Safar mein Dhoop to Hogi

Safar mein Dhoop to hogi

Safar mein dhoop to hogi
Jo chal sako to chalo 
Sabhi hai bheed mein
Tum bhi nikal sako to chalo
Kisi ke waaste raahe kaha badalti hai
Tum apne aap ko khud hi badal sako to chalo
Yaha kisi kp koi raasta nahi deta
Mujhe girake agar tum sambhal sako to chalo
Yehi hai zindagi, kuch khwab, chand umeede
Inhi khilono se tum bhi bahal sako to chalo
Safar mein dhoop to hogi
Agar chal sako to chalo
Sabhi hai bheed mein 
Tum bhi nikal sako to chalo

- a poem by Nida Fazil

I Love the message it gives. the roads going to be tough, Expect the Heat!

It is a tough and competitive world, If you are ready to face the challenges and play the game - come along. 

What i loved is that the author says "I am going to go". If you want to come - you can. There is no waiting and team work and getting everyone on board or any other stuff that immobilizes action!

Its such a great way to put Courage and Perseverance! 

I saw a video - where our Prime Minister Narendra Modi recited this poem in Rajya Sabha in March 2016. 

So proud to have such a great man leading our country!

Wish you all a very Happy New Year! 

Love
Alpa

Mujhme chupi si jo shayri hai..continued from last post

This post is a continuation from yesterdays post. link below in case you havent read that one yet
http://angelalpa.blogspot.in/2016/06/tune-into-you.html

Who is the one person we can rely on to make us feel loved and nurtured?

Some of you probably guessed, parents, siblings, friends, or you probably got my drift already.(ping me if you did)

So I'm going to by 36 this year, I can barely believe it! How can I when i don't look or feel a day over 16 ;)?
Anyway, by now I've had a couple of kids and seen some things coming full circle, I realised - What we really are in love with is - Love. 

The object or person we love is not of as much consequence. All that matters is we should feel the love. 

Beneath all this need for love and poetry and connections, what we are really searching for at the core of all these relationships and connections is actually Happiness. In fact we search for happiness in every action and decision we make.

A life-saving realisation dawned on me.

"I don't need another person to feel that perfect state of love or happiness." I can get myself in that state, in a far more reliable way.


You are the person you can be rely on to love and nurture yourself. 

It was a liberating and empowering realisation for me. 

Happiness doesn't really come from a person or thing, but from a space inside us. 

In this hoopla of expressing and proving love and loyalty to others, we have forgotten to love ourselves. In the race to be kind to and forgive others, we have forgotten to be kind to ourselves. 

Loving others brings us joy and contentment only when our own cup is full and overflows onto others. When we try and give others without fully filling our own cup, our energy gets depleted and it causes fatigue, stress, resentment and frustration and illnesses. 

Finally we come into and leave this world alone, we are responsible to ourselves alone for the life we live. We cannot blame anyone on our death bed, saying, "Had they loved us a little more or made us a little more happy, our life would have been beautiful." 

Lets learn to connect with ourselves to find that space of unconditional love and happiness within us.

How??

Easiest way is Meditate and do pranayam regularly. Both are big energisers. 

I recently read this book -"You can heal your life" by Louise Hay, after recommendations from many people. It lived up to the hype.

Louise speaks about mirror work besides many other wonderful tools in her book. You can check out this video for mirror work. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZFcN5qB8yM

Mirror work involves looking into the mirror at ourselves and talking to ourselves to completely accept and love our self. Improving the relationship we have with our self, through the mirror. Yes i know it sounds very silly, you look into the mirror many times a day I'm sure, but this will feel different and difficult initially. specially if you've crossed the 30's, 40's age mark. 

Confession time - When i was in school and college i used to spend a lot of time reaffirming to myself in front of the mirror. Many of us probably did that. 

As we grow up, we get distant from ourselves; we forget to plug-in to ourselves,  to check if we're doing OK, which is where our stress begins. I have started doing mirror work again. It feels kind of nice, even though now i don't get as much time as i did back then in school/college. One of my kids finds their way to the room asking me to open up so they can join the party! 

Another way is to remember that we deserve our own love compassion and kindness as much as anyone else in the world. So next time you are giving up something you love or want to do for someone else, think again. What you really are doing is emptying your love cup and replacing it with future resentment, when you will feel the gesture wasn't reciprocated.  
Fill your own cup first. Even in the aircraft they tell you to put on your mask first before helping others, even if its your own kids you want to help.

Lets re-discover self-love, self-compassion and self-nurturing.  It truly is the path to lasting happiness. Meditation is a great tool to connect with the self. 

Next time you're thinking "Nobody loves me!", remember you have YOU....and that is all that matters in the end. Treat yourself like you'd treat your lover. Give yourself a huge hug and blow a kiss to the mirror and meditate. 

And as all things come full circle, the more you love yourself, the more irresistible you become to others. More people find themselves drawn to you and your cup starts overflowing even more. And you can start focusing on the road ahead and do those great things that will be part of your legacy, with confidence, contentment and boundless energy. 

Try it, drop me a message, tell me how it goes. 

Love

Me

Tujhme chupi si jo shayri hai..

