Mitali’s Dialogue

This Mothers Day is bringing up a gamut of emotions for me. It’s a big year for me as a mom. Next month my older son K will be graduating from high school and also turning eighteen. I am excited to celebrate these milestones as it truly feels like an accomplishment given our journey as parents over the past eighteen years.

For many parents high school graduation is a momentous occasion - a milestone to be celebrated as our kids step into adulthood and prepare to leave the nest. But I also have some apprehension about the path ahead. We still have lots of responsibilities ahead of us as parents of a special needs adult. K is not yet ready to leave the nest but community college is hopefully in his future - something we couldn’t imagine was possible four years ago. Legally he may be turning into an adult in June but he is still learning how to take responsibility for himself and his actions and decisions. The future is still unknown but I guess that’s the case for all of us parents.

Our journey into the unknown started when K turned two and we realized that he was not babbling or making any sounds. From that initial diagnosis of verbal apraxia, we have since uncovered other diagnoses along the way - each with its own set of difficulties and missed expectations. I waited till he was four before I heard the words - “I love you”. I drove him to countless sessions of therapies and tutoring to help him learn how to read and do math. Violent tantrums were a norm in our house as he struggled to express his needs and emotions during those early years.

But it hasn’t been all doom and gloom. While his journey stretched my patience as a mother, it also taught me to live in the moment and celebrate the small wins. His disabilities meant that he truly lived each day as a new day - carrying no baggage from the past and no worries about the future - seemingly embodying the concept of the “beginner’s mind” from Zen Buddhism. As his mom, I learnt to give up control over things that were not in my control and to only plan for one year at a time with him. His development journey is his own. Giving him the grace of space and time has allowed him to discover who he is. During his elementary school years, all his artwork would come back home painted black or torn into shreds. Then in sixth grade at an art class at our local community center, he discovered a passion for painting and colors and now his artwork hangs all over my house.

He taught me that you only need one person holding hope and fighting for his rights to help him progress through life. I learnt to hold and express my unconditional love in each IEP school meeting (IEP stands for Individualized Education Plan - a document that ensures public schools provide appropriate education to fit a kid’s specific learning needs). I became his fearless champion building support around him with a team of teachers and specialists that continue to see him for the strengths he brings to the table. I discovered courage within me to not get defeated by the stark assessments delivered every three years by his school counselors.

Last year I wrote about how my life was transformed the day I became a mom and how I have learnt over the years to finally carve out space for myself despite getting subsumed by the responsibilities of being a parent. I have also learnt to flex my parenting skills in order to raise my second son N, who is neurotypical and four years younger than my older one. In the early years I worried if I had the capacity to give N the attention and energy needed after all the work that my older one demanded from me. Over the years I learnt that quality matters more than quantity and giving him my undivided time during his swim meets or taekwondo competitions forged deeper connections along the way.

In the early days when there was much chaos in our house, N lived up to his name which means “little saint” and would counsel me to be kind and forgive my older one for his emotional outbursts. These days as a teen, if he had his way, he would have very little to do with me so I have learnt to use humor and candor to engage him in open dialogue on hard topics. Instead of demanding that he listen to me, I learnt to let go and have him fail and learn from his own mistakes. Knowing that I have his back and won’t judge him means he often turns to me when he finds himself in sticky situations.

Over the years I have discovered that values get passed down to our kids by our daily actions regardless of the challenges that we may face each day. Kindness, compassion, independence, honesty - these are values that K upholds every day in his interactions with the people that matter to him. N surprises me many days with his approach to life - humor, flexibility, grit and a growth mindset are traits that he has picked up from both of his parents. My biggest joy each day continues to come from seeing my kids pursue their passions and develop their unique personalities. They in turn continue to teach me valuable life lessons on how to lead a fulfilled and happy life.

“The child ever dwells in the mystery of ageless time, unobscured by the dust of history.”

- Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies

Kinnari’s Dialogue

“Which phase of your kids’ life did they need you the most?” This is a question I often ask friends and cousins who have or are getting ready to send their kids to college. I’m curious about when my kids will need me the most - is it now while they are little or will it be when they get older? I’ve received a version of the same answer every single time. “They need you in different ways at different times - it shifts from physical to emotional. When they were little, it was being with them, watching them all the time and it was physically exhausting. But it starts to shift once they hit middle school. In high school they’ll need you and seek you out only once in a while and if you aren’t accessible at that moment then they will move on to the next thing.”

I’m in the stage of life where my kids are little (7 and 2) and need my attention, love, and energy almost all the time. I find myself fully leaning into “mom mode”. It is the role that I am prioritizing over everything else - wife, employee, daughter, sister, friend, self. Sometimes it’s a conscious choice and some times not even a choice. It is where I find myself needed the most. It is also the one that fills my bucket the most. Hearing the girls giggle, watching the love grow between the two of them, being on the receiving end of hugs and cuddles and sweet things they say, fills me with immense joy. I am lucky to be in the presence of so much love and am constantly pausing to soak it all in.

"I love our daughters more than anything in the world — more than life itself. So for me, being Mom-in-Chief is, and always will be, job number one"

— Michelle Obama

Becoming a mother has changed me in immeasurable ways. It has changed my mind and how I think. It has changed how I feel. It has changed how I make decisions, how I practice listening, how I show up.

“Mom, she says mean things to me all the time and sometimes I feel like crying” - little A said to me as we were walking home from a school event a couple of weeks ago. My heart sank. I had overheard a friend say something hurtful to her and asked her about it. The Mama bear in me wanted to immediately step in and fix it. It had been going on for a few months but this was the first time I had witnessed it. I started thinking about what I could do - should I talk to the friend’s mom? Should I talk to the teacher? But I knew that this was just the start of the drama of female friendships. I had to help her learn how to navigate it instead of stepping in to fix it.

This incident was also bringing up my own insecurities from childhood but I had to learn to separate that out. I’d had my own share of friendship wounds when I was a kid. But I hadn’t come home and talked about this or expressed my hurt feelings to anyone. I had buried them deep inside and thought I’d moved on. But every once in a while they resurfaced. This was one of those moments. My inner child was coming up for air upon seeing my daughter hurt. I had to put that aside. I wanted to practice listening and creating a safe space for my daughter to express her emotions. Offer suggestions instead of telling her what she should do. Impart the wisdom I had gained over the years and talk to her about creating space in friendships, about choosing to be around those that made her feel good, where she could be herself.

“Honey - it’s okay to feel sad when someone says unkind things. How about we practice different things you could say or do when we get home?” We walked the rest of the way home holding hands in silence. With her I am in the midst of the shift from the physical to emotional. With my little one it’s purely physical.. as I write this she’s napping right beside me with one arm on me to make sure I don’t go anywhere. So for now, I’m going to stay right here. It’s my favorite place after all.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

I’ve been skimming through Kevin Kelly’s “Excellent Advice for Living”. Kevin Kelly is a renowned technology thinker, author, and co-founder of Wired magazine, known for his “radical optimism” regarding AI and digital culture. In this book Kevin shares bits of wisdom that he has shared with his young adult children and friends over the years. He says “I’m primarily channeling the wisdom of the ages. I’m offering advice that I’ve heard from others, or timeliness knowledge repeated from the past, or a modern aphorism that matched my own experience. I think of these bits as seeds because each one of them can be expanded into a long essay… You are encouraged to expand these seeds as you read to fill your own situation.”

I found myself highlighting a lot of this book so I recommend picking it up when you have time. Here are a few of the ones that struck a chord with me this month -

“Listening well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?” until there is no more.”

Everyone talks about the importance of listening. I consider myself a good listener - mostly because I am curious and ask a lot of questions. But this past week while on a family road trip, I interrupted my husband several times while he was asking me to look for a parking spot. In exasperation he said “will you *just* listen to me?”

I like the practical advice offered here - first listen. Then listen some more. Keep listening and asking for more until the person is done before saying what you want to say.

“Taking a break is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength.”

As someone that has been wanting a one-year break from my tech job while also being fearful of taking it, it was great to ponder over this one. So many of us are wired to be productive and to measure our worth by the quantity and quality of our “doing” that taking a break seems like we’re taking an easy way out when in fact it’s the opposite. Taking a break is actually a sign of strength because it says I love myself, I want to take care of my being. Or I love life and I want a pause to savor it. It’s also a belief in oneself to be able to find a footing after the break.

“Choose not to be outraged today.”

Ever so often there are moments when I get so annoyed, so irritated by something that pops up in my life outside of my control - a comment or a situation. The other day I was standing in the salad line for lunch and had to step away for a minute to grab a bowl. Rejoining the line, a newcomer to the line tried to call me out. I was about to get pissed off …how outrageous to assume that I would jump the line, that too in the workplace!

I remembered this quote just in time. Instead of getting upset I offered a smile and said “I was in line already and asked him to hold my spot”. The man I pointed to said an enthusiastic yes, ready to defend me. Choosing to not be outraged took less than a second but it changed the dynamic of the conversation and left my mental state a lot less agitated.

“Forgiveness is accepting the apology you will never get.”

This is such an interesting way to look at forgiveness. Accepting the apology that you so badly want or need, the one that you are likely not going to get - whether it’s from your partner, your child, your friend, your parent or a teacher from years past. So many times we hold on to the hurt that is caused to us until the offending party apologizes. But what if the apology never comes? Why hold on to something that is harmful to us? Kevin has another bit in the book on this - “When you forgive others they may not notice but you will heal. Forgiveness is not something we do for others; it is a gift to ourselves.”

“Keep showing up. 99% of success is just showing up. In fact, most success is just persistence.”

Where in my life do I continue to show up? Where do I feel like I have persisted? For me - it’s always been about love first and foremost. In the past ten+ years my attention has shifted from my partner to my children but the love for both my family and friends has expanded. And as I grow older I’ve thankfully, finally come to a place of love for self. So ya - I’d say that persistence pays off.

“Separate the processes of creating from improving. You can’t write and edit or sculpt and polish or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment.”

I try to remember this every time I sit down to write a post for Disco Dialogues. I aim to write from the heart, for myself before trying to edit for the words to resonate with others. Writing is a time for my feelings and thoughts to flow into words, for sharing my experiences and the wisdom I’ve gained from them. If I approach it from the lens of editing then I’m stifling the creation process.

And finally I loved this piece of advice about parenting - it aligns with the way my husband and I are currently raising our kids - time > money.

For the best results with your children spend only half the money you think you should but double the time with them.

Mitali’s Dialogue

In the same week that one leader of a country decided to threaten annihilating an entire civilization of a country, we also managed to launch a rocket into space to send humans the furthest they have ever been from Earth. As I watched the livestream of the Artemis II launch, I was struck by what humans are capable of doing once we set our goals on it while also being saddened by the fact that we still engage in futile wars that kill our fellow human beings.

Last week I chose to watch Project Hail Mary in the theaters and experienced another “feel-good” moment. The science fiction movie felt “E.T.-esque” - humanity banding together, dropping our differences and working to save the planet we all call home. After watching the movie and reading a Reddit post that claimed that the book was better than the movie, I decided to start reading the book.

“…It’s a simple idea, but also stupid. Thing is, when stupid ideas work, they become genius ideas.… I’m smart enough now to know I’m stupid. That’s progress.”

- Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

I didn’t grow up reading science fiction even though novels by Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov were popular back then. But recently I have found myself drawn to science fiction novels. Maybe it was a search for optimistic scenarios of the future painted by authors who believed advances in technology would be good for humanity. Or I was seeking a balance against the doomsday articles published in the past year around the hysteria of AI.

“... Wow. I’m sitting here in a spaceship in the Tau Ceti system waiting for the intelligent aliens I just met to continue our conversation…and I’m bored. Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.”

I found myself amused and riveted by Andy Weir’s storytelling in the book. He brings details and humor to the story that just can’t be conveyed in a two and half hour movie. I would highly recommend reading the book as it is truly juicier than the movie and has many laugh out loud moments. But if you don’t have the time to read the book then I still recommend watching the movie on a big screen, preferably on IMAX.

“…It gives me a feeling of control. I’m doing something by aggressively doing nothing. After an eternity the panic begins to ebb away. Human brains are amazing things. We can get used to just about anything…

The slight reduction of fear has a feedback effect. I know I will get less afraid now. And knowing that makes the fear subside even faster. Soon, the panic dies down to fear, which diffuses into general anxiousness.”

Our last post was about finding the courage to take action. The quote above is a nice way of explaining how sometimes focusing on doing a small action within your control (which can be as simple as clenching your teeth which Dr Grace did in a moment of panic) can bring panic and fear down to an acceptable level.

The following conversation between Dr Grace (the human scientist stuck in space) and his alien buddy Rocky from planet Erid about what makes them similar made me chuckle.

[G] “We’re as smart as evolution made us. So we’re the minimum intelligence needed to ensure we can dominate our planets.”
….
[R] “Another similarity: you and me both willing to die for our people. Why, question?? Evolution hate death.”
[G] “It’s good for the species. A self-sacrifice instinct makes the species as a whole more likely to continue.”
[R] “Not all Eridians willing to die for others.”
[G] I chuckle. “Not all humans either.”
[R] “You and me are good people.
[G] “Yeah.” I smile. “I suppose we are.”

Watching the Artemis II splashdown this week along with the messages from the astronauts while in space reminded me that we humans are actually good people…and brave too. Some of us choose to risk our lives for furthering the cause of humanity.

Mitali’s Dialogue

Am I too comfortable with my life? Have I lost the ability to do hard things? Am I challenging myself? It’s crazy how quickly these self-doubts pop into my head. Over the past six years since I stepped away from a corporate career I have found myself stuck with these questions multiple times.

I chose to embark on this journey of forging a new path for myself once I left Google. Over the years I have grown comfortable with not being defined by my work - a title or a company. It hasn’t always been smooth and a lot of my writings here have been about that journey. Yet each time these thoughts rear their head, I am caught off guard. Have I not already worked through this self doubt? Why is this the loudest voice in my head?

Self doubt and fear used to not have a prominent place in my life. I learnt to exercise courage early in life thanks to my parents. They chose to move countries multiple times in my first twelve years of childhood, placing me in situations where I had to adapt to new environments and build resilience. I moved from Oman to the US at the age of eighteen, landing in a new country, starting college in a place I had never visited before, not knowing a soul on campus. But I soon figured out that I was not afraid of the unknown. I quickly learned how to thrive and make friends and adapt to a different educational system and way of living.

When I entered the workplace, I gravitated to new risky opportunities. I would raise my hand every couple of years to move to a new office or start out fresh in a new role, enjoying the experience of being a beginner again. “Thriving in ambiguous situations” became the hallmark of my professional career. Choices were finite so I exercised courage constantly and like any muscle, repeated use continued to strengthen it.

But once I left the corporate world after twenty years, it became harder to keep this muscle strong. I had to find new ways to challenge myself. Like any muscle, courage has a tendency to atrophy when not in regular use. Without work as the container, I would often find myself frozen when faced by novel opportunities - struggling with the many choices ahead of me and finding nothing compelling enough.

In 1844, Soren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher who is considered the father of existentialism, wrote of anxiety as being the ‘dizziness of freedom’ - a philosophical concept describing the overwhelming, vertigo-like feeling when one realizes that one has the absolute freedom to choose. When the future is open, we start to dread the infinite possibilities and the weight of choosing and being responsible for the outcomes of our choices leads to anxiety.

