Take a thinking exercise, say, What would you do once the lockdown ends?

In the first couple of minutes, we will jot down all the things that we have been craving to do. At a fast pace. Once the initial frenzy of thoughts passes, our mind slows down. After the first five minutes, we pretty much draw a blank.

Usually, this is the point we stop and move on. But instead, try staying on it for another ten minutes. We will find our mind wandering and amidst that exploration, a couple more ideas will pop out. Just one or two but, more often than not, they will be deep and fulfilling. Ones that hold an intrinsic value for us but we forget while busy plucking all the low-hanging fruit.

So, next time, stay on watching after the dust settles. The view can reveal some pretty powerful insights.

This is the question people usually ask when they check in on you. I always answered based on how my day went. But it was pointed out to me recently that the actual answer to that question should be based on how I was feeling about myself at that moment.

Feeling good about the day should not be mistaken for feeling happy with oneself. Sometimes, the former may not be related to the latter. I find the distinction to be very revealing and another step in the direction of increased self-awareness. So, the question I ask myself now is “How often do I go to sleep feeling happy and content with myself?“

Asking the right questions is the first step in arriving at the right answers.

Self-awareness is a journey with no clear trail, milestones or destination. Which is why it is so hard for us to understand where we are in the process. But today, I don’t want to talk about how to become self-aware. In my opinion, the steepest slope is first getting to the point where we are capable of cultivating awareness within. This cognizance cannot be induced on demand. Nor is it a one-time passage.

This apparent lack of control over initiating an important life change got me thinking on what has helped me in the past to reach a stage of mindfulness. The truth is that this climb happens subconsciously for the most part. But there are things that can catalyse the process.

• Reading books that elevate our thoughts. These can be autobiographies, self-help or creative fiction. I would include blogs here too. (A Learning A Day, Seth’s Blog)
• Listening to podcasts that deliberate and analyse the complex questions in the world, those that don’t have straight cut-out answers. (Hidden Brain by Shankar Vendantam)
• Engaging in conversations that stimulate self-introspection.
• Trying new ventures. There is no right or wrong one here, it’s completely subjective. The only question we need to answer is what it means to us.
• Picking a challenge that attacks deep-seated self-doubts.
• Writing in a journal.
• Travelling.

The list can really go on. These are just some of the things that I have noticed to have an impact on me. It is alright if we try something and it doesn’t work. It just means that either the activity or the time is not right for us. And we move on to the next thing. The scary, but simultaneously, exciting part of this process is that there is no right or wrong step and every successful or failed attempt is just a data point. The underlying theme to take note of in all these activities is that they engage our minds and broaden our thinking to reach a point of mindfulness. And once we reach that stage, we can then embark on our journey of self-awareness.

In their book, The Power Of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath talk about the significance of creating our own defining moments in life. They describe these peaks as the punctuation in the prose of life. What we do usually is leave these moments to fate and luck, waiting for things to happen to us, when we should be looking for opportunities to craft them ourselves.

Reflecting back on what I had read, I identified two such examples in my own life. One was my recent post about achieving my first month milestone in my blogging journey. Three-quarters of the way in, I realised that I was approaching the end of the first month. And from that moment on, every post I wrote was motivated by the fact that I was getting one day closer to reaching that milestone. There was no reason why 31 days should matter when my goal is to keep writing everyday. But creating that artificial milestone gave me the impetus to finish that final lap. That first month post became a defining moment for me.

The second instance is from my school days. Our 6th grade social studies teacher was a history buff and made us enact the lessons in class. It was neither framed as a competition nor did it have any tangible reward. Just a bunch of students with props and wardrobe made out of unremarkable classroom materials, pretending to be warriors on a battlefield. Till date, I remember the last scene, where my friend, as the triumphant warrior, celebrated her victory by throwing her booty into the air with cries of ‘At last, it is mine!’ The loot was a bunch of sharpeners and erasers. I fell in love with history that day and it lasted all through my school years, even as I slogged through pages and pages of the French Revolution. So memorable was that moment. This example is more powerful to me because it shows how a teacher made a class fall in love with a subject by taking the time to craft an everlasting experience.

