1. Keep your good work.
2. Check before leaving (I bought full moong dal instead of broken).
3. No one will respect you unless you respect yourself.
Tag: life lessons
I tried high rope walking in the morning. Was veryyyy scared. Gave up. I wasn’t even ready to jump off the harness when I decided to give up. Was pushed.
Tried climbing the wall in the evening. Failed again.
But didn’t have even an iota of regret. It’s better to try and fail than to not try at all, I suppose.
Other than that, I really need to work on my looks. Looking way more untidy or it is lack of confidence due to so-called friends not being around.
So much of a normal day. Yet so much to learn.
Life is epic. With life lessons coming in.
Recent life lessons from being a manager:
- When you do something that might come as offensive to the other person but in reality happens as a result of their neglect, sometimes mentioning the reason why you did it is important.
- People who are assets won’t give away their work (under pressure) even if you ask them to. The good way is to ask the one who is filling in for them, to take work from them. Always works!
- You may try your best to help a non-performing team member – by asking questions, suggesting them, presenting your PoVs. If they still don’t move, start taking actions and FYI-ing them. Not because you want to dominate them. NO! You’ve already tried your best. Rather because you do not want the work to suffer anymore, if the person responsible for it anyway can’t take ownership.
About hiring:
- Don’t make a decision while getting drifted by emotions
- Send a regret email + feedback
- Care, but understand that you cannot hire everyone
- Sometimes wishing for the best for your team means saying a lot of no.
About trust:
- Take a lot of time to trust anyone who has broken your trust before.
- Tell this to them
- Even when you trust again, verify.
About negativity:
- Even if someone in the team is performing negatively, talking to others would NEVER solve it.
- If you can’t resist, write it down. But NEVER talk to anyone about it.
- What you think radiates before what you talk.
Life lessons from being a manager:
- Your team will always be going through stuff – someone is in an airplane, someone is shifting, someone is occupied, someone will not respond, someone might be going through a break up – and asking them to work might make you feel apologetic. Why? Be the one who is there for them, helps them navigate life without excuses, and more than anything else – lets them shine in every area of life.
- Give away credit when you need it the most.
- Indulging in gossip groups with a subset of team is disastrous for the team. Not to mention, for you as well. Your team loves you, and you owe it to them to be unbiased.
- Taking time off for meditation and sleep isn’t luxury, it is a necessity.
- Karma yoga – where you say your affirmations and meditate for one minute – that is where all the magic happens. Doing it or not doing it will decide whether you are effective or impulsive.
- You may try your best on people and they may still choose to be angry at you, and then leave the company. If you have a pact of honesty with yourself, you need not feel bad. At all. People have their lives and they own their choices, not your mood.
- Chill baby, you have the Brahmastra – God. Everything else, will just fall in place.
Haven’t done a life lessons blog in quite some time, so here you go:
- You cannot enforce love. Not for people, not for work.
- Stay away from having calls during the afternoons. Sleep, baby!
- Stretching is as important as (if not more important than) working out.
- Sirsasana and sarvangasana are lit.
- Ghee khichdi with papad is the ultimate tummy-filler.
- Life becomes joyful when you are grateful.
- It takes years to get to a place of doing it in seconds.
Since I’m juggling with my new role as a manager, I’m documenting all my experiences in this category of my blog.
Some recent life lessons:
- No one will value your time unless you do.
- Kindness is superpower.
- Be prepared for every type of issues. It will make you calmer.
- Give away the credit.
- Trust, but verify
- Appreciate in public. Criticise in person.
- Keep writing. NEVER EVER EVER EVERRR stop.
- Empathy. Be there for them. But don’t allow for lethargy in work.
- You can be friends and chill around; or get work done. Can’t do both.
- When you get work done, though, it does not mean that you have to be rude. You can still be fun and chill, but friendship is another dimension.
- Be kind when they screw up. We have NO IDEA what they are going through.
- Be honest. Because YOU are watching.
- What you think about your team in your head, is what will manifest on the outside.
- You don’t HAVE to speak when there is nothing to speak.
- If you do not require any follow-up, you are GOLD.
- If you follow-up with people when they are supposed to deliver, it shows how diligent you are.
- Leave signatures through your work and your vibes.
- Measure yourself. Because what does not get measured, is not treasured.
- Writing a progress mail to your manager helps. You get to know where you are, and where you could be going.
- And, don’t be too harsh on yourself.
5 things only rich people do because poor people cannot afford to do them:
- Forgive others and themselves (the one who feels insulted is the one who has a ton of ego. The rich, forgive without being asked for it.)
- Taking care of their health as well as mind.
- Think of others
- Think of themselves
- Give without letting anyone know
Don’t you think so?
“As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen This is one of the tiniest books I’ve ever read, containing just 56 pages, however, each time I pick it up, I get a new direction to my thought. Here’s sharing the 18 timeless lessons from the book:
- A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts,
- The alteration in a man’s circumstances is in the exact ratio to his altered mental condition.
