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Its fashionable to start up today. To be a young CEO. To become an entrepreneur. To carry a “I’m CEO, Bitch!” business card.

To my readers in India, you quite likely already run a company.

It’s called your home.

It generates an income (your salary). It creates a product (you). And you employ people who help you run this business – your help. Your maids, servants, drivers, guards, delivery boys – all are your employees.

And if you want to know what kind of a CEO you will be in real life, just see how you treat these employees currently.

If you have high attrition and your maids/drivers leave you within weeks/months because of lack of trust/respect/fairness – then its quite likely that’s the kind of CEO you will be.

And if you have loyal, deeply engaged employees, who don’t have to be told what to do everyday and who are not driven just by money, then you know what kind of company will you create.

Entrepreneurship is real life. And that isn’t distinct from how you live your life.

You either lead.

Or you follow.

The path where you try to second guess, where you use hope as a strategy, where you want to prove that you were right, or want to prove the other person was wrong. That path is wrong.

The path where you want to first lead and then follow. Or first follow and then lead. Where blaming others is always the easy way out, or citing lack of guidance is your excuse. That path is wrong.

The path where you always lead because you are a leader. Or you always follow because you have to follow. Where you don’t ever challenge yourself to find the other side. That path is wrong.

That path is collapse.

Whenever you wonder about all that you could have done, it futile.

You can’t do it anymore.

And no amount of thinking or regret will change that.

Here are better questions to ask

What stopped me from doing it? (And do those things still exist in my life?)

What was it that I didn’t know back then? (And I know today?)

Regret will keep you in the past.

Reflection will bring you out of it.

To change any state of matter, energy is required.

That’s the law of thermodynamics that governs the world.

And that includes humans as well.

For us to move from one state to another will require energy.

For us to move from happiness to sadness or vice versa,

For us to move from risk aversion to risk friendliness and vice versa

For us to move from autocracy to democracy and vice versa

Will require energy

Mental energy

And mental energy drains us faster than physical energy

We give up much earlier than our bodies do

We resign to our circumstances much earlier than our muscles do

No wonder then – the world is collectively talking about work life balance.

Because the one at work is a different person than the one outside of work.

And that shift of state sucks is out of energy.

Thus the need to “balance”.

What we should really aspire for – is to work at a place where we can be who we are in real life.

If the state of matter continues, energy is not lost.

Do everything possible to find environments that do not change your state.

Instead, amplify them!

We all have opinions.

Opinions, based on our experiences, our upbringing, our past, people who we spend time with. Opinions based on our worldview.

And these opinions drives our judgement.

The problem arises when our opinions make us opinionated.

When we treat these opinions as facts.

And worse, when faced with a differing opinion, a differing view, we reject it instantly. Terming it as something that needs to be won over.

Something that needs to be destroyed.

But then, someone else’s opinion has also been shaped up their own experiences, their upbringing, their past, and through people they spend time with.

What if, instead of rejecting someone else’s opinion, we empathised with the context that formed their opinion?

What if, we tried to see what could have possibly shaped up this opinion?

“In my opinion” should be a way to present your opinion.

“I think i understand” should be a way to uncover someone else’s opinion.

“I think both can coexist” should be a way to not be overcome with our opinion.

I saw a political party calling the voters of the opposite party as stupid. That’s pretty dumb, considering they will need the very same “stupid” voters for a victory.

And herein lies the irony of most arguments.

They start with an intent of common ground, to share a common understanding, to convince by facts and figures of a truth they both agree upon.

But as the argument ensues, it quickly becomes a battle to speak, rather listen.

And we stop to realize that until we don’t have the two sides converge, there is no victory.

Telling someone they are wrong is never going to convince someone.

Telling someone they don’t see the point, is hypocritical.

Telling someone you will never understand, is you facing the mirror.

Winning an argument is possible only when both sides feel they have won.

You like pain but only if it doesn’t hurt too much

And you sit, and you wait, to receive

There’s an obvious attraction

To the path of least resistance in your life…

…‘Cause it’s easy not to
So much easier not to
And what goes around never comes around to you
To you, to you, to you, to you, to you

– Alanis (Wake Up)

The effort that it takes to go beneath the surface, to seek the truth, to appreciate the emotions, to hear a contrarian view

Is the difference between a life lived on lazy terms

And a life lived on your terms

Because the truth is – the lazy life isn’t our choice. It’s been dumped on us. By the average world around us. Seducing us towards it. By showing how thrilling the experience is right now. Why should you care about later?

The truth is – by living the lazy life you are living someone else’s life.

It’s easy not to do the hard work. And it’s easy to call it your choice.

Just that, it isn’t!

One can’t read a book. One can only reread it

– Vladimir Nabokov

Ever since I got back to reading book religiously, the above realization has been more than evident. Most books don’t offer much new. And the Pareto is massive.

A few books offer disproportionately high value.

And each time I go back to such books, it is amazing how much my current circumstance makes me see the same thing in a different light.

Or my new frame of reference makes me understand an abstract from before.

You realize, life is exactly the same.

Like books.

People, their stories, their experiences – are books.

And in one’s life – choosing the right books/people and retreading them, makes all the difference.

This means graduating from kindergarten books / school friends – to books of meaning / mentors.

And that means reading a lot of books / meeting a lot of people – before settling in on the ones you wish to reread.

In life, a library is the best place to chose. Not the best place to spend all your time.

Spend it with the few books that were written for you.

Spend it with the few people you can reread from.

The most visited page on the blog is my 6pack abs story.

And the most asked question is “which protein shake did you use?”

The answer is there in the blog.

But.

Welcome to the lazy web.

We read something. And we have questions.

And we ask those questions.

Without checking, if those questions have been asked already or not?

There is a high chance they have been asked already.

Yet, we will assume our question to be so important that we expect the writer to answer.

But the writer has got multiple of such questions. Several of them asking the same thing.

The writer has shared the answer already. And is now not likely to answer to your specific question.

Because the question has been answered. Does it really matter if it wasn’t “your” question that was answered?

That is how life behaves.

Most questions have already been asked.

And most answered have already been answered.

They are part of books, part of legends, part of history, part of someone’s experience.

They are part of the blog post called life.

And yet, we will keep asking the same questions.

Waiting for an answer.

Life is not a customer service helpline.

It’s an encyclopedia.

The hard work has to be done by us.