Will we ever get out of this labyrinth?

There are moments in one’s life when everything falls apart. When the one thing you were so sure about is something you are unsure about. When things just seem irrelevant. When all you want to do is lay in your bed all day and just think what led to this day? What could you have done differently? What could have saved you? Can you save yourself now?

Everything you used to love is something you just like or something you used to like. Days just pass and hours just go on. Everything means nothing and nothing means everything. The small things hurt, and the big things just pass. Everything’s just weird. You want to do things but at the same time you don’t do them because you don’t want to. Nothing makes sense. Some days are good days because you do something on those days, not because you feel something those days. Some days are bad days because you feel a little too much and that much isn’t something you associate with a happy person and then there are the normal ones which just pass.

On some good days you feel happy because finally after tons and tons of just days you got something done. Those days you celebrate. The cycle of days just goes on.

I don’t know how many days I have left on this Earth but what I do know is I want to get out of this vicious cycle. So, if anyone is feeling the same way, don’t feel alone.  I am feeling the same emotions. We will get through it. Maybe if I find a way out of this labyrinth, I will share it with you.

“You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”

John Green, Looking for Alaska

ARE YOUR SURROUNDINGS IMPORTANT?

1

Everyday people tell us that we should work in a silent place or we should study alone in a room to improve our concentration. Maybe you haven’t noticed but the noise from the heater is making you re-read all those paragraphs again and decreasing your efficiency.

Our surroundings involve everything around us. Not only the people we are with important but the non-living things in the work environment are just as important. According to a Harvard study, by simply adding flowers to the work environment employers observed an upsurge in happiness and productivity of workers. The environment is just as important as it is to sleep before working

A lot of us listen to music while we read, write, and research. But does music help or hurt studying? The answer depends on the individual. However, research has shown that studying with headphones on tends to decrease memory and information retention, while background music can be a study aid. Even the type of light in our room matters, when we work a flickering light will serve as a distraction whereas fluorescents soothe our mind and help us in finishing our work. Being too comfortable prevents us from working but an uncomfortable environment such as stiff chair or a high temperature will also prove to be disadvantageous.

In a research poll of 1,614 North American employees, it was found that access to natural light and views of the outdoors are the number one attribute of the workplace environment, outranking stalwarts like onsite cafeterias, fitness centres, and premium perks including on-site childcare. The study also found that the absence of natural light and outdoor views hurts the employee experience.

2

Everyday people tell us “choose the people you hang out with very wisely, you are going to become like them one day”. We all just discard these things people say from our mind within seconds but maybe they are right, maybe you just haven’t observed but you are becoming like the people you hang out with and this change is not something you will observe within a week or two. This change will take time, but it will be there.

For a second just pause and think about who you were a year ago and see where you are today and try to synchronise your habits or actions with your friends. See the habits you picked up along the year were already there in your friends. So, the old people shouting at us are correct.

The biotic and abiotic components of our environment contribute to our overall productivity. When you surround yourself with people who promote growth, you grow. When you surround yourself with people who promote productivity, you will produce more. Similarly trust orientated people will promote trust and you will learn to trust others. A Harvard research states that trust and purpose play a significant role in building successful, productive workplaces. The researchers found that commitment is largely influenced by one’s sense of purpose, feeling of personal impact and overall trust in the organization. Productivity is largely affected by the quality of human relationships including cooperative, social group moods and interaction.

It is also a proven fact that That Positive Work Cultures Are More Productive. Stressful environments promote high health care expenditures, disengagement and lack of loyalty and hence forth lower productivity.

By now I think I have convinced you that your surroundings play a prominent role in your overall productivity so if you are feeling lethargic all the time change things up a little bit and if you are working very hard be assured that some comfort won’t make you work any less.

ARE YOU OBLIVIOUS TO THE TRUTH OR ARE YOU ALL ABOUT SELF-DOUBT?

