9.14 Being “Nice” Is Getting You Nowhere ft. Ankur Warikoo

Are you one of those who cancel plans because you’re tired, then spend the next two hours feeling guilty about it? Let’s talk.

In the latest episode of Books & Beyond, Tara chats with Ankur Warikoo about his new book Winning People Without Losing Yourself, and what it actually looks like to keep everyone happy all the time.

Ankur talks about spending years trying to be the person everyone liked, and why that never really works out the way you think it will. They get into boundaries (especially with family), that turns into resentment when you don’t set them, and how often we end up breaking our own boundaries before anyone else does.

They also talk about the idea that the right relationships in your 20s shouldn’t be a distraction, but an enabler, what really happens when you expect someone else to make you happy, and how most conversations fall apart when you’re only trying to get your point across.

The episode touches on comparison in the age of the internet, and how easy it is to measure your life against what you see online.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing a lot for people but still feeling off about it, this one is just for you.

Books Mentioned in the Episode:

1. Do Epic Shit by Ankur Warikoo
2. Get Epic Shit Done by Ankur Warikoo
3. Beyond the Syllabus by Ankur Warikoo
4. Make Epic Money by Ankur Warikoo
5. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
6. Rework by David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried
7. The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
8. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck

‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms. 

Transcript

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A lot of people who are lovers of books were like, this is, this is chaos is literally like, you just vomited everything that you had and printed on papers. And you could have saved so much of paper because there's just empty space all over and it doesn't have to be that way. Hi, everyone. So when I first started working, one thing I really struggled with was being assertive, not just speaking up, but even knowing how to speak up how to say no without sounding rude, how to build relationships without feeling fake. And I've realised something since then being confident, social, and even good with people. It isn't something that you're just born with that you have this natural talent for. It's a skill. And like any skill, you can learn it. And today I have someone who's built his entire body of work around helping you learn these kind of skills. You've probably seen him on LinkedIn, Instagram, somewhere on the internet, giving very practical, no nonsense advice. Uncle Vargu. So obviously, everybody's heard of him, and I'm very excited to have him back with me on this podcast. I was telling him before that every time I speak to him, I leave feeling very, very inspired. And I hope you will too. So today, we're speaking about his new book winning people without losing yourself, which is an absolutely fantastic title. So hi, uncle. Glad to have you back. Thank you so much, Tara. Glad to be back. Always a pleasure to speak to you. The title of the book winning people without losing yourself, it suggests that losing yourself is a very real risk. And I think it's a very real fear that we have when setting boundaries and all of those things. So before we go into the rest of it, I want to I want to hear from you. Have you personally experienced this fear of you know, losing yourself? Because I also read in the book that you say for the first 30 years, you were trying to be a Superman and you were trying to be a people pleaser. So can you talk about your own experience? Absolutely, I think the book stems from personal experience. As you pointed out, for the first 30 years, I was an absolute people pleaser. All of my life was about being the obedient one being the one that everyone loved the one that everyone listened to the one that listened to everyone and so on. And I just realised that it just didn't matter how hard I worked. People always expected more and I had never enough to give and it was completely exhausting, certainly not growth inducing, certainly not anything that made me feel productive. If anything, it made me feel like I'm losing this battle every single day and I could try harder, harder, harder. And I just couldn't there was literally no way that I could win. And over time, I realised that that was such a cruel way of living life. And the opposite of that always felt like the bad way of living life because that suggested I have to be selfish. But I figured and I'm glad that I did the book also suggests that there is a fine balance where you can actually win over people without losing yourself. So you don't have to be selfish. But at the same time, you don't have to be a people pleaser. And all of the experiences are what I've tried to jot down in the book. Yeah. And why this particular book on relationships at this particular moment in time? Why do you think it's relevant now more than ever? To be honest, I don't think it was timed as such. I don't think it was or 2026 needs this book more than any other year or something. It was more of how I thought about my books when I started the writing journey in 2020. The first two books to epic shit, get epic shit done were more about thought provoking ideas and action around those ideas. And then I focused on the three things that I feel