Nishtha Gehija

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.

When India lost the ODI World Cup Final in November 2023, Jasprit Bumrah was one of the people who did not shed a tear (at least on the field). Maybe because he knew he still had more ODI World Cups inside of him.

When India won the T20 World Cup in in March 2026, Jasprit Bumrah was very happy but not explosively expressive. Maybe because he knew he still had more excellence inside of him.

In the post match presentation in the latter, he did say that he was remembering the former. So pain, trauma, reminiscing of the brutalities of the past — are an everpresent forces fo all of us. It takes wisdom to be stable and perform like a pro in situations like these.

I think this kind of stability comes from knowing that the only thing you can control is your excellence (which he does like no other), after that, you are eventually detached from the results.

The sad and empty phase that lasts longer than happy phase.

The quiet that lasts longer than the friendship.

The confusion that lasts longer than you’d expected it would.

Stay the course. Do the thing. Trust yourself. And even take a chill pill.

You will be fine. It is the melancholy and the internal firing that makes us enjoy the melody and the spring.

Having fun is good. Laughing together helps strengthen bonds.

But laughing at someone else when they miserable or when something doesn’t go right for them (even if they are someone you are close to) is outright insensitive.

And as far as I know, these are nice people who do not wake up one morning to mock others. This mockery is a very subconscious yet a consistent reaction. Which is why it bothers me.

When you are not consistently understanding that you as a citizen of this world are here to make the world better, you undoubtedly go make the world worse. How you make the world better could be through your corporate job or through your business or by being a great parent or whatever you have decided to do. It is this pursuit towards world betterment that leads to inevitable self betterment, and hence, a resultant unawareness to mock fun at others.

It might seem it is hard to not mock at others or to control yourself when someone is miserable.

I’d say it is the easiest thing in the world to do, just that only complex and impassive people cannot afford it.

Show me someone who talks too much and I will show you someone:

• who is all talk and no action
• has a problem for every solution
• complains about every single thing
• is never on time in meetings or any event
• this one is the most fun: never has the time to read books 🙂

Your mind needs to be quiet at least sometimes to navigate life.

Wise ones even know talking (and not forced silence) should be an anomaly, not an event that occurs daily.

Words you never knew meaning of, come over to your consciousness and you end up writing them.

When I check those “unknown” words in the dictionary, I know for sure these words belonged in those sentences.

But these words do not show up every time. A lot of times they don’t. They show up in a wave of flow, only when I keep showing up consistently without bothering too much about the results.

The Universe really wants to help you in every endeavour. It is just checking if you are worth being helped.

Friends that were close once, and then stop being friends.

Friends that we pick as friends, but later on we move on from them. Because we never saw them for the fact that they never deserved to be our friends.

Friends where almost everything is right to the point of trusting each other blindly, and then one fine day your friend thinks you are plotting a move.

I have unfortunately stumbled upon an unwanted yet much-needed truth of life, which is you will lose relationships all of the time. Friends, family, and all other relationships you didn’t expect to lose, in ways you didn’t expect.

But I do think it is important to sit with yourself to mourn the loss of those relationships. Like kids do. By mourning I do not mean literally crying, but to allow yourself to process those emotions. And do that over and over again.

At the same time, I like this video too:

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Claude is self-assured. Does not ask questions at the end of it response unless it is absolutely necessary. Which is why it has become my default LLM.

It does not ask for attention, merely does its work very well, that makes me give it my attention.

ChatGPT always has a question at the end of its response.

Perhaps it is designed to ask us questions to keep us engaged. Which often backfire to an extent that I have fully moved to Claude.

It desperately needs attention, which makes smart people move away so that they can get their work done from LLMs instead of chit-chatting.

“You are very talented.”

Especially to someone who has achieved a lot.

It demeans their hard work, toil and tears to merely being gifted and blessed, instead of building the success that lead them to being called “talented”.

The alternative way of respecting someone’s success is to say a version of “You seem to have put in a ton of hard work in here.”

It shows you respect their hustle and the fact that they earned it.

