Bitcoin: The Party is Just Beginning

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

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As of writing, Bitcoin is trading at USD 2,605, having surged from around USD 800 since January 2017. In addition to Bitcoin, other Cryptocurrencies have seen a surge too. Ether, another “digital token” that is intended as a medium for paying transaction fees on the Ethereum computing platform has risen in value from USD 10 to about USD 200 in the same time period. Other Cryptocurrencies such as Ripplecoin, Zcash, and Dash have also seen an explosion in value.

What are people saying?

Public opinion towards Cryptocurrencies has always been divided. However, with the new surge in the market, opinions have become even more polarized. Sceptics hinge on Bitcoin’s first impression as being a black-market currency and call this a bubble, while proponents contend that this is a global currency that is just going mainstream and can indeed go way higher.

So what is actually happening?

A number of market observers are right in noting that Cryptocurrencies are exhibiting bubble-like behavior. For Bitcoin, which isn’t backed by a central bank or doesn’t have a market regulator, this is particularly true, as its value is purely notional. Ether, a digital token that is incorrectly regarded as a Cryptocurrency, has real-world utility, but is still in an early experimental state that does not justify its current market price. In addition, the potential supply of Ether is infinite, unlike the Bitcoin – which has a finite supply hard-coded into its design. Long story short, the critics are right – we ARE in an ebullient Cryptocurrency bubble, and a painful correction is certain – but not imminent.

Why is this happening?

Skepticism notwithstanding, Cryptocurrencies are taking baby steps to going mainstream. In many countries, authorities are actually studying Cryptocurrencies, and exploring ways to regulate them. Even in notoriously conservative regulatory jurisdictions like India, sites like Unocoin are permitting people to buy Bitcoins for cash. Zebpay, another platform, allows you to make small payments using the currency. Each passing day, Bitcoin in particular inches close to mass acceptance and has thousands of new users signing up.

Value as a currency aside, the Blockchain technology that cryptocurrenices are based on has tremendous potential. Ethereum, as a technology platform, has just begun to explore this. A number of Ethereum projects such as the DAO, Akasha, and Gnosis have received an enthusiastic response from the market and have been successful in raising millions of dollars in funding. Today, hundreds of companies, in technology, banking, media, communication, and logistics are looking at ways that Blockchain technology can be leveraged for profit. When these efforts mature, platforms like Ethereum will achieve their true potential, as their Software as a Service (“SaaS”) offering will give users access to obscene computing power at a minuscule cost.

The most prominent factor in this bubble right now, is the Cryptocurrency casino. The utility of the Blockchain and the growing acceptance of Bitcoin do not entirely justify the surge in Cryptocurrency prices. However, millions of people around the world have discovered the speculative opportunities in Cryptocurrencies and have begun to trade them for profit. In fact, all Cryptocurrency trade today may be attributed to speculative trading, as the amount of Cryptocurrency used for actual transactions is microscopic. This is not unprecedented. According to the Bank for International Settlements, global trade in foreign exchange (“FX”) was about USD 5.4 trillion per day in April 2016. Incidentally, the total value of the world’s money – currency and bank deposits – is about USD 81 trillion (Source – CIA World Factbook – 2015). To put this in perspective, money equal to all the notes, coins, and bank deposits in the world changes hands every 15 days on the world’s FX exchanges. This entire market is speculative – run largely by multi-million dollar computers playing against each other. In comparison, the cryptocurrency market, valued at around USD 60 billion, is negligible.

The Cryptocurrency market is gaining in speculative appeal, but this journey is just beginning.

The Japan Factor

Japan is the most mature market for FX speculators in the world. Ordinary Japanese citizens generate a trading volume of hundreds of billions of dollars each week. Starting April 2017, Japanese regulations have made it easier for their citizens to trade Cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, and as the chart below shows, a large part of Cryptocurrency trading today is in Yen. Bitcoin, with its massive swings, is the perfect currency for a bold FX trader. In fact, the mainstreaming of Bitcoin will accelerate now that Governments are taking notice.

