The Rudest Book Ever

by Shwetabh Gangwar

Here’s a very simple example of specialness: I felt it when I achieved that. ‘That’, is anything that created a considerable amount of self-belief in you, and made you believe for the first time that you are capable. We all assume we are capable, because nobody would like to believe otherwise. But it remains theoretical until you have achieved something that not only becomes a reference point for yourself in the future—I was able to achieve this, this is who I am— but also proves to yourself that you have what it takes to be capable—I believe I can achieve anything I put my mind to.

Specialness is the badge of realisation you earn. It may seem very simple to you, but this thinking can change the course of your life. Any achievement dictates you have created or mastered something. This means that not only did you gain in terms of knowledge, but you built habits of discipline, hard work, prioritising and focusing—habits that will serve you in almost all aspects of life.

On top of that, achievements create immense self-belief; I can do it because I have done it before is an amazing thought to have at the back of your mind, guiding you. Also, achievements are rewarded with more o...

You need to make it completely clear in your mind that others recognising you, giving you attention, a moment of their time, is not you being treated as somebody special. You translate that into specialness because you hardly ever feel good about yourself. This

If you need somebody else to tell you that you are special, then you have not done anything to earn it in your own mind.

There are people who, despite having achieved, learned, and progressed a lot in their lives, have no sense of specialness in their minds. It happens because they did it all to prove something to somebody—it could be their parents, society, teachers. It was fuelled by pressure, competition, culture, and everything else but their own selves. Their lives to this day function on the principle that achievements and better performances are means to please those whom they have deemed gods. If they are pleased by me, then I am special. This is how their lives work:

Whatever I do, I do to prove to the world that I can do it. Basically, to be accepted by the world. Soon afterwards, the ‘world’ is replaced by people who become the ideal models of behaviour and performance, models you look up to. Therefore—Whatever I do, I must do it better to impress them. The idea then becomes to please them until you become them, and have their blessing and assurance that you have become what they would like you to be. If you are living this life, flip the script, which means: Whatever I do, I do it for myself, because I want to prove to myself I can do it, recognising that whatever you do in turn impacts the world. Because whatever I do impacts the world, I shall and must become better, so I can impact the world for the better. Those who hold prizes, positions and power are sources to learn from—and nothing else. You know nothing about their lives except for their abilities. Admire the fact that they have those abilities, and leave it at that.

When they appreciate you, single you out, congratulate you and welcome your efforts, you must understand that it is a normal, deserved reaction to your praiseworthy actions, not acts of benevolence from higher beings. You can appreciate that treatment, and make sure to in turn pass it on to others. But if you label it as something that makes you special, then that high of feeling special becomes dependent on that pat on the back, a compliment, a word of admiration to feel good about yourself. By doing that, you are silently setting yourself up to be crushed mentally the day you hear the opposite of those words, the day it’s not a pat on the back but a backhanded comment, not a compliment but an unpleasant remark, not a word of admiration but a rejection of your performance. This is a relationship between a master and servant, neither of whom is special without the other; the master relies on the servant’s presence for his special status, the servant on the master’s words of kindness.

The truth about most people who have achieved a lot but depend on the praise of others to feel specia...

Why am I special? What have I done in my life?, and get a clear answer. In case you feel dissatisfied, then you have the option to earn it. Nobody gives it to you, you have to take it. But that’s the hard part, earning it. It is to escape from this answer that we look for specialness in love, appreciative comments, and attention through social media or friends. It is because we know we aren’t special in our own eyes, that we at least want to be told by others that we are in theirs. Once you realise this, your specialness is taken away from the approval and acceptance of others and handed exclusively to the self. Specialness then becomes a collection of skills, and feeling special is the sensation felt on upgrading in life after having mastered a skill.

People are motivated by various factors to make decisions to the detriment of your happiness or prosperity. The point is, on many occasions, it won’t have anything to do with you. This is a big world we live in, with a lot of people. You’re just one of them. And sadly, the world doesn’t revolve around you, which kinda leaves you with very bad odds.

rejections are normal.

As mentioned before, it may have nothing to do with you when it happens, but because you are a self-important, self-loving son of a gun, you think from your ego instead of your rational mind and make it all about yourself. You act as if you’re the only one it has happened to. Therefore, once again, rejections are normal—start seeing it this way. They happen to everybody.

Those who are able to find out what they want to do in life chase after greatness to prove to themselves that they are great at what they do. With time, they realise they don’t need anybody’s approval, as doing what they want to do gives them purpose, and fulfilling that purpose gives them satisfaction and a meaningful life.

They don’t want to be my friends, because, well, people are weird. This leaves room for an actual reason to exist which, perhaps, is currently unknown to you. It allows for doubt to fill the space instead of assumptions from ego or hurt. Frankly, you don’t have all the facts to make any assumptions, judgements, or conclusions. By saying people are weird, you allow the experience to not affect your ego. Let it go, man, people are weird; you don’t have to understand them, nor blame anyone. The truth is, you don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on in their lives, what kind of a person they are, what their motivations are behind forming relationships. You don’t know anything about them. You tried, and that’s great. Always remember: your job is not to understand people, but to understand and take care of yourself. What we have understood so far is: We need a general attitude towards rejections in life, rejections are normal, they happen. In terms of rejections from people, it becomes: rejections are a normal thing, and I don’t have to take them personally, because people are weird. Who knows what’s going on in their heads—it’s not my job to find out.

