Finding Freedom Beyond Social Media

 In a world dominated by likes, shares, and endless scrolling, I recently made a radical decision. I deactivated my Instagram and Facebook accounts on 1st Jan'24. For years, these platforms had been an integral part of my daily routine, consuming precious time and attention. However, as the digital noise grew louder, I found myself yearning for silence, for moments of genuine connection and reflection.

The decision to step away from social media was not easy. Like many, I initially feared missing out, worrying about losing touch with friends and opportunities. Yet, what I discovered upon disconnecting was a newfound sense of freedom, a liberation from the constant barrage of notifications and comparisons.

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With my social media accounts offline, I suddenly had more time at my disposal than ever before. Instead of mindlessly scrolling through feeds, I found myself diving into passions that had long been neglected. Whether it was delving into a new hobby, immersing myself in literature, or honing professional skills, each day brought a renewed sense of purpose and fulfillment.

One of the most significant benefits of my social media break was the quality time I could now dedicate to my family. Without the distraction of notifications pulling me away, I found myself fully present during meals, conversations, and shared activities. In this digital age, where screens often replace face-to-face interactions, reconnecting with loved ones on a deeper level has become an invaluable gift.

Moreover, stepping back from social media allowed me to cultivate a sense of inner peace and contentment. No longer bombarded by curated images and status updates, I could embrace authenticity and introspection. I found joy in the simple moments—a walk in nature, a quiet cup of coffee, or a meaningful conversation with a friend.

As I reflect on my journey away from social media, I am reminded of the importance of reclaiming control over our digital lives. While these platforms undoubtedly offer connectivity and opportunities, they can also foster feelings of inadequacy and distraction. By taking a deliberate break, I can rediscover the beauty of living in the moment and prioritizing what truly matters.

In conclusion, my break from social media has been a transformative experience, empowering me to focus on personal growth, strengthen relationships, and cultivate a sense of inner peace. In a world filled with digital noise, sometimes the greatest liberation comes from unplugging and embracing the freedom to live authentically.

Stay Peaceful :)

If you always try to be normal, You will never know how amazing you can be.

 I posted this title on LinkedIn a month ago when I read it somewhere in Chennai in Nov'22. I was scrolling through my posts today and found it and it made me think that this line has more to it, and I should express what I feel about this line and some of my other thoughts via it. I've always made an effort to act normally and with good judgment. I was born and raised in Delhi, but I've been living alone in Chennai for the past few years. Being so far away from my family is difficult, but I'm prepared to make compromises in order to progress my work.

I can really relate to the title because I've always tried to blend in and not draw too much attention to myself. I've always been cautious and followed the rules because I've been terrified of failing and other people's opinions. (Especially in Chennai, it's an awesome place btw)

But what if I'm missing something by always trying to fit in? What if there are amazing things I could be doing—things about which I am passionate and which would make me truly happy I'm too afraid to do them because I'm worried about what other people might think? I think almost everyone can relate to these questions. 

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Though it's a frightening idea, I'm beginning to see that it might be worthwhile to take a chance and venture outside of my comfort zone. I'm aware that it won't be simple and that there will be many barriers and challenges along the way. But I also understand that unless I give it a shot, I'll never know what I'm really capable of. Seriously, you never know what you are capable of until you have been put in that situation, and fighting out of it is the only way out, I have been through such a situation a few times so I know that we are a lot more powerful than we think we are. 

(For any Seinfeld fans out there, it's time to see this episode.)

So I've decided to take baby steps to depart from my usual routine and explore new things. Though I'm not yet sure how exactly that will look, I can't wait to see where it leads. Maybe I'll pick up a new hobby or perhaps I'll start participating more in meetings or offer to help with a new project at work. I will give it my all and see what happens, whatever it is.

I doubt that I'll ever fully understand how magnificent I am capable of being, but I'm eager to try. I'm ready to take a chance and see all that the world has to offer because I'm overwhelmed by leading a routine, safe life. If I'm brave enough to pursue them, who knows what incredible things might be waiting for me?

