Nishtha Gehija

I am writing this at a point where no one of us knows what is going to be the result of IPL 2026. I have not watched a single match of IPL ever, but at this point I know that RCB is playing the finals.

Which is why I want to write this before we know the results of IPL.

One, no matter what you do, how you do it matters more than anything else.

Two, have fun baby. He is dancing to songs in practice, doing the snake hiss to his friends in opponent teams, and is casually having fun with all his team mates. Wokes would say that is PR (maybe that is true), but you simply cannot project having fun. It has to come from within.

Related to that, if you build the right relationships with high profile people like him by caring for him and not milking him for content, you will get your content anyway. I am referring to Danish Sait here, who is a good friend of Virat Kohli. There are several questions that only Danish has earned the credibility to ask from Cheeku, and Cheeku has answered them cheekily. Because Danish cares.

Four, have the right intent. I have heard him say this in several clips, and it matters so much because you can have a lucky day or a lucky year by fidgeting with your intent. But if you really care, you know you have done right to yourself. Anyone else never mattered anyway.

Five, you can only control your effort. You can not control your performance. But how you show up in the preparation for it is always something you can control. This is slowly but more importantly, becoming my life mantra.

Six, despite all the good things, sometimes good things might not happen to you. Be it 19 November 2023 or maybe retirement from Test team. But you can still show up with your grace in the next thing you do. Or let what happened to you become your fate. It’s hard to choose grace, but that is the right thing to do, like Virat (and in this case even Rohit) did.

Seven, this is for all of us, especially for non-cricket watchers like me, if you are really looking for lessons to grow, you will find them. You always find what you are really, really looking for.

PS: When RCB won IPL 2025, I was so happy for Virat. “I have given this team my youth, my prime, my experience.” Greatness takes so much from you, that the ones in the stands cannot fathom to understand.

Is not the same as a pauper and a prince.

The Small Life is a deliberate attempt to live with less than your means, to not be victimised by lifestyle inflation, and to live for yourself instead of making sure others see your wealth too.

Such people do not care whether others know about their net worth or not. They are simply too focused on growing it and too grown up in not showing it.

The Grand Life is a consistent path of keeping up with the Joneses. There is always something new we need to bring to home, something that needs an upgrade, and an item about which you cannot speak in front of a friend who makes meagre money.

Such people want to make sure others know them for how rich they are, even though their savings and investments are burning faster than fuel.

Technically, a lot of the times the ones living the Small Life are richer than the ones living the Grand Life.

See, living with the right tools is not wrong. Even the ones living the Small Life have great tools, only so much to an extent that they need them and they want it for themselves, not for show-off or to maintain a certain lifestyle.

In other times, it reminds me of the Rudyard Kipling quote, “Beware of overconcern for money, or position, or glory. Someday you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.”

Everyone starts their life as Akash.

Then they do a few things that Sameer does.

And eventually become Siddharth for the rest of their lives.

I stopped thinking about that question long ago.

But now I have increasingly come to believe (through the study of spirituality) that the purpose of our lives is to make others feel lighter through our very presence.

And it is something you cannot force. It is something you have to build in yourself everyday, through study of good wisdom, meditation, contemplation of that wisdom, and so on.

No one wants to be a parasite but they end up becoming one when they are:

• always thinking what could go wrong
• bringing their bag of problems everywhere they go
• are perpetually sad because they think the world owes them anything

So much of life is about shedding your old beliefs, beliefs that drain more from you than anybody else.

The purpose of life is to live it.

…but will you still be my friend?

I try to do it but cannot, so I give you the real reasons why I cannot do what you ask me to do. Will you get upset and loosen up our friendship?

Is friendship all about being performative, and the moment we are not doing things, we are losing friends?

Can we be friends for who we are as humans, even when the performance ceases?

I understand if you do not want to be friends then, but then were we friends to begin with?

One of those books that says too much without saying a lot.

The entire book was like a vivid screenplay, where the author has done a lot of hard work to make it simple, something I loved as a writer.

Self-help in fiction is a rare gem, and so few books get it right, this is one of them.

A short, quick but long-lasting and impactful read.

A book about dealing with childhood trauma, both for the inflictor and the inflicted. In ways it hasn’t told.

A book about self-respect.

A book about having conversations.

A book about getting out of your own self.

A book about how the person who pains the other person never really gets over it, and it lingers in their lives for a long time. (Personal note: I don’t really think that is true, because from late 2023 to early 2025 I was in touch with a friend from my past, who was exactly in present like he had been in past, exactly like Cathal has been in this book: hating the reality way too much, because he had not seen a woman more than an object.)

This book heals you, especially if you are a nice person. I promise.

Your contribution to the world is not your trophies, your work, your lavish home, your lavish car, etc. All of this will go with your death.

Your contribution to the world is how bravely you showed up in the face of an adversity and how graciously you showed up in the face of abundance.

