Do a hard reset and jump the bar !

When your phone needs to be rebooted every now and then,

What do you do ?

You read up some help online and they tell you to shut down your background processes and purge out all the unnecessary apps. You do it. But then again a few days later , it hangs and you are back to square one. You realize you have to free some memory and remove some of the apps which are really using a lot of your battery. You don’t want to remove them. But you say to yourself , its all for the greater good , and you do it anyway.

It works well for a great few months and then again it fizzles out and you end up at where you were a few months back. You wonder why a perfectly nice looking phone which looks pristine from the outside got so messed up inside .

You sigh.

You realize that there is only two other alternatives now, you hard reset or get a new one.

Sadly we humans are not as replaceable as mobile phones. But our minds are highly similar. We deal with our psyche in much similar a way as we deal with our malfunctioning devices. We have memories we like to hold onto and store even though they just consume a lot of space in our mind. We all have those apps we will never use which cause endless disruptions in our life but we never remove them like we don’t get rid of the toxic people in our life.

Nobody really wants to hard reset and lose it all. Everybody wants a temporary solution because the familiar feels good. It feels right. This goes on till we finally realize that life can no longer go on this way and we have to do a hard reset.

Being a third year undergraduate is tough. It’s not like being 22 was not hard enough. We all have our heartbreaks, hormones and emotions to deal with , now we also have failures. Endless failures. Every where you see around you , are students getting accepted into Grad Schools of their choice (and your choice) , there are people getting placed in companies which are tier 1 and people going abroad for internships. At every instant you wonder, are you doing it right ? Are you going in the path meant for you ?

Sometimes the thought of all the people doing much better than you veers you off the track. You imagine that what you are doing is not suited for you. You feel like focusing on other aspects of your life hoping that it will bring you more fulfillment. You start wondering why you don’t have a special someone yet ? Why does that guy not like you ? How come you are not tall enough, fit enough ? The blows you rain upon yourself never end.

Peer Pressure seemed like a fancy word to me when I was young. I used to imagine it was something about how other people coerce you into doing certain things you shouldn’t. The irony is the biggest pressure you can get is from yourself. Nobody really judges you for what you have done and the maximum judgement you can get is from yourself. It so happens that every person who wants to do well has a bar of expectation that they keep for themselves. Every day they look at the bar and measure how much they need to jump to touch it. This bar is good when all you see is yourself and your bar, but then if you look next to you and see the guy also trying to jump, you feel his bar is higher and so you raise your bar. The more people you look at, your bar just goes higher and soon you cant even want to jump. You let it go and lie down depressed.

 

What do we do when we are so bruised from all the blows we have rained on ourselves ? Finally we feel like we are the most useless worthless people to have lived on the earth. That’s when you realize that enough is enough. Its okay to have this many restarts and failures in life. If we can persistently switch on and off the mobile phone despite it having so many problems, Can we not try a little harder on the poor machine that is ourselves ?

I believe the best way to move ahead is to cut off. Sit down quietly and realize that the only person who can heal yourself is you. Nobody is ever going to feel what you feel and help you the way you can. So its better to get up and draw the curtain between you and the people around, you cannot stop comparing with. Its better if you introspect and realize that obtaining all those other things is not what you wanted in the first place. It is better if you cut off some parts of your life which were making it hard for you to move ahead.

 

Fresh starts. Thanks to the calendar, they happen every year. Just set your watch to January. Our reward for surviving the holiday season, is a new year. Bringing on the great tradition of New Year’s resolutions. Put your past behind you, and start over. It’s hard to resist the chance at a new beginning. A chance to put the problems of last year to bed.

Who gets to determine when the old ends, and the new begins? It’s not a day on a calendar, not a birthday, not a new year. It’s an event. Big or small. Something that changes us. Ideally, it gives us hope.

A new way of living and looking at the world. Letting go of old habits, old memories. What’s important is that we never stop believing we can have a new beginning.

