Raw. Real. Unfiltered. Daily blogs. Often, less than 100 words
Last few days were very hard.
I won’t say “because of…”
I’d rather say because I didn’t invest much on myself. Slept by 10 instead of 9:30 on a lot of days, killed some time on Instagram, and the worst of all, on the opinions of others.
Will change that a lot in 2022. Already started!
2022, here we come :))
Over time what made you cry, you begin to start looking forward to it.
Over time, what was difficult, you begin to find ease in it.
Over time, what you used to expect, you begin to find acceptance in lack of expectations met.
Over time, the money you used to dream of, you begin to be happy despite more of that money.
Over time, what used to make you happy, you begin to find happiness without it.
Over time, what used to make you angry, now makes you the most peaceful person.
Over time, as time changes, for good and only good, it changes us as well!
Even though you love your work,
Even though you feel energised,
Even though your boss is super-supportive by not micromanaging you
You must take an off on the weekends and on the festivals.
Because things that are meant to be enjoyed and relished are the things that are meant to be enjoyed and relished.
There is no substitute to not spending time with yourself and reflecting, because only in emptiness you get to understand yourself.
Which makes you all the more productive when you return to work.
This one is from a visual in Rishikesh – from Atali Ganga, the place where we’d stayed at.
That solitude from the hotel overlooking the Ganga river with a mountain stays with me till date.
Enjoyed as a side fun – to let yourself go and see what emerges 🙂
I often think about irrelevance.
What will make you irrelevant?
When someone else takes your job?
When you grow but miss your roots?
When you think there is something that, if taken away from you, you will lose your identity?
The truth is, whatever you have, will be taken away from you.
If not now, on your death.
Thus, the fear of irrelevance is technically the insecurity of giving up all you have.
Now that you know that it will go away anyway, how to deal with it?
Attention
Focus
Peace
Sleep
Rest
Books
Reflection
Could we be asking for any more?
1. Went to the mall after 20 months perhaps. Had to buy chappal. Went to Crossword Book store, got lost there and came back 🙂
2. Good to see life back to normal. I feel good for dahi papdi waale bhaiya, SIM card waale bhaiya, e rickshaw waale bhaiya, shakarakand waali Didi, and all those people whose employment depended on going out.
3. As I was going through the Crossword Book Store today, I also thought of fundamental rules of life. Here we go:
4. A good question for you: What parts of “normal” are even worth returning to?
Therapy is helping me.
I’m also getting broken into pieces.
But therapy is the glue that helps me fix them, instead of the cement that helps me conceal them. And that’s powreful.
Also, life is beautiful 🙂
When I was in Class 6, I wrote my first poetry.
In Class 9, I asked my English teacher: “What shall I do in order for you to give me more than 7 out of 10 marks, in the Writing section?”
In Class 10 and 12, I was the national topper in English language.
In University exams, I got 63 out of 70 in English and Commercial Communication – the only exam I did not study ANYTHING! (Don’t know who the topper was :D)
In the 3 months vacation after giving CA exams, I ended up writing my first book!
In 5 years after writing that first book, I was finally able to let go of a stable career as an Internal Auditor and plunge into writing full-time.
What we see that happens suddenly, has years of unseen practice that goes into it.
But here is what I know for sure:
1. Your heart knows it, before you know it.
2. Your life is always showing you signs, it is just you – who has to stop and listen.
3. Your journey is always going to be different from someone who “made it before you.” But still, your journey is yours. And you won’t want it different.
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.
A part of the work I do has these processes:
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:
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.
Organisations have time sheets for their employees to fill.
Which every employee fills with productivity hours.
Not realising, it indeed hampers their productivity.
This is how it works: If an employee works for 8 hours and another one for 5 hours, the first one is more productive.
Except that its not true.
What if the second employee took 30 minutes to nap?
Or went for a walk for an hour that indeed multiplied her productivity?
Or perhaps went to the office balcony and stared at the nature for a few minutes, which indeed let her look at an error that the “8-hour-productive employee” failed to look at?
We all function at different levels of efficiency. But most people term people just as “productive” or “unproductive” on a system that silently makes the productive one also unproductive. Because she cannot do all of that and has to be at work for 8 hours, she will lose her interest, curiosity, and of course, productivity.
The last thing we signed up for, while creating timesheet productivity!
With all that is going on in the world we need to be more powerful from within.
Trust yourself, your mindset is the biggest asset.
No news. More positivity. And some time in nature by going to the balcony / terrace.
You are all you have. And you can’t afford to lose your happiness like this every single day!
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.
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:
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.
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 who do not understand these miracles, call themselves addicted to the internet.
Feb is the month when Nana passed away. Precisely 18th Feb, 2014.
I loved him dearly. But don’t feel a vacuum. That is the best thing about true love.
Love makes you stronger and more loving in their presence, not weaker and hateful.
If we turn latter in a loved one’s presence, we perhaps never loved the one we lost. We were simply being selfish in the process of loving them.
Here’s how we waste time (and where we shouldn’t):
Today there’s nothing much to say.
Lost a close Uncle. Had met him two days after Diwali, last month. Little did anyone of us know that this was the last one.
While we were cordial and cool in our last meeting, I do realise that we don’t know which one is going to be our last meeting.
Lesson: Treat every meeting with people like the last one. We never know.