Turning 40

Hello hello! How are you all doing?

I am posting on Moments of Solitude after almost three years. However, if you’re familiar with my struggles with writing, I am happy to report that that era of my life is over. Like really, finally over. More on that later.

I am here today as I am celebrating my 40th (40th!) birthday and it feels like a good milestone to reflect and capture some thoughts on how life has been in the last few years. As I sit here, I am inevitably reminded of my 29th birthday, when the journey I am currently on began.

Turning 29

Exactly eleven years ago, on my 29th birthday, I wrote a post called Turning 29. That post came on the heels of a major life crisis where most areas of my life seemed to be falling apart. The crisis led to a wake-up call and in retrospect, was one of the biggest turning points in my life. Here’s a quick summary of the main lessons I learned around my 29th birthday eleven years ago:

• The importance of taking responsibility for my own choices and actions and allowing other people the judgment-free space to do the same
• To focus on what was in my control
• To pay attention to my thoughts and feelings and how they were shaping my life

Each of these lessons has stood the test of time and I have continued to live by them in the past eleven years. It's not that I don’t slip up and fall back into old patterns, but I am almost always able to bring myself back from frustrating situations to a place of empowered choices.

Major Life-changes in the Past Eleven Years

My life has changed significantly since the time I turned 29. Here’s a quick recap as some of you may not know all of this:

• I got married in 2013
• Siddharth and I moved to the US in 2014. I left my corporate job in India when we moved. 
• I went on to study positive psychology and started a coaching and consulting business in 2016 (this is what I currently do for work)
• We had two kids (both girls, aged 5 and 2 as I write this)
• We moved to Canada in 2020 for Siddharth’s PhD
• I discovered that I am meant to contribute to greater peace in the world (starting with helping people be more at peace with themselves and their lives.)
• I spent much of 2022 working with a spiritual teacher who helped me make progress on things I had been stuck on for years.

Most of these are significant life changes. Some of them I have written about in the past. But there are three of them I want to call special attention to: motherhood, writing, and spirituality.

Motherhood

Perhaps the one thing that changed my life in truly unexpected ways was becoming a mother. I had always wanted to have kids and yet was unprepared for what motherhood actually entails. Many of my ideas about who I was and what I wanted went out the window soon after my first child was born. I have spent a lot of time in the past few years grappling with and coming to terms with my new identity as the mother of two girls. They've already taught me so much and helped me grow by leaps and bounds. I am sure there's a lot more to come and I am excited and nervous at the same time. 

There's a lot to say on the topic of parenting but I won't get into it right now. I will likely explore this topic through my writing on other occasions. Who knows, I might even write a book about it some day! We'll see.

Writing

That brings me to the other most significant thing that has happened recently: I have finally been able to set the writer in me free. Ever since I started this blog in 2010, I have lived with this tension of wanting to write but not wanting to write at the same time. Whether or not I was doing any writing, the struggle was always present. There were times when I felt like I had figured it out, but I hadn't. Until finally, towards the end of 2022, I got to the root of what was going on and was able to resolve my inner conflict. I wrote a post about how it all happened. If you are curious, you can read it here. And yes, I have been writing fairly consistently in the past few months. No more inner conflict, no more drama, no more torture. Just writing.  

Spirituality

At 29, I had embarked on a spiritual path that transformed my life. For a long time after that, I wasn't following that path consciously, even though I kept getting called to it. But in 2020, when I realized that I wanted to help others be more at peace, I was faced with an uncomfortable truth: I was not at peace in my own life. While things were great on many levels and I had everything I had once wanted in life, deep down I knew that I wasn’t living the life I was meant to live. 

My dissatisfaction included areas of motherhood and writing, but there was more. A part of me felt disconnected from other people. I wanted to cultivate the qualities of love, compassion, and forgiveness in my heart, but I couldn't really access them. My heart felt closed-off. This is what actually led me to seek out a spiritual teacher. In working with him, I found everything I was looking for right inside of me. It was just a matter of having the orientation and the tools to access it all. While the journey has had its ups and downs, I have come to accept it all as a part of living well.

For the past few months, I have been infusing various areas of my life with spirituality. It informs my relationship with myself and others, how I look at my business, how I relate to money, and so on. I am still relatively new to this way of life but in some ways, it doesn't feel all that new. This is the path I started on at 29 and I am grateful to be back to it. 

Turning 40

As I sit here at the end of the day on my 40th birthday, I feel immense love, gratitude, and contentment. I know I am on the path I am meant to be on. I know that what's coming my way in the next decade of my life will be some combination of beautiful, messy, heart-breaking, wonderful, joyful. Because that's what life is about. Experiencing and embracing the highs as well as the lows. Learning, growing, evolving through it all. I feel more ready for it than I have been in a long time.