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The party is just beginning

The number of people trading Cryptocurrencies is increasing. Global events that harm public faith in institutions are accelerating acceptance by lay people. Major moves in cryptocurrencies can be seen after events such as Brexit; the demonetization of high-denomination notes in India; and anti-speculation measures by Chinese regulators. An increasing number of freelancers are accepting Bitcoin for international payments to avoid expensive bank fees. With each passing day, people are finding new use for Blockchain technology and are solving complex technological problems with platforms such as Ethereum.

The market for speculation is growing rapidly, as a number of highly secure and versatile trading exchanges are offering investors the option of trading Cryptocurrencies against regular currencies. These exchanges form strong and influential interfaces with the mainstream financial system. Indeed, a number of derivatives houses are already writing “exotics” pegged to cryptocurrenices. As such activity grows, Cryptocurrencies will attract more investors and the resultant demand will drive prices higher.

The entire market will see expansion. Unlike conventional currencies, Cryptocurrenices are freely traded against each other. This creates arbitrage opportunities between pairs and exchanges. All major Cryptocurrency exchanges permit algorithmic trading by end users. Large scale exploitation of arbitrage opportunities will cause prices to even out in the long term. The wide swings seen in recent years will become increasingly uncommon, and as platforms like Ethereum increase their operational utility, the trends in individual currencies and tokens will lean towards fundamentals.

There WILL be a crash

From Tulip Mania to the Dotcom bust, rabid speculation has always led to devastating crashes. This is likely to happen even with cryptocurrencies. Thanks to platforms like Ethereum, there is now a low barrier of entry to Cryptocurrencies. Today a lay user with minimal experience with solidity – Ethereum’s programming language – can institute his own currency and even make it freely tradeable with minimal effort. Projects like DAO and Gnosis are large-scale examples of this. Additionally, rapid advances in computing, networking, and storage technology will uncover deficiencies in existing cryptocurrencies, leading people to newer products and causing obsolescence of older ones. Many people who trade wildly will be completely wiped out.

And then a resurgence

However, like the Dotcom bust preceded a fundamentally sound expansion in the Hardware, Internet, and Mobile sectors, the fundamental appeal of Blockchain technology WILL drive resurgence in the industry and bring about mainstream businesses in Blockchain. Indeed – a Blockchain-based ERP system would be impossible to manipulate in order to deceive investors, regulators, or tax collectors. Corporate entities structured in “smart contracts” on platforms such as Ethereum could do away with Audit and Compliance functions entirely – saving massive amounts of money that could be better applied to innovation or worker welfare. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain are here to stay. Will we one day have a global economy where money and services flow freely across international borders free from protectionist measures and oppressive taxation? Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies can deliver – but today, we can merely dream.

Trump Is Just a Symptom

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

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‘Trump rode into the White House on a wave of xenophobia, fear-mongering, misogyny, helped by blatant boasts and brags.’  – Sandipan Sharma on Firstpost.com; 17 May 2017.

The press needs to stop saying stuff like this. This would imply that the majority of Americans are racist, misogynistic, and paranoid. As much as sections of the non-US media would support this assertion, I reject this. The incessant repetition of this half-truth has become somewhat tiresome, so I decided to go back to the New York Times’s Exit Polls to see if I had any fresh ideas.

Note: The percentages mentioned in the following paragraphs are not absolutes, but are based on the respondents to the exit polls cited by the New York Times.

So, did he really ride a wave of racism? Well, the fact that he won 8 per cent of Black votes and 29 per cent each of the Hispanic and Asian votes doesn’t really support that assertion. Despite open support from organizations with anti-Semitic leanings and other religious prejudices, 24 per cent of Jews and 29 per cent of those of “other” faiths too voted for him. Misogynist? The 42 per cent of female voters who voted Orange may disagree. Oh yes, there was his bragging of groping women, but obviously, the aforementioned female voters were willing to let that slide – perhaps given other factors that they considered to be more important.

