Starting from ‘The Secret’ by Rhonda Byrne, all the other self improvement books which I read talks about ‘Law Of Attraction”. Until starting off this pandemic, I did not even know or heard about this. But after reading ‘The Secret’, I was fascinated by this idea. Don’t know whether it is coincidence or so called attraction, all the other books , one or the other way talks about it. Maybe they use different name but it’s there as a core principle.

Let me tell you a story first.

Iliya was a girl who had fear for everything.But she was always very ambitious child. Due to her fear, whatever she approaches had adverse effect. Inspite of constant help from parents and teachers, she could not get good marks in exams. Teachers labelled her as unworthy child and she also felt she is worthless. Iliya loved walking in the garden and walk beside the nearby brook. During one of her walks, She saw an old man. The girl noticed an unusual charisma on his face. Later she came to know that the old man is a famous writer and a traveller.It was one of his such travel in her town and was there only for short period of time. Soon they became friends. The old man shared many life lessons to her and she felt as her fears are fading away by listening to those. As they became close, Iliya expressed the actual problem that she is going through in her life. After hearing the young girl’s problem, the old wise man decided to help her. It was his last day in her town. At the time of adieu, he handed a white shiny pebble and told her, “This is a magic stone and by holding this, whatever you wish you will get it, but with following conditions.

1. First and for most you should have faith in the magic stone. Once you wish something by holding this in hand, you should not have any doubt on achieving that.
2. Whatever you ask should be specific, achievable and a time bound to it.Let’s say if your wish is to get a nice gift from someone, be specific about what gift, from whom you are expecting and on what date or month etc.“

She was pleased to have the magic stone. The old man continued, “In order to fulfil any wish, Every morning as soon as you get up and each night before you go to bed, hold this magic stone and make the wish. Once you make the wish, with a feel of gratitude towards whatever you have in life, visualise that as you already achieved. Feel the same joy that you would have if you had achieved the wish”. She was sad as he bid bye, but also happy as she had her magic stone with her. The girl wanted to test the magic stone on her way back, but by remembering the first condition, she kept the magic stone safely in her pocket.

As the old man advised, Iliya made the wishes every morning and night. And also continued her visualisation. One of her wishes was to get good marks in exams and the following exams at school she happened to score the same marks that she had wished. Teachers were astonished at her achievement. Iliya understood the power of visualisation and realised how subconscious mind is treating her imagination as real and how it helped her achieving her goals.She held a smile on her face as she realised that the magic stone does not really hold any power and the power actually relies in her mind. Iliya realised now that the fear is something that we create and with the following various negative emotions and corresponding body behaviour etc, people starts feeling it as real. Iliya felt grateful for the old man for making her realise the fact.

I was trying to make you understand what is Law of attraction through this story. So Law of Attraction is nothing but the Law of universe and it states “In what we put our focus really on, is what we actually become or get in life”. Those of who want to know more about it can grab the book “The secret” and start reading. Here let me tell you how I apply in my life.

Before I begin I must stress on think positive stay positive and breath positive. Otherwise nothing is going to work. If your dominant thought is negative then you have to start manage or convince your mind to think positively. This is where everybody is going to lose and think that applying law of attraction is difficult and give up.

After this pandemic began our ‘new Normal’ was not so easy at the beginning and now somewhat we learn to adapt this ‘new Normal’. So here is how I applied and positively adapted the new normal. Starting the day itself, I feel grateful for the things that I already have and also convince my mind that today is a fresh and yet another beautiful day. During the day whatever difficult situation is on my way or whenever any negative emotion hits, I consciously convince my mind to think positively. For example, let’s say we have difficulty to get along with someone, what most of the people often does is constantly think negative about the situation and what happens ultimately is that we go completely against that someone day after day. isn’t it? Here is how you have to twist the situation if you want law of attraction to work. Try visualising everyday for what we expect our end-result to be. So for the above mentioned scenario if that someone is your boss, try imagining that you are having a great boss and having a wonderful time at work. If you truly put faith on this, maybe the current boss may change or you yourself may change the team or organisation. So when visualising don’t think about about “HOW”. When you start visualising the things or situation you want as you got already, the magic starts working. I swear this because I am talking from my experience. I have shared other family and friends with the same tip and it feels so nice when they come back and says me, “Yes, it is true and it has changed my perspective of life”.

