Last year, I had gotten myself waxed right after Rakshabandhan.

“Who even remembers their waxing dates a year prior?” you might wanna think.

No one. Not even me bro.

Except that when I had returned from my waxing appointment, I had millions of tiny mosquito-bite kinda bubbles on my calf muscles.

My Mom and I were equally stunned.

But we thought this would pass. Boy, so wrong were we…

What then began as a gradual process was my skin allergy. I started having itching at any random part of my skin at any random part of the day.

Initially it came and went. So I did not pay much attention.

But then it started showing up in grand gestures. I visibly started shaking in my meditation, because I was itching in my ears and the skin under the nose and the hamstrings all at once. Then at one time I had a bad itch attack during an overnight train. The other time I had that itch attack in Abu Dhabi in October.

In the middle of all this, I was also visiting the best dermatologist of the best hospital, who still could not diagnose what was going on. Each time I went to her, she simply increased the dosage of the medicine.

These episodes continued happening, when I got sick and tired and told my Mom how nothing was getting better. The only thing that was getting better was my allergy was finding new places to attack on. How could you get a random itch on your left eyebrow or the area just under your ring finger is beyond me!

When I was so frustrated, my Mom suggested we consult her homeopathic doctor.

Not only that, she said it with conviction, “I can tell you with certainty that her treatment will cure you from its root.”

My Mom does not trust anyone easily, just like all wise Moms. So when Mom said this to me with so much conviction, I was halfway convinced.

…

Roll down to December, the doctor made me recollect why this happened.

I had gotten the wax done and forgotten :)

She also went on to say that it happened because it is not the best thing to get yourself waxed during monsoon.

The treatment lasted for 3.5 months, during which I was prohibited sour things completely. So no imli ki chutney, no curd, no lemon, and Mom would make magic chhole chawal without chana masala in it :)

At the end of that treatment, I was fully healed. And still am. Thank you, doctor. But she told me to be aware of 2-3 things for the rest of my life, which I still take care of, such as:

• Try not getting waxed during monsoons

• Drink a LOT of water.

• While switching from AC environment to non-AC, try keeping a lag. This means, try turning off the AC a few minutes before I step out of the environment. Or when I get into my car or my room from outside, I should slowly make it cool, instead of going to super cool temperature all of a sudden.

…

Alright, now why am I telling this to you?

Because on 27th and 28th I travelled to Ahmedabad for a massive family function.

And I attended the party with my forearm unwaxed.

I was wearing a half-sleeved top, so if someone stood at a distance of a feet from me, they might be able to observe tiny growth on my forearm.

Now I am a fan of keeping myself well-groomed. I even went to the parlour to get threading done, but no, no, no to waxing during monsoon, baby.

“But it is a huge function, what would people say?”

I never ever had that thought in my mind, because 99% of people are my favourite people. But whatever strangers at the party think of me, no one is coming to me when:

• I ruin my sleep because I am itching all night in train and reduce my next day’s productivity

• Or when I am making repeated visits to hospital during my working hours, no one is coming to make money and make my business on my behalf because I got dysfunctional with allergies.

• Or when I make chilla without curd, no one is going to do that to their own chilla. They are going to add curd to it!

• Or people are going to eat dahi bhalla, when I am prohibited imli chutney.

• Or most importantly, if I could keep myself healthy by a bit of abstinence, I think it does not make it worth it to risk my health for so many months, just to make sure people think I am groomed.

The bigger point, though, is:

So often we give up on ourselves in these tiny teeny ways, that we do not even realise. Just so that other people like us. “So what if I get itch attacks again, at least people would see my smooth forearms.”

We always cook food for others or buy things for others, suppressing what we need.

We pick a career that might lead to our father saying one day “I am proud of you”, even though we hate that career.

We skip our meals just because others are not hungry! It is beyond me how people even do it.

We get into marriages that we know are bad, but because we are engaged, we do nothing. Because we want people to think “she fixed him (even though it is impossible to fix another human)” instead of “she stood up for herself and it is bold and I could never have the courage to do it so I will pelt stones at her forever.”

We all can write a book about our people pleasing behaviours.

The great part is: unless you want to live the life like someone in your family who is a perpetual people pleaser and a serial suppresser of their sentiments, you always have the power to take the manuscript you have now and tear it apart.

Oh, btw, I looked stunning as ever. You glow differently when you don’t try to please strangers you don’t care and who are never ever pleased :)

2 Raw One-Liners:

• You cannot change someone who does not wish to be changed. Change is always a personal choice.

• It is disastrous to trust hearsay. Especially if it comes from someone who is poor at communication or excellent at negativity.

3 Real(ly) Helpful Hacks for Life:

1. Learn to drive well. You can smooth and glide through the worst of roads if you learn it well. You do not need to push and jerk people when they are driving along with you. (Yes, I have had experiences with Uber drivers :(

2. Understand the power of your word. Words can lift someone else, words can destroy someone else. See this song. I kinda like this song about the power of words. It may not touch your soul for its magic of music, but with words, it is a gem.)

3. You did not expect this, but please keep your lust under check.

Someone may want to unsubscribe just by reading this one thing, but I have to tell you how this is the reason for so many downfalls. In the book “The Palace of Illusions” Vyasa tells Draupadi to be aware of three things: 1. To hold back her question just before her marriage; 2. To not laugh when her husbands are at the top of their power; and 3. When she would be made to feel ashamed in a sabha, to hold back the curse.” She did none of those.

But that is not the main thing I am talking about right now.

The main thing is each time she acted from that emotion, it was because she was either attracted to or angry with Karan.

So she did all three things: asked the question, laughed, and cursed — all driven by lust or anger resulting from lust.

It led to things like Mahabharat in the world.

My question is, how do we think lust won’t make other mortals do similar things.

I want you to sit with it for a moment.

…

That is it for this week.

I had too much fun over the last two days, I hope you did too. <3

Nishtha Gehija

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Also, I hope you would access my instant access my ebooks, if you haven’t already:

20s versus 30s: The strange and unique differences between the two most important decades of your life

The Corporate Life Handbook: If you are in corporate job and struggle with daily humdrums of it, one-pagers with harsh truths are something no one is going to tell you :)

The Career Changing Guide: If you are looking for a sign, this is it :)

How to Deal with Heartbreak: A book almost everyone needs but no one gives you right in your hand. If you don’t need this, get this for a friend you know certainly needs it.

Every Writer Needs to Read this: A book I wish I had 11 years ago when I was starting out as a writer

10 years ago, the internet game of India changed forever.

A new telecom company Jio started its operations. And offered a sim, daily data of 2GB and unlimited calls. ALL FOR FREE.

It lasted more than 6 months from September 2016 to March 2017. (Ooh, habit formation.)

As a result, within little time, all other telecom operators also had to reduce their prices.

Prior to that, there used to be monthly internet packs of 2.5 GB. Now there are internet packs with daily 2.5 GB.

It is good on the surface of it. But excess of everything is poison.

So I sat down to observe how unlimited internet has damaged us in so many ways, such as:

1. We have an acute lack of self-worth. If someone else is “happy in restaurants” or “dancing with friends” and we are not, it means there must be something wrong with us only! This lack of self-worth has also translated to older people, when their peers are starting new cooking YouTube channels or new businesses after retirement, but they are doing none of this.

2. We do not have a life outside of phone. Is this what we were born for? To work out very little on our feet and run miles on the phone with our thumbs? Has that become ultimate goal of our lives?

At max, our lives “outside of phone” states and ends with a mall. How about going to the lake or garden nearby, spending some time there, and not posting a single story/post about it?

3. The infinite need to become an influencer. Yes, it is a good and a profitable business (for some people). But look closely at the lives of any real influencer who has “made it” and you would realise they spend massive amounts of time away from the internet too.

4. So many more have lower back pain! And they have normalised it :(
My dear friend, health is normal. Pains should not come to you ideally before the age of retirement.

5. This one breaks my heart. Because people are on the internet more, they are reading less.
Reading (good books) makes you think differently. And just think. It is like travelling the world without a ticket (and Insta stories :D).

6. Oh, the parallel arrival of Netflix with unlimited internet. Netflix and Amazon Prime video were launched in India in the year 2016. Now we can rewatch your favourite SRK movie a 100 times while the project that requires deep work has been sitting idle for 100 days! :/

I can write so much more, but it is important to reduce the negative to as little as possible, and walk towards conclusion.

7. We human beings as a species were all leaner at one point. Again comes from sitting too much, moving and thinking too little. Of course if you are all fit and fine, from 30s to 60s the body does go through change.

But when I look at younger pictures of my elder sisters or my parents, and compare it with younger pictures of today’s generation, again, the unlimited internet and hence unlimited food delivery are impacting health. Visibly as obesity. Invisibly as brainrot.

Yesterday I came across a video of Sister Shivani of Brahma Kumaris. She was referring to the time when her talk show Awakening with Brahma Kumaris had just started on Aastha channel. A year after the talk show, she started travelling around the country giving talks. And she was stunned by what she saw.

There were people who were going through worst of their life situations, and got out of them just because they watched the 30-minute talk show of hers. For those who don’t know, it is about application of spirituality to practice. The people who gave this feedback made no other change but only this 30 minutes to their lives.

It made her wonder, that if merely 30 minutes of daily positive content could create so much positive differences in the lives of people, what would be the effect of so much disempowering daily content on our minds?

It often pains me that a lot of our free time, boredom, and sometimes our entire existence has boiled down to being online. Just because we have a lot of it.

I now feel pity for people who are constantly on the nook of the internet, wasting their life, trying to please an audience that is doing the same.

And it is not just Instagram. Instagram is just the biggest culprit. Twitter, Snap, LinkedIn are contributors too. At some level performance has become more important than doing the work that performs for itself.

As a result, ladies and gentlemen:

I know, I am no one to judge what someone else does. Also, social media tells very little story of someone’s whole life. But even if it is a partial story, most people are living it 30 out of 24 hours of the day to make a point.

Is the point even worth making if it makes you more addicted to projection and alienates you from who you really are?

So, what is the solution to the unlimited internet encapsulation we all have gotten into?

You know it in your heart. Had preachings and teachings worked, we have abundance on the internet. I have shared some in the past, but this time I wish you to dig deep.

When you sit with yourself, you know what you can do to get out of this collateral yet reversible damage.

I want to leave you with a story, though.

This week Taylor Swift did a secret performance at the Grammy Museum in LA. The list of the things she did was circulating on the internet, and one of those has stayed with me.

She said something to the tune of she does not wait for the idea fairy. She shows up to do the work. And then the idea fairy also shows up.

We somehow think that the resistance to excellence would some day go away when we would be rich, successful or living our dream. Swift is doing all of these. But the fight against this resistance is everlasting. It is up to us to fight that every day. Or to start scrolling, because hey, we do not pay for the internet with so much money, as much as we pay for it with our dreams, health and mindset.

And it is worth remembering what James Clear often says about consuming:

“The measure of a life is not what you consume, but what you contribute.
Spend less time owning, consuming, taking. Spend more time giving, creating, making.”

2 Raw One-Liners:

• The easiest way to have more energy is to speak less.

• The easiest way to have less resentment is to have the courage to have an assertive yet polite conversation.

(Both are apparently contradictory yet they are not, which is the beauty of words!)

