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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. 

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

It’s a big thing, because maybe you’ve been betrayed.
Maybe your 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 we are 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, but 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.

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?”

She said, “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 it’s worth striving for.
Because being the opposite isn’t worth it.

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.

Sara Blakely is a tremendously successful businesswoman. 

Someone asked her, what do you attribute your success to?

She said, “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. 

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. 

That is when we truly get old.

We grow old when we refuse to embrace the new.

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.

Comfort is a trap.
It’s worth sacrificing – for your happiness and for your growth.
It sadly seduces us into believing that we don’t need to try.

However, one comfort is worth always living with: Comfort in your own company.

The world is designed to tell us to hang around people, be like them, talk like them, and do everything that makes us fit in. 

Finding comfort in your own company and growing your relationship with yourself is the only comfort to forever strive for.

We are with our friends. Yet we feel bad at the end of the conversation.
They care for us. Yet something doesn’t feel right.

We are there for them in thick and thin.
Yet we don’t see them happy when we are.

Too often, we are surrounded by beautiful toxicity in the form of friends.

People who are there for us sometimes, yet make us feel bad every time.
People who are themselves, yet never respect us for who we are.

Who you are is priceless.

In Abilene Paradox, a group decides to do something that no one in the group wants to do because everyone mistakenly assumes they’re the only ones who object to the idea and don’t want to rock the boat by speaking up.

Strange how much of our life is driven by simply fitting in.

Not speaking up is wise, if it is just to speak.
However, it isn’t wise not to voice our concerns, if only we wonder what others would think.

Sometimes, speaking up helps someone else as well, along with your own voice being heard. 

Isn’t that precious?