Neutral thinking

**Note before writing this blog - This blog speaks about something I always felt in life but I think I got words to express these thoughts after reading of Know thyself

I always I like to (love to) read books. I was reading Dale Carnegie and Shiv Khera for quite some time in my college days and continued with some of the books talking about the positive attitude even after college. Though reading books by Dale Carnegie like "How to win friends and influence people" or reading something from Normal Vincent Peale like "The power of positive thinking" makes you happy for the moment. If you loose contact with these books chances are you will forget this superficial positive thinking course.
Why? either of the positive or negative thoughts makes you think of the partial side of the object. I have belief that half truth can never make you really happy, it can take control of your conscious mind for some period of time but it will never be able to satisfy your sub-conscious mind (rather soul). It is as simple as if I keep looking at the positive part of the number line I am never looking at the complete number line - I am only looking at part of it, and to face the real world we can not ignore negative numbers.

What I believe could be the ideal way of looking at things is 'Neutral thinking' i.e. Neither think positively nor negatively - just observe the things as they are, and never 'how they should be?'.

How can neutral thinking help me?
Neutral thinking could help everyone because then you do not get positive or negative surprises or chain of inter-woven positive and negative thoughts. This is because I am not thinking about something - I am just looking at it. When I think with positive or negative perspective then having the perspective of looking at the subject makes the subject hard to digest - because then you do not look at the actual subject - you just look to verify or you make fool of yourself my making your mind convinced about the thought which is not real.

When I say that I am born to win then it makes my mind constrained to think of victory as the purpose of life, is winning the purpose of your life? Does winning matters more or the joy of play? I am convinced that for me the joy of playing matters much more than winning. What if I loose? - I need not think that I will win next time - but I should look forward for the joy I will get from the next play. Though I have used the word joy here I think really what I mean is 'feeling being an alive part of the play' than just a stupid player who plays not for himself.

So decide what you want to be optimist, pessimist or just an observer.

"Stop Forrest stop"

Forrst Gump is one of my 'The Favorite' movies. I remember one scene from the movie when the actress (don't remember name in movie) says Forrest 'Run Forrest run'. The impact it makes is amazing, Forrest is able to run without the supports for his legs.
When I see people around me running and I sometimes think to stop them and ask "But why are you running?". I think many of them do not know why are they running. The most common answer I think they will give is "Because everybody else is running".
Me: but why everyone else is running?
X: because one has to run, without knowing why.
Me: But why are you following them, if you don't know why they are running.
X: That is what I am doing from the time I am born.
Me: so you do the thing that everybody else does.
X: Why - what do you do then
Me: I am trying to find that out. Trying to get our of the rat race. (Pause) What do you think you will achieve running like this?
X: Well I am sure that you won't achieve anything without being part of the race, at least I am running with them.
Me: But I don't want to be a part of the race, when I do not know where it is heading, I do not know why everybody is running and I don't know what will we achieve at the end of it?
X: What do you want to do then?
Me: Is not the life possible without race?
X: I never thought of it.
Me: Neither do I, but now want to do it.

I may not be a good story writer to narrate what I wanted to say (neither do I care - I am writing these blogs for myself)

But I see same unspoken conversations happening around and within me many a times.

If you do not believe me that we are part of rat race then I will give you following examples (at least they prove to me that I am {was?} part of rat race)
1. I want 25% salary hike because even the dumb as* in the office is getting 20% (I failed to ask myself does I deserve 25% - my reason is - even the dumb as* is getting 20%)
2. I don't understand how could I get 56% when the dumb ABC has got 63% (I should have asked what I wrote in exam - why should I think that if 63 for ABC then 70 for me?)
3. I should have a laptop - man all of my friends have it (do I need it? - rather for many the question is do I know how to use it and what is it's use?)

Life would be much much easy if simple answers like - manager is agreed to my reasoning, university agreed with my reasoning or I bought laptop whether I need it or not.
It becomes a habit. By becoming a part of rat race we set our standards based on what people around me are and not on what are my capabilities?

That is why I was thinking now it is time to say "Stop Forrest stop", stop to have a close look at your life, stop to think what you want to do, stop to search who you are, stop to listen to your own mind. Do not run in the rat race where nobody knows where s/he is going. Do not run in the rat race where everybody is living somebody Else's life (without understanding why). Do not run in the race where you forget the basics of life. Do not run in the race where you forget yourself. Do not run in the race which makes you stop dreaming. See your own dreams Forrest, do not make others ideas your dreams.

