It’s Not That Big Of A Deal

Have you ever embarrassed yourself?  If you have, that’s fine. If you haven’t, how did you manage not to? Surely, you must have at some point embarrassed yourself. Just say yes already! >.<

Anyway, I remember the last time I embarrassed myself, I curled on the floor and bawled like a baby. For 3 days I didn’t step out of my house. A sort of house arrest I set upon myself so that I could rethink and over think and rethink and over think my embarrassment as many times as I could. And mind you those 3 days weren’t enough. When I’d be smiling of or laughing with my friends, that stupid embarrassing memory would creep its way into my happiness and shred it to pieces. I killed myself over this moment which didn’t really matter that much to begin with.

Its crazy when I think of it now because it was so unnecessary. I wasted all that time and for what? If you would have seen my crying you would have thought that I’d suffered some great loss akin to the death of a loved one. I acted as if the world had come to an end with the sky falling apart and the earth drenched in a rain of fire. If I could go back in past and hit myself bloody, trust me I would. All that drama for naught. All my energy wasted for naught. All my tears, my emotions, my motivations wasted for naught.

Next time I embarrass myself I’m going to chant, “It doesn’t matter” until I start believing it. I will force myself to smile and trick my mind away from the sadness that is eager to follow. I will definitely not forget the incident but learn from my mistakes and move forward instead of dwelling on the past which is gone. I can’t go back in time and save myself the embarrassment any more than I can go back in time and counsel my teenage self to just relax and take it easy instead of acting insecure and rash. What I can do is move forward with this new lesson and not repeat my follies.

Your past does not equal your future and that is the best thing about life. Because it’s not that big of deal as our brain tends to make it.

Relax. Think about it.

Love Yourself Like It’s Nobody’s Business

Love yourself like it’s nobody’s business because you deserve that. Love yourself like it’s nobody’s business also because only you can do that. You know yourself best, the way that no one else can know you. You know what makes you happy, you know makes you sad. You know all the times you stumbled and fell flat on your face and the times you got back up. Each time you got back up you were different and better.

I remember when long holidays meant staying in my room all day long. I was terrified, I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was difficult to have fun, to love my company. I wasn’t a big fan of myself back then. It took me years to fall in love and enjoy my own company. I know some of my friends who can’t even think to spend some lone time. I get bored they say. But if you get bored by yourself, doesn’t that make you the boring one?

It won’t be easy and it will take time but it will be worth it. You will become independent in every sense of the term. I am not asking you to unfriend everyone on facebook and run off to the mountains but I am asking you to become your own best friend. Loving yourself is a powerful feeling. You will be able to control your happiness, because you are your own happiness. You won’t be dependent on others to entertain you, to make you laugh, to do things for you because you will be enough.

You won’t grill your brain over what others think of you. You will make your own map, steer your ship whichever way you want because you are in control and nothing beats that. Love yourself like it’s nobody’s business because you’ll always be there for yourself and that will be enough!

Think about it.

Control What You Can

Can you control the day and night?

Can you control the movement of the stars?

Can you control the mind of a animal?

Can you teleport?

Can you spin your head 360 degrees like an owl?

NO? You can’t do any of that.

How about these?

Can you control your anger?

Can you smile?

Can you give your 100% effort while doing something you love?

Can you take responsibility for your actions?

Can you say YES when you want to and NO when you want to?

YES? Yes you can do all of those things.

Then shouldn’t you be focusing on the things that you can control? rather than cribbing about things that are not in your control.

