Hello my morning people, how are you? Wish you a very very happy new year. I wish you a healthy and prosperous new year. 2020 was tough, I hope 2021 brings you all the joy and happiness in the world. Trust yourself, this is your year. This is the year to find your passion, this is the year to work on your passion and this is the year to achieve that big and bold dream. I hope you are ready to take that big leap of faith. I know, I am so ready for this new year. I have all the intentions to make this the best year so far. Are you ready to join me in this journey? Are you ready to find your dream? Let me help you get closer to your dream life by working on yourself every single day with some small but significant habits. This is the whole purpose of the Morning Cup of Sunshine. It is created to help you get closer to your own best version. So, let’s work together and become the best version of yourself. But before that, happy moment of the week.
Happy Moment of the Week.
This was a week of regroup, recharge, and rejuvenate. I was on a leave this week and I spent a lot of time relaxing, playing with kids, planning for the upcoming year and setting my intentions. I had a fun Virtual Vision board party last weekend. I was nervous for the live event. It was my first time going live on a social media platform. I had all kinds of doubts. But it went absolutely amazing. I truly have awesome friends. I have some very loyal and enthusiastic listeners. I was overwhelmed with the kind of love and support I got. This was definitely the highlight of my week. As I always say, I am still learning and I am exploring new things every single day and I am so grateful for this opportunity. I am thankful for all the people in my life. In the past year, I made so many new friends, some in real life, some virtually through podcasting. I cherish each one of you so dearly. Thank you so much for all your love and support and I wish we grow together in the new year too. Alright, this was about my happy moment. What about you? How was your new year celebration? Did you do something fun? I missed our new year gatherings this year, but that’s okay. I hope we get many more cheerful moments with friends and family this year. I am really looking forward to seeing my family this year. So, let’s hope that happens soon.
Alright, let’s get into episode 36. Let’s start 2021 with some nice intentions.
Intention No 1 : Connect
This is one of the main intentions for me this year. As I said in my earlier episode, 2020 taught me to reevaluate my priorities. What is the one thing that’s the most important in your life? I think it’s the people around you. It can be your family, friends, co-workers, community. The people around you make you who you are. They help you grow in one way or the other. People around you make you realize how special you are, they make you feel loved. So, I think, it is our responsibility to connect with them, care for them and show them the respect and love that they deserve. I understand, life is busy and we have a million things to do every single day. But this year, I want to spend some time intentionally connecting with my family. We live away from our immediate family. But this physical distance should not become a barrier between our communication. I am the type of a girl who remembers everyone’s birthday, anniversaries. I intend to continue the tradition of making them feel special on their special day by wishing them, calling them. It is not that difficult. You can make one phone call to your mom to ask how she is feeling today. You can make one phone call to your grandma asking about her day. I always say one thing, here in the US, friends are your family , away from your family. They are your fresh breeze in the vast, wide world. But with the new responsibilities, new roles some of my old and dear friends took a backseat. I lost touch with them. This year, I intend to connect with them, talk to them and rekindle our friendship. Just think, what is the use of a success if there is no one with you to share and celebrate. I think it is time to stop competing and instead start connecting. In this fast paced world, everyone is running towards something, some are running so that they can buy a house, some are running to save for kid’s college, some are running just because they don’t know how to stop or even slow down. But as I mentioned in my vision board party, the word of the year for me is Breathe. I am determined to slow down, breathe and connect. This connection is the connection with yourself. I intend to connect with not only friends and family but with myself. I intend to know myself better, understand my feelings, acknowledge them, respect them. In the past I was too harsh on myself, I pushed myself way too much to do things which I did not enjoy. But just because that was the norm, or I did that because I was supposed to do that. This year, I am going to listen to my inner voice, that small little voice which always tells you what you want. I am going to be more intentional about the expectations that I set out for myself. I want to be more present with myself. It is your duty to listen to your inner voice and at least acknowledge it. This year is the year of connect. I am intentionally going to connect more with my friends, family and myself. Connect to present, connect top yourself, connect to others, connect to nature, connect to the divine.
