Pat your back

“It takes strength to be proud of yourself and to accept yourself when you know that you have something out of the ordinary about you.”

–Abigail Tarttelin

Day 23/30

I gave a job interview today and it was brutal. The interviewer asked me some really tricky technical questions which I’m sure I gave inadequate answers to. In a normal scenario, I would have been really tough on myself, felt really embarrassed and indulged in negative self talk till I would break down.

Not today.

I feel proud of myself for attempting to give this interview while fighting my fears and anxiety about it. I feel proud of myself for trying very hard and giving my utmost best throughout the difficult session. I feel proud of myself for taking action and doing things that scare me the most.

I’m always hard on myself but I don’t want to do that this time. I absolutely cannot change the past. This interview has widened my thinking capability and has been an incredible learning experience. That certainly can’t be counted as a loss.

Instead of being your worst enemy, try and become your best friend today. The outcome of any situation in life cannot be predicted but you can align your thoughts to be more helpful and positive. And I’m training my mind to do just that. To see the good in every situation and take everything as a learning experience.

Be proud of yourself and pat your back, for a change!

It’s okay, you can do this

“Either you run the day or the day runs you.”

–Jim Rohn

For any anxious person, the first response to change is always fear and a desperate desire to run away from the situation. I call this the “I just want to go home” syndrome. I act like a fish out of water whenever I am forced to come out of my comfort zone. I gasp for air and flop around hopelessly till I’m put back into the water. In the real life scenario, I try my level best to become comfortable in the new situation as soon as possible. I realize much later that I was able to handle most of the new situations or any changes in my life. There was no real need for me to be anxious and panicky about it in the first place, especially to an extreme extent.

I’ve recently decided to try a new trick to calm myself down when I encounter any uncomfortable circumstances in life. As soon as I realize that I have to deal with a new situation in life, my mind works overtime and with 10x speed to blast out anxious and mostly doubtful thoughts. The overall environment created by these anxious thoughts turn negative if not dealt with at the right time, in the right manner. The source of most of my stress in life is related to career and office work. Yesterday when my boss told me about a new task that I didn’t have any knowledge about, my first response was of fear. Within a split second, my mind started spitting out a truck load of “What if?” questions.

• What if you don’t understand?
• What if it’s difficult and beyond your capacity?
• What if they figure out you can’t do this?
• What if they don’t find your effort worthwhile?
• What if?…What if?….What if?

The thoughts started to pile up as it was easily absorbed by my mind. Then, I decided to put my foot down and do something about it. I took action in the form of repeating a positive affirmation. I kept chanting, “IT’S OKAY, YOU CAN DO THIS!” till the pile of thoughts turned to dust. Surprisingly, it didn’t take a long time and I felt amazing after dealing with my thoughts monster, face to face or in this case, thought by thought.

I don’t know if I’ll able to use the same technique and make it work always. But I’m surely on the lookout for more such tactics now to deal with the enemies of my mind. Like we have various self defense techniques to tackle any unwelcome situation that could turn perilous, we need to develop an array of self defense techniques for our mind to counterattack the barrage of negative thoughts created by it.

It’s okay, you can do this!

Live now, think later

“Nothing is permanent in this wicked world — not even our troubles.“

–Charlie Chaplin

Finally I got around to write my first post in the new year. I tried drafting this post multiple times this week but owing to my daily office schedule, I wasn’t successful in completing it. It’s finally weekend and I have all the time in the world to publish my first post ofm2021. Is it just me or 2021 feels a lot more hopeful than the year that just went by? Things have started on a positive note and I feel quiet motivated to work towards my goals this year. I struggled with lot of anxiety during the last week of 2020. No matter how I thought about it, my future self seemed unfulfilled and unhappy. These thoughts weighed heavily on my present self and I couldn’t concentrate on the bright side of my life.

With the dawn of the new year, I am trying my level best to build a powerful routine and stick by it. I read an article by one of the members of my favorite band, my lifeline, BTS Kim Taehyung aka “V”. He talked about dealing with depression and his thoughts during this tough phase of his life. Although on the outset, it feels like he is living his dream life, he was still unhappy. He started disassociating himself from his persona, he didn’t derive fulfilment from work that was the source of his happiness before, he was confused as to why he felt this way when everything was going great. The way he got out of this mental turmoil was by jotting down his thoughts about it and he ended up writing and co-producing the song “Blue & Grey“. This gave him a great sense of accomplishment and helped him overcome his depressed thoughts to some extent.

