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A lot of kids often reach out to me saying they are confused what to do next in life.

They don’t know what career path to pick, the obvious routes of the world do not make much sense to them, and certainly there is a lot of FOMO looking at others “knowing the answers” but they’re still “figuring it out.”

In such cases, joining a startup as an intern almost always helps.

You get to hang around with super curious people from different verticals, you get to learn how to manage stress and anxiety, and more than anything else, you understand that everyone is still figuring it out. No one’s really arrived.

That magic hanging around with people, makes you more aware of yourself.
It gives you a bit of nudge into what you want to do.
And if you still don’t know what to do, you will certainly know what not to do. And that’s priceless.

To explore the outside world, is one of the coolest ways to explore your inner world.

If we really care about our team to win, we will give them feedback that is direct, instead of sugar coated, manipulative, or aggressive.

To care about people, is to let them blossom, which might even mean facing the temporary pain of rooting out the weeds.

Are you signing up for too many courses without actually going through them?
Or shopping a lot?
Perhaps unable to control your expenses?

Here’s a hack that works wonderfully well:
Adding a layer to process your payments, which means, asking your spouse or a family member for the OTP gives us the reality check.

If they agree, you can make the spending. If they don’t, you’ll get to check that it was spontaneous.

Choices that work, work with people who do the work with you :)

Late in 2019, when I decided to step down as the CEO of nearbuy, I decided to take a 3-month break.

During those 3 months, I wanted to experiment with content creation.

Hired a team.
Made content creation a process – on all platforms.
Started delivering talks in companies, charging for my time.

Basically putting in all the inputs.

Over time, the content creation started getting bigger, I started enjoying the process a lot, and haven’t looked back from then.

Right now, I’m on the 18th month of that 3-month break. And I couldn’t complain!

Not knowing the goal is precious. Because who you turn into during the journey, is priceless.

Most people get this wrong.
Personal Branding is not about starting with audience.

When people think of personal branding, they think of asking themselves, “What does the audience want?”
Not the right thing to start with.

What if we start with what kind of content we want to create, and then let the audience come in?

I never started with taking care of audience first.
I started sharing what was authentic to me – about my mistakes, about startups, about my experience in hiring, etc.
Over time, that brought in the audience which connected with that content.

My authenticity with content brought in authentic audience.
Just like everything else, right inputs invariably bring the right outputs.

I love stories!
Stories of people, their life lessons, their world view.

Every story is a different world.
And sometimes it’s the same world with just another story!

Which is why not spending time with people who are like you, sets you free from your world.
And helps you see a different one.

Wouldn’t you want to see who could you become?
A different you? In a different world?

A simple example of what’s called second-order thinking.

As humans, we are all hard-wired to respond to the immediate result of our actions. The first-order consequences.

Eating chocolate will make us feel good – Immediate result.
Watching Netflix will make us feel good – Immediate result.
Someone lied to us and we feel hurt – Immediate consequence.

It’s only when we go beyond the first-order consequences that we begin to see the true impact of our actions and of those around us.

I will feel good if I eat the chocolate. But it will deteriorate my health in the long run because of excessive sugar.

I will feel good if I binge-watch. However, I would not be able to get enough sleep. I won’t be at my best the next day.

You lied to me. Now I can’t trust you. I will second guess everything that you say. And that will shift into a habit that I will apply to others. And I will find it hard to trust people.

Thinking in second-order is not an exaggeration!
It’s a superpower that helps you see through the long-drawn process of compounding.

There was a time when content was not democratic.

The TV shows were decided by someone else.
Their timings were decided by someone else.
Their content was decided by someone else.

Noone could choose what to consume.
Either you consume all of it or don’t.

Then came the biggest technology intervention – Personalization.

Content today is a reflection of your interests, your reactions and your engagement.
It’s to get you hooked!
It’s all about what you know, what you want and what you care about!

Technology was meant to help us see things from a different perspective.
Instead, it’s making us more and more enclosed in our worlds.
It’s making us believe that it’s the entire world!

Personalization is not creating a better version of ourselves.
It’s only creating a bigger version of ourselves!

We are taught to admire the extraordinary.
To be inspired by them.
To want to become them.

But…

We are raised to become ordinary.
To follow a template.
To take the path already taken.

To admire is easy. To get inspired is easy.
To become extraordinary is not easy – because we haven’t been taught how!

Today’s generation is under immense pressure.
It’s the pressure of self-doubt more than anything else.
This self-doubt is led by the view that everyone else, except them, has it figured out.

People seem to be eating the nicest looking food.
Wearing the nicest looking clothes.
Clicking the nicest looking selfies.

We think the other person’s life is sorted.
We think that we are not good enough.

What we fail to realize is that others are going through the same anxiety as we are!

At times, all you need to know is that you are not alone in feeling what you are feeling.