Last year, around the same time, I first wrote about Bulls**t – Bulls**t is when we have a complete disregard for the truth.
Today’s newsletter is an easy, quick read on 7 shades of bulls**t I love to hate – a warmup for my inert writing muscles. A warm-up that I hope will get me started again on a diet of regular writing.
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1. Holding back
A master is going on a long journey and he wants to test the business acumen of his servants in his absence. So he gives some coins to each and declares that the one who generates the highest ROI will become his most trusted; and over time, will be rewarded with more responsibilities.
Two invest theirs and double the money.
The third buries his coin in the ground “to keep it safe for later.” His master calls him lazy and kicks him out.
— The Parable of Talents
Not giving our work the best stuff we’ve got and saving our talents for later is like leaving the rope slack in a tug-of-war.
On the contrary, if we give our best each time, even though we might fail, at least we would earn confidence from testing our limits.
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2. Life on repeat
In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors is forced to live the same day on repeat.
He’s trapped inside an evil time machine that only he can unlock; by changing his ways. Only when he starts to genuinely become a better human, does the endless time loop break.
—Groundhog Day Movie
If we repeat the same experiences year after year, it’s like we’ve rearranged furniture and told ourselves that we’ve moved homes.
Familiarity feels comfortable. But familiarity also keeps us standing in the same place… over decades.
Growth only comes from tackling a variety of challenges – new people, new situations, new economic cycles. If we are not making ourselves uncomfortable, we are not growing.
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3. Crossing the net
When Duryodhana visits the Mayavi palace (palace of illusions) that the Pandavas have built, he mistakes a crystal floor for water and lifts his dhoti. Then he mistakes a pond for a crystal floor and falls in. Draupadi laughs.
He assumes she’s looking down on him because the Pandavas are now wealthy.
That invented humiliation seeded the Mahabharat war.
—The Mahabaharata
When we assume we know the intent behind other people’s behaviour, it’s as if we cross the net in a tennis match and hit the ball from both sides.
Neither side wins, and it does not make for a very interesting match.
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4. Busyness
Jesus visits two sisters. Martha and Mary.
Martha rushes around – cooking, cleaning, serving, organizing. She’s visibly busy, visibly stressed, visibly important. Mary on the other hand, just sits at Jesus’s feet and listens.
Martha explodes, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work alone? Tell her to help me!”
Jesus replies: “Martha, you are worried and upset about many things. But only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better.
—Luke 10:38–42
When we fill our calendars to the brim, we believe we are important. Indispensable even.
Busyness works like blinders. It keeps us from tackling the real stuff. The important, painful to do, ambiguous stuff that we tend to procrastinate through busyness.
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5. Ignoring the fundamentals
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe, the horse was lost.
For want of a horse, the rider was lost.
For want of a rider, the battle was lost.
For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
—For want of a nail (proverb)
Being late.
Badly written cold emails.
Looking shabby.
Ghosting people.
Not researching people before meetings.
Getting the easy stuff right is…easy… but we overlook it. And this costs us way more than the effort it would have taken to get it right in the first place.
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6. Hiring consultants and then not listening to them
Apollo blessed Cassandrathat she could see the future. But he also cursed her, that no one would believe her prophesies!
So when she tried to stop the Trojans from bringing the giant wooden horse sent by the Greeks inside, they ignored her.
—Cassandra and the Trojan Horse
We hire experts, and then we ignore their advice.
Worse, when we tell them how to do their job.
But the worst of all is the client who says, “We knew this already”, or “We’ve done this before, it’ll never work”.
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7. Ordering in food and pretending you cooked it
A jay found some peacock feathers on the ground. He stuck them in his tail and started hanging with peacocks.
At first, no one noticed. Then one smart peacock realized they had an imposter amongst them. They angrily plucked out all his feathers – borrowed and natural.
Humiliated and bald, he returned to his flock. But they rejected him too.
He ended up alone and starving. Not good enough to be a peacock, and too good to be a Jay.
—The Jay and the Peacock (Aesop)
When we take other people’s ideas and pass them on as our own (with no attribution), it is exactly like ordering in food and pretending you cooked it.
Both are forms of plagiarism, but somehow, we frown upon the latter and engage in the former without even thinking about it.
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What’s common?
These 7 kinds of bulls**t result from gaps.
The awareness gap between who we pretend to be and who we really are.
The perception gap between how we think we come across and how people perceive us.
The courage gap between imagining what’s possible and making it happen.
The mastery gap between aiming for mediocre and then not even reaching there.
These gaps are born when we stop listening to our inner voice.
Much like an elephant that grows up tethered to a stake, and so never tests its strength against the flimsy, frayed piece of rope tying it down, we live with this bulls**t in our own heads that silently and unknowingly crubs our potential
I invite you to identify your bulls**t patterns, cleanse, and reset as you welcome 2026.
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