Balance Archives - Zamai Banje

Tag: Balance (page 1 of 4)

September 29, 2024

Friendships: The Ultimate Life Hack for Mental Health Challenges

Friendships are the ultimate life hacks to solve stress, anxiety, and even addiction.

One of the greatest thinkers of our time – Simon Sinek said the above statement and it blew my mind.

Why was friendship the ultimate hack? How does it solve mental health challenges?

Simon explains how in a conversation with Trevor Noah. I am sharing his thoughts with you here:

The Sacrifice of Friendship for Success

When we say we have sacrificed something for our career. We should not be afraid to put a name to who that sacrifice was. Because often time, it was the people in our lives that we call friends.

Your friends will be there for you. Your work won’t.

Friendships

Are you a Good Friend?

You usually make friends from school, work, church and other gatherings.

And then you let the location and time influence these friendships. This means you are unable to keep and maintain your friendships when you are not close to them. Please don’t leave your friendship to coincidence.

But to be a good friend, you have to ask yourself these questions.

Have you sacrificed a meeting to hang out with a friend? Do you call your friends on their birthday and sing them happy birthday? Or do you just put a thing on social media saying happy birthday because you saw everybody else put it on social media.

When a friend is depressed, do you go over to their house, sit, watch movies, eat ice cream all day and be depressed with them?

Have you told your friend – I love you? Not love you or love ya? But I love you. The way you know these things matter is how it made you feel when these things were done to you.

How to Keep and Maintain Friendships

Trevor Noah narrates a story:

“I was on a trip to Greece a few years ago. If you’ve ever been to any of these places where people are on boats and having a great time in the water, it hypnotizes you. Then I turned to one of the Greek guys I was with, and I said Nick,

If I was trying to get a boat, what boat should I get?

I’ll never forget this… His friend jumped in, and he said:

Trevor Noah, let me tell you something – the best boat is your friend’s boat.

It was a joke that had so many layers because if you own a boat there’s a lot of stress. You don’t want to own a boat unless you really love boats. But the thing I found profound was this.

Everybody who has a boat needs friends to be on that boat with them. And if everybody works to get the boat no one has time to have friends to come on the boat with them. Every boat I know is full of friends who are on that boat.”

Trevor Noah’s message is simple. Work on your friendship so you enjoy your best moments better together.

The Power of Asking for Help

We don’t build trust by offering help. You build trust by asking for it.

If someone is your friend especially if they have been there for you, don’t be selfish to deny them the honor of allowing your friends to be there for you. The reverse should happen too.

This is when you know a friend is a friend.

Friendship vs. Success: Prioritizing People Over Work

Finding the balance between friendship and success is a bit difficult in today’s times.

In our society, it is possible to show up as a family person. You can show up as a CEO. Showing up as a president is also possible.

Yet society does not deem it nice or important to show up as a friend. The society does not prioritize friendships.

You must have noticed it is more remarkable to have an amazing experience with someone than by yourself. When you say, “look what I did” versus “do you remember that time we did that”. The latter is a better feeling than the former.

How Ignoring Friendships affects Romantic Relationships

There is a big and underrated lesson here.

Abandoning or ignoring friendships has affected romantic relationships. Because people have now shifted all the expectations, the support, the love gotten from a community of friends to one person. We have abandoned those outside places and asking our partners to be everything all the time always.

This is an unreasonable and unfair standard to put on someone. Or to be put on you as well.

What does it all mean?

I like how Trevor Noah concludes their conversation with this adage:

A person is a person only because of the people. I guess King Solomon already knew this because he said it twice:

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up.”

That’s all. I hope this helps

Wishing you the best of friendships.

This email was an excerpt from a conversation between Simon Sinek and Trevor Noah. You can watch the full conversation here

September 22, 2024

Solomon’s Paradox: How to Counsel Yourself Right

Let me tell you when I first encountered Solomon’s paradox.

As a born strategist, I learnt chess as a young child by playing my fellow peers in high school.

We used to form a ring in the classroom where the players sit at the middle with the chessboard. Then the remaining people – the spectators stood and watched the moves of the players.

