January 2022 - Asif Rehmani

Your body is not a garbage can

When I was growing up, I remember my parents telling me that I must finish everything on my plate. Wasting food was just not acceptable.

I have never liked waste and continue to look upon it unfavorably when I see anything wasted – time, money, food, etc.

But having said that, my views on finishing my plate of food has changed over time.

Let me explain…

When you leave food on your plate, it goes to the garbage can. Chances are that many of us reasonable people will feel bad about wasting food, as we should, since we know in the back of our minds that there are people going hungry around the world. We should be thankful and blessed for the food that we have received and wasting it is definitely not a good thing. Agreed.

Having said that, there are times when you just get to a point where you know that you should not be putting more food in your mouth. You are full.

So why did you end up having more food on your plate then you could eat?

Sometimes it’s just not avoidable. For example, at a party where you are served food on a plate. For times like these, you just don’t have a choice as to the plate that was put in front of you. Or sometimes you just made a mistake and took too much food. You’re human. It happens.

The only choices you have at that point are:

Do you put it in the garbage can knowing that you are wasting food?
Do you put it in your body knowing that it’s not good for your body?

I used to be the person that would religiously finish his plate and would tell my kids to do the same.

As I have grown older, I have learned to respect my body more.

Your body is not a garbage can.

It’s true that it’s not good to waste food by putting it in the garbage but it’s worse to treat your body like a garbage can by ingesting food that your body doesn’t need

Same could be said for any other substance that’s not good for your body. The fact is that we have been given only one body and if we don’t treat it respectfully, we will suffer the consequences as we get older.

Be good to your body and be considerate of your future self. You deserve it!

How to slow down time

I can’t believe 2021 is over and 2022 is here

Have you caught yourself saying something similar?

For folks in there mid-thirties and above, this feeling is pretty common. It’s hard to believe sometimes how time is just flying by so quickly. It feels to get even faster once you have kids and the routines with them set in and you literally see them grow by the week.

I was having this type of a chat with a lady at a conference I was speaking at recently. She was saying the same type of thing: I can’t believe my kids are all grown up and time is flying by so fast.

I shared a thought with her. An idea of how to slow down time. I would like to share that same thought here as well for what it’s worth…

To slow down time, add wonder & curiosity in your life

My rationale behind this is the following. If you think how kids perceive time, many of them think time is going by too slow. They will tell you that they are bored most of the time.

Why is that? How is it that for them time is going by slow when they live in the same world as you and I..?

I believe this is because kids are constantly absorbing new information and experiences. They’re constantly getting curious about things they don’t know. Their sense of wonder is still young and fresh. For them, every minute is new and different. The only routine most of them have is going to school everyday and even there, they’re absorbing new information all the time (or at least we hope so 😊)

I’m convinced that adding the sense of wonder and curiosity in our lives will help us slow down time & enjoy life to the fullest

But what’s the way to add wonder and curiosity you ask..? here are a few things to consider:

Enjoy every moment.
Relish the present.
Get curious about the things and people around you.
Make constant learning a way of life.
Try to understand before being understood.
Take pictures and videos of moments that otherwise might be mundane.
Write down your thoughts in a journal routinely.
Start a personal blog like I did 😊
Discuss new topics (not current news) with your friends.

I hope you find the path that works best for you to add wonder & curiosity in your life. As Steve Jobs once said: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish”.

Solve other people’s problems

In business and life in general, it’s all about solving other people’s problems.

In your profession, the higher the number of people you’re able to help with your product or service, the bigger your market potential is.

Personal life works the same way. The more you help people and cater to others’ needs and feelings, the more loved and respected you are.

It’s a very straightforward fact of life that logically makes perfect sense but it’s not intuitive to many. I confess it was not intuitive to me as I was growing up. I had to learn it along the way.

Just because it’s logical doesn’t mean it’s easy to pull off of course. But if you can do it, you’ll see the results in your life and business both – Guaranteed!

I’m still learning and and getting better at it day by day… Good luck to you as well!

Is learning a waste of time?

“Why learn in school when you’re going to forget everything anyway?” – my daughter asked.

It should give us pause when youngsters are routinely asking this type of question that many of us also asked when we were in school: “will I ever use calculus in real life if I want to be a doctor? Why the heck is this a prerequisite for me?”

A very valid question for which I believe there is a very valid answer.

Learning how to learn

You might have heard this one before: you learn how to learn in school.

I think there’s a better way to explain this statement above. Let me try.

Just like any other muscle, our brain is also like a muscle (technically it’s an organ and not a muscle but let’s go with it for now for this analogy…). But I’m sure you’ve heard this one already before right? Well, I think it’s a bit more than that…

Our brain is like our complete body with different muscles or areas. Just like in our body, we have leg, arm, chest, back muscles, in our brain, we have areas for different things as well – thought, memory, emotion, touch, motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger and all other processes that regulate our body.

Then there’s the left hemisphere that is thought to control language, math and logic, while the right hemisphere is responsible for spatial abilities, visual imagery, music and your ability to recognize faces.

Ok, that’s enough for the technical parts of this post. Let’s get into what that has to do with learning.

Working out your entire being

If you went to the gym and only worked out your biceps all the time, you will eventually have some pretty decent biceps but you’ll be missing out on all the other compound movements that are super important to grow and balance the other parts of your body – chest, legs, back, etc.

