Reflections: The Story of My Unlearnings in Life
Final Segment from the Book Unlearn: A Practical Guide to Business & Life (2024) Download for FREE at https://archive.org/details/un-learn-a-practical-guide-to-business-life-by-anubhav-srivastava
By Anubhav Srivastava
The Greek Philosopher, Socrates had a habit of giving a lot of unsolicited advice, so people ended up poisoning him.
Keeping this in mind, I am going to wrap up this book soon.
But let’s start with a story first.
A man from a village once went somewhere where an accident happened because of which he lost his nose.
Knowing he would now be mocked if he went to his village, he decided to don the robes of a spiritual leader before returning.
He returned to his village. When the villagers saw him without his nose, they started laughing at him. He told them, “Idiots, you laugh because you are stupid. I have seen God; this is the extreme price I had to pay to be able to see God.”
The villagers then became very intrigued. One villager said he wanted to see God too. The man said, just like him, the villager would also have to give a huge sacrifice for it — his nose. The villager agreed.
The man asked the villager to come with him and took him to a hut. There he cut off his nose. The villager then waited for God to appear. But he couldn’t see anything. He said “Hey, I can’t see God!! Where is God?”
The “spiritual” man told the village, “I know you cannot see anything, but if you say that to the others, they will laugh at you. So, do as I say and start screaming that you have seen God! The villagers will start looking up to you and idolizing you!! “
The villager knew, he had been made a fool of, but did not want to embarrass himself in front of the villagers. So, he went to them and started screaming that he had seen God. One by one more villagers became intrigued, and the process was repeated again and again until the entire village became a village of nose-less people.
Modern society is a society of people who have willingly cut our noses.
Because this is EXACTLY how modern society brainwashes everyone into believing that the secret to achieving ANYTHING, is self-torture, obedience to authority and a mindless rat race for the approval of others.
Everyone is aware of its nonsensical nature, and that they have been fooled in their life, but no one wants to admit it.
Parents and institutions teach us that in order to get a better tomorrow, we need to completely sacrifice our peace of mind today.
They teach that as long as you keep doing what society tells you to do and be an obedient fool, and buy into every propaganda it peddles to you as truth, you will be successful and you will be respected.
Kids are taught this over and over again. The kid then grows up, overly complicates their own life as an adult, and then trains their child to do the same. and this keeps going in each subsequent generation. Each generation knows they have been made a fool of, but don’t want to look like idiots.
Let me show you how society tried to cut off my nose and is cutting off yours too.
But before that we need to come back to where my story began
The year was 1990, perhaps the first year of my life that I properly remember. I had just started Kindergarten.
For the first time in my life, I saw the attention that the “achievers” used to get and punishment the “losers” got.
Before this, I never really thought about success or failure and its impact, but I saw first-hand how the child who excelled in class was made to feel like he was a king, and those who didn’t were losers.
It was drilled from the very beginning into our heads and hearts that those who studied and worked hard would become royalty.
Those who played, or were daydreaming or did nothing at all, would grow up to be worthless.
At this point, while I was not dumb, I was not the hyper-studious kind either. I was the quiet, reflective kind who mostly stayed to himself and tried to stay out of trouble.
But even that was not enough. Very soon I saw that even being quiet was not enough to keep you out of trouble or be liked. You had to do well.
When I did well on my tests, my parents were very happy. When I did not, everybody thought I was good for nothing.
This was perhaps the first time a desire to be someone, to excel, to stand out became imbibed in me. I started dreaming. I started dreaming of a future when I would grow up to someone “successful” and prove my worth.
I started studying and doing reasonably well in my middle grades and life was going okay, until my teen years. Until my teen years, I and my friends used to play a lot, in school as well as where I lived.
However, the moment we started growing up, we were told by society as well as parents, that the time to play had ended. They said — “Now you need to study super hard, even harder than before, to be somebody in the future, to become somebody, otherwise you would fall far behind. “
“Your friends would go on to achieve great heights and you would really just end up doing menial jobs, if you chose not to study.”
It was supposed to be the make-or-break moment. Unfortunately, I had a patchy few years due to the negative events I have talked about earlier on in the book around the same time. However, I never lost hope that the future would have the answer. In the future, it would all be worth it…
I completed school. The next few years, I alternated between being an irresponsible, stupid teenager and being a daydreamer who believed that his destiny was to do something bigger.
