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1. When speaking to people, look into their eyes.
It makes you look attentive and unbiased.

In virtual meetings, look into the camera pinhole and not their face (will take some time getting used to).
That way, you look straight into their eyes.

2. Asking simple questions with predictable answers makes you instantly likeable.

That’s why, start a first meeting with standard questions.
“Where are you from?”
“What do you do?”
“Who all are in your family?

3. If you want people to agree with you, begin by asking for a small favour that they will say yes to.

It could be anything.
Even something as basic as “Could you please pass me that pen?”

Chances are high they will agree/say yes to what you ask after.

4. To show that you are listening, keep nodding.
It will make them express more.

Ranveer Allahbadia is a master at this.

5. Your last impression is just as important, if not more, than your first impression.

People’s memory of an experience is heavily dependent on how it ended.
Make that last impression count.

1. You don’t have to DO things with each other.

You’re happy sitting in complete silence, if you’re just together.

2. You focus on the cause of the problem.

If there’s a time when things aren’t right between you two, you choose to focus on the cause of the problem, and not who caused it.

3. You’re happy with their successes.

You know that your success lies in their success and you’re genuinely happy for them.

Anytime you find yourself losing hope, go and sit down with your parents.

“Ma/Papa – tell me about a time when you had lost all hope. And you still came out of it?”

Their eyes will light up.
Your hopes will light up.

The person who makes ?3 lakhs per year, but only needs ?2 lakhs to be happy, is wealthier than the person who makes ?10 lakhs, but needs ?20 lakhs to be happy.

“Vidur, what’s the best gift mumma and papa have gifted you?”

2017.

It was going to be Vidur’s 6th birthday in May.

He rarely behaved so, but this time he wanted a gift.
A cycle.

There was one problem though.

We didn’t have the money.

All of 2016 and 2017 had been a hard time for nearbuy, the startup I was running.

We had burned through a lot of cash, with not much success.
For no fault of theirs, 80 folks had been laid off.
To conserve cash we were also going through a founder pay cut.

With my single income less than our monthly expenses, we had been dipping into our savings for the past year.

I had taken personal loans, maxed credit cards, and was down to 3,000 rupees in my bank account.

I felt like an absolute failure.
Correction.
I was an absolute failure.

I had let down my employees, my investors, my founders. And now my family.

My 6 year old was requesting for a cycle on his birthday, innocently unaware of our financial reality.
And we couldn’t even afford that.

Ruchi suggested we sell her gold bangles, which will generate enough to buy the cycle and have some surplus.

We said yes.

While Vidur was away at school, we went to buy his cycle.
Brought it all the way up to the living room. And hid it.

When he came back home, we surprised him with it.
He broke down.
I don’t think he expected it.

We broke down as well.
We didn’t expect it either.

We were all crying, him with happiness, Ruchi and me at our state.

July 2017

Uzma was born. She brought us luck.

By August, Paytm agreed to invest in nearbuy.

By December our income matched our expenses.

June 2018

As part of a school assignment, Vidur was asked to answer a question. “Vidur, what’s the best gift that mumma and papa have gifted you?”

We expected him to say the cycle. He desperately wanted it.

He replied, “Uzma”.

We all broke down.
He, with gratitude.
We, embarrassed of ourselves.

The only gift that kids ever wanted, that we wanted too as kids, was love, not money.

The only gift we still want is love.

If we don’t get it, we think money will fill the void.
But it doesn’t.

Seek love. Embrace love. Explore love.

I recently saw one of Shah Rukh Khan’s interviews.

He was asked by Anupam Kher in his show, about the secret to his success.

SRK replied: I work very hard.
Anupam Kher said: isn’t that what everyone does?

SRK’s response? “Everyone works hard to get that one chance in life. However, I work as hard as I can after getting that one chance. “

And no one, absolutely no one works as hard as him, on every opportunity he has gotten. This is what makes SRK, SRK!

(Fun fact: SRK even remembers the conversations with journalists, even when they interview him years later. For late night interviews at his place Mannat, he asks every journalist leaving, about how they are going to travel back home. Wow. Just wow.)

There are two kinds of pressures:

Performance pressure and peer pressure.

Performance pressure is the one we apply on ourselves.
That we have to deliver.
That we have to win.
That we have to achieve.

It is the story in our head.

Peer pressure is the one we experience due to others.
That they are doing so well.
That there is so much to learn from them.
That I too can be just as good.

We tend to perform better when we are surrounded by performers and achievers.

That is how top athletes train themselves.

Pressure can make a hard potato soft and a soft egg hard.
Choose your pressure!

People are going to screw up.
They are going to lose it.

And the sad part is, they won’t even understand this despite us trying to explain this to them.

So, we have two options:

Behave like the world is supposed to – get angry, and tell them where they went wrong.

The other one being, to accept that some things never change and the one who needs to change is us.

The second one is a more peaceful and more difficult option.
Not because it affects the work, rather because it is now a change in equation we have to make with ourselves.

If we lose our temper because of where others screw up, we still have a long way to go.

The world is going to throw opportunities for us to lose our temper.
The biggest opportunity we have is to never pick that opportunity.

Of the many lies we were sold as kids (and upon growing up), this one always triumphs:

Something is better than nothing.
Selling a part of your soul is better than your soul making no money.

Except that when we are empty, we feel our truest emotions.

It is in solitude and standing for what we want, that we discover what we would never tolerate.

It is in the side-tracked lines of rat-race with the world that we discover we were not in a race with them in the first place!

And that’s not bad.
That’s liberating.

When we are busy with “something”, we never get the nothingness to be lost.
When we are tired of “nothing”, we discover who we truly are.

When you run a company, things will go bad sometimes.
And when they come to the leader – the leader has two choices.

Either they deliver to people’s expectations and get aggressive.
Or they surprise everyone by being calm and then facing it.

When most people expect the former, the best leaders deliver on the latter.

The best part is, we all are leaders of our respective jobs, thus, when we are calm in the tough moments of our jobs, we are displaying the right leadership skills – irrespective of our title.

Calmness is leadership.
Since being calm is a choice, displaying calmness is a superpower.