Earning and inheriting do not lead to the same destination.

Mark Twain was a wise man who said this.

Many decades later, though, someone on social media said:

“I do not read books. I do not workout. But hey, I am cool.”

The social media has democratised communication and access. This also comes with the choice for us to pick whom to listen to. More importantly, whom not to listen to.

Coaches like George Raveling and Tim Grover have written about Michael Jordan in their books, on how he wanted to improve even the most little things in his game. One of the most loved chapters in James Clear’s Atomic Habits is the chapter of British cyclists — on how they went on to win a championship just by making tiny changes in their lifestyles. Clear also shares a similar story in the addendum workbook to this book. The best leaders I have witnessed in corporate rooms are always learning and doing new things, instead of merely being irresponsible towards learning.

Those are the kind of people you need to read. To purposefully surround yourself with.

And move on from “smart, cool and charismatic” people who lack the slightest courage to read books and workout.

You have a class. Forget it at your own peril.

Let us say you are 100% right and the other person is 100% wrong. And I do not say this in the ego way of life but in the way of logic. Let us say that you were right all along the way.

But if you letting them win makes peace in the conversation, I don’t see anything wrong.

The only person that can afford to do it is someone who is so fulfilled from within that them winning this argument is immaterial.

Although, one might think that if this is a relationship that you interact with often, this way the other person is going to dominate you. I believe that if you really have a relationship of faith, trust and love with them, you will find a way later. If it is a relationship that losing some conversations makes you think you are a forever loser in the relationship, that was not a relationship to begin with.

Type 1: They are the brightest connoisseurs of excellence. Always doing more than they are required to. Without ever being asked for or being promised a compensation for the extra. Their work is their signature, and hence, they leave an unconscious positive impression wherever they go. Usually less than 1% of the workforce.

Type 2: They do their work as they are supposed to. No nagging, no follow-ups, yet no excellence either.

Type 3: Them doing the work after multiple follow-ups and requests is an achievement in itself.

The distribution of type 2 and type 3 is usually a function of the hiring decision of the company and the mindset of the leader.

It pays monetarily to be in type 2 and 3. It pays your soul to be in the type 1. At least for the work you care for.

You were supposed to have fun in your work.

When you diminish it just to end goals (which are important too), you are never living ever. You are postponing fun to tomorrowland.

Let us say you postpone fun to weekends and then actually have it. But then your mind will be again stuck in hoping to get to another goal over the week/when you get back to work.

All work, hence, should be boiled down to one common mantra: Have fun today.

How you do it is something you already know. It was the “fun” element that you needed the reminder to.

We all have acted as one at some point in our past.

So when someone else is acting like one around you, protect yourself from them. While blessing them in your heart instead of holding it up against them.

A random useless chat with your siblings

A walk in the park

Meaningful work

A system of books and spirituality to fall back on

A journal

Every other achievement, material or internal, is often an outcome of one or more of these.

When things between two people have a collision, there are just two ways to go about it:

You felt something was off, it hurt you, and you be an adult and communicate about it. And solve it by having a conversation where you make the other person feel safe while putting out how you felt. The tonality matters a lot here.

The second option is you realise the hurt is not worth it, so you resolve it within yourself. Your love and conversation with the other person is pure and pristine as before.

Sometimes we unknowingly tend to go with the third option, which is an amalgamation of both, and hence breaks trust in that friendship. You are mad at them but you do not communicate, and then when they ask you, you give them a piece of your mind, because, hey, they asked.

Any relationship in family or friends or anyone else is our responsibility. Sometimes when we do not heal the pain of some of our relationships, we bleed in those relationships that didn’t cut us, as a quote goes. Or we might think they cut us too, because we did not know that sometimes you can avoid cuts by being adults.

Being an adult is conversation about pain or self cancellation of pain. Venn diagram of no conversation and no cancellation is not how adults operate. The third option is only cutting you more. And you are already anaemic from the bleeding that has already happened.

…is to know when it is best to have a conversation instead of staying silent.