But it’s also important to remember that amid all the crap are a few things really worth holding on to, and one of those things is that bright spirit we call ourselves.

 

The Climb.

Failure.

It is the most triggering thing in the world. It brings with it feelings of shame, self loathing and anger. It doesn’t matter what you’re failing at. You can be struggling with less than brilliant grades, trying to break out of the lull of a broken relationship, trying to lose weight or just simply trying to change.

Change doesn’t come easy. For so long,your body has been accustomed to a certain situation , that you are bound to fallback. Everything in nature has a built in resistance system, nothing accepts change willingly. So yes, there are going to be times that you are going to want to pull out your hair and cry out loud. At these moments, it almost comes naturally when we want to blame someone else for the situation that our life is in. We want attention and for people to “understand”, but the thing is, it doesnt fill the void that you have inside of yourself. A void that can only be filled by you.

It takes great willpower and self belief to force yourself to say, NO I will NOT explain myself. We feel like people are looking at us, judging us for what we do. But here , ask yourself, How many times in a day do you look at another and ponder as to why they are doing what they are ? Not many times.

I think the biggest support to succeeding against change is to dream. Keep Dreaming, never ever stop. The more you dream about that perfect life, or that perfect attitude or body, it slowly builds your willpower to get there. Its not going to be easy. You may fail a couple of times in your diet and have that amazing pizza, but instead of giving up and hating yourself, say “ Im human, Its okay !” and make up for what you did by working extra hard in your next workout. Failure never really stops you or slows you down. Its just a feedback mechanism which helps you know where you can improve.

“Life is not a spectator sport. Win, loose or draw, the game is in progress whether we want it to be or not. So go ahead, argue with the refs, change the rules, cheat a little, take a break and ten to your wounds but play, play, play hard. Play fast; Play loose and free. Play as if there is no tomorrow. Ok, so its not whether you win or loose, it’s how you play the game. Right? “

This song really helps me keep my perspectives in place 🙂

The Climb —  Miley Cyrus.

I can almost see it
That dream I am dreaming
But there’s a voice inside my head saying
“You’ll never reach it”

Every step I’m taking
Every move I make feels
Lost with no direction
My faith is shaking

But I gotta keep trying
Gotta keep my head held high

There’s always gonna be another mountain
I’m always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be a uphill battle
Sometimes I’m gonna have to lose

Ain’t about how fast I get there
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side
It’s the climb!

The struggles I’m facing
The chances I’m taking
Sometimes might knock me down
But no, I’m not breaking

I may not know it
But these are the moments that
I’m gonna remember most, yeah
Just gotta keep going

And I, I got to be strong
Just keep pushing on

‘Cause there’s always gonna be another mountain
I’m always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be a uphill battle
Sometimes I’m gonna have to lose

Ain’t about how fast I get there
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side
It’s the climb, yeah!

There’s always gonna be another mountain
I’m always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be an uphill battle
Somebody’s gonna have to lose

Ain’t about how fast I get there
Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side
It’s the climb, yeah!

Keep on moving, keep climbing
Keep the faith, baby
It’s all about, it’s all about the climb
Keep the faith, keep your faith, whoa.

Never Back Down.

Knowing is better than Wondering,

Waking is better than Sleeping,

And even the biggest Failure,even the Worst,

Beats the Hell out of Never Trying.

–  Meredith Grey

Sugar and Spice , makes a chicken very very nice ;)

 

January has been Barbecue month for me. I dont know why no matter which restaurant I’ve been to, the one constant thing I have ordered is “Hot Barbecued Wings”. Something about the hard crust and the soft delicious inside just appeals to me ( Psychologists out there, interpret as you wish 😉 ).

So I decided, enough of the mmmmhhh and aaaah in the restaurant, over the chicken, lets make it at home !

