A new TIL series (will post it each time when I have some TILs):
- Firm + assertive
- Silence is golden. And it is diamond when it comes from within.
- Don’t take anything seriously. But take it seriously.
Tag: joy
Think of an unhappy person around you.
Most probably, they would have a constant reason for unhappiness in their life – a job, a relationship, anything they hate.
Then, go back to the time when that relationship / job didn’t exist. Before that, there was something else that kept them unhappy.
It turns out, being unhappy is never dependent on life situations. It is always a factor of how you deal with life situations.
I have seen happy people boldly get out of jobs they didn’t like. Meanwhile, they still made sure to be happy at it.
I have seen happy people be happy despite the pay cuts during the pandemic. Because they chose to be happy.
Also, I have seen unhappy people get more dissatisfied by the day, despite all they needed was there and was getting bigger.
The more we realise happiness is a choice, the more will we be able to make the choice of being happy.
The right music
The right books
Getting away from the wrong people
Spending time in nature, working looking at nature
Workouts
Meditation
Saying NO
If I go back to Nishtha of 5 years back, I would be ambitious. having a list of goals, wanting to go to TED, 30 Under 30, and certainly a Maybach.
Right now, I’m enjoying the process.
I’m working super hard.
I love my work.
I take my breaks.
All of this is so fulfilling, that the need for validation just goes away. It just does.
And what is left with, is the feeling of letting go of the need of success.
The success that you feel, when you let go of the need of success, is true success!
Life lessons from being a manager:
- Your team will always be going through stuff – someone is in an airplane, someone is shifting, someone is occupied, someone will not respond, someone might be going through a break up – and asking them to work might make you feel apologetic. Why? Be the one who is there for them, helps them navigate life without excuses, and more than anything else – lets them shine in every area of life.
- Give away credit when you need it the most.
- Indulging in gossip groups with a subset of team is disastrous for the team. Not to mention, for you as well. Your team loves you, and you owe it to them to be unbiased.
- Taking time off for meditation and sleep isn’t luxury, it is a necessity.
- Karma yoga – where you say your affirmations and meditate for one minute – that is where all the magic happens. Doing it or not doing it will decide whether you are effective or impulsive.
- You may try your best on people and they may still choose to be angry at you, and then leave the company. If you have a pact of honesty with yourself, you need not feel bad. At all. People have their lives and they own their choices, not your mood.
- Chill baby, you have the Brahmastra – God. Everything else, will just fall in place.
There is a wonderful client of mine, whose business is making Ayurvedic drinks.
He once graciously sent me a huge pack of Ayurveda drinks, along with two packs of hot chocolate powder and gourmet coffee.
It turns out, everyone in my family loves hot chocolate powder more. Which comes from an Ayurveda drinks manufacturer. Ironies of life.
The other day, I was having that chocolate shake, while my Mom asked, “You’re still working with this client, right?”
I couldn’t stop laughing. Ironies of life – me who was having it once a month, and my Maa who doesn’t have it either – both trying to love the chocolate product of an Ayurveda manufacturer.
PS: Here’s a pic, of that chocolate shake. Enjoy 😊
Three things that I do not understand:
1. People fall in love at X speed.
2. They fall out of love at 2X speed.
3. They have mental health issues at 3X speed.
Reasons:
– Parents not paying enough attention
– FOMO, because everyone on social media seems sorted
– We think we need someone else to complete us.
How to get out of this loop:
a. Get validation through who you are and what you do
b. Get validation through good books, videos and podcasts. They are super super super underrated.
c. Spend time alone. Daily. Outdoors. At least 30 minutes. If that could be a nature walk, nothing like it!
It’s been a while, and all this while, I have been thinking of what I’ve lost. I never knew I loved my old work so much. Who misses work so much?!
Everyone has to lose everything some day. What stays back is how you responded to such losses.
You know what’s the worst part? A friend of mine is dealing with another loss and all this while I have been bringing her back. And she’s recovering quite well, despite the fact that she is the most vulnerable om the weekends.
Another example I see is of Brahma Kumaris. They had a well established network of services in India, when a senior Sister of the organisation was told to leave this and begin her services in London. And as much as she resisted it, her stint in London paved the way for more and bigger services.
