Why did Mark Twain never work a single day in his life?

What is the benefit of death?
Well I’m starting out with a very sad point but it is the reality for all of us.
If we accept now that we are mortal and that day is sometime in the future, we live a very powerful life.
Late Steve Jobs said and I quote here, “ the benefit of death is you know not to waste life living someone else’s choices.”
This is the real secret to life-to be completely engaged with our own choices with what we are doing in this life here on earth. Our choice shouldn’t be our work, it should be our everyday play.
Human mind is constructed in such a way that we don’t want to work but we want to play.
Both are our own mental activities but the mind distinguishes them pretty quickly.
In reality, work and play are two different things, work is to satisfy others but play is to satisfy ourselves.
Life without our own choice of play is the most common reason to give up early.
We have to have our own choices in life, our own parameters, and we have to stick to them thoroughly.
We can not measure the effectiveness of our own choices in life unless we stick with our own measuring parameters.
Someone else’s choice in life in the long-run gives us nothing but the taste of regret.
The bottom line is if we live in other people’s choices then we regret later in the future.
We must live with our own choice that makes us happy, healthy, and prosperous.

Perfect example, Warren Buffett, who is an American investor, business tycoon, philanthropist, and the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, one of the world’s most powerful companies. He is considered one of the most successful investors of our time. He started his play of choice at age 8 and he is playing his game of choice until now. He is 90 years old now, still active and vibrant with his play.

Most people don’t realize that our own life will echo our own everyday work.
If we become flexible and mindful in our daily work as our everyday play, we not only get better results but our life also becomes better as a result of better play.

Life does not become perfect, only perfect life play makes our life perfect.
If we are not willing to learn the life play, no one can help us but if we are determined to learn the life play, no one can stop us.
Life play doesn’t come easy, it doesn’t come from what we do occasionally.
It always comes from what we do everyday with heart, will, and happiness.
Many of us only hope for a perfect play which is not going to happen anytime soon until we put practice on play.
Only hope of a good life-play in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments on us.
Only hope without practice on play is a daydream.

There are mainly two very different aspects of human minds which guide our choices.
The first is the logical mind which is driven by different thoughts that connect what we already understand in the complex problems in order to produce the solutions.
Most of the time this thought limits us in the comfort zone.
Many more times these thoughts are also influenced by other people’s choices.

The second thought comes from our intuition, driven by inspiration that can look at the problem and immediately figure out the creative solutions.
Most of the time this comes suddenly from our own choice of play.
Intuition is subconscious thought that brings feelings first and when feelings are put into action produces results.

I would like to share a real story about how intuition works and why we should nurture it.
Edwin Land, an inventor of Polaroid cameras, a pioneer of instant photography, was on vacation with his family in 1943.
During this vacation, one of his daughters, 3-year-old, pressed him why she couldn’t see a picture he’d just taken.
She needed it right away.
The impatience of the 3-year-old daughter catalyzes Land for a strong intuition.
After the vacation, Land and his research team threw all of their research effort to the challenge of instant photography.
Instant intuition became similar to instant photography for him.
In only 3-years after that, the product of instant photography was ready in many stores in the market.

Our human nature is intuitive if we practice it in the correct way.
Sometimes we bog down so much how to learn things but what we forget is that unlearning things is more difficult than learning the same.
Our intuition is directly or indirectly correlated to the process of unlearning.
Because unlearning provides space in our mind so that we can learn new things.
Trusting our intuition automatically tells us to unlearn things which are not working previously in our lives.

Human progress doesn’t come from the development of many more theories, it mostly comes from somebody applying or testing these theories and finds a solution.
Intuition is our key to test these unsubstantiated theories and find the long lasting results.
If everybody uses the power of intuition in their toolbox, the world would be a different place now.
Ask the power of intuition to the Xerox company that they failed to utilize it completely.
Xerox created personal computers 10 years before Apple.
Xerox created icon-based operating systems 15 years before Microsoft.
Xerox created an internet service 20 years before Netscape.
Yet Xerox bypassed all of these opportunities.
The real problem is Xerox read theories but couldn’t apply the intuition to test the real theories.

Any person who runs a marathon knows that finishing a marathon requires more than just running.
No matter how strong our body is, at some point during running our body wants to stop and take a rest. But the runner has trained his or her mind in such a way that he or she keeps running mentally.
His or her body becomes tired but still he or she runs because he or she has trained his or her willpower.
Our intuition is our willpower, more we use it, more it enhances the willpower.
If we stop running in the middle of the marathon, it’s due to our emotion.
Our emotions which come before anything else deplete our intuition and consequently diminishes our ability to control our actions.
Our intuition is our catalyst for the run to finish because we know we can finish it, we have trained so much for this run.
Our intuition tells us to stay focused on the run.
Intuition doesn’t come regularly, it comes when we have a habit of engaging with our serene thoughts.
We cannot force ourself to be more intuitive, it comes naturally when we honor it with practice.

Our intuition power also depends on our health status.
To do mental work we need a lot of glucose, a source of energy. We can not do a thinking job without a lot of glucose in the bloodstream.
The glucose itself does not enter into the brain but it changes into neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters are chemicals which are used by our brain cells to send signals.
If we have a deficiency of neurotransmitters, we stop thinking, we stop our intuition, we deplete our willpower.

I have three kids, and one saturday, my wife told me to look after them and she left.
After she left I made sure that the entrance door is locked so that I wouldn’t lose track of them.
I discovered very quickly that if they were making noise, they were good, no problem. But after a few minutes everything became very quiet, then my intuition started to work and telling me something isn’t right.
I came around the kitchen and saw that two older ones were trying to cut the younger one’s hair with a sharp scissor.

Intuition works best when we store energy. Invitation of stillness is storing body energy.
We should spend time on quietness, observe things mentally, meditate, exercise, where our intuition works the best.
It is this simple as it is.
I don’t know how the microwave works, but I know when I put my sweet potato inside it, it will cook my sweet potato, and I’m using it every single day.

Mark Twain, the greatest American writer and the father of American literature has said that he never worked a single day in his life, everything has been done by his subconscious and intuition.
Nurture your intuition everybody.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

Who are we as parents?

Few days ago I entered my daughter’s room and saw that she was doing high-school algebra.
She is in middle school and I asked her, “can you do it?”
She replied, “yes, of course.”
I added, “if you encounter any problem, get help from Tony, my son.”
My daughter became upset. I could read her face.
She replied to me, “Dad, why don’t you trust me?”
I didn’t respond immediately but I felt that I hurt her feelings.
I came back to the kitchen and reminded myself what I had learned from Dr. Carol Dweck book ‘mindset.’
I had read, I had learned but I wasn’t applying the principle given by Dr. Dweck.
I would definitely recommend Dr. Dweck’s book “mindset” as a recommended reading for those who are suffering from a fixed mindset in life.
At the moment when I replied to my daughter, I was operated by my fixed mindset which is actually hidden inside me.
Even Though I was aware of it, I was still not shifting toward the periphery of another area, a growth mindset.

The other day I also saw a similar scene.
I was attending my daughter’s parent conference meeting in her school.
Me and my wife were sitting at one table and my daughter was sitting at another table.
One of her friends’ dad approached my daughter and asked, “what are you doing?”
She replied “I’m reviewing my story for competition. It’s a little bit complicated, I’m a bit confused.”
“You secured first position last time, am I right?” he added.
My daughter replied, “Yes I did.”
He replied, “Oh, you spend so much time on your story.”
He further added, “I used to think you are a genius and your competitors must not be as smart as you’re.”
After watching this scene of conversation, I realized that this is another example of an individual suffering from an ill mindset, a fixed mindset.
Actually, these are only some examples but there are so many of these kinds of stories prevalent in our society.

Incident after incident, our society carries flawed perception.
We all want natural recognition rather than recognition through hard work.
We try to make natural recognition as our desire leaving hard work behind us.
We completely forget how our mindset works.
As Marie Curie said beautifully, “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”
Fear comes from a mindset.
We show fear to our kids to be supertalent as they should be born with it.
We want them as Albert Einstein, Michael Jordan, and Steve Jobs.
This kind of wish is not only bad for the kid’s psychology but it also degrades their confidence for a long time.
Our society is full of people with fixed mindsets.
If we have to teach our kids only to be a genius, then we have to lose a lot for them, most of the natural talents deplete if we have an unchanged mindset.

