Author: The Galavanting Gastronome

Love writing about food and travel (www.thegalavantinggastronome.com) and my conversations with God (https://gitanjali.yoga). Born and raised in India. Sailor's daughter. Travel is in my DNA. Married to a scientist, who is a chemist professionally and in every other culinary way. Food, coffee, cocktails, BBQ, smoked meats, rubs, sauces...he experiments with it all - with way more wins than misses. We love the outdoors. Hiking, kayaking and camping make us happy. We are equal opportunity foodies. We love hole-in-the-wall little mom and pop places, and multi-coursed Michelin star meals as well. And, we love talking about what we love about the food, drink, coffee and anything else we get to try.

My Life Worth Living

by The Galavanting Gastronome, posted in Inspiration

Many of you have heard me talk about Robin Sharma’s 5:00 am club (my Holy hour) and how I am a proud member. It took me over a year to get to the place where I could easily and gracefully get out of bed at 5:00 am every day and I relish starting the day before the sun comes up. I love being able to see the sunrise; there’s something very special about the time right between dark and day break. Naturally, to be able to wake up at that hour requires that I turn off the lights and be in bed at a reasonable hour – usually 10:30 pm, no later. This too took practice. Interestingly, this discipline took a LOT longer to cultivate than the discipline of waking up at 5:00 am.

Since the start of the New Year, after all the holiday festivities were said and done, after the tree came down, the house got cleaned and we marched into 2015, I have been faithfully waking up at 5:00 am, working out every day, by either hopping on our trainer bike, going for a run (I love running outside when there’s no one there…I run in a safe area, I wouldn’t advocate for running in the dark if you’re not a 100% certain of your environment), and even yoga using my handy dandy Yoga Studio App. Even if I just get to do a 5 minute yoga routine, it feeds my soul. On some of the mornings when my body isn’t wanting to do the more active exercise, the yoga helps just move my body to wake me up. After my exercise, I usually either write in my journal or read something meaningful. I also take this time to review my Big 5 goals for this year. I LOVE this time. Even if I don’t end up doing much more than a work out, this early morning ritual wakes me up in a way that helps me fuel my day with the right nourishment for my soul.

Earlier this week, I had one of those days that in the past were standard days. I had started at 5:00 am as usual and then after getting my kids off to school, I had back to back appointments all day until I picked them up, after which we came home, ate, did homework, tag teamed them with my husband, and then I went back out to attend a training by one of my favorite Network Marketing trainers. I didn’t get home till after 10:30 pm. Needless to say my energy was completed depleted and I was entirely spent! Consequently, I did not get up at 5:00 am the next morning, I did NOT exercise or spend time writing or reading, my soul was undernourished and my body was exhausted. I didn’t course correct that day by spending time recovering and then getting back on track the next day. No, rather, because I had slightly veered off course and because I didn’t immediately auto correct, I veered MORE off course. Now, the next night, instead of going to bed early to get back on track, I hung around with my husband till even LATER than usual. I fiddled around my laptop doing nothing more productive than checking Facebook. So as a result, a second day of No Holy Hour ensued, and now I am even MORE off course.

Interestingly I am observing myself and my actions as if I am outside my body, which is the reason for this post. I have never been this observant of my own behavior before, mostly because we are all so b*&y in the hamster wheel of life (remember I boycott the word b&^y last year?) that we don’t take the time to see what things we are doing that don’t serve us. When I replaced the word b&^y with productive last year, I was amazed at the time that showed up for me, and how things got done with ease and grace and with time to spare.

All I needed to do in order to veer back on course is to sleep early, so I can wake up early again and everything will be back to normal, and I am finding it hard to do just that.

My husband had to remind me that it was late yesterday yet again. Today, I woke at 5:30 am (ok, so that’s a bit better) and interestingly I had this awareness, that I needed to exercise. I felt lazy to go outside or get into bike clothes, but at least I could do yoga. So I found a 15 minute routine and did it before sitting to start write this post. By the time the weekend ends, I am committed to being in bed no later than 10 pm so that come Monday morning, I can be up again to renew my membership in the 5:00 am Holy Hour Club.

So what I realized through this was this:

