40 Things I Learned In Last 40years.
Looking back at my life on my 40th birthday
I’ve turned 40 a couple of months back.
To be honest, I’ve still not accepted the thought of becoming a 40year old person. Still feels like I’m 33–34 years old :-)
When I was in 20s, nobody used to take pay attention to my opinions. When Microsoft completed 30 years in business, Bill Gates mentioned that “People start taking you seriously when you turn 30”.
Actually, he was right. By 31–32 years of my age, people did start taking me seriously :-)
I’m 40 now and I’m expected to know a lot about life.
But I’m still figuring out the mysteries of life and that’s why still hold the mindset of my 33year old self.
Anyway, here are 40 things that I learned in the last 40 years..
1) Things don’t go as planned most of the times.
I love to plan things out.. and most of the times, things don’t go as per the plan.
That holiday trip, that weight loss goal, that plan of learning Spanish, that Gym, those books.. and the list is long.
But when I look back, I don’t have any regrets. Whenever things didn’t go as per my plan, the outcome was always favourable in long term.
2) Our opinions change and that’s fine.
In my 20s, I never understood the concept of religion and god. I was an atheist. Then I started to see the meaning behind the rituals. My opinion changed.
At times I didn’t like the idea of eating meat & other non-vegetarian food. I turned vegetarian for quite a some time but didn’t experience any change in my thoughts or my body. So, I again started eating non-vegetarian food occasionally.
My opinions kept changing as I discovered new things about the same subject.
People used to say that I’m not firm on my decisions, but I think it’s absolutely fine to ‘improvise’ our thought process.
3) Burden of expectations kills you
This one haunted me for a long time. During school days, college, when I got my first job and finally when I started my own business.. the burden of expectations was huge.
At one point it almost killed me. I was under tremendous stress.
Overcoming this burden and living the life stress-free is among my biggest achievements.
Now, I can think clearly. My actions are based on my intuition and no longer based on my family’s and society’s expectations.
4) Self-imposed pressure of performance
When I overcame the burden of expectations from the family, it was time to deal with self-imposed pressure of performance!
When I crossed mid-30s, I started comparing myself with the fellow entrepreneurs and developed a feeling that I’ve not achieved enough.
That started killing my productivity.
Later, I made peace with this and realised that it’s okay to move at our own pace.
30s is not the end of my life. It’s just an interval.
Look at any good movie and you’ll notice that the first half is just a build-up. Actual action happens after the interval :-)
5) Being judgemental halts the personal growth
Putting labels on every situation and personal actually limits the thought process.
People change with the situations. So, it’s really immature to put the good or bad labels.
6) Relationships are the most important aspect of life
My relationship with my wife, brother, parents, in-laws and friends defined my life.
If I take this aspect away, then my life will become meaningless.
7) Daily habits are the only way to achieve goals
The legendary author, James Clear taught me the importance of daily habits in his book Atomic Habits.
Later, I realised that if good habits help you move forward by a step, bad habits pull you back by 5 steps.
Imagine eating right food for 6 days in week and then having beers and pizzas on Saturday night. It spoils all the efforts.
So, focusing on good habits is important but it’s equally important to get rid of bad habits.
8) Maintaining a life log to understand patterns
Somehow, I had his habit of maintaining a private journal since the college days.
It gives a lot of interesting insights when I look back at the diary after many years.
It feels like going back in time while reading posts written in my 20s.
9) We can’t change our family
Our family members are not perfect and that’s absolutely fine. We are not here to change anyone’s basic nature as per our own beliefs.
It’s great to accept the people as they are. 🤗
10) We can’t & should not try to control our kids
I realised that the kids are born with a certain nature and skills. As a parent, my duty is to nurture those skills and help them flourish rather than influencing them with my beliefs.
I stopped influencing their thought process.
11) Me-time helps in introspecting
Whenever I was feeling low, taking some time off for self-reflection helped me 100% of the time.
It’s okay to take a pause for few days, stop running around and do the thinking.
12) You need a guide
No matter how much intelligent you think you are, you need a mentor. I was able to navigate my business with focus when we hired a business coach.
When I feel stuck, I turn up to my friends, my family, my wife for an advice. I have no hesitation about that.
It helps 100% of the time.
13) School friends are special
Among all the friends I’ve acquired during my life, I really cherish and enjoy the company of my school friends.
They are unique because they know the ‘real’ you.
They know you before you became that business owner, director in some multi-national, etc.
I don’t have to wear any mask in front of them.
14) Managing emotions is a key life skill
When my business was going through a rough phase, I had to deal with stress, anxiety, that feeling of uncertainty, fear of failure and some similar demons.
