Harsha's Life Blog

People are often unconsciously living out scripts handed down to them — by their parents, by their teachers, by their communities. We are all in some movie or the other, and greater awareness about this brings greater choice.   Unconsciously living out scripts  We are...

Much of life is about avoiding trying to have your cake and eat it. Trying to reconcile things that cannot be reconciled, or trying to separate things that cannot be separated. In other words, trying do the impossible.  More common that you might think  And, life is...

‘Become the best version of yourself’ is another one of those hollow, mottoes of modernity. It seems like an attractive slogan because it calls you to better yourself and to improve. However, its attractiveness soon loses its glitter when you dig a little deeper into...

If you have an insight into yourself that unsettles and challenges you — celebrate it! It is much better to become awake to your life, than be trapped in a Sisyphean struggle. A struggle where you keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Change begins...

What impact do the people in your life have on you? If someone makes you feel like sh*t why put up with it? Sometimes, we need to set-up boundaries for our own health. Boundaries that protect you from people who make you feel bad.  Noticing the people who make you...

Vent, if you need to, but don’t be a moaner. What’s the difference you ask? Venting vs moaning Venting is a releasing of pent-up feelings and frustrations that are probably better let out. Feelings that perhaps you prefer to deny and bottle-up, often non-consciously....

A large part of life is about finding the right people for you. The people that you would like to work with and hang out with.  Who are the right people?  The good news is that there is nothing intrinsically ‘right’ (or wrong) about the right people...

“Become anything you want to be!” — one of modernity’s mottoes — is so utterly confusing.   Become anything you want to be  This is the terrible advice that we so often hear being given, especially to young people. But, it begs the question: become WHAT exactly?...

What is most easily articulated is not necessarily what is most important. Yet, we are often suckers for this. We can focus on the wrong things to our detriment and elevate false indicators above the actual things of value themselves. Whether it is grades above true...

Sometimes, we can torment ourselves unnecessarily about decisions that are to come. Decisions that you expect to have to make in the future. You may ruminate and ruminate, forgetting that you don’t have to decide before you need to decide.  Control  There may even be...

Insight from today’s coaching: Sometimes, it is not time spent that is the problem, but rather the quality of time spent. The problem is not being present.  Cost of not being present  If you are distracted and not present with people, especially your loved ones, no...

We sometimes have important realisations about ourselves, about behaviours and habits we would like to change. Realisations that could become catalysts for real personal change. Yet, much of the time, we get nowhere. Our insights are soon forgotten and life is back to...

How to overcome negative emotions is a question whose answer is in the words of the question itself. For, it is in viewing certain emotions as ‘negative’ or ‘positive’ that the root of the problem lies. By creating a duality, we create a war within ourselves — a war...

How to overcome anxiety is a question that is increasingly being asked. And, its prevalence tells us a lot about life in modernity. About how the many pressures of our competitive, urban environments can cause inner tension and worry within us. Luckily, we have choice...

We, moderns, are so obsessed with achieving that even leisure is required to have a purpose. To serve as “recharging”, so that one can do even more achieving! Yet, this is a form of recharging just to drain yourself again.  Living in order to work  It is as if...

Everyone puts up a front, the only question is how much? It may be a big front some of the time, a bit of a front all of the time, or any mixture in between. Whatever the particular flavour, putting up a front is behaviour that is deeply human. I do it, you do it, we...

Being able to cut through the noise is the No.1 survival skill in modernity. In our information age of vast and mass communication, we must either cut through noise or else drown in it.   Inherent property  Generating patterns and narratives is an inherent property of...

With every inch of material advancement, we seem to be adding a mile of psychological derangement.  Despite our material progress, or perhaps because of it, modernity is producing more-and-more chronic anxiety and mental tension. It is as if our species’ very success...

We can clutter our minds in the same way that we clutter our homes. And the result is very much the same. Feeling cramped for space, confusion around where things are, wasted energy and frustration. Luckily, decluttering your mind is much simpler than you might...

How can we live with a sense of inner freedom? To feel like life isn’t an uphill struggle with foes to vanquish at every turn. The truth is, you often stand in your shadow, and you just need to get out of your own way. But, the mind is a tricky customer that loves to...

Through the use of logic, you see the limits of logic. Through the limits of logic, you see the use of logic. Everything is useful in some way and useless in another. So, you cannot ask a fish to cross the Serengeti in the same way that cannot ask a cheetah to swim...

Many psychological knots are self-perpetuating — like Ouroboros, the serpent that eats its own tail. We often become anxious about anxiety, sad about sadness, and fearful of fear.  Psychological knots  What makes psychological knots, knotty, is that you are attempting...

I recently read that Stanley Milgram’s controversial electric-shock experiment from the early 60’s was faked. Apparently, he massively cherry-picked the data to fit his narrative. Milgram claimed to have shown how obedience to authority led people to do unconscionable...

The Amazonian Pirahãs, one of the world’s last remaining hunter-gatherer tribes, have an intriguing tradition of changing their names every 10 years or so. For the Pirahãs, people are not the same in different stages of their lives and name changes are meant to...

Finding meaning is one of those trendy phrases that gets thrown around a lot these days. But, what does finding meaning really involve? What the bloody-hell is it and how do we find it? Here’s a thought. Rather than trying to find meaning in life, find what feels...

Looking to try something different in 2021? STOP desperately trying to ‘achieve’. The space that is left by freeing-up the energy wasted on proving yourself is fertile ground for growth. This is the void of achievement.   Be wary of positive advice   The world is full...

Friends, 2020 has certainly been crazy, but I tried to get on with things despite it all. Self-published my first book on my own terms Coached by video throughout the pandemic Got a bicycle Walked in nature more Wrote 143 blog posts Attended Nassim Taleb's Real World...

Why do we get worked-up over the behaviour of other humans? Why do we have expectations of people in the same way we wouldn’t of other animals? Because the human animal has what is known as theory of mind. Choice and action Theory of mind is the ability to attribute...