Memento Mori...Remember you must die

By Ahsan

This life is a wonderful gift.

The point of this article is to ask yourself if you are truly living or just existing?

Life is happening and it can be viewed as something you are enduring until the end comes or something that you are valuing because you never know when the end might come.

The first attitude about life is dimming and depressing and the second one gives life a sense of enjoyment, fulfillment and urgency to get what you truly want from life as you define it.

The term memento mori comes from Latin and was an admonition to the returning Generals of Rome. It was meant to remind them to not bask in the glory of victory but rather value the life that they have and truly live it.

In medieval Europe, educated men kept a skull on their desk to remind them that death is near.

Far from being a morbid reminder of your end, this “motto” MOMENTO MORI should be viewed as a liberating concept that will focus your mind on your goals, their achievement and then setting new goals to achieve.

As you travel the journey of your life, please keep in mind that your life is a gift with a time limit that is not known. Think about that for a moment.

Lessons From 9 Winters

By Shazad

I learned about snow for the first time at age 5 when I started kindergarten in the suburbs of Toronto.  I had to cross a high-school football field and then a soccer field twice a day to attend school until I started high school.

It was the 1970’s and the winter months were the worst in terms of bitter cold North winds against my face, knee-high snow and slushy puddles every day.  I felt tired, sick and miserable every time winter came. As I grew a little older I become stronger, more resilient and appreciative of the daily struggle to come and go to school.  I adapted to the cold and found simple solutions to  keeping my feet warmer and dry.  I learned that I was could enjoy winter and endure the hardship.  

Doing tough things in childhood made me understand what it is like to suffer and keep going.  Doing difficult things from time to time is good for everyone.  Now that I’m older I can appreciate these lessons.

Here’s how you can also become more resilient:

1. Do hard or challenging things every week.  Get comfortable with being uncomfortable on a regular basis.
2. Think about what is growth opportunity when you are going through a tough moment in life and do your best.
3. Prepare yourself for hardship by conditioning your mind, body and spirit to tolerate whatever may come your way.  You will still be surprised from time to time but you can minimize the stress you would feel by not anticipating some issues in life.

Organize Your Mind For A More Awesome Life

By Ahsan

Organize Your Mind For A More Awesome Life

Today is a great day to feel good and make true advancement towards your goals. It is so easy to do when you have made up your mind to do it and simply act on your plan. 

“Easy you say….sure.” [read with skeptical internal chatter]

It is easier said than done because our minds have a mind of their own sometimes. Meaning that we have great intentions to tackle the day but let our mind, that is anxious or tired or ruminating, to derail us from what we want.

Life should be easier and happier; however, when our mind is not working for us, life seems to get postponed at best and hellish at worst.

What should we do to turn the tide in our favour? 

Know one simple fact: your mind should be in your control. 

You may not be able to control others in your life or the circumstances of your life but you should be able to control your mind.

You are stronger than you think and braver than you believe!

Organize your mind so that your life moves in the direction of your goals. 

Here is the formula: 

Ask yourself what do you want out of life?
Decide to pay whatever price is required.
Focus your mind on the steps and efforts that must be implemented.
Sit for five minutes at the beginning of your day in solitude and quiet so that you visualize the achievement of your desires.
Do this in the last five minutes of your day as you drift off to sleep so that your mind organizes itself throughout the night.

The mind that is unorganized is sometimes referred to as the “monkey mind”. Without training and discipline, the mind can work against you. 

However, once you make a daily practice of quieting down the “chatter” and “swinging” and focus on being focussed, you can increase your enjoyment of life and all that it has to offer.

Organize your mind towards your primary goals of life so that you have increased energy, health, achievement, calmness and personal awesomeness!
 

You Are Not Your Past

By Ahsan

The greatest thing about you is that you can recreate yourself. Notice that I did not say circumstances, rather yourself. Simply put, if you look at who you are today, a lot was influenced by your past experiences and circumstances. Take the example of a child born in a neighborhood where there is poverty, drugs and crime. Should that person grow up to be involved in a criminal lifestyle would be understood but does that mean such a person is bound to only ever be a criminal?

Could that person not change? Could that person not become someone different? What if the person made a transformation?

What would it take to make a change?

A decision.

Finding a role model.

Self-belief.

Hard work.