are the most important that people care about, which is career, money, and then ultimately relationships. And that's the journey. My hope and this is just a imaginary world in my head is when somebody turns 20, they're gifted the set of five books. And they're like, And that was the, the idea that this becomes almost like a key to living life, certainly in your twenties, if not beyond. And, and the five books in some way would complete that. So is this the last book of the series? There was never a series. Will this be a last book? I will take a pause for sure. Yes. I'm not, I'm not releasing a book. Oh, I, well, I shouldn't say that. I did release a teenager's book midway last year. It was called beyond the syllabus. I loved writing it because I didn't think I would be able to write for teenagers, but our son is a teenager. So it was slightly easy keeping him in mind. I may write another book for, for kids sometime, but for adults, I think I'm going to take a pause and then, and then come back and see how I want to write whenever I want to write next. Oh yeah. That's, that's a shame because I really do enjoy all of the books that, you know, you put out and I like that they're so easy to read as well, which I want to get into a little bit later. But coming to the content of the book, you know, the book starts with Shaurya's story and he is your head of YouTube and your YouTube has done so well. And he's very young. He's in his twenties. And you talk about the fact that he's super rich. He lives in the flat below yours. He has bought his parents a BMW. And one day he lost his cat. And he said, you know what, I'm going to give up everything. I don't care. I just want to find my cat. I want my cat back. And you said that you were very happy that he went through this experience. So why did you choose to start the book with a story? And why were you happy that he went through this experience? One, I'll give you the honest, politically incorrect reason of why I chose this story above anything else. I'm not a pet lover. I've never had pets. And I frankly, this is the politically incorrect part. I don't fully resonate with pet parents, because I love humans. And I feel that humans are wonderful. And there's just so much to learn from it. So I can't understand or wrap my head around the fact that somebody could give more love to an animal than they could to say human. And that's why I chose this story, because I wanted to almost challenge my own self that relationships are frankly, so important that it doesn't matter who you have a relationship with. We could have a relationship with some old diary of ours from school, we could have a relationship with of course, a person, we could have a relationship with our first computer or our first car. I know so many people who have a relationship with their first crush. And they're like, Oh, my God, I still remember him or her or whatnot. And here was Sharia, who had a relationship with a pet, so much so that he was willing to give up everything that he had achieved in life until now, to go back to the day and to have her. And that I felt was a very powerful start to the fact that at the end of it, it doesn't matter how much money you have, how much success you have, how much public persona you've built, how much fame do you have, or everything, if you don't have the right relationships around you. And it, in my head, couldn't be a better opening to emphasise on that fact, certainly for me, because I come from the point that why are pet parents behaving the way that they do with pets. And I think the idea then was to just hit people with the point, because I'm also writing for people who are in their 20s. And I often have got this response from a lot of youngsters that should we focus on relationships at all in our 20s, because our 20s is the career when we have to build our career, we have to make money, and we have to get everything. So is relationship a distraction and so on. And I often say this, that the right relationship ideally should never be a distraction, it should only be an enabler. And if it is a distraction, or if worse, it is a destructive element in your life, then it is most likely not the right relationship. And that becomes a great test. So I wanted to start with this for people in their 20s as well, that you know what relationships are perhaps the most important thing, you don't realise it yet. You soon will. And I hope it's not too late by when you do. That's very good advice. And I remember reading this Harvard study, a news of this Harvard study that said predictor of happiness. And they studied these men, there was only men at that time over like most of their lives. And they said the number one predictor of happiness is their relationships, not the amount of money they made, not the success, but who's around them. And you know, the data saying it we experiencing in our daily lives, I'm really happy that you've written this. And because obviously, people in their 20s, you know, there is make epic money, we want to sort of be successful, but not at the cost of this, because longevity wise and happiness wise, this is something that is going to sustain. So absolutely sort of agree with that premise and agree that even I mean, I don't think a book is only for people in the 20s, because I'm in my 30s. And I still like to read all of this because it helps you sort of recalibrate a bit. Okay, so there's a section in the book where you talk about boundaries. And I think boundaries is something that