Where to start???

We all are very familiar with the question, WHERE TO START? Every day we encounter this question numerous times. Each time we have to start doing something new, we encounter the question, WHERE TO START?

Many people apply different techniques for starting to solve an unknown problem. There are as many solutions to WHERE TO START as much as the population of human beings on earth. But I like a simplified and effective solution. I use a solution borrowed from three sources-

1) Police department.
2) The knowledge of how our brain works.
3) Pierce Brosnon's dialogue in a James Bond movie, "First comes first".

Let's go in to the deep-

1) POLICE DEPARTMENT-

Police department or the law and enforcement officers encounter unknown problems regularly. Generally their work involves hunting down criminals. Criminals usually try to hide their crime and the evidences which relates them to the crime. Therefore crime investigating officers have to evolve a technique which helps them in finding the unknown in the uncertain environment.

What the investigating officers do is, they assume a theory or assume a possible culprit, and then try to find the evidences which prove or disprove the theory.

If the theory is proven right by the evidence then case solved but if disproved then the information gathered during this exercise gives further clues about the possible suspect our if not, the investigators simply think about another possible suspect as per the first theory or may change the theory because of the new clues and information gathered.

In short what the investigators do is decide a goal, start going towards goal by collecting unknown information, with the new information they correct their path and the goal itself if needed. And then moving this way, they finally achieve their goal, i.e. finding the culprit and the evidences proving him or her the culprit. Job done.

2) HOW OUR BRAIN WORKS-

As per the book PSYCHOCYBERNETICS by Maxwell Maltz, our brain works like a servo mechanism. For those who don't have any engineering background- servo mechanism is a conditional switch which operates when a pre-specified condition is met. For example thermostat in an electric iron or an electric geyser or electric oven is a servo mechanism. The temperature which is higher than the room temperature is first set in to the thermostat and then the heating starts. The temperature of the iron, water or air in the oven starts rising because of the heating. When the temperature exceeds the set level the thermostat cuts the electricity to the heating element, thereby preventing further increase in the temperature. But when the temperature drops below the set temperature, the thermostat switches the electricity on. Again the temperature starts rising, again as is exceeds the set temperature the thermostat cuts the electricity to the thermostat. This way the thermostat maintains the set temperature.

For a servo mechanism to work, there has to be a set point, i.e. GOAL. When a we set a goal, feed the necessary data and let the servo mechanism work then we can easily achieve our goal.

Now, the question is how to feed the data?

In the above example of thermostat, the data is the temperature, the temperature sensor senses the temperature and feeds the temperature reading to the servo mechanism. If we don't start heating then the servo mechanism does not work.

If you want to go to north and you are not moving then a servo mechanism can't tell you the direction. If you start moving then only the servo mechanism can tell you whether your direction is right and if not, then what correction is needed.

How to use this mechanism?

Set a goal and start moving for the goal. For example of you want to earn a particular amount of money in a particular time then first you have to start earning money in whatever way possible to you (I only advise legal ways). Then only you will understand if it is enough or you need to change the source or if there is anything else.

3) Pierce Brosnon's dialogue in a James Bond movie, "FIRST COMES FIRST".

Many times starting to solve a problem is as easy as FIRST COMES FIRST. For example, are facing a common problem of less savings. So you decide to save more and spend less. Now you encounter the question WHERE TO START? Just go for the FIRST COMES FIRST. From now on what is the first thing you are going to spend money on? Just think about how to lower it, our if it is necessary to spend at all? Then one by one go on to face the bigger expenses where you can save more with less efforts. Apply the 80-20 rule, that is 80% results are obtained by 20% of your efforts.

So starting out to solve a problem is as easy as 1 2 3.. You just have to start, and you will find a way. If you make a start then half the battle is already won. Because there is no problem which is unsolvable.

Further the solutions to the problems can be found at any place or situation in the universe, irrespective of the relevance. One just need to have an open mind to see it.

So what's the first problem you are going to face now? You know where to start..😉

See you soon...

Till then have a nice day...

Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.

The myth about city mileage and highway mileage

Most car and motorbike companies provide tested and verified mileage of their car models or motorbike models. Two things you must have observed that they provide two mileage figures- city mileage and highway mileage and second- highway mileage is greater than the city mileage or in other words highway fuel consumption is less than city roads.

As per my observation most people only look at those mileage figures at the time of purchasing the vehicle but afterwards very few pay attention to the actual mileage per unit of fuel consumed by the vehicle. Further most of the people think mileage is an inherent characteristics of a vehicle and only a vehicle mechanic can tinker with it.

The astonishing thing is that I have even seen engineers doing the same thing. Most of my friends are engineers and almost none pays attention to the mileage figure of their vehicle.

But on the other hand, I have seen some handful of guys understanding and finding and tinkering with the mileage of their vehicles. I guess curiosity is the common thing among these guys.

Well until now if you have not measured the mileage of your vehicle, don't worry. As you are reading this article, you are curious enough.