As I close this reflection, I want to take a moment to thank the long-time supporters of this blog. You've been on this journey with me from the beginning. Thank you for sharing how my writing has resonated with you. Thank you for encouraging me to write more. Your support has always meant the world to me. And I finally feel ready to write my heart out.

Much love,

Yashi

P.S. If you want to receive my writing more frequently, I invite you to sign-up for my newsletter on my website. While I may occasionally capture notes about my evolution as a person on Moments of Solitude, I want to keep things simple and write in one place. The website currently feels like the best fit. Hope to see some of you in there! And if you don't feel like signing-up for another mailing list, I get it. There's too much email in the world! I hope our paths will cross in other ways :)

A Promise

On my birthday in April 2020, I had an important revelation about my life's purpose. I was reading a book just before going to sleep. The author posed a question that I had encountered dozens of times before this but never had a clear answer for. 

The question was: When you die, what would you like your epitaph to read?

Before this point in time, whenever I came across a similar question, I would ignore it and move on. It was too abstract. I didn’t know what I wanted my life to stand for. There were so many things I wanted to do and be in life - how could I capture everything in a few words or sentences?

When I read the question this time, though, four words immediately floated in my head: “Her presence brought peace.”

Now, this may seem like a simple incident to you. But for me, it was life changing.

You see, five years ago, I had left an established corporate career in search of work I was more passionate about. On that journey of self-discovery, I came across Simon Sinek’s TED talk on the power of why. When I reflected on what my why was, I realized that what I valued most in life was mental peace. All that I ever did in life was ultimately towards that end. However, until now, peace had simply been a personal value for me.

But recently, when the words “her presence brought peace” came to me, I realized that peace was no longer a personal pursuit for me. It’s the reason I am here. In that moment, I knew that I am meant to work towards bringing greater peace in the world. And while I have already been working towards bringing greater well-being in the lives of my coaching clients for the past few years, this newfound awareness about my purpose has renewed my commitment to my work in a profound way. 

Frankly, I don’t know what form my purpose will take in the longer term. But for now, I know that in my work as a coach, I want to more intentionally work towards helping people be more at peace with themselves and their lives.

Why?

Because I truly believe that a big part of greater peace in the world comes from greater peace in the hearts of people who inhabit it. In other words, inner peace contributes to outer peace.

How?

Imagine, for a moment, that you were completely at peace with yourself. All the things you don’t like about yourself, all the shortcomings for which you beat yourself up, all the failure and shame and regret that you are carrying with you, imagine that you were able to make peace with all of it. You were able to forgive, accept, and love yourself. Unconditionally.

Would you then:

• Spend time comparing yourself with others?
• Feel the need to prove yourself in any way?
• Want to exercise power over those who don’t have it?
• Take your anger and frustration out on other people?
• Want to harm someone – including yourself?

I genuinely believe that when we are at peace with ourselves and our lives, the answer to all of these questions is a clear no.

And so, this is my promise to you and to myself: from this point on in my life, in one way or another, I will be working towards bringing about more peace in the world.

Yours, in peace

Yashi 

Life Update: July 2017

Hello there! How are you all doing?

It's been a while since I posted anything here. While I have written a significant number of assignments during this time, I haven't been active on this blog. I was motivated to write this post for two reasons:

1) I miss writing this blog. It has been an important part of my journey over the past few years and for the time that I have been away, I have missed it. 

2) I have realized that apart from being a personal blog for me, Moments of Solitude also acts as a way for many of my loved ones to stay updated on what I have been up to. On a recent trip to India, a surprising number of people have asked me about this blog, thereby inspiring me to start writing again.

Now, given my previous track record on this, I am not making any promises of writing regularly. Let’s just take it one post at a time, shall we? 

This post is based on the three most frequently asked questions I encountered during my recent trip to India.

1. So, what have you been up to in the last couple of years? 

As the regular readers of my blog would know, I left my corporate job in India and moved to the US with my husband almost 3 years ago. I was on a journey to find and do work that would make me come alive, and at the time, was posting here quite regularly about the progress I was making. Through this journey, I discovered the field of Positive Psychology and joined the MAPP program in September 2015. 

In some ways, I feel like I entered an entirely different life with MAPP. Everything was new and exciting and overwhelming, and it is only now, almost a year after completing the program, that I am beginning to get back to the rest of my life. 

