Why do people get stuck in life?

No one else, but we put locks in our brains ourselves. Here is how it works:

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• An old man used to live in a small town (more like a village). His home was very close to a school, and the school premises were often misused by people as they used to find a shortcut to places through the school premises. He did not want people to use school premises as a shortcut, but still wanted to use the shortcut himself for his commute.
• Here is what he did: He put a lock on the gate of the school, and observed the people. He watched that people would make it to the gate, but then seeing a lock, they would turn back and would take the long-cut.

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Then, in a few days, he took out the lock, but left the chain tied over and over around the gate. Note that now it was possible for anyone to un-tie the chain, and use the premises as shortcut. There was no stopping. There was no announcement. It wasn’t anything illegal.

BUT! People would see the chain, and would get discouraged anyway, and would walk away.

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He started calling this a mental lock. We all have mental locks in our brains, put by ourselves.

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• We tell ourselves that we cannot succeed.
• We tell ourselves that we are depressed.
• We tell ourselves that we have been cheated.
• We tell ourselves that we are not smart.
• We tell ourselves that we would not be considered for a job.
• We tell ourselves that everything that holds us back.

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There is no physical lock. The lock is in the brain. I had heard this story of the man who used to put the chain around the school gate, and I had this story in the back of my mind.

• One day, when me and my sister got two cats, we both didn’t want them to go to the kitchen area.
• We put a child barrier in our home, so that the kitten would not cross it.
• As the kitten grew to being cats, they still could not cross it, not because they had any physical limitations, but the lock was in the brain.

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Life will throw a lot of mental locks your way. They would be thrown by your family, friends, colleagues, supervisors, and so on. It is you who put those locks in your brains. You have to unlock them yourself.

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Your motivation will always end, when you will see some locks. If you stay disciplined, you can not just break some locks, but walk through walls.

Stay blessed and stay inspired!

-Rohit Malshe

Luck or Hardwork?

Most Important Things To Learn in Life

1. Who You Are and How You Operate

Before you focus on learning ANYTHING external, you must start by first looking inwards.

Unfortunately, our modern education system doesn’t teach us the importance of self-knowledge and understanding who we are and how we operate.

As a result, millions of people tragically lead lives of total misalignment.

They waste year pursuing goals that aren’t aligned with what they really want.

They work in jobs that aren’t congruent with their personalities. They adopt habits that don’t work for their unique biological makeup or character. And they live lives that are completely disparate from what they really desire.

The first thing you must learn is WHO you are.

What do you love? What do you hate? What is your personal definition of success? What is your learning style? How has your body evolved—eg morning person/night owl, lifter/runner, vegetarian/carnivore?

Until you know who you are, nothing else matters.

So take the time now to discover yourself and uncover who you really are and how you operate.

2. How to Build WEALTH (Not Just Earn Money)

The second thing that you should learn is how to build real wealth.

NO…

I don’t mean how to earn more money, build a 6-figure income, or create a 7-figure business.

There are plenty of people who earn $500,000 a year who are completely broke.

Their lifestyle expenses outweigh their income and they have a lower net worth than people who earn $50,000 a year and save 15%.

One of the most important lessons you can learn is how to put your money to work for you so that you’re earning money while you sleep and without your direct input.

Study the greatest investors of our time. Learn about different niches and investing verticals. Study the tenants of wealth building.

Learn how to create lasting wealth and every area of your life will improve as a result.

3. How to Build Lasting Friendships

Did you know that loneliness is as bad for your health as 15 cigarettes as day?

Well, it is.

And one of THE most important skills that you can learn is how to build lasting relationships and network with amazing people.

The quality of your life will be directly proportional to the quality of the people with whom you spend your time.

THE fastest way to increase your income, happiness, and success is by learning how to connect with better people and create better quality friendships and relationships.

I encourage you to read as many books as you can on social dynamics. Learn how to influence others. Learn how to tell stories, tell jokes, and become a social power house.

