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Anubhav Srivastava Quotes

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Famous Anubhav Srivastava Quotes

“Find your passion Barbell, where you pick a few things that you love and are good at and are generally more monetizable. As you make money from these things and obtain a relative degree of financial stability, use that stability and freedom to pursue other passions that you love and care about but may completely burn yourself out if they are your only source of income.”

“A man was once told by an astrologer that his wife would leave him for someone else and that would lead to his death. As a result of that prediction the man became increasingly fearful. He became extremely suspicious towards his wife even though she was devoted towards him. He also started hating her and hitting because he believed she would not be loyal towards him and leave him. After ten years of constant physical and emotional abuse the wife had enough and became attracted to another man, she felt was much kinder. One day after yet another violent episode from the suspicious husband, she decided that she would leave him for the other man and ran away that evening! Shocked, the man committed suicide. The man made that very thing happen that he feared! His own fear led him to commit actions that ultimately made his wife desert him. He made his life a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are going to make your life a self-fulfilling prophecy, might as well make it a constructive one, not a destructive one fueled by endless fear! On a lighter note, if you are the impressionable kind, which many of us are, this is why sometimes it is best to not try and know your future!”

“You are responsible for your actions, but not always the result of that action. You have the power to make attempts to influence your fate but not always in control of what eventually happens. If you made mistakes on your part, learn from them, but stop blaming yourself for the mistakes you never made. As long as you know in your heart that you did absolutely everything under your control, you are someone worthy of admiration.”

“Would you be comfortable travelling in a car or an air plane or maybe in a space shuttle in the future, knowing that the only safety mechanism that the engineers relied upon was positive thinking and visualization of everything being perfect? Would you feel safe knowing that engineers did not imagine and solve most of the possible negative outcomes that could happen that dramatically increase the chances of an accident? Would you want to live in a building built by someone who only relied on positive thinking and did not thinking of how to safeguard it from possible disasters? The buildings we live in, the things we travel in and the devices we use are relatively safe today BECAUSE of the positive steps taken as a result of negative and cautious thinking. Confidence is a great thing but sometimes the lack of it is an even better thing. The fear motivates you to settle for nothing less than excellence.”

“The most powerful thing in the world is not a weapon. It is a persistent belief that is so deeply engrained in your subconscious mind that it propels every decision you take in life. People possessed by such intense beliefs have the capability to change the world, for the better or worse. Because the stronger their belief and subsequent action is, the more the chances are for others to become affected by it. It can then spread like an epidemic and can change the world positively or it can destroy it completely. Choose what you believe in wisely. Do not let others brainwash you into it”

“If you have mostly seen your hard work and strategy pay off, you may probably still be under the illusion that you are self-made and I won’t blame you for that. I have had plenty of such illusions myself. It is only when you go through circumstances when the SAME hard work that used to work, now gives you failure after failure, will you acknowledge the role of timing and luck. This is not a "negative" mentality, if anything it is a mentality that helps you tame your ego and be more sensitive to those around you who are not so fortunate. The first step to bring about positive change in your life, which is confidence if you have constantly been failing, or humility if you have constantly been winning, is to UNLEARN the FALSE notions that modern society has brainwashed you with. Not everyone who is at the top deserves to be there, and almost no one at the bottom truly deserves to be there.”

“We judge them by calling "negative", "pessimistic" or "glass is half empty" kinds of people. What we don't see is that it's not entirely someone's fault that they see they become cynical about life. Nobody is a born pessimist. Every single baby, whether human or non-human, starts off their journey in this world as an optimist and filled with hope, it is what they encounter in life as they grow older that either keeps them positive or slowly turns them negative.”

“Understand the truth is far different from what appears on the surface. It is natural for most people to want to avoid presenting what really goes on in their life, the struggle, the heartbreak, the low self-esteem, the doubts, the things gone horribly wrong and instead only present a version of themselves that appears flawless. This is particularly true for celebrities but applies to even you, me, your next door neighbour, your friends and your enemies.”

“A lot of things that happen in life are random. Let’s explore this through an analogy: Grains of Sand in a bucket If you pour sand into a bucket, statistically, there will be some grains on the top, most in the middle and some on the bottom. All grains can’t be at the top. So, does it mean the grains of sands at the top special/better than the ones at the bottom? or is it just blind randomness at play? You might say the human mind is not a grain of sand, it has talent and the capacity to think. Well, what determined your talents and thoughts? Did you choose them or were they too influenced by factors beyond your control? I would argue that your talents and your thoughts themselves are not conjured up by you alone, but are also the result of luck and circumstances.”

