Have you ever done things in your life that you once claimed you would never do? I have, and those things have benefitted me in various ways.
Trading
Trading in the share market was one of those things. Around ten years back when some of my friends used to discuss on their buys and sells, the price fluctuations etc., I saw them as gamblers, because for me, trading was gambling. Gambling was considered immoral, thus trading remained untouchable. I once asked my friend Dinesh to tell me, that out of all these years he has done trading, overall did he make a profit or suffered loss? He answered that it was overall a loss. My response was that, then that’s why I would not do trading. After many years, during a dull phase of my life, just because I was getting bored and because I wanted to do something interesting, I stepped foot into the trading world. Since it was something I considered to be untouchable until that point, I had absolutely zero knowledge of the topic, therefore, I had to start from a place with me searching in Google, what is trading? How to do trading? What all you need to do trading? etc.
I have been trading in the share market for over six years now. Today trading is my alternative source of income. I realized that trading was not gambling, only when I started to do it. I do not do the Intraday trading. I invest in a few companies which I find could give me some decent returns in a short span, and I go for it. I don’t seek or give recommendations from or to any. It’s me, my money, my research, my prediction. I am happy to sell if I am getting at least 5% profit. Why not? Easy money. No greediness. Practical. It was trading, I remember, which made me start looking forward to Mondays.
For someone like me, who, is not skilled to do business, doesn’t own properties to let-out, and should not be freelancing because I am full-time employed in an organization, trading was The answer to alternate source of income. I have heard the stories of people who lost everything in the share market. I have seen people who are stupid enough to borrow money to do intraday trading and lose it. I have seen people who traded backed by zero research and simply prayed to God for price to go up and lost everything. I have seen idiots who are over-cautious and thus invested in fifty companies in the name of “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, and thus made nothing. Those who are not greedy, who are patient and those who carry a mature thought will benefit in trading.
Night-shift jobs
I used to be a person who used to say that even if someone offers me crores of salary to do a night shift job, I would not do it. Today I do night shifts comfortably. Yes, there were some challenges in the beginning on organizing and aligning my schedule with my family’s schedule, my sleep cycle, what to eat, when to eat etc. Some challenges continues but overall I realized that the night shift is not taboo. One remarkable thing that happened due to the night shift is that I got comfortable with all the 24 hours in a day. That means, during a weekend, if I happen to fall asleep at 8.30 pm on an evening, I will wake up around 2am or so. Then I will not try going back to sleep. I might watch a movie. I sometimes try reading a book. Sometimes I try making a YouTube video for my channel. If it was in the past, waking up at 2 am and deciding not to sleep would be something unthinkable. I would have never done that. I would have lay down in bed till morning and would have complained that I could not sleep properly. I am aware that remaining awake during a time when we are supposed to sleep is not something to be proud of, but the world has changed forever and it is what it is.
Some might not appreciate it when I say, I went back on my words and are doing things which I claimed I would never do. I call this flexibility. Flexibility doesn’t mean going back on everything we stand for. For me, it’s like this. I try to segregate all the things in the world in four columns. One; The things I would never do no matter what. The things like, plunging into the world of dark-web networks and see creepy, and inhumane stuffs, trying synthetic drugs etc. could go into this list. The second column would be; I will try my best not to do these things. This list may contain things like borrowing money from someone, cheat on my wife with her best friend (okay, my wife is staring at me; let me backspace). etc. Alright, the third column would be; I will try to do these things in my life, but even if I cannot it’s okay. Examples could be; building a house, visit many countries with family and friends, earn lots of money so that I can give a portion it away towards charity, towards temples, to the needy etc. Then the last column would be; The things I should definitely do in my life, like be happy and keep the people around me happy as well. That’s it. This way I can play around on those things which are listed in columns two and three; because these are flexible columns.
Sometimes in life, we will do things which we never thought we would do, or at least we thought it would remain only as a distant dream, like me getting opportunities in movies and you all queuing up to get my autograph. See, who knows! Anyway, the point is we change. Constantly. The saying about the change is thus true to its core, you would have heard it, it goes something like, that it is only change which never changes. Not just our thoughts and actions, our opinions too changes constantly. I say every five years, we either become liberal or conservative on various topics and happenings around us. It is quite natural and healthy and that’s how it should be. Flex it, people.