Tag: game

Success

Strange things about me

Today I’ll share some strange things about me. Which are 100% true.

  1. I’ve NEVER had a WiFi at my place. Because I don’t watch any show. So why do you need to screw yourself all the time with the Internet?
  2. That said, never watched any IPL match ever. Ever.
  3. I don’t order out. The last time I had Zomato on my phone was in (the first week of) March 2020 when I was travelling for a work assignment.
  4. Exited family groups. Yes, I’m allergic to negativity.
  5. I miss out 99% of family gatherings :)))

With that, there’s a strange twitter thread I wrote about how I work only for two hours per day. There you go! Enjoy 🙂

Uncategorized

The Taj difference

Last weekend, as I went with my team to Goa, we stayed in the Taj.

In the past, I have stayed in several 3 and 4 star hotels of small and medium brands, however, staying in the Taj showed what luxury looks like. Here is what were the differences between the Taj and other hotels:

  1. The cutlery was kept in an envelope on your table. Always. It made it look so neat.
  2. There was a table + 2 chairs in each balcony. Didn’t see it in any hotel or resort so far.
  3. The buttons had names printed on them – vestibule, master, directions of lights, etc.
  4. The fridge cabinet was beautiful – looked like 9 synchronous drawers.
  5. The TV was not fitted ON the wall, it was fitted IN a custom made hole inside the wall.
  6. The Chef prepared onion and garlic free upma and sambhar for me – because that is how I like it.
  7. The breakfast menu – every head had 2-3 more items than the usual buffet – which made it grand. Also, each head was kept separately – a strategy to think for other hotels.
  8. An indoor AND an outdoor restaurant by the sea.

These were the differences I noticed, other than the usual ones, such as – bigger rooms, nice toiletries, outdoor decorations, super clean and classic washrooms, lotsss of bottles of water being given in housekeeping, glass door on the bathroom but nothing was visible, no need to ask for bathroom slippers or toothbrushes like other hotels – they were by default present, clean roads of the resort, etc.

Overall, a wonderful experience! The Taj rocks 🙂

Okay, some pics here.

PS: If you look on the outside, there was no difference between a 4 star and the Taj. However, when you look closely, you see all the differences.

Thoughts

Stories on the street

Each morning as I walk or drive for around ten minutes to go to my meditation class, there are countless stories to witness on the street.

Here’s the two I witnessed today:

  1. A man was standing with his cart containing buckets of pickles. That is what he would be selling whole day, to make a living. Here he was, standing in a corner, serving pickle in a small bag. He then called out to the trash collector to come, so he could have his breakfast.
    Such beautiful thing. Most of us don’t do philanthropy because we feel we ourselves don’t have enough. But it is only in giving, that we receive the most. You do not have to empty your bank accounts. A small act of care each day, is more than enough. If someone who makes his living selling pickles can do it, what excuse do you and I have?
  2. Another woman was brooming the road, with the broom taylor made for thick surfaces. It is unlike the one that we use in our homes. It’s streaks are thicker, which makes it easier to remove dust from there.
    As this woman was brooming the road, I noticed a strange thing: that I could not observe dust on the road. Yet, as she broomed, the dust became prominent in every movement.
    That was a beautiful lesson: around how the deepest things are not visible. It is only through tough scratching that they surface. So are the things in our lives. Our deepest pains are buried behind us cracking jokes, being on time, being addicted to work, etc. Only when a deeper pain comes that it brings all that is within – to the forefront.
    A wonderful reminder of how we pain brings the best in us.

That said, there is a third story as well – story of you and I – walking on the roads, streets, malls, etc.
We get the stories that we see. And we become them.

The question is: What do we see?

Success

This is my best work to date!

A freelance company recently reached out to me and asked about my best work to date.

All artists have their best works.
Steve Jobs.
Seth Godin.
Leonardo da Vinci.
Robin Sharma.
Adam Grant.

However, the best thing about their best work is that they show up despite making a super hit.

I think the best piece about my work is “showing up”. Let’s say I have written a bestselling book and it breaks all records in all bestselling lists. Everything is great! But what if I stop writing altogether after that? Will my best work hold any relevance?

That is why, the best work any artist could do is to show up to produce their art every single day, irrespective of what mood, weather, or mindset they are in. If we just show up and show up and show up again, we build a brand of consistency which creates trust among the community as well as clients (current and prospective). That is the best work. 

The best part of this best work is: We ALL can do it, yet most give up in the first year itself.

You can read the full interview here.

Knowing Yourself

Do you have any evidence to support this?

This was a random question by one of my smart school friends on one of my tweets.

It got me thinking.

Not to think of what to respond, rather to think of where we have landed ourselves.