3 Real Confessions:

1. I missed the in-person show of a wonderful artist last weekend. On purpose. There is no logical reason, but let me try my illogical ones: Mujhe achchha lagta hai garden mein jaakar uselessly wander karna, ek ghante ke liye sham ko meditate karna, and most importantly, I need to walk around to consume content for 3 hours. Sitting is too much!!! No hate towards that artist. She is an inspiration. But I gotta become mine :) I did squander that money, but at least I did not squander that time again.

2. I am going to a family function for rakshabandhan. We have a party (of another occasion) a day before that too. And my biggest wish from this 1.5 day of trip is that my Mom comes out if it in good health. How life priorities change :))

3. I was in H&M the other day. And saw a GenZ boy click the picture of a dress in his Nokia dumb phone. The kinda you get for ~2,000 INR on Amazon that have the camera just for the sake of it. It is the kind of people like this that make me feel hopeful despite 10 years of abundance of internet. 💜

That is it my friend.

Wish you more time with yourself, being who you really are, because that is what we really need. 💜

Nishtha Gehija

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Instantly access one (or more) of these ebooks:

20s versus 30s: The strange and unique differences between the two most important decades of your life

The Corporate Life Handbook: If you are in corporate job and struggle with daily humdrums of it, one-pagers with harsh truths are something no one is going to tell you :)

The Career Changing Guide: If you are looking for a sign, this is it :)

How to Deal with Heartbreak: A book almost everyone needs but no one gives you right in your hand. If you don’t need this, get this for a friend you know certainly needs it.

Every Writer Needs to Read this: A book I wish I had 11 years ago when I was starting out as a writer

Happy Independence Day weekend my friend!!!

I was about to write a deep post like usual, but then I thought today is the weekend most people won’t have anything planned. So let’s keep it light yet something super meaningful.

I keep thinking about freedom to do what you want all of the time, so I came up with a few short pointers about what freedom actually means.

Here are 8 commandments of being independent (8, because we are entering the 8th decade of independence)?

1. To do what you are supposed to do, when you are supposed to do. Discipline is the greatest form of independence.

   

2. When you work, you work with focus. Distractions = giving up your freedom.

3. To go for a walk outdoors (preferably nature — park, beach if you have access, a water body, for example my hometown Kota has this wonderful Riverfront, Kota Barrage and Kishor Sagar Talab) every day. You do not understand what it does to you, unless you experience it yourself.

4. To forgive people without ever hoping for an apology for them. Yes, please stay careful in the future, but holding on to someone else’s wrongdoings is doing nothing right to you.

5. To have the courage to spend time with yourself, alone. Again, every single day. If you always need people or devices or music, you are never free.

6. To obviously never be extremely elated by joy or exhausted by pain. Life is a cycle, and people’s opinions and life situations do not hold the power to send you into extreme emotions.

7. To deal with your daddy issues, which basically means: Doing things just to prove it to your Dad, and then realising it is an issue. So you deal with it. You’d be surprised to know we do so many things just to listen “I am proud of you” from our fathers ONCE IN OUR LIFETIME, but we may never be able to listen to it. Often for no other reason that they have their own Daddy issues they aren’t even aware of. The freedom from the generational trauma begins with you.

8. Lastly, to always be a little underemployed. What this means is, you take on less work than you can. This way, when something exciting comes up, you have the time, but most importantly, the energy to do it. That, my friend, is the greatest degree of freedom.

2 Raw One-Liners:

• Only you have more money than ever you realise that the biggest form of richness is a mind that can sit with focus. And a mind that can chill without worrying about work.

• Nothing bigger than the joy of not knowing what is going on in the “latest OTT show”.

3 (for) Real good articles/notes I found on the internet you must read this weekend:

1. I’m begging you, never write with AI: Bret Stephens, NY Times (Note from me, I am requesting you, please please read this article. Someone shared a picture form of it too somewhere on the internet, and now it forever lives with me:

   

2. Seth’s Riffs: Seth Godin (I’m planning to create an archive of all of mine also, into an ebook. Mostly to make sure people stay away from phone. Dear God, but first, I need energy.)

3. 10 years in Delhi: Yours truly (only because today is the day of the Red Fort in Delhi) :)

Have a great weekend and freedom from your own bondages, y’all!

Nishtha Gehija

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Instantly access my ebooks:

20s versus 30s: The strange and unique differences between the two most important decades of your life

The Corporate Life Handbook: If you are in corporate job and struggle with daily humdrums of it, one-pagers with harsh truths are something no one is going to tell you :)

The Career Changing Guide: If you are looking for a sign, this is it :)

How to Deal with Heartbreak: A book almost everyone needs but no one gives you right in your hand. If you don’t need this, get this for a friend you know certainly needs it.

Every Writer Needs to Read this: A book I wish I had 11 years ago when I was starting out as a writer

Perfection is the mask of procrastination.

When we are trying too much to make things perfect, we are running away from the action we need to take.

When we take the action we need to take, we might fail. It means we would have to try something different. So we stay stuck in perfection paralysis.

Or we get busy scrolling. “I haven’t had the time.”

We say too many yes-es. It takes away from the responsibility of the thing we want to be doing.

Or we create a life of complexity. Too much research. Too much mess in the room. Too many open tabs. So that procrastination takes on.

Or we organise meetings. Meetings to talk about things that could have been a half-sentence email. But we like looking busy. Because when we look busy, we take away from productive and empty time. When we take away from productive and empty time, we do not have to do the thing we want to be doing.

All of this gets harder if you are making good money. Because now the only reason you gotta take action is for your soul. The bank account is already nourishing itself.

You get all the success in the world first, thinking you will fill your soul later. Only to realise that as you kept chasing success, the soul is now empty.

But the thing about soul is it never withers away. What you have always wanted to do is something you will always see yourself walking towards.

You gotta listen. Not to prove it to anyone. Not to be able to afford that team or that car or that property in Central Delhi. Just for the sake of doing things.

In the movie Piku, Deepika Padukone has a line; “After a certain age, parents cannot stay alive by themselves alone. We gotta work to keep them alive.” I’d extrapolate that to our souls too. After a certain point, the soul is ready to wither. It is only the soul that can save itself from death while still having a functioning heart.

When your life is not set and it is struggling to keep itself alive, the soul is blooming at its finest. Then life goes on and the soul gets suppressed. But there is always some part of the soul that is crumbling, that needs to come alive, if we let it.

Sometimes we need rest to let it come alive. Sometimes we need to just listen to ourselves. Sometimes we need to stop listening to everyone else. Sometimes we need to go with the flow. Sometimes we just need to turn off the internet.

But the only cure is action.

2 Raw One-Liners:

• “Good and true things are easy,” Kate Capshaw, wife of Steven Spielberg, to Taylor Swift

• “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” — The Great Gatsby

3 (for) Real cool pictures from my gallery

Found some on Substack, some in my screenshots. Feel free to let me know of the original post if you know them, I’ll tag them

Nishtha Gehija

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Instantly access my ebooks:

20s versus 30s: The strange and unique differences between the two most important decades of your life

The Corporate Life Handbook: If you are in corporate job and struggle with daily humdrums of it, one-pagers with harsh truths are something no one is going to tell you :)

The Career Changing Guide: If you are looking for a sign, this is it :)

How to Deal with Heartbreak: A book almost everyone needs but no one gives you right in your hand. If you don’t need this, get this for a friend you know certainly needs it.

Every Writer Needs to Read this: A book I wish I had 11 years ago when I was starting out as a writer

I am sorry for the late email today.

Been under the weather for the last three days. Still am. Fever, weakness, throat infection — all of which command supreme rest.

But the one learning I derived out of this episode was to schedule this email in advance, so that you as a reader know what to expect when.

I cannot build India’s most read newsletter by being inconsistent with timings.

I own it. I will fix this.

Now, let’s start.

Raw and Real Conversation

When I was in class 8, we had a house help named Sunita.

When she would come to our home for her chores, she would often bring her elder daughter along, whose name was Rajkumari. We made sure Rajkumari wasn’t involved in the chores (child labour), but she was an almost daily visitor.

One of the things that did not sit well with me in this set up was that Rajkumari did not go to school.

So during my summer break that year, out of the blue, I offered to teach her.

She would come at our home for one hour, I would take her to my study room to make sure she had the best quiet environment, and we began at ground level — teaching of the alphabet.

In less than a week, she quit.

I was naive enough to not understand it back then. So I thought she was not simply interested in studies.

Now as I think about it, I realise there was an upbringing, environment, mindset, (lack of) family conversations, and conditioning I was single-handedly fighting against.

For me education was my oxygen. I knew even at that age that this was the only thing that would give me everything I wanted.

But for Rajkumari maybe education was another distraction.

Maybe at home she was already being prepared to be a nice wife very soon.

Maybe there was a boy she was already seeing, and her parents wanted to make sure she got no freedom.

Maybe the conversation of education in that household was as unfathomable as driving Ferrari sports car from New Delhi to Gurugram on a Monday morning.

The question, though, is: why am I telling this to you?

It is because we all want to change something in our lives.

Even though we are blessed with the best lives, there is always an improvement our mind is always inching towards.

What happens after that thought is what makes the difference between us and Rajkumari.

No matter what you went through, you have the tool of education with you.

All our lives we think that the formal education we got was meaningless, because the reality is so much different. But that education gave you the mindset to figure life out, which you did and are still doing.

We forget that it was education that changed our childhood reality into what we have now.

Shaant hokar socho: This means we change things through education.

And by education, I do not mean just going back to college.

I mean preparing yourself for real world by reading books, reading spiritual texts, changing your habits, and so on.

If you cannot get up in the morning and you want to change that, and one fine day you read “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius and he says:

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work, as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for, the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

Or you are trying too hard in your work, and you read “The Inner Game of Tennis”, by W. Timothy Gallwey and you realise:

“The secret to winning any game lies in not trying too hard.”

Or perhaps you are experiencing hair fall during monsoon, and you watch a video by Rujuta Diwekar, do those changes, and bam, within weeks your hair gets better.

There is so much wisdom out into the world, but you have to be a seeker, a relentless force of life seeking endless education, because you can.

Your basics are sorted. You know how to read. You have a degree. Rajkumari couldn’t, because she didn’t know how and where to start.

I know someone in my life (whom I stay at a respectful distance from) who would cringe at all of the above and say “I don’t have time. My life is the worst.”

Guess what? There are books on time management, like the ones by Brian Tracy, and if you need perspective on your “worst” life, maybe you need to watch The Secret documentary.

The answer to every problem of yours is out there.

But do have to develop the courage, the willingness, the inner drive to be a seeker. And an all-time learner.

Staying married to your problems never moved the humanity or a single human forward.

Some ways to begin that change in the smallest of ways:

1. Pick one book. Any one book that interests you. And start reading it.

2. Then pick the next book. A good book often refers many books. Or go to Amazon recommendations based on your book, go to Goodreads for recommendations, or the best ever: step into your local book store. We need to spend more money in book stores.

3. Try not to read for a particular “purpose” all of the time. Try reading good books, but for leisure.

4. A good world is non-fiction books. Although I would suggest staying away from dopamine fiction, and read only that fiction that is helpful and is beyond the likes of “will they/will they not?”

5. Proportion of slop has to be less than proportion of good.

The last time I met Rajkumari was maybe 2 years ago in the same locality, she was obviously married and had kids, and maybe she had the same life that her environment conditioned into.

The chasm between us and Rajkumari is that we know how to educate ourselves. It is our OG Brahmastra.