What will be use of "stopping to think"
1. I won't have to keep confirming from 1000's that what I am doing is right (because I know it is right)
2. I know what I am going to achieve with what I am doing (because I have planned for it and was working to achieve it)
3. I know the road I am traveling (I know what road I am traveling because I have chosen this road)
4. I will be in control of my life.

So Forrest please stop to talk to your mind, let the world run...

Knowledge is inter-related

I do not know who said this first - "Knowledge is inter-related", I heard this most of the times from Dr. Vijay Gokhale sir.

When I learned "Fluid mechanics" first our teachers/ books used to give analogy of Electric current to understand flow of fluid.
Voltage is analogous to head
Flow rate is analogous to current
so on...

Before that in 11-12th class I had taken Electrical technology as optional subject, in ET class our teacher used to tell us that - to understand how current flows take example of water flow (fluid flow :)).

After that almost 6 years after studying fluid mechanics and ET etc. subjects I went to class for UNIX, and Gokhale sir told us "Unix Operating system is analogous to mother", study of study operating system is study of mother!

In my engineering days I read one book on Thermodynamics (Authors - Cengel and Boles) - in this book the concept of entropy and process efficiency is explained by giving analogy or ordered person (low entropy so more efficient) and dis-ordered person (more entropy so less efficient). I have not understood some other theories but some authors prove entropy with help of statistics.

Coming back to the original point - "Knowledge is inter-related".

I think some long long time back there must be a concept of scholar who is expert in every field (rather I will call him as a generic expert). Then as humans became more and more knowledgeable they started feeling a need of subject expert. Then the generic expert started getting known by the profession they are specialised in. People started calling the expert in health and medicine as Doctor, expert in machinery and construction as engineer and the experts who were interested in social service became politicians. Then I think people started differentiating in between these experts and they formed opinion that Dr. only knows about health and medicine and the engineer only about construction and machinery, time passed and in the run of time these experts really became subject experts, they forgot that they are scholars. Dr.s stopped studying engineering (it was not their subject) and engineers stopped learning things related to health and medicine.

On today's date when I go to Dental surgeon he cant give me medicine on heart and the heart specialist cant be consulted for kidney disease. Civil engineer do not know about automobiles and automotive engineer is dumb in problems of Power plant.

I think computers are bridging this gap now a days. Unfortunately they are also distinguished as Mac OS for artits, Linux for developers, UNIX for administrators, Windows for layman and so on.

I think a day will come when all these diversed experts will find need to learn the others subject to become a scholar. For example if I am mechanical engineer working on sit-system crash analysis and I udnerstand the rib-structure very well!! and the same mechanical engineer if s/he understands the FEA algorithms which are doing the simulation behind the scenes!!! and s/he also understands the one should be proactive - no need for managers in this world!!.
A day will come when religious scholars will understand that what is said by Shree-Krishna in Bhagwad geeta is same as the what Jejus said in Bible and what Mohammad paigambar said in Kuran. There will be no war on the name of religion!!

I hope and I pray that day will come.

I search

Hi all, I know most of my friends are used to my statements like - "I have taken leave and sitting at home in search of truth" or "I am reading something and think that it is helping me in my search for truth". I know many of you find it funny, sometimes I think same. Is not it funny to search for truth?

Why do we have to search for things which are within us like truth, happiness, love? Are these things external? or is it the thing that we have lost them in search of comfort and short cuts to success .

I remember my old good engineering days when I used to think quite a lot about engineering fundamentals. My ideas of engineering design and analysis were quite different. I used to think that I want to get the real knowledge of the subject and to achieve this I used to buy 5-10 reference books for the fundoo subjects like Mechanical Design, Strength of materials, Theory of machines, Thermodynamics and so on. On today's date unfortunately (or rather fortunately) I am working in software development and when I look at Mechanical engineering, sometimes I am able to find the design intent very easily. Now I do think that it was not wrong to read 5-10 reference books for the subject, wrong thing was reading 5-10 books without completely understanding one.

