What’s my why?

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

–James Allen

Day 21/30

When it comes to my career, my motivation to get a new job has never been an advancement in my career. My initial jobs were the ones I desperately sought to earn money. The financial conditions of my family was terrible and I didn’t know better than to get a job. I found one but the job description or company didn’t light up my soul. I cried on my way to office on the second day of my new job as I didn’t like anything about that place. I had to continue because of various reasons but quit after 4 years after I got my current job. My current job is great when it comes to work life balance but I’ve felt stagnant here ever since I’ve joined. There has been no growth whatsoever and I feel trapped here, every single day.

I have been randomly applying to a lot of jobs these days so that I get an opportunity. But the process hasn’t led any results as I was unclear about my “Why?”, the real purpose behind getting a job. This time it’s different. As my family’s financial situation is quiet stable now and I don’t seek shorter working hours anymore, my focus is on learning. I really wish to challenge myself a little, learn new things, motivate my own self.

If your “Why” is intact, you’ll be able to clear through all hurdles along the way. If you have your “why” clear in mind, nothing and no one will stop you from working on to become the best version of yourself.

It’s time for me to introspect, figure out my “Why” and schedule all my activities and tasks to achieve that goal. The Universe will forever be in your favor, if you do this. Trust the process.

Connect the dots

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”

–Steve Jobs

Day 17/30

A friend asked me a very profound question today, what do you think you’d be doing when you turn 40? I didn’t have any instant answer to this question. Questions like these are so difficult to answer. Life is so uncertain and I fell unsettled most of times. How would I know what I’d be doing 9 years from now. I sure do hope I’m happy, that’s what I aim for each day.

Just imagine a life, where you’d exactly know how your future would pan out. You have seen it, you know what to do to achieve it, you can avoid all hurdles along the way as you know those won’t help you reach the destination easily, you’d be ANXIETY-FREE. Well isn’t that awesome!

But my friend was quick to bring me back to my senses. “Life would be so boring then!”, he said. You wouldn’t have to face any challenges, you’d never experience the emotion of surprise, excitement or happiness as you would have already anticipated the outcome. There would be no joy of working hard and achieving your desired results through your efforts. Life would be meaningless.

As hard it is to accept this, it’s true. We shape ourselves and grow through each obstacle and challenge that we face in life. It’s very important for us to appreciate the outcome of our actions. As quoted above by Steve Jobs, we can only connect the dots backwards. So no matter where you are and what you do, don’t forget to work hard. You have nothing to lose. It will all make sense in the end.

When things seem uncertain

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity. ” 

-Gilda Radner

Everything in my life seems uncertain at the moment. Ever since I turned 30, I feel the presence of a ticking time bomb right above my head. I don’t know how much time is left for it to blast but not knowing it makes me want to quit everything and move to a place far away. My mind keeps making desperate plea for clarity and peace.

The past week has been emotionally taxing. I never used to experience any mood swings or emotional upheavals as part of PMS before. However, anxiety has somehow befriended my hormones to give me the choicest of fears to deal with right before Aunt Flo decides to strike with cramps.

In the middle of this mental turbulence, I gave a job interview through the reference of one my closest friends. On the outcast, the job seemed perfect but I just couldn’t convince my mind to take it up. The job timings were odd (from 12.30 pm to 9.30 pm) and I’ve felt mentally harassed and tortured while working in these timings before. It would have been a different case had I enjoyed working in a corporate set up or I was passionate about my career choice. The primary reason I work in a corporate is to make myself and my family financially independent. My “job” and career as an accountant always feels like a routine, is burdensome, stressful and drains me of my energy as it’s far from my personality and purpose in life. Don’t take me wrong, I am grateful for my current life and all the opportunities I have been blessed with. It kills me to feel constantly “unfulfilled” and “unhappy” in life.

Even the thought of working at this new organisation made me feel extremely stressed and unhappy. I knew that I couldn’t put myself through any more mental pressure for the sake of increasing my pay scale. I finally told my friend yesterday that I couldn’t go ahead with the job process. I might have lost out on a great job opportunity that could have made a huge upswing in my earning capacity. However, I couldn’t bring myself to say “yes” to it, believe me I thought about it, A LOT. Surprisingly I don’t feel dejected by it at all. All I feel is extreme “uncertainty” and “anxiety” about my future.

As kids, we never looked for reasons to be happy. Now, happiness feels like the most expensive commodity in my life. I constantly feel the need to prove myself, work hard, go through pain and turbulence to “earn my happiness“. It feels like I’m on a constant wait for something, someone, to change the course of my life and make it better. Is there an end to this phase of my life? I hope there is because I’m EXHAUSTED of waiting.

