The Rudest Book Ever

by Shwetabh Gangwar

Learning of any kind that involves zero investment of your thinking produces only imitation.

In most cases, older people are children who have aged. Stop attaching maturity, wisdom, enlightenment to ageing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Specialness then becomes a collection of skills, and feeling special is the sensation felt on upgrading in life after having mastered a skill.

rejections are normal.

you like them and wish to be liked by them in return. You have given them value, in your mind.

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.

That’s the difference between ‘knowing’ and ‘understanding’. You know a lot of sensible things, but the reason why you don’t apply them is because you don’t understand them.

Always remember: your job is not to understand people, but to understand and take care of yourself.

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.

Your perception of something creates expectations from them. Where does this perception come from? In one word, data.

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.

I am not going to expect anything from them. I know practically nothing about their life.

I am going to observe and wait for real data to show up.

Fuck what they would like to do, focus on what people actually do.

First impressions don’t come from data, but from how you perceive the world—which relies solely on your level of intelligence and knowledge.

People who are going to be good to you as well as 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.

Real winning requires your focus on neither winning nor losing, but upon learning.

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.

As long as you’re alive and functioning, the chance of getting back on top and amongst the greatest exists.

So, the first question is, who are you? This means who you are intellectually, sexually, emotionally and professionally.

the fact that feelings change all the fucking time. Feelings are unreliable as fuck.

Life is a lot of things that have nothing to do with happiness,

happiness is a by-product of life done right.

I was unproductive, not, I didn’t do anything,

fuck life in the long term so I can be happy in the moment, is what you do.

In short, because happiness is your priority, self-respect is ignored.

fuck happiness. I don’t want to be happy, I want to be satisfied in life. I want self-satisfaction.

Well, even if I am manipulated to like something, I still like it. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing it.

You know, I could have done this. I know I could have. I had what it takes in me, but I wasted my time doing stupid shit.

what am I interested in, what matters to me, what doesn’t interest me regardless of how popular it may be, their self-worth comes from feeling significant and interesting in the eyes of others.

It should not be I wanna show them, but I wanna show myself; not I want to be great so they will be impressed, but I want to be great so I can be satisfied with myself.

myself. That’s who you are; that’s the one who gets affected; and that’s the one whose life it is.

People will reject you, and your brain will go: How dare you reject the awesome creation that is me!

Letting go can be boiled down to two simple things: You can’t please everyone. You can’t control anyone.

‘Truth is rarely pure and never simple’.

You have to accept that people are flawed beings; we are a mix of selfish tendencies, biological urges, our impulses and ego-driven inclinations.

Everyone that you fight is not your enemy and everyone who helps you is not your friend.

stop trying to predict the future. Unless you are seventy years old and have had all sorts of experiences, you need to shut the fuck up.

a lot of you are busy finding solutions to problems that don’t even exist. You are creating them because you haven’t been humbled by practical reality. You still live in the fantasy world.

Assumptions exist where data doesn’t.

Don’t forget, having wrong beliefs is what makes you stupid; it’s the right ones that set you free.