Late night. Blue light glaring off bloodshot eyes.

A creator staring at an analytics dashboard, furiously refreshing the screen, praying the algorithm chooses him this time.

Every post, every draft, every line of code feels like life or death.

Like high-stakes surgery where one slip-up means public humiliation.

Then there’s that other person in the corner. Tinkering. Shipping weird experiments. Whistling. Completely unbothered by whether the internet claps.

They’re playing. Gaming the system. The algorithm follows them and even bends to their will.

As Kaguura Gichuru put it: “You cannot compete with someone who is having fun.”

We love the standard hustle dogma:

Wake up at 4:00 AM.

Grind until your bones ache.

‘Suffer now, live later.’

Nonsense.

People don’t stall because they lack discipline. They stall because they build on top of a ‘fragile cognitive foundation’.

A fragile cognitive foundation is a psychological and intellectual state where a person’s worldview, decision-making, and self-worth depend on rigid, simplistic, and easily shattered assumptions. When reality inevitably clashes with these assumptions, the mind cannot adapt, leading to defensiveness, stagnation, or burnout.

A fragile foundation turns creative work into a psychological prison:

Rigidity of Thought: Fluidity is how breakthroughs happen. Rigidity forces complex problems into binary, black-and-white arguments. One gets defensive and blames the world for internal stagnation.

Outcome Obsession: Tying our worth to external applause, and the work chokes. You stop optimizing for learning and start optimizing for ‘not looking stupid’.

Passive Hope: Waiting for an algorithm or the universe to reward unexpressed potential is a quiet surrender. Outsourcing your future strips away your locus of control and turns you into a spectator in your own life.

Pic Credit- Gemini AI

F. Scott Fitzgerald in his essay ‘The Crack-Up’, famously noted, the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

True leverage requires cognitive complexity—the quiet ability to hold two opposing ideas in your head without panicking. It means knowing the full counterargument while executing with absolute conviction.

Every craft, in the end, is a game of numbers.

The more reps you log, the more data you collect, the more statistically impossible it becomes to fail.

Stop treating your craft like an audition for external validation.

Stop defending an expired operating system just to protect your ego.

Move the scoreboard inside.

Out-think them.

Out-build them.

Out-fun them all.

Peeps out!

In my previous essays, we charted the quiet median where mastery meets mattering, and mapped the five internal gears—Care, Focus, Discipline, Confidence, and Gumption—that protect us from modern digital fragmentation. We also looked at how repetition turns conscious effort into an automated flow state.

But a vital question remains: once you light the engine, how do you keep it running over a lifetime without burning out?

If excellence is an intimately human impulse rather than a trophy reserved for an elite few, we must understand the day-to-day practices that sustain it. Drawing deeper insights from Brad Stulberg’s The Way of Excellence, we can transition from the mindsets of excellence to its daily habits and execution.

1. The Myth of the Ceiling: Prioritizing the Floor

Modern self-improvement culture is obsessed with optimization—pushing your absolute peak performance higher, raising the ceiling. But peak performance is volatile; it depends on perfect conditions. True excellence is a long game. Stulberg offers a profound paradigm shift: obsess over raising your average minimum output instead of your maximum possible output.

“Excellence is a long game. What we do and who we are on our worst days matters more than what we do and who we are on our best days.”

By “raising the floor”, one can ensure that even on days when motivation vanishes, our default execution remains deeply impactful.

Consistency outlasts intensity every single time.

2. Tailoring the Architecture: Values over Influencer Routines

We are consistently flooded with online routines detailing what high achievers do at 4:00 AM. But copy-pasting someone else’s framework is a losing strategy. Habits should serve as a rhythm to carry us forward, not a cage.

The first step can be anchoring one’s goals directly to their core values, giving one's efforts a clear direction. From there, one must experiment, iterate, and build a routine tailored entirely to the unique architecture of their own life, energy patterns, and personal pursuits.

3. Joy as the Ultimate Fuel for Endurance

In the heavy grind of discipline, routines, and trade-offs, joy is frequently dismissed as trivial or frivolous. This is a critical error. Joy is the fuel of endurance.

If one denies oneself any sense of satisfaction until he reaches a distant finish line, he will hit an emotional wall long before arrival. Excellence requires us to actively enjoy the process of showing up. Furthermore, we must intentionally construct “rituals of completion”—taking the necessary time and space to pause, digest, and integrate our milestones rather than mindlessly rushing to the next metric.

