Make Choices!

I was thinking about Doing Things earlier this week. Here’s the way I thought about it: and along the way I learnt about the power of making choices…

1. I started with this: thinking about how when one says they’ll do something and they do it, they have a self of achievement; and how when they say they’ll do something and consistent don’t do it, they have a sense of angst…

2. However, as I thought about this more, I felt there was an important element of “Choice” that was missing — if one chose to not do something they wanted to, that would lead to a sense of power, rather than angst. As I explored this, I started to think of choice in the context of action: Having to do things with no choice gives one a sense of enslavement; however doing things with a sense of choice gives one a sense of being a hero. Similarly, not doing things, with no choice — you feel like a loser, whereas with choice, you feel a sense of mastery.

3. So, I updated my model into 2 (ideally with a z- axis!) — this is what it looks like when you have and exercise your choices: either a sense of achievement, experience, mastery, or discipline: all positive feelings!

4. Here’s how it looks when you don’t make choices… except for the one quadrant of allyship (which I don’t think is long-lasting — you can’t rely on allies for everything that you do!), it is quite bleak: a sense of enslavement, angst, or depression when you’re not making choices!

5. So, to summarize — Make choices — choose to do things you’ve done before (accomplishment), choose to do things you’ve never done before (growth), choose to say “no” to things you want to do (focus), and choose to say “no” to things that you don’t want to do (discipline)! And once in a while, when you want to do something, and need a nudge — it’ll be great to have a friend who can give you that push!

What do you think?

I heard 2 new albums this week: one that I loved, and the other that was good (as expected!).

The album that I loved was “The Future is Our Way Out” by Brigitte Calls Me Baby: it’s hard to describe the album, except that the vocals reminded me of Elvis in parts, the music reminded me of Van Morrison, and other oldies… and yet it all sounded very modern and alternative. It’s hard to describe it in words: you just have to listen to it!

The other (new?) album that I heard was “One Hand Clapping” by Paul McCartney and the Wings, which seems to have been recorded much earlier, but is being released now. This was good, as expected, and it’s great driving music. What was confusing though is that there seem to be multiple versions of the album: a 1 hr 37 mins one (on Spotify) as well as a shorter 28 minutes one on Apple Music! Here’s the Spotify link…

I loved reading this article on why pi^2 is roughly equal to g (https://roitman.io/blog/91). I would’ve never thought there was a reason for that, but it’s brilliant!

I also enjoyed reading “Do Quests, not Goals” on raptitude: this is very similar to my current thinking on accomplishing meaningful things, and so it resonated with me (and ties into a larger set of articles that I’m writing!).

We’d gone to Lalbagh for a bird walk and the annual flower show today. I did see a few birds, and enjoyed the flower displays, but I enjoyed the signs in Lalbagh the most…

Until next week… keep grooving!