To tell someone to forget the past, to move on and concentrate on yourself is easy but on a practical ground, it is equally tough. It seems impossible at some point and all you would care about is how it is going to affect your image, future and character at large. The first thought in your mind would be that your enemy would be happy to hear your bad news. In short, your thoughts are clouded by someone else’s happiness rather than your own sadness.
To keep your thoughts away from all these, you need to get yourself engaged. No, you are wrong. I didn’t mean hobby. I meant passion. We watch movies, listen to music, read books etc. These are all our shortcuts out of the trauma but seldom do we realise that after the first 9 or 10 minutes your mind would disconnect from your body and starts going back to the epicenter of problems. After a while only we would realize that we have not been successful in this diversion. This is because all these hobbies mentioned are for the entertainment of the senses but whay we apparently need is not entertainment but the truth is that we need to engage our brain and start doing that which make use of the brain and we would be busy with it. It is the best therapy for us.
Recognising your passion is important. That which interests one might not be interesting for other. That which doesn’t seem interesting might indeed be your hidden passion. For instance, I have never counted cooking interesting. I have always been all about books. But at some circumstances I had to wear the chef’s cap. A few cuisine experiments and I realised that I love cooking. Since then, whenever I feel dejected, I cook. The best therapy for me.
Try doing everything possible and see what gives you real happiness and complete satisfaction. Thus excavate your passion and nurture it so that it will keep your brain busy and you no longer have time for processing negativity.
Be positive, power of positivity, think positive, stay postive- Positivity has been the most trending hashtag in social media of late. We all want to stay positive and keep negativity at bay. Is that so easy? Well, no. The more you try to remain positive, the more you will face difficulties and find it difficult to keep up with it. Once to go down the road of positivity, our expectations would be higher. “I have decided to be positive. Everything would be good from now onwards.”
Then comes someone or something which pulls you down to where you started off. All the positive energy you have imbibed would seem to vanish. You will start losing your self worth, the confidence and evetything falls apart. This is the time to drink the cup of positiveTea. Close your eyes and shut out the world from even your mind. The negative thoughts will try to peep in. Always keep your guard up and the moment negative thoughts come to you, tell yourself to keep quiet. It’s the silence of your mind that is important, not the surroundings.
The cup of positivity is not any magic potion. It is your mind itself. How you tame your mind is important. Not entertaining things that affect you is the most important. Your phone has a block button. Use it wisely. Don’t use it to show your superiority but use it to silence your mind. Block the people who are affecting your sanity, the toxic people in your life. More about toxic people would be given in the future posts.
Now where you stand, you have learned to silence your mind, to shut our negative thoughts and wade through negativity. But something that you think you have achieved might not be that which you have fathomed. The phase that you are in, will change and more troubles would come your way. Your job is to be proactive. Tell yourself that it is not the end. It will come up again or something else would come up but you should never stop drinking the cup of positivity
In the last post Be yourself and Fight For Your Selfworth , we saw about how important it is to be yourself and not care for the society. To change your perspective is easy but implementing the same is as difficult. There would be too many roadblocks once you decide to face it heads on. The prime allegation be “He/she was never like this. This sudden changes is arrogance” and the reason for this arrogance would be attributed to your success, money, relations or anything fancy reasons people would come up with because when it comes to framing stories about people in flesh and bllod, our society is the best author. This phenomenon doesn’t discriminate between cast, creed, education, occupation, gender or even dempgraphics. Well, gender can be debated!
What we have to do is to decide once and for all that you are going to be yourself and shut out everything that pulls you down in this process.
The moment your decide to change that bring out that little fire, you will have to face the most obstructions as change is the most unacceptable norm in the current society. How you hold your ground and pursue is the most important to do. Sometimes you would have to do something that you have never wanted to. You need to hold your resolve so as to overcome the inevitable and accomplish the impossible. Initially it would be the most difficult but your duty is to set yourself used to this judgement.Once you acknoledge and accept it, noone can prevent you. This doesn’t happen so easily. It takes time and resolve. After a few steps, get ready to run.