More on that later, but as of now, here’s a quick snapshot of what I have been up to in the past couple of years:

- Finished the MAPP program in August 2016. In that year, I met some truly wonderful people, learned about the science and practice of happiness, and wrote a final paper on the importance of self-awareness in our quest for well-being.

- Got trained and certified as a Life Coach. Started my own Positive Psychology based coaching business. What do I do in my business? In a nutshell, I help people lead happier, more fulfilling lives, using the science of human flourishing. 

- Started teaching Positive Psychology. I fell in love with Positive Psychology almost as soon as I found it, and it has become an integral part of my new career. I apply it in my own life and my coaching all the time, yes, but I also teach Positive Psychology in various forums. I went back to the MAPP program as a Assistant Instructor, became a Teaching Assistant for UPenn’s Positive Psychology course on Coursera, and I also started a Meetup group to share all that I have learned about living a happy life in the past couple of years.

2. How is life otherwise?

Overall, life is good. Siddharth and I are still happily married and no, we don’t have kids yet. I still love living in California. After visiting India in June this year, I am currently filled with a renewed sense of gratitude for the wonderful weather here. I do miss home, though, especially because most of my family and friends are there.  

The past year in particular has been a mixed bag, primarily because it was the first year of me running a business. Of all the things I ever wanted to become when I grew up, an entrepreneur wasn’t one of them. To be honest, I still think of myself as “a reluctant entrepreneur.” I became one because the other options weren’t offering me what I wanted. This lifestyle has its pros and cons and I still feel lost sometimes. I don’t know if this is it for me for the rest of my life, but as of now, I am all in. 

I continue to be an early riser. At an average, I get up around 6 am. My goal is to get closer to 4:30 or 5 am. I have also gotten more disciplined at eating healthy and exercising regularly. 

Like I said: Overall, life is good.

3. Do you miss the corporate world?

If someone had asked me this question a couple of years ago, my answer would have been a clear and resounding no. I was really tired of the corporate world when I left my job, and thought I was done for good. But now, having been away for a few years, and especially after running my own business for over a year, I have realized that there are pros and cons to everything. There are a few aspects of the corporate job I miss, and a few others I don’t. The thing I miss most, though, is being a part of a team.

Running a one-person business can be isolating, even for an introvert like me. In the past year, there have been times when I have really longed for the kind of team spirit I felt when I was working at a full-time job. I definitely miss that. Then, there is the trade-off between flexibility and financial stability. At this point in my business, while I have full control over how I spend my time, my income fluctuates from month to month. Sometimes, I miss the regular salary I earned until a few years ago.

Would I ever go back to a corporate job? Honestly, at this point, I don’t know. In the past couple of years I have learned that flexibility is one of my biggest values, and right now, I don’t want to trade that for anything. If that changes in the next few years, we will see.

So, that's about it. I know I said this blog helps my loved ones stay in touch with me, but strangely enough, I feel more in touch with myself right now, after writing this post. I shouldn’t be surprised, though, because that’s what writing almost always does for me. No wonder I have missed writing this blog.

Hopefully, I will be back with another post soon.

Why Do I Write?

Why do I write?

I often get asked this question.

Oh, no! Not by other people. I am no famous writer.

I get asked this question by myself. 

By a part of myself, to be precise.

Do you have parts to yourself?

Parts that question you, your dreams, your capabilities?

Parts that tell you what you can’t do and why?

And then, the parts that have the answers?

I have so many parts to myself that I often lose count.

Take this one, for example.

The part of me that’s forever critical.

It is never satisfied, no matter what I do.

“You’re not good enough. You never will be.” It tells me.

And I want to curl up in my bed and cry all day long.

“That’s nonsense!” Retorts another part.

This one is wiser, kinder, gentler.

It knows that I am human and forgives me my mistakes.

“You are capable of so much!” It says.

And I find hope again.

There’s a part of me that worries too much.

“What if?” is its favorite question.

“What if you fail? What if your dreams don’t come true?”

It thinks it must prepare me for the worst.

It is afraid of being hurt - like it has been in the past.

Even as I write this, a cynic in me is raising its voice.

“Wait a minute, wasn’t this supposed to be about why you write?

What are you doing, rambling on about nothing of value?”

I am dumbfounded. It is right. What am I doing?

My heart sinks a little.

Another part comes up to my rescue, however.

“Sometimes, you write because there is nothing else you can do.

It doesn’t matter what, it doesn’t matter whether it is any good.

What matters is that your heart’s content come rolling out.

As words, or as tears, or as both. Like they are doing now.”

Everyday, hundreds of times, I watch these parts fight with each other.

They are all me, I know. Or may be none of them is me.

May be I am more than all of them combined.

I know I have the power to choose which part to listen to.