“We get stuck in a rut whether it is in a “9 to 5” job that actually makes us work 80 hours a week or working constantly when you run your own business. It’s always about planning for the future, it is always about striving for more, even if that striving for more ends up ends up totally destroying your life. Why? Because having a lot of “fire in the belly” is portrayed as a virtue, REGARDLESS of whether that fire in the belly is doing you or even the world at large any good!! The truth is your work is NOT THAT important in the grand scheme of things, and if you hate doing it, it’s not even important for you. You may consider yourself super important, but no matter how successful you are, you are most likely a cog in the wheel of the system who will find a replacement for you, the moment your body can no longer take it.”

“Having self-respect and having an ego are two different things. An ego is all about trying to establish superiority over the other person, it’s about trying to show the other person that it is they that wield power and the other person should bow down to their whims. Self-respect is different. It is about having a healthy self-image of yourself and being confident. It’s about thinking highly of yourself without thinking low of others. It’s about looking at yourself in the mirror and being proud of who you are, instead of being ashamed of what you are being forced to become”

“Nothing is more important than self-respect. Not money, not love, not your designation. If there is one thing that matters most in life in addition to mental peace, it is self-respect. And frankly if you do not have self-respect, there is no way you can be happy in the first place, no matter how much money you make, what position you attain in life or whether you are with someone who claims to love you, because when you can’t respect yourself, there is absolutely no chance of peace in life.”

“Some people have been brainwashed with the idea that they should always be a people pleaser under all circumstances. They bend over backwards so many times and try so hard to win the respect of everyone else, that ultimately people only see them as soft targets that can be manipulated and used as per their wishes. And no, they are not respected. Respect is commanded, it can never be begged for.”

“Countless people, and not just women, men as well, stay in emotionally and physically abusive relationships, or in relationships where they are manipulated, taken for granted and demeaned at every single step. And yet they chose to accept their circumstances because they are either afraid of being alone or because they are expected to tolerate the abuse by society OR because they are so in love with the manipulative person that they seemed to have lost their identity. They think that by choosing to accept that abuse and losing their identity, the other person will actually appreciate their loyalty and love them more, or eventually realize their mistake and change. But unfortunately, that never happens, and certainly never happens if you don’t take a stand and refuse to accept the abuse any further. On the contrary, the person starts taking them for granted and is encouraged to make thing worse, because they think that no matter what happens, you are always going to be there and silently take all the crap they give you.”

“The truth is that everyone is undergoing some sort of pain which they won’t talk about. Everybody hates some aspect of their life. The person you may see having a nice time abroad may be going through a real stressful time with his boss humiliating him daily. The person that seems perfectly healthy may have a horrible condition he refuses to talk about. People clicking photographs with their spouses as if they are in heaven maybe facing greatest marital discords. When you realize that truth is not what always what it seems on the surface, you will automatically be able to shift perspective and realize everyone’s life has a little bit of heaven and a little bit of hell. By shifting perspective, you can learn how to deal with jealousy better. It is up to you whether you want to enjoy the heaven or complain about the hell.”

“One of the best ways to learn how to deal with jealousy productively is to identify the root cause of what is causing your jealousy. If someone gets a big car or house or something, is it really their material possessions that bother you or is there something deeper that you crave? Going from this example you may analyse your jealousy and come to a conclusion to it may not be riches you want but maybe the respect and adulation from society that come along with it. If you go after the material possessions without knowing your true desires, you may not be happy even if you get them, because what you really wanted was something else.”

“The root of low self esteem is people judging themselves by all the things they aren’t good at. When you start judging your self-worth based on that one thing you are amazing at, and there always is, you will start realizing how unique and gifted you are. There is no one like you.”

“Many people often try to make you feel guilty when you choose to relax. They say, you should suffer now and enjoy the rewards later. The truth is you can regret working too hard. In my life, ironically, I have no regret for the times I had fun and stayed away from "work.". I regret the years where I have worked so hard that I have completely missed out on making good memories.”

“You should realize that even the thoughts originating in your mind are not always your own. They don’t just happen when you want them to arise, but often arise within a certain dictated framework. Let me explain. In some ways, our minds have some similarities to AI models of the current era. Just like AI, we are trained on large sets of data and facts, fed by our operator (the society and world around us) and our thinking is limited within the current evolutionary constraints of our own brains, just like other animals cannot possess the cognitive capabilities of a human. To think beyond this framework is almost a superhuman task, truly demonstrated by only a few known people in history, the Buddha being one example. In other words, the one who is blind from birth, has no idea what “seeing” feels like.”