  1. All it takes are slight tweaks of behavior to change a habit from one that’s not serving us to one that is. What’s one thing you want to do differently? Do you need to drink more water? Perhaps you can start by increasing just one extra glass of water a day. Do it first thing, as soon as you get out of bed, or the very first thing when you enter your kitchen in the morning. Do it consistently, same time every day for 21 days and you will have formed the habit of drinking more water. Drinking a glass of room temperature water and a splash of lemon or lime juice first thing in the morning is a really good habit by the way.
  2. Our lives are so overly filled with activities, that we don’t have the time to slow down and consider our actions and whether they are hurting or helping ourselves most of all. I used to LIVE in this overdrive mode; in the kind of day that I had just once this past week. I booked my days to the gills and its no wonder then that my health wasn’t at its best, my habits didn’t serve me and I couldn’t be the best version of myself for my kids, husband, friends and family.
  3. In creating space, by creating boundaries and saying NO to projects and other things that don’t serve my top priorities right now, I created space for myself to BE more and DO less. I am after all a Human BEing, not a Human DOing. This allowed me to have more meaningful relationships with fewer people instead of having a 100 acquaintances. I am spending time cultivating friendships that mean the world to me AND more importantly, I am way less cranky to my family. I can laugh more, be more joyful and music to my ears, my 4 year old son lately has been saying ‘mommy you’re FUNNY’!
  4. I can LOVE more LOVINGLY. This one’s a big deal to me. Family is in my top three core values and yet family is what was taking the brunt of my burn out. I was less tolerant with my children and impatient with my husband and even my parents. I was on autopilot as a mom, wife and daughter. And I didn’t like it at all. I needed to be more present, more focused and more joyful for the 3 single most important people in my life…my husband and two kids.
  5. Today, in simply listening to my body and doing 15 minutes of yoga I was able to bring myself back on track. My mind is no longer racing at a frenetic pace and it can serve as an energy charging station for the people who I interact with, vs. being an energy sucking station (ever encountered one of those people? I used to be one!)
  6. Interestingly and not surprisingly, I am being more productive, more is getting done, I’m more aware of my projects/tasks and am methodically and carefully checking them off my list with a renewed zest.
  7. I MISSED my evening wind down holy time. Because I was staying up so late, I felt like I couldn’t take the 10 minutes I take at the end of the night to gather myself, give thanks, wind down in meditation and float off to dream land, instead, I would get into bed right away, then end up staying up even later because I couldn’t calm myself enough to go right off to sleep.

The ripple effects of overloading my agenda in months and years past is far greater than I even imagined. It didn’t just affect me, it affected people and activities around me. It caused me to be late, behind schedule and panicked, which caused me to be short, impatient, and slightly intolerant. It caused me to drive more aggressively, wonder why everyone was so slow on the road and just simply be unable to see the beauty of the world around me. It caused me to talk, walk and think at a pace that most people couldn’t keep up with.

Interestingly, I am finding myself at my creative and professional best as well. In clearing out the energetic and physical clutter in my mind and life, I have created space for magic to happen and I can see the momentum building to what’s possible for me. As we enter the year of the sheep, the year of collaboration I am excited to see what partnerships will transpire because of the space I created.

Now what I live for is the sounds of the birds, the patterns of clouds, sunrises and sunsets, the smell of the roses my husband bought me for Valentines Day, the orchid bud that’s beginning to open, the one that my 8 year old daughter and I have nurtured for half a year, the tapping of the birds at our feeder when its empty, the smell of incense burning in my home every day, the giggles of my children as I play tickle monster with them at the end of the day, the belly laughs I get when I make funny faces at them, the surprised smile on my husband’s face when I say or do something that he doesn’t expect, the playfulness that’s come back into our relationship, the purring of my kitties as I make the time to sit on the floor and tickle and play with them and quality time with girlfriends who I love and adore.

Isn’t this what life should be like for us all? It’s not impossible, and I’m here to say that it’s not hard. Mother Teresa said, ‘The Ocean is Made Up of Drops.’

The first step is awareness. Take stock of your life, keep a time journal, track where you’re spending your time for a week. Then we can assess from there. Let me know if I can help you!

My son is my greatest teacher: a story of patience and consistency

by The Galavanting Gastronome, posted in Inspiration

I have two children; a 7yo daughter and a 3yo son. With both my children my biggest goal before they turned two was to give them the gift of being able to put themselves to sleep which would give them the ability to sleep all night and develop sound sleeping habits. My hubby and I were very clear that no kid was going to crawl into our bed in the middle of the night. On the nights that they did wake and needed comforting, one of us (me!) would crawl into their twin bed and lay/sleep there instead. In this way a few nights of discomfort have avoided many many nights of one too many bodies in our bed.

My daughter was the epitome of ease and grace in all the baby training areas…we had her sleeping through the night within a week. She never entered our bed and always enjoyed her sleep. She potty trained in 5 days and it took 5 days for her to begin to enjoy school/daycare.

My son on the other hand is a different story. It took us 11 months to sleep train him! For 11 months we struggled with him not willing to fall asleep without a parent (me!) there. So the night time routine would take 90 minutes! My kids share a room and my poor daughter had many many nights of me putting her in my bed temporarily because of him crying bloody murder as we would leave him for minutes at a time to try and make him independent. Because he was old enough to get out of bed and just open the bedroom door – I would have to stand on the other side with my hand on the knob so that he couldn’t get out- all the while talking to him and trying to soothe him so he didn’t think we had abandoned him. I would literally set a timer on my phone and then go back in there, hug him for a minute and then walk back out again….all while he’s begun to cry again, and again, and again, and again. One of the hardest things in the world is to walk away from your baby as he’s crying. My husband would often be so upset that this was going to mar him for life…but I just knew – that if I consistently sent him the same message- that he was loved, and that he had to learn to do this by himself- I would be giving him a tool for life to help himself. Why it took 11 months– well we would get to a relatively good place and then either he would get sick– we didn’t maintain this when he was sick…or he would just revert to wanting me to be there till he fell asleep. 11 months after we first attempted to get him to sleep independently I’ll never forget the music to my ears when he said “mommy, turn out the light, I want to sleep.” And he turned over, looked the other way from me and didn’t say a word as I quietly left the room with tears of joy in my eyes and such happiness in my heart to have gifted him the ability to sleep soundly. Today after our little bedtime routine which includes rolling a hula hoop, a little bit of ball, a little bit of reading, my singing three nursery rhymes, sharing one thing we are grateful for and dozens of kisses and hugs and then more flying kisses, I can leave their room with a smile on my face instead of having to be in stealth mode praying that the door doesn’t creak as I try and sneak out without him realizing.