We have this privilege, and if we do not exploit it…I just took a deep breath.

We have to make that choice.

We can stay married to our excuses. The job is bad, family is bad, life is hard, back pain, environment, too hot, too much rain — whatever.

But you still have the agency. The only person who can take away that agency is you. The only person that can be the agent in turning your life 180 is you.

2 Raw One-Liners:

• Do not just look at the reception of your content. First look at how proud you are for putting it out.

• Being useful is probably every human being’s personal Mount Everest.

3 (for) Real crips blogs to read, and a place without likes and comments:

1. The need to feel useful

2. Be careful with your words

3. The chilla syndrome for life

That’s all for this weekend my friend.

If you wish to read ebooks in a PDF instantly, here are some of my instant access e-books. Feel free to not read them, but please start reading any other book this weekend.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing better for yourself ever.

Nishtha Gehija
rawreal.in | nishtha.blog

For months, I have been looking for a book on sleep.

Not in-depth kind of (which are plenty and a lot of them are fab), but one with a 10-20 pointer list. A list that keeps me on toes for to be dedicated to my sleep time.

Since I could not find that kind of list, I decided to create my own.

Feel free to copy it, take a printout and put it in front of your desk/bathroom mirror.

The world needs more quality sleep, more sanity and less screens, more than anything else.

Let’s start.

As you do, keep an open mind, and think about how this could help you.

On Sleep

1. Forget worrying about 5 am club. Start thinking about 9 pm club. Aka, how is it that you can go to bed by 9 pm max.

2. It is not the number of hours of sleep that matters (the most) but the sleep that begins between 9-10 pm that matters.

3. The programming of your mind before sleeping is so so so important. My night time schedule is telling about my day to God, what would it have looked like had today been the best day (reverse visualisation), and reading something empowering right before turning off the lights. If you want to understand more on this, please pick up The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy. A timeless classic.

4. To sleep at 9, it is best to have dinner by 6 pm.

5. To have dinner by 6 pm, you need to wrap up work by 5 pm.

6. To wrap up work by 5 pm, there is virtually no scope of wasting the ~4 pm time, that happens in a lot of offices.

7. Since there is no scope of wasting time because you will be focused on getting things done on time, you simply cannot afford to waste time scrolling on your phone.

Which brings us to the manifesto of screens.

On screen

1. If your work involves use of screen (most jobs do), before you start work for the day, write on a piece of paper: what all you want to get done today. It makes you hyper focused.

2. Even if you are going to shop online, decide what you want to shop for instead of “letting the algorithm do things for you.” Be vigilant about what gets done, post which you will abandon the screen and return to the analog world.

3. Analog is to 2026 what unlimited internet was to 2016.

4. If your default is to reach out to your phone each time you are bored, it is time to inculcate the habit of replacement that James Clear talks about in Atomic Habits. Replace the need to reach out for phone for anything else — Kindle, stapler, pen and notebook, canvas, a book (of course), clean something — anything. But make it a mission of your life to do small things you have been procrastinating than to scroll on the screen for the smallest time.

5. Lastly, keep a small phone. Let people think what they want to. You have already tried looking cool to others and living the life of others. Now that you know nothing came out of it, it is time to live your own.

On Sanity

1. Try living a private life. The joy of going out, pursuing a hobby, learning to knit and not telling the world about it is priceless. Even if you are not a celebrity like Virat Kohli who needs privacy, isn’t it worth it to live life just for the sake of living it and not documenting it?

2. When things go awry, it is the best test of your self-control. The Uber driver is going to cancel, your favourite league team might lose, or your parent may snap for no reason. But sometimes, wisdom in life is knowing this is all going to happen at all times in life. If it is going to happen to all of us, is it worth it to feel so traumatised and torn up?

3. Good books are your vacation while you are still sitting on your favourite couch at your home.

4. Have fun bro. जिंदगी बनाते-बनाते जीना नहीं छोड़ना है।

5. It should be the easiest thing to make you smile. Never have I ever regretted smiling. A fun habit I have is I always leave the mirror smiling. Whether it is morning or night, how you look at yourself is the most important thing in the world. Isn’t it, my friend?

2 Raw One-Liners

• The hardest thing in the world is to sit with focus for 2 hours and do your work without distractions.

• The easiest thing in the world is to sit with focus for 2 hours and do you work without distractions.

3 (for) Real blogs that you might love (no likes, no comments, just real content):

1. Disagree without disgrace

2. “In your element”

3. You must wave at kids

That is it for this weekend, my friend.

I will see you next weekend.

Nishtha Gehija

Your friendly CA turned writer didi, and a ghostwriter for top CXOs across 4 countries

Today I want to speak about my father, because he is turning 72 next week. Yasss!!

And a bit or two that you (and I) could probably learn from him.

Let’s go!!!

Ever since I have understood life, my father has been a simple man.

His wardrobe consists of strictly white shirts only, with grey/beige/navy pants.

We sisters gave him and Mom a couple’s wrist watch as a gift on their 25th wedding anniversary, which he wore for years! Fun fact: Next year it is my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, and he has changed just one wrist watch during this quarter of a century!

He has just three pair of shoes, one for going out, one slipper for use at home, and one extra which he doesn’t touch.

It has always been like this. I’d like to believe it is true for a lot of households, not just mine.

And while the world worships Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg for dressing plainly, a lot of fathers of millennials have been minimalists by design.

How does this minimalism affect you as a person?

I’ll tell you how.

I have held 3 jobs in the past, and on the day of tendering resignation in each of those three jobs, I sobbed.

A lot.
With him.
On the phone.

And he was this Zen like man, who was there to console me each time. Worth noting that in every single one of the three times, I did not have a new job offer coming along, yet he cared little about the future and more about the pain of letting go I was going through in the moment.

And it is not just these 3 times.

Each time there is something difficult I go through, I am somehow able to conceal it from my Mom, but with my father, the truth always figures a way to pop out.

There may be many reasons to it, but the biggest one is that this man lives such a simple life, that he has the bandwidth to deal with life problems. Of himself and his family.

He started working at the age of 6. (Please forgive us for the child labour. That has never happened again with my generation or my sister’s kids either. So it’s all fine now. Also, the person doing the work of getting him employed and the one who did employ him passed away years ago.)

Thus, all his life by design has been a journey of figuring things out. He hasn’t had the time to think about sleeves with cufflinks, the quintessential Gucci belt almost every man wears, or even a thought of spending money on a Rolex, when you are looming under the responsibility of getting your daughters married.

But there is one instance I’d like to share from his last year’s birthday, which never tends to leave my mind.

You will be most likely blown away by this

My father’s Activa was in the ICU, so we decided to get a new one for him.

A couple of weeks before making the purchase, I had simply put the thought in his head, so that it gave him the headspace to deal with the “looming surprise”.

On the day of purchase, I did not ask him. I just told him. And then told him I will call him in a couple of hours to the outlet to get the delivery of the vehicle.

I have always seen him loving the colour white. White clothes, white interiors for his shop, even white (vanilla) cake. (Special mention to his disdain for chocolate cake 😢). So I finalised that colour.

When I went back home to take him with me, everyone (but my father) gave a conflicting suggestion. My mom, sisters, BIL were of the opinion that we should pick up anything but white colour.

“Pick up a darker colour.”
“White would get dirty quickly.”
“Other than black, what were the colours available?”

The father maintained a peculiar, detached quietness that is his very nature oftentimes. Not giving any opinion.

Because I was the one making the final decision, I still finalised the colour white.

We finally took the delivery of the white Activa the same evening.

But that is not where the story ends, my friend.

That night, when my sisters and BILs had left, my father told me and my mom the story of his first scooter:

That some day came 17 years after that grey scooter was sold, followed by him driving another blue Activa because back then colours were not available, followed by his new white Activa finally when he turned 71.

Not to mention, he still didn’t voice his opinion!

He waited almost 30 years without a scooter of his choice, while practically running a home and fulfilling everyone’s wishes!!

I do not think anyone could live selflessly like this, other than parents.

Why am I telling this to you?

My friend, parents (especially a lot of fathers) hardly voice their wishes. It is just not possible for a lot of them. So, you simply have to hone the art of observing their life, and listening to them even when everyone else is going ahead with logic.

So, three days before my father turns 72, I do wish your father too gets to live all his unfulfilled wishes. And may we all have the empathy to understand it.

It makes life meaningful beyond measure.

Deep down, this is what we all are looking for.

2 Raw One-Liners

• To have a lot of money and not a lot of self-blabbering mouth is an asset we should speak about often.

• Intelligence is knowing when to start. Wisdom is knowing when to move on.

3 (for) Real wonderful lines I read last week, that you should too:

1. “Spend your adult life making people feel special.” — George Raveling and Ryan Holiday, What You’re Made For

2. “When you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.” — Oprah Winfrey, What I Know For Sure

3. “As someone who works in the corporate, your number one job is to understand people and give them what they want. Everything you want, will come back quicker than you had expected.” — The Corporate Life Handbook

Nishtha Gehija is a CA turned full time writer, ghostwriter of books for CXOs (famous for her non-AI, fully authentic content), and a daily blogger at nishtha dot blog.

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Get instant access to my ebooks:

1. 20s versus 30s: The strange and unique differences between the two most important decades of your life

2. The Corporate Life Handbook: If you are in corporate job and struggle with daily humdrums of it, one-pagers with harsh truths are something no one is going to tell you :)

3. The Career Changing Guide: If you are looking for a sign, this is it :)

4. How to Deal with Heartbreak: A book your best friend needs but no one gives it to them right in their hand. You can.

5. Every Writer Needs to Read this: A book I wish I had 12 years ago when I was starting out as a writer

I have been completely zoned out in the last one week.

Especially today, as I write this.

The only focus has been to deliver a manuscript of a client.

I didn’t clean my desk this morning. The barbell laden with weights is still lurking behind the study desk, as I worked on submitting the final manuscript of a client’s book I had bene ghostwriting. I need to trim my nails.

It is unusual, but we are all getting raw and real here, aren’t we?

We were initially supposed to close this on 30th June, but because I needed more time, I requested my client for a 10-day extension to 10th July, which he nicely gave.

I am so glad I stretched every ounce of dedication I had and delivered a masterpiece I am proud of. It is very hard to convince one’s own self, but seldom when one does it, it is time to pause.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the other side of the glamorous life of a work-from-home life.

I have been working from home ever since the Covid of 2020, but till mid 2023 I was in a job. So we won’t consider that because you are still accountable to a team.

But, what does the life of a work-from-home freelancer look like?

Is it even for you?

Allow me to try to walk you through it in the minutest details.

Some self-created principles:

1. Always have separate clothing. I may work in casuals, but never have I ever wore night suits during the day. Not even once. Not even when I have been sick. The home clothes are purposefully very nice, because how you feel is what gets reflected in the work you do.

2. If you love routine (I absolutely love love it. My sisters when they have to critique me they call me “time table”).

3. If it is a video meeting, I try to wear a shirt, even if it is slightly casual. (and certainly not an Athleisure) or a plain v-neck tee. The child inside wants Tom-n-Jerry, but the adult outside wants credibility.

