Win your Morning, Win your Day

Have you ever wondered at the end of a really unproductive day, 'What went wrong today?'

I have. The answers I got were manifold.

1. Lack of setting daily goals/targets
2. Endless distraction on unimportant stuff (TV/Netflix/Social Media)
3. Feeling tired physically and mentally

But upon closer inspection, all of them pointed to one simple fact. How I started my morning had an impact on my whole day.

When you win your morning, you win your day.

The difference between the days when I woke up early and the days when I did not was huge. On the days I woke up late, I felt irritated and at some level, angry at myself. This led to a huge drain in my energy levels and I wound up browsing the internet and working on my tasks in an unfocused way with tons of breaks in between.

When I woke up early, I could:

1. Spend time writing in my Gratitude Journal and set positive intentions for the day
2. Set daily goals and also make a resolution on distractions to avoid
3. Exercise in the morning and feel refreshed physically and mentally after the workout
4. Really focus on the tasks and get things done fast

This in turn had a huge effect on the quality of my life with my family. The more positive my day went, the more energy I had to connect with my family and play with my daughter. This in turn led me to feel even more grateful, thus triggering a whole new level of happiness and joy.

If you are to only focus on one goal for 2018, I humbly recommend that it be to wake up early and spend the first few hours focusing on yourself. It will have an incredible impact on your quality of time. Here's to an amazing 2018!

Art of managing key relationships

A few years ago, my family and I went through an agonizing relationship breakdown with a close relative. He was one of the few people I loved completely. Life then got really busy and I struggled to spend time with him. Our catch-ups went from once a week to once a month to once in 6 months. I never thought that he was going through some stuff in his life, alone. For some reason, he never shared his deepest feelings with me and I was blindsided. I could not put a finger on what went wrong but when it went wrong, it was devastating. He cut off connection with our family completely and nothing I did later could salvage the relationship. All we were left with were the heaviness in our hearts and the beautiful memories of the past. I struggled to make peace with why it happened.

I know that I am not alone in this. We all lose relationships, more than we wish we did. What can we do differently in managing the most important relationships in our lives? I have attempted to share my insights learnt from going through a broken relationship.

1. Listen with complete attention

I have often noticed that as I listen to people talk, there is this inner chatter in my head going on at the same time. For some others, no sooner has the other person completed one sentence, they have to let go a barrage of words from their end. Listening with complete attention entails silencing both your mind and your mouth and being completely focused on the other person. There is a movie that had the line ‘Listening is Loving’. When we just listen completely, it really opens up this connection that may have been dormant for quite some time. I have found this to be true, irrespective of the nature of the relationship.

2. Practice Non Judgment

We all have this innate ability to judge what is right and what is wrong. When we come from the perspective of a judge, it is little wonder that sometimes, the most important things remain unsaid, even within close relationships. When your partner or friend knows that you will judge his or her action, then either they will not confide in you or change their story accordingly. Either ways, it does not help strengthen the relationship. What if instead, we can choose to be curious and just withhold our judgment, a little bit? I have found that when I choose curiosity and withhold judgment, what matters and needs to be expressed, often is.

3. Talk from the Heart

For a relationship to thrive, vulnerability is the magic sauce. While listening and practicing non judgment allows vulnerability at the other end, we need to practice being vulnerable and speak our own truth from our heart. This means accepting our flaws and mistakes and being open and honest. Ego is the biggest killer to maintaining important relationships. When we can keep our ego down and practice courage through vulnerability, we will have done our part in strengthening the bonds of our relationships.

4. Design an Alliance

This is a coaching tool that I have found can be pretty much used in any relationship. Designing an alliance is to have an open two way communication to match each other’s expectation with respect to the relationship. There are a few relationships where distance and time really has no adverse effect and the conversations just flow every single time we connect with the other person. But in almost all other scenarios, it is key to keep designing an alliance and ensure that we are in sync with each other’s expectations.

All said and done, there is really no guarantee that a loving relationship will last forever. But when we can listen fully, practice non judgment, talk from the heart and continuously design an alliance, we would have done our part in making a relationship not just work, but thrive. Let all of us continue to cherish and thrive in all of our beautiful relationships.