Being confident is great. People believe you even when you are not telling the truth. Most probably you are perceived to be the best in your group even when you are not. So, what is it about confidence that attracts people? When do you believe that someone is intelligent and knows what he or she is doing? I am sure you don’t ask them to give an exam or something because in real life interactions are small they last only a few minutes and in those few minutes who think they know it all act like a know it all and the other people also end up believing the delusion. Sometimes the people who are confident really know it all but most of the times it is just the delusion they create that keeps them and their narcissistic habits going. Do you like being around someone who brags all the time? I don’t think so. People who are never notice their mistakes are the ones who never grow, and people don’t prefer to be around someone who always makes up excuses for not performing up to the mark. Accepting one’s mistakes is important. In the short run when you interact for a few minutes the people who prove that they know it all are the ones who get out lined but when considered in the long run people have the time to observe and test and get past the delusions and people end up hating the brag and somehow these delusions end when people see the truth.

Are you in self-doubt all the time? Self-doubt is great in many ways. When in doubt people always tend to make changes and these changes improve their work. Some people are always worried they never believe in themselves and sometimes when you are making changes things go from the best to the worst soon. Imagine you are working on this important project and you keep adding and deleting stuff at the same time but when you visit the project after it is all done you end up changing it completely and the final product is way worse than the original copy. This happens with many of us and many times these changes are irreversible. Self-doubt keeps you from becoming a brag and people like people who always want to grow but being always in doubt is not something we would consider ideal because being in doubt is not a good feeling.

So being confident prohibits growth and being in doubt makes you feel bad. What should you do then? Don’t think about confidence at all. Whenever we fail we start criticising ourselves and end up feeling even worse rather than feeling better. Mark Manson mentioned in his bestseller: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, people self-loath and usually end up in a downward spiral. It goes on like this first you feel bad because you failed, then you feel bad because you think you are not up to the mark, then you start feeling like a loser or a failure and bang the spiral goes on and on. This isn’t how you should deal with failure. We are all humans and humans make mistakes. Every time when you make a mistake don’t think that you will never do a thing properly think about how you cannot make this mistake the next time. Be self-compassionate don’t be hard on yourself. You messed up this time make sure that you won’t do the same mistake next time. People like to be around people who acknowledge their mistakes and promote growth. You will be happy and isn’t happiness something that attracts everyone. This way you will grow without hating yourself like a person with self-doubt, and you won’t be oblivious to the truth. Be okay with everything. Every mistake should be counted as a step on a ladder upwards. Be an optimist, forgive people and most importantly forgive yourself.

ARE YOU DONE BEING NICE?

Have been nice for far too long? Has being nice given you nothing? Has being nice took you nowhere? Have you been betrayed? Do people always take advantage of you? Are you fed up of being nice and want to act like everyone else?  Isn’t it that evil people always lose but people take advantage of good people. So, which one is better?

Good people are usually people who like to share and help others. They want to help anyone in every possible way they can. Some might say all philanthropists are good people as they help others and else in need of resources, but we don’t see them unhappy. In a study released by women’s philanthropy institute(WPI) in 2017 it was stated that:

• Giving makes us happy. Giving to non-profits and other charitable organizations has a direct positive relationship with life satisfaction. “The more a household gives as a percentage of income, the higher the household’s life satisfaction.”
• Giving makes us ALL happy. This positive relationship did not change across marital status demographics.

Remember in high school when everyone wanted to be popular and the cruel ones of all made it to the top but by the time of graduation they were at the bottom and the ones which wanted to share and wanted to make others happy were loved by everyone.

But the good people are also the ones who are taken advantage of because not everyone is good.People out there in the world are selfish they are driven by the desire to gain not by the force of sharing. They like to exploit the sharers they want to suck others dry and they do everything they can to gain. So how does one make it out alive and happy in this world?