especially in India, we don't know how to assert we're not taught to have boundaries. And it's really not part of at least my culture when I was growing up, I didn't I had to do a lot of unlearning in my 20s to learn how to assert it. So you say that when someone else crosses your boundaries, you see them as unreliable, but when you cross your own boundaries, we call it flexibility. And I find that very real. So how do you personally decide which boundaries are non negotiable for yourself? And how what is your advice on asserting? That is, that's a great question. So boundaries, I couldn't agree more, Tara, we are brought up in a culture where we're told there is no boundary, anything can happen. And we just have to be all compliant and all subservient and so on. And especially when it comes to boundaries with elders or with people of senior age, we're never told to have an any identity, any any boundary or so. And it does create, as I've mentioned in the book, resentment and resentment is, is a really lethal virus, because it never shows up in its true glory until it compounds to a point where it just can't be held any further. So you will resent, resent, resent, resent, resent, resent. And then one day for some very random reason, you just blow up. And the person opposite will be what just happened. And it's not that incident. Clearly, it's all of that added up resentment that's just gotten to this point. And it's given fancy names some people call it childhood trauma, some people call it blah, blah, blah. But the reality is this simple resentment that you've held on for several years and never had the ability to express it. I think the non-negotiable is where you would constantly feel not heard. And people find it very easy to figure the non-negotiable when it comes to people or others. But your question is really valid. How do you figure out the non-negotiable with your own self? Because that's the true one where you're building resentment towards yourself. And that doesn't feel like resentment, because what it does when it's resentment towards your own self, it is disrespecting your own self. So you are lowering your self-respect because you can't hold the promises that you kept to yourself. You said, oh, I will go to the gym tomorrow at 6am, but you didn't. So your body is like, bro, I'm not going to believe you the next time you make a promise to yourself, because you can't hold on to your promises. So why would I? And slowly and slowly, you wouldn't respect your self for anything that you do. And I feel that's the best test. The best test in my head is, have you gotten to a point where you cannot fulfil your own promises? Because if you can't, that is where you are not respecting your own self, and you have stepped a boundary or overstepped a boundary. You have done something which you know very well you're not capable of, you know very well you don't want to do, you know very well you shouldn't be doing, and yet, you will quote unquote force yourself to do it, and then not do it, and then internally blame yourself for not doing it. And thus, never do it the next time again. So the simple way to keep the respect that you have for yourself is make promises that you can keep to your own self. They needn't be very grand promises, but they just need to be very simple promises that you keep to yourself. And the more you do it, the more you build the muscle of fulfilling those promises, and at some point of time, you will very clearly be able to identify, oh, you know what, I'm just making this promise because it sounds nice, or it feels cool, or it makes me look or feel better, but it's not a promise I really want to keep. And that becomes a boundary. And I think that goes back to the title of your book, right? Without losing yourself, because that is so important. And oftentimes, even we're peer pressured into making these promises or doing things we don't want to do. And it's so important to know what we internally feel and be in tune with ourselves. But, you know, I really love the whole writing process, and the whole sort of format of the book, because it's you say that you can open the book at any page, and you will get a lesson. And I did find that to be true. I read the book, you know, from cover to cover, and then I just sort of kept sort of opening pages and, and you can read the page as is. So I found that format very interesting. So tell me a little bit about, you know, coming up with this format and what you want to achieve with it. The format that was decided in 2020, when I wrote the first book itself, and I followed the format since then. And the format is, I'm writing for a generation, which is not reading anymore. It's, it's a book certainly not written for Tara and the likes, not written for the voracious readers, the diligent readers, the committed readers, because it's frankly, a very disconcerting book, it doesn't have a start, it doesn't have a finish. So while you appreciate it, and I'm thankful that you do a lot of people who are lovers of books, we're like, this is this is chaos is literally like, you just vomited everything that you had and printed on papers. And you could have saved so much of paper because there's just empty space all over and it doesn't have to be that way. But I'm writing for a generation that used to Instagram reels and YouTube shots, and they're consuming 32nd bytes. So the question that I asked when I started writing in 2020 was, how would a big book in the world of Instagram look like? Or if I