Forward Positiwe

Friday-September-24-2021 edition of Forward Positiwe, a community newsletter by Vishnu Goyal to inspire you do more, live well, and stay happy.

📋 Beds Are for Sleep and Romance: Don’t use the bed for watching television, talking on the phone, doing homework or eating and drinking.

💬 Our brain associates our surroundings with the activities we do there. If you do work and other non-sleep activities in your bed space, your brain will most likely associate your bed with work and all those other activities. And when you try to get to sleep in your bed, you might find it hard to fall asleep. 

Why?

Well, because your mind is kinda telling you that your bed is a place for your work and all activities. It’s no longer a safe haven for you to sleep!  

That’s why you should ideally refrain from using your bed space for anything but sleep stuff. If you have enough space at your home, avoid using your bed for work and other non-sleep stuff.  It’s a vital part of something experts call “sleep hygiene” practice and maintaining it can radically improve your sleep quality.

🔗 How to Get a Better Night’s Sleep – By Tara Parker-Pope – The New York Times

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📋 Sometimes you have to unplug yourself from the world for a moment, so you can reset yourself.

💬 If I may ask you to do one thing: Go offline for a while please and see what that experience brings to you. 

You won’t regret doing it.

I do it with Do Not Disturb mode activated for all notifications during non-working hours, pausing all noise. And sometimes, going for meals leaving the phone on the desk. It brings back the sanity of mind to me and gives me space to think better.

🔗 Good Vibes, Good Life: How Self-Love Is the Key to Unlocking Your Greatness – 📘 by Vex King

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📋 What will make us smile?

Well! It is the 2G! ‘Gratitude’ and ‘Giving’! When you are grateful or thankful for the goodness of others and for the things you have, you feel happy. If you try to disregard things you have, you lose your happiness. Similarly, when you give, you feel happy. Because that reminds you that your existence matters on this planet.

💬 So now you have a formula as well to keep smiling and staying happy: 2G of Smile!

Be Grateful for the good things and people you have in life. Keep Giving away things you can to support others. If not too much, just give a smile and let the ripple of happiness wander around.

🔗 2G of Smile! – By Tarun Goyal

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📋 Listen to music. If you’re not a fan of meditation, create a playlist with your favorite genre of music. Typically, classical or calming music is suggested, but there’s nothing wrong with a classic rock playlist if that’s what you’re into! Immerse yourself in the song, and get up to move with it. Just a few minutes of dancing can get your blood moving and refresh your mood.

💬 Chronically working long hours without taking breaks in between can lead you to experience temporary brain fog, a condition when you lose mental focus and clarity to think and feel confused. That’s one reason why you must keep taking short breaks, not just for the sake of your physical health but your mental wellbeing as well. Stand up and look away beyond the screen, climb stairs up and down, play a track you love, or just do nothing for few minutes after every hour of work or so.

🔗 The 5:5 Rule: How To Reboot Your Brain And Enhance Mental Clarity – By Sage Leaman – Clear Skin Regime

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📋 I once visited a day care center, where I saw three toddlers play with identical plastic toys. You had to slide the red button, and a cute doggie would pop out. One little girl tried pulling the purple button, then pushing it, and then she just sat back and looked at the box with her lower lip trembling. The little boy next to her watched this happen, then turned to his box and burst into tears without even touching it. Meanwhile, another little girl tried everything she could think of until she slid the red button, the cute doggie popped out, and she squealed with delight. So: three toddlers with identical plastic toys, but with very different reactions to failure. The first two toddlers were perfectly capable of sliding a red button. The only thing that prevented them from succeeding was that their mind tricked them into believing they could not. Now, adults get tricked this way as well, all the time. In fact, we all have a default set of feelings and beliefs that gets triggered whenever we encounter frustrations and setbacks.

