Have you been following your new year resolutions? I am happy to report that I have very much been following mine. :) Going strong, in fact. In my last post, I told you about the reading wall.
I have already finished reading two books so far, and now I am on my third. Satish too has finished reading two books, and he too is on his third. Any free time we get, we are reading secretly and competing with each other openly. :) Of course, both being bibliophiles, we read for the joy of reading more than anything else.
If you want to know the books I read and whether or not I liked them, you can leave me comments, in this post asking me to mention them. If there are at least a 50 requests, then will write a post on them. Why fifty? Because it's WORK for me to do a review, and I don't work for free. But if there are enough number of requests, then I will do it [call it a wave of altruism submerging me with the number 50 ;)].
On a different note, what do YOU do when things don't go the way you expect them to? I am certain all of you have ways of dealing with a bad day. I know someone who binge eats (and then regrets it later!). I know someone else who drowns it with alcohol only to wake up with a massive hangover, not feeling any better. I know another who texts a friend.
Here are MY seven favourite ways to deal with a bad day, or to deal with life when things don't go my way. (This is of course apart from my 1st favourite thing to do, which is read, but I have included that too, as it is something I do ).
1. Go for a walk: A walk always clears my mind. I love long walks. I sometimes go twice a day. Each walk is about an hour long. As I walk, I think about variuos things, and I can see different perspectives. A lot of my own thoughts become better.
2. Listen to podcasts: This is something I do, when I walk. There are some brillaint podcasts out there. I happen to like BBC's Reith lectures a lot. One that I found very pwerful, poignant, moving and enlightening was a podcast by Atul Gawande called 'The problem of Hubris.
3. Sketch: This is my favourite activity as many of you know. I have an exclusive Instagram page for my art now. Check out https://www.instagram.com/preetishenoyart/
I am sharing here one sketch (or drawing or painting or illustration or whatever you want to call it. I am clarifying as someone asked me the difference between them) that I did in charcoal.
4. Write: I write such a lot! What would I do without writing? I have different journals for different things. I maintain an illustrated art journal. I have one for my deeper thoughts. Another for my story ideas and yet another to develop the novel I am currently working on.
5. Call a friend: This is something that I do very rarely. I dislike talking on the phone as it takes too much time. But if the person is very close, I make exceptions, and when I do talk, we end up talking for 30-40 minutes.
6. Read a book: Always, always always. A good book can be your best friend. You can have several best friends :) It's a fabulous feeling to lose yourself in the world created by a skilled writer. The characters you read about, become a part of your life. You find some bits of yourself in them. You care for them. You understand them, empathize with them. They console you. That is the power of a good book or a good story.
7. Tidy my room: I always quip that you can tell my emotional state just by looking at the state of my cupboards. My room generally tends to be tidy, my desk is
What do YOU do, when things don't go your way? How do you cope? Tell me in comments.
Till the next post (which will be soon), stay cheerful :)
Love
Preeti
__________________________________ps: If you are anything like Aniket, you probably have a Subbu in your life :)
Read about it in my new book It's All In The Planets. Get it at http://preeti.io/3
