The Samuna KC Podcast

No is a full sentence you don't have to add no because, no and, no but, if you want to add anything after no then you can add ‘no I can't’.  If you are anything like me, you have trouble saying no to people, and somehow they have control over your schedule, stress level and happiness.

Not only to bad things, many times you will have to say no to the good things as well. It’s actually easy to say no to bad things, for example ‘say no to drugs’, sure! ‘Say no to drink and drive’, absolutely, coz I don’t drive. However it’s hard to say no to good, but saying yes to good might be preventing you from doing great. 

If you have a problem saying no and have some boundary issues then today’s episode is for you. Please don’t say no.

https://www.drcloud.com/books/boundaries

Boundaries are a guard against your heart, coz when you don’t set boundaries not only will you get hurt, you will feel resentful, Grudgy, guilty, which is against your heart's will. You wanna feel cheerful, free, joyful and grateful. That’s why you gotta guard your heart and set some boundaries. One shortcut to find out if you are setting proper boundaries or not, would be to check if you feel resentful or cheerful after doing something or saying no.

Boundaries, When to say yes, how to say no, to take control of your life by Dr. Henry Cloud. I have been listening to this audiobook for quite a while, and meaning to create an episode on it. As  I have noticed, ever since we starting this podcast, a little over a year ago, the deeper and personal the topic is, I have a hard time completing it. 

You know the dark closet of your psyche where there are many traumas and emotions buried and you don’t wanna open it, for it may all fall over you and they will bury you. If not buried then you will have to deal with them. One by One. And you know it IS gonna be a mess. An emotional and psychological mess. As you go deeper, you realize there’s more mess, the only thing you wanna do is run away and/or good old procrastinate. There you go, right out of bait that’s one reason why you procrastinate, coz it’s too personal.

We are fighting with this invisible and lethal enemy, Covid-19. We feel extremely helpless. We are losing a lot of people, a lot of loved ones. I would like to take this moment to acknowledge the fact that the situation is hard. I address these with friends, with you in the podcast and social media, that it's hard and we are doing our best to stay productive, do what we need to do for ourselves and our families. At the same time, I would like to acknowledge the fact that the lockdown fatigue, the isolation fatigue is real too.  If you are feeling unmotivated to create, do your work or do what's necessary then it's absolutely okay. The energy of the whole world is down. This is a global pandemic, a global event that causes everyone around the world to slow down, take time,  get  help, take care of loved ones and stay connected even if it's only virtually. 

Talking about staying connected, while we try to stay connected on different websites, social media and other digital mediums there's always this chance of  hacking and attacking. Every other day, I hear from friends and on social media, that their accounts are being hacked, websites being attacked, people are getting scammed on emails.

In today's episode we are talking with a security engineer and a dear friend, on digital well-being and cybersecurity. How you can stay safe in the digital and cyber space. 

In other words today we're talking about digital sanitization and social distancing.

Decision making is hard and scary but there’s something harder and scarier than that, that is being stuck. 

To avoid decision-making sometimes we tend to take shortcuts like Astrology, horoscope, tarot card reading etc.  The whole business of fortune-telling is growing and the fact that it's there is  because we don't want to spend time on decision-making. We want somebody else to make decisions for ourselves, which is sometimes not best for us. That's why it's really important for you to make decisions for yourself. It does 2 things, 

One it saves time, instead of going into multiple astrologers, different people to discuss your problems, it saves your time. Of course you need to take some advice from some experts, for someone you look up to, you need information but then if you make your own decision it will save you time.

Two, there’s a  saying that it's better to make a wrong decision then, no decision. because  any decision will move you forward. It's better making a wrong decision than being stuck. 

Decision Making  is hard in and of itself but then there are some other elements that makes it even harder one of them being commitment decision-making is also a commitment, if I commit to one thing then what will happen to 99 other things. FOMO right? but then do you know what's more scarier than Fomo? incompetence the feeling that you are not living the life to the fullest and to avoid the feeling of incompetence you'll have to take decision and take a steps to One Direction.

