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Our friends and family.
Our colleagues.
Our acquaintances on social media. 

We love to keep everyone happy.
If they aren’t happy, that’s because of us.

“I should not have said that.
I am not balancing work and family.
I am responsible for their sadness.”

Except, it’s false. 

No matter how much we “sacrifice” for someone else, happiness is always an inside job.

How do we operate when no one is watching?
What’s a complete no-no, even if it is an immediate gain for us?
Do we want others to win, or is it just a sole game in a team?

Values aren’t something that we just write and let it be there. Values are who we are, something that we would never compromise on. 

When things fall apart and values don’t, it means we are on the right track. More than anything else, we know we are practising them right when others know us through those.

Our values are our foundations. While it is lucrative to work on the building, nothing keeps the building stable if there isn’t a foundation. 

In almost every organisation, there are grapevines.
People who think how work should be done, how others are doing it, and how it serves as a platform for them to gossip.

The sad part is, sometimes it affects the people who aren’t a part of that grapevine.
It leads them into believing that their worth is determined by how cool they are to be a part of that group, and not 

Except, that’s false.

Our worth is determined by what we control, our input, that is our work.
What others think is something we can never control.

A great way to level up is to remind yourself what you can control.
Somehow, everything else you cannot control loses its importance.

The society has categorised a profit making entrepreneur as successful and the one who does not, as failure.

However, that is the definition of society. Something that is rarely correct.

True success is having the courage to build something from scratch. True success is getting out of your own self to solve a problem. True success is living by your own stories of success and not the ones the world has imposed on us since childhood.

There’s no such thing as failure. The very act of going for entrepreneurship by leaving the life of comfort is in itself the biggest success.

To go for the career of your choice. It’s risky.
To choose your happiness over society’s validation. It’s risky.
To leave the comfort and chart for new territories. It’s risky

Of course it is risky. But isn’t not taking that risk a bigger risk?

Anger is an unhealthy emotion. So we want to control it. However, when it arrives, it arrives in a wave sweeping all our resolutions away.

No matter how much you resist it, anger wins each time.

The key is in not resisting it. 

Yes, you read that right. Don’t resist anger. Rather spend time with it. 

“Why do I feel what I feel?
Which need of mine is unmet?
Why am I letting my denial take over where I could have an open mind rather than being a sceptic?”

As we answer these questions honestly, there would be no need to resist anger. 

Because then it won’t arise in the first place.

The extreme emotions are usually a result of not spending time consistently with our own selves.

Two mantras of life I live by, that I recently told my team:

1. Never complain: Never. Ever. Even if it is the worst day of your life to date. It robs us of our power and tricks us into believing that we don’t have any.
   
2. Trust: Trust people for what they say. Living life with that sense of awe and wonder, to never let doubt creep in. If someone else’s lies comfort them, what’s the point for us to be discomforted by that?

Two extremes. Never and always. 

When you take care of never complaining and always trusting, the balance that forms in between takes care of everything else.

We keep running after work experience. 

We think it will make us better at what we do.
But experience comes with its own baggage — a blind belief that what we know is what is right.

However, it is the maturity of realising that we are constantly learning, that things are constantly changing, and what we know today might not work tomorrow.

A truly experienced person knows when to use and when to challenge that experience. 

We have this habit of checking the strength of our relationships, every now and then.
“Let’s see if they can be trusted.”

The minute we test it, we break it.
It is either earned or established through conduct.
It’s not to be tested.

To test trust, is to not have it.

IQ, aka how smart you are, once used to be the biggest determinant of success. 

Then came the EQ.
Empathising with people made us better leaders and effective communicators.

The world evolved and everything around us is now designed to attract our attention.
Thus, making it priceless for the ability to devote our 100% attention without being distracted. 

It’s not the IQ; it’s not the EQ; it’s not their combination either.
The ability to focus is the most significant determinant of success.