I’m back. After a wholesome nap…
I needed it.
I just organised Kalyani Inter School Cubing Meet 2023 at my school. Cubing is the sport of solving the Rubik’s Cube as fast as possible. (In super simple words). And this time I noticed the rising non-participation of school students in OFFICIAL cubing competitions.
Honestly, the registration fees of a single official competition is well above 500 Rs. 🙃 And a lot of us don’t have supportive parents.
And so decided to organize a small Inter School Competition. So went off, opened Chat GPT some weeks before. Typed in ‘I want you to write a convincing letter to allow me conduct an inter school cubing competition at my school’. And that was it.
I slashed the registration fees to just Rs 25. Me feeling extremely rich and sharing dollars in poor gullies in India ';)
Next day, I submitted the letter. And the day after that, I was called my Principal sir to discuss further, he kinda liked the idea.
😉
So spoiler if you are organizing an events or something… Never expect that all the invited people would definitely come, unless you are distributing free drugs and money.
We prepared a draft (Chat GPT is a good friend 🤖). And as the vice-school captain, I had to go with the School Captain to invite all the schools. There were nine, including us. And only 2 other schools came to the competition today.
So, the competition which I thought would have around 45 participants had only 15 participants today. And guess what, it went well.
The less the merrier because the managing shit gets less burdened.
My expected friend Srijan got the first trophy (I didn’t participate ;) ). Though he is the fastest in the Kalyani region probably.
Well, organizing feels above participating… What I mean is when you are participating, there’s a simple urge to becoming the first. But organizing anything… whether it’s just a family get together, these things make you feel sorta God.
God in the sense, of creation and managing the entire shit.
And technically speaking, this type of vibe around you… your competition, your planning, and all the participants have to follow it to get the carrot they want, again the carrot which you bought… this is different. And never had a taste of it before.
Like the moon, humans go through changes. Oh sorry! using ‘humans’ kind of feels indifferent…
Like the moon, people go through changes.
And a lot of us, a huge lot of us, don’t realize that the ultimate constants in all our lives are PAIN & CHANGE.
Whatever’s permanent, is ultimate, perfect and supreme and with change, everything comes a stage of upgrading itself. Without change, humans would have remained freaking apes still now and probably you would have been itching your own back without your reason instead of reading this post.
Pain… a four lettered word. It starts from birth and continues till you die.
Just like Development (Life-time perspective of development, I’ve been reading psychology for some time)… Pain has a different as per the context it represents…
Sometimes, it’s torture.
Sometimes, it’s agony.
Sometimes, it’s effort.
Sometimes, it’s mere pain.
But most of the times, it’s suffering.
Suffering has a meaning. And humans must find their own meanings in the suffering they go through every single day they wake up. That suffering is called LIFE.
Life, no matter how beautiful it is… must contain suffering. It’s the darkness that makes you hope for the light.
The little suffering can go a long way. Because until or unless, you struggle your way through, YOU ARE NOT IMPROVING. NOR YOU ARE GROWING THROUGH CHANGE.
And the one who is under the control of EGO, is STAGNANT. And here’s the thing… stagnant people die on the inside, they are eaten from the inside and they don’t even realize it.
There’s a huge importance of saying NO which I have realized recently. Saying NO, doesn’t mean ignoring a particular thing or work.
Moreover, saying NO allows you to give more on the things which are more important to you.
So, the fact is you choose your pain. you choose your struggle.
And most of us don’t realize this but one of the main questions which everyone should ask themselves is What are you willing to struggle for? What are you willing to sacrifice for in order to get what you want?
And the truth is a lot of thing are just zero sum… You give time to read Physics, you be good in Physics. And when you are giving time to Physics, you aren’t giving time to your weak point - in my case Chemistry, so you are lacking in that.
The point is Organizing one’s life is about making choices… it’s about making the right decisions (your decisions) which would ultimately define what you are willing to struggle for.
Without struggle, there’s no change. Without change, there’s no growth. Without growth, you are as good as dead.
Sharing a little personal story… 🙃
At the start of my Class 11, the first thing I did was to eliminate the social studies subject off my subject list. I dreaded social studies, even though I got 99 out of 100 in my Class 10 final exam. That was the highest marks which I got in any subject.
So instead, what I did was I SELECTED 7 SUBJECTS 🔥 for my Class 11. The maximum thought-to-be was 6 subjects. But I had researched earlier and for CBSE schools, the maximum limit is actually 9.
So, firstly my subject list was just robust: PCM Eng Drawing (Commercial Arts, fancy name huh) AI and Psychology. Look I just hated Biology, even though I’m pretty amazing at the practical part ;)
And Drawing was because I draw pretty good, better than the average. It’s kind of a scoring subject so that’s the main reason.
Psychology was out of genuine love.
AI… Well, most were taking Computer Science (CS) and I had always liked to be DIFFERENT and UNIQUE. And trust me back in Class 10, my python basics were just top notch (not like now)… in the half yearly exams, Class 10 would sit with the Class 12, and I remember solving Class 12’s CS paper because the guy who sat beside me couldn’t do it. And turned out that the guy whom I helped was a 60% student, and he got an amazing 92 marks in CS (90+ in just that subject). 🤓
But recently, after 4 months, things have changed. And have become quite focus about what I wanted to do with my life. It’s 1 year and a little more months… and after that my application would start. And trust me when I say this, I don’t have any amazing thing to show off in my College Applications (CA).
No million dollar businesses, no amazing organizations, no research paper, etc.
So one thing was open… it was trying for a Gold at the Physics Olympiads. And right now, solving questions JEE Advanced level questions and completing both Class 11 and Class 12 simultaneously is a little bit hard.
And Olympiads generally start in the last week of November. So out of time, but I’m making it my top priority.
So, had to take some decisions in my godamn life…
No clients taking in my Class 11 and class 12.
No businesses starting, no investors pitching, clients cold emails, DMs, video audits, etc.
And only focusing my time to this Physics Olympiad.
And so, here are changes I had to do:
Got myself out of the business groups. I’m part of Katrons which is a 2000+ community of business minded people. We are on Telegram helping the like-minded.
Only doing things which would make an impact in my CA: like being a part of RHA, organizing these inter school comps, etc.
And reducing time on less important things…
And that’s the main reason why I have 5 subjects now 😅. I dropped Drawing because I wasn’t learning something which I wanted to. And today, I submitted the letter of dropping AI out of my subject’s list because I completed the entire AI book and realized that I was more into making an AI out of pure code than to know the theory behind it. So reduced my extra pressure.
Well, all of our lives, we are chasing… And after that chasing is over, there might be hopelessness or there might be happiness.
The opposite of happiness isn’t sadness, it’s hopelessness. A cold grey area of no hope. And a person must organize his life in a certain way to get his maximum time into the things that truly matter to him.
We won’t be till the end of the universe. We would be here till our time comes…
Before that, having fun by engaging into the things that matter to you and enjoying life as a whole are perhaps, the only thing that matter… and which should matter.
It’s not about being smart… It’s about having clarity and peace of mind that brings true eternal peace.
Q} What’s the harshest decision you have taken in your life and how has that changed your life as a whole? Share your story, you might get a shout out in my next YouTube channel :)