Living the Middle Path

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]

Enters Tanistha Arora

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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Yoga – A way of life

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 HinduThe TribuneManorama 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]

Enters Priyamvada Mangal

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.

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Craving – The state of mind

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 –

  1. Mental Energy
  2. Physical Energy
  3. Emotional Energy

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?

  1. Mental Energy – Mindfulness practice is key for this. Every day, sit quietly for some time and meditate. It can be any type of meditation – Mindfulness meditation with an app (like Headspace) or Mantra based meditation like Transcendental Meditation (TM) etc. When we sit with ourselves, it gives us clarity and we can look inwards. Doing Journaling is also a great way to clear up your mental mess and find clarity. After waking up if you write a few pages of whatever is there on your mind, maybe your previous day’s thoughts or anything which is bothering you, write it down and you’ll immediately see the shift in your mental state towards clarity.
  2. Physical Energy – This is mainly about eating clean and exercising. If you eat good nutrition and exercise every day. It’s a sure shot way to increase your physical energy which then sustains throughout the day.
  3. Emotional Energy – Last but not least is emotional energy, which is one of the most important aspects of Homosapiens’ well being. One can maintain their sanity if they keep healthy human Interaction. Sharing your thoughts with others, laughing with them and keeping in touch. All of this increases our emotional energy.

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]

Enters Bhupinder Singh Budwal

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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Following your heart, going all in and building a 6 figure business

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]

Enters Sumersingh Rajpurohit

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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