Lies

[00:00:01] Hey everyone, you're listening to Ankur Warikoo on Voice with Warikoo. On this podcast I talk to you about entrepreneurship, how to grow in life, manage personal finances, handle failures and a lot more things that just come to my mind. The episode begins.

[00:00:18] The other day I was thinking what would be my response to this question. Question is, what's something you believed in as a child that you now know is not true? It was a lie that was sold to you at that point of time.

[00:00:33] And I thought about it, I couldn't come up with just one, I came up with five and here are the five. And I'm sharing these not because I believe that they're right or wrong, they certainly

[00:00:42] turned out to be lies for me, but more to provoke you to go and discover the answer for yourself. First one, that money is finite. If one becomes rich then someone else becomes poor by virtue of that. This was something that I truly believed to be true.

[00:01:00] And I grew up thinking that money was finite, there was only so much in the world and the rich became rich by taking money from the poor. They didn't become rich by creating more money, which is what I now know to be true.

[00:01:13] It was more like, oh, it's just distribution of wealth, it's not creation of wealth. Today I know that wealth is created. Today I know that entrepreneurship is a great way of creating wealth, adding value to anything that you do is a great way of creating wealth.

[00:01:27] And I spoke about this in my book as well, Make Epic Money, where the example that I quoted was if you have a pack of Maggie that usually sells for 10 or 20 rupees and if you would

[00:01:38] open it up and then make that Maggie, which will by the way not happen in two minutes, that's another lie that I believed when I was a child. And then you put some vegetable, then you put some oil and you put other embellishments.

[00:01:53] That thing now can easily sell for 50 rupees or if you're in Ladakh, 100. Where did that money come from? Literally thin air. You didn't add anything worth 30 rupees or 70 rupees or anything like that.

[00:02:07] You just added whatever, five rupees, 10 rupees, but you were able to sell it for a lot more because you added value to what was just a packet of Maggie. And that is how I got to know that money is not a zero sum game, it's a positive

[00:02:20] sum game where for you to become rich, nobody has to become poor. Number two, and this really hit hard when I realized it. The thing that I believed in as a child was that parents are always right.

[00:02:35] And the challenge was because we grew up thinking that parents are not parents, but they're gods. Or worse, we grew up thinking that parents are parents and not humans. We made them parent first and not human first.

[00:02:50] And only once we grew up and we started witnessing their fallacies and their, it's the fact that they were mortal. The fact that they were humans and they were also capable of making mistakes. And they were also capable of having a bias and being weak and

[00:03:07] having opinions that were not necessarily true or right. That realization takes a long time to hit. That's when you also lose your innocence in some way because you truly grow up to realize that your parents are humans first and parents later.

[00:03:27] The third thing that I grew up believing was that success is being rich and famous. That's what everyone wants to be rich and famous. And that's actually the best combination as well, rich and famous. Today I know I would much rather be rich than famous.

[00:03:42] It's another thing that I am a public figure now, but if you were to truly ask me, the best combination is to be rich and not famous. To have money enough for your needs, for your desires, for your wants, what not?

[00:03:55] And for people to not even know you. And there's so many examples like that. The thing is we don't know of them. When I walk in Delhi and there are, well, Delhi is full of such examples and Bombay is full of such examples.

[00:04:05] In fact, any big city or even small ones, where there will be people who have like net worth of 100, 200 crores and you would not even know them. You will not even feel that they are worth that kind of money

[00:04:16] if you were to just bump into them one normal day. And beyond just rich and famous, I believe that success, true success is being content, being happy, knowing that you have enough and loving your life the way that you have it as against chasing something forever.

[00:04:39] Number four, the thing that I believed in as a child, that not being good at studies equal not being good at life. I was so determined that that was true. I was convinced that people who are not good academically, they will never make it in life. They're losers.

[00:04:58] And I was, boy, so wrong. So wrong. It's nothing, nothing to do with how some stupid report card of yours has stamped you. Nothing to do with how much you scored in an examination. It's nothing to do with where you stood in the ranks of that class.

[00:05:16] All of that is just bullshit. What truly matters is what kind of a person you are, how do you apply whatever it is that you know for the benefit of yourself and of course others. And at the end of it, how you make people feel.

[00:05:32] That is being truly good. And then number five, the thing that I believed in as a child, that the more friends one has in life, the happier one is in life. Oh boy, no, not true. I am so happy having very few friends in life now.

[00:05:47] I'm so, so happy. I don't need people. In fact, I believe that I'm my best friend. I'm my best friend. I know my fallacies. I know my strengths. I know my secrets. I know my in and out and I can spend time with myself.

[00:06:01] I enjoy my own company. And I don't have to run away from my thoughts. I don't have to run away from who I am. I think if I were to meet my own self independently, I'd love to be friends with myself.

[00:06:16] And that I think is like the best gift that I could give myself. So these five things, things that I used to believe in as a child but now know are not true. What would be things for you?

[00:06:28] Thank you for listening to this episode of Voice with Variku. To be notified of upcoming episodes be sure to subscribe and follow the show on this app right now. Also don't forget to rate and review the show because that just feels nice. Thank you.