Pros of WFH life as a freelancer:

1. You do not have to prove to anyone you are working. If work gets done on time and is done well, everyone is happy.

2. A lot of the times in your job, your ratings are a product of your manager’s mood, especially if they are not rational. Sometimes I wonder how men are so much a prisoner of their mood, even though it is us women who go through their monthly cycles :)

3. I do not have to appear happy in meetings I do not want to be in, in the first place.

4. I love the solitude, the maker’s schedule. So we willingly optimise for it.

Cons:

1. People think you are free. Historically our culture has treated the busiest housewives as free, just because they were at home. That false mentality still lingers. For me, instead of getting triggered, I have learnt to draw boundaries. It clearly conveys your message. And it is no point being irked anyway.

2. Sometimes, like once every 6 months, I would feel the need for an accountability buddy, like an assistant or an intern who would keep me accountable on my to-do’s. But then I think of the dread of talking to another human being AND explaining them my work AND how it would take me away from the love of my life, which is staying quiet all day — and I buckle up my systems.

That’s pretty much it. I do not miss the working from office system much.

How to decide if working from home is for you:

1. If you can manage your time well, go for it. Otherwise, it is bold to be working from office.

2. You know when to stop.

3. You know when to start.

It is a journey. I was waiting for the train at the Dubai airport and sitting on a bench outside and working on my laptop. I was waiting in the line at Warner Bros Abu Dhabi and was on my laptop. Last week I had the best drive and I wrote for myself again, even though I was on a tiny break.

I do not mean to scare you, but just a wisdom.

And yes I may go to a salon on a Tuesday, there have been way more incidents that I have worked on Saturdays (rarely Sundays too).

Do I endorse it? Nope.

Am I working on it to have more of a work-life balance? Oh yes.

How much percentage of times is work-from-home life on track? 60%.

But the biggest thing is awareness.

When you know what you want and what you absolutely don’t want, you have won half the battle.

2 Raw One-Liners:

• Girl to girl: He is not going to change by you suppressing yourself.

• If you want to see who does the best work in a team, look at who speaks the least.

3 (for) Real meaningful and fun blogs that I wish to share with you:

1. Good boys that (forever) damage good girls

2. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

3. Some pictures of the 5 days of meditation retreat

Alright then folks, have a nice, monsoon-filled, relaxed weekend.

Don’t be on screen too much :)

Nishtha Gehija

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Instantly access my ebooks:

1. 20s versus 30s: The strange and unique differences between the two most important decades of your life

2. The Corporate Life Handbook: If you are in corporate job and struggle with daily humdrums of it, one-pagers with harsh truths are something no one is going to tell you :)

3. The Career Changing Guide: Practical and Real

4. How to Deal with Heartbreak: If you don’t need this, get this for a friend you know certainly needs it.

5. Every Writer Needs to Read this: A book I wish I had 11 years ago when I was starting out as a writer

But then memory lane took me to the reflections I did when I turned 34, 33, 32, 31, 30, 29, 28, and 27. Whoa! I don’t remember when I was this proud :)

That is the good thing about doing good things consistently. The consistency just does not let you off the hook.

So, here you go, 35 life lessons on turning 35, ladies and gentlemen:

1. You don’t have to twist your way into being mean. You’ll be surprised how much you can get done by being genuinely nice and caring, with every human.

2. Skill and attitude are the things that create confidence. Confidence and charisma without competence and curiosity is a lame victory.

3. When you work super hard in your 20s (7-8 hours per day) you will be able to work 4-5 hours towards your 30s.

   

4. Having a trauma is sometimes not a choice. Living with a trauma is.

5. Stop giving free consultations and keep your mouth shut. Give advice when asked for (by immediate family) and when paid (by everyone other than immediate family), and not when you simply think they need it.

6. A good night sleep and breakfast within an hour of waking up solve for most of your energy problems.

7. You must do the work.

8. Change your environment if you do not like it. I remember I started watching cricket regularly from Asia Cup 2023 (that India won), watched World Cup 2023, and then kept track of other tournaments, and then spent a lot of time scrolling memes on Twitter after India won World Cup in 2024, Champions Trophy in 2025 and when RCB won IPL in 2025. Super guilty. Never led to anything good. It was after that I realised it is not the best use of my time. So now I do not check Twitter during any sporting tournament. Simple as this. It once got out of hand (which meant I was on Twitter for over an hour), so I temporarily deactivated it. Change your environment, do not expect it to change it for you.

9. Related to the above, as I was reflecting that my 20s went too slow but half of 30s went tad bit faster, I realised it is because a little bit of my internet consumption has gone up, even though I am super careful. So, now I will bring it down further. If you think you do not have a lot of time, ruthlessly and drastically cut internet usage. Get a 2 GB per month plan if you need to, but the only currency you have is time.

10. Protect your Sundays at all costs.

11. It’s okay to not like doing the things in your 30s that you liked doing in your 20s.

12. Life is all about changing your inner conversation with yourself.

13. If something upsets you, do not bury it within. Talk to yourself and figure what upset you. And then figure if you can change it or accept it. Do it. If you bury things, they give rise to diseases eventually.

14. If you really really care, you can bring about all the transformation in yourself. But it begins with not expecting others to transform too.

15. Anyone who taught you how to be less kind and more nonchalant towards others is a liar, is a traitor. Please do not listen to them.

16. Classy people have a list of most gifted books instead of a list of favourite YouTube channels.

17. Show me your morning routine and I will show you what your day would look like.

18. Show me your night routine and I will show you how peaceful you’d wake up in the morning.

19. Quit being a Raja Beta. :D

20. True richness lies not in making Instagram posts about your achievements but writing essays about your despairs (cough cough ;)).

21. If you keep saying yes to everyone, you keep saying no to yourself.

22. The art of living life is to navigate situations that require you to say no, where you consistently say no without actually saying no.

23. Working with the right people is 1000X more important than working on the right project. Please read that again.

24. Your source of motivation has to be you. If “talking to this one person” makes you feel better, you will always be their prisoner.

25. Please do yourself a favour and read Consolations from a Stoic by Seneca (the Kindle version is cheaper than your chips packet), So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan (especially every sensitive girl and every gentleman must read it) and the newsletter of Cal Newport.

26. It is more important to decide what you will not do than to figure what you will do.

27. A good life should have no place for ego.

28. Life is all about returning to the childhood version of you.

29. When I am acting different than you had expected me to, will you still love me while trying to ask me what lead me to this opinion to understand me, or will you abandon me because I did not fit your mental mould?

30. Speaking less is the OG (and the most underrated) way to have more energy.

31. Happy people make time to go to a park or outdoors during the Golden Hour.

32. It is mind blowing how you become a walking energy of possibilities when you even stop having ideas of impossibilities.

33. Exercise is a necessity for your body and productivity, walking is a medicine for your mind and soul.

34. No matter when you travel and where you travel, always pack at least a shawl and a pair of socks. It is a staple.

35. “Life a good life and tell no one. People ruin beautiful things.” I remember reading this once long ago, and it is only around turning 35 you start understanding the truth of this statement.

That is it friends, which one did you like the most? Tell me, tell me!!

PS: I know, I know I had to share the essay essay “How to become a successful freelancer” today but bro I am in the middle of submitting the final manuscript of 3 books (the last 10% takes the 90% of effort, each time). And I also I am in the middle of a much-needed 4-day meditation retreat, writing this at 5 am after our morning meditation. Your special sneak peek into the life of a freelancer :))

This is the picture after our evening meditation that is held everyday from 6.30-7.30 pm, and it was a special one because it was outdoors in some ~23 degrees. Hope this qualifies for you to forgive me :)

I promise I will write that freelancing essay.

See you next Saturday.

Nishtha Gehija

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Instantly access my ebooks:

20s versus 30s: The strange and unique differences between the two most important decades of your life

The Corporate Life Handbook: If you are in corporate job and struggle with daily humdrums of it, one-pagers with harsh truths are something no one is going to tell you :)

The Career Changing Guide: If you are looking for a sign, this is it :)

How to Deal with Heartbreak: A book almost everyone needs but no one gives you right in your hand. If you don’t need this, get this for a friend you know certainly needs it.

Every Writer Needs to Read this: A book I wish I had 11 years ago when I was starting out as a writer

Exactly 2 days after turning 18, I left my hometown for college.

Yesterday I turned 35.

For the last 17 years, I have been perpetually homeless.

This is me, and welcome to my story.

Why did I leave home?

My parents worked super hard to give all four of us (me and my 3 elder sisters) the best education. But I was the first one to even go to an English medium school.

The school I changed to in 11th and 12th grade sold SRCC (the best college of India) as a metric of success.

While I could not make it to SRCC, I did manage to get out of my hometown.

It was difficult, I was clueless for one complete year, and my eating, studying, playing schedule went for a total toss.

That time I did not notice it, but never, even in those situations, I ever wanted to return home. Maybe the early signs of a future are always showing.

Why I stayed away from home

My reasons for moving out of home when I was 18 were (perhaps) to create my own identity, and give myself exposure the small town did not have.

My reasons for staying away from my parents’ home as a 35-year-old is because it feels better here. When something isn’t broken, it does not need fixing.

What happens when you stay away from home

1. After more than a decade of staying away, you develop a zen-like attitude towards most things in life.

2. Because of panicking too often because of people who are not as nice to you as your family is, you eventually realise, nothing and absolutely nothing is worth losing your peace of mind.

3. If something goes too bad, you develop the self-confidence, network and resources to deal with it.

4. Also, you start seeing the side of life where you are trusted easily. Nowadays when a billionaire or a millionaire CEO changes their stance based on my suggestion for their book, sometimes I think to myself in my head, “Dude, wow. I have never ever tasted what having an opinion mattered feels like.”

The other side, the non-snazzy, the difficult side of being away from home

It is not easy to stay from home.

In the Covid lockdown when I was temporary there for over a year, I contemplated it for a bit to move my operating location to my hometown, but it just did not make sense for my long-term growth as an individual.

It is painful to see your father asking you often to quit everything and move to hometown. Deep down I know that he wants to make sure I make the best of his life when he is around. He also wants to make sure if something happens to him, I am around too, like the rest of his daughters.

But I know if I give in to this fear of death, I am also giving up my whole different life that I have here. Sometimes my lower self also believes that do I not matter for him even a bit, that my career is still like his stepchild and not a family?

There have been several times I have stood at the railway station of my hometown wondering if I could be a different, a better daughter that would make me living away from home a little okay, a little acceptable for them.

The common layer I see across these patterns is the love, the longing, the separation, and yet, helplessness.

I somehow want my family to believe I care. Deep down they know I do. But an ageing part of them wants its proof too.

Why is it impossible to go back “home” now?

1. Because I love being away from home. Isn’t love enough? To have created a small, invisible world of your own is an achievement, even if it does not make it to LinkedIn.

2. At home, you are being shepherded. For no one’s fault, but because there is a culture that is followed in every home. When the bedsheets would change. When you must put things to laundry. What should be there for dinner. Why I must adjust to the TV sound every day because I am the youngest. Why it feels as if you are almost attacking your family if you want a different, protein-rich meal every day, even though they are the most cooperative, nicest and non-fussy ones. (It’s me, I know bro.)

   When you are a teen away from home for the first time, having these things back at home feels nice, even a privilege. When you are a grown up, it feels like you do not have a say on your own life in your own home, and you must follow the rules of the land.

3. I will never be able to experience what parents actually feel sending their kids away from them. But at least in my case my parents do have their 3 out of 4 daughters (75% progeny) near them. They are not completely alone. Call it my privilege to be able to get out, but is it wrong to do what you can with your privilege?

