NAVEEN NIVERTHY
AUTHOR, MARKETING & SALES LEADER, LIFE STRATEGIST
Think Better and Thrive. Step by Step.
Blog
Health. Work. Love. Parenting. Spirituality.
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The Story Where You Play Villain
Our lives are a bunch of stories, sometimes inter-twining and inter-crossing places, people and events; sometimes real, sometimes imaginary. We all like to see ourselves as the protagonist of the stories we live. Given a choice, we would like to play the hero in all stories too. However, inevitably, one may find oneself in a…
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Pursuit of Worldly Wealth
Today is Krishna Janmashtami, the birth anniversary of Sri Krishna, who gave us the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, which lays out a roadmap to Moksha, inner freedom and tranquillity. Though many of us like to relate to the good parts of any character as similar to our own selves, there is a lot in…
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Value in Focus: Adambhitvam | Sincerity
Chapter XIII of the Bhagavad Gita starts with Arjuna asking Kṛṣṇaḥ a set of questions, one among them was ‘What is jñāna?’. As a reply to this question, Lord Kṛṣṇaḥ enumerates twenty qualities or virtues of the mind, which He calls ‘jñāna’ or Knowledge. One of these twenty virtues or values is adambhitvam. Simply translated…
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Real Meaning of Yoga
What we pronounce as Yoga, has the form yogaḥ in Sanskrit and it is derived from the Sanskrit root ‘Yuj’, meaning ‘to join’ or ‘to yoke’ or ‘to unite’. It means communing with the absolute, non-changing constant that we may call Consciousness or God or Oneness or Is-ness. (Names are many, but the name is…
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10 Ways Social Media Addiction Can Ruin Your Life
The world seems to be hooked on the five great social media platforms viz. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp/WeChat spend billions of collective hours each day lost in their wonderland. (Tiktok may be next in the list) I am no authority on this to advise and you need not take me advice, even if…
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Building Spiritual Intelligence
There is enough talk about Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Quotient (EQ) in academic and corporate circles today with several ways of measuring, analysing and building one’s intelligence in problem-solving and emotional management. The two play an important role in a person’s pursuit of security, happiness and values. Are these enough to describe our ability…
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Economics in 10 Principles
There is a reason why children when asked ‘what do you want to grow up to be?’, never answer ‘Economist’. The reason simply is that children have not been told or made to think about the idea of economy or economics. For children, everything is in limitless supply, though they may not have everything. Economics…
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Finding Meaning & Joy in Chores and Errands
Today, my typical day starts with doing the dishes, cleaning the kitchen and rewarding myself with a hot cup of masala chai prepared with grated ginger, a whiff of cardamom and lots of love. It wasn’t always like this and I, like many, thought of this as a menial task, not worth my time. I…
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Relating Wellbeing and Flourishing to Moksha, the Final Pursuit
I was reading this book called ‘Flourish’ by Martin Seligman who is considered the father of positive psychology and was relating this concept to Purusharthas of Vedas, and that is when I had this insight. So I thought of sharing it on the blog. I have talked about the four pursuits of time a few…
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What makes a good life or a life good enough?
How much is really enough? Can we measure life simply by accumulated wealth? Can there be ‘good enough’ good in our life? Edward Skidelsky and Robert Skidelsky attempted to answer these questions in their 2012 book How Much is Enough: Money and the Good Life. They proposed that “Good Life consists in realizing the “basic goods”…
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Happiness needs to be pursued, not simply desired
In the ancient Indian Vedic tradition, happiness is described as ‘purushartha’ meaning ‘pursuit’, something we need to plan, budget and work for rather than something that is obtained by wishing for it. The Vedic tradition talks of four Purusharthas or Pursuits (they sound similar): Kama (Pleasure or simply Fun), Artha (Security), Dharma (Values) and Moksha…
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Parenting, Religion and Atheism
All of us have experienced and seen the security and comfort a child derives while being in the company of its parents. We know the discomfort a child finds in not seeing its parents around. I believe this longing for security and warmth is something we continue to carry with us as we grow into…
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Can family relationships turn toxic?