Intention No 2 - Create
This is a mantra that I am going to live by this year. I mentioned several times in my podcast episodes, I love to write. It is my own little space, it is my ME time. It is the most sacred and beautiful time for me. This year, I am going to try my level best to write every single day. I intend to spend at least 30 minutes every single day writing something. It is an extremely soothing and calming experience for me. I understand that this is different for everyone. It might be painting, knitting or reading, journaling for you. Whatever it is, do set an intention to work on it the first thing in the morning. Before you do anything else, spend at least 30 minutes on something that you absolutely love. These 30 minutes will give you the boost to spend your day more intentionally. It will give you so much joy that you can work on some nagging, tedious and even unwanted tasks without feeling drained out. You will feel accomplished. But remember one thing, you can only create something if you carve out time and you carve out a space in your brain. I would say, the title seems a little incomplete to me. It should be Create before Consume.
What do I mean by that? Just imagine, your regular morning. What do you do the first thing when you wake up? Maybe you woke up because of the alarm that you set. You pick up your phone to stop the alarm. What next? Do you get up from the bed immediately or do you spend some time scrolling through your Whats’s app messages, Facebook feed , checking your emails. Do you get up and get straight to the kitchen to get yourself some warm water or coffee and then head to the writing table or pick a book? No right, you keep on scrolling through the phone and by the time you realize it is already time for your chores, making breakfast, getting ready for work. Then the day starts, the rush starts, and at the end of the day you feel defeated. You realize you did not get even a single minute to work your passion. You tell yourself, this was a busy day and you will be better tomorrow. But tomorrow is the exact same replica of this day. Am I correct? Do you feel you do not have time to work on your hobby or passion? Listen to my friend, you always have time for the thing that you absolutely love and if you do not have time, you make time by prioritizing. I have started doing this one small thing for the past few months and I intend to continue that. I wake up at 5 , I turn off my alarm but after that I do not look at my phone. I plug it in for charging away from where I sit to write. I do not read my emails, my messages or even look at my feed for the first one hour of the day. This is my time, my time to write, my time to create. I create before I consume. I don’t want those emails, messages or feeds to dictate how I feel for the day. I don’t want the anticipation of a busy day after reading the long list of emails ruin my calm and peaceful morning. Once I am done with my morning routine, then I pick up my phone. I do three simple things in the morning that make my day calm and beautiful. I meditate for 10 minutes. Yes, I am still on that 10 minute mark, maybe this year I will meditate more but for now 10 minutes for meditation, 1 hour for writing and 5 minutes for whitespace. I talked about white space or blank canvas in my previous episodes. But it is simply doing nothing. It is sitting in peace without any distractions, This is the time where I get most of my episode ideas. Now, after this, I make myself a coffee and then pick a phone and enjoy my screen time for a few minutes before the morning rush starts, But this routine gives me a sense of accomplishment. Those few words that I write on a paper give me so much joy that I feel I can conquer the busy day with ease. So this year, I intend to continue my habit of creating before I consume. Always remember, what consumes your mind, creates your life.