“.Do not think that by working super hard even on vacations or weekends, you are somehow showing your dedication. You are only setting yourself up to be taken for granted, given more work and ruining your mental and physical well-being. If you don’t set your boundaries, don’t be upset when nobody else respects them. They don’t even know they exist.”

“People often glorify delayed gratification. While delayed gratification can be a virtue sometimes, we often forget that the most precious asset we have is not money but time. The time that goes by today can never ever return. Much of your life will be directed towards achievement but just remember even an achievement filled life is quite wasted if you can’t spare time to enjoy it and spend time with loved ones while you still can.”

“Who the heck is the society to decide that what you do for a living has to necessarily be painful so that you have a “right” to enjoy your time later? Who said you have to hate Monday to Friday so that you get a right to enjoy Saturday and Sunday? It’s nothing but a myth that we all have bought into. There is no concept Monday to Friday for work and a Saturday/Sunday off in nature. It is simply something we all bought into and our education system perpetuates as well. And because we bought into that myth, we also trapped ourselves in careers that we genuinely hate”

“Motivational Gurus often ask people their 5-year goals, 10-year goals or even 20-year goals. Those who can’t answer that are considered aimless. We are given the illusion that we can plan out our entire life with extreme precision. You couldn’t be more wrong. Life is not a game of chess where you can plan all your moves ahead or have a backup move for everything. There are countless forces influencing what happens to you.”

“You may set out with the goal of becoming a billionaire or a Nobel Prize winning Scientist or Author within the next 20 years. But most of the times, life will throw a curve ball at you that may displace all your plans. Your business ventures that you thought would work out exceedingly well and become your stepping stone to becoming a billionaire may become a super flop and leave you with a huge debt instead. The miraculous scientific discoveries you intend to make to win the Nobel Prize may never come across your way. You may make discoveries that are not that important or someone else who is much better funded may beat you to it. You may experience a personal tragedy which leaves you extremely disadvantaged. You may experience unexpected immediate responsibilities that may throw you off course of your goal. For example, a serious medical condition or the death of a family member. The world may not reward your actions the way you expected. What happens to your twenty-year goal? Nothing, it goes down the drain.”

“Why Long Term Goal Setting is Largely Pointless. Desires change, motivations change. What you wanted the most in high school is probably not what you wanted the most 10 years after that. In high school, being popular with the opposite sex and trying to look cool was probably the number one priority. After ten years, the number one priority is to probably get a good job or have a stable income. And if you have that, to find the right relationship for life. Twenty years after high school, it is probably to see your Kids do well in school and so on. Having a dream that you desire with the same extreme intensity as you desired it when you were 16 is possible but uncommon. Most of the times, you will realize that you probably don’t desire it after twenty or if you do, you probably don’t care AS much as you used to. How can a fire keep on raging once the fuel is burnt up? How can anything be accomplished if the burning desire to achieve it is no longer there after a long stretch of time? And there is nothing wrong with wanting something else after twenty years. That’s human nature. You don’t have to keep slogging on for something that you don’t care about. The point is this is why super long term individualistic goals can sometimes get vague and pointless because you may realize midway that you don’t even care about them anymore.”

“Goal Setting is propagated by modern society as some kind of panacea or solution for overcoming any life obstacle. The problem is most of the popular advice that modern society gives you is either wrong or consists of half-truths at best. I reiterate, that as individuals, it is better NOT to set Goals that obsessively focus on the RESULTS you are going to achieve, especially in areas where the outcome is inherently unpredictable and out of your control. Those goals will only stress you out and do more harm than good in the long run.”

“If a group or an organization can work like a machine with access to plenty of resources and has no bias towards negative emotions, goal setting can STILL be useful. As individuals though, our lives are highly unpredictable and we have a huge tendency towards being overly emotional about the result. The wrong result can put you into a deep depression, and the rare, “right result” inflate your ego far more than it is good for you, and eventually mess up your life anyway. Let me explain even further. A machine or a crane can work for far more hours, with far more power at a far more efficient pace than any human without getting tired, getting hungry, getting restless or feeling frustrated. Can a human do it? NO! Because we are built differently! The same kind of outcome driven goal setting that may work for organizations is usually a terrible idea for individuals. Here is what you should remember - If you are setting goals, especially goals where the results depend greatly on factors outside your control, the only ones you should set are the ones that focus on the ACTIONS you will take.”

