Travel as much as you want, your giant always stays with you.*

I had a friend recently ask me, “how can I do what you do, travel and see the world! ?”

Here’s the secret sauce : Don’t do what you want to do. Do what you can’t imagine not doing for the rest of your life. (1)

Even the most beautiful and majestic of nature’s demonstrations can turn monotonous if seen through a bus window, packed with miserable people to and from their way to work every single day.

My friend for example, wants to work in a particular industry. Well, I asked him, do you read and write about it? Do you know the history, important people, upcoming trends? Do you have a very specific opinion about a raging problem? Do you have a peeve about the way things are done and you can’t let go of it? Have you tried talking to people, meeting people with similar interests and opinions? Blogged about it? Emailed people, tweeted to them? Do it.

Want something? Well, what are you doing about it?

There is nothing stopping you from “a good life” but a mental barrier. Also, have healthy respect for luck. While it is never a good thing to have too much good luck, and nothing real is usually achieved through luck alone, it does play a large role, so you must take things with a pinch of salt. In my case, there were very fortuitous circumstances that have led me to where I am today. I had the right degree, learnt the foreign language, there was a necessity, the allure of an exotic location, the right contacts, and I was absolutely unwilling to stampede along to a Masters degree or an IT Job.

The problem then is one of self belief. Do I really deserve this? Have I earned this? Am I really capable? Self-doubt is one of the most difficult things I struggle with. Yesterday, however I had a very interesting conversation with a super successful entrepreneur who escaped from the threat of Gulag and Soviet Russia to arrive in the US penniless and made it big. When I was telling him about this very problem of self-doubt, he laughed and said, “Did you not choose to study? Learn a language? Equip yourself with skills, and finally the most important thing.. CHOOSE to take the risk involved? That’s all you need to know to put your self-doubts to rest” . Although this obviously isn’t a panacea, it has given me a very interesting insight and gone a long way in silencing my demons.

Make a choice and be responsible about it. Accept all that your choices entail.

Another example of such mental barriers is one that relates to learning. Especially adult skill-learning. Let’s take a few examples :

learning a language

learning guitar

learning to code

There’s a lot of stuff written about learning. Things like plateauing, the competency curve are very useful and informational. To me one of the most important things is “pushing through” . Here, I use the analogy of making Yoghurt or dahi jamaana in Hindi. Making yoghurt is pretty easy : just take a spoon full of yoghurt that has been kept outside the fridge for a while, put it in boiled milk and just let it be. After a certain period of time, voila! Good, fresh yummy yoghurt. Right up until the yoghurt is ready however, it tastes awful, just awful. Right up until you have the right quantity of fermenting bacteria, and because they grow exponentially, there is no intermediate stage between fresh milk and fresh yoghurt that tastes good.

Learning is quite often the same way. Learn the syntax, keep debugging till it compiles and works. Conjugate the verbs, garble the pronunciation, keep listening to noise till it makes sense. Practice chromatics and scales, keep sounding ugly till one morning your fingers slide across the fretboard. There is no intermediate stage that will please you, but let it ferment with practice. Keep at it, and you’ll have Yoghurt.

Go learn.

— Sagar