Blog – Page 3 – Tahmid Chowdhury

The key when you get locked out

We often use the metaphors of ‘keys’ and ‘doors’ in the world of personal development.

But on Monday, it had a far more literal meaning for me.

When taking the bins out, I shut the door behind me. I didn’t realise I didn’t have my key, effectively locking myself out.

It’s the sort of general mishap that we all face at some point in our lives. But it’s not so much about the event itself, but what we tell ourselves about it.

Whilst locking myself out wasn’t so bad per se, the real issue was that I had inadvertently left the key in the door on the other side. This meant that the lock itself was jammed, and so even when my flatmate arrived, we couldn’t get back in. To add to the social embarrassment, my neighbour also turned up and was also locked out due to my mishap.

After trying to wiggle the lock, It was time to eat humble pie and just call a locksmith. Fortunately, it wasn’t too late, and there was one available pretty quickly. What made it even more humbling was that when he turned up, he slid a piece of flimsy material across the side of the door and had it open within 15 seconds. The whole ordeal set me back €120.

There were quite the range of emotions throughout the ordeal. First, when locking myself out, I had the moment of panic. I found myself fall into a sense of self flagellation and guilt. How could I be so stupid? This was such a simple mistake.

It’s these moments where we get a true glimpse as to our internal fragilities. For me, it was a sense that this was some sort of karmic punishment. You see, I was generally feeling more upbeat earlier in the day. My sense of desire and ambition was coming back. I started to dream again about what I could do in the world.

Yet this seemed to be a message from the heavens telling me to stop being so arrogant. I am but a fool who couldn’t remember their keys. How could I dare to dream of making a difference in the world?

It’s pretty important to catch these moments when they come, else we fall victim to them. And it helps that I have a better understanding of my internal infrastructure now. Whilst I previously intellectually understood concepts such as ‘catastrophisation’ and ‘self forgiveness’, what I didn’t understand was why my pattern automatically jumped to these reactions.

Now I can see it for what it is. I jump to such thoughts because it is a safety response based upon a life lived in a state of constant hypervigilance. My modus operandi has been one in which any small mistake was a gross failure. It was what I was taught growing up, and further reinforced by society and the childhood dynamics I recreated in adult life.

I did deal with the issue fairly pragmatically, and in the end, I didn’t dwell too much on the cost of €120. This was a demonstration of my growth from the last few years. After all, these things happen. In the end, I was glad it didn’t happen at midnight, and moreso that the ordeal was sorted without any real harm done.

What was interesting was that the biggest awkwardness for me came from the social embarrassment. The fact that I was inconveniencing my neighbour felt absolutely terrible. This was despite the fact that in reality he didn’t actually mind all that much. Like most healthy adults, he recognised that these things just sometimes happen. It was a great example of my life pattern – if I see I make a mistake I feel bad about it for ages, even if it was a fairly minor thing. Because of this, I end up living a life in which I am focus on never making a mistake.

As for the karmic punishment, it was helpful to see that there was actually something to this intuition. The world wasn’t actually punishing me, but instead this was simply a case of cause and effect. As I learn to relax my mind and break out of this state of hyper vigilance, I’m having to relearn my way of living. And with that, comes mistakes.

Plus, I was crazy tired that day. I had been doing so much emotional processing that my brain was barely functioning. In that state, it’s no surprise that I made such a basic cognitive error. And put in that perspective, it actually makes me realise how well I’ve done this last year in managing to survive despite being at around 30-40% of my basic operating energy.

This incident was realy about the key. It was instead to realise that I am a human that is not going to be perfect. Making mistakes is just part of life, but what is not helping me is chastising myself if I do make one.

This last 18 months has demonstrated that my body cannot tolerate such an intense level of hyper competence and perfection.

Connecting the fragments back together

Photo by Kellie Shepherd Moeller on Unsplash

Each of us has our own ‘personal narrative’. It reflects how we see ourselves, and so also how we see the world. For example, some people speak with a timidness. They talk about how they’re nothing special. To them, they had a ‘boring’ upbringing.