“Life often tricks you into believing that you can only be happy when you accomplish something. The problem is accomplishing some goals is not totally under your control and even if you accomplish them, sometimes they may not give you the happiness you think you will get. For example, you may achieve what you were looking for, but in the obsession for finding happiness in the future, you may very well ruin everything good that you have today including health, relationships and peace of mind. How can you anyway enjoy any of your "success" without those three things? So, stop believing that happiness lies at the end of the tunnel. Instead try to cultivate happiness in the process, regardless of the result. This way, whether you succeed or fail, everything will still be worth it. Here's a hard truth. Almost no one really cares about you, so make sure you start caring for yourself!”

“Sometimes the solution we were looking for is right next to us and it is far simpler than we thought. But we make it more complex than it really is. Sometimes, we are so focused on looking so far away for a solution, that we ignore the appropriate solution that is right in front of us. If you have a goal and you encounter obstacles or walls, You don’t need to break every wall that comes your way!! Sometimes you can just walk around the wall. Some people wanting to keep banging their head against the wall, not knowing there is a way around it. Or maybe there is a door in the wall or maybe there is a way to climb. Be persistent, but be informed. Keep pushing on towards your goal but adapt if things aren’t working and look for the simplest solution (By simple I don’t mean illegal). You can tackle complex problems but remember, not every complex problem requires a complex solution.”

“Being Self Made is a lie if it's crafted as a story sold to people. It is an illusion for those who sincerely believe they are self-made. No one is self-made. You didn't choose the family you were born in, the economic class you were born in, the country you were born in, the era you were born in, the intelligence level you have, the special talent you are born with, the early education you got, the mentoring you received, your level of ambition, your macro-economic environment, being at the right place at the right time or generally having unexpected things turn in your favor. I will argue that even if you say you came from an extremely poor background and have worked extremely hard to achieve your success and you deserve 100 percent credit, even that is a partially false statement, as you have been lucky to see your hard work pay off (in some cases, exponentially)”

“Consider this - what makes me, ME? I was given that name, I went through certain experiences, I grew up in a certain country, certain era, I have a certain sex, certain mode of thinking. Now assume someone else with the EXACT same life experiences, (Not just similar, but exactly the same moment to moment life experiences from literally the same point of view as I experienced them!), genetic configurations and circumstances as me lives life the same way, would they have a different identity? NO! Because they have seen the exact same configuration and pattern of life that I have! Now, let's assume in addition to the exact same life experiences and genetics, the name given to the "other me" was ALSO the same. Well, there is NO DIFFERENCE left at all now. We are the same person. This is basically what is playing out in the world. We all feel different because of our different life experiences, genetics, eras we have lived in and names given to us. But shatter all of that and there is NO difference between the sense of I in me and the sense of I in You. We become like a Gadget in its factory settings; they are all literally the same. BUT, by sheer probability, no two people, at least in our known reality, will ever have identical life experiences, mental attributes, or physical configurations. This creates the illusion of uniqueness and separateness. But if these differences were nullified, the need for an individual “self” to explain subjective experience would vanish. In short, our sense of SEPARATE Identities is effectively an interpretive illusion: it arises only because each of us experiences life through a distinct set of genetic and experiential filters. Remove those filters, and the illusion of a separate self disappears. There’s no deeper mystery to consciousness—. The “hardest problem” isn’t consciousness itself; it’s shedding the preconceived notions that keep us clinging to the idea of a fixed, mysterious “self.” There is NO SELF.”

“Try experimenting with a policy where you will not develop demos, pilots, attend multiple exploratory meetings or develop lengthy customized proposals for prospects until the price expectations are set up front and you have done a basic check on whether the prospect can afford your services. You will be shocked to see how much time you will stop wasting on bad deals. The more time you can stop wasting on dead end deals, the more time you can devote to deals that can be highly profitable and take your business to the next level!”

“Suppose you love a person deeply and have done everything in your capacity to win their affection or try to keep them happy, but they just seem to never love you back, in fact they treat you harshly or cruelly, is it wise to keep loving that person for the rest of your life? You may love that person but is that love making you happy? No in fact it is making you cry. It is better to realize that despite your best efforts, maybe that love is not worth it and it is better to find a partner who loves you the way you love them so that you live a happy life. The same is true for your career.”