Have you ever seen a guy who’s buffed at the top and has very skinny legs? Believe me… It doesn’t look good. Not to mention that weak legs means weak foundation for your entire body.

Taking that same analogy, if you only studied one area like math or reading because you are focusing on studying engineering, the other parts of your brain would be deprived and would not grow. Those other areas also balance out your entire brain and serve as foundational areas you need for your main job.

Align your goals with your learning

You have to ask yourself: what are your goals in life?

Do you want to feel smart? Look smart? Make lots of money? Have a fulfilling life? Have people who love you? Be able to love many people around you and feel good about that? Make an impact on the world?

What do you really want …?

The answer to all of these things and more involve learning.

Learning is natural and automatic from the moment you are born. But you eventually get to a point where natural learning slows down.

Natural learning usually starts to slow down a few years into your job when things become repetitive. At that point, if you really want to learn and continue to grow and change things in your life, intentional learning is required. It’s not automatic anymore. It’s not easy… But it’s required if you want changes in your life.

But what if I don’t feel like reading books?

You might have noticed it I did not equate learning to reading books. I did not use the words “reading” or “books” even once above.

I personally think reading books is awesome. However, that’s not the way many people learn. They learn by practicing and doing, talking with others, watching something informational on television, traveling the world and so forth.

You do you! Learn in the way you enjoy.

No need to force learn in a manner that you do not find enjoyable. If you keep curiosity alive and continue to learn in the way that you enjoy, and make learning a way of life, I guarantee you will find that fulfillment that we all crave in life.

Stay curious. Learn. Have fun!

Virtual Reality – the next Internet

When the internet was first born and we were using it to browse the first few sites that were out there, it seemed pretty barren… pretty empty… but it was still so fascinating because you could browse to a web page made by someone who could be anywhere around the world. You would find whatever the creator intended you to find. You could even make your own creation on the internet if you just knew how to host it somewhere. If not, you just browsed other people’s creations. It was fascinating to see those dozens or so pages lingering out there full of all sorts of varied information and just marvel at them.

Now just after 30 years or so after it all went mainstream, it seems so normal. There are websites everywhere and all sorts of experiences exist on those sites. Nothing new and nothing to marvel at. All good old stuff of course, but things that we have all come to expect. Especially for the generation that was born in the 2000s, they don’t know the world any other way.

The next wave

I’ve been messing around with all sorts of experiences in the virtual world recently using the Oculus Quest 2. Taking part in VR experiences like playing golf & table tennis, wandering around earth using the Wander application (very much like Google Earth, but truly immersive putting you at the center of the experience), virtually teleporting to events and gatherings where you can be together with others from around the world (at least their avatars) without physically being together.

All of this feels eerily similar to the early days of the internet boom. The early 1990s when the internet almost felt like a playground. The virtual reality world feels like that right now where you can actually browse to all of the limited VR experiences out there. It’s not so vast yet that it’s hard to comprehend.

It’s all happening again. And I can bet that that the pace will be even faster this time around. In about 15 years or so, this virtual reality world will all start feeling normal and easily accessible to most.

One day in not so distant future, we will put on some form of lightweight glasses 🕶️ and have some capacitive material for our skin that will truly immerse our total being into a different reality.

We will “log on” to this reality just like we currently go on the internet. We will visit this new reality to get entertained and will even start doing business together there. A decentralized world where you just go to have fun, consume info or can set up your own shop at a virtual address and pitch your products and services to others virtually.

It’s an exciting time to be living in right now. Many of us saw the internet go mainstream in front of us and hopefully will now see the spawn of virtual worlds as well. That’s two major revolutions in one lifetime!

The question for us will be: will we be bystanders watching it all happen or will we actively participate in it?

I hope it’s the latter. Best wishes to us all!

Perfection: the enemy of Production

Many people tell me that they don’t create content because they are worried about what others will think of their content.

Will it be good enough?
Will people laugh at me thinking that my content is not good enough?
What if I’m wrong about something that I’ve produced?
Will anyone actually consume the content…?

If you keep on thinking about these things, you can find a million reasons to not start telling your side of the story.

On the other hand, if you stop giving a $#!+ 🤷🏼 and just start creating content, chances are that you will end up helping others with your content And you’ll feel good about the process.

Choice is yours of course and no one is going to force you to start writing that blog or that review on Google maps about a great restaurant you’ve been to or create a video showing something from your unique perspective that others could benefit from or so many other types of ways you can get your thoughts out there.

So what if you’re wrong about something? Try your best. That’s all any of us can do. As long as you’re genuine in trying to help others with your content, the consumer of the content will forgive you and appreciate you for trying.

I firmly believe that perfection is the enemy of production

Just go for it. And let me know when you do with a link to your content. I’ll check it out 😊

Why I decided to start this blog

Since the beginning of my professional career, I have been a teacher. I have always loved training and sharing information with others.

I found myself with lots of thoughts that I wanted to share but felt constrained by where I could share it. Of course I did not want to write my personal thoughts down on our business blog. That would not make sense. But then I could not write these thoughts on LinkedIn either since I consider that to be a professional network and random musings would not fit there either.

So this blog was born.

I hope to write on this blog on a regular basis. A lot of it is going to be my stream of thoughts so apologies in advance for any bad grammar or misspellings.

My hope is that the information on this blog is helpful to some people out there. Let’s begin.