So in January when a new opportunity came my way, I found myself stuck again. Is this the best use of my time? Am I using my privilege for good causes? Will this opportunity help me have the most impact? Fear of making the wrong choice led to procrastination. Procrastination resulted in inaction. Continued inaction started to erode my self-confidence. I started to question if I was even capable of doing hard things anymore. The lack of clarity in direction became an excuse to sit on the sidelines waiting for the motivation to show up. And slowly doubts turned into anxiety. Did I even have the energy to take on this endeavour? With these questions swirling in my head, it became easier to just not commit to anything.

“He who, restraining the organs-of-action, sits thinking in his mind of the sense-objects, he, of deluded understanding, is called a hypocrite.

But, whosever, controlling the senses by the mind, O Arjuna, engages his organs-of-action in KARMA YOGA, without attachment, he excels.”

- The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 3, verses 6-7

This month I found an inner desire to start reading the Gita. As I delved into the initial chapters, I found solace in the ancient wisdom captured in the book. Self-doubt is natural - even the great warriors faced it thousands of years ago. The Gita showed me that clarity doesn’t emerge from sitting still and waiting. It emerges when I take a step in one direction without focusing on the results. Inaction is not an option. As humans, we are meant to act. If we don’t engage in physical activity then the energy gets stuck in our mind and leads to a repeated thought pattern. What you do when you are overcome with doubt is what matters.

For me the hardest thing to do when I have lost self-confidence is to take that first step. It requires trust in the Universe to be comfortable with uncertainty about the future. It takes patience to believe in the process. I tried to make it as easy as possible to move into action by pushing myself to take small actions that felt uncomfortable but tolerable - volunteering in the community, reaching out to a stranger for a conversation. These actions gave me the courage to start engaging in more physically stressful activities like cold dips or strenuous hikes. Each act of doing something got me out of my head, away from the thoughts that were consuming my mental space. The more I practiced these “hard” things, the better I got at strengthening this muscle again.

And slowly I began to realize that courage has always been within me. I just needed to believe in it again.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

It was 5 pm on a Tuesday, and instead of rushing home to take over from the nanny, I was in a class with nineteen other adults learning about the first rule of Improv - “Yes, and”.

The “Yes, and” rule is the foundational maxim in improv. It involves two steps: accepting a partner’s idea (”Yes”) and building upon it by adding new information (”and”). It is the bridge between two points in a conversation.

I stepped up to the front of the class for a scene. My partner started the conversation with “I’m worried about Dad.” I responded with “He’s definitely not been himself lately. He even forgot about Mom’s birthday!” I had “accepted” the premise of us being siblings and my response built upon the concern my partner had shared.

What I love about improv is that you have to “make it up as you go along”. There’s an excitement that comes from not knowing where your partner’s words may take you. You have to respond right away in the moment. There isn’t time for fear to show up or for you to have a perfectly thought-out response that prevents you from moving forward

What if we lived our lives in the same way? In some ways, aren’t we all making it up as we go along? I didn’t know how to be a mother before I was one. Heck, sometimes I am still stumped when my kid asks me something. But I take all the information that is available to me at that moment and come up with the best response possible. Or I say something that will keep them going until the next question-I-don’t-have-a-clue-about comes up. There are moments at work where I’ve felt similarly - especially when working on the “0 to 1” products (the creation of a brand-new, unique product, moving from an idea to a functional Minimum Viable Product) where there isn’t a playbook. I’ve had the most fun when we had to identify product-market fit for a new technology, or determine the best set of partners to help bring a product to market.

I don’t know what comes next in my career or what my dharma is. I’ve been waiting for that clarity for several years. I’ve realized, though, that clarity doesn’t just come knocking on your door one sunny Sunday. Instead you have to take action to move towards it.

For the last couple of months, I’ve been experimenting with the “Yes, and” approach in my life. I want to be open to the opportunities that help me take action and bring me closer to my Ikigai - a Japanese concept meaning “a reason for being” representing the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for.

The “Yes”: Be a present mother and wife.
The And: Volunteer in my first grader’s class once a month. Create joyful moments for the kids that become core memories for them.
The “And”: Act as the Neighborhood Social Chair - planning family-friendly events for the community to come together.

The Yes: Manage global partnerships for Shopping at Google.
The And: Volunteer to facilitate workshops across varied topics (navigating difficult partner conversations, growth mindset etc.) at Google because I enjoy helping people expand and grow their skills.

The Yes: Live a joyful creative life. Write for Disco Dialogues.
The And: Take an improv class to practice taking action without overthinking
The And: Have a consistent daily spiritual practice
The And: Cook two new recipes a month for the family

“Yes to everything scary.
Yes to everything that takes me out of my comfort zone.
Yes to everything that feels like it might be crazy.
Yes to everything that feels out of character.
Yes to everything that feels goofy.
Yes to everything.
Everything.
Say yes.
Yes.
Speak. Speak NOW.
“Yes,” I say. “Yes”

― Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes

I am hoping that taking action, however small, will hone my vision for what’s next. At this point without that clarity I’m not able to take the big leap into the unknown. But maybe courage isn’t just about taking the big leap. It’s also the courage to keep moving forward, holding down a steady job, reaching for people that make you feel connected, creating things that make you feel alive, and being of service when you can. Perhaps if I continue to live this way, then one day I will build up the courage to pursue my ikigai.

Until then, all I can do is continue to just show up - ready to play and ready to serve.

Can you remember a time when you stopped doubting yourself and started doing again?

“You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring, and dreams are not real. Just . . . DO.”

― Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes

Kinnari’s Dialogue

I was lying in bed, a bit sick, when I got a text from a close friend - “You seemed very confident yesterday in your decision making. What’s going on today?”

I texted back - “Not great. I’ve been doubting it and can feel myself tearing up.”

I have spent the last two weeks circling a difficult decision. Should I pick option A or option B? Every day, a long conversation with a different close friend and my new AI buddies, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude. There’s only so much spinning a person can ask their dearest friends to absorb before the fatigue sets in - and the GPTs, to their credit, never tire of the same question asked seventeen different ways.

And through all of it - the conversations with my husband and friends, the AIs, the therapist, the pros-and-cons lists - I had completely forgotten the thing I’d been studying for months - the core of Yoga Sutras 2 and 3. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are a collection of ~196 aphorisms, or “threads,” written around 400 C.E. that serve as the foundational text for classical yoga philosophy. They provide a roadmap for controlling the mind to achieve enlightenment and self-realization, focusing more on psychology and meditation than physical postures.

Yogas citta vrtti nirodhah (Sutra 1.2)
Yoga is the restraint of the modifications of the mind.

The reason we must practice Yoga is to stop the fluctuations of the mind. If we can still our mind, we can control everything. The “spin” I was in is exactly what Patanjali calls vṛtti. If we can control the mind, we can navigate anything. But why do we want that stillness?

tadA drashTu swarUpeYvasthAnam (Sutra 1.3)
Then you see yourself as what you truly are

By making our minds still, we can observe our thoughts from a bit of distance. A few months ago, I wrote in my journal about watching the thoughts swirl in my head from a distance -

“There have been days where I’ve watched the swirl in my head from a little bit of distance. I’ve seen how the thoughts in my mind shift like a pendulum from the morning to evening, or perhaps within the hour. If I don’t get emotionally attached, I am able to be amused by it all.”

But these past two weeks have been a completely different story. Instead of observing my thoughts from a distance, I dove right into the swirl and got caught in it. There was no observing - just diving headlong into the riptide of my thoughts, being pulled one way and then another.

In the Yoga Sutras, after stating that the purpose of yoga is to still the mind, Patanjali explains how to get there. In Sutra 1.12, we learn that the mental modifications of the mind can be restrained by practice and non-attachment. Of these two, effort toward steadiness of mind is practice (Sutra 1.13).

It means we must become watchful, observe every thought, word and action. The way to do this is with the following three qualifications.

Yoga Sutra 1.14: “Practice becomes firmly grounded when well attended to for a long time, without break and in all earnestness.”

The first qualification for the practice is that it should be done for a long time. There is wisdom in Patanjali not telling us exactly how long. We must keep at it without asking, without wondering when we will achieve our goal. The practice is the journey. There is beauty in the repetition. These days, while working with my Yoga teacher, when she’s telling me to “bend forward, hands on the floor” for the twentieth time while doing our surya namaskars - I’m working hard on restraining myself from asking “How many more times!?” and instead tuning in to my body - the aches, pains, and even the resistance.

And then it should be without break. I have been sitting in meditation on and off for many years but always with long breaks in between. Same thing with publishing posts here on Disco Dialogues. The practice must be consistent without breaks.

And the last qualification is “in all earnestness.” I must pay full attention and apply my mind to it. Change is happening and I must have faith.

What I love about Sutra 1.14 is that it gives us the three most foundational aspects for any practice we undertake. Whether you are hitting the gym, learning a new language, or committing to a meditation practice, the requirements are the same: Patience, Devotion, and Faith.

Last week reminded me that I’m still a beginner. My practice wasn’t “firmly grounded” enough yet to keep me out of the riptide. The beauty of the Sutras is that they are always there to meet you when you crawl back to shore.

A few days later, I texted my friend back. “Better,” I wrote. “I think I know what I’m doing.” I’m not sure that was entirely true, but the Sutras don’t ask for certainty - just that you show up and practice again.

Mitali’s Dialogue

Last March I completed a five day hiking trip in Chile covering around fifty miles through glaciers and granite peaks. On day three, one of our toughest days, we walked for almost eleven hours. Half way through the trek after having just completed a four mile round trip to a glacier lookout point with an elevation gain of 700 ft and back down, my feet were starting to blister. Knowing that we still had another five to six hours of walking still left, I started to despair on how I would complete the trek.

I was dealing with aching feet, blustery wind in my face and a heavy backpack on my back. I noticed my confidence starting to slip. The destination seemed unattainable - Refugio Paine Grande, our hostel for the night was at least five miles away. I experienced a flood of emotions - overwhelmed from the miles left ahead of me, fear that I was attempting something too hard for my body, and frustration from the blisters on my feet. Thoughts followed the emotions telling me that the path ahead was difficult.

But moving forward was the only option available to me. Trying to get a grip on my emotions, I put my head down, looked at the ground and started repeating to myself - “one foot in front of another, Mitali.” I wasn’t going to distract myself by looking ahead at the majestic views around me. The pain in my legs became secondary to the task at hand - the steady placement of my feet on the boulders in my path. It wasn’t easy and there were moments when my group of female companions looked at each other wondering why we had signed up for this experience. But the mantra I had started in my head carried me through those last few miles.

When we finally reached our hostel in the late evening and dumped our backpacks, I reflected on my accomplishment from the day. I had just put my body through a physical endurance test and could have succumbed to the emotions swirling in my head. What had gotten me through the day was the simple act of taking one step at a time. I had managed to detach myself from the thoughts that weren’t helpful. Directing my attention to my feet and the poles in my hand, I was able to take the action that was needed in the moment.

Yoga Sutra 1.15: The consciousness of self-mastery in one who is free from craving from objects seen or heard about is non-attachment.

Since then I have found myself coming back to that mantra when a task seems daunting. Instead of letting my emotions run amok, by thinking about whether I will feel good for having done it or bad for having not done it, I tell myself that this just needs to be done. When I still struggle to get started, I break the task down into its simplest step that is non-negotiable. A step that is so easy to do that I can’t be distracted by other desires. Sometimes that is - Sit on the meditation cushion. Or open the spreadsheet. Or commit to meeting one person. This is how I manage to convince myself to start.

In the Yoga Sutras, vairagya (non-attachment) is the detachment from the results of our actions. When the mind starts to swirl, non-attachment is one way to bring the stillness back to our mind. The moment my mind thinks there is a choice to be made, it can start to create vrittis - churning up thoughts, emotions and desires driven by the external world. Instead I can stump my mind by taking away the choice. The desire for a reward or the fear of punishment falls away. There is no counter argument to an action that must be taken. Without a focus on the results of the action, there is only the action.

Mitali’s Dialogue

January is a month of rest and recovery for me. Over the past few years, my practices to tune into my body have helped me also notice the dip in my energy when January rolls around. Like many animals in winter, my body wants to retreat and hibernate once the winter vacations are over. I spend October and November building up my energy reserves for the holidays and family trips in December and then crash in January.

“Everybody winters at one time or another; some winter over and over again. Wintering is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast in the role of an outsider…However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely and deeply painful.”

- Katherine May, Wintering - The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times [Book]

So this year after a busy two week international trip over the holidays, I found myself once again in a deep lull in January. The kids returned to school in the first week, my calendar lightened up and I felt no desire to fill up my days with activities. Instead of setting new year goals or jump starting new habits for 2026, I listened to the signals from my body. It might be a deeply unfashionable way to start the year but I am choosing to expand on my spare time and catch up on rest.

It has been a journey to accept these seasonal rhythms of my body. For the past few years, I have started the new year with some dread. Will this January be different? Did I build up enough energy reserves in the fall to avoid a crash? Initially when I start to notice my body shutting down, there is a lot of resistance. Then the self judgement rolls in. Noticing the harsh words playing on repeat in my mind, I remind myself that these are just my old patterns of thinking. If I can’t think kind thoughts, can I circumvent my mind through kind actions towards my body?

For the past three weeks, I have been hunkering down at home, focused on rebuilding my energy reserves. It ends up looking like I am withdrawing from the world but I do it to maximize my scarce resources. Here are some simple ways I have been taking care of myself -

1. Nourish my body - To boost my energy, I take myself to the sauna and for cold dips, do walks to get sunlight and eat nutritious meals. Hydration and sleep become a priority.

2. Find warmth - I plop myself down in front of my fireplace for ten minutes, or catch the afternoon sun on my couch. I ask for hugs from my loved ones or catch up with a friend over a cup of tea.

3. Cut out the external noise - Being around groups of people feels chaotic so I say no to social engagements. I spend less time on my phone communicating or checking email or reading the news.

4. Quiet the internal chatter - A simple breathing exercise (inhale for 4 counts, hold for 5 and exhale for 6) helps calm me down when the anxious thoughts show up. When all else fails, I listen to audiobooks to drown out my thoughts.

Each year that this cycle repeats itself, I remind myself - This is who I am in this decade of my life. I am someone who needs to be constantly mindful of my energy levels. Someone who needs to withdraw for certain periods to recharge and find my balance again. This wasn’t me in my twenties and thirties but this is where I am today.

“Wintering is the active acceptance of sadness. It is the practice of allowing ourselves to feel it as a need. It is the courage to stare down the worst parts of our experience and to commit to healing them the best we can. Wintering is a moment of intuition, our true needs felt keenly as a knife.”

- Katherine May

Kinnari’s Dialogue

The end of January is already upon us. The past couple months have moved at a very fast pace. I spent the entire month of December in India - burning the candle at both ends - between working US hours, taking care of my toddler, making time for my mom and seeing friends and family, it was quite full on.

The Ritual vs. The Reality

I have a ritual of starting the year with a solo retreat. My plan for January was to take a few days off—no work, no parenting, no housekeeping—to envision the year ahead. I wanted that expansive, quiet space to think about the big picture before setting specific goals.

However, after coming back from India in early January, I had barely gotten the kids past their jet lag, before I headed right into a work trip to New York for a product launch. I returned home feeling pretty run down and craving down time only to go into several days of solo parenting while my husband was away for work. The following week was our first born’s birthday and as someone that leans into birthdays wholeheartedly we went into a week-long celebration of her turning seven. Throwing together multiple parties at our house at the last-minute took up a lot of my energy and time. It wasn’t picture perfect but it was perfect for my daughter. It gave me an immense amount of joy seeing her light up and feel happy, loved and celebrated.

