their inner self.
They see and experience their inner designer character daily.
Sharpening the inner designer character is contagious.
Creation itself is contagious.
Creativity is an indefinite resource, the more we look for, the more we find. This is the motto for any doer who devotes into any sort of creation.
Doers don’t anticipate any great creation but they do anticipate a different creation in their own imagination.
This is the reason Michelangelo viewed himself as a sculptor and created the Sistine Chapel Ceiling.
This is the reason that Charles Darwin took 20 years to finally publish his landmark work, the Origin Of Species.
This is the reason that Thomas Alva Edison, one of the most prolific inventors, held a total of 1,093 U.S. patents in his lifetime.
For some people, innovation is also contagious.
Take an example of Richard Branson, a magazine producer, who originated the idea of renting boeing and later started the airlines industry along with a series of other successful companies.

There is always one person that appears in my mind when I see the word doer: Winston Churchill.
He was a best selling author, painter, a gifted journalist at age 20, he became a member of parliament in the UK, subsequently, he became prime minister two times, and served his people.
As a prime minister during most of World War II, Winston Churchill rallied the British people and led the country from the brink of defeat to victory.
What a doer!
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in1953.
A doer of rare versatility.

Do doers have a way of coming up with big ideas of creation and innovation in their mind?
This is a complicated question to answer but both creation and innovation lie in doer’s bucket list.
One of the ingredients of doers regarding creation and innovation is they have a good attitude upon invention and innovation which acts as a competence over their skill.

Another most fascinating thing about doers is they know everything is temporary in their lives, therefore, they don’t waste time regretting and debating.
They always know it and behave in the same way.
They know, we all are temporary, our life is temporary, our house is temporary.
Our money, our relationship, our cat, and our cows all are temporary.
We have an expiry date on us.
If we realize this every single day, we certainly become doer, we try to leave a legacy, and we live a great life.

Doers know that feeling good comes only after doing something good.
Feeling good also comes after reading or listening or watching something good, but feeling good after doing something good creates ripple effects in our lives permanently. Nothing comes close to this astounding experience.

Remember, it doesn’t matter what we say and teach everyday consistently, what matters is what we do everyday consistently.
As Maria Popova, founder and editor of Brain Pickings, said; nothing beats the consistency driven by the deep love of work.

Thank you for your time.
– Yam Timsina





How did I learn to say ‘no’ recently?

Since the last couple of years, I have divided my life into three parts: the first is the time that I like to spend for me, just for me, only for me what I like to do, I don’t want to compromise on it.
Others might say I’m selfish because I don’t want to give this time to anybody else.
But nothing has touched me more than what my mind, heart, and body whispers me to do.
Selfish is a really complicated and difficult word to use.
This word leaves a negative precursor in our mind and thinking.
My mind and body always whispers simultaneously to me not to use the word ‘selfish’ to anybody else because you don’t know the other person completely.
Many of us use it too often, too quickly, and too lightly, but I don’t want to use it in such a way.
Let others use it in whatever form they want. This is their life, their thinking, and their choice.
But I don’t want to use the word ‘selfish’ for others, at least after using my two cents’ second thought.
If we avoid using the word ‘selfish’, I am sure we improve our non-judgemental curiosity and compassion a lot better.
This is a fast technological world, we all want to be super successful and super perfectionists so that we become superhuman superquick.
But, in reality, all we need in life is a lot less ‘super’ but a lot more ‘human’, this is more likely to happen when we don’t compromise time for our ‘me’ moments.
‘Me’ moment is a microscopic view of our life, it is not a selfish moment.
My picture of ‘me’ moment may look unusual for others but it is very common for me.
And I hope this should be the same for you too.
Here is a simple synopsis of my ‘me’ moment as an illustration.

I want to read Mark Twain’s ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ even though I am super busy.
I want to write about my first dad experience when my first child was born because something unforgettable happened.
I want to meet with my childhood friend in Seoul, South Korea because I’d spent my past 20 plus years with him together.
My tomorrow’s 5k running time is conflicted with one of my friends’ birthday party, but I want to run.
I want to listen to that specific song by Lata Mangeshwor several times when I am on my patio remembering my deceased grandma.
I want to travel this weekend, Naperville, Illinois to attend the writer’s club conference where I would have the opportunity to meet with Paulo Coelho, one of my all time favourite authors.
I want to meditate for 30 minutes at noon Sunday afternoon outside to elevate my focus level.

