September 3, 2020 – An Aura of Fleeting Thoughts

Hello there! Does your present life look like a burial ground of your memories every time you speak or do something? Well whether it is or it isn’t this article is just for you! As we age, no matter how fine tuned your brains is, it will start to play these magic tricks which take you along a guided tour of your memories- whether you want it or not and whether these memories are sweet or not! Join me here to understand how this impacts us and what is there that we can do about this, if there’s really anything that we can do and how can we use our memories to create an empowering present rather than be knocked down by them!

Each one of us has our own unique superpower and in the case of a few, that superpower happens to be the astonishing feats that their brain can achieve by replaying incidents and images from the past- with vivid details bordering on being outright spooky in a few cases! Any psychologist or a psychiatrist will be more qualified than me to share with you how memory helps and harms and what role it plays in constructing the person who we become- both in reality and in perception, but this piece is slightly of a different take on the same subject, it is about how even in day to day conversations and approach that we take- we relentlessly keep on going back to this memory bank (many times for no real reason) and that in fact ends up going more damage to us- especially when it doesn’t serve any purpose on our today or the fact approaching tomorrow! Let me explain!

What does your normal day look like? how many times during your day do you end up conversations referring to, “it was good then”, “this is what was done then”. “this is how it should, because that’s how I had seen it or done it”, “that vacation was great”, “that person is an idiot”, “those people are awesome”, “that family, that colleague, that friend, that cousin and so on and so forth”! You see, through the day at least once you will end up touching one of these chords- well there’s nothing wrong and right about it as long as it starts to interfere into what you are doing today! Sure enough if you are relying on your experience or learning to accomplish something, that still makes sense because here you are tapping into your memory cells to empower your today, the problems start to manifest, when you pluck the chords that don’t serve your present and neither seem to serve your future any time soon!

Sure enough, you would have had a great vacation, sure enough you would have had great colleagues and friends in life- but the only valid and golden questions is – how is any of that empowering your today? or how does any of it hold a promise to empower your future? If you have an answer- that they do- than hold on to those memories like your life depended on them- because these are not only your memories but, the tools that have the power and influence to shape your today and tomorrow. Everything else that you have stored in your brain and what you are able to recall- is pure waste of energy! Trust me, given the size that your brain is and the amount of tasks that it needs to get done- to just ensure you stay safe in a dumb world that we are living about it, it will only help the brain if you make a choice to weed out all that unwanted clutter from your memory bank and allow your brain to be that bit free to ensure it doesn’t get exhausted thinking about matters that really don’t matter!

Like with all else, the quality of memories that are recalled and that are stuck with you, go on to define the quality of your today and the arriving tomorrow! As long as you have un-serving, self-centric memories from your past (which perhaps stir up cautious to self-doubting tendencies) you will find those memories which border on being nightmares impact and dictate your ability to embrace the world as it really is- simply because your ability to perceive the world accurately gets fogged out by the overbearing presence of these nightmarish memories of the past! How many times have you said, “People from”xyz” are “abc” because you had a bad experience some time back?”, How many times you have made generalized, sweeping statements about people, religion, culture, vocation, orientation and what not- without really being bothered to know what the reality really is- just because your one experience made you feel that way!

Similarly, when you have empowering memories that added value to your in the past and show the promise to do the same in your today- those memory tires than constitute to add that vital touch of magic to further your shine in the world that you live in your today! Consider this, if you remember how you made a great mock-tail when you were in college and when you are able to spin the same magic at your daughter’s wedding reception- how does it feel for you and everyone- WOW right! That’s what meaningful memories are all about! This is how the magic of memories should be put to use, by not allowing them to bury you into your past but by rather allowing you to stay liberated in your present and by keeping you hopeful about your future!

As long as your memories are harnessed with the thought that they serve some purpose in your present or in the future, it’s best to have them buried away lest they come back to bury you in the present that you exist! Many problems manifest from this space of harnessing misplaced memories and these haunting memories in no time turn into nightmares and eventually begin to consume all the islands of calm that you may have within you and around you, because frankly no one really cares what happened in you past- you see even your boss doesn’t care of you were the beast employer last year or five years ago, if you are screwing up now and making it embarrassing for your boss “in the now”- that’s a good enough reason to fire you and get some peaceful sleep!

