Nishtha Gehija

When you go to a store of H&M or Uniqlo, the checkout experience is seamless. I believe it is for at least two reasons:

• They do not ask you to get a membership.
• They do not ask if you want a bag, they give you a bag by default, because the bag is free.

In a Pantaloons or a Shoppers Stop outlet, you are asked both of these.

It almost makes me reconsider revisiting them, because you do not want to say these polite no’s over and over again. Also, once a customer has landed in our store and is reaching the end mile of making a purchase, it is wisdom to know that future sales are going to be driven by how good your product is, not by selling memberships or charging for a ₹10 paper bag, a better quality of which comes for free at H&M or Uniqlo.

To begin with, I understand that the former two have a different audience than the latter two. I am also aware of the fact that the “free” bag is built into the prices of the products at H&M and Uniqlo, which are definitely on the higher side than Pantaloons or Shoppers Stop.

Yet the customer does not care about what is the price of your product. Pantaloons or Shoppers Stop could easily increase the price of every single SKU by ₹10 and lose no customers, while they could make the bag free. Also, if the product is no good, no customer is coming to “use their membership card” even for which they might have paid for.

The customer cares about good product, hassle-free experience, and not being pushed for “further sale” after they have made bigger financial decisions already during shopping.

Making money is not an evil object. Not caring about the customer and milking them after they have already milked themselves is.

Because if you don’t read good books, the world around you is designed to make you average.

Because your mind needs training to think new things.

Because you do not want to be addicted to the screen.

Because you want to learn from other’s lives, so that you do not use your life as a guinea pig.

Because Mark Twain said that there is no difference between people who don’t read and people who can’t read.

• Don’t jot them down
• Scroll often
• Sleep late at night
• Consume junk food (that shift your focus from your mind to your stomach and pallette)
• Be surrounded by naysayers

Find anyone whose ideas you adore and you would find them not do many or all of these.

• The world is designed to keep you unfocused. Open any social media and you will figure. Thus, you have to create a world around you that keeps you focused. 
• Focus is boring. But focus is where the bucks are made.
• Show me any successful person and I will show you the focus they put in. It need not be academics, but whatever they succeeded in, they focused at it. 
• The best way to get focused is to find what you are genuinely interested in. And then devote time and execution to it.
• But that is not the only way. A lot of the times when we focus on the work we are blessed with, it increases our focus too. 
• Always have something to do that you can chill around doing, when you get bored. Book, table tennis, outdoor games, if nothing else, go clean your closet and bathroom. If you skip this, you are likely to scroll miles on your phone. 
• Focus builds the internal confidence to not get affected by what naysayers do or say. Your blinkers are on, and that is it.
• There is always going to be a new movie, a new tournament, a new family riot, a new that is there at the doorstep of your focus to make it scatter around. You must train your mind 
• That is where reading (and not watching) good content helps. Your mind knows what to learn, and actually has the space to learn it. 

Lastly, focus is like good health. You have to earn it daily. Yet the past compounds. You can go by a small deviation here and there. But eventually consistency, saying no a lot (so that you can say yes a lot) are the keys.

Oh, btw, you have more fun when you are focused more. Having fun is directly proportionate to the focus you have.

Almost 5 months ago, less than 1% of people who know Aditya Dhar today would have known him.

Now there are inspiring stories being written about him (well deserved though) on the magic he created with two back-to-back blockbusters.

It turns out, the world will echo our success stories when they will see them.

But before the world sees us for who we are, do we have the courage to see ourselves for who we are?

When I moved out of my last job, I was clueless what I’d do next.

Or to frame it differently, what I knew for sure was I’d be a full time writer. I knew it for sure in my bones, in my soul, in my heart. Just that there was zero idea how.

Unlike my usual tendency, I did not push myself to figure life out the next day of leaving my last job. I simply swayed through my day. And the only thing I did around 4.30 pm that day was write my daily blog.

I started this blog in 2016, exactly 10 years ago. But out of the 2,946 blogs here in the last 120 months, the last 1,000 blogs have been here in the last 1,000 days (or ~33 months). In a continuous streak.

This is the home I return to, everything else I do at work is wandering. As much as wandering and travelling is necessary, we all need a home.