Although, motivational quotes and sayings were always a part of popular culture, even when I was growing up, in the mid 2000’s as I was about to embark on a journey of proving my worth to the world, I dove further into such literature.
Not only did I study classic self-help books but I also went into autobiographies of famous people where they described how “inspirational” their journey had been, and how they never gave up and eventually achieved their dreams.
With all these books, a huge sudden surge in available self-help content thanks to the Internet and social media, as well as the rise of the cult of “positive thinking”, I too got somewhat brainwashed into believing that this was the answer.
The one positive effect of motivation truly was increased confidence and a belief that I could do anything I wanted.
After all, if the winners were saying, that visualization, positive thinking, persistence etc. was the secret to their success, it must be true.
Why the hell should I listen to the losers anyway? They were salty and pessimists and looking to pull everyone down.
There was no such thing as luck according to the winners. You made your own luck. Every damn thing that happened to you was because of your efforts or your fault.
Of course, barely coming out of teenage years and possessing close to zero wisdom or critical thinking skills, I bought it.
Had I known what I know about the world today, through my experiences and study of REAL scientifically grounded as well as philosophical literature, I would have never bought it. But back then, I was young and naïve. Maybe I am still stupid, but certainly less stupid than I was back then.
I have already explained in the initial sections, the story behind my film — “Carve Your Destiny.” If you haven’t read it or forgotten what I said, now would be the right time to revisit the section: “How I made a movie that impacted over 2 million people” for context.
I would like to emphasize that all the principles that are discussed in the movie Carve Your Destiny such as self-belief, ignoring criticism, following your passion, burning desire, persistence etc. ACTUALLY, truly went into the making of the film itself and my belief in the real-world applicability of these principles was absolutely sincere.
Even today, I will still say this- ANYTIME you attempt something new or different from the crowd, unless the world hands everything to you on a platter, you WILL need self-belief, you will need to ignore criticism, follow your passion, face several failures etc and you will need to overcome obstacles.
All of these things are essential for the creation of anything new or walking on any new path. This is why I re-iterate that these principles indeed serve as basic building blocks for a path less travelled. Certainly, someone following these principles is living a better life than that of someone doing narcotic drugs!
But the big caveat is that if you choose to do all this, you have to do it for yourself, not with the expectations of an external reward.
These principles work wonderfully well to make your inner life or mindset better, but often break down in the outer world.
And this is where I want wrong. I went wrong with believing that the world or the universe will somehow reward these qualities of yours.
While adopting and sincerely following these principles is in your hands, the results of these efforts depend on infinite factors, many of which are completely out of your control.
There are also thousands of variables and inputs apart from the generalized advice presented in the film, that only experience can teach you. So yet again, I will say this to you. Treat the principles mentioned in the film Carve Your Destiny as basic guidelines, but not as dogma.
Remember, that in any objective, where the outcome depends significantly on factors other than ones that you directly control, the correlation between effort and reward, COMPLETELY breaks down.
Motivated by “inspirational and underdog stories” about “never, never, NEVER giving up” and how people eventually found success after paying the price for many years, I too was convinced that having paid the price for so many years and being so focused and determined for so many years, I would get what I deserved.
Having completely ignored my social life, working supremely hard for years and not just relying on “visualizations”, ignoring most of the fun things happening around me, because I had to be dedicated and focused, I was convinced that my life was now going to take off.
After 5 years of journey of interviewing people, studying filmmaking, then studying storytelling, learning movie editing, narrating, moving from one failed test screening to another for almost one more year before finally everyone got up and clapped, I truly believed I had cracked it.
God would give what I deserved, because I had paid the price and deserved it.
I still maintain to this day that Carve Your Destiny is a technically very well-made film. It has authenticity, deep emotional value and storytelling that is rarely seen in a documentary and is a certainly far better film than many hyper-popular “success” documentaries.
This is not arrogance but confidence in a well-made product.
Of course, I can’t take responsibility for the some of the things that certain interviewees went on to do later on!!
Some interviewees that were at the peak of their success 15 years ago, are today at rock bottom. This again, proves by the way, that many times, worldly “success” is often transient, time specific and dependent on countless factors.
