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Our friends and family.
Our colleagues.
Our acquaintances on social media. 

We love to keep everyone happy.
If they aren’t happy, that’s because of us.

I should not have said that.
I am not balancing work and family.
I am responsible for their sadness.

Except, it’s false. 

No matter how much we “sacrifice” for someone else, happiness is always an inside job.

“Not my type!”
“Oh, this one is just like me!”
“It would be difficult to hang around him.”

The mind is constantly labelling people we meet. 

However beneath the surface, there are no “types” of people.
They are just being themselves. 

What if instead of putting people into compartments, we saw them for who they are?
Tried listening to their perspective?
Understood their awareness and applied it in our lives?

People aren’t inherently different.
They are simply doorways to learn more about ourselves.

Waking up early gives us energy. But my friends are out partying tonight and I do not want to miss the fun.
Studying is important. But this new Netflix series everyone is talking about makes me feel I am missing out.
I do not have the money. But everyone seems to love the new iPhone and I do not want to miss out. 

For everything that we should do, there will always be something that we will miss out on.
The question then is, what is more important? 

How will we ever enjoy what we have, if what we have is never enough?

We are with friends. Yet we feel bad at the end of conversation.
They care for us. Yet something doesn’t feel right.
We are there for them in thick and thin. Yet we don’t see them happy when we are.

Too often, we are surrounded by beautiful toxicity in the form of friends.
People who are there for us sometimes, yet make us feel bad every time.
People who are themselves, yet never respect us for who we are.

Who you are is priceless.

Settle down in life. Or keep changing professions almost every 5-7 years.
Do what everyone else does. Or do what feels right.
GIve away your sleep for others. Or make it a top priority.

Doing what is uncomfortable always feels uncomfortable at the start.
Because what if we fail? 

There is temporary discomfort in doing the unconventional.
There is a permanent one in living life as a template.

We don’t choose our parents.
Nor can we choose how they conduct themselves as parents.
Or the repercussions of it.

But we do choose what to do to ourselves, once we are aware of what happened.
We can either blame them for our lives.
Or we can choose to heal ourselves.

Both are going to be painful, but choosing pain to heal is a preferable place to be in, than choosing pain to add to existing pain.

A part of growing up is being able to parent ourselves, if we believe we deserved better.
  

Every brand, personal or company, that establishes rapport with consumers online, is a winner. Almost everyone has a great product, how they establish communication with their audience decides almost everything. 

That said, here are some nitty-gritties into content creation:

Why?
If we are seeking a reason to do something, perhaps we shouldn’t!

How?
Through videos, posts, tweets – on LinkedIn (high organic reach), Twitter (improves our writing and presentation skills) and Instagram (because of high audience there)

What?
Sharing our journey, sharing what we know (skills – fitness, vlogging, comedy, music, etc.), sharing what we are learning. In other words, being authentic instead of being preachy.

Understanding our audience:
Spending time with them by responding to DM’s, getting them engaged in content by CTAs.
Content creation is not a one-way street. If the audience loves it, they will give our feedback. If they don’t, we will still get to know. That helps us build upon it.

Does the audience change?
“Digital customers require novelty because they are not marrying you rather dating you.” – Kunal Bahl

What if we run out of content?
Content is nothing but our life experiences turned into stories. As long as we are alive and observant, every action, every failure, every success, every day’s lessons could be translated into a content piece. Which essentially means, we won’t ever run out of content.

Whom should we follow?
People whose content makes sense to us, whose content we could repurpose, on whose content we could create content on. There is so much content out there, if we start making content on that, we would never run out of content.

Will it take time?
All good things do. In a world of instant gratification, more time something takes, more relevance does it hold. At least two years. That is the reason a lot of people don’t create content – because it requires patience, and it requires thick skin to not think of what others might think! (Bonus point: They aren’t thinking of you anyway, they are thinking of what you are thinking of them!)

Some technicalities:
Today’s phones have great video quality, a great one for start
If not daily, consistently at the same time is important
Language should be audience specific – India – Hinglish; outside India – English

Is it possible to get clients through creating content?
If we create content not with the intent of getting clients rather than sharing all that we know, giving without any intention of receiving, inbound leads will eventually come. A giver, is always given.

Tips for never giving up?
1. Making the algorithm your friend – even if you don’t post daily, post at a time that the algorithm knows it will be fed your content.
2. Being yourself – because everyone else is taken
3. Enjoying the journey instead of waiting for the reward – It is during the “during”, that our entire life is lived!

Sooner than we know, content creation will be an industry bigger than even e-commerce.

The journey is going to be demanding, if we think of content creation as just another task to tick off.
The journey is going to be fulfilling, no matter how much painful, if we think of content creation as sharing our life experiences, being able to look back at it 2, 5, 10 years from now and see how far we have come; and most importantly, what a learning curve of this wonderful thing called life, we have built for ourselves.

There are important items in our bucket.
Yet we say yes to every offer that comes our way.
Perhaps we’re scared of what they will think of us.

In that process of committing without thought, the urgent gradually takes over the important.
Leaving no room for us to act on what’s important in the long term.

No.
Polite no.
I’d rather skip this.
They aren’t rude, they are simply prioritising ourselves before we offer to others. That isn’t mean, rather super helpful for the very few commitments we would offer to work upon.

We teach others how to treat us, by how we treat ourselves. – Oprah

We want to make our best impression.
Give the most meaningful answers.
And make sure the interviewer is happy after evaluating us.

These are the thoughts that are going on in our mind, before appearing for an important interview. 

However, the interview is not only for us.
It is also for the company, for us to decide whether it is the right fit or not.
Going prepared with our questions and drafting a resume that shows who we are is as important. We are certainly going to exchange our time for salary, not our happiness.

A journey in a job is fulfilling only when it is a two-way line, just like any other relationship.

Entrepreneurship is cool.
It’s a great feeling to launch a product that you made from scratch.

But, maybe the entire ecosystem of sales, management, product, etc., overwhelms you.
You love product development but the processes and team building responsibilities don’t excite you as much.

And that’s perfectly okay.
It is perfectly okay to not do what almost everyone else is doing, because you don’t have that inclination.
Such awareness is power.
Because now you know what to act upon and what not to choose willfully. 

In life, you don’t have to become what everyone seems to be becoming.
Getting to such a realization is precious.