Move on

“You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It wont happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, ’I don’t care how hard this is, I don’t care how disappointed I am, I’m not going to let this get the best of me. I’m moving on with my life.”

– Joel Osteen

Day 22/30

I woke up today feeling irritated and frustrated. In the past couple of months, I have gone through 2 specific incidents with regards to my career and personal life that haven’t panned out in the way I want. You wait for a long time for things to work out your way, to encounter something that lights your soul, to experience something that sparks joy. After an excruciatingly long wait, the Universe decided to give me a glimpse of those things. Everything looked perfect on the face of it, it looked like my wishes have been answered, finally! But, turns out it was just a sample or in technical terms, a trial version. The outcome of these experiences are inconclusive. While I’m waiting for the end to be positive, somehow my mind keeps saying that it might not be so.

I’m frustrated but I’m done being frustrated. I’m done feeling like this. I’m done allowing rejections of any kind, to get the best of me. I don’t want to get into that phase of life where nothing and no one make sense anymore. Where I keep blaming my stars for everything wrong that’s happened in my life. Where I stop being grateful about the good things in my life and only concentrate on the ones that didn’t turn out as per my wish. I’m done.

While I’m horrible at the art of moving on, I want to fight back these negative feelings till the last ounce of mental strength and energy. How am I planning to do it? By taking care of myself and showing up for myself, each day, every day.

“With every act of self-care your authentic self gets stronger, and the critical, fearful mind gets weaker. Every act of self-care is a powerful declaration: I am on my side, I am on my side, each day I am more and more on my own side.”

– Susan Weiss Berry

There are many different ways in which one can indulge in self care activities throughout the day. Don’t be fooled by the name “self care”. Though these activities are meant to make you feel better, most of us will easily trade it with lying around and doing nothing. These activities require you to “take action” which is easily one of the most difficult tasks to do when we feel under the weather.

Here’s a list of random self care activities that one can choose from. I won’t make big promises and write down huge self care goals. I’d rather follow them for sometime and share my experience after a month or so. I wish you a happy and healthy state of mind. You deserve the best, you deserve to be happy!

Just the way you are

#44/100

Out human mind is so fickle. I believe we are under a constant state of metamorphosis in our thoughts, likes, dislikes and every single detail that makes us who we are. We wouldn’t be able to relate to our past self today. I was in conversation with my younger sister about my personality back in the day (probably a decade ago) and it left me questioning my choices in life!

I was a very happy child turned into a cowardly teenager. I had all sorts of issues, self esteem, low confidence, hatred towards my own self, body weight, you name it, I had it. But all those issues and my battle in overcoming them have made me the person I am today. When I was going through those issues, I never ever imagined in my wildest dreams to reach a point in life when I won’t have them anymore. I still can’t imagine it but those issues have toned down a lot and have given me the strength to deal with them in the right manner.

When I was younger, one of my biggest concerns was not standing up for myself. Forget big issues, I couldn’t even say “no” when I desperately wanted to. I always thought that people will ditch me if I don’t go by their choices. I never voiced my thoughts or let anyone know if I had a difference of opinion. What made me change this destructive behavior? I learnt to love myself, brick by brick, step by step. About 2 years back, I saw the movie “You can heal your life” at a close friend’s suggestion. The entire movie is based on the concept of accepting and loving our self. It seems like a really basic concept but the most difficult one to implement. If we ever pay close attention to our thoughts, it’ll blow our mind into a million pieces. Our thoughts can be fiercely negative and horrific at times. A few moments in silence with our thoughts might make us wonder as to why we hate ourselves so much. Learning to love ourselves is the first step to a better life and calmer mind. Just imagine if you could make your mind your best friend, won’t you be invincible? There won’t be any room for negative thoughts or emotions, our mind will motivate and push us to be the best in every situation, just like a best friend does.

Once I had this realization, I could work on changing myself for the better. It took a lot of effort to reach my current version and I’m still a work in progress. But, I’m definitely a lot more happier and content with my personality and life now. Let’s not be so harsh on ourselves, our inner child needs all the love and care it can get. Let’s feed our selves with positive thoughts, be grateful for our life and make it easy to forgive ourselves.

The blame game

#15/100

All blame is a waste of time. No matter how much fault you find with another, it will not change you.

-Wayne Dyer

Do you have a person in your life who you hold accountable for all your troubles? I’m not talking about finding a scapegoat to pin all your worries on. This person might have actually caused a huge hindrance in your life. Your life would have panned out differently without the involvement of this person. It could be a toxic friend, sibling or parent. Someone who is a big part of your life yet a hindrance to your growth.

What do we do with such people? How should we ignore their negative energy in our life? Mind you this is a person you care about the most and can’t disassociate yourself with. Yet their insecurities, fears, selfishness, lack of knowledge casts a shadow on your life. You feel like you are are stuck in a rut and desperately seek a way out. Since this person couldn’t take responsibility of their life along with the ones dependent on them, you rose to the occasion. But this person would never accept their in-capabilities or acknowledge your efforts in setting things on the right path.

Now that you’ve been handling these responsibilities for a while, you feel lost in this journey of life. You do not understand the reason for your existence. You feel like you’ve given up a lot of your time for other people in your life and cannot identify with yourself anymore. The responsibilities that drove you earlier and gave you a purpose have transformed into a burden. You gave up the crucial days of your life trying to set things right for your family and ended up without experiencing the carelessness and freedom enjoyed by a teenager. Now that you are an adult and are ‘expected‘ to take care of everything, you want your childhood back, your innocence back, you feel like taking a backseat.