We want evidences of thoughts we think intuitively.
We want to buy a car recommended by most people.
We want to wear the brand our boss wears because subconsciously it would make us look cool in front of him.
We want to send our kid to the school that promises best education, unmindful of the fact that the best schooling happens at home.
We want to…

All these are good wants. But that’s all they are. Wants.
They override the innate need that we all have: Needs.

One of our fundamental human needs is listening to our intuition. It will never have evidences. Nor does it want any. It is full by itself not having to want (or need) any validation.

Emotions

The silent anger

There’s a wonderful woman I know of, who is living her life for a great social cause. She’s been doing this for the last thirty years, started at the age of seventeen.

She doesn’t get angry.
Always works to uplift people.
Cooks great food for them.
Listens to their problems.
Offers solutions.

All epic. Super-commendable.

But I can often sense hidden anger within her. Because the people she serves don’t live up to her standards.

That’s sad.

Because no one is going to live their lives as we suggest them to be, no matter how much good that suggestion holds.
As a matter of fact, if we force them, they might grow even more resistant.

The key is acceptance. And that is the entire journey all about. Acceptance that we can only guide them and bless them, everyone takes their own sweet time to get to a place of change.

Till then, they need our blessings.

The silent anger causes greater resistance.
And loss of trust.

Life

Categorically not right!

Some things are NEVER right, no matter what. Here’s some of them:

  1. Being cunning, instead of being truthful.
  2. Applying your sales skills to relationships instead of being vulnerable.
  3. Changing your word.
  4. Doing something which your kids/parents won’t be proud of.
  5. Not treating yourself with the same respect as we treat others.
Knowing Yourself

My favourite one-liners

This is the collection of my musings while working, working out, figuring out life, and most of the times, showing up! Enjoy, and feel free to share 🙂

  1. Talent becomes latent when work doesn’t become hard.
  2. They don’t take care of you because they are too broken to take care of themselves.
  3. We wait for an idea of the future hoping for things to get better, not realising it is getting created here and now – with what we think and what we do.
  4. Chill bro! This too, shall pass!
  5. Never leave yourself. Because others will do that to you anyway.
  6. If you are not cunning, you should be proud of yourself.
  7. Saying no to things that aren’t important isn’t a bug you have, it’s your feature.
  8. Sometimes the best moments get created when we are NOT recording videos of them. The happiness is living in the happiness.
  9. Poking fun at others is a sign of lack of self-honour.
  10. Playing revenge on mean people is becoming a photocopy of the one you despise the most. Why would you do that?
  11. People don’t get tensed because they are tensed. They get tensed because they’re in a habit of getting tensed.
  12. Just like laptop’s fan starts shouting when a lot of load is put onto it, so does our brain starts shouting when we expose it to a lot of load. Less is more, baby!
  13. If our follow-up email to a cold prospect could land us a client, imagine how our follow-up to a cold-blooded person might make them warm! Ego is indeed the enemy!
  14. Awareness is being aware of what’s good in you and what isn’t. It doesn’t mean endorsing what’s bad in you because you are “self-aware”.
  15. Our happiness is a function of how quickly we are able to bounce back from a mood-off.
  16. We spend our lives thinking about the correct thing to do, not realising not doing is the most incorrect thing to do.
  17. If we don’t pursue momentary pain, we sign up for a permanent one.
  18. Be hard on yourself so you could be easy on others.
  19. You’re a beautiful person if you take responsibility.
  20. You are the change you’re looking for.
Happiness, Success

The reality of social media

You must have seen people partying on the beach on Instagram.
Or making teddy bears of snow.
And making you feel like it is your life only that is at loss.

Here’s a silent truth:
Someone I know personally posted a vacay pic of theirs, with a thoughtful caption and how happy they were truly being in this flow state of life. However, I know they are going through a really, really tough time. A super tough time.

It is great that they took a break, no doubts about that.

But here is what I want you to consider:

  1. Social media = away from reality. Almost always. Rather always.
  2. People show that they are enjoying because they have FOMO – they have also seen others showing their “happy” pics and would do anything to show that they are also happy.
  3. Our real nature is happiness. When we are away from it, we would do anything to get closer or appear closer to happiness. If we get close to real happiness, awesome! If we get close to faking happiness, our hole of sadness gets deeper.

Choose the form of happiness you want to live in. And the coolest of the coolest people, who are your (real) role models, they hardly share their vacay pics online with a “success-filled” caption. Because they know that real happiness is the remaining 350 days as well, when we are not on a holiday.

Read the above line again.
For yourself.

Success

I want to…

I also want to have as much engagement as GaryVee.