So, what were the big questions? Coming back to the NYT’s Exit Poll, 59 per cent of those who foresee a better life for the next generation voted for Hillary. Conversely, 63 per cent of those who saw a bleaker future voted for Trump. Let’s tie this to another question – that of Family financial situation. 72 per cent of those whose financial situation had improved since 2012 voted for Hillary, while 78 per cent of those who had seen a decline chose Trump. So who were these people?

According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, the unemployment rate has plunged from 8.3 per cent in January 2012 to 4.7 per cent in December 2016. The DJIA has risen from about 12,200 in January 2012 to about 17,000 at the time of the election. The S&P 500 has rocketed from about 1,427 in November 2012 to 2,400 today. So more people are working, and people’s investments are doing well – so whose financial situation has declined? I’ll hazard a few guesses. Perhaps the underemployed – those who have college degrees and student debt, but haven’t been able to find jobs that would afford them a dignified life. According to a study by Accenture, more than half of US workers who graduated in 2016 stated that their jobs do not require their college degree. Maybe the ageing – having built lives in America’s golden age of growth – they find themselves pushed to the wall by healthcare and living expenses after a life of honest toil. There are other factors too – Trump’s support base came from suburbia and small town America. Evangelical Christians overwhelmingly voted Orange – despite Trump’s arguably unchristian ways. They likely saw him as the candidate whose agenda was not centered around gay rights, abortion, or bathroom privileges.

The conditions that led to Trump’s victory did not come up overnight – they were probably building up over the years. Let me conjecture – a labour gap caused by putrid educational system triggers an inflow of foreign professionals who advance financially and professionally and build a privilege base for their children. Automotive jobs get moved to Mexico – cities that came up around these companies decay without the social or urban rehabilitation that such a drastic shift requires. Rising income inequality triggers radically divergent health, education, and social outcomes, creating a greater social and ideological divide. I could conjecture all day.

Each question on this poll opens up new questions. Who really is looking for answers?

The Current anti-Trump discourse in the US suggests that not much thought that gone into the reasons behind the election’s outcome and where the Democratic Party lost the plot. Trump opponents are waxing delusional – “the electoral college will do the right thing” or “He’ll be impeached within a month” and so forth. There is no indication that any serious thought is going into what has just happened. People are amusing themselves with satire – which may soothe their bewilderment, but will not solve anything. Let the Democratic Party sit down and run a detailed analysis of the reasons they lost. No, it wasn’t the Email scandal; no, it wasn’t Russian interference, no it wasn’t an image issue. They must resist the temptation to break this into bullet points. There are complex causes that led to this outcome – the analysts need to come up with one MASSIVE fishbone diagram that should lead the structure of the Party’s manifesto into the next election.

In one way, Trump’s rise to the Presidency has been the manifestation of the Gandhian proverb – “first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”. He’s won. The mocking must stop. If anything, it alienates the people who voted for him. There is no dialogue if your interlocutor feels that he is being treated like a fool. Contempt and scorn breed anger. Anger will pave the way for the next beast that will be far more hideous than we can possibly imagine.

Own It: Leadership Lessons from Women Who Do

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

A well rounded book of personal stories and sound advice.

Books on professional development, more often than not, tend to be a uni-dimensional and disguised boast. Authors of such books – often successful executives – use the benefit of hindsight to weave a “strategy” to help one succeed. These books often lie within demographic bubbles that make them irrelevant to people from other cultures. The bullet points at the back of Aparna’s book seemed like generic career advice – but it was the Preface that sealed my decision to buy this book. Aparna claims that she interviewed 190 women in senior leadership positions, and I was eager to hear what they had to say. Divided into six dense chapters, this book certainly says a lot!