For what seems like a really complicated problem the solution is a pretty easy one:

• At first be good to everyone
• Afterwards treat people the way they treat you. If someone is good act good around them, if someone is cruel act according.
• Sometimes act good even if the other is not acting nicely. This is give them a chance to observe and improve themselves.
• Maybe they will want to change themselves, then forgive them
• Water cannot kill water and fire cannot kill fire but if they act against one other then damage can be done.
• In short neither hunt nor get hunted.

ARE YOU LOOKING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION?

It is common that people find that they are working hard but still failing at whatever they are trying to do. Someone is trying hard to clear the interview and get the job. Someone is working hard for the calculus exam. In our life it is often that we work for something and still fail at it but sometimes working hard isn’t enough. If I ask you Are you working hard for the exam? Your answer is yes but if I ask you Are giving it your 100%? the honest ones among are you going to say no.

It is often said that people want to go to heaven, but they don’t want to die. Similarly, you want to ace the interview or the exam or that important speech, but you don’t want to give it 100% of your time and energy. Most of the time you start working on that important thing you want to work for and you become distracted you start using your cell phone or end up running some errands but after a while you start working on that important thing and then again the distractions, this cycle goes on and on  till the end of the day but at the end of the day If I ask you what were you doing throughout the day then, you were working hard for the speech or the essay or the exam or the interview. When the time comes around for the results, you end up failing. Have you ever wondered that the reason why you are failing or the reason why you can’t give it your 100% is because you actually don’t want whatever it is you are working hard for.

Sometimes it’s the most unexpected times when you succeed. The things you think you work hardly for are the ones you end up at succeeding at. The truth is while you worked less for this, in that little time you gave it 100% of your energy you weren’t distracted, and you were doing this work because you wanted to. It wasn’t because of some obligations or pressure. When we work for the things we really want, work never seems like work and that’s why you end up thinking that you didn’t work hard for the thing you just aced at. You should try to find things that you are good at and the things which you really want and then work on these things. Prodigies like Mark Zuckerberg and Albert Einstein were asked how they will divide their attention between the things they are average at, above average at and best at. We all think the witty thing to do is to give your 70% to the thing we are below average at, give our 30% to thing we are average at and 20% to the thing we are above average at and this is exactly what we are taught in school or in college or by our parents but just because an advice is popular doesn’t mean that it is true. Shockingly they all gave the same answer they all wanted to give 100% to the thing they are above average at. The reason being by giving their 100% to the thing they are above average at they will become the best at that particular thing.

THE RIGHT ENERGY IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION LEADS TO SUCCESS.

ARE YOU MISSING OUT?

Sometimes we scroll through our social medias and think about the things others are doing and we feel like we are missing out on a lot of things. We start to feel alone and unhappy because we feel that others are doing so many fun things while we are just lying on our bed scrolling through an endless gallery of photos but while we are missing out on the things they are doing, they are also missing out on the things you get to do. They don’t get to play with their siblings. They don’t get to spend time with their families. Just as you feel like you are missing out on that trip, they also long for meeting their families.
Suppose there is an exam tomorrow and you know that it’s an important one and you have this family function going on in your house. Most of us will study for the important exam and avoid all human interaction to avoid getting distracted and miss out on the fun. While most of us will study for the exam there will always be some of us who will ignore the exam and the tension that comes with it and just enjoy and have fun with friends and family because that is more important to him or her.
The same way you can decide what is more important to you and end this downward spiral of regret in which you keep on regretting the way you spend your time. Think about the things you are missing out on and ask yourself: Are they more important than the things you are doing right now? Will they impact your future in a prosperous manner? If they are important and they give you a better and happy future, then change the way you live. Steve Jobs had a habit every morning he looked at himself in the mirror and asked himself IF TODAY WAS THE LAST DAY OF MY LIFE, WILL I CHANGE THE WAY I AM SPENDING MY DAY? And if the answer was no for some days, he would change something in his routine.
We all need to do this exercise we need to stop regretting and start living. Every day you make a decision make sure you don’t regret it. Make sure it was something you wanted to do, not something others filled you with. This way at the end of the day you will be happy and fulfilled because you did what you wanted to do and the joy of doing what you wanted is everything.

