What is your unfulfilled dream?
If you cannot fulfill that now, then maybe you can do this...
Raw and Real Conversation
In 2021, I was hospitalised to get my appendix operated. (Side note: I have lost count of the number of times I have been hospitalised, so let’s move on from there :))
It is usually a one day procedure. Easy peezy lemon squeezy.
Except, mine was an unusual case.
I was hospitalised for 6 nights and 7 days (looks like a tour package :))
I was on my Day 3 and my body still showed very little to no signs of being discharged. So when the doctor came on rounds I sulked a bit and I asked him, “I wanna go home, when can I go home?”
That statement irked the doctor. He probably took it as a remark on his competence whereas I was trying to be a responsible patient who wants to recover fast. I guess maybe we got lost in translation, maybe I asked for too much…
The doctor retorted, “Had I been in a big corporate hospital, I would not even be speaking to you now. Assistant of a junior doctor would be the one you would be speaking to.”
I stayed calm on my bed as I listened to him. And the calmness was not just external, I had zero disturbance inside of my head too.
Here is why:
I think the very competent doctor whom I was talking to did want to join a big corporate hospital.
Maybe he had a massive dream for himself which went way beyond being a specialist and being excellent at what he did, which he was already.
Maybe there was a part of him that touched a nerve of the betrayal of dreams that we sometimes do to ourselves or have to do to ourselves due to situations beyond our control.
Which brings me to you, my friend.
Which is a dream of yours that is still unfulfilled?
What is an area of your life where you feel you have betrayed yourself?
When was a time when life flipped all its gears and landed you in a place you never bought a ticket for?
I am not going to ask you to abandon everything and go fulfill that dream. You are smart and wise enough already to do that. And there is a lot of useful, valuable content available on the internet that will ask you to do just that.
What I will ask you, though, is to sit with yourself and arrive at an answer.
To take this example of my wonderful doc, if you had a career ambition that did not materialise, sit with yourself like a best friend would, and tell yourself all that you need to hear.
I did with myself when I was once fired and being shattered was an understatement, I kept repeating things like these each time a void of that job popped up in my head. Here is what I would tell myself:
You did your best. You really really did. You did better than what was the best that was defined of you. (Which I did).
It is natural for a boss to have a problem with you. If he had so much problem, the solution lied in not expecting me to get better but communicating with me. I am not going to kill myself for someone else’s poor communication skills or just because they mentally moved on from me.
Look at how much your life got better when you got out of the prison you didn’t know you were in. Sometimes you need a push from the cliff to remember you are meant to fly.
No matter what job you are in, we are all in a job of listening to each other and uplifting each other up. You were never someone running away from constructive feedback, but if someone did not summon the courage to construct a feedback, their loss.
Sometimes it is important that you move on from a (work) relationship. It is especially important for workoholics like yourself who define their identity by the work they do.
Even though the end was something you last signed up for and even though firing is normal in corporates, if someone was disgraceful while doing a “normal” thing, you need to give them an apology they didn’t ask for.
After so much mental operation time and again, my mind would sometimes go to creating thoughts of “but if someone has gone from a great work relationship to firing me one fine morning, there must be some mistake of mine, isn’t it?”
To which I would again answer myself:
Let us admit you made a lot of mistakes. Not a fact, an assumption. So let us make the worst case assumption that you did make mistakes. First thing, you were always willing to correct them. You showed that through your conduct. Secondly, who in the whole wide world forgets the work they have done for so long and so well, and acts completely out of character? They did not have the emotional maturity every manager must have.
It took me months, I guess more than a year to move on from that job. But once I did, I was done. Actually, I was done the next day of my last working day of that job. Never ever missed it. But for the few times that sinews of the conversation of being fired would come over, I would talk myself out of it.
Not just “move on.” Because never in the history of moving on has moving on happened by using the words “move on”.
Rather whenever you have thoughts that your mind does not know how to move on from:
Sit with yourself
Answer every question your mind has
Do it over and over again each time the mind gets confused
Over time, the confusion will vanish and one fine day there would be a clarity you didn’t know you could ever get to.
Because my friend, you must know that while some people may not react to your instant outbursts of unattended past that wasn’t your choice, the one person that gets harmed the most is you.
When you simply suppress and don’t process, your mind chooses to regress when you least expect.
You have to reach to a place where you are in complete control of your emotions and feelings. And the way to that destination is laid with dealing with all the murky roads life has created for you.
2 Raw One Liners
The point of a discussion is not to win. The point of a discussion is to be open to listening everyone else too.
A good life requires effort. A bad life requires more effort.
3 thigns I wish you did before 2026 begins:
Go for a walk in a park without a phone. It will make you think, be at one with yourself, and has benefits that won’t ever fit into a page.
Please write what all good game and what were the lessons from 2025. A great life is always an examined life. Even if you don’t publish it anywhere, do it for yourself.
Let go of that one person whom you wish was different. You cannot fly while being in a mental prison.
That is it my friend. I wish you the best of next week and next year.
Keep rocking, I’ll see you next week.
Nishtha Gehija
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