I had initially thought of this blog as being about essential career skills but now I think that these skills are critical to living life as well. So I changed the title.
These skills can be divided into 4 aspects: Knowing yourself, Human relations, being detached and thinking skills.
I’ll start with some sales talk. I know the importance of these skills because I did not possess any of these skills when I was young. And so I paid the price in my life as well as in my career with a ruined career and social life and also no family life.
So do not underestimate the value of this blog. It points you in the right direction. You can thank me for it 20 years from now.
Now sales talk is all well and good but it must be said that what I am asking you to do is not quick and easy. You will need to do a lot of reading and also do Buddhist meditation and mindfulness practices. Not everyone enjoys this sort of thing. For those who are not attracted to what I am saying I can say that try out my suggestions for about 3 months. You may grow to like learning the new skills that I am advocating and decide to continue with reading and meditating. And that will be spending your time constructively and in a way that benefits you for the rest of your time on this earth.
The more I think of it, 3 months is a very good trial period. You will not be assessing your progress at the end of this time. You will be checking to see if you enjoy learning these skills. If you do, rejoice. Your chances of a successful career and satisfying life have gone up manifold.
Because learning these skills and practicing them is a lifelong endeavor. It never ends.
I will only talk about learning to be detached in this blog. I don’t want this article to be overlong. I will be publishing parts 2 and 3 in the near future.
So after this very long introduction let me begin. What does thinking in a detached way mean and how can you learn this skill:
What I have in mind is summarized in the sentence below:
He repeated more or less everything I’d told them, without emphasis and without mistake. The judicial mind, I thought, taking the heat out of things, reducing passion to probabilities.
Sourced from:
Whip Hand (Francis Thriller) eBook
And you must have guessed it since you know I am a Dick Francis fan. Reading the Dick Francis novels repeatedly will teach you how to think in a detached manner.
I have read that detachment is a common trait amongst the English. I remember reading one magazine article that praised VS Naipaul for his quality of detachment. The British conquered half the world in the 18th and 19th century so there is no doubting their courage and intelligence.
Also read The Arabian Nights. Reading just a hundred pages will have you understand that no one is spared the hard blows of life and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. You will be better able to deal with and have a constructive attitude to challenges. And you will not feel sorry for yourself.
Arabian Nights, The : v. 1 : Tales of 1, Reviews & Ratings – Amazon.in
I will be writing and publishing more articles in the life skills series by this Sunday and this coming week. Stay tuned.
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