- The soul attracts what it secretly harbours, that which it loves, and also that which it fears.
- Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.
- Circumstance does not make the man, it reveals him to himself.
- Men are anxious to improve their circumstance but are unwilling to improve themselves, they therefore remain bound.
- Good thoughts and actions can never produce bad results, bad thoughts and actions can never produce good results.
- A perfectly pure and enlightened being could not suffer.
- Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallises into habit and habit solidifies into circumstance.
- Change of diet will not help a man who will not change his thoughts.
- He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.
- Those who have no central purpose in their life fall an easy prey to petty worries, fears, troubles, and self pities, all of which are an indication of weaknesses.
- As a man thinks, so he is; as he continues to think, so he remains.
- Achievement, of whatever kind, is the crown of effort, the diadem of thought.
- Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become.
- Into your hands will be placed the exact result of your thoughts.
- The strong, calm man is always loved and revered. He is like a shade-giving tree in a thirsty land, or a sheltering rock in storm.
- Self Control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power.
The book is easy to read, and needs to be read over and over again. If you could do yourself and your life a favour, get one here, today, PLEASE!
And when you’ve read it, reach out to me to let me know which one line are you going to take with yourself as a reminder. I’d look forward 🙂
Some quick lessons I learnt this week:
- Change is the only law of life. Don’t go by what someone said a month or six months ago. If they are positive, they’ll encourage you evolving. If they aren’t, then you don’t need to bother 🙂
- You will be judged, even when you have your finest intentions. The best thing you could do is still have those finest intentions because that is who you are!
- Being the bigger person and not taking credit for that is superpower!
- Just because everyone else in the team is submitting work late, don’t lower your standards and be the latecomer. Always be a day in advance. Your brand is built by what you do every day.
- Everyone is trying their best. Just because their best doesn’t match with your standards of worst, they need support. Not internal trolling from you.
- Twitter is the best way to improvise on your writing.
- Spending less time on WhatsApp and Instagram is the secret sauce to eternal happiness.
- Evening walks in the sun are therapeutic.
- People want the best for you, trust them! If they don’t, trust yourself!
- People will behave kiddish. Most don’t want to see that. So smile at them for who they are. And move on.
- Most of the times what we are crying for is NOT even happening! The best way to solve problems is through communication.
- Learning is the licence to happiness.
- You matter!
LOL technically means Laugh Out Loud.
However, I use it as lessons of life.
So this is how we will use them whenever I want to share life lessons
- Protect your days. That is all you have.
- There is no “urgent” mail. Trust yourself.
- Keep your good word.
- Keep your good word to yourself.
- Read point 4 and 5 again.
That’s all.
Wish you a great time, wherever you are 🙂
All the influencers you follow, none of them were born with the followers they have.
Also, none of them is Shah Rukh Khan’s kid.
So, when you feel that they got “lucky”
When you believe that you just can’t “get there”
When you think others had privileges “you don’t have”
When self doubts starts encircling you
When success seems possible only by magic,
Remember that…
Everyone started at zero. Everyone.
If the ones who made it had something special, they had this:
- Breathtaking consistency
- Belief in themselves when the world was busy rebuking them
- Trust that if it is possible for others, it is possible for them as well
- Learning from failure
- Learning from others’ success
And many more pieces of the puzzle that get arranged once you actually step into the pool.
Start from 0. You did so in school. See where you are now. Start again, for a different curriculum of life you want to be living for.
I did a sin.
I opened the fridge today.
Is it really a sin?
It is, if you have to put something back and you have parents that trust you to the moon and back:)
Lol.
So my Mom saw me putting a steel dabba of halwa back into the fridge, when she remarked, if you are unable to do it, let it be, I’ll do it.
Yes Mom, I’ve lived most of my adult life away from home. Gone through heartbreaks without you being aware of it. Living in the capital of the country figuring out life. And lo and behold, I won’t have the awareness to put a dabba into the fridge. Such fun.
Anyway, yes parents are suffering and trying their best, but, sometimes you have to put a virtual gulab jamun in your mouth and stay silent.
For your sake.
And if you still want to take some action, I wrote about it in the newsletter I sent today. You can read it here.
These life lessons are deep, and never shared.
Here you go:
- Imitate the one you want to become. Allow for no deviation with lesser standards.
- A drunkard doesn’t have awareness of the world around them. Are you so much drunk in what you have and what you are becoming, that you don’t have awareness of the negativity and poison around you?
- A phone connection is flawless when we have a clear network. Is your network to your intuition clear, or is it flawed by opinions of others?
- Desire is the seed of killing yourself, if you know you know.
- Being kind and having sweetness in your demeanour isn’t a waste. It is, in fact, the best thing you could do to yourself. And the world, which by default worships the rare diamonds.
