A close call

Today has been adventurous to another level. I travelled all the way to my office in the morning hoping to have a normal work day today. When I reached office, I had to go through the normal workplace protocol of showing my identity proof and the status on a government based mobile app (Aarogya Setu) which tracks the coronavirus infection of users who have downloaded the app on their phone. This app collects details of infection of everyone who uses it makes it easy to conduct contact tracing process. When I checked the status today, it showed I had a “high risk” of infection as I had come in contact with an infected person about a week back. I was surprisingly calm throughout as I had experienced no symptoms till then. I was asked to go back home and check with the helpline on the app for further process.

Once I reached home and told my parents about it, they freaked out. My parents are complete opposites of each other and their reaction to this news was also poles apart. My mother was very scared but kept it within herself and showed a brave front. My father called a friend, brought me medicines which I had no clue about and asked me 10000 questions within a span of 10 seconds. Mind you, they went through all this stress only with the news of me coming in contact with an infected person. I hadn’t even tested positive by this time. After talking to my friends and contemplating on the situation for a long time, I decided to get myself tested. I went to a diagnostic center near my house and my swabs samples were taken for the tests. Let me give a heads up here, the process of taking the nasal swab samples is extremely creepy and weird. The swab is inserted deep inside the nose and for a moment I felt that it had reached my brain!!

Then came the somewhat long wait. The antigen test results are quiet rapid and come out within a span of 15 mins. The results for the antigen test are inaccurate at times and hence I got myself swabbed for the RT-PCR test as well which is the most accurately used testing method. Within few minutes of taking my swab samples, my antigen test results were out. Fortunately it was “Negative“. The RT-PCR test results will be out tomorrow. My life changed within a span of few minutes after I came to know about the status on my Aarogya Setu app. Most of the times the stress of the actual situation is more troublesome and frustrating than the situation itself.

I’m glad I decided to take test after all and find out about my condition today itself. My initial plan was to self quarantine for a week or so before getting tested. I am extremely grateful for my meditation habit which helped me be calm in this situation. I’m really glad that I worked on making it a habit and spent 20 mins everyday on healing my mental health. It came a lot handy in today’s situation.

Fingers crossed for my RT-PCR test results tomorrow!

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.

Patience is virtue

#64/100

Source : http://www.icantrust.co.uk/blog/how-do-you-eat-an-elephant-one-bite-at-a-time

Do you remember the feeling of complete disbelief you have when you come across any gigantic challenge in life? I’m talking about the tasks that require us to work hard for a very long time before we start seeing any results on it. We are a generation which is used to “instant gratification”. We are absolutely not ready to wait for a long time for our reward. For us hard work and rewards go hand in hand. Technology and the current corporations have utilized this phenomena to their best capacity to bring us applications that cater to the needs of the current generation. Everything is digitalized and available to us at the push of a button. We have the attention span of a goldfish, we need to see visible results for us to continue working on it.

The experience that I am about to share now relates to my struggle to continue working hard while battling the ill effects of this phenomena. The first month of my weight loss journey was extremely hard. I had never seen results with any weight loss method (casual ones) I had applied before. I had zero hope of being successful at this attempt (honest one) as I was trying it out for the very first time. Every single workout session was a challenge. There were so many instances when I questioned my decision of subjecting myself to the pain of exercise. For a person who has never been into any form of physical activity before, working out consistently without seeing any results whatsoever was a battle between the ease of giving up and my resolve to lose weight. It wasn’t just this, I had refrained from eating unhealthy food. That means I had to sacrifice on all the food that excited my taste buds but were unhealthy for my body.

However, I wanted to share this experience because it has been one of the biggest life altering lessons of my life. Though there were times I wanted to give up, I was able to motivate myself to continue working hard. I kept telling myself that the pain won’t last forever, I just have to do this for 3 months (that’s the deadline I had set for myself) and I can give up if I don’t see any results after that. This experience taught me to live in the present. For some reason, I felt that I needed to lose weight in a specific time frame, anything beyond that would be a waste of time. I really don’t understand why I kept chasing time earlier. Working on myself is a life long process, one can’t put a timeline on it. No one will judge us for not doing it before or after a certain time. The best time to start any activity is “NOW” and the best way to be consistent at it is to work on it “one day at a time“. We tend to compare our daily results to the end goal and get disappointed for not being successful at it.

I broke down my goal into monthly targets and celebrated each milestone. My initial goal was to lose over 12 kgs in 3 months. For the first few days I kept checking my weight after every difficult workout session and wanted to give up on not seeing any results (classic mistake!). Then I decided to mark one day each month (milestone) to check my weight and maintain a log of my daily food and exercise schedules. This helped me immensely as I could see gradual progress in my food and workout habits daily and that kept me motivated till my milestone days. On each milestone day, I could see a considerable progress in my weight, body and fitness levels and that just boosted my confidence to next level.