4. The Shared Path: Community and Seasons

The modern self-help landscape places the entire burden on the individual. But sustained success is never an isolated endeavor. We cannot do everything all the time; attempting to do so guarantees burnout. True longevity requires us to view our lives in seasons—leaning heavily into work when required, but intentionally relying on a community of family, friends, and mentors to sustain us through inevitable failures and setbacks. Love and connection are not distractions from mastery; they give mastery its meaning.

The Continuous Practice

Ultimately, excellence is a way of engaging with life rather than a final destination or a prize to be won. It does not require an overnight transformation or flawless talent. It simply demands:

• Clarity about what truly matters to you.

• The courage to continue to care deeply.

• The willingness to keep showing up and doing the work, day after day.

When we ground ourselves in these value-aligned daily actions, the chaotic world around us naturally falls away, replaced by the quiet power of steady growth.

In the modern business landscape, there is a dangerous misconception that every negotiation exists in a vacuum. We often treat each deal as a standalone event, closing the door and fighting for the best possible terms before moving on to the next one.

But seasoned dealmakers know a fundamental truth: there are no episodic negotiations.

We live in a highly connected ecosystem where one’s behaviour in one boardroom will inevitably influence his reception in the next. When at the table- the idea shouldn’t be just negotiating the contract. It should be about constructing a long-term negotiating brand.

So, what should that brand be?

Many professionals oscillate between two extremes: the unyielding “jerk” vs the litigation-averse “pushover.” But the most successful negotiators strike a deliberate balance: they are incredibly cooperative by default, but formidably stiff when crossed.

Here is how to build a world-class negotiating brand that protects your boundaries without destroying your relationships.

The Danger of the “Conciliator” Brand

When Joel Peterson, a veteran negotiator with billions of dollars in transactions under his belt, departed a major real estate organisation, he possessed a distinct brand. He was known as a “conciliator”—a reasonable, win-win dealmaker who hated litigation.

He thought this reputation would ensure a smooth exit. Instead, former partners immediately slapped him with a lawsuit. Why? Because his brand was too accommodating. They assumed he was a “giver” who would simply cave to their demands rather than fight back. That assumption led to four gruelling years of litigation.

The lesson here is critical: if your brand is entirely anchored on being a “nice guy” who avoids conflict at all costs, bad-faith actors will use it against you. You must leave room in your brand for retaliation.

Peterson adapted his reputation to become someone who is highly reasonable and eager to build win-win deals, but who becomes “very stiff” the moment an opposing party acts unfairly or violates core principles. You want people to know they can do great business with you, but they do not want to end up in a fight with you.

Enforcing Boundaries Without Burning Bridges

How do you transition from being accommodating to enforcing strict boundaries without ruining the deal? It comes down to a few core tactics:

1. Lower Your Emotional Baseline: When most people try to set a firm boundary, they raise their voice, bluff, or use “high velocity words”. This is a mistake. When you scream or throw a tantrum, your counterpart assumes you are just venting and will calm down by tomorrow.

True power lies in a low emotional baseline.

During a tense negotiation over a billion-dollar property swap, Peterson sat across from six partners. When the senior partner made an outrageously unfair demand, Peterson didn’t yell. He calmly stood up, expressed sincere sadness that their long partnership had to end this way, and left to catch his plane.

Before he even reached the airport, the opposing partners were calling his phone, eager to walk back their demand and make a deal. Because his delivery was perfectly calm, they knew his boundary was real.

2. Establish “Rules of the Road”: If you are doing serial negotiations with the same partner, you can maintain your firm economic boundaries by establishing mutual expectations.

For example, Peterson had a long-term partner who simply couldn’t feel satisfied with a deal unless he was able to negotiate the price down.

Instead of fighting this dynamic, Peterson adapted.

For their next 250 deals, he simply offered prices 5% to 8% higher than his actual target. The partner would knock the price down, securing a psychological “win,” and Peterson would land at his exact required number.

Being reasonable simply means designing a process where the other side feels good about giving you what you want.

3. Leverage the Undeniable Power of Likability: There is a pervasive myth that being an effective negotiator requires being cold or ruthless. In reality, there is “almost no upside in being a jerk”.

Even the most hardened professionals are swayed by human connection. Following his four-year legal battle, an opposing litigator admitted to Peterson: “I wanted to hate you... but I couldn’t help but kind of liking you”. That litigator confessed that despite his professional training, his personal affinity for Peterson subconsciously influenced his approach.