Between the work trip, the solo parenting, the birthday parties, and the struggle to just regain a daily rhythm, the solo retreat didn’t happen. However, on the five+ hour long flight to New York, I had already squeezed in some time to write about my insights from a month in India and also some high level goals for 2026.

It reminded me of this wisdom from James Clear:

“Work is endless. Exercise is endless. Parenting is endless. Same with marriage, writing, investing, creating, and more. You get to choose the parts of your life, but many of the important things in life cannot be ‘finished.’

Do not approach an endless game with a finite mindset. The objective is not to be done, but to settle into a daily lifestyle you can sustain and that allows you to make daily progress on the areas that matter.

Embrace the fact that life is continual and look for ways to enjoy the daily practice.”

Embracing the Daily Practice

I saw this clearly while I was in India. With the streets of Bandra dug up and clogged with traffic, I gave up trying to go for long walks and runs and switched it up. I found a local yoga studio and took a class every other day. It didn’t just save my sanity; it sparked a desire to go deeper into the practice this year—not as a goal to be attained, but as a lifestyle to be sustained.

All this to say: I’m no longer waiting for “expansive time.”

I realize I will not always have that luxury in this full season of my life. If I wait for the perfect, quiet week to reflect or to create, I will be waiting forever. Instead, I’m choosing to squeeze the meaningful things into the small pockets of time I can find.

Progress doesn’t always look like a retreat. Sometimes, it looks like a five-hour flight and a notepad.

Last week Disco Dialogues hit four years. Thanks to our loyal readers who read our words, comment on our posts, give us feedback or engage in conversation with us in real life. Every interaction is a reminder that the effort to put our thoughts into words matter. 🙏🏽

Mitali’s Dialogue

I decided to switch the side of the street that I walk on. Seems like a minor change but it changed my perspective - both about the walk and about my mental health. I have been walking the same 3-4 routes in my neighborhood for the past five months. While the physical movement has been good for my body, my mind has been starting to complain about the monotony of this activity. After all, there are only so many ways to look at the same tree.

So last week I tried a new trick. Switching from one side of the street to the other suddenly provided a whole new perspective on my walk. Things started looking different instead of familiar. I noticed interesting architectural designs on a house that I had passed dozens of times before. A tree that I hadn’t noticed before loomed majestic in its fall colors against the grey sky. Wow, this street is so pretty. I found myself excited about my walk again. The route hadn’t changed but there was a new energy in my step.

What if I could similarly change my perspective on old narratives that are on repeat in my head? Instead of worrying about SAD (seasonal affective disorder) appearing again this winter, I started to tell myself - “My body is so wise to tune into the changing season.” Fall is when nature starts to conserve its energy. Trees drop their leaves. Squirrels hoard their acorns. Why don’t I also slow down to conserve my energy for the winter months and the upcoming chaos of the holiday season? Instead of judging the change in my energy and mood, I am trying to reframe it as something that is good for me. It’s time to challenge my existing narrative - “I am terrible at sticking to my habits in the winter”. The fact is that winter is a time of reduced sunlight and lower temperatures and some animals go into hibernation. Can I stop judging my lack of motivation and accept that my body needs to hibernate as well?

By choosing a more encouraging narrative about my body, I tell myself to yield to the changes in nature. I become more self compassionate and accept that now is the time to do less. When I shift my perspective, I get to transform negative stories that bring me down into empowering narratives that allow me to be kinder to myself. I don’t let my old narratives hold me back. I find myself moving through the day in a way that is more in line with the message that my body is sending me.

“Whether we experience what happens to us as an obstacle and enemy or as teacher and friend depends entirely on our perception of reality. It depends on our relationship with ourselves.”

- Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart

Here are some reframes I am trying on this month -

• “I need to stick to my habits and move my body every day to take care of my health” → I get to enjoy my pretty neighborhood by walking in the sunlight and taking in the beauty of nature around me.

• “I am worried about having another episode of SAD this winter” → My body is wise and telling me that it is time to slow down and be kind to myself.

• “I am anxious about the future of my special needs son who is a high school senior. I am not doing enough to help him find his path after high school” → I am a loving mother who trusts in the process. I believe that his path will be uncovered slowly but surely through my continued support and love.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

Mitali and I were brainstorming topics for our post when she brought up the idea of changing the narrative in our head by picking a different perspective. So through last week I looked for opportunities to reframe how I was looking at things.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

- Marcel Proust

A few days ago, I woke up with pain in my lower back—probably from lifting weights or from contorting myself in my toddler’s bed the night before. I assumed it would ease up in a day, but four days later the pain is still there. I don’t remember ever feeling this kind of pain, so it’s been a little unsettling. I turned a year older last weekend, and part of me wondered if this was what getting older feels like. It’s frustrating - I can’t work out, can’t lift my toddler, and have to move at half the pace that I’m used to.

Yesterday, I even had to cancel a family play date I’d planned ages ago—one that probably won’t happen again until next year. But as I sat at the kitchen table, I realized it was the first day in over four weeks where I had absolutely nothing on my calendar. And instead of worrying about aging or losing momentum on my workouts, like Mitali, I chose to take this as a sign from my body to slow down.

It was lovely to stay home, watch the Alcaraz–Sinner final with my husband, do a puzzle with my older kid, and curl up on the couch with my younger one. It also gave me a chance to fully understand my husband’s pain. He’s been suffering through back pain on and off for several years and has asked me on multiple occasions to cut things out of our social calendar and minimize travel. My understanding of his requests was theoretical before and now with this small episode of having to slow down myself, it’s given me a much deeper perspective of what he’s been dealing with.

Last Friday I was seated in a dim San Francisco speakeasy looking at two very different scenes. Straight ahead - harsh fluorescent light, a bathroom sign. A few degrees left - a bar drenched in soft red lantern light. Same seat, same moment - entirely different ambiance. Sitting there, I was reminded that often switching what you look at can make all the difference. The view with the fluorescent light didn’t disappear, but neither did one with the red glow. Instead of spending energy getting annoyed and having a discussion about how the owners could have cut out the fluorescent light or closed that curtain, I just shifted slightly in my seat and picked the view I enjoyed more.

In less than two weeks, I’ll be getting on a plane with my mischievous, high-energy, never-sits-still toddler and flying 20+ hours to see my parents. I’m dreading the flight—anxious about doing it solo, wondering how I’ll get her through two long legs and a short layover. Once we land, there will be jet lag to conquer, new people for her to adjust to, and late-night meetings for me to keep up with work, all while not having her Dad and sister around to help.

I could focus on how hard all of this will be. But instead, I’m choosing to focus on other things that are also true:

• I get to go to India and spend quality time with my mom who can no longer travel

• My toddler gets rare 1:1 time and attention from me

• I get to step into my old life and reconnect with high school friends

• I’m lucky to work for a company that gives me the flexibility to work from anywhere for a few weeks each year.

What is one situation you could reframe this week by choosing a different lens?

Kinnari’s Dialogue

Diwali was last Monday but the celebrations lasted all week. This week the various Halloween activities - buying costumes, carving pumpkins, attending my first grader’s school parade and preparing for trick or treating - have taken over my calendar. Outside, the leaves are turning yellow, orange and red and will start to let go soon. Yes, Fall is here - my annual, visual reminder to slow down. However, I’m finding it hard to do so. All the burners are on high — work, home, family, social life — and I’m not sure which one to turn down first.

It is the season of Vata, according to Ayurveda, an ancient Indian healing system. Vata is the dosha (life force that governs the body’s physical and mental processes) of air and ether. As the leaves outside become dry and brittle, this can also translate to our bodies. It is why we must spend a bit more time taking care of our bodies during this season.

That is exactly what Mitali and I did a few weeks ago when we celebrated a dear friend’s 40th birthday in Thailand. Our friend who was close to burnout suggested a week-long wellness retreat. At first when she proposed it, I laughed out loud saying “Are you crazy? I have a full-time job and two kids - there’s no way I can go to Thailand!” But I knew I needed a break and I wanted to be part of her milestone birthday. So I took the plunge and bought the tickets, all the while feeling self-indulgent. However, a day into the trip - between conversations about our health, body treatments, yoga and nutritious freshly prepared meals - I realized that spending the time and money on taking care of myself isn’t indulgent. It’s a necessary salve for these times we live in where we overextend ourselves across our work, family and social lives.

At the retreat I took a Tanita body composition test and discovered to my surprise that my nervous system was close to a pre-burnout state. “How is that possible? This is the healthiest I’ve felt in a long time. I’ve been meditating and moving almost every day this year!“ I said to the resident therapist. “How we feel in our minds is not always indicative of what our body feels.“ She then went on to educate me on the “4Fs” - the way our body responds to either stress or trauma. When the brain perceives a threat, our body can either Fight, Flight, Freeze or Fawn.

“Back in prehistoric times, our ancestors faced real physical dangers—like saber-toothed tigers—and their survival depended on reacting instantly. Today, our “tigers” are more likely to be psychological stressors, like job interviews or deadlines, but the body reacts in the same way. The response is part of your sympathetic nervous system, and it happens without conscious thought; it’s been hardwired into us through evolution to help us survive. When triggered, the body releases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which boost energy and focus, helping us confront danger, escape, or protect ourselves effectively.”

- Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn: How We Respond to Threats

This insight helped me become a bit more aware of my body’s stress responses. Last week after a morning of volunteering in my first grader’s class and a very hectic day at work, I was feeling pumped about being super-productive. But when I did a check-in at the end of the work day, I sensed the adrenalin coursing through my body. I was talking fast, being snappy and not feeling grounded. Later that evening I got into an argument with my husband, snapping at him for no good reason (stress response: Fight). When invited to multiple Diwali events last week, some on the same day - I struggled to make hard choices and just over-committed and said yes to everything (stress response: Fawn).

So now as the trees prepare to shed their leaves and conserve energy for the winter, I’m trying to figure out how to conserve my own. Will I be able to finally turn down one burner?

Mitali’s Dialogue

Fall is the time of year when everything seems to speed up. I know I am not the only one who feels this way. Over the past few weeks, I have had numerous conversations with friends, lamenting about their busy schedules and lack of downtime. I try desperately each year to not over-schedule myself but wrestle with saying no to the many Diwali celebrations, Halloween parties and other social events that pop up in October. I know that before I can even catch my breath in November, the planning for Thanksgiving will begin leading into preparations for the winter holidays.

Fall is also the season when I am prone to SAD (seasonal affective disorder). The change in light and temperature means I have to make adjustments to my schedule and habits to take care of my body. When the leaves start to change color in preparation for winter, I am reminded that a depression episode may be around the corner. A couple of weeks ago, in preparation for this season, I decided to read my post from last year. I wanted to remind myself of the habits I had outlined to keep the “December drearies” away -

• Stick to a schedule

• Create a cozy space in your home

• Move your body

• Find small things that bring you joy

• Engage in energy-gaining social activities

Back then, these tips seemed very practical but as the winter season progressed and I entered 2025, keeping up with these habits on top of family commitments during the holidays became too much. When I get overwhelmed, my body will often cycle through the Fight and Freeze stress responses (as referenced in Kinnari’s post above). I may know rationally the various habits I need to follow to take care of my body, mind and soul. I may attempt to prioritize time for all of them. But when my system is overloaded, I start getting snappy and then start to shut down to conserve energy which often leads to a depression episode.

One of my realizations from earlier this year was the need to do less when in the midst of an episode. Instead of being an over-achiever and trying to do all my habits, I forced myself to slow down and ease off of my self-expectations. Strip things down to the bare minimum and focus on just ONE thing, Mitali. I reminded myself of one of my words for the year “consistency” and I tried to be regular with one habit - moving my body every day. The physical movement helps counteract the Freeze stress response. Somatic, body-focused approaches like walking, yoga, dancing, cold water plunges, saunas, etc bring the energy back up in my body as well as discharge any pent-up tension or swirl in my head.

Doing one thing reliably also allowed me to feel good about myself instead of beating myself up for not doing enough. Keeping a commitment to myself meant prioritizing myself. I scheduled time on my calendar for a quick morning walk instead of trying to squeeze it in between meetings and kids activities. When my schedule got busy, I noticed my mind starting to spin - judging myself or berating myself for not making good choices with my time. In those moments I would remind myself - “Just do this one thing for yourself and forget all your other habits and commitments.”

Over the past five months that is what I have attempted to do. Reduce expectations, drop commitments and focus on accomplishing one thing. No excuses Mitali! I made the effort to take walks during our jam-packed family trip to Norway in July and amidst the chaos of the monsoons and traffic in Mumbai in August. I stopped telling myself that it is unsafe to walk alone in the dark and instead forced myself to try a quick walk after dinner during September. Each day that I kept my commitment to myself made me feel good.

For now doing one thing seems to be working for me. I find myself in a much more stable place this season than I have been in other years. And for the present moment that is good enough.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

Last weekend my husband and I took a two day trip to Los Angeles to celebrate his birthday. We had been talking about doing a getaway without the kids since our anniversary last year and hadn't gotten around to it even when another anniversary popped up again this year. When a party in LA featuring our favorite Berlin DJs popped up on M’s feed, we knew this was it.

There are some nights - specifically dance nights - that are etched in my memory. There are so many factors that come together for a night to be special, scratch that - to be magical. Who you are with, the type of venue, the energy around you on the dance floor, how many hours you dance, conversations and most importantly the vibe the DJ creates and the journey the music takes you on. A lot of these special nights for me have been dancing alongside my husband to a German DJ and producer called Dixon. For me, Dixon is a master. His sets are unpredictable and diverse, his transitions are flawless and he’s unparalleled in controlling the energy of the room and establishing a vibe. I have now seen him over ten times - up close in clubs and from a distance on massive stages.

M introduced me to Dixon when we first started dating. It was 2014 at an underground club in San Francisco. I remember thinking - "Wow someone else is introducing me to great music for a change!" This was the start of Dixon showing up in our relationship at defining moments. The following summer I had a work trip planned to Amsterdam after meeting M’s parents (for the first time) in Tunisia when we discovered that Dixon was playing outside Amsterdam on M’s birthday. He ended up joining me as we saw Dixon and Ame another DJ and producer play a back to back nine hour set. That night we danced until sunrise and I felt an inexplicable connection to the crowd.

A year later with Dixon spinning at a boat party in San Francisco, during a break M said “I’ll marry you tomorrow if you want.” In 2017 right after our wedding in Greece we joined friends in Barcelona to catch Dixon and Ame play together again. It was mid summer and hot and muggy and everyone was sweating but that didn’t stop us from letting the music take over our minds as we moved our bodies on the floor.

The past couple years our relationship has been on the back burner as we got caught up in the chaos of caring for two young ones, a move and jobs. More recently, we had been living like house mates or two passing ships and I had started to wonder whether our connection was still there. This past weekend in LA, away from the busyness of parenting and amidst the music, the dancing, the lights and the few minutes of snatched conversations in between the songs and set changes, my mind let go of how things should be and I found that connection again. Dixon and Ame and Jimi Jules and Trikk (two other house music artists) mixed incredible tunes and made the crowd fall in love.

Dancing gets you out of your head. In dance, in movement, the joy of living sweeps through your entire being. Moving your body to music you love opens you up to a different dimension.
When time is no longer a construct,
when you give in,
when you let go,
when you embrace each other,
when you willingly let the music take you,
when you let your energy shine through
when you fall in love.
with dance, with music, with your partner, with yourself, with LIFE.

