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As humans, leaders and wise humans, we love to solve problems for others. It makes us feel better, and we believe that it would make them feel better as well.

Except, that it doesn’t.

Smart people suffer from a problem called The Curse of Intelligence. They want to solve things fast. Make everything aligned. Remove the chaos. 

It hardly helps anyone. The one whose problem needs to be solved – the company, the family or friend have a certain way of operating that is different from who we are as an individual.

A real smart way is to ask questions. Questions help them understand the problem better. So do they help us. 

The best part? The one seeking for help gets it in the manner best for them.

It turns out, the things that work conventionally, are rarely the things that work conveniently.

“You must be outgoing and hanging around with people. Your introversion ain’t gonna help you!”

Almost every introvert has not only heard these lines, they have also lost touch with themselves whenever they’ve tried to fit into the world this way.

Introversion isn’t being curled up in a room forever and not talking to anyone. Introversion and extroversion are rather a manner of how we respond to stimuli. As author Susan Cain notes, “For some, it’s a Broadway spotlight. For others, a lamp-lit desk.”

It becomes increasingly important to know this, as 1 out of every 2 or 3 people are introverts. Imagine the collective damage we’re doing as a society.

Like every other important thing, life and our perceptions take a twist when we become more aware. And accepting of our/others’ introversion.

I often talk about suggesting kids in their 20’s to go about exploring different career options. 

But what should you do when you have really found what you love, you’re good at it and the world is ready to pay you for it?

Double down on what you’ve found. Think of what all could be possible and what kindles the fire in you. Ask yourself what is the next level in the field you’ve picked.

And then, work super hard on being the best at it.

Exploration never stops. Vertical one just follows horizontal. Rinse and repeat.

Of course a gap year “wastes” a year of your life.

However, we get prepared for 15+ years to work, why make a choice of what to work on immediately?
How will we ever get to know the depth of the pool without stepping into it?
How will we ever know what we are good at if we don’t try what all we could be good at?

A gap year is simply the stopping at the petrol pump to give much needed fuel to the long drive of your career. Without it, we may be in an illusion of the car while in reality it is stagnant.

You should not stop watching news because someone on the internet tells you to stop watching news.

You should stop watching news because your brain cannot focus on the good if it is being fed the bad that is happening around.

Making decisions from a point of why we want to do them makes them stick vis-a-vis doing them without awareness of reason.

Your biggest enemy is not your competitor. Or a newbie changing the world. Or a viral trend you missed.

These are parts of life.

Your biggest enemy is someone who tells you that it is impossible for you to think beyond what lies in front of you. They make you think small because they want you to be one, even if unintentionally. It could even be your closest friends or family.

You cannot move further. Anyone who tells this to you, is the one who is your responsibility to move further away from your life.

It’s always been very important to protect our time.
Because it is the only deposit in our account that never repeats itself ever.

However, never like now has been important to help with your time.
Connecting people to the right medical leads, using our time to verify on their behalf, or even using our time to talk to people who are out in the world still working – so that humanity could survive.

To keep humanity over anything else is the best use of our time right now.

To give your time to those who need help to survive, is the biggest help to them. And yourself.

The society has categorised a profit making entrepreneur as successful and the one who does not, as failure.

However, that is the definition of society. Something that is rarely correct.

True success is having the courage to build something from scratch. True success is getting out of your own self to solve a problem. True success is living by your own stories of success and not the ones the world has imposed on us since childhood.

There’s no such thing as failure. The very act of going for entrepreneurship by leaving the life of comfort is in itself the biggest success.

Happiness is our nature as kids. If we enjoy something, we are in a state of flow doing it. If we don’t, we’ll cry our hearts out to make sure we don’t do it.

And then, we grow up. Unfortunately. And forget to make our happiness a priority.
We pursue courses that our family wants, marry someone because we’ve been told to, and end up living a life that is totally apart from how we would be happy living it.

In the pursuit of trying to make others happy and giving up our own, we realise we aren’t happy either. So, choosing our happiness is the safest option to ensure not only ours rather everyone else’s happiness.

How do we know if we are happy doing something? By asking two fundamental questions:

a. What about it makes me happy? b. Am I truly happy doing it?

It turns out, the happiest thing we could do to our happiness is live with it forever. That’s the most difficult yet the easiest thing to sign up for.

When we think about why we got successful, we may call it our hard work, dedication of our parents, and our commitment. 

While all that is true, studies have shown time and again that the ones who got successful were because of a huge stroke of luck. Being at the right place at the right time. Being picked by the right people. Born in a country where we can grow.

All of this is something we cannot control. But has hugely affected where we are.

Yes, we wouldn’t have made it without our hard work. But we wouldn’t have made it without luck either.

It’s a privilege to be where our success has led us. And the best thing we could do is help create luck in the lives of others.