Run!

~ Gaurav Aradhye ~ Leave a comment

I intend to get to run 10 Kms comfortably at the end of my summer break. So I started running a week back with a target of running at least 3 Kms daily.

Some days I ran alone. On some, I ran with different people. The result is astonishing. Whenever I ran alone, I ran for around 3 Kms. Whenever I ran with others, I ran more than 6 Kms.

Why is it so? Does that mean I am lazy? Certainly not. I achieved my target of 3 Kms anyway. But I thought 6 Kms was too much in first week. But it was not. Today I ran 8 Kms. My legs did hurt and I had to take a break due to pain in my rib cage mid run. But it was worth starting running again.

Pains not necessarily mean something’s wrong. Pains are deceiving. They open a store of interpretations for us to interpret. But beware! It’s important to interpret them correctly. You succeed, you push yourself. You fail, a new problem awaits you.

I saw my friend running and pushing himself. He had his own targets. A little walk to grasp the breath and subdue the pain and I was up running again.

In life, it’s very important to find people who inspire you, who run faster and longer than you. Not because they will make you run faster. Only so that you don’t stop. Speed is not important. Continuity is. The one who continues wins. Sprinters fail after some period.

Avoiding the autopilot mode

~ Gaurav Aradhye ~ Leave a comment

 

Few months back, while I was playing table tennis I realized that I was not being 100% conscious in every shot I played. I have been playing table tennis since I was 10 and I have been doing the same mistake all the time! I was just not 100% into every shot I played! What was the reason? Autopilot mode!

Let’s see how this works. When you do a certain thing for hundreds and thousands of time, your brain knows how to do it. For all the next times in future you try to do that thing, you no longer have to do it consciously. As your ease grows, the task is shifted from conscious to subconscious brain and things start to happen automatically. For example, when you start to learn how to drive a car, you require 100% concentration while driving and tremendous mental efforts to coordinate the things. But after a certain period, you no longer require the same amount of mental work. You can even think about some random stuff while you’re driving and you don’t even remember how you drove the car when you reach the destination. Thanks to your subconscious brain.

I call this subconscious work of the brain as autopilot mode. This autopilot mode has been very helpful in our evolution, turning difficult tasks into habits. But the same autopilot mode proves to be detrimental to your improvement without you realizing it.

What if you have got comfortable doing a thing before you got the perfection? In that case, you are never really trying to improve! Is that the reason why some people are better than others in doing certain thing because they remain extra attentive always? The answer is probably yes.

As soon as I dragged myself out of the autopilot mode, I realized I had dramatic improvement in my play! And the same principle can apply to so many things in life! So avoid the autopilot!

Besides the advantage of progressing towards perfection, it will also make you more mindful. More living in present, more meditation.

Does your alarm ring at the right time?

~ Gaurav Aradhye ~ Leave a comment

After enjoying stable routine for 4 long years, I am back to a life where it’s very hard to have a fixed schedule. Everyday is different and I have no idea when I would be sleeping or waking up. Irregular sleep timings and absence of schedule means high probability of waking up feeling tired. And then it’s more difficult to start your day on a high when you don’t feel like waking up, or if you are feeling more tired than when you went to sleep!

That’s when I started looking at the sleep cycles and realized it was a grave mistake to have my alarm clock set to the same time everyday! If you want to wake up feeling fresh, then you have to calculate and set the wake up time! And thankfully the calculation is very easy!

Typically a human brain goes through 5-6 sleep cycles before waking up and it’s better to wake up between the two sleep cycles than in the middle of a sleep cycle. Whenever you’re planning to go to sleep, allow 15 min of buffer time for your brain to enter the sleep cycle and then add the number of sleep cycles you can afford to have, multiplied by 90 minutes.

For example, if you decide to switch lights off at 11.50 pm and you have to wake up around 8 am, then don’t set the alarm for 8 am. Add 15 mins to 11.50 pm => 12.05 am. If you allow yourself 4 sleep cycles, (360 mins), you will have to set alarm for 6.05 am to wake up between your 4th and 5th sleep cycle. But wait, that means you can afford one more sleep cycle. You can wake up at 7.35 am.