So that's why we dance. Dance culture promotes an openness to others and fosters a sense of belonging and community on the floor. Because on the floor when you move, when you let yourself go and surrender to the music, you can feel love flowing outward and expanding in all directions.

And what else are we here for anyway?

Mitali’s Dialogue

Where is the one place you remember feeling completely yourself, in love with your whole being? For me I vividly remember the moment nineteen years ago, as I watched the sunset, and danced my heart out in front of massive speakers at The Deep End, a sound camp at Burning Man. It was 2006 and it was my first time at Burning Man with my husband.

I distinctly remember the drive to the playa - the vast, dry lake bed of Black Rock Desert in Nevada where Burning Man is held. It was two years into our marriage and I was feeling a lot of angst about our relationship. I don't know what we were fighting about but I remember feeling quite irritable with my husband. But that day as I connected with the repetitive rhythms of deep house music, I felt all my emotions, worries, anger, hurt just melt away. Why am I letting someone else's behavior affect my feelings and mood? I am free to let it all go and move on. And as I let everything go on the dance floor, I felt totally liberated.

Over the years I have often wondered if I would feel that free again. Totally comfortable in my skin, carefree and free from any expectations in my head. A lot has happened in my life since that experience at Burning Man. As we grew into a family of four, I took on new worries and stress from my increased responsibilities. Fifteen years ago I had to step into the role of an advocate for my special needs child. I also continued to climb the corporate ladder for over a decade, managing teams spread out across the globe. Five years ago when I walked away from a successful career, I had to come to terms with creating financial uncertainty for our family. Through all of this I also experienced episodes of depression. More recently I have had to grapple with the unpredictability of the path ahead for my high school senior given his learning challenges.

Through it all, that memory has remained. And slowly this year, that feeling of freedom has started to reemerge. It started with me seeking out live events - theater, open mics, and comedy shows. I felt a rush seeing other humans perform - unrestrained in the public expression of their emotions. But it has been at electronic music concerts where I have finally found that feeling again. Dancing to the hypnotic music played by DJs, I feel uninhibited as I tune into my body and get out of my head. And surrounded by crowds moving to the beats, I feel a profound sense of communion as others let loose as well.

Studies suggest that the rhythmic beats of house music can lower cortisol levels, the stress hormone. House music with its 120-130 bpm tempo range can affect the sympathetic nervous system and stimulate the release of dopamine, a hormone associated with pleasure and motivation. Dancing releases endorphins which can produce pleasurable sensations and alleviate pain.

"..Research from the HeartMath Institute has shown that our bodies pick up on the electromagnetic field of information that radiates from another’s heart. If someone in our presence is in a state of care or compassion, our own heart can detect such signals, and this helps our heart rhythms to become more synchronized and coherent.

...polyvagal theory explains that our nervous systems have the capacity to co-regulate with one another, meaning that one person’s nervous system (broadcasting cues of safety) can help to turn down the threat response in another person’s nervous system."

- Beth Kurland, How to Find Support in Difficult Times

In these times when the news seems to always hound us with one tragedy after another, I have found it liberating to leave it all behind for a few hours when I listen to a DJ perform. At these shows I find a community where we can all feel safe and connected to humanity. Despite all the tribulations we face individually, in that moment, we all choose to set our worries aside and just be present to the moment. And maybe during these troubled times coming together to dance can be the salve that we all need.

Mitali’s Dialogue

“Pull over!” I started to scream in my head. “Don't you see the signs - ‘Slower traffic use turnouts’?” The calmness I had started to experience five minutes ago on my solo drive to the beach was shattered. Moments before, I had turned off my phone and turned up the music in my car as I admired the sunlight streaming in through the redwood trees. Then I got stuck behind a cautious driver going twenty miles an hour around the bends. And I was annoyed.

Let me rewind a bit. It was the start of summer and things were getting chaotic in my household. The kids were out of school, schedules were erratic between different camps each week, summer jobs and impromptu get-togethers with friends. I was getting ready to leave on a four-week family vacation across multiple countries while also planning two family birthday celebrations and getting a work project off the ground.

In these busy times, it's easy for me to say that I have no time to do something for myself. But it is exactly in these times that I have learnt that I need to protect my alone time to keep my sanity. If I don't fill my bucket I have nothing to give to others who need me. So that day I prioritized carving out some solo time before we left on vacation. It was definitely not optimal. There were constant demands on my time from the family. But I know I have to practice maintaining my boundaries because my needs matter especially in the times when it is difficult to hold on to them.

There is a favorite beach that I like to go to alone whenever I find myself feeling overwhelmed by a hectic schedule. It's not convenient to get to but the hour-long drive along a winding narrow road amongst towering redwood trees immediately pulls me out of my head. As the road emerges out of the forest onto scenic Highway 1 with a view of the ocean, I find myself transported to a different place. On the beach, I tune into the sound of the crashing waves, and my mind immediately calms down. It is my special place - a place that allows me to relax, to get out of my head and forget my to-do list and instead experience joy in nature. Each time I drive away from that beach I feel thankful for the life I have, joyful about the beauty around me and filled with calmness to handle the craziness of life again.

So that afternoon, I was in a rush to get to my beach. I had even packed stuff to take a cold dip in the water before the light disappeared. I had a short window of time away from the family and I wanted to maximize it on the beach, not stuck behind a slow driver. The vrittis were strong - creating waves of emotions on my chitta lake.

Yoga Sutra 3: tadA drashTu swarUpeYvasthAnam

Translated as: Then you see yourself as what you truly are

• “drashTa” ie the Seer - Think of ourselves as the ones watching the waves rise and fall in the chitta lake.

• When your chitta lake is still, it will finally reflect the truth of who or what you really are.

• And what is that? Look up at the beauty, the light, the wholeness that you are surrounded by - that is you. Tat tvam asi - thou art THAT.

• Once we are freed from the citta vṛttis, which is the fluctuations of the mind, we then gain knowledge of our true nature: you are puruṣa, the soul, the observer, the seer.

[Notes from “The Yoga Sutras For Children” by Roopa Pai]

So this time I noticed the vrittis. And I started taking some deep breaths, forcing my shoulders to relax, to calm my mind. I reminded myself - “It's ok to drive slowly…enjoy the beauty of the drive.” Slowly I fell into a rhythm behind the car repeating - “I am not my anger. I have a choice to not react to this inconvenience. I am not the storm, I am its calm center.”

Eventually I made it to the beach that day and found the courage to take my first solo cold dip in the ocean. But it was the drive home that turned out to be the truly magical moment of the day. Just ten minutes from home, I suddenly spotted the moon rising in front of me on the freeway. The timing was perfect - a ginormous full moon hung on the horizon as I found myself in the right spot to see it rise in its glory. If I hadn't been slowed down by the car on the drive to the beach, I might not have been on the freeway at this time. And I smiled to myself. When I stop sweating the small stuff, I get to bask in the glory of the good stuff the Universe puts in front of me. Blissful, radiant and wise.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

Sharing below something I wrote in my journal earlier this week about the ripples in my mind (chitta) -

“I have been observing the thoughts in my head since I woke up this morning. Doing what I'm training myself to do. To watch, to observe. Something felt off this morning, I didn't wake up in my normal happy state. I make it to an 8 am yoga class (for the first time this year) before work. Plenty of time to be in my body, to breathe, to make space in my head. It helps in getting my state of mind back into a more neutral space. After the class when I pull out my phone, I see texts from back home. An issue has popped up between my parents. I'm instantly drawn into feeling sorry for them and guilty for not being able to help from here. My brain goes to thinking about when I can travel back to India. Shall I take the toddler and go work from India for a few weeks and leave behind the first grader with her Dad? I immediately start looking for tickets to India upon getting to my desk. But soon work starts demanding my attention with incoming emails, pings and calendar notifications. Next come the thoughts about work… What am I doing? Why am I not making changes? I hold myself back from reaching out to Mitali or my close friends to complain. Just yesterday I made a decision to not spend any more energy talking about it - and to instead focus on action, no matter how small.

I am watching all these thoughts come and go and also finding myself getting caught up in the swirl, in the raw emotion of all of this. I tell myself it'll pass. Be calm and let it pass. I step away from my desk and find a quiet room and close my eyes for a few minutes.

There have been days where I've watched the swirl in my head from a little bit of distance. I've seen how the thoughts in my mind shift like a pendulum from the morning to evening or perhaps within the hour. If I don't get emotionally attached I am able to be amused by it all. Most of the time I am shocked at the extent of havoc created in my mind and body by these "vrittis", these thoughts. Where do they come from? How are they able to dictate how I feel? My mind is a circus!”

Yoga Sutra 3 talks about the ultimate aim of yoga - to quieten these vrittis in our mind, so we can see our true selves. You are not the body nor the mind. You are the Knower, the Seer.

Last weekend Mitali and I attended a meditation talk by B.K Shivani, a spiritual leader representing the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual Organization. One of the first things she pointed out was the need to heal our minds. She talked about how meditating once a day wasn’t enough because our minds were so full. “Pain doesn’t just mean emotional hurt. It can also mean lots of clutter in our minds. Our face and body language are a reflection of our mind.” She asked us to think of our mind like it is our baby and give it love and care.

Here are some of the daily practices she suggested to help take care of our mind, in case you’d like to give one or more a try -

1. Every hour take a pause and check on your baby. If you find it is disturbed stop everything, take a few minutes and attend to it. If it’s going too fast (in a rush) make it slow down. The aim is for us to keep our mind stain free.

2. Consume less, don’t keep absorbing from the world. Only consume what is needed.

3. Kam bolo, dheere bolo, mitha bolo - Speak less, speak slowly and speak sweetly. Data is free, energy is not. It’s important to conserve your energy. Silence saves energy. Talking takes a lot of energy, talking badly about people takes up even more. Choose your words carefully.

4. Review your day at the end of the night. During the day the stain is on the bedsheet (on your mind), but if you go to sleep that goes into your subconscious. Remember to be clean and clear before going to sleep. Take two minutes and forgive everyone. Create good thoughts for tomorrow.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

We've just crossed the midpoint of 2025. As I realized that last week, I wondered which area I'd been able to make the biggest change in this year. Is it Parenting? Career @ Google? Health? Marriage? The answer was instant. It was my internal state that feels the most changed. My inner state of being is what I have been most focused on. I'm not at the point where people in my life would recognize a difference yet but I can feel the small 1-2 degree shifts internally.

It started with increasing my meditation practice to two twenty-minute sessions in January as I talked about in “A steadfast approach to 2025”. When I fell off that practice after a trip to India in March I decided to take a more structured approach. I took the Inner Engineering course offered by Isha Yoga institute in April to learn the shambhavi mahamudra kriya - a yogic practice that combines breathwork and meditation to enhance focus, mental clarity, and overall well-being. I've been doing that practice every day since - with a few exceptions. On the days that I haven't made time to do it, I've missed it and longed to return to the mat and to my inner self.

Attuned to this internal space, I've been drawn towards learning more about Yoga, especially the philosophy of it. I finally started my study of a book I’ve had on my shelf for over ten years - The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - a Vedic spiritual text that has been around for over 2000 years. Patanjali, who is known as the father of Yoga did not invent Yoga - it already existed in various different forms before. But it was Patanjali that put it together into one system - the format known as the Yoga Sutras. There are many books that have translated and attempted to decipher The Yoga Sutras as laid out by Patanjali and I've been reading a couple in parallel as I'm uncovering something new in each one.

Patanjali has got one of the most epic starts to a book. So simple and short that I completely missed the depth the first time around.

Atha yoga anushasanam (Sutra 1)
loosely translated as "And now, the teachings of yoga."

For me the "And now.. " feels like an invitation, a calling. Now, that you are here - put aside the external world, the relationships to others, all that crap that doesn't really matter...forget about it. "And now.. Yoga" And now, it's time to bring your attention to the union of the mind, body and soul. And now, it's time to learn how to take control of the senses and stop the fluctuations of the mind. And now, we begin instructions on how to merge the mind with our inner being.

Yogas citta vrtti nirodhah (Sutra 2)
Yoga is the restraint of the modifications of the mind.

Patanjali wastes no time. He gets right to the purpose of Yoga and why we must practice it. Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. If we can control our mind we can control everything.

Citta is the sum total of the mind. Within citta (mind) are three levels - the ego or ‘Ahamkara’ (that ‘I’ feeling), the intellect or ‘Buddhi’ and the desiring part of the mind that gets attracted to outside things through our senses or ‘Manas’.

When I first sat down to write this post it was peaceful and quiet. A few minutes into it my husband and my older daughter walked into the house. At that moment, I heard my daughter (through my senses) ask my husband if she could watch TV. My intellect stepped in. "Why is she asking about watching TV anytime there's some downtime? …Maybe it's okay for her to watch TV considering she spent all morning at a swim meet." My ego then decided that I should make her lunch and have her eat first. All of these three things happen one at a time but so quickly that we seldom can distinguish between them. These fluctuations - thoughts in my mind - give rise to the effort for me to get up and go make her lunch. The want was created and unless I fulfill it, my mind will not go back to its peaceful condition.

The natural condition of the mind is a peaceful state. But these "vrttis" or mental chatter disturb the peace.

"The entire outside world is based on your thoughts and mental attitude. The entire world is your projection. Your values may change within a fraction of a second... If we remember that we won't put so much stress on outward things.

…As the mind, so the person; bondage and liberation are in your own mind. If you feel bound, you are bound. If you feel liberated, you are liberated. Things outside neither bind nor liberate you; only your attitude towards them does that.

…If you can have control over your thought forms and change them as you want, you are not bound by the outside world. "

- Swami Satchidananda

I've been experimenting with this a bit. There are moments in my day now when I am more conscious, where I am more aware of what's going on in my mind…watching each thought and emotion as it arises, and the meaning my mind gives it. At these moments, the mind again tries to jump in and take control of the meaning. How about I shift the meaning to this so then I can be joyful? But then I remind myself that even that is the mind wanting to gain control again.

And after these moments of being the watcher I go back to the unconscious ways that I have known my entire life. I start the practice and fall off again. But as I dive deeper into the sutras I am finding out that there lies an answer in these pages to all of these predicaments. There are tools and practices to use our breath and our bodies to gain control of our minds and 99.9% of of us are not aware of these.

I am slowly inch by inch moving towards a knowing of what our real ‘work’ here is. I will leave you with the words of Ram Das who articulates this in a beautiful way; and a song with those words because it has brought me peace and stillness and we all need more of that in these times.

Mitali’s Dialogue

I have written often about how my mind leads me astray (Hello anxiety, my old friend, Don't just do something, sit there). I have learnt over the years to not give too much importance to the thoughts in my mind but it still trips me up. A few weeks ago when Kinnari shared a draft of her post on the book The Yoga Sutras by Patanjali, I realized that I hadn't read this ancient Indian text and was intrigued by her notes. I remembered that I had picked up a book for my kids on our last trip to India called “The Yoga Sutras For Children” by Roopa Pai. I decided to open up the book and start reading it and was immediately hooked. The author described the alternative “click-bait” title for the book as “Maharishi P’s Ultimate Handbook for Mind Control”. How had I not read this book before?!

Over the past few decades yoga has become popularly known as an exercise mode in the West thanks to the prevalence of yoga studios and classes. I thought “yoga” (which literally means “to join” or “to link”) was about the union of the body and the mind through the practice of asanas. Years of taking yoga classes has taught me how the practice of yoga calms my mind. But this book is giving me a broader perspective on yoga. The word “sutra” means “thread”. In the context of this book, the author describes The Yoga Sutras as “a string of clearly laid-out steps to help us achieve control of our minds, creating in the process a strong, unbreakable link with our highest selves, so that we become the very, very best version of ourselves.”

