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Ambitiousness makes you restless, progressiveness keeps you inspired.       

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It is good to get better, richer and stronger. I mean, why not? There is nothing wrong about gaining success, power and fame. Why should we needlessly glorify average existence with anonymity, helplessness, and deprivation? After all, ‘happiness’ is precisely what all of us are in pursuit of.

Aha! It’s this last line that brings it all into perspective. Yes, it all comes down to happiness. And you can’t be happy if the fire inside you consumes the fuel that is you. That’s why, it is important to grow without desperation or insecurity. That’s when it is called progressiveness – the wiser form of ambition.

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Yes! It is good to get better, richer, stronger, and… wiser.

Neither one good day makes you ‘great’ nor does one bad day make you a ‘bygone’.

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Life can change in a day. No doubt it can. Ask a person who won a lottery or met an accident, or someone who got through an exam or lost someone! Such extreme events do shape a person and their life unmistakably. However, in most cases, one day gone off the beat isn’t a decider.

That’s why, if you have a terrifically good or a terribly bad day, do learn to take it in your stride. Don’t let it inflate or deflate your self-concept needlessly. Believe me, it is easier said than done, because our fragile self-concept is always vulnerable to take such events on their face value.

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So, how was your day? Oh Come on! Add it to life, and…move on. 🙂

If you are going through a difficult phase, don’t extend it by making new mistakes.

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Everyone goes through a lean patch occasionally – due to circumstances, mistakes, problems or idiocy of oneself or others. Though its duration is ‘directly proportional’ to the magnitude of what went wrong, usually, the patch passes on its own, leaving some learning and some bad taste in the mouth.

However, at times, we become overanxious in such a phase – restless to get out of it in a hurry without serving the metaphoric sentence. In that restlessness, we often end up making more errors in judgment, behavior and choices. And that creates another loop of newer consequences to be borne.

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Yup! In such a phase… “Stay patient, pay the dues, and wait for it to get over”.

If you are getting nervous, get nervous and also keep doing your stuff.

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It’s okay to feel ‘not okay’ at times – to have that strange uneasy feeling in the stomach when concern gets mixed with sadness; or that queasy heaviness in the head when stress gets mixed with diffidence; or that weird bulkiness in the body when tiredness gets mixed with reluctance.

While these feelings are there for a reason and deserve to be acknowledged, it is important to ‘not wait’ for them to ‘get over’ to ‘get going’. You can begin to get on with your journey even with the dwindling morale and jittery steps, without waiting for the perfect timing or right feeling.

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People who go places are the ones that move, not in absence of, but in spite of these feelings.

Often the people who come to make a difference in your life aren’t packaged to your liking.

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They come as a rude team-member who makes faces, a skeptic colleague who rips your ideas apart, an unbearable customer who makes you feel miserable, a boss who is straightforward to the extent of being insulting, or a dear one who behaves coldly at your critical juncture.

At times, they have ‘absolute gems of wisdom’ to deliver to you. However they often deliver those gems in combination with a sarcastic tone, a straight-faced manner, some swear words, an argumentative way, a bad mood, foul language, or a ‘below the belt’ remark.

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If only we can learn to sometimes ignore the package for what’s packaged!

You can’t hope to ‘solve a personal problem’ while trying to ‘manage your impression’.

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Due to the nature of my work, people often ask for inputs on their intrapersonal & interpersonal problems. Ironically, when I hear them expressing their problems, often I find that they do not tell their problems honestly. Actually they try to manage their impressions while presenting their problem.

They use stylish words to seem well-read; or use subjectivity to avoid embarrassment; or frame issue in a manner that shows them in good light; or check their expressions to not let sophistication go down; or censor their versions to not look weak or dumb; or present in a ‘leading way’ to evoke sympathy.

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Sadly, when they do that, it becomes another ‘part of the problem’.

Successful people have a responsibility to prove they are worthy of it.

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You would often find successful people doing mediocre work and still managing to get away with it just because they have a ‘name’ to back it up with. Well, I agree that it is important to respect that that ‘name’ is built by a series of great works in the past for which the person must have worked pretty hard.

However, once you earn a name, you can either ‘exploit it’ or ‘prove it right’ – i.e. either ‘work harder and create better’ or ‘dish out shallow work and maneuver with presentation’. Well, don’t forget that there are many people out there who are as worthy of success as you but haven’t got it. If you’ve got it…

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… keep proving that you still deserve it as much.

In relationships, long silences are often muted screams.   

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There are times when a person conveys pain or discomfort repeatedly, and in every which way possible. Yet the other person either doesn’t listen, or listens but ignores or doesn’t understand the severity. This happens due to other person’s insensitivity, rigidity, negligence or different priorities.

Whatever is the reason, it devastates the one who is more sensitive, adjusting, involved and committed. It is like left stranded in a jungle with sun going down; or being too invested to withdraw. This deadlock and imminent dead-end can take a real toll. And often, you have nothing left to say to the other person.

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Hence the ‘silence’.

There are so many stories that we are a part of.

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We all live multiple lives, running parallel to each other. It is as if there are stories spread across us, and we enter one, play our role, and then eject ourselves from that and enter the next one – sometimes by design, sometimes by will, and sometimes by being drawn by other characters.

These stories are of all types – in some, we are valued…in some, we are damned; in some, we are glorified… in some, we are misinterpreted; in some, we play the ‘hero’…in some, we play the supporting cast. And the best part is that all these stories are nowhere but…in our own minds.

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Yup! We are the ‘storyteller’. Remember that, as it will help you stay…sorted.

To continue to do something you like, you have to keep doing an ‘appended one’ that you don’t like.

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For instance, if a kid wants to continue to enjoy sweets right through his childhood, he has to rinse his mouth every time he eats some. However, you would typically see that kids wouldn’t do that. Why? Well, because that appended activity is neither pleasurable nor seems urgent.

I call it the ‘mundane-ness of compensatory mechanism’, and it is applicable in all walks of life. Yes, for every glamorous act there would be something tedious to be done to ensure its longevity, and any form of excellence will have its share of dull drudgery to be done to maintain it.

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In other words, for every interesting thing, you have to continue to do an uninteresting one as well.