The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don’t tell you what to see.
The dog days are over
It was one of those days that inspired hope —a harbinger of spring in the form of a warm sunny day at the tail end of a long winter. We went out on what was supposed to be a regular walk, the type that we’d gone on thousands of times. My mind drifted to all the fun things we were going to do this summer.
But they were not to be. Although we left together, I came back alone. …
What I’ve learned from a 30-second practice over a 2-year experiment.
I’ve tried countless techniques and methods to optimise my wellbeing. This is one of the rare ones that has become a mainstay in my daily ritual. Why? I’ll explain. But first, here’s the backstory.
2015 was rough. I was fighting to get my first startup off the ground. I worked like hell but nothing was working. I was struggling. Big time. On top of that, I was alone in a new country. I used my self-imposed isolation as a reason for focus. I made the classic mistake of throwing myself in my work in the hopes that I’d find answers.
The beauty about adversity is that it forces us to confront our reality. First there is a crack in the facade. Then the crack grow longer and larger. It gets to a point where it can’t bear the pressure. It shatters. …
A time capsule of my year in learning.
It’s not about what you’ve learned; it’s about what you do with what you’ve learned. But, how can you apply what you’ve learned if you don’t remember them in the first place?
So, last year, in an attempt to find out if I could learn and remember better, I ran a year-long experiment where I recorded every single one of my learning (I ended up with 456 learnings and I published the 52 best ones in this post.)
With 2017 coming to an end, I’d like to share my key learnings this year, new insights from my second year of doing this. …
What To Do When You Bare Your heart And Nobody Shows Up.
Two weeks ago, I published a post that revealed something extremely close to my heart and the response has been, wait, I’m trying to find the words for it. Right, spectacularly underwhelming.
A myth inspired by a true story; a true story inspired by myths.
The Japanese say you have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends and your family. The third face, you show to no one. It’s the truest reflection of who you are.
I must confess: I haven’t been very honest with you, or as a matter of fact, with myself in the last few years. …
A short essay on why we should treat relationships like gardening. Best read together with How To Choose Who To Spend Your Time With.
1 — Survey
Relationships are like gardening; you reap what you sow. To be a good gardener, first, you need to survey the lay of the land to know what you have to work with or against. The seasonal climate, the amount of sun exposure, and so on.
Most importantly, you need to make sure that the soil is healthy and the conditions are right for life to flourish. …
A simple method for how to preserve and use our time and energy on relationships that matter.
After years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie Ware was searching for something more meaningful. Despite having no prior experience, Bronnie found herself stumbling into palliative care, where she spent several years caring for patients in the last twelve weeks of their lives.
During this time, as the patients revealed their dying epiphanies to her in their raw and honest conversations about life and death, Bronnie came to notice that a few themes kept surfacing repeatedly, which she eventually published in this now widely shared blog post. …
The results of a year-long experiment in 2016 where I’ve recorded all of my learnings (456 in total).
The Beginning Of The End
A brief thought on reflecting effectively
One of the reasons why I love year-ends is because the “end” of anything always gives rise to opportunities for reflection. We may build an understanding of the world through our experiences, but it’s only through the process of reflection that we develop our understanding more deeply, and make our intuitive knowledge more applicable.
There’s only one problem: The first step to effective reflection is accurate recall and the human memory is inherently faulty and unreliable, partly because we’re biologically susceptible to a whole host of cognitive biases. …
4 years ago I received a letter I wrote to myself 10 years ago. A letter I had completely forgotten writing…
“The following is an e-mail from the past, composed 5 years, 8 months and 27 days ago, on September 18, 2006.”
Imagine my surprise when I received an email containing a letter I had written to myself, which I had completely forgotten about. …
11 unexpectedly meaningful life lessons from an impulsive decision.
The story began when, together with three friends, I spontaneously signed up for an olympic distance triathlon (sounds fancy but it’s just the standard triathlon distance; 1.5km swim, 40km bike, 10km run) only seven weeks prior to the actual race day. This was not a great idea because, believe it or not, I’ve never swam or biked that long in distance my entire life and never in a competition. …