As I started reading it, I realized how much I could learn from following the sutras and practices in the book. The book is composed of 195 sutras, each with an average length of six words so it's a slim text but interpreting and understanding the cryptic words requires patience and reflection. Here is an example of the interpretation of the first 4 sutras from the book -

Here are some of my notes from reading and understanding the first two sutras -

Yoga Sutra 1: atha yogAnushAsanam

• There is no better time to start the practice of Yoga than now - Yoga being the name of a particular school of Indian philosophy.

• “Now” is the first step of a disciplined life. It is the opposite of procrastination, laziness, lack of commitment, unwillingness to do hard things.

Yoga Sutra 2: yogashchittavritti nirodhah

• “Chitta” means mind but in Yoga the mind is made up of three separate layers

  • “Manas” which is the data collecting lower mind

  • “Buddhi” which is the decision making higher mind, and

  • “Ahamkara” which is the mind that thinks of itself as ‘I’, separate from everyone and everything else, aka ‘ego’.

These three layers work together through

• Five ‘knowledge-gathering’ senses - sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch - that feed data from the outer word to the Manas

• Manas processes this data and presents it to Buddhi, which makes a decision and sends Manas the order to execute it through the five ‘action-performing’ senses and body parts - speaking (tongue), grasping (hands), moving (legs), eliminating (excretory organs) and procreating (reproductive organs).

• “Vritti” means changes, movements which are all the thoughts, idea and emotions that are generated by the three layers of the chitta (mind)

• An analogy often used is to think of the chitta as a lake and the vrittis as an unending series of waves rising in it.

• Every time we react to a thought-wave or a desire-wave - with joy, fear, anger, love, hate - the reaction creates its own series of waves, hence the noise and continuous chaos in our chitta lake.

  

• “Nirodhah” means stopping or cessation. If you sat at the edge of the chitta lake and observed the waves without constantly reacting to them, the waves would stop controlling you. You would take away the power you have given them and the number of waves would fall dramatically.

• The Yoga Sutras give us recommendations for not just reducing the waves but having them cease entirely. It might take several lifetimes to get to that state though. 🙂

Last week after reading a few sutras, I took the time to observe my thoughts and emotions and tried to practice not getting caught up in reacting to them - which to be true has been a constant practice over the past decade. When I found my two sons calling each other names last week, I paused before intervening, recognizing that I was getting triggered from their constant bickering. However when my husband made a snarky comment instead of expressing appreciation after I had run an errand for him, I failed to pause and responded with my own hurtful comment. When I stepped away to cool off, I recognized that I had just succumbed to an emotion-wave. I didn't beat myself up about failing at the practice but realized that “that” is the work - to catch myself and get back on the train again after falling off. It is impossible to expect myself to get this right every single time.

I am planning to spend the next few months reading and reflecting on the book - thanks to Kinnari’s recommendation. I hope to share more of my learnings as I go through it.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

“Money’s greatest intrinsic value—and this can’t be overstated—is its ability to give you control over your time.” - Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money

I've thought more about financial wealth building in the past couple years than I ever have in my entire life. Few things have led to this - baby # 2 (raising kids is expensive!), stock market ups and downs (to see your security blanket snatched away so suddenly is scary!) and having my two closest friends and brother semi-retire early (when will I have all the free time in the world!).

I spent my twenties and early thirties not paying much attention to money. This led to some lucky mistakes - holding on to company stock that I didn't know I had for years until it had appreciated a lot, but also some terrible ones that I prefer not to dwell on. While renting apartments in San Francisco, my father advised me to invest in buying a house. I didn't listen. I assumed I couldn't afford it without spending any time looking into the numbers. Didn’t I need a partner to pitch into buying a house? Years later when I finally made my first down payment I realized how wrong I was.

Over the last five years I've felt conflicted with my time - Should I go all in and build more financial wealth over the next five years or take a small break to design what I want the next phase of my life to be about? I've realized that true wealth, besides having a healthy body, a peaceful mind and love in your life, includes having complete control over your time. The question that I've pondered over is - how much is enough? Would it be okay to give up certain luxuries I enjoy for having the freedom of time? Here are some words from my journal that show me grappling with this very issue --

To lie in bed on a Monday morning
after the kids have gone to school
and the house is empty

To read to my heart's content
Close my eyes and turn towards that inner silence
Such luxury

How shall I liberate myself?
Are the shackles I fret about even real?
On mornings like these, absolutely not
On other days, within the external structures, very much so

Is it the world of Business & Commerce
I must give into? Or can I choose instead
to live amongst words and feelings
emotions and art and beauty?

This business of money making
How much longer must I dwell in here?

—

Recently, Mitali sent me the article she references below about Sahil Bloom’s book - The 5 Types of Wealth. In doing research for this post, I ended up watching his talk at Google. After a conversation with a friend about how Sahil was probably only going to see his parents 15 more times (given that he lived on the opposite coast and that his parents were in their 60s), Sahil ended up having a discussion with his wife about what they wanted to build their life around. He then quit his job, they sold their house in California and moved back to the east coast to be closer to his family changing the "15 times" to several hundred times by living closer to their parents. This journey led him down the path to identifying the different types of wealth, to understand what mattered to him, to step off the path and focus on the bigger picture. To redefine his scoreboard so he was not just focused on the one thing at the expense of everything else. Here's some added definition to the 5 types of wealth:

• Time wealth - freedom to choose how you spend your time, who you spend it with, where you spend it when you trade it for other things. It's about an awareness of time as your most precious asset.

• Social wealth - your relationships, the few close deep bonds and also your connection to the larger circles that extend beyond yourself

• Mental wealth - purpose, growth, creating the space necessary in life to wrestle with some of the bigger picture questions. This can include spirituality, meditation, solitude etc.

• Physical wealth - health and vitality. Taking controllable actions on a daily basis to fight the natural decay that your body is going to go through as you age

• Financial wealth - Money but with the specific nuance of what it means for you to have enough, to build your life of enough.

In the talk, the host asked Sahil for his favorite type of wealth during this season of his life. Sahil’s response - which I realized mirrored mine as I heard it being articulated - "It is very hard to enjoy any of the other types of wealth if you don't have the texture that relationships provide. No one dreams of being on a yacht or a private jet by themselves. Social wealth is what provides the depth and meaning for you to enjoy the other types of wealth." It is through relationships with my family and my friends that I experience true richness. Every day but especially this last weekend when we celebrated Mother's Day, I was struck by how blessed I am. I got to be on the receiving end of immense love exhibited through hand-drawn cards with misspelled words and tight cuddles and giggles from my daughters and thoughtful gifts from my husband including the gift of time away from the family to recharge.

So what does this all mean? Pursuing financial wealth was hard enough now we have to pursue all of these? The host asked Sahil another good question by surfacing the quote "jack of all trades, master of none" - do we risk the same by trying to pursue all these types of wealth? No, of course not. It doesn't work like that - you and I both know that. We don't need Sahil Bloom to tell us that. I have been working on all of these other types of wealth throughout my life and feel wealthy enough. But I'll give you his response anyway because the guy once again articulated it better than I could.

“The reality is that the mindset you need to have is not that you are going to have a perfect balance across all of them but that you are not going to turn off any of them. If you turn off health as an example through your thirties and forties then it's very hard to catch up in your fifties and sixties. Or if you don't show up for your friends when they need you, they may not be around for you later in life. Through various stages you'll lean into some over others but just don't turn off.. keep it on the down low. What does down low mean? Invest some tiny thing to continue to move the ball forward in that area with the recognition that anything above zero compounds. Do the tiny thing on a daily basis. It avoids the atrophy, and avoids shutting that area off.”

Mitali’s Dialogue

Last month as I was catching up with an old friend after a long time, our conversation veered towards the choices and levels of satisfaction we have with the lives we lead today. She said - “I would love to lead the life you have today.” She was referring to the freedom that she noticed I had built into different dimensions of my life. The conversation caught me off guard as I had been feeling unmotivated and disillusioned about my current situation for a couple of months. Her comment forced me to question the discontent I was feeling. What if I evaluated my life based on the freedom that different types of wealth have brought into my life over the past decade?

In today's society “wealth” is often measured by the money in our bank account or financial assets that we have built up over the years. Things we have that make us feel rich like our net worth. But in truth money isn't the only type of wealth we have. We do ourselves a disservice when we view it as a measure of success or happiness in our life.

“...I’ve met some billionaires that I would have no trouble describing as poor—not just because they had an endless desire for more (which was Seneca’s definition), but because their lives were a mess, because they were preposterously insecure, because they were estranged from their families, because they had few friends, because they didn’t take care of themselves.” — Ryan Holiday

In a post I recently read, the author, Ryan Holiday talks about feeling “poor” in certain aspects of his life despite being financially well-off. This was prompted by a conversation he had with Sahil Bloom who recently published the book “The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life”. I haven't read the book but found the premise interesting - that we can look at wealth through five dimensions -

1. Financial

2. Time

3. Physical

4. Mental

5. Social

So in April I decided to use the following two frameworks to try and get a more holistic view of my life. These only provide a snapshot in time but it allows for some much needed perspective.

• You can do an assessment of “wealth” in your life based on the book by Sahil Bloom mentioned above. I encourage you to pause and try it out - it only takes 10 minutes. The results might surprise you - maybe you are not as poor as you thought you were or maybe you need to make different choices to build up the wealth that you want.

• The Wheel of Life exercise is another framework that you can use to assess your level of satisfaction with different aspects of your life. I have shared this in the past but doing it again pleasantly surprised me. My life wasn't as lopsided as I had imagined it to be. Ah if only I could hold onto this insight when the doubt arises!

Contentment - a way to assess true wealth

In January I wrote that one of my words for this year is “contentment” (with the other being “consistency”). It is a practice that I struggle with - being ok with what is. This is how I described the practice that I am attempting this year -

…Being satisfied with my existing practices. Finding fulfillment in the way my life is playing out. Being at peace with what is. Accepting the moment, not resisting or wanting things to be different.

Through various conversations with friends over the past month, I realized that my brain's negativity bias often had me focusing on one or two specific areas that I label as bad or lacking. There is a desire for things to change and dissatisfaction with the way things are. It is a constant practice to be satisfied with where I am.

What I gain from practicing contentment

The process of pausing to assess my present moment is quite therapeutic. I can short circuit the negativity bias of my brain when I take the time to honestly reflect on each of these aspects of wealth - financial, time, physical, mental and social. Maybe things are not so bad. When I ask myself - Can I frame this differently? - the story of my life changes. Everyone's life has its share of ups and downs, but if I widen my aperture to account for the different types of wealth in my life, I see that I have much to be grateful for.

This is not to say that we should paint an unrealistic rosy picture of our lives. But maybe we can challenge the old narrative that we have been telling ourselves about what we are facing in life. Life is a constant struggle, between reminding myself that life is good and not sinking into the depths of despair when things seem hard like dealing with the roller coaster of emotions from my special needs kid or my own depression episodes. When I act from a place of doubt, scarcity or disillusionment, I forget the types of wealth I have invested my time and energy in. With a balanced and robust view of my “wealth portfolio” I am able to acknowledge the choices I have made and celebrate the freedom they have afforded me. And then I find myself relaxing into the sensation that life is good.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

Have you ever sat with a decision for too long? Not wanting to choose one path or the other. Paralyzed because neither choice seemed easy. Waiting for clarity. Waiting for things to change on their own. Choosing to not choose - which is of course also a choice. It's a choice to continue living in that limbo state of indecision. Sometimes we stick with the status quo and live in that state of conflict, sulking and feeling trapped in those self-imposed mental prisons.

The thing with choices is that each one comes with its own consequences. We can only choose one path. I have to forego the benefits of the path I did not pick. I have to pay the price of the one I did. This is true for the big, heavy decisions - Should I marry this person? Should we have a child? Should I leave this job? Should I end this relationship? And equally true for the small everyday ones - what should I make for dinner? Which summer camp should I book for my daughter? Where should we go on holiday? Every single choice is a trade off. And every single choice has a consequence.

Recently I picked up Oliver Burkeman’s book “Meditations for Mortals” and came across the following -

"Whatever choice you make, so long as you make it in the spirit of facing the consequences, the result will be freedom in the only sense that finite humans ever get to enjoy….Freedom to examine the trade-offs - because there will always be trade-offs - and then to opt for whichever tradeoff you like.”

Is that the right approach? I’ll try it out and see if fully accepting the trade-offs that come with my decision can help me get comfortable with making one.

Mitali’s Dialogue

I first learnt about decision trees in an Operations Science class that I took as an undergrad. It was taught as a management tool to visualize and analyze complex decision-making processes like planning product launches or expanding offices.

“Decision trees help break down complex problems into smaller, more manageable parts. They allow for the exploration of different scenarios and help to identify potential risks and tradeoffs between different options.”

Why do I bring this up? Because in real life when faced with choices we often try to apply this tool to decisions like choosing a college, pursuing a career path or even for everyday tasks like choosing what to eat for lunch. But in order to use this tool we must make some predictions on options that are available at each decision node. In real life many of those scenarios aren't clear. It is hard to imagine future potential outcomes when there are too many variables at play. This can lead to analysis paralysis or decision fatigue and cause us to freeze when it all seems too overwhelming.

“There is a transcendent spontaneity of life, a "creative reality ", which reveals itself as immanent only when the perceiver's mind is in a state of “alert passivity" of "choiceless awareness” - Aldous Huxley

But there is another way that I have also tried. Despite being a strategic thinker and a rational person, I don't recall engaging in this analysis when making some of the “important decisions” in my life. When I look back on those moments, I find that I didn't really take much time to go back and forth considering alternate options or to imagine the various paths I could have opted to go down. Instead I went with a gut instinct circumventing the cognitive overload that can happen otherwise. Maybe in the back recesses of my brain I had been working on the decision trees for many months, but in the moment it felt like spontaneity forced the decision without any fear of choosing “wrong”.

It's how I decided to have a second child even after my first child was diagnosed with disabilities or how I chose to make a radical late career switch from business development to HR or how I started writing about my personal reflections here after quitting a long business career in tech. An impulse to take a certain action and then see how it plays out.

In my current life this gut instinct is often brought to the forefront when I have to advocate for my son in his IEP (individualized education plan) meetings at school. When we discuss the annual services and goals needed for my son who has a disability I often have to remind myself that “It’s ok to not know if these are the right outcomes for him” or “I don't know where he will be developmentally in a year”. I have to trust that there are no wrong choices but that the path will unfold for him as it is meant to. All I can do is recognize where he is today and support him based on what he needs right now. While other high schoolers might be choosing which AP courses to take or which extra-curricular activities to pursue to help them get into college, the path is largely unknown for my child. Predicting his future or imagining “what ifs” doesn't serve any purpose. There are many times that I am at a loss as a parent, but I am learning to trust that his path can only be defined by the present moment.

The poem “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost is often interpreted as a poem about making choices and the potential for regret or even a celebration of choosing unconventional routes for a more fulfilling life. Robert Frost actually wrote this poem as a joke to a friend to suggest that “our power to shape events comes not from choices made in the material world but from the mind’s ability to mold the past into a particular story.” [Source: The Poetry Foundation]. The roads were about the same, the decision is based on a vague impulse and the difference in the paths is defined by retroactive narrative that turns a whim into something nobler - a decision. In the end it doesn't matter which path is chosen but the narrative we construct about how our life unfolded. We don't have to operate like there is only one “right” choice, which makes us think we owe it to ourselves to hit the mark correctly with every choice.