Once upon a time in a sea far far away, lived a little puffer fish named Cecil. One day Cecil’s Professor Meena, asked Cecil to conduct a research on the effectiveness of the education system run by the clown fishes. Cecil was given 3 months to conduct this research. During the 3 months, Cecil was required to constantly report to his Professor and seek counsel accordingly. In the initial weeks Cecil consulted his Professor Meena and things were going quite well. Gradually Cecil gained confidence and thought he knew what he was doing and hence he stopped reporting to his Professor. Prof. Meena reminded Cecil again and again to meet her and discuss the research findings. But Cecil paid no attention to her. At the end of the 3rd month Cecil handed his research paper in for marking. When the results came out, Cecil scored poorly. He had received 60/100. Cecil’s other friends had all scored above 70. This made Cecil very angry. He blew up and was in a sour mood all day long. He snapped at his friends and started bad mouthing Professor Meena.

Cecil’s friend Macey made him understand. Macey said, ” Cecil, you have been quick to point out Prof. Meena’s faults, but what about your own mistakes?”

“My mistakes? What did I do wrong? Meena Ma’am is partial, she doesn’t like me”

“Yes your mistakes. I don’t know about her being partial. But she did remind you to come meet her and you blatantly ignored her. Did you not?”

Cecil blew up again.

“You cannot control how she scores you. But you could have controlled your over confidence. You could have met her. Keep her reported, run her through your research questions. Perhaps then she wouldn’t have marked  you so poorly. You could have changed the outcome just by talking to her”

Cecil calmed down a little. Macey was making sense. Cecil hated when Macey made sense.

“Now what is done is done. Next time, do everything that is possible to improve your outcomes. You do your best. The result is not in your hands. But the effort is. Control what you can. Give your 100%. That’s all you can do. That’s what you should do.”

“You are right Macey. I should have talked to her.”

Learn form Cecil’s mistakes.

Think about it.

Happiness is a choice

Everyone loves being happy. But you can’t always be happy right? Life is a roller-coaster that goes up and down and sadness sneaks its way in just like happiness. Right? Wrong. You can be happy whenever you want to.

One day Cheta the rabbit was assigned a lot of work. Cheta had to collect 100 carrots in 1 day for the forest festival due tomorrow. Cheta started complaining about how she should have been informed earlier. How its unfair that she has to do it all alone. That all that the other rabbits do is sit in one place and warm their tails. While collecting she kept looking at the watch wondering how slowly the needles were moving. Cheta stumbled on a pebble, stubbed her paw and the pain just made her mood all the worse. She got so annoyed that she decided to skip the forest festival and stay at home.

Consider a different scenario

One day Cheta the rabbit was assigned a lot of work. Cheta had to collect 100 carrots in 1 day for the forest festival due tomorrow. Cheta started her work enthusiastically. Its impossible to collect 100 carrots in 1 day that too all by herself. True! Cheta approached her colleagues to help her reach her goal. They all hopped right in and soon 100 carrots were ready to go for tomorrow. Cheta looked at her watch and wondered how fast time flies! She took her colleagues to nice little cafe and treated them with the world famous Asparagus latte and thanked them for their help. She enjoyed with them all in the Forest Festival, the 100 carrots used in the decoration made her feel really proud. Her colleagues were now her friends.

Yes Cheta the rabbit is fictional but she can be found in all of us. We all go through this stupid complaining sessions where we throw ourselves a pity party. Whining, cribbing, felling sorry and being completely unproductive. Pity parties are cute but what we want is a rocking fun party where we enjoy every bit of it. Its up to us to transform our pity party to a fun bash. All we have to do is choose to be happy. That’s it.

Do you want to cry about stupid problems or do you want to solve the problem head on and take it as a challenge? Turn your situation around or I will send The Joker to you. He will definitely put a smile on your face.

Think about it!

It is easy to be lazy

Today like every Tuesday I had to make a choice. Should I write this blog post today? Or should I write it tomorrow? I decided to flip a coin for this situation.

Why I shouldn’t post this today?

I am tired, really tired.

I am sleepy.

I have to wake up early tomorrow.

My migraine is setting in.

In some countries, tuesday will come tomorrow. In those countries your post will reach on a tuesday.

No one reads this blog anyway. It’s not like you have a million fans waiting to devour your words.

Why I should post this today?

Well today is tuesday.