Are you aware of how your mind reacts to failure? You need to be. Because if your mind tries to convince you you’re incapable of something, and you believe it, then like those two toddlers, you’ll begin to feel helpless and you’ll stop trying too soon, or you won’t even try at all. And then you’ll be even more convinced you can’t succeed. You see, that’s why so many people function below their actual potential. Because somewhere along the way, sometimes a single failure convinced them that they couldn’t succeed, and they believed it.

💬 If you think you can’t do that one frog-task on your to-do list or achieve that one special milestone in your wish-list or work-life — Rethink and retry, this time like that child who kept sliding the buttons of her plastic toy until the cute doggie popped out. 

🔗 Why we all need to practice emotional first aid – By Guy Winch – TED

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📋 When we wake up from our sleep we then realize that what we assumed was real was just a dream.

In the dream state every event that happened seemed real and true. Notably, due to this assumption, we experienced various emotions. We may be feeling miserable in a dream and simply by being awake and aware we see that all our misery ended. What if the dream was a beautiful one? Likewise, as we wake up we realize that was also not true.

This is the biggest gift of Wakefulness – a realization that we are responsible for creating our own realities, everyday.

However,most of us choose to lead a very mechanical life. We blindly follow the crowd, the trends and the ideals set by the society. We unconsciously tend to follow the rat race and create false beliefs, ideas and goals in life, assuming that this will lead to happiness in life.

💬 Ask yourself: “What I am getting done is matching what needs to be done?”

If the answer is no, you might probably be willing to shake things up. Because your thoughtful actions are the only bridge that can lead you from your dreams to your dream reality. Unthoughtful actions can burn that bridge. Do take extra care of how you’re spending your time and where you’re putting your efforts. 

🔗 A new leadership imperative called wakefulness – By Shri Shivam – People Matters

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Before you leave, a thought from my Scrawlbook:

Nobody can let you down unless you allow them to.

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Until next time, keep living your fullest, Mate ✌️

And feel free to forward Forward Positiwe to your family ‘n’ friends if sounds cool to you : )

Vishnu Goyal
Keep Doing Good Stuff
[P.S. You are amazing. Let no one tell you otherwise.]

Friday-September-17-2021 edition of Forward Positiwe, a community newsletter by Vishnu Goyal to inspire you do more, live well, and stay happy.

📋 Spend a few minutes outdoors

Try to go for a walk during any breaks you have during your day. Even a five-minute walk paired with some deep breathing can be the reset you need to restore your peace, decompress, and process any stressful interactions you may have had. Studies show that time spent in nature is linked to cognitive benefits, and also improvements in your mood, mental state, and physical and emotional health.

💬 I spend about 10-15 minutes almost every evening on the rooftop, strolling and just looking around. View from there: Trees, Metro, other people around, sky and few birds flying, and few more things. After the office work-time is over, it gives me the mood-reset I need to jump to other activities and do work on my side projects like Forward Positiwe and ZeroAdo.

So, just a gentle reminder: If you can go to a park or something for “outdoor” activities, great! Please go ahead. If you can’t slash short on time slash don’t want to go outside except for work, you can have kinda outdoor activity right in your home slash flat slash PG and still get a mood-reset and energy boost you deserve.

🔗 How to Protect Your Energy in Times of Stress – By Dr. Aaliya Yaqub – Thrive Global

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📋 No. Opt out. Unsubscribe.

💬 You can make more time for living by sparing less of it on unnecessary stuff. And these three words are a great reminder of this— “No. Opt out. Unsubscribe.”

Say no to things that mean nothing to you.

Opt out of assignments and work you don’t care about.

Unsubscribe from stuff you don’t need. 

The less you have to do, the better you can do it, the more you can live.

🔗 Opt Out – By Brittany – Less Less More

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📋 When I was a child in Catholic school, the nuns never tired of telling us how lucky we were. Of course we were lucky in the obvious ways that should never be taken for granted — lucky for our health, our food, our families, lucky to be able to go to school — but in the face of real disaster, our luck escalated dramatically.

