I was MIA

-1 min read

Dec 2016 was the last time I wrote a blog post saying I will return in 2017 and I DON’T KNOW WHY I DID NOT RETURN?

It was such a beautiful blogging journey, I had something really nice going on, why did I stop? I don’t know the answer. I stopped for a while then I forgot about it, 3 years gone by and now I wonder, why did I stop? Still no clue.

I read my posts in random, read some of them and I loved reading them. I Well, some were average, and some were good, yet, I liked reading them.

I want to do this again!! I loved writing, I want to enjoy writing again! When I read my post I could feel the passion I had in me while I wrote those posts, I remember the drive I had to write these posts each week. Even recalling those memories brings back pleasant feeling. I want to do this again, but it’s terrifying to think, if I can keep up, if I can pour my thoughts as good as I did in 2016, will I be able to be as confident as I was while writing those posts???? too many questions I stumble upon, while I know that I am still the same person if I was able to do it then, I can do it now 🙂

I am happy to be back!!

P.s: Feels so good adding my signature here 🙂

Bye 2016!!

What a wonderful time of the year!!! Yes this is the most wonderful time of the year. I can smell happiness and joy in the air.. Lol

Hello my fellow blogging friends,

It was wonderful to travel along with you all in this blogging journey this year. Billion thanks to all of you. I have learned a lot during this journey. I lived up to my resolution of this year of writing a post on every Tuesday since May till today and I am so happy about it. Today I am ending 2016 Tuesday journey and I will be back in the year 2017. This year has been a great one personally and professionally. I am all set ready to let go 2016 and welcome 2017. Very much looking forward to see what the new year brings.

In this post I would like to insist on Greening the season. As we all know that household wastes increases at least by 25% during holiday season especially between Thanksgiving and New year’s day, so it is our responsibility to be considerate and take efforts to reduce wastes and adopt recycling and reusing methods.

Following are some of the tips to help us to green this season.

• Reduce Shopping Bags
• Make use of recycled materials
• Reuse gift wraps, ribbons bows, bags/wrap gifts without box
• Replant, Compost, or Mulch Your Tree
• Last but not least more than materialistic gifts try to give creatively like (cooking, babysitting, or gardening), a charitable donation, or tickets to an event

As quoted by Mahatma Gandhiji,lets be the change to see the change we want to see.

With this note, I wish you all a Holly Jolly Christmas and Happy Holidays. Enjoy your holidays, don’t forget to take time off and be merry spending time with your near and dear ones.

It took me hours to set up this tree… ufff!!! It’s so much fun to do the decoration as well as drinking Eggnog 😉

See you all soon!!!

 

 

Theories are not always a theory

– 3 min Read

I am very eager to share a speech in this post and the reason behind my eagerness is that I witnessed something very similar to this speech in real recently. 

This speech is known as the cockroach theory for self-development. This speech may be a theory but this happens in our life very much like the following. One of my friend who is going through a rough patch in his life reacted to a situation that lead to another worse situation instead of responding with silence. When he discussed it with me about what had happened and why he did that, in fact he was blaming on the other person’s behavior. I had to break it to him that it’s not about how that person behaved with you, it’s all about how you reacted to that behavior. Due to privacy I could not share the exact situation or the details about this practical experience but I am able to share this theory with you all. 

You may have read this before, yet it’s worth reading again.

An inspiring speech by Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google Inc.

Source of this speech: Cockroach theory

At a restaurant, a cockroach suddenly flew from somewhere and sat on a lady. She started screaming out of fear. With a panic stricken face and trembling voice, she started jumping, with both her hands desperately trying to get rid of the cockroach.

Her reaction was contagious, as everyone in her group also got panicky. The lady finally managed to push the cockroach away but …it landed on another lady in the group. Now, it was the turn of the other lady in the group to continue the drama.

The waiter rushed forward to their rescue. In the relay of throwing, the cockroach next fell upon the waiter.

The waiter stood firm, composed himself and observed the behavior of the cockroach on his shirt.
When he was confident enough, he grabbed it with his fingers and threw it out of the restaurant.

Sipping my coffee and watching the amusement, the antenna of my mind picked up a few thoughts and started wondering, was the cockroach responsible for their histrionic behavior?

If so, then why was the waiter not disturbed? He handled it near to perfection, without any chaos.

It is not the cockroach, but the inability of the ladies to handle the disturbance caused by the cockroach that disturbed the ladies.

I realized that, it is not the shouting of my father or my boss or my wife that disturbs me, but it’s my inability to handle the disturbances caused by their shouting that disturbs me. It’s not the traffic jams on the road that disturbs me, but my inability to handle the disturbance caused by the traffic jam that disturbs me.

