UnLearn Quotes

“We are not meant to be happy all the time, at least in terms of constant bliss. Our brains cannot always be high on dopamine. If they were meant to be then narcotic drugs wouldn’t be so harmful.

A better and more realistic aspiration than constant happiness, is “reasonable peace”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“You are in control of your actions but not always the result of those actions and there are far more factors at play than your own will that will decide what you get out of life.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Life is too short to worry about others. They will judge you even in your current life while you are still doing what society wants you to do. So, if you are being judged anyway while you are miserable, why are you afraid of being judged while doing something that actually makes you happy?! Living the life you want to live doesn’t mean you will never face frustration, but you will find a degree of peace even during that frustration. Something you could never find with your current life.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Imagine yourself looking into the future coming to the end of your life leading the life you already have.

Then compare it with coming to an end while leading a life that you want to lead even if you are only mildly successful. But even in failure you manage to get some sense of peace when you could never get while doing what you are doing currently.

Compare the two scenarios, which one is full of regret? If the regret is higher in the second scenario keep doing what you are doing and lead the safe life even if you are miserable. If the regret seems higher in the first scenario, you know it is time to take the leap.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“In my eyes, the people who are not successful are the ones that regardless of the money they have are leading a life dictated by society even if it means being miserable.

They want to do something that make them happy but are too afraid to do it because they are terrified of others judging them. These people may be seen as successful in the eyes of others and even responsible members of the society but they are never successful in their own eyes.

They lead their lives with desperation and yearning, waiting to break out and do something that makes them fulfilled. But they won’t because they have been brainwashed enough to make them believe that they are destined to be pawns and nothing else, even if they are pawns with money. If they try to do anything beyond being a pawn, society laughs at them, discourages them and quickly brings them back to where they were.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Society doesn’t accept that happiness is the key to success, to them here is the definition of success: You do what you are meant to do as a pawn in the world and make some money doing it, then die and make way for other pawns.

Now if you make an animal buy into this stupid rule, it’s understandable. What is not is how a so called higher being such as a human can ever accept that his or her fate is just to be a pawn leading a meaningless life, no matter how highly paid that pawn is. If you have the slightest ability to think consciously you will eventually realize that just doing what society asks you to do is no success at all if it deprives you of happiness. In fact, it means your life has been a total failure.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“We have been brainwashed into believing that the meaning of life is a rat race where happiness is a reward waiting at the end. And quite often the society, including our parents and other relatives are to blame for it. How are you going to be happy? When you study extremely hard and get into a great college later, you will be happy and successful.

Well, what do you do when you get into that great college and don’t seem all that happy? Well, you better work hard in college and keep your grades up so that you get your dream job and then you’ll be happy! Well, when you get your dream job and are making money but miserable you are supposed to get married because then you will finally have a “happy stable life”.

Finally even after marriage, when life is still a chore and now you are supposed to do everything for your kids, you keep wondering, hey where’s my happiness? I am still not happy, in fact I am miserable!

It is then that society tells you it was fooling you all along. It tells you “Suck it up, the meaning of life is to do what we tell you to do, not to be happy!”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“The only destination we all truly share is the grave, please don’t postpone happiness until you get to that moment. To become truly successful, start finding joy in the journey. It may be painful, it may not be as financially rewarding as you hoped, it may give you stress but there is always at least some joy you can extract out of life whether it is alone or with friends or whether it is in your work itself. If you can’t find anything to be happy about right now, chances are you won’t find anything to be happy about even when you achieve your goal.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“It is amazing how people think they are going to be happy or successful only when they achieve their dream, their destination. This kind of obsessively future centric approach takes away a really important part of your life, which is the present moment. Think about it, life really is a series of present moments and yet the irony is that most people in an obsessive pursuit for the future, forget to truly live and enjoy the present moment. Then, when the present moment becomes the past, they obsessively regret about not having truly enjoyed their past!”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“A great example in nature of finding simple solutions but being persistent is that of a River flowing through the land.

Now imagine a River. It does not matter how slowly it move. It will always find a way. And it does so by changing according to the situation. What happens when it encounters an obstacle? It adapts. It changes direction. If there is a small hole in the obstacle the water will flow through that hole. If there is a wall, the water will keep rising up until it starts overflowing. Now, if it has absolutely no option at all, it will even cut through stone over a process lasting millions of years.

So, it can work “super hard” when it needs to but it knows when to spend its energy and where to spend its energy.