At 9, when I came back to school after a car accident, they tallied up my good fortune: a broken nose, a broken wrist, my lip stitched back together, shards of glass still pushing out of my skull — it could have been so much worse! My sister was worse, she was still in the hospital. She would be there for awhile, resting between the white sheets of her astonishing luck. She should have been dead, and she wasn’t.

At the time, I thought the nuns were idiots. They simply refused to see how we suffered. But now — 48 years later — I think, man, were we lucky.

💬 Whatever bad situations you have been into, it could get worse than it really did. But the good news is: It didn’t. So, I believe you can allow me to say to you: You are lucky! Plus, that’s a positive outlook you can rely upon to feel good in all circumstances. 

For instance, having a bad job is better than having no job at all. So, having a bad job is being lucky. 

Being jobless with few savings is better than being bankrupt. In this instance, being jobless is being lucky. 

Having met with an accident but still getting to survive with a broken body part is better than losing life altogether. So, getting to live after an accident is being lucky. 

Take any situation, no matter how worse, you probably can find something in it to feel lucky about. And you can stay happy feeling lucky always. Isn’t that incredible?

🔗 Sometimes the Luck Is in the Fall – By Ann Patchett – The New York Times

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📋 Sooner or later, it happens to all of us: We put our trust in someone, only to have that trust betrayed. We get lied to, duped, cheated, bamboozled. It leaves us feeling foolish, and wondering how on Earth we didn’t see it coming.

💬 If someone has done “it” to you, you are not the one who did something wrong. By trusting someone, you did nothing wrong. It’s those fools, who betray you and hurt your feelings, who should feel guilty. So, never blame yourself if someone ever punches you in the back and plays with your emotions. Be chill and move forward, knowing you have nothing to be guilty about. On the better side, you get to see the reality. And living in reality is something you can be happy about.

🔗 5 Books About How People Lie, Bluff, and Con Their Way to Success – Next Big Idea Club

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📋 I have one friend, a CEO, who wants the time on his calendar to be as precious as the time on a U.S. president’s schedule (he told me this during a different administration). If a meeting only needs seven minutes, then just give it seven minutes. A different friend, also a CEO, set a company policy that if a meeting invite didn’t include goals, an agenda, and pre-meeting preparation, you could skip it. The acronym there is GAP — no GAP, no need to attend.

💬 “No GAP, no meeting.” — If you can implement this rule in your work-life, please do. 

I am trying too and have declined a few meetings without a pre-planned agenda this week only. I simply asked organizers over chat: “What is this about?” And most of the time, the meet was about something that could be easily dealt with over the chat or something I am not even working on. Saved few hours. So, this “No GAP, no meeting” trick really works.

🔗 A Reasonably Detailed Guide to Optimizing Your iPhone for Productivity, Focus and Your Own Health – By Coach Tony – Medium

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📋 we can be confident and uncertain, that we can be courageous and need help, that “I don’t know. What do you think?” is not just a seven-word reply—it’s an invitation to human connection, growth, and forward motion.

💬 As human beings, we are always work-in-progress, making mistakes, learning new things, not knowing some stuff, and figuring it out. 

So, even if you’re Pro at something, it doesn’t mean that you have to be “Know-It-All” and know all the answers right away. What’s important is that you know what needs to get done and be confident that you’ll figure out a way to do it. 

For instance, among other things, I am an SEO Pro too. Time and again, I keep getting into situations when some technical issue is reported with the website causing errors in our Google ranks, and I am not sure how to get that problem fixed. And that’s when I get the opportunity to do R&D on that new issue, figure it out and get it fixed. This “keep learning” approach has always worked. And I say with full confidence that I am an SEO Pro, and I can get any SEO issue fixed.

Key takeaway: Stay confident even if you don’t know your stuff sometimes. You can always figure it out and get it done.

🔗 Do Better Work: Finding Clarity, Camaraderie, and Progress in Work and Life – 📘 by Max Yoder

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Before you leave, a thought from my Scrawlbook:

No.

We all can use this word more often than we think possible.

Without feeling selfish.

Without feeling any guilt.

Without feeling like a slacker.

This simple word—No— if used wisely can save so much time.

