Anuj Shrestha

Fetal Medicine Specialist, Radiologist, Tech Savvy, Hobbyist Photographer.

[James Clear @JamesClear]

Your first attempt might not be very good, but nobody's early work is good. There will always be a gap between where you are and where you want to be. And the bridge between that gap is courage. The courage to look foolish in the beginning. The courage to show up again when your early work is criticized. The courage to look yourself in the mirror and say, "I realize I'm not good enough yet, but the only way to get better is to keep working on it."

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

I’m in love with this sentence:

“Your future is shaped by the habits you repeat, not the goals you set.”

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

A reminder from The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel:

“The highest form of wealth is the ability to wake up every morning and say, ‘I can do whatever I want today.’ People want to become wealthier to make them happier. Happiness is a complicated subject because everyone’s different. But if there’s a common denominator in happiness—a universal fuel of joy—it’s that people want to control their lives. The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want, is priceless. It is the highest dividend money pays.

Use money to gain control over your time, because not having control of your time is such a powerful and universal drag on happiness. The ability to do what you want, when you want, with who you want, for as long as you want to, pays the highest dividend that exists in finance.”

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

“Do not try to do everything. Do one thing well.”

— Steve Jobs

[Mark Manson @Markmanson]

The people who seem most at peace aren't the ones who got everything they wanted. They're the ones who stopped wanting everything they couldn’t have.

[Mark Manson @Markmanson]

It's a simple fact of life: if you want to do something incredible, something that makes you stand out above the rest, then you have to become comfortable being different—that means being misunderstood, criticized, even hated.

[DAN KOE @thedankoe]

If you don't have a goal so meaningful it makes other people's opinions irrelevant, you will lose control of your life. You will adopt the goals assigned to you by your parents, peers, or society.

[Mark Manson @Markmanson]

The secret to happiness isn’t getting what you want—it comes from not wanting what you don’t have.

[James Clear @JamesClear]

Life rarely changes in a positive way without an increase in responsibility.

That can mean taking ownership of your health or committing to a relationship or starting a business.

Whatever it is, if you want the trajectory to change, the amount of responsibility usually has to change.

[Mark Manson @Markmanson]

The quickest way to ruin your life is to try to make everything easy.

[James Clear @JamesClear]

At any moment, you are one good choice away from a meaningfully better life.

[Mark Manson @Markmanson]

Laziness is fear disguised as a lack of motivation.

[Mark Manson @Markmanson]

“Doing hard things” is a habit that must be practiced… or, like any habit, it will be lost.

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

This paragraph by Richard Feynman hits so hard:

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.”

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

I’m in love with this sentence:

“The art of not being ready and doing it anyway will take you so far.”

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

There's a physicist at Stanford named Safi Bahcall who modeled this exact principle and the math is wild.

He calls it "phase transitions in human networks." When you're stationary, your probability of a lucky event is limited to your existing surface area: the people you already know, the places you already go, the ideas you've already been exposed to. Your opportunity window is fixed.

When you move, your collision rate with new nodes in a network increases nonlinearly. Double your movement (new conversations, new cities, new projects) and your probability of a serendipitous encounter doesn't double. It roughly quadruples. Because each new node connects you to their entire network, not just to them.

Richard Wiseman ran a 10-year study at the University of Hertfordshire tracking self-described "lucky" and "unlucky" people. The single biggest differentiator wasn't IQ, education, or family money. Lucky people scored significantly higher on one trait: openness to experience. They talked to strangers more, varied their routines more, and said yes to invitations at nearly twice the rate.

The "unlucky" group followed the same routes, ate at the same restaurants, and talked to the same 5 people. Their networks were closed loops. No new inputs, no new collisions.

Luck isn't random. Luck is surface area. And surface area is a function of movement.

The lobster emoji is doing more work than most people realize. Lobsters grow by shedding their shell when it gets too tight. The growth requires a period of total vulnerability. No protection, no armor, soft body exposed to the ocean.

That's the cost of movement nobody posts about. You have to be uncomfortable first. The new shell only hardens after you've already moved.

[The Shift Journal @TheShiftJournal]

𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘥𝘢𝘺, 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘥𝘥𝘭𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘶𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘶𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶.

[🍂 @Lovandfear]

“The more you understand this world, the more you destroy yourself. That's why fools are happy, and intelligent people live in loneliness.”

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

I’m in love with this sentence:

“The degree to which a person can grow is directly proportional to the amount of truth he can accept about himself without running away.”