Nikhil's Blog

Walking away from people is also important. It becomes a necessity. To stop the hurt. To prevent the future from becoming destructive. To resist the pull of staying. To let the better odds play out. When staying causes more harm than good, walking away is the only sensible step left. The sign of love is in its preservation. Love teaches you to conserve. To nurture. To let it grow into something beautiful. Even if it comes at a personal cost. Even if it ruins you. In love, "you" don't matter.…

Having decent manners can change your life. This is not hyperbole. People remember how you treat them. They remember that you showed empathy. They remember that you saw their existence and not their status. People remember how you make them feel. And once you start treating people well, you can get away with anything. The goal isn't to get away with unspeakable things. It isn't about manipulation. It's about how much slack people will cut you once they know you're a reliable person. Be…

Opinions are easy to have. That's why everyone has one. Even those without knowledge will carry one about something. Even the one who has not read a single book will have an opinion about books. The compulsion to hold an opinion creates a bigger problem. It puts the cart before the horse. We form the opinion before the knowledge arrives. I no longer enjoy talking to people. I don't think I will ever make any close friends. It's too soon to speak about the future, but for now this is what it…

When you are the sole breadwinner of the family, guilt becomes a constant companion. The guilt of choosing your own happiness over your family's. Of buying something for yourself before buying for them. Of watching them suffer and not being able to fix it. Of perpetually diminishing your problems in the face of theirs. This is one of the quieter, more corrosive sources of suffering for such people. You are not responsible for everyone's happiness. The compulsion to keep everyone comfortable…

Anxiety is walking into a dark room and seeing a tiger. It's not there. It cannot be there, but that is the effect an anxious person experiences. They feel everything is falling apart. They want to stop that, which feels like the right thing to do. But everything is not falling apart. It only appears so to them. They want to control how every action of theirs, as well as others', turns out. They want to influence the outcome. They plan it in their mind and then attempt to control it by managing…

You don't matter simply because you are connected to somebody. We all have relatives we are not close to. This is perhaps the most universal truth among us. Yet we never stop to ask why we are not close to certain people. What actually draws us toward some and not others. There is a difference between the love you earn and the love you receive as an extension. Your relatives love you as an extension of their love for your parents. If they resent your parents, they are unlikely to love you.…

The biggest difference between men and boys is how they talk about women. Boys treat women as though they are trophies. They count how many they "scored." How many they slept with. How well they flirted with them. How many had fallen for them. These are the hallmark traits of boys. I call them boys because they haven't grown up yet. The maturity is simply absent. Women aren't trophies. They are not medals you collect for accomplishments. They are people. Sure, some of them aren't good, but most…

There is a certain charm in living an unapologetic way. You say what you mean. To whomsoever you find worthy of your time. You talk to people you like. You tell them when you like them. You don't care about opinions from people who don't matter to you. For a long period I lived this way. I never thought about morality. The right and the wrong. The good and the bad. I did what I thought was right. For me, morality was always about the person in question. If I loved someone, the moral thing was…

If nobody was watching, would you follow your ethics? Most people wouldn't. They would revert to their baser instincts instead. Religion condemns them for it. Society does too. But they aren't entirely wrong. Your body doesn't understand ethics or morals. Your brain has been shaped over thousands of years of evolution. It did not evolve around ethics. Ethics are how we remain part of a society. Follow a culture. Stay civilised. So people don't kill each other and instead resolve their disputes…

Overthinking seems like the most common affliction of our time. It can, however, cripple your life in more ways than you can imagine. It messes with your head. It disrupts your sleep. It gives you headaches, migraines in extreme cases. The ripple effect is severe. Mental pain soon begins to reflect in your physical appearance. It translates into bodily fatigue. Overthinking is not just thinking too much. You are thinking too many things. Even things that never happened. Your mind cannot…

We all have someone we know doesn't like us. We also have someone we don't like one bit. Cannot tolerate even if our life depended on it. But if you were asked to name three good things about the person you absolutely despise, who despises you in return, could you do it? The honest answer is no. Whatever we say, our judgments are clouded by emotion. Emotions are rooted in what we feel, not necessarily in what happened to us, but in how we interpreted what happened. Especially when we know the…

An argument broke out during my commute today. Two men were going at it hard in the crowd. One of them lost his cool and switched to his native tongue. The other had no idea what he was saying. He asked him to speak in a common language. The other simply couldn't. His language of anger was native. I could understand both, and I was quietly amused at this strange way of having an argument. Within minutes the intensity began to drop. One man kept speaking in his native tongue but the other…

You have a routine you follow on weekdays. You wait for the weekends so you can be free from it. No work. No commitments. You want to spend time with yourself. Maybe with a book and a coffee. Maybe with a pen and a pad. Or maybe sitting with the memory of a lost love. But there are times when you cannot. You are surrounded by people. There are too many things on your plate. No time left to call your own. And before you realise it, the weekend is gone. This creates frustration. Because you lost…

Psychology tells us we can never truly be without bias. Every thought, every idea, every argument we have ever made is saturated with inherent bias. Towards something. About something. Every time we thought we were being objective. Every time we were playing devil's advocate. Every time we thought we were weighing options — we were operating from bias. We are simply incapable of having a thought untainted by it. Unless we are wholly indifferent to the outcome. Or to the people involved. That is…

People who are most rigid about their morals are the first to break them. They broadcast their moral standings and religious values, and build their entire identity around those. This narrows their worldview while filling them with pride in the mere act of performing that morality. To them, it matters that everyone else knows about it too. Some people cannot tolerate this hypocrisy and call it out. They resort to arguments but end up with deeper frustration and damaged relationships. Such…