Free up so much of the “busy” schedule.

And get us all the time we need to pursue aspirational and joyful activities.

Let’s say “no” more often to all the activities and work that are not really important and don’t bring back any value.

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Until next time, keep living your fullest, Mate ✌️

And feel free to forward Forward Positiwe to your family ‘n’ friends if sounds cool to you : )

Vishnu Goyal
Keep Doing Good Stuff
[P.S. You are amazing. Let no one tell you otherwise.]

Friday-September-10-2021 edition of Forward Positiwe, a community newsletter by Vishnu Goyal to inspire you do more, live well, and stay happy.

📋 “Everything you see in nature has some imperfection,” Spehar said. “And a dose of imperfection is calming, like in Japanese wabi-sabi,” the aesthetic and worldview that emphasizes the acceptance of imperfection and impermanence.

💬 If even the almighty nature has imperfections, how can we expect ourself, our life, people around us, and things we do to be perfect?

🔗 Need a quick stress-reliever? Try one of these surprising science-based strategies. – By Jelena Kecmanovic – The Washington Post

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📋 reframing a problem positively, have proven effective at preventing or reducing mental health problems.

💬 Next time when you’re in a problem, instead of pressing the possible negative outcomes of it and cursing the bad luck, try to think: “If there is anything I can do about it right now?” You will feel better and more in charge of the situation.

🔗 Adolescent Mental Health? There’s a ‘Vaccine’ for That – By Tamar Mendelson and Laura Clary – Scientific American

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📋 “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old; they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”

💬 In short, we don’t become old when we have lived for 60 or so years. But we become old the moment we stop learning new things thinking we have learned enough in life and know everything we need to know. We grow old the moment we decide that we have grown too old to start a new venture and live a new dream. And all these realizations lead us to the good news: When we will grow old is all in our mind! And so, we can choose to stay young as long as we want to. It’s year-less. No limit to it.

🔗 Stupid Things I Won’t Do When I Get Old: A Highly Judgmental, Unapologetically Honest Accounting of All the Things Our Elders Are Doing Wrong – By Steven Petrow – Next Big Idea Club

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📋 We either offload the responsibility of remembering moments when we take pictures of them, or we’re so distracted by the process of taking a photo that we miss the moment altogether.

💬 “To Remember The Moment, Try Taking Fewer Photos” – This one statement says it all.

See, taking photos is not bad at all. The focus here is “fewer photos” and not “no photos at all.” The idea is we should not be that busy capturing the moment that we miss living it.

🔗 To Remember The Moment, Try Taking Fewer Photos – By Daryl Austin – NPR

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📋 When I think about boundaries, I think of an experiment by organizational scholar Leslie Perlow. She went to a Fortune 500 company and she tested a quiet time policy. No interruptions three mornings a week before noon. On average, engineers spiked in productivity. 47 percent of them were more productive than usual. But the best part is that when the company made quiet time official policy, they had 65 percent above average productivity. I don’t think there’s anything magical about Tuesday, Thursday, Friday before noon. The lesson here is that we need to treat uninterrupted blocks of time as treasures to guard.

💬 Chats. Emails. Phone calls. Video meet requests. All-day long.

Amidst so many distractions, when do you have the time to get “real” work done and what can you do about it?

You can fix a few “uninterrupted blocks of time” every day when you are not active on any communication app, have blocked all notifications, put your phone on Do Not Disturb mode, and just doing the work all by yourself, free of usual distractions. That’s when you start finding your “flow.” Or, as Adam calls it: “That feeling of being in the zone.”

I loved this whole idea of “quiet time” and “uninterrupted blocks of time.” What do you think of it?

🔗 How to stop languishing and start finding flow – By Adam Grant – TED

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📋 There’s a notion that we should be able to handle things on our own rather than approach someone for help or advice. We feel like we should be able to figure things out, even if we’ve never been put in a situation before.