The first section on Biases, Bullies, and the Boys’ Club contains a number of first-person accounts. Those hoping for a string of happy endings will be sorely disappointed. While there are some stories of women who have been able to prevail over the patriarchy ingrained in corporate systems, there are poignant accounts of the emotional and psychological damage that such workplaces can cause. More often than not, the woman leaves the company for a workplace that is more woman-friendly.

The second section, Pinstripe Predators, deals with sexual harassment. Here too, there are few happy endings. Most of the accounts in this section describe the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that ways that companies protect their predator stars. There is a balance though – the section mentions cases where sexual harassment laws have been unfairly used against men – for instance – to cover up a consensual affair.

The third section – The Man and his Mother – is particularly relevant to the Working Woman in India. While I know that married women face challenges at home when it comes to balancing work and a career, I had no idea that this affected even women at the top of the corporate ladder. This chapter was very interesting, Aparna mentions strategies that women have used to manage their relationship with their husband’s family. If you’re a working woman who is married or plans to get married, this chapter is the strongest reason to buy this book.

Pregnancy, pumps, and paternity, the fourth section, dwells on the challenges that pregnancy and children pose to a woman’s career. This section too, is rich with strategies and sound advice on delegation and enrolling spouses and family to pitch in. Like the other sections of this book, this too tells the other side of the story. Aparna includes case studies of how companies today are establishing support systems for employees who take a break to have children. Crucially, she cites real-world instances where corporate leaders prove that this makes business sense.

Diversity is just a ‘Danda’ discusses how diversity initiatives range from being merely a checkbox to functional programmes that lead to an inclusive workplace. Aparna’s interlocutors highlight regulations such as the mandate for female independent directors on company boards and comment on how these can be used effectively.

The sixth section, the Woman Impedimenta, was the most valuable section of this book to me personally. Aparna is really in her element as a coach and communicator, and has very sound advice for anyone in the workforce. She prescribes actions, attributes, and development goals for anyone seeking to advance in corporate life. I read this chapter three times, and now, starting a new job, plan to read it again. Man or woman, college fresher or middle management, you NEED to read this chapter.

Overall, Own it was an enlightening read. While this book is aimed at women in the workplace, Aparna steers clear of the slippery slope of criticizing and commiserating. She deals with difficult topics and relays sound advice from women who have shown up, owned it, and prevailed. The anecdotes, told in graphic detail, enroll the reader in the situation, the issue, and the solution. The section on “Man and his Mother” is unique, and is a must read for any Indian woman. The Woman Impedimenta has crisp and actionable career advice for anyone at any stage in their corporate career.

There are some rough points though – a financial planner interviewed in this book suggests that gold jewellery is a sound investment. In my opinion, this is inaccurate, and the realizable value of gold jewellery can be as low as 50 per cent of the sticker price. People would be much better off learning the basics of investing – deposits, mutual funds, etc, and self-manage a small portfolio. The information is freely available, and all it takes is a few hours each month to keep oneself abreast of market movements. Investments in equity, real estate, and alternative assets would need help from a professional.

An account in the book describes the disintegration of a marriage after a couple repatriated to India and the man, who was no longer working became a couch potato and a slob. This account, I felt, offered an overly simplistic view of what could have been depression triggered by a transition to “trailing spouse”.

You need to read this book if:

You’re a woman in the workforce

You’re a woman about to enter the workforce

You’re a people manager or aspire to be one

You’re an entrepreneur with an idea who is planning to start a company

You’re a man who has been a mute spectator to sexist or predatory behavior and has been at a loss for what to do

Buy on Amazon 

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

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img_5213-2A chronicle of human despair with hope for the future

Yuval Harari is a historian and a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His earlier books (which I haven’t yet read) appear to be on military subjects – “Renaissance Military Memoirs: History and Identity”; “Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry”; and “The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture”.  With Sapiens, Harari has made an ambitious attempt to chronicle the journey that Homo Sapiens has taken over the past 100,000 years.

