Dazed and Confused…

If you are thinking been there done that… then continue reading. if not, well .. read it anyways because at some point of time you will be there.. Trust me..

Couple of days back, when I was talking to one of my friend I suddenly realized that ‘ Sometimes we find our self in the middle of nowhere; and some other times in the middle of nowhere, we find ourselves.’ So what if ( a big IF ) we were put into the positions, even the harsh ones by destiny/God/LIFE whatever we want to call it, because there is something there for us to learn.

Most of the times we are confused when we are supposed to decide. What then?

Decisions. Decisions, Decisions…

I am a poker player( A good one By the way 🙂 ). Making decisions is part and parcel of the game, in fact its the only controllable aspect of the game. The game has taught me many things in life like discipline, being rational, using my emotions to think rather than thinking with my emotions and most importantly it taught me to make the RIGHT decisions. When I say making right decisions, what I mean is : We must not do what makes us feel good, we must do what is right irrespective of how we feel. I am not telling not to have any emotions, after all where would we all be without emotions? its about how we deal with them and how we use them.  Also one important thing about decision is that (one wrong thing we all do) DO NOT look back. Success of a decision is not decided by what happens after we decide, did it succeed or failed, doesn’t matter. Success of any decision is based on did we decide correctly based on the information we had at the time of the decision. What happens later, doesn’t matter(it rhymes I know.)

Now, what if our decisions go wrong, all the time. Its a good and an important question. I have made a lot of wrong decisions. I think all of my bad decisions have taught me more than my good decisions. Many a times what we think of bad is not necessarily bad. ( Actually there is no such thing as good or bad. More on this topic for another post.) In life we need some bad decisions to led us to the right path. Just because we don’t realize it, doesn’t mean they are not necessary. Sometimes we have to be bad to be good. That’s the harsh reality. Think about it. In some situations, we would have forced ourselves to be bad to do the good thing. (Yeah you aren’t special everyone does that. Oh my dark sense of humor is showing up).

Anyways to summarize it don’t worry about the things we cant control. Concentrate on the things we can. Rest will take care of itself.

“Change can be scary, but you know what’s more scary? Allowing fear to stop you from growing, evolving, and progressing.”-Mandy Hale

Another quote that comes to my mind now is that ‘ Funny thing with the world is that, Intelligent people are always in doubt and idiots are always cocksure about what they are doing.’

So the point I am trying to make is if you are in that stage of constant wondering, be happy because you are alive.  Hence my point: LIVE LIFE ALIVE ALWAYS.

Are you scared……..BOO !

What is fear? is it bad? is it good? should we live with it? get rid of it? How did it

What is Fear ? Scientifically its: …  Fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger—if we didn’t feel it, we couldn’t protect ourselves from legitimate threats. But often we fear situations that are far from life-or-death, and thus hang back for no good reason… I am not gonna talk about physical danger because its irrelevant for this time. Its got to do with the response when we were cavemen. also I don’t like to type..and moreover I hate to bore my audience. Anyways now for the INTERESTING part, emotions. This everyone is interested to know. Response for emotional danger. If you actually think about each and every decision that we make, we make it using a combination of intelligence and emotions. Intelligence- well that’s for another post. When it comes to emotions we are always worried about how to handle it because not doing the right thing is worse than doing the wrong thing.

Be it fear of losing in a simple sport or being scared of taking the next step in a relationship, or afraid of losing someone, we are all scared. I will give my thoughts to simplify this. If it makes sense take it, if not well..it means you are an idiot and you are unable to understand what I am saying.. Just kidding. 🙂

First things first. How did fear come into our brain to begin with?

Scientifically children( by that I mean all of us) are born with only 2 fears, falling and loud noises. These were incorporated into our genes millions of years ago and we cant fight it. This is the reason why why tend to close our ears unconsciously if there is any loud noise and we are scared even when there is a slight sudden noise you didn’t expect to hear. Falling well should I even give any examples? Everyone would have experienced the funny feelings in the stomach when we were falling(Roller-coaster rides is an easy example).

These are the only fears we are born with. But there is a funny, idiotic, self proclaimed, arrogant, ignorant thing that introduces us to all other fears.. You guessed it. Its called ” SOCIETY”.

The pressure to succeed(not even knowing what success is ),pressure to become rich( not even knowing what money is) and pressure to be always fake a smile(not even knowing what happiness is) caused us to get scared of everything and everyone. (More on the stupid society later. I will save something for other posts). Lets get back to our topic.

Is fear all bad. Well I hate to break the ice. But no. fear is not all bad. I know what you are thinking. Fear is the cause of most number of defeats in the world. How can you say fear is good, Blah blah blah…Don’t make that face. Hear me out, then you can decide for yourself.. Fair ?

Fear is just like any other emotion. Let me take an example of a sport(because you like it and easy for me to get the grounds). Scientifically its proved that there has to be some pressure/stress/fear (whatever we call it) for any player to perform well. But when it increases to an extent more than the necessary level, it reduces the performance(remember Zidane). Even when we are playing, this can be easily observed. If you don’t give a damn and play carelessly your performance would not be up to your mark. Why else would tennis players ( well players of almost all sports) yell at themselves in front of a camera? (Marketing too but still.. there are certain things we cant fake.) . This can be explained graphically.(https://explorable.com/how-does-stress-affect-performance).

Now back to our fear, like I said fear is not all bad. Fear is what keeps us alive. Unless we allow the fear to reach that threshold point we are good.