Last week I decided to take the help of a therapist to gain clarity on my mental health issues. The first therapist I talked to told me I need medication to increase the level of serotonin in my brain (short cut much!). I don’t want any dependency on medicines to feel happy so thought of talking to another one. The second one was far more sensible and probably a better listener. She didn’t tell me anything “out of the box” yet I felt much better after the call. She gave me homework in the form of 2 lists, one list of all the things that are under my control in the present and second one of things that made me happy and think about ways to create a career out of it (learn new skills, research on the subject etc.) I’m yet to complete my homework but I still feel a lot better by each day after the call. I guess I just needed an intervention, someone to talk to, someone who listened to my thoughts without any judgement.

This week was crazy hectic! I went to office on all days yet managed to find time out to do things that make me truly happy, 5 mins meditation, 15 mins workout, writing in my journal and studying for my exams. My anxiety has been in check for this week. As BTS V mentioned he felt better after writing his song, it was a big accomplishment for him. This statement hit me hard, the best way to beat anxiety is to “take action” and accomplish a task, no matter how tiny it is. When we are anxious and depressed, we lose interest and confidence to do anything in life, be it old or new. Pushing ourselves to take action is the best way to beat the blues.

The most important goal that I’m forcing myself to stick to is to “take each day as it comes“. Concentrate completely on the day on hand, live each day in the best possible manner, document it, give it importance and focus only on that day. This takes our anxiety off the past or future and diverts the mind’s attention to the present moment. This is helping me as of now. I will share my goals for 2021 soon, looking forward to a happy 2021!

Full stop to self sabotage

“Self-sabotage is when we say we want something and then go about making sure it doesn’t happen.”

-Alyce Cornyn-Selby

I haven’t related to any other quote in a long time more than the one above. To give you a little background, I have a tendency to plan huge goals for myself. get excited about it, be motivated by it, plan detailed schedules around it, YET, not work on it! Sounds absurd right? I managed to break this toxic pattern 2 years back during my weight loss journey. I had to force myself to take each day as it comes and work on my goals everyday. That immensely helped me achieve my weight loss target.

For the past couple of weeks, I have noticed a resurgence of this toxic pattern and it’s not pretty. I had scheduled a long run today, woke up at the designated time, had kept my shoes and clothes ready the night before, yet didn’t show up for the run. My mind gave me various reasons to abort the plan and I LISTENED TO IT. The same pattern accompanies me with my preparation for CFA Level 1 exams to be held on February 21st 2021. I have started studying for it, I utilize my office travel time for it but when it comes to studying at home, it’s a NO SHOW. The other time my mind is engulfed in this toxic pattern is during my preparations for a job interview. I am never able to prepare for an interview beforehand, I just go through whatever material I can scan within an hour or two before the interview schedule.

While wasting my time, NOT STUDYING for my upcoming exam today in the afternoon, my brain finally realized that there’s a toxic pattern in play. I don’t know for sure but it looks like it’s my anxiety acting up, preventing me from working hard so that it doesn’t hurt when I fail. We know our brain’s “survival” mode becomes extra effective when it notices an upcoming threat to our existence. Facing failure is the BIGGEST blow to our self esteem and our brain wants to protect us from it at all costs. However, the results of my hard work is UNKNOWN in the present moment and will be determined in the future. Hiding away from the pain that the end result MAY or MAY NOT have restricts my learning process and GROWTH. While I haven’t been able to figure out a one stop solution to my anxiety yet, switching the purpose of my goals from an ACCOMPLISHMENT mindset to a GROWTH/LEARNING mindset should trick my brain into being less dramatic about the consequences. I’m planning to put this into practice right away and will share my findings in about a month or two. Let’s see how this little change in my thinking affects my life’s BIG PICTURE.

Under the weather

“The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.”

–William James

Last few days have been very difficult, mentally. I’ve been experiencing bouts of anxiety, sadness and despair. I’m trying to fight it with regular exercise and consistent meditation. These habits are a life savior as I’ve mentioned many times before yet I’m struggling to stay sane and happy these days.

The reason behind my anxiety can’t be pointed to one single event. I’m anxious about a lot of things mostly related to my future and the society’s expectations from it. My father is a super hyper and anxious stress taker and that doesn’t help. My mother is trying her level best to fight the naysayers and not let it trouble me but I know for a fact that it affects her badly. My existence has suddenly become a source of burden for my family as far as my age and marriage prospects are concerned. I really don’t know who decided to set an age benchmark to gauge the successes and failures in life. Whoever did it, their thoughts are redundant in the current day and age but very few people understand this. I don’t know what I should do to stop being a cause of concern to my family. Marriage is indeed a big event for everyone except the one who is required to do it without being mentally prepared for it. In the midst of this, I lost out on a good job opportunity and that just made the situation worse.