Perhaps the biggest mistake that people end up doing with their memories is that- they think others will be as excited as they themselves are and nothing could ever be farther from the truth! You see human memories are completely intimate and virtually second skin! They are only and only meant for consumption by the beholder of those memories. Thankfully, the way our brains are physiologically structured- it is often very difficult to narrate a memory without help of an external visual cue- consider this, say you want to describe that splendid Florida beach to your friend who has never been there- you can go on and on and even sing a song or write a poem- the other person is just going to end up thinking what an idiot you have been- it is only when you are able to share a snap or a video form that locale – will that person be able to relate, like, dislike, share a thought or an opinion and that if the person has a liking for the beach!- If the other person is a mountain or a plains lover- well you are toast and you can say bye bye to whatever fragile bond that you hold! This is what the magic of memories really is! They belong to the beholder and are for the beholder of the memories and do not call for participation of anyone else- unless they have been co-created by people with a singular thought for a purpose!

As one taps into their memories, sieves through them in the context of what empowers them and what harms them, it empowers an individual’s present once they are able to tap into the meaningful memories. This also helps to develop a sustainable charisma that goes a long way to help them navigate their world and better equips them to face their tomorrow!

I leave you here, for now, urging you to do a deep cleaning of your memory bank, weed out all that doesn’t serve you anymore, arrange what does and apply what helps so that you can empower your today on the foundation of your memories and not ever get worried about getting buried under their overbearing past from the past!

Ciao for now, will be back soon with another one, until then stay wise and stay safe!

You failed at something? Great! Failed at it again? Awesome! Still at it and going to try one more time? Splendid! Well, if you think, I am out of my mind, this is what the life of a crazy innovator, scientist or explorer looks like and if you ever wondered from where does humanity get it’s answers to complex and new challenges that keep popping up- it is this space of learning from failures by redefining as them as they happen! Join me here as we explore what failure really is, why it is good and why failure alone can prepare you for success and when it does that- why that success almost always is enduring and self-sustaining!

The next time you get a chance to visit a library, I urge you to go to a section that tells you stories between the 1800’s and until 1970’s! That is the period where all the magic that we see around today happened- sure enough we did not have the computers than in the way we have, neither did we have the internet nor the so-called smart phones- but what was built during that period in the history of mankind across the continents- remains to be the foundation that has made everything else to stand up eventually! This is also the period that was marked by intense and successive failures, one after the other, day in and day out only to eventually allow someone to keep working on the earlier omissions to come up with the required adjustments to get the answers that were been sought and thereby touch success and create something that would open up a new world altogether! If you ever wondered why few nations are more technologically advanced than some others, the reason again lies in the study of those 170 odd years, the nations which have struggled, failed, got beaten, broken and have risen up are the ones’ who today lead the world and that is perhaps the biggest visible lesson in front of us to understand that Failure does not and it never has limited or stalled success, rather it is the one that has forced humanity out of their comfort zone to search further, look beyond and reach for something new, establish the new normal’s of life almost every 20 years- all of this- we owe to the the bygone failures- its is on those foundations that we have got all of our today built! So why is failure so intense? Why does it get so deep inside and sting so bad? Why do we shy away now, from failure if it is what it is- a motivator in disguise? Well, read on!

The human brain is perhaps the most awesome machine that we have ever come across, even after thousands of years of evolution, every other moment it tends to keep throwing up surprises and we are all but compelled to say, “Well I didn’t know this about you!” Through our evolution, our brains have had to be hard wired for tough conditions, before we established permanent settlements and cradles of civilization. In those formative stages of humanity, failure was equal to death. you see, you went ton hunt a wild boar, the chances would be if you missed the boar, you would be back with some serious injuries (with no remedy at that time) spelling slow and sure death! Likewise if you were a farmer, watching out for pests, and keeping a check meant ensuring food to survive and failure on that bit meant seriously bad news! So this from where the story of why “failure is fatal” became so hard coded and even as humanity started to thrive and prosper the new age sins of gluttony, greed and all their cousins, embedded a sick idea into some person’s mind, “If I don’t do “XYZ” , I fail and If I fail, I am finished”, well sure enough that kind of statement makes sense as long as you are one of those troopers, law enforcement agents, critical member of the society, saving lives and keeping community safe, you don’t hear about a bank teller shooting themselves in their foot , because they misplaced the 50 cent coin right! This is the reason why that wrong notion of “failure is bad” , “failure is the end” and “failure is fatal” got stuck like an unwanted excess postage stamp on the dashboards of our mind and every time we go out to do something, we end up unnecessarily putting ourselves into more scrutiny than what is required, sure enough there are some vocations where one must never throw caution to the wind- you, see you always want your co-pilot doing the checks even as you command the plane, but that’s about it, what you need to know to begin with is that, if there is something really that important, it will come in with its own set of checks and balances either in human form or through the interface of technology that we use and if that doesn’t happen, there are only two inferences, wither what you do- is not important or you have just set yourself up for the greatest learning of your life through failure- for failure is always a step closer to you than success! So what next, how do we know when to keep going and when to stop and choose a different path? Sure enough you don’t want someone to be martyred at the alter of failure pursuing success- it was fashionable back then in the olden times, now a days that’s called being stupid!

