Here is how to break the habit of stress eating. Every time you unthinkingly shove some snack into your mouth, ask yourself: Am I hungry? Or just bored and anxious? Stress eating is a classic mindless action that we do on autopilot. Here is a simple way to override...

Today, it is not enough to eat healthy and exercise -- you have to hack your metabolism. You have to hack your brain, hack your sleep, hack your energy levels... Thankfully, I haven't seen anyone 'hack meditation to attain bliss in 5 minutes,' though I am pretty sure...

Chronic worrying is a habit. And like any habit, it can be broken. But let us first understand how this habit is formed. When our brain feels some threat or uncertainty, it creates this dreadful feeling in our head that we call ‘anxiety.’ And we desperately want to...

I have been part of two very different recruitments: Drivers in the police force and consultants at McKinsey 🙂 And yet, from both the recruitments, I learned the same lesson – we totally underestimate the role of luck in our life. During my stint with McKinsey, the...

When I was working as a consultant with McKinsey, I wanted to become an investor. And I was convinced that investing would be a cakewalk. After all, we were trained in problem-solving and logical thinking. What else would you need? I then joined a private equity...

My co-founder at HabitStrong, has one Buddha-like quality I have never seen in anyone – she is absolutely not affected by envy, FOMO, or the disease of comparing ourselves with other people. She has never cared about how much money her classmates are making. Whenever...

I fear that lack of sleep is killing people. We lost a security guard at our apartment, who died of a heart attack. Barely 52, he was very gentle and friendly, and looked fairly healthy. While there could be many reasons for a heart attack, one thing I did notice is...

If I could go back and change one thing about my professional journey, it would be this – I would worry less and live more. For most of my life, I have been too caught up in the drama of success and failure. I have worried too much about the catastrophe that would...

When Sharon Salzberg, a renowned meditation teacher, came to India in 1970 looking for a solution to her life’s suffering, she was very disappointed. After weeks of grueling travel, she reached Bodh Gaya to attend a vipassana retreat run by Mr. SN Goenka. She was...

Here is the common advice I got from my seniors on joining the Indian Police Service – “You have to extract work from the sub-inspectors.” Like you would extract oil from coconut, squeezing out every drop. In fact, one otherwise well-meaning officer told me, “Don’t...

Whatever little goodness I have in my life, I owe it to simple, straightforward habits. All the fancy-sounding self-help formulas, often using terms like ‘energy’, ‘vibrations’, and ‘consciousness’, are mostly nonsense. As an example, when I woke up today I wasn’t...

Many years ago, a fund manager met me to discuss a company I happened to be familiar with. Before the meeting, he told me, “I am a little slow. Could you share a short note on the company that I can read at my own pace, so I come prepared for the meeting? I absorb...

During the offsite at the private equity firm I worked with, there was this German guy who was kicking the football like a rocket. Trying to catch up with him left us gasping for air – not one of us could outrun him. And while we were in our thirties, he was in his...

You don’t quit building good habits because you are inconsistent or weak-willed – more likely, you quit because of perfectionism. When you are building a habit streak, you want it to be perfect. But once in a while, life will get in the way – be it sickness, travel,...

I have made plenty of career transitions and here is my biggest learning – if you are fearless and keep learning, you can catch up with anyone, even in a new field. When I went from studying engineering to becoming a police officer it felt like a big leap. But then...