Month: July 2024

1. Keep the book in mint condition. No folding of pages or rugged edges.
2. Treat it as if it were gold. Though it is worth more than that, we will be just like that.
3. When you return it, say thank you to the lender. For lending it to you. And for the wisdom you gained (if any).
4. If you can, just order yours maybe? Someone who loves reading does not like parting away with their heart that is contained in books.
5. A bonus thing is also to gift the giver with another book (but most people won’t get that).

Say nothing.

Not trying to replicate the other person.
Not trying to put in a spice of something negative.
Not trying to say useless stuff just for the sake of saying something.

When we have nothing to give, silence isn’t golden, it’s diamond.

1. Every culture is broken. Including companies that claim to be “great cultures”. The idea is to find a broken culture that fits your jigsaw puzzle.

2. Finding your passion is overrated. Finding driven and positive people to work with is the real deal.

3. No matter how valuable you are for the company, you are your manager’s one bad mood away from being fired. For no reason 🙂 So, always have a passive source of income and an active source of happiness outside of your job.

4. A manager that pushes you and critiques you is way better than a manager that doesn’t. Nothing meaningful usually good comes out of comfort zone.

5. Lastly, your colleagues will celebrate your personal milestones. Your family will celebrate your work milestones. However, one day, you will move on from this work and that would be it.
Work, much like life, is in embracing the ebb and flow of change, and going along with it.

Bonus: At the end of the day, all you have is You.
Make sure whatever you do, the person in the mirror looks back at you with pride. Nothing else really matters.

1. A notebook, and
2. A pen

That is all you need. That is all you need.

Each time you are about to take a leap in life, to get to the dream you have always wanted to pursue, to get out of your own comfort zone, to embrace what you had always wanted to, a part of you will feel uncomfortable.

“Do I even deserve this?”
“Should I return to my silo?”
“If I do this how would my relatives critique me?” Lol.

It is a turning point. More so of realising it is you who has been your biggest roadblock.

However, the hero’s journey is all about realising that you can get up and move any time.

Towards your goal.
Out of your own way.
Towards everything you always knew belonged to you.

The resistance shouts at first, because it hates abandonment.

However, it mutes itself completely and even dissipates, once it sees abundance in action.

A manager that pushes you is the manager you need.

Each time I have had a manager who made me think and work hard, I have grown as a professional as well as an individual.

On the other hand, each time there has been no challenge at work, it legit felt like wasting my time.

There is no growth without pain.
If we don’t choose pain, pain might eventually choose us.

If you are an introvert and find it difficult for you to thrive at work, this might help:

Being an introvert is not a deterrent to work.
It simply means you recharge yourself by being by yourself.

You can still do great work.
You can go out and talk to people.
You can have meaningful, productive conversations in a conference room full of senior most people of your organisation.

As a matter of fact, I am an introvert pro max ultra, and all my work in almost 10 years of my career has been centred around talking to people.

Sometimes, we take our character traits as our career flaws. And try hard to change them. Those beliefs become our self-sabotaging identities.

What we instead need is to embrace fully who we are.
And let our character traits shine bright.

Research also says introverts tend to have higher level of empathy, which is a must-must in any team.

So, my friend, celebrate yourself for being an introvert.
What an introvert needs the most is self-acceptance.
When they have it, they can go conquer the world!

There is a simple answer:
No.

It is like delegating your assistant to say your affirmations and exercise on your behalf. Can’t happen.

2 reasons:

1. The purpose of emails is to communicate your voice.
Not the voice of a machine.

2. When you write emails to people ahead of you, know that they have access to AI tools better than you.
Your role is not to be there for them by using your AI tool.
Your role is to be there for them by using your voice.
While you delegate routine tasks to AI.

Without a doubt, AI will take on a lot of tasks.

However, in order to make the best use of AI, we need to know who we are.
It is a daily process. You can’t outsource it.

It all boils down to one choice:

Let go of your voice. And AI will drown it in a world of noise!
OR
Know yourself. And dance with the best of AI.

Why can’t you just write whenever you are inspired?

Why can’t you just wait for the muse to arrive in a flowing robe and dangling earrings and let the “art” write itself through you.

Because writing is a habit.
Just like working out.

You cannot work out 6 hours on a Saturday and then not work out the entire week at all! Doesn’t work like that.

The more you write consistently, the better you get with time.
The more you let whatever is in your head get out every day, the more refined your output becomes.
The more you let yourself know that you are here for showing up for the process, not just for the results, the more easily results will show up for you.

It ain’t any rocket science.
Just the science of reps.

And anyone who tells you that you could become a great writer by not writing daily – is tricking you. Perhaps themselves as well.

“Do you have any questions?” I once asked a candidate after conducting the interview.

This one question answers more about them than the entire conversation.

Here is what he responded:

“What is your age?”

Now, I am someone who has always been vocal about her age.
If only, it is a mark of wisdom not a weakness.

However, asking personal questions in an interview is a total no-no.
It shows lack of respect for personal boundary.

Sometimes, in our attempt to “appear smart”, we end up becoming anything but smart.

So, when in doubt while having a professional conversation, always remember:

Be open to asking professional questions.
Draw boundaries on asking personal questions.

What is helpful is when you find yourself a place to work where you are surrounded with good people.

Here is why:

Good people see the best in you, even when you can’t see it.
They don’t mock you for having weird hobbies, because they themselves have them.
They are there to help you without ulterior motives. Just because they can.

Take it from me, even when you are doing something you don’t absolutely love but are working with good people, life is a cakewalk.

However, if you are working on your passion but with people that drain you, you are losing every second.

Of course, if you get best of both worlds, nothing like it.
But nothing could replace the thrill and joy of working with great people.

People’s beliefs are like stardust. Know it or not, you take it on to you.