Seeing is believing: The law of attraction can be applied for anything that you want such as health, money, relationship, career etc. With visualisation what happens is the subconscious mind starts believing that it has happened already and unknowingly it makes you behave like the way you visualise. This gives high self esteem to achieve anything we want in life. While visualising, you need to be specific on your end result. Let’s say if you want promotion, be specific about the role, when you want your promotion and think that you’re already in that role.

So visualisation and keeping faith on the universe for what you want is the key here.

“Visualisation is more important than knowledge – Albert Einstein”

For any situation, there is always choice to be made. One choice is to think negative and have fears, anxiety and have a feel that the life is full of problems. The other choice is to think positive and enjoy the path of life by being in the present. The choice is with us.

Be the change and be positive!

“വായിച്ചാലും വളരും വായിച്ചില്ലേലും വളരും
വായിച്ചാൽ വിളയും വായിച്ചില്ലേൽ വളയും”

This is a very famous short poem written by our beloved Kunjunni Mash (Indian poet of Malayalam literature – wiki).These lines are very well known to each and every Malayalis and must have heard many times in our childhood. The translation is that

“we grow up if we read, we grow up if we do not read
if we read we ripe, if we do not, we bend”

What a meaningful poem it is. In this online era, people are more interested in watching or listening than reading isn’t it? In order to understand how reading enhances our knowledge, one must start reading it. I must confess that I got interest in writing blogs through my readings. I did not have any interest in reading until the age of 22. The only books that I read was the academic books those days. Those who knows me can very well related to what I am saying. But slowly and steadily I started reading various fiction books but not sure what has influenced me to do this. Since then over a decade and a half, I have been continuously reading different kinds of books. We have a small library itself set up at home. It has now become a hobby of me.

As I always say, each and everyone is different and thus our interests too. Instead of saying “Oh I and book, No way”, What you need to do is find the subject that you have interest, grab those books and read. The way we we inculcate reading habit in our children by giving them books of their interest, we must choose ours too.

It is not necessary that every book that we chose is interesting to us. So it is perfectly okay to stop reading those books that are boring. Choose your books wisely and read on and on and on. I usually take 2 or 3 weeks to finish about a 300 page book by making sure to read 15-20 minutes daily. But there are some books which brings us extreme excitement that a good movie gives us, those books, I sit and finish in just two or three days by keeping rest everything on side.

Once again I reiterate what Kunjunni Mash said if we read or not, life will go on, if you want to see any difference in your lives start reading today.

Happy Reading!!

Do you know what is life transformation really means? I heard this many times before. Frankly speaking I knew the word meaning, but did not understand until I myself went through this transformation. Are you also like me? Read on to see what I really meant by this.

In this fast paced life, most of us are disturbed or unhappy in life for various reasons. some says they are anxious by worrying about future (anxiety is nothing but fear of not meeting our expectation), some says they are stressed (We feel stressed when we are unable to complete a task within the expected time) , some says happy professionally but not in personal life and vice versa and the list goes on. Some think that when we become rich or have lots of money, will bring happiness. But rich or poor, we all go through all these emotions for various reasons. We cannot get away with these in life, but we must learn to manage it. When a person is able to manage these emotions well, he/she will be able to achieve their goals and thereby becoming happier in life.

How do we manage these emotions ? If you make the life a little disciplined first, then I can assure you that that you will find your own ways of finding happiness in life. The author Robin Sharma describes in the book – “The 5AM club” to follow 20-20-20 rule that I found to be very effective in making my own life disciplined. Any action when you continue minimum for 21 days, it becomes a habit. So I urge you to try these 20-20-20 principle just for 21 days and experience it yourself. Anyways it is just 21 days right? So take it as a challenge.

