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Most of us consider investments to be something that generate huge returns in monetary terms.
Bonds, stocks, crypto, etc., are great examples.

Some investments do not give monetary results. But they give equal rather far more value than money.

Spending time with family.
Working out.
Meditation.
Reading books.
Spending time with yourself.

The investments that do not look like generating money, are the investments that do generate the most money!

1. Doing difficult things. Even when you don’t feel like doing them. You can earn decently and have your pleasures even when you don’t do difficult things. But an easy life hardly becomes a happy life.
2. Living by your own definition of success and failure. So that when you succeed, it is on your own terms. When you fail, you know where to close the gap towards getting successful.
3. Not caring what others think of you. The burden of others’ opinions is not for you to carry. Carrying your own life is in itself an act of courage. Carrying other’s opinions is in itself an act of cowardice. Knowing the difference, is superpower.

We often think we have to be cut from a different cloth, in order to become the top 1% of the world.
Hardly wondering, that we have to focus on creating and living in a cloth created by ourselves, and we have already won 99% of the battle.

When people get happy by seeing me on Instagram Live, here is what I really intend to do: Listen to them. Listen to their stories. Listen to where they belong. And just be myself.

As weird as it may sound, I am not talking to a follower. I am simply talking to a human being.

And that makes all the difference.

To be human is what makes human connections.
The happy truth of life, that most of us sadly forget.

Show up anyway.
We all have seasons and reasons why things are not working out.

However, those who work even when they are out and about, eventually work things out.

A lot of managers make the classic mistake of letting their empathy for their team ruin their team’s performance.

Which means, if a team member is not delivering quality work, delivering it with delay, or is not behaving in a manner that is in alignment with the core team values, but because the leader has empathy for the team mate, they hold back that feedback.

Unmindful of the fact, that holding back feedback also means holding back their growth.

If you want someone to grow, you will have to have the courage to tell them the uncomfortable truth.
They might not hug you back immediately. But they will thank you back, eventually.

When the market is going bearish, the biggest fear people have is that the past and the present money they have made is going to the ruins in the future.

When we face a relationship turmoil, we fear our trust of the past and the present going to ashes, with a fear of bleak future.

When we are not performing well in a job, we think our past reputation and present actions are of no use, with zero hopes of a stronger career ahead.

Whenever we fear something, we fear not only loss of the future, but also the past and the present.
Thus, the fear is a construct of walking to the future with emptiness.
And that drains us.

A good way to deal with that future would be to have more objective conversations with yourself, if what you are believing is actually true. A lot of the times we are healed through conversations with a therapist, however, if we do not have the right conversations with ourselves, we might have to land to a therapist for the clutter we carry.

Fear is real. So are your conversations of how you deal with it.
Choosing wisely is the distance between who you could be, and who you couldn’t, because of fear.

I recently shared a post about life lessons for 20s – something that I share quite often.

A reader asked: How about those in their 30s?

For me, I still use them at 40!

Life lessons remains the same. The way we perceive them, changes. And we get deeper at the same lessons :)

The reason we procrastinate is because we think we have time.

Let me explain:

Let’s say you have a college assignment to submit a week later.
And your default is to start working on the deadlines.
Because of which, the quality of your work suffers.
So does your sleep cycle and your productivity.

Thus, when we think we have time, we are essentially putting the onus of letting the last moment overcome the progress of small wins. Which ultimately makes us lose.

Seneca says, it is not much about what you bear, rather how you bear it.

It is not much about what is it you have to work on, rather how you work on it systematically.

We often talk about a team building trust with their leader, however, that is a direct reflection of how a leader builds trust.

Here’s how:

• By knowing that they don’t speak ill of any member in the team.
• By making sure to be there for the team members when they need them.
• By being honest in what they do and who they are.
• By not being a superman, and showing when they are figuring life out.
• By being someone who respects people for who they are and where they are coming from, instead of imposing their own choices and beliefs.

A leader builds trust by not considering them as a head, rather a part of the team.

1. Setting distraction time – it distracts me away from distractions, when I am working.
2. Saying no. A lot. Because I want to sleep on time.
3. I meditate. Because I know who I am, it lets me let go of what isn’t serving me.

To let distractions come in, is a choice. A choice, that we get to make all of the time.