In both situations, the defining moment didn’t exist until someone identified the opportunity and designed it to be one. All we need is to recognise that we have the power to create them, for ourselves and for others.

When confronting our fears, nine out of ten times, the anxiety leading up to the face-off point is much worse than the outcome itself. There are a few strategies that I have found to be useful in handling it.

• Asking what-if questions and then answering them. The uncertainty of what might happen is one of the major reasons for the anxiety. Clearly spelling out the worst possible outcome calms us because we feel better prepared mentally and hence, more in control. And in most cases, we will find that the worst case scenario is pretty manageable.
• Introspecting the root cause of the fear. Once we know what its real source is, we will start formulating ways to resolve it.
• Reducing the time spent in dread. I have found that the longer I postpone the thing I fear, the worse the fear gets.

There is a parable about a grandfather telling his grandson of the two wolves inside each of us – one made of kindness and love, the other made of fear and hatred. The two creatures are always at war with each other. The boy asks which wolf wins. The grandfather replies, ‘The one you feed’ ~ Unknown Native American source

• Sharing the fear with someone. When it stops festering inside, we no longer feel overwhelmed by it.
• Telling the truth. I have found that being honest with the other person about our fears and apprehensions, more often than not, pays off. It is natural for most people to extend a helping hand.

As Ambrose Redmoon so rightly said, courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgement that something else is far more important than fear.

In the current day and age, there is more cynicism than trust. More often than not, we expect the worst from people. This is propagated by the entertainment industry too. Post-apocalyptic movies and series show people losing sight of their humanity and giving in to their darker sides.

In times like these, this real-life Lord of the Flies story as described by the Dutch historian, Rutger Bregman, is a testament to how compassion and humanity can thrive in the most hopeless of situations. A group of 6 runaway teenage students, stranded on a deserted island for 15 months, leveraged friendship and mutual support to survive through thirst, starvation and loneliness.

When I read the story, my first reaction was incredulity. If not for the unimpeachable source of the information, I would have assumed that this was some wishful fairytale fabricated by an idealist. Later, when I questioned why I found it so hard to believe, I realised the depth of my own cynicism. I found it more believable that humans would tear each other apart than that they would work together. This is truly a sad state of mind to be in.

If a group of teenagers could learn to lean on each other in the most adverse circumstances, we no longer have an excuse for not fixing the fragmented society we live in today. These kids have proven that we can always find ways to be more tolerant, humane and kind to one another.

Today marks one month since I started blogging daily. I have stopped and started several times but this time I stuck to my goal and wrote everyday. This feels like an appropriate checkpoint to reflect on my blogging journey so far.

Am I meeting my goals?

I started this blog as a daily commitment to consciously reflect on my routine life experiences and learn something new each day. This remains true till date. And writing daily has helped me to start internalising this.

In my first post, I listed the goals I intended to focus on.

• Write daily
  • I have managed to achieve this over the last month (finally!)
• Each post should be based on a single concrete idea
  • I have largely succeeded in this but there is still room for improvement
• Use constructive feedback to improve on future posts
  • I have not been successful here having shared this blog with only a couple of people. I wanted to establish a routine first, which I have now, so I will start sharing from today.

I plan to keep working on the above three goals but have a few more to add.

• Atleast once a week, write long-form posts about topics that require deliberation.
• Study the style of other well-written blogs and incorporate it into my own writing to maximise the value derivable from it.
• Improve the quality of the content I read, watch and listen to. I have realised the importance of a constant touch with good vocabulary when I couldn’t find the right words to convey my thoughts.

What has worked and what hasn’t?

This is a very important question for me because I can then build on the positive and weed out the negative. Let’s start with the things that have worked.

