Start 1% at a time to reach 100% in no time..

As was asked of me by a friend I went through the philosophy propounded by Dave Brailleford which he put into practice while coaching the British Cyclist's group Team Sky with great success.. Lately they seem to be embroiled in some doping controversy which is something every sports person seems to be a part of at least once in his career. Anyway as it has nothing to do with the philosophy in question I would rather skip that bit. So back to the principle of Aggregating marginal gains.. it seems to have been inspired by a certain Japanese philosophy known as Kaizen which means continuous improvement. The irony of the entire thing is that even the Japanese can't claim it as their own Coz this philosophy was first proposed and put into practice by the Americans during World War II. This philosophy is basically about not looking at the big picture and breaking the goal into small achievable tasks. Then work daily on a regular basis to improve upon the small tasks by 1% at a time. . This requires lots of patience and consistency. One should not expect miracles overnight as it's a gradual process and it takes time and works by aggregating these small small gains which won't be pretty evident initially but in the long run we will reap the benefits. . Just like in farming as we dont stop with just one harvest and the entire process has to be repeated again and again for every subsequent harvest, the same way just because we reached our goal we should not stop making those efforts that led us to this happy outcome.  One more example to put this across would be a buffet. Basically a buffet attracts as well as overwhelms us. We tend to want to try everything and end up piling up our plate and later regret by not being able to finish by leaving half the food untouched. But if we take little quantities at a time we might be able to taste everything and it might leave us much more satisfied and our stomach too would thank us in the long run. So basically as not to get overwhelmed by the enormity of our goals and to prevent our brain from pressing the panic button and pulling us back we better cut the tasks to smaller chunks and put in consistently atleast 1% effort daily.

Channa story - the beginning....

It is always nice to find humour in the most mundane day to day activities or rituals in one's life. It's fun to see the world in a humorous light. I always used to wonder how it would be like if all the inanimate things had life in them. Yeah kinda like toy story. . I mean the food we eat or the chair we place our bum on or the car we drive around. . It would be one crazy helluva life na. This occurred to me today while having my breakfast mmmm actually brunch because the clock was striking 11 at that time. . I was having appam and channa. While I was having my food one of the channas fell off my mouth onto the floor and rolled off under the table. It felt so funny I started laughing.  It seemed as if that particular channa had a life of its own and was a rebel who wanted to break free from the monotony of being ground to a pulp by my molars and incisors ....  it just leapt off my lips onto my bosom then onto my knee and then onto the floor and rolled off to safety under the table where it knew it was safe for the time being from my plundering hands. Little did the poor thing know that fate had other things in store for it. It was just a matter of a broom sweeping it off its feet and being dumped in the dustbin and thus it's journey to God knows where begins. 

Hypnotised by life..

There are times I feel I should go to a hypnotist and ask him to hypnotise me.. and make me do all the things that my conscious mind won't let me do.. and he has to record all the things that I did during that induced conscious yet unconscious state. Later when he snaps me out of my dream state I would ask him to play the video over.. maybe the recordings will give me a glimpse into my real self. . My calibre. . The things that are hidden within me.. The things that am not aware of I have in me. But then am afraid too because without my consciousness I would be too vulnerable. All the bad and dirty stuff have hidden in the inner depths of my mind might come out. All the old scars would start bleeding again. The mask might fall off.. hmmmm...