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A lot of us do not want to live by the conventional route.
We want to explore and challenge ourselves.
But our fears hardly let that happen.

What if I fail in singing?
What would I tell my parents if I couldn’t earn as much as Sharma ji’s son?
What would my friends say when they know I have left my job to start up? 

However, what if we used our power to think to think for ourselves?

What if people end up loving my music?
What if my parents would be happier seeing me happy?
What if my friends draw inspiration from my example?

We don’t know what the result will be.
But if we don’t try, we won’t ever know our own selves.

Kindness leads to success. Or success leads to kindness.
A statement a lot of people ponder upon.

Will we be successful if we are kind?
Or should we be kind when we get successful?

To me, kindness is non-negotiable because people want to be validated and heard more than they want external success.

Kindness doesn’t necessarily lead to success, kindness is success.

Everyone is walking a different path.
We all seem the same, yet we all are on our own paths.
Different challenges, different beliefs and different ways to solve them.

What, then, is the point of wanting to follow someone else’s path?
What’s the point of knowing the address of a street we don’t intend to go to? 

What if we invest all that time in carving our own path?

True success isn’t succeeding on the path of someone else.
True success is staying true to our own.

Most sports are played in the mind, and not so much on the field.
The fittest people are fit because they talk to their mind daily to go work out, irrespective of the chills outside.
The stories we are living today are the result of stories our mind has been telling ourselves.
Most successful people feel successful not by the things they own, rather by the empires of the mind.

The most powerful training happens in our minds.

The friend who quit trying after failing once.
The colleague who gave up because they were tired of being tired.
The super successful people in school whom we’ve forgotten

We don’t remember any one of them anymore.

Because we don’t remember people by what they have achieved, we remember people by their relentless hard work.
We don’t remember people for their past, we remember them for what their present actions are.
We don’t remember people for failing, we remember them for not giving up after failing.

The best thing about hard work is it equally works hard for us.

We may have a great job.
Or an envious education.
Perhaps we are settled as per the definition of the world.

Yet, we feel something is missing.
There is a hole within that none of the external things are able to fulfill.

What if we asked ourselves, “what is the one thing I want right now”? Not five, not three, just one; and then chase it.
It could be money, or work life balance or more family time – there is no right or wrong, there is just one inherent need that we all must fulfill. If we fulfill that one need, we will feel at peace with ourselves.

When we want everything, we end up with nothing.
When we optimise for one thing, almost everything takes care of itself.

We have two colleges to pick from.
Two career options to choose.
Two different opinions to a problem.

Which one should you pick, when both seem to be conflicting choices?

The one that brings more pain in the short term.

No one knows how a decision would turn out to be prior to making it.
The only thing we do know that the harder path is the one where the pot of gold most likely lies.

Happiness is not short term.

Eating chocolate.
Scrolling right before sleeping and after waking up.
Binge-watching.

They all satisfy a dopamine urge, they don’t make us happy. In the long-term, doing these consistently makes us miserable.

To check if something makes us truly happy, the real introspection is to go for five levels of happiness. What will happen if I do this? And then? And then? After that? Then?
It’ll give perspective and wisdom to make wiser choices.

Anything that makes us happy now and lousy later is a distraction disguised as happiness.

Having no plan in life and being okay is a great place to be.

This, however, does not apply to our days.

It’s fine to not know what life would look like five years hence.
It’s not fine to not know what our day would look like.

Take care of the day and the decade falls into place.
– James Clear

Everyone has fears. Even the ones who appear fearless.

Being fearless isn’t about not feeling any fear.
It is about knowing that no matter what the fear is, you have the courage to face it.
Dealing with fears is the real courage.

Being fearless is embracing fear.