But sometimes, it is really, really hard.

May be that’s why I write. Sometimes, at least.

The process of writing has the power to heal.

It gives a place for these voices to say all that they want to say.

Until they are tired and ready to let go.

After which I feel free to do what needs to be done.

The Writer in Me: Revived

“Yashi! Will you be my client?” The coach asked me.

It took me a moment to process this request. Me??

I was attending a coach training program in San Rafael, California, along with 25 other participants. At the beginning of our training, all of us had committed to being a client for demonstration purposes whenever called upon to do so. I didn't know it then, but had quickly learned that being coached requires courage. And, being coached in front of a bunch of people requires much more courage. In the past few days, I had seen several other participants get coached and bare their hearts and souls in front of other trainees. I had sat in the audience, admiring their courage and vulnerability. And being the delusional optimist that I am, I had somehow assumed that I would never have to sit in front of the class getting coached. Clearly, I had been wrong.

I agreed, of course, and walked up to the front of the room. The coach knew I had a topic in mind because she had asked all of us to come up with a “meaty” topic - something we really wanted but were struggling to achieve.

The coach and I settled down at the front of the room, 25 pairs of eyes staring at us, waiting to see what was in store.

“So, what is the topic that you have in mind?” My coach began.

“Well, the topic is that of writing. I have always loved writing and really enjoy it, but, for the past two years, I have been struggling with creating a consistent writing routine.”

If you are a regular reader of my blog - you know exactly what I was talking about. Again and again, in the past couple of years, I have set goals to write regularly, made promises to post on my blog consistently, and have failed invariably. All this has been extremely frustrating for two reasons: first, as some of you would know, I hate breaking promises. And second - my intense desire to write combined with my acute inability to do so has kept me in a state of perennial inner conflict. If I really wanted to write so much, why was it so difficult for me to do so? I wanted to solve this issue once and for all - to either decide that I don’t want to write as much as I say I do or to act in a way that was consistent with my words. I really did need coaching with this topic.

My coach began asking me questions about what made writing so important to me, what was it that I wanted to write about, how did it align with my purpose in life, what my ideal writing life would look like, and what was it that I needed to do to get to where I wanted to be. For those of you who don’t know much about coaching, this is how the process works. By asking powerful questions, my coach was compelling me to think about my why, about the cost of me not taking any action, and about the pointlessness of the obstacles I had unwittingly placed in my own path.

Ten minutes later, I heard myself committing to write an article of 1000 words on the same day, and to share it with my coach the very next morning. This was over and above the other commitments I had for the evening (which were a lot). One of the participants later told me she would totally support me if I decided to feel “unwell” in the evening. Another one shared that she almost yelled out a resounding “no” on my behalf. Even for me, under usual circumstances, this commitment would have seemed ridiculous. I, who needs a specific kind of time, space, and state of mind to really get into the zone of writing, churning out 1000 words just before bed when I was half-asleep? How on earth was that going to happen?

But, you know what, I did it. As tired and exhausted as I was, I still wrote the first draft of that article before I went to sleep that night. And, it felt fantastic.

I didn’t share that draft with the coach, though. The next morning, I told her I had written the first terrible draft, but that I would edit it and send her the revised version. I also promised my batch of 25 that I would share the final article with them. And I am going to do it. Not just that, several weeks have passed since then and I have written something or the other every single day. I didn’t write so consistently even when I was participating in NaNoWriMo - a challenge that required me to write 50,000 words in a month.

So, what happened? What exactly shifted in that ten minute coaching session that enabled me to bring about a behavior change so quickly? Well, three things, to be precise:

1. First of all, I broke some myths about my writing process. Unlike what I had always believed, I don’t necessarily need a particular kind of time, space, and state of mind to get into the zone of writing. I wrote 1000 words in 20 minutes that day, even in a half-asleep state - and even though the first draft was really bad, it had enough content in it to become meaningful and coherent upon revision. 

2. Secondly, the coaching session helped me break down a vague goal - building a regular writing routine - into a specific one: to just show up and write everyday - for 30 minutes. That’s all. No setting the scene, no creating a space, no having a specific topic in mind. Just showing up and rambling on for 30 minutes. It also helped to have an accountability partner - someone who was counting on me to fulfill my commitment.

3. Finally, and I think most importantly, this exercise helped me gain clarity about why is it that I want to write. I realized that I want to use writing as a tool to help others and live a more meaningful life. To be clear, this was a major realization for me that happened over a period of several days and not just in that ten minute coaching session, but the session did bring everything together for me.

