The Blog of Himanshu Sachdeva
In our fast-paced lives, we often seek grand transformations. But what if the secret to lasting change lies in tiny, consistent actions? Enter micro-habits—the unsung heroes of personal growth. In this post, we’ll explore how these small shifts can yield significant results.
What Are Micro-Habits?
Micro-habits are mini-routines that take less than two minutes to complete. They’re easy to integrate into your day, yet their cumulative effect is profound. Examples include:
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In this episode, I’m talking to Chidanand Hiremath who is a Visual Designer, Photographer and former Digital Nomad. He has travelled 30+ countries till now and currently living in Berlin and getting his Masters in children’s rights and childhood education. His love for travelling started since his childhood when one day his father brought him an old NatGeo Travellers magazine from 1949. In his early 20s, he left his first job and started freelancing as a graphic designer. Since then he’s never looked back, he’s doing what he loves and exploring himself as an artist and as a creative.
In this conversation, we talked about how he got started with travelling, why he doesn’t like travelling as a tourist. How he started out with freelance graphic design and did his first solo trip in India with his own earned money and subsequently internationally. His perspective on how being a digital nomad may look attractive externally but how hard it is when you actually go ahead and do it.
He also does nude art (sketching and drawing) and we get into the detail about how it practically works out. He also talks about why he doesn’t like selling work of art or photos on stock sites. There are a lot of interesting topics in this conversation. I really enjoyed talking to Chidanand.
So without further adieu, please enjoy this conversation with Chidanand Hiremath.
Taking control of your life is in your own hands. When you are self-aware, even the tiny moments of deep clarity change the course of your life. Suppressing your emotions is not the right way of clearing them up, rather consciously going through them, observing them and resolving those tough moments is something which is a long-term solution.
This story is from Tanistha Arora – one of the strong women I know, who has been a great student of life, studied life sciences in her academia and subsequently holds a degree in Law. She’s worked with the National Commission for Women (NCW) and while working there she has handled cases of many abused women who had been through rape, sexual assault or were suffering from PTSD. She shares how that whole experience shaped her and a subsequent journey inward, kindled through meditation, inspired her to drop her blooming career in Law and how she embarked on the journey to fulfil her life purpose.
She’s a prolific writer and documenting her journey and I hope this story will inspire you.
[This story is part of the Lifestyle Design in Action series]
I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.
– Invictus by William Ernest Henley.
When Nelson Mandela was confined in the prison during the freedom movement of South Africa, he was internally struggling to find his true self. The poem became his lifeline and my journey also revolves around this.
Just for the background- I completed my under graduation in Life Sciences, graduation in Law and worked with National Commission for Women (NCW) for a year (although I no longer identify myself with such an introduction).
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In this episode, I’m talking to Shashank Murali who’s the Co-Founder and CEO of TapChief. TapChief is an Indian Start-up which aims to build the future of work with it’s focus on Solopreneurs and the gig economy. A freelance professional can register on TapChief and can access thousands of projects to choose from and TapChief handles all the things around this and help the freelancer earn well.
Shashank is a BITS Pilani Alumni. Like many tech founders, his journey also started in the hostel room of BITS Pilani where he created the early version of what today is TapChief.
In this candid conversation, we talk about his journey and how TapChief started out from his hostel room and has now become one of the top Indian Start-ups and is having 1 Lakh plus professionals on their platform. How BITS Pilani shaped his thought process. We go deep on TapChief’s focus on people with Attention to detail and empathy. Their goal of getting 2 Million people to the platform and much more. There are a lot of nuggets in this episode for anyone who’s aspiring to start a company or a start-up which is looking to level up.
So without further adieu, please enjoy this conversation with Shashank Murali.
Designing your life around your passion and what you deeply resonate with, is not easy. Making difficult career choices, making life choices which may sound naive to the people around you, not being able to see the light across the tunnel, but still being hopeful and moving forward in the dark. That’s what it takes to follow your heart.
It all comes to what matters to you. Is it a stable paying job where you feel discontent? or Is it working on something you truly believe in and practice yourself, the thing that makes your heart happy!
In the middle of the herd, there are always exceptions, the moonshots, the crazy ones, the ones who take that shot, which most of us are afraid to take. Leaving the stability and going for that alternate lifestyle which makes them feel fulfilled. Starting a company, Building an innovative product, Starting to Coach etc.
This story is from Priyamvada Mangal, a Freelance Yoga Coach and Journalist from Mumbai, India (Instagram).
She is a certified Yoga Coach and has been working to introduce Yoga to more and more people as a way of life, with her coaching. She is also a prolific writer with her writing pieces published in The Hindu, The Tribune, Manorama etc. As a journalist, she has worked with names like Mumbai Mirror and Firstpost. She’s worked on many photojournalism projects, her photography portfolio can be found here.
Since leaving her full-time job at a big media house couple of years back, she’s been working freelance and is well on the path of financial freedom. She usually provides one-on-one Yoga coaching, but now since Covid-19 hit all of us hard and restricted us inside the boundaries of our homes, she has started teaching Yoga online.
In this piece, she’s sharing how she first got introduced to Yoga and shares about her transition from a traditional journalism career to the freelance writing and Yoga Coaching. She also shares the Yoga way of life that changed her lifestyle and how she’s helping others now to discover this alternate way of life with her Yoga Classes.
[This story is part of the Lifestyle Design in Action series]
The first time I did yoga was when I was 13 and visited the yoga institute for a children’s camp, since then I have been doing Yoga on and off but I never really made it a part of my daily lifestyle until 2018.