I have decided to make 2021, MY GLOW UP year! Even if I start the year on a great note, I know for a fact that I WILL relapse back to my depressed self soon enough. It’s not because of the occurrence of a setback or failure, my positivity usually wears off when I realize that I’ve lost control of my life.

For 2021, I’ve decided to take cue from my “weight loss experience” and be “consistent” with my goals, by hook or by crook.

My mantras for 2021 :-

• What this means is that, my focus would be on my efforts in present moment rather than expected results in the future
• I’ve decided to give my best in the present moment, work hard to become the best version of myself and have faith in the UNIVERSE to unfold things in my life, what it considers BEST for me
• Stop fighting against all situations in life and fear that the Universe has turned it’s back on you
• Document everyday, each day is special
• Trust the process, go with the flow.

I guess I’m all set for the new year, are you?

The one with the hundredth

100/100

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” 

-Bernice Johnson Reagon

WOW! My emotions are all over the place today. I feel emotional, elated, proud and ecstatic at the same time!! I DID IT!! I completed my challenge of posting an article daily for 100 days. This feels surreal. To be honest, I was very scared of leaving this goal unaccomplished during the initial days of this challenge. I do have the tendency to set huge goals for myself and realize later on that I don’t have the ability or willpower to accomplish it. But this was different. Writing an article on my blog never felt like a task, it was something that helped clear my mind everyday. My day felt incomplete without posting on my blog. Maybe that’s the reason I was able to conquer my irrational fears about this challenge and reached the shore without having to experience any sort of turbulence on the way.

The impact of this challenge on my life

When I started out, I had zero confidence in my writing skills. This challenge forced me to think beyond my limitations and pour my heart out every single day on this blog. I have a long way to go in the field of blogging and accomplishing this challenge is a step in the right direction for me as it helped clear a lot of mental blocks such as :-

• I was worried that I would run out of topics to write about for 100 days. Turns out as long as we are alive in the Universe, we will always have something to share to the world.
• It is not as difficult as my mind made it seem like in the beginning. I started taking each day as it comes and broke down the 100 days into 1 article each day and concentrated only on that day’s article. Thinking of the challenge as a whole can be quite overwhelming, breaking it down into smaller, more achievable goals is less intimidating to our mind.
• I don’t know if my there has been any improvement in my writing skills, but I sure am much quicker and better at putting my thoughts into words now. That’s a big win for me!
• Whether you do something or not, time passes by anyways. It’s better to utilize time to the best of our ability and do everything that our mind can dream of.
• You don’t need to have a particular skillset or extraordinary talent to do something you like. If you are truly passionate about it, you will grow along the way and become better with each attempt. Don’t let the fear of societal judgement hold you back from your dreams.
• You can never know what you are capable of unless you attempt it.

Gratitude to the readers and my blogger friends

I started from square on with about 6 followers and now I have about 160+ of you following my blog. This is the biggest level of appreciation for me and motivates me to continue doing what I love. Thank you for your amazing comments, likes, support and feedback, I cherish them dearly and it fills me up with gratitude and love!! All the bloggers on this platform are superstars in their own right and have the most amazing writing style. I get to learn something new from each one of you. Keep up the great work, you guys are INCREDIBLE!!!

What next?

The challenge has come to an end but this isn’t the end of my blogging journey. I’ll continue to post articles (hopefully daily) for as long as I can think of till I find my niche and a fixed schedule to follow. A heartfelt thank you for all the support and amazing friends I have made here. I am truly overwhelmed!

The real test

#56/100

“Be happy for no reason, like a child. If you are happy for a reason, you’re in trouble, because that reason can be taken from you.”

― Deepak Chopra

It is so easy to be happy when things are going well. The real test lies in our efforts to stay happy when things don’t take place as per our expectations. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been really happy, for no particular reason to be honest. Listening to good songs, watching good shows, eating good food, I sought happiness from these daily basic activities and sort of created a routine out of it. Everything seemed great, I genuinely began to feel a childlike sense of happiness in a lot of things. I didn’t realize that I had created a routine for myself. Any change in this routine could bring me massive disappointment and sadness as I wasn’t anticipating it. That’s exactly what happened!

My mom injured her hand day before yesterday. It’s a fracture and her hand needs to be put under a cast for 6 weeks. Now this comes as a big jolt to my routine as I’m heavily dependent on my mother for everything. Now is the real test of my happiness. There’s a big change in my routine, the exact same routine that was a reason behind my happiness from the past few weeks.

