We Are The Living

Understanding your body’s auto-pilot

Picture some of the following actions: Walking in your neighbourhood, solving 10 + 10, talking in your mother tongue, counting 6 oranges. Now imagine the following scenarios: Walking through a crowded railway station or airport, solving e² cot 27.9, talking about science in a language that you cannot speak very well, counting 39 oranges. What difference did you notice between the two sets of situations?

If you pay close attention, you will notice that the amount of activity in the brain increases significantly during the activities in the second set. This is because those are situations that you are not used to being in on a regular basis. E.g. you may not even pay attention to your steps while walking through your neighbourhood, but while walking through the crowd of the railway station, you have to watch each step and be attentive. But if you are a regular commuter, even jostling through the crowd will become a habit. That exactly is the power of habits. Your mind runs in cruise mode when you perform activities as a habit and you will often find that it drifts into thoughts of its own while your body finishes the activity on its own accord. You can say that you are running on auto-pilot mode without thinking about it. Continue reading Understanding your body’s auto-pilot

The Joy of Acceptance

The Story of a little girl (me):

I am about 5’3”, may be a bit shorter. It is about the height of an average Indian Woman. But my family is no average. I am a dwarf among the giants. Women in our family including my mom are on an average of 5’5” and men around 5’10” .In both my family and my extended family among all the elders, siblings and cousins I’m the shortest. It was a source of great agony for me during my growing (or not growing enough years).

I can see I really fell short of my parents’ expectations in this front. We visited a number of doctors in various disciplines – Siddha, Ayurveda, Unani as well as the conventional English Medicine. Bought a number of miracle pills for height enhancement as well as exercise books. Most of this only made me feel more self-conscious of my vertical deficit and I abandoned them sooner or later.

Continue reading The Joy of Acceptance

Get more out of your reading

Let us go through an exercise. Consider all your reading sessions during your day. Factor in all that you read: blog posts, magazine & newspaper articles, social network posts, books, novels, just about everything. On a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfying do your consider your reading sessions? Do you come away from each reading session having learnt something new and looking at the world or your career in a different perspective? Are your reading sessions pleasurable and relaxing, making you want to read on and on? Or are they rather stressful, making you shake your head and ponder how terrible the world is? Continue reading Get more out of your reading

What does this make possible?

Today we are celebrating the ability in the disability. Paralympians not only stand for the celebration of human spirit but every Paralympic athlete is a tale of great courage and human potential unperturbed by great personal tragedy.

Life often throws at us difficult situations that are in our Circle of Concern, where there is little we can do to make the situation better. Neither can we ignore and move for it is a reality that is to be faced.

Inspiring Paraolympians — Inspiring Paralympians

I’m sure most of us have never and probably will never face anything as challenging as any of these athletes had faced and overcome. But we have our problems and they do seem big enough to disturb us.

So what do we do then? We can stand there..cry and whine..complaint about or we can ask.

‘What does this make possible?’

Continue reading What does this make possible?

The Extra in the Extra-Ordinary !!

What makes someone an Extra- Ordinary Athlete (Usain Bolt), an Extra-Ordinary Inventor (Edison), an Extra-Ordinary Doctor (Atul Gawande), Extra-Ordinary Actor (Kamal Haasan) or an Extra-Ordinary Minister (Sushma Swaraj) ? Is this the privilege of some professions and professionals or can any one be Extra-Ordinary in any work. Continue reading The Extra in the Extra-Ordinary !!

Power up with a rousing morning routine

Imagine the following scenario. You wake up in the morning with the alarm ringing in your ears. You know that you must leave for work in an hour or so. You brush quickly, take a bath and put together a quick breakfast, something minimal like a sandwich with jam and a quick cup of tea. The clock is ticking away and the rest of your morning is spent getting dressed as fast as you can and getting your office bag in order, while taking a few quick looks at your phone for new emails and updates. Finally you rush out of home hoping to catch your train / bus to work.

Now imagine that you wake up in the morning and spend a few moments to stretch and take a deep breath. You enjoy the view from your window and steadily start your next sequence of actions. You fix yourself a healthy breakfast rich in nutrients and have it slowly enjoying each flavour. You spend some lovely time with your loved ones. You take some time to work out, meditate and read a book. Then you get ready for the day. You transition from shut-eye sleep to complete wakefulness in small steps, fresh and ready to face the day. You become a healthier and better person day by day.

Which one of the above is you? Continue reading Power up with a rousing morning routine

Born to Run: Ultra Marathoner Yogesh

Varadan Yogeshwaran @ Yogesh is a good friend and colleague of mine where we were part of the same ToastMaster club. Another common passion we shared was running, but I quickly realized Yogesh was a different league of a runner than my dilettante of half-marathons. He was then running Full Marathon and 50KM runs at the drop of a hat and was practicing for his first 100Km run, which he later completed successfully. Yogesh truly ran an extra mile in everything from work to play and everything in between. Yogesh was running 100 Km, leading a critical project at work, championed corporate safety initiatives, headed an active toastmaster club all at the same time and remained grounded and humble after all of that.

His story is a great example of what can be accomplished by doing the right things consistently. Here is a snippet of our discussion for your reading pleasure. Continue reading Born to Run: Ultra Marathoner Yogesh

The art of dabbling

We, as humans, certainly have a lot of hobbies. Some of us paint, some of us collect things, some of us travel and some enjoy things as connoisseurs. However, almost every human enjoys ‘dabbling’ in something at one point or the other. Hold on. What exactly is dabbling?

Let’s see. There are two ways to do anything that has methods. One way is to acquire as much knowledge about something as you can and then start doing it in tiny meticulous steps, making sure that everything is done right every step of the way. Another way is to find out about something as little as you can, then jump straight in with both your feet, learning on the go and enjoying the experience despite its flaws. This second method is what I call the art of ‘dabbling’. The term comes from ducks plunging head first into the water and paddling the surface of water! It is also used when a person tries out something with minimal research to see what works for him/her. Continue reading The art of dabbling

Why M.S.Subbulakshmi was the most Iconic Carnatic Singer ever?

Year 2016, will be the centenary year of this Music Legend, a time to look back and see what made M.S, the Iconic Legend that she is.

In South, it is very uncommon to have any pictures in the wall, even of the families themselves. No wedding pics, no pictures of children. The only pictures that ever adorned the walls were that of Gods, Dead Great Grandparents and that of M.S.Subbulakshmi fondly called as M.S. I remember going to a friend’s place where every wall had a picture of M.S, every album ever released of M.S.Subulakshmi was in their music collection in every conceivable form of audio recording that had existed till then from Gramaphone records, audio Cassettes, Compact Discs and Mp3.

Continue reading Why M.S.Subbulakshmi was the most Iconic Carnatic Singer ever?

Why being open about your life’s flawed past makes you better

Lewis Howes is a former American football and handball player, and is now an entrepreneur and an author of The School of Greatness. He also has a podcast of the same name. He is looked upon as a super-hero in the States. In fact, he himself used to think of himself as an impenetrable super-hero who could supress his darkest emotions and put up a brave face when challenged by adversity. One freak outburst incident made him change his mind. At the World Domination Summit 2015, Lewis urges us to tear down the facade of iron-clad straight face and be more human and express our feelings. He advocates vulnerability. In his own beautiful worlds, “Don’t be a super-hero. Be a super-human.” Continue reading Why being open about your life’s flawed past makes you better