Intention No 3 : Celebrate
Third intention that I want to live by this year is Celebrate. 2020 was a difficult year, it was a year that made me think all about life. It changed the way we live. It changed the way we socialize, the way we spend our free time. But what I realized, is we don’t need much to be happy. A company of loved ones, one heart to heart conversation, one heartfelt message, relaxed and at home time with kids were enough to make us happy. 2020 changed our ways of celebrations. We found new ways to celebrate. We celebrated the drive through birthdays. People honk horns to wish Happy birthdays. We celebrated Diwali, Thanksgiving over a zoom call. I am not joking, but we even had weddings over zoom calls. I am not saying I wish this to become a norm, but what I want to say is even this pandemic did not stop us from celebrating. It might be in a totally different way, it might be on an extremely small scale, it might be virtual but we did celebrate. Infact, in 2020 we did try to find ways to celebrate the small victories. It was all about surviving. It was about cherishing small moments. I still remember the day we got the copy of my son’s book. We had a huge gathering over a zoom call. We all dressed up, he had no clue what was going on. It was all a surprise for him. My entire family gathered over a video call. There were more than 25 people on that call. We started having a normal conversation, Mihir thought it’s just a family video call. But later, we asked him to open a wrapped up gift, it was nothing but a book wrapped nicely in a gift wrap. We all clapped. This celebration called for a Confetti Party Poppers. We all celebrated his virtual book launch. He read a chapter from the book for us. It was such an amazing time. Such moments made 2020 memorable for us. In those times, I realized we get such a boost because of these celebrations. Celebrating small wins helps us work harder for our goal. It helps us regroup, refresh and work with more enthusiasm. So this year, I intend to celebrate more. I intend to celebrate the small wins, small milestones in the journey. It is never about the destination, it is all about enjoying the journey. I am going to firmly believe that every day in your life is a special occasion. The more you celebrate your life, the more there is in your life to celebrate. We all want a life filled with happy moments and celebration of small happy moments help us collect even more happy moments. Isn’t that true? If you look closely, you will find so much to celebrate. I think, gratitude is the key here. If you feel grateful for all the small things in your life, you will find more reasons to celebrate. Rewarding yourself with small gestures, appreciating someone with small acts of kindness are the ways to celebrate. Celebrate the endings for they proceed new beginnings. Celebrate the diversity, celebrate mankind. Celebrate friends, Celebrate family. Celebrate your life. It is not that difficult, you don’t need luxurious things, extravagant arrangements to celebrate. What you need are your loved ones, your happy heart and intentions to feel the joy. This year, I am going to be more intentional about how I feel. I am going to be more aware of my thoughts. I know very well that happy thoughts make me work harder. Seeing the results and rewarding myself for all the hard work makes me work even harder. I realized that you don’t need to wait to be at the end of your journey to celebrate instead, celebrate the small milestones. If you want to lose 10 pounds, don’t wait for all that weight to shade off before you could buy a new dress. Don’t wait to love yourself just because you have not reached your target weight yet. Don’t hold off from rewarding yourself along the way. It doesn't hurt your journey if you celebrate the small milestones along the way. I also think instead of rewarding some numbers or results that you may or may not see on your weight scale, reward your consistency. Reward yourself with a nice, light stretch on the weekend for working out hard during the week. Reward yourself with a nice massage session for working out for an entire month. Indulging in some self care activities is the best way to reward yourself. This year I intend to invest some time in self care activities, those are always backburner for me. They were never my priority before but this year, I am going to make sure that I take some time off to take care of my physical and mental health. Celebrating the success and even efforts are the ways of self care for me. 2020 taught us the hard way that life is too short not to celebrate the nice moments. I fully intend to celebrate every moment, good or bad, every victory small or big, every thought. I fully trust this is your year and live this year celebrating your way through it.
Recap
On this note, let me quickly recap this episode. This is the first episode of 2021. I am setting my intentions for the year. This year I want to be a better person, I want to connect more with my loved ones, friends and family. I want to care more for my loved ones. I intend to create. I am a creative person at heart, I love every aspect of the creative process. This year I want to learn a lot about creative writing. This year I want to create more and consume less. This is the year for more celebration. I intend to celebrate every small milestone with a hopeful heart and joyful mind. I am so excited for this new year. I am looking forward to many new opportunities and many new adventures. I am sure I will see you every week on that journey. I am hopeful that I will keep on bringing the new and useful content every single week for you. Wish you a very happy new year, my dear friend. I hope that this year brings you warmth of joy and affection. Let the celebration begin !!!