It’s not a surprise that such people aren’t particularly proud about where they’re from. Nor do they tend to be as confident either.

Compare that to someone who has a much more involved story about how they grew up. Their tales of upbringing can sound like a dazzling adventure.

The big irony is that these two stories could be the exact same person. It’s not really the history that matters, but the story crafted from it.

A tale of adversity can be a framing to demonstrate resilience. A tale of a calm and loving upbringing can be one that highlights stability and warmth. Ultimately, it’s down to the author, which also happens to be ourselves.

This is something I’ve understood. I’ve worked hard to shift my personal narrative from one that feels quite tragic to one of growth. Yet the last few weeks have also demonstrated a further layer that I never realised. My personal narrative was missing large segments.

For those of us who have grown up in different countries or societies, it can be far harder to connect the dots between everything that happened. I never realised how much that was the case for me. Whilst others could recall their earlier memories without an issue, I would often find it very difficult.

I’m not talking about normal amnesia of early years before the age of 6. I’m talking about big blanks between the ages of 8 to 16.

For some time, I ended up giving up figuring out this part of myself. Try as I might, I could not remember something that was not arriving in my head. Simply thinking harder didn’t work. I felt like I had hit a dead end.

Still, there are other ways to uncover the truth. What I ended up following was not my mind, but my body. The mind did not know where to look. It was grasping at bits of information that I had heard second-hand from other people. but my body had the reverberation of feelings. The process was allowing these to be experienced. When the feelings flowed, so did the memories. Once I had figured this out, It didn’t actually take long for a bunch of memories to flood back. Things that had transpired from around my early teens have come back.

Following the feelings meant also experiencing them. And it was painful. There’s no way of diminishing this fact. It’s not ‘normal’ for people to not remember their childhoods like has been the case for me. The very simple explanation is that most people experience their early lives in a more stable and functional way. I did not, and this affected my deeply. This is something I’ve had to come to terms with to reintegrate those memories.

What I learnt was that there was no ‘single’ incident that I was repressing. Instead, it was piecing together a mish-mash of events and circumstances. It was seeing that I had been at an age where I did not understand what was going on. The movement between countries, confusion between languages and my ‘different way of thinking’ – i.e. my sensitivity and autism – meant I felt without guidance.

It’s also important that I not beat around the bush. The communication in my family was also very poor, and this had a detrimental affect on my wellbeing. I did not understand why we moved to Bangladesh for two years. No one actually explained it to me. I think I was implicitly meant to understand this through osmosis from my older brothers. It is only now in adult life that I learnt that the aim of us moving their was to learn more about our Bangladeshi culture.

Uncovering such experiences is a delicate balance. It can be pretty easy to fall into rage and anger. I do not plan on blasting people about the events of 20 years ago. It helps no one, and only causes pain.

But having some internal anger is good. It revitalises my senses by rekindling that internal fire. I’ve had challenges feeling and expressing anger. Now, I understand why – I’ve been repressing plenty. So let the flame burn.

Bu it’s also very important to see the past for what it really was. I’ve chronically underplayed the effect it has had on me. Eventually this comes back to bite, which for me was through a complete body shutdown.

I’m now in a period that is best described as grieving. Certain illusions I’ve had about my life have been broken. There is a shock when core tenets of your life turn out to not be true.

But I also know that this is the process. It is through the purification of our false beliefs that we can truly let go of the past.

This is how we achieve freedom.

On rekindling the flame of desire

Photo by Jai Langoju on Unsplash

One of the big potential traps in modern day society is to lose that spark.

It’s particularly visible in a city like Brussels. So many people come here with big hopes and expectations. The reality of the clunking system can be pretty soul crushing if we’re not careful.