This post will be categorized as a Tumble TUESDAY post

When you started this blog you promised to post on the designated days. (Fancy words terrorize me to work).

You enjoy writing these blogs even though only one person is reading it.

At least your brother is going to read it!

As you can see, I had more reasons on the ‘DOn’t’ list that on the ‘DO’ list. And those ‘Don’t’ reasons outweigh the ‘Do’ reasons or do they? It is easy to be lazy. To walk away from things that need to be done. It is easy to pile on all the things on your TO DO list because you’re the one supervising it. It is easy to binge watch your favourite anime or read that book or just turn the lights off and say good night to the world. It is easy to break the promises you make to yourself. Easy to make up excuses, one after the other. We never run out of excuses do we? It is easy to convince yourself with the promise of tomorrow knowing fully well that tomorrow never comes. It is easy to cheat yourself. It is easy but its not the right thing to do.

Dumbledore once said: Soon we must all choose between what is right and what is easy. He didn’t say ‘wrong’ instead he said ‘easy’ and how appropriate is that! We often push things to tomorrow. But never do we once stop and think how Future you will be mad at the Present you for being lazy. We all have gone through this. The infamously famous last minute rush to reach the deadline. That’s when we think, “If only I had started a day earlier, I could have done so much better”.

So today when my migraine was setting in, getting cozy cosy, just about to rip my thoughts and peace to shreds, I decided to not be lazy. I decided to fight laziness. I shot Laziness thrice in the brain, twice in the gut and once on the foot. I persevered and I won! And this feels so much better than being lazy and just consuming entertainment produced by others. I chose to be a creator and that should and will always be my priority.

Travel in time a little, see if you are happy or frustrated in the future. Choose wisely. Everyday.

Think about it.

Angry and STUPID

As a child, I remember constantly being on the look out as I kept losing my temper. Just like the boy who cried wolf! after a point my friends stopped helping me in my search for temper. That’s when I realized that no ones likes grumpies. A grumpy little kid, now I wonder how I even had any friends. I think my cousin had something to do with it. The past as always makes me cringe!

Growing up I realized that anger is worst kind of emotion as it brings satisfaction to no one. Its not like sadness, you cry for a while, you feel better and you get right back on the horse. Or like joy that fills your life with sunshine or rain, some people like rain better or snow (whatever you prefer). Anger is just outright unhealthy.

When you get angry:

1. You upset the person subjected to your flaming words

2. You upset yourself

3. You regret things you said

4. You ponder over, ‘How did I miss this point? I should have said this. That would have done it!’

In short, nobody wins. By becoming angry you are letting the other person have control over you. How and why do you give anyone the power to offend and thereby control your emotions? Do you want someone else pressing the buttons on your remote or would you rather keep your remote control to yourself? And what if the other person doesn’t give a damn and you are left fuming, wasting your time and energy on imaginary arguments which you COULD have won in case the argument takes place at all.

Tyrion Lannister once said, ‘I prefer angry and stupid to composed and cunning’. This quote puts my message in a nutshell. Being angry = being stupid. No one wants that. Getting red mad is easy, just like cakewalk or is it catwalk? definitely cakewalk. You are just being lazy. Staying calm however is difficult and requires a strong amount of self control. But its not impossible.

Keep your remote control to yourself. Avoid voluntary stupidity.

Think about it.

Have a snack

You know those annoying moments when you are in a restaurant, hungry like Scooby doo and the waiter takes forever to serve your order. Those are the moments that tell you who you really are. You are impatient, constantly looking at the waiter wondering if she/ he has your order yet. You make crazy comments like, “what is happening in there? are they cooking food from the scratch?” One after the other you look at tables around you wondering, “damn! that looks so good, I should have ordered that”. You play that stupid game that every customer plays in a restaurant, asking yourself over and over, “is my food here yet? when will it come?”. Your stomach gives you a hard time, constantly reminding you to feed it. You lose all your patience, you pick up that fork and start air-eating* and you use the spoon to drink water. An itch almost convinces you that there is nothing weird about requesting a bite from a stranger’s plate. Your entire life flashes in front of your eyes and you are just about to collapse. The food arrives to your rescue. Resurrected, there is nothing stopping you from behaving as if you have seen food for the first time.

