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When an interviewer asks you questions about yourself, they are not going to judge you by the facts of the answer.

They are going to judge you by how much you know yourself.

And very few of us do!

Awareness, is everything. Everything!

Your values won’t make money for you. However, on days when you are crying out loud and driving your car, what do you offer to someone asking for food at the traffic signal – kindness or anger?

The thing you offer to them are your values. In that moment, when you offer them kindness, that is who you are.

In that moment, when you offer them anger,

that is who you are.

It may seem that none of this is related to who you are.

Except that it is totally related.

Values are the qualities that show up when you do not have preparatory time for them, Fortunately or unfortunately, that is what defines us.

The most dangerous people invest their energy explaining why change is something they don’t need.

The best thing you can do to stay away from their danger is not enter their danger zone!

Because their zone makes you believe that you don’t need to change!

However, the only constant in life is change. If you don’t change purposefully (for the better), the danger zone of energy-draining people changes you automatically. For the worse.

Working out teaches you discipline and patience like few other things do.

Working is not painful.

Pain is showing up for the workout. Getting off the couch. Having proteins. Having meals on time. Keeping track of your body measurements.

These are the things that need discipline. These are the things that grow your discipline and patience. The reward is understanding the fact that all worthwhile things require discipline and patience.

Not everything comes at the speed of a tap on a smartphone!

The world fears the person who doesn’t fear anything.

But it’s scarier for the world to face someone who embraces fear.

Someone who moves on despite their fears is the most fearful for the world.

Because they have chosen to leave the herd, and walk their own path.

The world cannot be with them and face them, so the world continues being scared.

The world prefers tribe and triviality over loneliness and the lushness of the new paradise.

It is exactly the reason fearless people walk alone.

The world will always keep you in the news if you do the unexpected. No one covers the expected. No one cares.

If you do a side gig along with your job. Or if you work more than expected in your job.

If you say ‘I love you’ to your parents more often. Or better still, if you don’t fear hugging them.

If you are kind and calm in a moment when

under fire. Or if you make others calm as well.

All of this is ruckus. The unusual. The eye- popping.

Do none of these and go along with the world and no one will care.

Create your own ruckus, and the world will make sure it helps you amplify it.

To not have a plan and be okay with it is the best plan. It will take everything to get to that point.

It’s okay to not have a plan.

It’s okay to answer ‘I don’t know, and I’m okay with it’ when you are asked ‘Where do you see yourself five years from now?’ in an interview. It’s okay to not put the pressure of figuring out life today itself.

It’s okay if you are not at a place where you can say ‘It’s okay to not have a plan.’

The plan of not being okay without a plan is the plan that unfolds gradually. And it’s perhaps even okay to have a plan till then :)

Most of us think that if we had an aim or a goal, we would have reached someplace in life by now.

And, thus, would have been happy. One of the biggest lies we believe in.

Reaching goals in life is as tragic as not having goals.

Both of them make us feel empty and useless.

The real way to happiness, as Buddhism believes, is the madhya marg – the path of pursuit, the path of joy en route to your mountain top. The path of enjoying the struggle. The path of falling in love with the process with zero attachment to the results.

The truth about happiness is that if you don’t feel it today, you won’t feel it tomorrow either.

We realize how courageous we are when being courageous is the only option we have.

Once you burn all your boats is when you realize you have to learn to swim. Ex tempore.

I had decided to take up public speaking in early 2020, after stepping down from the position of CEO of nearbuy towards the end of 2019.

Then COVID happened, and bam, all public events got cancelled!

A friend, while on a call, suggested that I teach what I know (entrepreneurship) online.

Because I had already burned the boats, and did not have cash beyond three months, I gave it a shot!

Because I had nothing to lose, the courage helped me to not lose myself.

Because I had no option other than courage, that courage opened up many options for me!

When courage is the only option, it never gives up on us, if we never give up on it!

The greatest illusion we all live in, is that life should be perfect.

Perfection is not a place to go to.

Perfection is finding joy, peace and growth in

the mundane and the boring.

The illusion is that perfect is all the bells ringing and no problems at all.

The reality is that perfection is dancing along with the problems ringing all the bells!

It is in acceptance of now as the perfect moment that our illusions of a better future begin to boil away.

What’s left is life. And perfection.