by Shikha Rastogi | Sep 7, 2017 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! A couple of weeks ago I examined the close connection between ‘feeling our negative emotions’ and our happiness and in the process it got a little emotional for me :-). This week, I would like to examine a very popular relatively new belief which is getting a lot of attention especially from women these days. And that belief is – A WOMAN CAN HAVE IT ALL!!
Belief: A WOMAN CAN HAVE IT ALL…
Even though at first I really want to say, no, absolutely not; especially not without making sacrifices which would affect at least some aspects of a woman’s life – personal or professional and the lives of her family members; I also believe whether a woman can have it all or not depends on how she defines as “having it all” and what her priorities are in her own life and what parts of her life she is willing to make compromises with because without compromises, there is no such thing as “having it all”!! For me personally, it’s not possible to have it all because whenever I think about having it all, what I really want in my professional life is to have a very high profile career with amazing pay, a fancy title, and great prospects to keep climbing the corporate ladder regardless of the long working hours. On top of that, for my personal life, I want to be married to a husband who is very loving and supportive of my high profile career and who pitches in to raise our 2 very well behaved kids. And I don’t think I am going out on a limb when I say that most women define “having it all” similar to how I define it. But like I mentioned above, since a lot of compromises will have to be made to get to “having it all”; I don’t think it is even appropriate to call it “having it all”. It should rather be called “having most of or some of it all” 🙂
Folks, I believe a revolution started a few decades ago in this world when some women who became aware of their very intense desire to become as successful as men in their own careers and therefore started to work very hard to achieve their dreams of having these very successful careers. And even though these women were out there achieving amazing heights in their careers, they still were not willing to sacrifice their dreams of having amazing personal lives on top of these high profile careers. Thus, over time, as these women tried to have the best of both worlds, it created a huge dilemma for these ambitions women because at the end of the day, they were still women which meant that according to the laws of nature, they were still the ones who had to get pregnant and bring human beings into this world and nurture them far more than their husbands could. And since this law of nature hasn’t changed and probably never will; and on top of that, since over the last few decades a lot more women have bought into this belief of “having it all” and now have this flame of ambition burning inside of them, it has impacted women by tremendously increasing their workload and as a result their stress levels. And this is what has led some women, including myself, to question the sanity of this belief – IF A WOMAN CAN REALLY HAVE IT ALL?
If you are a woman who believes in this belief; each time you watch/read the news which talks about the Marissa Mayers and Indra Nooyis and Sheryl Sandbergs of this world; do you think to yourself, I can be them. Or I want to be them? Or I have what it takes to be them? And the more you pay attention to such stories, the more you buy into this illusion and think yes, you can have it all!! You can have a very high profile career; a loving and supportive husband who has a similar high profile career, yet, completely supports you in your career as well and 2 beautiful and very well behaved kids. Each time you think to yourself, if these ladies can do it, why not me. And if you are already an ambitious woman, these kinds of news stories really catch your attention and make you desire the kind of life that these ladies lead. It makes you desire the kind of power and money and importance and being needed all the time by very important people to do very important things. But ladies, the truth is, even though these women with these high profile careers appear to have it all, however, what you don’t know is the entire story. You probably don’t even know half the story because this is the side that you don’t get to hear in the news. You don’t get to hear what these women’s internal states are as they try to manage everything in a day that just like all of us only has only 24 hours in it. You don’t hear the news about their stress levels and their coping mechanisms to deal with those stress levels. You don’t get to hear about how little or no time they have available for their own kids and spouses. You don’t get to hear their kids’ longings to spend time with their own mothers and not the nannies. You don’t get to hear about their own disappointments of missing out on watching their kids grow older. You don’t get to hear about the kinds of relationships they have with their own family members. My point is, you don’t hear about a lot of things which they have to sacrifice to get to where they are in their careers, the price they have to pay. And its not just women who end up paying the price, its men too who pay the price for having a very high profile career. But this is the compromise they choose to make. And that’s why, even though, to you it may appear that these women have it all, they simply don’t! They just choose their careers over other things in their lives. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with that because this really is a personal choice. But even though this really is a personal choice, at the end of the day, you, the woman, has to be satisfied with making this choice no matter what you end up choosing. If you choose your career over your personal life, you have to be OK with it. If you choose your personal life over your career, you have to be OK with it. If you try to do a little bit of both, you have to be OK with it. You have to be OK with it because if you are not, you will never be happy living the life that you have today and will want to do what your friend is doing or your relative is doing because like I mentioned before, everyone’s lives look much more appealing than your own until you look deeper. Moreover, at the end of the day, all these choices lead you to one and only one destination – happiness and none of these choices are better than the others, I think. They just make our life journeys different, that’s all!
