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One of the biggest mistakes I made was thinking I will keep my parents happy with the money I make.
I will send them on vacations, buy them things, and make their life comfortable.
But the busier I got, the less happy they were, despite all the things they now had.

The truth is that we have much less time with our parents than we think.
Our parents are going to die, and we have no idea when.
Sadly, we do not have all the time in the world.

So call them.
Tell them you love them.
Thank them.
Spend time with them.

Because all that our parents really want is us spending more time with them.

True relationships do not need things to grow.
They need time.
So be sure to give your loved ones this time.

Productivity expert David Allen invented this rule.

Essentially, our mind always keeps unfinished things in focus.

If you have to complete something but you haven’t done it yet, your mind will keep on distracting you.

It will keep telling you in some way that the work is not done.

So the 2 minute rule says that if you can do something in 2 minutes, do it.

Don’t add it to your to-do list.
Finish it at that time and remove it from your checklist.

You build momentum, reduce your mental load, and sharpen your productivity.

It has become fashionable to startup today.

In the world of Shark Tank, everyone thinks they should start their own business.
Worse, people think that those in a job are losers.
They have sold their soul.
They have become part of a rat race.

That’s a lie.

A corporate job early in your career can shape you up meaningfully.

1. It gives you financial stability. Which sets up a good foundation.
2. It teaches you the power of planning, of systems, of processes.
3. It shows you the magic of teams and how your individual contribution at a micro level comes together with that of several others, to create impact at a macro level.

What is the one thing you have learnt from your job?

There is one scene from the movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara that lives rent-free in my head.

When all the three characters are about to jump for their skydive, Imraan (played by Farhan Akhtar) is afraid to take the leap.
Arjun (played by Hrithik Roshan) sees his fear, and in that moment, he says:
LET IT GO.
LET IT GO, IMRAAN.

Whenever I see the scene, I get the chills.
Because it is such a powerful scene.
And so true for our lives!

There are many things we want to pursue.
There are also several factors holding us back.
All it requires is that ONE moment of faith.
The moment we push through.
The moment we let it go.

To make way for what we truly want.

“I don’t have time!”

When people say this, what they are essentially saying is that they do not have energy.
But what kind of energy are they lacking?

Physical energy:

– Quality of your sleep.

– When and what you eat.

– Your fitness.

Emotional energy:

– Do you have self-confidence?

– Do you talk positively to yourself?

Mental energy:

– Are you creative?

– Are you optimistic?

Spiritual energy:

– Do you have integrity and commitment?

– Are you honest?

If you eat shit, sleep late, and lie to yourself that you will fix it tomorrow,
It doesn’t matter how well you have scheduled yourself for the next day.
Your day will be shitty!

It isn’t about managing time.
It has always been about managing your energy!

Our living room has a beautiful large window, overlooking the Aravalli Forest.
On a day as bright as today, the window seems non-existent, as though one can walk through it.

That is what the bee, this morning, thought as well.

There was a bee. Inside the living room. Trying to get out.
And all it kept doing, for nearly 5+ minutes, before we helped it, was to get past the window.

It also didn’t realize that there is another window next to this big clear one.
And that window was open.
Wide open.

If the bee could, it would have stopped banging its head against the big window and instead moved to its right and flown into the open skies through the window that was open.

But it didn’t.
I wonder why?
I think it was because it was convinced that if it tried hard enough, it would be able to get past the window.
After all, the bee could see its goal. Clearly. Vividly.

I ultimately helped it, by using a towel to push it towards the open window. A couple of attempts and it worked.
The bee flew away.

But what if I didn’t help?
Would the bee have still continued to try?
Would it have given up at some point?
Or would it have figured the open window, on its own?

We will never know.

THIS, is our life as well.

Our life, where we can often see our goal clearly. Vividly. Within our reach.
BUT SOMETHING is coming in our way.
And we just cannot figure what it is.
We just keep telling ourselves, “try harder, don’t give up, it is within your reach – you can see the goal. DON’T GIVE UP!”
So we keep banging our head against the window.

If only we stopped. We gave up, NOT on the goal, but on the path.
If only we realize that the goal may be the same, but the paths are multiple.
If only we moved sideways, to see if there was another path.
We may find the open window.

Don’t change your goals, if it gets too hard.
Change the path.

Old phones.
Charge for an hour.
Lasts for a week.

New phones.
Charge multiple times.
Lasts less than a day.

In the old days, phones were used for just one purpose: calling.

Now they are used for shopping, watching movies, chatting on a video call, paying our bills – virtually everything!

Since the functions have increased, they need to be charged more often.

Similarly, as we’ve grown up, we do multiple things – read, work, attend to family, hobbies – everything, which wasn’t the case when we were kids.

The question is: “How often do we charge ourselves?”
When we don’t charge ourselves, we are drained out.

And a drained-out phone doesn’t work, despite all the specs.

More than two decades back, the society revered the ones with high IQ.

Over time, it began giving higher importance to mastering our emotions, and understanding them in others.

So EQ became the in-thing.

However, there is a third important thing beyond both of these: focus.

The top minds in the world today are working towards just one thing: your focus.

A tag in the Slack overflow.
An important WhatsApp notification.
A story “mention” on Instagram.
Someone tagged you on Facebook.

Beautiful ways to make you realise you are important.
While nothing is more important than your focus.

If you have the ability to sit and work on one thing at hand for 60, 30 or even 5 minutes at stretch, you have the biggest asset in this world: focus.

Our intelligence and emotional mastery is relevant, only when we have learnt the art of focusing on the subject at hand.

Focus is the new IQ.

How do we respond when we are hurt?
Do we blame the person who did that to us?
Or carry the baggage of that hurt forever?

Here’s a simple question to ask:
“What is this trying to tell me?”

We’d probably get nowhere getting to the root cause of hurt.
However, understanding the lesson behind each hurt and failure grows us tremendously.

When hurt, ask for the lesson. Not the reason!

We’re entering the elevator from the 10th floor.
Have to go to the 20th one.
By mistake, we pressed the ground floor button.

In the haste to correct that mistake, we instantly press that 20th floor button.
Forgetting that the elevator will go to the ground floor first.

It doesn’t care about our mistakes.

What if we remembered this while making mistakes in life?
How would our actions change when we knew there’s time to rectify the mistake?
Would we do anything different if we knew there was no need to hurry up?

Probably, we’d help ourselves from making another one.

We always have time to correct the mistake after we’ve made it.
Trying to correct it immediately is another mistake.