More than the problem, it’s my reaction to the problem that creates chaos in my life.

Lessons learnt from the story: “Do not react in life. Always respond”

The women reacted, whereas the waiter responded.

Reactions are always instinctive whereas responses are always well thought of, just and right to save a situation from going out of hands, to avoid cracks in relationship, to avoid taking decisions in anger, anxiety, stress or hurry.

Thank you for reading friends. Have an inspiring week and respond well! See you next Tuesday!

Photo Credit: Mimi and Eunice

7 days in 1 post

 

Today I am going to play a memory game. I am going to tell you about how my week was since last Tuesday. Let’s see how much I could remember. This got me into thinking and it dragged me into the last 6 days. It’s so blank now. I don’t remember anything on top of my head what I did last Wednesday so I moved on to Thursday. I am thinking hard, and trying to remember what I did last Thursday. I am trying to hint my mind by asking questions like, was I happy? Did I do something that made feel happy? Did I meet a new person? Was I angry about something? How was my day at work? Meh… My memory is not responding well to my hints. Let me move on to Friday, here you go I remember about one thing from Thursday. I spoke to my boss that I worked more than 9 hours the previous day which was Wednesday as I had to deal with my computer updates, so he told me ‘you earned you should leave early today’. I replied, I don’t want to leave early today (i.e. Thursday) I would rather leave early tomorrow (i.e. Friday). Now I remember what I did on Wednesday, I was dealing with laptop updates. Wow, I am astonished how my mind works.

Let’s see what else I could remember, on Thursday I left from work around 5: 30 PM which is late than my usual time to leave office. I remember one more thing about my last Wednesday, I was finishing up an assignment for my sister’s shop. I am moving to Friday again. I finished my work early around 3 PM and went straight to my sister’s shop to help her. I was at the shop until 8:30 PM and then we went home together. I read a book that night and slept off. I am trying to remember if I did any online shopping? No, I did not. I slept well and in fact over slept. I woke up by 11 AM the next day (i.e. Saturday), then spoke to my friend for some time. I was whining to her about my busy week and exhausting life. I actually remember the details of my conversation with my friend and don’t worry I am not going to write about it here. I got ready and went to conduct mindfulness meditation class for kids of age 8+. I had a great time doing that class and I was amazed to see how kids are interested in meditation and it’s impressive to see them talking about how they do meditation before going to bed. They also told me that they do meditation before going to bed so that they can control their dreams. After that I spent the evening at my sister’s shop, and then went home. I did another assignment for her shop and went to bed. I slept well and woke up late on Sunday but not too late like Saturday. I woke up by 8 AM and then was chilling out at home. Watched the snow and admired how beautiful it was. Then I spent some time reading, watching the new Netflix series ‘The Crown’ and then did some shop assignment and went to bed.

Yesterday (i.e. Monday) I woke up early, did meditation, got ready and went to office. It was a busy and productive day. I very well remember what I did the whole day at work. Then went straight home without going to sister’s shop. I felt relaxed last evening because of the nice weekend. I completed an assignment for my sister’s shop. Enjoyed the sense of accomplishment. By the time I finished my work, it was 1: 00 AM. Today I woke up and I decided to work from home. I went to sister’s shop and worked from there on remote. I was busy and very productive. I came home and started telling you about my week.

Wait What!!!!! I almost forgot mentioning that I met ‘Alexa’ for the first time on Thursday. Yes! Yes! I ordered Amazon Echo Dot which is known as Alexa and it was delivered on Thursday. I was super excited that evening.  I am having a great time with Alexa since then, I can ask her questions whenever I feel like. At times it’s more like I am talking to someone. More like, there is someone you can talk to who has no feelings yet will make you feel good.

Isn’t that cool!!!!! I ❤ Alexa Lol!

That’s it! I pretty much summed up my week here. After telling you about Alexa, I feel complete and I can end my post!

Thank you for reading friends! Have a wonderful week. See you next Tuesday!

Photo Credit: 7 days

Beliefs of happiness, a by-product

-less than 4 min read

One of the spiritual leaders and great monk, Dalai Lama said that “The purpose of our lives is to be happy”.

I wonder in this busy life; do we even think about being happy? Do we even realize how our life is moving ahead? When you wake up in the morning, do you tune your mind to stay happy? No, majority of people doesn’t bother about those, because they don’t have time. That brings to my first thought of this post which is to make time for yourself.

