Life performing a Karthi-wheel! 🤸♀️
We come across dozens of individuals every single day. Rather, a new dozen every other day. Some at work, some on the street, some via our social circles or some at that random bus stop. But, how many of them do we truly remember? Let me rephrase it, how many of them do nonchalantly leave a lasting impact on us? How many of them make us crave for another meeting, another conversation or even just another eye contact?
The above “how many” includes this one charismatic individual I recently interviewed on my podcast. Early morning of 26th Jan 2023; India celebrated it’s 74rd Republic Day and I celebrated my 15th podcast recording by having Karthi Subbaraman as the guest. (Now this is where you clap) 😊
I went through the hourlong conversation I had with Karthi on my podcast over and over again and churned the top 5 interesting ideas I learnt. Indulge.
We never talk about falling in love with subjects as much as we talk about falling in love with human beings.
As an individual, we have our own ideas of changing the world. There is always a voice of that little us, feebly asking us to resist certain social constructs, break some constraints and take a small step towards creating that dreamy utopian world.
Changing the world, although shouldn’t necessarily involve dethroning dictators or eradicating an establishment. Neither should it require one to be a part of a cult and eliminate worldly desires.
Changing the world, can be as simple as falling in love with an idea. A subject. Karthi, on the other hand, fell in love with the concept of human computer interaction. She was curious about all the ways in which the ever evolving world of innovations and research affected human lives, and, she truly believed, this is how she is going to change the world.
Externalization is a great way to internalize your thoughts.
Early morning journaling or pouring out stream of consciousness over an A4 sheet of paper, is one of the cheapest ways of therapy.
It becomes easier to listen to the conversations your mind has with itself by just writing your thoughts down. Your brain cannot go back in time and open up a thought on its own — although when you feed those thoughts to your brain via the bridge of your sense organs, it can seamlessly bring them back to life.
Don’t be pleasure seeking, pain avoiding and energy efficient beings.
The 3P’s at which Karthi believes how we operate as human beings.
- The bottom layer — Physiology — The biological systems, how we functions, our organs and their operations.
- The middle layer — Psychology — Our mind, the central part of our body — basically the central nervous system.
- The top layer — Philosophy — our observations, conscious and subconscious thoughts, ideas, etc.
If represented in a pyramid structure, the bottom layer is the larger part and top layer constitutes a small area. Which conveys the fact that every human being, in their lifetime, usually goes through the two layers — Physiology and Psychology. But, very few go through the top tiny layer of Philosophy.
Karthi looks at this pyramid as a game — one needs to go through the bottom layer, conquer the middle layer and reach at the top layer to truly achieve greatness. Only looking at your life, from the needs and wants of the bottom two layers will keep you mediocre.
The triune structure of human brain, too, is structured similarly. The level one has the highest hierarchy, which involves breathing, keeping the heart stable and beating etc. The level two, looks at the emotional needs of your body and brain. Cravings, sex, desires etc. Whereas, the third layer, it’s all about learning, ideas, decision making, languages and consciousness.
In conclusion, one needs to go past the default human nature to achieve greatness.
Anything more than survival and procreation, is a privilege.
Understand yourself. Understand humans.
We are surrounded by almost more than 8 Billion human beings.
Understanding humans around by considering the 4 primary aspects — the human nature, the being of a human (ontology), human body and human performance — will help us understand every single subject that ever existed on this planet.
We tend to complicate things by categorizing everything into different subjects, ideas or topics. Whereas Karthi, looks at everything from the basics of understanding humans, how we communicate and how everything operates.
We talk about leadership as a skill. As a complicated concept to mastering the art of influencing. Although, if we really reach to the core of it, it’s all about understanding how humans communicate.
Every subject that we learn, is a lens with which a human being sees it.
Why are human beings winning?
It’s all about human adaptability.
Our ability to profoundly communicate our thoughts, the ability to use tools efficiently and the ability to persuade and make things happen are the three salient features of adaptability that makes us rule the world or rather keep winning in spite of the existence of stronger, smarter and fierce beings around us.
In conclusion:
Read humans, rather read yourself to understand the intricacies of everything around you. Be curious and resist your basic urges to conquer everything you come across.
These 5 learnings have been churned from just the 40mins of my conversation with Karthi Subbaraman from the 1hour 20min long podcast. There is so much to learn and understand from her that even an hour long conversation would never be enough.
Thank you!
