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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.
‘Be resolute towards distractions and giving towards your cause.’
One has to learn this.