I love my life!

There are days when I find myself moaning and groaning my way through everything, and then those other truly wonderful days when all’s right with the world. I don’t know about you, but me, I can yo-yo between the highs and the lows and the in-betweens pretty quick. For all those not-so-high days, there are a few things that I need to remember…a few reasons why life is so beautiful.

I’ve been blessed with a good workplace – the timings are great, work-life balance is pretty good, people are OK, work’s not too bad…

…there are days when I wish I had more work and days when I wish I had less, but hey, at least I’m not staggering under the weight of unending work!

I love being able to drive down to work – I’ve been doing that since about 5 years now. Yes, the traffic can suck, and there are days when the insane number of vehicles on the road drives me nuts, but I still enjoy my drive…my music…my thoughts…my pace…my freedom!

Watching the rain through my windscreen

I love my girlfriends! I enjoy our plans to meet up over the weekend, or on Friday night…our spur-of-the-moment plans to meet for lunch and shopping…our gossip sessions and our crazy giggles.

There are so many, many things to love – like my crazy cat Pepo and my darling hubs…my peaceful home and quiet neighborhood…my loving parents and crazy sister…the bright sunshine and God’s beautiful, natural world…it’s a long, long list.

Life…it’s beautiful!

What do love about your life?

Happiness is…

Image via Wikipedia

Licking an ice cream cone on a hot summer day
Catching up with friends for a leisurely dinner at the end of the week
Lazy Saturdays at home, curled up with a book
Coming home tired and irritated to find Pepo (my cat) in a playful mood
Long conversations with the husband that start out as you’re turning in for the night, and go on until well past bedtime
The feeling of oneness with the Almighty
Planning our next vacation
Taking a day off work for no particular reason
Going out with the camera and returning with some really great photographs

So, what makes you happy?

4 life lessons I learnt from my cat

A fine balancing act

That’s Pepo, my adorable furry friend. She adopted us on 15 July 2009, and has been a constant source of entertainment for us ever since. In addition to entertaining us, she also strives to teach us mere humans some lessons, cat style!

Act first, think later: Pepo’s a house cat, which means she spends hours watching birds through the window. In this picture, she’s clambered up onto the top of the window, near the ceiling, and after having her fill of bird watching, is looking for a way back down. She knows one of us will come get her!
Translated to us humans: Just do it! Don’t think. The more you think, the more reasons you can give yourself to not do something to break out of your comfort zone. Act and trust in the universe, things will almost always work out — 99.99% of the time!
Want something? Be cute: One of Pepo’s favorite things to do is to go out on to the balcony and drink water or sit on the ledge and watch the world go by. Since she’s a house cat, these excursions are under supervision. So, once we are back from work, her first request, nay demand, is to be taken out. The best way to get her demand met? Be cute!
Translated to us humans: When you want to be recognized for the work you do, you need to move out of the mindset of letting your work speak for yourself — you need to focus on building strong relationships with your managers. It doesn’t mean you have to suck up to them, but small talk, going along with their plans, and problem solving as much as possible wouldn’t hurt.
When I’m playing football, I’m Ronaldo!: Yes, Pepo plays football…with balled up paper…and when she’s playing, she’s Christiano Ronaldo incarnate! Focused, quick, nothing but the game matters – not food, not going out, nothing!
Translated to us humans: Focus, hard work and perseverance will help you achieve any goal. The best way I’ve found to stick with it: write your goals, break them into baby steps, reward yourself for every milestone achieved, don’t beat yourself up for missing a target – analyze what went wrong, fix it, and go for it again!
Sleep above all else: The amount of time Pepo spends sleeping can leave you amazed! On weekends, she sleeps, eats, plays, sleeps, plays, sleeps…you get the drift, right?
Translated to us humans: (1) You need downtime baby! There’s no way you can go on and on and on, working, running the house, looking after everyone else before yourself. Make some “me time” — meditate, go get a manicure, watch a movie or grab lunch with a friend…something, anything, that is only for you!
(2) There may be times when we wish we had 48 hrs in a day, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon — can you imagine a 16 hr work day? Yuck! The best way to be productive — plan, focus, and ensure you get adequate shut eye, or your body’s going to rebel on you, and then you won’t be able to get anything done!

Has your furry friend taught you any life lessons?