This single skill will change your life more than anything else.

4. How to Fight Amiably with a Romantic Partner

If you want to find love—and I’m assuming you do—you are GOING to fight with your partner.

It’s just a reality.

Anytime two different people join forces and decide to do life together, there will be conflict.

But this doesn’t mean conflict needs to be nasty.

It’s important that you learn how to handle conflict quickly and amiably. Learn when to compromise and when to stand your ground. Learn how to distance yourself from the problems you are facing and seek resolution instead of superiority.

If you can learn to fight clean, your relationship will stand the test of time and you’ll be better off for it.

5. How to Change the Stories in Your Mind

The final—and most important skill—that you can learn is how to intervene and change the stories going on in your mind.

Nothing that happens to you, regardless of how it may appear, is either good or bad.

Things simply are.

Yet most of us fabricate a slew of negative stories regarding the events in our life.

We take things personally, blow things out of proportion, and see minor setbacks as the end of the world.

If you can learn to disrupt these stories and replace them with a more Stoic attitude, you’ll be able to face and overcome any adversity that life might send your way.

If you don’t, you’ll forever be a captive of your circumstances instead of a master of them.

…

Hope this helps.

Stay Grounded,
Andrew Ferebee

Why to read lots of books and articles?

Because reading allows you to compress decades of experience into a few hours.

For $10 you can learn the lessons and wisdom that took someone else YEARS to learn and you can learn it in an afternoon.

Just imagine….

Being able to learn the MOST important health hacks that you need to live to 100 and be happy and healthy… for $10.

Or how to start a successful business from your laptop and earn more than $1,000,000 a year.

Or how to navigate your relationships and improve the quality of your romantic life.

Reading—assuming that you take action—is one of the highest ROI activities in which you can invest.

An investment of $10 can make you $1,000,000.

An investment of $10 can save you from a life-threatening disease and allow you to perform 10x better at work and home.

An investment of $10 can change EVERYTHING in your life.

What other assets do you know of that can net a 10,000% ROI?

-Andrew Ferebee

Hacks For Being Successful?

 Yes, there are but they are extremely hard to do and not everyone call pull it off.