This means it would be better if you wake up half an hour earlier than you had previously planned, so as to feel fresh after waking up, rather than allowing yourself more time to enter into next sleep cycle.

Whenever you wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle, you are bound to feel confused and tired.

Even if you are planning short sleep/nap, plan it in multiples of 90*x + 15 minutes!

You can also use Sleepy time calculator to calculate the wake up time. They even have android app!

My experiences of 10 day Vipassana Meditation Course

Vipassana
~ Gaurav Aradhye ~ 2 Comments

Vipassana

No contact with outside world and no talking with anyone for 10 days. 10.5 hours of Meditation per day. Total Isolation. If you want to make a start towards cleansing your mind and root out miseries from your life, if you want to take control of your mind, this is the first step you must take.

There will be many rough patches in the way, but if you have strong determination, you will find a way through to the end. And this is just the beginning. The real efforts start from here. There is no stopping now. You have learnt a technique, now you have to practice it everyday and master it.

After my first 10 day Vipassana course, I have come out purified, cleansed, refreshed and totally charged mentally. For me, It was difficult than I  had thought it would be. On many sessions I had excruciating pain in my back, on 2nd and 5th day I was watching tears rolling down my cheeks with detached attitude, on 6th night I couldn’t sleep a single minute. But I persisted. I stayed till the end. This had not been possible if it had not been Vipassana. It made my mind stronger. Many people worry that this course will make them detached from everything and make them an emotionless person. But let me assure you that this is not at all true. If you decide to take this course, you are not taking a risk, you are taking a step towards purity and equanimity.

Continue reading “My experiences of 10 day Vipassana Meditation Course” →

A life without years…

~ Gaurav Aradhye ~ 3 Comments

Imagine how would be our world if we didn’t measure our life by years. We would just live. Freely. Without making rules for our life according to time. Without associating events to years. Without feeling young. Without feeling old. Off course! If there is no measurement of time, what really is young and what really is old?

Major Advantages

1) The greatest advantage of it would be lesser evocation of feeling “Time’s running faster than before”. Let me explain why do we feel this more and more as we age. When you were in school, you felt the year was much much bigger than it is now. Reason being, if you were 9 years old and spent one year in school, then it would be equal to spending worth of 10% of your life in an year. But when you turn 24 years old and spend an year in a boring job, then you are spending only 4% of your life in an year. So in direct comparison, you feel that time is moving much much faster than it was in your childhood.

If there was no measurement of years, I surmise that the feeling will be less depressing. There is no doubt, that the time would still appear to be warped, but slightly lesser than it is now.

2) Lesser depression. People wold not be able to do direct comparison with the peers of exactly their age. I am 28 years old and I am earning only this much and he is 28 years old and he is earning that much. No bullshit like this.

3) No Marriage vs Education. 25 is too late for enrolling into graduate school, I would better drop the idea and get married. Or else I will turn 27 till I graduate and then who would marry me? Seriously, when you become 80 years old, will it matter if you married at 27 or 25? And do you think you will be too old after two years. Yes you are right, drop the idea, you are already old.

4) Extension of above point: You should hurry, next year you will turn 30 and then it will become extremely difficult to find someone for you. Slow claps! How much difference a 29.99 and 30.01 make? You should worry more about your health, not numbers.

5) You are under 35 and you have blood pressure. How on the earth can this be true! They said blood pressure arises after 35 age.

Seriously, what magic does 35 do? Again, leave the numbers and look where humanity is going. The amount of depression and anger present in today’s youth, it can’t match with any other earlier generation. The air you breathe is toxic. And you still believe in 35?

6) I am 40 years old and it’s too late to follow my real passion and leave behind my regular job. Man, you didn’t come to this earth to do stuff you don’t like. It’s never too late, whether it is 40, 60 or 80.

The list will in-exhaustive. And if you really learn to do things in life without considering how old you’re, you will always be on the brighter side, and more importantly, you will be a happy person, if not something else.

The choice is yours. Cheers!

Prisoner of Ego

~ Gaurav Aradhye ~ Leave a comment

There was a man living in a town with his heart full of ego. He would earn decent amount of money. He was fond of doing things which his ego demanded and his money allowed him to do.