This article is to be read along with,

The power of compounding- 10 ways to improve your bikes mileage

Ok, so let's  now come back to our myth- the city mileage and the highway mileage-

Most of the time, my observation is in contradiction with the automakers. My motorbike and car gives less highway mileage than city mileage. And I can safely bet that for most of the people it is the same way.

Now why it is so?

There are two reasons-

1) AIR RESISTANCE-

Now what is this AIR RESISTANCE?

Whenever any object is moving in the stationary air, the air in front of it gets pushed by the object, also there is a vacant space produced behind the object as it moves forward. It is like moving through a densely packed crowd. You have to push the person in front of you away from your path and as you go forward the person occupies the space formed behind you. So you encounter a resistance to go forward. The more speed with which you want to go forward the more resistance you have to encounter. And if you move more than a certain limit you may get beaten up by the persons you are pushing. :-)

The same thing happens with your vehicle. As your speed increases the air resistance increases.

The air resistance quadruples as your speed doubles.

So you burn more and more fuel to overcome this air resistance as you increase your speed.

To reduce this air resistance which is also called air drag most cars are made aerodynamic (i.e. stream lined). So that they have to make less movement in the air. Or in other words they make it easy for the air to move around it.

But still as your speed doubles the air drag quadruples.

To understand the might of the air drag let's see another example-

The air drag is so negligible for us humans that we never give a thought about it while walking or running. It is because normal humans seldom run and even if we run, we can run at the top speed of 15km per hour and we generally walk at 4km per hour. So we just feel a little wind blowing around us when we run and no movement of air while we walk. That is we have to apply very little force to overcome the drag while walking or running. But suppose you are able to run at say 200km per hour then you have to apply the force equal to your weight to overcome the air drag. For example of you with 70kg then you would have to apply 70kg of forward force to overcome the air drag to run at 200km per hour(if you were able to run at that speed with our normal aerodynamics).

Usually we drive slowly in the city traffic as the roads are crowded and the speed limit is also lesser than the highways. Therefore if you are driving in a relaxed manner then you will encounter much lesser air drag, hence lower fuel consumption.

But on the highways you have open roads with higher speed limits, so obviously we drive at higher speeds on the highways. Which increases the fuel wasted on overcoming the air drag.

Now the second reason-

2) ENGINE EFFICIENCY-

The internal combustion engines (i.e. gasoline or diesel engines) fitted in our vehicles are operated in the wide range of RPM. The throttle governs the fuel going in the engine and thereby governing the RPM. While driving the vehicle we are constantly changing the RPM of the vehicle to suit the driving conditions.

But the engines efficiency is highest in a narrow band of RPM. Above this narrow band or below this narrow band the efficiency of the engine decreases drastically. Generally the vehicle operates the most economically when it is in the top gear and the RPM a little above stalling RPM (stalling is when the engine RPM is so low that it can't function smoothly). In such a condition your vehicles engine will be working comfortably and most efficiently.

If you look at the specifications of the engine, they generally provide a maximum torque figure and the RPM at which you get this maximum torque. This is the RPM at which the vehicle operates most efficiently. So in any gear depending on the driving condition of we stick to this RPM then we will get the best fuel economy possible.

But we almost always exceeded this RPM by a huge margin whenever driving on highways. Therefore the engine is working far away from the economic working zone of the engine.

So the result is LOW FUEL ECONOMY.

(The working of an engine is similar to us. For example, though an average person can run at the top speed of 15km per hour, we seldom cross 4km per hour. If we start running, soon our body starts struggling to get enough oxygen, struggling with removing the excess heat generated, struggling with the lactic acid generation in the muscles etc. Same is the case with the automobile engine. As we work great when we are doing things in our comfort zone most of the time, the same is applicable for automobile engine.)

I have tried to make this subject as easy to understand as possible. Hope you are ready to apply and save fuel.

See you soon.. Till then have s nice time..


Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.

Happy new year

So ladies and gentlemen, you must be thinking why am I so late in wishing Happy New Year??

Well, it is because I don't just want to wish you but, contribute in making your new year happy. You must be thinking how am I going to do it? Do I know the situation you are in and have a perfect cure for your problem?

Yes, I do know the situation you are in, I was in the same situation, trust me. Whenever new year came, I would make new year resolutions, decide what I wanted to do and achieve in this year and then making a plan to achieve the goals I set but then out of nowhere problems start arising, like I am too tired to get up early in the morning and practice yoga, so I would decide to start from tomorrow, I would decide to study regularly, but every time it was time to study there was a great movie playing on the TV which I couldn't resist watching, or friends are calling me for an outing and obviously the only choice I made is postpone my plan. This process got repeated so many times that I got used to postponing my plan and then one fine day, without my knowledge my new year resolution was lying in the remote corner of my brain. And this day was hardly a month away from the 1st of January.

Does it sounds familiar with your experience? Have you made such resolutions and couldn't stick to the plan?

If yes then keep reading otherwise you don't need my advice.