had to create a book, which was an Instagram, what would that book look like? And the book would certainly not look like the books that we're used to. So imagine if there are YouTube, sorry, Instagram stories, and Instagram stories are book pages, how would those read? They would not read like the pages of Kindle, they would read like you want Instagram stories to be like one powerful takeaway, one powerful illustration, one powerful impact, or at best two continuous stories, and then part one, part two, and so on. But certainly not a paragraph, certainly not an entire paragraph and stories and so on. And that's what I've stuck to in all of the five books that have been published. In fact, even the sixth one, Beyond the Syllabus for Teenagers, because it is very easy. It's very light. It doesn't feel guilty if the reader leaves the book midway. It gives them a sense of completion, even with one page or a few pages. And it doesn't force them to remember what they had read if they were to come back to the book at a much later stage. Plus, selfishly, it is also very Instagramable. So the book is just highlighted in yellow, it looks really nice, click, put it in there. And then you suddenly have social signalling that, hey, look, I'm reading a book. And that's very important for this generation. Yeah, now it's a thing that, you know, people want to signal that they're reading books. So I'm always happy when people read more, talk about reading in whatever format, whichever format, it doesn't matter to me as long as people are picking up books. That's what's most important. But do you think you'll experiment with other forms like with other formats, like Instagram, real kind of content, but something different in the future? I know you said you take a pause, but when you come back to it? If I do go through the book that I was speaking about for young adults or teenagers, again, that would definitely be a very different format. I wouldn't share it because it's not yet decided. But it will certainly be very different from how you're used to books. So I keep experimenting. I love it. Like the, the honest truth is, I have not ever thought of myself as an author. I certainly shouldn't be at any literature fest. So if any literature fest calls me I judge them. Because I'm, I'm just a writer. I have loved writing. I've been writing for the last 25 years. I've been writing my blog for the last 22 years every day. And I find my thoughts being more and more clearer and crystallise. And I find myself gaining clarity if I write. So writing for me is just a way of communication, but more importantly, a way of introspecting and getting clarity within. And all of these books have just simply been curated. All of the content has frankly already been written. I didn't sit down to write this book. This book was curated over one and a half months through all of the content that I've written about relationships on social media for the last 10 years and plus. So when I think of formats, I don't have frankly, any identity to hold to any lobby to please any body to impress. I am like, I don't care. I am not an author, I am not a writer. I can frankly be anyone. I can literally come in, destruct the entire industry and leave and nothing will affect me. And that's what I find quite fascinating. So the formats hopefully will keep changing. You're not sort of hell bent on that identity of a writer. Not at all. Out of curiosity, what is the identity that you most designate with? An entrepreneur. I love thinking of myself one and I love it when people would call me one. Fabulous. Okay. And I think it was a year ago, a few years ago, there was something, your post went viral because there was a whole discussion on your books being ghosted. And I honestly feel like that was really fabulous that you wrote about that because at the end of the day, it's about your thoughts and your ideas. And you're just hiring an expert to curate it, as you said. And I think there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, we have a whole nonfiction imprint where we help experts and authors write their books. And I actually don't think of ourselves even as co-authors, we're just someone who's sort of, you know, contacted to help them do that, because it's all their thoughts and ideas in the book will not exist without their life experiences. And then in the acknowledgements, I read that, you know, you wanted someone to help you curate this who's good at editing and writing, but not so good at money. So can you tell me a process actually looked like for you? Sure. So thank you for acknowledging firstly, because it couldn't have come from somebody better than you, you understand how this works. And you appreciate why it works as well. I, as I said, have been writing for the last 25 years, I love writing my LinkedIn articles started in 2013. My blog started in 2006. I have been writing a newsletter for the last seven years now. And so much of that content is just public is just there, but it's not curated. And it's not certainly packaged in a consumable form. That certainly was true for money. So when I wrote Make Epic Money, all of that content was not even on text, it was in videos, because I've published more than 1400 videos over the last seven years on YouTube, all on personal finance, covering a whole host of topics. But they aren't in text format. In fact, they aren't even in English, they are in English. So if somebody had to read them or try to read them, there's no way that they