Raw. Real. Unfiltered. Daily blogs. Often, less than 100 words
If you choose to show your authentic self, it is amazing how many people would offer themselves to help you.
Society has taught us to show only goodness and beauty, and that is what brings respect from others.
The real thing, if surfaced to the top, would bring in reality from everyone else as well.
Collectively, we will take things forward, by showing where we lag.
Otherwise, false impressions will create false realities, which will serve no true purpose.
If you’re alone and you don’t like it, somewhere you have done something to deserve it.
If you’re alone and you do like it, somewhere you have done something to deserve it.
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.
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?
When you look at your work a month ago and laugh at it, you know you’re growing.
Bonus Point: Also, when you look at another piece of work from a month ago and feel proud seeing it, you know you’re creating epic work.
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.
Everything you want to control you won’t be…
…unless you control yourself.
It is a disease not restricted to a few people.
Rather, there are very few people who don’t suffer from this.
Well, what to do if you want to be one of those few people?
a. Being kind even when you have the right to be unkind is an unprecedented advantage.
b. Replacing “you’re an idiot” with “I think there is a miscommunication” lets the other person know that they’re not unwanted.
c. More than anything else, when we move around the world with the backstory that we are the hero and our role is to make others rise, instead of being the villain who wants everyone to fall down.
Split personality disorder is real and more rampant than we ever thought. What we need is a decision to have a personality we would be proud of.
And to live to that personality when things inevitably don’t go vanilla.
If our thoughts create our destiny,
If our time is limited,
If we have the power,
Then doesn’t it make sense to make a budget for our inner resources just like for our cash and expenses?
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!
I love imli chutney. Whenever I go home, I just being a can filled with it, prepared by my Mom.
Since we are in the middle of a lockdown and I am unable to go home, today I asked Maa to teach me how to make chutney.
What she described as a process took me 90 minutes just to crush the tamarind! Pre and post processes notwithstanding.
Process. Journey. Of going through the crushing process. Of just going through it.
Going through it.
Recently a new version of a popular song was launched in India.
The old version was a super hit, and was composed by one of the renowned names in the music industry.
Almost every Influencer on social media posted about how they adored the old version and the current version was lame. Yet the new version, as of this writing has 32Mn views on YouTube versus the old one having 26Mn.
If the old version was rightly more melodic, and everyone so rightly agreed to it, why is there a dramatic difference in the number of views they have?
Is it because it is easier to criticise and people were just exploring the facts to be rightly sure of it?
Or is it because we realise the importance of something great when we are served with something worse?
Or maybe, the mind loves consuming dancing cat videos more than a great inspirational talk – because consuming great content requires responsibility?
It could be any or all of them, yet it shows how much power we as humans are blessed with.
We can twist the wheel in any direction. The question is, which one we choose today?
New friends.
When you find new friends of course you feel great, you feel like you have arrived home.
Yet at the same time it’s it would be great to remember that those friends help you make you a bigger version of you, a better version of you.
Would be wise to not be like them rather being just the best version of you. Balance of love. Best of both worlds.
In all the things that everyone describes as “normal”, we all have one thing that we DON’T do.
Even if everyone in the world is doing it, we don’t do it.
In “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, the author Daniel Kanheman talks about why we tend to lower down the volume in the car while searching for parking spots – because parking requires a thought process and even music comes as a distraction.
It is such a subconscious process, that we hardly realise that we do
it. As it comes to doing weird things with my life, I can never work with music.
Nor can I read a book accompanied with music.
Not even meals :/
That focus is a necessity for me, and music comes in when I am seriously sitting idle or (the good old days) when we were allowed to drive on the roads:)
Like most people, I DON’T listen to music “at all times”!
Going through this.
Saw it on James Clear’s newsletter, replicating it for you:
Bill Watterson, the cartoonist and creator of Calvin and Hobbes, on the difference between ambition and happiness:
“…having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.
Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement.
In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it’s to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success.
Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake.
A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
You’ll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing.
There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them. To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.”
There are going to be times when people are going to throw stones at you.
There will be times when no one will understand you.
More than anything else, they will try to shatter you into pieces before you could believe it.
Amidst that external terror, just remember:
When you stay silent within and without, wonderful things happen. You tend to not listen despite they saying, and you tend to not get affected despite they trying too hard to.
You being unquestionable is up to you.
It’s so difficult to find the time to dig out the time to do most important things.
We think that we don’t have the time we need to schedule things and even if we try and schedule thinks we are not able to get the change you want to have.
Here’s a counterintuitive approach: just try to do five things every single day that you want to win the day.
You don’t have to who at the fag end of the day, they may be completed by 12 Noon or 3 PM.
For those things you want to know that when you have done those things you have won the day.
For example if you have a hard time working out put it out on your list: workout. If you have a hard time finishing up on that important project write it out on the list ProjectX and so on.
Do not keep more than five items not even six not even 7, not 10, not 20.
Because it’s not possible to accomplish 25 items a day, just focus on your five things by 12 noon by 11 o’clock in the morning by 3 PM at 5 PM whatever time feels right with you and live by that.
Your time your life would become a journey, a wonderful journey that you will be proud of and you’ll be super proud of it and super proud of the fact that you made the right decision.
When the lockdown will be over, what will your reaction look like?
A. Happy to have the freedom to go out.
B. A part of you will regret if you didn’t make the best of this time.
That very part of you will be overjoyed if you made every moment count.
What are you spending your moments currently on?
The best way to lose up on everything, is by do it so much.
Break is much needed, like we are right now.
If all this holiday got over you will be sad.
Enjoy these holidays before holidays get over.
Your eighteenth birthday doesn’t come back. This isolation won’t come back. So won’t this peace.