We live in a society, that too a judgemental one. We will be judged by someone or the other at every point of our lives. We live our lives fulfilling the social norms that we foregt our self worth and end up not being ourselves anymore. Being ourselves doesn’t imply that you can do whatever comes to our mind because were are dealing with toxicity or negativity and we cannot be negative ourselves. Hence it is imperative that we should ask ourselves and confirm a few points to reinforce that you are doing the right thing. Since Awareness is the Key to start SelfLove, let’s be aware.
Forget the society:- The societal standards might not always go with your moral standards. Morality is relative. The line of morality changes from person to person and hence you need to think and resolve where to set yours.
Do what you love:- Not everyone get the happiness and satisfaction from the same thing. For some it would be music, for some it would be dance or movies or or cooking or books. For me books and writing is what gives the orgasmic satisfaction notwithstanding the literal one. No pun intended. You are the only one who can figure out it. Once if you zero in on something, don’t get stuck there. Explore more arenas and you will be surprised too see unreaped talent and passion lying inside you. For me it was cooking. I haven’t ever even dreamt that I would be someone who enjoys cooking. But once I ventured into cooking experiments, I realized that if not books, food is what gives me immense satisfaction
Express yourself:- The moment you start expressing yourself, you will become the lightest person in the universe. By expressing, it doesn’t mean that you need to change your character and start behaving like Jeet in the bollywood movie ‘JabWeMet’. You could express your emotion through your passion. You can also express it in the literal sense if you like it that way. A whole-harted laughter can heal your sould like nothing else.
Stay away from toxicpersonalities:- It could be your friend, relative, spouse, colleague or anyone who has an influence of any sort. Your decision should be not to entertain them at all. It took me years to learn that negligence is the best way to tackle to toxic personalities because they will do something to instigate a retort from your and use the same against you to play the blame game using victim card. You can either block them right away or tell them first. But once you tell them, once the conversation ends, the victim stand would be exchanged with that of the witness.
Ask yourself the question:- While you try to be yourself and honest, you might end being a bully because truth is not always right if it does affect someone adversely. In an attempt to love yoursef and being yourself you should not end up being the toxic human being yourself. Hence never let your guard down and never let anyone prevent you from having the #MorningCupOfPositivity. Also, never hurt anyone intentionally.
Basically, the idea of being yourself is to take your conscience to the podium and not letting anything else on the dias, and have a cup of positivity.
When I announced the topic for the #A2ZChallenge by Blogchatter, I did not elaborate it. I did not emphasise what I meant with the word Self-love. The term can have several illustrations. Hence it is imperative that I should shed light on what exactly I meant with the word self love. So let’s see what is self-love and how are we planning to achieve it in the coming 26 days.
As I said before in the previous #WellnessWednesday post Self care and Selfishness , caring ourselves doesn’t make us selfish. Caring only about ourselves make us selfish.
Caring for yourself can happen at different levels. Taking care of your physical, mental and emotional health are inevitable for Self-care. You need to know your weakness and work on that, you need to be yourself, you need to be cautious about the tipping moment, you need to be out of the zone that pulls you down and moreover, you need to be aware of the key perpetrator or what prevents you from self-love. Self love is positivity.
Love yourself so much so that no one can love you more than yourself. How to attain this frame of mind of loving yourself productively and positively is what the series is all about. You will see how you can face certain situations and overcome it with positivity. Positivity is not some magic that will come to you and transform you with a magic mantra like ‘abracadabra‘. It is a process, it is a mind frame, a stage where you won’t let yourself affected with any negative situations and stubbornly hold your ground. So let’s buckle up and and pursue the journey of positivity through self-love.
The word detox evokes the memory of a washout. As we saw growing up, warm water with honey, warm water with lemon juice etc. But a sole physical detox would not help the purpose. We need to cleanse inside out. Keeping that purpose in mind, I am starting a new series detox Tuesday starting from today. I will try to come up with a new post every Tuesday about the step by step process of the detox we need to apply. Today I will share two important steps of detox. (
I will be suggesting a few Apps. These are the ones I have used myself and found helpful. This is not sponsored.