There have been clients who read this blog and onboarded me to ghostwrite their books, because they could trust me with their life stories.

Most importantly, I don’t follow the world, the algorithms, the latest tool out in the market here.

Just as home should be.

Here’s to the next 1,000.

1. Let them believe they are the smartest.
2. Do not counter them.
3. Then go do the right thing regardless.

The biggest mistake we make is believing a fool would become wiser with logic and/or intuition.

Foolishness is a choice, resulting from a culture of self-created walls of “I am the best”. You cannot every help someone get better who already thinks so.

“Why put in the effort to explain why it isn’t a fit, if they haven’t done the homework to determine if it is a fit?”

Tim Ferris is talking about Maria’s policy that sometimes the best “no” is no reply.

This made me reflect on the three levels of “no”, arranged in order from lower to higher relevance:

1. Not responding with anything, out of ego.
2. Responding with a polite no, out of understanding them and you
3. Not responding with anything, because read the first sentence.

I came across a recommendation of following James Clear on Substack, and I subscribed to him immediately. 

The next step asked me if I want to recommend him. 

Now, I am VERY picky about recommending newsletters, even if they are from my favourite people. But with Clear, I recommended him without batting my eyelid. 

Because I am 100% confident of the content he is going to put out on Substack (whenever he starts doing that) is going to be excellent. 

What is something people are going to be 100% confident about you, that they put their stamp on it just by seeing your name? 

Every single day, we are allowing people to form a perception about us. The worst (and the best) part about it is they often don’t notice how.

What is the choice you are giving people to make about you, every single day?

The internet has made the choice of business easy from any remote corner of the most remote village. If you are not watching out for yourself, it becomes your biggest addiction too.

A car makes you go everywhere quicker. If you are not balancing it with exercise and getting your daily steps, sitting is equivalent to smoking.

You are an A++ giver. The moment you let it become your default setting especially when the other person does not need or ask for your constant giving, the same giving that nurtures others will probably drain you.

Whichever room you enter into in the world, it is cohabitated by the pious as well as the pointless. The direction you move in is where your Venn diagram will tilt towards.

A past that was traumatic beyond measure.

Or a past that stands as the brand ambassador of the good old days.

It is the past for a reason.

…is weighing you down.

So you empty it in front of anyone who crosses your path.

“It was heavy. So emptying it on you was the most natural thing.”

The problem is, problems have the same nature as happiness.

They compound when shared.

A better way is to ask yourself before emptying your problems is, “Am I sharing this to vent myself out, to gain sympathy or to get to a solution?”

You will then know what to do with your answer.

Here are some for you to enjoy:

“The deepest form of slavery is the hunger for being understood.”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky

“All sins are attempts to fill voids.”
—Simone Weil

“Making work easier. This is the problem.”
— Jerry Seinfeld

“Sometimes you need to allow life to save you from what you want.” 
— Brandon Stanton

“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails of Nazis after WW 2) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
—Captain G. M. Gilbert, US Army psychologist, Author of Nuremburg Diary

A lot of people pick their family and friends as their cans to vent out.

But I think it is important to sit with yourself to understand what are you really crazy about. Get your thoughts clear with your mind or perhaps on paper.

Another question to consider is: If you can talk to the person who is the reason of your venting out? Not by venting out to them but by having a conversation with them like adults. Adults is the keyword here, because a lot of people are merely 8 year olds in 30, 40, 80 year-old-bodies.

If yes, have the courage to have the conversation. It is much more effective than venting out to someone you love.

If you cannot have that conversation, it is very important to finish it with yourself. Or, if you want to share it with those you love, it is important you share that as an information and not as a complain.

Our loved ones deserve the best of us. And at our worst, they deserve to be with us, love with us, and even see us dealing with our challenges. But if we simply treat them as cans to vent and vent and vent, we may not know but that is rarely a healthy relationship.

Translated, you want to vent out, it is a three step process:

1. With yourself: Get clear with what are you crazy about. Let the anger subside. Let your rational side take over and get clear about what is bothering you and what is simply an outburst of lack of patience.
2. With the person who is the cause of your pain: Have an adult conversation, not an 8-year old conversation.
3. With your loved ones: As an information or maybe as an ask for help. But never as an ask for a dustbin.

Slower than a snail’s pace.