Take care of your people. Your passion will find a way.

Publishing ChatGPT comments and posts on social media will get you engagement, but at what cost?

Using a beautiful, almost click-baity picture of a creator who lost their life in a tragic incident and then writing a post about them will get a lot of “sad thing”, but at what cost?

Lying often might make you a macho in the moment, but at what cost? At the cost of being trusted.

The work we do, the content each one of us puts out, the promises we keep and we break often, cost us more than our need to prove our smartness.

I understand it is not easy to be vulnerable.
I understand it is not easy to have “less likes on authentic content”.
I understand we all love to be liked.

But at the cost of betraying the person in the mirror, my friend?

The most beautiful art, the most beautiful people do not always have all the cheers.

It is like movie stars and cricketers being celebrated but not martyrs. Doesn’t make their life any less. If any, martyrs live the most courageous lives ever.

The right question is not to ask:
“Will this get liked?” (Social or offline)

The right question is to ask:
“With every action that I do, do I respect myself even more?”

1. If you want to be peaceful, less social media. Please.
2. When you get bored, do what you love. I love dancing/staring out the window/reading. It helps you reconnect with yourself.
3. When wasting time online, TED talks > reaction videos. As much as the latter is more popular, I think what sails you through happy and sad times is wisdom.
4. Learn the lessons every day. Life is too short to be wasted.
5. Meditation doesn’t help you with breathwork, etc. It helps you with life. It is not “something you do”. It is something that you carry, as you navigate through life.
6. You have to learn to be best friends with God. Unfortunately, no other best friend would be able to help you.
7. Most things in life compound. Good health. Cooking at home. Exercising. Sleeping on time. Reading. You won’t see their benefits immediately, but my friend, when you do, you will thank yourself every single day of your life, for doing them.

Let’s assume for a bit that you scroll endlessly on social media and get all the validation you are looking for?

Your content gets the likes you want.
You get the leads you are looking for.
Your digital content gets the customers you wanted.

Then what?

If everything does work out as you want and that would make you happy, then what?

You will travel. You will get that car. You will take your family on that fancy vacation. Then what?

Ultimately, you will still have to find joy in everything you do and all that you are.

Start there today itself, my friend.

Your joy will give you all the things you are looking for. And more.

Dressed up in my “most expensive” formals that I carried from my hometown, my bag carrying a book that I would never read after day 1 in office, and loads of hope and dreams, I got into the elevator (the only time, I otherwise use staircase) to get to the 9th floor of my office, of my very first job.

Greeted by another colleague who recognised me from the interview (but I didn’t), she handheld me to our office space and gave me a bit of informal induction to our work culture.

From that sunny yet confused morning in New Delhi in April 2015, I have always been baffled by the amount of respect I have gotten in all my jobs.

Being served the best cuisines.
Getting to experience air travels and great hotels.
Working directly with people who had 20-25 years of experience when I just had 2.
Going on to hire people that would take on key roles in the company.
People taking responsibility for actions you have assigned to them.

I am someone who is never looking for external validation.
However, I have been acutely grateful for every good thing that has fallen into my lap, especially those that I did not witness before I stepped into the corporate world.

As an entrepreneur, though, you have to earn that respect.
Every single day.

You are not working for a company.
You are working for yourself.

You are not representing a bigger team, a powerful entity.
You are representing yourself, backed only by good work.

You are not where you work at.
You are what you work on.

That is a journey almost every entrepreneur goes through.

The respect, the applause, the privileges — were never for you. (I’m glad!) They were for that position and the company.

Once you are on your own, even when you make way more money, you have to earn that respect, that applause, every other thing that you thought you deserved.

You deserved none of this.
You earn everything, through your work and your values.
And a bit of rubbing your nose every single day 🙂

Humility, it turns out, is not a virtue of being an entrepreneur. It is an essential entry level qualification, in the absence of which you will only be serving your cloud and clout of ego.

When everything else fails, humility wins.
When you win, humility still wins.

It is staying true to it through the troughs and the peaks that makes you a stronger, better, different person.

“The journey is the reward.”
– Steve Jobs

A blessing to eat less and let your body rest.

A blessing to listen to your mind more.

A blessing to focus on yourself.

A blessing to focus more on gratitude as a way of life.

A blessing to look for more blessings, because you are blessed with uncountable.

Everyone is winging it.

At the core, everyone is struggling.

Some try to deal with it, some simply forget it.

But at the core, everyone needs help.

Seek it. Ask for it. Learn from it. Communicate your needs clearly the next time.

We don’t become little when we help ourselves. If only, we become so magnificent because we have the courage to seek.

To know that everyone faces narcissists.

To know that we all are facing the same set of problems.

To know that we are all in this together. None of us are alone. Even when we might feel so, we are all in this together.

Sometimes, the problem is not with you.

You are doing your best.

Your absolute, honest level of best.

And some people, they just cannot take someone who is so put together, so they act out subconsciously, and take advantage of these put together people.

I remember I once did multiple things in one job, just to help the team.
The result? The boss taking me out because I reached out to him once every two weeks for a 1:1.

Another time, I trusted a friend way too much.
Result? I struggled with trusting people way after that. As a matter of fact, I would doubt anyone who would be nice to me, because for me, niceness meant “I will trust you, you will be nice, you will stop being nice, and disappear”.

Another time, I helped a client with writing 1.5X words for a book we originally contracted for.
The result? IDGAF, missing out on calls, not responding to messages and emails, and demanding even more work!

So, my friend, the world is not going to soften for you just because you are a rose.

You, my friend, need to display that you have thorns as well, should people try to pluck you in vain.

The problem with nice people is they think their niceness can change wrong people. It does. Only when you let them know the consequences of fooling around with you.