I love this verse from the song 'subhanalla' from 'yeh jawaani hai deewani'

Ek din kabhi jo khud ko pukaare

Meri zubaan se tu zara, 

Tujh mein chhupi si jo shayari hai

Tujhko sunaaun main zara, 

Such a beautiful thought by Amitabh Bhattacharya

How beautiful when someone says i will acquaint you with your own hidden beauty...which you are unable to see yourself. 

However, this passionate teenage/twenties serenading love doesn't last forever, it soon gets hidden under grown up responsibilities like career, marriage, kids, fame, success, EMIs etc. With time we often forget our own beauty and change to please others, maybe a partner, boss, friends, society in order to be more accepted, more loved, more successful.

We are happiest in relationships where we don't need to change. It is a rare blessing to have a partner or a career where you can be yourself, sing your own tune, instead of singing other people's tunes. Even if you try to sing their tune, you always feel you're going off on most notes. Even if you do sing it, its still not your song, not the song you were born to sing and you're not going to be happy singing it. 

Even more beautiful is a relationship where you discover parts of yourself which you didn't know existed, the relationship makes you feel safe and loved enough to drop your insecurities and make your life bigger, better, larger or do whatever it is that you always wanted to but were too scared to, knowing that you always have that cocoon to come back to, which will nurture you unconditionally when you need it. 

These scenarios however are very difficult and unrealistic to sustain though you may be fortunate to experience them in bursts. I have been fortunate  :) 

I have yet to see a love like that - that has sustained time, marriage, kids, monetary issues, sickness etc. 

That type of love usually ends as soon as you step out of the Bollywood movie :)

But there is one person  on whom you can rely at all times to make you feel loved and nurtured. 

Any guesses who that could be?  

Answers in the next post 

Love 
Me

The Importance of knowing yourself and having the right partner

I started writing this post 6 months ago and couldn't get beyond the title. And somehow just as soon as I saw Imtiaz Ali's movie "Tamasha” and loved it, (Ya, i know I probably lost a few of you there ;), I was inspired to complete this blog. 

The importance of knowing yourself

We can’t be successful at relationships with others if we don't know ourselves. 

Remember that movie -"Runaway Bride", starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. Julia Roberts would run away from the altar at each of her many weddings. She wasn't ready to commit to marriage as she really didn't know herself (she realized this at the end of the movie of course)

She would change herself whenever she was in “love”, to mirror what her partner liked/wanted. Like a reflection in the water. So neither did she know who she really was, neither did her partner. 

She had to spend some time alone and single, and discover her "I" in order to say "I love YOU" the way it was meant to be said.

(There are also some people who NEED to forget their "I" as their "EGO" is so big, they don’t have space for anyone else.;) )

Imtiaz Ali’s Tamasha too, is about Ved (Ranbir Kapoor) discovering that "I". Ved, a boy who’s free story-telling spirit gets crushed under the tracks of the 'Engineering' train. Imtiaz so beautifully depicted Ved’s spirit slowly dying with each heart-wrenching scream in the middle of his engineering course, as he killed his wishes and spirit to make his father happy.

Going against our spirit/nature has more side - effects on our life than we imagine. This is not to be taken lightly.

The book "Thinking fast and slow" by Nobel Prize Winner, Daniel Kahneman mentioned a study that was conducted by Baumeisters group that has repeatedly found that an effort of will or self-control is tiring; If you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The effect of this is compounded every time you do something against your will. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion. 

Side effects of ego depletion include :

Overspending on impulsive purchases

Reacting aggressively to provocation

Persisting less time in a handgrip task

Performing poorly in cognitive tasks and logical decision making

Deviating from ones diet

 These are just tested side effects. These effects when compounded over years, totally change the quality of your life and thoughts. They can make you an unhappy, ever-complaining, obese or grumpy person. This is also the kind of behaviour that makes us easy prey to emotional manipulation by others, getting us deeper and deeper in that hole. Can you imagine how many things in our life can go wrong just by going against our true calling?

I have let myself be a victim of Ego depletion in the past and spent many years facing the terrible consequences. It’s not a nice place to be. I’m really grateful I could get myself out of that state with the help of some great family and friends, relatively soon and am left richer with the experience.

Importance of finding the right partner

Focus back to ‘Tamasha’ - Slowly over the years Ved’s free spirit was silenced and he morphed into a boring corporate drone - until he met someone on a holiday at an exotic location, Corsica, Tara (Deepika Padukone), who made that spirit resurface and loved him for it. The location and being on a holiday away from routine also is a huge factor in the spirit resurfacing because as soon as he got back to routine he became the same boring person, even when he was in a relationship with Tara, later.

A superb scene, where Tara dumps Ved – as she says he is not the same person she met in Corsica, and he tells her – This is who I am. I’m not that guy you met in Corsica, I was acting then. I AM like this. I am boring.

And Tara tells him. Don’t you realise that you are the guy I met in Corsica – you are acting now. This is not who you are.  

The scene so beautifully brings up the contradictions and self-beliefs that we face and live with in life as well as the power of belief! Beliefs are way stronger than facts.

A change in belief can change your life!

How Ved’s partner perceived him made him resolve the contradiction he had in his mind about who he really was.

This, my friends, is the importance of having the right partner!

I'm blessed to be with a partner who helped me to take charge and get out of that Ego-depletion zone and be the best me i can be!

Be the right partner! Find the right partner!