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Most of us had a childhood of competing with others.

Get more marks than your competitor.
Higher rank.
Go to a better college than them.

These were (and unfortunately still are) the parameters that defined success for us as kids.

Except: Everyone is running their own race.
We aren’t competing against anyone, but us.

Being alone in the race is super powerful, because now we get to focus and win our way. Not someone else’s. 

Maybe you figured a PM fit that worked.
Maybe you wanted to try things on this side of the world.
Or perhaps you were just happy doing it.

Whatever it is, that reason is important.
Your “why” is important.
Your root cause matters.

The reasons hyped by the media, the Twitteratti, competitors, don’t matter as much.

When you know why you became an entrepreneur in the first place, the only story that matters is the one between your two ears.

Someone was kind to you for a long time.
Now, all of a sudden they’ve become rude.

This leaves you questioning.
How could they change? Why did they change? Did I do something wrong?
Somehow it has started affecting your self worth in that relationship. 

Here’s the truth: People don’t change. They just surface. Depending on their life circumstances or even the situations. 

When we accept people for where they are, we don’t do them a favour. We do one to ourselves.

Focus – Is something we chose for our own selves. For the life that we have chosen. Our career. Focus makes us accountable. 

But there is another perk of that focus: The right kind of focus leads us to stop focusing on what others are doing wrong, and start looking for where they are going right. 

Owning your game does not allow you to question someone else’s. 

People are going to screw up.
They are going to lose it.
And the sad part is, they won’t even understand this despite we trying to explain this to them.

Over and over again.

So, we have two options: behave like the world is supposed to, get angry, and tell them where they went wrong. The other one being, to accept that some things never change and the one who needs to change is us.

The second one is a more peaceful and more difficult option. Not because it affects the work, rather because it is now a change in equation we have to make with ourselves. And that causes all the internal chaos.

If we lose our temper because of where others screw up, we still have a long way to go.

The world is going to throw opportunities for us to lose our temper.
The biggest opportunity we have, is to never pick that opportunity.

Of the many lies we were sold as kids (and upon growing up), this one always triumphs:
Something is better than nothing.

Selling a part of your soul is better than your soul making no money.

Except that when we are empty, we feel our truest emotions.
It is in solitude and standing for what we want, that we discover what we would never tolerate.
It is in the side-tracked lines of rat-race with the world that we discover we were not in a race with them in the first place!

And that’s not bad. That’s liberating.

When we are busy with “something”, we never get the nothingness to be lost.
When we are tired of “nothing”, we discover who we truly are.

The cool kid will always have opinions of you.
The boring kid within you will ache to do anything to get their validation.
It is going to be fascinating to leave who you are and be what they are.

Except, that it isn’t success.
If changing yourself could bring you friends, they aren’t friends.
If being someone else could bring you closer to people, it is always a wiser choice to stay alone.

Success is a relationship you have with yourself. If you know who you are and where you are going, you are successful. Period.

When you run a company, things will go bad sometimes.
And when they come to the leader – the leader has two choices. 

Either they deliver to people’s expectations and roast them. Or they surprise everyone by being calm and then facing it.

When most people expect the former, the best leaders deliver on the latter.
The best part is, we all are leaders of our respective jobs, thus, when we are calm in the tough moments of our jobs, we are displaying the right leadership skills – irrespective of our title.

Calmness is leadership. Since being calm is a choice, displaying calmness is superpower.

The worst thing that would change your life for the worse forever.
Over time, it isn’t the worst thing. Like every good thing that doesn’t make us excited forever, so do the bad things lose their power over time.

Time is not only a great healer, it also makes you aware of better things.

Everything is temporary. And that’s a wonderful thing to begin.

A friend is making a million bucks. But they are super sad. They feel trapped and have no time for themselves and the family.
You, on the other hand, just quit your job. Yes, the same one. To pursue your creative freedom. And you are happier than before. With maybe a few lesser bucks.

Money is important. And it does buy happiness. That’s a fact. However, if we are unable to use that money to buy happiness it is making us miserable. On the contrary, if we create happiness and then operate to work, somehow, somewhere, money takes care of itself.

If money brings happiness, so does happiness bring money.
Fortunately, being happy is an advantage no competitor could copy. It’s always a choice.