But let’s go back to examining, where did I personally go wrong?
I went wrong here:
In believing that somehow effort is the only thing that matters in the real, unpredictable world.
In believing that monetary success was correlated with the excellence of your work.
In believing that if I came out with a film like this, my career would take off, just like it had for many others who overcame similar odds.
In believing that success was like a science, when in fact, it is not even like an art. The factors you control can be controlled but external success is many times a roll of the dice.
Vincent van Gogh, whose paintings are so greatly admired today, himself died by suicide and penniless, believing himself to be a failure.
But then again, does it mean something that is excellent will always get its due after years? Not necessarily.
How many countless Van Goghs must the world have never even given their due credit? How many must it have forgotten already? How many will never get their due, in life or in death?
The answer is millions. Because, contrary to popular belief, the universe doesn’t care about conspiring to make your dreams a reality, the universe doesn’t really care about you at all, so you have to start caring about yourself.
Forget about Van Gogh, how many people must have sincerely wasted their lives away reading inspirational sayings from “achievers” whose own success stories were far more murky, dirty, unethical or just sprinkled with dumb luck instead of the perfect picture they painted to the world?
How many people all over the world waste their entire lives on careers, exams, massively debt funded college degrees that lead to dead-end jobs, or mistakenly keep believing that the businesses they are doing will succeed just if they just never give up? Billions!
But they say every cloud has a silver lining, meaning there is always a positive aspect to be found in a negative situation. So, what is my silver lining?
In some ways, I think it is good that Carve Your Destiny did not get me the “success” I believed I deserved. Because if it did, I too would have been blinded and consider myself 100 percent self-made and I would continue to believe in and perpetuate the myths that in reality, work only for a tiny minority of people.
Eventually, I picked myself up, as I had no other option, and slowly and painfully built a pretty respected career as a consultant and speaker over the next ten years anyway. Did that too involve a healthy dose of luck though? Absolutely.
-Had I not received good quality education, I would have never been able to develop intellectually.
Become a Medium member
-Had my parents not raised me in a somewhat “sensible” household, I would have fallen prey to negative habits a long time ago.
-Had I not read the books I had, and not received the setback I did with Carve Your Destiny, I would have been blinded by positive thinking, started this business on a loan, and wasted all the little capital I had on frivolous non-revenue producing activities.
-Had I not found a decent marketing strategy and a decent market even after multiple iterations, (let’s face it, many don’t) it wouldn’t have worked.
-Had I not been lucky enough to have the ability as well as willingness to study personal finance, this business would have been wiped out during the Covid Pandemic, despite many years of “persistence.”
Oh, by the way, speaking of the Covid Pandemic, being able to live through it, when millions died is luck too.
Despite all of this, it is impossible to predict what exactly will happen in the coming years, because being able to do okay in life and business is still a dynamic process, depending on multiple unpredictable factors. There is no fixed holy grail that never leaves you once you find it.
Again, don’t credit me for my “persistence.” Every living being persists on something from birth till death, even a cockroach. It’s a biological necessity, not some glorious, heroic trait.
But my let’s go back to the original point that I want to make through these reflections.
Is it fair that the society tells everyone that if they just sacrifice their life away in the present that tomorrow will be beautiful?
Don’t people have a right to a beautiful today instead hoping for a better tomorrow, which they may not even be alive to see?
Is it fair that society tells everyone that whoever is a winner, succeeded because they are super talented or because they outwork everybody else or because they are geniuses.
Is it fair that when the reality of the world is that, many get far more than what they deserved and countless more talented people end up with nothing?
Is it fair when popular motivational literature or sayings “inspire” people to waste their lives away and they willingly do it, thinking they will get glory, but the only thing they get is pain, anxiety and despair?
I understand that not everyone can be at the top, it’s just not possible. If everyone became a millionaire, then the value of one million dollars would be worth a single dollar, or in other words, useless.
So, everybody can’t be an “achiever” or “rich”, because if everyone is, then no one is.
But the other side is that you may be one of the rare few who actually pursues your goals and WINS. You may become a “super achiever”, call yourself self-made and believe you have attained freedom.
The problem is, even if you become an achiever in the eyes of the society, you are still imprisoned by the shackles of that same society, weighed down by its expectations. Your boss maybe different from the usual bosses, but you will always have a boss.