I learned that the best of me comes only if I push myself over the edge.
And this is possible only if I know myself better.
And this is possible only if I spend quality time on myself for my ‘me’ moments.

Remember, air hostesses always say put your mask first before helping others.
I hope you got the point.

The second part is for my family where I want to spend my time with my kids and wife.
Nothing is more important than our family. Most of the time, our life revolves around our kids, spouse, parents, and siblings.
I like to stay at home, play with kids, watch movies with them, travel with them, participate in activities that they want to be involved in and make them happy.
I know if I don’t do this now then there would be a list of more regrets on deathbed than my life accomplishments.

The third part is to dedicate time to my professional work.
This is the time for bread and butter.
Remember, this part is no less important than the above two parts by any means.
This is my work for living and that supports me financially and upgrades me every single day by learning something new.
By profession I’m a scientist so I need to be updated on new discoveries, findings, and innovations every single day.
To accomplish my professional goal, I need to work efficiently and smartly, otherwise, the aforementioned two areas of my life would be affected.

The most difficult part in life is to make balance in these three areas.
It doesn’t happen often, it needs a little bit of practice.
There are many reasons why it’s difficult to balance but I’m going to mention one which affected my life the most.
In our life, each of these three areas needs to grow without affecting the other.
But trust me, nobody is perfect and I’m not the exception.
There are a lot of people who are struggling for this balance.
I’m trying to make this balance but my life doesn’t know this balance automatically unless I teach and practice my life how to balance them.

This balance for me became possible only when I knew how to say ‘no’ very politely and gently to the activities which have no meaning in my life.
But the majority of us are very weak to say ‘no’ to, because we don’t want to offend anybody.
This is our human nature.
We have been taught since childhood not to say ‘no’ to others.
We look rude and undisciplined in society’s eyes.
If we don’t offend anybody by saying ‘no’ then we offend ourselves, so this is our conscious choice to whom to offend.
Nowadays if somebody invites me or proposes to me to go somewhere or to do something, and if I don’t want to go or don’t like then I simply say ‘no’, thank you for the invitation’.
I don’t give them any answer for why?
This is difficult but we must practice.
I don’t say and will never say, “oh I’m busy, I don’t have time.”
Remember, there are always 24 hours in a day, same for all, for me, for Elon Musk, for Joe Biden, for Oprah Winfrey, and for my 6th grader daughter.
It’s not true that I don’t have time, I have time but maybe not for that specific task.
I simply said, “little longer ‘noooooo’ with a nice smile, thank youuuu, though.”
This part is really hard if we don’t practice, I’m still working on it.

The most recent type of ‘no’ that I have learnt is no to political news. In past years the amount of time that I spent on political news is insanely high when I look back on my life.
To be honest, I never learnt anything from political news.

I absorbed everything just as entertainment, it didn’t help a single ounce to improve the quality of any area of my life.
Finally, I realized this is a total waste of time.

I found that spending so much time on political news is not helpful at all.
Most of the political news is intentionally motivated to hook, influence, and addict us, and finally make us morally and intellectually bankrupt.
Does it really matter to my life which party leader said what in where?
I don’t think so unless I’m a political leader or I make a living by doing politics.
Of course, there are exceptions.
But exceptions don’t rule our life.
Exceptions are just exceptions.
If we divert the time and attention that we spend on political news to the area of our interest in life that matters the most, we gradually move in the direction of our choice.
I’m not saying as a guru or any motivational speaker.
I belong to none of those catagories.
I make a living by doing science so I know little bit about the science of body and mind, and how they are connected chemically.
Largely, this is from my own personal experience rather than scientific facts.

Political news, I believe, is a two-edged sword.
On one hand, it gives us a world of entertainment from early morning that could be quite addictive and can go till late night; on the other hand, it tends to fill our mind with information which has no value in our lives.
Not very far in the past, I used to be a young person in a hurry because I used to watch a lot of news on CNN and Fox. All of that time was going from my actual ‘me’ time or family time or work time.
I used to think consuming CNN was not a waste of time because I’m learning.
Instead, I used to think that if I sit quietly doing nothing for a few minutes, that was a huge waste of time for me.
But I recently learned that how we look at our time spent also changes with time.
Maturity also teaches us how we are maturing daily, weekly, and yearly.

