Understanding experiences

A good experience needs you to understand the following about it:

Nuances, Expectations, Comfort and Context.

Nuances are the technicalities you need to understand and do certain actions in certain ways to get the experience going ahead.

Expectations if unrealistic can have a big disappointment and maybe even accidents. Controlling the overexcitement is also important to be in a realistic zone.

Understanding your physical and mental comfort in the new situation is important and to keep it in the comfortable area is crucial. Getting out of the Comfort zone during the new experience can cause anxiety, tension and scariness and do things that make us lose control and may end up in accidents.

Context is about being aware of the environment. The context brings with it the unique set of constraints and a few opportunities. Being aware of it is important for your safety and well being.

You can use these 4 parameters for any new experience. Be it driving a vehicle for the first time, adventure sports, trying new food or anything else for that matter.

Let's take an example to understand: Scuba diving.

Nuances: The nuances of breathing from the mouth instead of nose. The sign language to remember and use under water. Reading the depth in the depth watch. Remembering to blow air through your nose in case of water entering the goggles.

Right expectations: We would move around clumsily and may even fall after wearing the fins on land. Do things slowly and don't be in a rush. Do not pull the other person who can barely see or hear you with all the equipment being worn.

Comfort: We should not feel any pain of wearing the oxygen cylinders and be comfortable in the scuba suits. We should be mentally strong to be under water and not be scared of losing our lives. Comfort of having water into the ears and your eyes slightly burn in sea water if it enters the goggles.

Context: Are you scuba diving near rocks with high seas where the water can push you into the rocks or in calm waters? Was the scuba trainer training good? Was all the scuba equipment good and well fitted to your body size thereby minimizing risk? Has the scuba guide taken an extra tank of air for safety? Are you close to a safe place called home or away? Is the situation risky (rough waters, opaque waters) or normal (calmer waters, clear visibility) by the standards of the guide?

Understanding the unique set of parameters in each of these 4 categories would define your good experience each time. 

Good and bad experiences

Good Experience is about getting the what, where, how at least 85% right.

If we dont know the details, expectations, services or dont get it right, it turns out to be a bad experience.

The first bad experience creates a big burden of not wanting to try the experience again. It can be boring or uncomfortable at the least and painful or scary at the worst.

It is important to be guided into the "Right" experience with correct information, tips of getting it right, pitfalls to avoid and to take care of yourself in the context.

Most people are not guided into new experiences thereby hesitating into getting into more new experiences.

Life is a huge set of first time Experiences.

The racing experience, the boyfriend-girlfriend experience, the bunking school for a movie experience, the exploring a new city experience, travelling for a vacation experience, buying your first own automobile experience, staying alone as a bachelor experience,  making new friends experience, trying some crazy food experiences, dabbling in the crypto markets and derivatives experience, first physical intimacy experience, a running experience, teaching experience, engaging a kid experience, visiting an art museum experience, performing live onstage experience, a send off experience, making something memorable for someone experience, discussing experiences' experience, visiting a monastery experience, comforting someone greeving experience, handling inheritance, handling a death in the family experience and much more.

This is where a "Chief Experience Officer" comes in, to help you get the right understanding, sense, direction, pace, packages and tips to get the best out of your experience.

Crime master Gogo philosophy

There is a character called Crime master Gogo in the film Andaz apna apna.

Funny movie.

The character has a line "Aaya hoon toh kuch toh lootkar jaaoonga."

I relate to a similar philosophy. "Aaya hoon toh value exchange karke jaoonga."

In other words, wherever I am, I will give or get value or both.

Types of new experiences

There are many different types of experiences:

1. Adventures sports

2. Food

3. Seeing and watching unique things (a geyser in Iceland or seeing a real kangaroo with a joey in it's pouch)

4. Rare things (First show of a movie, finals of a tournament)

5. Latest new things (like immersive Museums in 2023 which are just popping around the world)

6. Personal records

7. Doing the usual in an unusual context

8. Artistic

9. Something that brings a new perspectives (a movie like the Truman show)

10. Doing something crazy while in a group

11. Listening to or seeing another persons unusual or personal story.

12. Relationship experiences

Let me know if there are more categories.

Chief experience officer

You are running your life and you are its chief executive officer (the CEO).

But, as time is limited for everyone to enjoy and learn things in life, we all need to constantly experience and learn new things.

With constant new experiences, one gains knowledge, the right mindset, connecting various knowledge leading to insights, gaining wisdom without doing the amateurish mistakes, opening of the mind to imaginations and creating possibilities and ideas.

Life is a collection of Experiences.

Everybody have experiences and knowledge and stories.

Most have small ticket Experiences.

Few have medium to big ticket experiences. Very few of these have the willingness and intention to share these. Even fewer, have the time and are willing to go through the effort to share it.

Based on my belief that "Life is a collection of Experiences", I am the Chief Experience Officer of myself, my family and few others.

This role demands the following:

1. Being in touch with the latest happenings and opportunities in the world by building systems to get this to you.

2. Digging beyond the surface to understand the what, how, where, how much cost, the risks and the benefits.

3. Communicating the new available experiences to the group

4. Finding the right point in the 4 dimensions (x,y,z and when) to execute the new experience.

5. Executing the experience seamlessly.

Everybody needs a Chief Experience Officer for their life to maximise the meaning of life.

