In the past six months, I’ve listened to 100s of hours of podcasts on topics ranging from philosophy, spirituality, finance, investing among others and here’s a compilation of the most profound lessons. These are from famous people we already know and love and I have thrown in some from friends and family. I’ve tried to restrict this to lessons that are not oft-repeated though some classics were too hard to skip. Hope you find some that are insightful and new to you!

Rajender Malla

  • Smile often; count your blessings; be kind

Dr. Veena Ganju Malla

  • Take things as they come; control your senses or they control you

Buddha

  • All things that compound come to an end

Jim Otar

  • Stay out of debt unless for the first home or education

David Goggins

  • Success isn’t always fun
  • Do uncomfortable things as often as possible
  • You’re not finished when you’re tired, you’re finished when you’re done

Jayaprakash S

  • Pain of discipline is the price of happiness
  • Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy

Warren Buffett

  • In order to finish first, you must first finish
  • Stay within your circle of competence
  • It’s not greed that drives the world, it is envy

Aswath Damodaran

  • Never invest to get rich, invest to preserve and grow your capital

Jack Bogle

  • Buy the index and don’t look at it for 50 years, don’t even peek

Saket Kumar

  • Twitter is a good product but not a great business

Arunim Samat

  • Differentiate between pain due to physical damage and pain due to mental fatigue
  • Nirvana is an illusion, we are already free
  • We can’t make radical jumps, make incremental changes

Kritarth Anand

  • Suno sabki, karo khudki
  • Set intention before initiating anything.

Osho

  • There are two ways, and try to understand that these are the only ways. One way is to go out and prove that you are somebody; the other way is to go in and realize that you are nobody.

Krishna

  • Perform every karma as an offering to me, and I will take care of your needs
  • You are not a human seeking a spiritual experience, you are a spirit living a human experience
  • Tamas « Rajas « Satvik « Satvik++

Chamath Palihapitiya

  • Get the fucking money

Swami Vivekananda

  • A fool can’t get angry, a wise person doesn’t get angry

Mohnish Pabrai

  • Be a cloner, clone the very best. Especially when no one else is.

Oscar Wilde

  • A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing
  • If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy?
  • Impatience with actions, patience with results

Naseem Taleb

  • Don’t blow up

Steve Jobs

  • You can’t connect the dots looking ahead

Peter Lynch

  • More money is lost anticipating a downturn than an actual downturn

Miscellaneous

  • Things don’t get easier, but you get more capable of doing them
  • In every walk with nature, one always receives far more than one seeks
  • It ain’t the things we don’t know that hurt us, but the things that we are sure of that just ain’t so
  • Doubt is an unpleasant state of mind but certainty is absurd
  • A recession is when your neighbor loses her job. A depression is when you lose your job.
  • Don’t define yourself as a noun, but as a verb which characterizes the changes
  • If wealth is lost, nothing is lost. If health is lost, something is lost. If character is lost, everything is lost.
  • Happiness in modern life is building up of tension (creating desire) and then releasing it (fulfilling desire)
  • We have two lives and the second starts when we realize we only have one
  • Two sources of disappointment: not getting what you want, and getting what you want
  • When you give someone your attention, you give them your love ♥️
  • P = NP? is the question “is there an advantage in getting lucky?”
  • Samsara is a buffet, where you have lots of what you want, and not enough of what you need
  • For the wise, emotions are but lines drawn on flowing water
  • Concentration builds wealth, diversification preserves it
  • Science advances one funeral at a time
  • The solution to your problem is to see who has it
  • People cheat on each other in a hundred different ways: indifference, emotional neglect, contempt, lack of respect, years of refusal of intimacy
  • Note the difference between hunger and craving
  • Don’t eat food based on how much you like it, eat food based on how much it likes you
  • The empty can makes the most noise
  • The trees with the most fruits bow down the most
  • The right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy
  • Self-care is not having a relationship with people committed to misunderstanding you
  • You are not required to rebuild a relationship with people you have forgiven
  • Stop feeling bad for outgrowing people who had the chance to grow with you
  • Financial planning is less planning your finances, more financing your plans
  • Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.

If you made it this far, here’s a little song I wrote about my interpretation of non-duality (Advaita). The background music is from the song April by Tesseract.

A few friends and I started a podcast recently, please check it out!