I know to be able to be at peace with your choices in general is a tough thing let alone when that choice impacts the entire foundation of your life and the people who matter to you in that life. But personally coming from an ambitious mindset and now living peacefully by accepting a little bit of both worlds, I can tell you that no matter how highly your boss or colleagues think of you, its only spending those few precious moments watching the smiles and laughter on the faces of these little people who you brought into this world is what makes my heart sing with joy :-).
Leave me a message if you feel like leaving one and until next time, live life 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Aug 25, 2017 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! A couple of weeks ago, I examined failure and a very popular belief associated with failure which tries to act as a motivator but I believe ends up doing more harm than good to a person’s psyche and that belief was ‘try, try and try again until you succeed’! This week, as kids head back to school, the emotions of families in most households are on a roller coaster ride. Hence, this week, I would like to examine why it’s even more important to tightly hang on to that compassion and kindness during these times especially when we may feel most stressed and out of control!
Belief: Its important to punish kids so that they can learn how to behave better!!
Don’t we all love to listen to all those heart melting stories when someone shows amazing kindness towards us or someone else. Or, when someone wraps us or someone else up in this soft blanket of compassion when we need it the most! When someone understands us the way we would like them to understand. When someone just listens to us without making us feeling like we are bad people for saying all that we want to say! When someone waits with open arms for our storms to pass so that they can give us that tight hug and let us know that we are still ok after the storm. When someone appreciates us for the small as well as big things that we are capable of. When someone loves us simply because we exist and are part of their lives. When someone accepts us perfectly along with all our imperfections!! Don’t we all love that and deeply desire that kind of love, kindness, compassion, acceptance and connection? So, if we all, regardless of where we come from or how we were raised or what religion or faith we follow or what our family values are, desire the same things; how is it that we can’t give these same things to each other or at the very least our own family members, our kids and our own selves? How is it that while raising kids, we continue to believe that punishment or anger is necessary to get kids into behaving better? Why is it that we continue to blame the state of our lives on external people and events and don’t take responsibility for our inability to manage our negative feelings like anger? Here is my perspective…
Folks, even though we all deeply desire these beautiful things that I mentioned above; however, those times when we need acceptance and compassion and kindness and connection the most, we are unable to extend that to anyone including ourselves and our very young kids because we are too busy judging ourselves, our kids and other people as bad. And we judge them as bad people because we judge negative emotions as bad and therefore whoever displays such emotions or lets them out in the form of anger or any other bad behavior is tagged as a bad person. And because as a society as well as in a family setting, we have such high expectations from everyone including young kids to be able to display good behavior all the time every time; we create an environment of so much shame and embarrassment for the young kids and adults who for whatever reasons at times are unable to manage their emotions and thus their behavior. And because we create so much shame around negative emotions and behavior is why a lot people end up having really bad episodes of anger or bad behavior because they have been holding on to that shame and anger for a very long time. And when they can’t keep this shame and anger inside anymore, they snap and we all know the damage that could be done by people when they snap!!
