Tag: awareness

People

Does love die?

Love is like a plant, it is supposed to blossom.

In the initial years, it requires a lot of care to grow. If we are careful about that for at least a decade, it will automatically nurture itself later. Then it would become the strong tree, that gives shade and does not require much of nurturing.

But if we don’t nurture it in the start, it does wither. And slowly goes away.

Coming to the question: Does love die? Of course it does. When we don’t nurture the first few years with care and trust, be it in any relationship, nothing is left. If it is a relationship we cannot run away from, such as family, we learn to accept them – but there is hardly any connection. If there is a relationship that we can go away from – a partner, friend, business relationship – the best we could do for them is bless them!

Love, btw, begins with yourself. But that’s for another day.

Self Love

Five tips from tears

1. Think in questions.

2. Don’t send that email.

3. Surround yourself with the right books.

4. Workouts are therapy.

5. Dance, baby!

Knowing Yourself, Process

How transformation feels like

We don’t go from eating junk to eating healthy.
We go from finding solace in food to finding solace in inner powers.

We don’t transform from an angry teenager to a calm one easily.
We go from using energy on others to using it on our own senses.

We don’t go from being fat to think.
We go to changing the stories in our head.

We don’t become a morning person one day all of a sudden.
We become one when we die in the morning despite working whole night.

It turns out, transformation does not mean having a change.
Transformation means using the old habit to become a new one.

Use the bad to become the good.

Knowing Yourself

The best thing of 2021

I recently conducted an AMA on Instagram about the best thing that had happened to people in 2021 so far.

The responses were surprising.

While I had expected people to say things like got a new job, promotion, etc., most responses went with:

1. Started prioritising myself.

2. Taking care of what I want.

3. Took up yoga to for myself.

4. Moved to a new city.

5. Learnt to live on my own.

And so on and so forth.

Loved it! When people take care of themselves, they are able to take care of others more. Which isn’t true vice versa.

Looking forward to having more of them and seeing people get more powerful.

Art and Creativity, Success

Creativity and infidelity

Creativity is a weird companion.

Exactly 24 hours back, I was bursting with ideas to write blogs on.

Right now, I don’t know what to write.

Seems like creativity has been infidel to me and left me. Except that isn’t. Because creativity is a process. If you show up, it always does.

If you are reading this blog post till here, you know that creativity has kept up. Because I kept my promise of writing this post.

Creativity is always loyal. If we are.

Self Love, Uncategorized

Pre-valentine post: Just quit!

I did not love myself at all, when I was in two toxic relationships:

  1. You’ll look good with this.
  2. Wear this, don’t wear this.
  3. Quit writing your blog.
  4. Quit preparing for CA.
  5. Just quit, just listen to me and I will love you.

I lol at myself how I was such a fool to call such instances “love”.

Anyway, those were idiotic steps on my part. But today I received a finalised video about a project that I’m working on. And life’s come a full circle!

Don’t know what would happen to this project, but I’m glad to have never quit and didn’t choose this kind of “love”.

If you have a choice between love and career, do they really love you if they don’t love your choice for your career?

PS: In the new project, I was looking exactly opposite of what these gentlemen wanted me to look like. Self love is super power! Happy Valentine’s Day peops! Hope you love yourself 🙂

Knowing Yourself, Life

It’s great that you’re not a laptop

My laptop turned ten this January. (Lol, looks like I’m talking about my kid. Haha, except that it is not my kid, I’ve just typed so much that it is just my therapist taking all the mental health issues outta me 😀 )

So, coming to the laptop.
It’s slow.
Can’t work on videos.
Since my work is primarily writing, we are still in a relationship.
But it takes time to download from and upload to the drive.
With too many tabs open, may even occassionally hang.
But it’s trying its best.

Here’s a fact: This laptop is a laptop. Which means it does not have a replaceable CPU. Which means it can only be replaced for a new one.

But here’s a bigger fact: You are not a laptop.
Your brain is not fixed.
You can change it.

Your body replaces itself almost every year.
You can change your body.