But going to someone familiar or reaching out to someone who was in a similar situation can give you that boost you need. Putting yourself in a strong position early on is important because it sets you up for better opportunities later. Getting help from someone to reach a destination is better than trying on your own and never reaching anywhere.

💬 Harsh but true: You can’t get ALL things done by yourself alone.

Have people in your network who know things you are dealing with better than you do right now? Just reach out.

Most of the great things we have in the world now were built by a “group of people,” a “team,” not an “individual.”

🔗 Your actions today determine where you end up 20 years later – By Melissa Chu – Ladders

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Before you leave, a thought from my Scrawlbook:

We feel despair because we have felt hope earlier.

And every time passes by.

If we keep moving forward, we surely see a new ray of hope again.

We just have to make sure we do keep moving forward.

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Until next time, keep living your fullest, Mate ✌️

And feel free to forward Forward Positiwe to your family ‘n’ friends if sounds cool to you : )

Vishnu Goyal
Keep Doing Good Stuff
[P.S. You are amazing. Let no one tell you otherwise.]

Friday-September-3-2021 edition of Forward Positiwe, a community newsletter by Vishnu Goyal to inspire you do more, live well, and stay happy.

📋 I believe that an overlooked route to gratitude is exposure to difficult circumstances. There are many basic advantages of life itself that we too often take for granted. After all, humans have a natural tendency to adapt and become used to situations that are relatively stable. When individuals become aware that their advantages are not guaranteed, many then come to appreciate them more.

💬 Before COVID-19, my life was going great. 

I got a new job in Feb 2020 and joined the new team on 2-March-2020. I was excited.

I got to travel from home to the office, daily, via Delhi Metro. I took it for granted.  

I got to work with an incredible team in an office with a great vibe and exciting things to enjoy.

I got to meet new people on my daily commute and have a chit-chat, walked carefree without a “mask” and visit any place in the city without going under a “non-contact body temperature assessment” and do many other “usual” things. 

Then, there was Corona lockdown, remote working, and do-all-things from home phase, and it’s still on. 

Now, I do realize how things I did consider so usual were so special actually. Earlier, I took all those things for granted that I am now grateful for. 

Now, I miss working in an office, traveling in Metro, having a chit-chat with colleagues on those small breaks, and every other bit of pre-corona life. 

And I believe you must have experienced something similar during this entire Corona phase. 

The lesson: Let’s appreciate things we have in life now. Those may seem usual only until those fly away from our life. Let’s enjoy whatever advantages life has for us now. Every bit of it is special.

🔗 The Opposite of Toxic Positivity – The Atlantic

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📋 Depression is living in the past, anxiety is living in the future, and joy is found living in the present.

💬 Can we change whatever negative or sad happened in the past? Nope. So, what’s the point of keep thinking about that and stay in despair?

You, me, all of us have made plans in the past for our future. Right? No harm in planning. Still, did our future turn out to be exactly as we planned? So, what’s the point in staying worried about the future and thinking: “What’s gonna happen in the future?”     

Past is history. It’s gone. Future is a fantasy no one can predict. What’s the reality? The present. Present moment is all that we have got. To work, to play, to enjoy, to be happy. 

That’s why we need to let go of the past and plan for the future now but not worry about it, to stay happy in the present moment. Present is joy. Joy is present.

🔗 Free yourself from the tentacles of pain with radical acceptance – Aeon

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📋 Happiness is more about subtraction than addition.

💬 More often, we think buying new things, getting that promotion, getting that side-hustle or business to the next milestone will make us happier. 

Yes, they do but only momentarily. The moment you get that new order delivered. The moment you get that promo. The moment you get your cheque from your first client. 

What’s next?

Will you have to wait for the next big thing to happen to be happy?

Or can you change your daily routine to be calm and happy everyday? 

I believe: You can.

And one of the best steps to make daily life happier is to subtract things from your schedule that are not that useful and at worst, bring anxiety, stress, and negative emotions. 

You know your schedule best and only you know well what are those things that suck most of your time and energy but don’t bring any value. 

Still, if it can help, let me share mine. 