For those who are reading, it is very easy to come out of this situation and make your plan work. The remedy to your situation is in three words. Now sit tightly as I am going to tell you those magical 3 words which are going to change your life forever-

The 3 words are-

MAKE IT SIMPLE.

Yes, you read it right, to make your plan work, you just have to MAKE IT SIMPLE.

What do I mean by SIMPLE?

SIMPLE means 3 E..

1) Easy to make
2) Easy to work with
3) Easy to get results

Now we will get in to details of the 3Es.

1) Easy to make-

To make the plan easy to make just cut the crap. Don't think about the things which are not related. If you have doubt about the relation, then simply assume it have no relation if there is no fatal danger. You will get to know about the relation later on, automatically. For example, why to include 1st of January in your plan? Does it really have any relation to your resolution? Mostly it does not have any relation with the plan (what do 1st of January have any effect on starting a fitness workout or practicing yoga?). You can start from just now. Don't wait till your enthusiasm dies.

2) Easy to work with-

Your plan should not change your lifestyle drastically all of a sudden, the change should be gradual. Because there is always resistance to change so make the changes slowly but persistently. For example- I will sleep 15 minutes earlier today and get up 15 minute earlier tomorrow so as to get those 15 minutes of time in the morning to yoga. No drastic change like getting up 1 hour earlier than normal and doing 1 hour yoga. That's not going to work. 15 minutes is enough and do-able.

3) Easy to get results-

Results are very important. Positive results keeps our moral high. Positive results keeps us going. So your plan must be designed in such a way do as to get results easily. If it is really difficult to get results then the plan doesn't work. For example of you practice yoga for 15 minutes in the morning with proper understanding and attention to your body, you will feel much relaxed the whole day. That's a good result.

That's a simple hack you can use to make new resolutions from now, you don't need to wait for a new year to make new year resolution, just start from now, one small step at a time.

Remember ONLY ONE SMALL STEP AT A TIME, MAKE IT SIMPLE is the way towards better health, wealth and happiness.

See you soon.. Till then have a simple life and extraordinary results...

Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.

Wealth creation- Ratio of spending to income

So until now, you have learnt the simplest definition of what is an asset and what is a liability.

To revise again, ASSET is your belonging which puts money in your pocket, while the LIABILITY is your belonging which takes money out of your pocket.

If you want to be rich you must buy assets, lots and lots of assets. You have to allocate most of your income in purchasing assets, but what's the point of making money if we can't buy liabilities? Because we have longing for all the costliest liabilities, e.g. fancy car, huge flat screen television sets, home theatre systems, automatic home appliances, latest smart phones, fancy gadgets, the list even goes to luxury yatchs, private jets, vacation houses, maids and servants, personal assistant etc.

To understand how to do it, you must imagine you are doing a business, even if you are not a businessman. (what is a businessman? is another important topic to write a post on, you will soon get to read it on samanyabuddhi.blogspot.com , stay tuned.)

So now you are imagining that you are doing a business, you are the CEO and managing director of the business. Your business is managing your family. You and may be other family member of your family have incomes, may be from job or self employment or business or rental etc. That is your income or you can say income from operations, and then you have to pay the utility bills, grocery bills, servants salary if there are any, tuition fees of your kids, hotel expenses, entertainment expenses, purchase of clothes, traveling expenses, loan EMI's, fuel expenses etc.

So these things make income statement or cash flow statement of your business(it tells you from where your money is coming from and where it is going)-

Income statement / cash flow statement-
Income-
1) My salary -
2) Spouse's salary-
3) Interest on deposits-
4) Dividend on investments-
5) Gifts-

Expenses-
1) Grocery bills-
2) Utility bills-
3) Traveling expenses-
4) Maintenance of vehicles-
5) Children's education-
6) Healthcare expenses-
7) Gym memberships-
8) Entertainment-
9) Miscellaneous expenses-
10) Various taxes-

There can be other incomes and expenses too which I have not covered, but you can include them.

If you do it, you will get a clear picture of, from where and how much money is coming and where it is going. The money remaining after the expenses is your free cash or savings. You can use this free cash to buy assets, which will add to your income.

Similarly, you can make list of your assets and liabilities on a sheet, known as balance sheet.

Assets- (which put money in your pocket)
1) your job
2) property(only if it is putting money in your pocket or it's price is increasing more than it's expenses- in short putting money in your pocket)
3) shares of any company you are holding (again if putting money in your pocket)
4) fixed deposits
etc.

Liabilities- (which takes out money from your pocket)
1) your car
2) your smart phone
3) your tech gadgets
4) loans
5) different memberships
6) shares or equity in a loss making company
etc.

So now you get a clear picture of from where your money is coming and where it is going, also which of your belongings are putting money in your pocket and which are taking it out. Once you get the clear picture it is easy to start the reconstruction.

The reconstruction process involves getting rid off the unwanted liabilities and purchasing more of the profitable assets.

But the question is up to what extent we have to do it for the best results?

The answer to this question lies in the financial statements of the successful companies. How these companies spend their earnings. The dividend they give out is expense to them while retaining of earnings to purchase or expand the business is like buying assets for them.