Mitali’s Dialogue

Seventeen years ago I gave birth to an adorable baby boy and as I shared my first smile with him, I don't think I comprehended how much my life was about to change. I had grown up as an only child of two doctors and moved countries three times by the age of twelve, so I spent a considerable amount of my childhood entertaining myself. I wasn't neglected or unloved but I learnt early on how to be comfortable by myself with my books and my toys when I found myself in a new culture without my familiar friends. I was also an introvert. While I enjoyed spending time with new friends I made in each school I entered, I also cherished my alone time - climbing trees, building makeshift houses for my dolls and starting small fires in our backyard to pretend to cook meals. As an adult, time not spent in the office was spent hanging with friends - going to music festivals, traveling, entertaining or by myself - enjoying lazy weekends, sleeping in late, reading and cooking.

I entered into a relationship with my now husband in my mid twenties and had barely discovered what “adult” me needed to keep me grounded. I had my first kid as soon as I started my thirties. Once I became a mom to two boys, my alone time just disappeared. With a full-time leadership role in tech, suddenly all my time was taken over by work, family and chores. My son was colicky from the start so the first year of his life, I was so exhausted that any time I got to myself was spent trying to catch up on sleep. My firstborn was a high energy kid who woke up at 5am and demanded that we all wake up and play with him, and wouldn't fall asleep by himself in his room without one of us being there. So on many nights I found myself falling asleep with him. At the age of two and a half he was diagnosed as a special needs kid so for the next few years, any time I carved away from work during the day was spent taking him to speech therapy and services to help his development and dealing with emotional meltdowns from his lack of communication skills in the evenings.

My second kid was born four years later and time became a haze between managing a household with two boys, a demanding job with travel and teams to manage, visits from grandparents who stayed with us three to four months of the year plus family travel as my husband and I packed in road trips and visits to international destinations with the kids. So with all those demands on my time, my own need for quiet time just got forgotten. I don't think I even realized for the first few years what I had given up. When my mental health started to decline, I first attributed it to postpartum. Later once we realized that we had our hands full with a special needs child and a baby, it became an impossibility to consider taking time away for myself and leaving my husband alone with two kids. The only times that I felt justified in leaving him to be a solo parent was for work trips given the constant travel demands of my job. As a mom it became easy to put myself and my needs below those of my kids, husband, job, parents, in-laws. No one stopped me from prioritizing time for myself away from work and family but myself. I just forgot to be kind to myself and recognize that my needs matter too.

It was only during the pandemic that I realized how much of an impact personal time away from the family could have on my mood and energy. I had quit my job by then so there were no work trips to leave my husband alone with the kids. My kids were twelve and eight by then so I felt comfortable asking my husband to solo parent for a weekend while I took leisure time for myself. Thanks to Kinnari who planned a couple of girls' trips with me and another friend in 2020-21, I began to experience again what it was like to have unplanned time with no one needing my constant attention.

It was glorious. I started to get back in touch with the person I used to be before I became a mom - traveling to new destinations, laughing with friends, cooking meals together. I also discovered new interests that emerged in my forties. Hiking in nature, getting body treatments, learning how to start a fire that I could huddle around with friends, reading out loud to each other from treasured books and engaging in spiritual conversations about life.

But it wasn't easy for me initially to relax when I had this time away. I could justify it as a special needs mom or a mom facing depressive episodes but did I even need to? This is a trap that many women fall into. Whether they are a stay at home mom or working mom, special needs mom or caregiver daughter to aging parents, women often feel guilty about prioritizing their own needs. It took me time to get comfortable with acknowledging this need. Deep down I knew I needed to do this for myself.

Those initial trips were tough on me - guilt for leaving my husband to deal with the chaos of two kids at home, anger at the urgent phone calls from my son or husband when the shit hit the fan at home, sadness for my inability to stick to my boundaries and get uninterrupted down time. But each trip that I took became easier for everyone in the family as we learnt new skills on how to manage these situations. I started by restricting myself to three-day trips within California so I was always a phone call away if needed. Then in 2022, I had to travel to India to help my mom with some personal matters and decided to try a three-day ayurvedic wellness retreat there to address my gut health in the hopes that it would also improve my mental health. While I was there I decided to restrict my communication with my family in the US - the time zone definitely made it easier given we were twelve hours apart.

Everyone survived and I came back much refreshed, rejuvenated and reenergized to handle tough situations again. Since then I have done a six day vipassana (silent meditation) retreat in California with no cell phone access in 2023 and a six day wellness retreat in Thailand in 2024. Each trip away from the family gave me the courage and confidence to continue to make this an annual practice. I am about to set off on a new adventure this week - a ten day trip to Patagonia, hiking in the Torres Del Paine National Park where I will have no cell phone access for most of the trip.

If there is one thing I could tell my younger self it would be to prioritize things that make you feel whole. I got so subsumed into my role as mother/manager/daughter for twelve years that I forgot who I was or what I needed. A person that needs down time to recharge and connect back with herself. A person that enjoys the company of other adults without young ones demanding her constant attention. A person that needs to connect with nature and her body to ground herself. But it's never too late to bring change into your life. It starts by recognizing what you need, trusting your intentions, asking for it and then making it happen without giving a damn about anyone else. Because you deserve it.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

"I've noticed over the last year that your inner voice has become less critical" my therapist noted to me a couple of months ago. "Hmm yes.. I think you are right. About time!" I responded with a big smile. This is something I had been working on for years without making a noticeable dent so it was nice to finally see a change.

As an overweight kid, growing up in India wasn't always easy. It’s a culture where people feel free to offer you their opinions even if it comes at the cost of hurting you. Friends, family and strangers felt it was their “duty” to tell me what was wrong with me. Most often when it came from friends and family it was well-intentioned but it was always about looking better instead of focusing on being healthier. While I was dealing with the “affectionate” names and jokes related to being chubby, my cousins were dealing with comments about the color of their skin. No one was spared, especially if you were a girl. Years of hearing the same thing over and over again in your youth makes you start seeing yourself with the lens that others see you.

I also grew up in a house around a Dad that was very critical of us. He felt it was an act of love and that his criticism would make us improve, make us stronger. What he didn't know, and what most people don't realize is that the way we talk to our children, the things we say to them they internalize. The voices of our parents become our inner voice. I became self-critical, developing a sharp and hurtful inner voice. Even when I did something good, I'd compare myself to others and sometimes to an idealized version of myself. I tended to minimize what I had achieved and not take pride in who I was becoming. I carried my insecurities with me through my twenties and thirties. My self-talk was negative.

"Self-talk is the way you talk to yourself about yourself. Negative self-talk is a self-punishment and an extremely insidious one at that. If you make a habit of berating yourself, you’ll experience chronic guilt that morphs into shame. Unless you disrupt your self-punishment with some self-compassion, you’ll eventually adopt a false, shameful identity as someone who is incapable, damaged, lazy, annoying, a mess-whatever mean adjectives you’re using to describe yourself."

- Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist’s guide to losing control

Self-compassion as a tool

It wasn't until my late thirties that I started to do the deep work of accepting myself for who I was. During covid, I attended a talk by Dr Kristin Neff on self-compassion. She is to self-compassion what Brene Brown is to shame and vulnerability. According to Dr Neff, there are three critical components to self-compassion. Here is how she explains it -

1. Kindness: Self-compassion means being kind and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism. We’re warm and supportive when confronted with the imperfection of life rather than cold or harsh. We’re helpful and encouraging, like a good friend, coach or mentor would be. This inner support allows us to feel safe and puts us in a better frame of mind to cope with challenges or make needed changes in our lives.

2. Common humanity: Self-compassion is rooted in our common humanity. When we struggle or make mistakes, there’s often an irrational but pervasive sense of isolation – as if “I” were the only person in the world having this painful experience. All humans suffer, however. Not the same way or the same amount, but the very definition of being “human” means being vulnerable, flawed and imperfect. When we are self-compassionate, we recognize that our suffering connects us rather than separates us from others.

3. Mindfulness: Self-compassion requires taking a balanced, mindful approach to our suffering so that we neither suppress or exaggerate it. Treating ourselves like we would a friend means we step outside our usual way of looking at things, putting our own situation into better perspective. Mindfulness allows us to turn toward our pain with acceptance of the present moment reality. It prevents us from becoming “over-identified” with difficult thoughts and feelings, so we aren’t swept away by negative reactivity.

There are so many times where I've heard either myself or my close friends say "But why should I be kind to myself? I deserve this. I made the decision to do x. I'm the only one to blame for being in this position." But self-compassion starts with us giving ourselves permission to encounter what we feel. "You are allowed to feel sad, to feel angry, to feel disappointed..." Self-compassion allows us to acknowledge the pain we are feeling and respond with kindness instead of criticism. While our choices may have been the reason we are in pain, blaming ourselves doesn't do any good. It puts us in a negative frame of mind robbing us of the opportunity to make any progress.

"As an emotional-regulation strategy, self-compassion is king...We underestimate self-compassion all the time. We think of self-compassion as optional, when there’s nothing optional about it. You can’t heal or grow without self-compassion. In the absence of self-compassion, the best you can hope for is stagnation."

- Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist’s guide to losing control

It has taken me years to be kinder towards myself. What's been beautiful about this journey though is that it's also led me towards self-love. I started with healing my wounds with kindness towards myself, then somewhere along the way I learned to accept myself as I was - messy, scattered, disorganized but also joyful, creative, funny and loving. And today when I ask my daughter if she loves herself and she asks me the same, I can truthfully say.. Yes, yes I do!

So on this Valentine's day - a day that is celebrated for loving others - remember that loving ourselves is the foundation to all other love. We do not have to love. We choose to love. If you are not in a place where you love yourself dearly then start with kindness, start with self-compassion.

Mitali’s Dialogue

It was a simple question from my husband eight years ago - “How was this vacation for you?” A few months prior I had complained that our vacations were starting to feel more exhausting than relaxing. It may have just been the toll of doing multiple international trips with two young kids in a year. Or maybe it was the reality of life with a child with special needs who struggled to use words to express his needs. Vacations were majorly disruptive to his daily routines which often resulted in angry outbursts. I found myself constantly worrying and prioritizing activities that kept him engaged so that I could keep the peace in the family while on the road.

My husband’s question made me pause and realize that I was failing to identify my own needs. Initially this made me unpack what worked for me and what didn't while on vacation. And then I started to get honest with myself about how I was feeling on a daily basis and recognizing when things didn't feel right. There were times when it felt easy to go along with what my boys wanted and there were times when I realized that what I wanted was completely different. The mantra I found myself repeating was - “I matter, my needs matter.”

Over the years the more I practiced pausing and checking in with myself, the better I got at noticing niggling feelings that I would have ignored in the past. It wasn't always easy to tune into that voice as I took pride in being accommodating and adjusting to others. My emotions became a gateway to recognizing when I was choosing someone else’s needs over my own. Feelings of anger, frustration, guilt, disappointment, anxiety became acceptable when I viewed them as signals. I discovered an intelligence that was always within me if I chose to listen to it.

As I brought awareness to my emotions, I would remind myself that “this belongs”. Then I would bring to mind the metta or lovingkindness meditation that I had learnt a few years ago.

Repeating this prayer taught me to be kind to myself and forgive myself for my inadequacies. Being kind to myself meant talking to myself like I would to one of my kids or my friends. Could I create a safe space for all feelings to arise and then bring compassion to myself? Instead of berating myself, I learnt to let go of expectations. As I did this practice, I would notice the love and tenderness that I felt towards myself. Years of practice has shown me the importance of treating myself with care and respect. Honoring my needs has led me to discover new ways of taking care of my physical and mental well-being and carving out time to fulfill them.

Mitali’s Dialogue

The icy shock of the San Francisco Bay in October 2022 was my first taste of cold water immersion. That was the year when I was learning to tune into my body in order to nourish it and help it relax. Over the years, I had battled neck and shoulder pain due to the tension that I held there. One day my friend Krista told me about a group of women that had started doing cold water dips at sunrise in Marin and encouraged me to join them. As I read more about cold water exposure, I learnt that it could help reduce inflammation and improve blood circulation. Intrigued to see the effects on my body, I decided to join her one Sunday morning.

While discussing my plan with friends, a lot of them thought I was crazy. It probably was a bit crazy - putting my body through the shock of a practice that involves submerging the body up to the neck in ice-cold water (roughly 10-15°C, 50-60°F) and staying in the water for about 5-10 minutes. I convinced myself that doing it with a group of women would allow me to get over any fear of the cold. In preparation for my first dip, I pored over tips shared within the community. I dug out my son’s old swimming parka, packed a woolen hat and thick socks to warm up my extremities quickly, and carried hot tea to sip in the car to prevent the “afterdrop” which occurs when the core body temperature continues to drop after exiting the water.

I followed the women as they walked calmly into the water. Stepping into the frigid water with Krista, I immediately noticed a tingling sensation in my body. As I waded further into the water, the shivers started. A numbness was gradually taking over my feet and legs. There was a deep awareness of my body and I realized that the only way to handle the physical shock was to focus on my breathing. Memories of the breathing classes that I took in preparation for labor came flashing back - that was the first time I discovered how regulated breathing allows humans to get through a great deal of pain. With each passing breath, I drew out my exhalations and tried to slow down my breathing.

After about a minute of focused breathing, I started to perceive something different. A warmth was slowly spreading through my body. It was deep inside because on the surface I was still covered with goosebumps and shivering and feeling numb. It was a sensation that I had never felt before - like all the cells in my body were vibrating together, generating heat, helping me withstand the shock to my system. Suddenly I was no longer convincing myself to stay in the water. I was embracing a feeling that required me to just be present and trust the signals from my body. And strangely after a few minutes I found myself relaxing into the cold instead of fighting it.

That first morning I spent seven minutes in the water. After I changed out of my swimsuit and put on the many layers I had packed with me, I found myself shaking profusely. It was an intense reaction to the cold water exposure and this time it felt like all the cells in my body were quivering even faster, unable to let go of the vibrations that started during the immersion. It was a heady sensation, a bit like euphoria, or lightheadedness. The feeling persisted for almost an hour and I knew I was hooked.

What I hadn't anticipated was the immediate mental health benefits of doing this practice. For the rest of the day I felt invigorated and alert. Sensations were heightened, colors around me seemed more vivid. I imagined my neurons firing on all cylinders, processing and transmitting information throughout my body. Putting myself into a physically stressful situation, gave me a sense of accomplishment when it was done. The results seemed to only last for the day but the memory of my positive mood motivated me to try different ways of continuing this practice.

There is a lot that has been written about the benefits of cold water immersion (CWI) - bolstering immunity, combating symptoms of depression, improving circulation, increasing metabolism, reducing inflammation, improving sleep quality, and building mental resilience.

“During the initial shock of CWI, the body experiences stress and discomfort due to the sudden drop in temperature. To counteract this, endorphins, the body’s natural pain relievers, are released. These endorphins not only reduce pain but also enhance feelings of well-being. CWI also activates the sympathetic nervous system, which controls our “fight-or-flight” responses. This activation leads to a significant increase in noradrenaline (also known as norepinephrine), an excitatory neurotransmitter that not only helps manage stress but also boosts energy and focus. The surge in noradrenaline increases blood flow to the brain, potentially causing feelings of euphoria.

