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The price of being good

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.

Who should you trust?

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.

How did you fail today?

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. 

When do we grow old?

When do we grow old?

 

Is it simply upon hitting a certain number?

Or perhaps before that?

 

We grow old when we think the way we see the world is the right one.

When we believe it is our point of view that matters, and it need not be changed.

When we refuse to see another way to live life, because it will challenge our comfort zone. 

 

We grow old when we refuse to embrace the new.

Predicting the future

What did you do today?

Learned something?

Met someone interesting?

Took notes and executed upon your ideas?

Or watched Netflix, ate junk food and slept a little more.

And what will you do tomorrow?

Day after?

Quicker than you know, the days turn into weeks, weeks into months, months into years.

Quicker than you know, your present turns into your future.

By the choices you made today.

The best way to predict your future, is to look at your day today

The easiest way to correct our flaws

We all have flaws.

We’ve all made mistakes.

Done things that aren’t a badge of honor.

But the hard question is:
How to correct them?

What if we stopped looking for them in everyone else?
What if we just corrected just this one flaw? 

Because it really necessarily about their flaws.
It is certainly about how we compound their flaws in our minds.

 

To correct our flaws, stop looking for them in others. 

Feeling inferior is also a habit

If most of what is sold in the world is pegged on you feeling inadequate and incomplete, is it then a surprise that we constantly feel inferior?

Cosmetic companies are constantly telling us – we don’t look good.

Finance companies are constantly telling us – we don’t have enough.

Car companies are constantly telling us – we don’t look cool.

Fashion companies are constantly telling us – we don’t look good.

And when we submit ourselves to this media, this information, this narrative, we sub consciously begin to feel it.

What you do repeatedly becomes a habit. Feeling inferior works the same way. 

Feeling adequate can also work the same way. 

Good things take time

A tweet yesterday said that entrepreneurs are patient and impatient at the same time.

And that resonated with me. I agree with it. And also believe that the patience impatience directed at the right things works wonders. And if misdirected can backfire.

Impatience with finding the truth will work.

Impatience with people won’t.

Impatience with fixing the errors will work.

Impatience with getting results won’t.

Patience with customers will work.

Patience with the version you want to sell won’t.

Patience with spending money will work.

Patience with wasting money won’t.

Entrepreneurs: Impatient with action. Patient with results.

Drown

You don’t drown by falling into the river.

You drown by being submerged in it.

The jail we cannot escape

Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years.

And for all these years, he wasn’t treated well. Not given decent clothes to weak, food to eat, books to read.

Eventually, he went on to become the president of South Africa and for the swearing in ceremony he invited the jailers as well. The same jailers who hadn’t treated him well.

When asked, why would you invite those who didn’t treat you well, he replied,

“If I didn’t invite them, I would still be in prison”

Such is our mind. It is the biggest prison of all. We can escape or be released from any physical prison, but it is the one in our head that is the hardest to.

And the one that we have to escape from.

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