It’s also very visible. When we look people in the eyes, we can see if there is a spark behind it or not. Once someone has lost their spark, it feels like their soul has been tuned down to power-save mode.

Whilst burnout is often assumed to be about overwork, it can just as well be a loss of hope. That was certainly the case for me. Day by day, I had my desires ever increasingly compromised. By the end, I had little will to leave my bed.

But as time has gone on, I find my veins slowly warming up. It is as if my soul is, slowly but surely, waking up to the idea that challenge and ambition are attractive things again.

This is the reflection of my internal flame. Once extinguished, it is now rebuilding.

The time we spend in our formative years allows us to slowly kindle our internal flame. Such a fire takes many moons to build. It also only happens in a healthy environment. A child who is neglected will be too fearful to have desire, whilst a child who is coddled will have no reason for ambition as they have already got what they want without trying. But a child who is safe and given space to try things is one who can learn to dream.

If we grow up as healthy adults, our fire is lit, and it simmers fairly constantly. But if the fire within us is extinguished, it will take a notably long time to ignite it once again. Like most things in life, maintenance is far easier than reconstruction. It makes sense when we realise how long it took to build the first fire inside of us.

In Ayurveda, Pitta is one of the three doshas (or energies) which make up our constitutions. Pitta is the mix of fire and water. This constant battle between the two elements is what governs these behaviours, as well as how well our body digests.

For me, my burnout has been more an extinguishing of flame. The constant sense of difficulty and frustration in my life meant that I slowly lost my fire. I regularly had digestion problems, as my internal system was unable to start the furnace within my stomach.

The embers of my soul were so extinguished that I lacked desire to do anything really. For many months, my existence was little more than basic survival. And with my digestion so weak, my energy was also very low too.

For a large part of this time, I ate pretty basic meals – essentially whatever I could stick in the oven. Over time, I also started becoming reliant on energy drinks to give me an energetic kick.

Whilst these allowed me to survive, they were not particularly helpful for my longer term recovery. These foods often increased my vata energy, which is the mix of wind and space. Oven cooked foods meant things were generally dried out, whilst energy drinks also increased my frenetic energy. These drinks are also cold, which further cooled my internal fire.

I’ve now been eating food that is more warming, in the literal sense. I’ve gone back to using more grounding and activating spices to balance my meals, with hot, stew-like textures. I also am having warmer drinks too. I now try to have warm water as my drink of choice, sometimes adding a bit of ghee.

This has helped balance my energy, and i t’s also done a lot to improve my digestion. This has meant that more parts of my body are coming back online too, which is also a sign of recovery.

I am of a kapha constitution, which is the mix of earth and water. This means my tendency is to be generally slower moving, and prefer calmer surroundings. I do have a tendency of using a lot of vata energy – I like bouncing around with ideas and sometimes enjoy spontaneous action.

But pitta doesn’t really come naturally. I am not particularly motivated by fire-type behaviours. I rarely have much interest in competition, nor a fiery desire to win. I prefer being much more calm and measured, rather than hot and passionate.

Some live with a very fiery temperament. For them, these things come very naturally. But that also means that their challenge is likely the opposite. This, I think, is where the more traditional idea of burnout comes in. Someone who is so passionate about their work that they do not know how to stop. They are probably lacking stability, and would benefit from grounding foods like homecooked meals. Cooler foods may also help to temper their internal flame too. On a practical level, they need more time to rest and recuperate.

The key point is balance. A fire too hot can burn down the foundations, whilst a fire too cool will fail to keep the engine running.

Understanding our bodies will help us immeasurably with the challenges we face in life. It is often the first signs when something is in imbalance.

The more that we learn to be in tune with ourselves, the easier we can remedy the issue, before it becomes a bigger problem.

Seeing the purging as the purification

Photo by Tony Litvyak on Unsplash

When we’re looking to improve, we often think that it’s all about building upon our existing knowledge. We often talk about ‘growth’, and ‘improvement’.

