Fasting festival

It’s October month – the festive season in India. One such beautiful day, I was fasting until the moon rises. Four days after, there was another fasting festival. Children start noticing family culture, rituals, and traditions when they grow up. That day, my inquisitive 9-year-old son raised a question to me, “Mumma, why do you need to celebrate festivals by keeping yourself hungry for an almost entire day?” I understood his emotions for me. I felt warm to see the amount of care he was showing for me. Moreover, I was impressed that he was curious to understand the logic behind the fasting festivals.

Let me explain a little more about what fasting means. Fasting in hindee means, “Upvaas”, which is made from Up+Vaas. That means residing near to. Since we are talking about spirituality here, it means residing near the supreme soul. I believe, on fasting days, the general idea is to keep your focus away from food, so that you could get more time to focus on the supreme soul.

It has become our tradition to offer some offerings or worship, hoping to achieve something in return from God on fasting festivals (also in other festivals). This is where I don’t agree. It is okay to offer God out of your pure heart, without expecting anything in return. There should not be any conditions associated with those offerings or worship! We should be thankful for what we have received from Him.

To me, fasting on festive days doesn’t mean keeping yourself hungry or thirsty. It means increasing your inner strength. It means increasing your self-awareness and consciousness. In this world, we get too attached to things. Let me make it clearer. In our daily life, we get ourselves attached to some things consciously or subconsciously. Sooner, they become part of our daily habits. For example, few have a habit of eating ice cream daily before going to bed. Few cannot live without eating daily junk food. Few cannot live without screaming at people while driving. Few cannot live without watching television or having too much screen time. Few cannot stop thinking negatively about themselves. Few cannot live without playing video games or whatnot. We all want to eliminate that one habit from our life, but that is deeply rooted in our system. We often say, “We try hard but cannot!” But my friends, there is nothing, we cannot do!  This is what fasting means for me. Let me explain to you how.

Fasting means, leaving one such habit for that day, which your mind always used to say, “I cannot …”, not necessarily food or water. Fasting day can be the initial day, the very first day to start the “I can…”.

  

Thanks

Mridulika

 

Decisions

Decisions are a vital part of our everyday life. We need to make small or big decisions throughout our lifespans. They can be as simple as what we want to wear today or as complex as with whom we want to get married. No matter what our age is, no matter where we live, with whom we live, and whether we are alone or accompanied, we always are required to make decisions in our lives.

When we were age 4 or 5, we started to learn to make small decisions, and not to forget the significance of those choices at that age. Shall I play with blocks or trains? Shall I scream to show my anger or talk it out? Learning to make small choices at a young age. The human brain develops in a complex, mysterious, and glorious way. It is the most magnificent, splendid beauty in the world. It is said that a human brain’s pre-frontal cortex doesn’t get fully developed by the age of 25. This is the part of our brain, which is responsible for planning, organizing behavior, making decisions, analyzing the consequences, and inhibiting impulses. The human brain works miraculously! Isn’t it?

Whether a 5-year-old kid is thinking about what toy they should play with or what food they should eat, an 18-year-old is thinking about what course stream he should select for his/her college, or a 30-year-old is thinking to change his/her job, we all need to make thousands of decisions every day in our lives. It is estimated that an average adult makes 35,000 decisions each day!!! This number is astounding.

Most of us make our life’s easy or hard decisions based on consequences. There can be positive or negative consequences. Sometimes, we all need to make hard choices in our life. What's essential is, to make decisions in difficult situations and then accept the consequences. As it’s quoted, “It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.” Jim Rohn

Let us think a little more about the driving factor of making any strong decision.

Driving factor to make decisions:

Let’s take a simple example here. Suppose I need to decide what I want to drink, “Tea or Coffee?” My solution would depend upon answers to this set of questions: “What my mood is?” “Am I with someone else, if yes what does he/she would like to have?”, “What’s the weather?”, “Is this nighttime or daytime?”, “Is it raining?”, “Am I feeling tired?”, “Am I feeling cold?”, Or it could just be the completely random pick, tea/coffee, it doesn’t matter. This is just an example. It depends on person to person. Different people think differently. Someone can have a totally different set of questions in their mind. Few won’t even think and just pick straight coffee or tea. All I want to say is that our mind is accustomed to dealing with such day-to-day simple routine scenarios. It quickly sorts out these problems by taking sensory inputs from our surroundings and making decisions for us swiftly.