There is another problem we have as a society.
We label our kids as genius in various fields.
My son is good at math.
My daughter is excellent in storytelling.
It seems like we are encouraging our kids but actually we aren’t.
Unknowingly, we are saying that my daughter can’t do math and my son can’t do story telling.
This happens because we are not creatures of logic and reasoning, we are creatures of emotions.
Logic and reasoning is the result of a growth mindset.
In reality either son or daughter can do either work, math or story telling, fabulously if we develop a exploring mindset, a growth mindset.

People who believe in a fixed mindset need a quick fix to succeed, and when they do, they feel proud, more important, and famous than others.
They feel a sense of superiority, since for them this is a win.
The truth is we shouldn’t lurk behind the self-esteem of a dark cloud.
Fixed mindset is a dark cloud because sometimes it gives us false impressions as clouds cover the sun.
No doubt, a fixed mindset hinders our growth potential and development.
A growth mindset teaches us how to pinpoint our identity when we are unsuccessful because it is so easy to spot who we are when we are successful.
We must be able to give a specific and precise answer for it and most importantly we must teach this phenomenon to our kids.
If we answer this question properly then only we nurture our mindset in a positive direction, and teach others to do the same.

In many cases the societal reality remains opposite.
The answer for a growth mindset as opposed to fixed mindset is hard work.
If we love something or we are thinking of it as our long lasting career, we have to work hard for it to achieve.
One simple example, Michael Jordan became the king of basketball because he used to practice when other players were taking a break.
Michael Jordan wasn’t a natural player by birth, he was the most hard-working person.
He wasn’t selected in his high school team, he wasn’t selected by his college team, and he wasn’t selected by the first two NBA teams.
So then what kind of mindset he had when he was beginning his basketball career.
Truth is he gave his all for basketball that he only valued and cared in his entire basketball career.
Michael Jordan taught us: we have to take the challenge, learn from our mistakes, and continue the positive mindset to achieve more.
He grew his positive mindset every single day.
Our mindset isn’t static, it is dynamic as cloud. Clouds don’t change into something new, it only changes its shape and size.
As what Michael Jordan did, we have to value and respect what we’re doing regardless of the final outcome.
And we have to show and teach the same to our kids.
We must teach our kids: Becoming is way better than being.
The only way we can teach our kids to improve their everyday skills is by keeping track of what works for them and what doesn’t and trying to understand why.
Michael Jordan became the symbol of basketball due to his everyday growth attitude and discipline of keeping track of it.
When we believe our core qualities can be developed through a growth mindset, failures can still hurt, but they shouldn’t deviate and distract us.

One of my friends works in a pharmaceutical company as a lead scientist. He told me that he has to tackle problems everyday, review new courses of actions, figure out what works and what doesn’t in vaccine development.
He once told me during this COVID pandemic, “we haven’t found the effective vaccine for coronavirus yet, but the search is continuous.”

He reminded me once again that mindsets are our beliefs. They’re quite powerful even though they’re just faith in our mind, and we can grow our mind every second.

We don’t always need hard confidence in everyday lives to succeed but we always need a kind of mental push subconsciously.
Our subconscious mind works 24/7 so that it doesn’t contradict with our conscious mind of not having pure confidence everyday. The equilibrium between conscious and subconscious mind could be shifted in our decisions by our mental habits.

From my reading what I learnt is that Buddha passed through absolute stillness and peace on his way into nirvana, this was possible by moving both conscious and subconscious mind in one direction.

We have to have a habit of forming a picture in our brain forming new connections even if we aren’t doing any practice or work. The picture of a growth mindset helps to take challenges and more to learn continuously.
There is nothing like innate talent, this is crystal clear, we must teach our kids about this misconception that talent isn’t born, it is made.
As Dr. Dweck says, “success is more than 99 percent is hard work.”
Hard work beats talent if talent doesn’t put into work.

According to psychologists Karen Horney and Carl Rogers, many times our kids feel insecure particularly from parents. Kids feel distress, pain, and lost in the crazy world. The truth is they are very young and cannot speak against parents. They cannot walk alone, they have to find out how to win parents’ trust.
The most important thing is that we must give our kids the freedom to grow.
They learn more from their own interest than our own interest.
We as parents must learn what our kids are trying to tell us rather than what we are trying to tell them.

Let our kids know that Albert Einstein, Michael Jordan, and Steve Jobs have made the word ‘impossible’ a very small word.
‘Impossible’ word is thrown around by fixed mindsets who find it easier to live in a small bubble of the world.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina

What did you find in your destination?

It was a winter evening in Virginia.
I was at a gathering.
My friend’s boss was an author and a researcher in a reputed publishing house.
We were outside in a garden and she told us a story about how she found her amazing husband, a university professor.
At one point of her career, she was working as a sales assistant in downtown Chicago and she used to ride a train to commute.
One day she became late and missed her train for office.
She was sad, irritated, and upset and blamed herself for being lazy.
She also missed an early office meeting on that day.
In a grumpy mood, she was waiting for another train to catch.
A man appeared in the train station, who was a graduate student in Northwestern University.
Long story short, she pointed to her husband and said that if I wouldn’t have missed that train on that day, I would certainly miss this amazing man from my life.
And I was attending to celebrate their 21st marriage anniversary gathering.

This story taught me why we should cherish every single moment of our passing life irrespective of the nature of moments.
Life is made up of various small passing moments which most of the time we neglect in need of bigger goals and destinations.
Actually life happens when we are hustling for something.

You are attending a party for your recognition in your office because you got a promotion, and suddenly you receive a call from your mom that your dad is diagnosed with cancer.
As we all know we are not perfect, we all have issues in the family, you were avoiding your brother’s call but suddenly you heard that your brother died due to chronic heart attack.
Recently you got furlough, you were in stress so you forgot to call your mom on mother’s day.
This is only a small glimpse of our everyday life.
Since most of us have a tendency to feel good only if things are going our way, all the time we are trying to control everything in our lives.
If we rush only for a destination by brushing off pure moments, our life becomes hollow and we suffer a lot.
I think this is not the way to live a life.
Beauty of life remains in all moments of hustling, pain, suffering, and happiness.
We have to observe, absorb, and assimilate all of them.
This is a process of life.
Destination is a by-product of our process.

Everybody says life is not for a destination, life is a journey but very few actually adopt this mantra and apply it.
Many of us are always in rush, workloads, family schedules, kids responsibilities, and health schedules. Many of us have side hustles along with our main profession too.
Nonetheless, we run around constantly trying to get something, trying to control something, and trying to determine where the destination is in our lives.
We carry so much tension, anxiety, and fear that we completely forget the flow of life around us.
If we run only to catch something then we miss many things in life.
Life becomes hell.

There is always an interval between any two tasks, if we don’t live in that interval and always worry about the next pending task, then we are not living a life.
That interval between two tasks is actually a life process many of us don’t identify or ignore.

Current corporate world has also ignited the concept that vision-driven leaders recognize the destination rather than path. They said destination matters not the path.
In reality, it doesn’t apply all the time, because life isn’t business.
Business needs the end product faster to get profit faster, but life itself is not the business of only profit and loss.
Life is more of exploration of paths so that we become healthy and happy.

One day I visited my friend Nitesh’s office due to some personal affair.
The other day he told me he had a hectic schedule for that day even though he invited me to his office.
When I reached his office, he was on the phone.
He signaled me to sit on the chair, later I knew he was talking to his elder sister.
His nephew was selected for the national championship for swimming competition.
He expressed his happiness and support for his nephew and sister for their achievement.
He ended that call in less than two minutes but I felt that those two minutes talking were really thrilling and encouraging.
I asked him, “Did you finish your presentation this morning?”
He replied, “Yes, I did.”
It was fantastic and the client appreciated his strategy and hopefully they are going to sign the contract very soon.
He added, “I have another presentation at 4pm.”
Looking at his freshness and energy, I asked him, “Nitesh, how do you manage all of this?”
He asked, “What do you mean?”
“You are so fresh, so energetic and you accomplish so much so easily” I added.
He replied, “There is nothing new, I just keep things in perspective, I know how to utilize the moment and how to accomplish it without burning my life.”
He added, “To be honest, those two minutes which I spent with my sister on the phone was my interval time between my two tasks, those two minutes were best for the day and that keeps me moving my whole day smoothly.”

