Beginnings are hard.
I didn’t think starting up would be so daunting. Yet, here I am.
I have learnt to take challenges head on & quiet my monkey mind to move forward in life.
After endless research, failures, learnings, moments of clarity & tiny dopamine hits of ‘cracking it’, I started to see great results in my experiments.
When my internal & external feedback loops made me sharper & more focused, I knew what I was doing was working & it felt great to keep running these experiments.
Masters Of Fate is an attempt to capture these & share it with the world, in a bid to help people unlock the best version of themselves & make time for things that matter the most.
Why this, why now
I just turned 33 & for the past couple of years, I have been on a journey of becoming more myself, becoming better & it has been drastically life changing in so many ways.
This journey is taking so many different forms. Things are changing rapidly, I have many active personal projects now as opposed to ZERO couple years back. But let me rewind a bit.
Back in 2018, right after my MBA & straight into my first job, I quickly realised I was stuck in a rut, beginning to feel like I have little to no control over things, always on auto mode. I thought this is how life is, that most people will lead an average, traditional life & I will be one of them.
I definitely didn’t understand what is ‘being present’ & what the whole hoopla was. How would it feel.. to be fully present. I didn’t know. I don’t think I ever felt it in my bones for me to fully absorb it & evoke that feeling when I needed it the most.
I was never taught these skills.
Looking back, I was grasping for straws on most days. I remember that feeling so well, but thankfully haven’t felt it in a long time now.
All of us have dreams we’d like to fulfil, some short term, some long. But mostly we are on the jagged path of being our most comfortable selves, trying to make a dent in the universe.
It’s a pity that we all know very well, just how much we are capable of achieving, how much we deserve a certain life, and yet, we fall at the hands of our pre determined Fate.
Why is that? I asked myself often. Will things be the same or can I change? How are successful people doing it? What is it that I am missing? A spark? A push? A life changing event? Or a miracle? A last straw? My agony becoming unbearable? What will make me move after all?
I realised I didn’t know myself enough to answer these questions.
Expert research said to go back to my childhood and try to find what excited me the most. Alas! I don’t think making measuring scales out of used Diwali diyas with my childhood bestie or making dandiya sticks out of old antennas was sufficient to find my purpose in life. I loved my Indian middle class life as a kid, but was the monotony of this complacent life acceptable to me anymore as an adult? I was jaded.
I figured I was mostly living my days day-dreaming, in hopes that my knight in shining armour (my brain) will save me one day.
That one day, I will have a groundbreaking idea and that will change my life. Or change my outlook. Or change my almost always slanted sofa position. That day never arrived. Nothing did.
And then out of nowhere, I took the path of existentialism to justify it all.
Why do we even need to do anything when all of us are going to die anyway.
YES! That’s the one. Hold on to this idea for your dear life so you don’t have to face your own demons of leading a very singular, unidirectional life.
Don’t let your multiple personalities bloom. Lead a cynical, detached life, build your existential vocabulary & fight your way with the world to be a lonely, hard headed auntie.
Too good, you’ve cracked it. This seems easy, I can definitely step into this avatar. And so I did.
Living life on the edge (read not paying my education loan, zero investing), partying my weekends away, and honing my existential philosophies, I told myself diligently - I am but a fleeting dot in this floating universe.
I lived my days on endless cheap dopamine fixes through social media, shopping, food ‘experiences’, parties & dating apps. Ah yes. Lay it on me. The city life was raging & so was I.
I knew from the very beginning of becoming an independent adult that this was not my ideal way of living, but somehow I kept getting sucked in this black hole like a timeless warping of sorts.
I was trying to run on quicksand. And every time I tried to come out of it, existentialism invited me to its quarters. And I was rising up the ranks pretty well in my head, so why not.
I was living life in a haze. I could see it passing by me so quickly. Nothing made sense. I used to be so wired.
I didn’t have any mindfulness tools at my disposal. I was too smug for taking therapy. Of course, my brain used to talk me out of so many things, definitely I don’t need therapy, I backed myself up.
I continued living my best Instagram life through travel pics. Even the thing I loved the most - travelling for noteworthy experiences - didn’t cut it for me anymore. I have so many crazy travel stories & yet none of it filled the void that was formed.
I picked up many tiny projects & never saw any of it through. I was great at relationship building & made many new friends, had many philosophical life altering conversations but lacked the energy to have one with myself.
I was a shining example of a master procrastinator. I was too self aware, observant, empathetic, imaginative & clawed my way through perfectionism to do whatever it takes to be in the same place.
And then the pandemic happened. And after endless mundane days of doing the same things, I got bored, got laid off, went back home to spend time with parents, realised I am not in a good mental state, bounced from there in 2 months to the mountains, started a new job and eventually shifted to Goa.
Goa. Wild ride.
In the upcoming dispatches I will share a lot more about this heck of a wild ride.
But for now - long story short, it changed my life. For good.
And I am so friggin grateful to my past self for this one tryst with destiny I solely partook in.
Masters of Fate is my attempt to share my experiences with you of this tumultuous journey, this rollercoaster I have been on for the past 4 years.
These are my stories of resilience, the tools, hacks, frameworks & design thinking I have used to design my ideal life & you can too.
I will share the mindset shift that is urgent in today’s times and I promise it will take you on a self exploration journey.
I’ll share my pursuit of finding myself, knowing myself, removing the veil & seeing clearly what life looks like on the other side of becoming better & healing myself.
I use the word healing & not fixing, because it changes the narrative for me. Recognising that I was suffering from the maladies of the modern world has been a game changer in not relapsing.
This is my journey of mastering my mind, coming out of imposter syndrome, my greatest feats in mental & physical fitness, sharpening my senses in order to listen to my body & reconnect with it, of feeling so aware in each moment, fully present with each happening of my life, feeling in control, feeling happy, healthy & connected with nature & most importantly myself.
I am beginning to play with energies, take better decisions & I am mastering how to get into flow state.
I have certainly reclaimed my days. I still day dream but I feel creative in making those dreams come true. I set forcing functions now & my systems keep me on track. My brain does the creative heavy lifting & everything else is taken care of by my processes.
Life’s no more a blur & I feel so energised every day. Happy to report that I have many purposes in life that are too precious for me to not act on those.
I can’t spell exsiestentioul anymore. My past version is distant & blurry and I am in many ways, awakened.
So here I am, refusing to be average, to accept life as it is, to keep becoming better & build with focus, a future I want to live in.
I am actively working towards it & I am in a place to share how I connected the dots & left a life behind that no longer served me.
Thank you for taking the time to read through my first love letter to life & to you.
Every Sunday, you will have many moments of clarity delivered to your inbox & tools that will not let you slide back to your old self.
This is an invitation to understand what peak performance in life looks like, to explore new beginnings, to re-imagine what life could be, to stop feeling stuck, to take back control & live your dream life.
Welcome to Masters of Fate, a very personal experiment, built publicly for people who want to be the best version of themselves.