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How do we live a life of integrity?
A life of honesty?
A life where we do not have to second-guess our thoughts and actions?

Roman Stoic Philosopher Seneca said: 

“We should live our lives as if everyone could see us.”

What would we do differently if everyone could see us?
What would we stop doing altogether?
More than anything else, how would that change our life?

When we assume everyone can see us, we stop lying to the world.
And that is the first step to stop lying to ourselves. 

When we get angry, we end up doing things we don’t want to be doing.

Our actions become impulsive, words get uncontrolled, and thoughts become really fast.
None of this allows us to calm down and be thoughtful.

And we often ask ourselves:

Why does anger hurt me more than the other person? Why do I feel empty after that emotion of anger? Why am I not able to focus for long even though the situation has passed?

Gautam Buddha described anger aptly when he said: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else.”

When we are angry at someone else, we are the ones who get affected the most. And yet we feel that giving up anger means giving up power..

Giving up anger doesn’t mean giving up power.
Giving up anger means having power that no one can take away.

There are people who have gone on to do exceptional things.
Changed the world forever.

Leonardo da Vinci. Madame Curie. Albert Einstein. Steve Jobs.

What’s a special trait they have?
Were they child prodigies?
Or naturally gifted?

It’s because they kept telling themselves: “I don’t know a lot, I’m still learning.”

In the quest of being a student forever, they became teachers of creating an epic life.
In their ordinary curiosity for knowledge and education, they became extraordinary.

Being extraordinary is going the extra mile by remaining an ordinary student forever.

Do you sometimes feel lonely?
You feel no one understands you, feels your emotions, or knows what you’re going through.

How to go about fixing it?

When we listen to someone who’s going through the same pain,
when we let them know they aren’t invisible,
when we assure them there’s nothing wrong with their emotions,
we take the first step in moving beyond our loneliness.

When we allow someone to walk away from their loneliness, our own walks out along with it.

In the healing and hearing of others, lies our own.

An alcoholic father had two sons.

One grew up to be an alcoholic. When asked why, he responded, “I watched my father.”

The other grew up hating alcohol. When asked how he chose to be sober, he responded, “I watched my father.”

So it wasn’t about what happened to them. It wasn’t about the circumstance. It wasn’t about the situation. 

It was about what they took from it.
It was about the stories they told themselves of what they went through. 

We are the stories we tell ourselves.

Do you feel bad upon receiving feedback?

“Maybe my your boss doesn’t like me.”
“Maybe she doesn’t think highly of me.”
“Maybe I am just not good enough.” 

We discourage ourselves with all these thoughts in our head.

What if we took feedback as an opinion, instead of a fact?

What if we you learned from it instead of judging ourselves?

Because that will decide how well we grow.
The words we keep repeating to ourselves will end up becoming our truth.

Feedback isn’t about you, the doer.
It’s about the deed.
The deed, which the doer always has a chance to make better. 

Are you afraid of making decisions?
What to wear, what to eat, career choices, who to marry, whether to marry – small to the biggest decisions, are you afraid of making them?

The truth is we are afraid of making decisions because we are afraid that they might turn out to be bad decisions. 

We’re afraid of bearing the brunt of wrong decisions, overlooking the fact that even if they turn out to be wrong, we would’ve learnt a lesson.
It won’t entirely be a loss.

The biggest loss is not making a decision and staying stagnant.
If you don’t move, you would’ve already made the wrong decision.

I recall during my first job, unable to understand why things functioned in a certain way, I asked my boss, 

“How is it that some people have so much work and some hardly have any work?”

“Good people pay a far higher price for being good, than bad people pay for being bad.”

That has stayed with me forever.

If you are good with your work, you will get more work. You will get more responsibilities. There is a lot more than will be expected from you. And that is going to be hard.

Being good isn’t easy, however worth striving for.
Because being the opposite isn’t worth it.

Whom should you trust?
Who deserves to have it?
Who doesn’t?

Trust may a big thing, because maybe you’ve been betrayed.
Maybe your you heart’s been broken.
You trusted someone and they let you down.

However, is trust only about the other person?
Isn’t it a measure of how much are we willing to invest in a relationship?

Whenever I ask myself this question, the answer I get is: I should trust people.
I should trust them not because they are trustworthy, instead so that they become trustworthy. 

Trusting is not only about who they are.
It’s also about who they could become when they have your trust.

Sara Blakely is a tremendously successful businesswoman. 

Someone asked, what do you attribute your success to?

“Every night at the dinner table, my father would ask my brother and me, ‘What did you fail at, today?’”

Did you fail today?

Did you get knocked down and bruised today?

Did you face rejection today?

Sara had it ingrained in her mind that it’s okay to fail.
What was not okay was to live with that failure.

Treat failure as a part of life, and it will turn success into a habit.