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To go for the career of your choice. It’s risky.
To choose your happiness over society’s validation. It’s risky.
To leave the comfort and chart for new territories. It’s risky

Of course it is risky. But isn’t not taking that risk a bigger risk?

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.

If given a chance to trade anything of the wealthiest people, what is the right thing to trade?

Their money? Status? Network? Hard work? Life Lessons?

The best thing to trade for, is their curiosity.
What do they think about the most? What is the pattern of their thinking? What are their mental models?

Curiosity can make us figure out a way to make a motor car in a world where everyone wanted a faster horse cart. Lack of it, can make us believe we are meant for slow commutes forever.

Having wealth of the wealthy is like eating fish, having their curiosity is learning to fish. 

Our parents are the people we disagree with the most.
We have differing opinions on the smallest life issues to making big life decisions.
And that’s okay. And a different thing.

Right now, our parents need a different thing from us: Our presence.
When they were our age, they witnessed tremendous hard work, lack of opportunities, and struggle to make ends meet. Right now, they are witnessing death of those around and younger than them. 

Life hasn’t been easy for them. But we can make it a bit easy, by being there for them – making them talk about their favourite topics (our childhood, their childhood), listening to them, or simply engaging with them.

Strange that people we love the most and vice versa need only love from us when they see love around them crumbling down in all ways.

I’ll be happy when I find my partner.
I’ll be happy when my parents understand me.
I’ll be happy when my efforts are applauded.

I’ll be happy “when”…

When we attach a “when” to happiness, we make it conditional. Someone else has to take the responsibility to do something that will make us happy. That’s a huge onus to place on those who aren’t even aware they are carrying a heavy load.

The safer and more convenient option is to own our happiness. To be able to control our factors and definition of happiness. To be happy alone.

Happiness in relationships is not contingent. Happiness is a relationship with ourselves. When we have that relationship right, we become happier in all other relationships.

“I don’t know what to do with my life.”
We happen to tell this to ourselves early in our lives, especially when we see people younger than us becoming successful YouTubers, rocking on Reels or becoming child prodigies – and our wanderings make us wonder if we will ever “make it” in life.

However, there’s only one kind of people that do not make it, if ever: Those who do not move.

For the rest of us, for those who keep exploring, for those who keep looking, and for those who are never satisfied with settling, we will somehow figure out what to do with our lives.

Success is in exploring, and not setting with your own mindset that doesn’t let us nurture.

We don’t start hoping we’ll get there.
We make strategies. Plans. Executing them to the T.

Then comes a huge black swan effect. At the moment we were waiting for it to get over, another one came in sweeping away all strategies.

And when all of these do not work, then comes the hope. Hope that we will make through this storm, like we’ve done through all of them. Hope that there exists a light at the end of the tunnel, wherever the end is. Hope that till we get to the end of the tunnel, we will be the light.

All our strategies didn’t account for what we are going through. Hope is the only thing we’re left with – fortunately.

The trends have pointed out overnight stars.
There are people telling us how to get rich overnight.
And most of all, pop culture shows us ways to get rich quick instead of working at a corporate job.

However, in order to get to where we want to, we have to start at a place we perhaps dislike.
For our work to pay off exponentially, we must give our 100% to the work that isn’t our dream job.

Because at the end, what we do in “our dream job” won’t be any different from the work ethic and habit we cultivated in the work we hated. Our work changes, we don’t!

When someone tells you to not give your 100% in your work, it works 100% of the time to not listen to them even one percent and go make your ruckus.

Tired of eating the same food. Tired of sitting at home. Sad I’ve to celebrate my birthday at home again. Tired of not being able to travel.

Counting what we don’t have is the easiest way to feel bad. 

Except it helps no one. Not certainly us.

What if we felt grateful for food amidst the uncertain economy? The privilege of being home in the middle of a pandemic? Glad that we have the family that cares for us with or without birthday?

Gratitude isn’t just mumbo jumbo. It is a way of life. An art of looking for butter in adulterated milk.

How will we ever be able to enjoy more, if what we have is never enough?

When we talk about secrets to productivity, mostly we think they would be Pomodoro technique, having a schedule, working out, etc.

While all of that is true, there is something way bigger than it: Our rest schedule.

Rest and rejuvenation is not sitting idle, wasting time, and something to be done when we will have more time. It is rather a way of getting more productive. Because even when we are not doing “work” on the outside, amidst the games that we play, the music that we work on or maybe while folding clothes, the mind is working on its own patterns to bring us our solutions.

And that, in turn, accelerates our productivity.

Old ways (of napping, engaging in creative pursuits, not being busy) are indeed the real gold.