Emotional Detox:- Emotional detox is inevitable if you need to have a positive mind. I have shared in my Motivational Mondays as to how you shouldn’t let anything affect you. The first step is to stay away from it. Remove or block the person who drains you out. If it is impossible, mute them and stop responding to them. Stop secretly peeping into their social life. Mute their status and stop checking what they are doing and feeling miserable yourself. Don’t forget that these days people live dual lives. One is the real life and the other is the social media life.
Second step is the Digital detox:- There are a lot of apps to track your screen time and I have tried most of them. Personally I have found YourHour quite helpful. Download the app, set your usage limit between 4-5 hours and unlock to 50 numbers. Monitor you usage for one day and see which App you are using the most. Set a limit for the App as well. See how it works for you for a week. I will get back to you with the next step next week.
Two golden rules about digital detox is no gadget harlf n hour before and after your bedtime. If you get to your phone the moment you wake up, the amount of toxic thoughts and negativity you breed throughout the day is unbelievably high.
So let’s start with the first steps of emotional and digital detox.
Welcome back to Wellness Wednesday. This series is not only skincare but self care and health care also. So today I though I will go with selfcare.Caring oneself doesn’t mean that you should be selfish but it means that you should keep yourself away from whatever pulls you down. If that comes across as selfishness , so be it. But you should understand the difference between self-care, self- respect and selfishness.
If you wish to be away from someone because you feel that the particular person is toxic to your life, or your well being or being with someone affects your self worth you should and you must step down from the relationship be it friendship, romance, marital life or even relatives.. There comes self-respect as well. Toxic love is an oxymoron but it is the current reality. It is important for our youth to recognize when something gets toxic and the when the danger bell rings.
As I always say, not letting yourself affected by all these drama in your life is the most important point to hold on to. Train your mind to not let anything affect you. The first step in this process is to recognise the toxic personality in your life or realise it when some situation or something someone tells is affecting your mind. Colloquially we say “Getting into your nerves” You should realise it when something or someone starts to get into your nerves. The moment you should stay away, stop responding and even stop thinking about it so that it won’t get past your imaginary shield of positivity.
When you decide to stay away from something that affects you, it is self care and self respect. But if your staying away or being with someone is decided by whether you can get anything done by them, then it is selfishness. You cannot disguise your selfishness as your self worth because then you degrade yourself as a human being. If you are deliberately, well n good. But if you are doing it thinking that what you do is being self caring, then you should understand that it is not the case. Next week we will see how to deal with selfish people.
I had mentioned in my FB and Twitter that I will be starting a few series in Scrutiny. There have been a gap in my performance due to several reasons. Hopefully I will be able to pursue the series without any flaw. So here we go with the announcement of the first series WELLNESS WEDNESDAY. The series is all about healthcare and skin care.
Here we start with the first post in the series WELLNESS WEDNESDAY. As you all know I have a combination skin or precisely normal to combination skin. To take care of a combination skin is a tricky business as your face behaves like that of two different individuals. The combination skin itself has different combinations like dry to combination, combination to oily etc. I am sharing a few tried and tested steps that have worked wonders in my skin.
OIL CLEANSING
It is a misconception that applying oil on your face will create breakouts. This could be true for extremely oily skin, but otherwise oil cleansing is the best way to prevent breakouts. Oil cleansing coulf prefereably be included in your night routine. This deeply cleanses your open pores and keeps the skin smooth and finished. All you have to do is to take a pump or two of the oil, apply it all over the face and gently massage into the face with your finger tips. Make sure not to apply more pressure. After the oil is completely into the skin, oash it off with a mild cleanser. This cleans your skin from deep within and creates a smooth base to the face. This method can also be used as an alternative for make up removers as it helps in removing even waterproof makeup.