There is another category of decisions: Strong decisions/hard choices. Let’s take an example of that category here. Suppose I need to decide “Where do I want to settle down?” What could be the driving factor to making strong choices? For me the most important driving factor is consequences. I cannot randomly pack my bag, pick up a place, and settle down there, no. To make that strong decision, I would need to have a strategic plan. I would need information and determine the pros and cons. I would analyze all the consequences. There could be positive/negative consequences associated with the place where I would want to move in and with the place where I am already settled in. There could be some risks associated with living conditions, and some challenges in the work cultures of both places. After I analyze all the risks involved, I might want to analyze my alternatives. I would want to compare all the alternatives. At last, once I know what is best for me, I would act! It is possible that the outcome of my decision might not be the same as I thought and decided it would have been. Sometimes good decisions can have bad outcomes. But I would be prepared for the consequences! I had thoroughly analyzed it and then had taken my decision. So, just because the outcome was not exactly the same, as I was expecting, doesn’t mean my decision was bad, correct😊

Shifting our focus to my earlier remark where I mentioned that the human brain’s pre-frontal cortex, which is a significant part of decision-making, gets fully developed by the age of 25. After understanding this concept, it feels so natural that our kids and teens don’t make decisions the way we adults make. Then how can we help our kids become independent and confident decision-makers? I think by giving them choices at a young age, creates a foundation for making decisions. It also teaches them to deal with the consequences of their decisions at a very low level. For example: giving them a choice between a banana and an apple, if they pick an apple, they won’t get a banana and if they pick a banana, they won’t get an apple. These kinds of small choices help build confidence, and independence, dealing with the consequences at a young age. As kids grow, the freedom of choice would surely increase but wherever safety is involved, surely parents’ input should be needed.

We all make wrong decisions in our lives, and our kids would make them too. They need to keep making independent decisions in their lives as they grow, rather than getting discouraged after one or two failed decisions. We would need to give them more opportunities. We would need to keep believing in them and showing confidence in them. Always make them feel safe and show them how much we care and how much we love them unconditionally. As a parent, we have our life experiences. Since our brain is fully developed, we can see long-term consequences, but our kids and teens might not. They might ignore those consequences while making their decisions. Most importantly, they should always have trust in us that no matter how big the problem is, they can come to us fearlessly to share, and they will find their solution. After all, what are family for😊

 

Thanks

Mridulika

Stay Positive

 I grew up in a teaching family. My mother, father, grandmother, and 2 more generations devoted their life to teaching school and college-going kids. Ever since I was age 4, I was told that “Pen is the strongest tool to mankind”, and “Pen is more powerful than the sword”. As a small kid, I used to wonder how come a small pen that is easily available, accessible, and usable has such a strong power that it can defeat a sword. Very soon, I realized what it means. The pen has the power to explain the most powerful thing in the world “Word”. Words are our greatest virtue. They have the power to construct or decimate. They can be helpful or hurtful. They can literally change the brain structure depending on the way we use them.

We often hear from life coaches, spiritual leaders, and our teachers the benefits of using positive words. In recent days, there has been a lot of focus on positive parenting, positive management, positive thinking, and overall positive well-being. I wonder, what happens in our brain when we use or hear positive words and how they can affect our personality?

Also, what about when we are not talking to someone but to ourselves! Self-talk – inner speech – recent studies say a lot about the advantages of self-talking. Are there any similarities between self-talk and chatting with others? According to recent studies, there are actually many similarities. Our brain considers that self-talk is very similar to talking to other people. When we talk, larynx muscles move. It’s been noticed that when we silently talk to ourselves there are noticeable movements in those muscle groups. Broca’s area (the area of the brain that is active when we speak loudly) is also active when we self-talk. In the case of self-talk, our body’s physical activity is similar when we talk to others. In other words, as far as brain activities are concerned, self-talk is not much different from talking to someone else.

Every day thousands of thoughts and words go through our minds. Most of the time we are self-critics. We often use negative self-talk such as “Why do bad things keep on happening to me?”, “It’s so difficult, I can’t do this”, “I don’t have time or experience to do all this”, “The traffic is really bad, I am not going to make it on time” etc. All these are fewer examples of our day-to-day negative self-talk which we use without even realizing the damage they are inducing to our personality.

I wonder how our brain reacts to positive and negative words irrespective of talking to ourselves or out loud?

According to the book “Words Can Change Your Brain” when we use positive words, we increase cognitive reasoning and strengthen areas in our frontal lobes. Over time the structure of the thalamus will also change in response to our conscious words, thoughts, and feelings. The longer we focus on positive words, the more effect on other areas of the brain would be noticed.

