The Advantage Player

We had a very interesting professor. He once discussed this amazing life truth, probably the only thing I paid attention to in his class. Challenging the human desire to achieve goals, he illustrated how unhappy we become while trying to get something. And so he concluded that if what we want something (to be happy), in the process it actually gives us more pain. Very beautifully sweeping in the Bhagwat Geeta, he presented us with his side.

Happiness is in the attitude or the approach of the individual and not something we want to reach at. More times than often, we fail to realise what truly would makes us happy.

If you are someone ambitious, you would agree that often it’s the people who are more ambitious that are sad than people who have little desire of something. A lot of times it makes me want to be a ‘happy go lucky be like a puppy’ kinda guy until the stupid competitor spirit devil in me awakens. And then I am left all bamboozled.

According to Steven Covey; you can do anything and be anything you want, only thing is that you gotta pay a price with your brain-share for that. Pretty simple & true. And I think after being pretty unhappy a lot times with pushing myself to challenges, I can successfully blend the two theories.

Approach is the one which needs more or equal attention a lot times than the goal itself. No rocket science but sometimes with all the natural instances poking in your face you tend to overlook everything and focus on just getting there. Forget about it and enjoy the ride…be happy with the right approach; make an effort, it does need your brain-share.

Ok now, I see that the last post was heavy and kinda long but it certainly did not wish to invite misunderstanding with what I wrote; ok may be a little bit. So I thought to clarify all what people have misunderstood. Consider following instances which recently happened:

Situation 1

Wise-man 1: “Hey dude, I read your blog. I know you are going through a lot of insecurity lately man. We can meet up and talk if you want.”

Situation 2

Wise-woman1: “Oh ya, I read your blog. You are spending a lot of time these days with that guy, what’s his name..aahh some insecurity guy right.”

Me: “that’s not what it’s about”

Wise-woman1: “ok, I didn’t read it all the way then..”

And just when I thought I was covered with pie all over, Nav added the chocolate sauce…

Nav: “That’s why I don’t write long posts”

To make the last post make me look less of a loser I wish to give the following disclaimers:

Disclaimer 1:

It was a generic thought. It did come out of things that I faced but was meant to overall understand the meaning of insecurity in our life.

Disclaimer 2:

Lets not forget the essence of this blog (I expect you to remind me that when I get random in futureJ)

I have been through a great time recently with my pal Insecurity (Nav, you know am not replacing you man). It has taught me more about myself than I ever wanted to know. I am glad however that we got to spend time together and I can finally say in the end we are at peace with each other.

Following the close relationship that we now share; I would like to introduce to you my very special infamous friend, Mr. Insecurity. Now here is a little bit of summary about him:

1. He is everywhere, he finds you when you got nothing better to do.
2. …….(shit what am writing are people going to read this?)…bingo!

That’s how people know him as. But don’t give up on him yet, I think he is the best friend anyone could have, if you learn to tame him that is.

Why do we get up and do things that we do everyday? Do we want to prove something to us or to anyone? Doesn’t the thought of achieving something so great or unbelievably cool so inspiring? Reality check, 90 percent of our actions are sole result of our friend Mr. Insecurity (now the debate over whether or not that’s right is a separate issue all together, beyond the scope of my brain and yours, because the first reason you would want to debate is because you want to prove a point and that will land us back to square one).

So the game is 1-1. We do everything because we are insecure about something- we think insecurity is bad.

Now the cynics would argue that evolved forms of insecurity is bad and in small quantities its good and keeps people motivated. Well, I disagree. Consider this; isn’t the drive to do something really challenging much stronger than doing something easy. So shouldn’t the insecurity too be stronger.

Now that I have introduced a hypothesis and gone back and forth (much like the GMAT exam verbal section), allow me to simplify things.

The Truth

We do things because we are insecure. Achievement of something makes us content. Contentment eliminates insecurity and that the stage where we would want to be. The more our mental capacity is or the more desperate we are for contentment, we will try harder to achieve it. Seems good right; here’s the catch. Above things work in a controlled system, in a situation where we push ourselves too much or don’t know how to achieve contentment we become something called a ‘Loser’ (signified by making an ‘L’ on your forehead. If you trying to hard to understand this blog, try doing the same).

The Advantage Tip

Be insecure and learn to enjoy it. Learn to fill your contentment vessels through the right channels and not short-cuts. Understand that achieving something is only momentary happiness and things done to achieve something is of far more consequence as they govern your Winning status in the long run.

Periodic inability to find happiness makes us do some crazy things. I mention periodic here as I have come to believe that in whichever way possible; small or big, we do find ourselves with a temporary buzz of contentment which soon disappears just about when we don’t want to. More so, all this is voluntary; as much as we may not want to believe that. The mind had its mind games, and all this worthless effort sitting in an orange coffee shop is all about defining own rules to win this game.


The effort is towards condensing psychology fads, management hypes and interpersonal theories to make one the Advantage Player. I am infact quite fascinated by the word itself (pretty obvious otherwise the blog would have been some really heavy long English word originated from some other language, so goes the trend).


Everyone plays. Everybody reacts to certain ways sub conscious works. Some people control it better than others, some win (sometimes). There is no clear winner and there never will be, that’s life; but we all want to be better players by the end of it. We all want to take the next big plunge and come out with it. And there are some people who do it with a little bit of an edge over the others, these selected few pick up lessons of life sciences from everywhere. They understand how certain inalienable truths (as been put forth by Baz Lurhman) go on to dictate terms and happiness becomes a mere chance or sometimes only just getting lucky with what you do.


The Advantage Player takes out the chance and adds in the advantage. That’s what makes happiness and contentment come more so than being mere a periodicity. This is all about that.


So what is common between good Advantage players..? Actually nothing; that’s why there are so many biographies written, otherwise only one success story would do.