The Law of Cause and Effect

The idea of writing this came to me when I was flipping through pages of random books and by change stuck at the Aristotelian Principle of Causality, or what we today call the Law of Cause and Effect.

When people believed anything which they can not understand is GOD, to amuse them and put a period on further thinking, Aristotle stated something completely different. It changed our view of the world forever. 

Everything happens for a reason; for every effect there is a specific cause. 

Aristotle postulated that we live in a world which is governed by Laws and not by mere chance.  Everything happens for reason weather we understand it or not.  Many times we come to know the reason long after the effect. He said that every effect has a specific cause or causes. Every cause or action has an effect of some kind or another, whether we can see it, or whether we like it or not. 

This law is equally applicable on achievement, wealth, happiness, and prosperity and business success. Everything happens for a reason, good or bad, positive or negative.

This is referred to in the Bible as the Law of Sowing and Reaping which says that, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap." 

Sir Isaac Newton called it the third Law of motion. He said, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." 

For us it can be like “As we think, so are we”. Thoughts are the cause and the primary creative forces in humans. We create the entire world by thinking and then slowly we are in that.

 

Understanding What I Want to Achieve

When I meet people who are above 50 or 55 years of their age, I always ask them, “Do you feel, you are successful” . To my surprise most of them come with Answer “no”. Obviously my next question is “Why?” I always add stuff to my question like if they have money or good family or good children or some spirituality, these are just to give them a direction to think and most of the time it’s a success. They do start thinking on these things and these things further lead them to special things in their life which make them or don’t make then successful in their views. So they do come up with their reasons, and most of the time its like they were not able to understand what they want from them and some even if they understood , they were not able to figure out how to achieve that. There were also people who are still not clear what would have made them successful.
Understanding what I want to achieve, and particularly how I will achieve it, is much harder than it seems. Personally, it's less difficult to identify what I want to achieve, the hardest part is deciding how I will get there and then summoning the commitment to make it all the way. Which is the reason this next question is perhaps the most important in defining your success and success plan. WHY do I want to achieve these things? If sometimes I don’t feel strongly enough about achieving something, there is very little chance I will have the stamina to stick with it. Personally speaking in this scenario; almost every time I have not achieved it. If I know exactly WHY it is I want something, if I find a way to remind yourself everyday so that I can stay committed I tend to do it or sometimes if I am leaving it I know very strongly perhaps I am successful in leaving it right here. If I find yourself quitting halfway, it is most likely that I didn't spend enough time understanding WHY part of I wanted that something. Best way is to Go back and truly think about it, I might just find that I was doomed from the start because my WHY wasn't strong enough

A philosophy of life: - I am an adventurer, looking for treasures.

According to so many people, I do not enjoy my life, I make so much so I should go out and spend money in many things which they think they like and they hope I too will like and then they assume that I will be enjoying my life.

Most of the time I pass off these moments with a make over smile on my lips, really stretching my cheeks, but very rare I when I keep hearing this stuff from so many people around me, perhaps I ask questions to myself, are they right.
Something very similar happened very recent and I am in such an age where sometimes I need to verify, things I know are right or wrong. I heard this for long and decided that ok let me do some research, real good work and what ever is the outcome I will follow that at least for next 10 years. I am expecting that perception along with economy and concepts will change in 10 years. I believe that’s quite realistic. First thing was to find out what I want to achieve. I kept it very simple “I want to be happy”.
So the question was to identify the general activities or the conditions or mental situations when you feel happy and satisfied. This went very subjective, as different people can be happy in “N” number of different situations and mental states.
So I reduced the question to “If you have more money than you require for living, then will spending your extra money on things which are not the “Need” or “Want” but you “Like” will make you happy?”
So I started with methodology for research. First go was on books, quotes, philosophies, lectures and all written knowledge. All gave me a negative result.

