Nishtha Gehija

Dinner in the golden hour.

Watching birds go back to home (wherever that is).

By the time dinner is done, the pink-blue sky is now laden with darkness, yet visible clouds.

Ah, the joys of a slow life.

This morning we drove at 5.15 am for over an hour to the mountains.

And it was hands down the best drive of my life. Ever.

The wind was so perfectly blowing that I was enjoying my window seat view. It wasn’t too harsh for me to close the window. Just Perfect. In capital P.

The best thing was while the sky was slowly turning blue, the glittery sparkling moon of the last night was still in its full form. Not the white-kind of moon that we see in the mornings, but the glittery moon of the nights was in full form in the morning.

I did not click a lot of pictures, but these are really good. The moon’s picture does not do justice, because a few minutes back it was sparking even more. The kind of stuff you can never prepare for, it only shows up by surprise. But it only shows up when you are willing to access nature all of the time.

Today is 3-year anniversary of me going out on my own.

So, 3 learnings from this stint:

1. If you are high agency, have worked hard in your jobs in the past, and have a bit of savings (at least a year), you are going to do almost fine. I did not need savings, thank God, but just the fact they existed helped me from making desperate decisions.

2. The life of an artist is different from the life of an entrepreneur, with a little Venn overlap. My active choice is the former. You have to keep reminding yourself which one is yours.

3. The best thing going out on your own is you can go 5X your usual speed or slow down just because you want to. The self-confidence that you build through your skill eventually helps you in deciding your attitude too.

Thanks to everyone who chose to work with me, buy my books, refer me to beautiful opportunities, and still continues to do all of these. You bring food on my table and peace to our entire family. And for that, I am truly, truly grateful.

It’s been over 11 years that I qualified CA. Worked as an Internal Auditor for over 5 years, and now it’s been over 6 years that I have not been doing CA specific work.

But the skills I developed in the 2 years preparing for the CA Final exam and the years of my Internal Audit jobs are hands down the skills that I use to date. Every single day.

Nothing good you do or become in life ever goes to waste.

It all ties back to making you the person you were always supposed to be.

1. Close your computer
2. Jot down your ideas, to-do’s, even work in your notebook.
3. Start executing on them in the notebook itself, till the time you are fully energised to go to the computer to execute and not scroll merciless miles.

…All of this, after you have had at least 15-20 minutes of nap.

What a date. To turn 35.

I must be honest. It is way past my bedtime. And I should not be on screen right now.

So I will share just a few life lessons of the last one year and then doze off:

1. If something is a no in your intuition, please try not justifying it. That voice is always right.
2. Your life glorifies when you purposefully move away from all energy drainers of your life. The past 13 months were probably my first of those, after maybe my childhood.
3. Sleep is the answer to everything and all your problems.
4. Workout and eating on time will solve the remaining of your problems.
5. Delegate chores, so that you can focus on your core.
6. Doing what you love is still hard, but way easier than hating your entire existence doing something you despise, only to end up in an appraisal of 6% raise or being the victim of the mood of your boss.
7. Kindness wins every battle and the war.
8. What people do shows on them. What you do shows on you.
9. If you decide you want to get your work done by 12 noon or 3 pm, you will get it done. If you don’t decide, you will continue suffering till the middle of the night.
10. It is good to give yourself some goal, some project, something that you look up to. It keeps you on your toes while you love being there. The idea is to continue working for yourself even if you create work for your clients and customers.
11. Good shopping requires patience. But it solves for a lot of headaches later.
12. Life is all about giving yourself cues. Get into a habit of a clean desk > productivity, dinner at 6 > long walk, sleep at 9 > great meditation in the morning, and it makes so much easier. Thank you, James Clear.
13. Try not force yourself into people. Let them be. The right ones will stay.

Chalo, I am sleepy now. It’s already 50 minutes past bed time. But I wanted the blog to go live today itself.

See you tomorrow.

Ten years ago, I used to be sad that no one in my family read my essays and books. Now I am glad that no one in my family reads my essays and books.

Life time and again proves it that if something is too good to be true, it is. Always keep up your good work, you have no idea how much you are building with it.

Romanticise learning from people when they say no instead of lacing into them.

The satisfaction of creating something because you want to > > >

A cluttered mind is a sign of a body that hasn’t taken a walk for a long time.

All reasons equal, one of the reasons we get tired is because the people we are with have started making us feel irrelevant.

We start questioning if what we are doing even matters.

So each time we sit down to do something, our perceived irrelevance has already made us tired.

Two ways to solve for that:

1. If someone matters to you (at work, home) make it a point to communicate it to them often.
2. Please be doubly careful while giving snide remarks. It is not good for your mind to be that kind of a person, it is never really good to listen. If the problems do arise, it always makes sense to communicate like an adult.

You have more to life than making someone else suffer.

People should feel energised and not tired because of you.

• Charisma without substance
• Loud voice
• Entitlement
• Demeaning others
• Stating your claims as modus operandi of the world

All of the above are masks disguised as confidence.

True confidence includes but is not limited to:

• Being kind (and meaning it)
• Being happy for others’ happiness (even though you might want to be envious)
• Being curious instead of being judgemental
• Letting people be
• Staying true to your word
• Bringing a positive energy into every room you walk into
• Having a standard so high that people run away from doing anything mediocre around you

Confidence is having the courage to show up, each time it isn’t easy to.

