Nishtha Gehija

This morning, as I was walking from my spiritual class back to home, a bike ran past me.

On the pillion seat was seated a 4/5 year old school kid, who randomly looked back.

And I waved to him with a smile.

The kid was stunned for half a second, and then he waved back.

He then turned his face ahead, and looked back one more time. I waved again with a smile, he responded with greater smile, till the time he was back to facing forward.

This happened one more time, until the motorcycle reached a T-point and vanished.

A part of me believes that the kid is going to be happier and a little more confident today, because someone made him feel seen, instead of being self-focused.

All the self-assured people I know have exactly this in common: they make themselves feel seen. Either they are given this from their family, or they give this to themselves in the lack of it.

It’s the little things that no one sees, are usually the biggest things.

And I usually do not post about my “achievements” online these days, but to make a kid happy and be their trusted ally for “waving”, is equivalent to getting a sticker from them 🙂

There is an unfair advantage to a persona that does not cry on the internet.

Does not mean life gets easy for them.

Simply means they use their life problems, learn from them, and later share a success story out of them.

There is massive credibility in being the person who is never upset, all set.

I go for an evening walk daily.

The weekly output in a normal week comes down to the following:

• 2-3 days of the week I have far exceeded what my set number of steps for the day is.
• 2-3 days I just get done with the set criteria.
• And once or twice a week I’d go slightly below the average.

I obviously do not like the last part but that doesn’t shield the truth from you.

Except, this week I don’t want to walk but I force myself to walk just the bare minimum for the average steps.

It isn’t the best of weeks, but I am becoming the kind of person who walks every day.

Sometimes all you need is the bare minimum to remind yourself of who you are and set your self-image.

Regression from the mean is sometimes return to what it truly means.

• Responding to people’s memes (if only you like them and they don’t spam you)
• Asking “if they had lunch” if you are in a post-meeting lunch
• Being accomodative enough to have a timeline of Monday for a work conversation that happens on Thursday.

A lot of busyness and bitterness towards humans pops up because we do not pause to lean into the human we already are.

Give yourself some time, space and nothingness.

Be okay with being free.

Know that you have your spark and you can reignite it anytime it is unable to stay inside. But for now, it is okay to stop putting timelines on yourself for a while.

Slowing down helps you eventually get faster and also go longer.

We are going to have differing opinions from everyone at some point of time.

What we can still offer them is grace.

Disagree with grace.
Do not let your anger control you.
Let your curiosity guide you.
Focus more on getting to the right solution, not trying to prove yourself right.
Think of a win-win.
Only the humble survive.
You can win any disagreement with love.
Read Robert Greene and Chris Voss.

Before you take a step forward, leave your childhood patterns at the back door.

If someone is sharing a problem with you looking for a solution, it is certainly your problem too, even if it is none of your business.

Also, if it is not your problem and you use the exact same sentence, there is a bigger problem to be solved than the real problem itself.

When I look back at my life, I have been blessed to achieve some good degree of success, right from the early start.

Yes, there have been failures too (who does not have them), but the graph of what I have received has been fortunately tilted towards me.

Yet I believe everyone’s success has a lot of backstage events that do not come to light.

One of my biggest failures is no one in my family celebrates me. Forget celebrating, there is no acknowledgement even. If there is a tiny teeny bit of awareness to them about what I achieved, it gets washed off in “you are too young, too unaware, too immature, and we want to warn you against this cruel world.” The only result of this is that when the world is actually cruel to me, I do not tell them ever.

Everyone is so caught up all the time in their problems, that anyone who lives their life without narrating their problems is an alien, a perpetual non-existent being for them. It vanishes a tiny femtometres of my smile each time, when they do not realise the battles I fight to smile a little before them, so that there could be some sort of happiness in their lives.

I understand that sometimes life is a little partial in awarding its problems, but how does it get down to not celebrating your own family? I guess life awards its problems too, in the uniquest ways.

People often worry about the death of their immediate family. They rightly label it as their biggest fear. But no one talks about the hundreds of thousands of deaths of family that happen while the family is still alive.

And while you and I cannot do anything about it, if ever life gives you a chance to celebrate your family or friends or close ones or anyone else, may you realise how big of a success you are, to truly celebrate someone else’s success.

Meanwhile, I try to erase the memory of someone in my family stowing away my box of my new iPhone (when I had bought it 2+ years ago) when I showed it to them with joy, because they could not afford it back then.

You never know how one irrational decision of yours can have a snowball effect of years of misery for someone else.

You never know how someone else loved you so much (the last four words stem out of me as I read All Too Well lyrics of Taylor Swift yesterday) that they sort of trusted you with ever lie you said, ever promise that was fake, every action that had no intention.

You never know how many people in your family, especially those younger than you end up copying you, and then unconsciously become unkind to the world and themselves.

Kindness is the easiest thing to do, because it is our inherent nature. We crave for it when we don’t get it. Yet kindness is the hardest thing to do, because it does not get rewarded often and easily. Mostly it doesn’t even get acknowledged. But if you are not kind, who art thou?

Cranky
Dismissive
Unempathetic
Forgetful
Disturbing words/actions/both

Careful
Kind
Calmer
Cheerful
Nice human being

When we say “in your element” for you, what defines you is who you really are.

Is it a good thing for everyone around you that you are “in your element”, or they are glad you aren’t?

On days you are overwhelmed or there is too much manager’s schedule, too little of a maker’s schedule, how to cope?

One useful strategy I have come to understand is do one small thing to move the needle forward.