Looking back 2010: I've learnt…

As 2010 comes to an end, I look back and reflect on the year that’s gone by. There’s been so much joy, a few sorrows…so much hard work…a lot of partying…and so many things that I have learnt.

The top 10 things I’ve learnt….

To laugh out loud – Life’s too short to be constantly worried. Take every opportunity to catch life by the horns and L-I-V-E!
To stay calm – Shit happens, but how we deal with it is what matters most.
To prioritize – Family and friends and health come first. Work’s important, but it isn’t the be all and end all of life.
To constantly adapt – The only constant in life is change. We can’t stay in our comfort zone forever. To live fully (see point 1), we have to break out of our comfort zone…sure it’s hard at first, but like Nike says, Just do it!
To make time for me – My day for myself is Saturday – I have the weekends off, but the husband has only Sundays off. Instead of moaning and groaning about it, I use that one day to have fun…go out with girlfriends or even alone (see the next point), clean up the house (if I feel like it), do some bloggy work…
To be comfortable in my own skin – Next time you’re out in the market or mall, really notice people around you — they are almost always with their families or friends. Even the movies would have you believe that one is a lonely number. But you know what, it isn’t! It takes great confidence and oodles of self love to be out there in the crowd alone, doing your own thing, even *gasp!* eating at a restaurant alone. This may be an Indian thing, but it’s one of the most important lessons I learnt this year.
To try and try again – If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have started working out again. I’ve lost count of the number of crash diets I’ve gone on, of how many times I joined the gym and gave up. But this year, I was determined I would do it, and stick to it. And I’ve succeeded. The weight hasn’t come off as fast as I had hoped, and there are days when I stumble, but I get up and get back on!
To draw the line, work-wise – Sure work’s important – it’s what helps us put food on the table and clothes on our back. But if work overtakes the rest of your life what purpose is it serving? If you have no time for family, for friends, to enjoy your hard earned money, is it really worth it? There’s only that much stress I can take over work, beyond a point, I refuse to compromise on my personal time.
To speak out – The husband’s not a mind reader. Unless I tell him what’s bothering me, he ain’t gonna know. So instead of stewing or going silent, I realized it’s best to let it rip from time to time. Keeps him on his best behavior too 😉
To take a break – I used to take time off from work only if I was sick or traveling. But there are days when you just want to laze around, and I realized that if I just took the day off, I went to work the next day feeling like a million bucks!

Life is always teaching us lessons, either by experience or by sharing. I’ve shared what I’ve learnt this year, won’t you share your lessons with me in the comments section?

Linking up with Jade:

Love is…strong

Love is...not without its complications Relationships can be messy and complicated. There may even be times when we wonder what possessed us to get married in the first place. So when a friend recently asked me what makes my marriage tick, I had to think long and hard about the answer.

I’ve been married 8 years and knew the darling husband for 3 years before we tied the knot — that makes it 11 years with the same man. Wow!

If I said it was an easy journey, I’d be lying. If I said I was blissful every single day, I’d be lying. But I do know that I am truly blessed that we found one another. There are times when I can still get weak-kneed just looking at him…times when I marvel at the universe that brought us together…and yes, even times when I wonder how insane I was to have gotten married! But those are fleeting moments, generally brought on when I am really angry or frustrated with the husband — and those moments happen in every marriage.

So, what makes me feel like the luckiest woman alive when I wake up next to him every day?

The fact that, no matter how many fights we have, the core of our relationship —our bond — has grown stronger over the years. We can fight and argue and storm out of the house on each other, but at the end of the day, when push comes to shove, the love is very much alive and growing.

What is it that makes your relationship tick?

Life, it's beautiful

I feel blessed today. Blessed to have great friends, an awesome husband, an interesting job and an “easy” life. Maybe part of this feeling stems from the lovely week I’ve had.

Met up with out of town friends on Sunday at my favorite Moroccan hangout, Fez Dining. Mojitos, a hot mezze platter, chicken tangine and interesting conversation make for an excellent lunch, don’t you agree?

Lunch over, me and the husband went over to a friend’s house to drop off some things at her place. That supposdly short visit turned into a talkathon and dinner. We alternated between longing around in her living room and running out to the balcony to look at the sky as the sun set over Delhi. Pleasure comes in the small things sometimes. Isn’t that a pretty sky?

