Yet another series of blastsin Delhi, I was in Delhi when this happened , luckily I was not in either of the places where the blasts took place .I have lived and grown up in one of these places, worked in one other, always shop in one of these, so it came as quite a shock for the proximity that we all have to attacks like these. I was flooded with phone calls asking if I hadn’t been adventurous that day and if I was safe. Continue reading →

Mumbai shocked everyone, however, the speed at which Mumbai tried to get back to normal was equally shocking for me !! Yes….life has to get back to normal..There is a sense of anger, outrage but WHERE IS IT expressed??? I wish the city ….the country had stopped at least for a day and EXPRESS what they felt. The outrage has almost dies down. It is important to vent out your feelings towards achieving some result in the end which benefits everyone. Continue reading →

MUM, BE THE LEADER!

If we had all the answers to all the problems and situations, how would life be? High hopes, I hear often when I ask this question to working women, entrepreneurs and even leaders. And then I ask if we actually managed to find the right and apt answers to any situation and deal with it in a way that benefits us, helps us and is the best solution at that point of time, how would life be? Fun, boring, exciting, smooth or perfect? Nearly perfect, I would say. Continue reading →

Is Violence the only Expression???

In the light of rapes and sexual violence..

Sex and Money are the two most ‘misunderstood’ concepts ..

So totally not understood, so poorly expressed and so vaguely defined..

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Gender is a ‘biological fact’ and when we hear gender becoming a major ‘issue’ in society, it is disheartening to the mind. The other major dampener is that Gender Issues are always pertaining to the female gender. Women across the world have fought this fight, which apparently is neither their own nor created by them.

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Emotional fitness guru of India for personal and business transformation, Abha Maryada is set to launch an iconoclast and visionary leadership book to help women reclaim, redefine and internalize leadership within themselves. With the undeniable background of gender issues across the world, India’s First internationally acclaimed Woman Motivational Speaker, Thought Leader, Visionary, Continue reading →

FOR THE STATE OF MINDS AND THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THEM???

WHO IS TO BE BLAMED?? CAN WE BLAME AT ALL??

Are WE THE CONDONERS??? Is Condonation also Perpetration??? And our obvious choice for life, is that we do not want violence of mind or body…stay TOLERANT..Stay peaceful, accepting and adjusting. Continue reading →

OUR ARRIVAL TO THIS WORLD..WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN?

 You were planted in this World with no contribution of yours.  Your parents discovered that you were conceived.  They would have gone through many emotions on discovering your presence, not fully knowing how to react.  With lot of excitement, they would also have entered a state of anxiety to keep you healthy and millions of thoughts would have worried their mind about what you would be like, what they would like you to be etc.  They would have begun already to have dreams about your life.  Every day that must have passed while you were in your warm home, must have been day of mixed emotions, fears, happiness, anxiety, gratitude and all else.  You had already begun to exist in their life, their minds, their environment, their present and their future.  

From a little shapeless dot, the first month of your conception saw your rudimentary brain.  Your arm and leg buds appeared out of the shapeless lump and over the months grew into solid arms and legs.  Your thread like spine grew into solid bones and your head continued to grow.  Initially it was much bigger than the body but eventually the body caught up with the big head. This is human nature, the body follows the head.  Within a few hundred days, your hands, feet, mouth, nose everything came into being. In the womb you moved all the time, trying to make space for yourself. You filled up the whole space in the womb as you grew. One fine day you cried out loud, your voice shrill ,as if wanting to make yourself heard.  You looked like a puckered chicken, very pink, your eyes wide open as if looking at something. As if longing to see this beautiful world.Then you took your hand to your mouth, as if knowing the right thing to do.  You were beautiful, a miracle of nature, a new being, a new world.  You had arrived!! 

One unique being had been created, with his own characteristics, made out of the unique combination of the parents. It is certain there is no one else exactly like you or there will ever be ANOTHER you.  It must have been a magical moment for your parents. YOU were their magic, their miracle! They were your miraculous creators, you got the ‘gift of life’ from them.  You got the ‘gift of this world’ which immediately embraced you as one of them.  As you moved in the womb to make space for yourself, the world that you have arrived in, became the new womb and you continued to find that space for yourself, that is what you are still doing and will continue to do for the rest of your life.

Your parents gave you existence.  You began to ‘BE’ alive from then on. You began as a small speck and from that little shapeless being you grew within months. That is your nature, GROWTH. Just as was needed for you to become the ‘YOU’ today.

WHAT DOES YOUR ARRIVAL MEAN?

MUM, BE THE LEADER!

If we had all the answers to all the problems and situations, how would life be? High hopes, I am told, when I ask this question to working women, entrepreneurs and even leaders. And then I ask if we actually managed to find the right and apt answers to any situation and deal with it in a way that benefits us, helps us and is the best solution at that point of time, how would life be? Fun, boring, exciting, smooth or perfect? Nearly perfect, I would say.

If you are a Mum and you run a business, you know that balancing home and work is the one big need for most working mums. Add to it, the emotional stresses of children’s needs, lack of time, business and work pressures, social pressures, a working mum’s life and career path is often filled with many such speed breakers. Is there a solution to all this or do mums always have to work on low steam? The answer is, there is an answer! That is to turn Mums into Leaders of sorts.