Now I understand that a pause to look into my own heart or mind for a few minutes daily is never a waste of time.
This is an investment of time in me and in my health.
In my view, this is one of the most rewarding investments we can make in our lives.
Remember, physical exercise does good in our body including health by its repetitiveness, but quietly looking at the mind is eclectic.

Political news is only good for career politicians who make ends meet doing politics or the job is related to it directly or indirectly.
Majority of news is motivated by specific political philosophy or by some hidden political agendas.
Journalists inform us of the twisted news which affects us physically and emotionally.
As far as I have understood, a journalist’s job is not to teach people, nor twist the news.
Their job is to let people know what exactly the news is, as it is, unfiltered.
It’s up to the people to decide the right and wrong and make their own decision.

There should be a clear alignment between what we do and what we think in life.
Our mind produces thoughts but our body produces feelings, they are different.
If we don’t align our thoughts with our feelings then we are doing something wrong.
Without this alignment, we never produce any tangible results in our life.
This indicates that we are doing something which is not sustainable, we are doing it for the sake of doing only.
That’s the exact moment I realized when I was spending my time with political news in front of a television set or on youtube videos.
I was involved and doing one thing by my feelings but my thoughts were completely different and were giving me different directions.
We humans have the power to pause and reflect, this is basically a habit to check alignment of our feelings and thoughts, no other animals have this power.
When thought, the work of the brain aligns with feeling, the work of the body, we are in the state of being.
This state of being is required to break any wrong habits in our lives.
I completely broke my habit of watching too much political news, opinion, and analysis after realizing the state of being in my life.
Though, again, I’m not perfect but moving in that direction slowly.
Knowing this state of being is one of the best tools to go from good to great in our lives.

What controls us is very important and knowing it is extremely powerful.
Sometimes, it’s very difficult to see a fine line between help and control.
Politics itself is a good discipline of life, it helps to carve our footsteps in society, but if we are not aware of its nature, it controls us very quickly.

Remember, If everything is politicized including our body, mind, and daily work then survival becomes our full time job.

We become deprived of our life choices if what we do all day is to fill our mind with political news.

Is survival our full time job?
Possibly, if we feed only junks in our mind.

Nowadays I would rather feed cheerios, milk, and strawberries to my two years boy, play with him, and watch with him than to watch political news.
I have watched ‘the boss baby’ multiple times with my son, I don’t know the exact numbers but surely many times.
This is a computer-animated comedy movie.
My boy especially loves the boss baby character so I’m watching it over and over again to make him happy.

Many dialogues and scenes are vivid in my memory.
These dialogues from the movie I use frequently at home to create a fun and healthy environment around the house.

Some of my favourites from ‘the boss baby’.
The ‘boss baby’ runs the company ‘BabyCorp’.
“Either you run the day or the day runs you.”
“Success is not linear, it’s a wild ride.”
“Aim for failure, then only you get success.”
“No, no Jimbo, puppies are evil, we babies are losing and puppies are winning.”
“Is this my team? A musclehead, a bunch of yes men, and doodlers.”

My personal favorite is,
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right.”
Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina


Why did my friend tell Ei-ichi Negishi, a Nobel laureate professor, “I am two and half months pregnant now?”

I was at the national conference of the American chemical society. After attending numerous presentations, I was at a social gathering cocktail party, a fun, mix up, and refreshing network evening.
I was at the table with one of my colleagues who is now an assistant professor in the university.
All of a sudden, the late professor and Nobel laureate Ei-ichi Negishi stopped by our table.
My friend and I greeted him.
My friend immediately jumped and asked, “Professor Negishi, it’s our pleasure, you are with us this evening, can I share something with you?”
Professor Negishi replied, “yes, of course.”
“Professor, I’m two and half months pregnant now,” she mentioned.
Professor replied, “ Wow, nice, am I the first person to know after your husband?”
My friend replied, “yes.”
“Many many congratulations, you are about to enter into the most fulfilling job on the planet, mom,” Professor responded.
“Any tips professor, I know you raised two astounding daughters,” my friend added.
“In the end of the day, you and your husband’s life revolve around your kids, just keep that fresh always in your mind, it would be an amazing and thrilling experience to live by, especially being a mom and a professor at the same time” professor Negishi replied.

