Learning and Planning

Planning ahead….due to sudden shifts, new phase of life had begun. Planning ahead… not really! Just going with the flow. I know that I cannot control time and most things are outside my control.

However, despite that I can still plan ahead in small ways. Looking forward to starting new adventures. It may take me some time to get there but that’s what I am planning for. Riding motorbikes for me is thrilling and adventurous. So, the first adventure that I am planning on is setting out on a motorbike tour.

Why am I sharing it? When I  am not even close to it yet? Do I believe in law of attraction? Write down your goals and recite them before sleeping each night and as you wake up every morning. They shall soon come to pass!

Not really!

I do know that goals written down have much more meaning and for some reason I am a little more determined to fulfill them.

Just like my endless thirst for seeking out knowledge. I write down goals and work towards them. But let me tell you, I have encountered more failures so far than successes. You may wonder what those might be, as an example, learning languages for me is exciting, stimulating and fun. Yet, I am still a beginner after many years spending time to learn German, Persian and Arabic. The truth is my effort has never been deliberate and focused enough to learn one of them and get good at it. Yet I am fascinated by people when I hear different languages. If I could fluently speak in a different language, the conversations could help me explore different cultures and ideas too.

There are so many things that I would like to learn but if prioritise them appropriately, the skills and knowledge gained will be of future benefit both in building career and life. My current focus is building on these valuable skills while keeping up with other hobbies at a minimum to remain consistent and not losing those skills. 5 mins of German a day, 5 mins of Arabic a day. Persian??? I will go back to it when I start reading Rumi and Iqbal again.

I have been neglecting the practice of martial arts. I have been hiking a lot lately, but not enough exercise and sweat doing that on its own. Yesterday, I ran, the plan was to jog 4 miles. I only managed to jog 2 miles, and even that alternating between jogging and walking each mile. It’s easy to lose skills too if they are not kept honed. Martial arts may be one example, excel or a programming language maybe another.

The point is, it is important to make time to sharpen one’s skills and keep up with them. Martial arts and teaching it is part of that planning ahead. So, while I wait on things to materialise, I got to keep practising so my movements remain fluent.

I have never walked a linear path. If I were a molecule in a beaker full of liquid. The brownian motion would pretty much describe my path so far, despite such haphazard path, I am still contained in a beaker so I am able to maintain my goals in sight. Maybe not the best way to describe it but this is how I have been able to keep sight of my goals. If I were to lose myself in an ocean, I might just lose myself. The ocean is vast, full of sharks and creatures of the deep sea. Navigating through all of that might be even tougher, but I believe planning, practice, and sticking to my game plan will be crucial when it’s finally time to immerse my being in the depths of oceans.

I am going to stop the rambling now, it’s been a a whole month since I last wrote anything on here. It feels even longer. It’s not that I don’t enjoy writing, I just have to get better at managing my time. This weekend it has all been about creating a routine that will help me be more productive and writing it down so I can start following it.

Beauty and Love Inspired 2021

مگشا در اندیشه و برگیر رباب
صدگونه نماز است و رکوعست و سجود
آنرا که جمال دوست باشد

Let the beauty of what you love

Be what you do,
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth.

میں اکیلا ہی چلا تھا جانب منزل مگر

لوگ ساتھ آتے گئے اور کارواں بنتا گیا

I set upon the journey all alone but,

People joined along the way and it became a caravan

کیسے کہوں میں دل کےفرماں

الفاظ بن نہ سکے جو تھے چھپے ارماں

How can I tell you the secrets of the heart?

Those hidden desires could not be translated to words

واقف جو ہے سینے سے میرے

جانتا ہے وہ دل کی دھڑکن کو تیرے

The one who knows these hidden secrets,
He knows your beating heart too,

کیوں کرتا  ہے تکبر اتنا

چلتا ہے تو اکڑا کر جتنا

Why have you such pride?
Why walk conceitedly?

پہاڑ بھی نہیں تیرے ھم قد

نا ہی چھو سکتا ہے آسمان کو تو

Neither are you as tall as mountains, nor can you touch the sky

ذرا غور کر اعمال پر اپنے

اعتراف بھی، اعتراض بھی

Ponder over your actions
Accept some, reject some

کس منزل پر چلا ہے تو

کیا ممکن بنانے چلا ہے تو

Where do you plan to go?
What impossible are you trying to make possible?

اس زندگی کے موڑ پر چٹان ھیں، اور دریا بھی

گزر گئے ہیں جو مکاں، وقت کی رفتار میں

In life’s journey, every turn you will either face a mountain or a river
The moments that have been lost in time,

توجہ دلانے کا سبق اٹھا

تنظیم کا پرچم لہرا

Learn to focus your attention ahead,
Waving the flag of discipline

خودی  کو کر بلند اتنا

کے ہر تقدیر سے پہلے

خدا بندے سے پوچھے

بتا، تیری رضا کیا ہے

Raise yourself to a rank, that before every distribution of fortune
God asks of you,
Tell me what you desire!



