Mistakes I made in my relationships

A thread...
I always sugar coated my feedback, even when I felt strongly that they had done something wrong.
I felt I would come across as rude.
I felt they will feel bad about themselves.

People who wish to grow always seek feedback.
Diluting the feedback is disrespectful to them.
I always wanted to know how I could help them.
I always wanted to know what was wrong.
But I never shared how they could help me.
Even when asked, I never shared what was wrong at my end.

People want the joy of being able to help you, just as much as you seek that joy from them.
I continued to be in toxic friendships, because how could I be selfish and leave them now?
I continued to be friends with people who had long stopped growing, just because we'd been friends for long.

Sometimes killing a relationship is the only way to save yourself from it.
I thought it is my responsibility to keep the other person happy.
If they are unhappy, then I am at fault, I am incapable, I am inadequate.

The best relationships are those where people take responsibility for their own happiness.
I felt I will keep my parents happy with the money I make.
I will send them on vacations, buy them things, make their life comfortable.
But the busier I got, the less happy they were, despite all the things they now had.

Relationships do not need things to grow.
They need time.
I justified spending insane hours at work because I was doing this for "our future"
And the next thing I know, our son was 4 years old.

Relationships may or may not have a future.
But all of them have a present.
This moment, right now.
The relationship needs this moment.
I became friends with my colleagues, but that made it hard for me to be direct and radical with them.
My friendship superseded my responsibility as a leader.
I started to fail as a leader, while being a good friend.
A relationship can take multiple avataars.

If we do not know which is the most important one for us at that point of time in life, we will fail in all versions of the relationship.
After the birth of our first child, my wife dedicated herself to become a mother.
While I needed her to still play the role of my friend and partner.
I felt dismissed when the mother in her took over my friend.
People change.
They always do.
Because of which relationships also change.

If you keep telling people "you have changed", then it is most likely you who has to change.
I always wanted to solve people's problems.
I heard them out and my instant reaction thereafter was to make a plan to fix things.
I thought I was being helpful in the relationship.

Quite often, the best gift you can give a relationship is the ability to listen.
Just listen.
It angered me that my parents did not understand why I left my PhD, why I left my cushy consulting job, why I left my startup.
They don't understand me, was all that I could think of.

It have been easy though for me to see how their life experiences had shaped their reality.
In a relationship, it is always easy to think "they don't understand me"

How often do we ask, "do I understand them?"
I craved for acknowledgement in all my relationships.
I craved for a "thank you" whenever I did something.
I craved for a "you are awesome" whenever I helped someone.

If people didn't acknowledge, they were not doing their part in a relationship.
Acknowledgement doesn't always comes in words.
It also comes through actions.
Sometimes even through silence, if you care enough to listen.

If you crave for acknowledgement, you may or may not find it.
If you do things without it's need, you will find it in surprising ways.
For the longest time I blamed myself for everything.
I was inadequate.
I was responsible.
I was incapable.
I was wrong.
I was a failure.

And that affected my relationships.
I over compensated.
I was needy.
I sought validation.
Once a friend asked me, when was the last time you shouted at someone, were rude to someone, abused someone, hurt someone, blamed someone?

I couldn't remember and replied, "not anytime recently"

"Then how is it that you do the same things to yourself?"
That's when it struck me.

At times the most toxic relationship you have to save yourself from, is the one you have with your own self.
I realize today, that almost all the mistakes I made in my relationships, stemmed from the relationship I had with my own self.

And the day I was able to fix my relationship with myself, I gave myself the opportunity to fix all my relationships.
I still suffer from imposter syndrome, I still think of myself as a failure, I know I have let so many people down

But the difference is that of these thoughts drive me to become a better person, as against shutting me down.
I find strength from my failures.
Because today, I chose to define my success and my failure, instead of allowing the world to define it for me.

My relationship with myself today is one where I am aware of what I am feeling and I try to answer why, almost always.
Its a relationship that grows
Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
- Seneca
PS: I have also written about my tumultuous relationship with money here

PS: And my incredible relationship with time (one of the best ones I have had!)

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More from @warikoo

2 Oct
This right here, is almost all of consumer psychology summarized.
This picture is a real-life proof (take it for what it's worth) of the Prospect Theory - which was presented by Dan Kahneman and Amos Traversky in a seminal paper in 1979
bit.ly/2Gsq7i2

They (actually only Kahneman) went on win the Nobel prize in 2002.
A layman summary of the theory is
Pain from loss >> Pleasure from gain

It said
People are willing to take a sure shot than gamble on getting higher gains (another form of loss aversion) - which is shown in Poll 1
(60% took the sure shot Rs. 500)
Read 14 tweets
2 Oct
August 2016.
It has been 3 months since LinkedIn had launched its video feature.
And I had been waiting for it to be activated on my profile.

A thread...
I have been blogging since 2005.
Almost daily.
Started with my experiences as an MBA student at @ISBedu, then a consulting job.
Until then it was like a public diary.

But it took a very mature turn when I turned an entrepreneur in 2009.
I was experiencing so much, on a daily basis.
Making mistakes left, right and center.
Course correcting.
My biases were being challenged.

And I was learning so, so much!

The blog began to reflect that.
And people began to read it.
A lot more people than used to.
Read 19 tweets
25 Sep
Mistakes I made with my money.

A thread...
We grew up without any money.
Perpetually in debt. Hand to mouth existence.

Which is why I grew up hating money.
I thought it was the cause of all our problems.

And I never wanted money to rule over me.
What I didn't realize though that this desire to dismiss money, led me to disrespect it.

Because I had a knack of making money, I never really spent any effort in understanding how to maintain and grow it.

In the process making a lot of mistakes.
Read 20 tweets
18 Sep
20 books that helped me, more than years of school or college ever will.

A thread...
It was 2009 when @vivpahwa gifted me
REWORK by @jasonfried @dhh

The book changed me.
Threw open a different way of looking at the world.
Came to define "resist the obvious" for me as a life lesson.

It remains my most gifted book till date.

amzn.to/3ktKrhH
2016: I had just laid off 80 of my colleagues for no mistake of theirs
And this book came to my rescue

BETTER UNDER PRESSURE
"CEOs must master three essential attributes, realistic optimism, subservience to purpose, and finding order in chaos."

amzn.to/3icfyNQ
Read 23 tweets
11 Sep
Validate your startup idea in less than 14 days and less than Rs. 5,000

A thread...
I am constantly generating ideas.
Mostly really bad ones.
Occasionally good ones.

And it got to a point where I had to find a way to objectively select or reject an idea.

So back in 2010 I came up with 2 tests.
1. The shower test (or Balti test - doesn't matter)
While taking a shower, ask yourself all possible questions about the idea that your worst enemy would ask.

> How will this fail?
> Why are you the right person?
> Why won't the competition win?
> Why
> Why
> Why
Read 25 tweets
4 Sep
My startups before I started up

A thread...
1992; 12 yrs; Summer holidays

3 of us start a comic rental biz.
We gather all our comic books, lay them out on a chatai, set it up in front of our house from 10am to 5pm.
33 comics in all.

Usual suspects - Chacha Chowdhary, Nagraj, Super Commando Dhruv.
We make Rs.11 first day
Excited, we go to the store and buy another comic for Rs.10

In 3 days, we have 3 new comics added to the inventory.

4th day, boy comes, pays Rs.10 and takes 10 comics.
We are elated at the bulk deal.
He never comes back!

Biz shuts down after 11 days.
>10% pilferage killed it
Read 22 tweets

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