Nishtha Gehija

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.)

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.

Now that you know about it, what are you going to do?

In a manner that you don’t betray your core values?

And you create something meaningful for the world!

What NOT to do:

I do this. I want to do this for you. Can you please make that happen?

What to DO:

Hey, I saw you are doing this. This thing could become better if you did a, b and c. Also, once you do these, your business will be affected in this manner.

I could help you do this. Here is the work I have done and here is why I could help:

…

Please do not get lost as just another person in the long list of someone else’s cold emails.

Make it impossible for people to say no.

A goal in general: I want to make XX achievement by ABC date.

It sets success to a certain date, making you feel less at home about yourself every single day.

A goal as a process: I will write a blog daily. I will write an essay weekly. I will record a vlog 5x a week.

It makes sure you take care of your inputs. You are showing up because you care. You are showing up for yourself instead of one future date. You are building a well of self-confidence that consistently showing up and getting better each day solve for everything you want to build.

Then when there is a day you don’t feel like doing something, you still do it, because your actions are tied to a goal as a process and a function, not goal as a possible future.

No feeling in the world could override this.

…please postpone all commitments on your weekends and spend time with yourself.

People full of joy for life make time for emptiness.

Some people will stay perpetually dissatisfied.

Some people will be hurt because you did not do what they wanted you to do.

And some people will be hurt just because they haven’t been hurt lately, and the habit of hurting wants to take over.

Nothing others do is a reflection of who you are, especially if you are clear as water with yourself about why you are doing something and why you are not.

No matter what you do, some people’s opinions are meant to be ignored my friend.

The joy of believing the other person did what we think they did, and not listening to them.

The euphoria of someone else being wrong, without ever having a conversation with them.

The bliss of bequeathing blame, because responsibility is a scary subject.

Listening is boring. Boring gives peace. You can either create chaos or pursue peace. Once you experience peace, you’ll realise all the wars you had been fighting so far had been nothing more than vague.

Because every single book that is there on his bookshelf, he has read them.

So is Aamir Khan an avid reader.

And here we are, scrolling kilometres on the phone every day, looking for the next reel that will fulfill you.

My friend, the thing that will fulfill you is not the screen in your hand, but the book in your bookshelf.

If screen could make you rich, the influencers wouldn’t be asking to “like, share, subscribe”. (Guilty here too :))