What about people you want to be friends with or desire romantically? Your expectations from them come from a perception which has no real data backing it. You are getting hurt, disappointed and affected by rejections from people you have no data about. What you have is impressions of them, first impressions to be precise, which is debatable data, or unreliable data, to say the least. Here’s how it happens in your mind, stepwise: You notice a person, and you think, Hmm. The ‘hmm’ can be caused by multiple reasons: they are physically attractive, appear to be warm, friendly, fatherly, kind, intelligent, knowledgeable, mature, wild, fun, crazy and awesome to you. These first impressions are registered in your mind, creating an attraction towards them in a friendly way, or a romantic way, or in a purely attention- and approval-seeking way. From these first impressions emerge expectations: I would like to be friends with them, I would like them to take me under their wing, I want them to notice me and like me, I want them to think I am cool, I want them to be mine, I want them to assure me I am capable, I want them to assure me I am sane, fun, valuable, too. These expectations further push the first impressions into conclusions about them in your mind—they are perfect beings, or something very close to that.

This is a very important stage. The truth is, there is no actual data to support all these claims, only impressions created in the first moments of interaction with these people and from what others say or feel about them. Therefore, your response should be: They may seem this way, but I don’t fucking know. Instead of doing that, your brain starts a brilliant new process called idealisation, which involves your imagination. When you start to idealise them, they begin to appear more special to you; you focus more on them and your expectations from them strengthen. You have already accepted without proof or confirmation that they are what your first impressions tell you. Now, you are running scenarios of them accepting you and becoming your friends, and you are making plans with them in your mind. You get hurt when none of that happens. In case it does happen, in the long run, let’s say, after years, you realise they are completely different from what you believed they were. Now they are completely human to you, which means regular, ordinary people with plenty of flaws, insecurities, and unimpressive accounts to their life’s story. Your excitement about them is over. The process repeats with new people.

Do you have a history of figuring out people accurately? Do you claim it takes you no time to find out who’s who? Or do you have a tendency to trust people too soon, forming completely wrong perceptions and ideas about them and realising later it was horseshit? It is entirely possible you’re too hopeful, too naive and a believer in people, a believer in the goodness in people. Two things you need to consider: Whoever you are, or however you try to appear in front of people, manipulates your perception of people as well. For example, I am nice, therefore others must be nice as well. Whatever you believe in does not change the practical reality that people are not you. If you are nice—good for you—that is by no means a guarantee that people will not be themselves.

Once you remove those general assumptions that your mind takes for granted, and the first impressions, what you are left with is, I don’t know—which is the most intellectual place to be in regarding all matters of life.

Like we said before, I am not going to judge them based on rumours, nor am I going to buy into the hype around them. I simply don’t know.

Why not entertain the possibility that it is salesmanship until proven otherwise!

people with self-serving motives or ‘bad’ motives, both know a single unbendable fact: there is only one route to gaining your trust and coming into your life—by being nice to you and making you feel good. In the beginning, they were great. Therefore, until you have real data, the perception ‘they are weird’, which essentially means, I don’t know them at all, helps you avoid falling into traps that take years of your life away and teach you nothing new.

great first impression in your eyes, never forget, people are fucking weird. So screw the first impression no matter what they do professionally. Accept that we live in a world of marketing, so screw what they are selling—charm, looks, profundity, it doesn’t matter. And always keep an eye out for real data. That is what will end the practice of you thinking that any person who makes you feel good in the beginning is special.

Without a foundational principle on how to see failure and rejection, whenever you don’t succeed in something you care about, the first thoughts are: I am a fucking idiot, I am nothing, I am a loser, I don’t deserve anything, I deserve to die. In many cases, these feelings are accompanied by fear of your parents’ wrath, friends’ judgement, people’s disappointment. How am I going to tell my parents? Everybody is going to think I am a loser. I am good for nothing because my friends got through. Everybody is going to move on, and I will be stuck here forever. Some of the worst outcomes are:

You stick to one place. You don’t change your job, as if you have married the workplace. Changing jobs feels like a new challenge; it involves a new environment, new people, new tasks, and the word ‘new’ brings a strong feeling of uncertainty to you. It’s a maybe to you—maybe I will fail there, maybe I will not perform well there, maybe I will have to act differently there, maybe I will have to learn different things there. And the focus in all those maybes is on the worst possibility: It won’t work out.

As a coping mechanism, you treat it as if it’s a matter of choice. I am a cool guy who never studies and always fails in exams, that’s my thing. You think people are laughing with you, when in reality, they are laughing at you, which you only realise once they have all moved on in their lives, and you are left with limited options considering the consistent track record in failing.