Here’s my version of the recipe 🙂

Hot and Sweet Barbecued Chicken

Take 6-7 pieces of boneless chicken ( Most restaurants prefer the wings, but I prefer my chicken fleshy and succulent) and place on a dish. Put grinded herbs, 1 Tablespoon of red chilli powder, salt, ginger garlic paste( 1-2 drops) and 1/2 teaspoon of oil on the chicken. Now use your fingers and rub the mixture over the chicken pressing the herbs in and coating it uniformly.

Leave the chicken aside for 15 minutes to marinade and suck in the juices.

Use 1 cup of Flour, 1 Tablespoon of corn starch , grinded pepper, 1 Tablespoon of grinded cornflakes and put the marinaded chicken in this mixture. Coat it uniformly, leaving no part of the chicken bare. ( I know 😛 )

Now in a pan, put 1 Tablespoon of vegetable oil. ( Thats right. No more. This is because we are making only small quantities of chicken and we have already used a little oil in the marinade.)

Place the chicken pieces in a circle on the hot oil. Let it cook for 4 minutes and flip over the circle of the chicken . The color of the chicken at this point should be yellowish-orange with a light browning. The picture below indicates what that looks like.

Remove the chicken from the pan and place aside. Now for the sauce.

I believe in using my ingredients to the hilt, so this is unorthodox but I used the same oil from when I fried the chicken in the sauce as well (whatever was remaining of it :P).

Add 1 tablespoon of ginger-garlic paste. To this add one table spoon of worcestershire sauce, 1 teaspoon of vinegar, barbeque sauce ( a substitute for this would be : molasses + mustard sauce + red chilly sauce ). To this add half a teaspoon of honey and chilli sauce. This was not on the recipe, but I wanted my chicken to have that extra glaze and zzing 😛 I wanted my sauce to not be that concentrated so I added a little water and put in all the chicken pieces and coated them with the sauce in the pan itself. I let it cook for a while and thats it. We’re done !

I served the chicken with freshly cut carrot and cucumbers, not to mention great amount of pride. The one great thing about a barbeque chicken is you just CANNOT have it alone. I mean who would you gush to about the abundance of flavours in that one bite then ? So I served it to my parents and it was just so satisfying ! The chicken was crispy from the outside ( thanks to the surprise cornflakes packaging ) and so luscious and soft from the inside. Just biting into that piece filled my mouth with happiness ! Here’s a little picture of the chicken from the inside . (Yes I bit it and took a picture 😛 )

Hope you guys can try this out too . Happy barbecuing February ! Bon Appetit 🙂

No Crying, Just Cooking

If you feel you have too much on your plate, then its about time you started doing something that might feed more than just your stress or stomach. This Saturday, I just about had enough with all the Projects, Papers and Books that had become a staple part of my life and took a day off.

My mother had dragged in a cover filled with vegetables and put them on the table. With my life spinning out of control, the one thing I could still control was staring right at me. I thought : “Why not ? I could make something nice on a saturday and cooking would make me feel so much happier and stress free !”

So I walked into the kitchen and made it my own. I decided, Appetizers for the day would be non veg. Preferably something spicy which would add some buzz to my lustre-less life. I googled it and came across the perfect recipe !

In todays blog post I would be giving you my take on the dishes I made today. The terminologies are rather amateur and based on my observations, so my apologies in advance to real cooks who read this post 😛

Eral varuval ( Prawn Varuval )

This seemed to be a tangy pungent prawn dish which would definitely bring the perfect start to my late morning ! Whats more , it was so incredibly simple 😀

De-vein the prawns such that only the tail of the prawn is retained. The official recipe took even the tail off, but I like to keep them on as I feel this gives the prawn a beautiful shape after cooking as they dont curl up and shrink while, the shell gets a beautiful coloring.