It took me a couple of years to make peace with these emotions and when I learned to ‘manage’ my emotions, I felt like I’ve become a new person.
15) Change of environment brings transformation
On many occasions, I was running out of workable solutions to my problems. During that time, a complete break of minimum 2 weeks really helped me.
When we change the place, people around us and the environment where problem was created, we kind of break the bubble of negative energy and only then we are able to think clearly.
16) Mindset of a seeker of truth
Somehow, I was not very religious during my teenage days. I always used to question various rituals and even challenged the existence of God.
Later I realised that there are communities for atheist, vegans, etc which was no different than a religion.
I preferred to go solo and be a seeker of truth.
This mindset has served me well till now.
17) Nature heals
I’ve experienced the healing power of nature. I don’t need to explain this.
Just a bare-foot walk on grass can make all your worries disappear. Nature heals the wounds of body, energy, and mind too.
18) Power of gratitude
If my mind is gripped with negative emotions and stress, a sure shot way to change the feeling is to start thinking about the blessings.
It sounds simple and sometimes empty talk, but the gratitude is a powerful stuff.
Ever since I discovered it’s power, I maintain a gratitude journal and it’s transformative.
19) How to read the books
Reading is good but then there are tons of good books when you go to the book store. And the book recommendations that flow from all the directions make is more overwhelming to chose what to read.
So, how do I pick my next book?
I pick up a book that is going to help me solve my current problem in life. For example, when I wanted to setup marketing in my business, I started reading books about marketing. When I felt directionless in my life, I picked up books by Osho and Om Swami.
This is the best way to consume books. I don’t read fiction.
20) Money is energy
I learned this very late in my life — in late 30s, that money is not a ‘thing’ or ‘object’, it’s an energy.
This energy flows ‘through’ those who can manage it well. It has characteristics like a person. Maybe that’s why we call it ‘Goddess Laxmi’ in India.
A lot can be shared on this topic, maybe in another post.
21) Our needs & wants have limitations
It’s very important to find out what do really want in the life. In my 20s, I used to have lousy desires like becoming a billionaire, having huge mansions, etc but later I realised that there is limit to how much we can handle.
My good friend Vijay (Chennaite) used to give an analogy of Idli :-). He used to say, how many idlies Ambani can eat in a day? He was right.
We can lead a very happy life if we know our ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ correctly.
Chances are, we don’t need as much as we desire.
22) Intuition
Our actions either come from instinct, intelligence, or intuition. We know how instinct and intelligence work, but we often reject intuition (that gut feeling) as if there is no base to it.
Somehow, I always trusted my intuition. The more I stopped doubting, the stronger it became.
You can’t see Intuition from the eyes of logic. Logic is ‘intelligence’s domain.
Daily meditation practice helped me become more intuitive.
23) Law of attraction does exist
Like many others, I was introduced to LoA by Rhonda Byne’s ‘The Secret’ movie. Later on, books by Josesh Murphy, Nepolian Hill and the work of Wayne Dyer helped me go deeper into it.
So, the law of attraction is real. Our thoughts waves attract similar frequencies.
It’s not magic. It’s just another law like other laws that work all the time.
You need to ‘believe’ it to experience it.
24) It’s ok to play small
When I started my business, so called business gurus told us — ‘Go big or go home’. That’s a terrible advice.
When we look around, we see a lot of small business owners, popular shops and successful professionals.
Not everyone wants to be like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg and wants to build a billion-dollar business.
It’s absolutely fine to play small if it fulfils your needs and makes you happy.
25) Happiness is subjective
Oh god, this is such a simple learning but don’t know why people don’t get it.
Not everyone wants to be a millionaire, not everyone wants to live in a mansion or own luxury cars.
I’ve seen people enjoying at their time at farms, I’ve seen people running small cafes and passionate about serving food to their regular clients.
Happiness is not a standard thing. It depends on how you’ve been raised, where you are born and many other things that shape your thought process.
When I truly understood this, I was able to get rid of the burden to become successful.
26) Diet plans should not be generic
This is the biggest mistake that most of us commit — following a generic diet plan.
After trying low-carb, no-carb, low-calorie, high-protein, Rujuta Diwekar’s diet, Dixit’s diet, intermittent fasting, etc, I realised that any diet plan works differently for different people.
Ayurveda explains it beautifully. Finally, I understood my ‘Prakruti’ and designed my own diet plan.
It was sustainable & it worked :-)
27) Body is the best dietician
It’s important to listen to what our body says. It tells you when to eat, when to stop eating, what works and what doesn’t work.
But it’s not as easy as it sounds. I removed all the distractions while eating, meditated regularly, closely observed body’s reaction to a particular food and then I was able to understand body’s signals correctly.