“By the way Sophia, you don’t become a good professor by becoming knowledgeable yourself, you become a good professor by knowing how to transfer knowledge to others effectively, and as a mom you will have an edge for the later part,” professor Negishi added.

“Thank you professor, I have one more weird question to ask you because I’ve got this golden opportunity. I’m with you this evening, I don’t know what’s coming to my mind” my friend added.
“Sure,” Professor Negishi replied.
“By any chance, could you remember, how long you and your wife didn’t talk to each other due to some kind of misunderstanding or argument or whatever it could be during your conjugal life?”
“Wow, this is difficult to answer, you are taking me long long back, of course, we had many many of those instances.”
“Well, as far as I remember, for at least 5 to 6 hours we didn’t speak, but for most of the time, I broke the silence” professor Negishi replied.
“Thank you professor, thank you for sharing,” my friend and I greeted him again saying bye when he was moving to another table .
When the professor left, I told my friend, “congratulations, am I the second person to know this secret news after your husband?”
She laughed and said, “kind of yes.”

I told my friend, “I was expecting questions related to either a chemistry project or your professor position or maybe research funding or any university related to a Nobel laureate chemistry professor, but you surprised me with unexpected directions.
You are unpredictable”.

“My friend, sometimes life takes us far from our real current standing ground, what we do everyday and what we think everyday, I guess this is what life is all about,” she expressed.

“I was the most timid person throughout my life and still I’m.
I became irritated very quickly.
I rarely felt secure and calm,” she expressed.

“My decision power had been uprooted long back.
I always felt infected and contagious.
Everything looked fictitious to me” she further added.

“I never understood what I wanted in life until I met a man whom I married 5 years ago who transformed me completely into a new me,” she expressed.

“This is not the appropriate time to share all of these but you just told me as an unpredictable person so I’ve got motivation to initiate different aspects of my life even though I’m meeting and talking to Nobel laureates and brilliant minds in our field on this beautiful evening. Nobody knows what’s inside us and what is the cause of our suffering and infection unless we express it,” she added.

“My parents always focussed on my weaknesses, they never allowed me to improve my strength.
I was very good at storytelling and map reading but they always pushed me in mathematics and statistics where I was weak.
I was weak in Spanish in high school but very good in English so my parents hired a Spanish tutor for me.
My story telling capacity got plateaued and never crossed the barrier but nobody cared.
These were my childhood memories.
I couldn’t do anything but I could reflect and connect now,” she said emotionally.

“I came from a very unusual family situation. My parents didn’t talk to each other for many years, even though we’re under the same roof.
My childhood consisted of numerous silent dinners and numerous silent lunches.
Now I’m an adult but I feel this is so awkward and unmotivated.
My parents said they didn’t divorce because of me.
Dad wanted to show his love and care for me more than my mom, and my mom wanted to show her love and care more than my dad.
They had competition to possess over me.
I never understood what they were trying to prove until very recently in my life.
I was in the middle taking advantage of both of them without knowing the chronic infection inside me.
Though I’m an adult now, my childhood memory sometimes suffocates me and is affecting my adult life,” she expressed.

“Sometimes, guilt and shame are very important to reconsider.
Many times my dad showed his guilt but never improved on his behaviour.
My mom also showed shame many times but never showed any attention around my dad, she was centered only in herself,” my friend noted.

“My dad and mom never sat together and discussed and learnt anything from each other. Both always tried to find whose fault was associated more than what was the actual truth. Finding somebody’s fault accelerates our ego but finding truth accelerates peace.
Ego and truth are very strong words but sometimes we are compelled to dissect them.
My mom was a project manager in a tech company and dad was a sales officer.
Both were immigrants to the USA from Japan, both were very exhaustive in their 30’s and 40’s, both were trying to be perfect, both were trying to be somebody else, but I had no clue who that somebody else was.”

