Raw. Real. Unfiltered. Daily blogs. Often, less than 100 words
5 minutes after work, sit and reflect.
5 minutes after food, sit there only.
5 minutes after meditation, do not reach out to phone directly.
5 minutes after workout, breathe.
5 minutes after waking up, revise your affirmations and goals.
The space of 5 minutes creates all the space we need.
I sit on the floor to have my meals. And when I get up, I do so without any support. This is my gold standard for health.
As the winter is approaching, my Mom got a velvet mat for me to sit.
And all of a sudden, I just couldn’t stand from that velvet mat. I felt like all of a sudden I had lost my health and stamina. It was uneasy.
And then a bolt hit me. Velvet is smooth and it acts as a friction between the resistance of the floor and my feet.
So the trick was to remove the velvet mat and then get up. Bam!
Sometimes the problem is not with our efforts, rather the medium where we are executing our efforts. Changing that might change everything.
This lockdown came along with gyms locked down.
Till March, I had reached a great weight resistance. Then began the workout at home.
Today I brought in weights from my old home, and lo, the resistance which I could carry initially wasn’t there. The reason, obviously, was lack of practice with weights.
In life, the more we continue to live with goodness, the more resilience we develop against what’s isn’t right – without losing on who we are.
If we remain where we are without increasing that quota of goodness, over time, we’ll lose it.
Over time, we will lose ourselves.
Yesterday my father turned 66. While his life has innumerable lessons, here are some that inspire me today:
1. Picked up exercise during lockdown. Still continues it for an hour daily.
2. Loves to go to his work daily. A trait missing in a lot of millennials.
3. Is always there to listen to my problems, without judgement. Ever.
4. Will give up anything but never honesty. That, in turn, brings him tons of blessings.
5. Most importantly, understands the space I am in. Thus, never forces me or even brings up the topic of marriage. Being a boomer and raised by parents who witnessed WW2 and partition of the country, this mindset shift from him is the best gift he could give to me.
Here’s a closing note: Him and I have different points of view on almost everything. Yet, you will miss your father when he is gone. Love him despite the differences. No one would love you like him, and this comes from someone who is the biggest rebel to her father. 🤗
When did it actually happen?
When did I move from giving love to needing it?
When did I move from giving tonnes of acceptance to needing it?
When did I move from cheerful, super happy and full of charm kid to crying whole day?
Never have I ever waited like this. Waiting for this time to go away. Don’t know when. I have written positivity and power for eternity. Then why so much truth? Why am I documenting my rock bottom? Why?
I have no idea. Other than the fact that I want it all out of my system.
And also one more reason: The ones suffering from mental health problems are already strong. They have to muster the strength to get back up. So don’t think they need any help. They spread awareness on it so that more people could become empathetic towards each other and more cases of depression stop from coming. That is the only reason.
Today an Amazon packet was to be delivered. The boy reached on the ground floor, and called.
Since I didn’t receive, I immediately called back, however was unreachable.
So I went to the balcony of our first floor home, and saw him.
He asked for my name first. I responded. Then he asked for his number that flashed on to my screen. Then he even asked for my number that was there on the package. For no reasons, no one has ever done that.
A part of me wanted to get angry at him. However, I told myself: “He must also be in pain for going out and meeting so many people in these conditions. More so, maybe he had lost a valuable packet in the past for not doing due diligence.”
This suddenly stopped me from getting angry. And gave me perspective.
We choose our emotions. And then, those emotions choose us.
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.
When you know who you are, you will always be undefeated.
When you know each of your thoughts have a spiral effect, you will always be undefeated.
When you know everything you want is waiting for you, you just need to be the recipient to receive it, you shall be undefeated.
We create a heaven and a hell in ourselves. Not because of what we do, rather because of what we allow ourselves to think about.
Think about.
Think about it.
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.
Someone in my circle, is going through a tough time in their life.
They have been going through a lot of tough decisions that they want to take.
Last couple of days, we got to spend some time together.
I spoke with them on some days, and they were okay the next day.
Today they’re back to square one, wishing and wanting the world to change.