Take a bowl and make a paste with the following ingredients :

• Ginger Garlic Paste
• Tamarind Pulp ( 1 Teaspoon is enough as we would be using even lemon)
• Lemon Juice
• Salt
• Red Chilli Powder
• Cumin Powder ( This adds that zest )
• Turmeric (About a pinch only, this is for a soft color)
• Rice Flour (This is for that texture)
• 1 Teaspoon vegetable oil ( acts as a binding agent)

Coat the prawn in this paste and use only 1 teaspoon oil in the frying pan while you fry the prawn. Remember the texture of the prawn should be soft and juicy, so do not over fry the prawn. Once it starts getting a little reddish brown , it can be taken off in a plate and served.

I served this dish with some piping hot Coffee and woahhhh the response was good ! My dad was just sighing about the juicy luscious prawns and this only motivated me to make something even more better for lunch.

I love Youtube by the way, you can search for anything, from “Tiramisu” to “simple paneer that makes me happy” and you will find a result 😛 Eventually I narrowed it down Kadai Paneer : which is a mouthwatering combination of paneer(Cottage Cheese), Vegetables and traditional Indian spices.  This is one of the most popular curry recipes of Indian and Punjabi cuisine.

Kadai Paneer

Dry Roast a table spoon of Fennel seeds, Coriander Seeds, Cumin Seeds, 2 pods of cardamom and clove and a few pepper corns. Remember the right time to take it off the pan is when the coriander seeds look a little light brown and there is a strong smell that has diffused in your entire kitchen. This should happen in roughly 5 minutes and make sure you donot keep the spices on the pan after, the burnt taste would ruin the entire dish.

Create a powder of the above spices by using a mixer grinder and keep aside.

Chop a onion into thin slices and chop 2 tomatoes into small blocks. Fry this in 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil till the onions have browned and the tomatoes have reached a squishy consistency. Add this mixture to the mixer grinder containing the powder previously made.

Grind this together to produce a thick paste of uniform consistency.

Now dice onions and peel off the individual shells. Chop some capsicum into blocks.

Add a small chunk of butter ( I used garlic butter as this had such a beautiful smell) to a pan, add ginger-garlic paste and the diced onions and capsicum blocks. Stir them to coat the vegetables in the mixture. This should last approximately 1-2 minutes and then add the previous mixture from the mixture grinder. Add the paste at intervals and stir so it cooks perfectly in the butter. Traditionally this dish is supposed to be made in ghee but I used garlic butter because I felt it smelt better, no other reason 😛

Add the cubes of cottage cheese or paneer into the gravy and cover the cubes up, add water to the gravy as and when you feel the mixture is getting too concentrated. Add some salt to taste and let the cubes of paneer cook.

In my final stir, I wanted a tangy finish to my Kadai Paneer so I added a little bit of tomato sauce. Finally garnish with coriander leaves and serve with Naan or Roti  and gear up to feel happy and satisfied 🙂

 

 

“Tap”ping the door of the past

Tap .. Tap.. Tap.. the water drips out of the tap.

I stare at it silently.

Tap.. Tap .. Tap… the water continues to drip out.

I stare at it. And then try to rotate the handle so that the noise drowns out.

Tap .. Tap.. Tap… the water persistently drips again.

I look at it and then feel an overwhelming anger . Why does it keep dripping even though I try so hard to make it stop ?!

Tap.. Tap.. Tap..

And that’s it, I lose it.

But just before I almost yell at that infuriating tap …a question comes to mind ..Why does that tap remind me of ME ?

Its been almost ten months since my last post and a lot has happened in the last one year. Professionally, I got acquainted with a possible career option and developed new areas of interest. Personally, I grew as a person as I gained some friends and lost so many more.

As a student in my third year studying Computer Science in a competitive institution, I feel that we learn about pressure very swiftly and early in life. I turned 22 yesterday, but mentally I feel 45. Ofcourse, physically I look 15, but thats a whole new different ball game 😛

Many questions force their way in the face of students our age today. Research or Job ? Natural Language Processing or Computational Biology ? Friendship or Love ? Fling or Long Distance ? GATE or GRE ?