In other words, your past is not your destiny. Your destiny is what you make it. Have a bit of positive expectation that you can make a desired change in yourself. Fill your heart with courage. Know that others have made amazing transformations in themselves and so can you!

You just need to be convinced that you can recreate yourself. In fact, doing so will add excitement to living your life. Make the most of living an awesome life if you dare.

Going Beyond The Present

By Shazad

Each generation of humanity has an advantage over the past generation because of technology and economic growth.  It's been this way for most of past 100 years and will likely continue to be true in the future.  As people, we must not measure ourselves against our parents generation because we start with an advantage at birth.  What we should continuously do is measure our current self against our own past.  Take stock every 5-10 years to see if you are really moving forward to the next level.  If you are, that's great news and it makes life so much better. If not, we need to find out where we are lacking and make adjustments to move forward. 

Every month, measure your progress and make the required changes. Move towards a more Awesome Life.  Level up and Go Beyond!

Time Management In A Distracted World

By Ahsan

Where did the day go? How did I not get that important task finished?

What should I do tomorrow to be more productive? Have you not asked these questions of yourself?

Of course you did. And even if you do it often, we have some simple ideas to make these questions a thing of the past.

Take notes and be triumphant. Here is the main secret: start each day with a fifteen minute block of time that is solely focussed on planning out your day.

During this time, take out a blank sheet of paper and start writing down your To Do List—not the way most folks do but rather by asking the following question: what do I need to get done today?

Now write that down.

Next, do the hardest thing on the list first. In fact, you know it is the right thing to start with if you absolutely don’t want to do it right away. What most people do is knock off all the easy and fun things first and then start the hard but important stuff later. When later comes, we can get tired, run short of time or realize that we need to recruit others to help us and can’t rub the oil lamp and have them instantly appear

Keep it simple: start with a block of 15 minutes to chalk out what needs to absolutely get one today and start creating the list. Then get going on the non-easy thing first!

Voila! You just had a great productive day!

We Are Here To Grow

By Shazad

Why are we here? I suggest it is for growth in all aspects of our life. This includes our Physical, Mental and Spiritual well being and fundamentally makes us who we are.  We are not here to compare ourselves to each other - even though that is natural way of thinking.  We need to measure our growth against our past selves. Have we been improving ourselves day over day and year over year?  Ask yourself if you are a better person now than you were last year.  Are you trying to become that more refined or polished person that is showing growth in all parts of your life?

Take an honest look at your whole life and seek opportunities for growth every day.  Before the new year comes, determine where you are in life today and decide how you are going to grow in the next week and in the months to come.  Make growth your life’s purpose and measure your progress against where you were at the beginning of the year.  You'll be glad you did and will be on the road to Living Awesome!

Learning Is Easier with Age

By Shazad

Both Ahsan and I have a passion for learning. I think we both have had this our entire lives. I
truly believe in Life Long Learning (L3) as fundamental to all human growth and happiness
because everyone has the capacity and desire for these things.
It’s common to think that we should learn things at a young age because it’s harder as we grow
older. I thought a lot about this idea in my own life and I fell the opposite is most likely to be
true. As I celebrate more birthdays, I realize that the mental tools and experience I have gained
over the years actually helps me learn new things faster. Why? Because I can relate the new
learning to something I already know and build upon that analogy by thinking of common ideas
and models already familiar to me. Having some basic concepts in mind and desire to
understand the new info, I begin to study the key points about the new thing and understand it,
one piece at a time. Understanding things at a hi-level first also helps to get more clarity when
you go deeper and closer to the thing you want to study.
When you think about it, the more experience you have, the more you can understand new
things and relate to the things you already know. Age is an advantage and not a hurdle to
learning so have confidence to keep learning new things all your life.

Force of H.A.B.I.T

By Ahsan

We are the sum total of our habits. All of our good habits, render good results. All of our bad habits, inhibit results. Habits make us and habits break us. Think deeply for a moment and see if this is true in your life.

What is H.A.B.I.T ?

A helpful acronym for HABIT is: Holistic Actions Building Incredible Traction

Traction towards what, you ask? Traction towards your goals. When we want to achieve our goals, we need to have habits that help build sustained traction. When considering your goals, start building a list of habits that are needed to support the achievement of your goals. For example, if we want to be on time for appointments, we might make it a habit to be ten minutes early. Likewise, if we want to build a strong and muscular body, we probably should make the habit of thinking of a muscular image of our body and exercise regularly. Habits are always actions that we take either mentally or physically. These actions (read habits) drive us toward our goals.