One: I have removed all the social media apps from my phone, except LinkedIn. Deleting unnecessary social apps has saved me time I would otherwise spend on scrolling. 

Two: I am still using an iPhone 6S. No upgrade to Apple’s genius iPhone 12 etc. Because I have got all the essentials in 6S only. Don’t need an upgraded camera and all. [If you’re an Apple fan, please don’t hate me for this. Go ahead for your favorite Apple devices!]

Three: I was working on 5 different projects earlier and was not able to accomplish anything because of the time scattered all over them. Now, I am working only on Forward Positiwe and ZeroAdo. Just two. Those I am able to manage and grow. 

Four: I uninstalled the work chat application from my mobile. I am on PC throughout the workday and can reply right from there. Why keep a mobile app as well then? So now, once I am logged off, I can actually take a break instead of constantly checking notifications from my colleagues after office hours.   

To start, you can think about what apps eat most of your time – Can you delete them? About people in your network who make you feel negative – Can you try to keep yourself away from them? While shopping, think once: “Do I really need this stuff?”

Am positive that subtracting these things of very little or no use from your routine will make you happier.

🔗 5 Simple Things I Removed from My Life to Become Happier – Anthony J. Yeung

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📋 The Dalai Lama said, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

💬 Remember last time you did something to make someone happy? 

How did you feel right after?

Let me guess: “Happy.”

Yes. That’s natural. 

Whenever we make an effort to make someone else happy, we do feel happy too.

It’s simple humanity. It’s simply the essence of being human. 

We don’t even need to know the science behind it. It just works. 

Being kind to others and practicing compassion and gratitude can bring so much joy and happiness to you. 

Few small and doable ways to go for it–

One: Maintain a journal where you can regularly jot down things and people you’re grateful for.

Two: Help people in need like giveaway clothes or home items you no longer need, volunteer for a cause you believe in.

Three: Handwrite thank you note for someone you’re really thankful to. I did this once and it brought huge smiles!    

Others: Give it a thought. Am sure you’ll find new and creative ways of your own.

🔗 Finding Happiness – No Sidebar

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📋 People always say, “Follow your passion.” Well, I tried that. I sang opera. It ended up not being how I want to spend my life.

I took, I don’t know how many, personality tests. Nothing ever said I should be a farmer, except this little nagging voice saying maybe I could.

💬 “What shall I do with my life?”

“What career shall I pursue?”

“What shall I become?”

These questions fill our brain space, more than we think they do. 

We think a lot, discuss a lot, and then go for something we believe we’re passionate about.

Sometimes that turns out to be really good. Hurray!

But when it doesn’t, we realize that what we started didn’t come out as we thought it would. 

And we say to ourself: “I made the wrong choice. I shouldn’t have gone for it. I shouldn’t have done this.” 

Well, I’d like to say to myself as well as you that we didn’t make any wrong choice, perhaps.

While things didn’t turn out as we expected, but we got the experience at least. We got to do something that we thought was our passion. And now, we’re not hanging around the question: “What if I go for it?” Because we have done it. We have given it a shot. 

Now, let’s go for another thing. Another career. Another adventure. Another untraveled path.    

The new and unexplored path may not take you to the planned destination, but it will surely give you the experiences of a lifetime. And I think that’s what life is all about. Not the end, but experiences in between.

🔗 It’s Never Too Late to Ditch the City and Run a Farm – The New York Times

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📋 “What’s obvious to you is amazing to others”

💬 We can be so good at something, some skill, some craft, that we don’t even realize how much of an expert we are in it until someone comes to us and sing our praises!

This week, I was working on the new design of my website vishnugoyal.com. I got everything completed but could not figure out the code to fix the website header on mobile and tablet screens. I spent about 2 hours in research to get it fixed but no luck. Next morning, I reached out to my developer mate Yogesh for help who I call “Code Wizard!” He looked at my website, took about 5 minutes to inspect, and gave me the 8 lines of code. I added those to my website and boom! There I have my website header, fixed on mobile and tablet screens. 