Trying to meditate, workout and journal my way out of this. I wish to document this as much as possible so that I feel an immense sense of gratitude when this difficult phase ends. Our human mind is quiet resilient, it tends to hide the traumatic experiences of life in a vault at the most remote corner of our brain to quicken the recovery process. But I would like to come back to these journals so that I know that I have to ability to deal with such situations in future too!

I wish for all of you to have an unlimited supply of happiness and inner peace!

Am I losing control?

“Control what you can control. Don’t lose sleep worrying about things that you don’t have control over because, at the end of the day, you still won’t have any control over them”

–Cam Newton

I’m back after a brief hiatus. The last time I posted here about a week back, I had undergone my RT-PCR test for detection of corona virus and was awaiting it’s results. Thankfully, I tested negative and could carry on with my normal life. My parents heaved a sigh of relief as they were a million times more worried and scared than me. Over the weekend, I got the opportunity (blessed as I got tested negative right before it) to go on a short getaway with my friends. This was a long awaited trip and we enjoyed every bit of it.

Back home, I was forced to dive straight into reality. Going on vacations rejuvenates me yet I’m never pumped up to get back to my normal routine after the end of the trip. On the other hand I’m left with an intense feeling of doom and gloom which takes a while to get over with.

In the past week, I underwent a roller coaster of emotions. It started off from feeling extremely happy about myself and the results of my fitness routine to pitying my existence. I get extremely worked up even at the mention of my marriage at home. It is something my mother is really looking forward to, but this might be one of the most difficult things I have to undergo in life. I truly believe now that I had a slight bit of control over all my earlier problems in life.

I read a TV actor’s love confession on Instagram yesterday, she said that every person deserves a partner who understands us, believes in us, inspires us, helps us grow and truly cares for us. These are simple personality traits of a decent human being yet it feels like an impossible task to find such a person. An unmarried girl who has crossed the age of 30 is directly or indirectly made to feel like a burden in the eyes of the society. Even though she is completely happy and content with the manner in which she has led her life, all of her achievements fall short before the mention of her unmarried status. My relatives and most of the people who are dearly concerned about my marriage today were missing when my family led a difficult life throughout my childhood. No one offered to help us with the expenses on our education yet these people are willing to pay money (huge sum to the tune of Rs.35,000) to a marriage broker to find a prospective groom for me. Few of the marriage broker’s requirements were a pictures of me in traditional attire and answers to questions such as, “Does the girl know how to cook food?” or rather “Is the girl comfortable in cooking food for the family after coming back from work?“. While cooking is a necessary life skill which I wish to posses, my male counterparts are never asked such questions even when they lead the exact same life as us!!!

In the midst of this I gave an interview for a job which I couldn’t prepare for, owing to my own carelessness and blamed it on my anxiety. I never felt this before but after I gave a shoddy attempt at this interview, I realized that I suppress myself. I deliberately sabotage my attempts to excel at my work for reasons unknown to me. I know I am capable of doing much better at my workplace and my career yet I never try my best. There is something that holds me back and I will try to find out what it is to the best of my ability. As of now, this realization is a great starting point to work on improving myself in this extremely important aspect of life.

Pouring my thoughts and feelings here have made me feel better already. Here’s to finding those tiny little things that help us cope with the inconsistencies in life, a little better each day!

Just breathe it out

#89/100

“Life is short. We can live it lost in thought or we can choose to be present as life unfolds around us.”

-Headspace

Meditation! I must have ignored this important and extremely powerful habit for a happy mind all my life. I just couldn’t bring myself to stay still at one place and concentrate on my breathing. It made absolutely no sense to me. The biggest misconception that I had in my mind was that meditation was supposed to immediately calm me down and clear my anxious thoughts. That’s not how it works. About 4 years back I encountered a difficult situation at work. I had made a huge error and was petrified of the consequences. I was constantly anxious and my mind didn’t leave any stone upturned to churn out one negative thought after another. There was no respite even at home as my mind continued the negative thought pattern. That’s when I decided to give meditation a shot at calming down my mind. I could see a positive result from barely few days of consistent practice. While the thoughts continued to disrupt my mind, I was slowly learning to acknowledge them and let it go. I didn’t even realize when I did it. My anxiousness subsided eventually when everything got sorted out at work and not one of my negative thoughts manifested into reality.