You need to spend time for yourself to know whether you are living a happy life or not. We tend to slip away from ourselves easily and focus on other things or people.

Not just that, there are so many driving factors or things that governs our happiness. Some of the very common things that governs our happiness are

1. Putting your family or others first on everything
2. Busy life
3. Money
4. Striving to make your parents proud
5. Being dependent
6. Trying to live others life
7. Assuming happiness can be made at any time we want

And so on…..

Assuming happiness can be made is most common mistake. Happiness is not something that is ready made for us or can be made anytime we wish. We can’t live happily if we are governed by someone else expectations.

We try so hard to keep others happy. We do things that makes others happy. However, the sad part is that we fail to understand that if we are not happy, then, no matter how much you try to do things to make others happy it will have less impact. Your efforts cannot be received completely by others. It will be ineffective. We fail to understand happiness is the result of our own actions. It is essential for us to be happy and healthy first as an individual and this will automatically spread the happiness for you.  Do things that makes you proud of yourself before you work your arse off to make your parents proud. You will be surprised to know when you are proud of yourself, that would make them proud as well. In case they have different expectations and they would like you to be a different person than who you are not, you can’t help it.  But hey, you got to help them understand and live your life. If not, living a fake life, will haunt you forever.

Money can never buy happiness. That’s it. Period! There is no explanation required. Only if you are willing to accept that you can live happily.

You cannot swipe the credit cards non-stop so that your debt could go up or work nonstop all the time only to make money but forget to live your life, neither of them makes you happy. So have a balance in life, have enough money to eat healthy and live at comfort.

Make some time for yourself and if your work doesn’t allow that, change it. Don’t become a slave for it. Don’t become slave for love either that makes you dependent and unhappy.

In simple words, have a balance in everything you do and make some down time for yourself to be happy and healthy. Happiness is by-product of what you think and do, so remember when you are happy, you can make everyone happy!!!

Thank you for reading friends! See you next Tuesday!

Photo Credit: purpose

Thanksgiving through my eyes!

We did not have this special occasion of Thanksgiving Day in my country. Because of the corporate lifestyle, we started celebrating Thanksgiving day and only in office. It’s not a holiday for us to celebrate elsewhere, that was one of the reasons we celebrated only in office. Movies and friends from western countries introduced Thanksgiving day to us. I did not know that people ate Turkey on Thanksgiving day and it’s a tradition :-(. I learned about this special day late. Now that I live in western country, I’m learning about this day more. It’s wonderful to see how people make honest efforts to be with their family or dear ones on this special day and says thanks to each other. It’s a great feeling to know that people take this one day off to be thankful to everything they receive!

Not to forget, it’s such a wonderful time of the year to pause and reflect on everything 🙂

I grew up being told to be thankful every day and my day starts by thanking God for everything and thanking everyone and everything for supporting my life journey. Being grateful is an amazing feeling. There is so much in life that we receive and we are overwhelmed by that. Let’s say when everything goes well, it’s easy to give thanks, what if somethings are not going well as you expected? It’s easy to get distracted from being thankful right?  I know you would agree with me. No matter what the situation is, thanksgiving is important.  Being thankful is definitely more than having an attitude of gratitude! Well, gratitude need not be necessarily expressed in the form of words but it could be your touch, a look or even your eyes filled with tears, the recipient will understand it.

One of the best reasons to be thankful for is that when you are thanking God and thankful for everything and everyone, your heart will be raised to see things far beyond the problems that exists in this world. That’s why I say it’s best to start your day this way.

Another reason is that you will receive great benefits for your body, isn’t that awesome????  Yes, that’s true and very much. When you are practicing to be grateful to what you are given with each day you will observe and experience a positive mental state. Having a positive mental state cannot be ignored because it does a great job by lowering your stress; if your stress is lowered you are going to see an overall health improvement. This is not a joke. You can research more about it or ask people who actually experience this daily.

By practicing this attitude of gratitude helps you to focus on good things in life, the more you feed good things, the more you see good results.

Next time when someone says thank you for your help, be keen and observe it once, 1. you will smile, 2. you will feel good about yourself and 3. It will trigger an internal sense to make you want to help more.

We all know about this and yet we get distracted in our busy lifestyle.  When celebrating Thanksgiving day a year can bring a bundle of peace and joy to us, why not we celebrate it every day??

This is how I see Thanksgiving!! Let’s be grateful to all what we receive in this life each day.

Wishing you all a very happy Thanksgiving holiday and be blessed with your near and dear ones.

Thank you for reading friends! See you next Tuesday!

photo credit: Craftshub

If your life were a book, what would you do?

