About the Author
Ankur Warikoo is an entrepreneur and content creator whose deep, witty and brutally honest thoughts on success and failure, money and investing, self-awareness and personal relationships have made him one of Indias top personal brands.
In his first book, Ankur puts together the key ideas that have fuelled his journey one that began with him wanting to be a space engineer and ended with him creating content that has been seen and read by millions.
His thoughts range from the importance of creating habits for long-term success to the foundations of money management, from embracing and accepting failure to the real truth about learning empathy.
This is a book to be read, and reread, a book whose lines you will underline and think about again and again, a book you will give your family and friends and strangers. Ankur hopes for this book to become the most gifted book ever!
T his book may very well turn out to be the most useless book you will ever buy. Because nothing in this book is something you dont know of.
This book is not going to be a revelation. It is meant to be a reminder. A reminder of how life happens to all of us, in a similar yet unequal fashion.
This book is not going to say something new. It is meant to put words to your thoughts. Thoughts that we all feel, repeatedly, but rarely stop to make sense of.
This book is not going to change your life. It is meant to make you more aware. So that you make choices in life from a state of awareness and not ignorance.
This book is a compilation of my thoughts that I have shared on social media over the past twelve months.
Most of which come from my own reflections, my own observations, my own experiences.
Back in school we used to play this game called book-cricket. Where we would open up a book to a random page, and the page number would determine how much we scored on that ball. I imagine this book to be one such book-cricket, except we dont score runs. Instead, here we are reminded, we put words to our thoughts and we become more aware.
If I could make a suggestion, play book-cricket with this book.
Every day, open a random page. Read one, maybe three pages. Reflect upon them. Maybe make some notes. Or just smile at how it made you feel.
And then come back to it the next day.
If on any day you find yourself saying
I needed to hear this today, consider me the bestselling author of the century!
stay awesome
stay focused
do epic shit!
M y relationship with success has been driven largely my relationship with multiple failures.
The mistakes that I have committed relentlessly over the years.
The failures that I sat down with and reflected upon, that made me inch towards success at the most unexpected times.
This part of success isnt necessarily about prescriptions on how to get successful.
It is rather about defining what success really means to you, staying true to that, and then using failures as reflections to create your own success!
Nothing beats the feeling of having done more in twenty-four hours than what the day expected you to!
You planned to do five tasks this morning.
Ended up doing seven.
With more productivity.
And far greater energy.
That joy, that emotion, when youve exceeded your own self, is true achievement.
Breaking your limits without even expecting to is the powerful way to see how much more you are capable of.
Others success will generate massive
self-doubt every morning when you
get up.
Get up anyway.
...
A year from now, you will wish you had started today.
Start today.
Time goes away and leaves us with only one of these two things: regret or results.
A year from now you will wish you had unfollowed emotionally draining people.
A year from now you will wish you had said no more often.
A year from now you will wish you had said yes to yourself more often.
A year from now, you will never be sure of the results.
But you can certainly be sure of regret, if you dont start today.
What is the single biggest thing you can do to help you towards professional success?
People do not have to follow up, when you commit to doing something.
Thats it.
...
How we think of our problems is how the world will think of our problems.
If we exaggerate our problems, so will the
world.
If we are happy despite our problems, the world will help us get happier.
While we (almost always) dont choose our problems, we can always choose how to respond.
When we rule ourselves, we can never be ruled by our problems.
The biggest misconception people have is that they are the odd one out and everyone else is sorted!
You are what you do.
Not what you say youll do.
We know ourselves through our thoughts.
But we know others through their actions.
That is true for others as well.
They cant read our thoughts. All they see is what we do.
It does not matter what we say.
What matters is what they see us doing.
Commitments are nothing if not backed up with actions.
Luck happens to those that make things happen.
If you start creating content, you have greater chances of it being shared by your dream celebrity.
If you say hello to every stranger, you
have greater chances of finding your dream partner. If you send cold emails every day, you have greater chances of getting your dream job!
Your actions decide your luck. So does your lack of actions.
Luck isnt really good fortune.
Luck is what eventually happens when your hard work yields results.
Persistence isnt a one-day miracle.
It is a conscious choice translated
into habit.
The first few episodes of the Netflix series maybe boring. However, you still keep watching the series. It turns out, a friend told you to stay at it because it gets interesting eventually.
What if we treat our goals and our journey in the same way?
Keep at them, even when they are boring early on, because they will get interesting eventually?
The result of no efforts is nothing.
The result of persistent efforts is a habit where you cannot not do the right thing.
We have just one life.
Why live it with just one identity?
Why cant you be an entrepreneur who also creates content?
Why cant you have a day job and also sell your paintings on Instagram?
Why cant you be a professional sports person along with applying for B-schools?
We crave novelty, yet settle for a one
career life.
We crave novelty, yet choose to define ourselves by just one role, one title, one function, one designation.
We have one life.
But we dont need to be one person.
Consistency + Authenticity is the magic formula to crack the content game.
The content game magically helps you when:
You are creating content at regular times (daily/thrice a week/weekly)
You are You. You do not have to be someone else
This makes you enjoy the process. You find the hard work easy, and it becomes effortless for you, while everyone wonders how hard it must be!