Reconnecting with myself

Over the past few weeks, I have been sensing a strong pull towards self expression. Even as I have been taking steps towards expressing myself, through coaching, speaking and writing, I have also sensed quite a bit of resistance. It feels as if one part of me wants to be bigger and bolder but another part is scared and fearful. Hence I have been feeling this swirl of emotions, joyful and alive one time, dejected and anxious the other. 

I feel it is important for me to fully accept every emotion that comes up and not push them away. Every season serves its purpose and I do believe that there is some learning that will be available to me that will reveal itself at the right time. 

However, I do have to separate myself from the stories.

I am creative, authentic and service driven. On some days, it feels like Life is such a joy and there is flow in action. I am grateful for these days. However I want to rid myself of the unrealistic expectations that every single day will be like this. 

I have to remember that I am my values and I am my inner leader every single day, both good and bad.

I am NOT weak, passive or lazy. Yes, there are days when I feel fully in the swirl of negative emotions and am slow to take action. Yes, I am not perfect. Yes I am flawed and human. 

But every single day, I am my values and I am my inner leader.

I have complete faith that when the time comes, what is meant to be expressed will be expressed through me. Till then, I choose to be alive, to be grateful and to be present, with whatever comes up.

Staying with the Mess

I was watching a video of Craig Valentine, a former world public speaking champion. A message he articulated in the video captured my attention.

'You can't create a message without first creating a mess'.

Wow. I thought of all the mess I had created. I had articulated a good number of ideas into words and then being dissatisfied with the quality (mess), deleted a bunch of them altogether. Most of my ideas and thoughts never saw the light of the day. Ouch! I realized that I have never been comfortable staying with the mess.

If you are anything like me, you are probably not expressing your passion enough, be it in writing, music or public speaking or anything else. Your need for perfectionism or standards is coming in the way.

So, how can we stay with the mess? More importantly, how can we get comfortable with the mess? Some elements from the agile methodology is definitely applicable here.

1. Stop the self judgement. The way we look at what we create is often very different from how others perceive it. It is quite possible that what we look at as crap could be perceived as a masterpiece by others. Even otherwise, there is no magic bullet to creating a masterpiece without first getting the ideas into creation. Acknowledge that the creation is more important than what our ego is telling us.

2. Share the mess and get feedback. This is the scary part, where we fear that negative feedback from people will actually reinforce what we tell ourselves at the beginning, that this creation of ours is crap. This is however the exact same path that can help us get comfortable with mess. If we can learn to filter out the criticism and absorb improvement suggestions, we are on our way.

3. Never stop iterating. Sometimes, fatigue will kick in and we will be tempted to explore other avenues that will look far more exciting, as opposed to working on the mess. But if we can be persistent and keep iterating, we will get to the message.

When we polish the rock, time and again, eventually the diamond within will shine through. This requires non judgement, ability to withstand criticism and persistence. At the end of the day it is totally worth it when the message or the masterpiece shines through. 

My Coaching Business, My Baby

Have you ever felt really stressed about a new venture or a new initiative that you took up? You wake up in the morning, feeling heavy in your head, thinking about all the tasks that lies ahead. A deep sense of overwhelm. I know I did.

When I realized that Coaching was my calling, it was like a light bulb went on in my head. I felt exhilarated and panic stricken at the same time. Exhilarated that I have found something that I cared about deeply, that would feed my soul. Panic stricken about all the work that lay ahead in making this calling my reality.

As I took baby steps and got my initial few paying clients, I felt totally alive. I felt joy in my heart and a spring in my step. But with initial success comes high expectations. I decided I had to become a coach full time soon and my mind calculated all the thousand steps that had to be done, immediately!

I have to setup the website, today. I have to print my visiting cards, today. I have to get like a 100 clients, today. As my mind began to focus on all the things that needed to happen immediately, I realized the stress in my head. I realized that the joy of actually experiencing the work of coaching was slipping away.

I decided to take a break and spend time alone, in nature. Just being present in nature is a healing experience and I sensed calmness in my heart. I came back and discussed with my coach on my expectations vis-à-vis setting up the coaching business. I spent time introspecting and came up with a few questions for myself.