But if we only build upon what we have today, we are relying upon the foundations that we had built earlier on in our life. These foundations are pretty shaky and unstable.

I previously worked with a coach who would regularly talk about this. The work was really to clearing out the dog turd underneath to create a new, healthy foundation. From here, we can truly build anew.

Many people, no matter how much learning or introspection they do, seem to keep repeating their mistakes. It’s generally because they do not address the real root issues. This is the sort of stuff like how we really see ourselves, and what beliefs we learnt in childhood.

In western language, we talk about it as healing the inner child. There is truth to this phrase, yet it makes it sound like it is simply about giving love and attention. That parts important, but it doesn’t give the full picture. A lot of it is actually extremely painful and messy. Attempting to skip this difficult step is why many people never truly learn.

Outside Western approaches, there is far more importance of ridding ourselves of the impurities. In Buddhism, there is the concept of ‘saṅkhārā’, which are our mental reactions or conditioning. Our thinking can quickly create a whole host of mental defilements – rāga, dosa and moha: cravings, aversions and ignorance. These are then stored in the body, as a weight we carry around. In the Vipassana 10 day silent meditation I did, it was all about feeling these sensations in the body. The idea was to let the body release them, without starting to analyse the feelings. If we started analysing ‘why’, we would end up creating even more cravings and aversions, thereby recreating the problem.

Ayurveda describes toxic residue as ‘Ama’. These are created by poorly digested foods. Ama is created by eating foods that are not good for us (which can vary depending on our constitution), but also from whether we overeat, eat at irregular times or eat unconscientiously. We also build up further ama from stress and a lack of physical activity.

In the book about Ayurveda I’ve been reading, they talked about a sage who very sick people would come to visit. This person had a reputation for healing people. The sage would take them in, and give them some sort of elixir to consume. Unbeknownst to them, this would induce a pretty horrendous period of sickness and regular vomiting for about a month. It was a very unpleasant experience, but by doing so, people could be cleansed of the internal toxins. By the end of the ordeal, they would leave feeling better.

Another, slightly less extreme example is having a day of ‘langhana’ – a fast day to give the whole digestive system a break. For a long time western scientists have described how bad this is for your body, though the opinion is starting to shift more recently. It must not be forgotten that fasting has been a part of civilisation since time began. After all, even in Christianity we talk about Jesus fasting for 40 days and 40 nights.

As for me, I’ve started taking Triphala powder, which is a mix of three medicinal plants. This is particularly known to help with digestive issues, and I’ve been taking it at night to clear out a lot of my digestive issues. It’s helped a lot to rebalance things, along with looking at my diet more in general.

The additional side effect has been that my dreams have become incredibly intense. That said, the triphala contributed to this, but it wasn’t the root cause. I think my body is now getting to the point where it has enough energy to do the deep internal processing needed. As the body is releasing ama, so is my mind.

I had a dream where I had an uncle interrogating me as to why I had been off sick and not working. I had to explain that I needed the rest to my body. It was tapping into my learned expectations of family roles and duty.

In another dream I was expressing my internal, suppressed rage by being physically violent against people. I could shapeshift in it for one reason or another, and by the end was trying to flee for safety. Last night, I had another dream where me and an imaginary sister swallowed a pill and intensely began throwing up blood. I then had to go and find help for both of us.

These were all dreams from this week. The process is really coming through thick and fast right now. In fact, I’ve tended to have around three dreams a night, though I generally only remember the most vivid ones properly.

This may sound alarming, but it’s actually good. Ayurveda talks about such dreams as a purification. Importantly, within each dream I have agency. These are not dreams of being trapped in fear, instead they are ones where I react to the situation and am somewhat overcoming the obstacle.

I appreciate that I’m fortunate to have the time to go through this process, which not everyone does. Then again, I don’t think the process is as intense for most people either. My ChatGPT interpretation of the pill swallowing is that me choosing to go down this cleansing path has been far more difficult than I expected it to be.

