Nidhis.daily.blog

Category: self growth

  • Concious uncoupling

    When silence takes center stage. When there is comfort in avoidance. When it is best to fall out of touch than stay in touch. Both sides let time and tide wash it away. Quiet. Concious. Disconnected.

    A term made fashionable by the Hollywood actor Gywneth Platrow – silent divorce describes the above situation accurately. There is quiet quitting, and act of growing apart, slowly albeit steadily. A noiseless separation that isn’t conjectured in a day but has been in the making since years, decades perhaps. Partners falll out of love, liking and eventually co-existence. No drama, no pressure just pack up and move on.

    It’s rampant these days, not just amongst married couples but even other relationships. Friendships are more often than not ending this way. Falling in and out of love and companionship is the reason here too. You grow ‘bored’ of a bestie and latch onto another, more often than not only to move onto another. Often the courtesies are exchanged and being ‘in the radar’ is no more considered insulting even if you were 3am friends at one time. Even in families you see siblings no more emotionally connected to the umbilical cord or to each other. They live together or apart, function in harmony when required but act in complete autonomy and isolation of each other (or even the parents at times)!

    It can be termed emotional conservation – where you want to save your feelings and not spend them unnecessarily by ‘sweating on the small stuff’. This also saves one from the societal pressure of living with one’s partner or family. Thus saved from the stigma, everyone can live and let live. Carrying on with the parallel lives, non aligned but cooperative where need be!

  • Reflections

    Not all athletes win an olympic gold. Not all scientists get the Nobel prize. Not all authors win a Booker prize. So why burden yourself with the pressure of outperforming?

    Not saying to not chase your dreams. Neither proposing giving up your passion or profession. Just a wild Wednesday reflection of why not revel in being you. Why always chase titles, awards, prizes and accolades. Why not enjoy the journey itself. Why look for assurances in achievements. Why not stay self contained. Why seek validation externally. Why not discover peace within.

    Cherish. Be grateful. Nourish. Ruminate. Preserve. Construct. Unlearn. Relearn. Think out of the box. Eureka moments don’t happen in chaos. They need a reflective state of mind to nurture.

    Not all of us would go on to accomplish larger than life goals. So better most of us start cherishing the moments as they pass and savour the memories built around them.

  • Get Better At Living

    Always in a hurry. Multitasking forever. Feel like you are chasing endless goals from an infinitely long bucket list.

    The constant aim is to make our lives better. Bigger, faster, anything superlative is what we are tirelessly (& most often mindlessly) working at. What if we chase being better at living instead of the constant desire to upgrade our lives.

    #MetroMonday

    Let’s not assume it’s a death of ambitions. Nor is it that I am preaching slow thinking or deferring decision-making. It’s more about keeping yourself and your core constant in whatever life throws at you. You can only control your physical body, not even subtle body, then why put up a fight with the situations, circumstances and behaviours of others. All of these are external to your locus of control anyways.

    Look inward and guard your space. Keep up your own spirits. Build your own routines. Walk a new path. Put on your playlist and float in the music. If someone lends a shoulder every now & then, embrace it and be grateful about it. Get better at living whatever life throws at you!

  • Growth in Stillness

    How do you react to stillness? Do you dread it because busyness is your middle name? Or do you embrace it in the garb of laziness? Or do you find it comes naturally to you?

    Being still is an art. And like every other art form, it take practise. Hours and hours of practise to be able to master it.

    So start small, and not be meditating with your mind. First meditate with your body. Keep your focus undiverted at the task at hand and stay at it without itching to pick up the next task or the next thought.

    It would be discomforting to begin with. Staying calm and undisturbed doesn’t come easy. Fleeting thoughts, feelings and to-do list float around you. You swim in the sea of constant chaos. So find your comfort in this discomfort.

    Once you master your concentration skills, start lengthening the same and put it to work while doing nothing. Or simply put meditate for a brief period. Anxiety comes natural to us humans. Choose stillness over it, start small but start today.

  • Breathe Of Love

    Are you thriving or existing? Do you feel life is not being lived in moments but is slipping through you hands like grains of sand.

    What if you could experience each breath laden with compassion? Each of your life moments could be full of love and warmth. Your every action could carry the stamp of kindness and empathy.

    Mighty I stand

    It is not that you would turn into a pushover or a doormat who is easy to please and get things done. Neither does it imply you need to be all giving despite your inner biases. Firm yet polite. Calm but clear. Assertive and not arrogant. Giving yet worldly wise. And all of this is possible if your inner state is one of peace, tranquility, sufficiency and bliss.

    It means being in a yogic state of existence beyond the meditation session or the asana on the exercise mat. Thereby living each breath full of love.

  • Progress Over Perfection

    Is it good to toot your own horn? Hell yes! If you got the bragging rights to something that was a first for you, go ahead and publicize it, shamelessly.