Another thing that does not help to take any kind of a decision as information overflow, in today's world there's so many information all over the place that you do not know where to look and to find right information, to make a right decision and if you fail to check your sources, then there's this risk of taking the wrong decision. It’s important to make sure, you gather your information from the right sources and check if they  are science backed or not.

another thing that's in our way to take a decision Make a decision is confirmation bias because you believe in something and when you see the similar information in the same direction you trust that it.  it's really important to explore some contradictions, and then doubt your own sources. it's actually really the balance between learning more and trusting your own intuition and it only comes from practice. Decision making is like exercise as much as you practice you will develop more trust in your own decision-making process and your intuitions.  Then you will either stick to your decisions.

Why is it so important to make decision and move forward? 

The decision-making process is so tiresome, it is so hard, we don't want to do it, then why can't we just stay the way we are, on our robe all day, doing nothing and we don't have to take any decision and life would be so Rosy and purple, is that so? no, because you have a dream and if you don't work on your dream when you cannot sleep, your dreams won't let you sleep at night. the way Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam said ones, “dream is not what you see in sleep dream are something which wont let you sleep”. we all have those dreams that won't let us sleep and to be able to work on that dreams guess wha? t you will have to take action and then to take action guess what you'll have to do? take the decision and for that you will have to let go of other options

#S3E2 Steven Pressfield wrote The War of art, for me he undoubtedly wrote it  for you too but I know he did it exclusively  for me because I hold Olympic records for procrastination. I can procrastinate thinking about my procrastination problem. I can procrastinate dealing with my problem of procrastinating by thinking about my procrastination problem.

-Forward by Robert Mckee for the book, The War of Art, By Steven Pressfield.

The War of art by Steven Pressfield, before we get into the in and out of the book and resistance,  what is or how we can deal with it let me tell you a little bit about the writer Steven Pressfield

He is a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction. Whatever I write in these few lines won't be enough for this person.  Turning Pro, Do The Work, Nobody Wants To Read Your S*** , Yes! That's his book and some of his significant fictions including The Legend of Bagger Vance, which later was turned into a screenplay and made into a movie starring Matt Damon and Will Smith, also King Kong Lives amongst many many more.

In ‘The War Of Arts’, he talks about resistance, the invisible enemy of a creative entrepreneur, of an artist.  It prevents us from sitting down, it prevents me from sitting down on my chair, in front of the microphone to record this podcast, week after week.

The Dalai Lama once said, “The Enemy Is A Good Teacher”. You wanna understand what your number 1 enemy, Resistance is trying to teach you, then please listen to the full episode. 

Don’t forget to leave your comments, if your resistance allows off course. 

https://vivekavani.com/bhagavad-gita-chapter-2-verse-47/

The War of Art Audio Book - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JyQoATndiQ&t=7190s

#S3E1 You are looking to get started and grow on fiber or UPWork or any other platforms and work from home. With coronavirus and its effect on businesses everyone is talking about the importance of working from home. It has its own challenges,  from getting away from the comfort of your pajamas, the internet and electricity in some countries.

It is also an ideal situation for so many other people, where you can avoid the commute and save a lot of money on eating out. It’s about the people who were already doing jobs and now they are working from home. Even  if you don't already have a job and you are looking to do something digitally from the comfort of your home, it turns out this is not really a new thing, and you don’t need to already have a job to work from home.

Many freelancers have already been doing it,  with platforms like Fiverr, Upwork and Facebook groups like  digital Nomad where you can look for the jobs and  make money competitively better than what you could have made in a regular job. 

 We have a guest with us today to talk about challenges and opportunities available for working remotely, if you are into it stay tuned.

Click Here for Digital Nomad Facebook Group- 

Click Here to SignUp to Fiverr. 

Click Here to SIghUp to Upwork. 

Payoneer.   

Xoom. 

Remitly. 

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#50: We don't want to become hungry entrepreneurs, hungry artists, hungry creative entrepreneurs, we need money, and need good money. So from Dave Ramsey, I have learned to make money and from Paul Pant, I was already learning how to manage the money. Once I have it, like once I have enough or once I have a lot. God, I'm ready for more money. I know what to do with it, I know how to handle it, just send it to me. 