In Sapiens, Harari suggests that three “revolutions” have played a pivotal role in getting humans to where we are today. The first, the Cognitive Revolution, enabled humans to develop fictive language that allows people to tell stories, and further, believe in “shared delusions” such as God, Human Rights, and Peugeot. The Cognitive Revolution supposedly allowed humans to unite in larger social groups under shared fictions such as religion and national identity to thrive in an environment where competing humanoid species such as Homo Rudolfensis, Homo Erectus, and Homo Neanderthalensis failed. Consequently, it is either through genocide, or winning the contest for shared resources, that Homo Sapiens prevailed and remain the only Human race on the planet.

The second revolution, Harari postulates, is the agricultural revolution, which marked a transition from the forager lifestyle to the creation of human settlements. The consequent food security permitted human energy to be directed to the development of arts, commerce, and science.

The third, the scientific revolution, brought colonization of the entire planet, improved lifespan, and a more integrated global society. Harari tracks how science, politics, religion and business worked hand-in-hand to bring humans together. Despite what the media would have us believe, Harari suggests that we are currently living in the most peaceful and just period in human history.

This book, however, is not a history textbook. Harari points out that while historians have kept track of events, they haven’t really chronicled human happiness. Are we happier? Harari suggests that given the workings of human consciousness, a peasant in the dark ages who believed in heaven may have been happier than a modern atheist trying to amass experiences and achievement before a final oblivion. This thread segues into a subtle plug for the Buddhist practice of mindfulness. A criticism of the cruel treatment of domesticated animals is another key feature of this book.

In his conclusion, Harari stops short of offering a prediction for the future – perhaps his publisher wanted him to save that for the sequel – Homo Deus, which is also on my reading list.

Harari has an easy, immersive style, peppered with witticisms that relieve the intellectual stress for the lay reader. That being said, this book is dense, both in information and insight. Meticulously researched and heavily annotated, Sapiens is a brilliantly written book that I highly recommend.

Buy on Amazon – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Review: Move Your Bus by Ron Clark

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

I first heard about this book in a talk by a corporate leader, and made a note to add it to my reading list. My Kindle has been the cause of impulse-buying in books, and this book too, sat on my unread pile for months. I finally got around to reading it over the Christmas Holidays, and have since been kicking myself for not doing so sooner!

I can confidently state that Move your Bus is the best management book that I have read in 2015.

Ron Clark is a US-based educator who runs the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, Georgia. From what I gather, his eponymous school uses innovative methods, reportedly improving education outcomes among students. Clark’s three previous books are on education theory, and this has been his first book on corporate performance. One would expect that an educator would have little to say in matters of managing a company, but Clark is also a high-performance entrepreneur, operating an enterprise that fulfils a critical social need.

The basis of this book is a Flintsones’ style bus, with the floor ripped out. The driver of the bus provides direction with the steering wheel, but it is the passengers who provide the power for mobility in the same manner that Fred Flintstone drives his car. Clark applies this analogy to teams.

Clark describes the passengers on the bus as Runners, Joggers, Walkers, and Riders. The Runners, he states, are the overachievers – individuals who put their professional performance above everything else in life. There are then the Joggers, who perform well, but are not as driven as the Runners, characterised by patches of brilliant performance. The Walkers, according to Clark, are those who just “go with the flow”, doing the bare minimum to stay productive. Clark defines one more class of employee – the Rider, who invests no effort, yet finds fault with people around and is generally “dead weight”; slowing the team down.

In this slim volume that can be read in a single afternoon, Clark paints insightful images of these types and highlights how the first three fit into the team’s dynamic. He also discusses strategies to best utilize them and drive them to peak performance. Clark has an easy, conversational style that makes this book an easy read. Though loaded with anecdotes from Clark’s own life and career, the book does not sound preachy or pedantic.