If you were lucky to have answered one of these questions, dont worry these questions are like a tennis ball launcher, the moment you hit one you can see the other one coming right at you. As if having so many questions to answer and such less time at hand was not a problem, we are surrounded by people competing against us directly or indirectly.

When so many thoughts and emotions are a daily part of our life, we as humans become very much like a simple household tap. Usually it flows peacefully but when sediments build over time, this tap gets clogged and refuses to stop dripping. What is the best way to set our emotional tap free ?

Let it go. Let it OUT.

Some people eat a lot, gym a lot, listen to music… Writing in my opinion, is the best way to free myself from thoughts that plague me. The last year was one of the most influential years of my life. It was an emotional rollercoaster. I was always the bookish introverted girl who never went down to play with the other kids in the apartment. I had lived my entire life with my parents and done exactly what they asked and never experienced what living on my own might feel like. I might even say that even though I was 21, I was as immature as a 17 year old. But then I got the Indian Academy of Sciences Research Fellowship and…. Ropar happened.

Ropar in Punjab, is a beautiful serene place with a very pleasant temperature. I left my city home and landed alone in Punjab, faced with a rural beauty that I had never seen before. The roads were planned and the air was so fresh. I opened my eyes and I could not stop taking it all in. When I reached my Girls hostel on Campus, my first thought was disgust. Oh My God ! It was a barebone room with no AC and it was 42 degrees outside ! But soon as I looked around in the rural market where they wove my mattress, I realised this was going to be my home for the next two months. I walked into my room and started setting it up and I felt emotional, as this was the first time I was doing everything all alone. And unnaturally, I enjoyed it. Turns out Im obsessively neurotic about cleanliness, something that my room mates endlessly tease me about and something my mother just cannot believe. 😛

When I had gone to Ropar, I had done some barebone projects based on Natural Language Processing. In my college we called these projects research projects, but three weeks into my stay at IIT, Ropar I began to realise I had not even covered the R in Research. We worked all day and sometimes late into the night and I began to enjoy it. There’s something about being with like minded people, it brings joy to the most dull things. I still remember pushing my clothes in the washing machine as my roomate and I discussed the daily news. I remember kickboxing late at 8:30 PM and coming home drenched in sweat and freaking out over a cockroach in the bathroom 😛

I remember sitting in the middle of the lawn staring at constellations and playing with the early morning dew. There were no fancy shops to have fancy junk food. I had a lemon with cucumbers everyday in the mess. And when I was feeling excited, I would squeeze the lemon and make myself some cold lemon juice. Something about those birds singing in the morning as you drink your cinnamon flavoured “chai” makes the peace come out in you.

Punjab deeply changed me. I began to see the need for learning new things. I began to feel the need to spend time with ME. When I left for Ropar, I was hyper and emotional. I was concerned with petty fights. I had best friends back home in Bangalore, who I felt were drifting away from me. But when I came back from Punjab, somehow everything stopped mattering. I felt the need to be within myself and understand the chaos within me. And slowly the people who did not align with me faded away into their own hemispheres. Occasionally I felt rather alone, Why is it that I did not fit among the crowd, an annoying voice nagged me ? Why did he/she desert me ?

But the clouds cleared out and I found my silver lining. I had left Bangalore with a sense of inferiority, like I cannot be good enough to stand at par with my peers. But now I could sense in myself a growing sense of confidence. Since I felt alone, I fought to survive and with that I started to feel like I can be alone and I can be happy. Peer Pressure is a very much present phenomenon and the people who feel it intensely are most often the ones who value themselves very critically and want to achieve success.

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” 

If at any point of your life you feel that you have achieved all your goals and there is nobody around you that you would much rather be like, then you know its time to move. Ambition and Competition are requirements for success and we should tackle our competitions with the right spirit.