So, how is it that we can begin to create environments where people feel safe to let their crap out? Well, just like charity begins at home, I feel very strongly that the very first step towards breaking this vicious cycle of shame and embarrassment with regards to all negative human emotions is to learn how to parent our kids with compassion, kindness, acceptance and connection. And when we learn to hang on to compassion and kindness in the midst of our kids yelling and crying and tantrums; what we are teaching our kids is that they are they are not bad people for behaving the way they are behaving and that they are only HUMAN! On top of that, when we are able to stay calm and not yell or get angry at our kid or call them names when they are in the middle of their crap; we also let them know that we accept them and love them regardless of all their imperfections! And when kids know that about their own parents, they don’t feel ashamed about displaying their negative emotions as well as behavior. And when they don’t feel ashamed, they don’t feel like bad people who are unable to manage themselves and their emotions and behavior. And when they don’t feel like bad people, they are able to recover faster from an episode and are able to connect better with themselves and love themselves for who they are. And when they are able to love themselves for who they are, miracles happen!! Miracles happen because they are able to connect with themselves, their parents and everyone else around them on a heart level instead of an ego level! And when they are able to connect on a heart level, they are able to give all the compassion and kindness and love and acceptance. And when they give out all these qualities, they receive them back in abundance!! And honestly, don’t we all want to raise kids who are kind and compassionate?
To anyone who is still not convinced, I would like to say this – I know it’s very hard to stay calm in the middle of a kids’ tantrum and bad behavior especially because most of us were not raised this way and didn’t learn how to manage our own emotions; however, I want you to imagine this. Imagine that you work in a corporation and your boss is a bully. Every time he needs you to do something, instead of encouraging and helping you into doing your best work; he shouts at you and calls you names. So, do you think you will like to be yelled at by your own boss? Will that encourage you to perform your best? Will that motivate you to wake up each morning and show up at work? I don’t think I am going out on a limb if I assume that no one, literally no one, will like to work for a boss like this. So, answer this then – aren’t you doing exactly the same thing to your kids; bullying them when you yell at them and call them names? If you are judging yourself for being a terrible parent right now, I invite you to show yourself some compassion and kindness because this is where it really begins – YOU!!!
And as always, feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next time, let your crap out because you are human 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Aug 10, 2017 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! Hope you are enjoying summer wherever you live. Few weeks ago, I examined a belief which tells us that we should do whatever is necessary while we are still young so that we can live an amazing life sometime in the future. This week, I would like to examine failure and a very popular belief associated with failure which tries to act as a motivator but I believe ends up doing more harm than good to a person’s psyche and that belief is ‘try, try and try again until you succeed’!
Belief: Try, try and try again until you succeed!
Sometimes in life you may feel like nothing seems to be working the way you want it to work or when you want it to work. The goals you set for yourself may not seem achievable. You may feel like you don’t have control over pretty much anything in your life! It may feel like someone up there in the sky is not your friend and doesn’t love you and wants you to suffer. It may feel like no matter what you do, it’s never enough. You may notice all these other people around you living their amazing lives expect you! You may feel so frustrated, so hopeless, so unloved, so unworthy all at the same time! You may feel like a complete and total failure! The very raw experience of failing is what you may be experiencing…
‘Failure’ is something that every single one of us experiences in our lifetime. It doesn’t discriminate between rich or poor; white or black; intelligent or average; fancy title or not. It’s a basic truth of life and living and if you allow yourself to learn from it, it has the power to transform you! It can transform your beliefs, the way you think about life and living, the way you think about failure and success and thus it can change the way you go through the very raw experience of failing itself if you allow yourself to listen to the messages that are being sent your way! Amazingly, it also opens a well of opportunities that you were turning a blind eye towards until now! It allows you to move in the direction that is meant for you in this lifetime. However, most human beings don’t think about failures this way. Most of us are so afraid of failures and the experience of failing itself. And they are afraid because from the very beginning of their lives, the people around them tagged failure as something bad, something embarrassing, something that should not have happened but if it did happen, you are to bury it into a dark corner of your heart and with the help of positive thinking and your will power, you should just keep trying again and again and again….until you succeed! And when you finally succeed, that’s when you feel worthy as a human being, devoid of all embarrassments, able to talk about your success and just pretend that your failures never even happened! Failure is like this monster that exists in everyone’s thinking, but we are all too embarrassed to acknowledge that it not only exists but takes up quite a bit of room in our heads each time we try anything!