But adapting does not mean conforming. What is the difference between stagnant water and river water? The river adapts temporarily and keeps pushing on. Stagnant water conforms completely and gives up. River water adapts to the situation only to finds it way. Stagnant water accepts the situation as its final fate. That is why River Water fuels civilizations and stagnant water just stinks.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“If you have a goal and you encounter obstacles or walls, You don’t need to break every wall that comes your way!! Sometimes you can just walk around the wall.

Some people want to keep banging their head against the wall, not knowing there is a way around it, or maybe there is a door in the wall or maybe there is a way to climb.

Be persistent, but be informed. Keep pushing on towards your goal but adapt if things aren’t working and look for the simplest solution.

You can tackle complex problems but remember, not every complex problem requires a complex solution.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“If you have a goal and you encounter obstacles or walls, You don’t need to break every wall that comes your way!! Sometimes you can just walk around the wall.

Some people wanting to keep banging their head against the wall, not knowing there is a way around it, or maybe there is a door in the wall or maybe there is a way to climb.

Be persistent, but be informed. Keep pushing on towards your goal but adapt if things aren’t working and look for the simplest solution.

You can tackle complex problems but remember, not every complex problem requires a complex solution.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Sometimes the solution we were looking for is right next to us and it is far simpler than we thought. But we make it more complex than it really is.

Sometimes, we are so focused on looking so far away for a solution, that we ignore the appropriate solution that is right in front of us.

If you have a goal and you encounter obstacles or walls, You don’t need to break every wall that comes your way!! Sometimes you can just walk around the wall. Some people wanting to keep banging their head against the wall, not knowing there is a way around it. Or maybe there is a door in the wall or maybe there is a way to climb. Be persistent, but be informed. Keep pushing on towards your goal but adapt if things aren’t working and look for the simplest solution (By simple I don’t mean illegal).

You can tackle complex problems but remember, not every complex problem requires a complex solution.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Persistence does not mean banging your head against the wall repeatedly and hoping it shall break one day. That’s just going to break your head. Persistence is about having the common sense to come back with a sledgehammer to break the wall. If that doesn’t work, come back with a bulldozer. If that doesn’t work, use dynamite.

If that doesn’t work, look a little bit more to see if there is a hidden door in the wall that you missed!

If that doesn’t work, just find another damn wall or stop looking for walls at all.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Millions of random events are happening to people daily and out of them some will have incredibly positive experiences, others will have incredibly negative experiences and most will have just average experiences. It is not because life is fair or unfair. It is because life is often random. For every positive will be a negative and vice versa. Your happiest day maybe someone else’s saddest day. Your saddest day maybe someone else’s happiest day. It’s not because life hates you, it’s just because that’s how things are in the universe. It throws out events. It is we who ascribe it with positive or negative qualities.

Regardless of their level of talent or what they truly deserve, probability dictates that some people will win much more often than they lose and some people will lose much more often than they win.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Is life fair or unfair?

If you think about it, the entire universe tends to do some very random things. Even though things behave in accordance with scientific laws, some things seem to be sheer chance. After all, of all the planets of the solar system, only the earth can sustain life. Some are too hot, some are too cold, most of them don’t have water. And yet, earth managed to be in the right spot and then life evolved from there.

Was the earth designated to be some sort of special place by a God or did things just kind of got into place through chance or a lot of lucky breaks? Most scientists believe in the latter. Along the way, there are were many near extinction scenarios, and yet life survived it all to allow our evolution into modern day humans.

That in a way makes us a hell of a lot lucky. The very fact that we exist is a result of huge lucky breaks for the earth over billions of years.

Now what about the other planets? Most of them have incredibly harsh conditions and are uninhabitable? If those planets had a consciousness, or a “soul”, should they be complaining that the universe is unfair to them? It gave so much to the earth and nothing to them? Shouldn’t they be sitting and whining and crying that God or the Universe gave nothing to them?