Guess we'll see :)

Vivek Choudhary

What matters ?

I turned 31 last month, As per my ideology the most productive years (21-31) are gone, and the hard work I have done in those years will direct how the rest of my life will go, well not entirely but it sure will have a significant impact. During those golden years, I worked hard, like really hard, from traveling in buses to getting a bike, to getting a car I have seen my fair share of hard work and I am proud of that. Doing 24*7 shift, I didn't even care about Saturdays and Sundays and worked as fast as I could and as hard as I could, I wasn't able to make everyone happy but then again my goal was to serve my company, my organization which I can proudly say I did and will continue to do so. 

When I started at 21 I was energetic, young, and powerful (compared to myself at 31) now I have a family, a beautiful and loving wife, and 2 beautiful children (A boy and a Girl) what more could one ask. Now I live to serve my family and fulfill their needs.

I sometimes wonder why we are doing all this, why not relax and enjoy all the time (for that you need a shitload of money) but then again even if you had all the money in the world, what would you do? Would you constantly go on vacation? I can tell you you wouldn't, humans get bored very soon, sometimes sooner than you think, often during my vacation which lasts more than 7 days, I begin to miss home, I travel most of the time and have to spend a lot of time away from family but still, a vacation is temporary it cannot be permanent. So the question comes again what matters the most? 

I have asked this question to several successful people and I got 1 common answer, which is self-satisfaction. 

Now try to understand this, it is a very simple term, "Self Satisfaction" but it is actually nearly impossible to achieve this. You must be 1 in million people if you have this. 

I am not a very knowledgeable guy but for now, what matters the most to me, is the happiness of my family, the people around me, and the people I work with. The environment I spend most of my time, I want it all to be positive and happy that is my goal and I try to achieve it every day and go to sleep with a smile :)

In case you don't agree with what I have said above, feel free to comment, reach out or ignore.

Thank you

Vivek Choudhary 

A Squirrel bit my toe.

I woke up around 9am and was sitting outside watching birds and peacocks (if you know me then you know we have lots of them here) I saw a Squirrel near me moving quickly to different trees. It came near my feet, I though its harmless as I have never heard it can cause harm. The next thing I know it grabbed my toe and bit me. I was shaken by this behavior of a Squirrel. It did not bleed or anything but now I know that these things bite.

Just like in our life, we see, assume a lot of things and believe that it can't do you no harm but nothing is certain in this life my friend. Its not that this squirrel thing made me a different person but I was thinking about events going in my life right now and was planning to make them better and then it bit me. Making me realize that we can never know for sure what's going to happen. One day you are happy for your achievements and then the other day you are miserable due to your failures. The point I want to make here is don't take things for granted and never plan too ahead of time.
You will never know what's going to hit you.

Regards
The guy who got bit by a squirrel.

Share water with Birds/Animals

It's really hot weather and we all are comfy inside our home because we are humans, our ancestors gave us the gift of advancement. We have technology, we have access to cold air and water, but what about those birds and animals who live in the city. They don't have any natural resource of water here in the city, they don't always get shelter in the hot burning afternoon. As a capable human it's our responsibility to share the basic resources with them just like the nature has shared it with us.

I felt this urge to help them birds because I just saw them drinking water from a pot my father leaves for them everyday.
Like 20 minutes ago I went outside to see how hot it is, It's very bad out there, I saw a crow and some other birds drinking water from the same pot. It got me thinking that what if some animal or bird needs water badly but is so weak that it can't fly or walk, what about them ? They will just die, because it's a city, people are busy, they have stuff to do and later they will relax with a coke in hand watching TV, they don't bother if a bird lives or dies. Even me, just today it hit me that what am I doing to help them ? Where was I before ? or Where are you now ?