He further told me that there are two types of people in this world. One type who stop their work due to rainfall. They hate it and blame the rain for their stoppage.
The other category of people who enjoy every bit of moment, even the rain and lightning.
They enjoy every passing moment and accomplish their task.
They said, “Oh it’s raining, so nice. Rain is wiping out the dust of the environment, so fresh.”
“I am in the second category,” he added.
“I can enjoy my life in seconds, I don’t need minutes to enjoy it.”
This whole universe is around us for more than 13 billion years, any natural processes around us were here before we were born and will remain here until we die.
The manifestation of each moment is amazing so that we must accept the natural result.
We become more energized and excited in our task if we cherish the interval of life.
We can not avoid the happening moments.
We have to accept them as they are.
There is beauty in acceptance.
We must know how to laugh in our tears. We must know how to cry in our laughter.
This isn’t complicated to understand, there is also an interval between laugh and tears, we just don’t apply it in our life.

Interval is about understanding where we’re going, and destination is the road we’re planning to take but still don’t have road signs. Interval comes first because we have to make road signs to reach a destination.

The important thing is that we don’t have to find our final destination at once, and we can avoid wasting a lot of time and worry trying to find a destination.
Destination is not a once-and-done phenomenon.
It’s a continuous process.
If we don’t enjoy every passing moment, we move towards boredom and disinterest, and destination without inspiring and happy process leads to destination without further direction.

If we focus on what is happening around us rather than what isn’t happening, our progress becomes exponential, not incremental.
One simple example.
Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick, the founders of groundbreaking transportation today, Uber, were freezing at night in the streets of Paris because they couldn’t get a cab.
The moment was painful for them but they translated the moment of pain to revolutionary transportation business without owning a single car.
They have just one app.
If we appreciate every single moment whether it is a painful or happy moment, blue-sky ideation arrives.

We shouldn’t suffer and bleed in the process of life, which is very simple; enjoy every bit and every piece of it.
As we all know many people during their time said that two brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright were stupid.
Their destination of making a “flying machine” was criticized by many as a foolish idea or impossible task.
Instead they enjoy every single obstacle they faced.
They accepted and appreciated every single moment of not having the sufficient resource that they needed for their final destination.
They never finished high school.
They were self-taught.
The only thing kept them moving forward was the excitement of the process of making a “flying machine.”

Loving the process rather than destination is our tool to change the status quo.
Process itself should be a catalyst for passion and excitement.
Every single moment around us is a process, so nurture it, cherish it, and enjoy it.
Reaching a destination provides immediate satisfaction, but the process of achieving a destination provides a lasting satisfaction.
There is no destination in life, once you reach your destination, another destination appears, so enjoy the interval.

Thank you for your time.
– Yam Timsina

Was I addicted to Facebook?

Why was I lacking focus in my required task?
Was I sick?
Not really.
Was I a victim of instant gratification?
Maybe, but I had no clue.
Was I a lover of pleasure rather than happiness?
I had no idea but I felt like I was addicted to something, and it was a strange feeling.
In the past I used to think alcoholism is addiction, drug or tobacco use is addiction, but later I realized I was addicted to something more unusual than that.
Now I firmly believe that addiction does not only indicate alcoholism and drug use, it also indicates lack of focus and concentration.

I am re-examining my past life, my past activities and how I was spending my time.
These are some other forms of addiction that I have seen in my surroundings, in my family, in my close friend circle, and colleagues.
Many are addicted to excessive web-surfing, they can’t stay even fifteen minutes without their smartphone. Smartphones are a tonic for them.
Some are addicted to excessive texting, they enjoy chat rooms more than their spouses and family.
Few are addicted to driving and texting, it’s fun for them rather than to wait until they stop.
Couple of my crazy friends are addicted to excessive sexting, let’s not go deeper, it’s self-understood.
Two of my former colleagues are addicted to excessive twittering, whoa, they love that twitter-bird, how fast it flies.

I was addicted to excessive facebooking, contemplating its influence in my life, I decided to invest some money in Facebook stock. How far can I go?
Everytime I surf, Facebook makes money, so why not take a small share of the profit?

When I became an excessive facebooker, I began to live in the past and dream about the future because I have less time to do the real work at the present moment.
I always procrastinated for my real work.
I used to open my facebook page to warm up my task but I never noticed the passing time.
In the end I regretted, I couldn’t finish the task.

Many years ago I had a family friend couple, who used to upload many happy moments pictures everyday on facebook.
My wife used to tell me how happy their relationship is.
I thought the same way for many years.
But three years ago we heard they divorced.
Me and my wife both became shocked.
After reading a book “Atomic Habits” by bestselling author James Clear, I realized that they were too busy to upload the pictures on facebook rather than to work on their real relationship.
Well, this is only my reporting, not a judgement, maybe they became addicted to facebook and couldn’t comprehend its caustic effects in their lives.
Not only Facebooking, any kind of addiction costs us enormously.
Most of the time, Facebooking teaches us to follow the digital shiny objects rather than spending time on real objects.

With Facebook, I have a personal relationship so that, please, allow me to go a little bit deeper here.

Facebook is a double-edged sword.
It helps to stay connected with the lives of people we care about.
Amazing, how far we have come due to technology.
We must salute the people who innovated this technology.
Kudos to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
But Facebook also tricks us into dreaming of other people’s digital happy lives.
Life is far from comparison as shown in Facebook.
We rarely see negatives of people’s lives on Facebook, everybody posts only their positives.
Life never becomes only of positives, it’s a conglomerate of both positives and negatives.
Ultimately Facebook is only a trailer, not the full movie, the real life is with us as a full movie.

I have another friend who spends a lot of time on facebook but he makes a living there, he is an advertisement optimizer. Facebook is his employer.
Facebook is his playground for his earning.
But I became the only addicted customer for facebook.
Anyway no regrets for the past. I learned from it and now moving ahead in life.

Alas, I forgot the worst, I used to surf facebook during pee break at 2 a.m.
What a shitty habit I had !

Why was I having a hard time to break the addiction?
It took a long time to crush the addiction.
Because it required work, hard work, mental work.
It required initiation where I was very lazy.
If no initiation, no beginning, and no flow.

One of my friends shared with me about another addiction that he is suffering.
He loves frequent changes of girl for love, which I have noticed quite regularly.
We may not think it as an addiction but it is also another form of severe addiction.
His family life is in choas.
This is the addiction to friction.

When we become addicted to something, this something brings deeper addiction due to repetition of the same habit with no realization of harm.
This habit doesn’t allow us to keep track of time.
When I was severely addicted to Facebook, I was also addicted to distraction, so I used to open my facebook page all the time even during time of focus reading and writing.
I was in love with distraction.
When distractions came my way, I stopped the task at hand and used to talk either past events or future plannings.
Distraction became my good buddy either to fear me or to show hope.
I wanted to finish my task but I was unwilling to turn off my facebook notification on my cell phone.
I used to respond to text messages immediately, absolutely no patience to wait.
I used to count the number of likes on my facebook upload all the time.
No regret, even at midnight.

I loved to be more reactive than proactive because I wanted to impress others by my comments, my shallow expertise.
I was crazy like a rat between two holes, I used to check my email more than hundred times in a day, maybe every 10-15 minutes.
I used to carry my smartphone all the time with me in my pocket, in class, in meetings and check the phone every couple of minutes ignoring what’s happening inside the room.
I couldn’t make good, healthy and intimate relationships with anybody because I never paid hundred percent attention to anybody because of my smartphone.
I was pathetically poor at listening.
The person who was next to me physically and to whom I was talking always felt unimportant and insulted because in our talk I used to text constantly to somebody else.
Author of “Start With Why” Simon Sinek says, “if you keep your smartphone in front of you on the table in an important meeting even if your phone is in silent mode or off, you are addicted to the phone. If you talk to anybody in person by holding your smartphone on hand, you are addicted.”
As Sinek said, whether it’s true or false, I lived with all of those habits.
Ultimately, I also became addicted to shallowness.
I hated focus and depth.
I became superficial rather than a person of depth.

One of my friends, who is a security analyst in a brokerage firm, has an interesting addiction.
As you know from his job title, he is not a celebrity, he is a normal person with a normal job.
When he comes out of bed, immediately, he surfs the tabloids.
Later he confessed to me he is addicted to celebrity-gossips, celebrity affairs, break-ups, and divorces.
He told me he couldn’t stop reading.
At one point he felt sick if he was not keeping up with Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian, and Namrata Shrestha.
Once he told me that those things have no value in his life but still he is addicted to reading them.
He realized it and said to me that he is wasting his precious time.