Strange how “me” and “mine” works. While in reality, only God is mine. Because I am not this body, I am the observer in this body. That observer is answerable to God – to create karmas that set an example, not something that sets ego boundaries.
Nishtha, no we are not going back. Staying true to your karma is your dharma. And life always moves beyond.
There is this special love between the writer and her writing.
The love that does the extra things that “no one will notice”.
The love that does everything because there are no limitations in true love.
The love that makes you detached because you gave your best.
The love that no one will see or understand, other than the writer and her art.
The love, that transcends the money and validation, because they follow effortlessly.
The love, that comes from within.
The Love, that the writing becomes the writer’s signature.
No one will understand this, unless they have been in love.
No one will value this, because the writer does not crave for that value.
As a matter of fact, it is this privacy that the writer enjoys the most, as writers who love their work would agree 🙂
A few days back, a relative called up on my birthday.
After exchanging pleasantries, they said, “I have heard that you have gotten very slim.”
“Yes, you have heard the truth,” I laughed that off.
“No, but very, very slim I mean,” they shot back.
I used my fun tone again, and asked, “But you would be still commenting on my looks even if I gained a lot of weight!”
“O, even that’s the truth!”
The truth is, no matter what you do, someone will figure a way to raise a question.
If you are kind, someone will ask you to be stern.
If you are stern, someone would want you to calm down.
If you are formal, someone would want you to be more casual.
If you include casual conversations, someone would want you to stick to the point in official meetings.
There are always going to be people raising a question on you.
The question is:
What is YOUR truth?
What do you want to do?
How much weight you want to gain/lose?
How do you want to set up your relationships?
Do you value kindness more than anything else?
And when you know what YOU want, here’s a repetition for the nth time:
It DOES NOT matter what others say.
Some good friends figure out a way to chill.
Most others figure out a way to negatively thrill.
Focus on the former, and life will never be still 🙂
PS: I don’t talk to my relatives per se, but this time I had to, because of my birthday :)))
The more you care only about getting positive feedback, the more you will escape your growth.
Your work is to excel at your work. If you’re constantly degrading at it, you’re making it impossible for others to trust you.
Don’t focus on being liked. Focus on being curious, learning, and really really listening!
Don’t send that angry message / email. Calm yourself down.
People are people. They are going to overestimate what they do. So don’t feel let down when they
You won’t be a superhero when you commit to doing 10 projects and you do 6. You will be a superhero when you commit 6 and do 6. Your words matter. A lot.
Don’t try to impress your boss. Or anyone. The more you try to do that, they will sniff it. They just expect you to be real. And do the good old hard work. Along with the smart one.
Talk to your boss. Talk about your problems, what’s troubling you, what isn’t working, etc. Don’t expect him to get back to you every single day.
But, at the end of the day, you should be happy going to work each day 🙂
A good writer reads.
A great writer studies well-written texts.
A good writer is attached to their work.
A great writer loves their work, and is flexible to make changes. (Almost ALL the time :D)
A good writer wants others to like their work.
A great writer writes because she cannot not write.
A good writer writes when they are in a mood of writing.
A great writer writes, no matter what, and gets into a great mood.
A good writer faces writer’s block.
A great writer keeps writing, and lets the editing weed out non-essentials.
A good writer gets tired after a long session.
A great writer gets euphoric after a long session.
A good writer is in it for the rewards.
A great writer, gets rewarded for the process she follows daily.
Anyone can be a good writer.
It takes love for the process, the constant upskilling, and enjoying the flow, to become a great one.
A part of the work I do has these processes:
- Go through the rough draft the client sent
- Create a clickworthy post out of it
- It gets posted on social media.
Mostly, the post is about adding value. Sometimes, that value added comes with some backlash from people (that is one of the secrets of getting viral…more about that later btw :D)
Now, there are two types of people I work with:
- Whenever the backlash from people points at the author (aka yours truly), my clients straight away state that they are the author. I love that so so soooo much! Standing as a guard to protect their people. Awesome folks they are 🙂
- They highlight a tiny spelling mistake for two consecutive weekly meetings. My writing for them hardly generates any virality. Because what they are always talking about is how will the people that know him, will respond.
I just love the type 1 clients. Never argue with them for money. They pay whatever I ask. Never interfere. Rather I request them to interfere.