Now is when I need to put extra efforts in being happy under any circumstances. It’s also extremely important to know our “why” (the purpose behind doing anything) before starting any new thing. This “why” makes us focused, dedicated and gritty enough to achieve our goals. My “why” is to be happy under any circumstances, especially during the bad ones. Difficult as it may sound, there’s always a way out.

Do I really procrastinate?

#54/100

“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand—and melting like a snowflake.”

– Francis Bacon

For the longest time I sincerely believed that procrastination = laziness. You have a list of tasks at hand for the day, you know it’s too important to complete them on time, you have plenty of time to strike of each task from your to-do list, yet, you choose to slack! I’ve done it with my studies, while getting ready to go out and majorly with my office work.

For the last 3 days, I have been waking up early to get a good head start on the day and complete my workout before I start my office work. I got the waking up early part right each day, however, every single day I procrastinated till the last minute and had to rush through my workouts and office work. This got me thinking, what really went wrong?

I had a super productive weekend this week. I woke up early both days and completed all my planned work. I even managed to squeeze in a 10 km run on Sunday when my mind tried it’s best to convince me against doing it. On Monday I noticed my energy levels dipping, I was gloomy and it was easier for my mind to convince me to procrastinate.

The point I’m trying to make here is that procrastination is not a state of mind or force of habit. In my case, I tend to procrastinate when I don’t like the task at hand. I’m an introvert by nature, going out to socialize with people can be a nightmare for me sometimes. I always procrastinated when I had to leave my house to attend social events. I don’t like being part of the corporate rate race. That explains my extreme procrastination when it comes to office work. I enjoy reading but studying for an exam makes me anxious and stressed. The fear of not performing well in the exams always overpowered my fear of exams itself. That’s why I always procrastinated on my studies. If I don’t study well, I can blame my lack of preparation for it and be a victim of the situation. On the other hand, I am always punctual on the days of my running events, for my trips or attending a highly anticipated event.

Not every situation in life is going to be as per our wishes. We can be depressed even after manifesting all our goals and achieving the life of our dreams. Life is how you make it. If I hate my current job, I’ll manifest more reasons to hate it. If I work hard on liking what I do, whatever it is, the universe will manifest more reasons for me to find things that I like. It may feel pretentious at first, but to manifest the life of my dreams, I need to pretend that I’m living it in the present. I absolutely couldn’t relate to this advise when I read it in self help books. How can I be happy or find reasons to be happy in a situation that I absolutely despise? Recently I hit rock bottom, I absolutely couldn’t find any reason to be happy in the present or visualize it in future. Being unable to imagine a happy future is the most painful thing one can experience. I got over it by trying to find happiness in the small stuff. As I concentrated on that, I found more reasons to be happy about.

I really need to use this technique at the work place too. I absolutely hate it at present. Starting tomorrow, I’ll try finding reasons that make me happy and fulfilled at my workplace. I’m really excited to see how this experiment turns out. Will I finally be able to be passionate about my work? Only time will tell though I’m optimistic about it!!

The Monday syndrome

Source : Pinterest

#52/100

Ah, my hate for Mondays knows no limits. Ever since I’ve started working in an office, there hasn’t been a single Monday I’ve been elated about. Sunday evenings always brings a sense of gloom in me. I go through an existential crisis every week in anticipation of each Monday. I wasn’t like this during my school days. I don’t remember being sad with the thought of going to school ever. Yes, end of summer vacations did make upset about losing all the free time to do absolutely nothing. But the disappointment in me before the start of each work week is beyond measure.

In my first ever interview for a job, I was asked “Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?”. I might have answered in the most dumb manner possible as I was clueless at that point but I did mention that I want to be passionate about the work I do, whatever it is. I never had any long term work related goals back then, I don’t have them now. Getting a job and earning money were one of those things that I had to do owing to the financial condition of my family. I wonder how I would have turned out had there been no financial constraints or responsibility on me to earn for the family.

Well, coming back to Mondays, I’m trying to deal with it better. I try to find happiness in small stuff throughout the week than wait for the weekend to make me happy. Yet, it gets to me sometimes. My work isn’t fulfilling, it defies my personality. Maybe because I have this inherent feeling that all the work that I put in is gone into fulfilling someone else’s dreams. I feel limited in my thoughts and ideas. I have to behave in a certain manner, talk in a certain way, work in a fixed patter, there’s no individuality in the work that I do and that just irks me.

I’m trying hard to derive happiness and fulfillment from it. I’m trying hard to be my best, do my best in every situation that I come across. In return, can I dream of experiencing zero Monday morning blues ever?. I wish to have Sunday evenings where I look forward to the week ahead, plan for the stuff to be accomplished during the week, wait excitedly for Mondays to arrive so that I can work on my projects. I can be completely delusional here but a girl can dream. I’m still in the process of figuring out myself. I hope one day I can turn into the person I can be proud of. Someone who knows themselves inside out, is aware of things that connects with their personality and works for a life that consists of everything that makes them happy and fulfilled. Till then, I’ll go back to understanding myself a little better each day.