I have been thinking quite a bit about the topic of writing since the day I was coached almost six weeks ago. There are so many other lessons I have learned about myself and my writing process that this topic requires a post of its own. However, I want to conclude this post by sharing my current destination on my journey as a writer. Even though I didn’t post much on my blog, I have written more in the past year than ever before in my life, thanks to a ton of academic writing required for the MAPP program. I have also received encouraging feedback from my instructors and classmates, which has enhanced my confidence in my writing abilities. Finally, the coaching session described above has been instrumental in connecting the dots for me. Today, more than ever before, I feel that I am on the verge of finding my voice. The writer in me seems to have been revived with a new sense of gratitude, hope, and purpose.

2015: The Year That Was

Even though the season of yearly reviews has come and gone, and I am more than three weeks late in posting this, I still want to write about how 2015 was for me, particularly because it was a very special year.

“Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Never before in my life has this statement held as true as it does for the year 2015. I began the year with very specific goals and plans about what I wanted to do - many of them I didn’t end up successfully executing. However, the process enabled me to achieve things I didn’t even have on my list - things I wouldn’t have imagined possible at the beginning of the year. The year 2015, without doubt, was one of the BEST years of my life.

What I Had Planned: To lose 13 pounds through regular exercise that was also fun.

What I Actually Did: Trained for and ran my first half-marathon. It was fun at times, but very difficult at others. Even though I lost only about 6 pounds this year, I am fitter and healthier than ever before.

What I Learned: That sometimes, the thing that is holding you back, is all in your head.

What I Had Planned: To start making a living from my passion (which I initially thought was writing)

What I Actually Did: Realized that I was actually passionate about helping people become happier (and writing was just a means to do that), came across the field of positive psychology, learned about the MAPP program a week before its application deadline, applied and got through, and began one of the most meaningful (and fun!) periods of my life. Didn’t make any money - ended up paying more for education, but boy, is it worth it!

What I Learned: To trust the process - one of the key themes in the MAPP program.

What I Had Planned: To write and post regularly on this blog.

What I Actually Did: Ahem. This has been my most embarrassing failure in 2015. After repeated promises of writing and posting regularly, I consistently failed to meet my targets. However, I did an enormous amount of academic writing this year - which has been helpful. But, that does not take away from the fact that I didn’t write as much as I would have liked to - and I hope to do better on this front in 2016.

What I Learned: That it takes immense discipline to write on a regular basis, and that I have a long way to go in this regard.

What on Earth is Positive Psychology?

First of all, wait a minute. Let me get this straight. The first semester of MAPP is already over? Wasn't it yesterday that I went back to school? Even 2015 is about to end? And I have not written a single post - a single post - on positive psychology so far? And I haven't posted anything in almost four months now? Despite my goals of writing and posting consistently? This can't be true, can it? Except that it is. Time flew faster than it ever had, I wrote little else apart from theory papers, and I ignored this blog even after having so much to write about. Sigh. I have made and broken enough promises about writing this year to be afraid of committing to anything now. So, as of now I have decided to just go with the flow with regards to this blog.

The irony is that for the first time in my life, I haven't had a shortage of content to write about. And yet...But, before I start ruminating again, let me begin. And I shall begin from the beginning. The title of this post reflects the nature and the tone of questions people ask me when they learn that I study positive psychology. What is positive psychology? What do you mean "positive" - is the rest of the psychology negative? Oh, isn't this the field with the yellow smiley face as its logo? In this post, I will share my perspective on these questions, based on what I have learned in the last three months.

Let's begin with a thought experiment. Imagine that all the problems from your life have vanished. You have perfect relationships, all the money you could have asked for, a job you love, a boss from heaven, and there is nothing that is not working in your life. How would that be? Would you like to lead such a life?

If you are anything like me, you will be bored to death just by imagining such perfection. 

The good news is, that is NOT what positive psychology is about.

Now, imagine that your life is filled with failures, challenges, and pain. Nothing good ever happens to you. You are miserable all the time. How does that sound for a life?

Terrible? Of course.

Thankfully, that is also not what positive psychology is about.

The truth is: life is messy, but it is also wonderful. We are awful at certain things, but excel at others. We are often driven by fear, but also have the capacity for enormous love. Positive psychology is the scientific study of how human beings can live their wonderful, messy lives in the best possible way. It is not just about the yellow smiley face. It is not a field of study as opposed to "negative" psychology. It is a new branch of psychology that focuses on the good things in life. It attempts to answer questions like what makes life worth living, and what actions can we take to lead better lives. And it does it using the principles of science.

Does positive psychology have answers to all the life's questions? Not really. It is a new field of study, and there is a long road ahead of it. But I think it is a worthy endeavor and I love being a part of it.