I have been going to the gym almost every morning. Doing weight training since i’m aiming at overall building of muscles. My main goals are , to have a healthy digestive system(less bloating) and also build a healthy food habit. In order to build healthier habits the best response i have found is to focus on eliminating bad ones. With the time that is left from eliminating , use it to develop new ones.

Being aware of your metabolism helps identify what is good for you and what’s bad for you. I realized over time that meat is bad for me , it would give me this bloating sensation and sleep would be affected. I did the same thing with milk, spicy food, green chillies, whey protein powder. This process is constant and the more new things i try the more i realize if it’s good or bad to me. Fortunately i have reached a point where i am able to tell what’s good and bad for me. This has improved my sleeping cycle.

For the protein sources i have found that spinach, green leafy vegetables, paneer, sprouts and eggs(only twice a week) have been good for my metabolism. Going ahead i want to eliminate the habit of eating out , because you don’t know what is added. Building awareness is the key to maintaining habits, and i would like to work on that as well.

Over the last few years, i’ve realized that the greatest resource of our lives is not money but ‘Time’. When you have time as a resource you can plan, you can make a few mistakes and learn from them and that can be your path to making some difference to humanity. Understanding this might be easier said than done. While the path towards freedom to have ‘time’ as a resource involves you building considerable wealth during your working lifespan.

What does passive income do to you as an individual ? When you have a fixed source of money coming in and taking care of your needs without you putting any additional efforts to earn that passive income, you gain ‘time’.

In today’s time there are multiple ways where you can build a passive source of income. The age old way is to start your investing journey early in life , this gives you considerable advantage over time. In the digital age also consider increasing the content that you put out in social media platforms, this can work as a passive source of income over time as you increase your followers. The way ahead for brands to be more closer to their customers is by marketing through influencers, this also increases your credibility in your professional lives. While all this requires time to build, but after a point it goes on autopilot and you can build a considerable bank of ‘time’ for your own sake.

The rat race is an endless pursuit of power and money by competing against each other and trying to stay ahead in the society that we live in. In simple words, an individual is always seeking things to spend his money on, thereby working for it all the time. Till he can no longer work because of his physical age. Now at this point he realizes he hasn’t created any sort of impact in his lifetime, but it’s too late to act on it.

Escaping the rat race isn’t about quitting your 9-5 job. It’s about avoiding the money trap, the race towards your next pay cheque or your next material possession. Nowadays with easy access to taking a loan or an emi, this pursuit towards escaping the rat race has become harder than ever. For the first time India’s consumers have an outstanding credit card debt of close to Rs. 2 lakh crores !! With higher inflation eating into their savings this cycle of increasing debt is unlikely to reduce. Now this makes the pursuit of leaving your job even harder.

Our brains are wired in a way that it likes gambling , addictions etc. It takes a certain level of awareness to understand that your stuck in an everyday cycle. Once awareness hits you only then can you take the required steps to address it. Strike a conversation with people who have achieved this, watch content which helps you in this pursuit. With only hard assessment and hard decisions you can not bother about what society tells you about money.

All your life you have worked towards building a career , building a house, building a family. And now you don’t have much to work on, does this mean we are done with our life’s purpose ? I was researching for this blog and found a video of guy on youtube who was an 86 year old, this guy lost his wife early and mostly lives alone. He says he liked the profession in which he was working when he was younger. And continues to do it till this date and this has given him some meaning to his existence. The thoughts that come to you after you retire are often bitter.

Over time as you age you become wiser , your body becomes slower , your ego probably grows larger, and maybe you have some health issues. Now after you’ve worked hard and have had many mini purposes all your life. The only thing you have time for, is with your own thoughts and this can get bad with time if you don’t work on it as an individual. Now this sounds scary.

