Conversations with my parents
I was having a conversation with my parents recently about how to live well. Recently I’d started to realize that I had not made an effort to get to know who my parents truly were, their opinions, or their reflections and learnings from life. I have been living in the US, away from them, since the age of 18 and, after visiting them last year briefly, I realized that I do not have that much time to spend with them.
Thus, I started questioning them on every facet of life to obtain some understanding on what they believed. The goal was to understand what my parents thought an ideal life consists of and what a person needs to do to get it. This turned out to be a very interesting conversation, one that I want to record here.
What is the right thing to do?
Sometimes I am plagued by a confusion. I do not know what to do at any given instant. There are too many things calling out my name and choices I could make that they paralyze me. And so, I don’t know what the best thing to do is at any given moment, so I often do nothing at all. Maybe I open Instagram for easy hits of dopamine. Or I listen to music, retracing every minute detail of my life. Anything but having to pick something and just work towards it!
It is difficult to make a choice, and it is impossible to know whether what we’ve chosen is the right thing to do or not. And so I asked my parents…
Me – “What is the right thing to do?”
Parents – “Imagine yourself in 5 years. What do you see yourself doing? Be precise with this exercise. If you want to work, what kind of job do you want? Is it going to be an office job or something outdoorsy? Are you going to manage people or not? What are your coworkers going to be like? Get detail.”
Me – “Let’s say I know exactly what I want. Now what?”
Parents – “Progressively break down those details into small, bite-sized actions. Work through them step by step, increasing the intensity and difficulty slowly. Be honest with your work. If what you did today and yesterday was not enough, remember that 1 year is just 365 versions of today. If nothing changes, nothing changes. Constantly measure your progress because what isn’t measured cannot be improved.“
Me – “What if I start doing something but then I find that it doesn’t really suit me? I am deathly afraid of this happening and this prevents me from starting anything…”
Parents – “Remember that people operate in feedback loops. The way it works is that you start doing X, and then you notice Y about X, so you pivot towards Z. No decision you make is irreversible. Don’t be afraid that you’re going to be stuck to what you start doing.
This is way the world works. Microsoft began with Bill Gates and Paul Allen developing a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 microcomputers: they didn’t develop windows straight out the gate.
If you find that something doesn’t suit you, do what Ross said. Pivot. The worst thing you can do is not act. Always remember that.”
It became clear to me that I need to adopt this mindset to everything I did. My guitar playing, writing, software engineering, all of it. Precisely imagine, what you want out of life, especially in the next 5 years. Break down what’s needed to be done daily. Act.
Keep it simple, stupid (KISS)
We have a tendency of overcomplicating many things. This why the fitness industry is as big as it is. Otherwise there’d be no reason for us to have so many different workout programs, diets, protein powders, equipment, etc. Being fit is only a matter of consistent workout habits and eating less than we expend calorically.
Isn’t it that simple??
Yet our brains get to work and concoct some stupidly complicated workout program that has us counting our macros, facros, and god knows what. Our inability to swallow that such problems have simple solutions, cause us a lot of misery1.
Another good example in modern society is dating. It is unfathomable how much dating has been overcomplicated by my generation. The general consensus nowadays on what dating is, how a man is supposed to act, and how a woman is supposed to be, is so far off compared to the definitions we used to hold even several decades ago that it is genuinely hilarious.
It seems to me that there’s an overthinking problem rampant in the world right now. This has made everything so much more complex than they need to be.
Me – “Are we overcomplicating a lot of things in the world?”
Parents – “Yes, but that’s just the nature of the mind. Your mind exists so you can differentiates objects and forms. You could argue that this differentiation is making reality a bit more complex. This complexity offers us an alternative explanation and is the reason we have been able to categorize and accumulate knowledge as we’ve been able to in this world.
The problem is when we start applying this process to every single thing in our lives. Love, relationships, our purpose, etc. Do not let your mind become a hamster with a wheel. Think as much as needed and then shift to doing. Seek feedback from the environment on what you do. Then switch directions if you need to. That is all you need to do. Move, act, and don’t let perfection become the enemy of good.”
Me – “Isn’t the more complex explanation more accurate though?”
Parents – “Aren’t you aware of Occam’s razor? The more complex explanation is not always accurate. And, to be fair, the most simple explanation may not be true! But it definitely comes with fewer assumptions and are easier to verify. Strive toward simplicity of thinking. This doesn’t mean don’t learn. It just means: simplify everything in your worldview. Trivialize and take it as a game.”
Me – “I want to get good at many things. To do that, I need to practice all of them daily. How do you manage your time in a simple way?”
Parents – “Why do you want to get good at those things? There’s a lot of focus in world on becoming good at certain things, breaking plateaus, reaching mastery. While this is a good endeavor, it might be harmful to you and your own goal.
