I'm not sure. It's actually easy to say, "I'm sure this is going to happen". The truth is that we are never sure. It's just that it takes a lot of emotional labour to see the alternatives, to see how the thing we are sure
Managing the day. When we leave the task of managing and prioritising the day to the last minute mind, it creates havoc. It leaves the important things pending and indulges in the time-sinking activities which bring our energy down. It's the equivalent of leaving the home for a toddler to manage.
Tackling overwhelm. It's not easy to do that in your head. The brain has not evolved to tackle multiple stimuli and hold them in place. For the brain, an unexpected stimuli is a survival threat that activates fight, flight or freeze mode instantaneously. It does not say, "Oh, I
Abundance breeds abundance. And scarcity breeds scarcity. When we show up with a scarcity mindset, we try to hold onto what we have. We see the world from a fixed perspective and every interaction becomes a zero sum game. We win when you lose. On the other hand, abundance is beautiful and it
Upstream or downstream? Should you go against the river flow or along with it? Should you move up the hill or down the hill? Should you choose the more difficult task or the easier task? All of this is irrelevant until we specify what's it for. When we become clear about
We buy stories. Apple is a story. So, is Starbucks. And Nike. If all you are doing is selling a product, then you become a commodity and join the race to the bottom, to be the cheapest. But when you sell a story that resonates, then people engage with you and the price
Coming back to true north. Distractions, urgencies and emergencies take our attention away, they make us busy. They create a mind space where we can't think clearly, where we are preoccupied. We feel that once we handle the distraction, once we take care of the urgency, we would be able to sit down
Two kinds of work. One is tangible and imminent. Someone's waiting for it. You can check it off from your to do list. The other is ambiguous and without a deadline. But it leads you towards your goal. It helps you make progress, no matter how slow it may seem. It'
The professional creates his own luck. We hear the term "beginner's luck" thrown around everywhere. Some of it has to do with the fact that the expectations are way low for a beginner. But still, many strive to make it through riding the beginner's luck. And once you fall into
Money & emotions If money is an emotional issue for you, you’ve just put your finger on a big part of the problem. No one who is good at building houses has an emotional problem with hammers. Place your emotional problems where they belong, and focus on seeing money as a tool.
Don't leave your seat. It's not about working longer hours. It's about maintaining your focus on the task that matters. It's easy to keep switching contexts from the work that you need to do to the unending distractions vying for your attention. But if you keep doing that,
Infinite to finite. Creativity is the act of engaging with infinity and creating something finite which our audience can engage with. The canvas that you paint, the startup that you launch, the book that you write, the conversation that you initiate are all acts of creativity, are all about creating this magic. The
Choices and decisions. We make a lot of choices each day, and sometimes we might call them decisions. Most of the choices are impulse choices or habits that we have formed over time. On the other hand, decisions are mindful thought and reviewed. They help us in making the choices as we go
Lost in the clutter. One by one, slowly but surely, clutter starts to accumulate. It seems harmless every time but soon it takes over. All our energy goes into navigating through the cruft. And our priority goal gets lost somewhere.
Out of balance? What would you do if you were driving a car and it seemed out of balance? Would you speed it up or slow it down? Would you take it to a maintenance shop and get it recalibrated or keep driving? What about you when you feel out of balance?
Becoming a better "boss" to ourselves. If someone working with us is not feeling well, even if slightly, we will proactively ask them to rest and get better before they get back to work. We will not question their intention or assess their situation from a critical eye. But when it comes to ourselves, we can
99 business ideas. When we make ideas scarce, we feel afraid. What would we do if it fails? But there is no dearth of ideas. Ideas are always in abundance. To access the good ones though, we need to go through the bad ones. We need to write them down. And this isn&
The antidote to perfectionism. Perfectionism is laziness, the laziness coming from our desire to create only one draft, the perfect one. And this desire comes from the fact that as consumers we only see the final iteration. We see the movie only after it's released in the theatre, we buy the phone
Getting out of our own way. There may be other obstacles between you and your goals, the life you want to live. But the greatest obstacle is us, ourselves. The fear, attachment, emotion associated with doing the work that can make our lives better. The key is to work as a professional, doing things because they
The best version of you. There are days when you are at your best self and there are days when you are not. And that's okay. That's human. The important thing here is to take the strategic decisions for your life and work when you are your best self. And not
Scars “Martin Sheen turned to me and said, “Do you know what Saint Peter says to everyone who tries to get into heaven?” When I looked blankly, the man who once was president said, “Peter says, ‘Don’t you have any scars?’ And when most would respond proudly, ‘Well no, no
Pick one goal. More often than not, we strive to achieve multiple ambitious goals, especially when we sit down to write our new year's resolutions. While all the goals might be virtuous and helpful, this approach also puts us off the hook because we do not have one clear goal that
"Where you are" or "where you want to go"? We tend to strategise about our goals from the place where we are currently. We look at the current circumstances and see what's possible and what's not. But a different lens, a different framework may be useful while setting our goals and that is to figure
Striving to feel stretched. When we take action to lead, to bring about change, we might end up not feeling good, we would feel the resistance, we would feel like an imposter. These feelings want us to stop taking action. On the contrary, when we stop creating change, when we do what everyone expects
The edge of the box. We all live in a box, the box of our awareness, our knowledge, our certainty. It's the people we know, the books we have read, the places we have visited. Our perceived reality is within this box. And then there's the outside of the box, the