By separating the people from the thorny problems, you can maintain fierce boundaries while remaining a genuinely likable partner.

The Ultimate Asset: Trust. At the end of the day, a world-class negotiating brand is built on a foundation of trust. If you continuously demonstrate Character, Competence, and Power (the empowerment to actually make a decision), people will actively seek out opportunities to do business with you.

Negotiations aren’t zero-sum wars.

They are simply conversations designed to solve mutual problems.

Build a brand as a flexible problem-solver who refuses to be taken advantage of, and you will never struggle to find a willing partner across the table.

PS- The inspiration behind writing this post is a masterclass by Joel Peterson about negotiation at Stanford.

For decades, the standard prescription for institutional inefficiency has been a single, unyielding word: digitization. We took paper files, turned them into PDFs, and moved physical queues into digital waiting rooms. But changing the medium of bureaucracy didn’t change its fundamental nature. The pace remained slow, the tasks remained highly repetitive, and the friction between the citizen and the state persisted.

True administrative transformation doesn’t happen when we simply record state processes electronically. It happens when we make those processes intelligent.

Drawing from a recent training on AI in Governance , this essay explores the transition from a passive digital state to an active, predictive framework—examining how we can leverage these technologies across public systems while strictly maintaining our ethical and mathematical guardrails.

1. Mapping the Friction: From Workflow to Automation

The first rule of applying any advanced technology to public service is deceptively simple: you cannot automate a process you do not fully understand.

Before drafting a single Request for Proposals (RFP) or outlining complex software requirements, public administrators must conduct a rigorous audit of existing workflows. We must isolate the precise entry points where government machinery slows down, categorizing tasks by their structural inputs and outputs—whether they are text, images, or audio data.

Once these friction points are mapped, Generative AI ceases to be a buzzword and becomes a highly targeted tool:

• The Administrative Scribe: In high-volume frontline operations—such as healthcare—speech recognition and generation models can dynamically capture and transcribe human interactions (like a doctor-patient consultation), updating central databases in real time without manual data entry.

• Cognitive Leverage for Officials: By functioning as an advanced assistant to public officials, AI can rapidly parse vast libraries of historical case files, legal precedents, and policy notes to deliver faster, highly context-aware responses.

2. The Operational Blueprint: The Smart Outpatient Model

To see this in practice, consider the structural re-engineering of a public Outpatient Department (O.P.D.):

[Citizen Arrival] ──► [Aadhaar + Facial Recognition] ──► [QR Token Issued]
                                                               │
[Database Updated] ◄── [Automated AI Audio Transcription] ◄────┘

By blending identity verification with real-time tracking, the frontend patient experience is completely reordered:

1. Seamless Identity: Integrating Aadhaar with Facial Recognition Systems (FRS) immediately authenticates the citizen upon entry.

2. Dynamic Flow Tracking: Citizens are issued tokens or wristbands embedded with a QR code. This allows computer vision and predictive models to monitor crowd flows, updating database actions dynamically and shifting administrative resources where they are needed most.

3. Ubiquitous Accessibility: Post-consultation instructions and welfare schemes are directly linked to that same QR code, ensuring clear, immediate access for the citizen.

3. The Two Pillars: Predictive vs. Generative Frameworks

For effective public sector procurement, we must avoid treating “AI” as a homogenous entity. It operates across two distinct technical dimensions, each solving a different economic problem within governance:

Predictive AI (Classical Machine Learning)

• The Core: Rooted in pattern recognition and statistical probability.

• The Utility: Used for risk forecasting, fraud detection, and optimized resource allocation. It answers the question: What is likely to happen next, and where should we deploy our budget?

Generative AI (Deep Learning & LLMs)

• The Core: Focused on contextual synthesis and multi-format output generation.

• The Utility: Powering advanced conversational interfaces (via frameworks like Dialogflow or Microsoft Bot Framework) to bridge the vernacular divide, making complex public policies understandable to citizens in their native dialects.

4. The Indian Paradigm: DPI Meets Intelligence

India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)—built on foundations like Aadhaar and UPI—provides the perfect substrate for these intelligent layers to scale. Across the country, we are seeing the emergence of powerful, localized use cases:

• Vernacular Inclusion via BHASHINI: Moving beyond English-centric governance, the Digital India BHASHINI initiative utilizes generative models to translate judicial transcripts and public welfare data into regional Indian languages instantly.

