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 OH GOD—YET ANOTHER SELF-HELP BOOK?

The Decision Dilemma

I am in the profession of arms for the last 35 years and have been through my share of adventure, terror, fun, ecstasy, pain, poignancy, and many other emotions that are bound to be experienced in the rough and tumble of active combat. No one in my family was part of the armed forces and I still find it hard to pinpoint the moment when I got fascinated to join the army. It could have been a war movie, some World War II book, the story of the Indian Freedom Struggle or India’s wars, or a real-life Fauji (soldier) whom I may have seen during a train journey. Be that as it may, I decided to join the army, and forged my way through the application process. Before you jump to the wrong conclusions, it was an innocent forgery. I lacked the courage to tell my father that I wanted to join the army and his was a simple signature to forge on the application form. I cleared my written exam, Services Selection Board (SSB), and medicals and soon found myself gawking at the mighty and majestic Indian Military Academy (IMA) at the precocious age of 19. The fire that was in my belly at the age of 19 still rages and I have maintained my passion for army life all through these years, but am I the same person I was 35 years back?

The dreams, goals, aspirations, desires, and longings, of a 19 and a 54 years old person are unlikely to be the same. Somewhere along my journey, coupled with my mandated tasks in the army, I became a trained pilot, a sportsman of decent achievement, and picked up reading as a serious habit, which led to triple master’s degrees including MPhil and MBA. Writing soon followed, beginning with blogs and culminating with books (you are reading my fourth). The thoughts in my head needed more vocal expression and hence a podcast followed as also a YouTube channel, which got me invitations to speak at colleges, universities, radio channels, Litfests etc. In short, I got interested in doing many other things as I grew in life and which is quite natural—change is the only constant in life. Interestingly, the subjects that I studied in my graduation, Zoology, Botany, and Chemistry, came to no practical use in my life—so much so for the academic qualifications and their utility in real life.

The fact that I could do all this while being a full-time employee is because I was in a government job where inherent security is available and also because my passion for my primary job never dwindled. Had I been in a non-government job or business, lost my passion towards that and longed to do something else, what were the options before me? Was it possible for me to quit whatever I was doing and start something new from scratch at the age of say 40 or 45? We take our major life decisions like profession, choosing a life partner, investing, etc. at relatively younger ages. The decisions may or may not hold as we grow in our minds, intellect, and body; as the dynamic external environment changes the profession for which we trained many decades ago may start becoming redundant. The journalism profession is a case in point that has metamorphosed into something different from the heydays of print journalism of the 80s. If you have to make a life-altering decision and need a second piece of advice, who will you ask—a 19-year-old who has not seen life or a 40-year-old, with adequate life experience? The answer is crystal clear and yet we continue to live our lives based on the callings and advice of a youngster, which we were many years or decades back, oblivious to the changes in our internal and external environment.

As I said, change is the only constant and we must be flexible and resilient to choose and change whatever we are doing anytime in life. As I averred earlier it can’t be a knee-jerk reaction that can be taken overnight, but in life, we don’t have a process that can help us in this complex exercise. Our education system and society prepare us for a specific role and thereafter expect us to keep doing that for decades whether it fits our evolved avatar or not. This is a serious issue, especially in today’s technology-driven frenetic-paced changes that are taking place all around us.

The Pandemic Epiphany

A few months ago, the hot topic for discussion, at workplaces (virtual or physical), homes, colleges, social media, et al. was the phenomenon called ‘The Great Resignation’. As per reports, nearly 4 million Americans quit their jobs in July 2021 alone. It was a rising tide reaching the crescendo in July 2021. The greatest percentage of employees quitting their jobs was in the age bracket of 30 and 40, supposedly the most productive age group for working professionals, an age where people are reaching or have reached the zenith of their careers. A career for which they have prepared, toiled, coveted, schemed, manoeuvred, for decades, and yet, in a moment of epiphany that they gained during the torrid months of the second wave of Covid 19, they threw it all. They gained the bliss of family time, home life, easy work schedules, reduced pollution and noise levels, and unrushed days, to realise that life was much beyond the punishing 12 hours of workdays. The weekdays that were full of mind-numbing work and the weekends that were full of ear-splitting music, alcohol-induced delirium, and goddamn-you hangovers, were bygone monsters. 

The Great Resignation launched a culture of Anti Work and it fast spread to other parts of the world—OECD countries (an interesting category of people termed as ‘Not Looking for Work’ came to the fore), Central and Eastern Europe etc. The rush towards ‘Start-Ups’ mushroomed, a field where ostensibly, one is a master of his/her time and not bound by the stifling rules and work schedules laid down by the organisations. It didn’t seem to matter that the risk factor and instability in Start-Ups were exponentially higher than in a so-called ‘Regular Job’. The year 2021 saw the birth of a Unicorn (a private company valued at more than US$ 1 billion) every 10 days, in India alone. The year 2022 has also seen around 21 Unicorns so far (till end-September) but they remain outliers in this unpredictable landscape. 

Since we are discussing India, as a stark contrast, there was a record number of people who lost their jobs. In April and May 2021, nearly 2 crore people were rendered jobless. These people had also been in their respective fields for years, and yet, when the crunch came, their employers decided to lay them off. Why did it happen? Because these people were adding the least or no value to the rapidly shrinking bottom line of companies. They had become, despite spending valuable years of their lives in that field, cargo instead of crew. Rightfully, when the storm of Covid 19 hit the ship, this cargo was hastily offloaded. As we start 2023, companies like Twitter, Facebook (Meta), Microsoft, Ola, Uber, Netflix etc. are giving the pink slips to their employees by the hundreds.

