Everyone would have heard the essence of these frameworks many times, but I purposefully call them frameworks here because I urge you to make it so. Framework, mindset, algorithm, whatever you call it, deliberately install them into your life and see the miracles they can do to your life. It has done so to my life, I wish you the best and share these hoping it does to your life too!
- Awareness is everything
- Ignorance is the cause of pain. If there’s suffering, you don’t know something you need to know. Now, no matter what problem I’m trying to solve, I’ll first come to this framework. What am I not seeing? First of all, am I looking at the problem correctly? [Viveka (Objective thinking) has changed my life! You can read about Viveka here.]
- Learn from everything – When awareness is so important, it would be a brilliant idea to inculcate “seeking” into everything you do in life, right? It might be anything – movies, books, blogs, podcasts, talking & asking people questions, stories & experiences of failures & successes, your own thoughts, emotions, behaviors/actions, and habits. There’s something you can learn from all of it, and from everything else. Of course, we need to develop Viveka for a higher understanding of anything. But before that, when we are in a more primitive stage, we need two seeds to learn:
- Humility – Realization that you know nothing. Like Robin Sharma says – “Be the humblest person in the room”. This has helped me a lot.
- Curiosity – Hunger to learn. This one’s a natural trait if you’re coming from hunger!
- Remembering Mortality (Death as a friend): You, me, and everyone will die someday, we all know this, but do we? We’ve already discussed this in Blog 2: Read your obituary .
- Time is the only resource, use it well – We know we must:
- not waste time
- maximize productivity
- Be grateful for it. Every day is a bonus! Go! Make the most of it.
- Do not trade time cheaply. Very useful sometimes in making decisions. No matter how alluring an opportunity is, carefully see how much of your life resource it is trading for whatever benefits it claims to provide.
- Time is the only resource, use it well – We know we must:
- LIFE Alignment: I’ve already explained this concept of LIFE (life in caps) in Blog 89: LIFE Alignment. An all-good encompassing idea. Greatest Health, wealth, wisdom, work, love & freedom are all part of LIFE.
- Being Natural. Anything unnatural (non-LIFE) will lead to unsustainability and eventually decay and pain. I’ll give you a simple example, your body is designed to sleep and wake up according to the Sunlight, this has been proven by Science too. When we go against this simple natural law, our health gets upset. For anything related to health, this framework is very helpful. Let me give you another type of example. Nowadays people are using all kinds of chemicals on their bodies. Hair conditioners, Sunscreens, lotions of various kinds, and cosmetics have their own world. Why do we need all of these? Hair conditioner for example seals the hair externally to make it look and feel it’s soft and smooth, but when that effect wears off, it’s back to split and dry hair. Instead of using such kinds of products that offer just a band-aid as such, why don’t we solve the core problem itself? Why does one have split hair? How does hair naturally heal? Hair need not be hydrated externally if it gets sufficient water through the body/skin. Why don’t we ask these questions? Similarly, why do you need so much cosmetics if you can make your face glow just by being natural? Why do people go for such band-aid products that actually harm us more than actually help?
- Intentional living – We’ve talked about intent in Blog 81: Intent. Living in such a way that you are aligned with that intent you’ve set for yourself can be called as Intentional Living. Or, even if you’ve not set an intent for life, ensuring you don’t do anything unintentionally can also be called as Intentional Living. When you want to utilize your time well, you’ll become intentional, however, intentional living is not just about time. Intentional living is a very powerful and broader concept. Everything from the time at which I wake up (4:30 AM), what I say to greet anyone (Namasthe), what kind of physical exercise I do (yogāsanas), to what I wear is very intentional. And through that, there are a lot of benefits like:
- You’ll have more clarity of, let’s say the character you’re playing, and more self-esteem, confidence, and competence levels also increase due to the increase in practice time, etc.
- And there’s absolutely no fear of missing out because you’ve already thought about what you want, if you come across something that’s new, if it matches your intention, then use it, if not, leave it. It becomes very simple.
