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Don’t dismiss yourself before anybody else does.
Give yourself that chance.

Free yourself.

The one decision that will affect EVERY area of your life meaningfully is picking the right partner.

This is because, your partner affects:

– Your financial life:

To have the same financial goals and use money in similar ways makes life less about convincing and figuring out, and more about living it together.

– Your physical life:

Your workout habits, your eating habits, your binge-eating habits, your sleeping habits – all have a direct impact on how you live your life.

– Your emotional life:

Stability in your relationship with your partner will eventually determine how emotionally stable you are in every other relationship you have.

Making this one decision wisely will determine almost everything in your life, meaningfully.
Not to be made in haste :)

Several years back, I got a call from a current student of ISB.
“I have an offer from McKinsey and Google. I don’t know which one to choose. Can you help?”

I didn’t help. I just asked a question:

“What is the most important thing for you in life, right now?
Something so important, that you are willing to compromise on everything else?”

“Umm – learning. I want to be learning right now in life. Very important!”

“Fair. Is learning so important that you are willing to work in a shitty company with shitty pay and a toxic culture, but you get to learn A LOT?”

“NO! That sounds awful.”

“Then, learning is not the most important thing you want in life right now.
It is ONE of the things you want.
Think again.”

“Okay okay. It is money. I need money.
That’s important!”

“Fair. Is money so important that you are willing to work with a horrible boss, horrible work hours, you learn nothing, but it pays you A LOT?”

“No! That sounds awful.”

“Then, money is not the most important thing you want from life right now.
Think again.”

Here is the thing with us humans…

If we do not know what we truly want in life the most, at that point of time,
The next best thing that we want
Is
Everything!

We want everything.

A great pay. Great work-life balance. Great office. Great manager. Great colleagues. Great offsites. Great promotions. Great increments.

So we settle for something that we think offers all of that.
However, the one thing that we truly want from life, is left unattended.

“What is it that you want most from life right now?”

When I have gone into deep discussions with people about this, they have been mostly surprised at their own realisations.

It is ridiculous how many of us have never asked ourselves this question!
Thus, have no idea what it could be.

The best thing you can do is feed your soul with the one thing it craves for the most right now.

3 times life worked out for me luckily – and how you can set yourselves up for luck:

1) I didn’t make it to IIT after my Class 12th – because of which I went to Delhi University.
Which is where I met my future wife.

If I made it to IIT, I may have never met her!

2) I randomly met my batchmate from ISB one day.
He spoke about a new venture he had started.
I asked him if I could help, along with my day job.
He graciously agreed.

If I hadn’t met him that evening, I would have continued to wait for the “right moment”, to become an entrepreneur!

3) The lockdown was announced.
And my only income stream after I resigned from nearbuy – corporate talks – went to zero.
I had 5 months of money left in my bank.
My friend suggested I move these talks online.

If it wasn’t for that chat, I might have never realised the power of online teaching.

What started as blind luck changed character and ultimately moved to “luck from my unique character”.

We think of luck as something beyond our control.
Which makes us helpless to it.

Luck is something YOU can influence.

Sit down with yourself, reflect on your life and make a list of all the times where you “lucked out”.

Go back further, to see if there was anything you did to create the foundation for that luck – such as I did by having a network of batchmates at ISB.

Once you find it, that’s what you can do more of – as a habit.
You are now increasing your chances to get lucky.

We can’t determine what will work.

But of all the things that we do, one is bound to work.
And that will make all the difference!

Those who say that money is not important, are lying.
Money is VERY important!

May 2003

At the age of 50, my parents had decided to buy a house.
They had moved to Delhi 20 years back.
Made it home.

But they had no home to call their own.

Every 2-3 years, moving from one rented house to another, had tired them.
Physically and emotionally.

There was a house in Faridabad that caught their eye.
It would cost 10L.
Which was not a small amount, by any measure.
A loan of 8L was somehow arranged.

August 2004

Papa was fired from his job.
At 50, it was hard getting another one.

So, he decided to start on his own.

The business didn’t work so well.
Money wasn’t coming.
The EMIs had begun defaulting.

One day, he called me, checking if I had some money to spare.
I thankfully did.

“Yes Papa. I have money right now.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much.”
And as he said so, he broke down.

He was tired of how much money ruled over us almost all our life.

At that moment, I HATED MONEY.
I hated what money, or the lack of it, did to us.

Today, I believe we all have 2 lives.

One, that we spend earning the money that we need in life, to have enough.
Two, that we live once we have lived the first.

Money is important.

It buys you peace of mind.
It buys you health.
It buys safety.

But, at the same time, do not run after it endlessly.
Know how much is enough.

Around 28, I came up with that number. And have worked towards that.
Today I have it.
So, I do not need to run after it anymore.

Find that number for yourself.
And do not feel any shame, chasing that number.

And once you have it, live your second life.
Where you do not chase anything.
Except your inner voice.

You want a new job.
Or start your own business.
You want to get out of a relationship.
Or you want to lose weight.

But you’re unable to do any of these.
Not because you don’t want to.
Rather because you’re afraid.

Afraid of failure.
Maybe afraid of what people will say.
Afraid that they’ll make fun of you.

The question isn’t to avoid the unavoidable; the question is to ask yourself, “What is it that I’m afraid of?”

And when you do know what you’re afraid of, you can take the next step of getting comfortable with it. And taking action anyway.

Failure is discomforting.
Being comfortable with it makes the discomfort less scary.

We’ve all made mistakes.
We still do.
We will continue to.

However, the first mistake rarely brings any harm.

Ignoring the mistake and not learning a lesson from it causes real harm.

Because we’ve wasted a learning opportunity.
Because we might repeat the same mistake again.
Because we have let a life teacher go by without giving us a lesson.

Committing mistakes is not the mistake.
Not learning from them is.

What is the role that we define ourselves by?

Am I a Product Manager?
A painter?
An engineer?
A leader?

Society has trained us to believe that we should be just one thing in our life.

However, none of the successful people in history – from Michelangelo or Albert Einstein to Bill Gates did just one thing.

They did multiple things, and that helped them excel in the one thing we know them for.

What if our role was not limited to just one title?
What if we could do everything that nudged our emotions?
What if we made this possible?

We have just one life.
Why live it with just one identity?

Strengths are our trump cards.
We already have an edge over them.
They make us start ahead of everyone else.

Weaknesses are our jacks.

We will have to work more than everyone else to even be at par.

Then why is it that people are told to work on their weaknesses and not on their strengths?

Working on our strengths gives us a competitive advantage.
Working on our weaknesses doesn’t offer that; every bit is a struggle.

Strengths increase on the principle of compounding; so do our weaknesses.

Which one would you choose then?

When we only do what we were told to do, we own the output.

If anyone else gets that work done better, cheaper, faster than us – they would replace us.

Owning the output makes us dispensable

However, if we stopped and asked ourselves, “Why am I being told to do what I have been told to do?”, We will own not just the output, but the outcome as well.

Owning the outcome will surprise people each time we deliver stunningly more than what we were supposed to do.

Owning the outcome, instead of the output makes us indispensable.