For the love of GOD please go outside, make some arrangements so that a bird can have some water, trust me it will pay you back with a nice gesture.

Vivek Choudhary

Road Safety : Your life can change from a silly mistake.

The events are from my real life experience this week. It affected me so much that I'm writing about it.

My aim is to spread awareness among people about some safety measures or you can call it being attentive and being aware of your surroundings at all times.

I was boarding a bus from Delhi to Gurgaon, as you all know the low floor buses in India, I sat at very rear near window. I bought my ticket, plugged in my headphones suddenly the bus stopped and people started shouting, I looked out of the window there was a man under the bus, his legs were trapped in the rear wheels, low floor has two rear at each end. The driver hit reverse so that the guy can be retrieved I saw the man pulled his leg out and was shocked to see one feet was severely crushed and damaged. I've never seen anything like that. Luckily a PCR vehicle was nearby and cops too. They immediately took him to the hospital in that vehicle. 
Now that person didn't know that this is how his day is going to end up, he would have never imagined that he would lose his foot, the point is, a simple mistake to catch a running bus resulted in having to live a life without his foot.

I saw the ugly face of machines vs man, we created machines but we've to be careful around them. A machine won't know if you're hurt. A bus is a big transportation vehicle and driver does not have eyes in every corner, it's up to us to be careful around it. Whether you're on foot or bike or car, just don't fool around a bus or truck. 

Take care
Vivek Choudhary

The Decade of your life.

I was born on 25th of November 1991 that makes me 24 years old now.

It's time to reevaluate one's life. I believe and follow a philosophy that the age between 20 to 30 is the most productive and decision making decade of your lifetime. These 10 years either make you or break you. One should know how to utilize this time and make the most of it. Think practically, during these years, you're most energetic, passionate, fresh, powerful. You can use all these powers to make your life more comfortable and reach the state of success. After 30 you'll have your family to worry about, your kids, your ageing parents. You won't be able to focus in one direction. After 30 you can't physically or mentally give enough to your career/business so by then you should make your life comfortable enough to take care of those losses you'll have to deal with.

Then again if you don't want any of the stuff mentioned above and want to live your life like many teenagers, then go travel the world, have fun, party and hangout with friends. Whatever you do, remember, you won't get these 10 years back. So spend wisely.

I've completed 4 years of this decade. And so far I'm in a pretty good position in my career. I've 6 more years but I'll do it in less than that.

Stay focused, work hard, earn respect.
Respect is far more valuable than money.

Vivek Choudhary

The Anti-Social Network

Hi everyone,

I want you all to take good 5 minutes of your lives and give this idea a piece of your mind.
The cellphone we use, majorly for Social Network, I couldn't be more straight here, "Just stop over doing it"

You are thinking you are closer to the person you love but actually you are going away. These networks are here for communication, not to live your life on a wall. I go to facebook once or twice a day (Actually I am a YouTube addict) just to see what my friends are up to and after scrolling for 30 seconds I am back in the real world, with people who are with me. In future when you won't have the bones to walk, the courage to jump, the passion to ride, you will regret each and every unproductive second spent here on these cobwebs of internet.

You need to make most of everything we have, because life may seem long, but its actually really small when you begin to realize the joy of small things. You may not realize this, just have a look the facts below.
Users send out 58 million tweets per day, with 9,100 happening every second. However, there are 222 million Twitters who just watch other people’s tweets. There are 684,478 pieces of content shared on Facebook; 3,600 new photos on Instagram; 2,083 check-ins on Foursquare during every minute of everyday. People are spending 1 out of every 7 minutes on Facebook when online. Facebook users typically are spending 10.5 Billion minutes (almost 20,000 years) on the social network. And, that’s excluding mobile devices. See 20,000 Years, we can't even begin to imagine how valuable and priceless piece of time is wasted and it goes on.

