Nishtha Gehija

Is to get off work. So the work gets better. When you do return to it.

Earlier this week I sat down to compile my top posts from 2025, I ended up reflecting on these things:

Everything in life is seasons. There were sometimes an array of posts that I absolutely loved. Then there were sometimes another array of posts (thankfully, smaller) that I did not love. Life is all about seasons. No tree gives fruits all year long. It is the nature of good things to come in rotation.

All you have to do is show up. That said, since it is my commitment to write one blog post a day, the practice always compounds. Even my posts on “bad days” last year were much better than my posts on “good days” several years back. The magic of compounding.

There are several overarching themes to everyone’s lives. If we listen closely, it tells so much about other people.

If you keep getting better, you would eventually get better. I looked at some of my recent posts and then looked at some of the posts of the earlier year. I have grown so much without making a visible effort. Only because I chose to show up. It applies to so many things in life.

One thing about life is that when you love what you do, it shows. There is virtually no commercial incentive to doing this blog. But I do it because it is important to share ideas. And because I love it. When you love something, you do it because you cannot stop yourself from not doing it.

On that note, may you start creating an equivalent of this daily blog for your work. Or maybe you create a daily blog yourself. It’s free. Write in 100 words what you are thinking about. Only infinite upside.

At my spiritual class a wonderful woman runs a home based business of baking cakes.

So I ordered a cake for myself, which she brought this morning.

As I came home, I cut the cake and also clapped. Even though I was alone. But I clapped. Because why not? Are there any rules to clapping?

This is how I wish you celebrate your life. On your own terms, with your own rules. The only formula that I have discovered for being perpetually merry.

When we know someone who has disproportionately higher money than us, it is always useful to remember that they are still a human and not an ATM machine.

You should always figure a way to meet your needs and wants. And if you can’t meet them, slash them.

Just because you are surrounded by someone who has way more money than you, you are not allowed to ask them of anything. In the similar manner that you are not allowed to ask for money from someone who has less than you.

The other person might love to do things for you, but it is wisdom to remember that people love giving when they know that your intent is not to strip them off their money. In order to keep their joy of giving intact, we must never bring in a greed of asking.

No one’s money is yours, honey. Other than your own. A life mantra that has always allowed me to live with the highest level of self respect for ages, and still continues to.

A couple of days back I went to a local market to do some shopping for my Mom. The kind of market where you get everything of good quality yet for cheaper prices.

Except, such markets are not fit for shopping for your clothing. Because of course if you can afford it, buy one good quality clothing versus 10 cheap quality ones.

The Sindhi in me (wearing uniqlo top and bottoms, not to miss the irony,) forgot this rule. So I ended up buying a nice and cheap lounge wear bottom for ₹150.

To no surprise, it tore apart within a few hours of wearing it.

I still decided to make it useful by taking it to a nearby tailor. After two months of it hanging behind my bathroom door (the only one thing there).

He fixed it, and then charged ₹80!

To look at the bigger picture, ₹230 is still nothing. But the experience followed by effort is worth way more in price.

Lesson learnt: Get a Uniqlo, forget about things for years.

In our spiritual class, 6 friends of mine had put up a 10-minute skit 3 months ago. I was given the opportunity to direct that skit.

It happened with not too much time on hands. And barely an hour’s practice before the final performance. Yet the skit managed to make people laugh.

Last weekend my friends put that skit again. This time after practising for 1-2 hours for 3 days straight. The result was more polished, more refined and more coordinated output. Of course the audience was also happy.

The participants confessed they still needed better practice.

No matter what we do, the answer is always practice. Practice does not mean mere repetition. But a focused repetition while smoothening out the edges and getting better each time.

With practice, non actors become actors, non dancers become dancers, and people like me who love to operate in silos become directors 🙂

Whatever the question, the answer is practice.

A sign to make your life better, instead of proclaiming yourself as a failure.

Learn from your life baby, don’t label your life by a failed day or month or a year.

When I was at a place in my career when I was making 1.8x of my last year’s salary, I had a funny instance happen to me.

I know a well educated, super rich aunty, with a great career behind her, who is now retired from her work and writes poetries. She has also self-published multiple books of her poetries. (Full marks to her for keeping her art alive.)

I do not know whether it is by design or by default, but her passion for writing never translated into something monetary.

So coming back to a conversation when she came to know it had been quite a while I had moved out from my job. She looked at me from top to bottom, and asked with a pitiable face, “Are you able to pay your bills?”

PS: I am very well dressed at all times, just that she was in a place of judging me because she had not seen a life where a writer makes a lot of money. So she was trying to get it vetted. She could not. So she asked me the question after a scroll down my body 🙂

Ah, the joy in living a life so low profile that people do not think you have a lot of money. It is the best feeling in the whole world. And the coolest achievement of my life I guess? 🙂

Last year when I was at my parents’ home, my father liked a uniqlo beanie I was wearing.

