Sometimes, you only need to show up. Yes, that’s it. Just show up. Show up, because you owe that to yourself. No matter when your day starts and when it ends, show up for that one thing, for at least that one hour you need to.
Many times, we don’t need inspiration or motivation, but momentum – the one thing that makes you sit and do your work, and get it done without thinking much about your relevance in this universe. Yep, it’s true!
And I have started quietly loving this version of mine (very recent though), and my loved ones, where they have such clarity of their goals that whatever happens throughout the day, including the emotional ups and downs, they show up. They just show up when they are required to without any fuss.
You want to read more? Read a few pages, or just a single page every day from any book you want to read and explore. Just one page every day. I’m pretty sure you have that much time.
You want to write more? Do you feel like you have nothing to write when you sit in front of your laptop? Fine. Start with how your day has been so far. Just start it. Scribble the story, and finish your rough draft. Now you have a draft ready to edit and publish later.
I know, you have 100s of ideas, headlines, storylines, and content pieces saved in your Google Docs, in your Notes, in your LinkedIn and Instagram saves, and in your Medium and Substack reading list. Oh, and the one in your private WhatsApp chat (with yourself)!
My dear writing friend, I know you have all of these, and you still wait for inspiration. You need action. Just start scribbling that one blog piece, and the story will come to you. Show up for the sake of your sanity. Please!
Has health gone downhill? Want to be fitter and more confident? Then show up. Move your body. Outdoor walk, indoor walk, walk on treadmill, deep breathing exercises, basic beginner-level cardio & strength training, dance workout – do anything in the world you can do.
Just do it. Do it at least for half an hour 4 times a week. It won’t give you a celebrity-like figure, but it will break your inertia, your initial resistance, your lifelong wait for motivation, and you will finally feel the process happening through you.
When a few pages read every day brings you to page no 300 in a 400-page book, or when even 30 minutes of everyday walk builds your discipline and mental strength to keep going on in this journey ahead within a month, then you actively start to focus on the momentum, not motivation.
Yes, motivation is important. But choosing to do the things that move the needle, that’s a game-changer. And I can say this from my experience that sometimes doing less is more – just make sure that you show up for the things that get you into the flow you need to be in.
Inspirational content is superb to watch, but small changes made every day, out of clarity and intention, can inspire like a dozen motivational talks can never.
I hope you got my point.
Note: This piece was originally written for my LinkedIn post, but it exceeded the character limit, as you can see, so I edited and shortened my LinkedIn post a bit, and this is the original version.
I don’t know what the reason is behind it exactly, but this is something I think is true. After all, it is a reflection of my inner world. I can’t deny that.
After a lot of shortcomings, complexes, and challenges, we finally admit that we need to accept ourselves as who we are and leveling up ourselves can only be fulfilling when it happens from the place of self-love instead of self-pity and hatred.
We acknowledge our limitations. We accept our flaws. And we work on ourselves so that our today’s actions make our tomorrow more accomplished and fulfilling. This long yet rewarding process demands from us one thing, and that is – a deep sense of security within.
A deep sense of security that comes from an unshakeable faith that no matter what, you will achieve and live your dreams for sure, and the universe is working in your favour.
But insecurity appears and stares us in so many subtle forms that you wonder if you are doing enough inner work.
Becoming a zen monk is not my life goal yet, but becoming the person who is so secure within that external insecurities can’t affect her even for a second is one of my goals for sure. And my heart says that it is possible, it is doable.
How? I don’t know the step-by-step method today. But one thing I know for sure is that my sense of security comes from my inner confidence, my confidence comes from taking aligned actions and showing up with a lot of love and respect towards my goals, and my actions come from my intentions, my mindset, and my beliefs.
So, taking a bit closer look at my beliefs, my mindset, my intentions, and my actions in my everyday life can maybe take me closer to the roots of my insecurities that sometimes pop up out of the blue and make me feel uncomfortable. And I can focus more on those beliefs, mindsets, and actions that boost my sense of security deep within over a long period of time.
