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As a kid, we may not be given everything.
Maybe we didn’t have all the love in the family.
Maybe we did not go out like all other kids.
Maybe we were denied that shiny lunchbox.

However, what we got was something more special: the ability to appreciate everything.
And when we did get everything that we couldn’t as a child, it made us realise its value even more.

Not having everything is the biggest luxury of childhood. 

When something bad happens, everyone says they’re in a lot of pain.
However, this pain that you are going through — only you can truly feel it.
No one else can.

Only you know what’s going on with you.
Everyone else sees the world through their own biased lens.

It is your pain.
It is your journey.
And it is only your understanding.

Social media.
Junk food
Video games
Alcohol
Drugs

Are these the biggest additions?

We are not addicted to these things.
We are addicted to the feelings that these things generate.

And all addictions generate a feeling of comfort.
Which makes us numb. 

When we are addicted to comfort, we don’t get comfortable with failure.
Instead we get comfortable with what we have.

When we are addicted to comfort, we don’t get comfortable with risk.
Instead we get comfortable with safety.

When we are addicted to comfort, we don’t get comfortable with challenges.
Instead we get comfortable with appreciation. The biggest addiction is comfort.
Because we don’t change and challenge ourselves anymore.

When we are real and vulnerable on social media, we are inevitably going to face haters.
And they might end up saying things that affect us..

Whenever that happens, here’s a question to ask ourselves: “Would we go to them for their advice when we need it?”

If we wouldn’t take their advice for anything, it certainly doesn’t make sense to take their hate seriously. 

Negativity coming your way isn’t your choice.
You taking in the negativity certainly is.

A kid is told “no” 400 times a day while growing up.  

So as we morph into adults, that behavior gets reflected in everything that we do. It results in “no” being our default response to everything.

This has never been done.
Are you crazy?
What’s going on in your mind that you’re thinking of doing this?

What was taught to be shameful in childhood, might not be the reality.
When we question everything that we think is shameful, we might realize most of those things aren’t.

Our energy gets drained.
Enthusiasm lowers each time.
There is no feeling of being cared for.

These are the experiences we have with some of our friends. 

However, we were not born into those relationships. We chose them.
Since we chose them, we can also choose to get out of them. 

This isn’t mean or narcissistic. This is to save yourself from misery forever. When we take energy-draining people out of our lives, we stand up to appreciate ourselves. And that’s an act of self-love.

It’s okay to fire your friends.
If we don’t, we are firing our energy, our optimism.

More than two decades back, the society revered the ones with high IQ.

Over time, it began giving higher importance to mastering our emotions, and understanding them in others. 

So EQ became the in-thing.

However, there is a third important thing beyond both of these: focus.

The top minds in the world today are working towards just one thing: your focus.

A tag in the Slack overflow.
An important WhatsApp notification.
A story “mention” on Instagram.
Someone tagged you on Facebook.

Beautiful ways to make you realise you are important.
While nothing is more important than your focus.

If you have the ability to sit and work on one thing at hand for 60, 30 or even 5 minutes at stretch, you have the biggest asset in this world: focus.

Our intelligence and emotional mastery is relevant, only when we have learnt the art of focusing on the subject at hand. 

Focus is the new IQ.

How do we respond when we are hurt?
Do we blame the person who did that to us?
Or carry the baggage of that hurt forever?

Here’s a simple question to ask:
“What is this trying to tell me?” 

We’d probably get nowhere getting to the root cause of hurt.
However, understanding the lesson behind each hurt and failure grows us tremendously. 

When hurt, ask for the lesson. Not the reason!

We work really hard.
Give up on all pleasures.
Sacrifice valuable family time.

All in order to get to our goals. 

Unfortunately, sometimes we are not able to make it.
Our dreams are shattered.
So does our hope go for a toss.

And sometimes, we do achieve our goals.
Of all the things we had been struggling hard for, one day they become a reality. 

And when they do, we find ourselves asking the questions: 

Now what?
What’s next?
Is that all how success feels?

Not getting to life’s goals is tragic, however, getting there is equally tragic.

When the ink in the pen gets over, we keep the pen under the tap to clean it.

And that’s a messy process. Ink all over. More than you thought there is. 

However, after that, the pen is absolutely clean.
Ready to write again with the newly-filled ink.

Any clean up process in life will be messy. 

But as much as we would want to avoid that mess, it is only after that mess that we will see something more beautiful emerging at the end. 

It is not the mess during a clean up that we should fear.
It is avoiding the mess that we should fear.