I stopped practicing meditation the moment situations got better in my life and I technically didn’t ‘need’ it anymore. That’s where I went terribly wrong. Meditation helps in improving our overall physical and emotional well being if practiced daily. I have tried making it a habit few times in the past and failed terribly. In the past, I scheduled my meditation session at a time during the day which made it easier for me to delay it indefinitely. I made a small change in my daily routine to incorporate my meditation session, first thing in the morning. I start my day with a 20 min meditation session every morning and carry on with my daily activities after that. This schedule has worked pretty well for me in the last 12 days and I feel great. I’ve noticed a decrease in my junk food cravings as I am able to not dwell on those thoughts for long. I’m pretty excited to experience the long term benefits of this powerful new habit in my life.

There are various ways to meditate, I personally use a guided mediation application called ‘Headspace’. The techniques shared in the application are easy to follow and the video animations are catchy enough to sustain my attention. In the initial days I had to force myself to sit at once place quietly and meditate. It sure has gotten easier over time and scheduling it first thing in the morning has been extremely beneficial in being consistent at it.

Apart from reducing anxiety, stress and calming the mind, the long term benefits of meditation include better emotional health, an increased sense of self awareness, improved attention span, helps in fighting addictions as well as improved sleep. This habit seems like a long term investment with no immediate rewards but I surely want to continue long enough to reap it’s benefits in the future. Making it a daily habit surely helps in being consistent.

Interview anxiety

#81/100

A job interview is not a test of your knowledge but your ability to use it at the right time.

-Anonymous

“Hi, we’ve scheduled your interview for Monday at 4.30 pm.” I begrudgingly say yes and mentally prepare myself to experience a highly stressful time till the end of the interview. If I have 4 days till the interview, I think about it every millisecond of the 4 days and wish for the misery to end as soon as possible. If I were to rank my biggest fears in life, attending job interviews would sit comfortably in the second position right below public speaking, giving it a very close competition.

I don’t know what it is about attending job interviews that makes me so anxious. It could be the stress of knowing every technical aspect of the job, dealing with the embarrassment of not being able to answer a question, the expectation of creating a great first impression, the fact that we are being judged on the basis of our behavior and answers or the self loathing that follows after the end of what you would consider a “bad interview”.

Over the years, I’ve become better at coping up with the anxiety of attending a job interview. I’m less critical of myself and have gained more confidence to deal with the stress of attending an interview. Yet, I’m never able to prepare well and keep pushing the learning bit to the last minute. I don’t know why I do this, I tend to waste my time till the last hour and frantically rush over whatever little I can study at the last hour. Let me list down few techniques and my experiences with such situations to help people like me to turn their anxiety into something productive.

• Set out your intention : Write down or mentally note the reason behind attending the interview. It could be to gain interview experience, earn more salary, the desperate need to change your current job or just a career switch. This would help you focus better on the preparation and give you a solid reason to counter your fears.
• It’s never as bad as I think : As scared as I am to attend job interviews, the actual ones turn to be much easier and manageable than my fears about it. Before the interviews I imagine the interviewers to be the meanest people on earth who throw extremely technical questions at me and judge me if I don’t answer them. This has never happened till date and I’ve been interviewed mostly by warm and humble humans.
• Take a deep breath : My heart tends to race extremely fast right before and during the first few minutes of the interview. One technique that has helped me calm down is taking deep breaths. It gives my mind a breather as well and acts as a slight distraction for my mind from it’s racing thoughts. While taking the deep breaths, I try counting them so that I can divert my mind’s attention to my breathing. It works pretty well for me.
• Prepare : Anxiety is a constant state of fear of the unknown. The best way to deal with such fears is to face them, head on. I’ve cancelled numerous job interviews before just to escape the ordeal of attending them. This has only caused my fear to multiply. I always feel much better and a little proud of myself after attending an interview, despite the outcome. It’s always helpful to take time out to prepare as much as you can before the interview to give yourself a much needed confidence boost. As you attend more interviews, you can find out areas where you can focus more on and be well prepared the next time.
• Reward : I tend to celebrate after attending every job interview as it’s I consider it a big accomplishment regardless of the outcome. There are times when I get disappointed with my performance and tend to beat myself up for lack of better preparation. Nevertheless, every interview ends up being a great learning experience and should be viewed as one.

My goal for the next job interview would be to get over my anxiety and push myself to prepare well for it well in advance. Hope to share a good interview experience whenever I have a next one!

