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Wake up.

Read your slack and email notifications.

Curse your boss in your mind.

Hate your job.

Get up and get ready for the day.

Sit to work with a fake smile.

Gossip with coworkers.

Blame the management and the system.

Do mediocre work.

Don’t fulfil your commitments.

Wind up for the day.

Bingewatch for next 3 hours.

Fall asleep with TV on.

Do nothing to work on your passion project. 

If this is the life you are living, when are you going to take the first step to changing your life, my friend?

Lines are good. We all stood in them in the school assembly.

And then we grew up.

To go to college. And then office.

But the lines still existed. In a coffee shop. In an airport check-in gate. In a metro.

With only one difference: Our teachers were not there anymore, to ask us to maintain discipline and be a civilised human being. And then, our real selves popped out.

Some of us were still patient.
Others went on to break the lines and get a privilege.
Others went on to create a stampede.
Some even went ahead with cursing and hitting each other.

And more often than not, whenever we were not patient, we used to think that the system is incorrect, for making us wait in such long lines.

Little did we realise, that whenever we are forced to be at a place where we have the slightest discomfort, it reveals who we are loud and clear.

Same is about waiting in a line.

Who you are, while waiting in a line, is who you truly are.

1. Spend time with people nothing like you. So that it opens up your mind.
2. Build a routine. So that it gives you the discipline to do the things you should be doing.
3. Workout. To respect your body and keep it productive and fit.

What else would you add?

Stop seeking attention.
Stop seeking validation.
Stop seeking goals that you never wanted in the first place.

When you stop seeking what is only an external metric but drains you from within, that is when you truly grow and start fulfilling yourself.

The best growth rarely happens from seeking meaningless things.

DDLJ is one of the most popular movies in the history of Indian cinema.

No wonder, almost every person I know loves that movie.

However, there is one favourite scene of mine from the movie, which a lot of people tend to forget.

It is about Simran’s (Kajol’s) grandmom, when she unexpectedly is bedridden, and perhaps won’t be around for long. In that scene, when everyone is surrounding her, she says a line that has forever stayed with me:

I have lived a good life.

This is what is a life truly lived.
Living a life on your own terms.
Living a life that even when the whole world was against you, you lived a life that you found was meaningful.

Live a life that you are proud of. Everything else will take care of itself.

How to deal with failure?

Fail often.

Not the kind of failing in exams, or making a disastrous life decision.

Rather the smallest of things.
Asking a stranger for money.
Greeting a stranger in the elevator.
Sending that cold email to the CEO of the company you want to work with.

Worst case? You will fail.

Great. That is the intention.

However, in it will you understand how to build the muscle of dealing with failure. Which is what you were looking for – how to deal with failure.

I am right.
What I did was right.
I am always doing the right thing.

Vs

I could have been wrong.
Let me know the truth versus figuring who is right and who is not.
There is more power in knowing the right thing to do, than to know who is right.

Smart people, when they start doing the right thing versus trying to be the right person, is when they eventually become wiser.

There are a lot of nice people.
Nice because being nice is nice.
Nice because they want you to think nice of them.
Nice because who wants to not be nice and be a bad person.

And then there are truly kind people.
Who truly care, without wondering if others think they are nice or not.
Who be the bigger person in every conversation.
Who want everyone to win, together.

Anyone can be nice. But the truly nice people, are also kind.

It is what you feel within.

For what it has made you.

And for what you have become.

Achievement is rarely something that is to be shown. It is only a feeling.

It ceases to be an achievement if the only purpose of it is to show off to people.