Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
Welcome back to Success with Srini. Today is a Friday, as I’m recording Happy Friday morning to you. On the podcast today, I want to drive a point, specifically if you are trying to get in shape, trying to have good health and get control on your habits, like food habits, exercise habits, and things that come in the space of health.
Last week, my dad turned 88. Precisely on February 5th. 88, incredible life. In fact, when he started his job, his first job, British were still in India and India got its independence in 1947. And the British stayed back, some of the officers stayed back to help the administration. So the British were still around. When my dad got a job. He was 17 years old. He got a job in police department. And then over the next 50 years, he ascended to different roles. So he retired when he was 58. So, next 40 some odd years incredible journey.
Now, in 2013, he had a stroke, and he lost some of his functions. So part of his memory, some of his he has processing issues and things like that. Since then, he’s okay, he does his basic things, but then all the performance stuff has gone away. And dementia has come in now. So the case in point, why am I sharing all this? Well, he has a desire to live, and he has a desire to accomplish more things. Before the stroke happened, he was one of the most busiest people I used to go to India, I can’t even spend time with him, he is busy. He has to go to some places, he has to meet people. He is all the time writing his poetry or writing books or going out and speaking, constantly busy helping some young police officers mentoring them to come into the force, he will always busy. But always looking forward to what tomorrow has for him.
I remember a long time ago, many, many years ago, while he was still active, he told me he said the reason why I want to stay longer is because I want to see how the government is changing. How the social fabric changing, how new things are developing, I want to see as much as I can. And even today, when he’s fully compromised, my mom is not around, she’s gone. She passed away in 2015, my dad comes into my office, the room where I record my studio, little studio, I have my room. And he looks at all the books that I have, whatever books I have, and he looks at them. And then he has this expression on his face, where he says I could have done more. But I couldn’t. I remember that this was 2017, I had a larger library in my house, he once came up into the library upstairs. And he looked at all the books, I had the books completely spread out throughout the room. He looked at them. And he did this, “tsk tsk tsk” like that. And that sound, a sound of regret, a sound of I could have done more, and I couldn’t feeling and that bothers him that he could have done more.
And since the stroke he had a stroke in 2013, nearly 10 years, almost nine years now almost nine years now. And he could have avoided that stroke with a proper diet and a proper exercise, he could have avoided that stroke. And the case in point, again, is that for your health, you have many options. You can take the diet, you can exercise you can work out, you can feel good, you put 30 minutes in the morning, running or jogging or swimming, whatever the rest of the day is going to be beautiful. Energy is going to be incredible. But then what are you doing to keep your mind active? What kind of foods that you are eating? What kind of exercise are you doing for the mind? You’re assuming that if you just can take care of the body, the mind will take care of itself? Yes, in a way.
But then this generation, my dad’s generation, older generations, they all depended on medications in life was designed through medication. Have a headache, take a pill, their blood pressure, take a pill, they have some blood sugar inconsistencies take, you know shots, pills, whatever. In this generation, where we are in and our children are growing up in this generation our belief system is that we need to keep control on our invisible functions of the body and those invisible functions include sleep, hunger, heart rate, heartbeat, your thirst, whatever. All that invisible functions, we need to get control on them and we get control of all the invisible functions to the body by regulating our known functions to the body. That means, we need to exercise we need to work out we need to eat right these are the non functions.
So, if we take the non functions, then the unknown functions of the body which are which nobody knows, for example, tonight, you will be hungry tonight you will go to sleep, but you exactly do not know when you’ll be hungry, exactly not know what time you’ll sleep. Very rarely I meet people who will exactly sleep at a given time. I know people who wake up more or less at an exact time that they have in their mind, but then rarely have met people who will say exactly 10pm, I’m going to sleep and will go into deep sleep. Where we have seen that could be possible, you know, anything is possible. But you get the point.
Question is, there is enough amount of medication to deal with the known functions of the body, something goes wrong, there is a medication for the unknown function of the body when the brain stops functioning or is functioning at a lower level your neurons have died, because the stroke. Now what he takes a pill called Donepezil, which supposedly helps the brain to overcome some functionality loss due to dementia. But then that’s it, there is not much happening in that space. And, again, you look into new technology here these days, and companies like neuro link and all the trying to replace the brain functions with new technology, when you see all that kind of innovation happening. But then there’s not much of medication as much as there is to the body to the brain.
So my takeaway from this is that if you have time and you do not know what to do with time, go workout, go run, do like 10-15 minutes of exercise, it doesn’t need to be full blown one hour, you know, people dress up to show up in the gym and do nothing. You took and had a meal, just go walk out, you know, step out of the house and walk around. If you are in between doing nothing, and you have some time, some lag time or whatever, just go and do some activity, and make sure that you’re tracking those calories, you know how many active calories you’re burning, kind of get control on this function. You know, you have time you know what you have to do do it. And as a result of doing it consistently over a long period of time, the unconscious functions will also start regulating themselves. That’s how this works. And obviously, the brain has to be kept active. So there are some brain exercises, try to play chess or start to learn a new language or a new skill.
Very late in life. I want to share incredible story. I was motivated by this myself, you might have heard the name Grandma Moses. I think her real name Grandma Moses, she was married to a gentleman by name Moses. I think her real name is Anne Marie Robertson, and Marie Robertson. And she was 81 years old when she discovered that she could paint and she started painting. I think overall, in her lifetime, she painted about 1,500 paintings on big vaults that outside on the big walls and in a big buildings.
And out of all the paintings she painted out to all the 1500 paintings she had over 25% of those paintings came after she was 100 years old. Incredible story. She became famous because those paintings eventually landed in greeting cards and magazines. Some New York reporter was walking by in the fields of this remote area where she used to live and he saw all these paintings. And he took photos of those paintings and made her popular she became incredibly famous along the way made incredible amount of money. I think she became a millionaire as a result of this photos if I’m if I’m not wrong.
No matter who you are, what your age is, you can do anything that you would you if you want to do something you can and this is the bottom line. I get this question all the time. And I’m too old? should I start this business? Or should I start that write a book? You know, my career is ending? What should I do? My answer across the board is you can do anything you want to do as long as you are willing to do and anything that you do involves effort. Anything you do involves commitment, hard work. Nothing is easy. Not even this podcast. I promise you I took like four takes this morning. I was not, I never got a compiler into the story. But you get the point. Anything, anything you want to do, you can start at any point in time. And age is just a number as they say.
Thomas Jefferson, remember this quote, says, “My only fear is that I may live too long.” That’s profound. My only fear is that I may live too long. That’s the fear I have what if, you know, my grandmother had a stroke, paralyzed. My father had a stroke but he’s not paralyzed but he has he lost part of his memory. My grandmother did not lose memory, but she was paralyzed. So different kinds of stroke. And what if I live long, and I also will have something like this, that fear crosses my mind that fear turns me into a performer. I respect that fear. I know it is possible. There is a possibility of that. But then I’d use that fear to create the motivation.
As I wrap this up, my message to you this weekend, be careful what you’re eating. Be cautious what you’re eating. Be cautious. What’s he doing pure, unconscious functions of the body, which we do not know, which we do not have control upon. And just to know your conscious functions, define your unconscious functions, the body and those conscious functions you can choose. And you choose it right this weekend.
That’s all for now. You have a wonderful weekend. But I’ll come back here tomorrow. We’ll talk a little bit more. Bye now.