One major shortcoming of this book is the way in which Clark deals with the Riders – the underperformers on his bus. His language seems to suggest that organizations summarily fire such employees, as any effort invested in them is a waste. This, I believe, is a very simplistic view of a complex issue. Professional underperformance may have various causes – right from willful inertia, which of course warrants Clark’s choice of action, to pathologies such as clinical depression and social disorders. There is a dilemma here – should a company invest in attempting to ‘fix’ an underperforming employee in what could be a poor business decision, or should there be an ethically difficult “culling”?

Over all, Move Your Bus is a great resource for people managers, regardless of their career stage. Clark practices what he preaches in education – this easy-to-read book is rich in information and insight, and will leave you thinking for weeks afterwards.

Simplicity

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

Since December 2014, I’ve been working on two fitness goals – first, to drop the flab that I’ve put on since mid-2013, and second, to strengthen my left shoulder after a round of physiotherapy. I’ve had a lot of tools at my disposal – because of my background in the martial arts, I’m a strong believer in bodyweight exercises; I also have kettlebells that I’ve used to shed some serious weight in the past. Additionally, I’ve always supplemented any weight-loss effort with High Intensity Interval Training, usually in the form of sprints.

Since February though, I’ve faced trouble with my left foot, which made me drop sprint training. To compensate, I built a weekly programme of alternating bodyweight and kettlebell training. This went on for a while, but the lack of gains in strength and endurance sent me back to the drawing board. After all, to come home on Friday evening with sore shoulders and no energy is not what I expected from my exercise regimen.

Two weeks ago, I stopped the Kettlebells. My exercise regimen now comprises only bodyweight workouts, with alternating days of upper-body and lower-body work. For weight loss, I relied on a high-protein / low carb diet that has served me very well in the past.

The change has been amazing. With a good 48 hours between workouts, my body now has time to recover, and I’m able to push the performance envelope, with data to prove it. I’m also losing fat. The best thing of course, is the improvement in temperament, which makes me look forward to each day’s workout.

There is a lesson in this – simplicity.

My goals were simple. I had enough (too much?) information. I wanted to try everything to get the maximum effect; however, what I did was to just wear myself out. It’s scary to think that I brought myself so close to another injury that would have taken me out of action for 3-4 months.

This is what my current workout looks like:

Upper body: Push-ups; Pull-ups; seated dips; Scapular pull-ups. I do two failure sets of these exercises in this order, with a timed one-minute rest between sets.

Lower Body: Deep Squats (butt to heels); forward lunges; single-leg Romanian deadlifts; side lunges; calf raises. I do two sets of these exercises in this order, with a timed one-minute rest between sets.

Further reading

Mark Lauren’s You Are Your Own Gym is a fantastic resource for bodyweight exercises. This is a well-illustrated book suitable even for beginners. A related app available for iOS and Android helps users build workouts and follow a 40-day plan.

Mark Lauren’s You Are Your Own Gym (Flipkart): http://fkrt.it/Ggn4MBNN

Mark Lauren’s You Are Your Own Gym (Amazon) http://amzn.to/1CycgJ2

Bodyweight Strength Training Anatomy by Bret Contreras is for athletes who want to get more into the dynamics of each exercise. This is a great resource for instructors and trainers.

Bret Contreras: Bodyweight Strength Training Anatomy (Flipkart): http://fkrt.it/GA~kXYNN

Bret Contreras: Bodyweight Strength Training Anatomy (Amazon): http://amzn.to/1BR8ZK5

Desperate Measures

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ 2 Comments

Every now and then, I see posts in the social media, where people wishing to “get in shape” go on a “program”, “cleanse” or “detox” for anywhere between three and 30 days. In India, this has hit a whole new level of insanity, where brides to be embark on an extremely aggressive programme that includes weight loss and skin lightening in the weeks leading up to their wedding. It is perhaps thanks to a culture of instant gratification where people expect tremendous results in an unrealistic amount of time. The fad diets aside, these unrealistic expectations coupled with a supersize helping of slothfulness have spawned a multi-billion dollar industry of pills, potions, and machines that are supposed to give you that body of your dreams.