While looking for solutions i found that not spending time with other seniors and spending time with people who are young changes your perspectives and helps you become less bitter. Now keeping an open mind at all times does help in interacting with people as well. The other solution is finding something to work upon, take up a consultant work or some daily hobby, this might give your life some kind of daily goal and ultimately make you a better retired person.

When we think of our lives from an existential perspective we do not matter much in the grand scheme of things. We are but a tiny spec when compared to the size of the universe. Does this mean that the things we will do today are not going to have an impact on any level ? This should seam that whatever we do is useless.

Let’s dissect an individual’s life, most of his life is spent towards taking care of his needs when not planned properly. An individual can be considered useless if the only thing he does in his lifetime is taking care of his own personal needs. The other argument to it is, that he will not be able to take care of someone else or do something impactful unless he has taken care of his personal needs. We often see our own personal needs as responsibilities and unless an individual does not take care of his responsibilities he will not think of something else in life.

The Indian society is currently designed that way, we have to pay for our own health expenses, college tuition , kid’s wedding , retirement costs and unless an individual fulfills all these he will not think of something else. We have all known the effect of compounding over the long term in our investment portfolios. Our investment journey should be started very early in life, however small the investment amount is. This will help in taking care of responsibilities early in life.

Once the responsibilities are taken care off early in life, we can start thinking about how to make some kind of impact during our lifetime. This might make our lives a little less useless.

Today’s world has boundaries between countries, humanity’s objective purpose as a species is to enhance co-operation and evolve. One hand there are people who brute force their way to make humans an interplanetary species, on the other hand there are people who politicize every moment and try to build a narrative to gain their attention. Yes the world of today is directed based on the ability of a few people who seek to gain power. I believe that it’s rare for one person to direct where humanity has to move towards. And it’s a culmination of moments that lead to someone coming to power , hence it maybe random. The idea of one person directing these random events sounds scary.

The old civilizations do hold the same sway like we read them during our history classes in school. The unification of nations is based on ideas primarily related to geography and religion. The old powers like the british did try to alter these and rule the world. The new power seeks to do the same thing. The internet did try to close these boundaries and enhance co-operation amongst nations. I do believe that humans innately want to be good actors but they often get influenced by what is happening around them. This leads to wars, this leads to stability getting disturbed. Unless someone tries to brute force co-operation.

From a financial perspective i do see more volatility in the coming days, excellent promoters will always find a way to generate the best return on capital in bad times. These companies will be available cheaply during such times as most of us invest based on the emotions of the environment. While investing, it is futile to underestimate the ability of the good promoter. The primary ability of an investor should be to keep the mind open.

An individual at some point in time starts dwelling into himself for existential questions. While this process either drives you or slows you down. I’ve often found that it’s easier to drive yourself when you have a timetable to follow. Remember ? during our school days we knew exactly what we had to do the next day, and this gave our day to day lives some kind of purpose. Also this simple task of making a timetable helps in increasing focus. We can also introspect what went wrong and correct it based on whether we followed the time table or not.

For me personally the turning point was when i started reading atomic habits by james clear. It opened my eyes to the power of habits. One of the writings in that book which hit me hard was the ‘spiraling of bad habits’, he mentions that everybody has some inner bad habit and in order to stop that we must not do another bad habit after we perform the 1st one. For example if i’ve eaten a lot of outside food already , then it’s better to avoid the ice cream as desert and rather go home and drink some hot water. This process has internally made a feedback loop and it helps in tracing what went wrong. Because bad habit is a bad regret cycle and because of that regret we often perform another bad habit.

All said and done, I believe that the person who has found his life’s true meaning often will have this process ingrained over time. The most important step is the process and meaning will follow.

The other day i was flabargasted by what power the youtubers of today hold. Mr.Beast almost has 200 million freaking subscribers ! That’s almost half the number of people watching american football (the number is 400 million). Now think about this from the marketing perspective. When a company spends for marketing for TV advertisements they can only guess that x number of people will watch the ad and probably 15% of them actually buy the product. Whereas in the creator economy you exactly know how many people have watched your ad and the subscriber base is mostly loyal.