Home(less)

Taylor Swift was 20 when she wrote “You will always find your way home.”

Exactly ten years later, at the age of 30, she wrote, “I can go anywhere I want, anywhere I want, just not home.”

This is exactly what happens to anyone who leaves home as a late teen and contemplates on life in mid-30s.

The Success Tax you pay living away from home

I have had countless moments where I would have something really nice to tell, something good that happened in my life or career, and I would be jumping around and call up my family.

A lot of the times, almost invariably, they would say something that would diminish my achievement or joy or both. You must be careful of what you are getting into. We just want to warn you. We want you to make sure you have thought about this. They do not do that on purpose. They really want me to be aware. They want the best for me.

The contention that “the world is a scary place and I must be aware” is right, just that when it continues to come up at the wrong time, it is a pattern.

So for the past 2-3 years it has come to a point where I have gotten several opportunities that are life changing. For a second even I could not believe this could happen to me.

And yet I have jumped by myself, alone, and been absolutely normal with my family over the call. Forget excitement, but they don’t even know what transpired.

It breaks my heart to see that back home no one is really happy of the positive changes that are happening in your life (not true for my parents, but true for extended family). For them, the only definition of you has shrunk down to “she lives away”, mints money, and let us forget she is a human.

So, what can we do to make our family or anyone feel at home?

1. If you are unconvinced with a decision of theirs about their life, have conversations. Not opinions, not decisions, not judgements. Open conversations to understand. And please know that when we accept people for who they are even if we disagree with them, they will go any length to accept us for who we are. Every action has equal and opposite reaction. You cannot draw abundant acceptance in lieu of radical resistance.

2. For anyone we interact, regardless of family or friend or an acquaintance, you never know the battles they are fighting underneath that smile. There was an ad of depression with two faces, one was a straight face and the other was smiling. It was later told the person who was smiling was the one dealing with depression. So it helps to be a nice human being always, so that it becomes your ongoing nature.

3. The way to make someone do something was never by condemning their choices, but by loving them regardless. Love is there, but the condemnation sometimes is also a part of the parcel.

This is not an anti-family post

As a matter of fact, my mom was worried about me yesterday the whole day how I was alone on my birthday. For the very first time in eternity, my father sent me a text message yesterday for my birthday. It was early morning and I was in the spiritual class so he texted. We spoke too, an hour later, so chill :))

But this is about the fact that loving your parents and living with them are not complementary things.

You could love them and still carve out your identity.

The family doesn’t conspire to be wrong

I also understand that our family is human too. And almost every adult is a victim of generational trauma that has been passed on in the DNA. But when you become aware, it is up to you to break it or to become a victim to it.

Breaking it has serious repercussions, some of those you read in different shapes and forms throughout this note, but it is any day better than accepting the trauma as default.

When you know better, you should do better too.

What to do now, if you are someone who is feeling home(less) despite having a home?

1. There is a song from the movie Anjaana Anjaani that goes,

“Jab hoga, andhera, tab paaega dar mera…us dar pe, phir hogi teri subah…
Tu na jaane aas paas hai Khuda”

2. In Bhagwad Gita, God says to Arjun, “Depend on me completely.”

I have never felt the truth of these statements dwindle, ever.

3. I have experienced this over and over and over again in my life, that each time I call God to make a decision on my behalf or be with me or guide me, it has given an outcome that my human self could never contemplate.

   I guess that is what keeps my parents at peace too, staying 500 kms away from me :)

Final words

2 weeks back, my elder sister had a minor accident while riding her scooter. Her vehicle was hit by a tempo traveller whose brakes had failed.

The way I got to know of this was when I called up my Mom around 9 in the morning, as I often do, and my father picked up. “Your Mom is massaging your sister, as she met with an accident.”

Whoa, a 43-year-old she having her mother next to her tending to her minor sprain.

Anyway, my sister and I cracked some jokes over the phone, and once I was certain that she wasn’t hurt too much, I hung up the phone and got back to work.

My mind then automatically took me to a chilly morning of Delhi in January 2024, when I woke up around 3 am unable to breathe. Neither with nose, nor with mouth. It was impossible to lie down. And when I would sit up, the only way to breathe was to open the mouth wide open.

I knew I needed immediate assistance.

But the independent person inside me would not want to wake up my landlord uncle and aunty (the nicest people ever) staying on the ground floor. I also have a few acquaintances in the same sector, but decided not to ping them.

Instead, I called up the ambulance of our nearby hospital, told them clearly that I can “walk and move so I don’t need ambulance per se” but because it was a breathing issue, I needed assistance. They were kind enough to send an ambulance anyway. The one I travelled in alone, along with the driver and 2 hospital staff.

For those wondering, I was nebulised and made to go back home in the latter half of the day.

There are a lot of people who know me directly, who are envious of the life I have here in Delhi away from home. They will never know the price I have had to pay.

Nishtha Gehija is a daily blogger on life and observations at nishtha dot blog, is an author of several books and ebooksa, and ghostwriter of books for CXOs.

Ciao.

Before we begin, here is some trivia that might be helpful for today:

I am a CA turned full-time writer. Yup, the latter is my full-time work for more than 6 years now..

Why am I telling this to you?

Because I will now take you through the most fun story of trolls that I go through, and how I have fun with it :)

I was once in a conference, where an acquaintance of mine was introducing me. So I believed there would be some teeny tiny bit of respect for the work I do, duh? What I instead got was “it takes courage to give up a lucrative career as a CA and pursue a small life as a writer”. Oops. I wish I was making this up :)

Earlier this week I met a practising CA, and after knowing my story, she said, “You must be needing more time that is why you perhaps became a writer?” Sigh.

This one is my favourite. A retired principal of a school (the kinda aunty whose grandkids go to Vietnam for a summer vacay :)) was borderline heartbroken when she heard about my career change. She legit looked at me from top to bottom and back to top, in pity disguised as concern, and asked, “Guzaara ho jaata hai?” I laugh about her reaction to date :))

Hand on heart, I must tell you all these are really nice people. People that our education system has successfully converted into believing you become rich only by a corporate thingy, and certainly never by pursuing arts.

I don’t blame them either. Our cinema has done the same for the longest time.

In the movie Dil Chahta Hai, it was the business tycoon’s son Aakash who lived in a bungalow in Mumbai, drove to Goa in his Mercedes, and flew to Australia in first class. Meanwhile Sid, the artist, ran from his home to his neighbour’s home. His financial existence was so minuscule that the makers didn’t even bother to show how he went from Mumbai to Kasauli :)

The reality of making money

Which is why, I want to walk you through the reality of how money functions. Not to prove the trolls wrong, but to help anyone think deeper beyond what is visible.

1. After a few initial years of working, it does not matter which background you came from. What matters is your attitude towards life and the conversation in your head. But only people with the right attitude would agree to it.

2. You’d be surprised to know, but richness has got nothing to do with how much you make (assuming people think I make less than a working CA). Richness is created out of a habit of investing. This means someone making ₹20,000 could be rich, and someone making ₹5,00,000 per month could be poor, based on their habits.

3. A wealth manager I know often tells stories about people’s relationship with money. If there is only one thing I could tell you from so many of such stories, it is this: What you see in people’s lifestyles is never a reflection of people’s wealth. Read the previous line again because it is so important.

4. At some point, money is all a mindset.

5. When you have the self-worth to not judge people by the society’s standards, that is when you are really rich.

Why is it important to have this conversation?

Not to prove how much my income and net worth is. That is not the point here.

It is important to have this conversation because:

• So much of what we see is our biases playing through. Coming back to Dil Chahta Hai, we all see the rich Aakash because he is wandering around in Sydney because he is bored. But we could never imagine Sid doing it, even if he was filthy rich. He would very well be sitting in his home and painting. An artist is so fulfilled with their lives that they forget everything else automatically. But I think only the artists have the art to understand it.

• There is no right or wrong way. If you love corporates, go do it. If you hate it and are an artist, I am happy for you too. This is no diss into corporate cuties. Fun fact: Even I became an artist because I was pushed into hell with no parachute. Might as well learn to fly :)

• Why is money still a metric of success in 2026? Wasn’t everything about being a nice person? Like a really nice person who cares but who draws boundaries, etc. waala nice person.

• Last year, I had gone to Om Shanti Retreat Centre in Gurugram for a 3-day meditation retreat. One of the practices of the retreat is when the spiritual class gets over around 7.30 am, everyone should ideally go and do sewa for 30-60 minutes. It is sort of we “earning” our meals for the day. I happily went for the sewa of painting the block boundaries surrounding the garden. Think of painting the yellow and white blocks on the pavement. In those 30 minutes, I learnt at least 5 nuances about painting. Yet I can bet the blocks I painted were the worst. Every job appears easy when someone else is doing it.

The point I am trying to make here is that there is almost zero correlation between what someone does for work and how much money you have.

It becomes all the more important to live with this nuance, because life is rarely black and white. 

That is it.

Oh wait, one more thing. I thought for long if I actually wanted to write this essay, but I went ahead with it for just one reason:

Just in case, btw, a detailed essay on how to become a successful freelancer drops exactly after 2 weeks, on 04th July.

And for the trolls that wonder how much I make or do I make more or less than I would as a CA, well: Dude, I am a Sindhi way before I became a CA. What do you expect?

To explain more to trolls, I honestly do not have time today baby. Today is the due date of payment of monthly GST, they might know. Oh wait, how would they know :)))

2 Raw One-Liners:

• “You don’t have a lot of friends because you are not cunning.”

  — my Mom

• No one regretted an hour of workout. No one rejoiced an hour of social media.

3 (for) Real realisations I have been having about life lately:

1. The biggest factor to making yourself fitter is stretching well. It gives you the power for the next workout.

2. Do the nice things even if no one is watching. There is nothing more liberating than being true to yourself.

3. And when people know you are by default nice, be nice still, without having them walk over you and crush your niceness (I’m a crumpled up piece of paper lying here, coz I remember it All Too Well.)

Alrighty friends, let me know how you found today’s essay. I personally enjoyed the blend of fun with a serious conclusion.

Chalo, I will see you next Saturday.

PS: The “5 things” essay now goes on my daily blog nishtha dot blog every Wednesday, just in case you were wondering.

If you weren’t, awesome. Nothing changes at your end. Have a great weekend. <3

Nishtha Gehija

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Instantly access my ebooks:

20s versus 30s: The strange and unique differences between the two most important decades of your life

The Corporate Life Handbook: If you are in corporate job and struggle with daily humdrums of it, one-pagers with harsh truths are something no one is going to tell you :)

The Career Changing Guide: If you are looking for a sign, this is it :)

How to Deal with Heartbreak: A book almost everyone needs but no one gives you right in your hand. If you don’t need this, get this for a friend you know certainly needs it.

Every Writer Needs to Read this: A book I wish I had 11 years ago when I was starting out as a writer

Last year I turned 34. And for over one year or so, I have been feeling what I have now come to call as the mid-thirties disorientation.

It is not depression.

It is disorientation. (Haha, I did not write it using ChatGPT, so chill :))

It is that one short phase of your life (that sometimes lasts a little longer than a year) where you are not fully yourself.

It is your brain at the bridge, of not being able to keep up with the person you were and the person you are becoming.

You are unknowingly dragging far from who you have been for the longest time. Yet you do not find it alien.