Could not be 4 hours of deep work that day, but could we do 4 minutes of deep work that day?

One of my favourite lines from James Clear is “every action you do is a vote for the person you wish to become.”

So when you do those 4 negligible minutes of work on super busy days, you are telling yourself that you do meaningful work each day.

And you never go against your self-image.

A high profile woman I know recently recommended that I must watch the Rajkumari show of Nayab Midha.

She knows me for several years, is well travelled and out of all countries she has visited, she only told me Japan is something I would love. And that’s right, there is this special connection (not yearning) I feel towards that country, that I have never felt for anything else, even though I haven’t visited the place.

With that trust, I looked up the next show of Nayab. I also sent it to someone in my family who is a big fan. She coincidentally happens to be in Delhi on that day, so I tried my best to convince her.

But life has other plans even when something is visibly all aligned, and she refused to join in.

Here comes the interesting part: In my mind, I did not sit and overanalyse their thought process. I did not tell myself anything about what they could have, should have, would have. I also did not do a quiet PhD of their patterns, which is usually my default for life so far. The best part is none of this has got anything to do with me going alone (I love being alone), it has all to do with me simply thinking where I didn’t need to.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a sign of growth.

Forget overanalysing, I did not even under-analyse.

I do not have tips on how to reach there, but when you do, nothing is more liberating.

A lot of us try to attribute our miseries to childhood experiences.

Something our parents did or did not do, and a lot of it comes down to affecting our behaviours and choices as adults.

I have been reflecting on this for years, and I have concluded that at some point all people will face tribulations of life, even if their childhood was a fairytale sans trauma.

(On a side note, though we do not get to control what happened to us as kids, we get to make different choices, undo patterns and redo self confidence as adults.)

Yet life will come and question us over and over again. Regardless of what was our past.

This means our present has power.

This means that even though miseries are always going to knock the door of our life, our presence has power too.

You are a different person today. You can choose to not be a miserable person today.

Learn the lesson.

Figure the next right step.

No one gained a thing or two by dwelling on the past or hoping for it to be different.

Keep moving forward. Rinse and repeat.

But over a period of time, if you continue believing a lie, it becomes a self-fulfilling truth.

It all begins in the mind. And ends in the mind.

The first tier is for drizzle kinda rain.

The third tier is when it is raining cats and dogs.

It is the second tier where you have to make the decision whether to use it or to switch to first one (if it is not too harsh of a rain).

Funnily enough, my middle class mentality makes me think that I should use the first tier, even when the rain calls for the second tier.

The battle of the first and the second goes on for a while, until it is finally time to go on to the second tier. Then too, each time the wiper moves fast, you undo a bit of your “you deserve less” mindset.

It amazes me that a car wiper also comes with its lessons on our deep grained psychology.

Boys that come from good families.

Boys that go on to have good education.

Boys that apparently their family is proud of.

These are the boys that often go on to damage good girls.

Not perhaps with the intent of damaging them.

But with just the thought of having fun, a side thing, someone to talk to, someone to message, someone to vent out their frustration on, someone to speak to without ever listening to, someone where they just take and take and never give.

Boys that believe that with money and making a few calls to the girl (of course when they are bored) they have earned the right to do anything to this girl’s mental health, emotions and her life. Because hey, according to them, this girl just doesn’t exist. This girl is just a girl who is his “friend”, because you cannot call a less-decent noun to an educated girl.

It is not that these boys intend to damage these girls. But what else do we name this act of selfishness done to cure one’s loneliness temporarily, while permanently damaging the other person?

To do anything wrong to any human being, especially when they trust you is the biggest form of hollowness, selfishness and narcissism. All of which is masked under kindness. And the phone calls this boy makes (always at his own convenience).

Girls, please know that:

1. You are allowed to say no. NO. NO. NO. TEN MORE, THEN THOUSAND MORE TIMES NO.
2. Boys have this habit of saying things to girls to invoke any emotions from them. It is the girl’s responsibility to have an internal compass so strong that it is impossible to fall prey to these words. A kind girl is kind to herself first. If kindness to others means giving up your inner compass, that is not kindness.
3. You might lose a “friend” but you will thank yourself forever. Even after years. Even after DECADES.
4. A boy that respects you will never make you question yourself and your existence.
5. Any relationship, friendship, or even in family — having differing opinions and disagreements is fine. But to morally kill a human being by calling them their friend but using them for your convenience is something not even animals do.

I feel a strange longing, a need to belong there. But the biggest and the best learning of me going to retreats over the years is that you cannot “pay” your way into going there anytime.

You go there only for 4-5 days when a retreat comes up, learn and meditate as much as you can, and come back and transform your life. Our goal, then, is to make our lives so enriched that our transformed life helps others.

I call it the joy of longing your home, away from home.

We should try to get our family and friends rid of it.

Even if they do it out of love, a part of me believes there is an absolute pressure to perform, to make the other person like what you did for them.

I have never done it for anyone else, so forgive me for being so naive, if I am one.

But once-a-year surprises are honestly scary. What if whenever we talk to that friend or family, we really listen and care? What if we are a bit kinder in our messages to them? What if we stop talking about ourselves a lot often and be curious about them?

Isn’t all this better than a once-a-year surprise?

Loving people and making them feel good isn’t wrong.
Just that if you do it on one special day, the weight of it stays on so long that we forget the tiny things of the other 364 days.
Loving people and making them feel good should be our year long responsibility (and joy) for them.

Learn from them.

Let them make you terrific.

Do not waste your pristine present and fruitful future for a pathless and painful past.