23 Sunflowers I planted at 23

8.The power of reading 10 pages of a book every day.

Being a writer I always thought reading novels would affect my writing style as I might get influenced by other writings. I feel guilty to do that, I wish I had other perspective towards reading books. It was that one day where I was so disturbed and worried about life,  I shared it with my friend and my friend asked me to invest my time in self-improvement and divert my attention from negative things that was happening in life. My friend was kind enough to send me a book immediately. I started reading it and as it was my first book it really did nothing to me in the beginning, in fact I decided to quit reading it from the next day, but one line from that book struck in my mind and I decided to complete that entire book. Since reading is a habit, I decided to develop it by reading 10 pages everyday. Within 2 weeks I finished the entire book. It was a self help book and the kind of strength it gave me at my difficult times is unimaginable. I made this a habit and seriously this has been one of the best decisions of my life. Books have definitely helped me to improve my life in many ways, that might be in getting better perspective, decision making, relationship, courage, it has helped me to dream big and helped me understand it is us who look at life and it must be our vision. This has helped me heal, grow as an individual and most importantly as a writer I’ve gained better knowledge to put out my thoughts in a unique and easy way. Hoping to see myself as an author one day.

9.Finding passion is important.

During my Engineering days I always felt this is not my cup of tea but I decided to complete it and I did. I developed a habit of writing articles, poems and stories when I was in 8th and this gave me a sense of relief. I continued writing articles, my family and friends loved it and moreover I started enjoying it and feeling good about myself. In 8th standard may be I was too young to understand what passion is all about. As days passed writing became a part of my life. During my Engineering I joined an International NGO as a volunteer, which was my dream and participated in many service activities and also worked there as a Freelance Content Writer and Associate Social Media Manager. During these days I realized this is what I love doing and decided to convert my passion into profession by becoming a freelance content writer but not full time. Finding this passion has helped me to take break and understand myself better. I do have a 9-5 job but what makes my day different or special for me  is part of the day where I follow my passion and spend time with myself. I may develop or find new interests in different fields in the future and I would love to explore that part of life as well cause I believe having one life doesn’t mean to follow one path. Passion helps us to explore, experience and develop a sense of courage to try new things which helps us to become  better person. It is not mandatory to convert your passion into profession. It’s your decision but never quit it in the fear of failure. This is a long process and let’s enjoy it. It should not be the matter of failure, it should be the matter of growth as an individual during the process.

10.Let’s spread the word of kindness.

We all live in the world that is filled with so much struggle and pain. Everyone in one or the other way is going through a lot. Everyone is fighting their own battles. Some share their problems and some not. Let’s be respectful to people. How beautiful is it to be kind? I always compare kindness to the field of Sunflowers. As Sunflowers automatically smile by the rays of Sun, I feel kindness gives a sense of purity. Our one kind talk or our one kind act can make someone’s day and we all can forget our pain at least for a moment. Kindness is not only meant for human beings, it is also meant for animals and nature. Being kind to others is as important as being kind to oneself. Being strong or being courageous must also have an essence of kindness. Let’s be kind and make this world a better place to live and love.

11.There’s no rule that you need to be perfect in everything.

I had joined  guitar classes in 2018 as I wanted to learn ‘Munjane Manjalli’ song as I wanted to play it for my mom’s birthday. Initially it was difficult for me to even hold the strings, but as days passed I got better. I did learn the tune and played it on my mom’s birthday, it was not perfect but mom loved it because it was the first song I played for her. I remember I had written a letter for my dad, my dad loved it, he read it to my mom and we all had a laughter attack as I had made a spelling mistake and that sounded so funny, if my letter was perfect I don’t think that moment would have been created. Is it that important to be perfect in whatever we do? Yes, I believe perfection is very important in profession, and I feel that perfection comes either by learning from mistakes or hard work. But there are moments or things you need not to be perfect at, you can just be yourself and live the moment. We can work hard to become perfect but finding beauty in imperfections and being happy should be natural.  Being perfect at certain things is important and it also depends on how we gauge perfection but that doesn’t mean imperfection is not beautiful. Idea of perfection should not make you loose little joys in life.

12.Journaling, a step towards healing.

I cannot describe the number of ways I’ve tried to come out of trauma. I’m from a brown family and it is definitely not easy to make parents understand about mental health issues. This didn’t give me courage to tell about all this to my parents. So I tried seeking help online by making some research on Google, finding self help videos on You tube and reading books. I watched a You tube video and one of the videos spoke about journaling and its benefits, after this I watched multiple videos about it and decided to try it. I started writing about what I’m feeling, what is making me anxious, what are my dilemmas, my concerns, my doubts and later I used to find solutions for few and let go of some thoughts. This somewhere helped to covert my complex thoughts into simple ones. This helped me let go of certain things very easily, it kind of reduced the baggage that I carried. At last always I wrote about the things I’m grateful for and this gave me hope. Not only this, it also gave me courage to talk about my health with my parents and make them understand about it. I'm glad my parents understood and supported me in my journey of healing. There are days where I don’t find any solutions, there are days where I cannot let go of things but I write down things to breathe and relax a bit. This is my way of journaling and  that helped me. For me journaling is a long process of healing and would continue to do it. Journaling made me understand there's always hope and opportunities it is us who must look at it.

13.Social media shouldn’t define the life choices. 

Being a genz kid I feel there is some kind of pressure on me to put myself out there on social media. There was a rough phase in my life and the way social media affected me is disturbing to even think of it now. I just thought everyone in the world is happy except me. I used to watch my friends share some happy moments of their lives and I used to regret about my life. This went to an extent where I started comparing my life with others in everything. This gave me a sense of self-doubt that just vanished my self-confidence, lowered my energy, I lacked motivation. But I was always connected to spirituality, journaling and somewhere this always gave hope in spite of me experiencing many negative emotions. That one hope helped me find new ways to distract myself from social media. I started reading self help books, meditated, started journaling, improved my writing skills and started practicing healthy life to become better. This was not easy but I never gave up. After reading multiple books, watching multiple self-improvement videos, after lots of journaling and gratitude messages I realized we all show the happy moments because we want to show only that part of our life. Believing whatever we see on social media and comparing ourselves with others is not gonna take us anywhere in fact it’s a form of destruction. Especially making life choices based on social media  is definitely a bad choice. Spending time on social media and not getting affected by it is difficult but trying to not get affected and limiting its usage in whichever way possible is necessary. Using social media for life betterment that might for business, learning new skills, or trying to put out your art work is cool but that shouldn’t be the only defining factor.

Hope you liked part-2 and see you in part 3.