Tag: power

Uncategorized

I wish I had the superpower of memory loss!!?

Just for one minute, just for one minute I popped out of my room and saw Maa watching Anupama, where someone is telling her, I wish everyone had this blessing of memory loss.

Maa be like: I agree!

Damn!

Okay, you want to forget?

Forget.

As simple as this. You remember because you remember, nothing else.

I remember my first relationship – I was so sooo deep into the memories of it years after it got over, that I remembered the chats of our conversations for years. Years! And this is after I deleting all of those, with NO back-up at all.

At a certain point, I remember it happened in early 2019, I forgot everything. EVERYTHING.

As a matter of fact, very recently I was reading my book which I wrote early in 2019 and was going through a snippet of chat, and I was like, “Dude, I didn’t know I remembered all of this!”

Forgetting is not a super power. It’s a choice.

People

The saint and the prostitute

There was once a saint who lived up there, in the mountains. To meditate. And think positive thoughts.

In the hut, just opposite to his, used to live a prostitute. Every day, she used to look at the saint and be inspired – as to this is how I should be living my life – filled with positivity, and thinking of God.

Meanwhile, the saint used to look at the prostitute’s house, and think about how she is ruining her life, how her life is terrible, and how he would never want a life like that.

Several years later, they both died.

Up in the clouds, it was decided that the prostitute will go to heaven and the saint will go to hell.

“Why, I was meditating whole day?” rebelled the saint.

Here’s what the administrators up there told them:

It is not what you do, it is what you are thinking about whole day, that makes the difference. While you were busy mocking the prostitute in your mind, she was busy idealising a meditative lifestyle.

It turns out, our thoughts actually run or ruin the world.

Process

Random life lessons

Haven’t done a life lessons blog in quite some time, so here you go:

  1. You cannot enforce love. Not for people, not for work.
  2. Stay away from having calls during the afternoons. Sleep, baby!
  3. Stretching is as important as (if not more important than) working out.
  4. Sirsasana and sarvangasana are lit.
  5. Ghee khichdi with papad is the ultimate tummy-filler.
  6. Life becomes joyful when you are grateful.
  7. It takes years to get to a place of doing it in seconds.
Art and Creativity

Conversation with an artist

Yesterday I had a conversation with a colleague of mine, who happens to be the video editor.

Of the kind and cute fellow he is, one line stayed with me:

“The only thing I don’t like is bad quality videos.”

Wow!!! That is an artist.
He is willing to learn.
Super happy to have 1000 feedbacks.
Rather DMs me often to share feedbacks.
And, LOVESSSSS his work – and that is visible from his art.

It is such an absolute pleasure to go through his videos.

Life is great when you are surrounded by artists.
Life is wonderful when you choose to be an artist.
Life gets gratefully incredible when you love your art. There is no one who can take it away from you. Unlike people who come and go, the art is a part of our existence.

In the process of making that art come alive, we come alive.
Isn’t that incredible?

Knowing Yourself

How slim is too slim?


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 :)))

Life

The art of asking

The best way to ask for a busy person’s time is NOT by asking them when they’re free.

They value their free time more than their “busy time” and would protect it at all costs.

A more effective way is: To ask how they can help, where the response most likely would be a one-liner.

If you convince them to care, they will dig out the time when they are “busy.”

Uncategorized

So much injustice?

Think of a team of 20 people.
All are doing their work.
Some are rockstars, some are just getting along.

But you see the management treating everyone at par.

When you are a rockstar, this might irk you.
Someone else who is not performing is also being treated as well.

But…there comes a time, when things get levelled up.

We’ve all experienced this before.
The question is: What are we experiencing even when we are doing our best work? Envy or happiness?

Books

A relationship of 10 years!

It was June 2011 when my friend dragged me to a seminar after college.

It was “Aadarsh Amdavad”, a 15-day self-help workshop, that consisted of:

  • Daily 2 hour sessions by an acclaimed speaker
  • Had a spectrum of audience instead of a narrow group
  • It did not want us to “get better”, but the way it was designed, ended up making us better.

After that fortnight of daily wisdom, I felt a surge of happiness that I didn’t want to let go of.

So I started walking to Crossword Book Stores near my college, after the workshop got over.

For hours, I would just sit there and read, not knowing I was getting into an affair it would be impossible to get out of.
For hours, I would not care about anything in the outside world, just me and the books.
For hours, daily, it was a retreat from everything else in the world!

That love affair has lead to a lifetime partnership with books now.

More than anything else, keeping myself lost in that world has lead me to find myself, over and over again, peel by peel, page by page.

Here’s to a decade of that relationship 🙂
Here’s to a relationship that is with you ALWAYS…
Here’s to a lifetime of companionship!!!

Uncategorized

One thing women must NOT do

Think of a scene in a household.

A millennial / GenZ is working on their laptop.

Mom is working on her things.

They are not talking. Not out of anger. Just because they’re chill.

Now imagine this.

Today, the Mom has gone to her Mom’s place.

Dad is at home because of evening curfew.

All of a sudden he feels alone.

Because guess what? The millennial kid is still working, nothing changed.

All of a sudden Dad felt he and his presumed “importance” were not catered to.

We do this so often, so much, that we even forget we do this.

What? The need to make men not feel alone.

That’s why shy girls speak more when around men. Just to comfort them.

Or daughters try to please Dads. Just because of this subconscious need to not make him feel alone.

Or why overriding a man’s instructions in office has to be supported with reasons.

If there is one thing women must not do, is this: Try to please men. It is so so so deep-rooted that we think it is our love for them, however, it is in reality rooting to that nature of not letting silence do the talking.

For females – in formal and personal relationships, we do a lot of talking through silence.
For males – in all relationships, you do not need to do the talking.

