Carrying a brick. Somehow, let's say, you get to know that there's a brick in your bag as you are trekking. You have momentum now, you know you can carry the brick. And to remove the brick, you will have to stop, get the bag down, open it, find
Rabbit holes. Learning is like going into a rabbit hole. One thing leads to another, and you keep going deeper and deeper. Over time, you just know things. You don't know how. And, much like Alice, you end up in Wonderland.
Getting back on the highway. If we take a detour, the detour can easily turn into a rabbit hole. We want to go back to driving fast to where we were going. But now we are lost. It requires intent and persistence to get back to where you were going before you lost your way.
Almost daily. If you want to do something daily, start with almost daily. Almost daily is doable. And soon daily would happen effortlessly.
The generosity of No. It's obviously hard to get a no. That's what stops us most of the time. But it's even harder to say it. It takes emotional labour and massive generosity to do this. Sometimes, the door you are knocking on is not the right one,
Hidden wisdom. Suffering is the body's mechanism to guide you towards something you need to do. Hunger is a suffering mechanism. When the body needs food, you feel restless. Until you eat something nourishing. So are thirst, tiredness, and fatigue. The central nervous system is significantly more intelligent than the
Low battery. What do you do when your phone tells you it's running out of battery? One, you put it in the low power mode. The phone itself starts using battery judiciously until it's put on charge. And two, more importantly, you are conscious of how you use
Too many pivots. Pivots are good at the beginning of a project. This is when they are cheaper compared to later. When an architect is designing a building, a pivot is just erasing a line and drawing it again. Seth calls this the thrashing phase of a project. Most of us though skip
Ignoring the compass. When you are navigating through maps, as long as you follow the path, nothing much happens. But when you miss a turn or take a wrong one, the voice keeps nagging you to get back on track. This is how the body compass works, too. When you move towards things
BAE. I wasn't aware of this, but it's trendy to call your loved one BAE, which stands for "before anyone else". Things that don't stop surprising me. But what about your other BAE? The thing you'd do before anything else. The
Deciding... The decision-making process isn't passive. You sit down. You write down what's in front of you. You see the possibilities and the probabilities. And you decide. That's it. What elongates the process indefinitely is fear, is wanting to not choose, is wanting to stay
Delaying happiness. "Do your homework first. Then you can go out to play." What if we did the opposite? What if we choose to play first? What if we choose not to delay happiness? The sad truth is that we learn to delay happiness so much that we forget what
Who am I to? This one question stops us in our tracks. We hide, shy away, vanish into thin air. We mellow down our desires. We trim our feedback. We shrink ourselves down. But who does that help? How does that make things better? How does that bring a smile to anyone's
Avoiding ownership. That's where we get stuck. Whether it is our career, our relationships or our life, ownership is always there for the taking. And once we take it, we are in charge. And that's scary. As Uncle Ben said, "With great power comes great responsibility"
Zoomed out. Google Maps shows you the complete path from here to there when you ask for directions. It's helpful. It tells you the overall lay of the land and by when you would reach. But you can't drive in that view. Driving requires the next action view.
What's changing this time? If you keep doing what you have been doing, why do you expect the results to be different? What's changing this time? Not that you'd work harder, or better, or be more disciplined. But how's this a new experiment? Scientists do this all the
The perfect idea. That's what you might be waiting for. The idea that will just work. That will not get rejected. That won't need any change. The one that all the devil's advocates would nod to. The perfect idea might be perfect, but it's an
Changing the culture. It's tempting to want to do that. Changing the way everyone behaves. And sometimes the change is worth fighting for. Though it might require persistence over years to make it happen. If it feels right, that might be the path for you. The other choice, though, is choosing
Setbacks. Setbacks rarely happen when you are sitting at home and waiting. It's only when you make an assertion and move forward that they show up. A setback is a sign that you are on the right track. The best response to a setback is to step forward.
Play to win. No one plays to lose. We play to win. But play to win puts the focus on the win, away from the play. Play to play allows us to lose on the way to becoming better. Over time, play to play always wins.
Seeing the water. There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over
Off mode. On mode is effective only when you have an off mode. Sleeping well makes the body more effective. A vacation makes our work more effective. Resting makes workouts more effective. We are living more and more in an always on world. And that's making us less and less
What would they think? "What would they think?" - The actions and decisions of the social self are mostly based on this one question. They could be one person or many. The essential self rarely asks this. It asks "What feels right to me?" and then calmly moves in that
On sale. The sale in the garment stores seems to be about you getting a discount or the store moving the inventory. But it's more about putting on a show. The sale is for these two weeks. You either buy and take advantage or you miss out. Things that are