So I ordered one for him. And neatly made the package and the tag disappear so that he could not see the price.

Once he was in awe of it, I ordered one more for him. (He wears topa every day of winters.)

By the time the second one had arrived, I had left from their home and was back in Noida.

This time he saw the price and felt bad, something that is typical to wonderful parents who do not want any special treatment to themselves.

On the phone call that night, he said, “You should not have ordered this expensive topa for me.”

Here’s what I responded: “I have just one father. So I can spend all I want on you :))”

Try this at home and let me know how it goes 😀

1. You take a break from the screen.
2. You take a break from the box you were sitting/living in.
3. You are one with nature.
4. You learn to befriend dogs, squirrels, cats and other domestic animals hanging around without interacting with them for a minute.
5. You see that the ones that are consistent on their walks are also visibly fit.
6. You suddenly move on from something that had been loitering your mind for years.
7. You have the ideas for a new book.
8. You have the ideas for the project you have been working on.
9. You have the ideas for everything your mind is looking (and is not looking) for ideas on.
10. You understand how to respond politely yet assertively to someone without being rude and dismissive.
11. You forget everything you must. You remember everything you need to move forward with optimism and joy.
12. You realise how magnanimous you are and how little you need to prove that to everyone else.
13. You just keep walking. Is there anything more to life than this?

They root for you because your win is their win.

Especially because they have no incentive to root for you other than the fact that they really care.

Also especially, because, they help us get over people that didn’t treat us right. And make us believe in the power of right people, and how we can be one of those too.

The more empty a human, the more they will try to bring others down in an interaction.

The happier a human, more they would listen to others.

People’s complains are merely their inability to work on themselves.

We have an opinion because we cannot be alone for an introspection.

When we spend time with ourselves alone, we make sure no one around us feels alone. When we are always clinging to others, we make sure everyone around us ends up feeling alone.

Disaster happens not when things turn apart, but when human beings do not turn within to meditate and study.

You cannot have a powerful human interaction unless you have a powerful relationship with yourself. A powerful relationship with yourself happens on walks.

The best life is where you do not crave for any human interaction and are celebrating when you are all by yourself.

When I am at my parents’ home for more than a week (like this time when I’ll be leaving after 10 days), there is often a bittersweet experience.

Bitter, because it pains to see them at ~70 not drawing boundaries with relationships, and allowing everyone to walk over them. And then it pains to see them suffering and not recognise the source of it. And then it pains to see them watching news while having dinner at 9.30 pm (this is for Papa, Mom has her dinner earlier sans TV).

Then it is a sweet experience too because I do not have to think about getting vegetables or groceries in general or think about getting home cleaned because Mom does that. And this time I had visited

So that is all that.

Nonetheless, I still prefer going back to my home in Noida because life is set there. And while it is physically comfortable to be in parents’ den, it is time they get out of “having to care for a kid”. Also, I think I am more emotionally stable there 🙂

Do not push yourself to make the decision immediately.

Even if it is for 5-10 minutes, put your attention somewhere else.

Your mind would always get to the right solution if you give it a little bit of space without force.

PS: Calls with Papa happen on the same call with Mom 🙂

Often means simply making sure your mood is fine even when it is not fine.

What is life if you are not in control of your emotions?

Feel all your emotions, but do not let them affect your mood. You are not that cheap.

But once you go, you will never regret going for one.

I once read a quote that said, “do not trust an idea that occurs to you indoors.”

You and I are being raised in an environment that will give food, money and even relationships from our couch while we don’t move an inch. But it is important to know that outdoor walks give you:

• a body that can move, which is the only place your money/food go
• ideas that the universe is trying to give you but we are too busy sitting in/scrolling boxes that we don’t go out to catch them
• a feeling of being one with ourselves. Something that is alien to most people.

You do not have to do extraordinary things for an extraordinary life. Just do the basic things consistently.

1. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. This books makes me believe in the beauty of the world outside of social.
2. Linchpin by Seth Godin. We all are obsessed with main character energy. This book gives you a real process of how to become one, without craving for the applause.
3. The Elements of style by William Strunk Jr. Very short yet very useful book for everyone who communicates in English (emails, text messages, slack, DMs, etc., basically — every single one of us).

Side note:

• It is a good walk down the memory lane to see when I bought these specific books from Amazon 🙂
• Books save the world from the infinite enigma of devices enslaving us.

All you have to do is start things.

Just start. Just start. Just start. Over and over again.

You will get it done, quicker and better than you think.

To do things, start doing them.