Spending time on celebrity twitter feeds, perusing the Facebook uploads excessively of the people we don’t care about is a self-sabotaging habit.
I love the quote from my favourite personal development expert, Jim Rohn, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
In my view, we are also the average of the five habits we spend the most time with.

The bottom line is:
Without inspecting our life, our activities, and habits thoroughly, we can not expect something out of it.
When I was addicted to Facebook, I wasn’t aware of what I was doing.
Awareness comes only by knowing what we are doing in all aspects of our lives. It’s the same as peeling off each layer of onion even though we know there is nothing inside.
I was having the ripple effect of my addiction to my family and relationship.
At one point I became aware of its effect when I received the email from my daughter’s teacher saying that she is weak in reading comprehension according to her grade standard. This was just one ripple effect.

As a human being, we all are able to forgive and forget. We must be able to forgive our terrible habits and addictions, and we must be able to forget these habits and addictions as well.
We don’t need any counselling, advice, courses, or any other commercial products to kill our addiction.
All we need is we have to change our mind.
To say it simply, change is tough.
Mental change is extremely tough.
Remember: if we don’t bring mental peace and happiness which of course require findings, addiction will always follow us.
Be aware of your life.
Stay away from addiction.

Thank you for your time.
– Yam Timsina

Are you a hard worker or smart worker?

I would like to share a story from The New York Times bestselling author and medical surgeon, Don Miguel Ruiz.
One man wanted to free himself from his suffering and pain so he went to his mentor, a Guru, for help.
He asked, “Guru, if I meditate four hours a day, how long will it take me to remove my suffering and pain?”
The Guru looked at him and replied, “If you meditate four hours a day, probably, you will remove your suffering and pain in ten years.”
Bringing his hard working mentality, the man said, “ Oh, Guru, what if I meditate eight hours a day, how long will it take me to remove my suffering and pain?”
Guru looked at him and said, “If you meditate eight hours a day, perhaps you will remove your suffering and pain in twenty years.”
“But why will it take me longer if I meditate more?” the man asked again.
Guru replied, “You are not here to sacrifice your joy, your family, your relationship, and your life.
You are here to live freely, to be happy, and to love the way you are; then only you will be free from suffering and pain.

The core lesson I got: If you can do your best in two hours, but you spend eight hours instead, you only grow tired and frustrated, miss the whole point of love and life, and you won’t enjoy your life.
Don’t be that person.
Do your best and then only you can live freely, you can love, and be happy.

This is the key difference between hard worker and smart worker.

Everything is moving faster than ever.
We are living in nanoseconds now, not in days, weeks or months.
Fast progress in technology and better understanding of the human body and mind has changed the way we think and work in the present society.
If only hard work is the weapon to succeed then coal miners, farmers, and construction workers would be the most successful people in the world.
Many hard working people in many areas are short of fame, recognition, and status because they completely forget or ignore to work smartly.

I have read that many smart people do meditation regularly but hard working people don’t get time to do meditation, because they are too busy and don’t have time to do so.
Regular meditation is a key tool for smart work because it is the only way to make our brain healthy.
Overall exercise makes our body healthy but meditation does the same for the brain.
Needless to say, today’s world is run by the brain, especially the healthy brain.
I shared one of my colleagues that Tony Robbins does one to two hour mediation everyday.
She immediately replied, “Oh whoa, I wish I had such free time. I don’t have free time, I’m always on schedule and very busy.”

After knowing the fact that smart working people bring creativity by meditation and hard working people just don’t get time for meditation, I also decided to learn this mind exercise habit.

I arranged for meditation class twice a week, an hour a session.

In my first class, my meditation instructor said, “Sit down in a cross-legged position on the floor and close your eyes for sixty seconds.”
I obeyed his instruction and did the same.
I asked, “What should I do after closing my eyes?”
He replied, “Nothing, just relax, remain calm.”
Probably after ten seconds I thought that meditation is the most annoying and disturbing thing ever I am learning in my life.
After I closed my eyes, innumerable things came to my mind: my stove at home, did I turn it off?
My office assignment which I haven’t finished yet, the deadline is looming.
My sister in Cincinnati is sick, I have to visit her.
I shouldn’t be late for tonight’s dinner with my fiance.
These are only some glimpses of so many other things that came in my mind.
Oh my god, how do people do mediation for hours and hours?

After sixty seconds, my instructor said, “How did you feel?”
I said, “Terrible, I was inside my mental jail, in sixty seconds with my closed eyes I recall more things than in a month with my open eyes.”
My teacher said, “You just started your mental motion, you should learn continuously to be in motion until some force stops you and you become mentally stationary.”
“Motion doesn’t give you results, you get results only when you finish motion”, he added.
Many smart people spend time on meditation to make their mind empty so that they can plant whatever they want.
Meditation makes their empty mind a more fertile ground where they can plant the seeds of better ideas, supreme thoughts, and positive vibrations.
Most importantly, meditation grows the seeds of love, affection, and care in mind.

There is a huge difference between smart-working people and hard working people in many aspects.
Consistent regular meditation is just one of many of those tools.
Smart working people are balanced people, they know the key points to get work done, they focus a lot on their health, diet, and relationship.
Quite amazingly, they spend a lot of time alone.

They spend a lot of time thinking and wandering.

Smart working people change from moment to moment, they always think that it makes a huge difference when you are healthy as opposed to sick.

Relatively hard working people don’t care about healthy habits, they become sick pretty quick.
Mostly they are haphazard and have no sense of balance on various aspects of life because they have poor understanding of how the brain actually works effectively.
They rarely read books outside of their profession.
Most of the time they have ready-made answers, “I don’t have time to read outside books.”
They are poor at making connections between different dots of life in one pattern, because they see the flow of life only in one direction.

Hard Working people try too hard to do more than their best, they will spend more energy than is needed and in the end their best will not be enough.
When they overdo, they deplete their body and go against themselves, and it will take them longer to accomplish their goals.

When I first came to the USA, more than a decade ago, I did a low paid hourly job for some time to survive.
I was attending school as well as working in a cafeteria.
I was unable to afford a new car so I was driving a very old car.
One day my car broke down on the way to work and I took it to the workshop to fix it.
The mechanic examined it and said it costs four hundred dollars to fix the car.
He said, “The equipment costs seventy five dollars and three hundred dollars is labor plus tax.”
He added, “You can pick up your car tomorrow at noon.”
I said,” “If it takes only two hours then why are you charging me three hundred dollars?”
He replied, “Sir, I am charging you not only for two hours but also my nine years of hard work: five years auto engineering and four years of internship.”
I didn’t say anything, I remained silent.
Actually, the first time in my life I understood the price of something which I never realized before.
I also understood why I pay three hundred dollars to my primary care physician for a thirty minutes health check up in the clinic.
I widely opened my brain and told him to fix my car.

I was about to leave, I asked him again, “Could you fix my car today so that I can pick it up in the evening?”
He replied, “Sir, I was a very hard working person before but I suffered a lot. Believe me. I owned this workshop after many years of hard work. I started as a cleaning boy in a car dealer shop many years ago.”
“Recently I am learning smart work instead of hard work. My productivity and health has gone up pretty quickly,” he further added.
He said, “I might finish your work today by working a little longer but my wife wouldn’t be happy at home if I become late for dinner because we have invited our niece for dinner tonight.”
I felt how courageous and sincere this person is.
He is communicating with me as clearly as he can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama.
He is speaking with integrity.
He is saying only what he means and using his words in the direction of truth.

In any circumstance hard work does not mean we should constantly work all the time.
Naturally, our body and mind is not designed for it.
But hard work should be in such a way that our mind should constantly enjoy and explore the work.

Hard work becomes smart work when we tweak the mind to get the best of the best in everything.

Smart working people stick to their best for any positive atomic habit.
Most importantly, they avoid self-judgement, self-abuse, and regret.

But in a lot of cases hardworking people fall in the trap of self-judgement, self-abuse, and regret.
Personally I have also experienced these types of people in my life directly or indirectly.
They often exhibit unhygienic, nerdy, and pompous behaviour.

