Contrarian Wisdom Quotes

“No, Pain No Gain is Not Always True.

Whenever we tend to go through painful experiences in life, we often keep pushing on because of the age-old advice we have been given, which is “No Pain, No Gain,” That advice is sometimes true, but many times, following it could be the worst thing you could do.
When you are in the gym, soreness is good. A burning sensation of blood filling up the muscle is good when you are lifting.
But if you rip out a muscle or tear it and have excruciating pain, you are going to mess things up. If you have angina or chest pain, you need to stop or you might have a heart attack.
The same is true in business and career, just because you working very hard and killing yourself does not mean that will give you the best results”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Long term goals often make you complacent. If you want to be a billionaire in twenty years and you are broke in five years, you will probably think, hey at least I still have fifteen years!

I once met a guy who wanted to be a screenwriter. I asked him by when he wanted to make his mark. He said, he wanted to be a leading screenwriter maybe after 20 years. I asked him, “Don’t you think that’s kind of way too vague? He said, “No, time is unlimited anyway.”

Anyone with common sense knows that time is not unlimited. Maybe time is unlimited in a cosmic sense but not in the life of a human. This kind of vagueness and extremely long-term goal setting was only setting him up for complacence.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“You may plan to represent your country at the Olympics but what do you do when you don’t even make it to your high school team? Or have to let go of that dream because of an injury?

With short term objectives, you can be more adaptable. If you achieve it within the next one year, you can decide upon what to do next or whether you want to go higher. If you do not achieve it in the next one year, you can decide upon what changes you need to make much more quickly or to make a complete switch while you still have time.

In simple terms, if you have taken a wrong path to your destination, it is better to realize that after one mile, rather than heading 100 miles in the wrong direction and then getting lost in wilderness.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“Most of us have been taught about the importance of planning and goal setting in order to achieve whatever we want out of life. After all, unless you know where you are going, how will you end up at your destination?

Goal setting has been shown to be incredibly useful when it comes to an organizational level as well. Man reaching the moon and various other progresses that we have seen in the 20th and 21st century are all results of goal setting.

There is one major problem with long term goal setting though. You can’t really plan life when it concerns a single individual. John F. Kennedy, the person who set the goal for Mankind to reach the moon, himself never lived to see that day.”
― Anubhav Srivastava, UnLearn: A Practical Guide to Business and Life

“If you don't understand what the professor is saying, don't dismiss the possibility that he might be wrong.”
― Paul A. Volcker, Changing Fortunes: The World's Money and the Threat to American Leadership

“Once a majority of players adopts a heretofore contrarian position, the minority view becomes the widely held perspective.”
― David Swensen