So the first on my list is The company managed by legendary capital allocator Warren Buffett and his business partner Charlie Munger, The Berkshire Hathaway.

Berkshire Hathaway has paid dividend, hold your breath - ' only once' under Warren Buffett's part ownership, but that too because Warren Buffett does not had sufficient percentage holdings to stop the dividend payment. After that Warren Buffett have increased his equity in the company so much as he had virtually total control on the company's decisions. Since then Berkshire Hathaway have not given any dividend. That is the company had used all it's income to fund new investments and expansion of existing profitable operations. Berkshire Hathaway is the extreme case of retained earnings. None can blame Berkshire Hathaway for not paying any dividend because it had used the money for increasing it's income very efficiently.

But if we look at other growing, profitable and debit free companies, we will find that, they are sticking to the 80-20 rule.

It's not a rule it's just an arbitrary value. These growing, profitable and debit free companies reinvest their 80% of the earnings and distribute the rest of the 20% as dividend to the shareholders. In this way the shareholders of the company has money to spend and also have a growing business(growing income).

I always try to stick to this 80-20 rule. It's a no brainer and it works. Now a days most of the average families save less than 10% of their income and buy assets (if they are not paying home EMI's). So it is hard for them to reach that 80% mark, but you can start increasing 1% at a time. You can not convince your family and yourself from directly moving from 10% to 80% but you can certainly convince and achieve the move from 10% to 11% and then from 11% to 12% and so on until you reach your target. Use the proverbial ' Boiling Frog Syndrome ' to your advantage.

That's it for now.

Hope you have got the basic idea about how to look at your financial situation and how to improve it for your betterment.

See you soon.. Till then happy investing...

Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.

Understanding financial freedom- Cats

I love cats. Cats are one of the many masterpieces of nature's adaptive engineering skills. Cats are very loving, soft, beautiful animals and also deadly, cruel, capable killers at the same time. The most important thing is they know which role to play at which time. A pet cat sitting on your side, expressing it's love for you with the deep and tender 'grrrrrr grrrrrr' sound can sense it's pray or enemy nearby and starts playing it's deadly killer role within a fraction of a second.

Actually I like all the animals in the CAT family, including Tigers, Lion, Leopard; the bigger siblings of our domestic cats. They are almost similar except size and strength.

But they all have one thing in common- "The Attitude".

They have a very distinct confident but carefree attitude. Big cats are really the king of the jungle. If you look at them, you will know, 'they are the undisputed king of the jungles'.

Our domestic cats have the same attitude, same everything, except the size.

As I like to observe and learn, I quickly learnt to understand when the cats are hungry and immediately give then the required food. So my pet cats don't have to worry about the food when I am there. So their Royal attitude remains intact in my company. But what happens when I am not there to feed them is a very interesting thing.

When I am not at home and my pet cats feel hungry, it has two options, either go out and search for a prey or to ask for food to my parents. The first option had very high uncertainty of getting food, they also have to compete with other animals which are after the same prey. But the second option offers some certainty. They will get food if they can convey the message over and over again. So most of the times the cats choose the second option. That is to ask for food.

(Domestic cats convey this message that they want food by, making that deep grrrrr, grrrrr sound and "myaaw, myaaw", simultaneously rubbing their cheeks, body and tail against our feet. (what a demeaning behaviour !!!) Demeaning because they don't do this the other times, that means they don't like doing it. At other times they are exhibiting their Royal attitude. To show their love they just sit beside us or on our laps or body and make that grrrr, grrrrr sound, or they just sit on your belongings like your quilts, bag, table etc. And look at you lovingly.)

Their whole Royal attitude is ruined when they ask for food. And the Royal attitude goes down and down as this process is repeated. But the process can be reversed if they are provided the food before they need to ask. Again their Royal attitude returns.

Amazing story isn't it!!!!

This story will become more amazing and fascinating once you substitute humans for cats and money for food and what a man does to earn the money. The story is equally true.

As domestic cats have two ways to get food we also have two ways to earn money-

1) Go out and earn money of your own.(similar to hunting, a way full of uncertainty, but full of dignity.)

2) Take a refuge to an employer and be a salaried person.(similar to asking for food to the owner by pleasing him, a way with a lot of certainty, but less dignity.)

(see my post on 'ONE IDIOT')

Similar to the domestic cats most of us also choose the option with a lot of certainty and keep doing the job for the sake of money. Even if we don't like doing that job we still keep doing it for the sake of money. We do it year after year and so on up to an extent where this demeaning kind of behaviour is so much ingrained in our brain that we no longer feel it as a demeaning task. We perform our own brainwashing without ever realising it. We even teach our children the same thing- ' to get good grades in the school and college so that you can land in a good paying job.'

It's like the proverbial 'BOILING FROG SYNDROME' (it is said that if we put a frog in a boiling water, it will immediately jump out of the boiling water, but if we put a frog in water at room temperature and slowly heat the water to boil, the frog will not jump out and die. It is because the frog is unable to notice the small changes in temperature of the water, even though the changes are deadly.) We seldom notice small changes in our life until its too late.