Although my initial reason for my weight loss was for completely aesthetic, healthy eating and workouts have become an integral part of my life. I have become stronger, physically and mentally after consistently working on myself and achieving this goal. This experience has taught me to stay patient and to keep going when things get tough. As they say, “The universe always falls in love with a stubborn heart“

The next time you have a huge task and keep questioning your abilities to complete it, just remember to be consistent at it, one day at a time.

My relationship with food

#63/100

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

― Hippocrates

Food is an essential part of our survival, perhaps the sole reason behind it. Food can instantly change my mood, make me happy, energized, motivated and exhilarated. I’ve experienced severe bouts of anger, irritation to the point of absolute frustration when I’m hungry. I’m extremely blessed to have a belly full of food whenever I desire it. My mother has always been an amazing cook and have prepared scrumptious dishes for our family all my life. At the end of a tiring day, having good food prepared by my mother has the power to reverse back all the stress built up during the day.

But I’ve never had a cordial relationship with food. While growing up I was overweight. I never thought that I ate too much to gain that weight. It was much later in life that I was introduced to the terms “binge eating” and “stress eating” to deal with it during my childhood. I was oblivious to the amount of food I had during the day as a child.

I always tend to eat too fast and too much. I somehow feel the need to have more than necessary portions of food to feel satiated. I tend to eat an indescribable amount of sugary treats when I’m sad or depressed. The dopamine rush that I get when I eat sugary food used to be my way to deal with stressful situations in life. I absolutely couldn’t live without sugar or sweet food. I swore of sugary food for a year and a half about 3 years back as a sacrifice to achieve one of my goals at that time. As silly as it may sound, it was my way of pleasing the universe to manifest my dream in exchange of something that I absolutely couldn’t give up. I never ended up fulfilling my dream but my abstinence from sugar made me mentally strong to deal with the frustrating situations in life.

The second breakthrough with my food habits came during my weight loss journey. I gave up eating all of my favorite food (junk, processed, with refined sugar etc) and resorted to healthy eating only. My portion sizes were also limited. I forced myself to eat slow and chew more, giving ample time for my brain to realize that it’s full. I drank water first whenever I felt hunger pangs to avoid eating because of boredom. I slowly acquired a taste for all the healthy food that I absolutely detested before. The effects of healthy eating showed up on my mind, body and overall health within a span of 3 months. I couldn’t have been happier.

My relationship with food still isn’t the best but I’m learning everyday. I feel extremely guilty when I have junk food or excess food. I feel the need to workout more than usual just to burn off the extra calories consumed from having “unhealthy food”. Up until few months back, I could eat multiple bars of chocolates in one sitting to cope with my anxiety issues. I don’t know how I got over it but I don’t crave sugary food anymore. I still tend to gulp down my food without realizing it. I order large portion sizes of food just for the sake of it and find it difficult to eat everything leading to overeating. There are many instances where I tend to allow food to control me rather than it being the other way around.

I’m learning each day and trying to heal my relationship with food. My mind has a lot to do with my food choices as I tend to use food as a punishment when I feel guilty of eating unhealthy food. I’m working very hard on my mental health and the desire to be happy despite any adverse circumstances. If we can get our mind to calm down and be patient, each and every aspect of our life would flourish, especially our food choices. So let’s try to understand our mind better and be patient enough to love every aspect of our life. Let’s be stronger, little by little, ever day!

Making my time count

#61/100

“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot”

-Michael Altshuler

I wanted to do so many things today. Yet, I’m sitting on my bed at the end of the day today, completely clueless about the manner in which I spent my day. I woke up in the morning with a plan to complete all my work on time. I had a mental list of everything that I wanted to work on today. But I ended up having an extremely rushed day, wasting most of the time zoning out or on the phone and just like that, my day got over.

I don’t know why I’m unable to take action on every task on my to-do list. When I almost get around to do it, there’s a voice in my head which says this can be done tomorrow and I listen to it like an ardent follower. Why am I being so lazy? I have absolutely no clue. I am totally aware that I can work on completing every work on my list on the same day if I put my mind to it. So what’s exactly wrong?

I’m not a lazy person yet there are times when my easy going nature causes a lot of inconsistencies with the timing of my work. I really don’t wish to waste even a single millisecond of my life.

The best way to get a hold on our life is by journaling. When I pen down our thoughts, I understand myself a little better each time. Fighting procrastination has been one of the main goals my life.

I’m too overwhelmed with housework and office work at the moment. I know that I can do much better than this. Every day I wake up with the intention of doing all my work before time and I end up doing the exact opposite of that. My mind isn’t able to handle my volatile emotions and has decided to seek the safe way out by doing absolutely nothing.

Looking forward to a better tomorrow.

Good night!

When I earned my first and only scholarship

#5/100

I’m a chartered accountant by profession. I had cleared my exams way back in 2012. I almost gave up reading for good after studying for these exams. Forget further studies, I was mentally exhausted to even pick up a novel to read.