Bow down, be humble

#49/100

“Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.”

–Oprah Winfrey

When I joined my current workplace, the one person I admired the most was my boss. His work ethic is impeccable, is extremely passionate about his work, is polite with his peers and subordinates and has a vast knowledge on any topic. But my admiration for him didn’t take time to turn to loathing the moment I encountered a part of his personality that shocked me to the core. He lacks empathy. Now, sympathy and empathy are two emotions that are extremely crucial to judge a human being’s personality. Most of us are sympathetic and disguise that as empathy. If you are sympathetic, you would listen to someone’s troubles, try to console the person and leave it to that. But if your empathetic, you will imagine yourself in that person’s shoes, lend a helping hand and try to work out on a solution.

My house is almost 56 kms from my workplace. I’ll not even discuss the part where my organisation is gas lighting us into coming to office just because they don’t consider work from home as an effective means of working (the pandemic can’t be used as a reasonable excuse here). It takes 8 hrs each day to travel from my house to my office to do the same work that I can complete in few hours at home. I’m grateful to go through this ordeal only twice a week but the sadist reason behind making the employees suffer in the name of employment is infuriating.

The best way to identify a true leader from a boss is the presence of empathy. In the scenario I explained above, a true leader would have understood the employees troubles, made genuine attempts to listen to their concerns and make an informed decision which favors everyone and keeps the company operations smooth. Instead, my organisation devices new ways each day to make their employees more frustrated and angry. They don’t understand the severity of the situation and make no attempt to do so.

I’m trying to sail through this situation by focusing on being happy and positive to the best of my ability. I wish and have an ardent hope to get out of this mess soon. I don’t know when that would happen but I do know I’ll be much stronger in my actions, thoughts and grit by then. As they say, every dog has it’s day. I’m waiting for my day to arrive sooner than I can imagine. The world can be a scary place sometimes, we can make it better by being empathetic, kind and humble towards one and another. The people helming the decisions at my workplace lack all 3 of these crucial emotions. I pray for their well being when each of the dogs they’ve bruised has it’s day.

Source : Grammarly

The one where I hit a 100!!!

#43/100

This is an appreciation post! I’m absolutely over the moon since I hit a 100 followers on my blog. I’m filled with gratitude towards every single person who has followed me, liked my posts and taken precious time out from their life to comment on my posts. Your support means everything to me.

I created this blog in 2016 when I was going through a difficult phase in my life, however I hardly posted 10 times in the last 4 years. Writing was a way to let out my emotions and get clarity on my thoughts. I have always enjoyed reading blogs and they never fail to give me a sense of direction when I feel lost in life. I’ve come across so many amazing blog posts that were totally relatable to the situation I was going through and reading their experiences gave me strength and support. I always harbored a dream to write well and connect with people with my writing. I’m a juvenile in this field and have a long way to go. Yet every single milestone is extremely special to me as I feel like I’m on the right path.

This year, due to the current situation that we are in, I had a lot of time on my hand. This was the right time for me to improve my writing skills and learn a little more about myself in the process. This milestone is a great motivation for me to continue my efforts and work better.

A big thanks to everyone once again!

Musically

#34/100

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.”

-Plato

What is it about music that brings an instant relief and sense of happiness to my life? I’m not a musician, neither am I a student of music. I am normal human who derives immense pleasure from listening to music. Sometimes listening to favorite songs changes my mood, helps me concentrate, makes me instantly happy, deviates my mind from the reality and brings peace to my mind.

I really wish to know how music became such an integral element of everyone’s life. There’s a right kind of music for every occasion. Music also has the ability to bring out certain emotions from people that words fail to derive. While listening to songs that were my jam in the past, I instantly time travel to the past and relive those moments.

I haven’t come across a single person in my life who doesn’t listen to any kind of music. I’m sure such people do exist and I’m curious to know how they manage to exclude this beautiful element from their lives.

There are some songs that hit the right chord with me from the word go. I have a tendency to keep listening to the same songs on repeat once I like them. I never outgrow such songs and they take a permanent place in my playlist. For a person like me who has a limited attention span, music does manage to draw my attention to it every single time. Of late, listening to songs has made my long bus commute to office so much better. It has a magical effect of soothing my nerves and bringing a smile on my face every single time. I really don’t know what this world would do without music. Sounds like a really sad and depressed world to me.