A little bit of balance

Survey a hundred people about the most important things in their life. Family, money, happiness, health will be all be among the top answers. One thing that you probably won’t hear and which ranks very high in my list is balance.

Think about it, without balance you fall. Doesn’t matter whether you are riding a bicycle, striking a multi-million deal or simply leading your life, without balance you WILL falter. And balance is not easy to achieve. It requires an ability to understand the necessity of change and the flexiblity and will-power to bring about that change.

Right now the biggest problem facing humanity is the environment. I am scared sh@#$less for myself and our future generations. I have heard that EARTH is self-adjusting. That itself is a scary idea. We are currently raping the EARTH of its resources and I fear it will indeed re-adjust, by getting rid of us. We are changing the balance of nature and it is a terrible thing.

I have heard arguments about how the harm that humans do is extremely insignificant in terms of the big picture and I accept that it might even be true. But what I cannot accept is our refusal to strive for balance. Our refusal to give back what we take and our refusal to acknowledge that this rape of EARTH is going to result in really bad consequences. We are supposed to share symbiotic relationships with everything around us and we are turning into f#$ing parasites.

I personally take environmental consciousness very seriously and I want to become a greener person with every passing day. The naysayers might be right and change might be inevitable. But if I die in an earthquake, I want to be able to say I tried, at least a little bit.

A little bit of stock advice

My 2nd post of the day. After a great long weekend (my sis visited), I don’t yet feel ready to get back to work.

A very good friend of mine (and a very smart guy) recently started writing a investing/stock related blog. He had me sold on the website address itself. It is called http://speculator2investor.blogspot.com

If you are interested in investing, you should check it out. If you are not, you should be interested. Do some basic reading and read his blog. Let me get you started – Before you do anything, start investing in your company’s retirement plan.

Full disclosure: He has NOT asked me to advertise his blog. But I do believe he writes well and has good advice. So I am just spreading the word. I do not know if this is cool or not or if this is the DONE thing. There seem to be a lot of rules involving sending out blog links, advertising other people’s blogs and what-not.

Remember, if you get rich following his advice, please remember to send me an expensive Christmas/Diwali present. I promise I will pass it along to him.

A little bit of thanks

Being some-what of a non-conformist, I was very tempted to stay off Thanksgiving because every blog across the USA in the last few days will start with “I am thankful for … “. But this one time, I am going to go with the flow because I feel like it.

I am thankful for

• My health and brains - With these I am surely capable of taking on any challenge. Whether I have the guts, I will find out when I am up against it.
• My family and friends – I am truly blessed with amazing family/relatives and a great bunch of friends. I take credit for the friends since I chose them.
• Sleep – I can sleep like a lamb even without a hard day’s worth of work.
• Laughter – Life would hardly be worth living without.
• My optimism – Things can always be made better, all that is needed is the will.
• All the jerks in the world – Thanks, you make me feel good about myself.
• All the good people in the world – Thanks, you make me feel good about everything else.
• Bono, Angelina Jolie and Al Gore (among others) – Damned if you do,  damned if you don’t. Hang in there
• The 8 hour commutes in LA, being a single tax payer in the US and a desk job that involves staring at a computer for hours at an end – If these are my biggest problems, life can’t be too bad.

A little bit of money

Money – the most important 5 letter word in the world, perhaps the most important word in the world. Makes me wonder. Money is a very recent innovation in the history of humankind. It is a product of the bartering system. Since when did it become more important than things like relationships, health and happiness. These have been around for far longer and mean more to us than money ever will. Yet all around me I see people who sacrifice things far more important than money for sake of money. Again I am generalizing but I think I am pretty accurate.

One important reason is that money and material things are addictive and once you are hooked, it is hard to go back. It takes a concious effort to keep perspective about money.

IMPORTANT – I am NOT trivializing the value of money. It is very, very important. Money provides the kind of empowerment that cannot be matched even by a good education (blasphemy !!). Money keeps your family healthy and happy. It ensures your kids will have the education they deserve. It allows you to effect positive change in the world around you. Money is a wonderful thing.