We have been conditioned to believe that relationships in the family are always beautiful and full of love and fulfilment. Like all other things, it is not always so. I have seen how toxicity starts showing in relationships. When left unchecked these relationships take a toll on our physical and mental health and erode our…
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True Wealth as per Vedanta
Wealth by definition is the abundance of valuable possessions; a plentiful supply of a particular desirable thing. It is the value that is sought after by everyone in some form or other. Money is the default form of wealth known to us. Vedanta, the esoteric and ancient science of happiness and fulfilment, discusses real wealth…
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Why We Need to Understand and Teach Healthy Nationalism
One of my favourite writers Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography at the University of California, LA says that asking whether nationalism is good or bad is like asking a person whether self-confidence and ego strength are good or bad. Having too much of it means that you are so full of yourself that you ignore…
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What is the function of a Human Being
We live in a functional world. The function of a heart is to pump blood, the function of the kidneys is to purify the blood, the function of the lungs is to infuse the blood with oxygen. Even many inanimate objects have functions. For example, the function of a bridge is to enable people to…
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The Four types of luck
I mentioned in a previous blog post that there are three key ingredients to success: Hard work, Timing and Luck. Here I would like to flesh out the topic of luck. It is a commonly held belief that luck is something that is outside our sphere of influence and hence we cannot control it. This…
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How to Create a Nourishing Space for Children to Learn and Grow
One of the most beautiful gifts that Goa (on the West coast of India) bestows on its inhabitants is space- colourful, creative and cultural space. I bring my daughter to this beautiful place called the Museum of Goa- a gallery and community of contemporary art founded by one of India’s most respected contemporary artists, installer…
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You are the Sun of your Conscious Universe
The Sanskrit word Sakshi meaning witness or seer or your conscious self is used to refer to our inner being that is changeless, the passive witness of the changing states of mind. It is the ever-present knower/ experiencer in every experience, which can never itself be experienced. It is that which illumines our conscious world…
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Homemaker: The Most Important Career in the World
The job that gives meaning to every other job
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Love Flourishes When..
Lessons on love thatvlife taught me
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Understanding and Transforming Boredom
The great philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer once said, ‘The Two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.’ The associations with boredom have invariably been negative and it is seen as undesirable by most. Another great philosopher Soren Kierkegaard confirms the same when he says ‘There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering: a…
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Choosing Between Pleasure and Happiness
The ancient wisdom of Vedanta tells us that we are frequently posed with a choice in life between Preyas and Shreyas (Sanskrit). Preyas includes all desired activities by an individual at a given point in time while Shreyas includes that which is desirable for all people of all times and places, namely freedom from unhappiness,…
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Love and Walk Along
Love knows no taking, only to give, seeks no reward here or hereafter; Seeks no treasure at the end of life’s rainbow, so Love and walk along. Love springs from within, not from the other; It comes out of our own nature; like the sun shines, and the flowers bloom, it cant be held back,…
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The Four Kinds of Friends We All Need
Show me who your friends are and I will show you what you are. Vladimir Lenin A friend is a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection and it is typically one exclusive of sexual or direct family relations. Friends come in all shapes, sizes and colours. Friends are not just people…
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12 Money lessons for my daughter
Most of us adults believe that money is a harsh reality of life. But the fact is that reality is neither harsh nor benign. It simply is a fact of life. It is our lack of objectivity that makes it look harsh or otherwise. The sooner we have this objectivity in life, the better are…
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Makara Sankranti: The Sun Festival of India
This is the first festival of the year and normally occurs on Jan 14th or 15th. This year it occurs on Jan 14. Wrote this brief post to describe the festival.
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‘If’ by Rudyard Kipling
Sharing one of my all time favourite poems, ‘If’ as weekend inspiration. The poem is full of inspiration, motivation, maxims for living well and is a blueprint for personal integrity, behaviour and self-development.
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Ten ways that make me
Our ways of thinking, feeling, behaving and decision making define us and make us the person we are. I am sure we all attempt to define ourselves professionally quite often but seldom at a personal level. I always wanted to make a disclosure to my daughter, Aanya at someplace in this blog about this personal…
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Let children see the good and bad in you
As parents point children to see not just the good in you but the bad in you. Don’t make it look like you are perfect and whatever you do and do not do is the right thing. Children emulate by default. They learn by mirroring the people around them. They even speak with the same tone…
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Being a girl child in India
The Indian constitution today treats women and men alike and bestows upon them the same rights and duties. There are also many initiatives promoting the welfare of the girl child in India. However, the majority of religious communities of India, hence societies continue to place higher importance on a male child over a female one.…
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From Learning to Knowing
With children, we normally associate ‘learning’ to represent all activities of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviours, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. It largely means conditioning and I am not discussing how to condition children. Rather I am trying to throw light on how knowing takes place in the mind. Conditioning is easy- be authoritative, set…
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On Children
A century ago, in a war-torn world, the Lebanese-American poet, painter, and philosopher Kahlil Gibran wrote Prophet in 1923. In that poem, there is an instance where a young mother with a newborn baby at her breast asks for advice on children and parenting. The poetic prophet responds to her. And a woman who held…
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Trust a better guide than belief
I define ‘trust’ here as a process of reaching a firm judgement that something is true. This is one of those instances where I don’t take the dictionary meaning as it is but I hope I can convince you in favour of this definition by the end of the post. I already have explained in…
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