can, instead of just looking at the transcript of a YouTube video. So I got my ghost writer, her name is Annabella. She's worked with me in the past in my previous startup, very close to me. She's the sister of my very close friend as well, who went to school together at business school. So there's working relationship. And I love her work. She's a seasoned editor. She worked for Times of India for 10 years, then she was with the startup, blah, blah, blah. So she knows the entire thing. But I gave her a really hard task, which frankly, I didn't have the time for, and certainly didn't have the will for as well, which was, hey, Annabelle, go through every single video of mine that I've published in the last seven years, and transliterate what I spoke into words. And now bring it all together. That's a really tough job. And I do not envy her because while she is really generous, and she says that she learned a lot in the process. I was very particular, I don't want a finance professional to do it, because then they will just come, oh, this is obvious. No, no, no, no, no. She in fact hates managing money. She's not good with money in her own admission. So it was very easy for me to say, you're going to do this, because you're really good with writing, and you're really good with weaving words. But you suck at money, or at least you don't like it as much. So you will be the best judge of what kind of book would help you. And that's the book that I want. I want to write for you, and I want to write for everybody like you. So she took about two months, really painfully going through every single video, jotting down all the main points, and so on. And she wrote a draft, which was, I think, about 34,000 words, first version. Then I sit on the edit, because I am very particular about the tonality, the way that I speak. I use very short sentences. I don't write paragraphs. I use a lot of line breaks, because I want it easy for the person to read. I'm very particular about what goes on one page, and the other page, blah, blah, blah. So I would sit down on that, take about a month, and edit it. I would send it back to her. She would then, of course, flesh it out, get it done. And then we would send it to Penguin, the publisher. They would then edit it at their end. Most of those edits were mostly grammatical, but they're not content related as such. We would sit down on it again. And over the course of about four months, we will get to a point where we have the final manuscript. Then it will go to a typesetting process. And a typesetting process, for those who may not be aware, is the process where a book from a Word doc or a Google doc is converted into a print doc, because a printing format is different from a Word doc. So once it goes into the typeset process, a lot changes, at least for me, because I'm writing one page at a time. I don't have a flowing story. So the typeset throws a lot of things here and there. So once the typeset process is done, I get the book physically printed, and I sit down with that copy, and I literally write notes and make changes and rewrite sentences and so on. And then I use those notes and then go on the PDF to add it, because I don't want to make somebody else's life harder. And then that will go to the typesetter, and they'll make those changes, and that will bring the final typeset. And that is when it goes into print. So this entire exercise takes anywhere between four to six months. It's really fast because I'm not writing a book, but it still takes this much time because we're curating, and we're editing, and we're re-editing, and we're curating, and blah, blah, blah. And that's the same process that we followed for all the five books. Thanks for sharing that. I think it's very meticulous, the whole process. And yeah, going through all of those videos is no easy task, but I'm sure that she learned a lot. So what do you think of, because now with AI coming in, and AI creating content, and I'm sure it can create content in a variety of formats, but let's talk about books. What do you think of AI creating content for books, and even maybe possibly one day writing books? What do you think that does to authors like you? I feel that if there is anybody who thinks they have an original idea, they're lying to themselves. I love this conversation that Yuval, who's the author of Sapiens, had one day, and he was like, I am constantly amazed by how well Sapiens did because none of the ideas in the book are original. I just sat down, and I compiled everything that I had read, everything that I thought was important, structured it, wrote it in my words, and that became the book. And that's true for almost everything. It's certainly true for fiction as well, because fiction is never fiction. Fiction is portrayed as fiction, but everything is inspired by something, whether it's a true story, whether it's a make-believe one, whether it's your ideas, and so on. So what AI is going to do is it's going to churn out a whole host of very similar sounding stories, certainly around nonfiction. So if you were to ask AI to write a book on personal finance, it will sound exactly like any other book if you were to give any other prompt, but on personal finance again. And that is where I feel, much against being scared of AI, authors and true authors should be elated because everybody now thinks they are an author, but that makes the authors truly stand out. It's the same way that everybody believes today that they are a photographer because they have an