The above is a recent episode from my life. I and my friends went insane and we let this happen all the time. We are a happy bunch and the only time we ever had thoughts of strangling each other to death were when we were completely starved. We realized that the hard way.

Have you had one of these episodes too? You become so cranky you start disliking yourself? I am used to eating every 2-3 hours and even missing one meal makes me act like a Godzilla wanting to destroy everything in front of me. To fix this, I have decided to put some snack packet in all my bags to avoid episodes like this.

I know people who skip meals for no reasons and stupid reasons like, “I want to fit in that LBD”. No that’s not what you want you need to eat. Eating is more important than fitting into anything. Weren’t we all taught that, ‘The three basic necessities of life are food, clothing and shelter’. See, food comes before clothing! Food comes first and it always should because otherwise it will intervene with our happiness. Now we don’t food to add to our stress causing pile.

Next time you get cranky for no reason, have a snack.

Think about it.

To making new mistakes

One fine morning X woke up. That’s what people do in the morning, they wake up. And like most people, X had to go to work. Here’s the thing, X was really late and bumped to the wall thinking that its a door. X got hurt and instead of finding the door, bumped in to the wall again thinking that it is the way out. Preoccupied with the ever ticking clock, X bumped in to the wall again and again and again. Despite getting hurt and getting nowhere, X failed to figure out a solution. Kept walking in to the wall, kept getting hurt on loop. It was a fascinating scene to look at.

Who is X? Well X could be anyone. It could be you, few years ago I was X too. When faced with a problem I came up with a solution. When the solution didn’t solve my problem I got annoyed. But without reflecting upon why the solution went wrong or how I could try solving the same problem in a different way. I kept applying the same logic, I persisted and so did the problem. Tried to put the fire out with my hand, and watched my hand burn away in the process. Then, I didn’t even think twice that maybe that’s not the way to put out a fire. If only I had tried putting out the fire with water, I would have learned that water is a better extinguisher than my hand. By using water, the fire is put out and my hand stays safe. But instead I had to replace my hand with a hook. Cool as it sounds living the life of a hook handed pirate is very very difficult.

One day, I and my crew mates were having a party of my 9th stolen ship when the abominable hawk attacked me. During our battle, I could have lost my eye. I could see my crew mates waving an eye patch because they knew what was coming. Just then I had an epiphany. Instead of fighting the hawk up close pulling its legs and feathers allowing it to poke my eyes out. I pulled out my rifle and the hawk flew away as I fired one shot. Now all I had to do was point the rifle at my mates for waving that eye patch at me. Anyway, the point is that in that moment I chose to act differently and in that process I learned something new.

I learned that: 1) Wrestling a hawk is a terribly terrible idea

                         2) Hawks can’t match the awesomeness of a rifle

Suddenly I wasn’t X any more. I was something much much better. Armed with this new power of reflexivity, I went on to try new approaches and faced challenges with multiple weapons. If plan A didn’t work, probably plan B would, if that failed then we have plan C. Every failed plan taught me something I didn’t know before. Unlike X who was on a perpetual merry go round, I had lined up for the other amusements at the carnival. X failed to learn anything new, in fact X didn’t learn anything at all.

Sadly this is what most people do. They act like X. Don’t be X, look for the door or a window or blow up that wall if you will. Make new mistakes. Learn something new everyday.

Think about it.