• Mass Scale Logistics: Systems deployed during massive cultural gatherings like the Uttar Pradesh Mahakumbh use computer vision and predictive AI to monitor vast railway passenger flows, mitigating crowd congestion and proactively ensuring public safety.

• Financial Integrity: Tools like MuleHunter.ai, operating within the banking ecosystem, leverage classical machine learning to scan network anomalies, detecting and freezing fraudulent accounts to protect public funds and subsidy transfers.

• Targeted Social Welfare: In places like Nagpur, the introduction of AI-powered Anganwadis uses anonymized data analysis to deliver precision nutrition and early-childhood learning kits, directly targeting systemic rural poverty.

5. The Mathematical and Ethical Guardrails

When a private software application fails, a user experiences temporary inconvenience. When a public sector AI system fails, a citizen may be stripped of their livelihood, healthcare, or fundamental rights. Therefore, our deployment metrics must be uncompromising.

We must evaluate every model through a strict matrix of mathematical correctness, optimizing heavily for True Positives and True Negatives:

                  ACTUAL REALITY (Recall) [cite: 44]
               ┌───────────────────┬───────────────────┐
               │   Eligible (1)    │  Ineligible (0)   │
 ┌─────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┤
 │  Approved   │   True Positive   │  False Positive   │
P│    (1)      │ (System Success)  │  (Unjust Leakage) │
E│             │         │         │
D├─────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┤
I│   Denied    │  False Negative   │   True Negative   │
 │    (0)      │ (Citizen Denied)  │ (System Success)  │
 └─────────────┴───────────────────┴───────────────────┘

In public policy, a False Negative—wrongfully predicting a citizen is ineligible for a service—is a catastrophic policy failure. Because we must balance Precision (predictive accuracy) with Recall (the reality of who needs the service), we must judge models by their F1-Score. This is the harmonic mean of the two metrics:

F1 = 2.(Precision.Recall/Precision + Recall)

Before any wide-scale deployment, rigorous A/B testing must be mandated to prove that the AI-assisted model delivers services faster and more equitably than the traditional human workflow it seeks to replace.

The Three Questions for Every Administrator

As we venture toward the long-term horizon of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), our immediate professional focus must remain on safely managed, Applied AI. Every public sector blueprint must continuously answer three non-negotiable questions:

1. Equity: Did the AI model unfairly deny service to a citizen due to biased historical data?

2. Competency: Is the AI model performing worse than a trained human professional for the task at hand?

3. Inclusion: Are any citizens being entirely left out of the state’s digitization efforts?

Technology is an exceptional lever for amplifying efficiency, but it cannot replace institutional empathy. By building resilient Platform Engineering, mastering Prompt Engineering, and keeping a dedicated human-in-the-loop, we can build an agile, predictive state that serves every citizen with absolute precision.

What are your thoughts on introducing AI-driven automation in public administrative spaces? Let’s discuss in the comments below.

If you found this essay insightful, consider subscribing to the Minimalist Manifesto for regular deep-dives into philosophy, economics, and public policy.

Modern world is obsessed with finish line. The applause, photo-ops, victory symbols, adrenalin rushing reels.. you know it all. Not saying they are not important, but do they have any intrinsic meaning to it? What about taking a lesser glamorous meaningful path in personal and professional life? A path which is quite, yet fulfilling. The path which calms down the nerves and soothes rather than pumping dopamine in the body. A path of quality without loosing ourselves in the process. It is a path driven by scientific methods of competency leading to the path of excellence.

True excellence is less about a rare spark of genius and more about an intimate human pulse. It is the steady, quiet median between mastery and mattering.

The Four stages of Competence

In my previous essay, I had discussed about the four stages of competence. Unconscious Incompetence, Conscious Incompetence, Conscious Competence, and Unconscious Competence. These are an established psychological model known as the Four Stages of Competence.

Unconscious Competence, is the stage of the journey where competence becomes second nature. We all have already walked this path countless times- case of first learning to walk. It was frustrating and fulfilling at the same time. The fact that we all have charted this course so many times is a testament to how ingrained it is within our species.

Psychologically, striving for excellence offers an antidote to many of the ailments of modern life.

Emptiness, burnout & alienation often stem from spending time & energy on misaligned or misguided endeavors. This happens when a short term thought or feeling takes us away from a long term goal or value

• Turning to substances or poor habits even when health is our priority.

• Spending hours scrolling online even though deep family connection is our priority.

