Anuradha Sridharan

 It was 5:40 PM. I just freshened up and was about to step into the kitchen. I noticed D playing with her dolls and Lego blocks. Instead of heading to the kitchen, I sat down with her. She then asked me, "Can you play with me for some time?". I replied, "Sure, I can play for 15 minutes". She immediately looked at the clock and then asked me, "Can you sit with me till 6 o'clock?". I responded with a Yes. While playing the pretend play game, she kept on checking the clock every few minutes. I asked her why. What she said gave me the answer I needed to hear. Her answer was "I want some human to play with me". It just broke my heart. For the past few days, I had been busy, stocking up groceries, cooking, doing dishes, laundry, cleaning, etc. Though I have conversations with D throughout the day, I wasn't dedicating my complete time and attention to her. During her playtime, she reads books, plays with her dolls or our kittens/cats (we now hav...

  A day to celebrate books. World Book Day is celebrated on April 23rd every year.  In this age where information comes to us in various forms (audiobooks, podcasts, courses, videos, online workshops, etc), my preferred source is through books, especially physical ones. I love to read on my Kindle as well, but I find that I retain the information much better when I read from a physical book. I prefer to read non-fiction books on topics related to psychology, nutrition, wellness, health, self-development, productivity, philosophy, marketing, etc. I do read fiction books/novels but I don't tend to gravitate towards them naturally. Childhood conditioning played a major role in shaping my book preferences.  A couple of years back, I had made a list of my favorite books . I'm sure there are a few more that I'd like to add to this list. "Biology of belief", "The Heartfulness Way", "Many lives, many masters", "Atomic habits" to name a few. I...

  I'm a continuous learner. I seek information and knowledge from various sources. But over the past few months, I have experienced this realization - Some life lessons are best learned through experience. Let me give you an example - I'm the kind of person who loves to be in control of various aspects of my life - be it food, lifestyle, productivity, time management, interests, etc.  When things went out of my control, I got quite stressed. I tried researching more about why certain issues were happening, watched a ton of youtube videos, discussed a lot with my husband, and tried to gather a logical explanation.  The time spent in these activities didn't alleviate my stress levels but rather increased them even more. I couldn't understand the deeper meaning behind these phrases "Surrender to the situation", "Accept it wholeheartedly" and "Let go" when I heard them from multiple people whom I respect and adore. Once I started to apply these...

 A question that had been lingering in my mind for decades is finally getting answered in the past one year through various sources. When I heard this answer for the first time, I couldn't accept it. I faced a lot of internal resistance. The answer then explained itself through deeper questioning and serendipitous interactions. The answer became even more convincing through multiple workshops (Tushita's meditation sessions and Anbe Yogam's 4 Gates 1 Home).  As if these weren't enough, I accidentally stumbled upon this book in my community library and it simplified the answer even further.  Yes, I'm now a firm believer of karma , the universal cause-and-effect law applicable for everyone. I now understand the deeper meaning of it and it has helped me connect many loose ends. The main protagonist of this book "The Search that seeks you"  written by Sangamithra Amudha is named Karma. It is a simple story of Karma's self discovery through his life experien...

 As I shared yesterday , I was going through a couple of unexpected health issues in the past few weeks. Sleep-deprived and at the same time, not enough food intake made me feel quite drained. Days just went by without much focus. Many good habits that I had incorporated had fallen off the track. After a few dull days, I picked myself up, restarted a few good habits (not all of them) and I could see a clear shift in my energy levels.  I had a different set of responsibilities (and its challenges) from Oct-Feb. I had presumed that March will be a time when I could focus on a few personal projects, but then these health issues cropped up all of a sudden. This experience made me realize that there will never be a perfect time when everything falls in place the way we wanted. Our responsibilities and life situations keep changing. We need to adapt our schedules with clear intentions along with a "Terms and Conditions Apply" mindset. That's where planning comes in handy. We ma...

 You might have heard of instances like "I bit a murukku and my tooth broke", "I bit a seedai and my tooth fell off". Have you ever heard this statement - "I bit into a samosa and my teeth came out". Well, that's what happened to me 3 Sundays back. After a long long time, I was tempted to eat a samosa. I bought home a piece from my favorite sweet shop, poured the chutneys on top of it, and took ONE bite from my front teeth. My next reaction was OMG! My 4 front teeth dropped off on my plate. If you are shocked at this point, let me admit - the teeth that broke were my 10-year old ceramic bridge. From my teens, I had many tooth cavities, got many root canal treatments done in my 20s, and had to get a ceramic bridge in 2010.  I shouldn't be blaming the samosa or the fact that I was tempted to eat it. The incident happened, which was beyond my control and I had to fix the issue. Over the past 3 weeks, after multiple trips to my dentist and various proc...

  I recently stumbled upon this term called " Revenge bedtime procrastination ". This implies that we delay sleep on purpose to gain some me-time.  As I was reading more articles on this topic, this one by BBC had elaborated it very well "people who don’t have much control over their daytime life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of freedom during late-night hours”. I remember many years back (2012-13) when D was a toddler, I would put her to sleep by 10 PM, make myself a nice cup of hot chocolate and watch an episode of "Castle" on Star World from 11-12. Though I knew I had to catch up on my sleep, I would delay it, just so that I can grab an hour for myself. Fortunately, there wasn't any Netflix/Prime during that time as I might have ended up binge-watching one episode after another. Off late, I have been observing this sleep procrastination happening among my friends and family. During this past year of work-from-home, it is becoming a...