A perfect Sunday gave way to a busy Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and then we had a holiday on Thursday for Janmashtmi (Lord Krishna’s birthday). I spent the morning lazing around at home, reading, surfing the net; then headed over to the gym for a workout and finally to the parlour for a haircut and pedicure. I’m totally loving my shiny red toes! Don’t they look pretty?

Friday started off slow…no work in at all in the morning, so I was able to book tickets for my visit to the parents. Luckily for me, two projects floated in in the afternoon, so I had something to keep me constructively occupied 🙂

Looking forward to the weekend now — got to finish packing since I leave on Tuesday, have to buy some gifts for mom and dad, and will probably catch up with a few friends too.

Life…it’s beautiful!

So, what’s your week been like?

Reflections in the rain

I enjoy monsoons. There’s something about the rain that brings hope — it’s a time of regeneration and joy; growth and introspection.

An impressionist painting

While driving to work today, the sunny skies suddenly turned dark and the rain started pouring down. Caught up in traffic, I turned the car wipers off. As the rain sluiced over my windscreen, the world outside turned into an Impressionist painting — blurred and beautiful. It took the chaotic traffic and huge puddles out of focus, prompting me to reflect on the parallels that we can draw between this moment and life.

When standing in a jam, turn the wipers off and enjoy a moving Impressionist painting. In life, stop and smell the flowers! How many self-help books say this…and yet, how many of us actually take the time to do it? Try it. Just 5 minutes of being present in the moment will give you a high unlike anything you’ve experienced before.

When you’re stuck in traffic with nowhere to go, turn up the music and groove to the beats. In life, when you feel like things are going on on auto pilot, it may be just the time to stop “doing” and to think about what you can change or how you can shake up your routine.

When you’re driving through a downpour, it’s best to go slow. In life, when there’s a lot that’s coming your way and you feel overwhlemed, it’s best to take out some time for yourself. Even if it’s just 15 minutes to meditate or destress. You’ll feel relaxed and will be able to tackle things more effectively.

When storm clouds gather, turn on the headlights! In life, when you’re confused, bogged down by your thoughts, shine the light of reflection on yourself. Try using mind mapping or brainstorming techniques to work through your problems and come up with creative solutions.

When day turned into night

It’s amazing how you can draw parallels from situations around you! Are there any other parallels you can think of? Do leave a comment, I’d love to hear them!

Rediscovering one another

As the rain comes pouring down and the roads get flooded, I know that I’m going to spend most of Saturday at home. The husband will also be housebound, as he can’t go teach tennis in the rain now, can he? But as I try to plan the day ahead, I realize that our plans always always involve going out somewhere — be it to catch a movie, shopping, or dinner. We seem to have forgotten the art of staying at home as a couple and doing things together.

So today, as we may not have any other alternatives, we plan to sit together and rediscover the art of spending quality time at home as a couple. Wish us luck!

In total control of my life

One of the things that I’ve been wanting to achieve since a really long time, but have only been thinking about, is weight loss. This month, I moved from thinking to doing — I joined a gym! I thought it was going to be boring, that I might have to push myself to go, and was not sure if I would last out a month. But guess what? I’m loving it! (OK, it’s been less than a month, but still!)

Working out, pushing myself and seeing my fitness levels improve is giving me a high unlike any other in a really long time! It’s made me feel even more confident, and most importantly, I feel like I’m finally in control of my life.

Isn’t it strange, though? I just took one action step to change one area of my life (and trust me, there are a lot of areas I want to change), and suddenly I feel like I’m been pushed off the fence and into the driver’s seat. It’s exhilarating!

Now, where did I put that list of Things I Need to Change Pronto?

(Image courtesy everydaypeople.com)

Finding meaning

Three and a half billion years of evolution has built the need for meaning and purpose into human beings. It is as real as our need to breathe. —- Donna Druchunas

And how do we uncover this deeper meaning to our lives? The deeper meaning of life lies where we choose to dig deeper. Ask yourself everyday what went well and why it went well. If you had a good conversation with an angry friend, describe what about that conversation went well. Did you do something different? Did you respond to a negative with a positive? Try to outline three positive things and the reasons why they went well at the end of the day. Daily practice will help you to build a good foundation for uncovering meaning in your life.