Once he got an idea. Although he did not need any servants, he employed a servant in his home. The servant was extremely poor and mute. He had no option but take the job. He thought he would earn decent amount of money, if not, at least to feed himself properly. The man was cruel. He did not stop there. He built a cage in his home for the servant. Everyday he would lock up the servant in the cage for full day. So the servant was not serving the man directly, but his ego. At night, he would allow him some time out. But as soon as he would call the servant, he had to return to the cage. The servant was extremely poor so he had no choice but to live in a cage that would earn him meal two times a day. The servant would wonder why the man had employed him if he would assign him no work.

One day, at night, the servant was out for a stroll and he sat on a sharp thing by mistake and there was a deep cut in his flesh in the posterior part of his body. He was in excruciating pain. He came home and pointed toward his wound trying to get help from his master. But the man did not pay any heed. He ignored it and criticized the servant for making noise when everybody in the family was asleep.

The servant lived with the pain. It became the routine. But his wound did not heal. The infection caught hold of the flesh. Wherever the servant would sit, he would leave behind his blood. And his master would scold him instead of taking him to doctor.

The infection went on increasing. The insects began to wander around the wound and they started eating the flesh, Soon they entered the servant’s stomach making way through his body. Finally the master got alarmed. He took the servant to the doctor. Doctor said he couldn’t save his life. That was the end of a prisoner of ego.

If you had a great difficulty in reading the story, then it was more difficult for someone to go through it. That was the story of a boxer dog in my neighborhood. Please treat animals with love and care, and pet them only if you can return the love they shower upon you. You don’t own anyone’s life, be it a human or an animal. Dignity is for everyone.

Coherence is overrated. Randomness is underrated. You will probably be dead tomorrow.

~ Gaurav Aradhye ~ Leave a comment

If I ask people in general, “what are your thoughts about death? What do you think it would feel after being dead? Would you like to be dead?”, I am sure most of them would frown, and turn down the question as strange or silly one. There could be many reasons, some of them I can think of are…

1. People don’t like to think about death

2. People assume they are not going to die anytime soon

3. People don’t think there is something after death

4. People mistake death with pain, and they don’t even want to give it a thought

Continue reading “Coherence is overrated. Randomness is underrated. You will probably be dead tomorrow.” →

Love – from a different angle.

~ Gaurav Aradhye ~ Leave a comment

Jessi-with-roses

The story is from the old age when time itself was idyllic and nature was rustic. There was a sweet small girl named Jessi. Her father had maintained a beautiful garden surrounding their little home. Every day in the morning, Jessi used to accompany her father while he watered the plants. There were Mango trees, Coconut trees, and other fruit bearers and then there were Roses, Tulips and many more… Under her father’s tutelage, Jessi too learned to take care of the plants.

Continue reading “Love – from a different angle.” →

Returning the Unowned

~ Gaurav Aradhye ~ Leave a comment
ofs17
ofs17

 

Gently adjusting the tripod on the road, while making sure no vehicle interfered, he remembered the life changing moment for him. The frame he was trying to capture did not belong to him. But he certainly felt the responsibility to pass it on to the prisoners of risk-free boring life. Few months ago he saw a similar picture and got inspired to set on an exciting journey leaving all the fears behind. He had never liked his routine. Now he does.

I wrote this story for One Frame Stories Project. A new frame gets published every Friday and also the stories submitted for last week’s frame. You have to submit a story based on the given frame with maximum 99 words. It’s fun! You can read other stories based on above frame here.

Staring into the future…

~ Gaurav Aradhye ~ Leave a comment
One Frame Story 13
One Frame Story 13

 

It’s their routine. To stare into the future. They wake up at 5. Distribute newspapers door to door. And after doing a lot of hard work at “The Modern Garage” throughout the morning, when they get hungry, they grab some bread chutney and come here at the backside of the school. Through the slits, they look, they dream… of gathering enough money, of standing on the other side of the compound. Gnawing on the bread slowly, they pledge of not losing hope, every single day.

 

I wrote this story for One Frame Stories Project. A new frame gets published every Friday and also the stories submitted for last week’s frame. You have to submit a story based on the given frame with maximum 99 words. It’s fun! You can read other stories based on above frame here, and you can submit your story for this week’s frame here.