10 minute rule - overcome distraction

 Got this idea from the Mindvalley content - Being Indistractable  by Nir Eyal

Distraction is anything that takes away from your traction or planned work. 

Distraction could be useful work but its a distraction since it is not scheduled

If you have no schedule then distraction does not make sense. Distraction should be against a schedule so rule number 1 is schedule your day then only you will know how much you are distracted. 

10 Minute Rule:

If you have an urge for distraction like checking facebook just set a 10 min alarm. You are delaying the urge by 10 minutes. Observe how you feel. Its perfectly ok to go to your urge after 10 mins but most probably will not. 

Character and Success

Ridiculouly terrible people are successful 

Pleasing people are successeeful 

Pleasing people are poor so are terrible people

Pleasing people who are poor are happy so does rich pleasing people 

Conversly terrible people tend to be terrible both rich or poor 

So what is happening here. What is the attitude which we have to keep to be successful it seems you can be successful and rich and still feel terrible and be a grumpy guy. 

There are 2 major themes of energy the way of the light and the way of dark both are powerful. 

The way of light is the satvic way of growing, creating values to others making life better for everyone and by that process generating wealth

The way of dark is about trying to be smart and thinking all other people are dump and trying to extract money from those dump people, getting the last blood of the fellow person, jealousy,  etc

In both ways you can get wealth and similarly in both ways you may end up losing wealth, 

Lets explain the loosing wealth aspect 

You are grumpy jealous and you may end up bumping to a person worse than you (another dark worker) and end up loosing money or the light workers and neutral persons avoid you and seek others (both dark and light workers) leaving you grumpy with poverty

Related to light worker, you have not built a personal ego boundary which can save you. You have no boundary which will result in no personal ambition for material wealth you just want to serve and be happy this will result in both not getting rich and if at all you get rich by some accident you may end up loosing it with this attitude. 

Ego less state or  communion with the universe/ god is a very good state which will recharge you but you need not stay in that state permanently. You have to have an inner sanctity with the communion but have to go back to a good ego state 

If you want to be pleasing or in other words if you want to be a light worker and still create material wealth or for that matter any kinds of wealth like health. You need to develop a healthy good ego which will act as a boundary for your living energy. 

A sense of  Iness is needed for your progress

MindValley All Access - cost saving subscription options

 Mindvalley introduced all access say couple of years ago and have introduced monthly all access few months ago.

The monthly access is $100 per month and the yearly is $599. 

So as you can see if you subscribe for monthly and even if you continue for  6 months the yearly subscription looks cheaper. 

But there are couple other alternative 

You can subscribe in your mobile (google/ iphone) - > and anyway you have access to that subscription even in website

Google gives monthly subscription for $59 per month and Amazon says Rs4999 which is $67 per month

Both the Google and iphone option looks like traditional subscription offer of pay every month  or pay for 10 months and get 2 months free.

As Vishen Lakhani says Mindvalley is not a personal development streaming network. With connections app and live interaction All Access is getting awesome and you should try it out. 

The MindValley customer service people are generous  and kind but I feel they are slow. 

It takes a good amount of time to get response 

And here is the killer if you subscribe to the website monthly access they even allow 15 day refund. 

A 15 day refund for a 30 month subscription is insane but they do that. 

Anyway long story short you have to try the 1 month subscription and decide for yourself if its worth it for you. 

And the monthly subscription from the apps(google/ iphone) does not hurt your pocket 

No Universal Prescription Please

 There is no silver bullet which can solve all the problems. 

Prescription has to be customized. 

Lets take investment as an example someone will say if you are this age  you have put X amount in Equity and Y amount in Debt that could be more of a guideline not a prescription. 

You need to consider the person's financial goal, career stability and many other things like his aptitude for risk etc and give him a customized solution. 

Similarly to spiritual path 

A guru comes and says follow my path and he has a big event having 10k people where he teaches Kriya

After few months how may people will be doing the Kriya and also even if they do it, does that really add vale to their life. 

A guru, let me call him a coach since that seems to be a better term. 

The spiritual coach (or for that matter any coach like finance/ health/ career coach) should first understand his capability to guide and should know the level the disciple is and give a training program at that level and he may have to calibrate the training program based on the progress. 