It starts with a question: You wanna do this, right? This may seem like a very simple question, but, my friend, there is a difference between wanting to do something and having to do something. Most people in this world are doing what they do not because they want to, but because they have to. Having to do something becomes a duty you have to fulfil. Wanting to do something is a choice. Therefore, to win, the very first thing you need to clarify in your mind is, do you really wanna do this?

When it’s a choice, there is an ownership of doing

that thing. You want to do it. You are not doing it because somebody else is on your ass, you will get fired if you don’t, you will have a bad report as an employee—all of these mean you don’t care much. You don’t mind having fun and stalling the wor...

Here’s a very simple thing, if you don’t care, if you don’t take what you do seriously, then forget about winning, ever. So, decide right now in your mind, do you wanna ...

A hunger for money, status, power;

A hunger to prove in your own eyes that you are capable (which would be the concept of being special);

How real winning works: one wins after having failed time after time. The essence behind real winning is not giving up, no matter what badges and medals society is handing out. When it comes to your ‘heroes’ and those who define success and hard work for you, you see them the same way. These people are your heroes because they display an impressive standard of consistent hard work, and through that hard work have achieved expertise in their fields. And that is why you love to fixate on and romanticise how many times they failed, lost and were rejected. You are hugely understanding and forgiving of their failures and mistakes. You believe in them because you know they are not the type to give up.

So, in your story, the traditional sense of winning applies. In the stories of those you admire, winning has everything to do with a never-give-up spirit, excelling in a skill, and doing so by hard work. Why don’t you apply the same to your story as well?

You want to be special. This specialness is not about being superficial, it is about being capable. Earn specialness by becoming capable. Once you have decided to become capable, start seeing whatever you are doing as a challenge.

The mindset of looking at things as challenges appeals directly to your ego. Whether you feel you are interested in it or not becomes unimportant. Your hunger to become capable is far greater than how the challenges make you feel.

Thinking in terms of utility makes you realise that there is a real world out there, away from your frog-well, with real competition, and the trophies you may be collecting are mere indicators that you are on the right path, but you haven’t actually won.

Thinking in terms of opportunity gives you ambition. Ambition gives you seriousness. With ambitious goals, the nature of its utility in your mind is revised and reset as well.

Thinking in terms of abilities makes you aware of where you stand right now and where your ambition requires you to be standing.

Make the fact that failures, rejections and losses are normal a foundational principle upon which your brain works.

As long as you’re alive and functioning, the chance of getting back on top and amongst the greatest exists. It depends exclusively on your own dedication to build masterful skills in it. If you decide that you want it, then nobody can stop you. The only downside of failing is that your path may become longer, but you’re not dying in the next five years. You have the time, so focus on building that skill no matter where you are.

And that’s how winning is done, it’s not about which college you went to, which trophies you won at age fifteen; it’s about where you stand, what your capabilities are, and what you can show when the opportunities come. Success depends entirely on your preparation. So believe that it’s going to be a journey, and there are going to be plenty of failures, and that’s all right. But at the end, you win by becoming too good to be ignored.

Once you have adopted ‘failures are normal’ as the foundational principle in real winning, when you fail, you do not emotionally punch yourself. Your emotions are focused less on feeling miserable and more on conducting an investigation. You recognise that, although failures are normal, that does not mean they are nothing. Real winning requires the minimisation of losses to the best of your control.

First, you take ownership of the failure.

The first makes you responsible, the other a victim. Instead of finding tendencies, people and relationships to blame, you make yourself fully responsible for that failure. This is step one of the investigation. I deserve this. Whatever impact this failure causes, I deserve and take responsibility for it. Once you take ownership, it becomes your fuck-up. You are not a victim, it didn’t happen to you, you caused it. Once you own it, everything before that failure comes into scrutiny, all those people, relationships and tendencies that could have taken the blame; they all have to go under the surgeon’s knife.

After ownership begins assessment: Why did I fail?

Assessment produces findings about your abilities, habits, relationships and the people in your life. For example, what was your approach going into the competition—serious or lazy? Did your approach include following a plan, routine, daily rituals backed by strict discipline? Or was it just counting the months left and convincing yourself of bullshit like you’ve still got it under control? If your approach was serious, then should you have worked for more hours a day? What state of mind did you have the entire time? Was your focus clouded by emotional entanglements? Were you busy in the consumption of short-term pleasures? Or were you desperately running after getting laid or finding true love? Whatever your findings are, for the sake of success, you learn and incorporate them into your life as changes to be made. If you want success, there are going to be huge adjustments, and current relationships will have to go through negotiations. The findings might tell you that certain relationships aren’t even deserving of negotiations. They need to go. You need to take...

The truth is, the reason why you liked that person is because they are special in your mind; and you remain hurt because they don’t like you back.

What are the influences that shape your ideas of the kind of person you want to date, and the kind of relationship you want? If we can sort out the sources of our expectations, then maybe we can save ourselves from this self-repeating cycle of bad relationships, falling for the wrong people, and getting hurt by rejections.

It is this nonsense that gives birth to the idea of the fantasy girlfriend or fantasy partner that you want to have in your life. You have been told, shown and convinced that it exists.