There would always be naysayers who mock your progress and say that you are no where as great as you see yourself as. But sometimes you have got to look beyond the stings. It is not possible to never feel hurt by what people say about you, but like chicken pox, it infects you, scars you and then you will hopefully never be infected by it again. The hardest part is to do something that nobody expects you to do. But, I believe If you feel that you are with the wrong person or with the wrong friends and you know this for sure in your heart, then you should take the choice and move ahead with the people you think suit you, no matter what your friends say. Life is too short to fill it with regrets and to always conform to the rules.

Sometimes we just have to take the risk. Its cheesy as hell but I believe the heart guides you better than bare rationale. The choice may be something scary like revealing your feelings towards someone or even trying an adventure sport. At this point the simplest way to make your choice is asking yourself this question : “Ten years from today, Am I going to look back and wonder.. What if ?”. If your answer is yes, then I think you should take that shot. Life is so complicated, its not worth it to burden ourselves with thoughts like “I wanted to do that but I didn’t as she told me not to/ I wonder what they would have said”. It simply does not matter. If they had to say it, they would say it someday anyway.

The questions will always keep coming at you. But today I learnt a valuable lession in Software Engineering Class :

“Adapting with the Change is far more preferable than creating a new plan”.

Plans will come and go, but its essential to be open to the change. Yeah, sometimes the change we try to accept in our life in often painful. Whether its ending a long term relationship, or moving to a completely new research interest...the rush that comes from winning the challenge is worth it. 🙂

Dream Big : A Song for Inspiration

Here’s a song, that I feel, should inspire everyone trying to achieve any kind of goal , so hold your head high, listen to this song and Dream big  🙂

This song is by Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band.

Here are the lyrics and the video :

When you cry, be sure to dry your eyes,

‘Cause better days are sure to come.

And when you smile, be sure to smile wide,

And don’t let them know that they have won.

And when you walk, walk with pride,

And don’t show the hurt inside,

Because the pain will soon be gone.

And when you dream, dream big,

As big as the ocean, blue.

‘Cause when you dream it might come true.

But when you dream, dream big.

And when you laugh,be sure to laugh out loud,

‘Cause it will carry all your cares away.

And when you see, see the beauty all around and in yourself,

And it will help you feel okay.

And when you pray, pray for strength to help to carry on,

For when the troubles come your way.

And when you dream, dream big,

As big as the ocean, blue.

‘Cause when you dream it might come true.

But when you dream, dream big.

When you cry be sure to dry your eyes, cause better days are sure to come.

And when you smile be sure to smile wide, and don’t let them know that they have won..

And when you laugh be sure to laugh out loud, ‘Cause it will carry all your cares away.

And when you see, see the beauty all around and in yourself,

and it will help you feel okay.

And when you pray, pray for strength to help to carry on when the troubles come your way.

Out of the Box, into the New

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

– Steve Jobs

Cutting Free From the Crabs

One time a man was walking along the beach and saw another man fishing in the surf with a bait bucket beside him. As he drew closer, he saw that the bait bucket had no lid and had live crabs inside.

“Why don’t you cover your bait bucket so the crabs won’t escape?” he said.

“You don’t understand.” the man replied, “If there is one crab in the bucket it would surely crawl out very quickly. However, when there are many crabs in the bucket, if one tries to crawl up the side, the others grab hold of it and pull it back down so that it will share the same fate as the rest of them.”

So it is with people. If one tries to do something different, get better grades, better jobs, improve themselves, escape their environment, or dream big dreams, other people will try to drag them back down to share their fate. 

Moral of the story: Ignore the crabs. Charge ahead and do what is right for you. It may not be easy and you may not succeed as much as you like, but you will NEVER share the same fate as those never try.

 

This is not a monologue about how I feel the world is conspiring to bring you down. 😛 (Of course sometimes when I am melodramatic, I do feel that :P)

As a student and a young adult, I find myself privy to many kinds of opinions that the world has to offer.