This makes the cost of acquisition of a product more visible with creators as you have the data available with analytics, these youtubers with millions of followers also have an ability to influence their subscribers to a greater extent than a TV spot ad. This is because we humans have the need to identify ourselves with a personality and subscribe to them.

Take the example of Beast Burgers , in this case Jimmy was able to market his product nationwide !! By only posting on his youtube channel , this makes the cost of acquisition of the customer almost nill (except the cost of making the video). Now imagine a wide range of products he can launch with his own branding and the loyal subscribers have a higher chance to purchase them. In today’s world, personal branding and identity are taking importance with platforms like Youtube and Linkedin. The credibility of a creator goes up drastically and trust is built almost immediately.

The other side to this is negative emotions or bad thoughts can also influence people. I think to take advantage of credibility staying away from controversial topics indirectly boosts your personal branding and over time you can take advantage of it.

The evolution of species leading to modern day humans, when seen from a scientific perspective has been a series of chance occurrences, seen from an unscientific perspective it’s been a wonderful miracle. As a species we have taken massive strides and rule the ecosystem but we have also damaged a large part of the environment over time.

Enough said using darwinian terminologies. When put under a microscope the average lifespan in a country like India was 35 years in the 1950’s ! (maybe the years after wars led to under nutrition) Now as of 2023 it is around 70, it means we have managed to double our lifespan in less than a century. Going ahead lifespan is projected to increase by approximately .33% every year. This is optimism for future generations when it comes to lifespan.

Now when it comes to making a difference in the journey of other humans, every individual has a limited time to do that. When we think about it deeply, till the age of 22 we complete our graduation(if we take the non-medical route). After that from 22-30 years we try to pay of our student loans or try making ends meet as our salaries are basic during this time. The time we can actually make a difference is between the ages 30-60 because after 60 your physically unfit.

Now during these years 30-60 , you technically have only 30 years to make some difference. The steps to make a difference might be something like this :-

1. You figure out the area of what you like doing

2.You do what you like on a consistent basis

3. You add value to overall work that your doing

Now these may look very simple compared to when we look at the lives of people who made a difference, but i think it boils down to these few things primarily.

You’ve got only 30 years to make a difference ! Your time starts now !

Note : This writing is for informational reading only and is not meant for investment advice.

“Any Asset that is against the constituents of the state (the country’s currency in this case) is bound to become regulated over time”. In simple words, the idea of a state looses meaning if it looses the ability to control or regulate an asset.

We do not live in a world where there are no boundaries, there are lines drawn between countries , difference cultures , different ethnic preferences etc. Although the advent of internet has over time made the world a smaller place, the differences in boundaries from the idea of a “State” still remains. The introduction of crypto to the world made a dent in that Idea where the state lost its relevance in controlling the flow of money.

Now the idea that flow of money should be in the hands of people sounds exciting but it has its own consequences. Humanity has been shrouded with greed and people who stand to benefit first are the people who have unregulated businesses like drugs, hawala, the cartels and the terrorists.

When it comes to the field of investing, crypto as assets are a confused asset , sometimes it is seen as a inflation hedge i.e replacement of gold , which means that when the overall economy is in doldrums assets like gold and crypto should rally. But that was not the case, when equities rallied crypto also rallied. Similarly there were situations when equities rallied and crypto mirrored gold a few times. Hence it becomes difficult to put a correlation to it. However as the asset matures maybe we will see some kind of trend over time, maybe it is to do with the usability of crypto and only time will help us understand it better.

An asset matures over time when regulation is applied to it, however the idea of crypto thriving where there is no regulation makes it a difficult asset to ascertain if we should invest.

Maybe there is a dystopian future where boundaries are not enforced and even regulations are ‘for’ decreasing boundaries between lines, until then i’d postpone investing into crypto as an asset.