After wards when my journey started in software engineering, I did not repeat my past mistake I took only one book at the time. First one was Denis Ritchie for C programming. When I started with COM and failed to understand it I took Bjarne Stroustrup, but this was strong dose for me and could not understand this book, so decided to learn Thinking in C++ volume one, this was quite helpful and after this fortunately the language in Bjarne Stroustrup was quite understandable, and after Bjarne Stroustrup's book COM books were quite understandable.
When I did some reading of COM books like Don Box and Dale Roggerson (these are names of Authors - books are Essential COM and Inside COM) I thought that I am expert but then I got opportunity to meet Dr. Gokhale and he made me rethink about it. The truth was - "I was practically almost 0". So sir (Dr. Vijay Gokhale) suggested me simple thing - solve all the problems in C++ FAQ book, without looking at a single solution and this worked quite well. Before solving these FAQ questions I failed in 2-3 interviews (this was shock to me earlier I never failed in interview) and after solving the FAQ book (only about 25% to 35%) I gave 3 interviews and was successful in all of them. So I was not wrong in reading but I lagged in the practical side of the study. After that I did same kind of study of subject called "Data structues" studied it from Tanenbaum and then without referring the book wrote code for all (almost) kinds of lists, stacks, ques and little bit for trees and performance in interviews went to great from good.

I think in this C++/ software engineering learning journey the experience I gained is more important in the aspect that "how should we learn?".

Is not the same kind of mistakes we do in our daily life. We buy book like "How to win friends and influence people" and so on and so forth and at the end we understand that what I am doing something superficial and then get towards the books like "7 habits of highly effective people" which talks about paradigm shift and the basics that we should accomplish first. And then after 1-2 years we realize that I have read it but how much am I following out of those learnings? Sometimes we even hate those books thinking that I wasted my time reading it. We think so because we failed to practice it.
I think the reason we think negative is sometimes we go ahead with assumptions which are far away from reality and we ignore the truth about those assumptions because we want success at any cost and the hunger for success makes us ignore the reality and when we face reality then we become helpless and go into negative mode.

So what should be the answer to minimize the entropy (disorder) in life -
1. We should do the things, understanding the whats/ whys and hows about it.
I will give here simple example - when I was new in software development and I used to work on any development I used to find a way to do it, Once I get some way of doing it I used to say that my work is done. Then TL used to tell me from his experience that why should I do the same things some other way (I used to wonder why). As the time passed I started understanding that to be a good developer one has to answer these questions
i. "What am I doing?" is important because if I do something other than "what" I was supposed to then what is the use of doing it (unless i have done something next to Newton or Einstein). If I keep my focus on what then it is obvious that I am going to get the expected (because I am doing what was expected - required)
ii. Why is sometimes more important than what. Sometimes we keep on doing something and then this why comes - I have done this development to get this result - but "why" do I did it in the way I did? Was there any good alternative? "Why" I did not thought of that alternative if it was better?.
Sometimes the answer of why can be even more useful when - "Why am I doing it when somebody else has already done it - why not to use it as it is or with modification - why to duplicate?"
iii. How am I doing something is sometimes very important in long term. Many a times this how is ignored in the inertia or doing things faster but time comes and we understand that what was working is not extensible. The Architecture is very rigid and do not allow us any flexibility in making design changes. The reason is we failed to answer the Hows in while doing it.
So to be a good developer I need to continuously keep my eyes open to answer these Hows - it is not just what I do but also important that How I do it?

2. We should do the things when we are quite confident that I love what I am doing
I used to work in mechanical industry earlier and was quite good in work (off course because I used to love my work and understand it too) when I came to software industry and was struggling in the initial days I understood that it is not important how much money you get from this profession it is also important that "Do you love what you are doing". Fortunately after getting my basics clear I definitely love the job of software developer - it gives me opportunity to think in the shoes of God - since as a developer I am something similar to God for the product I design.

3. Don't do things for others - do it for yourself
Many times I hear complaints from friends that "I have to sit in office - because my manager do not leave office earlier", I think sitting long hours in office is wrong if you are doing it to please somebody else. It is not important to please somebody else. Our life is really quite short and it is practically almost impossible to keep pleasing everybody - accept this in case of boss as well. Doing your work with your best is important. We get paid to do the job not to please managers/ bosses. Fortunately in my last company and current company I got the bosses who care about work and not about the timings.
I do not say that stay late- stay there if you want to do so. I remember I used to sit in office for complete night when I started with software job. My problem was I wanted to develop software as good as I used to design mechanical engineering products, so to learn things fast I used to go to office on Saturday morning and then studying the code till I feel sleepy I used to return on Sunday afternoon at home, I never felt tired by doing so - the reason was simple "I was doing it for me" not for anybody else.