Although it’s slow, the positive benefits are starting to bear fruit. Slowly, but surely, I’m regaining energy as well as internal clarity. My hope is that by going through this arduous process, I’ll be lighter, healthier and stronger than I’ve ever been.

The secret all this time was Ghee

There is commonality in every individual action we take. But if we go with the common approach, it’s unlikely to fit us as an individual.

Whenever we take an action, it connects us with the whole. Humans eat, sleep, work. In this, we share a common thing that binds us as a society.

But if we are guided only by what is commonly done, it’s unlikely to really suit us. Just because ‘the norm’ is to get an office job, does not mean that this is right for us. And just because the average amount of sleep required is around 8 hours, this does not mean 8 hours sleep is actually right for us either.

Good eating habits has been a challenge for practically my whole life. A lot of it is mixed in a sense of confusion. There was a natural conflict of style between what I would eat at home, which followed Bangladeshi curries, compared to what I would have outside, which was a generally UK, Western-style cuisine.

As I moved to the bigger cities, the influence of multicultural and cosmopolitan cultures blended foods even more. When I lived in Brixton, I was surrounded by Afro-Caribbean cuisine. But along with that were restaurants that served Italian, Thai, Korean and all the rest. Outside of the fancier sounding things, my stress-based diet meant I fell towards takeaways from the fried chicken shops and the kebabs.

Now living in Belgium, the external influences are more continental European. Belgian dishes which tend to be heavier, but also quite a lot of Mediterranean influences too. Brussels is another city with an international mix of cuisine – even if not quite at the scale of London.

Over the last few years, I’ve been trying to clean up my act. Takeaways and rushed eating is no healthy way to live long term. But finding what to replace it with has been far more difficult.

I’ve had moments of eating very clean – stuff like salads, or trying to cut out carbs as the ‘bad food’, only to find myself at an incredible hunger afterwards. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t last.

For a long while, it turned into the calorie counting style. Reducing fat here and there would make the numbers go down, which would then make me healthier. Yet eating less satisfying foods is also not particularly sustainable either. Living more miserably isn’t the recipe for success. If you’re not happy, you’ll eventually break. Everyone does.

I knew there must be an alternative approach, and I also wanted something that was closer to my genetic roots. I became wary of western dieting suggestions that didn’t really fit me or what I had learnt growing up. I was skeptical of western claims that non-western foods were naturally more unhealthy. Even today you can find ethnocentric reports that rice is bad for your health – despite by the fact that this is what people ate in a balanced way for thousands of years.

I even heard a teacher saying to be careful using ginger, as it can be bad for people with cardiovascular problems. Ginger is incredibly beneficial, and can do a lot of good for people with heart issues. Only in specific cases would it be best to avoid it. And again, this is a product that has been used in Asian cuisines for thousands of years.

Whilst I would love to say that my search was simply a case of going back to my roots and what I ate when I was young, the reality is that the modern version of the Bangladeshi cuisine I ate were not especially healthy either.

Our portion sizes are big, and these days our dishes can be too rich or too sugary. An unfortunate reality is that many migrant communities coming from impoverished backgrounds have had a rebound effect has led to an epidemic of obesity. Growing affluence has meant an increase in the fattier foods. Whilst meat in the past was for special occasions, now it is a common occurrence. Meanwhile, we are all affected by the increasingly processed food that we eat, which reduces quality and satisfaction. This means we either add more rich ingredients, or eat more to feel satisfied.

My search has eventually led me towards ayurveda. This is commonly known in modern day India, and dates back to 5000 years ago. Ayurveda literally means ‘science of life’. Although in the west we do have some influences of things like yoga, ayurveda is less known.

For me, it was extremely refreshing to hear about the importance of more earthy, healthy meals. Healthiness is not just about cutting down calories, but instead about properly feeding the body.

