The best hack to be peaceful

In the last week of 2020, I removed the email app from my phone.

Little had I expected, my screen time went down drastically.

So, going to continue that in 2021 as well. Even if there is an extreme news of me making it to the best seller list, I’ll be able to enjoy it when I am peacefully sitting in a place to read that email. Quick notifications aren’t a great place to celebrate.

Maybe will try that will WhatsApp soon:)

Thanksgiving is all about…

Thanksgiving is all about…

• Being grateful to your farmers, because without them, even pizza wasn’t possible.

• Being grateful for the electricity, otherwise how would geyser operate?

• A thousand more things tbh, but today, let’s stop with the fact that we have almost survived 2020 stronger and better.

What else could thanksgiving be about?

7 great things 2020 gave us

2020 is a blessing, if we see it!

While most of us have already named 2020 as the worst year ever, there are some incredible gifts that 2020 brought with it – something that we could have come into our lives had the pandemic didn’t occur.

Thus, 2020 in all its rights, is the year of these life lessons:

  1. It was never the lack of time: It is always about whether you really want the change, or whether you really want to cling to the way you were before. 
    Change is hard. And with so much time on our hands due to lockdown and work from home, we realized time was never the issue. It was all about making the choice. After all, how can we expect anyone to give us their time if we do not have time for ourselves?

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  1. How we were without pandemic was reflected in how we were with pandemic.If we look closely at the behaviours of people we admire – be it online or offline – their lifestyle, approach to life situations and happiness remained unaffected despite such major changes the world over. And if you see people around you that were suffering or in pain during the pandemic, they were suffering even before. This isn’t judgement, this is a reflection that the outer situations do not determine who we are or what we become.
  2. Meditation is a necessity: Since the response to external events is always dependent on our inner thoughts, meditation is not something to take up, it is something to imbibe in our lifestyles. Even five minutes between two tasks, 5 times a day works wonders. If you haven’t tried it, you have missed out on abundance of peace within you.
  3. Fitness isn’t just a hobby:I read a story of a 40 year old daughter, taking care of her Covid-stricken father. Her husband was out of city and her mother had passed away, so she, along with her father’s full-time aid started living in a room next to his. After some days, the help who was there to help also developed Covid symptoms. Meanwhile, the husband had returned, so they both started taking care. However, very soon the husband was also Covid positive. So she was there taking care of her father alone. Throughout that period of taking care of him, she was healthy and unaffected. Reason? She has been taking care of her fitness as well as diet. It is as magical as parents’ love, we don’t see it unless we see the absence of it in people around us.
  4. We have the power to heal others. However, how will we able to extend a hand if our own is fractured? Tell me in the comment section.
  1. Don’t delay giving love.You may never know the person may not be with you tomorrow
  2. It all begins and ends with only one person: YOU. No one, absolutely no one has the right to enter your space of mind if you have decided to make yourself stronger – not even family, not your colleagues, not your friends – no one. I understand it is easier said than done. However, my mental health issues also surfaced during this pandemic and made me realize the importance of being the master of my mind, instead of letting it control me. It takes efforts, but what’s a good thing without making the efforts?

Isn’t it?

Last one?

Rest assured, you won’t ever know what and when is going to be your last one.

Today, being the last day of the year, a lot of people are thinking of what the last year did to them, reviewing it, etc.

What if, we treated each day with the urgency of the last day.

Some of the benefits that are going to accrue:

1. You will stop hanging around with people like whom you don’t want to look like.

2. You will be more kinder towards your work.

3. You will stop procrastinating on the thing you need to do the most.

Last one?

Well, you will never know the last one for you.

Before the New Year begins…

We all are talking about what 2019 taught us, yours truly being one of them.

Though that’s all great, I respectfully urge you to think over, what’s something you want to master in 2020.

Not a resolution.

Not a goal either.

Something that’s a part of your identity as much as perhaps your cellphone is.

And when you’ve decided, don’t wait for 2020 to teach it to you by December end.

Instead, be someone who teaches their awesomeness to the world as and when they learn it, something that’s independent of clock of time.

Why is it important?

Because the time needs to know, you’re the Master, not the other way round.

2019 – Life Lessons

How can we wrap up 2019 without sharing the wonderful life lessons this year brought along? Here we go, hope you enjoy reading them, as much as I did, writing:

  1. If you sit and eat (without phone), and chew well, your quantity of food reduces to less than half.
  2. Walk up to random people you see daily (in the gym, in your workspace, in the park) and give them a word of appreciation. You don’t know how what problem they might be going through.
  3. Everything you enjoy and every single person you enjoy with are going to come to an end. This is not negativity, rather a reason, to be internally fulfilled.
  4. Working out with a personal trainer will give you rewards no self-gymming could give. You will learn the specifics of working with a pro only when you treat your body like a pro-temple, to run your life.
  5. Listen to the stories people tell, even if you aren’t interested. You giving away your five or fifteen minutes may reduce their burden they’ve been carrying for perhaps fifteen years.
  6. Badmouthing never helps. No matter how truthful it is.
  7. Your parents don’t post an IG story on your birthday. Most likely, they aren’t even there on Instagram. Yet no one loves you like they do. Don’t equate social media validation with love.
  8. The sure shot way to failure is to mimic influencers, versus learning from them.
  9. There are going to be times when you’re going to lose faith in some relationships that matter the most to you. In such times, just remember: “your heart is a place for God to reside in. How can God’s home hold dirt against someone whom you love so much?” When you start operating from this consciousness, you automatically start having empathy for that loved one versus expecting them to have sympathy for you.
  10. You always know the answer in your heart. Be clear and polite enough to say a no when you don’t mean otherwise.
  11. When you push yourself, you get results you thought were out of reach. In the start of the year I forced myself to think I don’t have time for 10K steps a day, and guess what, didn’t achieve that target on most days. In December 2019 when I started getting serious about taking in at least 10K steps, it somehow started happening automatically. Daily!
  12. It’s okay to fail. At least you weren’t focused on checking in what others were doing wrong.
  13. “Speak your truth, even when your voice shakes,” says Robin Sharma. 200% true.
  14. If your intentions are pure, you can melt stones to water. Intentions are the real power.
  15. You are always meditating. Even when you’re thinking “nothing good happens with me, I’m no good, why am I being treated like this, etc.,” those are also the times you are reiterating a pattern to yourself. What gets repeated, gets reprogrammed.
  16. Content creation is the king. I never felt this way ever before than 2019, and when you are strategic in creating contextual content and distributing it, your brand grows 100X over a period of time you won’t even realise. (PS: Even if you are in a job with no intentions of getting famous, having a brand presence for yourself is like the swoosh of Nike – the brand itself gets everything else done.)
  17. Your parents love you, even if their words say otherwise. Tell them, you do them, too.
  18. If you have the ability to enjoy a family lunch without bringing in the phone, you are one of the richest people on the planet.
  19. Don’t think your problems are too hard. Everyone else’s problems are hard as well. Learn to dance with them versus via them.
  20. Working on yourself, and being the “lit” lighthouse, lights up 100s of people. People are already carrying a storehouse of dull lull with them. If your presence lights people up even for the three second stride on the corridor, you are creating miracles beyond trillions!

Those were some of mine, easy yet the ones that will make 2020 better.

Want to know some of the business and career lessons 2019 brought along? Check them out here.