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By:

Asha Tripathi

14 April 2025 at 1:35:28 pm

Stop Comparing, Start Growing

Success does not grow in comparison; it grows in focus. Over the years, women have made significant strides in every sphere of life. From managing homes to leading organisations, from nurturing families to building successful careers, women have proved that strength and resilience are deeply rooted in their nature. Financial independence has become a significant milestone for many women today, bringing with it confidence, dignity, and the freedom to shape one’s own destiny. However, along...

Stop Comparing, Start Growing

Success does not grow in comparison; it grows in focus. Over the years, women have made significant strides in every sphere of life. From managing homes to leading organisations, from nurturing families to building successful careers, women have proved that strength and resilience are deeply rooted in their nature. Financial independence has become a significant milestone for many women today, bringing with it confidence, dignity, and the freedom to shape one’s own destiny. However, along with growth has come another silent challenge — the tendency to constantly observe, compare, and sometimes even compete with the journeys of others. But a crucial question arises: Is it necessary to track the growth of others in order to grow ourselves? From my personal experience of more than two decades as an entrepreneur, I have realised something very powerful — true growth begins the moment we stop looking sideways and start looking within. A Small Beginning I had a flourishing career of teaching abroad, but when I restarted my career after moving back to India, my beginning was extremely small. My very first assignment was a simple home tuition for a single student, and the amount I earned was meagre. There was nothing glamorous about it. No recognition, no large batches, no big earnings. Just one student and one opportunity. But instead of worrying about how others were doing, how many students they had, or how much they were earning, I made a conscious decision—my only focus would be on improving myself. I focused on teaching better, preparing better, and becoming more disciplined and consistent. And slowly, without even realising it, things began to grow. One student became two, two became a small group, and gradually, over the years, the work expanded beyond what I had initially imagined. Looking back today, I can confidently say that the growth did not happen because I competed with others. It happened because I competed with myself yesterday. Comparison Creates Noise When we keep watching others' journeys too closely, we unknowingly divert our own energy. Comparison creates unnecessary noise in our minds. It brings doubts, insecurities, and sometimes even negativity. Instead of walking our own path with clarity, we start questioning our speed, our direction, and our worth. True success grows through focus, not comparison. Every woman has her own story, her own pace, and her own struggles that others may never see. The path of one person can never be identical to another's. So comparing journeys is like comparing two different rivers flowing towards the same ocean — each with its own route, its own curves, and its own rhythm. As women, we already carry many responsibilities. We balance emotions, relationships, work, and society's expectations. In such a life, the last thing we need is the burden of comparison with one another. Instead, what we truly need is support for each other. When women encourage women, something extraordinary happens. Confidence grows. Opportunities multiply. Strength becomes collective rather than individual. There is enough space in the world for every woman to create her own identity. Each of us can build our own niche without stepping on someone else's path. Choose Encouragement Envy weakens us, but encouragement empowers us. Rather than questioning how someone else is progressing, we can ask a more meaningful question: "How can I grow a little better than I was yesterday?" Lift As You Rise Today, after twenty years of experience, the most valuable lesson I have learned is simple yet profound — focus on your own work with honesty and dedication, and success will quietly follow you. We, women, are capable, resilient, and creative. We do not need to pull each other down or compete in unhealthy ways. Instead, we can lift each other up while building our own dreams. Because when one woman rises, she does not rise alone. She inspires many others to believe that they can rise, too. And perhaps that is the most beautiful form of success. (The writer is a tutor based in Thane. Views personal.)

Opportunistic Embrace

Trump’s lavish welcome for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman lays bare a US–Saudi partnership driven by deals in billions of dollars and a blind eye to murder.

President Donald Trump meets Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump meets Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s return to Washington this week - his first since Jamal Khashoggi’s murder in 2018 - was choreographed with all the extravagance of a state visit. President Donald Trump welcomed him to the White House with military trimmings, smiles and a flourish of flags. It was, in every sense, a political theatre of indulgence as Saudi Arabia and the United States renewed an alliance rooted less in shared values than in a frank, transactional opportunism.


The Crown Prince arrived armed with eye-catching promises. Saudi investment in the United States, he announced, would jump from $600bn to nearly $1trn - an extraordinary pledge at a moment when America is hungry for foreign capital. The two sides are also preparing agreements spanning defence, nuclear energy and a high-profile purchase of US-made F-35 fighter jets. The White House under Trump’s second term is eager to present this as proof of revitalised American leadership and economic clout. Riyadh sees it as a way to expand influence in Washington while diversifying its own strategic dependencies.


But awkward moments ensued when reporters pressed the Crown Prince on the most sensitive scars in the relationship: the 9/11 attacks and the 2018 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. MBS insisted, as he has done for years, that Osama bin Laden, himself a Saudi national, intended the September 11th attacks to rupture US-Saudi relations, and that anyone questioning Riyadh’s commitment to counterterrorism was helping to fulfil bin Laden’s goal. The families of victims, furious at his presence in the Oval Office, were unmoved. America’s intelligence agencies, too, have been clear that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, and the kingdom’s export of extremist ideology in earlier decades created fertile ground for bin Laden’s rise.


On Khashoggi, the Crown Prince offered little beyond familiar denials. More extraordinary was Trump’s intervention. Sitting beside MBS, the president dismissed the CIA’s 2018 conclusion that the Crown Prince personally ordered the journalist’s murder. Khashoggi, Trump airily declared, had been “extremely controversial.” “Things happen,” he added, absolving his guest with a shrug that would have been unthinkable for any previous American president.


But the logic underpinning this performance was entirely consistent. For Trump, the opportunist salesman, the moral cost of overlooking a murder is outweighed by the prospect of lucrative business. Saudi Arabia already holds significant investments in the Trump family’s orbit, including the $2bn handed by Riyadh’s sovereign wealth fund to Jared Kushner’s private equity firm. A Trump Tower and a Trump Plaza are planned for Jeddah; two more projects are scheduled for Riyadh.


For MBS, the United States remains the indispensable security provider in the Gulf, the backbone of the Saudi military and the political guarantor Riyadh turns to in moments of regional crisis. By dangling vast investments and weapons deals before an American president keen to claim economic victories, MBS can demand concessions while signalling that Saudi Arabia has alternatives from Chinese investment to Russian coordination on oil markets.


The geopolitical context makes the embrace even more revealing. In the past, the United States has tolerated Saudi excesses from the oil embargo of 1973 to decades of Wahhabi proselytisation. The Middle East is again in flux: wars in Gaza and Yemen, shifting alignments in the Gulf and a global scramble for energy security. Washington needs stable partners as it focuses more of its attention on Asia. Riyadh wants strategic autonomy while still benefiting from America’s military umbrella. The result is a relationship in which both sides privately distrust each other, yet publicly cling to the fiction of strategic harmony.


The opportunism that sustains the US-Saudi alliance may be unseemly, but it offers flexibility in an unstable world. What neither side can admit openly is that this flexibility is precisely what makes the partnership both resilient and perpetually fragile - a bargain held together by a mutual willingness to look away when inconvenient truths intrude.

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