Coming back to the fad diets and detoxes, a large number of these are “very low calorie diets” that will cause a serious calorie deficit, and consequently some weight loss. However, the first few kilos lost are usually “water weight” which will return within days of resuming old diet habits. Frustration aside, there are potentially dangerous side effects. Sustained low calorie intake can destroy muscle tissue and weaken vital organs. Fad diets that focus on a single food or food group can leave the body deprived of essential nutrients and trigger other illnesses. Even if there is some weight loss, it is unsustainable in the long run.

In my journey from 108 Kgs to a peak-fitness weight of 74 Kgs, I learnt 3 key lessons that ALL the information on weight loss breaks down to.

Firstly, no matter what TV infomercials, pumped up fitness trainers, or that overweight diet expert in your office tell you, weight loss is a function of calories consumed vs calories expended. If you burn more than you eat, you lose weight and if you eat more than you burn, you gain weight.

Secondly, good health has a little to do with calories and everything to do with nutrition. Your diet must include a complex range of micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals to ensure optimum health.

Thirdly, exercise is critical to preserve (if not build) strength, mobility, and endurance.

Getting healthy is not a weekend project or a month-long plan. It is an aggressive reprogramming of your mind and body and includes critical changes to every aspect of your life. If you make the changes and follow what works consistently, you will succeed – else, you will be stuck in the vicious cycle of crash diets and magical supplements.

A Mindful Approach To Emotional Pain

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

Every one of us nurses some sort of emotional trauma. It could be disappointment related failure, grief at the loss of a loved one, perhaps the agony of a broken relationship or even the numbing melancholy of loneliness. Such pain takes long to disappear, if ever, and often comes right back, triggered by the faintest memory.

Mindfulness, derived from Buddhist meditation practices, is a system that teaches practitioners to focus on sensations and emotions as they occur in the present moment, purely as what they are, by suspending judgment and self-criticism. In the book Mindfulness: A Practical Guide To Finding Peace In A Frantic World, Mark Williams suggests that emotions and sensations are like seasons that pass, and that enduring sorrow and unease is a result of self-criticism and a preoccupation with what is long gone.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to meet a European psychiatrist who claimed to have worked widely with PTSD sufferers. Drawn in by the prospect of obtaining free medical advice, I began to talk to him about some of the unpleasant incidents that I had experienced in my past – that I felt controlled my life, even at that point. Moving our conversation to a more private location, he asked me to get specific, to recall events and emotions.

The exercise was extremely painful, and left me in tears. While I was composing myself, he called for a dozen notepads. When these arrived, he told me to write down my account in as much detail as possible. When I was done, he laid it face-down on a coffee table and asked me to do so again. I did this perhaps ten times while he proceeded to drain the hotel room’s rather varied mini-bar. This took around six hours.

When the coffee table was covered with notepads (or more likely, the bar was empty), he asked me to pick up and read aloud the first account that I had written. When I was done, he asked me to pick up the last one and read it aloud too. It was incredible. In the course of that one evening my recollection of the emotions surrounding those events had changed substantially. I realized that perhaps my mind superimposed emotion on those memories each time I recalled them.

Williams discusses this in his book. He talks about how we exist on two planes – thinking, and doing – and how, while these are states that are essential to human existence and individual growth, their overuse or unnecessary application yields negative results. Williams goes on to describe a third state – being – when one exists in a state of acute awareness of sensations and emotions that one is experiencing at that present moment. This is the state that Mindfulness meditation strives for.

Nowadays, whenever a negative emotion strikes, I look at it objectively, and try to establish if the pain is just because I am being judgmental of myself. While it is normal to experience sadness, anger, and despair in the course of life, a vicious cycle of self-loathing is perhaps at the root of chronic unhappiness and myriad addictions.