Deep engagement fosters a sense of autonomy, competence & relatedness- three key ingredients to a life both great & satisfying. Working on tangible, meaningful tasks- raising a child or tending to a garden is profoundly grounding.

This is where excellence shifts from a raw, abstract potential into a daily practice. It becomes less about how we wish our lives looked, and entirely about how we show up for our lives, day after day.

The Five Mindsets of Excellence

The act of showing up starts entirely in the mind. Our “inner stance” determines our growth—either pulling us toward greatness or letting us shrink toward smallness. The best part? These mindsets are not genetic traits you are born with rather they are muscles that must be deliberately developed.

I. Care

The foundation of any great work is care. You cannot pursue excellence without genuinely caring about what you are doing. But caring carries an inherent risk. It opens you up to the potential of future grief or failure if things don’t work out. Because of this vulnerability, choosing to care is fundamentally an act of raw courage. Yet, these emotional investments are some of the most meaningful we will ever make.

II. Focus

Focus is our second mindset, and it is becoming increasingly rare. The modern, attention-driven economy is explicitly incentivized to fragment our thoughts and make sustained concentration feel deeply uncomfortable. But focus is a muscle. It will not improve by default. We have to actively schedule it, ruthlessly protect it, and commit to it daily.

III. Discipline

Discipline bridges the gap between our intentions and our actual achievements. A critical truth of mastery is that action precipitates inspiration. Waiting to feel motivated before you start working is a losing strategy. The peak performers we admire have simply achieved a mastery over the mundane act of getting started every single day —whether that is Cristiano Ronaldo practicing free kicks daily or Kobe Bryant arriving at the court at 4:00 AM.

IV. Confidence

Genuine confidence is an accumulation of reflecting evidence, never unearned arrogance. It is quiet, humble, and coexists with our natural self-doubt rather than trying to replace it. True confidence is the natural byproduct of doing the actual work, facing obstacles, overcoming setbacks, and accumulating real-world proof that you can handle whatever comes your way.

V. Gumption

The final piece of the puzzle is gumption—the capacity for resilience and proactive initiative. The terrain of excellence is challenging, and we are not going to feel passionate or proactive every single minute of the journey. A “gumption mentality” allows us to momentarily step off the path to recharge when necessary. It means giving yourself permission to sulk for 24 hours after a major presentation at work falls flat, or celebrating for a weekend when it succeeds, before getting right back on track, refreshed and revitalized.

Conclusion

When these inner states—care, focus, discipline, confidence, and gumption—are in sync and working in perfect coherence, we quiet the external noise. We stop chasing the performative version of success, and we set ourselves up for true excellence in action.

In the first part of this series, Anatomy of Obsession, we explored how Zyan planted a “seed” of idealization that slowly devoured the reality of a living, breathing woman. But the story didn’t end with the breakup. While Eliza walked away to find her own independence, Zyan remained behind, retreating further into the shadows of his own mind.

This is the follow-up. It is a look into the “post-resolution” reality of the sculptor who realized he never truly wanted the statue to come to life. This is an exploration of the mirrors we build to protect ourselves from the mess of being human, and the chilling comfort found in a world where you are the only one who dictates the terms.

Previous link-

Zyan sits in the silence of his apartment, staring into the void of his own creation. He realizes a haunting truth:

He never actually knew Eliza.

He didn’t love her; he loved the idea of her.

He didn’t miss her presence; he missed the version of her that lived exclusively behind his eyes.

In the end, Zyan is not a lover but a collector.

A collector of memories, stories, anything which keeps nourishing the seed.

The sculptor inside him can only work on it to perfection if he can figure out the anomalies in the statue.

He remains a prisoner of his own imagination, something he enjoys too.

No one can hurt him in his world. The world belongs to him, responds to him and bows to him. He yields unimaginable power over it. The only place where he is the one dictating terms & conditions, where consequences are a direct result of his actions.

He is forever chasing the “perfect” partner while stepping over the living people standing right in front of him.

He is a man who doesn’t miss people—he only misses the curated mirrors he tries to make them become.

The mirrors showcase his version—the mirrors which never break & never leave.

He smiles slowly and whispers to himself, “I am not a victim of my brain. I am the architect of my own isolation.

THIS IS MY DESIGN”.

THE END

NB- Zyan evolves backwards into a ‘Solitary God’. He understands the deeply disturbing truth. In a void, you can’t be hurt.