On the other hand, when we allow ourselves to use negative words, we increase the activity in our amygdala, which causes the release of stress-producing hormones - catecholamines such as epinephrine, and norepinephrine. These hormones circulate in our blood and increase our cortisol levels. According to authors Newberg and Waldman, “Angry words send alarm messages through the brain, and they partially shut down the logic-and-reasoning centers located in the frontal lobes.”

So, it’s clear that the use of negative words is harmful to our mental and physical health. While talking, we should focus on mindful and conscious words. As our elders used to say, "Think twice before you speak". We should give careful and clear consideration to every word before we speak, whether in our head or to others.

The use of positive words keeps our anxieties and depression away. It channelizes happy hormones, boosts self-esteem, enhances confidence, and brings out the best in ourselves.

Positive thoughts->Positive speech->Positive Action->Positive Outcome->Happy life.

Stay Positive!

 

 Thanks

Mridulika

Reference

1. What's Happening When You Talk to Yourself in Your Head - ATTN:

2. Words Can Change Your Brain (psychcentral.com)

Unravelling unknowns: A year of Henna’s new beginnings

We come to this world, with absolutely nothing, no knowledge or realization of who we are. Everything seems new, fresh, unknown, and unfamiliar. When we open our eyes for the first time, we see a complete new, untold, undisclosed, and mysterious world with so many questions popping up in our tiny little head. The sight of our smiling parents gives us the very first sense of existence. It is really bewildering to imagine the world from eyes of a newborn. Gradually we learn numerous new things, from talking to walking, all which were unknown skills at the beginning. We triumph over all the challenges phenomenally and make our path from our mom’s lap to this indubitable prodigious world.  This happens to all of us, every living being on this planet. This is very natural, correct! We are born curious. We are born to explore new things and the world around us.

Though, as we grow old, we tend to burden ourselves with routines and responsibilities; and forget about this basic curious nature of ourselves. We keep ourselves concealed in a comfort box. It might take a lot of courage and determination to come out of that box to try out new things. But, once we make up our mind to achieve something new, we become unstoppable. As Gandhi said, “Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.” - Mahatma Gandhi

When I observe kids around me, I realize that kids are indeed a great inspiration for all of us. They don’t have the fear of unknown which we grownups start to carry sometimes. They motivate us to learn new skills, try out unknown things and embrace new challenges. They teach us to stop thinking about failures before starting any new endeavor. They encourage us to come out of our fears and comforts. They show us how to determine ourselves to keep digging and keep tasting the zest of unknown world. They influence us to be perseverant and fight all the obstacles which come along the way. It could be scary, but if we believe in what we are doing is right, the feeling of accomplishment is delightful.

In my book “Unravelling unknowns: A year of Henna’s new beginnings” Henna, an 8-year-old girl is an explorer, adventurous, nature-lover, kind, enthusiastic, challenge taking and precocious girl. In just one year of her life, she had a great deal of remarkable experiences. Experiences, which she never had before. She explored wondrous, prolific, majestic glory of nature. She assimilated significant new skills and triumphed over all the hurdles.

Through this book, I would like my readers to visualize and unravel the hidden 'Henna' in them. Somewhere, in all of us, there is a little Henna, who wants to fly high in the open wide sky and accomplish something new, something which gives a sense of existence of oneself. It just needs a little courageous step to unravel the unknowns!

The book is available on Amazon in eBook and Paperback format. Please check out the link below and enjoy reading😊:

https://a.co/d/i95MUWN

Thanks

Mridulika

Phenomenal aspects of handwriting

"Please hold your pen correctly"," Try to write your letters beautifully", "You need to focus on your handwriting", "Could you share your handwritten notes please". Do you find these phrases familiar? Back in our school days, writing with pen on paper was the only medium of saving and practicing our learnt knowledge.  We had the habit of taking class notes with pen. Surprising it is, but because of handwritten notes, we used to remember quickly and prominently. In all our examinations, whether they are school tests or college entrance exams, we always used pen and papers. Computers got introduced to us as a separate stream to learn. It is peculiar but true that we used pen and paper for our computer exams too. We used to handwrite algorithms of complex problems and manually test their efficiency and correctness on paper, all using pen!

Writing with pen was essential and significant part of our school days. I remember, we used to gift each other special pens and notebooks on birthdays, teachers' day, holidays etc. We used to feel immensely happy crafting our thoughtful words and capturing our precious moments in our special diaries with our exclusive pens.

