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A rat with a burning tail
Thirty-Five Years Of Grind
Chetan Bhagat began grinding at 15, preparing for the IIT entrance exam, and by his own count the grind lasted 35 years. He went on through a banking career, a string of books, and Bollywood.
The Turning Point
At 50 he felt how finite life is. A couple of decades were left, an ailment was likely to arrive because he was not sleeping enough or taking care of his health, and he asked why he was doing it. He traced the hustle to not being loved enough by his father, which had left him needing to prove to the world that he was good enough.
Putting Out The Fire
He decided the fire had to be doused first. He went to Vipassana, slowed down the writing and the events, and started taking care of his health, his relationships, and his old friendships. He moved to Dubai, where nobody reminds him five times a day that he is the Chetan Bhagat. The question he asks now is how he is doing as a human being.
Why does childhood approval drive adult ambition?
Psychologist Jennifer Crocker at the University of Michigan has studied contingent self-worth, in which a person's sense of value depends on meeting outside standards such as achievement. People who stake their worth on success feel each win as relief and each setback as a threat. Because no single result fills the need, the pursuit can continue after every goal is met. Crocker and Connie Wolfe laid out the theory in a 2001 paper in Psychological Review.
How does a Vipassana retreat work?
Vipassana is a meditation practice from the Buddhist tradition whose name is usually translated as insight. The best-known retreats in India follow the teacher S. N. Goenka and last ten days. Participants keep silence and spend most of each day observing the breath and sensations in the body. The courses are held at centers around the world and run on donations.
Why do people reassess life around fifty?
Psychologist Daniel Levinson described a midlife transition in his 1978 book The Seasons of a Man's Life, based on interviews with forty men. Economists David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald later found that life satisfaction across many countries tends to bottom out in people's mid-to-late forties. Their work is known as the U-shape of happiness.
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