Thoughts

I am going to tell you about one of my favorite studies that I happened to come across during my Masters degree. The research basically focuses on the spread of happiness and talks about the impact of other people's happiness on us. As social beings, I think that very often we include food, water and shelter as essentials for survival. But we mostly tend to forget another crucial and extremely important facet - human connections! Here’s the thing. Our relationships (and connections with others) play a huge role in determining our mental and physical health, resilience and most importantly, our...

The past year has been like a roller coaster ride for most of us reading this. Dealing with a lot of emotions together was definitely a challenge for me as well. I would like to share a few past experiences that made me stronger. It was Mid-June 2020 and we were in the middle of the pandemic where cases were rising every day. My father was not feeling well and had to be rushed to the hospital and they were denied entry saying beds were not available because of the covid situation. Luckily, we had a family doctor who was...

A close family relative has had mental health issues in the past, so my family has always been well aware about mental health concerns and how to cope with them - and that’s something I’ve been really thankful for. I am an ex-restaurateur. I had this great restaurant chain called “Too much drama” which was a barbeque chain run by employees that were hearing-impaired. Here, customers used sign language to order their food. Within about 2.5 years, we’d opened three outlets, and everything was pretty great. The first shock I received was when one of my partners decided to quit,...

Even though I had been avoiding therapy for quite some time, mental health awareness through social media has played an important factor in my life. The idea that one does not necessarily have to experience trauma (or something equally difficult) to go for therapy was unusual for me. As a result, I participated in group workshops conducted by Gulmohar. One of the workshops was about decoding the meaning of life, and another one was about body positivity. With the internet going gaga over the ideas of fat/thin shaming and the obsession with physical appearances; the workshop felt like I like...