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Unlocking happiness with gratitude
In sixth grade, I started wearing glasses, and then began my nightmare. While playing, I would get sweaty and the glasses would keep slipping and falling, occasionally cracking the lens. Also, I would keep crushing and twisting them inadvertently...
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A Dramatic Journey
In Jan 2006, while most of my MBA classmates had secured their summer internships, I was waiting, empty-handed. Many firms didn’t even interview me...
Self-Respect in Entrepreneurship
In the past, I have often gotten this question: “Why don’t you use your civil service connections to get business from government?” As an...
Embracing Accountability
During my days as a private equity investor, I saw people making two kinds of mistakes: Type 1 mistake: You make a bad investment, but when you...
Minor tasks vs deep work
When I walked into a shopping mall, they gave me 10 plastic tokens. And they said, “Each token buys one item -- anything you want, whether a 10...
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We all get the jitters
A few months after I moved out of the US, just near my erstwhile apartment building, a plane landed in the Hudson River, near New York City. The US Airways flight had a complete engine failure due to a bird-hit and had no power left. Yet, Captain...
Where You Start Does Not Matter
In 1995, during my final year B.Tech placement season, everybody was obsessed with salaries -- companies like Cadence, offering Rs 10,000 per month or a bit more, were rockstars, while anyone offering even Rs 1,000 less became an ‘undesirable.’...
Learn Like an Intern
Quitting the Indian Police Service allowed me to restart my journey, like a fresh intern trying to make sense of the world. I totally loved the first 5-6 years in the Civil Services -- every day was a new learning. But gradually, it became more of...
These are Your Key Assets
When I quit my job to become an entrepreneur, it felt a bit weird, but not for the first time. Years earlier, to do my GMAT and MBA prep, when I took a transfer from the post of Trivandrum Police Commissioner to a low-key role in Kerala police, I...