Your lifestyle isn’t fixed, no matter how trapped you are.
Your tiniest of changes can make the biggest of differences.

You are not a laptop.
Don’t live your life like one.

Knowing Yourself

Do you have any evidence to support this?

This was a random question by one of my smart school friends on one of my tweets.

It got me thinking.

Not to think of what to respond, rather to think of where we have landed ourselves.

We want evidences of thoughts we think intuitively.
We want to buy a car recommended by most people.
We want to wear the brand our boss wears because subconsciously it would make us look cool in front of him.
We want to send our kid to the school that promises best education, unmindful of the fact that the best schooling happens at home.
We want to…

All these are good wants. But that’s all they are. Wants.
They override the innate need that we all have: Needs.

One of our fundamental human needs is listening to our intuition. It will never have evidences. Nor does it want any. It is full by itself not having to want (or need) any validation.

Knowing Yourself, Process

Organ donation and our levels as humans

There’s a country where citizens become organ donors by default on attaining a certain age. It’s a law. They can choose to opt out if they want to, however, they will be in the last priority for consideration as organ recipients.

However, this is not possible in developing countries where there are fights on basic things like bank accounts or food and shelter.

There is nothing wrong or right. It is just the culture that pushes people to think certain way. It’s the reason why desis act like firangs in the countries of firangs. The culture gets it done from them.

This pretty much explains why we do what we do, and why is it impossible to change people without their prior choice or change of culture.

Someone who grew up in corporate culture does not know the nuances of starting up at all. Perhaps an eighteen year old knows more.
Someone who grew up in an Omkara apartment in Worli Mumbai won’t ever understand the nitty-gritties of arranging the basic things in most households.
Someone who meditates at dawn daily won’t love the culture of drinking till sunrise in Goa. They just aren’t that.

People aren’t wrong. They are just different. Simply due to changes in the people we are surrounded by.

While we cannot control whom we are surrounded by unless we make some drastic changes, we can always change whom we are surrounded by online.

Since humans spend a lot of time online, we have the choice to think like the people of the country where becoming an organ donor is mandatory.

We always have a choice.

Emotions

The silent anger

There’s a wonderful woman I know of, who is living her life for a great social cause. She’s been doing this for the last thirty years, started at the age of seventeen.

She doesn’t get angry.
Always works to uplift people.
Cooks great food for them.
Listens to their problems.
Offers solutions.

All epic. Super-commendable.

But I can often sense hidden anger within her. Because the people she serves don’t live up to her standards.

That’s sad.

Because no one is going to live their lives as we suggest them to be, no matter how much good that suggestion holds.
As a matter of fact, if we force them, they might grow even more resistant.

The key is acceptance. And that is the entire journey all about. Acceptance that we can only guide them and bless them, everyone takes their own sweet time to get to a place of change.

Till then, they need our blessings.

The silent anger causes greater resistance.
And loss of trust.

Documenting the Day, Life

Weekend lessons

Some quick lessons I learnt this week:

  1. Change is the only law of life. Don’t go by what someone said a month or six months ago. If they are positive, they’ll encourage you evolving. If they aren’t, then you don’t need to bother 🙂
  2. You will be judged, even when you have your finest intentions. The best thing you could do is still have those finest intentions because that is who you are!
  3. Being the bigger person and not taking credit for that is superpower!
  4. Just because everyone else in the team is submitting work late, don’t lower your standards and be the latecomer. Always be a day in advance. Your brand is built by what you do every day.
  5. Everyone is trying their best. Just because their best doesn’t match with your standards of worst, they need support. Not internal trolling from you.
  6. Twitter is the best way to improvise on your writing.
  7. Spending less time on WhatsApp and Instagram is the secret sauce to eternal happiness.
  8. Evening walks in the sun are therapeutic.
  9. People want the best for you, trust them! If they don’t, trust yourself!
  10. People will behave kiddish. Most don’t want to see that. So smile at them for who they are. And move on.
  11. Most of the times what we are crying for is NOT even happening! The best way to solve problems is through communication.
  12. Learning is the licence to happiness.
  13. You matter!
Jokwa, Life

I have finally arrived 😂

I have been creating content for more than five years now.