Or then there is a social proof bias preprogramed in our brain which prompts us to do what most others are doing.

All this results in to a kind of entrapment.

But don't worry, you can easily get out, just like my cats have found out their way. They just stay with me as they know, they will get food without having to ask or beg. So how can one get the money without asking or doing any job?

To know how read my posts on 3 MOST IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF LIFE - WEALTH.

Enough for today.

Hope you got the lesson from my cats as I did.

See you soon. Till then enjoy the life..

Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.

She loves me...
She loves me not...

3 Most important aspects of life - WEALTH

Until now we have only partially covered the first aspect of life - HEALTH.

You must have read it in the posts-

3 Important Aspects of living - DIET

What do I do when I get ill?

No. 1 Misconception about great health

3 most important aspects of living

You must have also come to know that there are 3 pillars which support our life-

1) HEALTH
2) WEALTH
3) HAPPINESS

If all the 3 are strong then we can live a meaningful life, we will also take the human race a little forward, because if you have all 3 pillars strong then you will be perceived as a leader, an icon, as an inspiration to those who don't possess these strong pillars. Whether you notice or not but people will notice you. So automatically you spread the awareness. You touch many lives.

Until now we have discussed that Health, Wealth and Happiness are the supporting pillars of our life. All three have to be strong equally so as to live a balanced life. Also if one or more pillars are weak then we can't enjoy the benefits of the stronger pillar. (think about it practically.) Together they compound the strengths of each other. Therefore we have to work on all three to live a meaningful life.

Well I have said at the starting that we just partially covered the first aspect of life, yes it is true, just partially, there are so much to learn. But don't worry, learning is the way of life. So enjoy the process. Take it easy and visit samanyabuddhi.blogspot.com often to learn something more. Get yourself thinking. Get answers to your questions. Never keep any question unanswered.

Let's start with the basics of WEALTH-

Definition-
Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources.

Valuable resources can be anything- money, land, buildings, vehicles, machinery, goodwill, skill, knowledge, personal relations etc.

But as far as the blog- samanyabuddhi.blogspot.com is concerned, we will focus on the wealth which will give us financial independence. Financial independence is the basic thing which one should achieve to become a great wealth creator to the society. Financially independent people are the people who perform the best work in the society, simply because they are not doing the work for the sake of doing it, but as a hobby or as a passion. Financially independent people change the course of humanity towards better, they make the marvels of the world. For example as Mr. Warren E Buffett and his business partner Mr. Charles T. Munger have built the Berkshire Hathaway, Similarly in India Mr. Narayan Murthy have created the Tech behemoth Infosys, or Mr. Siddharth Lal is shaping up Eicher Motors (The maker of Royal Enfield motorbikes), or look at the TATA group, there are many many examples all over the world.

Therefore we will discuss about the financial aspect of the wealth for now.

So let's start with the basics-

Our belongings can be divided in to ASSETS and LIABILITIES.

People gets confused in the two, because as per general commerce practice there are many assets which actually act like liabilities.

To cure this problem we will adapt to the definition made by best selling author Mr. Robert Kiyosaki in his best selling book 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad'. These definitions are very practical and easy to understand. I couldn't find anything more simple or more practical.

The ASSETS are the things which put money in your pocket.

And the LIABILITIES are the things which take money out of your pocket.

So the simple thing is you have to accumulate ASSETS and reduce LIABILITIES.
With this definition, most of our beloved possessions becomes liabilities, for example, our car, as there are fuel costs, maintenance costs, depreciation, takes out money from our pocket, even if we don't use it, it's value goes on reducing as time goes by. Our tech gadgets also lose their value very fast, for example your smart phone, After just a couple of months there comes a new model and the price of the old model falls drastically.

But hold on, you don't have to give up your love for automobiles or tech gadgets or beauty treatment or other luxury items to become wealthy. Then how to do it?

A two word answer will be DELAYED GRATIFICATION.

What is DELAYED GRATIFICATION?

First let's understand what is GRATIFICATION- when any act triggers your feeling of pleasure is known as gratification. For example when you feel thirsty, you drink water and experience some pleasure. Whenever we want something and get it, we experience pleasure. Our brain quickly recognises the pattern because of close association of an act with the feeling of pleasure and then tries to repeat this pattern.

Now what is DELAYED GRATIFICATION?
Delayed gratification is when you perform certain acts which gives you pleasure long after the act is performed. At such times our subconscious have difficulty in noticing the pattern, seeing the connection between the act and the pleasure. Because so much time is elapsed after the act. For example, you have the money to purchase a car, but instead of purchasing a car you invest the money in purchasing shares of a good company growing at the rate of 20% per year, and then after 6 years your money get tripled, you sell one third of your shares and buy a car for the same amount, but what you have now is, a car plus double the money which you originally had plus this money is growing at 20% per annum more than enough to pay for the gasoline and maintenance of your car. Only catch is you have to wait for 6 years for the gratification, but you have gained much more. The pleasure is much more.