So, let me ask you this – what is the worst thing that happened to you when you failed? Did you feel awful? Did you feel like you have nothing to live for? Did you cry your eyes out? Did you feel like this is only happening to you in this whole wide world? Did you feel very alone and lonely? Folks, whatever it is that you may have felt or are still feeling because of whatever you have failed at and how many ever times you may have failed at that thing, failing is just as important as success. Failure is the Universe’s way of maneuvering you in the right direction especially when you are that person who has everything planned for yourself and your life, however, your plans don’t match the Universe’s plans! But because most of us have a negative perspective on failures; we tend to just stay in that frustrated mode and keep trying over and over again for that same thing without even realizing that there could be something else that we could be doing with our time and with our life.
A few years ago, I read somewhere that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And to me, that is exactly what ‘try, try and try again, until you succeed’ means. By using this belief to try to achieve whatever it is that we want to achieve; what we ignorantly end up doing is denying all the other possibilities that are out there which are just waiting for our attention. And I don’t even need to give you examples this time because there are many that you can find from your own life about how you failed at something and then something even more amazing happened to you. Something that you didn’t even realize was possible. What I have been realizing over the years is that we have created a very narrow definition of success in our heads and all of us like sheep in a herd try to go about achieving success in very similar ways – getting a degree and working in a corporate job and making six figure salary etc. etc. But let me ask you this – how many of you actually love what you do in your jobs other than the paychecks that you get? If you don’t love what you do regardless of whether you are a rocket scientist or a janitor, then I think you still are a failure if you just have the guts to ask your own heart :-)..it will tell you the truth!!
Folks, I have had a very intimate relationship with failures, quite a bit of them actually! But failures is the very reason why I am able to express my heart out and type up these words which resonate with so many of you! I didn’t realize it back when I was in the middle of all my failures but the Universe was just trying to reveal all that I am capable of in this lifetime :-)…Do you know what you are truly capable of? Just ask your heart and do what it says even if you feel fear in every cell of your body! Just do it!!
And as always, feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. Until next time, listen to your failures and learn from them….
by Shikha Rastogi | Jul 14, 2017 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! A couple of weeks back, I examined relationships and what happens to two people in a relationship when we say “relationships grow apart over time”! This week, I would like to examine the belief that we should do whatever is necessary while we are still young so that we can live an amazing life in the future when we can send our kids to the most prestigious schools and retire thereafter!
Belief: We should do whatever it takes to accumulate for our kids’ college as well as for our retirements which is when we will get time to live our lives and be happy :-)!!
Wow, I really want to call us the most stupid species on this planet but for the sake of keeping it civil, let’s just call ourselves, naïve! And we are naïve because we think that we have time. We think we have time to work in that stressful job that leaves us so drained that we can’t even spend a few beautiful moments with our own family and kids; and we tell ourselves that we are working so hard to make our kids future bright. We think we have the time to forsake the relationships that we have right in front of us so that we can spend more time with our ‘online’ friends; and we tell ourselves that we are making those much needed ‘connections’ which may help us when we need them in the future. We think we have time to shop until we drop instead of spending that time having fun with our family; and we tell ourselves how much happiness we are bringing into the lives of our families by shopping with them. I think you get my point!