This means, we don’t need to pay heavy fees to the nutritionist, our body is the best dietician.
28) Food affects the mood
When I’m in a bad mood or feeling low, almost in 50% of the time it’s because of bad stomach. It has nothing to do with others.
Sometimes a bite of chocolate or a good panipuri is enough to elevate the mood :-)
29) Don’t trust what you see and hear. Always question.
I have so many stories where I misinterpreted the person based on what they say. Many a times, I misinterpreted situations based on what I saw.
Now, I don’t form any opinion until I’ve taken a 50-feet-above view of the situation.
30) Surrender means alignment
I heard so many spiritual speakers talking about surrender. Read books on it but I never understood the concept.
Recently, I realised that the true meaning of surrender is to align with higher intelligence. After meditating consistently for days, I experienced this only a couple of times.
Lot of work is required to understand is completely. But when we understand it, it feels transformative.
31) Amazing things happens out of routine conversations.
We call this ‘Manthan’ — it’s when 2 or more people discuss a certain topic, and something really great comes out of it.
Interestingly, I got many great insights from the friends who are not from the IT industry just by talking about the problems I’m facing about my business.
I often indulge into such conversations with my wife which leads to better clarity and meaningful outcome.
32) Detaching myself from the outcome
In Bhagvat Geeta, Krishna tells Arjuna to focus on actions and not on the outcome (कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन). He further suggests to take only selfless actions that are beneficial to the larger society.
It took me 3–4 years to understand the meaning of this simple sentence. Why should I work for society? How can I get motivated to work if I don’t think about the outcome?
When I read about how Karmic cycle works, I understood what Krishna wanted to teach. Our aim should be to accumulate as little Karma as possible to exit the Karmic cycle. And only way to do this is to take self-less actions.
I’m still learning :-)
33) Nothing is permanent — people, places, situation
It took me a while to understand this. I always tried to make things permanent.
I lost touch with my best friends when I left the college, lost another bunch of good friends when I quit my job and so on.
I used to blog on MSN Spaces, had a website on Yahoo Geocities and used to spend most of my time in organising my MP3 collection in Winamp.
Nothing is permanent :-)
34) Victim mentality
When my business was going through a low phase, I unknowingly started blaming the employees, government policies and so on for our own failure.
But the new businesses were launched by others became successful during the same time, in the same environment.
Victim mentality is the lowest state of mind, and it shuts the doors for any possible opportunity.
35) Nobody is crazy
Morgan Housel used this term in his book while explaining investment behaviour. But this applies to real life as well.
People behave according to their memory imprint — where they are born, their family, friends, social circle, situations they went through, etc — there are so many factors that influence our behaviour.
That politician, that boy with a strange hairstyle, that boss, those people in religious rallies, that rash driver — nobody is crazy.
36) Forgiveness
In one of his books, Wyne Dyre had said that people don’t die because of the snake bite, they die because of the venom.
When we have an argument with someone or someone does terrible things to us, then after the incident (snake bite), it’s our thought (venom) that kills us.
Later, when I understood that we are one and part of a same higher consciousness, forgiveness became very easy for me.
Now, I don’t hold any grudges or resentments in my hearts for anyone 😇.
37) Karmic imprint drives our behaviour
Understanding about how Karma works was a transformative experience for me. You can get answers to life’s many mysteries using this framework.
In ‘Matrix Reloaded’, Oracle tells Neo that “we’ve already made a choice, we are here to understand it”.
38) The current moment is inevitable.
Whatever is happening now is not sudden. A consecutive series have events have led to where we are now.
This means we can’t avoid this moment. It’s inevitable.
There is not point in putting a label on it. We just need to experience it.
39) Books are not the only source of knowledge
Many authors have explained the power of subconscious mind in their books. We can tap into its true potential using meditation, self-hypnosis, NLP or other techniques. When we do it, we can get access to unlimited source of knowledge.
I’ve also met people who’ve gained divine knowledge using sacred ceremonies like Ayahuasca. There are people who can communicate with higher spirits to get answers to their questions.
Books are definitely not the only source of knowledge.
40) There is a limit to how much we can understand about the universe.
When my 10-year old kid asks me questions, I answer him according to his age. There is no point in giving him a complete information if he can’t understand it. He will eventually get it as he grows.
Same way, when I read Bhagvat Gita, I derived different meanings from it at a different point of time in my life.
Later, I got convinced that there is a limit to what a human mind can understand about the mysteries of universe and it’s creator.
We don’t know what we don’t know.
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Phew! That’s all folks.
I hope some of my learnings will help you in your journey of life.
Let me know in comments which one resonated with you the most.
I’m not done with learning yet. Will write a follow up post after a couple of years :-)
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Cheers!