badge

Friday, April 6, 2018

When Life Breaks You Down, A Fighter Reborn

I believe every woman has TRUE BEAUTY within her in all the roles she plays. For over 18 years across 650 plus salons across the country, Naturals has been helping the Beautiful Indian Woman get more Beautiful.
Today Naturals Salutes the Beautiful Indian Woman.
Presenting Naturals TRUE BEAUTY… http://bit.ly/naturalsOF 
This is a story about the a Women whom I feel "True Beauty"
What was your most painful life experience?
A Break-up? Insult by relatives or put-down by friends? Loneliness? dream getting shattered? Losing someone? No Job? Failure in Exam?
If you have answered “Yes” to any one of the above then read on…
   
Will a person who never ran in her life, would ever run a marathon?  Absolutely, Yes! They can!? What’s so special about it!? But, will a person decide to run a marathon after losing both legs?
Yes, That's the inspiring story of  Shalini Saraswathi who turned into an avid runner (a blade runner).
She made the decision of running when her life snatched both her arms and legs.

We all know about Nicholas James who has No Arms, No legs and No worries. Here is another inspiring story from our own India. It’s the story of Shalini Saraswathi.

It was when all my colleagues were complaining about office stress, spouse problem and concluded life hardly seems a worth living. At that point of time we received an email with a subject line Meet Bengaluru’s Blade Runner Shalini Saraswathi @ Bengaluru campus.

     While I was running a TCS 10K Marathon, I have seen her running but never in my mind realized she has such a beautiful inspiring life of positivism and determination. After attending her session, I realized why she is called as an icon of perseverance and hope.

Her story in short. Like millions of people out there, she had an extremely beautiful life,  successful career, a loving family and a great soul mate. She went to Cambodia for a honeymoon. After returning to India, She had to get admitted to hospital for a slight fever. Never in her wild dreams she would have thought some rare bacteria called Ricketssial would affect her and that would change her life upside down. Slight Fever led to multi organ failure and she went to coma for few days. Doctor declared her survival rate was 5%.

Next few years, she went to the hospital only to remove few of her flesh removed from her body every now and then. Shalini Saraswathi went on to lose all four of her limbs. But, that's not the end of the story.

The next year she realized she lost both the arms and both legs, but not her courage. A Fighter was reborn. She challenged the sky. “Does not matter what comes in my way, I will never give up and Don’t mess up with me”. She moved on from her pain and trained herself for a TCS 10k race in Bangalore.

Most of the time we listen to our mind which gives a lot of excuse. “Hitting snooze button”, “From tomorrow I will hit the Gym”, “From tomorrow I will start”. We love to listen to those lame excuses which mind offers and are addicted to it.

For Shalini, when her body did not help her to have what she wants, she trained her mind and made her body listen to her mind. It was not easy for her initially. When she went for a personal training no one knew how to train her. Yet, she overcome those struggles. How was it possible for her to come out it? She chose to look the brighter side. When her legs were about to amputate, she chose to wear a purple nail polish and admired it. That's the power of positivism she carried.

The one thing which was constant in her speech was “A big smile and a positive attitude”


Now tell me friends, can’t we deal with our problems more positively and happily? 
Small disappointments should never bother us. 
Everyone has scars around us, it’s in our hands and out choice to use those scars for a self-destruction or for a self-discovery.

Few lines from her speech today, “Walk in the rain, stick your tongue out and catch the raindrops, hold hands, feel the grass under your feet, smile at strangers, admire good-looking men/women, fall in love, call someone you have meant to, give big tight hugs, dance till you drop, wear your red lipstick, join that class you have always wanted to, buy the shoes you want, write a book, sing aloud, learn to play an instrument, bungee jump, sky dive, travel to Antarctica for all I care – LIVE TODAY AND LIVE IN THE MOMENT – you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow!”

Friday, March 30, 2018

Gratitude Journal for a Positive Life


Past few days I feel extremely happy and positive. I could sense my quality of life is improving a lot. I was meeting lot of new people with the same mindset of mine. I could feel my immune system has improved a lot.

What made me to feel this change? Adding a simple exercise in my day-to-day activity.

What’s that?

Gratitude Journal!!!

I started practicing gratitude daily. Every day at the end of the day, I started writing 2 positive things happened in that day.

Here are the positive things happened in past 3 days:

March 28:
  • Salary credited well in advance.
  • Had a delicious dinner with my Manager and functional team manager along with my project Head. Well, what’s so special about it? The quality discussion I had with them was wonderful.

March 29:
  • Meeting a girl of same mind-set. We shared same business, life and person goals. In fact both our paths were same.
  • Realized I am an active person. Out of 27 person, None are interested to play Badminton I really thanked god for giving an interest in sports

March 30:
  • Woke up at 4: AM and roamed Bangalore. Was searching for a zumba class and by mistake got into Sobha Lakeview Clubhouse. Yes, the doors were open and the security guy let me in thinking I have a membership with Shoba and stay in Shoba apartments. The Clubhouse was ravishing. I started exploring the 4 storied luxury club. It had a Swimming pool, Tennis Badminton, Squash courts, also Table tennis with spa,  gyms, a library and so on
  • The summer was unbearably getting hotter in Bangalore and I wished for a Rain. I requested the nature, "Please sky. Show some rain." To my surprise, around 4 PM, the weather got cooler with a heavy breeze and the rain spilled on my face endlessly. 
If you are positive, positive things happens in your life. The above things are extremely Small things. But matters a lot!

What are you waiting for? Grab a pen and write 2 positive things happened on that day. When you start writing this, you feel that your entire world is full of positivism. 

Well Most of us are surrounded with lot of negativity and it makes us to think that everything goes wrong and nothing goes right.

After starting this exercise, I am paying attention only to the positive things happening in my life.

I feel the sky is clear and people around me are good. My productivity in office has largely improved.

I would suggest you to start a gratitude Journal to have a positive impact in your life. Request you to pen down in notebook instead of typing in laptop.

Do post in comments what are the positive things happened today.