Self Discovery…

I started working full time after a break of about two years. I found myself work in the Technology industry, right where I belong. This new engagement has consumed my time and headspace more than I thought it would and always change has led to new self discoveries –

  1. I get more done when I am busy.  You may think it’s not true, it’s definitely very counterintuitive but IT IS SO TRUE for me. As work ramped up, I realized I could get more done now than what I used to get done being an unemployed homemaker.
  2. I am an Ambivert. I always thought of myself as an extrovert but ‘shy at first’ person but I realized at work that I chose to be introvert with some people and extrovert with others and that has nothing to do with how comfortable I feel around them or how much I like them.
  3. I am great at my Job. I only came to be a software engineer by the process of elimination. So I never considered myself good at my job – I think we as women, very easily judge ourselves harshly. At my new workplace, I saw myself handle all issues like a PRO in a very short time and took on things head first fearlessly.

Not only that, I now have new ambitions, new aspirations, new hopes… Its amazing how one good thing has a snowball effect in our life!

 

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Is Failure really the key to success??

I have heard this a million times already ‘Failure is the key to success’… How many times have you heard this ? I have heard it so many times that I use it to feel a little better every time I am down and depressed because I have failed yet again. And if this were true, I promise you that I would be one of the most successful people by now. Thats how many failures I have had already!  But no, here I am… still struggling…

So, no it is not failure, its definitely  not failure that lays down our path to success, that brings us closer to our goals, to achieving something that we once thought impossible.

And I am not just talking from my own experience here. I have seen many people experience failure, in fact, I think I do not know any one person who has not lived through a failure in life. Yet, I do not see all of them succeeding at what they once failed. You know what, I think this phrase ‘Failure is the key to success’ was coined to only allow us to feel okay about our failures. And it does a pretty good job at that! It has personally helped me get through some bad times, but what I am saying here is that to succeed, it is not enough to just fail…

Well if failure is not what spurs the success then what does?

I think it is our response to our failure. It is how we handle our failures….

It is our ability to get back in the game and learn from our failures. Failure can help drive us in the right direction only if we are able to look at in the face and analyze it, take full responsibility for it and then not just stop at that but get back in the game to try yet again. It is our ability to quickly moving from – ‘Oh no, I have failed!’  to ‘Okay, lets try this again’. It is our human nature, we all feel disappointed and discouraged at first but our ability to move from feeling down with the failure to accepting the failure and embracing what we learnt from it to apply in the future is what sets us apart from people who fail to succeed in the end.

So lets get back in the game and work at developing an attitude towards our failures that will indeed make them the pillars of our success someday!

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My heart so full and yet so empty at once

I recently lost one of my best friends, my grandmother. When I lost my grand father more than eight years ago, it felt like loosing the one person who loved me most dearly. I did not feel like anyone has ever or will ever love me like he did. Losing my grandmother was a very different feeling though…It felt like I lost a best friend, a confidante.. someone I loved dearly and looked up to for strength in my weak moments. Someone with whom I shared all my innermost feelings. I realize now that this is the woman who really shaped my thinking and played a huge role in making me who I am.

She taught me that – Tomorrow is a new day. Whenever she was having a bad day – be it pain from her chronic spondylitis or from an argument with a family member, whenever I approached her to ask how she was doing, she always said I’ll be fine tomorrow morning because a good night’s sleep has the power to heal it all. Tomorrow is a new day with new hope and it will all be better tomorrow!

She taught me to be elegant – poised and polite. I never once saw her with messy hair or a less than perfectly draped sari. It did not matter what time of the day it was or what her state of mind was, she was always poised inside out. I never heard her have an heated argument with a maid or even raise her voice at me – a child she was trying to discipline.

She taught me to keep all relationships cordial at the least. I do not know a single person in her life that she interacted with half heartedly. Her heart and her home were always open for anyone and everyone.

She taught me that we always have enough to give and to share. No matter how tight money was, no one absolutely no one ever returned from her home without a satisfying meal. Whenever she visited people, she came bearing gifts for all that she had carefully planned for over weeks or months. She had the perfect attitude towards money, while being surrounded by people who either spent beyond their means or were too stingy and selfish to even care for loved ones, she maintained her just right attitude towards money.

She taught me to expect the best from others. She always believed in the good. When someone did something she believed to be incorrect, she always focussed on the fact that there must be a good reason why.

Most importantly, she taught me to laugh my heart out openly without holding back like she always did. She often laughed so hard that she ended up with hurting ribs/stomach. Her smiling face instilled in my memory will always be a place for me to draw strength from.

I am so fortunate to be co-parented by a woman with such a strong and flavorful personality like her. I will live the rest of my life with abundant gratitude in my heart because I love her!

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For Better or for Worse?

I grew up hoping to be a doctor someday. I had the test scores and the drive but not the financial backing that is integral if you are going to medical school in India. Sometimes, I think, it was a desperate decision, premature abandonment of a dream. Maybe I could have done it even without the money – with the help of scholarships and some support from extended family but back when I was 16, I was led to believe it was just impossible.

I now am a struggling hypochondriac, following the prolonged illness and death of my grandfather, so much so that walking into a hospital for a skin allergy test makes me more nervous than speaking in front of a crowd. So maybe a profession that needed me to practically live in the hospital examining people in pain who I wouldn’t always be able to help, was not best career choice for me.