Do what your heart says. You must have heard it a thousand times by now. But nobody explains what it means. So each of us fills in the meaning. For some, the heart stands for instinct. For others, it means doing what you love. Intuition versus emotion. The brain naturally emerges as the rational candidate. Almost too rational, because nobody enjoys what the brain has to say. It is more pragmatic. More outcome-driven. Less swayed by feeling. Or so the interpretation goes. So should you follow…

Some people are masters at making you feel inadequate. As if you are worthless. As if whatever you did doesn't matter. As if you know nothing. They act as if they are fixing the world for you. They are doing you a favour. You cannot ask for their help lest they take over. Then they will make you feel as if you have not done enough. This is a sophisticated form of manipulation. The goal of all manipulation is submission, and this is no different. But in this particular method, the perpetrator…

Pressure situations teach us something that a decade of slow life cannot. They reveal our highest potential. Our truest limitations. And the sheer resourcefulness of the mind. For some, when the mental pressure is at its peak, the mind does not falter. It becomes sharper. But not everybody handles pressure the same way. Some people sleep through such nights like a baby. When they wake up and return to their work, they know exactly what to do. The calmness sets them apart. Then there are those…

Don't be too easy for others. Don't let people trample you. This is easier said than done for those who struggle to tout their own worth. People who doubt themselves don't assert their abilities to the world. They are always second-guessing. Thinking that if they are capable, so is everybody else. This keeps them perpetually humble. But also perpetually subservient. They are the first ones to be taken advantage of. They are the first ones to get mocked. Because they crack jokes at their own…

Politics has damaged a lot of relationships. It is hard to pinpoint when having a different political opinion began to feel like a personal threat. It has become nearly impossible to share a room with someone who holds the opposite view. It is even harder in the age of social media, where everyone feels compelled to broadcast what they think. The chasm has only grown wider with every passing year. Blaming any one political party for widening it is lazy thinking. Politicians do not necessarily…

The lack of courage to have awkward conversations keeps you from strengthening your conversational skills. The lack of skill in handling awkward situations keeps you perpetually scared and avoidant. Some people dodge difficult conversations like a contagious disease. They flee from it. They grow anxious. They panic. They get the jitteriness. They would endure all of this rather than muster the courage to confront. They lack courage because they are not skilled at it. They are not skilled…

A lot of people are suffocated. Mainly because they cannot express themselves. They have been punished for doing so in the past. And perhaps they believe expressing themselves would be too inconvenient for others. So they absorb the inconvenience themselves. The problem with good people is they assume others carry the same obligation. They don't. The lack of expression means you never say what you actually mean. Because it would be too harsh for the listener. You reach for convenient lies…

The trending story on any social media is how many people lost their jobs because of AI. That is if they are not discussing politics and war. Some people hate AI. Some are claiming they built a rocket engine to transport humans to the moon. Neither claim has anything to do with reality. The world has moved on without people. Technology has once again disrupted our world. We are reacting as if it hadn't in the past. The Industrial Revolution fundamentally changed how we live, how we eat, how we…

Reading fiction is meditative. It's true that it transports you into another world, but that's not the important part. The important part is that it makes you forget your current one. In a typical meditation session, you observe your thoughts. You see them pass by. You practice detachment from them. The idea isn't to not feel them but to not be controlled by them. The one thing people take away from meditation is calmness. The calmness with which they handle everything. Because they carry a…

In any argument, the one who raises their voice loses. Because raising your voice means you used force instead of quality to elevate your case. That is the first sign of low emotional control. You are being exposed. You showed the world that you are vulnerable. That you cannot contain your frustrations. That you have not channelled your anger. You will find such people everywhere. You could even be one. There are people who scream and break things. That is how they assert dominance in an…

Exhaustion teaches you a great deal. Like whether something truly matters. If yes, how much. How badly do you want it. Your body is giving up. Your mind knows it cannot proceed. Not without your body collapsing. And the mind has a responsibility towards the body. Towards survival. So it will flood your consciousness with defeatist thoughts. That you should quit. That you have arrived at the edge of your limits. This is when you begin to ask whether you truly want this. Because giving up is…

Self-pity is addictive. Licking your own wounds feels good. For a while, there is no burden. No responsibility. No accountability. You have no compulsion to act. You can weep over your bad luck. Or you can blame somebody for your condition. If you cannot find anybody, you can always blame your circumstances. Some people go a step further and blame the government. Worse, they even blame their childhood trauma. These things are tempting. Because they free you from the burden of finding a…

Having a good vocabulary is underrated. Not only for the external world, but also for the internal one. You can name what's going on inside your head. With clarity. With precision. And that naming itself brings clarity. A lot of anxious thoughts emerge from uncertainty, because we don't know what's happening to us, phenomenologically as well as emotionally. But having a vocabulary doesn't mean going pompous with a thesaurus. People mistake vocabulary for memorising complex words. That's an…

There's one feeling that's common between a child and an adult. As you grow older, it only gets worse. We should have learned to handle it in childhood but we never do. And that's being happy for others. It's almost impossible to feel genuine happiness for someone else. Especially when things aren't going great for you. But even when things are going well, it's hard to be happy for others. Because then you measure their condition against yours. If yours is still relatively better, you can…

Moving on in life is the easiest advice to give but the hardest to follow. When you are committed to something or someone, it's hard to get away from it. Because it consumes your very fabric of existence. It governs your thoughts. It encapsulates your entire personality. People can look at you and tell you are devoted to something or someone. That's why breakups and divorce physically change people. We have all moved on from something we thought we never would. And yet we don't remember the…