Husain Journal

Here’s the thing about hiccups: they’re often disguised as opportunities. Over the years, I’ve come to believe that every moment — good or bad — has something to teach us. Yes, some days, no matter how much we plan, life throws curveballs. Today was one of those days for me. Half the day has passed by, and I’m finding myself mentally drained, feeling as though I hadn’t accomplished anything concrete. Yet, as I reflect on the day, I realize it wasn’t a complete waste — far from it. A Slow Start with a Bright Spot The day began with a small but meaningful success: I offered my morning prayers on time. It was a quiet moment of gratitude and reflection, setting the tone for a promising day — or so I thought. But soon, the sluggishness set in. Despite my initial enthusiasm to write and hit a thousand-word target, I struggled to focus. Restlessness crept in, and my productivity felt like it had hit rock bottom. ...

You know what’s good for your growth, and you know what’s holding you back. Yet, you often look the other way. Sure, you’ve made some progress and achieved a few milestones, but most of those accomplishments came from the progressive steps you’ve taken. And deep down, you probably know that if you’d taken even more of those steps, you’d be in a much better place today. Sound familiar? If so, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get real with yourself. Ask yourself these tough questions—your answers could ignite the change you need: What foolish habits or behaviours am I engaging in that are holding me back? How can I eliminate them? What obstacles are in the way of eliminating these barriers? What small action can I take today to start moving in the right direction? Take some time to sit down in a quiet space, away from distractions. Switch off your phone and let those around you know you n...

"The person who starts the race is not the same person who finishes the race." Marathon spectator sign I’m not a sportsperson, nor a fitness freak. So my contacts view me with surprise on learning about my sudden fascination with running marathons, despite doctors’ claims that I’m visually impaired. (Note: I run with volunteers provided by Adventures Beyond Barriers Foundation. ABBF team takes care of specific needs of blind participants.) January 2025, I'm embarking on an exciting journey to participate in the Tata Mumbai Marathon. While I’m looking forward to the experience and the joy of the event, I’m also approaching this trip with a deeper purpose: to learn, grow, and connect. I’m determined to take bold steps toward personal development, and I want to take a moment to outline the key areas I’ll focus on during this adventure. As I brace myself up for the occasion, I...

Resistance: The Hidden Force Keeping Us Stuck There’s a quiet but powerful force inside us that sabotages our best efforts to create meaningful change. It’s resistance — and it’s always lurking in the background, making us second-guess, hesitate, and even procrastinate on the things that matter most. Resistance isn’t just something writers face when they hit a creative block. It’s universal. Whether you’re launching a business, changing careers, or diving into any big, bold project, resistance is there. It whispers doubts into your mind: What if this doesn’t work? What if I’m not ready? It wraps your heart in fear, holding you back when you’re on the edge of greatness. And what happens next? We freeze. We stagnate. We stand at the threshold, stuck in place, too scared to leap forward. But here’s the twist — deep down, we don’t want to stay stuck. We want to feel like we’ve done something , like we’ve taken the plunge, like we’ve c...

Ever found yourself avoiding projects that entail risks of failure and mind-racking work? Yeah, I’m talking of work that you put up to be reviewed and judged. Not the work that you tinker around with to fill up your time with a ‘productive’ activity – which is for the sheer sake of practice. Not the work that you know you would shove away so that it gets lost in the dark gulf of obscurity. Here I rather am talking of work that stands the hair-raising risk of rejection, failure, condemnation. Work in which you squeeze out your heart and soul and blood. Not 100% sure if you thirst for risk and are prepared to be slapped with rejection even after putting out your best – but I confess here that yes, I try several crutch activities to avoid work that entail risk and toil. This is the reason why before publishing on my blog, I feel hesitant – because I fully know that my work would be up there to come under people’s scrutiny. I instead prefer to read something which melts away...

“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.” Rumi It would be just the right thing to bravely put up my writing on the blog, and let people judge. Certainly, some folks aren’t going to find my posts useful, but for their sake I can’t hold myself back in the trenches. It’s said that a tiny minority of likers of a product make it super popular. Therefore I need to keep this truth in mind that only a tiny minority will appreciate my posts; not everyone is going to get bewitched. In truth, it’s not even practical. If I’m honestly and thoroughly honing my craft of writing, it’s appreciable because I’m doing something worthwhile. But amid this hustle and bustle of burnishing my craft, I must see to it that my passion to amass more money and power doesn’t go overboard. The desire for money and power has to be in proper limits because it’s the pomp and glitter of this desire which blindfold people. Yes, it makes us careerists, ambi...

“Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.” Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM I have since long been charmed by the idea of giving more time to producing rather than just consuming knowledge. Consuming or gathering knowledge on your topic of interest is good, but sometimes this is a clever way of running away from producing. Take my example. I secretly dream to become a great writer so that I can travel the world and live on my own terms. So to make this audacious dream a reality, I read books and top blogposts on writing. But when it ultimately boils down to producing my work so that others can judge it… I reason with myself that the time isn’t not yet ripe for it, and therefore I have to do more homework. Doing more homework, i.e. reading more books or listening to more podcasts, looks a good idea. But at the heart of it lies my fear of producing – my fear of making mistakes or getting rejected or ridi...

Ever felt looking over a massively successful work that you yourself would have created it equally well? Ever felt that you yourself would have delivered the same level of talk and had written the same kind of a novel? I guess that like me you too would have felt so. And maybe then you also would have felt that people get fond of just average or above average things…So if you had simply released your work, you would have made an amazing splash. Or you might have got this question in your head: Were these people simply lucky that they got so high popularity for their works? Maybe they would be having great connections, right? So far being lucky is concerned, well, I believe in the oft-repeated wisdom that the harder you work, the better your luck gets. And so far having great connections part is concerned? Maybe yes, maybe no. But that’s not so relevant. What’s the reason for their success, I think, is their bravery and courage. Yes, their courage to put forth their work i...