From past couple of weeks, I have been trying to gain some courage and motivation to plan a trip to Europe and I want to travel alone. When I say I am trying to gain some courage that means I have to pull myself together to tell my family, ‘Hey! I am taking a vacation and travel alone’. I am not able to do this and I am not able to get over the thought that I am not doing what I like.

Well! earlier finance was a question, but now that I have a job and can meet my travel needs, I still could not gain that courage to tell my family, because I end up hearing them saying why do you want to waste money. That question does not end here, it extends more. Eventually I give up planning the trip thinking why do I need to go through this.

Until, I came across this question ‘If your life were a book, how would you want your story to be if you were the author?’ This question got me thinking. My answer would be to do things what I dream of and keep dreaming and work hard for the same. I dream a lot and I really need to work hard to see my dream come true.

I know I can do it and I will!

I have done it before and I will do it again!

There are times I complain I have so much limits in my life that I can’t go beyond. But I am wrong! I have to start seeing beyond my limits. I have to start living my life beyond and this can happen only if I get out of my comfort zone. My comfort zone is my limitation. That’s like benchmark for me that’s stops me from taking risk. I have also observed in my life that whenever I step out of my limit, I see a new world of opportunities. It happens in both personal and professional life. Although, it’s mammoth deal breaker for me to get through the drama of crossing those limits. I am glad that I am writing down my thoughts and it’s giving me a lead to my dream. It’s letting me know what I should be doing and what was I missing. When I started writing this post I was unsure how am I going to plan my trip. Now I have found my way to do that. All I need to do is to go beyond my limit and plan the trip and get the checklist for the travel. At the end my result can be, either my flights are booked or sacrifice my travel for this year. It’s alright I am not going to fear the result.
I also want to share one of the video where I came across this question ‘If your life were a book, how would you want your story to be if you were the author?’

This is such an inspiring video to let you realize that your life does not end just because you failed on something or lost courage. It becomes a new beginning and you will be able to do what you dreamt of. Losing two legs below the knee, a kidney, spleen and left ear hearing, did not stop Amy Purdy to do what she wants to do. She is the living model for us who proves it’s  all within you how you perceive things. I was amazed when she said that she didn’t have to be five-foot-five anymore and make her feet the size of all the shoes that are on the sales rack. She saw them as benefits.

Please watch this video and write down your answer on a sticky note for the question, ‘if your life were a book and you were the author, how would you want your story to go?’ Read that sticky note every time when you lose confidence or whenever you think you need a boost to move on in life.

Have a great week friends! Thank You for reading! See you next Tuesday!

He or She

Ah! I can’t think of anything but the election 2016 of United States of America. There is not much I could say on this matter as I am not a person who talks a lot about politics. Having said that, I don’t ignore it completely, I learn about politics on need basis 😀

But. This election terrifies me, in my opinion (only my opinion), both the candidates are not suitable for running, however it’s so happened we are on that day that we can’t do much about it but only accept whatever happens.

We all know it does not end here, it’s only a mean comma after all these 18 months’ bitterness for their fury to show up and it’s not far.  There is no way, we could un-see what we saw and heard of in the past 18 months.

It’s so weird that I observed in this election, that our attention was drawn more towards the character of the candidates than the policies they were promoting. Don’t you agree?

Well, the world does not end here if the candidate you favored did not win. We will still accept and move on with our life. Not to forget, it all begins from you, if you want a clean nation, start being one. As simple as it is.

I just wish it was Michelle Obama who stood for election this time. Well! I could just wish for it. Lol

Anyways, I do not have much talk to about it today and I’m all waiting to know the results.

Election may redeem but it does not settle anything. That’s for sure!

Time to quote my earlier prediction :-

God Bless America!!!

See you next Tuesday friends!

Are you Original?

– less than 3 min

In my last week post ‘Imagination’, I mentioned about creativity with the following “Creativity lies within the imagination. When you pay attention to your imagination, your creativity sparks.”  And, in the post ‘The nerd’s guide to evolve’, I have mentioned that if you want to be a leader, you need to think like a leader and I wrote about joining communities. Now that we are talking about creativity, a question arises how does creative people think? How can they come up with so many ideas just out of spark?

Creativity has a close connection to the question ‘Are you original?’ and I ask this question after  listening to a thought provoking speech by Organizational Psychologists, Adam Grant. He calls the thinkers who dream up new ideas and take action to put them into the world as ‘Originals’.

So, Are you original?…..