So quietly you do not even realise the break up is happening.

We don’t communicate. We take the other person for a ride. We are tired of giving and only giving that we do not realise we were doing a charity and were rarely in a friendship.

Sometimes some friendships also reflect the kind of standards we have set for ourselves.

But more than anything else, I believe that if you are an overachiever mentally as well as materially, it is a matter of time before every friendship breaks.

I am not here to scare you, but if you are an anomaly who has real friends not showpiece friends, that is an incredible place to be.

A grandma needs help with ordering her online order. So she calls up her teenage granddaughter.

“Can you come over?” grandma asks.

“I’m out right now, can I come later?” the granddaughter responds.

“Sure.”

It turns out, the granddaughter did not show up for the next two days. And the grandma is upset. The grandma has already concluded that this generation does not know how to respect their elders.

On the other hand, the granddaughter is expecting a bashing from grandma, for maybe her screen time or choices of friends. She knows she needs to make things better, but the last thing she needs after the bashing of her parents is an addendum by her grandma.

So she figures ways of ignoring the visit to her grandma.

All of this is happening, because the grandma did not tell what is it that she needs help with. I am certain if you tell any sensible teenager that their grandparent needs help that only they could help with, they would come running over.

It is the non-communication and the expectant bashing from the grandparents that often keeps grandchildren away.

Perhaps true for every other relationship too.

If you can speak, please communicate your ask. Do not use sign language, because “they must understand you.” They will understand you at some point, but to reach at that point, you must start communicating please.

Please do not leave things to assumptions, even in the closest relationships. Give people the clarity of your thought before you judge the assumptions in their actions.

A and B are two close friends. They get invited to same gatherings. Have the same work. Basically live the same life, in two different homes.

A does all her work. And rarely attends gatherings. Only the necessary ones. She knows that she needs to preserve her energy. This makes her productive at work 90% of the times.

B does all her work as well. But shows up to every gathering she is invited to. She finds it hard to say no. “They thought of me, I must show up.” As a result, she often falls ill, at least 5-6 times a year. If she is productive even if 65% of the year, that is a blessing.

We believe that if the calendar is empty, it is free for filling it up with pursuits. We are more scared of free time than we are of AI taking over our jobs and death combined.

Yet, when the body and mind give up, as they invariably do, when we keep chasing the next dopamine shot on an insatiable treadmill of continuity, the body falls ill. It demands rest.

This is called living your life in reactive mode.

There are two sad things to it, that you and I are have the responsibility to fix:

1. We all believe that if we say no without a reason, we’d be deemed irresponsible, selfish, not an active member of society. So we become perpetual people pleasers and keep saying yes.
2. At the same time, few people have developed the ability to stomach a no. To listen to a reasonless “no” someone said because they wanted to spend time alone and not socialise. To have the self-respect to know that their “no” is not an act of rebellion but an act of preventing to live life in reactive mode.

For those of us who don’t smoke or consume alcohol, we don’t do it because we know it is disastrous for our future (and present).

So is living life in reactive mode.

You do not have to slog and slog and slog to earn your rest. Rest is as necessary as breathing, not as necessitating as ventilator.

…if you have lived for yourself.

…if you figured you cannot pour out of an empty cup.

…if you remembered that you need to change things if you need to change things.

…if you learnt how to love yourself and this is the most selfless thing you could do.

…if you really wanted to live for others, you would make yourself more empathetic, listen to others, make them stronger, make them independent, love them more, and most importantly, you would be a force of nature not someone forcing yourself to adjust to nature.

Giving someone money and breadcrumbs is absolute selfishness disguised as love and attention.

May we have the empathy to understand this is the last way to live for others.

You want to quit your messy job. And get rich doing what you love.

It is an excellent place to be.

The way to get to any place is to go through the way. Which means, you will get customers who trust you with your work you love, when you trust yourself.

How you build that trust with yourself is through managing your time. To start small along with your job. To deal with your excuses instead of making a deal with them.

When we look at someone getting successful in what they love and we want to do that too, we need to know that they had the courage. Not the courage to start, but the courage to fail and start all over again. Over and over again.

This consistency in failures created that flawless career.

The leap of faith isn’t coming. We have to walk to it. Even when we are scared. Especially when we are scared.