Folks, we have a very twisted view of life where even though we have so much of what we want from life already, however, we still keep chasing after more and more and more. And this greed for more and more doesn’t end with more. In fact, it just paves way for even more and more and more!! And this cycle of needing more continues until very late in life you realize what you have done! You realize, all these years, you had so much stuff and so many people who loved you but because you were too busy trying to chase after more, you didn’t even pay attention to what you already had! You didn’t take time to appreciate who already loved you. You didn’t pay attention to the amazing life that you already had. You didn’t pay attention to the hundreds and thousands of dollars you already had in your bank account. You didn’t pay attention to the amazing kids you already had. You didn’t pay attention to any of that!! You just kept chasing after more because the belief in your head told you that when you have more of everything it will lead to more happiness!!
I want you to understand what you are missing out on when you are focused on achieving more and more. So, let’s imagine you are a parent of a young kid and because you work in a very demanding job, you are unable to spend much time with him. Thus, this kid, although he needs you and your time and your attention; he is growing up in a one parent family because you are too busy creating a great future for him. So, down he road this kid grows up to be a teenager and now that he is a teenager, you want to influence him and his life and the decisions that he needs to make about his path forward in life. However, he refuses to listen to you let alone choose to do what you expect from him and this makes your relationship with him very turbulent. And because there is a lot of friction in your family, it creates a lot of unhappiness amongst your family members. But although your kid has nothing to do with all the unhappiness that is being created in your family, however, you blame him because you assumed that just because you are his parent, he will listen to you and do what you expect him to do. You thought it was more important to accumulate the money which he will need sometime in the future and sacrificed connecting with him in the present when he needed you. You sacrificed building your bond with him because you set a future date for your family’s happiness and you set a future date because you believed that your family including your son will be very happy if he only you could accumulate enough money to send him to that Ivy league school! Thus, you didn’t take the time to be the parent to your kid but now you want him to be the kid to his parent!
Folks, what I have come to understand in life is this amazing thing called ‘connection’! If you have a kid or any other family member, you need to connect with them and that is what makes you happy right in the moment. You need to notice and enjoy the already amazing things you have in your life which will make you happy not earning more or achieving more so that happiness can be yours in the future! I think most of us don’t really need more of anything! What we need is to be more present for what we already have enough of! And a lot of us already have a lot of what we desire. It’s just that we don’t take the time to notice and appreciate what we already have. And when we begin to do that, we will not have to wait to be happy at a future date, we will be able to find happiness right here, right now! And that is what makes any life worth living because until we do that, we are not even living, we are just chasing :-).
And as always, feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next time, be more present in your already amazing life 🙂
by Shikha Rastogi | Jul 3, 2017 | Beliefs, Perspective
Hi everyone, welcome back! A couple of weeks ago, I examined our beliefs around ‘fighting’ and tried to understand if all the fighting that we do makes the world a better place or brings us closer to peace that each one of us is in search of in this life! This week, as I have been thinking a lot about relationships lately, I want to examine what exactly happens to two people in a relationship when we say “their relationship grew apart over time”!
Belief: We truly loved each other in the beginning of our relationship but with time, we just grew apart!
As soon as we are born on this planet, each one of us forms our very first relationship and that is with our parents. And if we have older siblings, we become someone’s brother or sister. As life goes on, we form other personal relationships including our ‘love relationships’. This is a relationship where we put a lot at stake. We open our hearts to a stranger to give them love and desire to receive love in exchange. We choose to accept this person along with their flaws and their strengths; their ups and their downs; their good habits and their bad habits; their passions and their interests; their physical appearance and much more! And we choose to love everything about this person, including their weaknesses because somehow, we truly believe that this person and our relationship with them will give us the happiness that we so very much desire! In fact, we also believe this person will fulfil us and make us complete in ways that we cannot not do ourselves!! And we think all these things because of what we believe about relationships – that they are a source of happiness and love! So finally, one day when we decide to spend the rest of our lives together, everything makes sense. And although we don’t know what the future will bring along our paths, we still make plans for the rest of our lives!
