Nourishing Reads For Mental Well-Being

Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. - Oscar Wilde Too much of our life is spent behind masks, trying to be someone we originally are not.  We all are aware of Shakespeare's famous and priceless idiom - To thine own self, be true. In a society where social media profile rules, it has become all the more difficult to be just ourselves, and to portray our true traits to the world. As if the virtual avatar was not enough, we now have 'filters'! Talk about an illusion covering up another illusion! As it is, the life we live itself is illusionary and fleeting. Add to it, media profiles, DPs, cover photos, filters and what we get is a maze that keeps us searching for our real selves.  Most of us decide to be ourselves when we have lived half of our lives trying to please everybody, trying to fit in and trying to do what the society approves. Very few people succeed at a very young age to embrace their uniqueness and be themselves. The world needs more people who are origi...

I know for sure that what we dwell on is what we become. - Oprah Winfrey People always keep saying to focus on positive thoughts. There is a good reason for the same. The mind is the sharpest tool that has ever been in existence. Whatever you think and focus on, you have the ability to manifest the same!  There are people who fall sick out of just their thoughts! It is a proven fact that thinking of sickness always can actually produce negative effects on the body, ultimately leading to sickness. We are living in tough times. The world had barely managed to come out of a pandemic and now there are earthquakes shaking up major countries and leading to huge and tragic loss of lives, thereby spreading an aura of despair around the world. None of us can stay unaffected by tragedy, for we are all bound by one thread of consciousness. Everyone's despair is our own! (On a personal note, let us take a moment and join in the grief of the bereaved victims of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syr...

How you live your life is what makes you real. - Anonymous It is coincidental that I came across this quote today when I was already feeling a sense of disillusionment about the social media. How are the two related, you ask? Let me explain. To while away my evening blues, I was reading through some of my earlier posts in my FB profile and I couldn't help feel that they were written by someone else, someone who wanted some excitement in the day, who wanted some 'likes' and 'comments' by people both known and unknown. As I kept reading the posts, I realized something - they do not represent the real 'Me'.  Sometimes it scares me - in this already illusionary life, as we are sinking deeply into our virtual avatars, what if we lose track of who we really are!? The photos we post in the social media show us smiling and glowing with happiness, but what goes behind-the-scenes? We post travel diaries, praising the place to the sky. But how much time did we spend wi...

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. - Wayne Dyer Many a times the fault is not with the situation in our life, but with the way we choose to perceive it. Every now and then we need to view a situation from another angle, letting go of the one-pointed view that we have always deployed.  When difficult situations crop up in life, instead of viewing them as difficulties or obstacles, may be we can view them as opportunities for self-growth and development. When confronted with tiresome situations, we can use them to learn patience and self-control. Every roadblock can turn into a lesson if only we look at them as opportunities to grow and develop.   A rigid outlook towards life can result in breaking our spirit. A change is required in our outlook to help us to adapt ourselves to the many surprises that life loves to spring upon us. Maintaining a negative view of things over a long period of time will end up robbing all joy from our liv...

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. - William James Our days are made up of tiny and numerous chores. Some are of our liking, some we have to do because there is no other choice.  We do have one choice - we can either work grudgingly and let it show in the not-so-satisfactory results or we can do every work with focus, concentration and perfection, and let our efforts show in the exuberant results. And this is applicable to not just working people, but homemakers too! When we have to do a chore, why not do full justice to it? May be we will get some appreciation, may be our efforts will go unnoticed. But we will have the satisfaction of having done a wonderful job.  I have often come across a phrase - Excellence is a habit that we inculcate. By excelling at every minor chore that we undertake, we can make it a daily part of our lives. By giving our best to every task, by being particular about how we do it, we can achieve excellence in everything we do. It coul...

'If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it.' - Jonathan Winters There are two ways to live life - either take control of it yourself, or to let life control you. By taking control, we just do not take over the rights to our life, but we also take up all the responsibilities it brings. Have you read the book The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People? It has been written by Stephen R Covey and is an international bestseller under the genre of self-help books. The author begins by highlighting the habits that successful and effective people follow, and the very first habit is - Be proactive. Being proactive means taking control of your own life and the situations. It means not waiting anymore for the 'right' opportunity or the 'right' moment, but creating one on your own. It means recognizing and seizing the millions of tiny chances that spring up in our daily life and make good use of them.  The lure of victim-mentality is too strong to resist, I know. How co...

Fear kills more dreams than failure ever will - anonymous quote. I have a personal connection to this quote.  You see, I am very fond of traveling. Visiting new places, meeting new people and coming across new cultures and traditions is nothing short of euphoria for me. Living in India, I have often dreamed about visiting any one foreign country, just out of curiosity and wonder.  I am yet to do this! And the thing that has stopped me from pursuing this dream is my fear of flying. I had a terrible experience with a turbulent flight, about four years ago. I haven't stepped inside a plane thereafter. While the prospect of traveling to a foreign country is immensely tempting, the prospect of flying in an airplane is equally daunting and overwhelming! It is sort of a crippling fear that has held me back all these years.  The purpose of the above personal reflection was to simply show how disabling and crippling fear can be, if we let it overtake our mind. I have always believ...