I know you are scared. Well I am scared too like crazy. But you know what.

“Not taking any risk in life is the highest risk you can ever take”.

Vulnerability, Game Theory and Pussy

Vulnerability, an interesting topic, is what I want to discuss today. Everyone is scared to take a shot at the unknown. We think we are vulnerable and may end up in the worse situation than where we are now. So is it worth taking the shot, Is it worth being vulnerable, how do we know for sure, how do we decide …. I will try to address these questions .

This post is dedicated to someone who helped me figure it out. Thank you.. 🙂

When I mean by vulnerability, its applicable to all kinds of vulnerability let it be being vulnerable in a relationship or vulnerable of losing all you have now when you decide to follow your passion and if it doesn’t work out, vulnerable of letting the world know who you are and not accepted…etc. Whichever it is keep that thought in mind while reading the rest of the content.

Vulnerability has a very high correlation with trust. How much we trust/ believe that what we are after is gonna pan out. I know what you are thinking ” Yeah.. yeah.. but all these are intangibles and can we get to the how to decide part, game theory?”

Okay Now I wont confuse you much with math. But Know this Pay off=Probability multiplied by value. ( P =p*v).

Take a Shot	Probability	Value	Pay off
Doesn’t work out	99.9999999	-100%	-99.99999999%
Works out	0.00000001	Infinity	Infinity

Now let us consider 2 scenarios

1. I give it a shot and it doesn’t work out- As you can see I have taken the worst case scenario, that we will fail 99% and hence our pay off is in negative.  And each time we fail this keeps worsening and as you can see it just adds more .99999 to the system.  It cant go to 100% why I will tell you in some time.

( Hold on there is good news coming. 🙂 )

2.I give a shot and it works out- Here the chances may be very very very small, but since the value that we get out of it is infinity( priceless). The value even when multiplied by the least number is infinity( includes bliss, satisfaction, peace and many other things which are really priceless.).

Let me take an example to explain why the doesn’t work pay off cannot go to 100%. Say you want to become a sports start/ someone like Steve Jobs anything. There can be millions(even billions) of people striving the same but there has to be some slightest chance for the passion to work out because there has to be at least 1 Steve Jobs, not to mention many sports stars.. The same holds good for a relationship, following your passion. or… well you name it. Everysingle decideion I guess.

Now when I came up with this, one part of the brain said but what how do we know we are in that .0000000001 part, how do we know you will follow the right path, do the right thing, I mean the future is uncertain, how do you actually know you have to take it a shot.

Now the answer I got from my other part of the brain goes something like this ” I don’t know that, I don’t know if it is worth giving a shot. But let me tell you what I do know, its a fucking insult not living the life you want to live, knowing that you can live the way you want, just because you are a PUSSY to take it.”

When I mean by insult I don’t mean it only to me, it is an insult to the LIFE itself if  we are not doing the right thing.

So is it worth giving it a shot even after knowing you are most vulnerable, even after failing many times in life the answer is ” FUCK YEAH”

Living Life

The reason for me to start this post is try to put my thoughts into words. When my friend told me to start a blog to write the stuffs I know, I gave excuses like I am lazy, does it matter, where do I start, what do I start with ….But then I kept thinking, If I am unable to put my thoughts into words how do I know what I am thinking?

That was a logical argument from my brain. So I finally decided to start the blog.

I know what you are thinking, Here we go another guy philosophizing about Life. No I am not gonna philosophize on anything, Just trying to write what I have experienced, What I have thought about and try to improve my imagination, rationality, perspective and well my thoughts in general( sounds too serious.. ).. Let me just say I am here to talk about my EXPERIENCE..

Like I said I don’t know what to start. The posts are gonna be on random topics and unorthodox. Hey that’s how I think; in an unorthodox way. So its better to be honest in expressing your opinions as they appear.

Today, as this is my first post, I am gonna keep it simple.

Since I emphasized on experience before, let me tell you a story from my experience…

I was at a theater , watching a play.. I think it was based on William Shakespeare I don’t remember exactly. Anyways, one of my friend was playing a role of a hero in the kings era. I wont go into the story/script in detail. However there was this final scene where my friend takes a glass of milk from one of his friend which is poisoned and not knowing that he has been betrayed, he drinks it and dies.

Now, in these plays usually everything is set up. For example swords are made of wood, Background painted, fake blood etc..  But they were forced to use milk and not have an empty glass because if say glass slips or falls and if it is empty it would be embarrassing. So the directors make sure there is milk( non- poisoned obviously ! , if you are wondering) .

After the show was over I was hanging out with my friend at home after a work out session. We always drink milk after every work out session. But that day I saw something very INTERESTING. When I gave him his glass of milk he took his first sip and suddenly dropped it and for a second he was in shock,  then snapped out and came back to his senses. Then we laughed about it, made fun of the director and moved on..

Everything in the play that was not experienced did not affect him. The only part that that affected him was the experience of him drinking milk.

Now what if its the same with our lives, what if only the experiences that we have in life are the only real things and NOTHING ELSE MATTERS. I know you would have heard it from many people. But what I mean is the in depth experience of everything we do in our everyday life. We might read  many great books, quote great quotes,  try to understand others perspective, but irrespective of what great books we read, or whomever we quote, The only thing that is real and the only thing that brings life to our life is our experience of every thing we do.. More on this topic later. I guess its enough for the first post. So just experience life in every aspect. and don’t worry  when you drink a glass of milk .. 🙂