iPhone 17 Pro Max or a Vivo Max or whatever, a OnePlus Max, blah, blah, blah. But when you look at a true photographer's work, you're like, there is no way that I can do this. And that's why, ironically, the best photographers are earning far more than they ever did, because almost everyone else is just doing random camera work. So the same way, almost everyone will continue writing AI generated content, but the best authors will shine because they have incredible ways of depicting the same thing, incredible stories to add to something that are facts, incredible stories to begin with in the first place, and that will always stand out. So I imagine a world, Tara, where digital experiences will become completely commonplace. Everybody will travel to Spain and to Paris and to the Taj Mahal using virtual reality. Everybody will feel and be in meetings like these almost in person, but that will make in-life real experiences even more expensive and even more valued. Everybody will be able to taste digital food, but that would make real food really valued. Everybody will be able to write a book, but that would make the real authors really valued. I really like the photography analogy. And I agree. I think as we get more and more digital, there is more value. And we're seeing that movement for analogue as well. And we're seeing it with Gen Z and this whole touching grass movement and all of these things. So absolutely agree with that. Coming back to, you know, the things in your book, the content of your book, I really like the section on relationships. And you talk about myths, like love bombing, these are all things that one doesn't know in their 20s. And, you know, you have to actually experience them and then realise, oh, my God, this is so terrible. And it's good that you've sort of put all of these terms and all of that in the book. And you also talk about how, you know, making one person the centre of your entire world puts a lot of pressure on that person. And I think again, like a lot of people in their first relationships might end up doing things like this. So what are some non-negotiable rules for you and your loved ones? I think the biggest one, it's not even rules, but just one, I am not responsible for your happiness. You're not responsible for my happiness. We are happy within our own selves and we share that happiness with each other. That's the sacrosanct line, because the minute we make somebody else responsible for our own happiness, it's a complete trap. We will be unfair on that person. We will expect things that they haven't signed up for. We will hold them accountable for not delivering, but they can't read our mind. They don't stay inside our head. And in every relationship, certainly a love relationship or a marriage or a partnership fails because there is unstated expectations from both sides. And I feel that the biggest one is that you're not making me happy, but it's not my job to make you happy. It's my job to be happy and to share that happiness with you. Absolutely. I like that. You have to be happy sort of in your own self. And then you're able to come to that relationship also a lot more positively. And another thing, we talk about is communication and you talk about how word choice matters, how framing matters, understanding the other person's perspective matters, and even something like getting your parents to listen. I don't think that's something that only teenagers will go through. In India, we have to get our parents to listen to us kind of all our lives. So can you tell me about a time when your communication strategies really worked? And can you tell me about a time when your communication strategies also failed and what you learned from it? I think where it worked was when I dropped out of my PhD programme that I was undertaking in the US and came back to India, because that was a really hard decision, not so much for me, but certainly for my parents to digest. And I feel that I did a reasonably okay job where I explained to them why I'm doing it. I explained to them what my plan is, which frankly was a lie because I didn't have a plan. But I made up one and I explained to them what this would mean for all of us and so on. And to their credit, they were very understanding. I don't think they agreed, but they certainly understood. And that I feel was important because I didn't want them to feel as if I was disregarding them or disrespecting them when it came to this decision because they were until then the sponsors of my life. So they certainly had a very important part to play in that decision. But I also wanted to make sure that through that communication, I, at my own end, could clarify what was important and why it was. A point where it failed is on several occasions. I can't name one specific, but I feel that there have been several occasions, Tara, where I have chosen to communicate from my own perspective, only to realise that that's precisely the reason why it didn't work out. I was not asking, what is it that they know that I don't? I was asking, what is it that I want to tell them that I don't think they understand? And that's the wrong question to ask. Because if you think they don't understand, there's a reason why they don't understand. Nobody gets up in the morning saying, I want to spoil Ankur Warreku and Tara's life today. Nobody cares. They're just too busy with their own life. But if there are enough and more people who ask this question, what is it that they know that I don't? Why would they