The AlphaLife Project

Decisions - the word implies something very critical and very big. There is a lot of weight attached to this word - decisions. Somehow, people think that this is something big in life

But, this is something that is part of your moment-to-moment life. If decisions are all around you and you need to take them every single moment of your life, then it cant be really something too serious right?

The thing is, people think of decisions as life-altering events. Moreover, not everyone takes their own decisions. The other aspect is, people gravitate towards the easier decisions than the tough ones.

And then, sometimes your decisions go wrong. And you look at them in retrospect and keep wondering how you could have got it right. Somehow, people think that this is something big in life.

Dive deep into this topic and know more by listening to the entire podcast episode.

Success & failure are two sides of the same coin. But it takes a lifetime for people to even get anywhere near understanding this. Your mind is wired in such a manner that you want only success and you want to avoid failure.

All of this comes from pre-historic times because failure during those times usually ended in termination of one's life. Even today, when you think of what you want to do, you may think of getting success in the initial stages but eventually you start thinking only about all the ways you could possibly fail. This makes you either very fearful or makes you feel unprepared at all times, leading you to prepare more and more for outcomes that haven't yet occurred. However, like all actions, this one also has consequences

Every moment spent in thinking about failure and what you don’t want is a moment spent not thinking about success and what you really want. These thoughts plague you - there is a mini-hellstorm taking place in that brain of yours! You end up wasting precious time in all the things that are not needed, and you miss out on doing the things that are actually needed. When you focus only on what all could go wrong - your journey just comes to a standstill, it never takes off.

Dive deep into this topic and know more by listening to the entire podcast episode.

Whether you accept or not, you lack gratitude in life. Because, if you were not lacking gratitude, you wouldn’t be complaining as much. If you weren't lacking gratitude, you would be much happier, much more content.

The thing with gratitude is, It is binary in nature - either you have it or you don’t. If you say that you have 50% of it, it doesn’t work. And hence, most people think they have gratitude yet they keep cribbing about what's not happening for them in life.

Gratitude is not something that is set aside for the day when you achieve all your goals. That would never happen

All discontent comes from a lack of gratitude for what you have. And, when you don’t opt for gratitude, you are actually opting for the lack of it. This means - instead of acknowledging what you have, you are constantly acknowledging what you don’t have. Where do you think this is going to lead you - to get more things or to feel a further lack of stuff in life?

You will need to practice it actively. It won't happen by itself.

Dive deep into this topic and know more by listening to the entire podcast episode.

Whether you accept it or not, you are obsessed with balance. You do get to know when your life is going out of bounds and that troubles you a lot. But when you try to bring balance, you end up upsetting some other balance. This cycle seems to keep repeating…

Unlike what people think, balance is not about an equal distribution into each and every option. That is the one misconception that is hurting people more than it is helping them. Also, people usually end up wishing for no imbalance but that’s never going to happen; as long as there is motion or movement in your life, there will be imbalances;

The idea is not to avoid but to continuously sort it out. Looking at balance through a microscope doesn’t help, it needs to be a macro view.

There are only two things that one needs to do about balance but most people refrain from doing these things.

Dive deep into this topic and know more by listening to the entire podcast episode.

People have been facing an overwhelming feeling of boredom and staleness when it comes to their everyday work and life. Life just seems to drag on and on, and somehow contentment seems to be the ever-eluding factor. Probably you are indulging in Empty Rituals

EMPTY RITUAL

These are all habits that have got so deeply entrenched in your mind that you just do them without thinking. You are on auto-mode when you indulge in these rituals. You may even have no idea about why or how these things are going on in your life.

DELIBERATE PRACTICE

Deliberate practice, on the other hand, is something that is indulged in to get a specific desired result.

Your empty rituals don’t lead you anywhere. These two have lots to do with how your brain is wired.

Listen to the entire episode to know more on this.

There is no one in this world who has not thought of quitting something or the other multiple times. Quitting or the feeling of quitting is all around you. So is the entire gamut of emotions, feelings and beliefs that are associated with quitting.

Quitting is one side of the coin, the other side being starting / initiating. You cannot have only one side of it….you will need to indulge in the other one as well

Quitting is so hard because of the deep association that it has with your persona, your identity· You are not able to quit something because that particular thing gets attached to you as an integral part of your identity. 

Also, the stigma that has been created in your mind about quitting is something that stops you from quitting and keeps you stuck.

Not quitting, not letting go when it's time is also one of the biggest reasons for issues with mental wellness and all sorts of internal struggles which basically tear you from inside.

The saying - winners don’t quit and quitters don’t win - can't be used as a thumb rule to everything.

It's high time we replace that with saying with a new one - winners also quit and quitters also win!

Do listen to the entire podcast on this topic.

The current day and time belong to speed for sure. Everyone wants everything really fast. But, today, there are more number of people who are going fast but have no idea where they are heading!

Speed & Velocity are mistaken to be the same thing. But they are not.

They are different only in one aspect - speed has no direction component to it while velocity has a specific direction component to it.

Speed, just for the heck of it, is meaningless. That’s why more people feel that they are living a fast but meaningless life. Because they have no clear idea of where they are going. In your quest to be faster and reach somewhere sooner, you have probably lost sense of your direction.

You see, direction trumps speed at any point. What's the point of going at breakneck speed but not sure where you are going?

There is only one thing that can be done with this.

Hear the podcast episode to know more about what you can do about the same

Majoring in the Minor - You do this without realizing and then worry about why things are not going as per how you want them to.

Majors are the main things in your life, the macro stuff. This is the stuff that really matters, the big stuff. This is what defines the main and almost all the aspects of your life. Minors are the smaller things in your life. This is the stuff that actually doesn’t matter much, the micro stuff. It is there to fill some gaps left by the majors

The biggest issue is that you pay less attention to the main stuff and you pay too much attention to the smaller stuff. This is called majoring in the minor.

Majoring in the minor is one of the key reasons why people realize too late that they didn’t prioritize the right stuff, wasted precious time on the unimportant stuff and missed out on a whole lot of opportunities.

This entire business of right or wrong is so deeply rooted in your consciousness that you just indulge in it without having to even think about it. These are all judgments and you can't help them. Right/wrong, good/bad - these are the biggest judgments of them all.

See all the clash of ideologies and thinking that happens around you. It could be in religion, in politics, in business or anywhere else. 

These are just inventions of the mind. There is no universal right/wrong, good/bad unless everyone decides to agree to the same.

Transcend this and bring in fulfillment into your life.

You would have observed how you are a slave to your judgments. These judgments are now automated - you can't really help them, can you? Since you can't really stop your judgments from coming as they please, better way out is to know how to deal with them.

Judgment is just an artificial mind condition in which you see someone or something, maybe even yourself as being better or worse than a reference point. This is not the truth but this appears to be the truth to you at all times. It clouds your mind so much that you tend to act out of your judgments only, never from reality.

Acting from judgments is living in and acting out of unreality. Reality is reality, no matter how much u judge it. It's not going to change just because you are judging it. Judgment makes you take the 'right' side and hence defines the other side as 'wrong'.

It is critical to deal with this on your own because it won't deal with it by itself.

The game that you need to play to deal with your judgments is called FACT or OPINION. Fact is almost always what is there right in front of you while opinion is what you create out of the facts. This is one of the most powerful tools that can help you deal with your judgments.

What happens behind the scenes when you play this game: When you try to confront if it is fact or opinion in an authentic manner, you will force yourself to see the whole picture.

Fact vs. Opinion may be a game that kids are made to play to understand things deeper. But it’s a great tool for everyone to practice while dealing with their judgments.