What’s the best use of my time? What do you bring to the table? Is this person saying “we” when they really mean “me”? As a recovering nice girl and people pleaser, these are questions that I have started asking recently. These questions have uncovered a lot of anger. Anger that threatens to consume and spill out, but also anger that prods me into saying No to what I don’t want and helps me align with my values. […]

Jai Ganesha, Jai Ganesha, Jai Ganesha Deva
Maata Jaaki Parvati, Pita Mahadeva

Day before yesterday was my second Diwali here in California. Diwali, for those of you who don’t know, is a festival that celebrates the triumph of good over evil and which is as significant to Hindus as Christmas is to Christians. In the evening pooja (prayer), my husband and I sang the Ganesha aarti. The prayer had been floating in my consciousness for days before. Well, not the prayer exactly, which praises Lord Ganesha, but rather a specific line in it that has been getting under my skin. […]

Haven’t you always thought of hope as a feeling, a glorious response that rises from deep within? As something that you either have or don’t in a given situation. I had thought so too, and turns out it is another thing about which I was wrong. Research has shown that, shockingly, hope is not an emotion at all. Instead, it’s a cognitive process, a way of thinking. […]

As an introvert, I like interacting with people one on one, am not very good at making small talk and tend to be on the quieter side when I am in a new group of people. Since I am also an HSP, I tend to get over-stimulated easily – so if I’m already stimulated beyond my comfort level, and then have to interact with new people, I tend to get even quieter than usual. But this, as I realized while reading Elaine Aron’s The Highly Sensitive Person, is not a good idea at all. […]

Do you think of yourself as intuitive? Do you wonder why your intuition does not serve you better? Shouldn’t it make your life easier? Shouldn’t it help you figure out the path you are supposed to walk on? In her widely acclaimed book The Highly Sensitive Person, Elaine Aron talks about intuition in a way that answers all these questions. Generally, being highly intuitive is thought to be a gift, a trait that can help us make better choices. […]