And every single time, I noticed a pattern.

Whenever I was a spectator, I saw the best moves each player would have made. Their mistakes. And how the game will eventually end.

As non-players, we would nod in approval when one of the players made a good move. We giggled or gasped if a bad move is done.

Yet, when I was in the middle, either playing black or white – there was friction. I don’t see the game clearly as when I spectated. Mistakes were always bound to happen.

Does the Bystanders See better than the Players?

Our teachers used to say, that the spectators often see the game better because they are not pressured or making the moves themselves.

This pretty much happens to everyone in life, but I only connected it later.

When people are thinking about significant life issues, they frequently concentrate on the specific details of their own experiences, which hinders their ability to see things from a wider angle and is counterproductive to logic.

Why is this so?

This is because we don’t see the world the way it is, we see the world the way we are. We are emotionally invested in our own circumstances but logical when evaluating those of others.

The psychologists called this phenomenon – Solomon’s Paradox.

Solomon’s Paradox – Visualization Credit: Pejman Milani

Why did they call it Solomon’s Paradox?

Because you see… King Solomon was famous in the Old Testament for his extraordinary wisdom. He was regarded as one of the most brilliant individuals to have ever lived.

Yet, King Solomon had a disorganized personal life:

Hundreds of wives and concubines. Lack of interest in his children’s upbringing. Obsession with wealth and money.

To put it briefly, King Solomon was an excellent advisor but a bad one at applying the same counsel to his own situation.

You have at some point found yourself in Solomon’s Paradox.

You are impartial, and logical, when you are thinking about the issues that other people are facing.

When you think about your own issues, you become volatile, emotional, and illogical.

Solomon’s Paradox strikes when you give others clear, logical viewpoints and guidance but are unable to give yourself the same kind of clarity and reason.

How do you then break out of it?

I love the strategies recommended by Sahil Bloom. Firstly, Create Space. Then zoom out.

Create space from your emotional decisions.

You tend to make poor decisions because of your emotional attachment to a situation. The secret to getting out of the paradox is to give the situation some distance. Either physically or emotionally.

To create this space, you must pause, reset and engage.

Pause to give yourself time to react—whether it’s a few seconds, minutes, hours, or days. Reset by reminding yourself that you are in charge of what happens after you give yourself permission to experience the emotional reaction.

Then engage the situation with a more balanced perspective.

Zoom out to gain a wider perspective

Like a chess player, you live your life zoomed in.

This creates challenges. Because of this view, your progress appears smaller than it actually is. And your difficulties appear greater than they are.

Zooming out gives you perspective on the remarkable extent of your progress the real nature of your difficulties.

That’s all it takes…

A wiser man after Solomon’s era summarized these strategies to escape this paradox:

“And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own?

How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye?

Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye. (Matthew 7:3-5)”

Solomon’s Paradox serves as an important reminder that while we’re all excellent at giving advice, we’re not so good at following it.

Create space and zoom out. That’s how you escape your Solomon’s paradox.

July 28, 2024

Tai Lung: Never Crumble When Things Fail

Tai Lung is a complex villain in a simple story.

The wisest lessons can come from the simplest stories. In 2008, DreamWorks produced a timeless movie, “Kung Fu Panda,” which highlights the dreams of a clumsy giant panda named Po, as he tries to learn Kung-Fu while saving his village from the rampage of the savage snow leopard Tai Lung.

Rewatching Kung fu Panda made me realize this movie had everything.

A great storyline. Well-developed characters. Memorable lessons.

And the greatest lessons of the movie are learned with a focus on Tai Lung, the main antagonist of the story.

The Leopard, The Legacy

Understanding Tai Lung

Whether as an upgrade of Tigress, a direct counterpart of Po or as Shifu’s fallen student, Tai Lung was a great villain.

Before the beginning of the movie, Tai Lung was in prison, and we get to know more about him from his escape from prison.

His ferocity. The quickness. His ability to make clever decisions. And his full mastery of kung fu.

