When any new team member joins my team wariCrew for the first time, here are the most important life lessons they learn:

1. Their job is not to prove anyone wrong. Their job is to do their job right.

2. There is no such thing as “one person” better than other. There is more than enough for everyone to win.

3. You win only when you make your team win. No exceptions.

4. Feedback is there to make you grow. No one is playing conspiracy theories against you.

5. You are trusted from Day 1. Access to a shared team drive. Stipend credit. Our in-house software access. All of them. You only have to screw up badly in order to lose that trust. 

Which one of these was the most surprising to you?

Love is not a can of Coke – that you can have only when it is around.

Love is like a text message – whose emotions you can feel even when the sender is not around.

Being loved only when you are around is not love. It’s convenience.

True love in all relationships stays true even in all false situations.

What makes you fulfilled in a conversation?

Is it showing others where they were wrong?
Or is it walking with them to show that you both could be right together?

It is the easiest to do the first one. Takes zero effort. Instant dopamine kick.

The second one requires to take off the mask of “I am right” and use that as an opportunity to connect with another human being.

Human beings are wrong most of the time. That includes us as well. Most of the time.

To choose to not prove someone else wrong, is the beginning of being right.

Look around you.
Everyone is walking with some goal, some target, some destination in mind.

Finish your education by 22.
Get a job by 25.
Get married by 27.
Have kids by 30.
Buy a house by 35.
Get that fancy car, that vacation, that watch, that phone, that bank balance, that status, that position, that dream thing, by XX.

And you know what happens because of that?

You are constantly under stress.
Not because you can’t hit the target.

It is because you think you will not hit the target BY THAT TIMELINE.

It is NOT the actual goal that creates stress in our life, it is hitting that goal within that timeline that creates stress.

Start because you want to enter a new world.
Not because you want to escape your current one.

Start because you want to see how far you could go.
Not because you want to show it off to someone else.

Start because you cannot live without thinking of it.
Not because you don’t want to live in your current job.

Start because you know you will be able to manage starting up.
Not because you are unable to manage your current life.

Start because you want to do it.
Not because everyone else is doing it.

We are proceeding for our team quarterly offsite next weekend.

While it is a lot of fun, it is a LOT of hard work for the entire team to plan in advance, so that none of us are working during those 4 days.

This is an example of how we start planning more than one month in advance, so that EVERYONE in the team is synchronized with each other.

Planning your work is hard.
Coordinating with others is harder.
Doing so without disrupting the existing process is hardest. 

Which is what we practise, every single quarter :)

This is a question I ask all my guests on my podcast.

Ritviz, the singer, shared that his learnings of life are most expensive.

Such a brilliant answer!

Your time buys you things more expensive than money.

“What are you most worried about?”
“That I will keep repeating my patterns and won’t put in the work required!”

AW: “And what can you do to break that pattern?”
“Study and not overthink.”

AW: “And do you think you can do that?”
“I’ve been trying for one year and got no real progress…”

You see what happened there?

When the person said, “I am going to study and not overthink,” it did not cost any effort.
And it gave them a sense of hope.

However, that was false.

Because they had been doing it already for a year and nothing had worked.
So why would it, now?

The solution?

Don’t set resolutions, goals, or targets.

Take the smallest step possible – to set habits.
Once something becomes a habit, we dispense the least amount of energy to do the task.

Habits hire us and take us higher.
Targets tame us and often leave us clueless, in the absence of habits.

Time
Family
Experiences
Heated home during winters
Cold home during summers
Education for kids
Facilities for ageing parents

Few of the priceless things money buys.

You are wrong.
You did this wrong.
You said this wrong.
This was not done well.
You are always wrong.

The vicious cycle to what the world says as “wrong” will continue forever. Even when you have done the right thing.

What’s important is not what the world says is wrong.
What’s important is what you know is not wrong. And you stay true to the right.