20 uncomfortable truths about life A thread…

Uncomfortable Truth 1: Life has no purpose. We came from nothing. And once we are gone there will be nothing. No one will remember us beyond a few years or decades. And yet we will spend every second of our life wondering what people think of us!

Uncomfortable Truth 2: Where you were born, who you were born to and when you were born, has the highest correlation to where you will end up in life. Your opportunities, your privileges, your worldview, all stemmed from this lucky event that you had no role to play with.

Uncomfortable Truth 3: Reading books will not make you smart. Watching motivational videos will not make you driven. Writing will not make your thoughts clearer. We are not shaped by these things. We are shaped by the stories we tell ourselves.

Uncomfortable Truth 4: Whatever you are feeling today, will fade away. No matter how happy you are, how sad you are, you are not going to remember how happy or sad you were. Our emotions and feelings are temporary. We think of them as permanent.

Uncomfortable Truth 8: Most of leadership is about creating competition. Competition within teams. Competition with others. And if talent and capability cannot be competed on, the last resolve is to compete on identities. “This is us. And that is them. We are different.”

Uncomfortable Truth 9: We spend so much time thinking what they are thinking about us. But they are not thinking about us. They are just thinking what you are thinking about them.

Uncomfortable Truth 10: There is no way to know if a decision is the right decision, before you take it. And yet, that is what we spend all our time on!

Uncomfortable Truth 11: Empathy cannot be taught. Either you are born with it. Or not.

Uncomfortable Truth 12: We all accept the love we think we deserve.

Uncomfortable Truth 13: Our mind is our biggest enemy. But it is our mind that tells us that it is a friend.

Uncomfortable Truth 14: The purpose of college is to explore yourself. Most of us get lost instead.

Uncomfortable Truth 15: We nod to show that we are listening. But we are not listening to the opposite person. Instead, we are listening to our mind telling us what to say.

Uncomfortable Truth 16: It takes effort to find love. It takes effort to feel fulfilled. It takes effort to be fit. It takes effort to be happy. Which is why most of us do not have love, fulfilment, happiness or fitness in our life.

Uncomfortable Truth 17: Power over others makes us feel good about ourselves. And that feeling is addictive. Which is why most managers become bad managers.

Uncomfortable Truth 18: When we say we do not know what to do, we mostly mean we don’t what if what we want to do will work out or not. We always know what to do.

Uncomfortable Truth 19: We always have choices. No one is ever stuck. We are just scared to make those choices.

Uncomfortable Truth 20: We get angry when someone says something bad about us, because there is a small chance that what they said is true. Else we would never get angry!

The ironical thing about truth is that there is no truth in this world. There are facts. And everything else is an opinion. We build our lives around our opinions and those of others. Which become our truths.

You can’t change facts. But you can change truths. And that becomes the true joy of life. How many truths were you able to challenge and change?

What are your truths?

Uncomfortable Truth 5: We know others through their actions. We know ourselves through our thoughts. So we always think we are right, because in our thoughts we know why we do what we do.

Uncomfortable Truth 6: We struggle to love ourselves because we attach our self worth to what others think of us. But we don’t control what others think of us.

Uncomfortable Truth 7: Every parent learns on the job. And most of them don’t do a good job.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. - Marcus Aurelius