Excellence is the most sought-after trait of the 21^st century. We see creators making reels, shorts or self-help manuals, all showcasing their own version of excellence. Every creator or author out there has their own idea of excellence, which they pitch accordingly. For some, excellence is synonymous with the finish line, making it to the top of billboards or the dramatic display of intensity that burns brightly till its exhaustion.

We as human beings have a deep desire to excel in our own fields. We’re predisposed to turn towards excellence, just as a sunflower is predisposed to turn towards the sun. But the real question is, are we even aware of what excellence is? Are we aware of how to pursue excellence without losing ourselves in the process? These thoughts keep popping up in our minds when we try to pursue the way of excellence. Moreover, answering these questions are as critical, if one is striving for excellence, whether in professional or personal life.

Excellence isn’t some rare trait. Neither is it limited to only a few chosen ones. It’s an intimate human pulse. A natural pull to engage in something worthwhile, which reflects both who we are and what we value. For me, excellence is less about peak performance and more about the quiet median between mastery and mattering.

Biologically, we’re built for this. We want to achieve this sweet spot. Our bodies and minds naturally push toward growth — scientists call it homeostatic upregulation. Just like a bud that has no choice but to open. In modern life, we continue this trend in the form of upskilling or reskilling.

In practice, that growth happens in four stages :

1. Unconscious Incompetence — blissfully unaware of how much you don’t know.

2. Conscious Incompetence — the painful part where you suddenly see every shortcoming. This phase is achieved with time & repetition.

3. Conscious Competence — As repetition continues, with time, we develop conscious competence. This is when we engage in deliberate practice.

4. Unconscious Competence — The ultimate aim is to reach unconscious competence i.e. the stage where competence becomes second nature. The stage where core competency meets the flow state

I felt the shift most clearly during Advantage Assam 2.0 in February 2025.

Promotional video of Advantage Assam 2.0

We had over 900 VVIPs land in our small state — the Prime Minister, Home Minister, and other cabinet ministers, industrialists such as Ambani, Adani, and Tata, plus heavy delegations from Singapore, the UK, Taiwan etc. As part of the Accommodation, Protocol, and Transport committee, my days collapsed into 16-hour shifts and sleepless nights. By normal standards, I should have burned out completely.

Instead, something strange happened.

Because of all the repetitive, often boring protocol work I’d done for years, the mechanics became automatic. I wasn’t thinking about every security cordon or seating arrangement anymore — I was just moving. At one point, I caught myself calmly guiding my senior officers, colleagues and a junior at the same time, not because I was trying to lead, but because the rhythm was already there.

There was no heroic music playing in my head. There was just a strange, calm focus in the middle of absolute chaos. This state for me is the sublime state of blissful engagement and seamless performance.

That’s the part no one talks about enough. When one reaches that level, the external noise, the pressure to look excellent, and the fear of criticism start to fade. I wasn’t performing anymore. I was simply doing the work at a level where it feels like me.

It gives two things that actually matter: a sense of autonomy and a feeling of genuine connection to the people around you. Not because I was chasing validation, but because I was finally useful in a deep, effortless way. It is where I could feel one can silence the noise of chaos and criticism around us. I was no longer performing for the “billboard” version of excellence rather, I was simply existing in the quiet, steady centre of my own capability.

P.S. - Inputs have been taken from the book. “The Way of Excellence” by Brad Stulberg.

Every day Zyan meets strangers. Some of them with whom he exchanges glances. A few of them with whom he connects. The former are passerby. It is the latter with whom his anatomy of obsession begins. It begins as a small thing. As small as building an idea of them. Zyan takes cues from their smile or a shared word and constructs a version that fits in his own private checklist.

The seed (idea) is planted in the soil of his desires. But without the sunlight of reality, this seed grows into something predatory.

Zyan meets Eliza. He finds her attractive. He believes she has the vibes, and she believes he has the rizz- the modern vocabulary of digital attraction. They connect instantly over their handles and start sharing texts. Conversations start. Zyan mostly talks about theatre. GB Shaw’s Pygmalion, his all-time favourite play. Eliza likes music. She did a stint with a record label as an intern. Their talks match well. On paper—or rather, on-screen—it is a perfect match. Soon, they were going on dates. Zyan’s mind is in motion.

The seed is germinating in his desire for Eliza.

As they meet frequently, Zyan starts dissecting Eliza in his mind. Deconstructing her, then reconstructing, piece by piece. He extracts all her flaws and modifies them accordingly, like a skilled sculptor. The way she looks, smiles, eats, or cries. Zyan has a snapshot of her in his mind. He wants to transform the Eliza of his mind into reality.