For the first time in my life, a few days ago I bought some ghee. Ghee is clarified butter, what is used instead of oil for cooking in Asian cuisines. Despite this being the basis of what my mother has used to cook ever since I was a child, I’ve never used it when I’ve cooked something. Instead, I’ve used olive oil – what I’ve been told is far healthier, and notably less calorific. It’s both relieving and somewhat scary to see how much social conditioning of growing up in the West taught me about it all.

Cooking using ghee, then heating up the spices was such a soulful experience. For the first time in a long while, I felt a joy of cooking. Part of this was a sense of reclaiming my own culture. Part of this was just the general joy of creation. Cooking spices awakens the fragrances which give a real sensory connection. It awakens life in the body, and even though we are not eating, prepares our body for food. In the quest for easy, lower calorie and efficient, these sensory pleasures were lost. I’ve been reading that having warm water with a bit of ghee can actually be beneficial for me, particularly in my current period of burnout. From a western perspective, this would simply seem like eating ‘wasted’ calories.

I’ve also learnt of how ghee (and indeed heated oils) are a key ingredient for digestion. We do not douse our pan in oil simply to keep the food from sticking to the pan. No, it also is to lubricate the food, and support our digestive tracts.

No matter how healthy a food we make, if we do not digest it properly, our bodies will dysfunction. Ayurveda describes this as creating ‘ama’ – toxins within the body. So eating something that is healthy on paper is not the same as properly feeding our body based upon what it is asking for.

I could go on longer about what I’ve learnt, but this is probably enough for today. I’m still learning, so am certainly not an expert. But following the basic principles helps give a lot of structure, as well as helps explain so much about my bodily reactions. It’s a worthwhile pursuit if you want to improve your health.

If you do want to learn more, I can suggest some basic places for info/where to start. Just drop me a message.

A Sunday morning of tidying up the office

Empty Sunday mornings are pretty good days to do some tidying.

I’ve accumulated so many bits of paper in the last few years that it has started to overflow. My office space has become generally noisy, to the point where the clutter has become a mainstay on desk spaces.

A tidy-up has been very much overdue. And whilst I would like to pretend that I have such saintly energy that I just simply decided to tidy, the truth was that I pushed myself into it. Last night, I spent about an hour looking for my old passport. Turns out, I needed to find an old visa number stamped on it.

It took me about an hour of searching. And of course, it was at the back of the bottom drawer, more or less where I expected it to be. But it took me three goes of searching to find it, since it was buried between so many random bits of paper.

I left half the papers on the floor. I had made it so messy that I forced my own hand in needing to tidy it up this morning.

Whenever we go through our period of clear-out, we usually get hits of nostalgia. I was going through a lot of random printed documents, old letters, work info and other bits and pieces from the past.

The last time I did a similar exercise a few years ago, I remember being filled with a lot of emotional energy when I came across different things. I remember finding an old business card of my time in the UK Government. It had an emotional impact, as I suddenly remembered all those fun and bizarre stories of my time working there.

This time, I felt little. In fact, I was fairly systematic and was done within 45 minutes. I got rid of about 90% of the papers, saving only a very set amount which I would either need or had some sort of reason to be kept.

I think this reflects my shifting perspective on life. A few years ago, I would look to cherish the past. It would help me build my sense of origin story, showing where I had come from. Whilst this wasn’t a bad thing, I probably was also guilty of overly reaching for meaning and symbolism in the things I had done. It also meant that certain memories had a lot more power over me. I recall that when I did a Vipassanna silent meditation earlier this year, they described how living in nostalgia could become sweet, to the point where it was a negative addiction.

Now, I seemingly give far less energy to the past. What is done is done. These things may have been nice (or indeed not nice), but they don’t really have a whole lot of relation with my life right now. I don’t need to bask in past glories when there is a life to be lived right now.

Perhaps I’ve also changed so much that these past events don’t even feel like my own. I look at older pictures of myself and it feels like I am looking at a different person, living a different life. That might sound melancholic, but it’s not meant to be. I think it’s instead my way of centering myself in the present.

