It's 27th of March 2023.. and the paragraphs you see below preceding the line drawn to mark then end of the post were written sometime in February 2019. It was a time of change, and so is now... 

It's amazing how it has already been 13 years since I first started this blog back when I was in university. It used to be a regular, one post every week or so, and then it became an annual event. I guess adulting got in the way.

Even in the beginning, the readership were pretty low, there weren't a proper niche or theme that I adhered to, mostly just random ramblings about how my life is or so. I doubt if anyone reads this anymore by now. It kind of became a personal space to express my thoughts in writing. 

For someone who reads very little, writing has somewhat been a way of expressing my thoughts. Some deep thoughts, some darker ones, but this place seems to help me satisfy that need to express.

Sometimes one year's worth of thoughts are poured into one post. 

Its usually during a significant event that I drop a post over here, and this time around it is no different. I've been working in my previous employment for 6+ years. Never had I imagined I could last this long in a company. I guess when you find a place that treats you well and gives you opportunities, you stay on with it.

All good things come to an end.

Not that anything bad happened to me. Things around me changed, and I realized while I've been given opportunities to progress, along the way I've also given up or rather felt afraid to move away from my comfort - something that a part of me felt uncomfortable realizing it. It felt like I was keeping myself away from my potential. So when I had an opportunity to work for my previous boss in a new company, I decided to join her. 

Referring to my point above that I am "someone who reads very little" I do like reading a lot, especially materials which are concise and to the point. But I am a slow reader, and reading takes up a lot of time and needs you to be in a state of concentration and isn't something that you multitask with. As someone who loves facts and information, I find listening to audiobooks to be very useful and effective - something that you can do on the go. There's something about listening that uses less senses than reading but can have a similar impact - information download. Within the span of 3 months I have already finished close to 10 books! How about that?

Many of the audiobooks I listened to had to do with Behavioral economics, Mindfulness Meditation, Self Help books, most of which are books about Psychology. It's so interesting how some of the books have different inspirations but have overlapping contents, and these are the learnings which have helped / are helping me through my journey in my career.

I'll list the books over here before I go into the lessons I learned and what they mean to me:

1) Search Inside Yourself by Chade Meng Tan - My audiobook journey started with this one book that my friend James recommended

2) The Truth About Dishonesty by Dr Dan Ariely - an interesting book about how we perceive/interpret truth and how we could use this to our advantage

3) The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar - how consumerism has shaped the way we make decisions and why having too many choices makes it hard for us to decide.

4) Barking Up The Wrong Tree by Eric Barker - this book talks about what we think about success is wrong - especially on what we understand is important in our success could be misled.

5) Linchpin by Seth Godin - one of my favourite books which is short but straight to the point - are you indispensable?

6) I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi - to be honest, this book is not the most interesting one but was a good reminder on how you should manage your money

7) Predictably Irrational by Dr Dan Ariely - another one by Dan Ariely where he shares insights about how humans are irrational and how organizations can take advantage of this

8) Rewire your Anxious Brain by Elizabeth M Karle - a very straightforward and made to be understood quite easily about what causes anxiety, and their solution. In this book she focuses a lot on Cortex driven anxiety (anxiety or worry that are driven by "thoughts" can be controlled by psychological means) and Amygdala driven anxiety (anxiety or worry that is driven by memory can be controlled physiological means)

9) The Worry Trick by David A Carbonell - In my opinon a book that is complementary to no.8 - this is a little more fun and simple, but helps you understand what causes anxiety and how to deal with
them.

There were a couple of other books which I have read but these were the more meaningful ones which have made an impact for me. 

I guessed I digressed a little. 

Coming back to the beginning of this post, my path has changed slightly. The last 5-6 years were very much focused on married life, building our nest and the last 2-4 years were about stability and managing our finances well. This year it will be about the path in our career, and to me this is a big thing - 6 years is a long time for a Millenial/Xennial/Gen Y (whatever it is that I'm classified as) and gives an ample time for one to build a lot of habits/routines and lifestyle. It's changing now and that scares me a little. The fear and anxiety of change can be frustrating and the key source of these is the information gap that exists. As human beings we crave for predictable outcomes and when don’t see the end point we tend to worry. And we all know worry leads us nowhere.

I am thankful for the books I read as they gave me the inspiration to embrace change and to seek for more growth and not to settle. One of the key themes around the books I read is your are what you think - if you think you can then you can, whether or not it takes you 1 day or 1 year to achieve what you want, it is your thinking that will decide if you will keep going or not.

