Cause Greater Than Effect
Why are you doing something that you are doing? This question should be the most important one we should be asking ourselves every single day, because once the effect wears out, the cause still remains.
The year is about to end, and as we enter another one, I was looking back at my learnings. This is the year when I experimented the most with my life, I did things that scared me the most, I found a workaround around challenges I faced, I tried a lot of new things to eventually understand what I want from my life and more importantly, what I do not want. I took a few good decisions, made a lot of mistakes and here I am summing up a few contemplations I have had over the year.
I realised that the most important question we should ask oursleves should be why we are doing something that we are doing. While it may come across as a cliche or obvious thing to do, yet it remains just as important always. My point is when we begin doing something, there is an initial thrill to it, something that the gifted Paulo Coelho calls begineer’s luck. In the initial phase, all seems good, be it a relationship, a marriage, a new boyfriend, a new job, a new city, a new task. As time moves on, the same things that used to excite you about someone or something, begin to wear you out. You get used to them and they start boring you or if not that, they start to come across as too obvious to be done. As humans, we keep looking forward to new things to do, new people to meet and new places to visit. While exploration is a good thing to do, yet there are certain things that we are supposed to hold on to, in order to be stable in life. I am writing this article for those set of things. These seemingly repetitive things need a strong why for us to be continually engaged with them. Ask yourself why is it that you are doing something? Note the reasons down. Re-read those reasons every day, in order to be constanly motivated by the why of things that are important. Keep reminding yourself about the reasons behind doing something, until it becomes a part of your core memory.
It is important because once the effect wears out, the cause still remains. You might not want to get up in the morning to study because the effects seem blurry but a strong why practiced continuously in the back of your mind might make you spring out of your bed. Getting out of bed, especially on a winter morning might seem very difficult, nobody wants to face the cold outside over the warmth of a blanket. Going out for a run when you can instead watch something on Netflix might seem as a stupid thing to do, nevertheless it is the right thing. Studying might seem like the most boring thing to do when you see your friends chilling. You can only get out of your comfort zone if you get your whys of doing something straight. I gave up on social media a while ago, because I noted down the reasons of doing so in the back of my mind very well- it disturbs my mental health, it is addictive, I don’t want to know about others through social media posts, the way people portray themselves on it is too fake to be believed, it dictates how I should look, what I should do, and worse, what I should think. Once I got my reasons straight, it became pretty easier to not go back. The effects are not very rewarding because FOMO hits you, you are considered old fashioned, you also feel the need to show the happening things in your life. The positive effects resulting from such strong causes are rewarding- your productivity increases, your reduced screen time makes you a happier person, you start living more rooted to reality, you do not give in to the consumerism and materialism engulfing the society, you do not feel the need to show off.
How to do this remains a subjective thing. It varies from person to person. I have a cousin who got into a stringent weight loss regime and got wondrous results in a few months. He told me that his only mantra for going for running for each day of the entire year was “Karna hai to karna hai”, which translates to, “You gotta do it, you gotta do it”. He did not consider not going for running or not following a certain diet as an option at all. He had his reasons straight. I was watching an interview of Virat Kohli where he said, “It never occured to me that I could ever miss a cricket match. Missing a cricket match has never been an option for me.” This says a lot about why he stands today where he stands. He has got his reasons straight.
As we enter the last week of this years and are ready to welcome another one, jot down your whys on a sheet and never let go of them, no matter what happens in the world and no matter what anybody tells you.
You may reach out to me on sdshivanidubey@gmail.com.