If you are applying for a new job, you know your chances of getting that job may be so much reduced because of your social networking website profile page? Often employs search for applicant’s social networking website’s profile page to know more about you.  Maybe you have put some humorous pics in your profile or maybe you have entered wrong information (maybe just for fun) in your profile.  Your employer will be shocked to see all that and you will not be given the job offer.

Just think all of the technology is here to help you, not to become so dependent on it that when you do not have it, you can't live anymore. Clicking pictures of food before eating it, taking risky selfies just to get more likes, getting jealous because of less number of followers or likes, writing about your personal life in public, please stop all this, this makes you look pathetic and desperate.

Remember who you are, act accordingly.

Vivek Choudhary

 

To take credit or not ?

It's an odd topic and I am here to clear few things.
Whatever we do in life has a purpose, a motive, an outcome. That's why we do things right ?
But what about hobbies ? Dancing, Singing, Playing games etc. What do they do ?
You don't get paid for playing counter strike, nfs, candy crush. Then why do we do it ?

Its simple, because we like it, we love doing these things, it helps us and cheer us up.
Hobby can be anything at all, from serious research to staring at an empty wall. But whatever man, it makes us happy that's why we do it. Just like all these thing writing is also a hobby. but then people question you, you must have copied it from somewhere. I get accused many times for my blog, but people who say so are the ones who haven't read any of my post. Also they do not understand the concept of hobby. Someone did the same thing a while ago, but thanks to him he gave me the idea to write this one. He did one any of you would have done when you see my blog, its a work of years which I have put in it. Now, I also do not get paid for writing then why do I do it ? It's simple, first of all, I love to share whatever I learn with people, I believe if all of us were well educated then half of our problems would disappear. I don't do it for credit, that's what professional writers do. I write for myself, to express myself, to save my thoughts from being lost in this fast world. Our soldiers who fight to save us do not take credit, the secret service where unnamed people save our life. Credit is overrated (I say overrated a lot). When I woke up today, many people did not, So am I superior from them ? No. When I drove to work I did not hit any vehicle, Does that make me perfect driver ? No. Whatever we do, just remember there is someone out there who can do the same thing a lot better than you but the difference is he understands making a difference is more important than making an impression.

It's simple guys if you are doing it to impress others then you are a stupid a very stupid person. 
Remember guys there is a lot more than taking credit, for example, to live.

Vivek Choudhary

Why we are here ? Purpose of our lives.

Every day we wake up and do what we ought to do. Family, friends, and work.

That’s all we do.

My question is, Is that it? Is that all we are supposed to do in this beautiful world?

I get it some of you might be wondering our world is not that beautiful because of some unwanted creatures and the problems they create for us. Crime now I won't go into detail about what kind of crimes are there. We should rather focus on the beauty of this world.

For some of you, beauty is in a girl, boy, drugs, love, sex, nature, alcohol, cigarette, movies, technology, and whatnot.

But do you really spend a considerate amount of your valuable time in this world with things you love?

When I wake up every day I think about my purpose in this life, whenever I am not working, this is all I think about. I party, smoke, and have fun with friends but when I am not doing any of this all I am doing is thinking hard about it.

Everything that happens, happens for a bloody reason. That is a fact I understand very well.
Every step we take, and everything we do leads to an action, and that action my friend leads to a reaction. So whenever we do something good, not for ourselves but for others, it creates a ripple effect that automatically generates a reaction, and needless to say that reaction will be good for sure. The more gratitude you show the more thankful you are the more of it you attract (sorry I get carried away towards the law of attraction) But remember this, this stuff always works. No matter how little you do but make it a good deed. Feeding biscuits to a street dog, helping someone cross the road whatever you can do just do it. It won't take long, you don't have to spend any money. You'll get eternal satisfaction, try it once. You'll feel you were born to do this, to save humanity. A soldier does his work in LOC, you ought to do your work in society, if you can't clean the streets just don't spoil it. If you can't heal a heart just don't hurt it. If you can't make someone happy just don't make him cry.