20-20-20 rule describes the activities you must do in first three consecutive 20 minutes of the day as and when you wake up. As I mentioned in my last blog, it is effective and easy to implement when you try to wake up at 5 AM in the morning. Most of the success people are up and awake when the rest of the world is sleeping. You might heard Brahma Muhurtha (The Creator’s Hour) in ancient Hindu Belief, is the period one and half hour before sunrise. It is called as ‘The Creators Hour because during this time the mind is very calm and serene. If you are a late riser, there are chances that you get busy with your usual other daily routines and lose this habit.

My 20-20-20 rule

As soon as I get up, first thing I do after freshen up is visualising my set goal. When the heart is filled with gratitude and do visualisation as though I have met these goal helps me to move forward even if there are challenges for achieving these goals. The goals can be towards your health, career, relationship or anything that you want to achieve. Only thing is that the goal should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time bound). When I say SMART, we cannot set goal, for example, I need to take multiple certifications. why is it not SMART? Because we don’t have clarity on how many certifications and on what, at what time you will be completing etc. Once you set SMART goal, it gives you clarity and easy to track your progress too when you do daily plan. How do you visualise? Well, you can write on a book or on a paper with SMART attributes, also you can include pictures. When you walk through this early morning it goes well into the subconscious mind.

Let me now briefly tell you about my 20-20-20 activities.The first 20 mins of my day is dedicated to the health. This means we should try to sweat in first 20 mins after our morning ritual. This you can do 20-30 minutes, but must ensure to do for at least 20 minutes. What happens when we do some sort of exercise, as the blood flow increases we become active and also it improves our focus.

Next 20 mins is dedicated for meditation. Meditation allows being with self and thereby enabling ourselves understand better. The youngsters construe meditation as something that the elderly retired people do in their free time. When I say people that I do meditation everyday, they comment me back saying “oh! Are you on spiritual path?”. This is effective if you can do this before 6AM because most of the world will asleep during this time and also when you do it in Brahma Muhurtha, we will be more focused. Recently I happened to listened to a youtube lecture on meditation, I urge you to listen that. (Pasting it at the bottom of this blog)

And last 20 mins is for writing personal journal, day planning and reading book. This period attribute to your growth. Writing journal and day planning do not take much time, probably 5 – 10 mins. I start by scribbling down few lines about my yesterday in the diary and this is something I love writing. Next I review the previous day plan and tick mark for whatever I have accomplished and cross mark for not completed ones. And now with this, I am ready to make my todays plan by incorporating unaccomplished task of yesterday’s. The plan consist 3 – 4 lines of bullet points about activities that I am intended to do for the day. This gives you clarity on the task for the day and also it imbibes in having discipline in life. You may feel at first that why to do this planning as we are aware of our daily activities. But believe me, you will have more clarity on what is happening in your life. Once this is done, its time read a book for 15 mins or listening to any motivational speeches. This gives positivity for welcoming the day freshly.

You can do little bit of customisation as you wish on this 20-20-20 rule, but make sure to include activities for your health, growth and to your soul. Do try it for 21 days and I am sure you will feel you are more disciplined and you will also realise what is life transformation really means like I realise now. Give your valuable comments in comment section of the blog and if you want you can contact me at dhwani.blog@gmail.com.

I am just translating it over here for my non-Malayali friends.