I experienced this car mechanic’s transformation from a hard worker to a smart worker as a representation.
He was living his life with blossom.
Most importantly, he was productive, he was giving himself to his family, to his community, to everything.
He was impeccable, he was taking responsibility for his actions, but he wasn’t judging or blaming himself.
I learned from him: in any condition, do your best, no more and no less.
Learn how to change your best over time.
It’s true that hard work is required everywhere but let’s not forget to work smart.
Smart work is a choice, and so is the hard work.

Thank you for your time.
– Yam Timsina

Why am I so judgemental?

Few years ago, I was working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. One day I was returning home from work and I was on the metro-train in the street of Philadelphia.
At one stop, a man with two young boys entered the train, boys were not happy, they were crying. The man sat next to me and there were other people inside the compartment where I was reading some journal article. Many other people were also reading newspapers, some were busy on the phone, few were listening to music on earbuds, and some were just relaxing with closed eyes after a long day of work.
The train compartment, where I was, was mostly quiet.

The man who sat next to me closed his eyes but the two young boys were extremely active, basically they were in a rowdy mood, crying, running here and there, and they were snatching newspapers from other passengers.
This man didn’t open his eyes.
He acted as if he came alone, there were no boys.
Everybody inside the train compartment was really irritated and confused about what to do.
The whole serene environment inside the train turned into rowdy, noisy, and intolerable.
Everybody was looking at each other’s face because the adult man to whom these two boys belong was still in deep sleep, eyes closed.

I realized everybody was explosive inside with the man.
One lady across my seat whispered, “How irresponsible he is.”
I didn’t say anything but nodded my head to support her.
The scene became chaotic and uncontrollable.

Suddenly, one man across my seat stepped up and shook his shoulders, making him aware that he is with two boys and they are creating mess for others.
He said to the man, “Your boys are making too many problems, you should be responsible.”
The man replied, “Oh yeah, I should be.”
He added, “I lost myself, I became unconscious, I completely forgot I am with my boys”.
He said, “I am very sorry.”
His voice became brittle and said, “Their mom just died in the hospital, and they wanted to stay with their mom but I brought them home.”

Immediately after that sentence, everything changed inside the train.
The whole scene inside the train changed.
Everyone was shocked.
All the passengers inside the train immediately changed their attitude, behaviour, and perception towards the boys, even though the boys were still in the same rowdy behaviour.

The woman who whispered to me before and said him irresponsible was torn down.
I saw her moist eyes with tears.
She was trying to touch the boys as if she could cuddle them, I could read the emotion in her face.
I myself turned 180 degrees and became almost unresponsive.
I wanted to hug the man who was next to me but I couldn’t do that.
I couldn’t say anything, I became speechless, I guess I was trying to hide my tears in front of other people.
I remember somebody told me that emotions are fine in weddings and funerals but not in other places.
But I was unable to hide my emotion, my tears inside the train.
Emotions play a role in every part of our life but it’s up to us how we control them.

During this emotional mess, I got out of the train in my station and drove home from the train station parking lot.
My mind was full of those two boys’ pictures.
I even shared this experience with my wife at home.

I became so curious how this small squishy mass inside the skull works.
Why do I become so judgemental?
Why do I become so unconscious?
Why is this squishy organ inside the skull behaving so erratically?
Why does it allow me to change my mood, thinking and perception abruptly?

I was judging somebody fiercely a few minutes ago but immediately after knowing the fact I was regretting.
It’s not only one time that I judged one particular person, but how could I be completely non-judgemental?

Being judgemental is an unconscious human habit created from a raw mind, it is deeply seated in the human psyche.
We struggle to improve this habit because our brain works so quickly without giving us time for a second thought.
In majority cases, often the thoughts we perceive exist in negative ways in our mind.
Only the constructive and positive beliefs influence what we think or choose not to think.
Our judgemental practice runs on auto-pilot, entering into subconscious level, if we don’t work on to improve it.
We don’t become non-judgemental by any motivation, it happens only by mental clarity.
We must be aware of the shift of unconscious habit to conscious habit to succeed.

Our brain is designed to be unique.
Each of us is created or born uniquely.
We have different capacities and understandings, we are given different choices with various outcomes possible.
The way we think is also our choice.
There are a lot of things we can choose in our life.
We can choose one glass of wine or five glasses of wine tonight.
We can choose one cup of tea or five cup of tea in a day.
We can choose to go running outside or sit and watch the 10th season of friends on Netflix.
And most importantly, we can choose anything irrespective of the type of mind we possess.
Choice is the result of our brain action.
Thoughts are also the same, we can think positively or negatively based on our choices.

I recall David Hawkins’s words, an internationally renowned spiritual author and psychiatrist, in his book “Transcending the levels of consciousness: “My mind is like a sponge, it has absorbed all the information, but I’m still in the same place.”
Human mind is incapable of segregating judgements and biases from truths even though we all are aware of it.
We have to work and practice consistently on our mind to achieve this goal.

Though we have an unique mind but in case of judgement, why do we respond in the same way?
We all perceive various things in various ways and thus live in various structures.
But why do we all have the same judgement in situations like that I experienced on the train?

What exactly happens to our minds when we start to judge others?

When I heard the sentence, “Their mom died today;” my judgemental mind turned into the opposite direction.
Not only mine, all passenger’s minds in the train did the same.
I started to see the world of those two small boys in very different ways than the normal boys who have their mom with them.

The important pattern that I recognized is when the boys were creating problems, I became vulnerable of my own fixed judgemental mindset.
I became a victim of my own rooted perception.
My fixed mindset only blamed the dad of the two boys.
Before I shift to a fixed mindset in any scenario, I should have given some room in my mind to wiggle, so that I don’t turn into fixed ready-made thought.

Actually I could alter my judgemental mindset but I couldn’t do that because I wasn’t trained to do so.
Strong will, patience, and power to ask why to the mind, are essential to shift into a room of non-judgemental mindset.

I learned the lesson: quick reaction to our existing perception doesn’t do good.
I need a non-judgemental mindset for a positive change in my life.

The key in such a situation, I learned, is to wait before to make our preconceived ill notion public.
I should not try to hurry things along my existing beliefs.

I have a tendency to focus on what I don’t have and what I don’t see.
I don’t focus more on what I have and what I see.
This is one of the main reasons that I quickly judge others.
If I start to focus on what I have and what I see, the whole world changes for me.
I will move towards the zone of non-judgemental arena.

When I was next to those boys’ dad, I didn’t ask anything to him, I was only thinking what’s wrong with this man.
Many times I don’t ask questions, I simply prepare my answers.
Many times I don’t listen, I only wait to respond.
During the whole train ride, I wasn’t ready to ask the question, I wasn’t ready to listen to him, I was only thinking: Why was this man so irresponsible?

Human judgements are so vicious that they are key causes in polarizing relationships with other humans.
Let’s work together to empower human relationships by being non-judgemental.

Thank you for your time.
– Yam Timsina

Do you remember when you first took a big risk in your life?

Have you seen any person walking out of a ship as an underwater welder to rescue a sinking ship?
Of course, less likely.
It’s impossible without any prior training, and if it is done without training then it would be a senseless act.
But for a maritime army engineer, this could be a normal task.
The bottom line is the same task could be risky for some but normal for others.
The whole intention of this background is: risk clearly is personal.
Risk questions us who we are, what we do, how we prepare tasks, and most importantly, what do we see twenty to thirty year from now in our life?

Do you remember when you first took a big risk in your life?
How did it feel for you?
It’s quite the challenging experience for me when I was learning how to drive a motorbike in my upper teen age.
I wrote every single step of what to do in a paper and memorized.
I drove the motorbike almost half a mile on the first day without anybody’s assistance, just following the memorized steps very carefully.
Nothing serious happened to me that day, next day I did the same. In a week, I became at least a moderate driver without taking any help from another person. Fortunately, I didn’t harm myself physically, but I still remember it was a big risk.
I don’t recommend taking this kind of physically challenged risk to anybody, but it was an amazing mental experience for me.