“Tenacity is a quality that we could all do with; that is, the ability to continue to do something for longer than might be expected. In other words, don’t give up easily. Finish that project. Complete that task. Finish that race even if you are coming in last. Stick with your ambitions; work towards them. Hold on to life, to that steep mountain slope. There’s always something you can do.”
A few days back, I picked up this beautiful, cute little book to re-read. The first time I read it was a few years back. I picked it up and started reading this beautiful piece by one of India’s most-loved authors, which opens with a letter from the author himself.
The colourful pages, beautiful fonts, amazing illustrations, and creative designs make the reading far more joyful and immersive.
Ruskin Bond has shared nuggets of wisdom in this book. It truly feels like a letter from your grandpa on how to live your life. It has the warmth, love, practical advice, and inspiration to dream big and live your life fully as long as you are alive here.
Among all those beautiful pages filled with tips, lessons, and advice, this one particularly resonated with me the most this time. It happens. As they say, we read a book for the first time every time we read it again. This time, it felt like I was reading this particular page for the first time. I read it slowly. I paused. I re-read it multiple times. I thought about it. And then I knew it was meant to come across. I needed this. I needed this reminder.
Tenacity. Just a little more push. A little more showing up. A little more faith in your journey to keep going towards your dreams, your truth, every day.
I enjoyed rereading this amazing piece this time, and I know I will reread it again someday for sure. Till then, I am holding onto tenacity. I am holding on to life, beautifully.
What is that one book you read or reread recently that talked to you like mine did? Share your stories, please.
I must say I have read something really fresh, rejuvenating, soft, simple, inspiring, and authentic after a long time in the genre of self-help. And this has been truly a lovely reading.
“The Magic of Creative Living” touched me in ways not many self-help books could before. The honesty, simplicity, and authenticity of the author make it an absolute gem.
Thankfully, someone writing a self-help kind of book talked about the myths and shit we feel trapped in so openly and loudly.
I loved this book. Loved each page, each chapter, and each paragraph a hundred percent.
Renuka has shared her life experiences, her problems, her struggles to live a life that finally feels a lot softer, meaningful, simple, yet successful, with all the fulfillment our soul craves silently. She nudges readers to sit, to question, to journal, and to basically pause and check if they are living the version of their lives they are really proud of from the bottom of their heart, or is there something missing? And if something is missing, then how to actively start participating in our lives instead of running away from it and scrolling for hours.
She has nudged throughout the book. It is a non-preachy read. You will feel the honesty. You will surely relate to the reality she is talking about between the pages.
For me, it has been one of the best, most refreshing, and simplest possible books in the self-help genre. I liked the writing style and the content of the book as well.
If you are fed up with to-do lists, how-to guides, early morning alarms, scrolling endlessly, mediocre performances, and a sense of fear and loss in life, then go read this book. It can be your saviour. I mean it. If you are ready to change, the author has your back.
You know, for the past year, and a bit more, my internal health, my hormonal balance, my weight fluctuations, my skin problems, and my surprising physical ailments and doctor visits have really made me feel very bad about myself. Very bad!
I can’t tell you how hopeless, bad, and weak I have felt inside. And when you go through multiple physical problems one after another – in my case, they were unexpected weight gain, constant stress, possibility of thyroid, initial stages of PCOD with a lot of added stress and mood swings, restlessness, the constant fatigue and tiredness – I was tired of feeling tired every day!
The overwhelm and heaviness inside, which only you feel very often. The surprising neck and nerve pain you never even imagined you can have, medications, and the internal battle between the one who wants to sort everything – get fitter, eat better, want to wake up early, do meditation and exercises, have breakfast on time, and the one who is tired, lost, and somewhere deep in grief, because each and every seemingly small thing, including just getting up from the bed and living normally suddenly felt so impossible.
And just imagine all these changes with the fact that everything is happening to you while you are a newlywed. You go to a new place, a new city, you live with your in-laws, and now your body feels like it’s operating in a survival mode every day.