“As far as I understand, we were somehow an upper middle class family financially, but dad was always running behind the commission rather than his annual salary.
My mom was always running behind more work performance and quick job promotion.
Relationship promotion never became a priority for my dad and mom.
My mom always complained about things that didn’t go as per her expectation.
She failed multiple times, her projects failed multiple times, and she didn’t meet her expectations multiple times, but she always complained about them.

I remember Stephen Hawking, a great physicist, cosmologist, and author who lived with the crippling disease ALS for 55 years. He has said beautifully, “people won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining,” she mentioned in a very soft voice.

“Now I learnt that once we start something, we don’t need to know it all at once.
Our complete potential and results start to appear once we trust our work.
In the end, complaining becomes so insignificant we actually don’t need it in our life.
I learned this from my husband.
At present I’m struggling to get my assistant professor position as a tenured position in my university.
I also know it’s tough because there are limited universities and limited tenure tracks, the majority of these tenured positions have already been occupied by my dad and granddad faculties.
But I’ve learned how to be calm and confident throughout the process and, most importantly, trust in me.”

“I remember, I used to come from school and I always saw either only dad or only mom at home, there were rare incidences where I saw both of them together at home at same time.
If dad were at home, he used to ask me “how was the school?” she said.
I used to say, “good”.
“Our conversation used to end and I walked towards my room.
When I came out for a snack in the kitchen, my dad was already on the phone,” she added.

“Later in life I learnt that people always do things which they want, not what they need.
Want becomes so vicious in life that we all can also gradually change our want into need if we are not conscious in our decision,” she added.

“Due to my silent home environment, I never knew the fine line between courage and confidence in my life because I never had that discussion at my home,” she said.

“Do you know the difference now?” I asked her.
She said, “I’m learning.”
“Yes, I know, I did some bungee jumpings,” she said
“That’s great, you accomplished your long quest of bungee jumping.”
“Awesome,” I added.

She said to me that once she was wrapped in a large elastic cord for the first time for bungee jumping, she was kind of senseless but she just gave up, closed her eyes and let it go.
She said, “I was really curious to know how it feels to have courage?”
She said, “I didn’t have confidence at all at the first time, it was just courage because I was shivering on the elastic cord.”

“Upto now I have done five bungee jumps, so I’ve learnt the difference between courage and confidence.
My husband has run multiple marathons.
He says that the present record of marathon is 2 hours 1 minute with Eliud Kipchoge.
But there will be somebody in the future with a lot of confidence who reaches the tipping point and will surely break the present record.
He always tells me that our life expands or shrinks whether we show courage or not, but exponential life expansion happens only when one courage turns into repetitive acts, that is the birth of confidence,” she said.

Her explanation was quite intriguing for me.

She said, “courage is an act where we don’t know the end point. We don’t know what is on the other side and how does it feel when we reach there?
But confidence is different, when we become confident, we know what is on the other side.
We gradually grow it.
Our brain can smell confidence and feel it.
Confidence is the same as our muscle, we can build it the same way as muscle.
I learned this from my husband.”

Suddenly, she received a call.
“Is this Sophia?
“Yes it is.”
“Do you have a dad named Brad in Macomb, Illinois?
“Yes, who is this, please?”
“Mr Neal, I’m Dr. Neal Kornik, calling from McDonough District Hospital, Macomb illinois. Brad was in an accident tonight. He is stable now but in critical condition.”
Sophia stood up and ran on the floor. “What happened?”
“As best we understand, madam, he was driving a car at dusk, he was making an U turn, he was hit from behind. Are you his closest relative?”
“Well, yes ….uh…well, no, I mean my mom is alive but my mom and dad don’t speak.”

I just heard what she said and how her life is leading up to now.
She cried in front of me.

She said, “Why did I tell the doctor that my dad and mom don’t speak to each other?
I don’t know, maybe my mind is working on autopilot.
It wasn’t intentional, it suddenly came in my mouth, maybe this burden is in my subconscious.”

She called her mom in Philadelphia.

“Mom, I never asked you anything in my adult life. Can I ask you something?”
Mom replied, “is everything okay Sophia”
She said, “yes.”
Her mom said, “yes, of course, you can ask.”
“Mom, it is very serious but promise me first, you won’t reject it,” she reiterated.
Her mom said, “promise.”

