Raw. Real. Unfiltered. Daily blogs. Often, less than 100 words
If you’re feeling negative because of someone, there are two options:
You can talk to them. Or you can’t.
If you have the relationship to talk to them, please do. It will clear all the mist.
If that relationship is not where you can talk, does it make sense to lose your sleep over? Perhaps the person needed to be talked to, is you.
Part I: Giving Help
If you want to help someone else, make sure you’ve helped yourself.
If you think you are still doing them a favour, you are not.
People love to know they’re loved, only if they could feel you loving yourself.
Part II: Asking for Help
If you are asking for someone else’s help out of their obligation to do it for you and out of their inability to not do it willingly, probably you need to rethink your choices.
Conclusion:
The only way to have everything aligned on the outside is to align yourself from within. Nothing changes before that.
Today I turned 29.
Damn! The number is so big! Yet why do I feel so young?
Or in other words, how did I get so lucky to be feeling so amazing while the world is conditioned to making us think that we should start with “settling”?
The answer is that I got insanely lucky to make some wonderful decisions. To choose to get out of company of people like whom I didn’t want to become, and to choose the company of rebels, oddballs and misfits — with a strange combination of my core values guard me daily.
However, the last one year had been a strange (and a blessed) one, with loads of mistakes and loads of learning coming along — which I have made an effort to summarize in 29 points below:
6. Kindness is superpower. Especially when it’s difficult to display it.
7. Gossiping will do more harm than goodness could do peace.
8. Working out with a personal trainer is game changing — in terms of your discipline, diet, follow-up, and of course how you look and feel within.
9. If you decide to walk at least 10,000 steps a day, you will!
10. Meditation is not a trick only for monks in the Himalayas. It is rather the only vaccination against depression.
11. A small hack for those on diet and travelling: Plain rice with curd and papad is a perfect meal. Saves from oily food of restaurants and provides all micro and macro nutrients.
12. In my former job, we went from our respective cities to the HO. In an evening, we went for a get-together to a Chinese restaurant; however I do not consume onion and garlic. So, we finally went to an Indian restaurant where I ordered khichdi, while others continued with having other oily food. Lesson: it’s okay to stand by your dharma in a matter of crisis. The only thing you will get is immense support.
13. When you’re misunderstood, you need to humbly stand for yourself.
14. Law of attraction works like magic. With a caveat — only if you’ve done the hard work. If I have never jumped into a pool and I wish to win a gold medal in Olympics next month, the only thing I deserve is a headache.
15. Not judging your family is the biggest gift to them. They are fighting a tough battle which we aren’t aware of.
16. Sleeping and waking up on time (and no screen time for 1 hour prior and after) will solve almost all your problems.
17. You’re becoming successful when outer success is coupled with smaller and lesser need to seek validation from others.
18. The intuition you have about people is stronger (and always truthful) than the image they’re trying to project. To rephrase, “Empathy cannot be taught. You’re either born with it or you aren’t.” — Ankur Warikoo
19. Like almost all other families, mine is also a dysfunctional one. Yet, their presence is the biggest therapy.
20. It’s okay to have a few or no friends than to have many who laugh at your progress.
21. I live a healthy lifestyle however I was hospitalized twice in last two years. Lying on that hospital bed, I realized this is simply my life shouting out loud to make a change.
22. Patience majnu, patience!
23. Consistent content creation will make you survive when everything else won’t. Even when you’re applying for a position with no qualification, experience of your content will take you to places.
24. Taking time to witness the sunrise is the best way to protect your (in)sanity.
25. In the last year I have been denied chances and been (almost) cursed by people who used to “treat me as their daughter” just because I followed an unconventional path being a female. However, I have also got respect and great work because of the same reason. External or internal validation. We get to choose either every single day.
26. No. No. Absolutely no. With kindness, bro!
27. People do what they know is the best. In 90% cases they aren’t intentional about it.
28. The world inside you needs to get out — through writing, creating videos, making drawings, dancing, singing — anything! It will keep you sane and the world will silently learn from your example.
