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You see a video and feel inspired.
What if you hadn’t seen that video?

You read a book and feel inspired.
What if you hadn’t read the book?

You meet someone and feel inspired.
What if you hadn’t met that person?

When we leave inspiration to chance, it leaves all those things that depend on our inspiration to chance as well.

What if we made inspiration a discipline?
What if we showed up to it daily instead of serendipity to bring it to us?
What if that consistency made it impossible for inspiration to escape us?

Inspiration isn’t just a choice.
It’s a habit that shows up when practised daily.

He was the topper of our school.
The teachers loved him.
The kids adored him.
And that included me as well.

He was tall, really tall.
Maybe 6’2″?
And he had really long hair.
Which, I thought, added to the enigma that he was.

I remember one day, I asked him, “How come you have such long hair?”
It was a stupid question.
An excuse, frankly.
To speak to him.
He replied, “In the time I go to the barber’s shop, I can complete one more chapter for the exam. So I don’t bother.”

I remember, standing there stunned, in awe.
Admiration.
So busy with pursuing his goal that he couldn’t care less about these trivial things in life.
THIS IS SUCCESS, I told myself.

And for the next decade, I followed that definition of success.
Being busy. Being productive. Ignoring the trivial things in life.
Blocking my day, every single hour.
As if I wanted to impress him – my invisible teacher.

And then the definition of success changed.

For the next decade, I spent all my time with people, as a leader, a manager.
Trying to help them get better at their work.
Their trivial things became my job.
That became my success. Their success.

Today, I don’t want to be busy.
Boredom gives me joy.
Looking at a free calendar gives me joy.
The trivial things give me joy.

It is okay to have a definition of success that keeps changing.
While the presence of success or the desire of it can be constant, its definition needn’t be.
It’s okay if it changes for you.

What is NOT okay is to know that something is not your success anymore, and yet continuing on the path.

You are jealous of how much they earn.
The vacation they took.
The home they bought.

We are jealous of what others have and we don’t.

And we tell ourselves, “If we somehow could get what they have, life would become better.”

But that isn’t true.

Because we don’t just get part of someone’s life. We get their ENTIRE life.

The stress.
The lack of privacy.
The constant scrutiny.
The intense pressure.

People’s lives are not modular. We can’t choose the parts we like.
If we are jealous of them, we should be ready to take on their entire life.

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.

“Your content is really inspirational.
I also want to create content.
However, I feel I have nothing to share..”

This is the fear of a lot of people struggling to create content online.

We are constantly thinking what we know isn’t good enough.
What we do isn’t cool enough.
What we have accomplished isn’t attractive enough.

And so we do not share.
Thus allowing someone else’s content to come out.
Someone else who believed their work was good enough.

Sharing what you know isn’t about what you know.
It is about how you feel about yourself.

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.