As much as you try to resist this life change, it is in a manner shattering everything you have been, but doesn’t serve you anymore. And another part of you is beginning to emerge on its own.

It is important that we talk about it here.

Before the mid-thirties disorientation, you are carrying on the do-more-get-more-done energy of your 20s. After this disorientation phase is over, you are going towards do-less-but-turn-things-to-gold energy into life.

In your 20s and early 30s, aka before this disorientation phase, you had nothing.

You worked so much and so hard to build everything you have now.

Career.
Money.
Network.
Internal stability.
The face that smiles even when the heart has broken 17th time during the day.
The tiny smile that unconsciously pops up when you see your nephew and niece struggle with career, because you know they will turn out fine.
The fact that you dealt with so many hells you hadn’t ever anticipated.
The innumerable times you saw a joyful relationship (and I’m not even talking romantic here) turn into non-existent, because hey, you were naive and did not understand how the real world functions.

It is something everyone goes through in their 20s and 30s, mostly unaware, yet they do.

It may manifest itself as a career shattering apart (in the moment) or feeling disconnected from who you are as a person or maybe making decisions that are not aligned with who you are.

Your parents were perhaps in their mid-thirties when they gave you the childhood trauma, effects of which are somehow visible to date

I also studied a lot of people I know in person and respect, who went through a similar valley of disorientation around similar age.

….

But this mid-thirties disorientation is a special place reserved only for driven, strong, focused, high achievers.

I call it disorientation because the other side of this mess is magnificence.

Priyanka Chopra once quoted Beyonce, saying, “I am on the other side of my sacrifice.” She meant she has worked hard enough ever since she was a 20 year old, that now she has crossed the bridge of sacrifice to supreme success, has gotten on the other side, and now she chooses her projects and the life she lives.

This disorientation is exactly that bridge.

Life is different for everyone. And this disorientation is something no-one can prepare you for. You will only know once you have passed that bridge.

I have been going through that for over last one year or so. It has been a messy year, to say the least. I appear put together but almost everything is shattering apart.

So much so that the 3 days I have had in the last 365 days when nothing was falling apart, I wondered if life was supposed to be so easy!

It was precisely the reason I did not do the year-end review at the end of 2025. I was so disoriented that I could not convince myself to put a mask and tell you “here are the things that happened in my life”.

Everything was externally good — the career, the success, the family time, the joys of life — but you know in your heart you are internally falling apart. Which is what even I was going through for a long time.

But a part of me now feels things are coming together for good.

You cannot point out how, but you know in your heart.

…

On the other side of this sacrifice, on the other side of this disorientation, is something you had never expected. Something so distant that you had even forgotten that it existed.

You now start experiencing a childlike joy.

Some of which also manifests as:

You stop explaining to others when they feel bad of the right things you do. Their intent of feeling bad is too much about them and not about you. “Ja bhai, khush ho ja tu agar bura maanne se tujhe khushi milti hai to. I am so done with explaining myself hazaar baar.”

You altogether stop trying in certain relationships, which have always taken you for granted. It is not a way of seeking revenge from them, it is just accepting that some people do not want you but your constant unasked validation.

You even become funny, because you have experienced everything else, honey.

With me, I have also never felt such need to dance and jump with joy at the tiny things, as I have been feeling for the past several weeks.

After this disorientation, you only do things that matter to you, instead of saying yes perpetually. Your productivity, money, career, health — everything you touch turns to gold.

When failure does arrive, it least bothers you. You know you are beyond that, so you navigate it like a pro. When success arrives, you are proud of yourself but you do not let it get to your head. Your only success now is staying true to yourself. Not a lot of people understand this. But you don’t care anymore either.

This other side of the disorientation phase, is a fearless and a joyful human, that has a special power that can make anything happen. And not care about everything they do not want to make happen.

…

Just that this shattering of your mid-30s that lasts a little longer than you thought, takes a lot from you. It tests your patience, it tests your self-confidence, it tests every ounce of courage you did not even know existed in you.

Yet you simply let go of the stains of the end of the day, brush them off, get up next morning, dress up and show up.

The world thinks you are so put together, but the world was never ever right about their perception of you anyway.

…

It reminds me of the Murakami quote:

….

The mid-30s disorientation is like puberty. Earlier or before, it hits everyone.

It is not the end of life. Just the beginning of a whole new, lighter, happier, richer, more joyful life.

For those who are on the pre-side of this disorientation find this daydreaming. If you are there, you might perhaps not even understand a lot of what I am speaking about.

But the ones on the other side of their sacrifice, on the other side of their disorientation, are wilfully nodding their heads to this :)

2 Raw One-Liners:

• Quiet is the new cool.

• Money can’t buy taste. You must acquire it.

3 (for) Real deep blogs you’d enjoy if you hate doomscrolling and liking/commenting, but love good content:

1. The world isn’t a fair place

2. Do you know why Shah Rukh Khan is richer than thou?

3. My dear…

That’s all my friend for this weekend.

A part of me had been aching to write today’s Raw and Real for the longest time, just that I did not know it had to be written :) Such is the art :))

I will see you next Saturday.

Nishtha Gehija

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Instantly access my ebooks:

20s versus 30s: The strange and unique differences between the two most important decades of your life

The Corporate Life Handbook: If you are in corporate job and struggle with daily humdrums of it, one-pagers with harsh truths are something no one is going to tell you :)

The Career Changing Guide: If you are looking for a sign, this is it :)

How to Deal with Heartbreak: A book almost everyone needs but no one gives you right in your hand. If you don’t need this, get this for a friend you know certainly needs it.

Every Writer Needs to Read this: A book I wish I had 11 years ago when I was starting out as a writer

Clean your room/a part of it. For knowledge workers, the act of moving your body in *free time* is an antidepressant. You get your best ideas then.

Fun fact: When I walk, I burn 200Kcal in ~100 minutes of walk. When I sprint, I burn 200Kcal in less than 20 minutes of sprint. Get bored so you can sprint when you work.

PS: Towards the end, sharing one of the random screenshots from my device, that I think you’d like too:

We are back to our weekly Raw and Real conversations. Yasss!!!

I have been meaning to come back for the last 2-3 weeks, but here are we are finally. And now we will stay consistent every week.

Along with this, you will also receive a tiny “5 cool things about X” every Wednesday, such as 5 Ways to get bored, 5 beautiful things I have learnt from spirituality, 5 unusual lessons I have learnt from Taylor Swift, and so on. It is going to be a short, quick check in with you to get to feel you inspired in the most raw and real way.

As usual, please let me know what you think of these.

With that, let’s get started.

Raw and Real Conversation

When my Mom goes to Nani’s house, she asks me to book an Uber for her. For commutes of either sides.

One of those days, when my Mom was returning from Nani’s house, the traffic police stopped the Uber driver midway. For the 5 minutes that my Mom was waiting in the car, she figured perhaps the car was not in the driver’s name, hence the hiatus.

She called me and asked what to do. Since she was only a kilometre away from home and the police <> driver conversation did not seem to be ending, we both decided she should get out of the cab and start walking.

The point to note, though, is she was completely safe, but it was none of her business (more particularly as a senior citizen) to be lobbying for a situation like this.

She reached home despite the uber driver asking her to wait, my money for the entire trip was deducted, and now the ball was in my court to complain, etc.

Later during the day when we both were laughing at this adventure, we mutually decided to not tell about this incident to anyone in the family.

We both were confident that my father and sisters would all say something to the tune of:

“You should be vigilant.” Bro, wasn’t she already?

“You should not travel via Uber next time.” Bro, will you drive the car and drop and pick her up the next time and every other time, exactly at the timings convenient to her?

“The world is bad, stay away from such people.” Haven’t unexpected problems sometimes cropped up in your work, despite your best efforts? It takes a clear mind to understand that uncertainty is the most certain law of life.

High agency, then, making the choice to do the the next right thing when something wrong happens, instead of sneaking away from wrong altogether, which anyway is impossible.

The question now is:

Why am I even telling this to you?

Because the most important thing in life is to be a safe person for others.

My mom and I were that safe person for each other, but our rest of the family isn’t.

We both thought it was an adventure, and we dealt with it. There was nothing we could do to change that minuscule thing before or during the uber trip. So there is absolutely no point for either of us to blame the other after that trip.

The conditions would have been different if she was far away from home or stranded on a highway, yet I think being safe person for each other we both would have figured it out.

The sad part is, most people in the world are NOT that safe person.

The uber trip is an example. We have all seen people around us launch an unnecessary tirade at others on the most petty as well as prodigious issues only out of habit.

They are always on the fence blaming others. We tend to consistently walk on eggshells around them. Their mind creates an imaginary massive misfortune out of smidgen situations.

On the other hand, here is what safe people allow you to do:

1. You can be absolutely honest around them. Even if what you say is not a praise but a criticism, nothing you say triggers them into an unexpected behaviour.

2. If they are displeased with something you say or do, they are still a safe person. They will reach out to you like an adult and share what hurt them. They trust you that you will fix that.

3. They do not give you the silent treatment or expect you to play the guessing game. Even if they need the space to be silent, they communicate it.

4. When safe people are hurt, their hurt is about something you did, not on you as a person or your character. Their trust toward you as a human never dwindles.

5. Problems turn into adventures for them and with them.

6. They have the maturity of a grandma and the playfulness of a child.

7. Most importantly, they spread joy to anything they do, everyone they interact with. Their baseline status is growth, not resignation to the miserable myth called life.

Needless to say, it takes effort to be a safe person.

It is so easy to be married to your perpetual problems and wear them as a badge, as an excuse to be an atrocious human being.

It takes effort to deal with your problems yet appear lighter with others, because you care for them also and not just for yourself.

I have consistently come to observe and conclude that safe people are usually those who spend time with themselves every day, in some way or the other. That 1-2 hours per day are their necessary “me” time, none of which includes internet, but is often a combination of workout, reading, meditation, sitting in silence, or doing some activity individually.

They fill their internal well, so that they do not outpour their emptiness to everyone.

They are a selfish person in order to become a selfless person.

On the other hand, when we do not attend to ourselves consistently, we repeatedly become an exasperation for everyone else. People don’t say it, they might perhaps even not know it, but they always feel it.

Be a safe person baby.

Life is too short for anyone to go through an unexpected uber adventure and purposefully keep you out of it.

2 Raw Realisations I have been having about creativity lately:

• The best time to share about your work to others is when you are done with the execution process. Marketing works the best when creation is done.

• The best creativity is the one where you receive answers in your shower to the question you had been pondering about

3 Cool One Liners for you to think as you step into the weekend:

1. “The parts of you that you hide end up controlling you.” —Carl Jung

2. “If you sit by a river long enough, the body of your enemy will float by.” —Sun Tzu, The Art of War

3. In your 20s, you feel hurt at least 18 times a day. After turning 31, you stop feeling hurt altogether. — 20s versus 30s, the instant access e-book

Alrighty then, my friend.

It makes me feel a little more useful that I will see you every week starting today.

Here’s to creating beautiful essays on life and excellent beauties of life!

Nishtha Gehija

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Today is 150th edition of Raw and Real. Yayyy!

Doing this constantly for 150 weeks straight (I think I had skipped one week in between). But other than that, a streak of almost 3 years. Wow.

Today I want to let you know I am taking a small break from this weekly Raw and Real.

I have been meaning to do this for the last 6 months, but I kept pushing myself, mostly because I did not want to disappoint people who wrote “please keep doing this, never stop”.