Find clients like those, and keep upping your game. You will be left with awe, work you love, and most importantly, self respect.
Sometimes all I have is sympathy for our parents’ generation.
Their parents saw the partition of the nation – leaving their country, their childhood, all that they called “theirs”, to come to another place just to survive.
In this need for survival, was the generation of our parents born.
Thus, the upbringing they got was of stress, not having enough time, and always lack of means.
Which is why our parents are the way they are.
They have been conditioned so.
They were never taught to love.
Perhaps because they were never loved.
And then one fine day, we pop up and expect them to be cool because that is what we are surrounded by – cool kids just like us.
Now that we know, we can still do what we want to do, while being respectful of who they are. It isn’t just for them, it is for the acknowledgement of how much they are trying to adapt, because they care for you:)
You cannot measure the revenue a customer will bring basis your product.
It also depends on:
– how you treat them
– do you really mean that kindness
– how much you care about customer satisfaction at the core
– what do you do to raise that bar
– how do you listen to customer queries and complaints
The existing customer, will then decide how many people would he decide to turn into your permanent ones.
Applies to all areas of life. Your social media. Your friends. How you treat them. How you treat yourself. Who are you friends with.
The tiniest things that we do, even how careful or ruthless we are while applying toothpaste on our brush, determines how successful we become – financially and in every other area .
- Saying thank you to everyone (PS: My email signature is “Thank you”, that I type every time instead of keeping it auto, because I wanna really mean it!)
- Having a schedule for your day (Even rest and leisure, otherwise Parkinson’s Law is wise enough :D)
- Speaking your truth, even if you are disliked.
Off-late I have started teaching Maths to my nephew and niece.
9th standard kids. Unable to understand it in Zoom classes. So we do another Zoom whiteboard instead 🙂
Here’s what few days of teaching have taught me:
Pros:
1. Be enthusiastic with kids and they will reflect that back every day.
2. If you clear their basics, they will we propelled themselves to go to RD Sharma (I know!) to do further.
3. Damn their innocent voice! Or maybe its my love for them <3
Cons:
I discovered one about myself: To accept everyone at their own speed instead of expecting everyone to be at the same one.
Life gets so much better when you hang out with the right people, in whatever manner 🙂
Last year, I resigned from my job in March 2020, got relieved in June 2020.
Started freelancing then. Learnt multiple ways of sourcing new clients. Did wonderful work. Made a bit less than my salary but absolutely loved every day of the last one year.
After all this hustle, this April I got myself to a place where I was making more than my last drawn salary. And lo and behold, I got a job offer (that begins on 1st June) for a job I love.
So I said no to some of the prospective clients, said yes to working with some of those along with working full time on the job. And I guess we will 2X my last drawn salary at the start of the new job, leaving how things take us further to the future.
So, it is easy to demotivate myself by saying “I was jobless for a year”. Well, this is how society has conditioned us to believe.
Except, the truth is:
1. I finally had the courage to pursue my passion of writing, by giving up the stability of a full time job.
2. That taught me sales, negotiation and persuasion skills, along with polishing my skill set as a writer.
3. I was able to try an internship in content creation, among other things, that finally lead me to having a full-time job as Content Manager with one of the top brands of India.
4. I was responsible and accountable for my time.
5. I was finally not killing myself daily.
Thus, I was (and still am) living a life of choice. A privilege a lot of us have however very few of us have the courage to live by it.
The best part? For the first time in life I’m going for a job for which there is no degree on my resume, just a skill set and an experience to prove its mettle. Isn’t that amazing? 🤩
Okay! A week long break from blogging. First time in the history of this blog!
But never mind, I’ll make up for this.
So the reason for the miss-out was that I was admitted in hospital 8 days back for appendix surgery. Got discharged yesterday. And now I feel a bit active in the mornings so getting back to work drop by drop.
Rest all okay. It was a part of life. Came and went. Chill 🙂
Looking forward to talking to you daily now.
Yes, it is the most positive word of 2020 and 2021, given the situations we are in.
However, what happens if a report is positive?
Do we dread death? Or are we scared if our family would be affected? Or do our deepest fears pop up?
The big wrong is not with the Covid. The big thing we have to deal with is not having to be alone. And that’s scary.