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Of the many lies we were sold as kids (and upon growing up), this one always triumphs:

Something is better than nothing.
Selling a part of your soul is better than your soul making no money.

Except that when we are empty, we feel our truest emotions.

It is in solitude and standing for what we want, that we discover what we would never tolerate.

It is in the side-tracked lines of rat-race with the world that we discover we were not in a race with them in the first place!

And that’s not bad.
That’s liberating.

When we are busy with “something”, we never get the nothingness to be lost.
When we are tired of “nothing”, we discover who we truly are.

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 it isn’t a 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.

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

1. Either they deliver to people’s expectations and get aggressive.
2. 2. 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.

We live in a trust deficient society.

Conditioned not to trust the delivery boy, the vegetable vendor or even the people in our team and our family.

Almost everyone operates like this.

Until one day, you decide to start from the other end: begin with trust.

Trust people for what they say.
Trust them with their choices.
Trust them to own the problem instead of pointing out. 

And you’ll be baffled by how beautifully things have turned out to be!
Most of the time, they will keep your trust. 

However, if they don’t, it always helps to look at the stats of who did keep up to the trust instead of going against it. 

The numbers would still nudge you to never stop trusting!

If people betray your trust, it always helps to leave people instead of leaving who you are.

When we were growing up, we were never taught self love.

More than anything else, we were sadly made to feel guilty if we didn’t make others a priority.

This conditioning led to a habit where we have forgotten how to love ourselves.

If only we realised that the best gift we could give others is to show them how to love themselves.

It will help them see themselves in the right light.
And that’s priceless!

We can love others only if we learn how to express that pious emotion to our own selves.

“I wanted to pursue this course but now it doesn’t make me happy.
But I loved this, so doing anything else won’t make me happy either.”

This is a standstill most people arrive at, and they believe it is just that they don’t like it.

While the truth is, that the middle of everything is going to be messy. 

Things would look stagnant, self doubt will arise and others’ success will generate massive self doubt in you.

What helps in such situations is, having cognizance of daily progress and having a set schedule of habits that help you get there. 

When goals give up, process and progress protect you. 

It is one of the best addictions humans have had and the addiction that saves so many dreams of humans.

“No one has done this before.
You should do what everyone else is doing.
Don’t colour outside the lines.”

Ever since we began to understand language, we have been given instructions on what to do! 

Except that we were rarely told why.
Because of which it never made sense.

Why not do what makes sense to us?
Why not live our own path?

It is going to be difficult to resist the world, however, you wouldn’t be a photocopy of what anyone else ought to be. 

And that’s priceless!

Your life path is yours for a reason: for you to not be a template of anyone else’s. 

Competition could sometimes get bad.
And suck a lot of our valuable energy.

What we were supposed to expend on ourselves is now going towards bringing others down, even if unconsciously. 

What if we focussed only on our journey?

Even if others were in the same range, what if we put blinders on and never peeped into someone else’s track?

The energy that is going to be saved is phenomenal.
What we expend on ourselves will help us even further.

To get to a place of zero competition, it never fails to be you.
Because everyone else is already taken!