Why Should You Attend a Vipassana meditation Retreat? And Why You Shouldn’t! (a thread 🧵)

It was 9:30 pm. I had just returned to my room after an intense discussion with my meditation teacher, Jorge Ricardo, about the practicality of a daily 2-hour recommended practice alongside a corporate life. This was after 10 hours of meditation, and I was feeling slightly out of sorts. Upon opening the door, I noticed an unusually gigantic cockroach on the floor! 🧵 I'm not usually bothered by such creatures, so I wasn't alarmed…initially. But then it started to crawl backward rapidly. "Can cockroaches walk backward?" I asked myself, "Am I hallucinating? Is the meditation making me go crazy?" All kinds of thoughts swarmed my mind.

I then noticed something strange. It seemed as if its head was turned 360 degrees towards the back, yet it was also looking at me. This was like a cosmic roach-ach test of my sanity!

Then I realized those were two cockroaches conjoined at their rears.

“Is this a rare biological anomaly?”, I asked myself. I had no way of verifying it because one of the conditions of the Vipassana course is to surrender your phone at check-in. So, I carefully ushered the cockroaches out of my room to safety.

We don’t talk enough about our failures. Acknowledging them is important. So here’s a a #FailureThread of the top 5 things I didn’t do well in 2022:
1. Quality sleep: I didn’t meet my goal. Falling asleep is not a problem, my nemesis was the occasional 3am waking up in spite of… …doing OK on meditation/exercise/diet(MED).I scored low on S of MEDS
2. Startup investing: Valuations were choppy and forming an investment thesis was tough. As a result I slowed down. Though 2023 is likely to be volatile as well, I plan to have a clearer investment philosophy.

Our son turns 18 tomorrow. Parenting journeys are rarely perfect but almost always fun. Parents make many mistakes, learn several lessons and in the process get reacquainted with life itself. So here’s a thread that young/would-be parents might find useful: (1/n) 1. The best thing parents can provide kids is exposure to new places/cultures. We decided we’ll visit at least 1 new country a year. I can’t understand parents who travel w/o kids coz they’re too young to remember. That’s like not telling them stories coz they won’t remember(2/n)

There’s a beautiful story of compassion associated with Diwali that Sikhs celebrate. The Sikh Guru Hargobind (17th cen.) was to be released from Gwalior prison on Diwali by Emperor Jahangir. The Guru insisted he’ll leave only if fellow prisoners (52 Hindu princes) are freed 1/3 The Emperor agreed with one condition. He can take as many Hindu princes as can cling to his coat tails. The Guru got a special coat made with 52 strings, allowing all the princes to hold on & walk out with him. This is known as ‘Bandi chhor diwas’ (prisoner release day) 2/3

A thread on what makes a good pitch:
Good pitches are outside-in & start from an external position- a problem u r solving or a client’s objective. Starting with ‘this is who we are' works sometimes. But mostly people don’t care about who u r. They care about what you are solving. Good pitches first appeal to System1, then System2. In his book 'Thinking, Fast and Slow', Daniel Kahneman talks about System1 (intuitive thinking) and System 2 (deliberate thinking). Good pitches first appeal to System1. And if needed, have adequate details for System 2.