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On Life:

• Figure out your purpose in life.
• Have an undeviating steadiness towards that purpose.
• Get in touch with your intuition.
• You can be a rebel in the subtlest of your mannerisms, but a wild thing in your imagination.
• Most of whom we know must die if we were to live truthfully.
• Being yourself everywhere is both appalling and admirable.
• Get this out of your mind: The idea of what and how others should be.
• If something bad has happened to you, you’ve learnt a lesson. Learning isn’t such a bad thing.
• The only thing that’s sustains life is the talent and diversity of all living beings.

 

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On Self-reflection:

• You will never find a more meaningful relationship than with your own solitude.
• Ask yourself what is preventing you from having a strong sense of wellbeing each day.
• Read. You think you have it harder, read: Hunger by Knut Hamsun. You think you have existential angst, read: Man’s search for meaning by Viktor Frankl. Religion is a man made calamity, read: Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.
• Renunciation is having passing thoughts about ice-cream but having no attachment and desire for it.
• You can be as old as me and still be tense, urgent and uncertain about the future. 

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On Technology:

• Media is trying to tell you that everything is wrong with the world. Kindly F it.
• Go analog.
• In this knowledge economy, find out how you can bring a different social capital to the table.
• Entertaining yourself mindlessly on the Internet is living a life of existential risk.

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On Creativity:

• Where you are extremely passionate, you are wildly resourceful.
• Where your heart is you are boundless in aspiration.
• If you are trying to make things work AND you’re not enjoying the process, it’s time to quit. Apply this to your job, your “passion” and your relationships.
• Creativity comes from nature, isolation, sacrifice.
• Be prolific.
• So what if you’re not making money, you’re a writer and you love what you do.

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On Success:

• Create a definition of happiness early on.
• Happiness can just be a space that provides serenity where you’re doing an activity you’re passionate about.
• Don’t fear social rejection. Just prepare yourself for overwhelming attention and learn to reluctantly ignore it.
• Conspire with the universe to help your success.
• Success is the coming together of self-discipline, talent, intelligence, strength and motivation.

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On Empathy:

• It’s exhausting to be rude.
• Be outrageously compassionate.
• Humanism can be a religion.
• Give others your undivided attention. Nobody usually needs much else.
• Even the most confused mind can hear the three words, “I love you.”
• Some people in the first world, have no likes on social media. Some people in the third world, have no food. Get some perspective.
• If you want to receive, your hand must also be outstretched as if you’re giving out.
• Be the one around whom people try a little harder to be their own self.

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On Change:

• Keep a plant close to you and see it grow every day. Its radical what growth looks like.
• Self acceptance is the prerequisite for change to occur.
• Be intentionally extraordinary and different.
• Revisit your narrative and if you are doing something easy; stop doing it.
• Combat (your own) complacency.
• Remember you are the master, not your desires, beliefs or expectations.

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On Self-preservation:

• Say no often so that you self preserve.
• Let your spirit be unknown, let the excitement of your quest be alive.
• Don’t let your thoughts bind you. Be free.
• Be resolute towards distractions and giving towards your cause.
• Tell me a safer space for ambivalence and ambiguity than your heart.
• Be a force of nature.

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