At this point, there are two versions of Eliza in his life. The real one with her own personality and flaws. The second, which is curated, polished, but fundamentally false. A product of the seed of his thought.

Months passed. Zyan started pulling back. Replies got shorter, then stopped. He still showed up for dates but felt drained and irritated. Eliza noticed. She tried to understand his sudden coldness, the quiet rages, the withdrawals. At first, she thought it was a phase. It wasn’t.

Her last message was blunt: “It’s over.”

Zyan read it. He almost replied, but the urge faded. He’d been here before. He closed his eyes and let it settle.

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of thoughts”- Marcus Aurelius

The seed has grown into a massive tree. The roots spread across the entire nervous system. The fruit it bears is unreal expectation, creating a physical hunger which Zyan can never satisfy. An obsession rooted in the desire for a silent, perfect partner. But Eliza can’t be the one whose idea Zyan has grown in his chest. For him, the ideal & real don’t align.

Zyan remembers the Greek myth. The character he often relates himself to. The sculptor of Galatea, an ivory statue. He fell in love with his own creation. Aphrodite gave it life. They marry and live happily ever after. But Zyan isn’t the Pygmalion of the Greek myth; he became the modern version of Henry Higgins, of GB Shaw’s drama Pygmalion. Eliza of GB Shaw doesn’t stay to be perfected, but rather leaves Higgins to find her own independence.

For Zyan, Eliza wasn’t just his desire but also a challenge. A living, breathing woman whose life he wanted to rewrite in a sophisticated version, his only obsession. The idea of perfection as manifested in the seed. Zyan becomes the prisoner of his own ghost. He stares at the void of his own creation. Endless…

The seed now devours his reality. The capacity of mind’s imagination, which sparked creativity, has now attacked Zyan’s sanity. This is his anatomy of obsession.

We’ve become silent builders of walls. It’s just what we do now. We stack these routines—emails at 8 AM, the gym, that constant “hustle”—mostly just to stay safe from a pain we can’t even name yet. We talk about the economy or some distant global crisis, as if those are the things keeping us up at night. But when you’re lying in the dark, it’s not the fire you’re scared of,

It’s the light.

We aren’t actually escaping pain. Pain is an old friend.

We…….

know its name and its face.

We know how to meet pain.

Either with a shrug or a sigh!

But pleasure? Joy? That’s the wild card.

It shows up suddenly,

And you’re exposed.

It’s like when you’re driving

A song starts playing that you used to love, and for a second, when everything inside you suddenly feels vast, complete, and utterly at peace. Then you immediately check the rearview mirror because you’re sure someone is likely to crash from behind.

Why do we do that?

Why do we treat a good day like a debt we’ll eventually have to pay back with high interest?

I see it in my friends, who won’t go on a second date with someone “perfect” because they feel something fishy…

I see how we ruin a Sunday afternoon by worrying about having Monday blues. There is a noticeable pattern here. It’s a defence mechanism.

If we don’t let the sun in, we don’t have to worry about the clouds. It’s like refusing to bite into a ripe mango because you’re already thinking about the sticky mess of the pit. Honestly, I wonder if we are really miserable or just like the feeling of being miserable, because it gives us something to talk about at dinner.

It’s a mess. We’re all such a mess. Mind becomes anxious. Heart starts pumping fast. And we end up choosing the dull, grey safety because the light is too bright.

We’d rather be tired than be happy. Being tired is an excuse. Happiness is a responsibility.

My wife tells me, I………

overthink, and she’s right. I’m holding my breath. We’re all holding our breath because we think the air is poisoned if it tastes too sweet. A quiet way of saying that, many of us have learned to distrust joy when it feels too good. Remembering the quintessential proverb “Too good to be true”. We’ve confused being “balanced” with just being numb. We think we’re being practical or “grounded,”

But

In reality, we’re not playing but getting played.

Stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. Release that very old, quiet habit. Maybe there isn’t another shoe. Maybe it’s just you, standing there in the middle of a beautiful moment, terrified because you’ve forgotten how to just be.

The gentle truth is this: there is no perfect moment waiting where joy arrives without any shadow. That flutter you get when things feel too good

It’s not danger. It is growth.

Breathe softly.

Go ahead and exhale. The light won’t kill you.

It’s just…..

trying to show you that you’re finally home.

The light does no harm. It invites us, quietly, to rest in.