This excerpt was from a lecture that Shri Girish Kumar (Founder Chairman of Shripuram Trust) has given to college students wherein he explains the importance of doing meditation and the cross legged spine erect posture benefit. The translation – “If you want to contribute something to the society and to your life, how can you become the contributor? if you don’t know your real aspiration, you cannot do that right? But how can you realise your aspiration. Meditation is the door towards realising your aspiration in life. what you should do in meditation. You sit in solitude for sometime. When you sit in solitude for sometime we will realise our subconscious thoughts and beliefs. Don’t ask how do you realise because if I ask how do you learn cycling or swimming , is there any correspondence course for these? one fine day we master swimming or cycling by practising those. isn’t it? This is how meditation too works. There is no question of ‘How’, just start doing is important. The way how someone enable us to swim or cycle, someone can only enable us but you are the doers. We should sit cross legged and spine erect in any comfortable place. Nowadays we are not that comfortable sitting on cross legged position as we are habituated to sit on chair. When sit in this posture for sometime we feel numbness in legs. what does that mean? blood flow has decreased towards lower body. Blood acts as the postman for carrying oxygen to different parts of our body. There are special type of brain cells called as Neurons. Neurons only get activated by Oxygen.When blood flow towards down decreases sum total of the blood flow towards brain. There is one speciality of these brain cells. only 5-10% of neuron only is activated. For intellectuals like Einstein, Erwin Shrodinger, Newton, Shakespeare, 35% of neurons are activated rest still inactivate. So when more oxygen flows towards brain, more number of neurons get activated. When this happens, our IQ, EQ and CQ gets improved. So it is important to sit crosslegged and in spine erect posture. When we keep spine erect we feel confident and active. Then you can imagine god, flower or flash of light or any color you like while doing meditation and try meditate for 5 to 24 minutes. Initially we may feel bored of sitting like this. But after some days the changes start reflecting automatically, and you will realise your aspiration too. Also you will possess the intense desire and clarity to achieve that dream. How do you confirm that it works? No other way other than practising the meditation.Try doing it for one year without break, afterall it is just 24 minutes that you lose everyday and if its benefit is immense why don’t you try ?

From the lecture: https://youtu.be/ViuUYsHguK8

Is there any great achievements in this world which has popped out blindly? No, all the great achievements were once someone’s dream or intense desire. what is the difference between desire and wish? Though both looks same,There is big difference between these two. When we wish for something, we are not sure whether we can achieve it. Bur when we have a desire in mind, we are sure that we are going receive this one day with this intense belief we set goal and act towards it. isn’t it?

Well, my last blog was about how important it is to control our thoughts. But what happens if you don’t act on our desires. Any action that we do is based on our thoughts isn’t it? Thoughts leads to action and if the thoughts are controlled and refined, it leads to more valuable actions. These many years, I was seriously thinking about doing something really meaningful in my life. Like many of you, I never took any action and always blamed or self convinced by saying no time left to put aside for that journey in my busy life. But reading those bunch of books that I mentioned in the earlier blog changed my outlook towards the life.

I was a night-owl and due to this, I was never able to wake up early. I know most of the people are like me on this. But now I change my habit a little and started waking up at 5:30AM. I have to change this to 5 AM soon, so that I can be in the 5AM club. The benefit of waking up before dawn has been mentioned by many wise and elderly people, but at that time I defy it gently thinking that there is no difference whether we wake up early or sleep late. But now I started feeling the difference. first few minutes of early hour is dedicated in planning the day. This helps in having clarity on your todo things on that day and revisiting that previous day plan on next day, helps us to incorporate incomplete things to include on the following day. At first we may feel like what is the need to write it down . But once you start doing , within a week I guarantee that you feel the difference. Thanks to Robin Sharma’s “Monk who sold his Ferrari” for these tips.

If you have a dream and if there is no action, then it just becomes a day dream. isn’t it? Let that action be very tiny, doesn’t matter at all. Because most important thing is to start with something. How do you make sure that you are on track with your dream or vision? This is where goal setting is important. When you set a goal with specific target date and have a plan on doing small or big action towards achieving that goal, the outcome is definite. Visualising everyday that you have achieved your dream already is a strong tool to convince your mind to achieve these goals

There are many people who says they don’t have any dream in their life. But my dear friends … each and every person is gifted with unique talents, its just that due to our external circumstances or your limited beliefs are holding you back. Better late than never, just go in silence for few minutes each day or in solitude, talk to your mind and unleash your potential.