Your boss can be your official employer, your publisher, your TV Studio/Producer, your investor, your critical clients, your record label, the bank, your ideologies, the organizations you are affiliated to, your sponsors, your spouse/kids, your own desires or more recently the various AI algorithms. Most of these in turn have their own bosses.
“Even if you win the rat-race you are still a rat.” -Lily Tomlin
The truth is as long as you are living, nobody is truly free, you still have to operate within the law of the land and have to operate in accordance with the laws of nature.
So, my point of raising all of this is, can’t we just let everyone be and not imprison them any more than they are already imprisoned?
Can’t we just stop judging them for what they achieved or did not achieve?
Can’t we just stop misleading people into completely sacrificing their lives by giving them the illusion that they have complete control over their lives when in fact they don’t?
Can we stop calling the grains of sands pushed to the bottom of the bucket, LOSERS, and stop treating the random grains at the top of the bucket as Gods?
My honest answer? NO. As a group, I don’t think we can.
Society won’t let the people who truly want to expose this harmful nose cutting game, speak openly. It loves the status quo and everything will probably remain the way it has always been, albeit in different forms as time goes on.
I am not painting everybody in a similar light though. You also have to be grateful to some people or some things within society as they are very things that will show you the way to loosen the shackles.
Overall, though, most people will keep getting their noses cut again and again, one way or the other.
But, if you personally, have the self-awareness that your nose is being cut, you can choose not to fooled anymore and make a conscious decision to step out of society’s games.
I am completely aware that all of this is hard to pull off without at least some degree of financial stability in proportion to your desires and lifestyle costs, relative to the area you are living in.
Money is extremely important but only till the point that gives you freedom to pursue your desires/ fulfil lifestyle obligations without too much stress. When money becomes your master, and the end all for the sake of it or for mindless societal competition, that is where the problem begins.
I am also not saying, you should give up everything and be a monk somewhere, unless you want to. I myself am still very much a part of “the real world.”
Ironically, being expected to live a “strict” spiritual life, when you don’t want to, or being shamed when you don’t adhere to “norms”, is also a societal expectation!! It’s almost a form of a “spiritual” rat race.
The only difference? — The feeling that “I live in a bigger house than you” simply turns into “I am holier than thou.”
Also, who the heck dictates what is right and what is wrong anyway? Again, one way or the other, they are guidelines created by the society, which often differ from culture to culture and era to era.
I might be wrong, as I often have been, but I think you should be free to pursue whatever you want as long as you are not intentionally hurting yourself or hurting others around you. You should be free to own whatever the heck you want to own as long as you don’t let those things own you.
So ultimately, if you wish to minimize your frustrations, you have to mentally bow out of trying to win, not only the materialistic rat race but also the spiritual rat race!
There is only one thing we can be absolutely certain of — We are living today and one day we no longer will.
Whenever you find yourself questioning whether the path you are pursuing is worth it, ask yourself, if you only had a few years to live, would you still continue to do it? If the answer is yes, then keep at it. If not, think deeply about why you are still doing this?
Ask yourself, do you want to live life least SOMEWHAT on your terms or completely waste it bearing the weight of the world’s expectations?
Only you can make that choice.
Ultimately, it is you who has to make the decision that enough is enough, that you are no longer going to be brainwashed ANYMORE, not unconsciously anyway.
It is YOU who has to make the decision that ultimately, your mental peace matters more than any pointless societal expectations you are expected to meet.
Remember — You can’t change the world; you can only change yourself.
Parting Story: The Secret of Permanent Change.
There is a story of a traveler walking across vast distances who got tired and stopped by a farm to get a drink of water. When he entered the farm, he saw a dog who was whimpering and crying slowly whilst laying on the floor.
The owner came out and the traveler asked him for the glass of water. The owner went to get it and the traveler still noticed that dog still kept crying while laying on the floor. When the owner returned with the water, the traveller drank it and said, “You know I have been noticing, your dog has been crying all this time. Why is that?”
The owner said, “Have you not noticed, the dog is lying on a bag of nails!”
The traveler, “Oh yes! How could I miss that? But he isn’t doing anything about it? Is he sick or disabled?”
The Owner said “He is not.”