Normal experience becomes mesmerizing when we are immersed in risk.
Before the pandemic, I had a discussion at the dining table of one of my friends’ homes.
I asked one of my friends, “Do you like gambling?”
He immediately replied, “No.”
He added that he has not received any ounce of luck in his whole life in any of his past endeavors.
I asked him, “Do you want to own a casino?”
He immediately replied, “Oh, yeah, of course.”
I was thinking to myself why people hate gambling but the same people love to own casinos.
The fundametnal is we enjoy other people taking risks but don’t want to take ourselves.
Even though owning a casino is still a risky bet but far less riskier than handling blackjack on the table as an individual player.
The casino owner has an edge with percentages so this is not considered risky.
They also sell their play book in their gift shops and other players buy it to win.
Casino owners know very well that when the play book doesn’t work.
And surprisingly, you can guess why drinks are free on the casino table, owning a casino doesn’t belong to risk-taking.

The underlying reason is that we are not taught to take risks in normal life.
Society doesn’t teach us to take risks, society teaches us to avoid risks.
The only way we learn to take risks is by taking more risks with minimum failures. We also stop scaring ourselves from taking risks.

It is quite common that we feel good after getting success and not so good after failures.
Life is a probabilistic game, and risks are inevitable in life.
They are not necessarily indications of failures. If we think risk-taking as an unnatural game, then we will certainly truncate success too.

If we want greater success in life, we need to take more risk; if we don’t want to take more risk, we will be mediocre or average.
Risk is everywhere no matter what we do in our life. I vividly remember the fire in a house of my friend; he lost everything he owned.
Many years ago, one of my friends was going to the office in the morning in New Jersey, and he was hit by a truck on zebra crossing and he died on the spot. My hands are shivering recalling that accident.

In the United States, around 50 percent of all marriages will end in divorce or separation.
This is quite shocking.
We don’t realize that marriage is also a kind of risk if we don’t know how to grow and nurture a family and a relationship.
Most of us try to predict how the person we are dating will turn out as a spouse based on how he or she speaks to us or how he or she holds a knife and a fork to eat chicken pieces during dating days.

This tells me RISK is not only a four letter word, we have to learn how to live with it.

Risk taking is a part of education in our learning process.
Nobody gets success just by taking risks.
We have to spend a hefty sum of time around risk, we have to think big around risk, and most importantly, we have to work subconsciously 24/7 around risk to get anticipated results.

Are you willing to undertake risk?
A fulfilling lifestyle integrates the strength of risk-taking. Some of life’s greatest fulfillment comes from accepting risks in multiple forms.

The average person is a risk-avoider who wakes up in the morning, has coffee and breakfast, goes to the office, has lunch, comes back home in the evening, has dinner, watches TV, and sleeps.
The cycle continues. If he or she has some extra dollars, put it in the saving account.
He or she never takes risks in life.
There is nothing wrong with this habit but this cycle never revolutionizes and transcends the society.

There are some other people like investors and traders, venture capitalists, inventors and entrepreneurs, who keep grinding on odd hours, and most importantly take immense risks putting themselves outside the box.
If they fail also, they learn from it and take another calculated risk, and eventually succeed. They know how to create emotional diversification on risk.

People grow in exponential ways when they place themselves in risky environments that enhance their strengths.
Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg, they all took immense risk, they dropped out from graduate school, they went from a stagnant environment to one that multiplied their strengths.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, dropped out from graduate school and turned his dorm room project into one of the top multi billion dollar companies on the planet.
He is the most successful entrepreneur of our time, he became the synonym of innovation, vision, and leadership.
He is certainly a risk taker.
Only risk taking taught him self-mastery and the process of improvement in the journey of his entrepreneurship.

The truth is that when we age, we become less enthusiastic, less optimistic in our goals, and a lot weaker in risk taking.
We aren’t necessarily against taking risk but we simply lack the beauty of risk-taking.
How we relate to risks very much impacts our life experience.
Our brain grows when we compel it to learn something out of reach at the moment.
By the process of neurogenesis, we develop new brain cells that catalyze new learning.
Risky tasks allow us to make mistakes, but that also challenges us how to move forward.

From my motorbike driving experience, I can tell that risk-taking is about developing positive emotional experience.
It invites exercise of hidden talents and skills to transform the process.
We definitely become idealistic thinkers to realistic thinkers, we learn to challenge the status quo, and move the ball forward.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, was admitted to Stanford University for his PhD but left after only two days, deciding to test his entrepreneurial spirit.
He never returned to finish his PhD at Stanford.
He also took immense risk to venture out entrepreneurship instead of a relatively stable PhD path.

Taking risks helps us to build the best within us that gives us energy, that also allows us to persist beyond unimaginables and unthinkables.

Many people are passionate in their profession but very few dedicate their time for reflective thinking. Reflective thinking is a tool for risk takers.
Reflective thinking clears the mind and pushes the limits of action.
This is also a cognitive exercise in some way.

One great experience of reflective thinking I realized personally is when I myself became a dad to my kids. How much care and sacrifice my parents did for me, I understood and felt the importance of parents in life on a deeper level than my existing understanding.

We all develop our strengths by using both physical and mental exercise in fresh and stimulating ways.
Physical and mental exercise both stimulate our core talents, skills, and interests.
This might be one reason after finishing five miles running, I become more motivated to run seven miles even though my stamina may not allow me to do that.
Without fresh inputs producing better stamina for my body, I risk to weaken my strengths leading to the concept- if I don’t use my body with respect, I lose my body.

We all say that profit is the single most essential ingredient in a successful business, a positive cash flow is equally essential for our finances. We should not deviate our business which hampers the cash flow.
Similarly, we should not take any risk that crumbles our life in a second.
The proportion of risk comes with research, preparation, and analysis.
We must complete the sentence, “I want to take risks to accomplish ……”
We, of course, need time, knowledge, and discipline to take risks in life.
Risk in itself should be our plan.

Only experience doesn’t take us to expertise if we don’t do research and don’t show willingness to take calculated risks.
E. Paul Torrance has beautifully expressed in his book, The Nature of Creativity, “Don’t be afraid to “fall in love with” something and pursue it with intensity.”
Creativity follows passion and deliberate passion attracts risks.
The most essential part of life is to make sure we are spending sufficient time studying risks, not just studying safe routes and safe destinations.
Amazingly enough, not every risk in life leads to success.
The risk-setup is a probability outcome that, if followed over time, should lead to lasting success in life.
Risks may take us to loss and frustration; but it is how we react to them determines our future success.

Finally respect your limitations, never test the depth of the water with both feet.
This is not called risk-taking, this is called pure idiocy.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina






Is it essential to be beautiful?

Few days ago I was watching a kid’s movie with my daughters on Netflix. Suddenly, two teenagers started to fight over the issue of their beauty. My elder daughter looked at me and laughed.
I laughed with her and told her that they are fighting in nonsense.
My elder daughter asked me, “Dad, is it essential to be beautiful?”
I paused for a moment and didn’t reply with a straightforward answer.
I simply replied to my daughter, “It depends on your perception of what beauty means to you.”
I elaborated to her that someone might be beautiful for me but may not be beautiful for you.
I gave a simple answer to my daughter but this topic was really complicated to deal with an eleven years old girl.

One of the reasons it is complicated is because of the current media. They always present tall and skinny women as the most beautiful.
In addition, they present flawless complexions, nice teeth, younger face, fuller lips, and smooth skin as beauty symbols.
I was thinking to myself, what kind of impact does it give to my eleven years old daughter?
As the media portray, how much percentage of women are in that level of beauty around the globe?

I told my daughter, “In reality, these women’s pictures shown by the media are not real. You have to understand this. Everything you see on the screen is edited.”
How can I make my daughter understand that part of the hidden story?
This is hard to believe just by saying. We generally believe our impressions and act on our desires.
To understand the rules of beauty, my daughter must be able to recognize the illusory pattern on the screen and what she understands about it.
All illusions are not visual, this is the biggest secret of the beauty industry.
The background behind these tall and skinny women is mysterious for my daughter.
It is easier to recognize other people’s beauty than our own if we become victims of our own illusion.

To get a deeper understanding of this issue, I told my daughter to launch her own youtube channel.
Nowadays she does magic in pictures and videos in her channel.
We all are aware how much we can do by digital editing in those pictures and videos.
Initially she was not interested in video works but as we become skilled in a task, its demand for energy diminishes.
Brain study shows that pattern of activity linked with any task changes as our skill increases, with fewer brain regions involved.
Nowadays my daughter is very quick to edit pictures and videos.
She makes pictures and videos amazingly different in various forms than originals.
I realized that we all are born prepared to perceive the world around us, recognize objects, direct attention, and focus what we like.
It is not the most beautiful from outside that attracts us, it is the one that is the most adaptable to change the status of beauty.