What if this business is instead a teeny tiny baby? Would I want this baby to grow up and become an adult in 6 months or in a year? Would I burden the baby with all of the responsibilities? Would I stress the baby to work all day to earn enough to pay all of the bills?

The answer was loud and clear.

I realized that my coaching business is very much my baby. I love it with all of my heart.  All I have to do is to nurture it, every single day and trust that in time, it will stand up on its own legs, walk and eventually run. Till that happens, I am grateful to continue to have a day job that pays the bills, that gives me the space to nurture my calling.

What is your calling, your passion that you want to express, every single day? What are your expectations around it? If it were to be your baby, how would you approach it?

What's calling out to you?

Over the past several months, I have set aside time for volunteering on causes close to my heart. While I have dabbled across multiple causes, I came across leaders from different walks of life who are deeply focused on a single cause and are passionate about creating an impact through their work. On interacting with them, I found that they do not look at what they do as work, it is their mission in life, their calling.

I am convinced that if we want to live a full life, we need to discover our calling. Now, how do we discover our calling? My experience in interacting with these inspiring leaders gave me an insight.

When I volunteered at Habitat for Humanity, I met several kindred spirits who were so fortunate with what they had received in life (Education, Money) that they wanted to give back to the folks who really needed help. When I volunteered at Challenge Day, I met incredibly inspiring leaders who had gone through so much in their childhood (Drugs, Alcohol, Abuse) that their mission is to educate high school children to understand that light is indeed possible at the end of a dark and long tunnel. 

Two completely opposite experiences in life and yet the same outcome towards living their calling.

It boils down to asking ourselves the following questions.

1. What have I received so much in my life that I am so grateful for, that I want to give back to the society?

2. What have I suffered so much in my life, that I never want to see another person go through what I did?

As I spend time with these questions, I am in the process of uncovering something powerful within me that is calling out to me. I am excited to explore what comes up. 

What about you? What's calling out to you?

Power of Self Acceptance

There have been so many days in my life when I used to let myself down by not meeting my goals. Be it annual goals, monthly or even daily goals. I had a penchant for screwing it up. Of course when you fail in the face of your own expectations, guess what your inner critic (voice in your head) will do to you. My inner critic used to beat me up, day after day after day. 

'You are lazy!'  'You are pathetic!'  'You will never improve!'

All of us have faced this inner critic with varying levels of intensity. We almost always come up with a single minded approach to tackling the inner critic. Do more. Get better. Toughen up. In the face of a mountain that seems to become bigger with each failure, we convince ourselves that the only way forward is to run faster. To push harder. We see stories of underdogs winning against all odds and hope against hope that we would be that person, one day. That our massive action will crush our inner critic.

I have tried to take massive action under the crushing weight of past failures. The result has not been pretty. How fast do you think I could run, when my shoulders are unable to handle the increasing burden. I ended up unable to take massive action and failed, yet again. It ultimately led to not just increasing self criticism, but a gaping loss of self esteem. The result? Apathy and Depression. 

Well then, how to handle the inner critic? I recommend a powerful approach, that worked for me, like a dream. It also has the added benefit of making us happier and feeling alive!

Accept ourselves. Fully. With all of our flaws.

The immediate reaction I hear is 'But I already have'!' 'That's what my inner critic has been saying'

No! our inner critic has been feeding us stories. There are flaws and there are stories. 'I take time to understand' is a flaw while 'I am stupid' is a story. By accepting a flaw fully and powerfully, we gain the freedom to focus on improving it or we get to focus instead on enhancing a gift that we have. With stories, there is no choice. There is only pain with no exit in sight.

There is power in authenticity. The minute we look deep within ourselves and accept our flaws, our perspective shifts. We begin to see the beauty within us, the values that have been buried within us and we can begin to understand ourselves better. This in turn gives us the chance to focus on what makes us come alive, what we care about and what truly matters. 

All of us can do more to live richer, fuller lives. But connecting with our values and being our own unique selves, with our own unique gifts and eccentricities is the starting point. When we begin to take steps to fully accept ourselves, that is the time when our soul begins ti wake up. That is the time for massive action. And that is the approach to transforming our lives!

What action can we collectively take today to fully accept ourselves?