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.

Connectedness and Feelings

 

Friendliness and professionalism

Power of timely love

 The 8 minutes catch up with a friend by Simon Senek:

The 8 min catchup

The perfect hug:

5-10 sec hug

A concept by John Gottman

The 6 second kiss

In conclusion, spend at least 8 min with a friend, a 10 sec hug to a loved one and a 6 second kiss to your partner.

Good Love v/s Bad Love

Good love sets you free. Bad love enslaves you.

Good love changes you for the better. Bad love forces you to unwilling changes.

Good love is supportive. Bad love is dominating.

Good love is empowering. Bad love is disempowering.

Good love is based on trust. Bad love is based on jealousy/ fear/ need to fit in/ not to be alone.

Good love doesn't demand you to give up on friends/ colleagues/ family. Bad love is obsessive and demands other sacrifices.

Good love helps you grow. Bad love enslaves you physically / mentally / sexually / emotionally.