2. LET YOUR SKIN BREATHE
Cleansing , toning and moisturising has been the widely accepted mantra of skin care. Every beauty Guru recommends it highly. I am also under the category that CTM is important for skin care but for combination skin, toning could be skipped. Regular use of toner has proved to be detrimental to my skin. If it’s pure rose water, well and good. A good water based moisturiser is the best for combinations skin. But, it is not recommended to use the moisturer on a daily basis especially during night. Once or twice a week let your skin breathe and skin the moisturising part. I repeat, this has helped me in improving my skin but if could not be the same for everyone. You can try these for a fortnight and see if it works for you.
3. MIXING SHAMPOO AND CONDITIONER
I don’t know how far this is technically true because all beauty blogger, make up artists and beauty gurus strictly recomment using conditioner after shampooing but for me mixing the shampoo with conditioner has helped a lot. While applying the shampoo add a drop or two of conditioner ie. very tiny amount to it so that the cleansing property of the shampoo is not affected. Shampoo thoroughly and wash it off completely. This could be followed by a conditioner or not. It’s all upto you. My hair has improved a lot since I started this style of application.
4. AVOID BLEACHING AND OTHER CHEMICAL TREATMENTS
I will doing a whole post on this topic later. For now I will beirfly put forward a few points to you. Bleaching and other chemical treaments and also creams like anti ageing creams give you an unprecedented glow. But little do we know that the effect is short lived and eventually we will end up damaging the skin for good. Hence it is advisable to avoid these creams and use the creams that don’t have harmful chemicals and alcohol.
5. CLEAN UP AT HOME
There are women who feel incomplete and unhygeinic if they could not go to a parlour and do a good facial. But contary to what we he been conditioned, the rigorous massaging on a monthly basis could have a detrimental effect on your skin. The funny thing is that every 3-4 years, the idea of different steps of facial changes and the opinions of one section of beauticians would be different from another section. Hence it is advisable and safe to do it at home. Use a good scrub, followed by pressing a warm towel on your face, followed by black head removal, and applying a chemical free face pack. A detailed post on the same will be posted soon.
6. WATER WATER WATER- AT ROOM TEMPERATURE
Right after waking up in the morning, drink stomach full of water at room temperature. Warm water is also good but somehow, water at room tempreature has helped me a lot. I drink to stomachfull that I feel full and later it works out as a detox without adding anything. Along with this drink 2-3 litres of water. There is nothing like drinking plenty of water that helps your skin
7. Sleep exercise and food
A healthy routine that which contributes to not only healthy skin but a healthy mind and body as well. Good sleep doesn’t mean that you should sleep for 10-12 hours. A good 7-8 hours sleep will suffice. The quality of the food we eat is the most important. Even if in small quantity, the food you consume must be healthy, balanced and nutritious. By exercise it doesn’t mean that we should lift hudreds of weights and workout in gyms. Any exercise that you like could be fine like aerobics, zumba, yoga, any form of dance etc. I personally recommend Yoga because it eases your mind along with your body and brings forth holistic development in our body.
We all have something to dream about. We have that one desire which will make our life accomplished. For some, it would be many. We call it “Bucket List”. You might me wondering how bucket list comes under the theme family.
As mentioned in many previous blogs, I am a different kind of human being who prefers books to dresses and other paraphernalia, reading to shopping and sleeping to parties. All my desires and the dreams have revolved around my family. I met my husband, my then boyfriend, when I was 16 and I was so smitten by him that I could think of anything without him. It was a teenage fantasy first and a habit later. So my bucket list also had my husband and now my kids involved.
1. Playing in the snow
Since I was born and brought up in Kerala, snow was a dream for me. We never had winters that had snow. Ironically, now we have snowfalls in Munnar during winter. It is more of snow flurry.
So, my desire to play in the snow was procrastinated till I got married. My honeymoon was in Switzerland and we went during winters, I know it is an unlikely tour, an off season trip but we got too many advantages like sale, availability of slots in tours and possibility of immediate change of plans.