I promise I’m not stopping. But I need to pause.

Wish there was a reason I could point fingers at, that I could give you right now. But if you have known me well over these editions of Raw and Real, you sort of know how I operate with intuition.

Whenever I have prolonged working on something and delayed taking a pause, it has always robbed me of the love for that task. Something I do not want to be doing here, for what we have built.

No idea when and how I will come back. Maybe I should think of doing Raw and Real like seasons of Friends, with ~23-25 episodes per season, which amounted to half the weeks of the year.

While half remaining the weeks where there was no output was exactly where the magic happened.

I hope you’d respect my decision and also continue pouring your love when I do come back.

Btw, a few things:

1. I am never stopping writing. The daily blog will continue as it has been. You can come read there if you wish to. It’s crisp, punchy, and it’s strange that writing ~3,000 posts over the last 10 years has never drained me.

2. Every other thing I do in writing and work remains BAU. Just that this Raw and Real required a different level of thinking and planning, for which I want to pause.

3. It is intentional to make a specific post like this instead of disappearing without notice. If you are also planning to pause something you love but cannot because “you love it”, maybe this inspires you.

4. Please keep reading good books, going for nature walks, meditating, exercising, and doing excellent work. (At this point I have become your mom :))

5. And, lastly, here are some of my instant access ebooks. At a very special discount as my (temporary) parting gift for you. Read these any time you miss Raw and Real.

See you soon. Keep walking <3

Nishtha Gehija

See you next week, which is going to be the 150th edition of Raw and Real, where I will share a bittersweet announcement.

Thank you guys.

Nishtha Gehija

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Instantly access my ebooks:

20s versus 30s: The strange and unique differences between the two most important decades of your life

The Corporate Life Handbook: If you are in corporate job and struggle with daily humdrums of it, one-pagers with harsh truths are something no one is going to tell you :)

The Career Changing Guide: If you are looking for a sign, this is it :)

How to Deal with Heartbreak: A book almost everyone needs but no one gives you right in your hand. If you don’t need this, get this for a friend you know certainly needs it.

Every Writer Needs to Read this: A book I wish I had 11 years ago when I was starting out as a writer

Two weeks back, I was miserable for something I had never expected.

I had had one of the best days at work. Life was going better than planned. A project that made a lot of things difficult was now coming to fruition.

Later in the day, as I spoke to my parents over the phone, my father told me he had a headache.

Now let’s be practical, we are not fools here. Who gets miserable on their father having a headache?

But the reality was that he had started having these headaches as a result of his acidity. Which is a result of lack of movement and irregular meal timings.

It honestly made me scared. I had the worst case scenarios in my mind. I even ended up crying in my meditation later that evening. (I almost never cry.)

It also made me play a “what-if” game.

What if he had taken care of his health better?
What if he lived for himself as much as he lived for everyone else?
Why does self-care feel like crime to Indian parents?

Also the other area of what-if’s:

What if he could just sit with me for 5 minutes when I was younger?
What if he for once could stop being so nostalgic and look at the present?
What if he smiled with joy because of his kids, and not out of responsibility?
What if he focused on building his wealth for himself, if not for us?
What if I failed as a daughter?
What if he failed as a father?

It was an internal battle that I hadn’t even thought I’d fight in those 2-3 days.

But it was a phase.

I decided to have a clear communication with him. That was the only way to solve it. Over the call on the third day of misery, I politely told him, “To me it looks like you are waiting for your death. You have always lived for us, do you not think you should really live for us, and not wait for this living to get over?”

I think it reinforced a belief in himself too, that we are not waiting for his death!

Gosh, the whole world could be so much better if we replaced non-communication with communication.

One of the best decisions I did was to speak with my father.

He has now started taking care of his health by bringing some changes in his lifestyle. At least he claims so :D. He now has also gotten regular with his medicine. You know, the good old nuskha where Indian parents would do anything but never get an “operation” done :)) I guess it was enough to get him to work other things out.

After that conversation, by a turn of fate I was reading Zarna Garg’s memoir, “This American Woman”. She lost her mother at 14. Her all-time angry cum frustrated father gave her the ultimatum, “Get married now or leave the house.”

She did not want to get married. She wanted to study. So she lived on the streets of Mumbai for almost two years. Taking charity from friends, relatives of friends, and everyone she could ask.

After those gruelling two years of stinking, sacrificing self respect, and at a point of running out of money, she finally gave up and returned home. Forget education, now she was 16 and getting married to a 25 year old business tycoon’s son.

All this while, her sister in the US was pushing her to come to the States. Zarna even appeared for visa interviews, only to get rejected.

As life would have it, maybe two days before her “marriage”, she got her US visa approved. She went straight to the airport, lest she could be caught.

When she made herself comfortable with her sister, brother-in-law and nephew in the US, her brother in law told her something that brought everything home for me:

"You can stay here as long as you ant. Get your degree. Get three degrees. Get ten. Study as much as you want. Take as much time as you want.”

It made me think, I might have held several things against my father in the past, but the one thing he never ever ever compromised on was education.

I think I have shared this before, but in 2007 when my eldest sister was at our home after her delivery, I had lost my study room (which was also a bed-room) to her. I was now studying in our tiny drawing room (a term only used in Indian homes), making my studies work out on the rectangular centre table.

One of those days, my father saw me crying in the drawing room when he had come home for lunch. I was crying because my massive study table had been taken away from me.

My father consoled me, hugged me, and then went off to his shop.

Apparently.

Well, it turns out, he had gone to his shop, picked up an employee from there, and went straight to get a new study table for me. In less than an hour, he was home with a new desk and a chair, perfect for study.

I can never forget what that table and chair meant for me. I was sixteen then. I went on to study on that desk for the rest of my student years, for the next seven years, till I went on to become a CA and move out to Delhi.

After reading Zarna’s memoir (and watching some of her podcasts too), I have figured that this rich, super successful, famous woman would have given an arm and a leg to have a father like mine.

A father who prioritised her daughter’s education.

And make no mistake, my father comes from a conservative family. A family that once used to worship sons and give zero impetus to a daughter. He does not have any son. We are four sisters. Still he never said no to any education we all wanted to have.

My eldest sister has a postgraduate degree as well as a Commercial Arts Diploma. My middle sister also has a postgraduate degree as well as an O’level diploma (which was hot back then). The sister just older than me is a triple post graduate.

Never said no to education.

From 2020 to mid 2023, I used to work with Ankur Warikoo, leading his entire content vertical. One of the best performing quotes of his back then (now I don’t have access to data, obviously) on all platforms was:

“If your parents are not rich, but you got a good education, be grateful for their sacrifices.”

I never understood this quote back then. My lower self would always think “But what about the times he was not present?”

Little do I realise now, that my silver lining could have become someone else’s joy of a lifetime.

We always think our parents could have done that, should have done that. I have done that too.

But if you got a good education (of course you did, otherwise you won’t be reading till here), everything else is solvable. Of course you would have to solve and it in most cases no one would understand you, I still think education opens doors for growth as well as gratitude.

Whenever I write about looking at a silver lining with your parental trauma, someone invariably says, “BUT YOU DON’T KNOW, MY GRUDGE IS BIGGER. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH THERAPY I STILL HAVE TO TAKE BECAUSE OF MY PARENTS.”

I’ll leave you with two things here:

One, because I love my parents, I stay away from them. To protect the love as well as myself. Not everyone has to do that. For me, this arrangement works best.

Two, Oprah shared this line from the book “Kin” by Tayari Jones, which I want you to reflect on:

“What if we had been so carelessly raised because (our parents) were just too exhausted to dote on us. What if it turned out that it wasn’t personal after all?”

It wasn't personal, my friend. I promise. I truly wish neither of your parents have to come up with a diagnosis for you to understand this.

2 Raw One-Liners:

• The most important skill is to learn how to listen to a no.

• Home is where there is no phone.

3 (for) Real nice books I have been reading and re-reading lately:

1. Of course, This American Woman by Zarna Garg. What a story of hard work and resilience. And once you watch her podcasts too, you might conclude that life is so different from what we all project in a reel.

2. Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris. If you like to read shorter yet meaningful stuff, this is your go-to. I cannot even begin to tell you how much my life gets better after I randomly pick one chapter and put it back. It is costlier than the usual book prices, but absolutely worth the price. Cut your pizza and Starbucks and that H&M tee, but please get this book. I don’t say this for a lot of books, but this one has to be on your bookshelf.

3. Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us by Manu Joseph. It’s bizarre how so far nonfiction had only meant self-help or business books or memoirs for me. This one is none of those. I find it amusing, yet the satire is on everyone who does find it amusing. Not something I’d actively look for, but a good change I liked what this book brought up.

Alright then my friend, enjoy the weather. Fun fact: For the first time in my existence, I wore a light jacket yesterday during the Navratri’s. We might like this weather, but I think this is Mother Nature coming back at us for what we have done to it.

I wish you all stay safe, have supplies to cook your food, and are grateful for your food as well as your father :)

Nishtha Gehija

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Instantly access my ebooks:

20s versus 30s: The strange and unique differences between the two most important decades of your life

The Corporate Life Handbook: If you are in corporate job and struggle with daily humdrums of it, one-pagers with harsh truths are something no one is going to tell you :)

The Career Changing Guide: If you are looking for a sign, this is it :)

How to Deal with Heartbreak: A book almost everyone needs but no one gives you right in your hand. If you don’t need this, get this for a friend you know certainly needs it.

Every Writer Needs to Read this: A book I wish I had 11 years ago when I was starting out as a writer

Almost everyone has a difficult time saying no.

The ones who are good at saying a polite no, I have learned, have developed an important side skill, which we are going to talk about today.

The skill to listen to a no.

If you are organising a house party at one of the friends’ places and one friend does not come, we must develop the skill to be okay (and absolutely okay with it).

Or the fact that someone does not want to be a part of a project.

Or the fact that someone does not want to go out on a weekend and chill, and do nothing at home.

Our subconscious makes us think saying no is the biggest crime in the history of the world.

So we take ourselves on a self-sponsored guilt trip when we want to say no. (And rarely say it.) Or we loudly and vocally judge someone who said no. (How could they say no when I can’t say it when I want to?)

While saying no is an important life skill, an equally important one is to listen to a no. To respect someone’s no without judging or, more importantly, souring your relationship with them.

Some ways to develop the ability to stomach a no:

1. Please know that no one, absolutely no one, is operating based on your operating system. They are operating based on theirs. So their no is not a reflection of your lack of love or lack of intent. They might want to spend time with themselves, have some space, or maybe have 983 things running in the back that you might not be aware of.

2. Someone who truly has self respect (not the fake confidence donned with charisma but the real respect for themselves) is absolutely okay with someone else’s no. We love you. We respect you. Peace.

3. Others saying no should inspire you too, to put your foot down, stop being a people pleaser, and say no when you want to. It should drive you forward instead of driving you insane.

I am certain if we started accepting the “no’s” of people, we’d build a healthy culture that promotes speaking the truth. Otherwise people would continue burying themselves in non-existent meetings and family gatherings just to escape a group that only accepts yes-people.

Saying no is a complete sentence. You know that already.

Accepting a no gracefully is complete self-respect too. Only the rich of heart can afford it.

2 Raw One-Liners:

• Your life affects your family. Break some rules, but be a little cautious before breaking some hearts.