Let's come back to our present day, we have multiple technologies for writing now: pen on paper, computer writing, stylus writing, writing on smart devices etc. It is a technology-friendly, digital age and somewhere writing with pen on paper is becoming obsolete. Even kindergarten kids are familiar with digital devices. Computers, which got into our life as a subject to read and understand, is now prime part of our kids' life. Computers have become a significant part of their learning life, especially during Covid time. I observe that today's elementary school kids use power-point, MS word, google slides to write their school reports so brilliantly.  Maybe kids are born with a pre-stored digital knowledge in their head! They do such a fantastic job in learning digital technologies, which we sometimes struggle to understand.

Noticing the increased use of digital devices at the early school age, makes me wonder, are we missing something! Let's just stop and think for a while. Have you noticed, people who use pen and paper claim to remember most of their written work! They can even give lecture on their report without even referring their notes. They have better problem-solving skills and have extensive vocabulary. Whereas people who use computers for writing usually struggle to remember what they wrote. Well, it's true for me for sure. I tend to forget my scripts more easily when I write on computer compared to paper. On the plus side, computer writing definitely gives substantial amount of fancy features which makes the written work more polished and presentable. Spelling suggestions, grammar corrections and all sort of helping features to improve our writing, are given to us by our "know-it-all" box. But are they really "helping" us! Let's think about it.

According to neuropsychology, a lot of things go in our brain when we write with hand. Our brain performs a heavy workout when we write holding pen on paper. No wonder, we feel exhausted after hours of handwriting. 

There are significant differences in handwriting and typewriting. Those differences strongly suggest that handwriting facilitates memorization of letters and helps in critical thinking.

Handwriting takes place in a small space.  Our attention is limited and concentrated. When we write by hand, our focus is onto endpoint of our pen. Whereas when we typewrite, our focus gets divided into 2 different spaces, screen and keyboard. Our concentration continuously shifts between keyboard and screen, makes us less focused and creates difficulty in memorizing.

In handwriting, the writer needs to visualize the letter, and form the shape of the letter by hand on paper. Each letter has a defined set of hand-moves to give them proper shape on paper. On the other hand, typing doesn't involve this. It involves hitting keyboard keys to form letter on screen. It also doesn't matter the way you hit the key. The same letter can be typed by hitting keys using different force, different motion or even by using different hand. Thus, typing has a very little to do with visual cortex.

Handwriting is slower than typewriting. But due to its slowness, it requires more thinking and analysis than typewriting. When we handwrite class notes, we process what our lecturer explains, analyze, and then write in our own words. It helps in memorizing and improves critical thinking.

In general, handwriting involves activities in multiple regions of our brain which typewriting does not. It involves motor cortex to manually write, visual cortex to visualize the shape and form of letters, and different neural networks related to language, spellings, grammar etc. All these neural connections, collectively work to help memorizing and learning. Handwriting is an essential part of our learning process and cognitive development. It should not be underestimated.

Thanks

Mridulika

 

References:

Neural substrates of sensorimotor processes: letter writing and letter perception

Why writing by hand makes kids smarter

Digitizing Literacy: Reflections on the Haptics of Writing

Mumma, I want to become a famous cricket player

Remembering those days when our dads used to watch or sometimes listen to commentaries of cricket matches. As a curious kid, we used to ask our dads how this game being played, what are few rules, and we tried our best to understand player's strengths and strategies. Soon this world-famous sport became our most loved family-sport to watch, learn and play. Most of our childhood spent playing cricket in our block with our good friends. A lot of us carried a delightful dream in our eyes to become cricket sports person one day and some of us accomplished this too.

The similar curiosity and wish to learn about cricket take place in Aarya's mind. A 5- year-old boy Aarya watches his dad playing cricket. Numerous questions arise in his growing mind. Alot of them get answered while watching the match and learning from his parents. Aarya is a bright, observant, deterministic, hardworking, enthusiastic, perspicacious and inquisitive boy. He loves watching and learning this sport. Soon Aarya starts imagining himself playing international cricket one day. Carrying these lovely and glorious dreams in his eyes, he deterministically works towards it.

My book "Mumma, I want to become a famous cricket player" is about Aarya who get inspired from his dad and work to fulfill his dream of becoming a famous cricket player one day. 

The intention of this book is to familiarize our young kids with basic cricket rules and opening doors of their wide imagination to encourage them carrying a prodigious and beautiful dream. After all, every achievement, every innovation, start with a big dream in one's mind and heart. As it's quoted “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

The book is published in kindle and paperback format on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Here are the links:

Amazon:

Mumma, I want to become a famous cricket player (Amazon)

Barnes and Noble:

Mumma, I want to become a famous cricket player (Barnes and Noble)

Please check it out!

Thank you

Mridulika