You may consciously enjoy the process of delayed gratification until it becomes an AUTOPILOT.

Mr. Charles T. Munger, Mr. Warren E. Buffett's business partner at Berkshire Hathaway says that,

I just need to know where I am going to die, so I won't go there.

So how did instant gratification kills your chances of becoming rich and financially independent?

Generally we get instant gratification through the purchase of liabilities.

Think about it, how did you felt when you bought your first phone, car, big flat screen LED TV, professional camera etc. You probably have felt so much pleasure that you might have forgot about maintenance cost or the finance costs, 'just get that thing' was your focus. You made a permanent damage to your future, but still you felt good.

Now if this instant gratification thing is compromising our future then how did it became permanently programmed in to our brains?

The answer lies in the caveman era, when our ancestors were living in jungle. At that time instant gratification was a boon, instant gratification meant better health and future. Sounds controversial right? But it is true, let me tell you how..

In the caveman era, instant gratification was linked to the basic things necessary for survival and reproduction. We felt instant gratification when we hunted for food and got it. We felt instant gratification when we felt thirsty and drank water. Or having sexual intercourse. Now what happened to those cavemen who didn't felt instant gratification? They might have starved to death or died because of dehydration as they wouldn't have consumed water or food because there was no reward (pleasure). So their capacity to hunt for food or water must have been diminished because of malnourished body. So, you must have to thank instant gratification for your existence. 😊

But now our basic needs are easily fulfilled. The task now a days is to achieve higher status. We struggle to achieve wealth. (you are reading this post is the proof). There is nothing bad in it, but this instant gratification acts like a villain as far as wealth creation is concerned.

To increase our wealth we have to concentrate on accumulating assets, increasing our income, spending less.

But again is it contradicting the whole purpose? Spending less?

Absolutely not, you just have to reduce the ratio of spending to income.

Now this is a really big topic. So I think it is enough for now. Digest what you have just read, think about it. We will get to the ratio spending to income in the next post.

Till then have a great time...

Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.

Auto-pilot

You must have heard this term Autopilot in relation to air travel. Now what does it have to do with our lives as an average person?

Well if you want to stay average then don't bother, but if you want to raise above, it will make a lot of sense. Let's think about it-

What is an Autopilot?

It is an automatic system designed to follow a predetermined set of parameters.

At first when this invention was made auto pilot was consisted of a mechanical arrangement with a gyroscope as a sensor which kept an aircraft in a level flight. Slowly as technology evolved other functions were also added, like automatic engagement or disengagement of autopilot.

Then came the fly by wire system and the electronics (fly by wire system is where the different controls only generate control signals, these signals are then processed by a processing unit and then actuating inputs are provided to the control surfaces. This technology is now coming to cars and bikes too, rather the luxury car makers are already using it.) This system made the programming of the system possible. Therefore now the autopilot of the todays aeroplanes are so advanced that once the flight plan is uploaded in the system very less work remains to be done by the human pilot. The autopilot can even take off or land a plane or even avoid collisions. But human pilots need to be there to deal with any surprises, as human lives are at stake.

So how can we lift our living above average with the knowledge of autopilot?

(Always remember that samanyabuddhi.blogspot.com is made to stimulate your mind to think, to use your common sense (common sense is the literal meaning of Samanya Buddhi) for the betterment of you Health, Wealth and Happiness.)

Or why I am telling you about autopilot in the first place? What is the relation of this autopilot and our life?

The working of the autopilot is similar to some extent to the working of our brain.

Our brain had two levels of thinking, conscious thinking & subconscious thinking. The autopilot works in the subconscious thinking. For example, when we are learning to ride a bicycle, it's our conscious mind at work. Our conscious mind is gathering the data when we are trying to ride a bike. It is recording everything, it literally gathers terabytes of data from every motor organ & every sensor our body has. (motor organs are our muscles, sensors include eyes, ears, skin, pressure sensing neurons in our muscles, the neurons which are sensing the movement of the liquid in the sacs behind our ears which is responsible for balancing(like an accelerometer).) Then our conscious mind works on finding out the correlation in different data parameters for example, when we press right paddle down with x amount of pressure, what happens to our balance, how much do we move forward or if we move at all. Similarly if turn the handle while moving forward what happens to our direction and balance etc. When this process of correlating is complete, our learning is complete.

(This process of correlating takes time and involves our subconscious mind, the process is fast when we are asleep, therefore whenever learning something new, take it easy, make sure you sleep in between your learning sessions, this way you will learn faster and easily, with less effort.)

Whenever learning something new, we make the effort with the conscious mind. We make the conscious effort to try (data gathering), then subconscious mind processes the data, and this is how we learn. Once the processing of data is complete it becomes autopilot. We can now do the thing without any conscious intervention. We can now think about something else while riding a bicycle.

But the problem with this autopilot is, it is very hard to switch it off completely if the need arises.

It is very hard to 'UNLEARN'.