behave this way? There must be some reason. They are rational, logical human beings. Then suddenly communication goes to a very different level. And every single time that I look back in my life where that didn't happen, it was because I was just very focused on what I wanted to achieve, not on why they would be behaving that way. Definitely putting yourself in other people's shoes helps a lot when communicating. Another part that I really liked was the whole thing about digital relationships and how we always compare ourselves. And you said that you may be comparing yourself to that friend who's earning so much money, but you're not seeing the amount of work they're putting in. Or you may be comparing yourself to that person who's living in Goa, but you're not seeing how much Wi-Fi, they're dealing with Wi-Fi and plumbing and all of these things. So I think that's something that all online, more and more on Instagram, we're seeing all of these lives online, we're interacting with people online. So tell me a little bit more about that section of the book and what you hope your readers will get out of it. I think the biggest thing in the world today, which is a challenge, is this constant comparison stemming from unfiltered, unrestricted access to people's lives. When I was growing up, our comparison set was like maximum 40-50 kids, kids from schools, kids from our colony, and that was it. So if we were actually compared with somebody who was doing better in school, then that was a person we knew. And we could actually go up to that person and be like, bro, can you stop doing so well in life because that'll make my life easy. But today, you would scroll and you have somebody scoring a 99.6%, and then you have somebody who's earning a million dollars, and then you have somebody who's travelling to the best places, and then you have somebody who's gone to the best concerts, and somebody who has bought the latest phone, and the latest car, and blah, blah, blah. And there's no end to it. There's never going to be an end to it. And I think what it does is it convinces us that if somebody has won, we will lose. Because in our head, the world is a zero-sum game. For somebody to win, somebody has to lose. If somebody goes plus one, somebody will have to go minus one, so that the sum is always zero. So it's a zero-sum game. What they don't recognise, and that's the only thing I would love for people to know about the world, is it is a positive-sum game. I could be one, somebody else could be one as well. Tara can own a house, I can own a house as well. Tara can own a phone, I can own a phone as well. She can own a car, I can own a car as well. She can earn a million, I can earn a million as well. Just because somebody else is doing well doesn't mean that I can't. And that means when you look at others and you see them succeeding, you have two choices. One, to believe that you're going to succeed, or two, to figure out what worked for them, so that you could learn something and give yourself a shot, perhaps better than what you've given yourself today. That is how I would live life. And that's how I've lived it, and thankfully it's worked out for me, so no reason for me to believe it wouldn't for anybody else. No, I really love all the messaging in your books and YouTube and even the class that you teach at TVBC, because it's sort of the abundance mentality. I love that you look at life, which is not a zero-sum game. Because I think, again, I'm saying that in India we've been raised this way, but we really have. And we have been taught that somebody else is succeeding, we may not, or there's infinite resources. And we all have the scarcity mindset as a culture. And that's, again, a lot of unlearning that we have to do, because I really feel like to truly get what all you want to get, you have to think that there's enough for everyone, and then you approach it with that positivity. So I really like that message that you put out there. And what are some responses that you've been getting from readers of this particular book, and what are they resonating to most? I feel they're, one, very happy that there is a book on relationships specific to an Indian context, because a lot of the stories that I've shared are very unique to our culture. Most of the books on relationship are outside, and at least I have never been able to relate to the Western concept of relationships in the way that they are structured. Not to say that they're right or wrong, this is very different from ours. And that's been the biggest feedback that I've got. Oh my god, I felt heard, I felt seen, I was reading the book, and I felt, oh my, this is exactly what happened to me. And this is exactly what I wish I had said, or I heard, and so on. And the second one, which usually came from young readers, people in their early 20s and so, is I didn't realise I was making so many mistakes. I didn't realise that, I remember one particular feedback that was, I don't know how to register it, but the lady said, I always thought that the world was toxic, but your book made me realise I'm the one who's toxic. And I have work to do. And I'm so glad that the book showed me a mirror, and I am going to work on it, which is amazing, because it takes a lot of maturity to get to that self-awareness, and to get to that realisation, and more importantly, to admit it to a stranger. So the feedback has been lovely, absolutely. That's really good. I like the whole myth-busting sections, because even the way that the format