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Reflect on a positive interaction you had with someone.

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  I am a member of Thane Toastmasters Club and as a precursor to one of the meetings where the theme was Content writing, a fellow toastmaster had reached out to members asking them to come prepared with their niche when it comes to content writing. For those, who were not sure of it, it was suggested that we DM on whatsapp. Since, I wasn't sure about my niche, I did reach out on whatsapp in order to figure out my niche. What followed were some questions which I had to reply back. There were following four questions that were asked: 1. What is your profession? 2. Any roadblocks you went through in your journey? 3. Particularly any passion? 4. What would your dream day look like? Based on my response to the above questions, the fellow toastmaster suggested that I should write on linkedin around my career trajectory from customer support to project management followed by few other topics around promotion, hustle culture, differentiating your work ethic with GenZ, Remote working and f...

What's something you appreciate about your body?

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With lot of talk and focus on mental peace and calm, the body tends to get neglected. I am happy to have been able to manage so far without the need to have any daily medication for bodily ailments. I have also been doing zumba 3 days a week and it is doing wonders to my body. I will soon target to have a daily exercise routine that includes Surya namaskar and concludes with a pranayam and meditation practice. My body has been generally fit and doesn't give me much trouble except for those occasional sprain.  Work from home means the body doesn't move much and hence extra effort is needed to ensure fitness. With night shift health was seeing some negative impact, however, so far I have managed to not let it impact my body to the extent that I have to be on daily medication. Also, some natural and ayurvedic remedies are helping.  Soon life will be taking a positive turn with me getting into a day shift job that does not cause me to stretch into the night. I am sure I should be ...

Describe a moment of peace you experienced today.

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  With renovation work going on at home, there has been lot of noise and dust at home for many days now. After non stop work going on for few days, got a one day relief due to some material not being available for the work to continue. It was really a great relief as working from home meant that I could not escape even for that duration that I am working. I would suggest anyone getting renovation work done to avoid it while staying at home. It really becomes messy and noisy. The only benefit being that you are there to supervise things live and get course correction done immediately.  Apart from that taking day off from work also helped as it helped me to cut off totally from work and not worry too much about the other kind of noise that typically happens at the workplace. The peace and calm replacing noise and chaos was welcome as I could introspect and connect with myself. The next thing I need to do is plan for a getaway after all the renovation work is completed and spend ...

What's a skill you'd like to learn or improve?

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I always wanted to explore music. Especially playing the flute or the violin. Someday I will fit this in my schedule. Currently, I am focused on learning some tech skills which will help me stay competitive on the job front. Music has always been a stress buster and something that would make me nostalgic. Listening to old Kishore Kumar and Mohammed Rafi songs have always helped me to escape all the noise and bustling around. SP Balasubramanium, KK and Lucky Ali songs are also something that elevates your mood. I am hoping someday I will be able to play these beautiful melodies on a flute and/or violin.  One day, I will achieve the goal of playing a musical instrument and it will most likely be a flute or violin. Once I reach that stage, I will surely be coming and posting about it on my blog. Possibly my blog will become a musical blog where I post about my adventure in music. I know it is wishful thinking to say this even before I start holding a musical instrument in my hand. How...

What's one limiting belief you'd like to let go of?

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The limiting belief that I do not have it in me to be a good public speaker is something that I would like to let go of. I have already started to work on it by joining Toastmasters Club. I always had decent written communication skills. I can even speak in meetings, both online and offline. However, delivering a speech on stage did make me anxious.  In order to overcome the limiting belief around my abilities to speak in public, I started participating in Toastmasters Club meetings on Sundays. I am now able to learn from fellow speakers and have started to understand that great speakers are not born. They become great speakers after relentless practice and spending time on preparation. The mistake I used to make is to think that because I have good communication skills, I can just go there on stage and start talking. However, I soon realized that it is not that way. Yes, eventually when you have mastered public speaking skill, you will be able to do that. In the initial days, you ...

Reflect on a challenge you faced today and how you overcame it (or plan to).

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The challenge I faced today was to find time to read a book. With so many distractions, all thanks to smartphones, it is easy to lose track of time. This is exactly what happened as I did not stick to the plan of reading a book that I have started reading recently.  I am glad that I chose to read a book after so many days. However, it is definitely not an easy task to carve out time for it. It is not that time is not available. It is about how to manage the time at hand effectively to fit reading time in the schedule. I have started a practice now to start my day with a list of actions for the day. At the end of the day, I just check whether I have ticked all the tasks or not. I have set a target for myself to read 11 pages per day of a book. The number was arrived at by figuring out how many pages need to be read daily in order to finish reading the book this month. Now that I have a fixed number and specific goal to achieve, it becomes easy to stay focused. I did miss reading one...

What's a small act of kindness I witnessed or performed today?

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 I am not sure whether this qualifies exactly as a small act of kindness that I performed or not. However, this definitely the closest it can get. I had been to city market for shopping along with my daughter today. We happened to be at a shop which had 2-3 stairs to climb from the street. We had been there to buy some stuff but looking at the crowd, we decided to skip the idea and revisit later as we were not having any urgency.  While we were moving away from the shop by climbing down the stairs, an old lady coming from the opposite direction just spontaneously held my hand to take support to climb the stairs. I realized it and just stood there firmly so that she does not lose balance and was able to reach the shop with ease. No words were exchanged between us. It was all non verbal communication.  Additionally, in the morning we had an unannounced guest at our window. A crow who often visits us in the afternoon typically, chose to visit us in the morning for breakfast....

A moment today that made me smile

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Today, I visited a Ganesh temple near my home with my wife. When we got there, the evening aarti (prayers) had just started, so we joined the crowd. After the service was over, we sat down on a bench on the temple premises, as we often do, because the atmosphere there is quiet and peaceful. Then we saw two or three little girls, who seemed to be about two or three years old, running around the temple and having a good time. I couldn't help but smile as I watched those innocent faces laugh as they ran. The little girls bumped into each other from time to time, too. I wasn't the only one who was smiling, though. I noticed that the other people in the temple were also smiling and enjoying the giggling and running. This made me realize that having fun doesn't have to cost a lot of money. All you need is a few like-minded people who are willing to get together and interact without any expectations. We can only savor special moments like this when we put down our phones, which ha...

What's one thing you're grateful for today, and why?

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Today I am grateful to have started reading a book after a long time. It all started with  the daily habit of creating a to do list for the day which is evaluated at the end of the day for execution.  As part of this exercise, I asked myself a question, Why can't I finish reading one book per month? That way, I will end up reading 12 books in a year. I then checked out the total number of pages in the book and figured out that there are 263 pages. Oh God! That is too much said the devil in me. However, the angel in me, chose to challenge the devil. 263 pages does seem overwhelming but why not divide the number of pages with the number of days remaining in the month. I ended up doing that and figure out that it will take just 11 pages per day to achieve the goal of reading the book in hand. This is why asking challenging questions is important. It is only when you ask the right question that you get answers that sets you free. Otherwise, you will end up preventing yourself from...