It was only yesterday that I realised that I have finally arrived. I wrote a post on LinkedIn that said:

“Changing WhatsApp DPs often is a sign of an unstable mind.”

Lo and behold, what trolling comments I got yesterday! My first troll series 🙂

And the best part is, there were bigger number of likes for that post. That is the nature of goodness. It is always in bigger numbers, just that it doesn’t need any evidence to back itself off.

On that note, if you don’t feel offended, let me ask you: How often do you change your WhatsApp DPS?

Family

Ladkiwaale aur ladkewaale

This week, my health insurance premium is due.

I had started receiving calls and emails from Policy Bazaar for long, to pay the premium. But I had decided to pay it just before the end date.

Yesterday they called up my father for the reminder, after understanding the fact that I never receive my calls. (His number was my secondary number.)

So in order for them to stop troubling him, I finally renewed the policy. Policy Bazaar website wasn’t able to facilitate the transaction, so I went directly to Max Bupa’s site and paid it.

However, today my father got a call again from Policy Bazaar, despite the fact that my documents from Max have already arrived.

I told my father that the premium had already been paid, he was receiving calls from the mediator while I had directly paid it to the insurance service provider. He seemed to quite not get it. To which I responded: “Think of it like ladkiwaale and ladkewaale having their conversations by themselves, and they decided to put the mediator aunty out of it.” Papa finally understood! 🙂

Simplicity has power, relatability and magic in it!

Career, Emotions, Family, Happiness, Knowing Yourself, Life, Success, Thoughts, Truth be told, Uncategorized

To those who have failed in CA exams…

19th January 2015.
The day I became a Chartered Accountant.
I still vividly remember the day.

We had just returned to Kota (my hometown) after an overnight train trip from Mumbai, after attending a family function there for three days. So the winter was a harsh reality from the pleasant zero winter of Mumbai to being back to Kota. Because of this train journey, I had taken a shower quite late, around 10-11 am.

The moment I came out, I saw a miss call from a fellow article at the firm I did my articleship from.

Oops, my heart started pounding.

As I called him back, he picked up the call and asked: “Kya hua?”

“Result aa gaya?” was my surprised response, to which he said yes.

My mom had gone to take shower and I was virtually alone at home. So I opened up the laptop, connected it to the slow BSNL router we had and checked the result.

452 out of 800, result: PASS. (*Top 100 scorers in India then)

Wow!

The day I will never forget!

Throughout the day I did not feel cold at all despite returning from Mumbai back to shivering winters of Kota. It was in the evening that I finally realised I should be feeling cold 🙂

My mom came out of shower and started crying a lot. A lot. She basically missed my Nanaji for whom I was a source of pride and who had passed away eleven months back. The day was something me and my parents had been waiting for, for years!

But this is the success story. That I cleared CA Final (both groups together) in the first attempt that too with very good marks.

Here is the back story: I failed in IPCC twice. As on date, given the number of failures we get to face, this doesn’t seem huge.
Back then it was. Especially for a class topper like me since childhood, who ended up with this major jolt for the first time in my life.

You know what, my Mom cried then as well, for how could such a thing happen to me? (Yes now I know that I was responsible, but I just couldn’t convince her to see that part. Maybe I didn’t want to see that either!)

But I did clear the IPCC exam eventually. One group at a time.

That is the word you need to remember my fellow CA students: eventually.

The world isn’t going to be smooth even if you clear all three stages in the first attempt with AIR 1. It’s true that social media is not going to have your pictures when you fail.
It’s true that your neighbours will probably stare at you when you’ll leave home for coaching classes.
It’s perhaps true that a friend who was not expected to clear is a CA today and you aren’t!

All this is real pain.
And it hurts, especially if you worked hard.

But there is one more thing that is real: Your grit. Your persistence. Your belief in your capability that no matter what, you will end up with the prefix CA before your name eventually.

Feel sad as hard as you want to. Clean your nose with your sweater that your friend likes who is a CA now. Look at yourself in the mirror and just be, it’s okay!

