Grow up.

I was recently looking at a list of top searched queries on search engines like google.

Here are the broad themes I found in the questions people asked:


1. Money 

2. Relationships and everything related to that

3. Food

4. Celebrities

5. How To 

6. Happiness and personal success

7. Health


And this list is also very close to most peoples' goals and top priorities.

Today we will be looking at and discussing number 5 on this list. 

How to.


The questions related to this theme included the following:

1. How to make an app

2. How to build my own website

3. How are cars/phones/etc made?

4. How to edit/create videos/movies

and so on.


In life, as we grow up we need to learn certain skills. We need to do this so that we can offer the fruits of our skills to others and in turn exchange them for the fruits of their skills.


When we are young our parents and caregivers take care of our needs and desires.

But when we grow up, we have to shift from depending on other people to depending on ourselves.

It is important for us to engage in mutually beneficial relationships with people around us.


For example, when children are young, parents and caregivers get a sense of delight from helping cute little babies and so are motivated to invest their time, energy, and money on them.

There is an exchange here.

The children get what they need (for example food, toys, help with living etc ) and the caregivers and parents get a sense of delight or happiness from helping and giving to the children.


But something happens when the children grow up, say when they grow from 8 years to 30 years old.


The parents don't get the same sense of delight from the children anymore and are not motivated to help and invest in them.

The exchange starts to shift to only the parents giving to the children. The children may start to expect help and investment in their lives from their parents. The exchange becomes one-sided and beneficial only to the children.

And so the parents stop investing their time, attention money, and energy into the grown-up children.


At this point ideally, the children have developed their abilities to support themselves.


However, today, I don't believe this is the case for a lot of children in the world.

They are still dependent and have not developed their ability to be independent. 


Part of the reason why is that we don't get taught about this explicitly in schools.

Today children waste their time on highly addictive, AI-chosen, entertainment on social media like shorts, and playing video games.

Instead of playing in the playgrounds, a lot of parents are using devices to parent their children, to stop them from crying, and this is not a good solution in the long term.

The children's attention span gets lowered and their ability to enjoy life without a device gets diminished.


It becomes harder for these children to develop skills that they can use later in their life. They then have less to offer to the world than what they need or want from the world.


This is not good. Not for these grown-up children, nor for others working with them.


And so Dear Reader, I ask you to audit your life and your skills, what do you have to offer to the world?

If you are currently working at a job, you are offering your time and effort to your employer.

If you are earning your money in other ways, you are offering your services to others.


Are you satisfied? 

Is what you are earning enough for your needs and wants?

If not, is it maybe because you have less to offer to the world?

How could you make yourself more valuable and offer more to the world?


I understand life may start unfairly for some of us, depending on where we were born. However, will you let it stop yourself from achieving your potential?


Don't give up, if you are not yet at a point where you are happy, earning well, and have great personal and professional relationships, you can still change it.


You can make yourself more valuable to the world.

By reading this, you are already taking another step towards that.


Here are a few things that I have learned to be really helpful:

1. Reading - reading books, and learning from other skilled people is a really good way to get new ideas and skip time wastage in the trial and error stage.

2. Writing - Writing questions and answering them. For example, questions related to a problem I am facing or goals that I have has proved to be an excellent use of my time.

3. Tracking my time - I keep a time log of what I spend my time in. I have been doing this for over a year now and have learned a lot about my priorities, and problems, I also gained insights and awareness and have made adjustments accordingly. I suggest you do the same.


I hope this article was helpful to you. If so please share this with your friends or someone you think would benefit from this. :)


- Lakshay 












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