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In a meeting.
In a 1:1.
While in a class.
While watching a YouTube video .
While reading a book.

Our mind consumes so much information, that it wants to use it.

The only issue – it remembers only what it repeats.
For which it needs to write stuff.
Thus, taking notes.

Note taking is the easiest way to get things from intention to action. And that’s wisdom.

Do you feel you have drifted away from your friends?

I understand how that feels.
I have experienced it myself.

However, the truth is that you WILL drift apart from your friends.
They will find their paths and so will you.
Because of one simple truth – each one of us has a different growth rate. 

We could have started from the same point in life, and even if there was a difference in the growth rates it would not be visible early on.
But as time passes by, the gap widens.
Until you realise you have become two different people! 

So if you hear your friend repeatedly saying ‘You have changed’, every time you meet, the fact is it is them that haven’t changed. 

Which is when you would know it is time to move on.

Continue to be friends with those who love seeing you grow.

“Dear Sir/Ma’am”
“To whomsoever it may concern”
“Greetings of the day”

These are great starting lines of an email/message.
Because I get to know instantly I should avoid them! 

Humans do not talk like that :)

Send your cold emails, like a human would. Not a robot!

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.