The third pillar of building a personal brand is entrepreneurship. There is this metaphor, that I usually use when it comes to entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship as a jumping off the flying airplane. Robert Kiyosaki uses it a lot. I did learn a lot from him. But then there was this fundamental gap in his teaching, where he didn't teach people to do jobs, before getting into business to have some kind of money before getting into business. Whereas he, himself, had a full time job. Later, he was living in his pension, while he was building his business. That's something he doesn't talk about. Doing a day job, doing nine to five I understood the meaning of it, I understood the meaning of cash flow. This is again Robert Kiyosaki term, but then I understand it more from Dave Ramsey teaching. 

Entrepreneurship is not only when you have opened your store or registered your domain, and started selling, I mean, that's the eventual goal. You cannot call yourself an entrepreneur without selling, but then only selling will not make it sustainable. Study, learn, do some jobs, travel, people connection, read books, they’ll  make you're ready to take that jump,

I want to skip that metaphor from now on, maybe it's not a jump. It's slow built, with a strong foundation. Slow with connection, with sustainability. The entrepreneurial skill can come handy. Wherever and  whatever you do, you do business, relationship, family, jobs, and anything.

When the pandemic started last year in March 2020, there was this social media post almost like a meme that ranked the most important roles in the world, most essential roles, essential job in the world. And it started from doctors, to nurses, essential workers, and art, theater, or artists, they were not in the list, not on the essential list or even in the list at all, like the role of artists in the society is none existential. . And right at that moment, I realized, like, if there was no art, this very poster wouldn't have existed, right? To create that poster, they needed to create those graphics, pictures of words, all of that was art. So this confusion between art and making that to apply into something important or into business, to making the whole Art entrepreneurship a thing, it's still not a mainstream practice. Whereas in our scriptures, in our tradition, art is always been a means to, to livelihood, the means to create something valuable in the society, be it cooking, painting, theater, music, dance, people have always made their living by doing all these things, but then society has never accepted it as a mainstream.

 That's why it's always been a part time job or a hobby. Then there is this confusion. On the one hand, society does not accept art as a mainstream career. And on the other hand, they worship at the altar of their favorite artists. I mean, why this hypocrisy, if your children says they want to be a singer, you would want to stop him and then put him into quote unquote, important jobs like doctors, engineers, accountant finance, but then you worship at the altar of your favorite singers, you respect them, you worship them, why this gap? 

I think this is where the art-entrepreneurship comes and making art, your living will give validity to it, and then you'll be able to practice it more. So my journey with art, my exposure with art started with TV, I would say, while I was growing up, TV was my escape. I had kind of a rough childhood, where we didn't  exactly get what we wanted. But then I accept that my parents did what they could do best,  the scenario was such that they couldn't provide what we wanted. And then on those times, TV was all of our escape. We used to watch the series on English, Hindi Nepali. For Nepali, it was Mina Cartoon, Momin, Ujeli. In Hindi, there was Shakalaka Boom Boom, Sonepari, Small Wonder. Those characters, they build hope in me. They taught me how to dream, books, comics, art, taught me how to dream, how to see the world that's beyond my reality, so that I can do some kind of a journey to get there. So that's what art does, it shows us the world that's not there already. But then it shows that possibility that we can get there. That's the importance of art, and the society, and art-entrepreneures have huge responsibility to take that message and tell the story of our time. 

I listened to an episode of Afford Anything Podcast with Paula Pant. I am a huge fan because she explains complicated financial and economical ideas in simple terms so that someone like me, who has less knowledge on finance and economy can understand the complicated system. I listened to an episode with Suze Orman. Where she said she hates the FIRE movement. Suze Orman was a financial advisor, she had her own show on NBC and CNBC she was there for 20 years giving financial advice to the people. While listening to this episode with Paula, I realized Suze Orman is the reason behind everything that is wrong with the US economy. Not only the US economy, but while we were growing up in the 80s and 90s in Nepal, or South Asia anything wrong that we learned about money is because of Suze Orman. This is rather a strong statement, but then Suzi  is not not only a person, it's a mentality that we grew up with. You need to work until you die to be able to support your family. The idea of retirement was only after you got to your sixties and seventies.