People have opinions on everything. Whether it’s how you score? How you dress? How you look or how you speak. Honestly speaking I would be lying outright if I said these opinions never matter to me. They matter and once upon a time they mattered more than they should have.

At these moments when I hear the opinions that other people have of me, I feel hurt. Sometimes I feel the need to defend myself. Sometimes I feel angry and violent. But then I realize ..

Do they know the whole story?

Does anyone in fact ?

I am a firm believer in the fact that subconsciously we all know what we really want and what we don’t. We could have the best friends or the best parents in the world and yet feel deeply alone. No,that does not make you depressive or selfish. It just means that subconsciously you don’t meet the standards that you have set for yourself.

It doesn’t matter how close you are to your parents, your friends or your boyfriend. No one will achieve that level of intimacy that you have with yourself.

Therefore, you ask yourself.

Why is it that I am not happy?

Why is it that everyone seems to think I have a perfect Life but I don’t think so?

And you’ll realize that you are not satisfied about some flaws that you have. Now note, these flaws need not be horribly obvious (like maybe you’re a chronic drunk or something) It can be something as simple as feeling that you are not suited for the subject that you’re studying. It can be feeling like you can’t communicate effectively even though the world thinks you have pretty good language skills.You can have a perfect BMI but yet want a better body!

And the sad part is IF you ever spoke these fears out aloud. People would only laugh 😛

Take it from me, I have a perfectly normal BMI. Yet when I expressed the need to lose weight my friends said “Why? You don’t even need it! Are you trying to become a model?” My own mother said the same. Of course the real reason wasn’t the body at all. I am trying to improve my stamina so I can work better and feel more active! Who will explain this to the world without the constant debate over all your reasons? :O

Similarly when I joined Toastmasters to improve my speaking skills a lot of people debated my move. They didn’t get it. I could write fine and speak normally according to them, what is the need for this waste of time, they said.

The point is that, no one knows your reasons better than yourself.

YOU know what makes you uncomfortable. YOU know what makes you feel like you are not at par with the rest. So when people question your choices and your decisions, ask yourself. Do they know why I made the choice? Can they possibly be familiar with everything that crossed my mind? The answer would be NO.

You can feel like someone is supposed to support you through your struggles and be your person, but instead of being disappointed that they couldn’t empathize with you,what you can do,is realise that you still have yourself. And you will ALWAYS pull YOURSELF up whether anyone else does or not.

I believe that Self-improvement is a very very personal process.

No one really knows how Steve Jobs felt when he was just a dropout from College. Day after Day he worked on himself, ignored the other opinions and one day he was a success. The same world which probably spoke against him when he was growing now spoke FOR him.

Everyone has flaws. What’s most important is to understand them, acknowledge them, and address them.

Are you someone who likes to grow? Do you constantly seek to improve yourself and become better?

It is through improving ourselves that we get the most out of life.

Today I have completed 1 year of Toastmasters and I feel like I can speak more confidently to a group of people I do not know. Only you can be familiar with the anxiety you experience when you face the unknown. And the way you choose to armour yourself doesn’t require any sort of explanation to anyone.

I have been working on my fitness for a month now and I feel active. It may not seem big to anyone but to me it’s HUGE. I have NEVER woken up at 5 in the morning in the last 21 years of my life or followed any kind of food regime.To me,holding back on eating what I want,requires serious effort.

So Not only am I more fit now, I am also a little step closer to being as disciplined as I would like to be.

The smallest morsel of success acts like a catalyst and builds your success curve. It’s like chemistry, when they add a small seed to speed up the process.

So basically all you have to do, is seed yourself.

DON’T be afraid to try the new.

Remember that Amateurs built the Ark, Professionals built the titanic.

If you feel not good enough, Make sure you charge right ahead and face that elephant in the room, no matter if anyone thinks you can or not.

The worst enemy you can have is Low self esteem and that can go only if you hack at it a little by little every day 🙂

 

Installation Ceremony at Sunshine Toastmasters : My experience

Toastmasters is an Organization famous for its motto: “Where leaders are made”.