The impact of these two neurotransmitters is complementary - norepinephrine prepares the body to handle acute stress by enhancing alertness and readiness, endorphins work to soothe pain and promote a positive mood. This dual response helps individuals cope with the immediate impacts of cold exposure more comfortably and can make the experience of cold water immersion more tolerable–and potentially even rewarding.”

- Stanford Lifestyle Medicine

Over the past two years, I have done a few more dips in the bay in Sausalito and in the ocean in Santa Cruz, and roped in folks to join me for plunges in a friend’s cold swimming pool in the middle of winter. Each immersion brought me back in contact with my body, bringing an awareness to the present moment and relieving my shoulder pain over the following days. I found myself paying sharper attention to the essential functional units of my body - cells creating energy, neurons transmitting signals, breath sustaining life - each operating involuntarily without any thinking. In my attempts to engage more deeply with my body, this is one of the habits that I will be practicing more consistently this year.

If any of this intrigues you, try it out once to see if it has any health benefits for you. You can start simple by just immersing your face in an ice bath for a few minutes or start your shower with cold water for the first thirty seconds and work your way up to five minutes. For folks with any pre-existing health conditions, please consult a doctor before trying any of these techniques.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

I haven’t mustered up the courage to do cold water dips yet. In fact I was one of those people that thought Mitali was nuts (and also brave) when she slept over at our house in San Francisco to make it to a 7 am dip with the group in Sausalito. My husband used to do regular cold water immersions at the San Francisco banya (Russian spa) when he was dealing with a back injury several years ago. During one visit with him I tried it out - but it was after fifteen minutes of being in a very hot sauna and I lasted for only two minutes. Mitali’s description of the sensations she felt has inspired me enough to reconsider and join her on a cold dip in the San Francisco bay in the distant future.

This winter to recover from a recent shoulder injury from tennis, I hit the Korean spa a few times. I discovered the magic of a Korean spa when my friend Janice took me to one in Los Angeles. Jjim-jil-bang, which means “heated rooms,” are a big part of the South Korean culture, where locals go to relax, unwind, hang out with friends and family, and engage in unique health benefits. Put away that fancy, serene image that pops up when you think of a “spa”. The Korean bathhouses I’ve been to in LA and Santa Clara are pretty basic i.e not as aesthetically pleasing to your senses as a typical spa. But what they lack in form, they make up in functionality.

Upon walking in, you are handed a pair of shorts, t-shirt and flip flops and a locker key. You can get a day pass to avail of the different rooms or sign up for a service. The most common service is an intense exfoliating body scrub with an ajumma (middle-aged Korean aunties). These ajummas are no-nonsense and highly efficient. I tried telling mine to be gentle but she had a process and she was going to follow it. During the scrub, it felt like she was taking layers off my skin. The only other place I’ve felt something similar was in a hammam in Tunisia.

As a mom to two young kids, with limited time on my hands, the last few times I’ve visited I’ve chosen to skip any service and spend a couple hours in the various hot and cold communal rooms. My favorite is the clay room. It’s a room with a large pit filled with tiny smooth balls made of ocher clay. As you lie in these pits, the small beads warm up your muscles, relieving pain and tension and stimulating pressure points along the body.

​They also have a jade room, salt room and ice room, each offering a different benefit. I spend my time in these rooms meditating and tuning into sensations within. In these rooms I have felt the tightness in my body melting away slowly. Apart from these communal spaces, they have same sex areas with the standard sauna, steam room, hot tub and cold pool, a room with the best massage chairs I’ve experienced and a cafe that serves nutritious Korean food. I’ve walked away from each session feeling less sore and also mentally relaxed.

Both heat and cold are beneficial for the body. My husband has been going to the sauna at his gym after every workout this month. It helps his muscles relax, avoiding post-workout soreness the next day. He has also joined Mitali for some of the cold water dips at a friend's pool. If asked, he would probably say cold > hot and also a lot tougher. If, like me, you are inspired by Mitali’s experience but are still working on building up the courage for a cold immersion, find a Korean or Russian spa close to where you live. They both offer an opportunity for you to experiment with putting your body through various different hot and cold temperatures and learn what works for you.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

Happy New Year dear readers! Hope your year has started off on a good note. At this end, Mitali and I took a trip this past weekend with our families to a place called Mar Vista cottages & farms in northern California. It was a lovely little spot with cottages across the Pacific Ocean and plenty of animals to get the little ones excited. Both my girls along with Mitali’s younger son spent a good amount of time feeding the goats, bunnies and chickens.

My favorite spot was a creek side trail on the property. Stepping into the forest with the sound of water gushing and rushing, on its way to meet the ocean immediately brought me into presence. On our last morning there, I took the time to sit there on my own and contemplated picking a “misogi” for the year - a term I had come across while scrolling Instagram. Misogi, meaning 'water cleansing', is an ancient Japanese practice involving purifying the mind, body, and spirit through physical and mental challenges. In samurai tradition, it helps warriors build mental clarity and gain a deeper understanding of themselves by pushing their limits. In modern day however, people are using it to think up one big challenge for the year.. something that is REALLY hard to do, and will push you to your limits. It’s a way to remember your year. [Here are some things people have shared in case you are curious.]

Do I need to pick ONE hard thing? Am I not already working on making improvements across the board? It would be cool to have one thing to remember the year by though. Should I sign up for another physical challenge like I did in 2022 - walking the camino? Should I quit my corporate gig and start my own company?

I didn’t have an answer. I let the contemplation go and turned towards the flowing water and the tall trees again. A few minutes later I closed my eyes and did a small meditation. Upon finishing, the desire to deepen my meditation practice came back to me. Over the past year, I’ve tried to maintain a daily 10-minute practice but to be honest I’ve let it slide on many days. At the start of 2023, I’d had a desire to expand on my inner life and had kept up with a meditation practice for several months, only to put it on hold when baby L arrived later that year.

“An effective method of meditation leads us to an experience of profound stillness, an inner silence that defies description. It is an emptiness that is full with peace, creativity and happiness. It is the natural condition of our mind beyond the processes of our thinking. We cannot help but get the feeling when we are in this state that this is who we really are. It feels so much like home. It feels so good. It is not only a mental experience. With effective meditation, every cell in our body is brought to a state of profound living stillness. Many of the symptoms of this stillness, this inner silence in our body, are measurable – the whole metabolism slows down along with the mind.”

- Yogani, Deep Meditation - Pathway to Personal Freedom

On that day by the creek, post-meditation, I made a decision to experiment with a new way to meditate (based on the book I was reading). I committed to doing two 20 minute meditations daily, based on the method laid out in the book, for the month of January.

The other thing I have been thinking about is what practices I want to continue (or start) in 2025. Here are some of my daily ones:

Daily practices for 2025

• End of day review - picking this back up from 2023. It’s a quick 5 minute practice before bedtime where I reflect and write (in an excel spreadsheet) 3 quick wins from my day and 3 things I want to do the next day. This helps me look for the “good” in my day and also helps me think about the most important things for the next one.

• 5 minutes of writing - I enjoy writing, it gives me so much. I want to do more of it but sometimes I let other things get in the way. This “5 minute” practice is the equivalent to “just exercise for 5 minutes”.. it’s intended to get me to start, knowing that once I do I’ll continue to do more.

• 100 grams of protein + 30 minutes of movement - as a vegetarian I don’t eat much protein. I spoke to a nutritionist who suggested having two protein shakes a day. I’m still on just one a day, but working on incorporating two. The second one - 30 minutes of movement is slightly easier since I’ve been at it for a few months. Both of these are related to my larger commitment to getting healthier.

• 20 minutes of meditation, twice a day - going from barely keeping up with a daily 10-minute practice to this feels like a big jump. However, if it truly helps in bringing about inner silence then I hope to continue with it for the rest of the year.

I would love to hear from you about practices you are either continuing or bringing into your year. Or perhaps you are going all out and have a misogi you’d like to share!

Mitali’s Dialogue

“New year, new habits, new you.” Well, not for me this year. I am content with “old me”. I have no new year resolutions - no new habits to practice, no new challenges to take on.

This year instead I am going to just try to keep up with the practices that I have already established. Back in December, I did get caught up in the barrage of emails about starting something new in 2025 and signed up for two new movement related services (dancing and walking). But I quickly realized that I was not in a place to add new habits. I lack the discipline to add any new habits to my routine when I am barely being consistent with the ones I already have.

Over the past couple of years through trial and error, ups and downs in my health, I have figured out the habits that sustain me (I wrote about this back in October). Since then, I have practiced writing weekly priorities and being consistent with my habits. I noticed the energy I got from committing to doing the same things regularly. Maintaining my practices over the past three months has given me confidence in my ability to stick with the same old. The challenge will always be keeping up with the practices. When things are going well and my energy levels are high, I get caught up in exploring new interests, or I travel and disrupt my routine, or I commit to too many social engagements and before I know it, I start to neglect the habits that brought me to my sweet spot. And then when my energy levels start to dip, I avoid doing my habits using lack of motivation as an excuse and the downward spiral makes it impossible to get back on track.

So one of my words for this year is consistency - doing the same thing every day or every week - like a solo walk on Mondays or yoga on Thursdays or writing my priorities for the week every Sunday. It may seem repetitive or boring or some days the habits can start to feel like a chore. The challenge will be to not question the wisdom of consistent practice but to remind myself that the beauty of doing the same old boring thing means I don't have to think about what to do and I get to reap the rewards over the long term.

Last week I watched the movie Perfect Days which chronicles the daily life of a caretaker of the Tokyo toilets. He follows a very structured routine but still manages to find moments of beauty and joy while doing the familiar things. It reminded me that each day I can make a choice on how to experience the familiar and the mundane. Which brings me to my other word for this year - contentment. Being satisfied with my existing practices. Finding fulfillment in the way my life is playing out. Being at peace with what is. Accepting the moment, not resisting or wanting things to be different.

I recently read that in Bhutan, contentment is considered a very special emotion, one that is the highest achievement of human well-being. The word they use is chokkshay, which is a very deep and spiritual word that means ‘the knowledge of enough’. It basically means that right here, right now, everything is perfect as it is, regardless of what you are experiencing outside.

Contentment is an ongoing practice that I have been attempting over the years. One of my affirmations from 2023 was - “I am at peace with the present moment and trust in the unfolding of my life”. I find myself mostly at peace with what I have in my life, living from a place of “enough” vs “more”. I have learnt to appreciate all of life's experiences, the good and the bad. The place I struggle with is radical acceptance of all my emotions. While I view each situation as an opportunity to teach me something, there are emotions that I am still not comfortable with and I resist acknowledging them when they arise.

Knowing that every emotion has a lifespan, can I allow for all my feelings to come and go without needing to change them, fix them or avoid them? Just this past weekend there were some big emotions expressed in our family causing chaos to ensue on the first day of our vacation. I found myself struggling to acknowledge what I was feeling. The urge to resist the emotions, to shame myself for feeling a certain way, to despair that my patterns keep repeating themselves, made me want to run away from my emotions.

As I found myself succumbing to my old distraction methods, I forced myself to get in touch with my breath and stop judging myself. To give myself all the time needed for this emotion to pass. Right here, right now, everything is ok as it is. I can be content with my sadness, with my anger. I am complete as a human being.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

It’s that time of the year again. We are a day away from Christmas and the schools are closed, the kids are home and we are all attempting to get into a relaxed and joyful state. It’s also the time of year for our annual reminder to our readers to take a little bit of time to look back and reflect. We’ve shared various methods over the years - the long and short annual review here and talked about some practices here.

This year we decided to have a conversation with each other about our reflections before writing this post. Our discussion centered around the following five questions:

• When did you experience moments of aliveness?

• How did you make yourself proud?

• What limiting beliefs have you shed?

• What word describes your year?

• What word describes your inner experience of the year?

This year for me has mostly been about Home. Both - my own home which is my body and mind, and the physical house we live in. I’ve consistently worked on both and feel great about where I’m ending the year. At the end of last year I still felt a bit broken and very weak after having a baby at age 43 and barely sleeping the first few months after her arrival. I do not feel this way anymore. There is still work to do but I feel a lot stronger within. Stronger and hopeful. And as we all know - hope is everything.

We also made a huge shift and moved out of San Francisco to Palo Alto to live closer to family. My moments of aliveness have certainly happened during my travels and time in nature but there have also been a lot of sweet simple moments in our new home that will stay with me. I still remember that first weekend after we had moved. All our stuff was still in boxes. My husband and I were taking a break in the backyard from unpacking. It was a warm summer evening and little A was riding around on her scooter from one end of the house to the other with baby L trying to follow. M and I were both exhausted from the move but we felt happy. We marveled at how easy it already felt with the girls in the new space and felt giddy (if one can believe it) about a move to the burbs.

What are the shimmering moments from 2024 that will stick with you? What are the memories that flash through your head and warm your heart when you think about them? It may have been a challenging year for many of you, but can you find a few joyful moments as you sift through the year? What can you take pride in? Put aside all those thoughts of all the things you haven’t done or still need to do. Now is not the time for that. Now is the time to sit back and feel grateful for all that has been, for all that YOU have been this year. Now is the time to pause, reflect on all the good stuff - the big and the small.

“You get to choose how you interact with the world and the meaning you assign to your experiences. You can choose your state of mind. You can choose to shift to an empowered state”

- Tony Robbins, How do I change my state of mind

Mitali’s Dialogue

When did you experience moments of aliveness this year? This was the first question that was asked of participants in an end of year reflection workshop by Nataly Kogan of The Awesome Human podcast. The question really resonated with me as one of my practices is to pause and recognize moments of joy in my day. As I looked back on the year, all the awe-filled memories came rushing back - moments spent with people I love and moments of solitude in nature.

Watching the monsoon rains in Pawna Lake in India, engaging in a deep discussion about our dreams with my partner on a beach in Koh Samui, admiring the play of birds on a nature walk through the Baylands near home, dancing with friends in the sand celebrating a birthday - each of these moments kept me in the present and filled me with gratitude. Taking the time to reflect on these memories spread across the year gave me a deep sense of appreciation for the life I have built and the way I have lived. I may have spent a third of the year in a depression episode but I didn't let it rob me of moments of feeling alive.

Last week when Kinnari and I did our in-person session it brought deeper insights into my year. I shared the one word that described my inner experience this year - self love - and as she inquired into that word, it brought awareness to the journey that I have been on for the past couple of years. Two years ago in my year-end reflection on Disco Dialogues, I wrote “...[I] often forget to do the last one - Love yourself. It seems like simple enough advice. Why do I struggle some days to find the good in what I do?”. Twenty four months later and I finally feel like I have learnt how to do this - to take care of myself like I take care of the loved ones in my life. Paying attention to what I need, being kind and gentle with myself, praising myself for the big and small wins in my life.

I share this because sometimes our expectations of ourselves are too high or we get impatient or frustrated when we don't see progress quickly. Reflecting can lead to disappointments if we fail to see the big accomplishments of the year that we can post to social media. But discussing my year with someone who creates the space for honest inquiry, gave me an opportunity to see how the small weekly actions over the years have had a big impact on my personal growth. Growth happens in spurts and often can only be seen when you widen your aperture.

In this last week of 2024, reflect on your year with someone that creates the space for you to show up as your true self. You might be surprised at what else gets revealed when you engage in an honest conversation.