• The loss of seeing your parents lose their will to live, a little each day.
• The loss of never being able to dance with your siblings again.
• The loss of your friends while still being friends.
• Deleting an old friend’s birthday reminder from your calendar.
• Work friendships disappearing into nothingness
• A friend becoming perpetually angry, without ever informing why.
• Deleting a message you typed for a friend, because you are tired of being silently rejected.
• The loss of your friends who are no more friends. I was on Instagram yesterday after a while and in that spree, I stalked several creators whose content I enjoy. Then I was reminded of an old friend from 2 years back, but we have lost touch over the last year. And even though I moved to the search bar to type that friend’s name, I stopped. No one talks about that loss.

I have found that most losses that happen as adults are losses in relationships, in some way or the other. Mostly because you cannot (and must not) force others to change.

Nonetheless, it is still a loss.

Most of us do not acknowledge it because we think we are the ones who are suffering, while everyone is still sorted. But the fact is that everyone deals with these losses, does not acknowledge them, and moves on in life. Yet, they don’t ever fully move on. Pain has a way of acknowledging itself if we don’t acknowledge it. It shows up in less joy, a slower pace of walking, less than usual smiles, slowly losing hope from life, and hurts in other relationships that don’t deserve those hurts.

May we have the courage to write out what gave us pain, so that it does not become a perpetual existence of our life, the dragon that always stays, often sways but never wanes.

I have been on my SMS cleaning spree these days, where I am deleting all kinds of messages, except these two: From humans (VERY few), and every single message of money credited.

Except, this morning after receiving my message of GST payment I had a realisation:

It’s a privilege to be able to pay monthly GST.

It reminds me of what Bob Proctor used to say about manifesting money, that I will try to paraphrase: Money won’t come to you just because you want it. Money will come to you when you know what you will do of it.

What Bob was trying to say was money is best in motion and not when it is hoarded. Like a river that flows nurtures and a pond that stays stagnant stinks.

So, for the record, I am now going to be keeping credit and debit messages (okay, at least GST debit messages to begin with).

When you are a giver by default, you default to giving as a way of life.

Obvious as it sounds, it sometimes becomes acutely dangerous too.

Because life and circumstances sometimes require us to accept the love and care that comes to us from the most genuine people, and not try to balance it out by giving away money or gifts or fruits to them.

Learn to accept the love and time someone pours into you, whenever they pour into you.

Life becomes a quintessentially precious quest when you stop the unconscious game of quid pro quo.

The last two weeks.

I went to take care of my mom out of love.

I did take care of her out of love.

But the last two weeks have been a blur.

A hospital visit. Sitting there for days. At parents’ home. Back to home in Delhi.

But maybe this blur has a lesson.

I do not know what exactly. Because I am in a blur.

Yesterday I clicked my pocket and suddenly felt my keys. I did not remember when I locked the home while stepping out.

Usually my brain always felt clear. Now it feels nothing. Other than a blur.

No one is at fault. Other than the fact that I let go of feelings without feeling them. So that they become a blur.

That blur creates a slur in the way our life appears.

Not worth it.

Feel your life.

You have shut it down enough.

Feel it so that you are finally free of everything that eventually flees.

The blur is not your fur to don, it is merely a purr that will disappear.

The blur is going to be over. It is going to be fine. Not “Ross” fine, but really fine.

I was feeling unbelievably upset 3-4 days ago, something I haven’t felt in 3-4 years.

So I went ahead and ordered a self-help book Claude asked me to. It is not the usual ₹200-₹300, it is some ₹700+.

As the book is due to arrive tomorrow, I honestly wonder its purpose anymore. I am fine now, and not in the way Ross is. I am also happy about myself, that the biggest extent I went about in that emotional roller coaster was ordering a book for myself.

When you love books, life is sorted even in the worst times.

This is blog 2 of the day, but nonetheless an essential read.

I do not know more than 5-7 high agency people, that too after thoroughly thinking through what I know.

Please keep these tabs open on your computer and then whenever you are done with your work, go offline, read them, understand them, and re-read them:

To start with, the High Agency article by Shreyas Doshi

The well-known High Agency essay by George Mack

The high agency habit (a smaller nonetheless useful blog), again by George Mack

If you are on Twitter, a High Agency thread, again by George Mack (some part of it is repeated in the essay, yet nothing is worth not re-reading)

I also like this email by Robin Sharma which he recently sent. There is no online trail of it at any URL, so replicating it here.

Dear Nishtha, you’ll find today’s message interesting. And valuable.

There is a kind of person you have met, perhaps only a few times in your life, who operates by a different set of rules. 

Obstacles that stop most people don’t slow them down (they speed them up, actually). 

They do not wait for permission, for better conditions, or for someone else to solve the problem. They think and they dream and they create. Then they move. [Because leadership is mostly about getting big things done].

They find a way where others find only reasons why not. This quality is called high agency. And it may be the single most important skill you can cultivate right now.

High agency begins with one decision—to be the author of your life rather than the audience of it.