1. Raising your standards: Easiest hack to be successful is to raise your standards. If you are a businessman and sell a product, don’t just build a mediocre product instead but the best one you can. If you are a student don’t just do the bare minimum to score well, instead focus on understanding the concept better than anyone else. Raising standards is the real overnight success hack. The reason why most people will fail at this is because raising your standards requires a lot of effort.
2. Being your own brutal critique: We all yearn for appreciation, we like it when people praise us. On the contrary we hate it when people point at our faults even if they are correct. Why? because we all love to love in a false bubble which gives us a false sense of happiness. Yes, you should not care about what people think about you but you can always use their feedback to improve ourselves. If one really needs to be successful we must always critique our own actions and behaviors. Be honest, say that my life sucks, everyone is doing better than me, I am just being lazy. However that does not mean you should make yourself feel bad, NO! we are not using self shaming here. Instead use this to actually act upon things. Thinking that you are fat and shaming yourself wont do anything, say you are fat and use all that emotion to stop eating junk and start going to the gym.
3. Don’t act like a common man because you are not one: I know a lot of people will be offended and triggered after reading this point but please read the entire thing before coming to a conclusion. Here is the thing, there is no such thing as a common man, it’s a myth. None of us is common, not you, not me. Every one of us is all the same biologically. A common man does not mean a person who is not well off financially, NO! All of us are uncommon and have something in us that makes us different from someone else, so stop counting yourself in the common man’s category because there is no such thing. You are mentally as capable as any other human being on this planet. Thinking that you are a common man only limits your potential to achieve more. No certification agency has given you a certificate of being a common man, hence don’t label yourself as the same.
4. Consistency over intensity: If you plan to build muscle in the gym, never aim for intensity. If you work out intensely today, tomorrow you would be sore and won’t feel like lifting weights. What you should aim for instead is consistency, aim to maintain a long workout streak, workout less but workout for days in a row to build that consistent streak. Working out intensely is a lot easier, anyone can workout for 1–2 hours, bust their ass for one day. However consistently going to the gym for 30 days is hard to pull off. Same applies to other areas of your life as well. It’s easy to pull an all nighter before an exam, however it's hard to study regularly for an entire semester.
5. Stay mentally far away from unsuccessful people: Be it your friends or a family member, if they are unsuccessful, stay far away from them, not physically but mentally. By this I don’t mean you should get away from them or stop talking to them, but stay away from them mentally and don’t let their thoughts influence you. I don’t mean to say this because they are bad people, however people who are consistently unsuccessful develop certain ways of thinking which are unhealthy and you don’t want to be influenced by them. For example, if you be around a person who has failed at diets and is still overweight, he might influence you into thinking that diet or exercise are just scams and they don’t help reduce weight. The best way to deal with such people is inspire them and lead them by example, follow a diet and exercise plan, show them the progress and help them break the myths which hold them back. In short, influence them in a positive way.
6. Give up short term happiness: Activities that take us closer to success never feel good in the moment, going out consistently to the gym does not feel as good as going in the moment however you would be happy after months or years of working out when you finally look at your body in the mirror. Studying after attending a long day of college feels terrible to do in the moment however you will be pleased on the day exam results are declared. On the contrary, skipping gym and laying around in bed playing video games sounds fun in the moment however if you do that for months, you will regret later because now you have a belly. Coming back from college, watching Netflix feels really good in the moment however you will regret your deeds when the exam results come out. Learning to code is frustrating in the beginning but it will put a smile on your face when you launch your first app. If you wish to achieve success that gives you long term happiness then you must give up on things which make you happy in the short term.
7. Expect setbacks and problems: They only time when you don’t have problems in your life is when you do nothing. However, if you wish to achieve success in any domain then setbacks and problems are to be expected. The bigger your goals are the bigger and more setbacks you will have. You will have them even after you are successful, the funny thing is that when you become a success, these problems and setbacks grow by a large amount. For example, if your goal was to build a startup that does a million dollars in revenue a month. You faced all the problems and setbacks and finally you are making a million a month in revenue, however that does not mean all your problems will disappear, in fact you will have even more of them.
8. Don’t do it if the above points make you feel depressed: Success has a different definition for everyone. Success and happiness aren’t the same thing, if after reading above points you think that they are depressing and you can't do it then it's absolutely fine and it does not mean that you are not destined for success. Nobody can judge you and advise you what's the best for you except you. If you just wish to be happy all the time, then it's completely fine and there is nothing to be ashamed of it. For you, success might mean living a peaceful life with no stress then you should, by all means, aim for it and not let other people dictate what success is for you. For some, success would mean getting highly educated, for someone else it might mean career or money, for others it might be romance, for someone else it might be friends and family. For someone it might be a combination of 50% career and 50% friends and family, The trick is to define your own definition of success.

-Saurav Sharma

When you buy something, you don’t pay in Dollars or Rupees instead...................

 When you buy something, you don’t pay in Dollars or Rupees instead you pay in hours worked and this is what exactly what people don’t realise which makes them broke.

You see an iPhone 8 being sold for INR 60,000 ($1,000 approx.), you have the money in your bank, you make the transaction.

You think that you have traded off 60k for a phone, but in reality you have just traded off your time and hours worked.

Assuming you have a salary of INR 38,000 per month and you work 22 days in a month for 8 hours, total worked hours would be 22x8 = 176 hours.

38,000 / 176 = INR 215 per hour is your hourly rate.

Which means that to buy an iPhone 8, you need to work for 60,000 / 215 = 279 hours.

Which is equivalent of 279/ 8 working hours per day = 34 days.