Just be. Who you are. In every relationship. Irrespective of the gender of the person you’re speaking to.

People, Success

Happy – not anymore?

Even thebiggest happiness could being about a place of sadness if you happen to compare yourself to others.

Someone else, younger than you, is going to get all the things you have been waiting for.

Does it feel bad! Maybe yes.

Should it feel bad? The answer to this could never be yes.

What’s the solution, then? The solution is to put yourself in more I more situations like these because that only would help you work harder and challenge yourself more often.

Think over it. Someone else won, you lost; and then you created your own plan of confidence a reality.

Success

Signs that you are growing

1. The things that used to upset you do that anymore. Not even in your mind.

2. You learn from the times you lost money and don’t make the same money mistakes again.

3. You don’t lay the same expectations on people, if they have willingly proved they don’t want to stay true to the relationship (even blood relationships).

4. You find a way to laugh even amidst chaos.

5. You have replaced anger for people with empathy and sometimes even sympathy.

Growing up necessarily doesn’t mean in age. You may be in your 70’s and never learnt to control your anger.

Growth is a choice. The one that we make every single day.

In the absence of which, we just die.

Process

There’s nothing wrong with Instagram!

Today I attended a wonderful master class by Nir Eyal, author of the book Indistractable.

Some wonderful things he said:

1. Schedule everything – learning, work, leisure, family time, sleeping time, free time social media and even OTG!

2. To-Do lists should be done away with, because no one accomplishes all of those daily.

3. Instead, do whatever you had desired to accomplish during that time. That is powerful! You’ll then end up achieving MORE than your To-Do list.

4. Life is NOT about getting things done. Rather spend 30-45 minutes daily, thinking.

5. And last resort, make an identity pact: Is what you are doing aligned with who you are?

Very very thoughtful! This master class is definitely going to be a masterpiece.

Success

I’d never thought I’ll do this!

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 🙂

Knowing Yourself, Life, Uncategorized

Boss Lady

To be a boss lady, you do not have to become the boss of the team. You just have to be the boss of your life.

Lemme show that to you with an example:

Pic 1
Pic 2

If you observe closely, in Pic 1 I am having a fake smile versus I’m just being a natural in Pic 2.

Why so? Because that day I was going to do something that I should have said no to. So I was not in my best frame of mind. It is from 2018.

In pic 2, from March 2021, I’m just myself all the time. Being happy, saying no to things that don’t matter, and more than anything else, being the boss of my life.

So, if you want to be the Boss Lady, just live your life on your own terms. And not to impress anyone.

Emotions

Why so angry, baby?

Anger. The word whose existence kills most relationships.

Even when people are aware that they need to stop getting so angry, why aren’t they able to change it?

Because they want their needs to be met first.

I want to be respected by my friends.
I want to earn more than a colleague.
I should be the priority for getting perks.

I want…

And when we don’t get these things we get bruised in our minds. That inner hurt is reflected as anger, sooner or later.

What if, we try the other way round?

I respect my friends and I know they also love and respect me, even if they don’t express it.
What I earn is right for me and whatever raise I deserve, will come to me.
Everyone is getting all the perks they deserve. It’s us vs me.

It turns out, when we change the inner conversation, the outer and inner anger vanishes.

Guess who is responsible for our anger then?
Guess who has the power to change it?

The power we look for outside, is the inner power we do not use.

Documenting the Day

Life updates

1. Life’s good. Enjoying work. And non-work.

2. Tried buying an iPad from Apple site, no deliveries as of now. Beta, thode din aur 🙂

3. Mom will make ice cream tomorrow. Since I cannot eat anything beyond dal rice roti subzi (i.e., no chhole, rajma, curry, mathri, etc.,) due to surgery, we came to a softer, easily digestible option.

4. Looking at the quantum of work I do, should I start charging more? Nope. I’ll manifest it. And let people pay me more out of will.

5. A prospect who converted has a problem understanding whatever I write on emails / messages. So then we have to get on a call. The entire process wastes a lot of time for me. Thinking of saying no to them tomorrow. Time is money. Not that I have communication issues. Rest all work perfectly well with messages / emails and once a week / fortnight calls.

6. Waiting to tell the new job info to my team at the right time 🙂

7. Gotta respond to the diligent guy who worked on the website. Been long.

8. Content, content, quiz, class, posting, uploading – six huge tasks for tomorrow. Gonna be fun.

9. Also gotta file the claim for hospitalisation. Saturday.

10. Did I tell you, idli still tastes good, despite having it a lot of times post surgery?

That’s it folks, stay safe and keep rocking 🤘🏻

Career

Jobless for a year

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? 🤩

People

People do help

If you tell people that you need help, they will reach out to you for helping.

However, we need to see to it that we ask 🙂

Emotions, Knowing Yourself, Thoughts, Truth be told

How past trauma affects work

Someone I know was in a bad relationship in the past.
Multiple traumatic experiences with the same guy.
He used to leave her, then come and physically and mentally exploit her, and the chain continued for several years.

Until one day she finally got the courage to get up and leave.

But you know what, this trauma continued for several years in her work as well.

She believed she was not deserving of getting her needs met at work, so she wanted to leave from work at the tiniest of discomfort.
She never went up to talk to her clients or bosses, because she was never spoken to in the most intimate relationships.
More than anything else, if anyone at work praised her work, she felt it was a lie just like the guy “loved” her and went away multiple times.

Here’s the truth: When you look at that guy, his social media profiles, his work background, he comes across as an Angel. Like no one could be as divine as him. Yet he is the cause of someone else’s deepest trauma.

Sometimes it helps to see that our desire for needs becomes someone’s long-term pain. Are we ready to bear the consequence of that karma?

Life

Tested negative?

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.