If you want better results, make better choices.
If you want the same results, make the same choices.
If you want worse results, do nothing.
We are not what we do. We are what we choose to do. And that makes a world of difference.
Category: Knowing Yourself
When in doubt, don’t act.
Let things be.
Ask yourself the right questions.
Seek more wisdom.
Act, when you’re fully confident and in a peaceful state of mind – neither too happy nor too sad.
Action.
We feel great when they badmouth others. Yet we feel superbad when someone else does it for us.
We do not feel anything while making others feel lonely. Yet we never want to feel that emotion ourselves.
We love to be loved. Yet do not love.
We feel great on doing something and useless on doing nothing – whereas doing nothing makes doing something worthwhile.
We want more time, yet are poor managers of our own.
The irony that needs to be solved in the world starts with one person solving it for themselves.
We become big
on the day
we refuse to feel small
on small acts of people
who don’t know
they are acting small.
They perhaps know this much only.
And thus, are acting this way.
But if you become like them
in the process of teaching them a lesson,
you have lost the biggest lesson of your own life:
“To not to be like the ones who try to pull you down.”
Because in reality, they aren’t trying to.
They just know this much.
They just know this much.
Perhaps you also need to alter your perspective.
You reflected on something that you wanted to change.
And you decided to change.
The question is: Till when?
Not only for one day or two. What are you doing to make change stick?
Before forming one more new habit and failing at all of them and calling yourself a failure, create a plan for sticking to just one habit.
And then the next. Drop by drop. Dip by dip.
This question is holding far more importance these days than anything else.
Well, yesterday I ended up the day my way. So slept well, and woke up really well.
And will do that daily.
It is just a formula. If you don’t apply it, you lose it. Every moment of life, you are just fighting a silent fight to keep your positivity alive. Today I did. Tomorrow, a little better. And a little more.
We shall overcome. We will overcome.
We need more people who understand us.
We need more people to respect us.
We need people who could see how hard we are working.
Amidst all of that, have we taken time to acknowledge our own journey?
And have we dug deep and acknowledged someone else?
If the answer to both these is yes, do we then really need someone to appreciate us?
Do you feel hurt by people?
You did good to them however they didn’t respond?
What if they didn’t hurt you?
What if they hurt your idea of how you should be treated?
No one, absolutely no one owes you anything. If they’re good, you’re lucky. If they aren’t good, you get stronger.
I see a lot of parents of my generation who still teach their kids what to do and what not to do.
That’s the saddest thing to happen.
Because we are creating another version of ourselves.
And we won’t be doing it in the first place if we were proud of what we have become.
Our parents’ generation did not have as many privileges as we have.
Not using the privileges that we have, is probably worse than not having privileges.
Part I: Giving Help
If you want to help someone else, make sure you’ve helped yourself.
If you think you are still doing them a favour, you are not.
People love to know they’re loved, only if they could feel you loving yourself.
Part II: Asking for Help
If you are asking for someone else’s help out of their obligation to do it for you and out of their inability to not do it willingly, probably you need to rethink your choices.
Conclusion:
The only way to have everything aligned on the outside is to align yourself from within. Nothing changes before that.
You will feel whole.
You will feel better.
You will feel you belong.
You will feel you matter.
And you do.
The problem is not you feeling bad or empty. The problem is you not acknowledging it. When you do, you immediately take the dagger from the emptiness to yourself. And then you begin.
It’s a feeling that just doesn’t go.
Or sometimes I mix it up with my introversion and love for work.
This is not for likes or comments, just to reveal a wall that’s been hiding.
And I do end up breaking it sometimes, only to come to the stones that built it up in the first place.
That I want to go to the hall and chit chat with my family.
That I want to be optimistic along with sharing that feeling of emptiness within.
That I know that it’s okay to be okay when it’s not okay.
Yet I do none of these.
Because anything that is not stomach ache, fever or diabetes is not a disease – that our society and upbringing has taught us.
Perhaps because they would want to hide it under anger, like everything else.
Perhaps because it requires the need to acknowledge your own inner needs to be able to acknowledge them in other.
Yet on the other side of the tunnel I see hope.
And I trust that hope like sunshine.
And somehow we will manage to come out of it.
I don’t know how to end this, yet this is not the end. For sure.
You know if it is right or not.
Wrong does not require efforts. Right does.
Efforts or nothing. We make a choice every single minute.
It is a disease not restricted to a few people.
Rather, there are very few people who don’t suffer from this.
Well, what to do if you want to be one of those few people?
a. Being kind even when you have the right to be unkind is an unprecedented advantage.
b. Replacing “you’re an idiot” with “I think there is a miscommunication” lets the other person know that they’re not unwanted.
c. More than anything else, when we move around the world with the backstory that we are the hero and our role is to make others rise, instead of being the villain who wants everyone to fall down.
Split personality disorder is real and more rampant than we ever thought. What we need is a decision to have a personality we would be proud of.
And to live to that personality when things inevitably don’t go vanilla.
One of the best learnings that covid brought to us is not to put all your eggs in one basket.
Warren Buffet has been saying it for years.
Not only for finances, also for our emotions and sources of income.
More than anything else, we have learnt never to depend on external validation (malls, restaurants, movies,etc.) for making us feel.
Will they support you is not the right question.
The right question is, will you support yourself?
Strictness does not mean rudeness.
Strictness also does not mean lack of a great bond.
Strictness also does not mean lack of respect.
However when work is to be respected, accountability must arise.
When we let people know the inherent measure of respect, we create a space for them to respect themselves.
The limit is the quality of content and people you surround yourself with.
The limit is the books you don’t read.
The limit is the empathy you don’t give to yourself.
The limit is the chats you have while you shouldn’t.
The limit is the DMs you don’t send.
The limit is the smiles you knew you could spread.
The limit is your decisions.
Your idol is doing something you don’t want to be doing.
The world is telling you to do that just doesn’t feel right!
Someone in the extended family is teaching how to betray others.
Everyone has their opinions and what they say is right where they are.
You do your own thing. Not because it’s hard. Rather because it’s difficult to be like someone else. When you are you, you will work harder than it is required, and you will feel zero fatigue because you are living by your own values.
Even if it is the same boring stuff every time, you know when you know.
Think of a recent WhatsApp group chat.
You were away while that chat was happening, and you read the conversation hours later.
When you’re done reading the chat, how do you feel?
Invariably your emotions are exactly same as those being exchanged in the chat.
The chat is simply written conversation. No one “said” anything to you. Yet now you feel those emotions.
Everything you read is just a thought.
Why not you write thoughts to yourself?
Why not read every single time, what you want to hear?
It’s easy. It’s simple. It’ll take just 15 minutes for you.
Will you? The answer depends on how serious you are for your life.
Every single day we have, we say more than what we speak.
Most people believe people judge them by what they speak. Speaking doesn’t generate trust. It’s just a validation of who you are.
What you don’t say and do it, decides what people will think of you.
Who you are inside, people will always know about it. Never an exception.
What you are speaks so loudly to me that I can barely hear what you say.
Anonymous
The question, then, is not “how do I make myself liked by them?”
The question is “how do I be the same inside and outside?”
Like a postcard. Not an envelope.