29. The journey of going within will always settle things on the outside. Always.
That’s it, folks! 29 years, 29 lessons, loads of love from family — such an amazing time to be alive in!
Even if a single word made sense to you, I’ve done my job well! We are, after all, the stories we tell ourselves. Keep rocking folks, and I’ll see you tomorrow!
I’m sure there must be some people whom we have kept out of viewing our Instagram and WhatsApp stories. The reason could be any – whether we don’t want them to know about our life, or we simply don’t want them to be in our life at all!
Think about it for a second: what if someone has already kept you out of their stories?
It’s natural to have a FOMO and feel bad as well.
However, what if that could be one of the best things to happen to you today?
Why do we want to know everything about everyone?
What will be the consequences if we don’t know that? Simple – we would be at more peace. And that’s elusive. Lack of indulgence is greatest power.
I was having a conversation with someone yesterday, who was justifying their anger.
When I told them you always have the option to choose love, they said where do I get so much love from?
Very valid question.
With a simple answer: connect with God because He is the ocean.
Like every relationship, it requires commitment.
Like every deep relationship, it will nurture deeply.
If you look at your day, you’ll find several things to make the radical shift.
And to look at all of them might sound demeaning.
So here’s the way to change your life:
Change just one thing in your day that causes you most pain.
Just one. Not three. Not five. Just one.
Maybe you check your phone just for ten minutes in the morning and it may get your schedule haywire.
Maybe you have your dinner quite late.
Maybe you get distracted easily in your environment.
What is it that causes you the most pain?
Tackling just one thing will lead to domino effect of life altering habits.
Decide now.
It’s a feeling that just doesn’t go.
Or sometimes I mix it up with my introversion and love for work.
This is not for likes or comments, just to reveal a wall that’s been hiding.
And I do end up breaking it sometimes, only to come to the stones that built it up in the first place.
That I want to go to the hall and chit chat with my family.
That I want to be optimistic along with sharing that feeling of emptiness within.
That I know that it’s okay to be okay when it’s not okay.
Yet I do none of these.
Because anything that is not stomach ache, fever or diabetes is not a disease – that our society and upbringing has taught us.
Perhaps because they would want to hide it under anger, like everything else.
Perhaps because it requires the need to acknowledge your own inner needs to be able to acknowledge them in other.
Yet on the other side of the tunnel I see hope.
And I trust that hope like sunshine.
And somehow we will manage to come out of it.
I don’t know how to end this, yet this is not the end. For sure.
A day will come…
When you will enter a crowded metro
Take out a snack from your bag and eat it there, and clean hands with your jeans.
And then you’ll smile at finally having reached there.
It’ll make you appreciate the metro crowd.
And when you do it, you’ll realise this solitude was all that you needed.
The best time to appreciate what you have, is now.
It may so happen that a well wisher has a totally different opinion about your life than what you have.
The thing is if you stand by yourself and you believe in your idea and you believe in the fact that you have explored all possible options and then taken this step because you’re proud of it, then my friends please do not get carried away by someone else’s opinion.
Your life has to be lived by you.
Your standards of happiness are something you should stand for, instead of expecting someone else to create those standards of happiness in themselves so that you could live by them.
That is a very very dangerous place to be.
Use this time to meditate rigorously.
Eat less. Set a time table. Grow your emotional strength.
Meditate. Go within. What comes without, is going to be something YOU are going to be proud of.
If hard work could solve all the problems…
…you know it doesn’t.
Except when it does.
Hard work, without putting in the right thoughts process and strategy, won’t ever come to rescue.
Having a laser like focus and not working hard for it, won’t either.
The goal, then, is to use your power of discernment, and decide if you really ought to be working hard Bro.
Validation is a sneaky game. It gets in through a hole underneath your main door, and makes you believe that it’s quintessentially the hero of your home.
Sadly, it sneaks in so softly that you don’t even realise that it has taken hold of you.
