DEVANSH NARULA

Building @coppa_club | Becoming | Wandering

[Dr. Arthur Brooks @arthurbrooks]

You can build an impressive life and still feel profoundly lonely if everything becomes about you: your success, your reputation, what other people think of you.

There is nothing wrong with money, power, pleasure, or fame. The problem begins when they become the goal.

A happier life requires something beyond the self. Real relationships, real love, and a reason to care about something other than your own advancement.

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

There are only two options when building something real.

Keep the bar high and pay everything it costs - the time, the emotional weight, the uncertainty, the version of yourself you have to give up.

Or lower the bar. Release yourself from the desire. Stop wanting the thing that’s costing you so much.

Both are valid choices.

What isn’t valid is keeping the bar high while refusing to pay the price. That’s not ambition. That’s just suffering without direction.

Choose the bar. Then accept everything that comes with it.

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

Nobody cares about what you’re doing.

Nobody is coming to save you.

It’s just you, the goal, and the distance between where you are and where you want to be.

Everything in between is a cost. Time. Friends. Emotional weight. Sometimes yourself.

Pay it or don’t. But there’s no other way through.

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

Most of us inherited a definition of success before we were old enough to choose one.

Good grades. Stable job. Family business. Money. A life that looks right from the outside.

But whose definition is that?

The problem shows up quietly. An artistic person trying to be a businessman will always earn less and feel less. Not because they’re not capable. But because they’re playing the wrong game entirely.

The misalignment is the problem - not the person.

We run toward what family, friends, and society call success without ever stopping to ask if it’s actually ours. And respect follows that shape automatically the person with money gets it, the person doing the craft they love rarely does.

But I think that’s backwards.

Borrowed success has a ceiling.
You’ll always feel insufficient chasing someone else’s finish line because even when you reach it, it won’t feel like yours.

Be true to yourself and your craft. Even when it earns you less. Even when it looks different from the outside.

That’s the only version worth building.

[Chris Williamson @ChrisWillx]

https://t.co/s62RGrMw1e

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

You are not just building a business on those days. You are building the kind of person who shows up regardless. So that when the pressure comes, when everything is on the line, the response is already wired in. The habit is deeper than the moment.

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

We are wired to always want more.

Not because we’re greedy. Just because that’s how we’re built.

You want 100. You get there. And suddenly 100 feels like the baseline. The new normal. The thing you can’t go below, not the thing you worked toward.

Same at the gym. The 20kg dumbbell that used to be your max is now your warmup. You adapted. The bar moved.

That’s the hedonic treadmill. The thing you chased becomes the floor, not the ceiling.

And the feeling of insufficiency never actually goes away. It just finds a new number to attach itself to.

We humans are just wired this way - always insufficient, always chasing, always one step behind the version of life that would finally feel like enough.

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

Feeling good in your own skin is one of the most underrated things.

It’s not loud. It’s not performed. It’s just a quiet ease with who you are - flaws included.

The calm in a room full of people. The composure when things get uncomfortable. The humility that comes from actually knowing yourself.

That’s the real confidence. Not the kind that needs to announce itself.

Just being at ease. With yourself and with the people around you.

Most people spend their whole life performing confidence instead of actually feeling it.

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

I had followers on Instagram and functioned just fine without them.

Built things without them. Wrote without them. Figured things out without them.

So why am I suddenly checking who’s viewing, who’s liking, who’s commenting?

I didn’t need them before. Nothing has changed.

The platform didn’t give me anything I didn’t already have. It just made the metrics visible.

And visible metrics are dangerous because they start to feel like the point.

They’re not the point.

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

Downloaded Instagram after three years.
And I’ll be honest the pull is immediate.

The validation is instant. A like, a view, a small hit of something.

It’s very easy to start doing things for that feeling without even realizing it.

The metric shifts quietly. You stop doing it for the reason you started.

So I removed all my following. Zero. Empty feed.

Output only. No consumption.

Let’s see how long that lasts.

How do you stay aware of why you’re actually doing something - before the validation starts doing the thinking for you?

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

Even the good content you consume is someone else’s framework.

The self help. The podcasts. The books. The people you follow here. All of it is someone else’s way of seeing the world, sitting in your head, quietly shaping how you think.

At some point you have to stop. Give yourself empty time. No input.
And ask - what do I actually believe? Not what I’ve absorbed. Not what I’ve been told. What is actually mine?

Most people never find out. They go from one framework to the next, always receiving, never building their own.

Think for yourself. That’s harder than it sounds.

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

Sacrifice isn’t always time or money. Sometimes it’s the emotional weight you carry alone. The responsibility nobody else can share with you. That’s the cost most people don’t name. And the ones who can hold it they build what others only talk about.

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

The default mode for most people is opening their phone and scrolling.
Which means focus has become rare. And rare things have value.
Anyone willing to just put the phone down has an edge most people don’t even realize they’ve given away.

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

Feeling productive and being productive are two different things.

I know exactly what productive means for me. It’s when my work moves closer to where it needs to be.

Everything else - the reading, the writing, the small tasks feels like movement but isn’t really.

And some days the real work just can’t happen. Circumstances won’t allow it.
So you sit with the gap. Between what you could do and what you can actually do right now.

That’s the hardest kind of day.

[James Clear @JamesClear]

A Monday morning question for you:

I recently asked a friend if he wanted to hit a certain business milestone and he said, "That depends. What does it cost me?"

Writing down your goals is easy. Everybody wants the glamorous result. What really matters is whether you want the costs associated with it: the money, the time, the tradeoffs.

Don't merely ask yourself what do I want to achieve, but also what am I willing to pay?

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

Intellectual humility is the real skill not knowing more, but staying open enough to question what you already know, willing to be wrong, willing to update, because the moment you treat your current understanding as the final truth is the moment you stop growing.

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

Everyone is consuming different information and calling it the truth.

Same event. Same news. Ten different people, ten different realities all feeling certain.

The algorithm shows you more of what you already believe. Your mind filters out the rest. What you saw last feels most true.

So verdicts get formed off headlines, reels, whatever came up on the feed today.

Information is useful. Verdicts from incomplete information are dangerous.

The real skill is staying open enough to be wrong about what you already think you know.

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

Writing is a coping mechanism. At least for me.

When you write, you give shape to things that were just floating around hurting you. You build a story around the pain. And once it has a story, it feels justified. Like it means something. Like it’s supposed to be there.

You’re not escaping anything. You’re just making it bearable by making it make sense.

The writing goes outward eventually. But it starts inward - as a way of telling yourself that what you’re going through is okay.

Selfish first. Then shared.

That’s honest enough for me.

[DEVANSH NARULA @DEVANSHNARULA7]

What all can you lose in the pursuit of building things the way you want?

It has taken immense sacrifice, and yet you’re still holding on to some faith just to keep going. You feel like these are the final moments of the break-and-make periods. Now is not the time to quit. But you don’t know how much is left in the tank.