In the personal development world, it’s oft talked about how we seem to spend most of the time either dwelling in the past or hoping for a better future. We rarely seem to really live in the moment. Perhaps I’m more in the moment now than I was in the past.

Nonetheless, there is some symbolism to my behaviour – even if it may just be coincidental. I previously wrote about how I had fallen down the rabbit hole of Vedic Astrology. Parts of it – including that 2024 was going to be a year prone to burnout – were surprisingly accurate.

I’ve been in this tougher sub-period for 3 years. But as of 1 November, I’m now shifting to a period where things will start to get easier. It won’t happen overnight, but I’m hoping that things will get easier.

I suppose that getting rid of old papers is probably as good a way as any to mark the end of the last period, and moving into the new.

And if nothing else, my space certainly looks tidier and more inviting.

Ayurveda: the alternative to modern health and wellbeing approaches

Photo by Lisa Hobbs on Unsplash

I’m sure you’ve heard about all sorts of theories around health hacks before. Whether it’s an Atkins diet, celery juicing, high protein or some other funky diet.

Whilst I’m not against such diets, they only seem to work for a certain group of people. For me, I’ve tried many different approaches, but none of them really seem to stick.

My next approach was to go with a far more scientific approach. But here, I found a style of living that felt overly restrictive, and not really conducive to everyday living.

On reflection, It feels like these approaches are focused upon unrealistic over-optimisation. Whilst this may be great for top performance, I’m not looking to become a professional athlete. I also don’t fit in the general western standards of what a body ‘should’ look like. On the BMI scale, I’m over 35, categorising as morbidly obese. A year later filled with strength training and some cardio, I’m now slightly heavier than I was before. Now, everyone is quick to tell me that BMI is a flawed approach. But that doesn’t stop it from being the first measurement used, and pretty much the basis of such a scientific approach.

Western approaches to health and body have also felt off with my genetic and cultural heritage. Certainly in Belgium, a professional is very unlikely to have ever seen a body like mine before. I’ve also learnt to be wary of going to these professionals due to how ethnocentric they tend to be. I’ve got to the stage where I fear talking about my upbringing where we would eat rice and curry every day. I expect to meet an awkward blend of them not understanding and a bunch of judgement for having a diet of the ‘savages’. Ironically, before modern diets, indigenous communities have eaten more healthily and better than in the West.

This line of thinking led me to looking for a historical perspective, something closer to my ancestral origin. It’s here that I came across ayurveda, but I never really knew what it meant. It’s actually something I’ve been curious about for a while, but I hadn’t quite found a good way to access it.

In a previous job a few years ago, there was someone in the office from another company who was an ayurvedic practitioner. I bumped into her in the office one day and asked her about it. She glared at me, and told me that if I wanted to know more about ayurveda I should google it. I guess I wasn’t her target market, which later evidently turned out to be for other hippy-type white women… Alas, as is the fate of many eastern approaches including yoga which have faced cultural appropriation.

It has actually been ChatGPT that has been able to point out resources to me. It pointed me to the book, Prakriti: Your Ayurvedic Constitution by Robert Svoboda, as well as helping me with the understanding. It’s funny to think that modern technology is what is helping me to connect with thousands year old approaches.

I am by no means an expert, but some of the main points is that we are formed of three doshas (life energies) – Vatta, Kapha and Pitta. I’m simplifying, but broadly, Vatta represents wind, Kapha represents earth and Pitta represents fire.

We all have these three energies, but the important part is understanding your own dominant dosha, so that you can keep your energies in balance. It’s actually fairly straightforward to figure this out, and there is even a free test you can do here.Unlike western questionnaires which are quite narrow, this asks not only about your diet, but also your features – your hair, body pulse, eyes and other physical characteristics.