PS: Number 6 — Diamonds are formed under pressure 🙂
Negative things about getting a positive life
1. Honesty is an expensive gift. Don’t expect it from cheap people.
– Warren Buffet
2. When people show you who they are, believe them.
– Maya Angelou
3. The best way to deal with corporate politics is to live by and speak your truth. It will make you undefeatable.
4. People will play games against you. Worry not, for they not know against whom are they playing the real game.
5. Don’t trust your extremely good or bad moods. What happens in the middle – your intuitions, people’s behaviours, what you want to do – that is the real stuff.
Some small reflections about life, that were sadly not as positive, however, very important to inch towards positivity and not being affected by the negativity of others.
The story of overnight success.
1. The “rasoda” jam singer Yashraj Mukhate recently moved from 30K+ followers on Instagram to 943K+ followers.
2. The singer Lisa Mishra recorded a combo of “Taareefaan” and “Let me love you” and few days later, she was called by Rhea Kapoor to sing a playback.
3. Elizabeth Gilbert was struggling before “Eat Pray Love’ came up, after which she even graced the Oscars.
What we see as overnight success of all these people, we fail to recognise that:
1. They had been creating content for long before the “overnight success” happened.
2. The life altering success happened just once, however they continued their relevance by working hard on future projects, instead of being complacent.
What is this trying to teach us?
1. It takes the good old hard work to get to the success.
2. It takes hard work even when we don’t feel like doing it.
3. Maybe very few of us will have this overnight success, however, we will always have a version of success where we were proud while going to bed, instead of being regretful.
It’s a choice we get to make, every single day.
When you’re not listening to your heart, things will fall apart.
When you do things that you don’t want to, things will still fall apart.
When you sell your soul, there would be nothing left.
Living life on your terms is difficult – this is the thought process fit into our brain.
However, when you live life on the terms of the society by killing yourself daily, you are already dead.
The best life advice ever is: Life life on your own terms. Everything else will just fall for you. (Try falling for yourself, baby! )
How can we wrap up 2019 without sharing the wonderful life lessons this year brought along? Here we go, hope you enjoy reading them, as much as I did, writing:
- If you sit and eat (without phone), and chew well, your quantity of food reduces to less than half.
- Walk up to random people you see daily (in the gym, in your workspace, in the park) and give them a word of appreciation. You don’t know how what problem they might be going through.
- Everything you enjoy and every single person you enjoy with are going to come to an end. This is not negativity, rather a reason, to be internally fulfilled.
- Working out with a personal trainer will give you rewards no self-gymming could give. You will learn the specifics of working with a pro only when you treat your body like a pro-temple, to run your life.
- Listen to the stories people tell, even if you aren’t interested. You giving away your five or fifteen minutes may reduce their burden they’ve been carrying for perhaps fifteen years.
- Badmouthing never helps. No matter how truthful it is.
- Your parents don’t post an IG story on your birthday. Most likely, they aren’t even there on Instagram. Yet no one loves you like they do. Don’t equate social media validation with love.
- The sure shot way to failure is to mimic influencers, versus learning from them.
- There are going to be times when you’re going to lose faith in some relationships that matter the most to you. In such times, just remember: “your heart is a place for God to reside in. How can God’s home hold dirt against someone whom you love so much?” When you start operating from this consciousness, you automatically start having empathy for that loved one versus expecting them to have sympathy for you.
- You always know the answer in your heart. Be clear and polite enough to say a no when you don’t mean otherwise.
- When you push yourself, you get results you thought were out of reach. In the start of the year I forced myself to think I don’t have time for 10K steps a day, and guess what, didn’t achieve that target on most days. In December 2019 when I started getting serious about taking in at least 10K steps, it somehow started happening automatically. Daily!
- It’s okay to fail. At least you weren’t focused on checking in what others were doing wrong.
- “Speak your truth, even when your voice shakes,” says Robin Sharma. 200% true.
- If your intentions are pure, you can melt stones to water. Intentions are the real power.
- You are always meditating. Even when you’re thinking “nothing good happens with me, I’m no good, why am I being treated like this, etc.,” those are also the times you are reiterating a pattern to yourself. What gets repeated, gets reprogrammed.
- Content creation is the king. I never felt this way ever before than 2019, and when you are strategic in creating contextual content and distributing it, your brand grows 100X over a period of time you won’t even realise. (PS: Even if you are in a job with no intentions of getting famous, having a brand presence for yourself is like the swoosh of Nike – the brand itself gets everything else done.)
- Your parents love you, even if their words say otherwise. Tell them, you do them, too.
- If you have the ability to enjoy a family lunch without bringing in the phone, you are one of the richest people on the planet.
- Don’t think your problems are too hard. Everyone else’s problems are hard as well. Learn to dance with them versus via them.
- Working on yourself, and being the “lit” lighthouse, lights up 100s of people. People are already carrying a storehouse of dull lull with them. If your presence lights people up even for the three second stride on the corridor, you are creating miracles beyond trillions!
Those were some of mine, easy yet the ones that will make 2020 better.
Want to know some of the business and career lessons 2019 brought along? Check them out here.
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.