The best part is that, like with everything else, failure starts and ends with you- your thinking and your approach, change any of these one variables and you will either alter the type of failure experience or you will hit the jack pot and touch success right away! Let me explain! If you study the life of inventors, scientists and innovators, the singular aspect that you will come across is that they relied on some founding principles of science and observation and persisted until they perfected what should manifest as an outcome to support what science told them in theory! They changed processes, steps, catalysts, ingredients, conditions of the experiment and everything that could have, except the pursuit of the finality of the experiment. Sure enough many scientists ended up inventing, discovering something else alongside what they were pursuing , that became a double cherry in many a case! When it comes to other creative facets likes, arts, literature, visual arts, etc, we all know how many times a writer would have trashed away a copy, a few pages at times the whole book! So what is getting played here? You would heard about why a painter just tore down a brilliant piece- this is the space wherein the finality doesn’t come to live with the imagery that the creator has in mind! This perhaps is the finest point of human exuberance and excellence in terms of pursuing an abstract value to be called successful! I mean a painter could be just fine, leaving the painting the way it is, the art connoisseur would have interpreted the way they would have wanted to and given the dollars and moved on, but that is exactly how it doesn’t work and that’s what separates the masters from the ordinary mortals and the only thing that these masters do differently with their failures is that they use it as their springboard to propel themselves even higher and farther to work on the next idea- as they use the current failure to touch the eluding success that they pursue! By now you must be wondering, if this is all about failures than why do we not fail that often now a days and why aren’t we able to realise the success as we aspire for? Read on!

The fact of life is that the modern corporate circus is all about risk avoidance, sure enough you want some critical aspects of business to work like that, makes sense- but this has all got to do with technological aspects! The human approach and attitude necessarily needs to be the one that embraces failure, if one wants to taste real success! You see most of our corporate work methods are more based on cherishing success and demeaning and looking down upon failure, so the human mind- being what it is, does what it should- mimic- yes- mimic- because it has seen “X” doing “ABC” to get that result which has the reward attached, so it will just do that so it too can get a chance to get rewarded- sounds familiar- yes, “corporate sales training” is a close resemblance for this! Then why aren’t everyone successful equally- why few fly and others fall, well that is simply because the ones’ who fail, learn, improvise and re-apply their learning- fly, the ones’ who face the wall and are only hanging by the structured corporate gospel, will fall every time they are faced with a negating experience unless they too learn to embrace failure as the first step to reach success!

As organisations become more and more risk averse and want to stay within an allowable band of human ingenuity and creativity- failures are far and few in between and so are the chances to improvise, re-learn and re-apply virgin human thought and that’s why we end up creating newness within what is there- but rarely coming up with something completely new as the earlier pioneers and inventors could! Sure enough, we have a few exceptional minds even now who world on complex problems and are able to come up with something that is path breaking- but again these are those geniuses- who have known to value failure and have always thrived on risking to venture into areas where normally no one would want to- you see, magic and success happens beyond failure and in a zone which is far uncomfortable and alien- a space within the human mind where dreams come alive and ideas take birth through some awesome persistence and application of wisdom!

My final take, seriously, do a retake on the whole concept of failing and failure. Do yourself a favour- just redefine your failure and from there allow the foundation of your success to be built! You will be simply amazed at the new areas that light up, the new pathways that open up and how you begin to see the same age old problems and challenges in a newer and brighter perspective- certainly I am not saying, you will have all the answers to your perplexing problems, but what you will be now armed with will be the right questions that you must ask yourself so that those right questions, bring to you the right answer which align you to the path of your success by digging deep into the learning’s from your failures! If you ever wondered why great things take time, this is one of them, great things and people both take time, for they are required to be forged by the forces of time, people and above all failures that they must experience to bring out the best of what lies hidden within them to serve the greater good of humanity around them even as they go about their lives being ordinary mortals doing some extraordinary service to humanity!

I leave you here, with these thoughts, urging you to embrace your failures and reach your success by building upon the foundation of your learnings through your failures!

Ciao for now, stay wise and stay safe! Will be back soon with another one!