- That simplification of the decision-making process itself reduces stress from your everyday life.
- A Compass for Life! (Blog 55) – Intentional living ensures we are living closest to our ideal life right now!. That also means – we Do not postpone living! This framework is also ensuring you are aligned with the “Remembering Mortality” framework, isn’t it? Because we ask & must answer to these questions here. What if you die tomorrow? Will you be glad you lived your life fully?
- Compound Effect – Small seemingly insignificant actions done consistently give huge results over time. I’ve used this principle almost everywhere in creating my intentional life, which is focused on fulfillment. In the world of finance, The compound effect is a principle that appears again and again and is used by all. But this principle is not limited only to money. You can use this to increase your work output, practice hours, and of course save & invest money too.
- Constantly & consistently Optimize for Excellence. Continuous, consistent Improvement, Growth Oriented, always. Even though this sounds similar to the compound effect, this is not the same. Compound effect is a principle that’s focused on the result. This, however, is a mindset just for the love for improvement, progress, and growth. Even if the compound effect wasn’t a natural law that exists in nature, I would still have this mindset. I would still practice for those 1% improvements. Always keep reviewing and looking for areas where you can improve your life. Act on them, just tiny baby steps are enough, but you need to keep walking. I’ve told this a long ago, Stagnation is worse than death!
- It is “thinking”, only if it’s deliberate and productive. I used to waste a lot of time thinking non-essential and stress-inducing thoughts. Just “what-ifs” that keep us in the loop and terrified. But then I wanted to end up ruining my mental health. So I imposed this rule on myself, whenever I see my thoughts going in an unproductive loop, I recognize that these are not me or my thoughts even. The mind’s nature itself is to repeat what it has gathered. So by that principle, there is no such thing as overthinking. We usually say “overthinking” when our mind is not stopping despite our intention to stop it, or even when it is hurting us. We are not actually thinking there. It’s just the mind moving along with the tendencies. Thinking is not at all that. Thinking is productive. And since it is productive, it ends. Any task should end, right? And especially if it’s hurting you, it’s not “thinking” at all. Thinking will actually help you when you are facing any problems. But if you’ve not trained yourself to think, or sometimes you’re not able to thinkwithout the thoughts overtaking the control, writing might help. If you’re in such a situation and need more help, it’s not a shame to take it. You can contact me too. I can listen. And hence make you listen to yourself as well.
- You’ve always got a choice. Wow! This is another framework/mindset that literally turned my life into an entirely new game of possibilities! We all know this innately, it’s just that we are afraid! We are afraid of making certain choices, choices that make us responsible for our choices, choices that make us an outcast, or choices that are unconventional. It’s an irony that we don’t like to take complete responsibility for our life on ourselves. However, remember this, no matter how deep you are in the ruins, you’ve always got a choice to make your life as you intend to. That’s the power of choice and intent. Of course, that intent needs to be backed by awareness and action.
- Bhārath knew / Our ancient Asian ancestors knew. The previous point for example was known to our ancestors. You take health, we have Ayurveda which is completely natural. But not just the last point, you consider any aspect of life. Astronomy? We have accurate mathematical calculations that were made even before the Westerners found out the telescope or even that the Earth was not flat! Everything from simple wellness to fulfillment, we have Yoga (Either it be Raja, Kriya, or Karma or Bhakthi or Jnana Yoga). Even our cooking style is so intentional because of our brilliant ancestors. Of course, this topic (Brilliance of Sanathana Dharma) is so vast to do justice here even for the number of examples. Anyway, whenever there’s a situation or a problem you’re trying to solve, check once, how did our wise ancestors of Bharath do in similar situations?
These are the frameworks that I’ve realized their importance through my life experiences. However, these are not new or these are not the 9, and I could add more, but I felt these are ones that have been the greatest influence on my journey.
Thank You
Sanath Kumar Naibhi
Nicely articulated
Thank you🙏