You’ve heard this before but it’s truer now than ever before: being a parent is a colossal responsibility. Kids are more empowered than ever before – thanks to the information age, alternative careers, and the mainstreaming of ‘cool’. Ten years ago, being cool was the exception. Today, being cool is the norm. The teenage psyche has undergone a sea change. Are we as parents catching up...

Last week we spoke of workplace 101 for freshers. In the spirit of adapting to new and significant changes in one’s life, this week we want to talk about marriage 101 for newlyweds. Marriage is probably one of the biggest life events in one’s existence. The idea of surrendering one’s identity and history to a new, shared identity and history is a very big transition and yet, our society ...

With 315 million students passing out of schools each year, India has the largest number of students in the world. 26 million students enter colleges and universities to pursue graduate programs. That’s a lot of young minds getting groomed for life. This would be a good time to mentor them and put them in the right direction. Here’s my advice to young minds who are on the cusp of ...

Sometime back, I wrote a blog in which I spoke of letting go of the past and living in the now. I also spoke about how human beings are notoriously in love with the words ‘then’ and ‘later.’ It’s the side effect of an evolved consciousness: the ability to imagine several possibilities at once. It’s a gift, and a curse. It’s a gift if one uses it to visualize positive scenarios and work t...

Recently a 15-year old asked me, ‘What should be the life purpose of us 15 year olds be?’ I thought it was way too early for him to be bothering about life purpose and all that. I started to think about my life purpose only after 30. It was only at 36 that I understood what I truly wanted to become. As Carl Jung said ‘Life begins at forty. Up until then, everything you do is just rese...

A mind-set is your attitude to life. It goes beyond whether the glass is half full or half empty. It’s more complex than that. Because the world is getting more complex. So the language of optimism also has to evolve past half full / half empty and take on deeper shades. Yes, the world is getting more and more complex isn’t it? Societies and workplaces are becoming more heterogeneous....

We all have some habits that affect our health and productivity. And though we resolve to get rid of them, we are not always successful. To understand what’s going wrong, lets visit the building blocks of habits. Habits are routines we create for ourselves consciously. Over a period of time, habits become hardwired and we start performing them almost subconsciously, with the same pred...

In one of my previous blogs, ‘Developing confidence as a personality trait’, I spoke about how improved self-management leads to higher confidence levels in the individual. One need not be a genius to feel confident. One need simply manage one’s self better. Before one manages one’s self, there is a more basic step and that’s self-awareness. All transformation begins with an awareness...

Many people feel they will be happy once a certain milestone is reached. Once they get a promotion, build a house, have a baby, or start a business that makes a profit – once these things arrive, they will be happy. Till then, their happiness, if it exists, is a lesser variant of happiness. Psychologists the world over tell us today that this kind of reliance on external circumstances...