Keeping up with this motto, The fourth of January was a very special day for Sunshine Toastmasters Club as it was the installation and induction ceremony for the term Jan- May 2015.It was quite a happy coincidence that the event fell so close to New Year, maybe a good omen even.

So it was not surprising when the Theme of the event was the strange ways that people celebrated New Year’s!

Did you know that In Russia, they write down their wish on piece of paper, burn it and throw it into their champagne glass and drink it at Midnight? I don’t know about what joys it can guarantee but it sure guarantees FOOD poisoning 😮

And in Netherlands they eat Oliebollen (big oily balls of dough which are deep fried and covered in icing sugar).This is supposed to welcome new year ( along with new layers of fat on your body).

The Venezuelans wear Yellow Underwear on this day, which signifies good luck.  Well It sure brought John Abrahams backside a lot of good luck in dostana :p

                

Yes, everyone seems to think of an installation ceremony as a solemn pious event, but at Sunshine Toastmasters we deal with even the most solemn occurrences with a sunshine like smile on our faces!

As if to emphasize just that, the event swung open with the joyous smile of the very talented artist-teacher Shivani who played the role of Sergeant in Arms with her usual ease.

There was a beautiful song just following that by our very own group of patriotic rockstars (one of the singers was our very own Lalitha ma’am’s son).

The evening then formally began with the Master of ceremony for the evening (ahem, that’s yours truly). Having never publicly conducted a meeting before (especially not one of this much magnitude) I was quite nervous. There were many high dignitaries present there and I really didn’t know what it would be like to speak to them or about them.

My fears were put to rest when Geetha Prasanna (past division B governor) came onto the stage to perform the induction ceremony. IF one has to play a leader without playing a bad cop this elegant woman does it best! It was clear when she spoke that she has the ability to blow your mind with the shortest of conversations. Following her was IPDG Kumaran. He looks tall and handsome, but nothing can compare the humility with which he speaks. He gave a clear perspective about what the entire point of the Toastmasters Initiative was.

Past President Anand came and radiated sunshine on our club as he always does with his ever-present smile and handed out the certificates of achievements at the club.

Area governor Mrinalini, performed the otherwise long induction ceremony with her trademark perfection and simplicity. And the new Team was welcomed with a joyous applause 😀

“For Last year’s Words belong to Last year’s language, Next year’s Words await another voice“ – Said Elliot.

There was a huge round of applause when newly anointed president Priyanka walked in to give her speech. She brought with her boundless energy and joy and once again rejuvenated the mood of the evening with an inspiring speech. Priyanka, is a very creative enthusiastic person and it’s my personal opinion that the club will achieve new hallmarks under her leadership (and most of the guest speakers enthusiastically agreed with my opinion in their speeches making Priyanka almost burst with happiness: P)

Many dignitaries spoke on this day, Toastmasters Gauri, Ramesh, etc. but one thing that I noted and was very grateful for was the spirit of the Toastmaster community. There were very few not so obvious glitches but everyone just jumped right in to help me conduct the ceremony and many people didn’t even get to know that something had gone unlike what had been planned!

The entire meeting was so energetic and filled with laughter, not to mention awe (OH! We had a BEAT BOXER at the event!) Yeah, Beat boxer Sunny blew everyone’s mind with his insane skills.

By the end of the meeting, everyone knew everyone. Even my very quiet mother who had come as a guest was happily talking to so many people. I met people from different clubs,different states. People of all ages mixed together happily and talked about their lives.

That’s the effect of Sunshine Toastmasters. People come from everywhere! Whether they are housewives or students like me. Dasas from ISKON or fashion designers. Research Scientists or Builders… It’s a welcoming arena to fine tune the leader in you, with the help of a warm group of people who extend friendship that lasts for a life time  😀

I’m so glad to be a part of it 🙂