Now what if you had bought a cheap Xiaomi phone which has decent features for INR 10,000 or about $170 ?

It would take you 10,000/ 215 = 46 hours.

Which is equivalent to 46/ 8 working hours per day = just 5.8 / 6 days.

Yes iPhone 8 obviously has a lot better features as compared to Xiaomi, but when you compare it with working 6 days for owning a Xiaomi vs working for 34 days for an iPhone just for those extra features and a good camera, is it really worth it?

You have to work a whopping 28 days for 8 hours to afford those additional features in a phone which you are barely going to use.

Are those additional features are worth 28 working days for you ? You decide for yourselves.

What most people do is that they buy things which:

1. They don’t absolutely need.
2. They have to work for days to afford.

Now this was just an example to demonstrate however this can only be applied to anything when you want to make a buying discussion.

When you are out to buy something, calculate the days you would need to work to afford that. Then consider the value it actually provides you and later decide if that is a good investment for you.

Buying an iPhone or any expensive stuff only makes sense in two cases:

1. If your hourly rate exceeds the price of the product, if your hourly rate is around $50 to $100 per hour then you don’t have to think twice to buy an iPhone.
2. In case that particular thing is still expensive as per your hourly rate but it is something you absolutely need. Like if you are an iOS developer and need an iPhone to test out your app. Or maybe you are an interior designer who has to click and share pictures of your work to your clients and hence need a good camera with you all times.

Once you realise the real math behind buying things, you will never be broke again.

P.S Do suggest if there are any mathematical errors.

-Saurav Sharma

I made many mistakes in my 20’s

Ultimately, it all worked out for the best and today I have a life that I never thought was possible.

But the results I have today could have happened a lot sooner if I’d avoided the following things.

Heed my warning and save yourself a lot of pain and heartache.

Enjoy…

1. Low Status Friends

When I use the term low status friends, I’m not referring to their current financial status or their social status.

I’m referring to their personal status.

Low status friends are friends who lack ambition, drive, and a desire to improve.

They are negative individuals who play the victim card and blame others for their results.

Avoid these people like the plague.

If you want to succeed in your 20’s and beyond then remember one thing…

If you show me your friends… I will show you your future.

Who you hang out with becomes your destiny.

So be careful who you allow into your inner circle and always seek to spend time around winners.

2. Codependent Relationships

Nothing will destroy you faster than a codependent relationship.

Whether you are the dependent (the person who uses relationships to find their self worth) or the enabler (the person who stays with a dependent out of fear), you will sabotage your life and ruin your results.

Period.

Relationships can be the jet fuel that propels you towards the life of your dreams or the anchor that keeps you stuck in the harbor.

In a healthy relationship there are two independent people who come together, bringing their unique skills and attributes to create a better life than either person could have on their own.

If you are in a codependent relationship, you need to sit down and asses things.

If you can save the relationship by establishing boundaries and getting quality alone time then do it.

If not, then move on with your life and do yourself a favor. End of story.

3. Hard Drugs & Alcoholism

I’m not one to judge and I dabbled with more than my fair share of substances in my early 20’s.

But there is nothing that will ruin your life faster than hard drugs and alcoholism.

I’m not referring to a night cap or an evening joint.

I’m talking about substances like heroin, cocaine, meth, and the like.

Avoid these like the plague.

They will turn you into a shell of who you used to be and leave your life in the gutter without a dime to your name.

Just don’t freaking do it!

4. Your Comfort Zone

If you want to live a great life, then you must avoid your comfort zone like a crazy ex with a butcher knife.

No one ever achieved anything great by residing in their comfort zone.

We don’t write stories about great men and women because they did what was easy.

Society rewards and recognizes those who do the hard things that are necessary to live a good life.

Look…

Everyone reading this has the potential to be successful beyond their wildest dreams.

But to do so, you must embrace the fact that successful people do hard things.

They step out of their comfort zone and into the unknown.