The most important thing we can do for our well being is to build and maintain our energy. As per my own experiences and what I’ve read in one of the classical books like Laws of Success and even in the works of modern writers like Darius Foroux, our whole energy is the addition of the three different types of energies –
If any one of these energies slips through the crack, then everything goes for a toss. So our main goal every day should be to build and maintain all these different types of energies. But as we know, as our day passes by we start feeling depleted by one energy or the other. So how to keep these 3 energies sustained in our body?
But there is an amazing co-relation between all these 3 types of energies. To elaborate more on this subject, I asked one of my expert friends – Bhupinder Singh Budwal from Navi Mumbai, India, who is the founder of The FnF [Food, Nutrition, Fitness] Coaching. Bhupinder is a certified Nutritionist from the Institute of Nutrition and Fitness Sciences. He’s also Meta Health certified Practitioner. He has been able to integrate Food with Emotions (one of the 3 types of energies I described earlier), helping clients to use food to heal their health issues and injuries.
Bhupinder and I have been in touch since past 3-4 years as he’s also a passionate runner and part of the running community in Navi Mumbai.
In this story, Bhupinder shares how his unique theory of working with emotional aspect along with the nutritional aspect of well being started and how he further connected the dots of Food Emotion Therapy (FET) – a therapy invented by him which has made his coaching very unique and started benefiting his clients pragmatically.
P.S.: This story is edited for better readability, keeping the context of the story unchanged.
[This story is part of the Lifestyle Design in Action series]
Being a Nutrition Coach since the past 5 years I wanted to go further to provide value with my coaching. I was teaching about mindfulness, nutrition and exercise to my clients. But I knew a piece of the puzzle was missing.
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In this episode, I’m talking to Aditya Kalyanpur who is a world-renowned Indian Tabla Maestro. He has trained under the Tabla Legends Ustad Allarakha Khan and Ustad Zakir Hussain. Since his first appearance in the Wah Taj! ad in the 90s where he played the Tabla along with Ustad Zakir Hussain, to now when he has become the Tabla Maestro and taken the Indian Tabla Classical Indian music art form across International boundaries. He’s played along with the Indian Legends like Shivkumar Sharma, Amjad Ali Khan, A.R. Rahman, Rahul Sharma and western legendary artists like Katy Perry, Herbie Hancock, Larry Coryell and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones to name a few. He also popularised the colourful Tablas. He’s wearing multiple hats at the moment, founder of 2 music institutes in the US and a non-profit in Mumbai India which helps out kids with Cancer.
In this conversation, we talked about his initial journey, his time with his Gurus, his creative process, how to perfect your craft and much more.
It was amazing to talk to Aditya jee and I hope you’ll love it too.
So without further adieu, please enjoy this conversation with Aditya Kalyanpur.
In today’s digital world, we have organically learned to live with technology. A word like financial freedom used to come from people who were nearing retirement or were retired already.
But today there are cases when even a 20 something old can also become financially free.
What? Is it even possible?
Yes! It is. You need not even be a rich brat to achieve it. With technology surrounding our lives, we have almost become cyborgs in a way that we can’t even remember general knowledge questions which we used to, a decade ago. Somebody, asks a question, Google pops-up on our screen immediately. The transition to this dependency has been so organic that we don’t even know when we entered the event horizon of becoming machine dependant and now there is no going back.
There are of course dark sides to technology – Uncontrollable Artificial Intelligence, People exploiting kids while they are online, online frauds and much more.
But there is a sunny side to it as well – Technology can liberate humans of today with just access to an internet connection. One can start their own creative business with a website, a YouTube Channel or a course selling platform.
Today’s story is of one of those people from Mumbai, India – Sumersingh Rajpurohit (Instagram). 25 years old, he is financially free and running his YouTube Channel (Last Moment Tuitions) which has around 474K subscribers (at the time of writing this post – Apr 2020) and he’s built a business around his educational YouTube channel – LastMomentTuitions.com. Both of his ventures are earning him a combined revenue of 6 figures+.
P.S.: This story is edited for better readability, keeping the context of the story unchanged.
[This story is part of the Lifestyle Design in Action series]
I was in my final year of engineering. Everybody else was searching a job and I was confused because I had two options —
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In this episode, I’m talking to Stuart DaCosta, who is a music composer and bassist in the band The Yellow Diary whose songs like Na Tere Jeha Hora Disda and Rab Rakha have been rocking the charts since the day 1 of launch. I absolutely love this band.
Stuart has been in the indie music scene in India from a long time. He has played in various bands like Something Relevant, Baycity Lights etc and then eventually made his way into The Yellow Diary. Which is now signed by Sony Music India. On the side he’s also working for bigger projects with his music production company – Salvage Audio Collective and have worked with films like Gully Boy which had chartbuster songs.
This is an episode with which most of the musicians might resonate. A lot of tidbits for musicians. But for everyone else also it will be a good episode and teach you if you keep working on what you love with all your passion, you definitely will get there.
So without further adieu, please enjoy this conversation with Stuart DaCosta.
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In this episode, I’m talking to Rajat Ubhaykar who is a journalist and author. His first book “Truck De India” launched in late 2019 and since then it’s trending in top travel books in India. In this book, he shares his 10000km hitchhiking adventure throughout India with Truckers. He documented the lives of truckers, the highway economy and busted a lot of myths about truckers.
In this conversation, we talked about his book, his writing process, a lot of stories he actually lived through while on this crazy journey, including an insurgent attack in northeast India
It was a great experience talking to Rajat about his own story and his documented journey called “Truck De India”.
So without further adieu, please enjoy this conversation with Rajat Ubhaykar.