The traveler exclaimed “Well if he is not sick or disabled and if the bag of nails is hurting him why does he not get up?!!”
The owner said, “He doesn’t get up, because the pain from laying on the nails is only enough to make him want to cry and whine but the pain is not enough to make him want to GET UP!”
This is the story of our lives!
We keep whining and complaining about whatever is bothering us but we rarely do something about it. The reason is that discomfort we get is only enough to make us want to complain but it is not enough to make us GET UP.
People actively decide to make a change only when the pain of not changing becomes greater than the pain of changing!
The question is HOW MUCH PAIN ARE YOU IN?
The Things I used to Believe that eventually created too much pain.
I used to believe that relentless pursuit of success and achievement was everything, even at the expense of mental peace.
I used to maintain rigid beliefs, inspired by motivational literature, even when those same beliefs were doing me tons of harm. Thanks to statements like “No pain, no gain.” And “never give up!”, I made my life much more difficult than it needed to be, for years
I worked with high expectations, focusing on outcomes that were often beyond my control, thinking this would lead to success.
I chased dreams primarily for the rewards and recognition, believing that the end justified the means, and that the pursuit was merely a necessary step to reaching a desired outcome.
I spent time dwelling on the past and planning for the future, often missing the opportunities and beauty present in the current moment.
I pushed through work doggedly, seeing it as a means to an end, a chore to be endured for the sake of future gain.
I relied heavily on willpower, trying to force life into the shape I wanted, rather than adapting to its natural course. I clung tightly to everything, resisting the natural flow of life, believing that I had to fight to keep things from changing.
I put in 12-plus-hour days for several years, first on my movie and then on my business, only to realize that everything good in my life came to me easily, and everything I worked super hard for seemed to cause more pain than it was worth. Despite achieving ‘reasonable success’ — whatever that means — I still fell far short of the goals I had set for myself in my mind. That truly was the cause of the real pain: those expectations.
I approached life like a strategic game with targets to be achieved, fixating on winning as the only outcome, and feeling devastated by loss.
I was firmly convinced that societal goals and milestones were the benchmarks of a successful life, and I strived tirelessly to meet them, believing this was the only way to truly live.
The UNLEARNING and realizations that this insufferable Pain Brought in Me.
Mental peace is foremost, if you have everything but no mental peace, it’s a waste. The pursuit of peace is also a more sustainable objective than the pursuit of happiness, as ironically, to get peace, you don’t need to achieve more, you just ought to want less.
Be willing to update every belief of yours, especially if they begin to do you more harm than good. You have to be open to learning from a variety of mentors, but also be open to rejecting what clearly doesn’t do your life any good, even it’s advice from the very same mentors.
Work without expectations and only on what you can control. Patience may be a virtue, but sometimes, a better virtue may be to wait for nothing at all.
If you have a dream, as far as possible, pursue it for its own sake, not for an elusive reward. Ideally, the activity ITSELF should be the reward.
Work till it feels like enjoyable and sustainable, not a chore. You can’t sustain what you don’t enjoy.
Go with the flow of what life gives you, not constantly rely on willpower.
Things often come and go on their own, what has to come, let it come. What has to go, let it go. Try your best, but also learn to let go if the solution itself does more harm than good.
Life should be a play, fun in itself, not a game with targets. You compete in games to win, and disappoint yourself by losing. You play only to have fun.
Don’t obsessively look at future as a source of happiness because you may very well get what you desire, but may also lose the invaluable things you already have and take for granted today.
The last 15 years of my life may have not been a journey of the “success” I imagined. But they have been a journey of gaining some insights I never thought I would attain. When one realizes that most society dictated goals are ultimately meaningless, they finally take the first step towards a more free life.
“The person who is caught in the net of ‘becoming somebody’, wastes his whole life, dies unfulfilled, in tremendous despair, because eventually he can see that his whole life was there for him to live, but because of his desire to become somebody, he sacrificed all that was freely available.
Give it a try. To goals you have already given too many lives. Now try to live moment to moment, as if there is no future. In the beginning it will be only as if, but by and by you will become aware that that as if is the only reality. In the beginning it may be just like acting. Soon you will realize that this acting is the only reality.
You have come with a goal, but I won’t allow you to remain with a goal.” — OSHO