A train cutting through mist-shrouded mountains and palm-fringed fields. Two men sit back-to-back on a wooden bench—worlds apart, yet inseparable.

One is a soldier: shaved head, camouflage fatigues, a rifle resting against his shoulder like a faithful companion. His posture speaks of duty, discipline, and readiness—the ancient archetype of the protector. One who meets chaos with order, and threat with resolve.

The other is a monk: saffron robes, head bowed in effortless contemplation. No possessions except the vow of non-harm and the quiet pursuit of awakening. He is the archetype of renunciation. One who meets the same world by stepping beyond it.

Here they are, side by side, breathing the same air, watching the same horizon. No tension. No sermon. Just presence.

This image is not merely cultural. It is philosophical. It is the living embodiment of the duality of man.

We are not one thing. We are two currents flowing through a single river. Within every human mind lives both the warrior and the sage. The soldier teaches us that some battles must be fought—boundaries defended, responsibilities honoured, evil confronted. The monk teaches us that the greatest victory is the one fought in silence: over ego, over anger, over the illusion that force alone can heal what is broken.

History is full of this tension made flesh:

• Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome, commanded legions on the battlefield by day and wrote Stoic meditations by firelight at night.

• King Ashoka, conqueror of empires, who, after rivers of blood, laid down his sword and became Buddhism’s greatest patron.

• The veteran who returns from war and finds solace in Vipassana meditation.

• The startup founder who negotiates like a general on Monday and sits in a 10-day silent retreat on Friday—because both are required to lead without losing the soul.

In our digital lives—where we post about KPIs and promotions, resilience and “hustle culture”—we too often pick a side. We glorify the soldier and forget the monk. Or we romanticise the monk and pretend the world needs no protectors.

But the train does not stop. Life keeps moving. The true art of living—and of leading—is learning to sit comfortably between these two truths: the necessity of strength and the supremacy of stillness. To protect without becoming cruel. To seek peace without becoming passive. To act decisively while remaining detached from the fruits of action.

The soldier and the monk are not opposites. They are complements.

Look at the image again. They are not arguing. They are simply being together.

That is the highest philosophy.

And the question it quietly asks each of us, in our careers, our families, our inner lives, is this:

Which part of you is the soldier today? Which part is the monk? And how well are the two of you getting along?

I’d love to know—how do you reconcile your own inner warrior and sage? Share below. The train is still moving.

Modern life is designed to pull attention. From tangible commodities like oil in the nineteenth century to data in the twentieth, value has shifted to something far more intangible: human attention itself.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that our attention has become the next great resource companies are fighting to capture. Mornings blur into a frantic rush of alarms, emails, and misplaced keys. By lunchtime, you may already feel worn thin.

Small joys—the warm caress of sunlight, a single beautiful flower, the quiet green of trees—are barely registered by the mind. Our thoughts are too busy racing ahead, constantly searching for the next dramatic shift. Yet real joy usually begins much closer to home, within our innate selves.

It may come as a surprise, but your brain already knows how to make life feel richer. Try slowing down. Take a deliberate pause and truly taste that cup of coffee. Let its warmth and bitterness bloom across your tongue. While walking, stop for a moment to admire a flower or the soft sway of greenery. In that single breath of presence, joy arrives unbidden.

These brief pauses offer a quiet but profound clue: joy becomes far more accessible when we create space to notice our inner experience instead of endlessly chasing stimulation.

In a world engineered to keep us reactive, choosing to pause is an act of rebellion.

It is how you stop outsourcing your peace to algorithms.

It is how you turn anxiety into clarity.

It is how you build the kind of emotional intelligence that actually moves the needle—in your career, your relationships, your entire way of being.

I began practising this last year, during my own quiet season of burnout (you know the one: seventy-hour weeks, zero boundaries, and existential dread creeping in at eleven at night).

Just… pausing.

Before meetings. Before replying to texts. Before opening my laptop like a mindless reflex.

The results surprised me.

Fewer stupid decisions.

Deeper conversations.

And, strangely, more creative ideas—ideas that felt genuinely mine rather than recycled from a dozen open tabs.

Here is the truth the younger generation is rarely told out loud: we were sold the lie that faster equals better. But the people who truly win in the long run are those who know exactly when to hit pause.

So here is a small challenge for you this week.

The next time you feel that familiar urge to reply instantly, to react, or to scroll—

count to three,

breathe,

and only then decide.

You will be shocked at how different the next move feels.