This role is not identified or defined by most and they miss out on many things in life.

Do comment on what you think about this role for yourself.

Learning from others

Some of life's important lessons I have learnt are from unexpected people whom I got to know pretty closely:

1. A 80 year lady landlord staying with her mother of 94 years old during 2006-2008 during my first job.

She had no children and her husband had passed away 5-10 years ago. She stayed in the first floor of the building while renting out the ground floor to me and my roommate. She was well educated and had stayed abroad for a long time. She was educated, elegant and respected. 

The other building in the compound belonged to her sister who had a daughter. The odd thing was that the sister didnt like my landlady as she was jealous of the love my landlady showered on her daughter. Also, she had mentioned to me that her sister wanted her to will away the house to her.

I have wondered many times what does she have to look forward everyday to get up to? Maybe taking care of her mom. But what after her mom passes away, even while the world eyeing to take away the wealth from the lonely widow.

What do you have to look forward for each day you get up?

Everybody needs a purpose,  or atleast something to be busy with.

2. Chaitanya Sathe

A school friend with a brilliant mind for physics, mathematics and equations who died in an accidental fall while mountaineering and living his life.

Although very sad to pass away below 40 years, the question remains: Is the best way to die doing what you love best?

3. A divorce of a friend from a love marriage years ago.

How 2 people attracted to each other have grown apart over the years and have nothing in common apart from the kids.

Having more common things and interests with spouse to discuss, engage and find solutions is the key to not grow apart and not be disinterested. 

4. A friend whom I try teaching how to live life better. In the process, I am able to introspect a lot of things, somethings in some new perspectives and I am learning new things including many insights which come out as blog posts these days.

Teaching is the best way to learn.

5. Listening to my daughter.

The most unexpected source of learning the latest things. She had worked on creating ai based images in canva with great images (no installation, no payment and better images) while the world is not aware and trying hard with stable diffusion, Leonardo and another tool.

Talk to other exploratory people.

Mediocre to great

 

Levels of living life are usually classified as survival, mediocre and great.

I believe, in reality, there is a huge amount of people in the zone between mediocre and great.

So, what is this area all about?

In survival, you have no discipline and no success.

In mediocre, you have discipline and control over some things.

In great, you have discipline and success in most of the areas of life.

The yellow area in between is where you have a good discipline in some areas but do not have discipline in the other areas which is not giving the compounding effect for the areas you are disciplined to make your life great.

Let me give you an example. You are great at saving money and investing. But you smoke heavily causing you ill health and making you spend a lot on Healthcare, thereby reducing your financial success instead of allowing it to further grow.

To live a great life, several things matter: mindset, what you focus on, what you learn and improve, earning well, investing, health, spouses mindsets and habits, spending habits, friends, networks, time management, vision, motivation, etc.

To move from mediocre to great requires one to master and discipline from a minority of things to the majority of the things and that is where the real struggle and effort is.

Ingredients to an exploring nature

I am an explorer at heart and mind.

I find, get, tune into things that hit me with new and varied information.

I like finding new things and find out how they work and how they connect.

It can be any field - Law, Weapons, Food, Places, Behaviours, Culture, Looks, Science, Politics, Geography, War, Business, Movies, Psychology, Scripts and lyrics, Music, Finance, etc.

As an example, many people go through the same newspaper or the same road as me but I have discovered more interesting things than them.

How come?

I think an exploring nature has 5 key skills:
1. Curiosity to know and use the information

2. Patience to keenly observe

3. Understand at the base level

4. Think about it at a deeper level of how and why

5. Engage / play / experiment with it by connecting the dots / varied information already known

The world is full of interesting and new concoctions for the curious and patient person.

Funny Business is not Funny

One may find Jimmy Carr as a very controversial stand up comedy. If you have heard him for an hr, you may describe him as any or more of the following:
Disgusting, Offensive, Loser, Pathetic, A**hole, Shrewd, Insulting, Abusing, Tacky, Cheap, Trashy and more.

The topics he chooses are all adult themed and more on the taboo side of the society.

He has chosen that as his speciality and he is a master at it.

An "ok" joke by his standard is "Every night, after the show, I have many attractive women banging on my dressing room doors. Sometimes, I let them out."

To get an idea of it, here is one of his live stand up comedies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD7xoJxn8TA

Now, there is a totally another side of him:

https://www.instagram.com/wealthytools/reel/C83ryW8vVOE/

Here he is telling us how we take life's pleasures for granted and that 100 years ago even a king could not take a hot shower to relax which we can do instantly. He questions how we are living like kings and yet life is objectively better and subjectively worse.

These contrasting topics have a few things in common: Insights, Perspective, Deep understanding.

Through this post, I am putting a point that stand up comedy is actually about insights about human behaviour and expectations and is put across from a non-common perspective.

To be a good comedian requires that they become a good subject matter expert in their area of specialization. And that is not funny, and should be respected.