I think I am speaking only about work - but is the personal life really very different?
Let me find can these 3 points help me equally in personal life

1. What Why and How
- Yes I should understand what am I doing about the things which matter to my family/ myself
- Why is equally important - I go for outings with family because it makes me and them happy. If it does not then I should not go.
- How - How I spend time with family is equally important, How much is the quality of that time, spending time with family will really be great if your actions and words come from within.

2. Do things only when you love doing them -
To have long term and strong relationships it is important that I love the people/ myself - if I don't then the relations cant be really strong and long termed.

3. Do it for yourself, don't do it for others - -
When we think that "I am doing it for somebody else" then we are thinking that I have to do it and it is responsibility and there is no alternative and so on. Doing so does not every time make you happy, rather it can make you run away. Doing it understanding the importance of it in my life makes me do it for the future I have seen with these actions.

I will write again on this. I know it is not complete but I am happy that I wrote it.

What is our purpose of life...

This question is the difficult most for me to answer up til now. At the time i was doing my engineering i used to thought that i am born to design the best mechanical machinery and if i don't design and if i don't make new machines there will be nobody else in this world who can do that. But now a days i am working with the software industry, after getting the feel that how inferior somebody can feel if he is just having great number of years of experience but who can compete with you. When i came to software industry everything was new to me and again i was taken up by the passion that i will design the software which will be unique and the algorithm i will write will rule the world. I was also reading Ayn Rand at that time and i used to think that i have got the goal of my life.

I failed to understand there was till one more goal i totally neglected, I was wanted to become the best son for my parents to be the pride of my mother. Unfortunately i was so busy with my work that i could not even think of taking some time to spend with my family also the career goals in the design were total failures. Unfortunately my mother died and i couldn't manage to get the opportunity to be with my mother and to support my mother in her last days. So i though that to become a good son should be first goal and soon realized that if i don't work well and if I don't keep 24 our bond with my job this goal is also useless.

Now i think that is not it the goal of my life to work for my country and to do something for the society and i tried a little to become the social worker but i could not find anyone with whom i can really work, i want to work and not want to pretend to show that what i am doing. I think that is useless and to achieve this goal now i think that i should better get in to the politics and should become the minister to serve the nation but when i look at most of the politicians i feel like rather than they serving the society the society is serving them.

I started reading some material on Swami Vivekanand and i think that it will be a great help for me on my path.

Am i unable to find my purpose of life or the thing is that i have more things to do than what is feasible in one life?

Can somebody share his her experiences?

Hello all, I am continuing this blog after long time.

I think all of the "I want to be I have written before" are to some or more extent externally driven. There are some of the odd which we think that "I have to..." and the influence of safeguarding oneself in the situation is so much that people start thinking in the way "This is what I want to". The real thing is one can not want to do something because one has to do it. After the 2 years of experience with 2 MNCs and other experience interacting with the people from various backgrounds and various goals now I realise that "Very few people in this world understand what they want to be" most of the others are only trying to covert the "have to" into "want to".

So what about my search? yes the first aim was the right one. I liked mechanical engineering and I liked studying functioning of machines. Its almost 1.5 year I am not in touch with any of the mechanical engineering subject but till today's date I sometimes amaze people working in the mechanical engineering domain with my analysis of the Mech products. Regarding the Software development I think that software development is the right job for the people who want to face challenging problems. A software developer has less to do with the software engineering knowledge and more with the Problem solving attitude. I have the second quality and Software development job has the challenges.

Now I think that there can be a best thing I can do my combining my knowledge areas that is to work in the field which can offer Mechanical engineering problems to be solved using software. The opportunity to develop products useful for mechanical engineers. And yes again I am talking much about "have to things".

The real challenge is to discover "What I want to be?" the second question which is more difficult to solve and which makes me think of other alternative to the first answer is "Why do I want to do this?".

I think I should start meditating to get the solution for these 2 questions at the same time. I have realised that while meditating we some times really go to the roots of the problems. Because while meditating we know that there is no point convincing my own mind that "A = B" if i repeat it 100 times :).