You are unable to understand your body, you are unable to process the change in the surroundings and culture around you, and your already weak immunity makes you go through one of the longest cold and sneezing phases, added with the allergy which just got triggered due to the environment and changes around you.
It was the really bad, shitty experience I had with my physical, mental, and emotional well-being – all at once! And my mind wasn’t able to cope with any of these for the months ahead.
Only god knows how many times I have cried alone, silently, in closed rooms, in the bathroom, because of many, many things happening one after another constantly, and no matter what I was doing, I was literally failing.
I was failing at waking up early. I was failing at sleeping early. I was failing at cooking two meals a day for myself. I was failing at keeping up with my creativity and discipline.
I was failing at showing up for my work, even for an hour every day. And when you have to show up, you want to show up, but the negativity in your mind and weakness in your bones takes you over; your reality confirms that you are a procrastinator. I don’t know how I survived facing myself in the mirror each day. I don’t know!
No one talks about the feeling that comes with a series of repeated failures, a series of very bad and low days in your personal life. You know, I can’t remember the number of times I had questioned even my existence.
Today I feel very bad for feeling that way, but it’s true. I had started questioning my existence, my presence, and just being alive some days.
No one can make you feel loved, cared for, respected, valued, and desired when you start developing a relationship with yourself, where you have started to deeply hate the parts of you that need your acceptance, your love, your care, your affection, and your trust the most. You can’t abandon your vulnerable parts and move on. You have to care for your deeply seated fears, tension, stress, and insecurities.
And if you are unable to, then it’s ok. Things will get better. Don’t hate yourself for not being your best. Please don’t. Healing takes time. Honour the process. And please love yourself. Please! I wish someone had made me understand all of this then. I really wish!
I don’t know when it happened. But it happened for sure. I forgot something. I forgot that the irritating, sad, bad, ugly, frustrating, emotionally low, mentally weak, physically inefficient – each and every one of this were also me, and I am everything.
Yes, I am good, and yes, I am bad as well. Yes, I may appear pretty and good-looking some days, and some days I don’t bother to even comb my hair. And that doesn’t mean that I should start hating myself for not living my life according to my high expectations every single day.
Making room for my mistakes is also my duty. I have to give myself that room – not out of shame for not being the type A every day, but for not forgetting that I am a human and I am becoming.
When it comes to love, especially self-love, I have realised one thing – Acceptance is the first and foremost step. I can’t love myself without accepting myself completely.
Yes, I have the potential to become what I want to become for sure. Yes, I have faith in my vision. But, I can’t make that come true if I am hating myself every day for my shortcomings and for the numerous things, people, and experiences that are not in my control. And they simply are not!
For me, this acceptance wasn’t easy. Not at all. The days when I failed, I stayed in bed, I didn’t do anything productive, I felt tired, unmotivated, and fatigued, were the days when I tried to hold myself from the outside, but inside I was crumbling, cribbing, hating, complaining, and constantly talking negatively in my mind about myself – about how unhealthy I am, about how much incompetent I am, about how I will, may never be able to do anything in life I truly want.
Every day, I cribbed, hated myself, cried silently, felt bad for the people around me, and felt bad for my existence on most days.
I wish I had then understood that I needed to accept myself completely – with each and everything unfolding in that chaos every time. The two sides of me where I was saying to myself that everything will be ok, it will get better, and in my head there was a loop of “I am such a failure that my parents will always be ashamed of me, my teachers will be ashamed of me”…..kind of thoughts were going on day in and day out.
I never experienced the emotional and mental weakness I experienced in that phase. It was terrible enough to shake me from the inside.
Today, when I think about this very recent phase of my life, I realise that if I am alive today, and I look forward to life with all the hope I have in me, it is only because of two things.
These two things happened to me. I didn’t choose them. They chose me.
And when I say I didn’t choose them, they chose me, I mean it one hundred percent. This was the blessing I needed the most at that time. I will talk about walking in another post. Today, I will focus on the faith part of my healing journey. By the way, this journey is still continuing.