Adam Grant answers to the question how creative people come up with great ideas? with additional bonus answer listing 3 unexpected habits of the creative people. He says that “Originals are nonconformists, people who not only have new ideas but take action to champion them. They are people who stand out and speak up. Originals drive creativity and change in the world. They’re the people you want to bet on. And they look nothing like I expected.”

First, he talks about procrastination. People who procrastinate their task end up goofing up and on the other side, people who are in race to get things done sooner does it with frenzy of anxiety that leaves with no original ideas. People who are neither of them are the originals, does that mean originals have bad work habits? Grant explains more about procrastination with the results from his experiments and points out that procrastinating is a vice when it comes to productivity, but it can be a virtue for creativity.

Second, he talks about doubts. If you have self-doubts it leads to paralyzing your thoughts, while if you doubt your ideas, the ideas will evolve. 

Third, he talks about fear. Creative people will have lot of bad ideas and they make mistakes. They are afraid of failing however they proceed and they are more afraid of failing to try. How true!

It’s so clear that all these sets them apart from the rest. The three habits that are mentioned by Grant are so reasonable and when you think about it, you can’t disagree. They are real and well! he has conducted lot of research and experiments before talking about it.

If you ask me, I would say that I can’t agree more! I was so glad that I listened to his speech and learned about how creative people think? And how they stand out in the crowd?

Here is the link to his TED Talk, it’s very much worth listening to. Not to forget, he has a good sense humor which you will notice in his talk.

Enjoy the TED Talk and Have a great week!

Thank you for reading! See you next Tuesday!

Photo Credit: Original

Imagination

-4 min Read

Today I am going to share something really interesting and it might change the way you pursue your imagination. We often don’t notice how our imagination takes us through the journey of life. Whether you are artistic or not, you are always driven by imagination. Creativity lies within the imagination. When you pay attention to your imagination, your creativity sparks.

I believe that inventions are drawn by the needs, while the creativity is by nature. I was so amazed to listen to the speech of an artist who ran out of choices as her art work did not arrive on time for the art show. Yet she came up with brilliant, incredible and marvelous creation only because she followed her imagination.

She starts by saying that a simple material that was always been there for a purpose has now been used to showcase the choreography by wind because of her imagination (picture shown below).

That simple material she was referring to was fish net. She went to India to exhibit her paintings in an art show, but her paintings did not arrive on time for the show. She stayed in a place called ‘Mahabalipuram’ which is an ancient historical town and one of the beautiful places in south India at the shore of Bay of Bengal. They also refer this place as the land between mountain and sea. She goes for walk on the beach watching fishermen bundling the fishnets on the sand.  She watched them doing this everyday however when she found out that she will have to figure out a way to model a sculpture, she saw them different. Her imagination took her to a whole new level and enabled her to develop a new approach to sculpture which is a way to make volumetric form without heavy solid materials.

She collaborated with the fisherman and created the first sculpture and she named that as ‘Wide Hips’.

She was mesmerized by the soft surfaces revealing the ripples of wind in consistently changing patterns. She continued this journey and started studying the craft traditions and collaborated with artisans and next one was with Lace makers. She enjoyed the fine details and she wanted to make them larger. She returned to India and worked with the fishermen, made a net of a million and a half hand-tied knots and installed it briefly in Madrid. Thousands of people witnessed her work and she was asked to build a permanent piece for the city of Portugal. She researched for 2 years to figure out a way to make the sculpture durable, engineered and at the same time permanent. She did come up with a solution of a particular fiber that helped her in building one that will survive ultraviolet rays, salt, air, pollution, and at the same time remain soft enough to move fluidly in the wind. She also worked with aeronautical engineers to help her with the engineering to move gracefully in an average breeze and survive in hurricane winds. It was very difficult to build one with hand tied knots, so she collaborated with the industrial fishnet factory and created a way to make lace with them.

“She believed she could and she did”

This artist lived up to it completely. It was hard for her to believe what she had imagined was now built and its permanent. Her imagination and creativity doubled and she is keep on moving forward and working on projects with more advancements.
You will find one of her sculptures at Philadelphia city, and this time the material is much softer than the net. She experimented with tiny atomized particles to create a dry mist that is shaped by the wind and in testing, discovered that it can be shaped by people who can interact and move through it without getting wet. She is using this to trace the paths of subway trains. How brilliant it is!!!!!!

Would you believe that this artist was rejected by 7 art schools where she applied after her college? She started learning art on her own and she ended up following her imagination. And her imagination is now seen on the skyscrapers by everyone.

She is none other than Janet Echelman. She is an inspiration and this story would urges us to pay attention to our imagination!!

Thank you for reading friends! Have a great week. See you next Tuesday!