08/03/2021
Become a “NEW YOU”
By Dr. Sajeela Maini
With challenge comes change, so this Women’s Day and beyond, will you maintain the status quo or ? The choice is yours!
“Choose to challenge”, is the theme of International Women’s Day 2021. We can all choose to challenge ourselves, our existence, our accomplishments, and our goals.
I choose to challenge the concept “Are women equal to men?” Has anyone ever asked, “Are men equal to women?” How can men and women be equal, when God and nature itself have created men and women different? I am not a women activist, and I don’t advocate pro-feminism or say pro-meninism. What is gender, why can’t we think of gender neutral, why can’t we coin a term “Pro-human”?
This year is the year of challenge. We should challenge our own stereotypic concepts and free ourselves from the mental blocks that are stopping us from being happy and living a fulfilling and meaningful life!
• Be You: The first and the biggest challenge is to accept yourself as you are. Please accept yourself as the person you are, accept your looks, accept your beauty, and accept your weight. Believe me, this acceptance itself will solve most of your life’s problems.
• Give up this feeling – ‘I do nothing, I am just a housewife’: A housewife is a home maker who works 365 days, without a holiday and without off-duty hours. It has been researched worldwide that women work more than their male counterparts. Still, they are not respected for their work and are taken for granted by the family, and also strangely their own selves. Being a housewife is not being incomplete or worthless, it is something to be proud of. A homemaker is the backbone of the whole family. We need to appreciate ourselves to get appreciated. Respect yourself for being a home-maker!
• Start your day with a smile: Happiness is a choice, and we can choose to be happy. Start your day by choosing to smile. This is the least we can gift ourselves for a new morning.
• Respect your personal space: We all need a personal space for ourselves. I understand we have a family and responsibilities, but we have a responsibility towards ourselves also. It is absolutely essential that the lady of the house remains mentally serene. And that is possible only if she keeps a personal space for herself to vent out negativity and imbibe positive vibes.
• Health and wellness: We need to take care of our health and wellbeing. Wellness starts from physical health, because if we are not healthy physically, other parameters do not matter. From physical health starts our journey towards mental health, then comes emotional health, environmental health, social health, and finally spiritual health. Please take care of yourself and your wellness parameters. Because only a happy mind can spread happiness.
• Live in the present: The biggest challenge we have is to ‘live in the present’ as Bhagwat Gita advocates. It is a difficult challenge because we have a tendency to transgress towards either past or future. Remember, a person who lives in past for long suffers from depression; and a person who lives in future suffers from anxiety disorders. Only a person who lives in the present life, can live life to the fullest. So Live in the Present!
• Forget everything and get rid of your mental baggage every day: “Forgetfulness is bliss”, so try and forget what caused you unhappiness the previous day. Try and empty your pile of emotional baggage every day, so that you remain lightheaded and happy. “Forget and forgive”, is essential for our emotional wellbeing. Keeping loads of baggage on our minds can tire us mentally and we might spoil our present in arguing for matters of the past. Empty your baggage every day!
• Exercise everyday: Do deep breathing, yoga, meditation, and also aerobic exercises to release your stresses and be a new you.
• Enjoy: And finally, the last challenge is to enjoy whatever you are doing. You do not own all the problems of the world. So chill, enjoy and live life as if there is no tomorrow. Enjoy every moment, enjoy your family, enjoy your work, and enjoy yourself.
I would conclude by saying that we have a choice of either changing ourselves or changing the world. Believe me, it is easier to change ourselves.
Challenge yourself, because with challenge comes change; and changing yourself will redefine you to a “New You”.
Happy Women’s Day!
***cocontrol