ARE YOU PROCRASTINATING?

Do you procrastinate all the time? “What I’ve found is that while everybody may procrastinate, not everyone is a procrastinator,” says APS Fellow Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University. He is a pioneer of modern research on the subject, and his work has found that as many as 20 percent of people may be chronic procrastinators but that doesn’t mean you can’t get things done on time. Here is a method to get things done in time:
• Make a to do list everyday
• Make sure that the list contains more than or equal to 8 items
• This list should be full of things you need to get done soon
• While setting these goals make sure that you don’t think that I can do this tomorrow or the day after tomorrow
• Just make a list of things you need to get done
• Make sure that the list is either made in the morning or on the day before
• Try this for 5 days and for sure you will find that your productivity is increased
This way you will at least get half the things done and it is much better than getting nothing done. The mind of a procrastinator thinks that I can do this or that tomorrow but by using method you will push forward the 7 other things forward and get one thing done. The not done things should be included in the to do list for the next day. This way you will be able to get most of things done on time.
There is one more aspect to all these things. Most of us know what we want in the long run but what we don’t know is that to achieve the long-term goal, we need to first achieve the short-term goals, and this is exactly what this to do list will help you with. This will help you get closure and will make you aware of the things you need to do on daily basis to get where you want to be.

ARE YOU HEARTBROKEN?

It’s weird how you give your everything to someone. You think about your future together. Dream about things and think that its love but then suddenly it’s over. The thing you dreamt about gone. The future you thought about doesn’t exist anymore.It’s so easy to get caught up with someone. You feel empty. You feel like you don’t have an organ anymore. All these signs depict that the relationship you were in was toxic in a way. Many of us even lose ourselves. Many people after a breakup feel these ways because somewhere along the way they lost themselves and all you can do now is just find your roots again. It’s easy to get lost in this derange world but when you will find yourself again you will feel the best you have ever felt.

PEOPLE SHOULD BE A PART OF OUR LIVES, NOT OUR LIVES.

At first when you realise you are alone you are most probably going to want to contact your ex, but you know that you shouldn’t do that but still do that. You shouldn’t act this way because if it ended this way with you feeling broken what makes you feel like it will work in the future? Do you really have this much time to waste? The outcome of all these actions is just that you lose your respect in the eyes of the other one.
5 by 5 rule: If it’s not going to matter in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes being upset about it.
We see this rule all over our social media feeds all the time, but we never realise how truthful it is. It’s just so simple we shouldn’t waste our time on things which are irrelevant. If it’s not going to matter later, it shouldn’t matter now simple. Just think are you even going to remember how all this went down after 4 or 5 years. We all know that you won’t even remember this specific incident so just don’t spend so much time being caught up with this incident. We all need to feel upset, but you just shouldn’t give up everything because other things are still going to matter even after 5 years, things like your GPA or college application.
We all see in romance movies how people sugar-coat things. Always a popular guy somehow falls for a not so popular girl and then the drama roles over and in the end the guy accepts the girl and they live happily ever after but that’s not the truth. Whenever we dwell a little too deep into science fiction we always get to hear that we shouldn’t get so stuck up on something that’s not even real. The same thing applies to romance movies too. All we see is fiction and in reality things are totally different. We are just machines who are totally messed up and we try different machines to work with but in the end the one machines that works with us is the one who is as messed up as we are.

WE ARE ALL MESSED UP. WE JUST NEED TO FIND SOMEONE WHO IS AS MESSED UP AS WE ARE.

 

ARE YOU FAILING?