When I told Yogesh that I did about 2 hours of R&D for what he just finished in about 5 minutes, his comment was: “It’s simple, bro.”

I thanked him in amazement.

Coding is obvious to Yogesh but to me, it’s magic. It’s amazing. I am more of a writer and marketer but no-coder.

That moment made me realize how special, amazing, and useful our skills are for others. And how each one of us has unique skills and powers that we can leverage working together. 

Our skills might seem obvious and no big deal to ourself, but for others those are magic. Exactly as Derek Sivers says: “What’s obvious to you is amazing to others.” 

So, if people have been telling you that you’re really good at something but you think that’s no big deal. Think again, please. You will find out how special and expert you are. And you can use that skill to make something creative, a project, a business, anything that can help people.

🔗 Music Tech Fest / Andrew Dubber – Derek Sivers

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Before you leave, a thought from my Scrawlbook:

Excuse vs Cause–

Excuse: May find thousands of those. Still not enough.

Cause: Only one is enough.

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Until next time, keep living your fullest, Mate ✌️

And feel free to forward Forward Positiwe to your family ‘n’ friends if sounds cool to you : )

Vishnu Goyal
Keep Doing Good Stuff
[P.S. You are amazing. Let no one tell you otherwise.]

Friday-August-27-2021 edition of Forward Positiwe, a community newsletter by Vishnu Goyal to inspire you do more, live well, and stay happy.

📋 Now here’s the good news for the rest of us: even just 15 minutes of moderate exercise a day (or 92 minutes per week) was associated with a three-year increase in life expectancy and a 14% reduction in risk of death by any cause, compared with a sedentary lifestyle, according to a new study.

Each additional 15 minutes of daily exercise (up to 100 minutes a day) reduced the risk of death by an additional 4%, the study found, and people who got 30 minutes of activity a day added about four extra years to their life expectancy, compared with their sedentary peers.

💬 3 years of extra life with just 15 minutes of exercise per day is a good deal. And if you’ve not been doing it, you should get moving now! Never too late to get started.

🔗 Just 15 Minutes of Exercise a Day May Add Years to Your Life – Time

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📋 The equation of life is 1+1=11.

💬 Life is one big journey comprised of many little journeys. You will face new challenges every now and then. Sometimes, you will need help. At other times, you will be in a position to help others. That’s why being with others when they need you and asking for help when you need it goes a long way. 

Together we can do more than we can do individually. And that makes the equation of life to 1+1=11, not 1+1=2. Incorrect, mathematically. More than correct, lifely.

🔗 The Equation of Life – Vishnu Goyal

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📋 To overcome your brain’s desire for instant greatness, it helps to create a wildly unambitious daily practice, something Carter calls a “better than nothing” habit. Simply take one of your goals and strip down the outcome into steps so small, so seemingly insignificant, that they seem almost effortless. For instance, if you want to be a runner but don’t remember the last time you walked a mile, don’t set a daily running target of 30 minutes. Instead, start with one minute. Really. If you want to start meditating, stop watching hour-long meditation tutorials. Rather, do some deep breathing for 90 seconds. If you want to eat more vegetables, add a single leaf of romaine lettuce to your meals.

💬 Start small but start.

You might not write a book in a day, but if you write a few paragraphs every day, one day you can have a book published under your name.

You might not be an expert coder today, but if you start writing a few lines of code every day, one day you can be an expert coder.

Whatever habit, skill or goal that you wanna achieve, start at zero. And go from zero to one. “Better than nothing,” as Carter says.

You will not realize when those small efforts accumulate to turn your dream into reality and a good habit you always wanted to develop.

An example from me: Before creating Forward Positiwe, I have been journaling and taking notes for more than 5 years. In Evernote, Trello, Notion, Google Keep, and a few papers, of course. Got no results back then, but all those efforts put into reading and note-taking do help now. A lot. And yes, it feels very happy to win at something you started.