Obviously I started with Rumi and ended with Iqbal. The thoughts are really based on some poems I read long ago.


Here’s to a new year… 2021 starting it differently; beauty and love and not a Bang 2020 😉 yeah that didn’t go well last year did it haha

Every day is a new day. You can start all over again from today and when you decide to start again.

Body, Soul and The Mind- 2

Few Mondays ago I posted a poem with the same title. I wanted to elaborate on why I wrote it and how are the body, soul and the mind intertwined.

Self-awareness is to be able to observe one’s behaviour whether in real-time which takes a lot of practice, or through hindsight. In addition, dissecting the emotions away from the thoughts and behaviours. So that we can look down from above. An objective view.

Metacognition is the ability to change one’s emotional state through thoughts. Our minds and limbic system doesn’t know the difference between emotions that are felt through real life experiences or the ones we feel by daydreaming or visualizing an event and emotions before the event happens. Feelings influence thoughts, similarly thoughts influence feelings. When feeling the emotions that we don’t want to feel, the research in psychology suggests, we should replace those feelings with positive feelings. Visualisation is powerful technique that can help us anchor our being in a state of calmness and joy amidst discomfort and adversity.

Chronic stress is a stress response that is built in the body over a long period of time. A chronic stress response when triggered is difficult to control as the chemicals released when in any situation that triggers chronic stress, are the natural state of the body. The body goes into the fight, flight or freeze response, cortisol and adrenaline kicks in, heart beat pumps up and the person loses control over their thought process/rational thinking and emotions. As a result, the individual is likely to make poor decisions and underperform. It’s a self-sabotaging mechanism. For many individuals, if they do not address instant stress then there is a greater likelihood of chronic stress getting triggered.

I have a lot of unfinished articles laying about in the drafts. Despite knowing theory and believing that I am emotionally intelligent, emotional self-awareness in real time can be quite challenging to actualise, especially in high performance situations/sports. But such challenges also give us an opportunity to grow.

So, having explained those terms that I think link the mind body and soul, I will refer back to this diagram I drew when I wrote about the ego.

Ego, heart and mind connection

Heart and brain coherence can be observed scientifically through exposing people to different situations that will trigger a response and the ability of those people via meditation/breathing techniques to remain calm. Exposure and deliberate practise is one of the ways to develop heart and mind coherence.

How the heart beats when under stress and when there is a shift to appreciation

Conscious breathing is a great tool and anchor to shift to appreciation when feeling stress. Wim Hof has proven scientifically how he can control his body temperature under cold stress through breathing technique. It unlocks the potential of mind, it taps into the ancestral genes that lie dormant within us. Joseph Campbell in the ‘Heroes with a Thousand Faces’ describes the many journeys of the hero. The archetypal journey of hero is full of challenges, stress and obstacles. That is the nature’s way of nurturing the potential of the hero.

It is possible to reach the highest state of consciousness and keeping in mind the struggles of ego as presented above, the rhythm of the heart and breathing technique to consciously shift to a state of appreciation. Practising this over and over can help release all the trauma, stress and dispel negativity. Below are the emotions and how they rank on the spectrum. The elevated emotions on the upper end and the limiting emotions on the other end. The elevated emotions are selfless and also the creative emotions. The limiting emotions are survival emotions which keep the mind, body and soul pinned in a scarce surrounding. There is no room for growth in feeling these emotions. Growth starts when one replaces the limiting emotions with elevated emotions. Deliberate practise through focus, meditation and breathing technique can help reach a higher state of consciousness. One of abundance, one of gratitude, one of appreciation.

Where are you on the wavelength?

Which frequency are you tapping into? Is your mind constantly bombarded with beta waves? Do you rest and sleep to energise yourself? In our sleep, our mind goes into the slower theta waves. With deliberate daily practise of breathing and meditation, it is possible to access to slow down the brains waves to gamma frequency and access higher consciousness. Traditional meditational practises of different religions have proven this. Although, it is not an easy thing to achieve, it is not impossible.

Instead of describing the different frequencies of brain waves, here’s a link to a short video of a crash course on brain waves. How they help us achieve higher consciousness! how it can help us open the path to new possibilities!

This is an explanation via what I have learnt from studying psychology, a little bit of neuroscience and reading and practising meditation. If you are not a science person, refer to my previous article Affairs of the heart. In there you will find other techniques and meditations, if practised with deliberate focus, those techniques can help you get near the path of higher consciousness.