They boldly move forward and chart their own path.

Get the hell out of your comfort zone in your 20’s and get into life.

5. “Normal”

If there’s one thing that must be avoided more than anything else on this list it’s normal.

Normal is 5-figures in debt, living pay check to paycheck, getting a divorce in your 30’s, working a job you hate, and rocking a “Dad Bod”.

F*ck normal.

Normal is the antithesis of greatness and if you want to be successful in your 20’s, you will avoid it at all costs.

Don’t do what other people do.

Don’t spend your time the way that the masses do.

Don’t buy the same crap, work the same jobs, or live the same lives.

As the old saying goes, “Do what others won’t so that you can do what others can’t”

Screw normal.

Be exceptional.

Hope this helps.

Stay Grounded,
Andrew Ferebe

Why are we so poor and others are rich?

 In the modern world, the value of everything is determined not by its inherent quality or importance but by demand and supply.

For instance, there can be nothing more valuable for a human being than food, water and air.

• Air is most valuable since we can’t live without air for a few minutes.
• Next comes water, without which we can’t survive beyond a few hours.
• Next comes food, without which we can’t survive beyond a few days.

However, in the world, food is more valuable than water, which is more valuable than air because

• Air is abundant around us, and we can effortlessly get it. Since its supply is far more than its demand, its value is practically nil.
• Water is also plentiful. Yet the supply of drinkable water is limited, and you have to make an effort to get potable water from a tap, well, or river. Hence, water is more valuable than air, but still very cheap.
• Food supply is limited as you have to cultivate the food with great effort, and its supply is less than the demand. Hence, it is more expensive.

On the other hand, we find that gold is costly. At the cost of one kg of gold, you can buy a lifetime supply of food. This is not because gold is more important than food but because the supply of gold is very limited while its demand is millions of times greater.

Diamonds are even more costly because their supply is meagre, but their demand is very high.

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Like material things such as food, water, air, gold, and diamonds, individuals' value also depends on the demand for their skills compared to the supply of the skill in the market.

For instance, labourers require little skill to do their job, and any healthy person can do this job.

As a result, developing countries have a vast labour force supply compared to demand. Their value is the lowest, and their people are the poorest.

On the other side, you have to spend years in schools and collages to acquire the knowledge and develop the skill of a software developer or manager.

In many developed countries, however, most people have a higher level of education, and fewer people are available to work as manual labourers. Hence, the demand for manual labourers is greater than the supply. As a result, labourers in developed countries are much better paid than their counterparts in poorer countries and even better than their educated counterparts in their own country.

Anyone can make huge money and become rich if they acquire a skill that is in high demand, but its supply is less.

For instance, the highest international and domestic packages offered during IIT Bombay placements in 2023 were INR 3.67 crore per annum and INR 1.68 crore per annum, respectively, while the average package offered was INR 21.82 LPA.

[1]

Therefore, if you acquire education from a top college and the top level skill, you can earn more than 100 times more income than the graduates of ordinary college and more than 200 times more than unskilled workers.

Even within the same college, the most skilled person would earn 10 times more than the lowest classmate.

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If you are poor, it is because you (or your forefathers) have not acquired a high-demand-low-supplu skill.

If some people are rich, it is because they, their parents, or their grandparents have acquired the high-demand, low-supply skills that enhance their value in the market.

If you wish to become wealthy, you must invest your time, money and effort in developing difficult-to-acquire but much-sought-after skills to command a better income in the market.

Once you become wealthy, not only will you become rich, but your future generations will also enjoy the fruit of your labour and live better lives.

Source of picture: Google Images

Awdhesh Singh, 

AwdheshSingh.com, Ex-IRS, Author, Educator, IITD 

Financial Failure ?

Don't Abandon Your Dreams

Footnotes

[1] 

https://www.shiksha.com/university/iit-bombay-indian-institute-of-technology-mumbai-54212/placement