I don’t know how, but somewhere I started to see, feel, and accept the fact slowly that my friends, teachers, mentors, inspirational and motivational stories, good times, happiness-filled moments, and professional mental health services and counselling – which I tried in my mid to late twenties – all of this, despite their best intentions, had their own limitations.
And I had to accept that these limitations from their side are a part of their existence and their role in my life. But I used to feel so broken and shattered inside that it took me a long time to acknowledge this fact, this truth of life.
I saw that there is literally no one who can hold you, protect you, listen to you, understand you, take a very good care of you, guide you, motivate you, make you shine, make you smile, and make you fall in love with this life again and again everyday, except the only one who is the supreme divine itself. The one who is present in each and everything visible and invisible to you, the sunshine, the moonlight, the snow, the rain, the clouds, the rivers, the earth, the galaxies, the universe, the cosmos – everything is almighty. Everything is energy. And you are the manifestation of that energy.
Faith. Faith in life. Faith in goodness. Faith in the universe, faith in almighty, faith in myself has helped me keep going as an emotional force like nothing I have ever experienced till now.
Faith came to me. Faith chose me. I didn’t need to follow anything religious or spiritual at any time. I just needed to believe that whoever is taking care of this grand cosmos beautifully every day is surely capable enough to take care of me and is definitely taking care of me. I just needed to believe that the universe is here to help me. I just need to ask for help with complete, pure belief.
The belief in the universe, the belief in the goodness, in the greatness, in the almighty, with a pure heart and pure intentions, gave me something I can’t even describe in words.
The least I can say is that I started to believe in life, in my existence, in this world again. And slowly, it started to change the narrative in my mind. And that was enough to shift the reality within. Somehow, my mind started to accept that I am a part of a very big cosmic reality of which I am unaware, and things will get better, more beautiful, relaxed, and happier with each day.
It’s true. Belief changes you. Belief changes your reality. It did change mine. My inner thoughts, words, conversations, and feelings have started to change in my favour. And that’s itself a very big, very important change.
Yes, I continue to have my phases of not-so-good days and not-so-good feelings, and I choose faith in life on those days as well. That is the least we can do for ourselves, I feel.
Faith chose me when I needed it most. And it held me every time I needed someone to hold me from falling again and again. It certainly has impacted my emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being in ways I didn’t know earlier.
Faith can really move mountains. It’s true. I can say it with confidence today.
Faith helped me in accepting myself wholeheartedly – with all the failures, all the rejections, all the setbacks, all the past baggage, with all the physical, personal, and professional insecurities I had developed unconsciously.
It finally helped me in happily accepting myself with everything within me – with all the mess and grace!
This ongoing process of connection with the supreme divine, the divine god, the divine goddess, or whoever you say, has made me come to terms with myself.
It made me acknowledge my current reality. It made me accept the decades of chapters of my past without the long-held guilt, shame, and unworthiness I had for so long. It made me let go of many things, people, and experiences I needed to let go of peacefully.
It finally made me see the present in front of my eyes with a lot of appreciation, it truly deserves. It made me learn that life is all of this – the good, the bad, the success, the failure, the love, the hatred, the drama, the peace, the highs, the lows – life is all of this.
We are merely a peck of dust here. We can’t afford to take the lows so seriously that we start to question our presence. Our presence, too, is a part of the plan. All we need is to trust the plan.
Yes, we need to. Nobody can trust us on our behalf. We have to, so that miracles can happen abundantly.
So yeah, this was the role of faith. Faith in the universe, the faith in life, and the faith in the cosmos, that helped me in seeing myself as a beautiful, worthy, protected, blessed, and one of the luckiest parts of this miraculous thing called life.
The sense of alignment you get to experience for the very first time in your life, that feeling changes the energy you choose to operate from on an everyday basis.
The process hasn’t been linear, and maybe it won’t be. But it will make many things clear to you one after another. And you will choose to fall in love with life again and again every day, despite everything going around you. And trust me, this is one of the most beautiful parts of this process. I have felt it. I can say it.
Have faith. The universe is working in your favour. Always!
Srishti Kumari 