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All our lives, we are surrounded by voices.

What we should be doing.
What we should be thinking.
How we should be doing things.

Instead of clearing up the smoke, these voices end up creating more.

Mystic and philosopher Rumi once said: “There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.”

What that voice is trying to tell us, nobody else would be able to.

Because we are the only ones who are listening to that voice.
That voice is the voice with clarity.
Only if we are willing to listen.

How do we live a life of integrity?
A life of honesty?
A life where we do not have to second-guess our thoughts and actions?

Roman Stoic Philosopher Seneca said: “We should live our lives as if everyone could see us.”

What would we do differently if everyone could see us?
What would we stop doing altogether?

More than anything else, how would that change our life?

When we assume everyone can see us, we stop lying to the world.
And that is the first step to stop lying to ourselves.

When we get angry, we end up doing things we don’t want to be doing.

Our actions become impulsive, words get uncontrolled, and thoughts become really fast.
None of this allows us to calm down and be thoughtful.

And we often ask ourselves: Why does anger hurt me more than the other person?

Why do I feel empty after that emotion of anger?
Why am I not able to focus for long even though the situation has passed?

Gautam Buddha described anger aptly when he said: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else.”

When we are angry at someone else, we are the ones who get affected the most.
And yet we feel that giving up anger means giving up power..

Giving up anger doesn’t mean giving up power.
Giving up anger means having power that no one can take away.

There are people that have gone on to do exceptional things.
Changed the world forever.

Leonardo da Vinci.
Madame Curie.
Albert Einstein.
Steve Jobs.

What’s a special trait they have?
Were they child prodigies?
Or naturally gifted?

It’s because they kept telling themselves: “I don’t know a lot, I’m still learning.”

In the quest of being a student forever, they became teachers of creating an epic life.
In their ordinary curiosity for knowledge and education, they became extraordinary.

Being extraordinary is going the extra mile by remaining an ordinary student forever.

Do you sometimes feel lonely?

You feel no one understands you, feels your emotions, or knows what you’re going through.

How to go about fixing it?

When we listen to someone who’s going through the same pain,
When we let them know they aren’t invisible,
When we assure them there’s nothing wrong with their emotions,
We take the first step in moving beyond our loneliness.

When we allow someone to walk away from their loneliness, our own walks out along with it.

In the healing and hearing of others, lies our own.

We chase goals, work hard towards them, and when we finally achieve them, we still feel incomplete.
Why does that happen?

Because we tie our happiness to a place.

Showing people that you can.
Proving them wrong.
Making sure you have their respect.

It all becomes a journey where we couldn’t care less about the journey, because we have all our eyes on the destination.
Except it makes us more drained out in the end.

I had a student come over my Instagram Live the other day, who has been practising magic tricks for 6 years now, and baffled me with a few of his tricks on the show.
He does not plan to make it full time, nor does he plan to monetise it.

But just the fact of getting up each day and having something to progress to, has kept him through the troughs and valleys.

Daily progress = Daily happiness minus Conditions attached.

Chasing daily progress is the ultimate antidote to the emptiness of chasing goals.

In our parents’ generation, it was a privilege to be a specialist.
To be the best and fastest in the world at one thing was the only way to survive.

With unlimited opportunities in the information age, things have reversed.

As someone who wants to climb the corporate ladder, your role is managing people instead of core work.

This needs breadth, experience and understanding of work, in addition to core skills.

Thus, becoming a generalist comes with possibilities of broader spectrum and a stronger profile.

If we are a generalist, we have a speciality of taking different paths.

We’re confused about what to do in life.

And college education certainly hasn’t helped.

Why not explore our way through life, instead of being in a hurry to settle down? 

Try out stand up comedy and share videos, and look at the reactions of people.
Create music if we love it, and see if others resonate with it
Get internships in design or coding, if that is what intrigues you.

It is better to be lost and busy in the chase of finding yourself, instead of being lost and busy in the rat race of never knowing yourself.

You have two ideas for your startup, but not sure which one.
Or perhaps two job offers.
Or two career options, and you cannot decide. 

You are looking for a solution, but to no avail.

What if we looked for questions instead, whenever we were faced with a dilemma?

Why do I want to make that decision in the first place?
What would change for me because of that decision?
What do we want from that decision?

Looking for questions instead of solutions is asking questions about the problem. 

There are some days when Instagram is down.

Sometimes Facebook is, WhatsApp is, Twitter/X as well.

I remember when that happened with Google, we all lost it.
“Dependency” was the word of the day.

We suddenly didn’t know what to do.
How to spend our time. 

All we kept doing was check the platform incessantly, showing how much we depend on it.

The next time a platform goes down, try a crazy thing: Go for a walk.
Your world is what your eyes see, not what the screen shows! 

We own the screens we own. Not the other way round.