Thus, with a lot of hope and love in our hearts, we start our new lives together. Over the first few days, everything seems to be fine until the honeymoon period is over and reality sets in. At that time, we realize that the love of our life doesn’t quite meet our expectations. And they don’t meet our expectations because they do something that doesn’t quite agree with our ‘idea’ of a life partner and the ‘idea’ of how this partnership which we call relationship is ‘supposed to be’. Hence, we get a little upset but don’t say anything to them because we try to adjust! After all, another belief has taught us to adjust and compromise if we want a long and happy relationship! A few weeks go by and we continue to stumble upon our partner’s habits or personality traits that don’t quite meet our expectations and now because we are irritated and frustrated, we say something. And this saying something leads to our first disagreement and maybe even a fight :-)!
As months go by, we continue to disagree more and fight more but since another belief told us that it’s very important to keep our relationship alive, we continue to stay married. However, because we didn’t quite get the happiness that we desired through our partnership, we now turn to our career and think that we can find happiness through our careers and therefore we pursue our career ambitions and become busy with work. And because we become busy with work, we don’t get a lot of time to disagree with or fight with our partners and so our relationship becomes bearable again! But as time goes on, we become frustrated with work also and then turn to ‘starting a family’ and think that we will find happiness through bringing a human into this world! So, we bring another human into this world and this tiny human already carries a huge responsibility of making her parents happy! And as soon as this baby is born, we become even more frustrated and depressed and hopeless and in physical and emotional pain all at once because of sleep deprivation and insane amount of tiredness :-). The reality of raising a kid sets in and hits us on the head like a brick :-).
And all this while, if God forbid, anything that was part of our plan didn’t quite work out per our plan, maybe we didn’t get the job that we wanted or didn’t conceive a kid when we wanted, then that would have added even more stress to our already stressful life. And it would have added more stress not only because we just couldn’t achieve what we so very much wanted to, but at the same time, we felt like our partner didn’t quite get affected as much as we did by not being able to achieve that thing! Thus again, because our partner was not able to meet our expectations about the way they should feel in any given situation, we become even more frustrated and disconnected from them and therefore with our relationship with them!
Thus, after years of being married and living in the same home and raising kids together, we still feel like strangers. In fact, we feel even more strange to each other than when we first decided to get married several years ago! And this is what is called “growing apart in a relationship”! And this growing apart happened because of two reasons. One, we assumed that a person or a relationship with them will lead us to that elusive happiness especially because we were not able to become happy on our own! Second, we expected that this other person, just because you chose to marry them, should behave and feel a certain way – the way you think is right! And that folks right there are the two most important reasons why people grow apart in relationships – assumptions and expectations! And this relationship or any relationship for that matter doesn’t even stand a chance from the very beginning but because we think that relationships are ‘supposed to make us happy’ is why we still get into them in the first place! And even if you or someone you know is still in a relationship several years after they got married, it doesn’t mean that they are happy in that relationship! A lot of people just don’t have the courage to break apart from their relationship because of fear – fear of being alone and lonely! And this fear is another big reason why a lot of people get into relationships in the first place :-)..
Folks, what I am learning as life goes on is no matter how good you ‘think’ this person is who you are choosing to have a relationship with; they CANNOT give you what they don’t have within them already! A beautiful and loving and happy relationship with themselves! And you too CANNOT give them that love and happiness back because you too are lacking in this loving relationship with yourself! So again, it all comes back to each one of us! And not only can they not give you happiness and love, they can’t behave and feel how you want them to behave and feel! And when we accept this very simple yet powerful truth and enter relationships from this understanding; even though sometimes we may disagree and fight, yet, we will be able to forgive and accept each other’s humanness!! We will be able to love each other for who we are instead of running our own agendas of how we can change each other! And that to me is what a loving relationship is – two people who already love and accept themselves deciding on coming together to create more love and happiness and passing it on to their kids through their loving parenting. What’s your definition of a loving relationship?
And as always, feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one! And until next time, love yourself to a beautiful relationship 🙂