As the story goes on, Tai Lung takes on the furious five (a group of his former kung fu master’s greatest students). He overpowers them with ease. His domination was so epic that Po trembled with the fear after hearing this encounter.

Yet in the final battle, this ferocious snow leopard loses to an easygoing big fat panda. Not because Po was quicker or stronger. Tai Lung lost because of three fundamental ideals

Read this to the end. There is a lot to unpack.

The Dangers of Pride and Entitlement

Shifu trained Tai Lung at the Jade Palace, raising him to believe he would become the Dragon Warrior.

However, when Oogway (Shifu’s master) denied him the title, the snow leopard revealed his true dark nature. He rampaged through the Valley, which led to his twenty-years in prison.

Tai Lung’s seething rage and fury did not fade, even after spending so many years in prison. His pride and arrogance did not leave him. Tai Lung’s entitlement mentality made him become the worst version of himself.

We see it clearly on his first encounter with Po:

Tai Lung: Who are you?
Po: Buddy, I... am the Dragon Warrior!
[bows over, panting from the stairs]
Tai Lung: [incredulous] You?
[laughs]
Tai Lung: He's a panda! You're a panda! What are you gonna do, big guy? Sit on me?
Po: Don't tempt me.

The eventual downfall of Tai Lung came from his denial and underestimation of Po.

Tai Lung also did not learn humility. And this virtue he lacked led him to crumble under the weight of expectations.

Crumbling Under the Weight of Expectations

This weight was not entirely the fault of Tai Lung.

Shifu filled his student’s head with the idea that he was destined for greatness. And gaining the dragon scroll was meant to be the physical representation of greatness of his years of kung fu training and mastery. Shifu also seemed to move on and never visited Tai Lung during his 20-year incarceration.

I know it’s not easy but Tai Lung should have moved on as well.

His next goal should have been simple. Focus on growing and improving yourself mentally, rather than seeking more strength and waiting for appreciation. Yet, Tai Lung allowed the weight of expectations to crush him.

Because of this weight, the former kung fu prodigy failed to understand and overcome the curse we are learning next.

The Ferocious Antagonist of Kung Fu Panda

The Curse of Seeking Validation

Next to Oogway, Tai Lung is virtually the most skilled and dangerous Kung Fu Master alive.

The snow leopard had immense physical strength, was able to punch and tear his way through numerous armored opponents. He was a kung fu prodigy from childhood. The prodigy was the first student to master all one-thousand scrolls of kung-fu.

Yet he had a fatal flaw.

This flaw is perfectly seen in the snow leopard’s dialogue with Shifu after his prison break:

Tai Lung: [growls] I rotted in jail for 20 years because of YOUR weakness!
Shifu: Obeying your master is not weakness!

Tai Lung: You knew I was the Dragon Warrior! You always knew! 
But when Oogway said otherwise, what did you do? What did you do? NOTHING!

Shifu: You were not meant to be the Dragon Warrior! That was not my fault!

Tai Lung: Not your fault? Who filled my head with dreams? 
Who drove me to train until my bones cracked? 
Who denied me my destiny?

Shifu: It was never my decision to make!
[gazes at Oogway's shrine and picks up his staff]

Tai Lung: It is *now*. Give me the Scroll!

Tai Lung’s ultimate goal was to be the Dragon Warrior and be handed the Dragon Scroll, which he firmly believed was his destiny.

Despite his heartless and insensitive exterior, Tai Lung was naturally unassertive and insecure as well. He never believed in himself to start with, and needed the Dragon Scroll to believe.

Ironically as long as he could not believe in himself, he could never win against Po.

Believe in yourself

As an adult rewatching Kung Fu Panda, there are questions gleaned from the movie to understand yourself better.

Can I stay humble when winning?
Am I afraid to change my path when it is no longer sustainable?
Do I still search for other people’s approval to validate my success and experiences?
Are these dreams mine or someone’s else?
Is anybody denying me my destiny?

There are so many questions to ask yourself.

The answers are right there in front of you. It comes no matter what you do. It is like what Master Oogway said: One often meets his destiny on the path he takes to avoid it.

Just believe in yourself. Don’t fight or seek it in someone or something else.