We can thus see two distinct categories of people emerging—one who had excelled in their jobs and yet felt dissatisfied due to an unbalanced life and the second, who had wasted their decades of life without significant improvement in their professional careers. One thing was certain, both the categories experienced wobbly work-life balance. The first category realised this imbalance during the Pandemic-induced lockdown when they spent months with their families to realise the futility of the life they had chosen to lead, and the second when their source of income dried up and they were forced to face their struggling families. Either way, both of the categories had not led a well-balanced life which was aligned with their inner callings and their Dharma (it’s not a religious concept and we will deliberate on it later in the book). 

The Shortness of Life

Things are more serious than the argument thus far, and that is due to the inherent shortness of life. An average Indian lives for around 69 years, which translates to roughly 25,000 days. If you find this number disturbingly short, let me shake you up further. Normally, a person is not self-sufficient to take major life decisions before the age of 18 and is not financially independent till 21 years. Also, beyond the age of 60, the energy pool falls to levels where active work may not be feasible. Of course, there are glorious exceptions but we are discussing average Indians here. This shrinks our calculation to barely 15,000 days (if we begin counting from the age of 18) and 14,000 if we count from the financially independent age of 21. Please look at these numbers again—14,000 to 15,000 days is all we have to play our innings on this planet. It is beside the point that we feel that we have adequate time to do everything that catches our fancy, but practically it is impossible. It is therefore very important to have a blueprint of our future self ready, in all our life roles, in front of us, before we decide to embark on any journey requiring the use of the critically finite time resource.

The corollary to the argument is that whatever we choose to do with our terribly finite time in this lifetime must be aligned with what we truly want to do. If we take the examples of people caught at both ends of the Pandemic Epiphany (the captains who chose to quit and the cargo who were made to quit), they had wasted a huge chunk of this short resource of time on things or pursuits that were too hollow for them in the long run. This most likely happened because they were not sure where they were headed and moved full blast on the first road that came before them, or the first opportunity that presented itself. We may pursue a path and even achieve reasonable success in that endeavour, but sometimes that hollow feeling refuses to leave us—is what we are doing worth it? Are we devoting too much time to doing something which is not aligned with our Prakriti (fundamental nature) while neglecting our basic Dharma? 

While course correction is always possible in life, it gets difficult as we reach advanced ages. The lesson is clear—we must be very sure of what we want to be, do, or have in life before committing any of our precious time and resources to that. But, how to find that, our Raison D’etre, is the big question that most of us struggle with. A major part of the book is devoted towards pointers to find out, rediscover or firm up your Raison D’etre, nay, your Dharma (we will delve into the fine difference between the two in the next chapter) by various techniques and tools. A possible method to do that, by following your Wheel of Life , with its hub and spokes covering various life roles, is what you will learn in this book. The ‘Wheel of Life’ lays out a blueprint for a balanced life that will result in ‘Holistic Wellness’. If we learn to live our lives as per the precepts of the ‘Wheel of Life’, in tune with our Dharma, probably, a Pandemic will not be required to shake us out of our slumber.

The Journey

Finding our Dharma is only the first step towards a happy and successful life journey. We need to find the direction in which we are to move. A thousand-mile journey begins with the first step but what if that step and the steps following are in the wrong direction? You will be travelling very fast but towards the wrong destination, hence intense focus on the Wheel of Life, like Arjuna’s aim, is a Sine Qua Non. Then there is the issue of enjoying your journey too and not getting overly fixated on the goal. There are scientific studies that conclusively prove that setting up a ‘Process Goal’ is far superior to setting up an ‘Outcome Goal’. The Process Goal in turn requires a good set of habits because 45% of whatever we do in our lives is dictated by the kind of habits we keep or discard.

The attitude towards the journey and the goal are equally important. If we believe that we are somehow incomplete till we achieve what we set out to, the feeling of lack will remain. This feeling of lack or basic unhappiness will lead to a less-than-optimum use of our precious time. This attitude is a recipe for failure as it is again a proven fact that success doesn’t lead to happiness but instead an intrinsically happy person is more likely to be successful. This becomes possible due to the elements of faith and belief that a genuinely happy and contended person generates which turbocharges their life journey in the correct direction while aligning the Cosmic Forces to the outcomes that we seek. As Paulo Coelho so eloquently states, "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." 

Bullseye

The essence of Sat-Chit-Ananda (Eternal Consciousness Bliss) in life is to correctly identify our Dharma in all the life roles we are mandated to play, set concrete goals to fulfil our Dharma duly balancing the Wheel of Life, and march on resolutely and with faith towards inevitable and enduring success and happiness. This book provides the tools to activate all your faculties through techniques that are steeped in scriptural wisdom, scientific experiments, or real-life experiences. By committing to reading this book, you will experience a perceptible shift in your consciousness. You would begin to question the Whys, the Whats, and the Hows, of life that you were taking to be the gospel so far. This intellectual awakening will lift the fog that descends upon the Mind-Road less travelled and will illuminate the clear path to max out life out of your ephemeral 15,000-day journey. You will develop the capacity and capability to redesign your life. It is immaterial at what age or stage of life you are, the concepts in the book will prove useful to all. In short, you will be able to hit the Bullseye on your Wheel of Life despite all the tricky missiles life throws at you.