There’s a turmoil in your mind and you take it all out on the person who was supposed to make you feel safe, be there for you, shield you from troubles and guide you. But they didn’t do any of it. Is it right to keep accusing the person for your troubled past, burdened present and blurry future? Can we allow another person’s inadequacies to control our life’s decisions?

I’m a big admirer of Oprah Winfrey and absolutely look up to her for motivation and guidance. She had a troubled childhood too, yet she didn’t let that define her destiny. With everything that went wrong in her life, she discovered her purpose and aligned her life’s choices with it. Despite all the accolades, fame and fortune earned by her, I respect her for being happy with her life. Everything else is superficial if it can’t give you peace and happiness. One of her famous sayings goes like :-

“You are responsible for your life.”

It’s a simple and profound thought yet extremely difficult to implement. Especially when you have dealt with many situations in life which you weren’t responsible for and were beyond your control. But these situations are a matter of the past now. Your reactions to these situations determines your present and future.

I have to accept this harsh reality. I would be able to see the silver lining and maybe change my life for the better once I own my life in it’s entirety. I’m clueless on how to begin the process of doing what it takes to take the reins of my happiness. I might stumble and fall along the way but hope to be persistent on this pursuit of being responsible for my life.

Down the memory lane

Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.

– Haruki Murakami

#10/100

I really don’t know if the human ability of keeping memories is a good thing. We’d most definitely love to recall the happy events but what about the sad ones? The pain of losing someone, that time when someone broke your heart, failing at that one thing which meant the most to you, betrayed by someone close to your heart or just being let down by your close ones, time and again. What do we do with such memories that just end up causing pain and sadness when we begrudgingly recollect them? Why doesn’t our brain have a functionality to selectively ignore the bad experiences and store only the good ones?

I know our life is a culmination of all types of experiences, the good, bad and ugly. But sometimes these bad remembrances have adverse effects on our present and cloud our vision for the future. A person’s likes, dislikes and entire personality is defined from the kind of encounters that they go through as a child. If a person had a bad childhood, they grow up having deep resentments and regrets in life. It is very difficult to let go of these bad emotions and carry on with their lives. They keep relapsing back to those horrific childhood memories and fear their present as well as future. Therapists and counselors tend to apply Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) while dealing with people with mental health issues. They try and understand the person’s childhood and all the events they have gone through to help them understand their emotions better.

Life would have been simpler with the existence of a reset button in our brain. We would be able to discard all the harmful memories and keep the ones that help us be happy and at peace with ourselves. A baby is born with a clean slate and an optimistic future. Before a human being develops the sense and ability to take their own decisions, their subconscious mind stores all the memories deep inside the brain from the word go. The good ones make you positive, gives you confidence, strength and happiness. The bad ones instills fear, anxiety, sadness, disappointment over events that your conscious mind has no control over.

In hindsight, the human ability of preserving memories is marvelous. They just have to work very hard on reacting to the emotions that are a consequence of these memories in a conducive manner.

Show me the money

Too many people spend money they earned..to buy things they don’t want..to impress people that they don’t like.

Will Rogers

#6/100

I’m closely connected to a person who has a money spending problem. This person’s entire life revolves around money. He wants to earn money without working too hard for it. He isn’t able to part with the money earned by him, no matter how insignificant the sum is. He piles on loans after loans and doesn’t wish to repay them, a very uncanny thought which leads him to believe that money received through any source is his to keep. Ironically, this person also has a family to fend for. How does he manage his responsibilities you ask? Sadly, by ignoring them. When the breadwinner has difficulty in managing finances of his family, other members have to rise to the occasion. The family thrived and shone in adversities without the help of the supposed patriarch.

Now that he is old, his source of money is on a constant decline. The concept of saving money for future needs never crossed his mind. This person has a weird understanding of money. As far as he is concerned, he can never have enough money, is always short of it and keeps asking for more. When it comes to his family members who are working hard to be independent, he believes that they have an unnatural source of money and demands his share frequently. He only asks about the sources of income of his family members or any person for that matter and conveniently excludes the expenditure. When it comes to money, this person’s idea of ‘living in the present’ has been detrimental to his survival. I have no clue how and when he developed this problem.

So how much money is really enough? Why are humans so crazy about money? Everything that surrounds us is profoundly affected by money. People work on jobs they absolutely hate to keep their family afloat, some indulge in criminal activities to survive, others just to add to their huge pile of money, some compromise their soul, happiness, passion, hobbies to earn more, some save through the entire life to spend on their retirement, money really governs all our minor and major decisions in life.

How much attachment to money is really enough? When we start dissociating ourselves from our core personalities just for the sake of earning money, we gradually lose interest in our life and have difficulty staying happy. Is earning more money worth losing our sleep and happiness over? When should we stop? People are on a constant chase of earning money, spending it on materialistic things that give momentary happiness and seek constant validation from the world at large. Why do humans care so deeply about other people’s thoughts?

There are a lot of unanswered questions about money in my mind. Money enormously affects every human to walk on the face of this earth. My only wish for the world at large is to focus on making happiness a necessity rather than considering money a source of happiness. Figure out ways to keep yourself sane and happy without involving an unrealistic amount of money. Is that really possible? If we stop and pause, list down things we really need for survival and compare it with everything we end up buying on our impulse shopping trips, we surely would find things that give us no happiness or usage. Happiness, sanity, peace and calm is what keeps you afloat during hardships and let’s you hold your hope high for the future. Let’s try and work on improving our quality of life than blindly earning money.