Can the content we sift through a day change your perspective.
Hell yes! And that’s what I want to discuss with you.
I consumed content via books, notepads, quora, youtube, medium, Spotify and blinkist.
It was a wide variety of sources.
I started my day with the book ‘ The art of creative thinking’ which is pretty interesting and the topics seem to be a bit rebel for most people. For example, how would you feel about a chapter titled ‘ Aspire to have no goals’, which is kind of misleading? But remember that the author talks from purely a perspective to develop creative thinking, and I feel that is the best way to do so. She is very focused on the subject and mostly the readers are there to learn about creative thinking, rather than achieving other aspects of life, like attaining a healthy body.
I learned a variety of thought models I need to implement in my life to achieve creative results of daily routines and aspects of my life. The book includes a lot of real-life stories that are highly inspiring.
I will give you a few thought models that struck a chord with me. The first one is about our school system which limits and inhibits our creative thinking abilities.
There are few options for a student to come up with creative solutions, rather than following the accepted standards. The school teaches you a lesson and tests you.
On the other hand, life tests you and thus you learn the lesson. During a long tenure of school time, we all as children who were creative geniuses in a way comes out as standard adult versions. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy my school period, considering there were a lot of great changes they made in me.
School provided me a demo version of society, where I could learn how to socialize and interact with people, the importance of teamwork, the happiness of sharing and caring, etc.
But in the creative aspect, I believe the school has failed me and my fellow beings. We rarely think creatively as adults, maybe because we are scared of societal judgments.
But we still have a chance to improve and apply our creative minds to apply in our daily lives.
Next, I have gone through my notepad where I have written inspired quotes and ideologies a few weeks back. The one I specifically remember is the importance of credos. Credos is a way of repeating to make one’s belief in himself stronger.
Why is this important? I feel, we encounter thousands of statements and news each day which has a high chance of influencing the way we see ourselves. If we keep this unattended, this can stifle out preception in the long term. That’s why its important to do credos.
The next way I had a few learnings was through Quora. This is one of my most favorite mediums to read. Why? Because you get a wide variety of outlook on the instances that are happening in our society. You understand what people think of a current scenario. Also, you get to learn from top entrepreneurs and their advice from their experiences, which I feel is extremely valuable. Honestly, I use quora mainly for this purpose.
Oh, I can tell you an answer I read today. This was written by Hector on the difference between how the normal people and businesspeople think differently. A normal person thinks debt as bad, but a businessman thinks debt a way to leverage money. A normal person tries to fit into society, but a businessperson tries to stand out. A normal person measures revenue by time/the number of hours worked, but a businessperson measures revenue by the value provided.
A normal person thinks failure as the end, but a businessperson thinks failure as an opportunity to learn. And it goes on to a few more points. You got the gist.
The next medium I used was Youtube. And I am a fan of the channel, Impact Theory. Tom is doing an amazing job hosting the program. It is a program where the host, Tom here, interviews highly successful people from a wide variety of fields to talk about their experiences particularly concerning business and mindset.
I watched an interview with John Assaraf today. And it was mindblowing. It was one of the episodes I like the most. John starts his story from his childhood, where he talked about his abusive father and the challenges he faced with his character problems. This all changed when he met his mentor, Allen Brown who helped in out to get in the proper life track.
I always wanted to find a mentor like this, who can guide me in the right way and provide me some advice in times of adversities. Allen started by reshaping John’s mindset and beliefs, then moved on to helping him with skillsets in the real estate business. The first task Allen gave John was to ask him to write down his goals.
When John showed this to Allen, the wonderful question this mentor asked was, are you interested in achieving your goals or committed? Sadly, John didn’t know the difference. Even I was not very sure before Allen explains it this way. If you are interested, you will take convenient actions on your goals, but if you are committed, you will do whatever it takes in achieving goals. And John like myself is a highly committed person.
I learned a lot from these interviews and I have taken down notes in my notebook.
The medium was Medium. This is similar to quora but more lengthy and explaining articles.
They have audio versions of certain articles as well. Today, just before having lunch, I listened to an audio article on the topic ‘ why bitcoin is no different than US dollars, sometimes even better’.
This was an intriguing title for me, as I have seen this title multiple times before while scrolling through the feed. It talked about what money is and how does it get its value, in essence, the value is human trust. Then it moved on saying that, nowadays the money is printed as and when required without much care which results in losing its value. The total currency in the market values at 10% of its actual value. This can be understood from the fact that we are now getting something for 1 dollar, which used to get at 12 cents in the 1980s.
The politicians and financial institutions are using multiple ways to find loopholes, which ultimately loses the stability of the currency. On the other hand, bitcoin works on the principle of blockchain technology which ensures much high protection. Besides, bitcoin stopped mining in 2014 and no more of them have been mined after that, which preserves its value and makes it more trustworthy than the traditional currency.
But there is an opposing argument stating that bitcoin is used in the dark web for illegal purchases, be it humans, drugs, or weapons. The counter-argument is that this is not specific to bitcoin or any other cryptocurrencies, this is more about the innate nature of money and the people using them. Traditional currencies are being used for purchasing drugs, humans, and weapons. It goes with arguments and counter-arguments on this topic.
I started having massive support for cryptocurrencies, as these are kind of the same with traditional ones with more trustworthiness.
I generally use Spotify for music. I rarely listen to podcasts in Spotify. But I started this habit of listening to a daily soap opera called ‘ The Archers’ which is broadcasted by BBC radio. I started this to improve my communication skills as suggested by Lucy from Y.channel. This is a really interesting show with 15 mins of content daily except Saturdays.
I feel this can tremendously improve my pronunciation and communication skills. I like the British accent, cockney which is sexy to listen to.
I listened to the Impact Theory interview here to take notes.
It was dinner time. And I listened to the blinkist book ‘ Epic content marketing’ I don’t remember the author. This was an interesting audio to listen to as I learned some valuable insights on content marketing.
To make this more valuable, this aligns with the business I am working on currently. Besides, I got an awesome business idea to work on in the future, a content market company, which supports and provides services to brands and companies to acquire more customers.
Why is this critical, because the majority of the population access content online. So the best way to market something is online, especially if you know the market and the target audience. I target millennial customers, as I belong to this category. I know exactly what they need and what interests them.
They are 426 million in count in India, and they have the most purchasing power, and they spent and consume content online majorly. Do we need another reason to target this audience? All my businesses and ventures will be catering to this audience, the millennials and I am one among them. I know the vibe.
Finally, we have reached the end of this post. I have listed down my learnings and the corresponding sources I accessed today.
Happy learning time folks!
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