Then I was talking to one of my good friends and he said “May be you are playing favorites, you are picking up books which you like”. Hum that can be a valid reason for skewness of my output.
Probably I should go out and talk to people. Which people, well I guess since I want to be happy ultimately, every body in my sample space should be happy.
This was again a very subjective question, that how will you know that they are happy.
Based upon a research, I prepared some questions and I interviewed people. They never knew that they are being interviewed for a purpose. People who were very frequent in giving me this advice were the ones around me and easy to approach, so they were the beginners of my sample space.
To my surprise, none of they admitted that they are happy. I was very rude to say that how come you are not happy when you do all the stuff you tell me to do in order to be happy.
I was really confused at this point of time but I was more boosted up, the idea that this will save 10 years of confusion in my life on this point was enough to keep me working.
So I started going to people in my office. I started with my collogues. 50% of them were out as they were not happy. That makes my sample very small low. I needed more people. So I added up one more criteria, let me look for successful people and then let me try and find out if they are happy and then I can test they for my main research question.
I approached senior leadership in company. My boss agreed to help me, being one of the senior leaders she was a great resource to get people. I managed to meet people from my Company, Disneyland, and few of my company’s clients and spouse of senior leaders in my company. They all helped me to take interviews where I was not able to go and meet in person. The set of question was same and they were more effective in digging out response than me.
We all pooled up our data which included senior leaders from different organizations, my collogues and my off the work circle and friends. This sample was a mix of people from different culture and country.
We found out that 80-85% of people who are happy and in some way successful in life and have positive attitude towards life and also make more money than they need, actually do not like to spend their money on things which is not their “ Need” “ Want” but they just like that thing, or that activity. There are few things which fall in their “Hobby” and they really find pleasure in doing so and so they do spend when they have extra.
The other observation was that all these people believed in multiplying the money rather than spending it. It’s clear that the amount of money they have right now is enough for their life still they all are interested in multiplying and spending them wisely. None of them spend money to compete with others or just because the other person who is really close to them is doing it. None of these people said that their “desire” exceeds their financial sense.
All these people have different ways to be happy and none of these have “Spending money” as one of the way to be happy. One of the finance guy is happy making money in stocks and investment, the other is really happy if he goes for a bike ride every night, one of very senior leadership women becomes happy to cook for her family and kids everyday. Somebody goes back home on Friday and look at her numbers to be happy rather than going out and partying.
Inference: Possible there is a philosophy of life that :- I am an adventurer, looking for treasures.
and
Treasures differ……

Meaning in life......

"Meaning is not something we stumble across, like an answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something we build into our life. We build it out of our own past, out of our affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to us, out of our own talent and understanding, out of the things we believe in, out of the things and people we love, out of the values for which we are to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. We are the only one who can out them together into that unique pattern that will be our life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for us. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure—as the world measures success or failure—is of less account."

Brain Rules

"There is no such thing as a firewall between personal issues and work productivity. That’s because we can't have two brains we can interchange depending on whether we are in our office or in our bedroom. Stress in the workplace affects family life, causing more stress in the family. More stress in the family causes more stress at work, which in turn gets brought home again. It’s a deadly, self-feeding spiral, and researchers call it “work-family conflict.” So you may have the most wonderful feelings about autonomy at work, and you may have tremendous problem-solving opportunities with your colleagues. But if your home life is a wreck, you can still suffer the negative effects of stress, and so can your employer."

—John Medina,
Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School

To Ponder…..

“Our circumstances answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures.”
~ Henry David Thoreau