If this idea seems absurd to you, then the idea that a God or the Universe is intentionally out to get you or punish you is equally absurd.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Everyone knows they won't be around forever but very few reflect upon this great truth often. Therefore, assess your priorities. Decide what is most important to you in life and pursue that. The last thing you want is to die with a sense of regret.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Dreams and aspirations are what make us human and separate us from animals. Animals live life doing the same things every day without any aim or meaning. Their life is a meaningless repetition. Sadly, most people do the exact same thing. In the rat race to make a living, they forget how to live. But the great thing about humans is that we have the power of conscious choice, in other words we can make a choice to do things differently should we really want to. It is likely that we only have one shot at life, why live with regret? Go after what you want to do, with no expectation of external results. At least this way even if you fail, you will never end up with one of the biggest life regrets of them all – The regret of failing because you never tried.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Too much fire in the belly will only give you severe acidity.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“We get stuck in a rut whether it is in a “9 to 5” job that actually makes us work 80 hours a week or working constantly when you run your own business. It’s always about planning for the future, it is always about striving for more, even if that striving for more ends up ends up totally destroying your life.

Why? Because having a lot of “fire in the belly” is portrayed as a virtue, REGARDLESS of whether that fire in the belly is doing you or even the world at large any good!! The truth is your work is NOT THAT important in the grand scheme of things, and if you hate doing it, it’s not even important for you. You may consider yourself super important, but no matter how successful you are, you are most likely a cog in the wheel of the system who will find a replacement for you, the moment your body can no longer take it.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Always remember that even if you fail when you take your own decisions, at least it will never lead to resentment because whatever you chose to do was your own decision. On the other hand, if you live a life dictated by others you may slowly grow to hate and resent even the people you love.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Not everything needs to be “fixed”. Many life situations often come and go on their own. You don’t necessarily need to DO something about everything.

Have you ever noticed that sometimes the more you try to fix something, the worse it gets?

By knowing that sometimes doing nothing is the best thing to do, you have achieved action in inaction.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Be extremely careful as to who you let into your life and once you realize they are super toxic of harmful, try and let go of them as quickly as possible. No matter, how smartly, honestly or peacefully you are leading your life until now, are just ONE step away from ruining it, thanks to the potential actions of the person you have let into your own life.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Regardless of any “wise” advice anyone gives you, including mine in this book, try doing the opposite at least once (as long as it is not illegal or does not carry with it a risk of ruin).
What worked for them might be terrible advice for you and what they think is useless maybe your greatest life changer.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Never trust anyone blindly, including your parents for while they'll almost always have good intentions, they won't always be right.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“You can place trust in the idea that some people may want good things for you, but necessarily do good things for you.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“A man was once told by an astrologer that his wife would leave him for someone else and that would lead to his death. As a result of that prediction the man became increasingly fearful. He became extremely suspicious towards his wife even though she was devoted towards him.

He also started hating her and hitting because he believed she would not be loyal towards him and leave him. After ten years of constant physical and emotional abuse the wife had enough and became attracted to another man, she felt was much kinder. One day after yet another violent episode from the suspicious husband, she decided that she would leave him for the other man and ran away that evening! Shocked, the man committed suicide.

The man made that very thing happen that he feared! His own fear led him to commit actions that ultimately made his wife desert him. He made his life a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are going to make your life a self-fulfilling prophecy, might as well make it a constructive one, not a destructive one fueled by endless fear!

On a lighter note, if you are the impressionable kind, which many of us are, this is why sometimes it is best to not try and know your future!”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“We all have subconsciously trained ourselves to look for what we lack instead of appreciating what we have. We may be amazingly blessed with great talents, relationships or friends and yet we only focus on the talents we lack, the relationships we lack and the life we lack.

When you focus on what you have your whole perspective towards life will change. You will realize that life is meant to be a mixed bag. You are not going to always have it all, nor are you going to have nothing. Count your blessings because no matter what you have, it is guaranteed there is someone else in the world that does not have it.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“The person you feel jealous of might be craving the exact same thing that you already have but just don’t see it.

If you are someone who has a loving spouse and are craving the wealth of your neighbour, that neighbour may be craving having a loving spouse while their wealth means nothing to them.

If you are someone who is jealous of someone’s athletic abilities or looks, they might be jealous of your brains or other skills.

The truth is that no one in the world is better than one or the other in all aspects.

Everyone is a master in something and a rookie in another. Everyone has a few things others might crave but will never have.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“One of the best ways to learn how to deal with jealousy productively is to identify the root cause of what is causing your jealousy. If someone gets a big car or house or something, is it really their material possessions that bother you or is there something deeper that you crave?

Going from this example you may analyse your jealousy and come to a conclusion to it may not be riches you want but maybe the respect and adulation from society that come along with it.

If you go after the material possessions without knowing your true desires, you may not be happy even if you get them, because what you really wanted was something else.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life