Potty training took 6 months!

Getting used to going to daycare/pre school took 2 years! (My daughter took 5 days) Two years of painful drop offs. Two years of him clinging to my leg not wanting me to leave him there. Two years of me often needing to peel myself away from his baby arms which were powerfully trying to stay around my neck or leg. I’ve had to steel myself a lot with this kid. He has taught me a new strength about myself.

As the title of this blog indicates he’s taught me a lot about patience, consistency and trusting the process, even when I didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, I just had to keep doing the do. Trusting that one day he would eventually come around to it just because of the sheer consistency of the behavior. So here are my top takeaways from this episode of mommyhood:
1. Brace yourself and stay the course: settle in for the long haul! What’s that old song verse “when the going get tough, the tough get going” — no matter how challenging it appears to be, just stick with it. Doing something consistently over a period of time will bring about the desired result! The pain of regret is far greater than the pain of discipline. I have heard stories from my friends who’s kids 7 and 8 years old who are still crawling into their parents beds at night, or don’t have a healthy sleep pattern because they haven’t developed the habit earlier on. Payoff will come– just don’t quit before pay day! If you feel like quitting, think of how amazing it will be when you get to the other side of where you’re trying to be.
2. Be kind to yourself: its far too easy to beat ourselves up that we aren’t doing a good job, or that we should have already ‘got this’ by now. As leadership guru Robin Sharma says, change is hard in the beginning, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end. It takes time and the journey is the journey. There are no shortcuts.
3. You can only eat the elephant one bite at a time: no, I’m not in the habit of eating elephants and I have no idea where this phrase came from but it illustrates the point perfectly. It’s majorly overwhelming in the beginning to take on a new project, business, endeavor that’s going to lead to massive shifts in your own life and those of others. And those are the moments worth striving for. All we have to do is put one step in front of the other consistently. When I run a race and I’m hitting a wall– the old phrase from Mother Teresa rolls around in my mind- ‘the ocean is made up of drops’ I say this over and over again to myself till I cross the finish line. Small actions done consistently over time will indeed lead to the desired result. So stay with it and don’t quit. The the only way to truly fail is to quit!
4. The world needs your brand of genius: you’re the only one who can be uniquely YOU! No one else can do what you do just the way you do it. So by quitting early, by not staying the course, by not being quietly consistent and patiently persistent you’re depriving the world of seeing your true genius! Imagine if I had quit trying to help my son sleep through the night by himself, imagine if he had quit trying to be potty trained, imagine if I had just pulled him out of school and said it’s too hard! What a disservice that would be to him. There are people who are praying for you, that don’t even know they need you and the moment they lay eyes on you, or hear you speak, or read your article, or your blog post, or use your product or service they will know that that was meant for them. And they will thank you, and they will bless you, and you will know that you’re fulfilling your purpose. So don’t quit.
5. Trust the process: even if you don’t know what the outcome will be. Just by doing what you need to do daily, consistently, patiently and knowing that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel…you’ll get there. “Faith is taking a step when you can’t see the whole staircase”– Martin Luther King Jr. just keep putting a step in front of the other…you’ll get there.

So take it from someone who’s grateful everyday that she had two beautiful children who not only sleep well at night, but love to sleep in till 8am or 9am on weekends that the patient persistence pays off and is well worth the pain I felt and the tears they cried. They won’t remember the tears, but they will sleep well forever…or at least until they’re parents themselves.

I’m Busy vs I’m Productive

by The Galavanting Gastronome, posted in Inspiration

If I may I would like to offer you something– as a result of my own personal experience/experiment this year. I refused to buy into the ‘I’m so busy’ syndrome anymore and so even though I often have multiple things going on – I removed the words I’m busy from my vocabulary and replaced them with I’m productive and what started to happen over time is that belief became my reality. I stopped spinning on the hamster wheel of life and was able to lean into a more relaxed state. I realized that the things that didn’t serve me or my family automagically started to fall away. And now even when my human nature starts to try and overdo it- things happen organically to shift that to a more productive less crazed level.

Spiritually speaking I AM is like Om- its the word of God/Universe/Higher Self (insert your own word here) so anything you follow with after those words has to become truth. It’s just the way it is. So if you affirm I am crazed then more crazed is what you’ll get.

All it took for me is a heightened awareness of not wanting to say I’m busy and my life started to shift in ways I couldn’t have orchestrated if I tried. I call it divine intervention to help me stop the self sabotage…I just had to make that first step and have the faith that things would happen in the way that was the best and highest for me and my family and it has been so.