Do you ever feel that you keep failing again and again? No matter what you do,no matter how hard you work,you find out that you are amateurish at it. For most of us this feeling is quite normal. Every day we all go through this feeling. Whenever you see that you scored a F on your mathematics exam or whenever you see that you didn’t get the job.At times this feeling takes over us. We feel sad and alone even though we have every reason to be happy and have our friends and family with us. All this happens because we see people around us who are successful at what they are doing.At times we all end up wondering why is it always me who fails? why can’t I score an A? why is everyone getting promoted and I am the one lagging behind? We all asks these questions to yourselves and end up feeling inferior and unsatisfied. Moments like these we need to realise that maybe that thing that we seem to be so stuck up on is not made for us.

A guy named Ma Yun was born on 10 September 1964 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. He graduated in 1988 and started applying to as many jobs as he could. He applied for 30 different jobs and got rejected by all. he went for a job with the police; they said, “you’re no good”. He even went to KFC when it came to his city. Twenty-four people went for the job. Twenty-three were accepted. He was the only guy. In addition to this, he applied 10 times to Harvard Business School (HBS) and got rejected. Ma had no experience with computers or coding, but he was captivated by the internet when he used it for the first time during a trip to the US in 1995.Ma’s first online search was “beer,” but he was surprised to find that no Chinese beers turned up in the results. It was then that he decided to find an internet company for China. That guy is now known by the name Jack Ma and is the co-founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a multinational technology conglomerate. As of August 2018, he is one of China’s richest men with a net worth of US$38.6 billion, as well as one of the wealthiest people in the world.

There are many things one can learn from stories like his but what we need to learn the most is that we shouldn’t give up. Maybe some things are just meant for us. Maybe you are not someone destined to be a chef maybe you need to give a try to engineering. But then the famous quote we all read in books and on the internet “nothing is impossible” pops up in our mind and we think that if it’s not impossible for me to be a chef I will work to be one. The thing is if you are willing to give every single second of your day to whatever it is you want to do for the next let’s say minimum 5 years then only you can make what seems impossible today possible tomorrow. You can’t just one day think that nothing is impossible and I want to be a singer and give up everything and then not even work on becoming one. That’s why we need to be 100% sure about what we want sometimes we can’t just rely on emotions other things are needed to be measured too. What you need to do is ask yourself some questions:
• What is it that you are doing right now?
• Are you good at it?
• Are you happy doing it?
• Do you want to continue your life like this?
• Do you wish to do something else?
If you think that whatever it is you are doing is something you know is meant for you then give it all you got if it ends up happening and if it doesn’t then find something new. If you are like most of us and think that you are failing then think about what you are doing right now and ask yourself is it really something I want to spend the rest of my life on? and if the answer is no then you need to find where your heart is and try it. One day after years and years of trying and failing you will be successful and happy.

NEVER HOLD BACK ANYTHING BECAUSE MABYE IF YOU ARE UNLUCKY ENOUGH YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE A TOMORROW TO LET IT ALL OUT.

ARE YOU DELUSIONAL?

Feelings are they even real or they are just part of our imaginations. Feelings disappear. Just like everything else they disappear too but if they don’t stay forever then why are they even there. What you are feeling today might be just the opposite of what you are feeling tomorrow. Right now, you might want to get a Ferrari and a nice house but tomorrow when you will get these things you might realise that you don’t even want these things anymore. So what matters is the present. Ask yourself a question are you happy with what you are doing right now or are you happy with your life right now? Now think you are happy with what your life is today but tomorrow might be different maybe you will crave a different thing tomorrow. The question we all have to ask yourselves is how can you really rely on those emotions, feelings that might change tomorrow. That’s when you need to observe others and have patience. You want to quit your job today but tomorrow because of this reason chances are you will be a wretched being. You want to leave your family and run away with your lover but tomorrow you might realise you are not even happy anymore. We can’t just rely on things that are imaginary we all imagine this shit just to make this life a little more liveable. Humans imagine things, things that are unreal, we imagine things that couldn’t possibly exist but we all do this because we want to keep going we all need a reason to keep ourselves alive. Are you really that delusional to decide things based on emotions that will change?  We will all be dust one make it a good life, a life you enjoy.

WHY ARE YOU NOT TURNING INTO DUST TODAY?