“Mom, my dad, your husband is in critical condition in McDonough District Hospital at Macomb, Illinois, he got in an accident. I received a call from the doctor and according to the doctor, he is stable but in critical condition. Mom, could you go right now to Macomb, Illinois and see my dad?” she said.
Her mom said, “yes.”

Next morning, my friend Sophia also took the first flight to Springfield, Illinois to go to Macomb.
Once she entered the hospital room, she saw her mom was on her dad’s bedside.
When they saw her, they both had tears in their eyes.

“Mom and dad, you might not be happy after reading this piece of content.
You might say what kind of daughter you are who shares her personal family story to the world.
Mom and dad, I’m not judging you, this my life is your gift.
Whoever I am now and wherever I stand, it’s all due to you both.
I haven’t seen god, so for me, you are on the same level, you are no different from god.
I always respect you both and I always love you both, my love and respect will remain the same no matter what, unconditional. period.

I gave permission to my good friend to write about me and my family, this is my only pure feeling that I expressed with him so that I can think and act mentally strong.
I wanted to clear my mind and body both.”

“Though I may not be 100 percent free from any judgement because I’m human with soul and mind, but trust me, I’m moving in that direction.
And I request to everybody, please, try to be free from any kind of judgement that you have.
We humans are here on earth not to judge others but to do our part of the task to make this world a beautiful place.
Who am I to judge my parents?
Actually, who am I to judge anybody else on the planet?
I always love you both, dad and mom.
I wish you both all the best.
Please, dad and mom, forgive me if I did something wrong by sharing our family story to the world,” she noted.

“My friend, I also know, your head is still running, why did I tell professor Negishi about my private news.
Professor Negishi gave us revolutionary scientific achievement in the name of Negishi reaction in 1977 when he was 42 years old.
But he got the Nobel prize at age 75, after working 33 years for the same discovery which he made when he was 42.
The mystery is that our society is weird, it only credits the work when we become old for the same work that we did when we were young.
My friend, we can learn a great lesson from professor Negishi, he is one of my heroes in my life.
I want to tell everyone that when you are young, please take risks, experiment, wander, travel, create, participate, show courage, and build confidence.
We have one life to live.
I wanted to have this conversation with you, professor Negishi, and my little one in my womb.
Believe me, he or she, I don’t know yet, is listening from my womb,” she said.

Rest in peace, wishing you peace professor Negishi.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

After six month’s music class, my music teacher asked me, “Is this your dream or goal?”

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

Daddy, what do you actually do at work?

We’re at the dining table.
My 12 years old daughter said, “Daddy, everybody says you are a scientist but, daddy, what do you actually do at work?”
My wife jumped quickly and said, “Your daddy makes chemicals in a chemical company.”
My daughter immediately responded, “I hate chemicals.”
My daughter completely shut her mind regarding any activities related to chemicals. She started to complain about her shampoo and nail polish.
She also complained about her paints that she used for her painting class.
“These chemicals are so bad, I think they are very low quality chemicals, my hair gets tangled after using a particular shampoo,” she added.
She turned towards her mom and said, “Mom, I remember you’re complaining about your nail polish last time, you couldn’t remove nail polish completely, am I right?”

I told my daughter, “what your mom just said about my day to day work is true but she missed my main task, making chemicals is only a very small part of the work that I do everyday.”
“My main job is to think about how to solve problems that we all face everyday.”
“Just as you said, you’re not happy with poor quality shampoo, poor quality nail polish, so tell me, who do you think should do work on how to make better shampoo that doesn’t tangle your hair?
Who do you think will solve the problem of low quality nail polish?” I added.

I told my wife in private that you could have said it in a different way so that they don’t shut down their door of perception, their door of listening, and their door of understanding.
My wife nodded with a smile.

As a family, we must be very conscious about our pitch statements regarding our everyday work, our hobbies, and our leisure, when we discuss things on the dining table with others, especially with our children.
Dining table is a very important place to explore our children’s interests.
Interest is the only tool to make people curious, there is no other way around.
Interest is a force that propels us out of bed every single morning and makes us ready to get going.
Sometimes interest becomes really insane. Neil Armstrong, an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer, and the first person to walk on the Moon, got his pilot’s license before his driver’s license.
Siddhartha Gautama, better known as the Buddha, was interested in peace, he was a prince who renounced his position and wealth to seek enlightenment as a spiritual ascetic, attained his goal of peace and founded Buddhism.