To each his own

#40/100

One of my close friends is going through a difficult phase in her life currently. She isn’t able to be at peace and happy with the proceedings in her life. I, including our other close friends tried to calm her down, give her solutions, tried to make her see the silver lining in her current situation. Somehow, she isn’t able to do that and it makes me helpless to the point of feeling frustrated. I’m not able to understand my behaviour.

I have gone through such difficult times too in my life. I try to keep such things to myself and get better on my own. It takes a long while but I get past the hurdles eventually. I feel helpless when my closed ones go through such situations. More so, when I’m not able to make them feel better. As a spectator, I can clearly find a solution to each of their problems. But when I go through a difficult phase, my mind blocks out any sense of relief or possible solution to make me feel better. Nothing seems practical and I’m not able to find sense in any of the solutions provided to me by anyone else. Being in misery and pain is really awful. Deep inside you know that you want to be happy but being in distress somehow feels easier than working on finding a way out. It’s always easier to quit than run the extra mile in a marathon. But the runner in me never likes to quit even if the pain gets unbearable. During one of my recent prolonged episode of anxiety and depression, happiness felt like a distant dream. I was irked with every single detail of my life and just wanted to quit everything and do nothing. After days of feeling absolutely terrible and sad, one fine day my mind reached it’s limit. It didn’t want to be the spoilsport anymore. I decided to live in the present, be grateful for whatever I have in life and find happiness in small things. These are truly my mantras for living a peaceful and happy life and they have been working wonders for me.

I’ve tried telling this to my friend but it’s very hard for her to make sense of this. I’m trying very hard to make her understand and motivate her to work on her happiness but she needs some time. Pain and sorrow are a part and parcel of our life. Life is too long and filled with uncomfortable incidents that are bound to make us jittery. The only thing that matters is the manner in which we handle them and grow stronger with each such situation. I hope my friend feels better soon. I remember when she was going through a horrible phase some years back and truly felt that was the end of her. But she got through that and I’m sure she’ll get through this too. There’s always a silver lining.

I got over it!

“If you’re going through hell keep going.” 

–Winston Churchill

#35/100

No, I’m not going through hell right now, life is pretty cool. However this quote is apt for the experience that I’m about to share today. For as long as I can remember, I’ve suffered from anxiety issues. Anxiety is a prolonged state of fear caused due to stress or negative thought patterns. Since I’m an introvert and shy person by nature, I have experienced anxiety everytime I’m under the limelight. I’m not talking about the actual limelight on a stage or for a performance. Holding a conversation with a new person, talking on the phone, going to a new place to get some work done, anything and everything unfamiliar makes me anxious and jittery. For the longest time, I have never been able to face a crowd of even friends or family, forget familiar people. Playing a game of dumb charades used to send a chill down my spin as I had to think on my feet while having everyone’s eyes fixated on me.

When I had started looking out for jobs after my graduation, my biggest fear was to attend an interview. It used to give me sleepless nights, I was never able to prepare for it as my anxiety would always get the better of me. I have bunked countless scheduled interviews just to avoid the fear and anxiety that I need to face before and during the interview. There were situations where I could literally feel my heart thumping and mind going blank. In one of my very first job interviews, I could barely speak!

Eventually after attending many job interviews, I got better in facing my fear. Yet, I’ve never been able to control my anxiety before an interview and have ended up cancelling many such schedules in the recent past.

I had an interview scheduled yesterday after almost 2 years.When you are in the process of attending interviews, you gradually get used to managing the fear. But when there’s a prolonged break and you have to face your fear after a long duration, the nervousness and anxiety tag along as if they never left your sight. Till the last minute, I felt like cancelling the interview. I could barely prepare for it because of my OCD related to preparation for any new event. When I need to prepare for anything, especially interviews, I put unnecessary pressure on myself to know everything under the sun. I really admire people who end up doing their best in every situation despite the fears and jitters. I somehow have to struggle really hard in this area.

After fighting rampant thoughts of cancelling it, I decided to attend it. I tried to convince my mind to play the role of a person who is confident and can handle such situations very well. I guess that’s the beauty of acting, when you persuade yourself that it’s not you who has to face the situation, you somehow muster enough strength to get over the performance anxiety. Also, the best way to conquer your fear is to face it. You might make a complete fool of yourself, but if you manage to get past the initial hesitation, you become better with each subsequent fear inducing situations.

Attending the interview, without thinking about the outcome, made me extremely happy and proud of myself. Life certainly is a culmination of all our experiences and the spirit to keep yourself happy despite the outcomes.