At some point of time, almost all of us have fallen into this need for validation. We believe that’s how life is supposed to be.
Wait, there’s a deeper side to it.
We need validation because we fear rejection.
We fear rejection because we think that we may not be liked by people we are most wanting to impress.
That feeling of not being liked, makes our ego shatter. It’s so deeply ingrained that at the time of needing validation, we’ve even forgotten that it’s the ego that is wanting to be liked.
When not liked, ego 0, reflection 1. That is a scary place to be. To see all your vulnerabilities surfaced and wanting them not to drown you, just scares the hell out of us.
What if, trying the other way round: Remembering that you’re whole and complete. If at any time you’re not liked by others, there are times when you’re liked by others.
Neither of these define who you are – it’s simply their perception.
Learn from feedback, let go of criticism, because inside you are perfect, outside we all are in the process of chipping away the non-required stuff.
If you ever feel you can trust others, maybe there’s actually something to change.
Not with them, perhaps with your relationship with the person in the mirror.
Our relationships with others are simply a reflection of how we treat ourselves.
Since charity begins at home, so does trust begin with yourself.
Surprisingly, as you begin to develop that relationship with yourself, no one ever breaks your trust.
If you have ever been in a place where you’ve had no idea about what’s going on, consider the following:
• Are you allowing others to create your ideas?
• Are you making choices to impress others and yet hate the choices you’ve made?
• Are you eating more than what you should?
If you really want to move ahead in life, be your own teacher and correct yourself.
No one else is coming for your rescue. You already have the idea, you’re just ignoring it under the darkness of…you know under whose darkness.
•
The ability to communicate is a hallmark of strong human being.
The ability to not speak when not required to, is a hallmark of stronger people.
Also, don’t expect a human being with a weak heart to have an attitude of gratitude. You have that gratitude for being the strong human being, and keep moving.
You and I have come across this several times: Everything that happens is perfect and for the good.
Then, why do people get upset at the outset of things not happening right?
Because they want to control it. They want to have the certainty, unbeknownst of the fact that it’s the uncertainty yet faith in the sun and rain that makes the crops grow.
If you go back to any situation of your past, most certainly you would find yourself contented today, with what happened.
If future can give you the capacity to accept the past, then the present has even more capacity to allow you to accept, that:
Everything will ultimately turn out to be good.
Getting bored?
Or getting tired?
Or not getting recognised?
Or not getting applauded?
Or not being noticed?
Bored is a feeling we seldom feel.
If we do, it’s a great one to move yourself inside, in this world of too much outside.
Sometimes it’s just doom.
Sometimes it’s too bad and you don’t know what to do.
Sometimes you are too emotionally tired to even try.
Most of the times, it’s your unhealed patterns that are coming up.
And when any of this happens, trust yourself to work on your inner self. Please read a lot of paperback books. Go for long walks in solitude. Meditate and chillax.
As much as overrated it may sound right now, staying offline to get in-line with yourself is certainly the only way out.
There will come a time when your righteousness will be tested. People will question your energy, your positivity and most importantly, your values.
That question won’t be direct. It will be in the form of allegation, bad words or perhaps even threat.
Now you’re left with two options:
Option I:
Justify yourself.
When you don’t have that authority, justify yourself in your head.
Option II:
Understand. Questioning you may be because of only two reasons:
a) They are not too fond of you. Perhaps your high vibes make them want to try more. When they can’t, the easiest way is to bring you down.
In this situation, simply stop. Even if they are totally wrong, what they need is to be “right”. Work on yourself to calmly respond and put your point forward. Then don’t get attached to they accepting it. Bless them, and keep working within.
b) They said something that really needs to change in you, their method was however not right.
In this situation, determine to work on yourself. And for the adage “be respectful”, you start at your end by respecting the person who disrespected you. Your respect to them (from within) will be the best gift to them.
You have the self respect not to be sensitive to someone else’s way of being. That way, you empower the world.
Today. Be.