Some creative guys made an experiment regarding this process of learning and unlearning. They built a reverse bicycle. The reverse bicycle has everything same as the normal bicycle except it has a special arrangement with the handle, so that when you turn the handle right, the front wheel turns left and vice versa.

To know what happens when a normal person who have already learned to ride a bicycle tries to ride the reverse bicycle see the video below-


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzDaBzBlL0

You can see it is very hard for him to ride this bicycle, because he is constantly fighting with the autopilot which is there in his subconscious. He has to 'UNLEARN' what he have already learnt about riding a bicycle. And then after few months of acquiring the new skill of riding a reverse bicycle it is again hard for him to ride the normal bicycle, but he is able to engage that old autopilot for riding normal bicycle again. Now there is another autopilot in his brain to recognise which bicycle he is riding and engage the required autopilot. Complex, isn't it?

If you doubt the video and want to try it yourself then you don't need to go finding the reverse bicycle. There are other options, like I have tried riding old Royal Enfield motorcycle. Unlike latest motorcycles the old models of Royal Enfield used to have the break at the left foot and gear shifter at the right foot. So if you are used to riding latest our modern motorcycles then you will find it hard and dangerous riding the old Royal Enfield motor bikes. You can find other vintage motorcycle models if you don't find a Royal Enfield with opposite controls.

So, what does it have to do with betterment of our life? Or our goal of improving health, wealth and happiness?

There are many things like bicycle riding, car driving etc. that we learn and then start doing it on autopilot mode. But things keep on changing, as you can see the old models of motorcycles had reverse controls. So we have to adapt to the changes and here the problem starts arising.

But if there are problems with the autopilot then why we had an autopilot in the first place?

We have developed this mechanism of autopilot over thousands of years of evolution. This autopilot mechanism are also found in insects. It is such a basic thing of life. It actually makes our life easy. It frees up our brains processing capacity for more important things. Like learning new things or decision making or thinking. Otherwise we won't be able to think anything while driving a car.

So again coming to the betterment of our life-

There are few drawbacks of this autopilot system-

A) Because of mental inertia or laziness our brain tries to stick to the previously learnt autopilot. For example the person possessing the old model of Royal Enfield would like to stick to the old model only because though the new model of Royal Enfield motorcycle is better in all respects he can't use the old autopilot, he had to construct a new one to ride the latest models. The person may rationalise his decision to stick to the old model by inventing some other reasons. But all others except him knows that he is at loss.

B) Because of the autopilot we are unable to notice new developments. For example if we are used to take a particular rout for commuting to our workplace, we have a tendency to never change it because that rout is fixed in the autopilot. The autopilot knows when to slow down, when to speed up, the timing of traffic signals, probable obstacles coming in the rout etc. So in short it's easy for the autopilot to follow the same rout. But what if there is something useful happening on some other rout or if the other rout is time saving or fuel saving?
You would never know until to try it consciously.

C) The most important drawback of this autopilot, or rather we can day a DEADLY FLAW of this autopilot system is that-
If we don't think about the dangers or if we don't experience dangers during the learning phase of the autopilot, then the autopilot simply doesn't have any data to counter these dangers. And this flawed autopilot keeps on working until accident happened or the odds manifest themselves.

For example, if you have learnt to carry your cellphone always in ON condition without thinking about possible dangers, then without your recognising it you will enter a gas station (petrol pump) with the cellphone on, or even attend or make calls while at the gas station, without realizing it, how much you have put yourself and others in danger.(the radio emission from cellphone can cause build up of static electricity up to such an extent so as to cause minute sparking which is enough to ignite air fuel mixture readily available at gas station).

Similarly if you have learnt driving a car without wearing a seatbelt then you will be fine until you have an accident. Also if you are not aware of the hazards of sleep deprivation and driving a car then there are very high chances of accident.

Your autopilot simply does not have data about such rarely happening bad incidences because they happen very rarely, but the most important thing is they do happen and your autopilot does not know the same.

So how to overcome these problems?

First to eliminate the problems we have to detect the presence of an autopilot, because we are so used to the autopilot that we seldom recognise that we are on autopilot mode.

How to recognise the autopilot?

It is easy, our brain is not made to be a multitasking machine, therefore our brain resorts to this autopilot mechanism to do one or more things automatically (subconsciously) and then concentrate on doing or thinking something new. So whenever you find yourself doing one thing and thinking something else you can be sure that you are on autopilot.

Now as we have learnt to recognise this autopilot inside us it is time to eliminate it's drawbacks-

It is again easy to eliminate the drawbacks-
You have to visit each autopilot and study it if it is missing something, are there any dangers? If there is any change in the operating environment like development of new technology or any changes in the surroundings, if there are any better alternatives etc. and do the changes necessary, try to learn new things. In this way you also work up your brain muscle.

This autopilot system also works in money matters for example some people are just used to take loans for buying things, some just like to save, some just like to make fixed deposits, some just like to buy a particular stocks etc. The bottom line is, learn new things, know where the dangers lie.