That calls for a minor but maverick shift in working mum’s thought process. The shift lies in modifying her emotional make up in ways that enhance the personal, work and social lives, turning them into Life Leaders. A definitive decision to work your emotional make up in ways that it benefits you personally as well as work wise, becomes very important.

1. Health: This one almost always gets the axe when you are a working mother. Does it affect your emotional state, it certainly does. Put this right in the front and make it a non- negotiable priority. Better the health, better you can perform at home and work

2. Workplace Distance: How far you are from home matters. It takes away that much time from your home to travel to and from work. Lack of sufficient time is one the biggest priority issues mums face. Lesser time means more organization, chances of inefficiency and more stress. Stay close, find a place near by, better still work from home.

3. Workplace environment: This is the hidden culprit for many problems. Often people carry their problems from work to their homes. Women being emotionally present, tend to look at work problems also with a lot of emotion. It is important to break away emotionally from a problem to deal with it. Unless you do that, you will tend to carry the same emotions back home.

4. Children and Family: Families are key support teams for any working mum. They need sufficient attention and support from the mum herself. Working efficiently around the family’s schedule is very crucial. Efficiency comes from creating systems, big and small around the home, children’s food, studies and family times, so more can happen in the mum’s absence

5. Relationship with Money: Money is a factor that can never be ignored in any situation. Growth in the money area, is the most powerful impetus for a working mum. The cost of such growth needs to be defined very clearly , so as no part of life is regretted later. Delayed gratification can work wonders, unless it is a serious money need. At all other times, it is important to assign enough importance to all of the other areas as well.

The Working Mother needs to become her own Leader and find the best emotional space to work from. That will be the Emotionally fit Leader Mum!

TRANSFORMATIONS HAPPEN IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT : KARMA

India, the hub of spiritual wonder has fascinating lessons for life and business transformation. The Gita, our big scripture is set on a battlefield called ‘Mahabharata’, where absolute peace is being propagated in the midst of havoc. Contradictory as it may sound, the scripture shows that it is our duty to maintain inner calm in the wake of worldly noise to be able to perform at our best as a human being. It assigns duty or karma the highest place in human life. In a battle between brothers, the good and evil, Lord Krishna asks his disciple Arjuna to follow his duty as a Warrior. On the one hand is the dampened spirit of Arjuna who is not able to reconcile to the fact, that he is destined to kill his own kin. On the other hand, his advisor Lord Krishna, teaches him Karma of a Warrior i.e. never to back off in a battlefield. In the end, Arjuna follows the path of duty to be transformed from an ordinary warrior to elevated being, known as the biggest warrior in Indian Scriptures.

Gita teaches the big lesson on ‘Perspectives’. What we see in a given situation as against what we can possibly see, creates the massive space where all ‘transformation’ in the human mind takes place. How we perceive life is what gives it any meaning and how we respond to what we perceive is what ‘causes’ anything in our lives. How can this help women to transform their personal and business lives? Embracing a duty driven perspective is the ultimate TRANSFORMATION tool, for it defines what is right for us and what we choose to perceive as not right. It is empowering in as much as it asks us to be in the Driver’s Seat of defining perspectives. If we were to follow this simple lesson from the Gita, we can know for a fact that we are under no obligation to perceive things as they always have been. We are also under no obligation to respond to all perception in the way it has always been done.

1.Pause and play to break patterns: Our minds are conditioned to react and define things. If we paused before reacting and chose a response instead to gender situations, what would change? Everything! E.g. Women in general are desirous of more but fear being perceived as ambitious, reacting in ways so they could never fully express that desire. What is our duty and towards whom? We know we have a duty towards ourselves. If we never insta-played to perceptions, instead pause and then play our own empowering duty driven perspective, we will see ourselves transform for we live with what empowers and nothing else.

2.Relationships mean reformation: The ones we feel right in and the ones we do not feel right in are all of reformatory value. Relationships are the primary mental-emotional interaction field. The best and worst relationships shape our perspectives about people. We choose the best relationships to continue with and avoid the ones that are not so great, but we must never discount the importance of the worst ones. Why? They are the key creators of the personality perspective of who we do not want to be. What is our duty? Have evolving relationships that transform and reform.

3.Business is organic, So are you: A business does not need a mere academic business perspective. With an identity, life, growth of its own, business is itself an organic process. Needless to mention, it is driven by an organically growing individual, the woman herself. Which one takes precedence is the question? Duty is the answer. Business makes its own rules dependent on the capacity and perspective of the business owner. Both grow with each other and how many rules one must make or follow depends on the organic duty requirement in any given moment. The inter-dependence makes the rules and causes transformations.

Why follow duty? Duty boils down to giving without knowing what we will get it return. Give to who and for what? The answer may sometimes be ‘nothing’ at all, from the world perspective. But from our inner perspective it is ‘giving’ to ourselves for our inner and outer transformations. A duty is always a responsibility towards ourselves, nothing less, nothing more.

More on this in my Book NUCLEUS: Power Women, Lead from the Core