Once my daughter told me that we are most scared of dying, public speaking, and losing money.
After these three, fourth is being wrong and fifth is not being beautiful, especially for us, girls.
I immediately replied, “How did you know this?”
She replied, “I read somewhere in the book, but for me number five is quite surprising.”
“In my view, beauty should be the confidence to achieve something bigger,” she added.

People who engage in a cause larger than themselves are the most beautiful women in the world.
Malala Yousafzai, Anuradha Koirala, and Oprah Winfrey are some of the representations.
I can’t understand how an eleven years old girl brings such an image around her mind.

I recalled the experience of trying to peek at the beautifully dressed lady at the neighbouring table in a restaurant many years ago when I was in undergraduate college.
That was the consequence of my fast thinking on beauty but the result of slow thinking could be quite opposite. This understanding came to me after reading “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman.

I told my daughter, “If you really want to be beautiful, there are several ways of achieving the same goal, but you should not quickly gravitate to the least demanding course of action; buy and use expensive cosmetics products.”
I added, “Belief in yourself is beauty that is important for success; flexibility in your self-belief is the cornerstone for sustaining beauty.”

The hardest route to become beautiful is a daily healthy diet and healthy habit.
These two things should be routine, and routine should not feel like routine.
Laziness is constructed deep into our own nature. We generally don’t act on pressing needs, this is not because we are lazy. We always operate on a certain principle that makes sense for us evolutionarily. We have a habit of conserving energy, if we see a threat, either we fight or flight against it but if it feels safe for us, we don’t waste energy.

Beauty is not only the ability to be seen charming, it is the ability to find charm in surroundings and to deploy attention when needed.
To feel beauty differently, we must see differently than others.

When we feel beautiful on purpose, we feel deeper connectedness, we feel making contribution.
I told my daughter, “Effort in healthy habits and healthy diet is a cost, and the acquisition of beauty is driven by the balance of advantages and costs.”
“You don’t have to struggle to become beautiful if you are spending time to make your purpose and tasks beautiful around you.”
Keep in mind my cutie pie, “Switching from one habit of buying La Prairie and Dior products to another of healthy habit is effortful. Self control gives you lasting beauty but requires effort.”
“But it will be worth it in the long run.”

Beauty should be a part of our discipline because discipline is required for any great undertaking: Serena William brought beauty in tennis, JK Rowling brought beauty in Harry Potter, and Rosa Parks brought beauty in the freedom movement.
Beauty alone can not substitute for skill, talent, and insight.
Remember, it is not enough to be beautiful; you must be consistently beautiful in your attitudes and behaviours.

Thank you for your time.
– Yam Timsina

Do you carry hand sanitizer in your everyday bag?

Many years ago I visited a dentist for my tooth pain and the dentist asked me a question, do you floss your teeth regularly?
I said, “Sometimes, but not everyday.”
Actually I had never flossed my teeth up to that point, many other dentists had suggested me before to floss but I never took it seriously.
I lied to the dentist because I felt uncomfortable to tell the truth.
Dentist immediately replied to me, “If you don’t floss your teeth regularly, your four teeth will be gone in six months to one year.”
I startled, I pitied myself, I realized how negligent I was. In addition, I also realized how severe my teeth condition was.
From that moment to this day, I haven’t missed flossing even if it is 30 seconds or one minute everyday, if I am at home.
I love my life and I love to have my clean and healthy teeth in my mouth, and I believe everybody should.
Nothing comes close to good health in life.
I didn’t adapt to this habit of flossing until it became severe and the dentist warned me of several negative consequences.
This isn’t only my story, there are many similar stories of other people.

We all go through different periods in life when we are in tune with our desire and anticipation, taking one activity after another. When everything we do turns to a positive experience, that’s the time to get involved actively in the continuation process and also start to seek new good habits.
Of course, there would be difficult times like at present with pandemic coronavirus when everything we touch might result in a complete disaster.
We also have to go through periods when our habits contribute to chaos in the society, reminding us one unfortunate moment after another.
At the time of writing this piece of content, the USA is suffering with more than 40,000 coronavirus cases in a day. This is an insanely big number and many of them are contributed by our own habits.
It’s important to recognize such painful periods and not push ourselves but rather step back and think before to act.
This is the time to think about how we can reduce or avoid the spread of viruses.

Many of us react to habits like frogs to hot water. If we throw a frog into hot water, it’ll jump in response to sudden pain but if we put a frog into cold water and heat it slowly, we can boil it alive. If a sudden habit change hits us, we jump from its pain, we quit it immediately.
Initially I felt the same way when I didn’t have a flossing habit.
On the other hand, I also noticed that consistent slow habit change can be very effective if the results of the change give positive feelings gradually.
I noticed no bleeding from my gums. I experienced it and enjoyed it.
More often we don’t feel ready to start anything that we never did before, we postpone and postpone, but once started, we keep on running, we can’t stop it.

The first news story on the viral disease HIV/AIDS published in the gay newspaper, New York Native, in 1981. AIDS was first clinically reported with five cases in the United States.
This disease completely changed the sexual habit of humanity across the globe.
Now a days we all adapt safe sex practices immediately, if need be.
We learned the lesson and safe sex habit is ingrained in society like an essential norm due to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

I never bought hand sanitizer before for household purposes.
I always bought only hand soaps and shampoos.
Judgements and decisions are not always rational. Most of the time these are based on psychological principles of how we perceive and process information.
I always believed that washing hands with soap is way more powerful than using hand sanitizer, but sometimes circumstances also help to change our habits.
I could buy and use hand sanitizer before when I was out of the house and had no access to soap water. But I didn’t do it because I didn’t feel the necessity depending on how I process information through my brain.
But now my habit changed because I processed information differently due to some external factors like pandemic coronavirus.
I started buying it regularly and the pandemic has created this habit in me.
This is only a small example of my personal habit change.
And I hope you are also having similar experiences.

The coronavirus pandemic will change social life in the same way as AIDS virus did in our sexual life.
Due to the nature of pandemic at the moment we must accept hygienic social life: Wear mask in public places all the time, don’t mix up with groups, don’t shake hands or hug to people, don’t indulge in partying, avoid or reduce mass gatherings, avoid or reduce public transportations, always have sanitizer in your bag when you travel or go to new places.
Try to avoid theatres, concerts, and stadiums as possible; instead look for alternative ways of entertainment and sport activities at home.
If you really need to travel, go with extra precautions.
At the moment these may look strange but when we start to accept them slowly, these become our new normal.
During this pandemic period, movie theatres are empty but netflix is blooming; stadiums are empty but computer gaming apps are at their peak.
This is how we are forced to change our habits and society follows it.

We have a “monkey see, monkey do” attitude in society.
In the beginning some of our activities may look somewhat out of track because they differ too sharply from the group practice.
This always happens in the initial phase of a new beginning like this phase of coronavirus.
Change requires courage and it begins with a single person.
Standing alone for change feels scary in the beginning, and most of us like to huddle, but in the time of crisis like at present, it is safer and wiser to stand alone.

Nowadays, my office is accustomed with zoom and other forms of online meeting forums.
We are comparing the results of online meetings and their effectiveness with pre-pandemic in-person meetings, if we found better results then we would continue this as a new office trend even in the post-pandemic period.
Society prioritizes things in terms of working culture and its effectiveness.

Most of us conduct our lives as if we will live only today and tomorrow-repeating the same mistakes, not learning from the past, and hardly ever planning for the future.
This comes to my mind when I see people on beaches in Florida and California during the coronavirus pandemic.
Unconscious mind doesn’t have the notion of time.
Our deep-rooted wishes remain largely unchanged throughout our lives.
A habit is a plan for some people but no habit is also perfect for some others. As Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
But crises like this pandemic must bring change even in unconscious people’s minds so that we all remain safe.
Our survival and success depend on our willingness to adapt changes in life while they are relatively small.
We can’t be irresponsible and spread the virus all around.

Some of us focus only on the present moment because we pay little attention to other people’s life.That is just another sign of being caught up in quick pleasure.
Crowd in Florida beach during a pandemic like this is a perfect example.
People with no social responsibility are more likely to keep pushing these habits until their own lives become crippled by its consequences.
The education of time is a good sign of civilization, and this is the time for education.
An intelligent person is likely to take a break in deteriorating habits, continue to monitor the surroundings, and wait to get in gear with social mingling.
An educated person is aware of time, while someone who is acting impulsively is not.
Any person who pays attention to the current virus becomes aware of its enormous impact in the society.

