Life lessons and hacks that my father taught me!
I am on a journey of uncertainties since childhood. I was always good at academics but never got fully indulged into it and kept trying/exploring new things be it my hobbies or experimentations. When you’re dealing with such adventures in life and are always off track about normal things, it is very important to have a source of inspiration and have someone around who can motivate you or raise you from darkness because every adventure small or big have some scary moments. While we idolise celebrities (true in my case as well — talk to me about Dhoni) but I always found one person in the form of my father standing by my side whenever I was clueless about taking roads.
My father has been my idol since ages and has always inspired me with the way he lives his life — on his terms with no fear of any sort. He has taught me many things when it comes to life and decision making. Listing few hacks my father taught me and that reflects truly in my personality:
About struggle
Since my childhood he has always kept me close to his struggles and me being master at observing things, adapted to his struggles and got to know the way to decide and react under different situations. Generally people avoid looping in their kids in materialistic problems related to job, finances etc but I was game since my schooldays.
About success
My father told me once that success is only a myth. There is no food in the universe that will satisfy your hunger forever. Success is just like food. It comes, it digests and we do away with it and become hungry again for another milestone. After few years the world will forget your achievements or success altogether, in fact even we ourselves forget things that we have achieved in past. Success is just the peak we have achieved but we don’t know the altitude of the highest peak we desire. Hence, we should not run after success rather run after excellence. Food will satisfy your hunger but good food will satisfy your taste as well.
About failure
This is my favourite part. The first time I touched failure was in 6th grade — math score obviously. I was then afraid of failing and so many questions were revolving in my mind — what if I fail? At times, we miss on good things in life trying to slog day in day out to avoid failures. It happens because we are afraid to fail. My father advised me to make my scorecard memorable — by that he meant ‘if you just pass, it will go waste as one of your scores but if you fail you will remember it forever’. So, I actually (involuntarily) failed in one of my exams and understood that “nothing happens if we fail” — this is my life’s biggest lesson. What it did to me that day was — it made me fearless to try things and take risks. It made comebacks easier for me — in my pre-boards I managed to pass in Economics by 3 marks, only to top all India in board exams next month. When you know that even worst will be forgotten one day you are not afraid to be worse. That ‘fear’ and ‘underestimation’ of self was over the day I failed.
About happiness
Happiness is subjective. People spend lives chasing happiness but it lies within them. Being happy is a state of mind not a result of your input. I have seen him being happy and enjoying life in toughest of situations and that has taught me how to stay calm and happy specially when things aren’t going right.
About discipline
Discipline is not a quality, it is a life style. It doesn’t mean you have a daily routine and set patterns. It rather means you’re inclined towards your goal and focus reflects from your daily activities.
About hard-work
My father has been one of the most hard-working people I have seen. In order to try and achieve 10% of his daily load, I have learnt how to expand my bandwidth and horizon. At present I work for 18 hours a day — 10 hours dealing with staffing and 8 hours building a community. And the most interesting part of it is that I enjoy doing it and still manage to take out enough time for people close to me.
About taking decisions
Every decision good or bad has a potential to change your life. My father has always taught me to take quick decisions rather than calculative decisions. He feels whatever decision we take in quick succession are generally processed through our heart and doesn’t go through channels of evaluation. I am not sure whether I should endorse this way of dealing with decisions but I have really engraved the same in my personality and I love going ahead with my intuition. Listen to your heart — you’ll have no regrets of not trying.
About respect
Respect — in all our function and for everyone in our connection. When it comes to respecting elders, the place where our roots belong or the work we do — he has always ensured that it strictly reflects in my action. We all are equal in terms of our scope as human beings — it is just the way we carry ourselves forward that creates all the difference. At the end of the day, the respect you gain is proportional to the respect you give.
About life
The only thing that is limited — so make the best out of it. He has always told me to do what I feel like doing. The world exists because we open our eyes and see it. If we aren’t here, it has no existence. Hence, try to make the best out of life — never settle, keep moving and keep inspiring people around. You’ll become immortal in people’s memory.