Here’s the secret about the world: It will change the moment we change.
In order for us to change, it will:
a. initially require focussed effort
b. an effort to leave your bad habits
c. the belief that in order to change your life, you need to change your life.
The dependency on people is short lived. You get to spend your entire life with yourself. What you choose to do when no one is watching, is what you get to become when everyone is watching.
Meditation is not just to “feel good”.
When we practice a dedicated practice of meditation, we hardly face issues managing our time and focus.
It’s not just for monks in the Himalayas. Fully effective for corporate ninjas like you and I.
Here’s the best thing meditation has done for me:
The ability to complete a two-hour task in 20-30 minutes. As exaggerating as it may sound, if you have practiced meditation consistently, you know this is as true as water.
You need more time, right?
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 is hard.
The easiest thing is to sit on the couch and eat French fries. Or play Candy Crush.
Waking up in the morning and working out relentlessly didn’t come easy to Jordan as well.
It is going to take a lot out of you to get there. Yet if you don’t make the efforts to get there you will get to a place it would be very difficult to get back from.
Working requires hard work.
Doing nothing requires hardest work to deal with yourself.
You get to decide.
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.
For several years, I’ve seen Oprah repeat Maya Angelou’s words:
When people show you who they are, believe them!
I for the longest time used to think that this was not right.
And proved myself wrong over and over again.
Oprah was very very right about what she said.
When people show you they’re mean, believe them.
When people show you they’re kind, believe them.
When people show you they’re angry, believe them.
And while you do believe them, continue believing in your own power to be super focused and powerful to what you radiate out to them. You be you, perhaps they will show you a better side of themselves.
There’s a very close relationship of mine, where I do not feel the need to be around them anymore. We’ve been very well connected, to the extent that when I used to cry alone miles away, she used to have an intuition that something is wrong with me.
Then today, I had a conversation with a mutual friend, who said she has been pushing him to convince me to take a major life step, which I do not want to take.
Then it really hit me to connect the dots. Just because this person does not respect my life choices at an inner level, I had been consistently losing this feeling of being around them.
That is such a deep thing. Not because I was #betrayed. Okay maybe I was, however a deeper thing was that we always act out basis what is happening there inside.
There are no two sides. The white ultimately becomes light grey shortly which ends up becoming black over a period of time.
Trust is something you build when they’re not watching. Hard to build trust with someone if you don’t trust yourself.
I don’t have anger against them, I only have blessings for them to trust and respect themselves. Because it takes a broken person from inside to disrespect and not give trust to the other person’s choices.
One of the best learnings that covid brought to us is not to put all your eggs in one basket.
Warren Buffet has been saying it for years.
Not only for finances, also for our emotions and sources of income.
More than anything else, we have learnt never to depend on external validation (malls, restaurants, movies,etc.) for making us feel.
Will they support you is not the right question.
The right question is, will you support yourself?
When I had initially learnt to cook, I’d multiply the amount of water and spices by the number of people who were eating the food.
Since I knew the perfect ingredients for my dal rice, i.e., what I cook for myself in Noida – while cooking the same for my parents at home I’d just put 3X water and salt.
Thinking it would work.
Except that it didn’t.
It requires lesser water than 3X of a single person’s water. It is just building up.
In life if we want to do something that seems humongous, we just need to begin the difficult process. As we keep taking small steps, we realise in the latter half of the journey that later you don’t have to make those 3X or 4X of efforts at the start.
The compound interest of your efforts will be more than enough to make you reach the destination.
You just need to start. Will you?
The limit is the quality of content and people you surround yourself with.
The limit is the books you don’t read.
The limit is the empathy you don’t give to yourself.
The limit is the chats you have while you shouldn’t.
The limit is the DMs you don’t send.
The limit is the smiles you knew you could spread.
The limit is your decisions.
1. Watering plants makes you feel humbler and happier.
2. Your parents need nothing other than your presence.
3. Cleaning with wiper is both abs and back workout, sweeping the floor is a great cardio.
4. Home cooked chocolate cake is super delicious.
5. Life is wonderful without TV serials!