The challenge is making habits stick, isn’t it? If we do some thinking and list out the habits we need to reach our goals, we will find that some days we will do them and other days we will forget to do them. Intentions alone do not make a habit automatic. The habits that stick need more than just alarms and reminders. We will be better off, if we can make the habit a part of a routine. For example, if your goal is to work out when you come home from work, what is your usual routine? Do you change into something more comfortable? Do you flop down in front of the T.V? Do you raid the fridge? Do these habits support your goals?

In other words, build goal-driven habits into a routine and see your goals being achieved. Make exercising a routine by having structures in place. That structure could be exercising five days a week except for Saturday and Sunday, 30 minutes after arriving home, after changing into your work out clothes.

Just be sure to build one habit at a time. If you are a normal human being, there are probably 37 habits you want to change. Realistic achievement of changing 37 habits starting tomorrow all at once will guarantee failure. Instead, identify one habit and work on it for two weeks. At the end of two weeks, start working on the second habit on your list and so on. Over time, you will see more of your habits becoming natural and ingrained, especially when they are part of your routine.

This approach is holistic because these actions are being implemented so as to build rare and incredible results in your life that have traction and magnetize your goals into reality.

Action Steps:

1. List a goal you want to achieve in the next three months.

2. List the step by step plan (structure and routines) to achieve it.

3. Figure out the key habits that will magnetize the goal into reality.

Learn New Things

By Shazad

Why bother learning new things? Why not just be done with education once you graduate from
College or University? Knowledge and Skills are like tools in our toolbox. If the only thing we
had in our toolbox was a hammer – we could only drive some nails into some wood. If we add
some screw drivers, a clamp, a wrench or two and a power drill, we can accomplish much more.
Consider learning new things like a new language, business skills or computer programming just
like adding new tools. With each skill come new opportunities to see the world around us.
Each of these tools helps us gives us potentially new ways to address problems we face so that
we are not simply trying to drive nails into wood over and over again.
Whenever you feel stuck in a loop or a dead end, ask yourself if what you need is a new way to
understand the issue. What could you resolve if you added some more knowledge to your
current pool of knowledge? What new skill would help you see an opportunity that you are
missing today? Keep adding to your toolbox each and every year so you can live a fuller life.

Creating A Personalized Healthy Self-Image

By Shazad

It is a New Year and new beginning.  Many people will commit to becoming healthier and more specifically, leaner.  That commitment is part one of the process but what is part 2 that helps us stay lean and healthy?
Part one is like being on a road trip to see your cousin in the USA. You just keep driving. You don't stop for long site seeing in between. You get the job done. This part is about doing the exercise and eating the right amount of real food. This is not about being balanced and its not supposed to be fun. Suck it up and be regimented.

Part two is about not reverting back to old habits and patterns. What is the minimum amount of exercise that will do everyday? What is the minimum amount of good food that will your body needs? Life throws challenges but our self image has to be that of a fit person who eats good food and works out. This self-image is key to transforming yourself and becoming that better person. If you think of yourself as aging, short, fat, slow or other negative way,  you will remain that way.  If you do happen to change to a leaner version of yourself, you may snap back to your past life just like an elastic band returns to its original shape. This is why changing your mental image is fundamental to creating a new you. If you believe there is an incredibly healthy, strong, smart and ageless person within you, you establish that as your new baseline.  Your mind must constantly see your best self as your natural state and everything you do as the process towards that state of mind and body. Work on your personality every day to make the body manifest what is in your mind.  For example, if I have Daniel Craig fit body (see Skyfall movie) for myself in my mind's eye in Ultra HD clarity, I can make a rich identity in my mind.  I can then strive to achieve that very specific physical result through  fitness and diet programs...minus the special gadgets and dangerous stunts.  This new physical self-image that I created for myself is very specific and detailed outcome which can help me achieve a very real result.  Each one of us needs a specific self-image that matches us in a realistic way.  This is the way we can stick to our commitments once we make a pledge to transform to the best version of ourselves. The New Year is a great time for reflection and reinvention. So, what's your new self-image going to be this year?