“What we see depends mainly on what we look for.”
~ John Lubbock

Many of us experience this very often but we seldom realize that it’s actually happening. It’s like when we need to know something and ‘the thing’ comes around we absorb it like a sponge, and when we are not looking for, then we just make a gesture that we are getting it but we actually do not take any anything. Right from my MBA I always wanted to learn trading, and trust me I really tried hard to do so. Every body who does it knows that learning the basic steps is a piece of cake. It all occurred when I was challenged by one of my coworker that how much money we can make every week. She was well advanced of me and that too in all together in a different economy, where I hardly knew the name of the common companies. Still it was a piece of cake to learn it and being more cautious and excited about it soon I started performing better than her. I did not realized it until I was reading the book “The Education of an Accidental CEO” where he mentions that in spite of being on the operation floor for many times as the marketing guy, he found himself to ne a naïve to what is happening there, when he landed there as the head of the operation guy. And suddenly he picked up everything as he was looking for these informations to execute from his current position.
This being understood, to get something or to learn something we have to have the desire first. Many small things teach us every day that you do not get something really good until you really desire and work towards it. (Sometimes in something which can be totally controlled by luck will fall under exception, but I do not agree that there could be something like this)
Everybody has dreams and they are really good and great dreams, many of us just accepts that that’s not possible or somehow some way it’s just a dream and it’s really not possible to achieve it. How tough could be to chase the dream is well explained in Paul Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’. How ever this book also explains how exciting is to follow the dreams, how nature conspires for you to be successful IF you attempt for it and ultimately how it feels when you achieve it.

When a person lives discontented from dreams, energy wanes and the days begin to be more about survivals than significance. Nothing animates people like chasing down a dream the hope of a better future fuels people to give their best efforts. In between our busy days either we forget our dreams or ignore then, prioritizing many other over them in life. Find that link between the dream and energy and you will see the magic.

DREAMS

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up?
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

~ Langston Hughes

Mountain High With a Message

January 27 2008,

I was in mid of the big presentation which is supposed to decide my fate in the company, and expected to open up many more growth ways in the company and Shree gets two tickets of mountain high. Very few times he expresses that he wants to do something and I take good care that I accept most of the time until really no other option is left. The day was Saturday, so there was some scope to cope with both the things. We both worked on my presentation, I was putting in the information and he was formatting for me and making it look good.
And we managed to pull the presentation to a reasonable point from where we can stop worrying about it for the next day. So the early morning Sunday we packed the food and got ready to go to mountain high. Took the address from Google map and sat in car with all the preparation. We started putting the address in GPS and it was not taking the address and we both were pissed... It’s around 80 miles away from home and what if we miss the way, and more chances that we will not reach the right place with no directions… and of course it was the first time we were going to mountain high for the first time.
We tried hard back and forth in between the Google map and the GPS but were not able to get the right address in GPS. So finally we put in some random address of mountain high and decided to take the risk. When we pulled out of the parking we were sure its gona be the extreme situations. It’s been snowing for last three days, so either we are gona experience something really good there or we are not gona get to that point, which is considered a good view.
After 45 mins of drive we were in that area, traffic was less because that area was expected to be in heavy show fall and so less people turn on.
According to the GPS we were on the destination, 76 miles away from our home and there was nothing to say “WOW” around. So we started to our exploration and started roaming here and there. Unknowingly we were on the right road and since we did not know the destination we kept going up and up. Good views started and we saw huge parking, people playing around and having fun. But since we did not know that this is the final place we decide to go more high, and we go 15 miles further, each new mile made us realize that this is better that the previous one, may be that’s mental.
We reached the point where it started saying “Road Closed Ahead”.
So we parked there. There were hardly 10 cars there and people were playing in snow.
We came out and the view was awesome, I had never seen this much snow in my life, although I had been to many places where it has snow in winters.
The things around were so beautiful, my dictionary goes empty to measure the beauty of that place.
We had nice 30-45 mins there, playing in snow and enjoying the weather there and of course the heavenly views. All of a sudden the wind starts blowing and the speed gets higher and higher. 10 mins latter we realized that we are in mid of the heavy snowfall.
Few people started on their departure, few stayed and few minutes latter, snow fall was even at its higher intensity. We enjoyed one of the very rare combinations of beauty there; at least it’s rare in and around California. I am calling it a rare combination, snow falls here around only for two months and in those two months the probability of snow falling for three days and still the roads were not closed and the third day fall on Sunday when we do not have to go to office and we do not have tension of any kind and when we reach there then the wind starts blowing at 100miles/hour and snow fall starts and then it gets intense so much that police makes us to leave that place…. These many coincidences are rare…
While returning me and Shree were talking, we got one more reason to believe that whenever we make genuine effort then GOD rewards us with his best thing.
Life is good…