Seizing the Flywheel
“Life is a flywheel”.
I heard about the concept of the flywheel during a youtube binge. It didn’t seem more than a catchphrase waiting for dismissal.
It came up again in a very consuming podcast. And it stuck big time. Applying the concept of the flywheel on our lives, I realized that our life is built on moments, one leading to another. It’s how you spend your hours that accumulate into how your day turned out. And your days go on becoming weeks, weeks turning into months and months change into fleeting years. And in no time, you’ve become half a century old.
Taking the flywheel as a metaphor and applying it to my life, I could not help thinking what my spins looked like… Am I gaining momentum? When’s the first turn of the flywheel? Am I trapped in the flywheel or controlling the spin consciously?
It struck me, we all are born into our own flywheels. Each shaped by our community’s culture, religion, politics, economics, societal norms, individual biases, and other influences we have become a product of.
Acknowledging the spins of the flywheel, we have a choice to make — let it spin on its own or take charge of each spin and live a more intentional life — a meaningful one.
I took this charge and it was/is a constant uphill battle. A quick scan of my environment and myself showed that my concerns did not align with the constant troubles of an average teenager. Grades, gossip, and idle conversations, elements of a superficial wheel, didn’t appeal to me. In the midst of these spins, I felt much distance was being traveled, with no visible displacement.
Recognizing that I wanted more from my life than what is prescribed to my age, I started to get my hands dirty. Continuously searching to connect with like-minded people and engaging in meaningful activities did start to propel me out of the quicksand. This search landed me an educational opportunity at TKS, a knowledge platform that allows me to connect with my authentic self and others who are also taking control of their spins. Needless to say, it's exhausting but fun, liberating, and exhilarating. Learnings are enormous but what I’ve realized so far is that:
There is no “right time”. There is just time and what you choose to do with it.
It’s the step on the flywheel you choose to take your way. And all consequential steps that follow.
The flywheel has taught me much, but the most important lesson was that our default state is mindless, and we can re-tune our settings by taking intentional steps towards the destination we want for ourselves.
It has made me realize that everything I do counts. I can never break off a part of my life to start a new one. It’s just what I choose to do right now that will pave the path for what’s next.
All the decisions I make now, that my younger self would be proud of, and the future one would be thankful for.
