Hey Reader,

This blog is inspired by a video (link is at the bottom). So if you like this read, do check out the video (very motivating).

My very great colleague in the office, one day told us a story about his friend’s father, who was Ex-Squadron Leader. Sometime back he was swimming at a place in Singapore. It was unfortunate that a small-Tsunami just hit the place and drowned him off. But, he was the only one casualty in that accident. He saved two to three people before the flow just took him with it. The Ex-Defense Personnel, retired from his duties, departed with all the glory discharging his duties. Let’s call them Johnny Bravo. If you ever ask them why you risked your life to save others, his answer would that they would have done this for us.

Where do people like “Johnny Bravo” come from?

“Great people are not born, they are actually made.”

Human-animal is a machine and there are systems inside us that work in the interest of our survival, and just like in industries, you provide incentives and bonus to people to direct their behavior for the profit of the company, similarly, our body is directed with our emotions and feelings towards any certain objective.

In order to have the objectives to be in best interest of our survival, let’s call it Golden Objective, we need to have a certain directional mechanism or to be appropriate our body must be directed with some particular set of emotions and feelings so as to achieve that objective. Some of these include Pride, Happiness, Joy, Love, Fulfillment.

“If you’re happy, if you’re feeling good, then nothing else matters.”
Robin Wright

Feeling of Achievement

We get a shot of a chemical, called Dopamine, inside our body when we feel like we have achieved something. Say, you decide that I will go for a 5K walk today. You start your walk and you end up walking 6K. You will feel awesome. You have achieved your goal. So this is one of those feelings that’s gonna drive you to achieve that Golden objective. All you need to do to get this feeling is to create a To-Do List. Write down all your Goals and Targets. You must write them out as we humans are a Visual Animal and once we see our Goals written, we feel motivated. Once you complete a Goal or achieve a target, strike it off in your List, and you get a shot of Dopamine!

But, this feeling of achievement is very very dangerous. It’s highly-highly addictive. It requires balance otherwise we would just compromise with our relationships. We will meet our targets but at the cost of our relationships. We will achieve but might not have anyone to celebrate with. So, please note – Feeling of Achievement requires balance or it will be very destructive.

“A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement.”
Bo Bennett

Mask Physical Pain

Human-animal survived for all these years because of one thing over other Homo-species, Endurance. Our body releases a chemical called, Endorphins, that masks our physical pain. In the caveman times, we use to go hunting for hundreds of distance and then come back with the meal. Next day, despite yesterday’s pain, we again went for hunting because we felt good the other day in that. This is why we survived – Endurance.

Have you ever laughed so hard, that you say oh my God, please stop my stomach is aching of laughter? This is because that mask of physical pain weakens if it doesn’t get Endorphins but we love laughing so in order to laugh more, we need endorphins, or we build the endurance, e.g. people who love their profession, despite traveling long distances every day, they love to do it again. They build up the endurance for that.

“Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.”
William Barclay

Feeling of Responsibility

I strongly believe that we should cooperate with each other. Come together and build up a strong circle to fight with the external dangers. Dangers can be anything – terrorism, job insecurity, bankruptcy, natural disaster, or anything. We should come together so that everyone in that circle feels safe and feels that they belong. We should work on to make decisions that are in best interest of all.

If we stand together, we can easily face the dangers inside. But if we break inside, we would need to put extra effort to protect us from the dangers and in fact, we will be more exposed to those dangers. This will be again Highly-Highly Destructive. So we should build the circle, but how big the circle should be? For me, as bigger, as we can!

“Leadership – leadership is about taking responsibility, not making excuses.”
Mitt Romney

Feeling of Pride and Fulfilment

Have you ever seen a Prize Distribution ceremony? Why is it so big? Why are so guests invited to watch people being rewarded? They can be rewarded in a smaller room with the limited audience! This is because it is how we feel Proud and Fulfilled and most of all, Happy. We get hit with a chemical, Serotonin, which is responsible for the feeling of well-being and Happiness.

It not only makes the person who is rewarded feel proud but also his/her family in the audience when they see you being rewarded on achieving something big. They also get a hit of Serotonin in the blood. Also, the people who are not being rewarded feel motivated that one day, they too gonna be on that stage and get rewarded.

But, in this materialistic world, it is very easy to trick this feeling of fulfillment. People buy out a $1000 phone and showcase its logo in the pictures and feel proud and fulfilled. But it is false! You would feel good in the GUCCI shoes but it’s not necessary that you have actually fulfilled something or achieved something. This public demonstration of status is nothing but just a false pride that goes off with time and hence gives, no happiness. So, I would request, don’t trick this feeling with a Materialistic Achievement. It is again Highly-Highly Destructive.

“There are two kinds of pride, both good and bad. ‘Good pride’ represents our dignity and self-respect. ‘Bad pride’ is the deadly sin of superiority that reeks of conceit and arrogance.”
John C. Maxwell

My old readers know, how much I love giving tasks, so after much long time – You have got one!
Make out a To-Do list that includes things like Going for a walk, Face the fear every day, spend “this much time” in reading and etc. and start working on striking them off! I would love to know about the experiences here in comments, and also if you like to share your To-Do List that could inspire others, so please Go On.

And yes, you can watch the video here.