When making the decision to move I had so much to fear for, what if I don’t feel happy? Am I losing the comfort I have here? Am I throwing away what I have built here? I really don’t know, but I noticed my fear was the effect what many psychologists would call “loss aversion” for every thing I think I could lose there’s every thing that I could gain too, but we are predisposed to think what we will stand to lose rather than gain. So I had to change the way I think about the positive impacts a change can do to me. Sure, there would be bad things but that’s life isn’t it?

The other thing I learned was how to contain my fear? One of the most discussed elements of anxiety and worry is the amygdala the part of your brain that is responsible for memory and the activation of the fight or flight mode. Fun fact: they say we only use 10% of our brains but what we often miss out is that 10% is used for conscious thinking. Most of our brain’s function are sub conscious like ensuring we breathe, making sure our motors move accordingly, storing memories, process information, activate our reflexes most of which we do not control. With that said, Amygdala has a privileged position within our brain, it can overwrite the functions of our prefrontal cortex (the part of brain responsible for our conscious thoughts). I think our gut feel / intuition has a huge connection to our amygdala that is why something “feels” right or wrong. As human beings we like to boast our ability to use our “sixth sense” our innate ability to foresee something happening. While sometimes it serves us well, most of the times they just don’t predict very well. The amygdala forms it’s Fight of Flight ability from generations upon generations of information and it was an important element of human survival. It decides sub consciously whether to run or fight when we are faced with danger. But as we progressed, the function of amygdala continues - to alert us when there is danger approaching.

These days we don’t face physical danger as much as our cave man relatives did. So our amygdala’s feature to protect us from threats which are not danger can be limiting to us. I believe that’s what has been driving fear in me. Seth Godin’s Linchpin said it in the most glorious fashion, her termed our amygdala as the lizard brain. All the lizard brain thinks about is to be safe, to fight only to ensure he could live another day and have sex in order to pro create. We no longer live in that world and we don’t quite need the lizard brain.

I don’t know about you, but I think I have developed a lizard brain and it is time I do something about it. Very strong words from Seth Godin but they are indeed painfully true.

So how to overcome the lizard brain? The lizard brain will fill you with fear, worry and anxiety in order to keep you from feeling uncomfortable. There are two things to recognise here: amygdala driven anxiety/worry and the cortex driven one. As I learned, amygdala is a privileged part of the brain so when you feel worried or anxious telling yourself things are going to be ok rarely ever made things better. Whenever your anxiety is triggered, you will normally be greeted by a increased heart rate or shortness of breath, that is how the amygdala signals to you that something isn’t right. This is when meditation or deep breathing would help. Realising your physiological triggers and practicing breathing frequently will help rewire your amygdala to be calmer. The other kind of anxiety trigger is  the cortex based trigger where you have your internal monologue that thrives on negative thoughts. This is when you have to consciously implant positive thoughts and regulate your internal monologue. One technique that is commonly taught in the books I read is what they deem as the “kind grandmother”. We always see our granny as someone who can...

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After 4 long years, I returned to my sanctuary, a safe spot, one of many, if you may, to again immortalize my thoughts in this lonely blog. And, we're back to discussing change. It's funny that I somehow come back here and read my drafts and posts like they were time capsules meant for a future version of me to reflect on my past as I walk towards the future. It's warm, fuzzy and hits different.

As write this, I have yet again joined a new organization - as they say, change is the only constant, and as we go on, shorter timeframes will be deemed longer - and this time, it's after 4 years.

After 4 years..

And the lizard brain lives. Thriving on a predictable, safe life, the lizard brain harbored hatred for change. Anything that breaks its routine, it shows disdain. Even progress were showered with fear and thoughts to ward it off. 

But somehow, courage prevails, even knowing there might be a barrier ahead - even though fear still lives within. 

I've taken up the job, and as I said 4 years ago, the fear of not knowing what's ahead sometimes feels like it's killing me slowly, but as I realize, the thoughts you manifest are your thoughts after all, and are only as real as you think they are. It's not easy fighting an internal fight, but as with all changes you have to fight your inner demons, proving them that whatever actions you have taken are good and will be beneficial.

And after 4 years, I'd learn ways to manage this, but every new changes thought from the surface seems similar are really different monsters that knows how to attack your weakness. 

But I am really thankful that I stumbled upon this post of mine - and I somehow feel that I am not alone, that the past version of me had done this before and he prevailed, and so it's a fight that I've to go through so the future version of me can look back and reflect that we've done this and we will keep going strong

And as they always say, tough times don't last, tough people do