Hope I have contributed something to your knowledge about yourself.

See you soon.

Have a nice day...

Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.

Ability to suffer

Few days back I was reading a blog-  fundooprofessor.com

That is when I came across the concept of "ABILITY TO SUFFER".

This was the missing link in my thinking framework. Rather I had a framework for thinking about businesses but the exact thing to call it was missing. Well, the framework for thinking is another topic of discussion. For now let's concentrate on Ability to Suffer.

You must be thinking that what does the Ability to Suffer has to do on the blog related to Health, Wealth and Happiness? Aren't we looking to avoid suffering?

Well, if you ask me, my answer to the first question would be, A Lot.

The basic or the foundation of enduring health, wealth and happiness lies in your Ability to Suffer.

Let's think about the relation of Ability to Suffer with all the pillars of life-

1) Health:-

If you have read my posts on-
Ageing and Anti-Ageing - 2 of the most popular words in cosmetics advertising.

The Language of Exercise - Our way towards being Healthy

3 most important aspects of living

No. 1 Misconception about great health

You must have understood that, to get good health you must inflict a little catabolism on your body. Our body is a Complex Adaptive System so it reacts to this catabolism by unleashing it's anabolic response. This anabolic response makes our body stronger. Therefore, the next time when you will be trying to inflict catabolism on your body through exercises, you have to take more efforts because your body is now stronger than before.

In short, you make your body strong by making it suffer. And why do you need a strong body? To make it able to withstand any microbial attacks or any rigorous work. In short you make your body resistant to suffering. In other words with exercise and diet, you increase your body's ability to suffer.

2) Wealth:-

Wealth can be grown only in businesses or investments. But both these ways are not easy. The world's greatest investor who is now second richest man in earth on Forbs list, a billionaire- Mr. Warren Buffett says, "Investing is not supposed to be easy, whoever things it is easy is a fool." The way to wealth contains a lots of traps, mistakes, losses, various risks, the process of decision making etc.

Now the process of building wealth is different for every person. Just like every person on earth is different in some way, each person who have accumulated wealth have accumulated it in a different way. The corollary to this thought is if you are trying to copy someone else's way to wealth, it is the recipe for disaster. Because you don't know actually what was the real thought process behind the accumulation of wealth with that particular person. It may be the case that, he may just have got lucky.😉 (but we can't just depend on luck to accumulate wealth. If you are relying on luck then stop reading samanyabuddhi.blogspot.com , this blog is not for you.)

Therefore to make your own way to wealth you have to try different things and spot those which works for you and then stick to them. But until you find the way that works for you, you are going to suffer losses. You may minimise the losses (and you should minimise your losses) by making the experiments on very small scale. But it is just a plane hard fact that, there are more chances that you are going to suffer losses to you find the best way to make wealth.

There is another fact to keep in mind that,

WE LIVE IN A CONSTANTLY CHANGING ENVIRONMENT.

Therefore once you find a way to make money, it is not going to work infinitely.

"Everything that begins have an end."

So after sometime the profits you were earning from your way week start diminishing our you may get in to losses. At such times, you must be having enough diversification to protect you from total bankruptcy. Even if you suffer losses you must be having enough strength left to be there to play the game the next day. And trust me this can happen for days in a row. I hope you got the point.

3) Happiness:-

Now you must be thinking what does suffering has to do with happiness? I used to think lack of suffering must be the state of happiness.

But just think about it, what are the common sources of unhappiness for the rich and the poor??

Poor relations in family members, lack of understanding, lack of mental peace, lack of love, lack of trust, unachieved dreams, failed partnerships, failed investments etc. Poor health is also a source of unhappiness but we just covered it above.

How these sources of unhappiness can be minimized? I am saying minimised because some amount of unhappiness is necessary to drive is forward. (NEED IS THE SOURCE OF INVENTION)

Lack of love and trust can be cured by being trustful and loving in nature, but in both the cases it is not necessary that if you trust or love someone then he or she should also do the same. Many times the trust is broken, love is not returned or sometimes some people also take disadvantage of love.

There are two ways you can find love and trust in your life-
⬜ wait for it to find you (passive way)
⬜ you start searching (active way)

Both ways work. You can wait for a person to come to you and love you, trust you, or you can go out, love, trust and see who returns the same to you. If you go out and search for it then your odds of finding love and trust multiplies. In this active process you will suffer a lot of heartbreaks, you will come across people who will not return love or trust, or some may even misuse your nature. This way of finding love and trust is full of suffering, but the prize is worth much more.

Failed investments, failed partnerships are also the same. Unless you do it, you won't find good partnerships or investments. You learn your lessons from your suffering. The more your ability to suffer, the more are your chances of finding more good investments and good partnerships.

Unachieved dreams can be achieved by trying incessantly and learning from failure.

If you are ready to suffer and learn from it then anything is achievable to you.

My take is the "lean technique" -

Perform small experiments, or better learn from others failure, get the data, refine your strategy, charge ahead.

See you soon and have a nice day.

Sumit
The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.