Constants & Variables

A 5-year old kid wishes to go out and play. Unable to accompany the kid for half an hour (owing to work stuff or house errands), and in order the stop the kid from bothering them, the parents hand-over a mobile phone and say, "Watch YouTube" or "Play a game". Later in the day, the kid doesn't eat supper on-time, and the parents spend a lot of time cajoling, negotiating (with sweets as a reward) and finally forcing the kid to eat, an ordeal that lasts almost an hour! Due to the lack of physical exertion, and a long time spent staring at the mobile screen followed by a late dinner, the kid is unable to sleep properly. After tossing and turning for hours, followed by a disturbed sleep, guess how the next morning would be at that household!

Imagine if most days of the kid's childhood are spent this way, and upon reaching adolescence they realize how much irreversible physical and mental damage the bad habits have caused?

We all wish to do something that's naturally good for us; be it eating healthy food or exploring our full potential in whatever we do. But then, like the parents do in the story, we are often offered something else as a trade-off; something that we want and not something we need, which effectively prevents us from even realizing where our true capabilities lie. A lot of money for all your time, or an easy, tasty and unhealthy snack to alleviate your hunger are not very different from the mobile phone given to the kid. 

How much irreversible damage are we causing by living only in the short-term and paying a huge price in the long-term?

In our story, maybe if the parents had taken out some time to play with the kid outside, the physical exertion would have ensured that the kid was hungry enough to gobble up the supper and tired enough to sleep well. That would have also saved a lot of time for the parents, who could have then devoted that to finish up their work stuff or house errands. Do that enough days and you have a physically and mentally healthy family, instead of a depleted and burnt-out one. 

But why is it so hard to do the right things ? Maybe because it is too easy to do the wrong things! 

Our choices and decisions drive a major part of our lives. There are also some given things in life that are out of our control. We should be in a position to practice discernment, and focus only on things that we can change, and not worry about those beyond our control. Like the famous poem says, "All the worlds' a stage, and all the men and women merely players;". The script and other players' parts may be out of our control, but whether to be a great actor in a bad play, or a bad actor in a good play, is totally in our control. 

It is too easy to swing to extremes; either becoming an obsessive-compulsive control-freak trying to steer every little aspect of life and despairing when things don't go our way, or by taking no ownership on anything and be completely non-committal about everything in life. The answers lie somewhere in the middle, and they are often some simple and fundamental things that we forget to do. 

Time is the biggest limiting factor that prevents us from being the best version of ourselves. But if we can figure out managing it then everything else falls in place. 

If we can find the little cracks through which we leak time, maybe we will have enough to do it all ?

I personally found that using the mobile phone as a clock was the biggest time-leak; we pick it up to check the time, get sucked into seeing a ping/social media update, and 20 minutes later, we are watching a prank video on Youtube/Facebook with no idea on how we landed there! This attention-diversion is a huge productivity killer. 

The solution: wear a watch, mute notifications on the mobile phone and set specific times to check it. Trust me, it works wonders!

Is there some other small but very rewarding lifestyle change that has helped you? Do share in the comments.