• If there is still a chance, there is still a chance.
• Whatever it is you want to do, believe in it and keep dreaming.
• “I’d love to be forgotten completely.” (Author note: Every fulfilled artist, who has given 100% 200% to the thing they are doing, usually feel that way. Every artist who is in the start of their journey are usually the ones that care about being remembered. Says so much about being an artist.)

I heard this term in one of Gursimran Khamba’s podcasts, where his wife tells him that men do not have the right to complain about not being able to pee in public spaces, since women have it worse.

And now I call all people who complain without having the right to complain, “Raja Beta”.

Some ways it manifests are:

“I cannot invest because I am earning too less.” You can, Raja Beta, put that money you spend in cafes impressing people on Instagram who couldn’t care less, towards your monthly SIP.

“I cannot send that cold email because I sent 2 cold emails and nobody responded.” You can, Raja Beta, you just need one email to work, but for that you need to send 100 emails, and learn writing better emails.

“I cannot start my side hustle because I am tired because of my job.” Raja Beta, stop going for that movie on the weekends, that pottery class on Wednesdays and that ranting session of excuses on that group chat — and lo and behold, you have at least 5 hours per week to start. At the start, you don’t even need more.

It turns out, life turns you into a Raja when you quit being a walking bag of complaints and excuses called “Raja Beta”.

Hopefully someday

Impossible

But here is why I can’t do this

They just got lucky

All of this looks good in movies

The words we speak to ourselves in our quietest moments (brushing the teeth, closing our computer, before going to bed) and out loud to others become our self fulfilling prophecies.

Not everyone of us is cut to be a Spiderman to save the world. But we can create our own world through our words. None of our lives is an exception to that.

1. What others do to you is a reflection of who they are, not who you are.

2. Doing good things but critiquing others for not being like you is not usually a good thing.

3. When you genuinely accept people, you accept them for who they are. No questions asked.

The ability to sit with a contradicting thought. Neither questioning it, nor believing it. Just allowing yourself to sit with it.

To forgive yourself for your past. Honey, you are over that. You are over that person. You are over that decision of yours. Please don’t be harsh with yourself for the rest of your life.

To go for a walk/drive/cycle without any purpose.

To do a nice thing for a stranger/your landlord without any reason. Just because doing a nice thing is the right thing.

The ability to trust yourself at a time when the world is still blindfolded and gagged to your art and what you bring to the table.

Will you talk to me with curiosity? Or will you judge me?

Will you talk to me with love? Or would you let your ego lead?

Will you question my life choices? Or will you accept me for what I bring to the table (pun not intended)?

If we are sitting next to each other in a party, we have a responsibility, a social responsibility to make it memorable for each other. That’s difficult, because it is so easy for me to look at your weaknesses so up close. That’s easy too, because loving a human should never be hard.

Can I sit next to you the next time we meet in a party?

…you will always be alone on that path.

Whatever path.

Whatever stories your mind tells you that you are not alone.

Whatever everyone else tells you that you are not alone.

Now that you have this intel, you still have the agency to thrive with it, or let it thwart you.

It is a liberating feeling to not care a dime about what others say, even if their digs are directed at you and only you.

Good listeners need to learn the art of sometimes not listening.

To people who care a lot, need to learn when not to care.

To people who want to make others feel important, it is liberating to know that you do not have to give a bit of importance to some ideas from people.

The other day my elder sister was taking her 8yo nephew to his summer camp on her Activa, when they both met with an accident.

While she protected my nephew with her arm like a true Jhansi ki Rani, she ended up twisting her own foot in the process.

The innocent 8yo walked up to the driver of the tempo traveller, which was the same vehicle whose brakes had failed, and asked him innocently yet protectively, “Why did you hit my mom?”

In that state of lying on the floor she asked my nephew to come back to her, and told him, “I’m fine, nothing has happened to me.”

This is where I wish parents changed themselves. (My sister did, after my lecture :))
Parents project themselves to be unharmed, 10/10 absolutely I-can-do-it-with-a-broken-leg kinda humans, who are never prone to any hurt, physical or emotional.

And then one day when we grow up, when our head hits the brick a thousand times, we realise in the most unexpected ways that our parents are humans too. They aren’t as perfect as we think them to be. They were never. And it gives us more empathy, but after a lot of years of unrequited anger.

So here is my request to all parents, even though I am least qualified to: Share your most real pains and problems with your kids. Not because you would burden them. But because you want them to be witnesses and partners in your life. Because you want them to feel okay when they go through the same things, which they invariably would. Because you want them to know that life is not as rosy, yet it is up to us what we do to what has been done to us.

Authenticity never goes out of style. Ever.

Came across a clip of Badshah (the singer) where he shared something Virat Kohli shared with him about fitness.

It is deep, and I wish you read it at least twice:

“So, are you going to take the exterior seriously, which will fade away when you’re not relevant anymore? Or are you going to be loyal to the interior, which has always been with you and will be with you till you die? Look inward and you will never be anxious about people. It’s the same place from where you create your art. It’s instinct and not thought.”

…by people whom you had least expected to hurt.

Take your time to process that. Learn the lessons that pain caused you. Learn how to behave differently with them, in a wiser, more evolved manner.

But my friend, is it okay if you inflict that pain onto everyone else?

One of the biggest joys in life is being surrounded by people who truly care for you, not just for the ones who show it off.

It is for these people, and more so, for yourself that you need to heal from the unexpected but inevitable wounds life throws at everyone.

If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you,” said the author Isabella De Bruno.