Remember- Taj Mahal is also built brick by brick . So are you ready ?

As always give your valuable feedback in comments section and let me know if anybody wants help in setting goals and for keeping track of that goal. I can definitely try helping you through life coaching. You can leave a message to my email – dhwani.blog@gmail.com for conversation to begin.

This blog provides insights on making your day richer by consciously controlling your thoughts. The things that are described in this blog helped me overcome my own stress and anxiety upto an extend. As mentioned in my about page, I love reading self improvement books, and in this pandemic situation I dedicated my free time for reading a bunch of these books such as Secret by Rhonda Byrne, ATTITUDE is everything by Jeff Keller, You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay, The monk who sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma to name a few books which influenced me highly. The review of these books can be found in book review section soon…

My intention is not to write review of these books in this blog, rather I would like to share tips that I got from these books so that if anybody is getting benefited out of it I will be honoured.

There is a saying “Your decision today will define your tomorrow”. We all agree that how true it is. In a way, each moment is passing through our choices of our thoughts. Research shows that there is 60k – 80k thoughts a day. That means almost 2500 to 3300 thoughts per hour. so think about this. Our ‘now’ is decided by the thought that went through a fraction of second back within us. How do we feel a day completely depends on the connection of dots between these thoughts. isn’t it? Each moment we are making a choice. For example, think that your neighbour or someone whom you know just passed in front of you without giving a smile. Now your thought can decide how your emotion towards that event can be. You might think that he/she has some dislike against you for not smiling, or you can just think that he/she might be in a hurry because of which he/she missed to notice you. One thought is negative and other is positive. When you meet him/her next time, if your earlier thought was positive you will talk to him/her gracefully without any hesitation. if you earlier thought was negative you will slightly hesitate at first until you get clarity on your thought. right? So the point here is that if you go dive into thoughts or in other words if the thoughts are controlling you it can completely ruin our day.

In this pandemic situation, there are many issues that we go through personally and professionally especially when there is need to stay at home for safety. The magic of life is we all have problems. We cannot find any individual without any problems. In a way that is life. But the severity depends on how we approach these problems. For example if a costly laptop is broken , rather than grieving about it, if we manage to cool ourself down and approach it gently, we will have thousands of ways to come out of it. Again our thoughts are controlling us in dealing with the problem. When we approach it with tension, it leads to stress and these negative thoughts create negative emotions too, thereby making ourselves completely down. So it is important to control our thoughts to lead a happy life. Rather than thoughts controlling us, we should learn how we can control our thoughts.This is one of the most important thing I learnt during this pandemic. It improved me a lot from a person who I was to who I am today. Still the journey is on. Because managing or controlling our thoughts is not an easy job.

Here are few tips to manage the thoughts.

Make a habit of waking up early and rather than directly switching to your attention to mobile, spend your time in elevating your day by spending few minutes – say 20 minutes of your day for dedicating only to yourself. How? A few minutes for planning your day, A few minutes for setting up a goal (personal or professional) and also follow few things which are listed below.

Start a day with a smile: Go in front of a mirror, affirm yourself with positive thoughts and give yourself a hug and smile. This is a great way to start your day freshly. I know you may feel its funny but this add a bit to make your day beautiful.

Meditation: Doing meditation helps to gain focus, control and very importantly to start a day positively. whenever you are feeling down, go and try sitting in silence for few minutes by listening to music or by following a guided meditation on youtube. The one which I follow for meditation is Boho Beautiful Yoga

Conquer the negative thoughts and switch to positive thoughts: There will be many scenarios in our day today life where we think negatively. But as and when the negative thoughts kick in, talk to your mind and affirm that feeling and try to control it. There were many situations wherein I thought I am lost. In those situations I talked to my mind and convinced that I am sole responsible for this situation because my thoughts created these emotions and its subsequent actions. I affirm that I don’t want my body and mind to be in the current negative situation because each moment is precious and our life is too short. Most of the times I am successful in coming out of it with this new fresh thought and it improves my mood too. Give a try next time when you feel down.