It is always energizing to hear from our readers when a post really resonates with them or even better when it helps them address something they are already facing. Last week we got, not just a response in the form of likes and comments to our last post on Fighting the December Drearies, but one of our loyal readers (and a previous guest writer) sent us a poem that just felt profound. We know many of our readers have older kids that have left home or are about to leave next year and so we thought this would resonate with a lot of you.

Margi shares her response to her first child leaving home for college. She wrote a post about expressing love for her family back in Feb 2022. Her response below starts with a line from Kinnari’s last post. After being away in India and leaving her husband to solo parent for twelve days, Kinnari had asked her husband how he did it. Margi starts her beautiful poem with his response below.

Margi’s Dialogue

"One day at a time."
I teared up and laughed at the same time reading Mus's answer to "How did you do this for twelve days?"
One day at a time.
For twelve days.
For eighteen years.
And then, one day, they don't need you to do any of it anymore.
It is devastating.
Can you believe that?
I would not have believed that when Evelyn was one. Or even when she was 17. But here we are.
It's a long slow process of loving and grieving. It is beautiful and brutal.
Becoming Evelyn's mother changed me completely. Taught me to just settle in.
Be here.
One day at a time.

Thank you for this one, Kin and Mitali.

Another friend expressed his experience with the words below when we asked him to elaborate on his email to us saying “I loved this installment.”

Michael’s Dialogue

Hi Kinnari/Mitali, your most recent post resonated with me in a number of ways. I was immediately reminded how my recent re-reading of Eckhart Tolle's 'Power of Now' has helped me stay present and further realized that, in Mitali's words, "I am no longer the person I was in 2022 or 2023. I have new habits and consistent routines that keep me in the present." When I begin to fret about the future (how can you not, given recent world events), I have found this technique super useful. I really loved Mitali's list of ways to stay grounded.

Turning to Kinnari's post, I have been personally migrating towards the philosophy of JOMO > FOMO for the past several years. The person I was last decade was so heavily driven by FOMO. Change is a powerful force for all of us, and as long as we can ground ourselves in the present moment, we can avoid a lot of the unnecessary suffering inherent in much of our thinking. Thanks for shining a light on so many of the situations I'm finding myself in at this precise moment in time. Happy Holidays!

(*JOMO - joy of missing out, FOMO - fear of missing out)

We put out our words hoping that they help someone out there feel less alone because we are all on similar journeys through life. Getting a first comment from a subscriber who has been reading our posts for over a year made us feel like our words really matter. We are moved by Layla’s reflection below.

Layla’s comment

Guys! I needed this one! I’m realizing in reflection I have terrible SAD and have to really strive to work through it. Your tips and tricks have helped me heaps and I’m thankful for how well timed this is for me!!! Thank you! Happy happy.

(*SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder)

We always enjoy hearing from our readers - you could be featured in one of our future posts! Do share any of your tips for battling the winter blues.

Mitali’s Dialogue

The first time I experienced Thanksgiving in the US was in 1995. As I walked past a padlocked Student Center on the MIT campus, I was struck by the importance of this day in America. It was the first time that I saw the campus 24-hour market closed. There were literally no food options on campus. My parents had, through some third degree connections, found me a local host family - a Bengali gentleman married to a Jewish lady - and they had invited me to join them for their Thanksgiving family festivities. As I waited to be picked up at a bus stop on Mass Ave, I felt grateful that someone had offered to open up their home to this fresh off the boat student with no family around.

I didn't grow up celebrating Thanksgiving but over the years it has taken on different forms. I have celebrated Thanksgiving with college friends on the east coast, with family on the west coast and often traveling when the kids were younger. It is always a joyful occasion to gather with the people who matter, giving our kids an opportunity to recognize the invaluable relationships in their lives.

But for the past couple of years, Thanksgiving has taken on a different significance for me. It marks the season of change. With the waning daylight, my energy starts to dip. Anxiety starts to make a reappearance as I gear up for the holiday season. I find myself succumbing to old patterns of thinking, the deep ruts in my brain that tell me - I have nothing to show for the year gone by or I once again have no certainty about my career plans for the year ahead or I don't know how to handle the energy in my household over the winter vacation.

This year I am trying to circumvent these old narratives. I remind myself that the past does not predict future performance (just like the stock market) and that my Past Self is not always wiser than my Present Self. Instead I am making an effort to create new grooves in my brain by choosing to savor the present moment. Things can be different this year. I am no longer the person I was in 2022 or 2023. I have new habits and consistent routines that keep me in the present. I go for nature walks to get my daily dose of sunshine and physical activity in hopes of maintaining my mental wellbeing. I take breaks to enjoy a cup of coffee at my local coffee shop and try to slow down time. I explore new communities that give me an opportunity to engage in deep meaningful discussions.

Only time will tell if I am able to stay in the now and not let my thoughts drag me down into past narratives. For now I plan to take it one a day at a time and do the things that bring me joy.

“...In the eternal now, where all possibility exists, your celebration is already complete. Your joy is already whole. Your experience is already perfect. You are already, and have always been, an utterly complete expression of the Divine.

Tune into that frequency. Feel into that truth. And let your holidays be exactly what your highest self is calling them to be.”

- Dr Sue Morter, Finding Comfort

If you find yourself succumbing to seasonal affective disorder (SAD), a type of depression that occurs during specific seasons, usually fall or winter, here are some tips to fight it -

• Stick to a schedule. I have been getting up at 6:30am every day even on the weekends and getting myself to bed at a consistent time. I try to expose myself to light in the mornings to maintain my circadian rhythm and even got myself a light therapy lamp recently, planning preemptively for the gloomy rainy winter days.

• Create a cozy space in your home that allows you to escape for a few moments. Light a candle, start a fire, run a warm bath, curl up in a blanket.

• Move your body. It doesn't have to be “exercise” but try stretching at home, or doing a quick walk around the block or between meetings. Bonus if you can also get a dose of sunlight.

• Find small things that bring you joy. For me that is sometimes making myself a cup of tea as the light starts to fade at 3pm, or grabbing coffee at a coffee shop on my morning walk, or buying a bunch of flowers from the grocery store.

• Engage in social activities that bring you energy. I prioritize connecting one on one with friends for walks, doing small group brunches, going for author talks at bookstores and recently even tried an online weekly writing group.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

A couple weeks ago I flew back to India to help my mother as she was dealing with some complicated health issues. I left the two kiddos behind with my husband as I knew I'd be spending a few days at the hospital with my mom. I was sad and almost resentful about leaving them behind. "You don't know how hard it is for me to be without them" I said to both Mitali and my husband. But then on the day of my departure my mindset shifted. I suddenly found myself feeling grateful - How lucky I was to have a partner that was able and willing to take care of two young kids on his own while I tended to my mother. How privileged to have an employer that wouldn't question why I suddenly needed the time off.

Being in India and seeing my mom go through a tough time was not easy. But without the kids by my side needing my attention, I had all this mental space and physical energy to be able to show up for her in a way I wanted to. My parents had requested I bring the baby with me but thankfully my husband and common sense had prevailed. I could not have spent nights at the hospital or taken care of my mother’s emotional needs with a one year old in tow. In fact the journey itself (two 10+ hour flights with a seven hour layover) with a baby would have exhausted me. Traveling solo meant I was able to show up, ready to be of service. So while I felt a bit guilty for leaving the girls behind, I gave myself permission to put the role of mother on the shelf for two weeks while I leaned into the role of being a daughter.

I flew back to San Francisco on Thanksgiving day and it felt great to be reunited with my little ones after twelve days. I felt deeply grateful for both - quality time with my aging mother in India and returning to the Bay Area to a house full of love. A return from being a daughter back to a full time mother. Within a few days of taking care of the kids and the house - cooking, cleaning, changing diapers around the clock - I was physically exhausted and crawling into bed by 8.30 pm. After spending time in India where the mundane everyday tasks of cooking, cleaning, laundry are all taken care of, coming back to doing it all for a family of four is a jolt to the system. "How did you manage twelve days of this?" I asked my husband. “One day at a time” he replied.

So as we approach the holiday season with schools closing and kids at home all day, I find myself being both excited and also a bit apprehensive of how tiring it may all get. I’m guessing many of us are in the same boat. It’s important to remind ourselves during these times to be self-compassionate, take mini breaks and say no when we’re not feeling up to the task.

These reminders below might be helpful not just during the holiday season but during the entire season of child-rearing and caring for aging parents :)

• Remember that kindness begins at home (in our hearts and bodies). This time with kids might be "fleeting and joyful" but is also all-consuming and exhausting. Let's be kind towards ourselves and not beat ourselves up about how we aren't doing enough - whether that's in our careers, for our children, our parents, our communities or our bodies.

• Solitude can be delicious. Take time to step away from it all. Even if it means you have to shell out extra $ for it. The time away is refreshing, you get to reconnect with yourself (or perhaps a good friend), breathe and get that mental space to reflect. It is when I take a day or a couple days away that I have the energy to think about the bigger picture.

• "No" can be a full sentence and jomo > fomo*. Be very discerning of how you spend your time. If it's not a fuck yeah, forget about it - at least for now. If it isn't going to rejuvenate you then it's okay to protect your energy and say no. (*jomo - joy of missing out, fomo - fear of missing out)

“Take internal time seriously and honor the need to reflect and connect with a deeper sense of your authenticity. Embrace the freedom of being able to recalibrate those parts of yourself that need to be brought into the present. Use this month to get a greater sense of what motivates you. It could be that you are revisited by interests from the past that have been put on a shelf or that you make a commitment to something that you really wanted but would not allow yourself to because of considerations of others or responsibilities you thought you should put first.”

- Monthly forecast for December 2024 from The Power Path’

Mitali’s Dialogue

Hope, optimism, sadness, disappointment, hurt, resentment - I went through a full gamut of emotions this past week. Partly from what was happening in the country I call home but mostly because of the events happening in my own home. As I named these emotions triggered by actions of my family members, I noticed myself getting stuck in a familiar pattern of thinking. 

“Our senses act as pathways to our mind.” I heard Alice Waters say this on a podcast recently and it made me pause. Could I use my senses to change the pathways of thinking in my mind? She was talking about how technology is causing us to lose touch with our senses but in stark contrast I realized that I was starting to relying more on my senses. While my senses can often be overstimulated, putting my brain in overdrive, over the past few months I have been using my senses to calm my brain down.

The habit that brings me into my senses immediately is walking. I recently upped my movement habit to walking every day instead of three times a week. Nature is an escape for me and I am lucky that it is easily accessible in California. I can step out of my front door and immediately admire the changing colors of the leaves on the trees. Or on a walk around the block I can take the time to notice the new blooms on the shrubs. 

On a morning walk, I tune into the sound of the birds chirping in the marshland. It feels like they are communicating the joy of a new day or maybe it’s just the nutritious food they are foraging in the mud. I watch the great white pelicans glide low over the water with their long wings outstretched, landing in a colony of a hundred white pelicans on a small patch of grassland. Five brown pelicans soar overhead in a synchronized V formation landing close by but seeming to be outliers to the white ones.

I walk without headphones taking in the noises around me and delighting in the play of the birds. Flocks soaring into the sky. Ducks, geese, willets, egrets, sandpipers, sparrows, finches - eating, swimming, sleeping, flying in their groups. Occasionally the lone gull or raven appears. A red-tailed hawk seems to sit motionless for me. 

Being here, observing nature, taking in my fill of sight and sound - the birds with their morning rituals, their aerial dances and their camaraderie as they chirped to each other - takes me out of my mind. I stop wondering if I have love or despairing about not feeling love from others and instead turn to nature to show me her beauty, her love, her joy. My thoughts stop racing, my breath slows down and I behold the true joy that can be found in what nature creates for us. 

“Everyone is educated in their own unique way and those of us who had the privilege of attending college are very often the least educated in regards to understanding that we are not just connected to nature, we are nature. To not know that is to be disconnected from our power source.”

- Andrea Gibson, author, Things That Don’t Suck

Can we open our eyes and drink in the beauty that surrounds us? Is this how Mother Nature shows her love to me? Through the sounds of the birds, the colors of the leaves and wisps of clouds in the blue sky. I just need to breathe and step away from the thoughts that my mind continues to churn up. My mind is not doing me any favors by allowing me to wallow in dissatisfaction. Think abundant Mitali, not scarce. There is much for the Universe to offer me if I stop focusing on my unmet wants and instead wait for It to provide for me. 

Stop wasting your energy 
getting caught up in your mind. 
How many times have you said 
that the mind leads you astray? 

Stop falling into this trap 
time and again. 
Distance yourself 
from your mind 
and your thoughts. 
Be aware 
that it isn't you
but your mind that is struggling. 

Observe it, name it, 
be entertained by it, 
but do not succumb to it. 

Because, oh there is a world here 
waiting for you to discover it.

Kinnari’s Dialogue

       Last week I was having dinner with a close friend visiting from London. I hadn’t seen him in a couple years so there was lots to catch up on. He’d had an intense few years between starting and selling a company while raising three kids. I asked him if he was thinking about taking a break in 2025. His response shocked me. “Not really. It’s harder to take time off when you live in a city. What would I do? I can’t think of anything I want to do.” I offered my opinion - “How about doing nothing? Maybe that’s what you need. Time to just be and do nothing.” We went through this interchange a couple times - me nudging and him pushing back. Finally he admitted that he worried about his mental health if he suddenly had a lot of time with nothing to do. This was coming from the same eccentric, super cool, fun friend that used to chide me for taking my laptop home when I worked in the London office back in 2010. He used to say “Kinnari, Europeans don’t take laptops home over the weekend. We like to turn off and enjoy life.” I reminded him of this, of who he used to be when I first got to know him. He was both surprised and thankful at this recollection.

This week it was a similar story. I was catching up with two girlfriends who are busy moms to young kids and have stressful tech jobs. We were having a conversation about whether we’d thought of a number - a number that would make us feel okay to quit corporate life and spend more time on other projects. One of them said “Yes, my partner and I have talked about it. We are five years out. But honestly I don’t know what I would do with all that time.” I brought up my point about spending time being, about engaging in activities and pursuing projects that were more fulfilling. Both the women smiled. One of them said “I’m sure you are right. But I am a doer, I like doing, being productive.”

Yesterday when Mitali shared a draft of her post I responded with “Well it’s good but I think it’s hard to access for those readers that are swamped with the demands of work and raising kids.” And to my surprise, it wasn’t my friends I was referencing but myself. I used to be able to escape for a walk to the Golden Gate Park at least once or twice a week. I am typically someone that tunes into nature often, stops to smell the roses and watch the birds. So why exactly was I finding it harder to relate to her post about “the world out here” today? I realized that I too was getting caught between the demands of work and school events for the kindergartner in addition to suffering from a lack of sleep with the baby toddler constantly waking up in the middle of the night. 

I hadn’t stepped out for a long walk in nature in a while. So I made a decision -  to take my 2 pm meeting by  phone instead of video. I drove to the Baylands Nature Preserve which is only ten minutes away from where we live now and dialed in after starting my walk. I was rewarded with expansive views of the sky, mountains in the background and cool air on my skin. In the distance I saw a flash of white. Upon walking closer I discovered about 40-50 great white pelicans taking a break and relaxing.

I spent more than half of the walk on the phone. But the fifteen minutes that I got to walk alone got me out of my head. I was able to feel awe for a bit. Those forty minutes made a big difference to my day. I came back home feeling a bit more energized, a bit more positive. 

Later that day, I got to marvel at the magnificence of the maple tree outside our front door with little A after she got back from school . How lovely it was to watch Fall work its magic in our own front yard!