Mindfulness has been a useful tool for me to find balance. Never being a meditating person myself, I found it extremely hard when I first began. Now, I long for those fifteen minutes of quiet each day. It has changed the way I think and react.

References: Mindfulness: A Practical Guide To Finding Peace In A Frantic World

Buy on Amazon India at the link below.

Paperback version:

Kindle Version:

Buy on Flipkart at the link below:

http://dl.flipkart.com/dl/mindfulness-practical-guide-finding-peace-frantic-world-english/p/itme3h3z6myya3zg?pid=9780749953089&srno=t_2&query=mindfulness+frantic+world&affid=ajitnatha

A Fitness Lesson From The Red Queen

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ Leave a comment

In Through the Looking Glass, the sequel to Alice in Wonderland, Alice complains to the Red Queen about remaining in the same spot despite running for quite some time.

“Now, here, you see,” the Red Queen Retorts, “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

How like fitness.

For the past month or so, I’ve been following an upper body training programme to recondition my shoulders and arms after about six months of disuse in the aftermath of the latest episode of my pinched nerve acting up.

I’ve been doing two sets each of push-ups, pull-ups, dips, and hanging scapular retractions. In case I encounter muscle failure before hitting my target, I cut intensity – moving from push-ups to kneeling push-ups and from pull-ups to negative pull-ups for instance. For the few days I seemed to have plateaued – though somewhat smug about the numbers that I hit.

Today, however, I decided to push harder, and raised my targets by 25 per cent, counting my reps backwards. Interestingly, I hit my enhanced targets on push-ups without any issues, and exceeded my previous counts on all the other exercises. This means that for the past one week, I wasn’t really growing – silly, silly me!

Sometimes, in the absence of an instructor or pace-setter we tend to be too easy on ourselves. This temptation is particularly strong when one works out solo in the privacy of a home. Fitness is like the Land Beyond the Looking Glass – you must run twice as fast just to stay in the same place!

So, here’s the change in strategy – my new targets are a minimum of 25 per cent beyond my highest good-form reps, with targets revised every 10 workouts.

Let’s see how this works. Watch this space!

The Yabut Monster

~ Ajit Nathaniel ~ 1 Comment

yeahbut

‘’Yeah, but a diet like that is very hard to maintain when you’re living with a family.’’

‘’Yeah, but after a day at work, even ten minutes of exercise is asking for too much.’’

‘’Yeah, but exercising in the morning will totally throw my day’s schedule out of gear’’

‘’Yeah, but I’m a foodie, sticking to a diet like this will totally drive me nuts.’’

‘’Yeah, but quitting cigarettes really messes with my head.’’

All of us know the Yabut monster – he kills our quest for a better life while it is still a thought. Most of us have some sort of a life goal – something that we want to change about ourselves to be stronger, wiser, healthier, or more attractive. Being thinking people, we also know what would get us there. Unfortunately, the evil Yabut monster rears his ugly head to nip our efforts with a ‘but’.

Growth is a never-ending process, and especially in matters involving the human body or mind, change is never a phase. If you strive towards something, you will have to push far beyond, because complacency and stagnation at your goal will cause you to lose your gains.

This means that any change that you wish to make in your life requires a much greater commitment than you actually think. Indeed, as soon as you make a decision to change, your mind starts putting up resistance, giving you reasons to back out gracefully with the satisfaction of having noble intentions that were unfortunately thwarted by insurmountable obstacles.

All the obstacles are inside your head – it is mainly the really smart people who fall prey to the Yabut monster. Only once you have defeated the voices inside your head, will you be able to make any lasting changes in your life. So every time the possibility for a desirable change comes up, and your response to it begins with ‘Yeah, but’, remember that the Yabut monster is just behind you, setting you up for failure.