Choice!!

My grandmother shared with me a wonderful advice over 10 years back:

" When we are teenagers, we think we have the power to change the world and set everyone right.
When we grow slightly older we realize that the world might be slightly difficult, lets stick to changing our country;
Some years later, we move to changing only the city, then only our society, then perhaps our family;
And right when our time is over we realize, may be we should have started by changing ourselves and the rest would have followed"

It took me over 10 years ( and thankfully only 10) to realize the truth of this advice. As of 12:30 pm today I have realized that managing myself is probably the most difficult task I have been entrusted with while I live. I should have been in the gym at 12:30 instead of cuddling up in my bed; I should have been blogging sooner rather than after almost a 7 months break.

Life is all about the choices we make, moment by moment. Some of these choices are the big life changing ones, while the others can be pretty small ones like choosing to write this blog post rather than day dreaming. Our life after all is a sum of all these choices we make. As Dalai Lama says that it is a human tendency to choose something that gives you pleasure or doesn't make you uncomfortable. However, one should rather opt for choices which give you happiness. 

A logical question is - Aren't pleasure and happiness synonyms? Well, no. Pleasure is something that lasts for a short time (might take you down for a guilt trip later) whereas happiness is long lasting. It might be uncomfortable in the start but it always leads to happiness, needless to say no guilt trips.

I now choose to be a bit more disciplined in life from now. The first step is to stick to the exercise plan for the Great Wall of China Marathon preparation. I have come up with a 5 days a week exercise program of my favourite exercises in the gym. And the second is to update this blog at least once a week.

When I named the blog "Lead the Change, Unleash the Development", it was more for leading the change in the world. From now, I change the context. It is driven more inwards. Lead myself to change and develop.