I STARVED MY CRITICS OF ATTENTION

I STARVED MY CRITICS OF ATTENTION explores what happens when you stop trying to answer every critic and start answering only to your purpose. You get your life back—your time, attention, energy, peace, focus and future. In this deeply personal book, Dr. Abhishek Gilara shares a simple but powerful realisation that came during one unusually peaceful Friday: the world had not become quieter; he had simply stopped listening to what did not deserve his attention. As visible growth came, so did opinions. Some admired his discipline, while others questioned his unconventional routine, continuous learning, intense work, health-conscious lifestyle and refusal to live according to what others considered normal. Instead of spending his life defending every choice, he chose a different response: keep working, keep learning, keep building, keep growing. Through five deeply personal chapters, the book explores why attention is one of our most valuable assets, why criticism must be separated from useful feedback, why visible success often hides years of invisible preparation, and why the strongest response to doubt is often not an argument, but consistency. Why give hours of your life to someone who spent only seconds criticising you? Not every opinion deserves a reply. Not every critic deserves your attention. Not every misunderstanding needs correction. Not every comparison deserves participation. And not every person needs to understand your journey for you to continue walking it. This is not a book about becoming deaf to criticism; it is about becoming wise enough to know what deserves listening to. Take the lesson. Correct yourself where required. Thank those who genuinely help you improve. Then leave the noise behind. Every minute spent unnecessarily defending yourself is a minute that could have been invested in your health, family, work, knowledge, character, spirituality and purpose. People may see your success and call it overnight. They may see the bamboo, but they never saw the roots—and that is all right. You do not need to explain the roots. You only need to keep growing them. Ultimately, you have a choice: feed the critic or feed the purpose; feed comparison or feed growth; feed anger or feed peace; feed the need to prove or feed the person you are capable of becoming. The one you feed will grow. Perhaps the greatest answer you can ever give your critics is not another sentence—it is a better life. Let your discipline answer. Let your consistency answer. Let your character answer. Let your peace answer. Let your growth answer. And if nothing needs to be answered at all—let silence answer. My growth speaks to them, not I.