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This is a story across 20 years, that I still can’t believe.

27th August 2002 - I took my first ever flight in my life.
It was for the USA.

Papa had to take a Rs. 55,000 loan to pay for the one-way ticket.

I still remember the scene at the Delhi airport.
My entire family had come to see me off.
Ruchi had come too.
Everyone was crying.
I was crying too.

But I was also excited.

This is what I had always dreamt of.
To go to the US for a fine education, become a space scientist, join NASA, land on Mars.
And that dream was finally coming true.

27th August 2022 - exactly 20 years to the day I left for Michigan State, the university confirmed me as a speaker for their alumni speaker series.

I spoke at the university this April.
Shared my journey with the current students.

19 years back, when I dropped out and came back to India, if someone had come up to me and said:

“Hey - I am from the future. And I have some exciting news for you.
In about 19 years, you will have more than 8M+ people following you on something really cool called social media.
You would have written two best selling books.
You will be invited by top companies to address their employees and motivate them.
Forget all of that - this very university that you are dropping out from, will call you back to address their students.”

I would have told the person to get a CT Scan :))

But here I am.
Living this life.
Not because I am the smartest person I know or the most hard working person I know.
I am living this life because I did not give up on myself.

A lot of you would be going through something similar in your lives.
A new company, a new city, a new career, a new relationship, or a new experience.
And it may not always turn out to be what you wanted it to be.

But that's not the end.
There is never any end, until the day we all die.

Up until that day, you have yourself.
And I wish for you to find that yourself, one day :)

Focus is something we choose for our own selves. For the life that we have chosen. Our career. Focus makes us accountable.

But there is another perk of that focus: The right kind of focus leads us to stop focusing on what others are doing wrong, and start looking for where they are going right.

Owning your game does not allow you to question someone else’s.

Happiness is not about experiencing something new or something exciting.

It is continually experiencing what you already have, in different ways.
And this also means that happiness is rarely about doing more.

Instead, it is about having the time, space and wisdom to appreciate what you already have.

A lot of us do not want to live by the conventional route.

We want to explore and challenge ourselves.
But our fears hardly let that happen.

What if I fail in singing?
What would I tell my parents if I couldn’t earn as much as Sharma ji’s son?
What would my friends say when they know I have left my job to start up?

However, what if we used our power to think for ourselves?

What if people end up loving my music?
What if my parents would be happier seeing me happy?
What if my friends draw inspiration from my example?

We don’t know what the result will be.
But if we don’t try, we won’t ever know our own selves.

If we were given a chance to peek into our future, we’d certainly not miss it.

What if we knew that the way we live our days is setting up our foundation for our future?

This also enables us to change our past, because the present of today is the past of the future.

The best way to change the future lies in the present.

Your perception of the past will change as you do.

And if you can change your past, through your perception, you can undo all the chains that have tied you down so far.

We are nervous.
Anxious about what people would think.
Scared of not making it through.

The worst part is - this vicious cycle continues for every instance of life.

No matter how much we try, we can’t tame the mind to stop overthinking.

What if, this time we started accepting instead of resisting it?
What if we continued despite the truth?

What if we started feeding our mind the truth we want it to manifest?

We can either hear the stories our mind tells us, or tell our mind the stories we want to hear.

We often want to make overnight changes.
But that won't work.
Because our body and mind resists change.
So we have to trick our body and mind.
By making the change happen slowly.

For example:

You wake up at 8am and want to wake up at 6am instead?
Setting the alarm clock for 6am will work for a few days, until it doesn't.

Instead:

Set the alarm for 7:50am (10 mins earlier than usual).

Acclimatise your body and mind to this small change.
Will take 2-3 weeks.
Post that, another small change.

Alarm for 7:40am
Repeat.

Then 7:30am.
Repeat.

Over a period of a few months, you would get to a routine of 6am!

The cool kid will always have opinions of you.
The boring kid within you will ache to do anything to get their validation.
It is going to be fascinating to leave who you are and be what they are.

Except, that isn't success.
If changing yourself could bring you friends, they aren’t friends.
If being someone else could bring you closer to people, it is always a wiser choice to stay alone.

Success is a relationship you have with yourself.
If you know who you are and where you are going, you are successful.

The worst thing that would change your life forever isn't the worst thing.

Like every good thing that doesn’t make us excited forever, so do the bad things lose their power over time.

Time is not only a great healer, it also makes you aware of better things.

Everything is temporary.
And that’s a wonderful thing to begin with.