But I believe that beyond a point money follows the law of diminishing returns, it doesn’t do a whole lot much more. And I very strongly believe that beyond that point your own passions and your pursuits should take far more priority. Any monetary gains after that  should be a by-product of your passion. In an ideal world our passions would BE our professions and earn us our paychecks. Some people are lucky that way but I am not. And a lot of people are like me. Such people, especially, need to take particular care that money does not take over their lives.

It is a cliche that there are more important things in life than money but a lot of people still do not get it. One needs to treat money as a means to an end and not the end in itself. It is hard to put a price on things like relationships, health and happiness. But it is not hard to figure out that there is not enough money in the world to buy these things.

A little bit of health

For the longest time, I have struggled with weight and I will be the first to admit it is all my fault. I have neither genetic problems nor super slow metabolism. The reason I was overweight was bad eating habits and lack of excercise.

What sucks even more is that I LOVE sports. I have pretty decent hand-eye co-ordination and balance. I tend to do OK at most sports but my fitness has always counted against me. I have been able to make occasional bursts of discipline where I got my weight down to the appropriate level. But I have always relapsed. I am hoping this time it will be different. Because this time I think I have done it right. But I am not there yet.

First and foremost, what I have done over the last year and a half or so is not focus on weight loss. I have tried to improve my health. Weight loss has been a much-welcomed side effect. While I still obsess about my weight, I have focussed on my health a lot more than weight. Health gain beats weight loss any day. Repeat after me….

Second – I have set physical goals and tried to meet them. Half-marathons, triathalons etc. I have also been playing sports more than normal. Volleyball, racquet ball, you name it. I am intensely competitive so I always get a good workout. And since I am in Santa Monica, I also get my butt kicked every time. So not only do I get a sweat going, it is a good excercise in humility.

Third – and as yet un-accomplished thing is that I want to eat well in moderation. The right way to go about it would be to measure my metabolism and then come up with a good diet plan. Until I do that, I hope to eat my regular diet in moderation with lots of fruits and vegetables. Being single and weak-willed this is by far the hardest thing I have to do. I hate ready made good-for-you stuff and I am too lazy to cook good-for-me stuff.

One thing I have realized in my weight struggles is that in an ideal world good health would be absolute. However in reality, it is a somewhat relative term. It is a function of the following things.
- Time you can devote for excercise.
- Where in the fitness scale you want to be. I enjoy physical activity so I want to be really fit. But for some one who is art oriented or enjoys intellectual activity, having super strong legs and shoulders is not really a priority.
- How much do you enjoy excercise.
- How happy you are. It is hard to go out for a run if you are feeling depressed.

A good way to think about excercise is to link it to your quality of life. If you are enjoying life just the way you are, you do not need to focus a lot on excercise. Ofcourse that still means staying medically healthy but a few extra pounds will not hurt you. But if you find your health affecting your quality of life, you need to do all you can to change it.

A little bit of heroism

At my last Toastmaster’s meeting (it is a public speaking course) someone made a very interesting comment. We are the Facebook generation. We are about smart online profiles. One-liners, favorite foods etc. It got me thinking on a completely tangential topic. A few of these social networking sites have a field in your profile called “My Heroes”. You will find all the usual suspects – Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela etc.

For me, I cannot call Mahatma Gandhi my hero. Nor Mandela nor Mother Teresa. You know why? Because I never knew these people personally. They did great things, very great things and inspired millions. But I am pretty cynical. Did I really know Gandhi, the person? And if I did not, can I call him my hero?

My role models are people I actually know. All around me I see people who make incredible sacrifices for their families day in and day out, without giving it as much as a second thought. People who work two jobs to put food on the table. People who handle work and family pressures that I cannot even imagine and still manage a smile on their face. People who do not compromise on their principles. I am very lucky to know a bunch of such people. They are the real heroes.

Society looks up to people who do spectacular things like climb Mount Everest, feed the poor in Africa or fight in wars. These are all great things and we take notice. What we do not notice is that all around us, heroism abounds. It is not easy to work 2 jobs for 40 years and take care of your family. It is not easy being a single mom and raise kids. But so many people do it, for decades. Regular men and women just like you and me.

So do not go looking for role-models in history books. You might already know a few on a first person basis.