I also want to have as many views as MostlySane.

I also want to not think a bit before buying Zara clothes.

I also want to…

We want to do a ton of things.
And probably that will take a lot of time.

That’s not the problem.

Problem is that we are not even starting.
Problem is that we keep waiting for that ride without getting out on the road.
Problem is we don’t trust ourselves.

Problem is, we don’t even know that we are the problem.

How will we ever get what we want, if we never get out of our own way and take action?

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
– Confucius

What is it that you are waiting for?

Success

Your house’s on fire!

I came across a clip of an interview of Kobe, the legendary basketball player who passed away in an air crash earlier this year.

The interviewer was talking about a game, where both teams had to do a tie-breaker of final throws. Once Kobe’s turn came, he had a Achilles tendon, yet he got up, made his throw, and finished the game like a star.

When asked about the reason, Kobe said:

“Let’s say you have an Achilles, your hamstring is torn, your doctor tells you to have a bed rest, not move at all. So you’re at your home.

And suddenly, the house’s on fire. The kids are upstairs, the wife is somewhere else, and now you have to save them. You will instantly forget your hamstring, grab your kids, make sure your wife is safe, and get out of the house. You won’t remember the hamstring because your family is more important than the injury. So when the game is more important than the injury itself, you don’t feel that injury.”

When the game is more important than the injury itself, you don’t feel that injury.

What is the game that we are into?

Injury or the kind that Kobe was into?

Success

Candy Crush rules

It is hard.

The easiest thing is to sit on the couch and eat French fries. Or play Candy Crush.

Waking up in the morning and working out relentlessly didn’t come easy to Jordan as well.

It is going to take a lot out of you to get there. Yet if you don’t make the efforts to get there you will get to a place it would be very difficult to get back from.

Working requires hard work.

Doing nothing requires hardest work to deal with yourself.

You get to decide.

Uncategorized

Anxiety

Anxiety is tricky.

The game is to make yourself never have anxiety.

The game is to play the game in the first place.

The game is to bring your best game.

The game of life is to be so busy that anxiety does not get to enter you.

The game is to be easy while being so busy that you know you are above all the situations life could offer you.

The game is to trick the game of anxiety, by being resilient when you don’t need it in the first place.

Uncategorized

The mishap

The mishap is the truth.

You went through a lot of bad stuff – that is the truth.

Fortunately, that’s not the problem.

The problem is, how many times the mishap is repeated inside our head and in our words.

Repetition is what makes the difference. Place is repetition hardly matters. What really matters is the doer and the deed.

The solution, then, is to reduce the frequency of repetition. The method, then, is to be the master of your thoughts. The fortunate thing, then, is that you can control it.

Uncategorized

Files

We make resolutions and they keep on adding up.

And then we make further resolutions.

The files keep getting bigger.

What if, we do something different: like execution? What if, this time it really looks different? What if…

Wait…

What will you do NOW? After this scrolling and swiping? Now?

Uncategorized

Badminton, not so good

When I had just entered tenth standard, I also exited something superimportant: playing badminton on the street with my neighbourhood friends.

Of course, it was justified back then. Board exams were coming up, I needed to focus on what was important. Playing wasn’t. (I don’t believe it now, back then I did.)

In a consequent events of getting plumper from 11th standard till first year of college, I finally started taking health and fitness seriously from second year onwards, and also achieved wonderful results post that.

Fast forward to yesterday, I was playing badminton with a bunch of friends, who otherwise, play the game daily.

And boy o boy, what a sad demise the team had which I was a part of.

I was leaner than them, had a stronger body with a lower fat percentage than them, can do a headstand and also do a plank effortlessly; over and above the strength from training in the gym.

Yet, here I was, flunked beautifully in the sport that had been a part of almost entire childhood of mine.

What I learnt from last night’s sport was this:

1. No matter what you can do, when someone else practices more, they become an expert at it. The same applies to business and life. Working more, creating more, and failing more, will lead to greater changes of success. Invariably.

2. Your future is designed by what you do in the present, not what you did in the past. This applies to all those who didn’t have a beautiful past, and also to those who had great habits in the past and now have left them.

Today is the past that will be created in the future. Take care of it, and if you want to experience some fun, make time for your metaphoric badminton.

Please.

Uncategorized

Enjoyment

Enjoyment does not happen only when you are chilling around.

Enjoyment does not happen only when things are working great.

Enjoyment also does not happen only when you are with your favourite people.

Those are an extended part of enjoyment.

Real enjoyment happens when you are in the midst of a terrible situation. When things are falling apart and you are struggling hard to find a solution.

That’s when courageous people get out of their own way and own their lives.

That’s the real game, rest is just waiting.