2. Be a lyricist
While my first one was accomplished, this one was done half way through. I wanted to be a lyricist in movies while I got chances for writing album song. Something is better than nothing and hence I took it up. Credits was not given in the video though. That’s another story.
3. Paragliding
This is an unfulfilled fantasy. One day I will go with my dear hubby and update you. Once we went to Wagamon for the same but when we went there paragliding was closed. Well, the time had not come then.
4. North Indian drives
It is being accomplished step by step and one fine day I will have travelled the whole of India. Last year we went to Bhopal by car from Kochi. This year will go.as far as New Delhi.
5. Being a successful author
Four years back, in February this was also accomplished. My first book “Waves in the Sky” came out like my baby. For me, my book was a success as I got quite good reviews but if the success parameter is being bestseller, I will have to wait more.
6 Bunjee Jumping.
I need to fly high in the air and the dive to the earth holding his hands. Like a bird I need to fly.
7. Sledging
The picture of Santa Claus sitting in the sledge has been engraved in my mind and I will go sledging one fine day.
8. To ride Harley Davidson
I have been a quite famous rider locally , about 12 years back. Since then due to several reasons, riding has been a distant dream. But now, when I see my husband ride his Harley Davidson Fat Boy, the rider in me watches with envy. Waiting for my kids to be a little bigger and you see how I dash off!
When I first did my eyebrows, ie in 2003,( Does that make me look old-SShhh), it was considered a blasphemy to go to beauty parlor. I have looked around to see if anyone is watching me. Now times have changed. Now-a-days, if someone doesn’t go to a parlor, they are considered obsolete creeps. I have been asked a lot of times why I let my eyebrows grow so much. It is when I get those weird looks that I remember that those tiny hairs follicles have sucked up all the oil that is supposed to be absorbed into my scalp. Just imagine our hair, I mean the real hair grow so fast ! Unfortunately the upper-lips, eyebrows and our scalp are under fierce competition and sadly the scalp fails miserably, at-least in my case.
I have always wanted to find someone who hates doing the eyebrows, upperlips, waxing and all the paraphernalia like I do. It to fifteen to find Prajakta Kohli, the youtuber who bravely declared that she hates going to the parlor and get tortured by paying the hard earned money.
Photo Courtesy: http://www.radioandmusic.com
That was a breezer for me and I took the cue. Now my Venus Razor and Tweezer are my philosopher’s stones. Just a touch and my skin turns gold: Pun Intended. If not the perfection that the threads provide us or the smoothness that waxing presents, I could do pretty well without the torture techniques inside the congested cabins.
Now I the last June, a year after my third delivery, I decided to pamper myself and went to a parlor to do facial, pedicure, manicure, hair spa and what not. After spending a fortune, when I looked myself in the mirror, all I could see is the same person with dark circles, grey hair and a lot of insecurities and complexes. That was my enlightening moment. That’s when I realized all this is a farce. Spending a day might be a confidence boost for many but for me it is nothing but a big time confidence buster because the beautician out there never fails to rub it on my face that I have aged over the years, which is quite natural, and my skin has taken up all the wear and tear, which could be cured only by a regular visit to the parlor. Come on! Whom are you kidding. I am a mother of three and gained and lost weight like a balloon in the hands of a kid. If there is an extra wrinkle or dark circle on my face that is because of the extra effort I have invested in bringing up my cuties.
The moment I started accepted myself as how I am, I was devoid of the insecurities, which could have landed me in depression. I have heard girls saying that they feel unhygienic if not undergone a pedicure, manicure clean up etc etc; As if cleaning yourself is a beautician’s job. If you feel a morale boost from parlors, well and good but stop judging people who don’t like to. Just because they don’t undergo expensive treatments, don’t think that they are obsolete, unhygienic and primitive. If you don’t like going to a parlor simply ditch it and live your life the way you like. Trust me! The moment you start loving yourself, you will be over all judgement and you will be the happiest person on the planet.
Love yourself for noone can love you as much as you do-
