Life Isn’t Short, It’s Finite
Life is not short, it is finite, and since there is a clear and definitive end, the question worth answering is what you will say about your life when you reach it.
Asked what people lose by never learning to concentrate, Dandapani traces the chain from purpose to priorities to presence to happiness, showing that concentration is how you get the most out of the experiences you have already decided matter. He then rejects the idea that life is short, points to his guru's last words, and says he does not care what others say about his life, only what he will say about it himself.
What this talk covers
- Most people want to be happy, and happiness starts with being clear about what you want and identifying your purpose, because purpose defines your priorities and shows you who and what is important in your life.
- Once you know your priorities, concentration is what lets you get the most out of them, whether that is an hour in the gym or an hour of undivided attention with a friend, and the byproduct of that is happiness.
- He does not believe life is short: an hour in traffic is not short and ten years on this planet is very long, but life is finite, with a clear and definitive end.
- When his guru was dying, one of the last things he said was what an amazing life, I would not have traded it for anything in the world.
- For every ten people who like him online there are others who call him a fake, and he does not care what people say about him, only what he will be able to say about his own life on his deathbed.
I don't believe life is short. I believe life is finite. When I'm stuck in traffic for an hour, life is not short.Dandapani
Questions
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The ability to be fully present in the experiences you have decided matter. If time with a friend or an hour at the gym is a priority, concentration is what lets you get the most out of it, and happiness is the byproduct.
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He says no. An hour stuck in traffic is not short, and ten years on this planet is very long. Life is finite rather than short, which means there is a clear and definitive end to plan against.
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He is not interested in what other people will say about him, since criticism arrives regardless. What he cares about is being able to look back on his own deathbed and say the life was spectacular, which requires identifying his priorities and developing the focus to stay present in them.
Transcript
815 words · 3:55
You have to sell it to people and we have to sell people on why they need to work out the right way and eat the right way all the time. Otherwise, they're going to want to do it the wrong way, the fast way or whatever. What are people missing out on when they are not learning how to concentrate?
What do they have to gain? How can their lives change? Yeah, I would say there's so many incentives for concentrating, right? Benefits for concentration.
Number one is that ultimately, I would like to think that most people want to be happy. I think very few people wake up and say, I want to be miserable today. Right. Most people want to be happy.
How do you be happy? First, you become clear what you want in life. You identify your purpose in life. You identify who and what is important in your life.
Your purpose defines your priorities. Once you identify who and what's important in your life, then when you're doing what you love, when you're spending time with the people that you love, how do you get the most out of it?
So if you love going to the gym and working out for an hour, how do you get the most out of it? the most out of it by being able to be concentrated while you're doing that. So if I love spending time with my best friend and having a glass of wine with him and sitting with him for an hour
and chatting gives me tons of joy and that's a priority in my life, the only way I can get the most out of that experience is learning how to concentrate. If I can give him or her my undivided attention for an hour, I can get the most out of that experience. The byproduct of that is I feel happiness. Right? So to truly at the end of the day, if you really want to have a life that's a happy
life, you really have to be clear who and what's important in your life. And in doing those things, you have to be fully present. And the only way to be fully present so that you can fully experience those experiences is to be able to be concentrated. Excellent. Do you think some people just don't know what they're missing because they've never
experienced it. So to explain it to them like, I think I'm fine. I like things. Everything's fine for me. Yeah. And you know, for a lot of people, one of the things I say to them is that you have one life, you know, you have one life as you. And a lot of people say life is
short. I don't believe life is short. I believe life is finite. When I'm stuck in traffic for an hour, life is not short. So an hour in traffic is long than living on this planet for 10 years is super long. So life is not short, but it's finite. There's a clear, definitive end.
And my question is, what will you say about your life at the end of your life? What will you look back and say, you know, when my guru was dying, one of the last things he said is that what an amazing life I would not have traded it for anything in the world. Right?
What an amazing life I would not have traded it for anything in the world. What words to hear from a dying man? Imagine to be on your deathbed to be able to look back on your life and go, that was spectacular.
How can how many people can truly say that? No, people always saying like, oh, you know, right, what others may say about you at the end of your life. You know, I want people to remember me as this or that.
I don't care. You guys run a business here. For every 10 people that love you, there's two more that hate you. Right?
I have an online presence that people that criticize me and call me a fake, capitalist, whatever, you know, then there's 10 more people that like me. I really don't care what people say, but what I do care is what I say about my life at the end of my life.
And I want to, on my deathbed, be able to look back on my life and go, that was frickin' spectacular. And the only way I can do that is to identify my priorities in my life, who and what's important, develop this unwavering focus, this ability to concentrate so I can stay present in all
these important experiences I've identified and want to have in my life. And as the byproduct of that is to experience the feeling of happiness.