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When you run a company, things will go bad sometimes.
And when they come to the leader – the leader has two choices.

Either they deliver to people’s expectations and get aggressive.
Or they surprise everyone by being calm and then facing it.

When most people expect the former, the best leaders deliver on the latter.

The best part is, we all are leaders of our respective jobs, thus, when we are calm in the tough moments of our jobs, we are displaying the right leadership skills – irrespective of our title.

Calmness is leadership.
Since being calm is a choice, displaying calmness is a superpower.

The worst thing that would change your life for the worse forever.

Over time, it 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.

“I have done my work.
Just go through it.
And when there are errors, I will correct them.”

This is sadly one of the reasons most of us do not end up becoming linchpins.

Because instead of thinking about becoming indispensable, we end up leaving our work undone and filled with errors.

When our managers go through our work, instead of trusting it has been done well, they have to re-do it.

Perhaps re-do their definition of how responsible we are.

Our brand is built by what we do.
And if we leave our work for others to give a finishing touch to, that is the brand we are building on.

Our work is our signature.
So are our errors.

Once, a scientist put five monkeys in a cage.
He also put in a ladder, and on the top of the ladder, were some bananas.

One of the five monkeys casually climbs up the ladder and tries to take a banana.

At that moment, the scientist sprays the rest of the monkeys with water.
This scares them and they pull the first monkey down.

After a while, all the five monkeys stop climbing the ladder.
Because as soon as they do, the scientist sprays water on the rest of the monkeys.

Now the scientist interchanges one of the old monkeys from the cage with a new one.

This monkey sees the banana and tries to climb up the ladder.

But as soon as that happens, the rest of the monkeys pull him down, without even the scientist spraying them with water.

This monkey doesn’t know what happens if they take the banana.
He just knows that as soon as he begins to climb the stairs, he gets beaten up.

Piece-by-piece the scientist replaces all of the five monkeys.

Now the cage has five new monkeys.

They have no idea what would happen if they tried to climb the ladders, no idea what happened before them.

But if any one of the five monkeys try to climb the ladder, the rest of them pull it down.
No one knows why.
Except, that this is how things have worked.

Question everything that you do that doesn’t make sense.

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?

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.

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.

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.