Cut to 7 years later, I finally wanted to study further, get another professional certificate/degree. I’ve always been an avid reader, I’m curious about the ways in which the world operates. Let me put it out straight, I ain’t a studious person but I do enjoy gaining information. Studying just for the sake of giving exams is probably one of my nightmares!

After researching through various short term courses and certifications, I finally zeroed down on CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst). I was fairly sure that I wanted to do this course. However, there was one big glitch. This course was extremely expensive. There are 3 levels to this course, the entry fees to the first level and examination costs was a whopping USD 1,150 (INR 86,000). I am anyways a known procrastinator, the exorbitant fee to this course made me second guess my decision of enrolling for it.

While I was in two minds about opting for this course, my friend told me about a “Women’s scholarship” offered by the CFA institute. Although she told me to not keep my hopes high, there was no harm in trying for it. I just had to answer few questions about why I deserved the scholarship and how the CFA degree would help me in my professional goals. I gave my best to answer the questions, applied for the scholarship and ‘tried’ to forget all about it. I refrained from registering for the exam till I heard about the institute’s decision. I knew I had very slim chances of being awarded the scholarship but somehow I couldn’t let my hope die a silent death.

Every morning I refreshed my mailbox to look for the institute’s reply. This went on for over a month. One such morning, I woke up hazily to a routine weekday. I refreshed my mailbox out of habit and there it was, the institute’s reply!

I got the scholarship! My joy knew no bounds! This was probably the sign I was waiting for. The scholarship waived off the fees to USD 350. I enrolled for the course right away. After experiencing few setbacks, I sometimes had pessimistic reaction to certain situations in life. This scholarship somehow restored my faith in the Universe. It was that positive beam of light that I was struggling to find since a long time.

Anger Management 101

I was a pretty patient person throughout my childhood. I used to seldom get angry and make peace with most of the situations in life. I did get upset if things didn’t work my way but never be angry.

When I look back at those days, I feel I’m a completely changed person now. Wrath and anger has become a part of my life nowadays, especially when I’m in office. I’m more patient and calm with my friends and family but not with colleagues at office. So, what has changed?

Well, in office I get angry over situations I cannot control. When people keep on asking the same questions again, they are not responsible for their actions, repeat the same mistakes carelessly, I feel agitated! I fail to understand why would someone wreck their own reputation and quality of work by acting in a negligent manner. And this results in me getting all worked up and swinging onto the damage control mode. Being a supervisor, I need to be responsible for everyone’s work and one person’s negligence results in me having to answer a hundred questions by the senior management which is tiresome.

In my case, I get angry due to one or all of the following reasons:-

• When I work at the last minute for any project
• When other people act in a careless manner
• When things are not conducted in an organised manner
• When I make a silly mistake which could have been easily avoided

As you can see, in each of the above reasons, the following 2 things are very prominent :-

• Situations in control – Involving your own self!
• Situations beyond your control – Involving other people

SITUATIONS IN CONTROL – INVOLVING YOUR OWN SELF!

In such situations, as you are the master of your own fate, you can mould the outcome. If things don’t work because of your own self, it’s a learning experience. You can make a note of such situations in order to not repeat them in future. In case you still repeat them, it’s a warning sign with “DANGER LYING AHEAD” written in big red letters asking you to pay ATTENTION. When you are too passionate about your work, failure or incompetence is bound to make you angry. But, if you consider each error as a learning step to your glorious future, it would make you heave a sigh of relief instead of crying in agony. Making mistakes helps you to discover ways in which it can be avoided in future and learning more about the work you are doing. You get closer to achieving the outcome you’ve visualised and know how to avoid any pitfalls that may come in future.

SITUATIONS BEYOND YOUR CONTROL – INVOLVING OTHER PEOPLE

In this scenario, it’s pointless to act angry and hurt your own self in the process. You need to realise that each person acts in their own manner. You cannot control the process or the outcome in situations involving others. To avoid pain in such situations, you need to make sure your thoughts clear to the other person. If they still act in a destructive manner, you can either end your association or stop being affected by it. Everyone should be responsible for their own actions. If a person’s destructive behaviour is causing difficulties to oneself, you need to make changes in your situation to avoid being dependent on them for your own happiness. You can only get angry due to others if you keep your happiness in their control. Break the control, be the master of your happiness.

In each of the above situation, your reaction matters the most. People act in split second without thinking about the situation or the reason behind it. Our reactions are always immediate. The best way to control anger is to control your reaction to any situation. Always Clear your head-> Analyse-> React!

I’ve tried to analyse the reason behind situations causing anger and list down the most simple ways of avoiding it. So next time you are about to get angry, take a deep breath, understand which of the above situation you fall in and think about it clearly before spitting fire!!

Ciao!