• People are scrolling on social media because they do not have good books to read. (Fun fact: I always keep a stack of books in front of me/on my desk/on my bedside so that I always have sources of good dopamine.)

3 (for) Real things to be grateful for:

1. Cooking gas that cooks our food. So little do we realise how blessed we are until a crisis hits our doorstep.

2. On that note, I was wondering this morning that having necessities like water, electricity, fruits, food grains — all of these are such massive privileges. None of our fame, fortune, fossils would be able to

3. Your mindset. A mindset that can handle almost any uncertainty. I know like I know like I know God will never keep me hungry or starving or sad. We just need to trust God more than anyone else, while we continue taking wise actions.

On that note, wish you a peaceful weekend, my friend.

I’ll see you next week.

Nishtha Gehija

rawreal.in || nishtha.blog

Anyway, let’s begin.

But before we do, here is a little deep dive into who I am and what I do:

I am a CA, now a full-time writer. I write columns for publications and ghostwrite books for CXOs. I have ghostwritten 12-14 books so far, several of which have gone on to become bestsellers.

Why are others not bestsellers?

How is a bestseller even made?

What is the biggest mistake an author makes?

Also, a lot of behind-the-scenes confessions that you are going to love.

First things first, I am not going to be sharing gossip about my clients, “you know what once what he/she did to me…” Nope. That is never the agenda here.

The agenda is to share some inside tropes into my life and career that I believe would be helpful in your life too, even if your life and career and entirely different from mine.

Let’s go, ladies and gentlemen!!!

1. The number one thing I must do as a ghostwriter is speed. People who write books along with their main job usually take a year. So since I do this as a full-time profession, I must get it done quickly.

2. Speed comes from focus. Focus comes from blandly being unavailable on Instagram, X, doing very little things on LinkedIn, and most importantly, working in uninterrupted blocks of time.

3. Focus also comes from concentrating most meetings into one or two days, so that I have the rest 3 days to myself writing. Because on days there is a meeting, you have to centre your entire day around that meeting.

4. A bestseller has two components to it: A good book + great marketing. By bestseller, I mean something that stays on the bestseller list for several weeks. It is very easy to put a book on bestseller list at the time of its launch, mostly by unethical ways. Unfortunately a lot of people do that. The real game is to be sustainably bestselling, which only a few books achieve.

5. You will be even surprised to know that there are some really excellent books out there in the market that never reached the bestseller status, yet are building a wonderful customer base of their own.

6. Bestseller, thus, is a very poor criterion to pick up a book as a reader. I have picked up tens of “bestsellers” that were yikes. I have also come across books that were not bestsellers but deserved to be. Marketing and product, though help each other, but at some place are also mutually exclusive.

7. The biggest mistake any author makes is that they can pay their way to marketing. It is like paying your way to raising your kids. No matter how many tasks you outsource, the task of raising your kid has to be done by you. So is the marketing of the book. No matter if you are picked by the best publisher or are self-publishing, it is always and always your responsibility to market your book.

8. No self-publishing package is worth the value. Self-publishing is free or at best in less than four digits of pricing. Run away from everything else. I am pro self-publishing, but anti self-publishing packages.

9. Having a following certainly helps in the initial sales of books. But every single day I come across great books (that are also long term bestsellers) from authors that do not have an iota of social presence. The world gives you evidence of what you are looking for.

10. At this stage in my career, I get a fair idea of how a book is going to turn out in the writing stage itself. I was once speaking to a client of mine who was on the call from the airport, unable to dig time in her office hours due to extensive travel. It was our third consecutive call where she was on the road. But the eloquence, the clarity, the depth of content that came out of her mouth when we were interacting made me ultraconfident that the book is going to be magnanimous. The book is something that ebbs and flows in her day in and day out. She is passionate about it and can speak about it for hours without thinking. THAT, my friend, is the biggest sign of a great book.

11. I have also come across instances where the author is forcing themselves to “write more content” to cover a wider audience. That is the most fatal mistake. Your audience is the smallest, viable audience. If you focus on just them, they are going spread your word on your behalf. If your product (book) is for everyone, it is for no one.

12. One of the biggest lessons for me is to draw fences around my time. I will do 200% to make the book excellent, but I will always walk away from a publisher conversation the author is having. I don’t join zoom calls with the publisher, nor do I read the client’s publishing contracts. Not my business. Not for my time. I respect the fact that the author is going to give me credit in their book, but my time and commitment is to ghostwriting, not the publisher conversations. Time is my biggest ally, and I have to be very certain on what I am going to be generous on (writing an excellent book) and what is an absolute no-no.

13. My job is not just a ghostwriter. It is a miniature version of the grand job that is often hidden. So technically my job is also to extract stories, anecdotes, life lessons, content from CXOs who have it subconsciously in their mind, but not at the surface. When I was in my first year in college (and in hostel), my roommate (who was in her final year) dedicated a song to me, “…tere maasoom sawaalon se pareshaan hu main.” I used to ask her a LOT of questions about how everything worked, in the hostel, in that city, in this new world. Now I extrapolate this to life and as I ask endless questions to my clients, they often say, “Talking to you I end up sharing things I had totally forgotten about.” Life has its own unique way of coming full circles.

14. I am also a consultant on how everything around a book functions. And fun fact, I have to share every suggestion as if it is the client’s suggestion, even though it was not :) In another context, at this moment I only share consultation on what is the part on writing a book. There are 100 branches of consultation that come from it, and I stay quiet. You put money on the table and then you get my opinions. And yes, all you people judging me, you’d be applauding for me if I was a man.

    

15. Everyone has a unique journey, even in similar professions. I think what really works for me is clarity of heart and intent. I would do nothing other than writing books, and that passion as well as clean heart undoubtedly translates itself into great work. There are 10,000 opportunities for me to cut corners and deliver shabby work to the client. But my work is my signature. I get to go to bed with myself every night. There is no room for betrayal in that relationship.

16. Lastly, I say this often that nothing is going to fulfil you if you leave your inner self unfulfilled. And if you tend to your inner self daily, it will guide you home. True for writing. True for books. True for everything you do and don’t do.

Hope you had fun reading this, as I had fun writing this too :)

The picture above is a good spin on what Women’s Day would look like too.

Chalo chalo, have fun, have a great weekend.

Nishtha Gehija

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Instantly access my ebooks:

20s versus 30s: The strange and unique differences between the two most important decades of your life

The Corporate Life Handbook: If you are in corporate job and struggle with daily humdrums of it, one-pagers with harsh truths are something no one is going to tell you :)

The Career Changing Guide: If you are looking for a sign, this is it :)

How to Deal with Heartbreak: A book almost everyone needs but no one gives you right in your hand. If you don’t need this, get this for a friend you know certainly needs it.

Every Writer Needs to Read this: A book I wish I had 11 years ago when I was starting out as a writer

Earlier this week I ordered some 4-5 books from Amazon. It was my stock for the long weekend reads.

One of those books was a very popular book that some influencers on LinkedIn had recommended. Alright then, let us give this book (that I am not at all drawn towards) a try.

As I flipped the book to the back cover, the author’s picture was also there.

Exactly at that moment I knew the book is going to be blah, meh, ew.
Which is what it was. I have now put it in my car boot for my car cleaning bhaiya to carry it for his daughter.

Please note that this is not a comment on the looks of that author. I don’t care how anyone looks.

Instead, what is very much visible through anyone’s face is who they are as a person.

It is not about the high resolution picture, make up, lighting, some face mark or some other mark that the world identifies as “less beautiful”. Yet the in someone’s face, their inner being is clearly visible. They might not certainly be “bad” or “evil” but you clearly know they are not your type.

It is visible in people’s LinkedIn pictures, their “happy” Instagram carousels and WhatsApp DPs clicked candidly at the perfect golden hour.

The best part is we all have this ability and this intuition to gauge people.

The worst part is some of us are too engaged in hating on others, giving people the needless benefit of doubt and ignoring the obvious behind what is said. It is a habit because we are too scared to trust ourselves. So we trust someone who does not need to be trusted. At least later we would blame them for messing up and not ourselves for making the wrong decision.

Take a deep breath bro.

For example, when I get LinkedIn connection requests, I can tell clearly from the sender’s picture if they genuinely intend to connect or they are simply here to spam or meander around.

I even did 2-3 experiments where the other person’s profile was good but DP told me they are not a good person I would want to be connected with, yet I accepted the connection request. Never, never once did they disappoint me. Status quo is a state well reflected in the face.

See this uncle in the picture. He was one of those 2-3 shady people whose connection request I accepted. My (internal) response to the first message: “Bhai it is none of your business how I am doing. Especially if you are not following that up with a work line.”

Then I removed the connection request, and lo and behold the true colours ladies and gentlemen. It makes me wonder people are even keeping track of who they are connected with. Even in my most free and time-wasting moments I have never gone down that ditch.

Obviously I have now blocked him (after taking this screenshot of course).

Not because he was coming to do some dirty talk with me. But I honestly am not that person who talks to random strangers on the internet about anything other than work. This person might be a diamond for some. For me, it is simply an unwanted rock.

What I am trying to tell you is a border thing, that we are interacting with people all of the time.

If you hire the wrong person who is right on paper, you have a daily headache.

If you join the wrong company where your manager is apparently successful yet political, you will suffer daily.

Even if you hire the wrong house help who is visibly hands on, they are going to cause you a lot of unwanted pain.

If the intuition says someone might not be your type, they are not worth even a dime of your time. Your life is not a guinea pig where you allow all kinds of people to come experiment with your mindset and energy.

This means that you have to keep looking for the right person. With the right person, you will always know. They say this with marriage however you live your life with other people too. Pick those people really well. You are not here to change everyone with your goodness. Over time their internal Komalika will rob you of your goodness.

Have more options. The first one is not the last one. Especially at all the relationships you have chosen (which is everyone other than your blood relatives).

If you have a “chalta hai” attitude towards yourself, the universe will replicate it with people exactly like that.

You have a class. May you bring only people who match that.

2 Raw One-Liners

• I have 10 books inside of me, but I am too tired to write them…

• Maybe the endgame is not to visit as many places in the world, but to sit along with your cousins and jam to Kun Faaya Kun in your real voices.

3 (for) Real nice quotes I found that you might love:

I keep an excel with some good quotes I come across. Here are some from the archive which I added last week:

1. “There’ll be happiness after me/But there was happiness because of me” —Taylor Swift

2. “We are embarrassed about things we should be proud of, and proud of things we should be embarrassed about.” —Jerry Seinfeld (His TED talk at Duke is WOW. Along with the content of course, he is self-assured and loud without being demeaning. I don’t remember the last time I saw someone so dignified who wasn’t putting a facade.)

3. “You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.” ― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

That is it my friend.

Have a great long weekend.

Wish you have all the fun with the right people :)

Nishtha Gehija

LinkedIn | X | Daily blog | Weekly newsletter

Instantly access my ebooks:

20s versus 30s: The strange and unique differences between the two most important decades of your life

The Corporate Life Handbook: If you are in corporate job and struggle with daily humdrums of it, one-pagers with harsh truths are something no one is going to tell you :)

The Career Changing Guide: If you are looking for a sign, this is it :)

How to Deal with Heartbreak: A book almost everyone needs but no one gives you right in your hand. If you don’t need this, get this for a friend you know certainly needs it.

Every Writer Needs to Read this: A book I wish I had 11 years ago when I was starting out as a writer