Instead of focusing on getting better, why don’t you just focus on enjoying whatever it is you’re doing? Why focus on getting better? Are you going to enjoy the activity more if you had more skills? Perhaps. But perhaps your true reason for doing said activity lies elsewhere, to gain fame, riches, or something else. Then we’d have to warn you: your pursuits are probably not going to work.
Remember the greatest lesson from the Bhagavad Gita:
Do your duty, do not expect the fruits of your actions
In other words, seeking goodness is being results oriented. Clarify why you’re doing the activity, whether you enjoy it at all, and then focus on your duty. That is all you have to do.
If you are consistent, it is the law of nature to give you what you ask for. But if you make the fatal mistake of being result oriented, and worse, being dejected because the results didn’t come at a pace you expected it to… You will get burnt out and stop practicing. Give yourself a chance. Forget becoming good. Forget results.”
Me – “That’s all well and good. But it gets really demoralizing when you do not see any improvement whatsoever after weeks of practice!”
Parents – “More patience. Remember the plateau of latent potential from James Clear’s Atomic Habits. Our expectations of results and reality are very very skewed. Progress is never linear and it takes so much more time than you think. You think your work is wasted but it is just stored within you. No work goes wasted. You just need to keep chipping away at the tree until the last hit makes it fall down. Be impatient with your inputs, but patient with your outputs.”
The comfort zone
I wanted to gain insight into what my parents thought about comfort zones, given the multitudes of life experiences they’ve had as life long professionals in different careers. This is what they had to say.
Me – “I am bored at work. I am not interested, I have little drive. What is wrong with me?”
Parents – “You are in your comfort zone. You’re going through the same daily motions everyday without having to try. You might think that’s a good thing but it’s not. One has to be pushed past their boundaries, challenged slightly, every day. Don’t you think life is more fun this way?
If you had all the answers tomorrow, would you even want to live any more? Maybe you would for a certain number of years, but then it would get boring.”
Me – “But I’m scared. What if I join a new job but it makes me even more miserable? What if I ultimately find that I should’ve stuck to my previous job after all?”
Parents – “You don’t know what the future will hold. But you sure do know that you are progressing the way you want to in your current job. Why not find out? At least you’ll be leaving your comfort zone and rocking the fabric of your life.
Sometimes, you need an earthquake in your life to remind you how good it is to be alive. Even if the job is horrible, you will have a renewed sense of appreciation of other laid back jobs, like the one you had before. Best case scenario, it is radically better than your previous situation. Win-win.”
Me – “What if I am not skilled enough?”
Parents – “When you went from grade 5 to 6 or 6 to 7, you were given progressively more challenging materials. Each stage of life requires you to level up. This is evolution. Don’t you want to evolve? Yes, it is scary, but that’s precisely what makes it worth it. Be patient. With time, you will gain the skills. And then you’ll wonder why you ever worried about such trivial matters.
The more scared you are, the more important it is that you jump. You need to, if you want to become the version of you in your mind that you wish you could be. Step into the fear. “
My relationship with myself
If you’re anything like me, your brain is not friendly to you. Like, not at all. When I’m trying to fall asleep at night, when I’m in the shower, when I’m at a party, or when I’m just trying to relax, my brain likes to play a game called “remember when you fucked up 9 years ago?”.
Having an unfriendly mind is difficult. We have to live with ourselves during every single second of our lives. Most of that time, we’ll be by ourselves. So shouldn’t we strive to have mental peace during that time? Theoretically, yes. But the nature of the mind is not one that seems to allow peace. Instead, it is a constant barrage of pointless chatter and negativity. It is like modern news outlets on steroids.
It is time, I figured, to learn about how I can handle my own mind. Because all this time, I haven’t been very successful at handling it.
Me – “Sometimes my mind just doesn’t give me a break. I am very negative with myself. How can I fix this?”
Parents – “The first step is awareness. Honest awareness is the single most important thing that will better you. If you weren’t aware that your self talk is negative, you would be like a dog trying to chase its own tail. You’d spend your life trying to realize why you’re sad, but you would never succeed. But you. You’ve already identified the problem. It’s your mind.
You job is simple now. Every time you notice your mind being harsh with you, you have to stop it. Kindly. Talk to your mind as if it’s a child who doesn’t know better. Train your mind. Have faith in the process; this gets better with time. Remember the 4 liberating questions of Byron Katie. Whenever your mind brings up a negative thought, ask yourself these questions.
- Is it true?
- Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
- How do you react when you believe that thought?
- Who would you be without the thought?
Me – “I am dissatisfied with myself. I have not been very consistent in my life. Have lacked discipline. Wasn’t resourceful enough. Was lazy. Some of these things are true! I don’t know what to do about these troubling thoughts.”
Parents – “The list of what you need is infinite. Some folks wish for a pot of gold. Others wish for muscularity and thinness. And yet others wish for values. If only I could be disciplined… If I could be friendlier. Logically speaking, there’s no difference between desiring a pot of gold to fall out of the sky and desiring a certain trait within yourself.