    As seasoned professionals, we don’t think twice about advertising our work wins with peers and leaders. So when it comes to personal victories, why do most of us go silent?

    I performed at a socially gathering. Or I learnt a new skill. Or I mended a broken connection. Why don’t we hear such stories often? Maybe because most earning professionals think such ‘domestic’ things are beneath them. Or they think these are insignificant achievements as they are meant to be a given. Since professional accomplishments are the only ones bringing in the monies, only they get the limelight.

    I see myself

    How about building a personal resume, something alike your professional one. It details out your EQ and IQ victories. It summaries the life experiences gathered in handling situations and dealing with people. It captures your learnings out of failures and rarely even revivals. It’s like a journal albeit the details, emphasizing your growth as a human being.

    Not that it can be marketed anywhere you may say, so why put brains behind it. But is there anything more dear than peace and happiness. Sometimes we need to step away from daily grind and look at ourselves as a third person. Your personal curriculum vitae would reassure you of your journey and decisions this far. It can even pave the way forward upon deeper reflection.

    Embrace it & set aside a personal brag hour each week rn.

  • Emotions Can Heal

    We take great care of our physical body. A tiny scratch or a minute discomfort is enough to make us acutely aware of tending to it. Then what about the subtle body which goes through a multitude of emotions?

    Emotional healing is a powerful experience. It is unnerving so not for the faint hearted to attempt. It requires you to be vulnerable to your core. You have to unearth your deepest, darkest memories and lay them bare in the open. It is a journey to be undertaken raw and with your bare self.

    Screen yourselves

    Layer by layer, you peel off the many lives you lived. Untying the bonds, untangling the connections. The framework is loosely to first be aware, then acknowledge and lastly accept. It guides you to let go – of past, present as well as future. It reinforces gently that a lot is beyond your control, only your permanent residence i.e., your physical body is your locus of control. It rises your consciousness to stay mindful of now and unlearn the stories you told yourself.

    As your wounds close, new emotions sew the gaps. Let not these emotions fool you, as they too are fleeting. Only your soul is permanent, it is your only truth.

  • Stepping out !

    As we grow up, we learn a lot. And also unlearn a lot. Ever desired if we could retain it all and still grow?

    A baby is born fearless. As she grows into a kid, exploring her immediate surroundings, she starts to learn her boundaries. She is told to run only this fast, laugh only this loud and think only this bold.

    Less is more

    While we should be aware of our boundaries, it is worth exploring the edges once in a while. There is a fine line between being timid and taking calculated risks. And it’s a boost to the self esteem when that overstep teaches us something, invaluable, irreplaceable by anything in our comfort zone.

    Relearning or unlearning is of value as jt adds to your personality, your charisma and your character. A new perspective in one domain of life oftens breathes fresh air into other aspects of life as well. How about taking stock of not just our growth but also of what shed. Sometimes that is what brings immense value as it sheds the unnecessary and lean is always in.

    Imagine being able to retain the childlike curiosity, the innocence, the forgiving nature, the carefree laughs, the deep breathing and much more even as we grow, learn and develop.

  • Something else on the mind!

    Work or Home? Socialize or Solitude? Comfort of homeland or adventure of overseas?

    (Wo)man’s quest for that something else just never stops. It makes us think, think some more and overthink. For some of us, we even act on this thinking and do things unplanned, uprooting and maybe even unthinkable of under normal circumstances.

    When everything seems nice and fine, we inadvertently rock the boat. Sometimes to prove to ourselves that too much comfort isn’t good. And on other occassions in reaction to our circumstances. Either ways, stepping out of comfort paves way to growth, organic or inorganic. Pushes us to do more, be more and be our better selves. That self which may then look back and laugh at the pool soul of the past who was feeling overwhelmed just sometime back. Such is the power of human adaptability.

    So fortunately or unfortunately, that’s what sets the human race apart from the other species on planet earth. Our constant zeal, unending striving, ever evolving list of desires is what keeps us going, re-discovering ourselves and even re-inventing our lives. As they say if all’s going well, is it even going somewhere?!

  • I quit!

    Do you know when to fold? How do you determine if this is the tipping point when you should call it quits?

    There are highs and then there are lows. Life is constantly swinging something at us. You have the upending ups and then the decimating downs. Sometimes a win looks like a peak summit and a ditch looks like a bottomless pit. Neither are true. It is what you feel and experience. Your thoughts are your ultimate reality and they determine your perception.

    Lit

    Literary experts, political nemesis, brilliant actors and even breakthrough scientists have a lull period. Do all of them get miserable? Yes. Do all of them call quits? No. They hibernate, chip away at something else, chill it out and basically let their minds reset before restarting the toil and hard work.

    So let’s learn to be humane & swim with the tides. Don’t give up too soon. Stay at it, for the art, for the love and for the expression. Remember, always, the art is first for the artist, then for the rest of the world.