• Being kind to myself. I have learnt to not spend time in negative self-talk and to be more compassionate when a post doesn’t shape up the way I envisioned. This has been one of the biggest reasons why I have stuck with blogging daily this time.
• No idea is too small. This concept has helped me to write about topics whose essence could be captured in a few words and which I usually feel are not worth mentioning.
• Rainy day blog posts. This is a list of drafts composed of ideas I jot down whenever a new one comes to me. I note down whatever impressions I have at that time and leave it at that. Then on the day when I am having writer’s block, I pick a draft and write it up.

Now for the things that have been detrimental.

• Obsessing over an image or gif to put into every blog post. I realised I was using up time which would be better spent on the content itself.
• Not engaging my mind well during the day. On such days, my posts have lacked depth and clarity.

What have I learnt?

For the past month, atleast once every day, I have been forced to reflect on my life and derive some lesson from it. Putting it down in the written form has cemented valuable thoughts that would otherwise just pass me by as fleeting notions. Writing religiously every day has been the most disciplined thing I have done in recent times.

Have I grown and how? I believe that this process has started me on the journey of personal growth but I am yet to see the real effects of it in the path my life is taking. I have to start consciously applying my learnings in the decisions and choices I make.

Overall, I am proud of what I have accomplished in the last month. And I hope to keep growing and doing better in the coming days.

Today is Mother’s Day. In general, I don’t subscribe to the idea of assigning specific days to celebrate our relationships. I believe we should cherish them everyday. But these modern traditions do serve one purpose. When we are caught up in the hustle and bustle of life, they make us pause and think about the people who we may be taking for granted.

My mom has always been an inspiration to me. Among the three of us kids, I shared her wavelength the most. Growing up, whenever I had a problem, she would be the first person I go to because she would speak the same way my mind worked, calming my fears while helping me find a solution.

I have learnt several values and habits by watching her. Like what it means to be a true perfectionist. Any task she takes up will be planned and executed in the best possible manner. She has an uncanny talent for giving just the right examples for situations. She is confident, bold, straightforward, honest and never shies away from saying or doing what she believes is right. I could keep listing the things I admire about her.

But in the last year, I have discovered new-found respect for her ability to manage her home and work lives skilfully. She was always an ambitious student who couldn’t take up the profession she wanted because her family was worried about finding a husband for a “too well-educated” daughter. But she shook away the disappointment and studied the course she was enrolled in. She was and still is the only daughter-in-law in the family to have gone to a full-time job. She worked until her day of voluntary retirement while bringing up three kids in a nuclear family.

I didn’t fully appreciate how hard she had to work and how well she must have managed responsibilities in all spheres. Partly because she used to make it seem effortless. And partly because I spent most of my time admiring my dad for being a supportive husband. But recently, I have come to realise that she was the focal point for these changes, how she must have dug deep and demanded more of herself in order to accomplish all this – being the sole working daughter-in-law, executing her “duties” at home without compromise, building reputation and respect at work, managing nay-sayers with grace, holding together all the relationships of an extended family and bringing up three kids to be good human beings with the right values.

Times are different now. We women have more freedom than what our mothers had. While there is still a long battle ahead, today is a day to take a moment and appreciate the women before us whose shoulders we stand on. I have always taken it for a given that I would go to work. I never struggled with the internal battle of whether I should compromise on my career for my personal life. I owe that freedom to my mother. She taught me to live a life that I was proud of, give it my all and always hold my head high. I don’t think even she realises the biggest gift she ever gave me. The confidence to be myself and push at that glass ceiling even harder.

Thank you, amma. I love you.

When we make a mistake, the only question we should ask ourselves is “Have I learned every last possible lesson from this incident?” When the answer is yes, it is time to move on. Obsessing over anything else like guilt, self-blame, what-ifs is counter-productive, sometimes toxic and ultimately, just a waste of time.