Society always tends to flow in channels, like rivers in their valleys, but we should be the creators of channels.
When a society feels an isolation, it turns negative. When it feels the group, it turns positive.
This is just the rule of society but sometimes we have to learn how to ignore the regular social trends.
The wave of coronavirus will affect immensely in a negative way for our economy, science and invention, and social mobility for a very long period of time.
We have already experienced a lot of negative results from different corners of society.
But let’s hope that this negative effect will turn to a positive outcome soon by changing our personal and professional habits, our attitudes and practices, and work cultures.

Our mind is looking for an order- a society free of coronavirus.
We have to make it and let’s make it possible.
Remember, only discipline and good hygienic habits will help to break the chain of coronavirus.
Once again, remember, this endeavor starts with each one of us, and please, don’t forget to have a hand sanitizer in your everyday bag.

Thank you for your time.
– Yam Timsina

Why is my childhood friend moving to the USA?

When I was growing up in a village of a very poor country Nepal, we were taught a system run by one man – the king, and the king was designated as a great leader. Later we found out what a weak system it was, but while the king system was prevalent, many people enjoyed following the king.
Ironically, the king freed most of us from the need to think for ourselves.
“Small kings” were installed in every area of society, in economics, science, engineering, and so on. This is the story of every underdeveloped country in the world whether there is a king or other forms of king.
The biggest fantasy of every person living in an underdeveloped country is that someone else, especially a political leader can make us rich or successful is always ingrained with us.

This is the biggest secret that differentiates the mentality between people living in developed and underdeveloped countries.

After living many years in a developed country and traveling back to my home country regularly, I can certainly feel that a majority of people in the underdeveloped world are happier than most of us in the developed world.
In an underdeveloped world, most people have a very simple lifestyle with no debt, a close family interaction, and sufficient healthy laughters.
I believe this is one of the keys to consistent happiness in life.

But still why does my childhood friend want to move and settle into the developed world?
What is the secret of his decision?
I am trying to express my personal perspective in this matter because I also moved in the same way many years ago.

I am a big fan of Abraham Lincoln. I am borrowing his lines.
“To believe in the things you can see and touch is no belief at all; but to believe in the unseen is a triumph and a blessing.”
Developed world provides a belief in the unseen for those living in poor countries and this is one of the fundamental reasons people across the globe want to move to the developed world.
They have watched, read, and heard news, life-styles, and glamour in social media, news outlets, and television. That attracts them at first hand, and they start to imitate the quality of life inside them. I’m not discrediting the more opportunities in the developed world, but this comes only after acquiring new skill-sets.

There is a cycle and certainty of things in life.
When the tide goes out, it’s sure that the tide comes back. The sun sets today but it rises again tomorrow; somebody dies somewhere but someone else is born in a different place. Somebody was born poor somewhere but dies rich in another place.
Sure, we have read and heard those stories.
Our life also flows in the same cycle and same patterns. This belief also plays a significant role in our decision to initiate immigration process.

I’ve seen many successful people from different walks of life coming from very humble and poor beginnings. They reach the pinnacle of success in the developed world. At one point they realize that it’s not difficult to get success but it’s very difficult to teach others to be successful.
They start to influence and give education to their roots where they grew up.
This is also a cycle of life.
Nobody becomes successful without harmonizing physical, mental and spiritual well being.
These successful people understand this at their core later in their lives.
They enjoy being in their roots and reflect back to the beginnings.
Their core belief starts with,
“If something is built to show, it’s built to grow.”
This belief hones them to lead the poor and disadvantaged community for progress and prosperity.
Among many reasons, this might be another reason my friend thought it is necessary to move into a developed country.

Successful people’s behaviour is public but their thoughts are always private.
Due to these private thoughts they are successful in the first hand. The way they think and do their tasks are different from normal people.
They always look for patterns and consistency in their lives.
There are more opportunities for these kinds of institutions which help to grow us in the developed world for private thinking, this is another factor to attract people from underdeveloped countries.
After kissing some successes, they build their foundation in their mind so that they want to make schools, hospitals or libraries at their birth places.
My friend has seen these activities in his home country so he might be influenced by them to make a moving decision.
If ordinary people can’t see what other successful people are choosing and doing, they can’t imitate and accept them in their own life.

I have experienced one important difference in people living in the underdeveloped and developed world as I worked in both places.
In the underdeveloped world, people rarely promote or encourage someone who has made some major mistakes.
They rarely appreciate and give second chances for growth.
But in the developed world, people never promote or encourage someone who hasn’t made some bad mistakes because if they do, they are promoting someone who has never done anything in life.
Life only flows with good and bad experiences.
Life tastes good and bad.
If you have tasted bad food, then only you always lean to taste good food next time.
This is another truth in life.
Repeated mistakes only happen when we don’t study mistakes, and repeated success only happens when we study mistakes.

I have not tasted any big success in the developed world yet, but I am a student of successful people.
I also noticed a very clear difference in the perception of success in the underdeveloped and developed world.
In the developed world, what everybody knows is not worth knowing, what everybody does is not worth doing. They stand on their own and live life to the beat of their own drum.
They put everything in their own perspective and act.
The pattern is quite the opposite in the least developed world, they try to copy the success of others which most of the time does not work without sound judgement, risk tolerance, and proper skills.
My friend might want to pursue the life of freedom in the developed world against mass approval.

My friend used to run a small business for a living in his home country but was not getting much success in recent days.
There is another mass belief that the developed world is strong in technology so that everybody uses it for their business advantage and prosperity.
This might have catalyzed him to make a decision to move.
In reality, technology is just one avenue to the developed world.
Developed world is powerful in developing a mindset for consumer franchise and service excellence.
They are very successful in reading customer psychology to promote their products and services rather than mere technology.
Imagine why the iPhone is so popular across the globe, it’s not only due to product, it’s due to skill to read mass psychology by apple company.
Most of the underdeveloped world focuses only on technology rather than consumer pschyology.
I would like to add one additional point here.
Why did Daniel Kahneman get the Nobel prize in Economics?
He isn’t an economist, he is a psychologist.
This is one example of how human psychology impacts to advance economic thinking. Underdeveloped nations are weaker to grasp this theme to advance businesses and entreperneurship.

Complex human activities cannot be automated.
Many human activities need an exercise of judgement.
Sophisticated machines and technology can smoothen the systems, environment around us, but can not replace humans.
Developed nations know this so they consistently focus on developing the human mind.
Underdeveloped countries are very poor to recognize this aspect.

Many people are attracted to move to developed countries because these countries act like a neutral market, gives an environment and opportunity to grow to everybody but has no responsibility in itself.
For example, the market does not care whether a trader gains or loses.
Traders have to develop the skills, knowledge, strategies, and psychology to consistently take profit from the market.
The sad part is underdeveloped countries act as polarized and induced markets, not neutral markets as developed countries.

Success comes from diligent application of the approaches we have applied.
There is very little focus to study failures in the underdeveloped world and most of the people focus only on success.
They may have knowledge, but they lack to turn that knowledge into wisdom through vigorous practice and application.
But it is quite the opposite in the developed world.
They don’t study only other successful people, they take a lot of time to study their own personal failures.
It is the mistakes that are more noteworthy in the developed world.
Each mistake brings its own new lesson.
There are many ways to get through this practice and application of mistakes.
The crucial fact is we can’t achieve anything important in life until we get into the motion and magic of practice, that part is lacking in the underdeveloped world.
My friend may want to join the motion of practice so that he wants to move to the developed country.

There are two types of people we generally encounter in this world; first category people who make things happen like inventors, scientists, entreprenures, and are mostly found in the developed world. They take risks and study failures a lot.

Second category people who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened, are mostly found in the underdeveloped world.
These people rarely participate in anything but read the news all day and watch the television constantly .
In which category you fall determines your destination.
Therefore, our life circulates with our thinking, activities, and participation.
Most of us regret many years from now that we didn’t participate in things of our choice but only watched things happening.

In order to succeed wherever we move, we need drive, knowledge, and discipline.
Developed countries certainly provide the proper soil to grow these qualities faster in comparison to underdeveloped countries.
Success is one of the most important byproducts of that plantation, but less so than any of those qualities in itself.

Thank you for your time.
-Yam Timsina