But if this is not possible, then the aspirant can look for gurus learn from them, also get blessings from them if  he can (since its believed that you need the blessings from Gurus for spiritual progress)

Basically most of the time you may not be able to afford a coach (in many areas of life since they may be costly and you may have to be in a level and then only you can start affording a coach)

So you can be your own coach attend some online classes or workshop and review and reflect and recalibrate. 

May be you meet some gurus in some of your training and after sampling you may decide to go to them for help. 

If they are a good guru they may not give an universal prescription for you, it should be a customized solution. 

Whether the Guru can do that or not is not in your control. 

But you can create your own customized solution and recalibrate. 

Dont surrender to your Guru. 

Your aim is progress and it need not be a blind surrender. 

I bless you have the energy and intellect and grace to find your current customized solution for various aspects for your life. 

With that you can have progress. 

Remember for deliberate practice you need to measure, review, report and reflect 

Themes dont change only the implementation does

Humans have been evolving for a long time and the last couple of centuries saw a drastic change in the lifectyle of people but when you look holistically themes never gets changed only the implementation. 

Humans want to be entertained by stories is a theme  

In nomadic days they lit a fire and gather around and the grand old person narrates story, now we consume stories in movies, audio book etc 

So themes don't change only implementation. 

Tracking Habits and Goals - Instant Gratification

Some of your goals are milestones some of them are ongoing. 

Examples of milestones

1. X amount of Money as Assets

2. Becoming VP 

3. Building a dream house

4. Starting a company 

Ongoing goals

1. I am an Athlete

2. I have pleasing personality 

Please note that ongoing goals when you get started you may not be there so you may have some milestones to achieve and then maintain once achieved 

But since most goals are long term and milestones in nature if you have a habit trackers (daily, weekly) and may be a Goal tracker monthly, Quarterly, Yearly.

When you track and put a tick on a habit or a goal you get instant gratification even though the goal is not reached you have the happiness in measuring the goal and Habit and see that the progress is happening. 

So delayed gratification is good but our evolution has put in the instinctive "instant gratification" in our genes . 

Why can't we gamify the delayed gratification goals to a series of instant gratification?

Note: Need to acknowledge that most of these ideas were crystalized as part of mindvalley and life book  

Habits that helps winning in many areas of life

 I am a life long leaner and dont have a second thought related to investing money for getting paid courses. 

Some of these investments are hit and few are misses but its ok. 

I am having a goal of a fixed amount of money for donation and may be for courses for which I don't find value I will simply feel it as donation. Its better to pay someone for more than the value they provide then just giving donation isn't it. 

I loved mindvalley all access (I have taken a break from it now should be back when they have new courses since I already consumed whatever I needed to consume)

I also completed  life book + mastery  and I should say my life is changed permanently. 

What I found in that course was there are many aspects of your life (they say 12) of which 5 is all about you

1. Health 

2. Intelligence

3. Emotion

4. Character

5. Spiritual

There are some habits which you do will check more than one aspect of life. As Jon says "A win anywhere is a win everywhere"

What if you can have daily habits which can touch many aspects. 

Couple of examples:

If I do exercise (as a person who never did exercise previously) it checks my 

1. Health

2. Emotion - as body moves you get happy 

3. Character - it takes discipline

Similarly if I do Meditation it improves my

1. Emotion 

2. Spiritual 

If I upgrade my skill technical or non-technical it improves my intelligence and career

What is important is to bring consciousness to everything. 

If you can have a vision and you build a goal and break some of them to Habit and then if you can track it and reflect (or report it to an accountability group) then nothing can stop you from making measurable progress to the ideal vision of your life. 

This is how companies are run and some companies go bust but few great companies survive for a long time constantly reinventing themselves and check the entropy. 

Why can't we do this in our own life and have a good progress in our life vision 

Take the example of this blog. This affects the following areas of my life

1. Intelligence - my creativity and communication increases

2. Spiritual - I am giving. I am creating

3. Emotion - this makes me happy

4. Social - I am connecting with some people 

5. Finance - Either directly or indirectly I improve my skills and give value and so I should get something in return financially also 

6. Career - this may make me communicate effectively and can help me in my current career or may help me in my part-time career or my  next career 

I urge you to explore your areas of life and find a habit or a ritual which could be the highest leverage across all the areas. The best return of investment. 

Back to Blogging

 I am back 

After a long Hibernation. 

I am back to writing. 

I have an aim to publish something once a week in this blog (I also have other writing aims like being a published writer and will also work on it)