But when you are done, don’t waste a minute pondering about what was and what could be. Just focus on what you are going to do next.

Winning in life is less about numbers and more about your attitude.

For example, I’m not a cunning person and because of that I sometimes get walked over (sometimes by my hashtag friends), and that feels very bad. But then I tell myself that my systems and ethics are powerful, so I needn’t be scared. NEVER ever has been a place in my life that because of not being cunning, rather being a simple human being, I hadn’t won eventually. Things always turn out to be in the favour of the person who works hard with the rights systems and the right mindsets.

And if you are worried about number of attempts, yes I did get a bonus of 1L INR extra back in 2015-16 because of being a first attempt passout. But today, 5-6 years down the line, almost everyone is earning in the same income range. Time is a great leveller and a wonderful thing to forget.

So keep up your spirits high my fellow CA students, it is only a matter of time that you will become a member of the reputed ICAI. Till then, focus on building systems and attitudes that eventually and undoubtedly lead to success, instead of letting things happen.

PS: In case you are wondering if I used some systems while preparing for CA Final exams after failing in IPCC twice, of course I did! I won’t blabber them here because the purpose of this blog is not to show you how, the purpose is to show you what. If you need help with systems and processes while preparing for CA exams, drop me a note at ngehija454@gmail.com and I’d be happy to help you out.

PPS: It will happen, eventually!

People, Self Love

Ladies, we could do better!

One of my closest friend in school brought up this topic once. We were just seated in our bus after school, and were waiting for everyone else to come.

“Nishtha,” she said, “you know what, I am ashamed to admit it, however it’s true a woman is another woman’s biggest enemy.”

Years later, her words are making me reflect deeply these days.

We talk about gender inequality, equal rights for women at home, sharing of responsibilities at home, etc., and yes men do need to wake and shake themselves up, however a lot of women don’t feel they deserve the good that men are entitled to.

So, if you are someone (man or a woman) who believes in equality, start with not saying these five things to any woman you respect or would want to be respected.

It’ll make the world better for your daughters and sisters.

Happiness, Knowing Yourself

Immunity against relatives

My mom informed me this afternoon, that she will be going to visit a relative’s place in the evening.

I was like, sure.

In a moment I added, “You love yourself, right?”

“What’s up with you all of a sudden,” she quipped.

I said then since those relatives squeeze the energy out of you, can you watch one video of BK Shivani on YouTube before going and one after returning? Please?

She agreed to do so, however, I don’t know what would her mindset look like.

I feel sad for her. Just like a Mom would feel sad for her kid going into bad company yet finding it difficult for her to convince him not to go.

Good wisdom is like immunity. We don’t realise its importance unless a pandemic arrives and doesn’t touch us despite hanging around Covid patients, because we had inner immunity. To make it last forever, we need to keep building it daily.

Life

Comma, Full stop or question mark?

When we use a comma, the latter part of the sentence elaborates the former.

In case of an exclamation, there is surprise.

In case of question mark, there is dissatisfaction.

A full stop is the fullest way of expression. Whatever has happened, has happened. Be easy and bring a full stop to it. (Because other ways of comma, exclamation and question mark never generated a response anyway.)

Why not try a full stop now?

Try a full stop.

Life

Everything will be alright

The days I workout the best, meditate the best, am working as per schedule, eating less, walking more are the days when there are challenges.

On the days things are going okay, life also gets average.

So don’t pray for more “settled” or okay days.

Wish for more strength and you will see yourself impersonating calm in every situation of life.

Try to karke dekho 🙂

Success

One truth of life no one will tell you

You want to know the most important truth of life?

Don’t tell anyone about your progress. Just keep working hard and adding feathers to your cap.

But don’t pronounce it out loud. Even the ones who love you the most secretly start questioning you.

You may believe this. Or taste this yourself.

Wish you a secretly successful life 🙂

Knowing Yourself

Don’t do it

Someone left a bike like this outside our building.

We leave our imprints wherever we go.

And it becomes a karma.

Imagine how many people are going to give opposite of blessings to such tiny aspects of what you do.

Earn blessings, not opposite of those.