But I just can’t help wondering if medical training and the power of all the knowledge that comes with it, would make me a stronger person, someone who would be more emotionally equipped to handle pain and uncertainty. Maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t be a hypochondriac at all! Well, it’s all left to just wonder now that the time has slipped away. It is one of those questions in my life that will have to remain unanswered I guess…

 

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Family fun Fridays

When I was little, Friday was a special day because on every Friday afternoon, my grandparents would come to stay with us for the weekend and I really looked forward to spending time with them. My grandparents had four grandchildren, but I always felt like I was the special one, the one they were more attached to. What I shared with my grandparents was uniquely comforting. So Fridays meant looking forward to late night card games at home with the whole family, late night runs to the store to buy kulfi (Indian ice cream), sleeping with my grandma, going to parks with grandpa, listening to his stories – the same 3-4 stories – over and over again, eating all the yummy things grandma made, just lots of fun and laughter all around.

Fridays are special even today, when we live thousands of miles away from extended family. We, my husband, Sana and I, have made our own Friday rituals. We go to some wine tasting or beer tasting and then get carryout for dinner and relax at home with some movie. We stay up as late as we want. It still feels like the best evening of the week, something that all of us still look forward to all week long.

Its all about relaxing fun time with your family and loved ones, isn’t it ? Thats what makes days, weekends and life so special. So happy Friday to you all!ffda0e91c816c3b69d3e2fa6f3e05214--happy-weekend-the-weekend.jpg

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Because I love you through and through

My biggest fear growing up has been dogs – yes, you heard me, not darkness, not heights, not failure, but dogs. I have been that kind of person who crosses the street and walks from the other side of the road, if I see a dog approaching, yes even if it was leashed. You would think that big great danes, dalmatians or doberman would scare me, yes they would but so would a lhasa apso or a Pomeranian.

My closest interaction with dogs was when I was in 10th Grade. I studied with a friend Sai, at her house and she has two lhasa apso’s – Snowy and Teddy. They were amazing dogs (never barked or growled at me) and after a year of going her house regularly, I was finally comfortable having them around so long as they stayed 3 feet away from me (which they always did). After tenth grade Sai moved to a different city and that was it for me as far as dogs were concerned or at least I thought so back then.

Forward fifteen years –  my sweet daughter, Sana, who was 4 year old then, and crazy about dogs starts begging for a dog. I keep telling her that I am terrified of dogs and she tries to talk me into it but I stay strong on my grounds. My husband, on the other hand, is also a dog lover and would be very happy to have a dog. A year goes by and I am still staying strong and saying NO. Few more months go by and now she is not asking for it as much anymore but I see that yearning in her eyes every time she meets a dog at a park or at a playdate at her friend’s house and only once in a while she says something like – “She has a dog, she is so lucky!”.

It breaks my heart to deprive her from something that means so much to her and that I know for a fact will be good for her. I have read and heard about the profound effects dogs have had in the lives of growing children and after several guilt trips and self talks, I just decide that I cannot stand in the way of something that is so close to her heart. So I push myself beyond my comfort zone.

On May 8th 2017, we welcomed MIA, a 15 week old Shih Tzu puppy to our family. Sana has had innumerable priceless moments with Mia already in the past two and a half months and in each of those moments, I have felt an unmatched satisfaction. I am still not always comfortable around Mia, I do not pet her, give any belly rubs or even let her come too close to me but I do think of her as family now and I do put her food out in her bowl, take her on walks and I even brush her hair down every few days (as long as Sana is holding her face away from me)

Makes me think about how much a mother can go above and beyond her comfort zone because she always always always puts her kids and their wants above her own needs …  all because she loves them through and through…

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My history with body weight

As it turns out I am my favorite, however if there was one thing that I could change about myself, it would be my struggle with maintaining a healthy weight. Weight has been a struggle for me since adolescence.

I remember when I was in the first year of college, I was falling in love with my now husband and I was determined to look my best for him, that was when I, for the first time in my life actually did something to loose weight and I ended up being the thinnest I had been in my life. At my thinnest, I weighed 64 kgs (thats about 141 lbs). How did I do it? Well, I literally starved myself like I would only eat one apple in a whole day. I know it was the worst thing to do ever but back then, it was the most logical thing to do for a desperate 18 year old.

I have been trying to think and remember how I felt when I had lost all that weight and all I remember is everyone telling me how much better I looked and all my friends hoping they could all be as determined as I was. It did boost my confidence and flattered my ego. But somehow I do not remember how I felt in terms of energy level or anything related to skin or hair issues as a result of starvation, or any hormonal changes like mood swings. I did happen to find a few photos of me from then and I personally think that I looked pale and my skin looks darker than usual.

Anyway, so from there I only put the weight all back on. By the time we got married about 5 years later I weighted 74 kgs(about 163 lbs). After 3 years of being married, when we were trying to get pregnant, I weighed 84 kgs(about 185 lbs) and I can only say that thankfully, the rate of weight gain has not been so steep ever since.

In these years, I have tried so many things and have finally realized that nothing works on a long term basis except lifestyle changes that you can keep on forever.

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Breaking through… getting uncomfortable…

A million times I have gone back and forth with this. Should I write a blog, or should I not? Yes I want to write a blog but I only want to write about my thoughts, my life, my fears, expectations, anxiety, achievements, disappointments, gratitude… all my inner most deep feelings and day to day happenings and that would mean opening myself up and letting others in…

This is a real struggle for me. Am I an introvert ? I love being surrounded by people and it never drains me out, on the contrary, it peps me up. It sometimes takes me time to warm up to people though, so call me shy, but once I do warm up to them, I have a lot to say. So, no, I don’t think I an introvert. But even then, its hard for me to really open up to people and talk about my life and feelings.

I find it easier to talk about politics or cooking or any other general issues and it helps that I am considerably well caught up with current events so starting a conversation or keeping a conversation going is not very hard for me. That said, I take longer to make real connections with people and it is something I am striving to break through.

So really deciding to get my own blog up and writing about my life is a big deal for me and I am hoping it will get easier with time and help my personality evolve.

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