Being What I Always Wanted To Be.....

 Have you ever experienced the pain of being unheard?  You are talking to your elders pouring your heart out and they are just mindlessly nodding their heads and sometimes even not that. You are in a room full of people where you are at the table as part of a decision maker but people talk over you or repeat the same things you said and getting acknowledged while it seems your voice didn't reach them? You are talking to your children and they shut the door on your face or after 5 mins ask you to repeat what you said because they were not listening? Your texts being read but are not replied to? Your spouse engaging you in a guessing game where you guess whether he/she heard you or not because you don't get any response? How do you deal with such situations? How to be heard? How to be respected when you speak? Some people might say talking is an art. You need to learn how to say what you want to say so as it makes an impact. Okay. I can agree with this for a public speaking situ...

 When I wrote the post on retrospection, many people discussed a lot of things with me which made me feel good for two reasons: 1) They read my writing  💓 2) The post stirred something inside each of them and I learnt so much from the discussions. In one of those discussions when we kind of side tracked to the topic of doing things for ourselves, one of my friends said that she has been doing it lately consciously and she feels it is very important for the reminder of our existence. She gave me a specific example that earlier when she used to order anything to eat, she would always think or ask her kids what they want. Even if she doesn't want to eat, she would order the same. But now, she rotates this choice of food. At times, the kids eat what she would want to order and this makes an incredible difference.  This thought kept ringing in my mind and today I decided to implement it. So, today its me and my son at home alone and I was super hungry at lunch. He was hungry ...

 We often find ourselves lost in the jungle of chaos in the middle of life. What is chaos? The one that is inside or the one that we “think” is outside?  Too many thoughts can be chaos. Absolute silence can be chaos too. Not crying at all can be chaotic and so is crying unstoppable. Not writing it out can be chaotic and so does writing on and on.  Where does it end? Please don’t say nowhere. That’s a dangerous word. If it ends nowhere that means it is endless. And who would want to live in an endless loop of unwanted things? Once again, for everything the answer is within. The answer for you is you and for me is me. We seek darkness hence we find it. If we seek light, it is easier to find as a matter of fact because it is within. I know it doesn’t work when it comes to it. I know it is not easy. But what is easy? From the day you were born, from lifting your neck to dealing with this today’s chaos, everything has been difficult. But we still lifted our necks. We rolled, w...

There always comes a time in life when you retrospect past few months/years and decide what needs changing. Sometimes the changes are in your routine, sometimes the people surrounding you and other times starting new things for your own good. My retrospection gave me all three recently! It is overwhelming to realize at times that you were roaming in the wrong lanes and had you not done this exercise, you might have done a lot of damage to your own.  I got this habit or rather this alarm of awareness ever since I was in 9th standard or somewhere around same age where I kind of auto-fix myself with this exercise. It is usually a hit and trial but the self awareness makes me more independent every time I do it. This exercise is also very helpful in thinking about myself (just me and no one else) which no one else would do so selflessly. It is such a basic thing but I see so many people forgetting to just think about themselves. They would think about their ageing parents, their spouse...

  This year women’s day was special. Not just for me, but globally. I saw so many changes around the globe for women. Changes we all have been waiting for since a long time. Let us take sports. Our Indian girls won the U19 cricket world cup championship and what a moment it was! Shafali Varma’s (Captain) emotional turmoil was so touching and relatable to all the Indian girls. Imagine the girls who had to disguise themselves as boys all their young age to be able to develop the skill set for the sport and attempt an entry on professional level if they could surpass the conventional norms of their families. No matter how blessed we are, we all go through similar challenges somewhere in our lives. I recently learned and realized how important men are as our allies to change the world. You want the world to be progressive, you can’t do it just by women even if your progression is for women. And second most important thing is resourcing. Having the right resources at the right time....

When today everyone talks about love and pampering, I want to talk about loss. Loss of a life, loss of a relationship, loss of memories, loss of friendship. How naive it is for someone to assign a day of love. Can you love someone for a day? Can love be for just a day?  Like losses, love is a constant. When you lose someone, you lose them forever. People might argue that a lost relationship/friendship sometimes comes back. Does it? Does it ever come back in the same form it went? I don't think so. There is always this wound that you taped which if ripped, will again make you go through it all over again. Today, 11 years ago, I lost my grandfather. There were flowers and kisses exchanged all around but we were grieving. But still, on his death anniversary when I go back and remember him, I only find love. Sometimes, it might feel like I am forgetting his face and then the next time, I can recall each wrinkle on his fingers. He taught me to write. I would have never known how to writ...

Now that the world is progressing and we do see women leaders all around the world doing great things and inspiring people, my organization also have some powerful women personalities leading the business while inspiring and paving way for inclusiveness and diversity. A prime inspiring day of my life was a recent conference that I attended last week at my workplace which was a talk session of the women technologists/leaders of the group. The session gave away so many life changing lessons to me that I am so glad I did not miss it. There are moments in your life that literally grows you in your character and personality and this was one of those moments of my life. We, the women tribe, are so smart and yet so naive. It was so overwhelming to realise that all or most of us feel the same things, go through the same struggles in day-to-day life but we all feel that the situations are unique to us. Or at best we assume, there are very few people who have to face the same things. There were ...

Recently, I read this book "Postscript" by Cecelia Ahern which is the sequel of the famous romance fiction P.S. I Love you. Its a strong recommendation by the way. However, the book talks about a concept called "Roots and Wings" which fascinated me so much that I kept thinking about it and wanted to write something on it.  Without giving any spoiler of the book, there is a point where one of the characters asks Holly (the protagonist) : what is that one thing in her life that gives her both roots and wings? Such a powerful question, isn't it? We all want to soar high in our life in all aspects: we want to succeed in career, in relationships, in parenting, in business and what not. Those are the wings we need to fly and reach the heights. At the same time, many of us want or rather need to be grounded and never forget our roots. What made us what we are. What's that reminds us of our beginning, of our base. What's the thing that keeps us tethered to home?...

Like everyone else, my new year began with some positive assertions in my mind. A basic idea of what I have to focus on and what I have to discard from life. My husband gifted me a planner book which is almost a project book rather and needs another planner to plan on how to fill that book. It asks me to plan out my year first on the year level, then on the month level and then on each day level and I sometimes wonder that if I were so sorted, I wouldn't need the planner after all. However, to those of you who have read "Atomic Habits" and "The power of your subconscious mind", this planner is a hybrid of both and needs a lot of skill which I am trying to acquire and make time for. My problem is that anytime I get, I find something "better" to do which is mostly reading and thus I miss out on a lot on trying some new things.  Anyway, one of my assertions was trying to write more. There was a time when I used to write 1 blogpost everyday. However, I was...