Low agency says: “I’m waiting to see what happens.” High agency says: “Given what’s in front of me, what’s my best move right now?” 

It is a fierce and disciplined refusal to outsource your power to circumstances. The moment you stop explaining your life and start engineering it, everything changes.

The high agency individual also knows—with unusual and legendary clarity—what they want. Most people are vague about their desires and wonder why their lives feel vague. Clarity is the foundation. When you know exactly where you’re going, every decision simplifies, every distraction becomes visible, and every sacrifice becomes worthwhile.

They have also made peace with discomfort.

They know the path to anything extraordinary drives directly through difficulty. When circumstances are hardest, they lean in. When the pressure is greatest, they do their finest work. 

A masterwork is not made under easy conditions. Neither is a remarkable human life.

And finally, they act. You might remember my brain tattoo: “Ideation without execution becomes delusion.”

Before they feel ready. Before conditions are perfect. Because they have learned that readiness doesn’t arrive before you begin—it develops because you began (there is massive power in simply starting). 

So act to make your ethical ambitions real, Nishtha. 

The world is waiting for your move. So make it.

Go enjoy your High Agency reads.

1. Grab a glass of water. Preferably from matka in this summer. Sit down. Have it.
2. Clean your space, if it isn’t already.
3. Do what you know you must do, for at least 10 minutes. 10 minutes is fine, if not 2 hours.
4. Decide what you will never do, going forward.
5. Go for a walk. If it’s too hot outside, meditate for 15 minutes.

It’s the basics whose absence usually bothers you.

And then it breaks even further.

But if you are someone who is experiencing pain in your heart today, please know that it is a sign that there is a part of your heart that still needs to grow.

Robin Sharma says, whenever life brings you in a period of pain, stay in it. Because a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul.

No matter how much others do for you or how much you are blessed with, you find solace in your problems.

Change is hard. Hard requires giving up self-pity and taking up responsibility.

If at any point in life you find yourself at a juncture where your problems are bigger than you, it is worth remembering that it is not the best place to be in.

1. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.
2. You cannot accentuate someone into changing unless they realise they are responsible.
3. The best way, then, to induce change is a combination of letting people be + sending them blessings + keeping your mind free from any stains towards them (learnt this from spirituality).
4. Words don’t being as much comfort as meditation does PS: You are meditating even when you are not sitting around to meditate.
5. The only thing that will save you in every area of life (relationships, career, yourself) is an undying quench for knowledge. Reading good books saves your soul, and this is no understatement.

I have never consumed non-vegetarian food in my life. Ever. 

For the past decade, I have even quit onion and garlic. 

I cook my food at home, offer it to God, and then eat it. I have eaten home-cooked food in trains, in airplanes, and even in my car when I went for a meeting and it was lunch time already. 

Oh, btw, I practice complete Brahmacharya as a way of my life.

Why am I telling this to you?

Last week as I was being a caregiver to my mother in hospital for three days. One of those days when she was having her lunch, she asked me to fetch water for her. When I returned, her roommate also asked me to fetch a glass of water for her. She was a woman probably in her 70s, the kinda ones that have seen everything in life, yet refusing to smile.

As per her instructions, I picked up her glass, rinsed it and then refilled it from our water bottles I had just filled. 

“Which caste are you from?”

She shouted as I went to rinse her glass.

When I returned with her glass of water, she confirmed again, “I hope you are from XXX caste.” This was her method of confirming she was consuming water from a pure source. 

So I said, “We are non-vegetarians.” I also added a fictitious caste to myself that is known for consuming non-vegetarian food. And then I returned to my Mom’s side of the curtain. 

My Mom who was barely able to walk under the influence of the surgery of the previous day, she and I giggled together. 

She apparently wanted to make sure she was having water from a *pure* person. I qualify beyond what she requires, but that is usually not a beautiful metric to judge people. Especially after you have asked them for favour. Thus, this fun. 

Sources say she is still asking her family to inquire about her co-patient’s caste 🙂

…especially in business.

I make my business decisions not based on today or a year from now, but based on “what if the world doesn’t work out as it does today and change completely?”

It allows me to not do certain things, to do certain things that don’t look practical, and in a lot of cases, always helps in the long run.

…Way too much.

So much so that one of the many reasons for me quitting my audit job was because me performing incredibly as an auditor sometimes invariably meant someone else losing their job. I did not think as much about what the “fired person” thought of me, but more about me not wanting to be a shareholder in a karma of someone’s firing.

I have spent 34 years of my life thinking a lot about what others think of me.

To a point where I am exhausted of it.

So now I just do my thing. Of course I take my care that I do not hurt anyone. And if someone says I hurt them, I apologise.

But the consistently over-functional mind that used to consider everyone and what they thought of me, is now sick and tired of being sick and tired.

So much so, that now I do not think of what others think of me. It still takes reminders. It still takes self-confidence. It still takes self-worth. But it is worth getting to the other side of knowing that what others think of you is none of your business.