Don’t be rude

I alight from the train and walk towards the stairs, one aunty clearly in a hurry brushes past me almost pushing me on another aunty. Aunties be dangerous so I keep calm, I understand that she is probably late for something. Its fine, being late is a human trait. I forgive her in my mind. A second later she looks back, giving me the dagger eyes thinking that I pushed her. Wait. What? How? Seriously, Aunty? I have been in this situation a million times and I still don’t get it. Why you gotta be double rude aunty? Not just once, but twice that too in a gap of 5 seconds. Instead of saying sorry, which I wasn’t expecting anyway you give me your stink eye. Not cool. She was terribly late and yet she had the time to be rude to an absolute stranger like me.

Here is another instance: I had applied for a transfer certificate in my ex-college a year ago assuming that it must have reached my current college. But naaah. I went back to enquire about it and guess what the staff aunty did? She lost my application. I had to re- submit the application and some documents. When I went for re-submission, staff aunty was absent and staff uncle says, “we don’t need these documents, we need those”. I still keep my calm. I go again with the application form, the right documents, a pair of kidneys, a pair of lungs and fully functional heart in case they ask for it. After baking in the sun for an more than an hour as their 30 minutes lunch break extends to 90 minutes Staff uncle says, “Your documents are right, this will suffice” A smile pushes its way through all the muck. And then he staff uncle goes, “You have to pay 100 rupees, come tomorrow” This is when I lose all my patience. I go from Hello Kitty to Shere Khan drooling over Mowgli’s blood in a split second. He takes the money, runs for his life and gives me the stupid receipt.

Its amusing how rude people can be. Being aware of one’s own needs is a good thing. Making yourself feel comfortable in a crowded train is understandable but kicking and pushing and shoving others while making yourself comfortable is not. I am not asking you to be kind, I am just asking you to not be rude. You want something, go get it by all means but don’t bulldoze others on your way. I am not asking you to smile, I am just asking you to not knife me in the belly. ‘Being kind’ and ‘Not being rude’ are two different things. Although being kind is ideal, not being rude is much easier. All you have to do is be aware that your actions are not harming the people around you. That’s it. Not difficult at all. Its super easy. Truly.

Think about it.

Manual mode on, please

Since childhood we are fed with ideas and notions of how to be and how not be and then there is Shakespeare’s hip shaking question of to be or not to be. Boxes were created on a mass level, a global level. These boxes were then distributed, we were taught to sit inside these boxes and live happily ever after. Our emotions were tailored, or actions and reactions too. Soon things got so mechanized that we stopped thinking.

Expectations turned into reality. We laugh when we are expected to, cry when we are expected to, brush our teeth and breed baby rabbits when we are expected to. Instead of winding our own individual clocks we became lazy and tuned our lives to what we saw and learned from the mass media. Newspapers, movies, TV series, magazines etc. became our gurus and unfortunately the worst ones became popular. Dare to swim against the tide? you will surely be ridiculed. “Don’t you drink alcohol?” is a frequent question that people ask non- drinkers. Drinking has now become a personality trait. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with drinking responsibly. But the question being asked implies that alcohol is as essential to human existence as water is. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it is not true.

Alcohol is just one of the examples. Our behaviours too are manufactured. What we say, eat, where we go, when we go, what we wear once we get there all of it is taught to us as the definition of COOL. Yes it is cool to be a rebel, but rebels too have responsibilities. Rebellion is not a synonym for stupidity.

We were born with a clean slate, just like Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story. Then he was fed with a standard program with a set of do’s and don’t s. No one liked Buzz Lightyear when he was in ‘Demo mode’. Buzz Lightyear in ‘Demo mode’ meant Buzz Lightyear ‘The jerk’. In Toy Story 3 when Lotso and his lot switch Buzz’s settings from ‘Manual mode’ to ‘Demo mode’ he starts acting like an idiot. Then all his friends switch him back to ‘Manual mode’, once again restoring his friendly, caring self. It is in ‘Manual Mode’ that Buzz has the power to think for himself and the people he cares about. It is ‘Manual Mode’ that makes Buzz who he is.

So turn off your ‘Demo mode’ and switch on your ‘Manual Mode’.

Think about it.