Escape this trap. If you desperately desire to build a certain trait within yourself, you can do it. You just need to act in a way that’s consistent with that trait. But be extremely wary. Your mind will keep convincing you that you need to be this and you need to be that.
This is just self brainwash and emotional suicide. Unless there’s something you have noted time and time again within yourself, realize that your mind could be lying to you or you could have gotten the idea in your head through other people.”
Me – “One of those qualities that I wish I have is confidence. My mind keeps berating me that I don’t have enough confidence. I look at some of my friends or people that do have it and I feel ashamed.”
Parents – “You think they have confidence but you don’t know what their internal state was like. Who’s to say you don’t have confidence either? That’s just an incorrect assumption you’ve made about yourself. Rather than thinking about these things, you need to be thinking about fixing your body and mind.
With a heathy body and mind, you will have confidence. Right now, your mind is not as healthy as it can be. A healthy mind will make your body healthier and vice versa. After all, who knows precisely where the line that differentiates body and mind is? They’re glued together. Think that you’re a confident person and voila. You’re confident.
Train your mind to be friendly towards you. This is one the most important things you can do and will fix all your problems. Why?
Because your mind is creating all these problems. So much misery you’re inflicting on yourself. And why? Just a game of comparison and your idea of what you should be like, rather than celebrating what you are and acting in a way that takes you closer to your goals. If your goal is to be more confident, train your mind to decimate any self-doubt and just focus on acting in a confident way. KISS.”
What is the purpose of life?
I sometimes wonder: is it egoistical to ponder about the meaning of our lives? After all, no ant, mosquito, lion, dog, or bird thinks about their purpose in life. They’re too busy finding food to eat and procreate. Who are we, the almighty humans, to think our life serves any greater purpose than to live, procreate, and die?
And yet… I do think our lives can serve a purpose. We can make a positive or negative difference in our more complex human world. I can leave behind a solid legacy or nothing at all. I can leave earth with my children saying “Papa was a hero” or “Papa was a rolling stone”. It’s within my power and the story I leave behind is my purpose.
Me – “So what is my purpose?“
Parents – “The purpose of life is to be happy. Take any single thing that people do. Jobs, parties, traveling, charity. All of it is done for happiness. Happiness is the supreme good and it is what everyone is after. There is nothing more than that. To leave behind a good legacy as you’ve put it, is done for maximizing your own happiness. Making a good difference in the world makes a good person happy.
That’s your purpose. To focus and enjoy whatever it is that you do. Fully. The consequence of this is that you need to let go of whatever that doesn’t give you joy. Does this mean you should not go to the gym because it hurts? No. Dig a layer deeper. Compare the misery of a chest workout and the joy of seeing your strength and muscle gains. The latter outshines the former by a long shot.
Don’t think difficult things will not give you joy. Oftentimes, they’re the things that bring the most joy in your life. Surround your life with things that bring you joy, and you are automatically fulfilling your purpose.”
Me – “Isn’t purely striving for my own happiness selfish?”
Parents – “No, it’s not. Your happiness is inextricably linked to others’ happiness. There’s a popular saying that the best gift you can give the world is your own happiness and personal development. Imagine what a gift you would be to your parents, friends, colleagues, and society if you became 10 times better as a person than you are today? You would change all of their lives, in a small way or large.
Your happiness is a great thing for the world. Your world. Others’ happiness is also linked to your happiness however. So, you must strive to help in the world. Not just the people near and dear to you, but everyone. And the best part of focusing on your own happiness is that you become a person who is capable of lifting others around you. You can only do that when you don’t have iron weights of personal misery stuck to your ankles.”
Me – “So I should care what others say and think in society. I should always be agreeable and put others’ needs above my own?”
Parents – “On the contrary, you should not give a hoot about what others think. Wishing for others’ happiness does not mean being a pushover and putting others’ needs over our own. There’s a balancing act at play here.
You need to learn how to find that line. And the difficult truth is: to learn, you need trial and error. You will make mistakes along the way. This is inevitable. This is why a friendly mind is so important. A trained mind will never berate you for mistakes. Mistakes are the currency by which we buy experience. So, it is your choice. Do you want to be experienced or have a mistake-less life?“
Conclusion
There’s a lot to think about in these conversations. These are guidelines on how to think well and how to live well. Because the way we think shapes our reality, which in turn shapes the quality of our lives. We all want happy lives so shouldn’t be explore our own mindsets, analyze the good and bad, and seek improvements?
I am hoping to turn this into a series, so I can collect the experiences and opinions of my parents and others on how to live as a reference guide. I will open these pages when my mind starts whispering the same questions that trouble me
- Just because the solutions are simple doesn’t mean they’re easy, however. This quote, mentioned in the TV series Bojack Horseman captures what I mean perfectly – “Everyday it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it everyday. That’s the hard part.” ↩︎
