Nikhil's Blog

As you grow in life, you have to learn to leave people behind. The idea of keeping the same friends is romantic. It looks good too. But it carries a fatal flaw that most people overlook. Your rise in stature also reveals your evolution in thinking, in your priorities, in your overall mindset. If the same evolution is missing in your friends, if they refuse to grow, you will notice a gap in the connection. This gap is often misread as arrogance. About money. About class. About stature. But…

Nobody will love you the way you want to be loved. Everybody wants to be loved in a specific way. You want the other to be passionate about you. You want them to be curious about you, to want to know everything about you, but without being nosy. They should worship the ground you walk on. Such a love is impossible because it demands a paradox be fulfilled. Nobody knows you the way you truly are. The way you are can only be manifested through someone else's lens: the people you have met, the…

The most fundamental question a man asks himself, often. Can he remain alone for his entire life without being destroyed by it? On the surface, that question begs another: why would anyone want to stay alone for life at all? When you're tired of commitments, when the burden of responsibility curdles into liability, when every relationship suffocates you because of how you were wired since childhood, you would rather remain alone for the rest of your life. The human mind is wired to seek…

We want to be desired by everyone we meet. This puts us in constant conflict with other people and with our own inner nature. It is impossible to be liked by everyone. Ninety five percent of the people you meet in life will eventually disappear from it. The person you are closest to today will, at some point, no longer be your closest confidant. Such is the nature of life. It is cyclical. This cyclical nature, coupled with our inability to foresee the future, always tricks us into believing the…

It feels natural to hate everything about a person once you hate that person. Doesn't matter how many arguments they make. Doesn't matter how true those arguments are. Doesn't matter their track record. If we dislike someone, our first instinct is to contradict them. To oppose them. That's simply how our brains are wired. They don't prefer truth, they prefer comfort. This raises a question I love to ask everyone: if you hate someone with all your might but they've made an excellent point, would…

Anger, overthinking, hyperanxiety, depression, or any emotion that exists with such intensity demands a different channel of expression. These are signs that the body is straining under high tension. That tension could come from unresolved emotions, whether from recent trauma or persistent emotional distress. Either way, the body is moving through turbulence without an exit point. In psychological terms, it's called sublimation. The unresolved emotion finds a way out through other means. Every…

We all want to be funny. We all picture ourselves walking into a party and becoming the room's centre of gravity. Girls are dying to talk to us. Everyone wants a piece of the conversation. Even though it's an overwhelming thought, we'd still want it, because it feels good. Especially the sense of humour part. A good sense of humour is a sign of intelligence. But unlike general intelligence, you don't need to remember the facts here. Or the political history. Or the current affairs. You need a…

Our parents are growing older and we are growing busier. This is a tragedy unto itself. They are running out of time and we don't have enough time to give it to them. This is the time we feel we should be spending with them. Reminiscing about their life. Asking them how theirs was. Are they satisfied? Are they happy? I often wonder about asking my father what he thinks about his life now that he has lived so much of it. What would he have done differently? What advice would he give me?…

There are times when we're surrounded by people. We're engaged in plenty of conversations. Yet we walk away dissatisfied. As if we couldn't say what we wanted to say. There's this nagging feeling after every conversation, that you're left holding more inside than what you managed to express outside. Because there was never a moment where you could truly express yourself. This nagging feeling is a sign that you're in the wrong company. Talking to the wrong person. We always focus on how we adapt…

A lot of suffering stems from not knowing what we want. The only way to know what we want is to enquire. All enquiry requires awareness. Of your thoughts. Your feelings. Your urges. Your instincts. That feeling in your stomach when you see something or someone is important data. Pay attention to it. That data reveals what you secretly crave. If you ask someone what emotions they went through today, they will have no idea. They have never bothered to sit still and reflect on their thoughts. They…

Have you ever been overburdened by a barrage of thoughts? Not one or two, but dozens. If you are even half as self-aware as you should be, you would have wondered where all these thoughts came from. They appear mostly random. Straight from the unconscious. No connection between them. You are reading a book, and without realising it, you are thinking about what your friend said three days ago. Thoughts are mostly random. But they are also deeply associative. You wouldn't notice unless you stop…

Empathy is a good thing. Probably the best thing you can offer anyone. To understand someone's pain without rushing to fix it is therapeutic. It is the closest you can come to giving someone the catharsis they need. Every self-help book and video preaches the same gospel. Social media is flooded with this one word: empathy. Most of the time, I advocate for empathy. But there are cases where it becomes a curse. Too much empathy and kindness can turn you into a sponge. That's fine occasionally.…

Every writer explores different writing styles in his lifetime. If you are a serious writer, you know what I am talking about. The style isn't just indicative of how you write. It's indicative of how you prefer to write. How you prefer to think. I have experimented with several writing styles. From stream-of-consciousness writing to short, rhythmic sentences. They were all essential to my thinking process. I realised that the style you choose should be compatible with how you think. Writing…

There's a common saying that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy. It holds true in every domain. Hating someone is a display of emotion. Emotional people aren't reliable in crunch situations. They aren't necessarily bad. They simply can't be trusted to hold the fort when the time comes. They will most likely offer you a justification for why their emotions mattered. This is why hatred belongs in the same bucket as love. Both are emotional responses. Except hatred is worse. It consumes…

You can learn more in one year than you did in the last decade. The world has moved fast. Technology has accelerated the passage of time itself, so much so that we can't keep up with it. Every few years we realise we've fallen behind. We aren't slow. The pace of technology is simply too much. We are always playing catch-up. The AI race has made us feel inferior on a grand scale. We haven't had to think about survival in years. Now we do. We have to reassess everything, from the ground up, right…

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…