of those is very easy to digest them. But yeah, I was very curious, you know, you've been a public figure for a while, and for so many people, you're a mentor, you're a guide, you're a mentor figure, you teach these classes. Do you feel pressure to always have the right answers and live up to your own advice? No, not at all. Absolutely not. I feel the thing that people value in me, and I certainly value in myself, is that I'll be the first one to admit that I don't know, and I'll be the first one to admit that I'm wrong. And I love people telling me that I'm wrong, because if I fix it, I only get better. And it's so amazing. So as a public figure, what I love about it is, and maybe it comes with age, but I certainly don't get affected by the tonality of the message. I can get trolled, and it doesn't affect me as much, but I certainly will receive the message in what it's trying to tell me. And I know that if I fix it, then that person has one lesser thing to finger point me at, and I have one more thing that I got good at. So why would I complain? This is like the best free feedback funnel that I can create for myself. And I think that really, really helps. So at no point of time would I shy away from stating what I want to, or admit that what I said was not what I believed in, or my beliefs have changed. I think one thing that really stands out from all the content also in the book as well, is that you're radically honest about the way you live your life, your mistakes, and also, you know, business, because I follow you on Twitter, and you constantly share all those excels and everything. And they're very, very helpful. I think people really resonate to authenticity and vulnerability, especially in a world where, you know, we are seeing the best of the best curated on Instagram, and people are renting out private jets just to take pictures of them. I think sort of, also people want to feel like, you know, I can also go ahead and achieve these things and do it. So I think that's very inspiring. So yeah, what's the one thing that you've enjoyed the most about being an author, since this is going to be one of the last books in a while, not forever, but in a while, what's the one thing, looking back on your journey that you've enjoyed the most? I think the biggest thing is people coming back and saying, this is the first book I completed. I love that feeling. I love that feeling, because that's exactly the feeling that I wanted to generate when I started the first book. And when I wrote the last one, as well, I would love for people to pick up books, books have truly been the bestest of gifts that I have got from my parents, and I continue to have in my life. And for all of us who love books, and have most likely grown up with books, it's such an incredible arbitrage where for the cost of what, like, full site speeds out something, you get to deep dive into one's entire life and one's entire mind. It's ridiculous. It's just like, it's astounding when I think about it that way. So if I can play any small part in getting people to fall in love with books, then I'll consider my job done. And as an author, that's been the most gratifying. Superb, I can only imagine what it feels like to have, you know, people pick up your books and love them. So, you know, we talked about a lot about your own books. So my last question for you is, do you have any two or three books that you keep going back to as a reader? Oh, yeah, I have a I have a list of about seven books, Tara, which are what I call the reread list. And I make sure that I read them once every year. Each time I read them, I just discovered something completely new, because I'm a new person, and the book then becomes a new book. Some of them, which I would love to share with everyone would be a book that I read in 2009. And it really impacted the way that I looked at work is a book called rework r e w o r k. It's by authors Jason Fried and DHH. They are founders of a company called Basecamp. Back then it was called 37 signals, incredible company, huge inspiration for the way that we have built web beta. And the book was a huge inspiration for how I think about work as well. The second book, particularly for founders, because that's a book that broke the myth around startups and entrepreneurship in general is the hard thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz. It basically just de glamorises entrepreneurship, and it tells you how hard it truly is. And it really, really is intense. And the third book, which I read, I think, back in college or some time, and it's truly stayed with me is a book called mindset by Carol Dweck. And what she did was she introduced me to this concept of a growth mindset slash abundant mindset and a fixed mindset. Because that's what the book is about. And that was such a fascinating revelation, because I'd never known of that concept before and just opened a lot of doors. I've noted down all of these books. I heard the hard thing about hard things, but the mindset book sounds really interesting. Definitely will check it out. So thank you so much. This was such a practical and honest conversation. I really enjoyed it as usual. Thank you. Thank you so much Tara. Hope you enjoyed this episode of Books and Beyond with Bound. This podcast is created by Bound, a company that helps you grow through story. Find us at Bound India on all social media platforms. Tune in every Wednesday as we peek into the lives and minds of some brilliant authors from India and South Asia.