Long-term thinkers win:

Long term thinkers win.

If you teach yourself to delay satisfaction, you will win.

People want everything now but the best wins take time.

It takes patience.

It takes working on habits over long periods of time to eventually see results.

We want to lose weight yesterday.

But we don’t want to do the work of changing our lifestyle, exercising, and focusing on our food intake.

Guess what? You’ll never lose weight with a quick fix.

Progress takes time.

You can’t control how much weight you’ll lose but you can control the actions you put into losing the weight.

I struggled with being a chubby kid growing up.

Had big cheeks, a sagging belly and it didn’t help that I was short.

When I say short, I mean shortest in the class till I was 16.

Ever since I skipped a grade, I was always the smallest.

Imagine a small tubby Indian kid walking around school trying to be an athlete.

No one took me seriously.

Shit I didn’t even take myself seriously.

But you keep working.

You keep trying.

You keep going again and again.

You find what you like and you do that thing over and over again.

That was basketball for me.

I never performed well in elementary school and didn’t make my high school basketball team, but I was constantly working.

I was trying to get a little better every day.

Today I’m a thousand times better than I was back then.

But it took time.

It took lots of struggle. It took failure.

It took many years of being the smallest person on the playground.

I couldn’t control my genes. I couldn’t grow any taller or eat more to be fitter.

I was a short tubby Indian kid.

That’s changed now.

I decided a few years ago to change everything.

I decided to choose myself and my weight.

I tried diets as a kid, I ran on vacations and went to the gym multiple times a week in university. Nothing worked.

So I decided to dedicate everything to it.

I found this 3 month diet and exercise program and I said in my head, ‘I am going to give this 3 months. I am not going to judge myself. I’m going to commit to the exercises and diet every week while leaving one cheat day, and I’ll see what happens at the end of it.’

Sure I checked the scale all the time and it seemed like I never lost any weight.

But at the end of 3 months, I was 20 pounds lighter.

I drank and ate unhealthy food multiple days in a row at some points, but I tried to stick to the plan.

It’s ok that I couldn’t make it every day.

But I tried.

I got back on the horse every day.

Even when I missed days, I didn’t judge myself and got back on the next day.

You just have to show up for yourself.

You have to decide what’s important to you and figure out how you want to get there.

It will take time, likely much longer than you think.

But you have to keep disciplined.

You have to keep showing up for yourself.

You have to make small changes every day and maintain your habits.

If you stick with something long enough, the results will come.

You have to embrace failure.

You have to embrace challenges.

But you have to keep going.

You have to decide that you cannot compromise on the bet to yourself.

You have to think about your future, even if it's uncertain.

Success is built on habits.

What may look like overnight success to you is many years of training.

I love that Olivia Rodrigo started singing and performing when she was a child.

Although she’s 18 and super young in society’s eyes, she’s been working on her craft for a long time.

She’s been trying, no matter how much failure she faced along the way.

Many people doubted her, including probably some of her friends and family.

Yet she stuck to it and now she’s a global superstar.

Everyone may look at her now and think she’s an overnight success, but she’s not.

She’s been grinding.

She’s been dreaming.

She’s been thinking long term.

That’s what I’ve realized about some of the most successful people in the world.

They were always thinking ahead.

They were always thinking about the next step.

They’re mind was oriented to the future, even though they knew the road was uncertain.

The future is uncertain yet you can do things every day that make that future self better for you.

Invest in yourself.

Invest in your education.

Understand the world.

Because even though the future is not given, you can help your future self immensely by small changes.

I started writing years ago and didn’t tell anyone.

But I kept at it.

Now I’ve figured out that one, I might be good at it, but two, I really enjoy it.

I like explaining the world to myself.

I can turn this into a full time business but my writing has always been with me in mind.

I’m not writing for a specific audience. I’m writing to my younger and older self.

I’m trying to help 17 year old Anish understand the world and write so that 35 year old Anish is proud of what he’s done.

Everyone else’s opinion is irrelevant.

I don’t care if people like me. I don’t care if they hate my writing.

Haters mean you’re doing something right with your life.

Everyone has an opinion now, but they’re not in the ring.

When you put your heart and soul on the line in whatever creative field you decide to pursue, screw the critics.

They’re not the ones doing the work.

They’re not the ones in the ring.

They don’t know the struggle.

They comment to get views and drive traffic so it can make their egos feel better.

Screw them.

Don’t listen to them.

Listen to yourself and those close to you.

Start putting yourself first.

Start spending time doing little things every day because your future self will thank you.

Don’t overthink it.

Take 5-10 minutes out of your day and do something for you.

It could be meditating, which I highly recommend, or reading or getting exercise.

Small changes to your life.

Be patient, don’t judge yourself and give yourself enough time.

You’ll see how incredible of a transformation it is to your life.

Plan for the long term but live in the now.

Delay your satisfaction and you’ll see how much further you’ll go compared to everyone around you.

Long-term thinkers win.

Never forget that.