We always say to our children, “You are too small, you don’t understand now, there are so many things I do at my work which are very important. You’ll learn them gradually when you grow up.” These are some answers many parents say to their children without giving any specifics.
If we cannot say what we do 8 plus hours everyday at work in a couple of sentences which they can understand then we’ve a serious problem as parents.

When I was a naive and a new parent, I used to say to my daughter that I make chemicals and sell them to make medicines. This is another type of answer I’ve found most often used by many other parents who also work in a place where things are made and sold.

There is nothing wrong with this answer but if your children don’t like making or selling chemicals or any medicines or any other particular things that you are involved in then you are done.
They don’t want to listen to any further details regarding your work, experience, and expertise.
If we don’t like some food then we don’t want to taste it, if we don’t want to taste it, then we don’t know what it feels like tasting.
This is true to all of us, including children, not only in food but also in many life experiences.

When children lose the patience to listen to us, they don’t understand our passion, our dedication, and most importantly, our attitude.
Listening isn’t only to listen to somebody, it’s a mental toughness practice, we need a lot of energy not to speak but to listen.
Listening is not just to be quiet, it means to be at present.

It’s not about our chemical knowledge or medical knowledge or legal or business knowledge or any specific expertise that we have which we are telling to our children.
It’s all about children’s experience of human attitude by opening their eyes, ears, and senses.
Our attitude is key to solving the most challenging human problems in the 21st century.
If our children are not paying attention in developing a good attitude then it will hamper in many different ways in their adult lives.

A good attitude is a settled way of thinking or feeling about a person or a thing that is generally reflected in a person’s behavior.
Good attitude also makes us aware of others’ perceptions towards us.

The most essential degree that we need in life is a good attitude.

Many skills are teachable but attitude is not.

I told my daughter, “I work various things but all of them help to improve people’s lives in different ways.”
Today I attended a presentation from a person from a cell phone company who was looking for something that he could add in cell phone battery materials so that the cell phone battery can last many years.
Think about your cell phone or laptop, what do you think if you don’t have to charge it for many weeks?

My daughter said, “That would be cool.”

Our cell phone and laptop’s battery life is still very short, we have to carry a charger all the time.
We have to solve this problem by creating technology so that we don’t have to carry a charger.
This is just one example of the type of problems that I face every single day at work.

I further added, “This is just one example of how I work to make a positive difference to people’s lives. I also help to discover unique ways and materials to treat the most challenging diseases. Many people are dying everyday due to many chronic diseases.”

I work to empower people as a team who are to deliver breakthroughs so that people get benefits faster and quicker. This team of people are called scientists.
Scientists always challenge the status quo.
Scientists are a very small segment of society but they change society forever.
They always work in unison to solve human problems because each person has specific expertise.

I also contribute to making science a tool of any technology that changes human lives on many frontiers.
Think about how technology is reshaping us to enhance our quality of life. We are living longer because we know how to cure many diseases.
Unfortunately, people are still dying due to many new diseases appearing every single day like cancer, dementia including Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, and schizophrenia.

We have developed CRISPR as one of the biggest discoveries of the 21st century. It allows researchers to easily alter DNA sequences and modify gene function. CRISPR is a gene editing tool that has revolutionized biology research, making it easier to study disease by correcting genetic defects, treating and preventing the spread of diseases, and faster to discover drugs.

We have developed faster communication for documents via email and instant messages so that we don’t have to wait for the mailman to receive information. But what about physical delivery of things, can we do it everywhere using any technology such as drones?
Actually, this has already been started but we need more sophisticated technology to access a larger population.

We are developing a driverless car so that we can sit back in the car and read the book while commuting to work.
How does it feel?
My daughter replied, “scary.”