All of these self improvement books almost talks about the same, but communicates differently with different tips and tricks. But what I experience is that these books definitely help us in charge ourselves with positive thoughts. If you cannot read books, listen to any motivation speech 15 minutes a day, that will sure have effect on your mood.

Give your valuable feedback in comments section and let me know if anybody is going through any negative situation in life, I can definitely try helping you through life coaching. You can leave a message to my email – dhwani.blog@gmail.com for conversation to begin.

It’s been almost a year since I wrote a blog post and todays topic is about a Magical cup – The Menstrual cup. I have been thinking of writing about this topic quite sometime, but somehow it did not turn out.

Many of you must have heard about the menstrual cup already. Here I would like to tell about my experience in using it. All ladies out here, I don’t need to tell you about the discomfort during periods, especially the initial two days. But what made me writing this post is that I wanted to tell about the comfort that menstrual cup provides to those who are still unaware of it or not using it.

Coming to my experiences, about an year or two, I happened to see a video on Facebook about the menstrual cup. When I watched once, I started getting related posts in FB and I became more aware of it. I decided to give it a try. I ordered one from Amazon based on review which costed me around 500 rs I think. I waited for my periods to start. It is not suggested to try it before period as the cervix changes during periods and hence it will be more easy to use it. There are many videos in youtube that explains about how to use the cup. A youtube video for your reference from hygiene&you: How to use a menstrual cup? How to insert a menstrual cup ?

The outcome of my first try was that I was not at all comfortable using it and I found very difficult to position correctly. But by reading about the advantages and many success stories from the people who are using it, I was not ready to give up. I did little more R&D on the menstrual cup size quality and reviews and I finalised a cup again – SheCup. Though it was costing around 1200 rs, as it lasts long, it is worth spending the amount. I started loving the cup each time I used it. Initial 3-4 months,I had to master things like inserting the cup, how often the cup has to be emptied, hygiene care etc. After more than a year of using it, now I am in love with the cup and can’t think of going back and using the regular pads.

The things that need to be taken care:

It is very important to take care about the hygiene of the cup as well as the hand. The things that I follow is sterilization of the cup before and after the periods and I usually make sure to clean the hand properly before removing the cup for emptying it. Twice a day, preferrably while taking shower and in the evening, I clean the cup with soap and wash it using hot water. I am sure after hearing all these hygiene care, you must be thinking menstrual cup is not a wise choice for you. 😊 You are Wrong! I can guarantee you that these all will be nothing once you get used to it.

The beauty of the menstrual cup is that once the cup is inserted, you don’t feel like there is a foreign substance in your body and also you don’t even feel like you are in your period. Initial two days of the periods, I usually use a panty liner. This is because if you are late in emptying the cup, once it fills up,blood droplets comes out through the tiny holes on the top of the cup. This is just a mechanism for us to know that its time for emptying the cup.

Th issues often come with the cup is with its size. People may have discomfort if they use a wrong sized cup and they may end up not using the cup altogether. I would like to highlight that info as well here. When you choose your cup it is not only the cup size but also the length matters in determining the right cup for you. It varies as per the cervix position and it varies in each woman. Pleas watch out this youtube video to know more on measuring cervix length when picking up the menstrual cup: How to measure your cervix?

Can you think of swimming while on your periods? Well, by switching to menstrual cup, you can even enjoy swimming. I never tried though 😊. Checkout this youtube video for more info: Swimming with Menstrual cup

All ladies should try this out and this is the only reason I thought of writing about this through a post. Many are unaware of its advantages of it. Try one and experience yourself the comfort that it brings for you. As I mentioned earlier in the post, don’t give up in the initial attempts or 2-3 periods, I can assure you that you will never regret about it afterwards. If those who are using it happened to read this post, please encourage others by putting your opinion on the comments section so that others can see it.