And here’s the reason behind it: As a general rule, we fear what improves us. Admit it, you fear public speaking. You fear asking questions in conferences. But you know it deep down in your heart that if you go forth to do it, you’ll get closer to success. We resist what’s tough for us, but the amazing truth is that all improvement takes place beyond the boundaries of our comfort zone. So, if we’re resisting public speaking, it’s a clear sign that it would bring improvement in us, and eventually we must do that particular thing. If you’re resisting physical workouts, you know that it’s the thing you want to go after. If you’re resisting to post regularly on your blog because you feel they’ll laugh at you, you know you need to chase that very thing. We resist what’s tough and risky for us. A student will invent excuses to avoid studying deeply, in a distraction-free climate. He might keep his phone within his reach, he might not turn off the notifications, he might study at ...

The beauty is that unless you outstep your comfort limit, you’re not going to improve. Many incredible people have said that all progress takes place outside the boundaries of our comfort area, on risky terrains. The resistance in us, triggered from our lizard brain, dissuades us from venturing out in risky situations (public speaking, tendering that proposal, launching a business, having a tough talk) because it sees that groundless fabric of fear from miles and miles away. Unable to gauge the gravity of the risk, it treats it as if it were life-threatening, and hence the resistance. This resistance once upon a time was important. The thing is that now things have changed – i.e. now we don’t have that many life-threatening situations as before – but the resistance operates in the same way. And the remarkable thing is that this resistance isn’t merely a concept. It has its physical, material existence, and as I said above, is known as the lizard brain. When we suddenly get alar...

Without taking the time to decide the topic I'm going to write on, I have just started the timer and now I feel words will rush out. Even if you think I’m a fool, it’s fine because I have to just take out my thoughts on paper as rapidly as I can. No cares. I’m ready to destroy my reputation for the sake of productivity. I know that we human beings have the capacity of thinking stuff amounting to hundreds of words in a single sec. I also know that we require some effort of the mind to shape those thoughts to words, and when the writing task is also involved with it, the toughness notches up more. Yet I think that often it’s laziness and time-expensive to wait and wait for figuring out the topic because time – one of our most precious commodities – slips fast. It’s laziness because oftentimes what we need is just getting started and the topic takes form automatically. You have heard it hundreds of times that writing is tough as hell. But rarely the naked truth is heard tha...

“When you feel afraid or nervous of doing a thing then do it because the real harm you may thus receive is less poignant than its expectation and fear.” Imam Ali As the train engine whistled and the screeching wheals rolled forward, my heart pounded violently against my chest. The carriages swung side to side – making me feel giddy. I said to Brijesh, my travelling companion, that I don’t want to go further, that I want to step off the speeding train. It was a humid night of July. I was leaving Lucknow to pursue a 1-year computer course in Delhi. I felt horrified to leave my home because my fears, provoked by my blindness, had imprisoned me in the company of my family and friends. I’m embarrassed to confess that so nervous I felt then that venturing out even from my home chilled my soul. Yet I decided, with the help of my encouraging friends, that I’ll have to make a leap and so I haired off to the Delhi course. I heard the thudding and slamming sounds with the shaking ca...

Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. Rumi You can’t predict what work will get popular like crazy and what work is going to wither away unnoticed. So isn’t it a smarter approach to work thoroughly and then be brave enough to go ahead with its release? Apple's Steve Jobs said, “Real artists ship.” We can find the wisdom of this sentiment in the works of Michael Angelo. Angelo composed hundreds of paintings of which only a handful earned great popularity. It was those few paintings that forced Angelo rise to those meteoric heights. There’re folks who want to write their dream book or blog, and they even make efforts in that direction: Gathering relevant data and sifting through the pile of technical details. But when it comes to actually organising all that information and keeping it forth for public scrutiny? They invent clever excuses to put it off. Having wandered in the same territories, I know that these excu...

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.” JK Rowling, Harvard Commencement Address, 2008 Imagine you’re the head of a top mobile company. You’re selling thousands of mobiles a day. But boom. A technical hitch has started triggering explosions in the phones manufactured by your company. Your choices? A: You can gather all the employees and go on a rage and do little to think about the ways that can keep your company on the rails. B: Or instead of ruminating over the problem you can lift your head up to discuss about the different problem-solving options. The only difference? Option A isn’t going to undo the damage while the option B can minimise it and keep your company in business. The same option-oriented approach is equally vital when it comes to overcoming the hiccups that you undergo on your academic and career course. You have the ch...

It’s a bright and fair morning, and sunshine seems to fill everything with life. I’m feeling cheerful, for today I’m going to deliver a presentation – an opportunity I was seeking since long. It poses a risk of being ridiculed or failing. I’m rising up to this risk, and even if things don’t turn out as hoped, I’ll learn a great deal in the process. I ought to praise myself for making this opportunity for myself. It’s by the means of these small comfort-breaching steps that I would gather more courage and take up bolder projects. I’m surprised to note my bravery and boldness because it hadn’t been long that I used to be a nervous guy. But due to the oft-repeated wisdom that our fears are unreal, and they often make us lose the good we might win, I have become risk-loving. Charles Dickens said, “We forge the chains we wear in life.” Still, though, there’s a lot of ground to be traversed, and I mustn’t feel overconfident. I’m trying to exert my slender powers at pruning my cha...