We’re living in the age of coronavirus, hundreds of thousands of people are dying, people around the world are still struggling to get vaccines easily.
This pandemic showed us as proof that the importance of science and scientists in any place on earth is always in top priority for human progress.
We still don’t have vaccines for children under the age 12.
Recently we made and delivered vaccines quickly and efficiently using science as a tool for age 12 and older to prevent the pandemic.
This is one example of how great human minds work at times of crisis taking advantage of science as a tool when we are desperate to save people’s lives.
Those people who made this vaccine mission successful worked 24/7 non-stop using science as a tool and developed a new mRNA technology.
At present, vaccines for COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, are the only authorized mRNA vaccines.

Kudos to all of those great minds who contributed to make mRNA vaccines and make our lives safer.

These are only a few examples of why science is the utmost tool for any kind of technology for human progress.

“Daughter, I’m just one of the many curious minds who are dedicated to human progress through science, whatever breakthrough technology it could be,” I added.

In reality, daughter, you don’t have to worry about anything at this point.
You have to focus on the basic foundation when you are young: excellent reading skill, excellent writing skill, excellent listening power, basic fundamental science and mathematics, and most importantly a very good attitude towards a person and a thing.

The basic foundation of education provides you how to handle the aforementioned tools in life, but sharpening these tools is a never ending process. You have to do it continuously throughout your life.

You’re just 12 years old, the work you will be doing may not exist now, therefore, don’t worry about it.
Always keep looking and focus on what you really love to do. You may not know or you might not have found what actually you love to do yet.
Focus mostly on why you do your work more than what you do, because why connects you to the broader world.
Your why should be bigger than yourself because it connects the people around you.

Don’t hate people and things quickly, sometimes the person or thing that you hate the most becomes the person or thing you love the most.

As I said, don’t worry about any existing work your dad and mom are doing, they are here to solve the existing problems, you might have to be ready to solve those problems which may not exist now.
Learn as many skills as you can which help to solve human problems by creating your own unique interests.
Always remember, your why should always be bigger than your how, this allows you to find security in insecurity in your work.
You have to know the answer of your why from inside otherwise you will never understand the answer from outside.
To do this, you must have a good attitude.

Keep in mind, a lot of things that we study in school or in textbooks become out of date pretty quickly and make no relevance with a particular time.
History is a good indicator how things keep changing, and our education also follows the same.
You have to develop the problem solving attitude which is directly related to the update of what happened today, yesterday, last week, and last year.
This update is more crucial than the past history, past textbooks, and past degrees.
I’m not saying these are not important but what I’m saying is don’t put too much emphasis on them and forget the real working ground.
You’ve to learn every single day by various means until you die, this is possible only if you become interested in learning.
Remember, problem solving attitude is learning from history and connecting to the present.

If you show your frustration and disliking thinking of your dad and mom’s everyday work at this age then you might start to lower your expectations in life.
This will affect you when you face bigger human problems later in future, when you should be ready to serve the world.

Remember, your mind is limitless.

The following are my two current mental projects that I constantly discuss with my friends who are generally problem solvers in one way or another. I know there is no guarantee that we could solve them during our lifetime.
Many people debate about these things as possible or impossible, but, in my personal view, we don’t have to go to the far ends of the spectrum, who knows 50 to 100 years from now how technology evolves.
Therefore, you might have to continue to be vigilant in such problems when you or your generation grow up and possibly bring solutions during your time.
These are just two of my personal favorites I like to mention to you but there are multiple of these types of challenges we have.

Most importantly, these kinds of problems also help us to make aware about our attitude, whether we are proactive or reactive or listener or talker.

My first thought.

We always talk about the shortage of fossil fuels for the future generations. Do we really know how much solar energy from the sun is wasted every single day?
So I’m still not sure whether we have to focus on preserving fossil fuels or to develop technology to use solar energy from the sun.
We’ve learned in fundamental physics that one form of energy can be converted to another form.
Does it make sense to you?

My second thought.

We eat food, we convert food into energy and that energy moves our body and our muscles.
Plants cannot move but still change one form of energy to another form.
Leaf slug is an animal that can do photosynthesis because it eats algae having chloroplasts.
Then, why can’t we do photosynthesis?
We eat plants that contain green chlorophyll, we have carbon dioxide that we generate inside the body, we drink water, we have sunlight, we have skin with pores.
So then where is the problem?
Why can’t we convert light energy into chemical energy in our body?
Am I thinking too superficially here?

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

Ultimately, your gay gene is an extension from your dad. Isn’t it?

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