🔗 How to Achieve Greatness By Being Mediocre Every Day – Stephen Moore

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📋 Don’t lie. We tell all kinds of white lies just to make things a little easier. But then you have to keep track of what you told everyone, and that’s just a f—ing bummer, man.

💬 Someone asks you: “How are you doing?”

You say: “Am doing well. Howdy?”

We always say “doing well” even when we’re not!

Well, that’s kinda a lie. But a fair one!

Yet sometimes, we do tell lies to people around, more complicated ones. Sometimes, we do it on purpose. Other times, circumstances make us do so. I have been there too.

Still, “don’t lie” – These two words are a reminder to make us rethink if we can tell less lies to people and consider our responses from a long-term perspective. And yes, practicing “don’t lie” will definitely make us feel a bit brighter and happier in the head.

🔗 Silicon Valley veteran David Selinger on launching a $5 billion company, working for Jeff Bezos and lessons for success – CNBC Make It

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📋 “How the hell could a person enjoy being awakened at 6:30AM, by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?” – Charles Bukowski

💬 Charles just left me speechless. Still, I have a reminder:

If you are not happy with your current job, company, or anything work, you can always switch. Switch to a different career, different company, different location. Change anything you are unhappy with.

“Who the hell are you to say this?” – You might ask me.

Well, back in 2018, I did make a scary move in my career that makes me believe so.

I quit my chartered accountancy in the final stage after investing more than 4 years of hard work. It was not fun, really. I wanted to pursue something on a more creative and digital side.

Before quitting, I had this thought buzzing in my head for months: “How can I let go of those 4 years?”

After much thinking, discussions with a few people in my network and family, I got the answer: “It’s all sunk cost.”

Just because I spent time mastering a career I don’t enjoy doesn’t mean I have to pursue it for the rest of my life.

So, I made the final move on Wednesday-January-17-2018 and moved to a career I had love for: Just creating stuff and scale it with marketing. More than 3 years since. No regrets.

Was it easy?

No.

Have to give probably more than 50 interviews before getting my first job in digital marketing.

But finally, it worked.

And a lesson I learned: It’s never too late to change and switch things up.

🔗 95 Charles Bukowski quotes that blew my f*cking mind – Cole Schafer

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📋 “Shipping beats perfection.”

💬 You have created something. And you want to share it with the world.

But you think: “It’s not perfect. I can make it better.”

What will you do next?

Either: Hold on, put more effort into making it “perfect” and release when it’s “perfect.”

Or: Go for it. Make it live.

Well, there is a difference between making things good and excellent versus making things perfect.

In fact, no matter how good of anything you create, there is always room for improvement.

In real world, perfection doesn’t exist. You and me can achieve excellence but not perfection.

We can never reach a point where there is no space left for improvement.

So, a viable approach is always to get your stuff live and keep making improvements along the way while real people use it.

If what you have created is good enough that people can use it and find value in it, just ship it. Don’t wait for it to become “perfect.”

Have an unreleased article, a book, an app, or anything stored in your system that people can use? Release it. And let your audience decide if it’s good enough.

🔗 “Shipping beats perfection” explained – Ben Kamens

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Before you leave, I suggest you try this exercise once:

Think about one thing that you thought was impossible for you but you somehow did it.

Note it down in your phone notebook or a diary that you keep close. 

And next time, whenever you come across something that seems impossible. Just refer to your note. While it will not make anything less challenging, I am sure that it will give you hope and confidence to go on and confront and win whatever is the challenge for you.

For me, it was building a mobile app. Had no knowledge of code. Kept doing R&D and finally, within 3 days, got it done. It was Minute Crunch for Android. While the app was not a success, it gave me confidence that if one puts effort into something, sooner or later, it will be achieved. And the same goes for you, me, and all of us.

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Until next time, keep living your fullest, Mate ✌️

And feel free to forward Forward Positiwe to your family ‘n’ friends if sounds cool to you : )

Vishnu Goyal
Keep Doing Good Stuff
[P.S. You are amazing. Let no one tell you otherwise.]