Paula was arguing in the episode about The  Fire Movement, financial independence and early movement,  and Suzi said she hates it. According to her,  it's against the system, if everyone gets retired early then who will fund the 401K? It can become the reason for the economy to collapse.

Fire moment is working hard earning more and spending less and investing the difference. Retiring does not always mean staying at home and doing nothing.  It's more about acquiring financial independence, so that you'll have a certain amount of money coming in, no matter if you work or not. Then you'll be able to spend your time on the things that are important to you. Throughout the show Susie was challenging every idea of it and then was cherry-picking the moments in people's life, where they had issues with their health, natural disasters or  pandemics. According to her, people should work until they are 60 and 70 year old and retiring  early is a bad idea. And she hates it. 

#S2E22 Relationship and its components love and romance. This is the valentine’s Day Special Episode. We Haven’t talked much about love in this Podcast for a long time now. Most probably last Valentine’s day was the time when we last talked about love. On the podcast, we talk about the brand, Personal Brand, and online business, and On my website The Samuna Kc, we talk about philosophy, entrepreneurship, personal branding, and relationship. I believe these are the four aspects of building a personal brand.
So, Today we talk about love.
When I thought about talking about love, I sat on my chair, opened my computer, put on my headphone. I didn’t have any idea what to exactly talk about. I mean I do have my Notes. I did research. But Why do I wanted to talk about Love? What’s there to talk about Love?

The Movies we grew up with, the books, the relationships we had and the other’s relationship we watched, I learned a lot about love. But, there we many confusion. If this is love, then why is it this way? When there is romance or relationship?

And then the light bulb went off! There’s a difference between love, romance and relationship. They are actually three different things. they are not the same thing. you could love someone and might not be in relationship. you could be having romance but there may not be love. Or, you could possibly be in relationship but there might not be love nor romance.

Declutter your life. https://samunakc.com/concepts-and-ideas/5-ways-to-declutter-and-clean-your-life-this-spring/828/

#S2E21 Where should I even start when it comes to decluttering because I believe I have come a really long way when it comes to organizing. this is not to say I have become an expert on organizing but then now I at least see the difference between the Clutter and declutter and how I feel on both situations. While I was growing up I have seen so much clutter. my mom still have all of our old clothes and then she said she's going to make some kind of a blanket out of it. I heard she actually did make that blanket but we still have some old clothes that she's been holding onto. I still have some hoarding problems, I hold on to a lot of emotional items. right now I can see this souvenir from one of my friend Dagmar, she gave it to me I think on her birthday as a return gift, and I've been holding on to it and taking it around for the past 7 years. Another one that Ashok gave me, it’s broken but then I'm still holding on to it. I never use it but then it's all right in front of my eyes all the time. 

I like to see empty spaces that's how I feel the energy flows.  I like to have a lot of empty spaces, empty walls. we have been in the US for past 5 years and only this September we bought like actual actual kitchenette.  I try to keep it as less stuff as possible because stuff actually do trigger anxiety on me. I'm doing a lot of decluttering and I realize that when I do declutter in one part of my life it relfexs on the other aspect of my life. 

Marie kondo, the tidying-up goddess she also says something in that direction that when you declutter on the on one aspect of the life it transforms into other aspects of your life as well.

 I'm already dreaming about spring cleaning. if you are looking forward to do some declutting in the spring let go over some steps and  let's do it together. 

Marie kondo an organization expert who organizes houses with con Mari Technique suggests, we should keep items that spark joy and anything that does not do that we have to let them go.  wardrobe, books , paper,  emotional and sentimental items. when I let go of my stuff specially my clothes I practice that. I look at it if it sparks joy  on me I keep it, if not ,I say thank you and I let it go. I have noticed  we should have a goal for decluttering  and a goal should not be like how many items we want to have, how many space we want to have, or how many empty spaces I want to have. the goal should be how I want to feel and then take it from there. to be able to feel the desired emotion what things should I keep and what would have to go.