In the end, it won't matter how you did, but it'll matter what you did, and they'll remember you for what you did. It's your duty to make sure they remember you with love in their eyes.

Vivek Choudhary

The Lesson

I'm a bit of an arrogant guy at times. I think and judge a lot but I keep my opinion to myself. Today something happened that made me think that we ain't always right or it's not right at all to think that what you're thinking is absolutely correct. At times we run into arguments and we don't even realize that instead of proving who's right we begin to prove who's ego is bigger. We totally neglect that other person's opinion.

Let's take an example of what happened today. There is a smoking zone in my building and it's on the outskirts of the building so it's kinda open to natural air from all sides. It's pretty much cool though and there's room for many people. But since it's cold so many people don't actually enter the smoking zone but they just stand at its entrance and smoke. Just to avoid the cold breeze or sometimes heavily chilled strokes of cold air. The point is I'm one of those people in fact I was till today. There are guards who politely tell people to smoke inside the zone. But thanks to our huge ego of class and band we don't listen to them. Today I went to the zone and started smoking outside the zone. The guard came to me and asked me to smoke in the zone since I was in a hurry so I went inside

A couple of minutes later I saw a few suits "Higher level officials" smoking outside, the guard came again and surprisingly didn't say anything to them and returned. After finishing my cigarette I went straight to that guard and asked "Why this discrimination? You told me to go and didn't say anything to them? "
The guard politely apologized and said "Sir I feel ashamed that I'm illiterate but still I've to tell you literate people to follow the instructions mentioned in that Sign Board. If you are offended I won't say a word to you smoke anywhere you want"

I was like this guy showed me that irrespective of my position in my band I'm so wrong so bloody wrong in following something which is meant to be followed by every literate and socially responsible person. I was wrong on so many levels that I couldn't face this man. I came to argue why he allowed others and refused to allow me, but the basic point in my whole argument would have been based on my irresponsibility. I stood there for like 5 seconds totally speechless. Somehow I managed to say "I'm sorry" and walked away. So before judging others judge yourself. If you believe you're right maybe you're on some levels but not all and that other guy might be correct on one of the remaining levels.

Vivek Choudhary

Dealing with Heartbreak Part - 1

It's a long time since I've stopped writing...
but sometimes it's the only thing you can do, everything else looks so damn boring.

After so many years on this earth, still, it's hard for me to know people, so many people betrayed me. I should learn from my mistakes but I still do the same mistakes, I love I care I protect but I've my own ways to do such things people may think of me as an immature ignorant arrogant bastard because most of the time I don't give a flying fuck to situations, people, responsibilities but actually, I do, I may not show it all the time, I actually love, I actually care, I actually worry. 


When I was in school there was this girl I was madly in love with, after many years I realized that I was barking up the wrong tree. Then I stopped barking. There's this "best friend" who showed his true colors later just for money, and many more situations were there, and they all were enough to make me a hermit. So I became one. Everything was so damn cool and simple for e.g don't have to worry about replying to texts, totally ignoring missed calls on purpose, don't care about giving time and being there on time. In simple words I became a stone, I remember I did not cry at all from January 2012 to June 2013. I was that strong.

Then something happened, In my fucking awesome life someone came and actually made it awesome. It was all so sudden that I changed within days, I still cannot figure out if the change is good or bad, but yes I hardly smoke or drink now, I can sit in a park and smile at playing little kids. But then comes the sick part of it, I can deal with physical pain but that thing with the nervous system is something that can drive a person insane, Law of attraction goes under the bed when such things happen, maybe I was wrong maybe it is all my fault but all I want is peace, I don't want things too complicated, I hate everything that is complicated e.g c++ coding or numerical analysis. Well, the irony is I cannot write what I actually wanted to write, I am writing all this shit that hardly makes sense.



Have a good day, fellas.

If you want a book I recommend The Modern Breakup  by Daniel Chiliac