My constitution is Kapha, or earth. Which, if you look at me, is actually quite obvious. I have a large complexion, and naturally broader shoulders. It was actually really relieving to see that my natural inclination is to be more withdrawn and to gain weight quite easily. Finally I have found something that actually explains things beyond blaming me for a lack of self-discipline.

The benefits of being a Kapha-type is that I generally have healthy bone structure and features. My body’s natural tendency is to retain more nutrients to keep me healthy. I actually have pretty good skin, and I am rather tall for a South Asian. Pyschologically, it has done me a lot of good to realise that I’m not broken, just a different category. Of course, it is vital to keep movement and exercise, as kapha in excess can become inactive and lethargic.

More fundamentally, it gives a very different way of looking at what foods I eat, without needing to delve into the complexities of micronutrients.

With a burnout, my kapha energy has been really low. I’ve also been living a lifestyle pushing lots of activities, so my vatta (wind) energy has been too high. So the important thing for me now is to actually eat more warm, grounded meals. Dry foods tend to encourage vatta, so I need to avoid these. So actually, eating more salads would be discouraged considering my current state. Spicier foods tend to encourage pitta too, which right now I don’t need.

One of the biggest struggles I’ve had is when I’ve had a ravishing hunger. Sometimes I will eat dinner, only to find myself hungrier than I was before I started. The answer to this is not about calories, nor is it about quantity of food, it is about giving the right thing that my body needs. This means having more warmth. I’ve cut out cold drinks and switched them for warm water or tea. I’m figuring out how I can have more soups and broths, as well as changing from cold desserts to warm things like microwaved rice puddings.

This feels far more intuitive as an approach than anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s also built upon wisdom that has been built up over thousands of years, whilst also taking a far more holistic approach than western scientific approaches do which are so heavily focussed on optimisation.

I’ll have to see how it goes with the results. The early days have actually been quite rough. I’ve cut out energy drinks and coffee, which needs an adjustment period. Although these give a temporary boost to my energy, these are only perpetuating my imbalance by being high in Vatta. But I’m hopeful that this will give a framework for a long term way of living.

Time will tell.

Finding solace in the solitude

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

This last week has been quite humbling. I wasn’t really expecting it, but I crashed. My nervous system is shot. Daily tasks have been difficult again.

It’s hard not to feel a little despondent. I was somewhat hopeful that things were improving. But sometimes, it’s two steps forward, one step back.

In response, I’ve decided to slow down even more. I cancelled pretty much all my plans, and most of my time has been in solitude. And actually, it’s been quite nice. Indeed, perhaps this has been the lesson I’ve needed to learn all along.

When I reflect on it, there does feel like some sense of coming full circle. When I was younger, I was far more withdrawn. I did enjoy socialising, but I did it far less. I also enjoyed having time for my own, as well as totally empty weekends.

Overtime, that changed. I started doing more, and progressively built more activity in my life. The years of my life before my burnout were built upon a buzz of adrenaline. Activity, projects and events. Often back to back.

This may sound bad, but the truth was that it was actually serving me well. When my life felt full, I felt energised. I felt more present, and actually more alive. I was better balancing my energy, which meant I had a lot more space to do new things.

The problem though was that I became overly reliant to external stimulation. When things stopped feeling exciting, I ended up feeling drained. The response to a setback was always ‘how can I do this better’ rather than ‘perhaps it’s time to put this down for now’.

I imagine this was probably an over-correction after the pandemic. We had our lives frozen for several years that returning to ‘normal’ felt chaotic. Some people responded with trepidation, finding it difficult to reconnect. I went the other way – throwing myself hard into people and projects. In hindsight, it was perhaps a bit too hard.

I wanted to be great at everything I put my mind into, and I also wanted to solve the world’s problems. I wanted to succeed in all my goals, whilst also wanting to do the deep, inner work. Even typing all of this feels exhausting. It’s no wonder that I crashed. In fact, I think I needed it.

If that previous period was about expanding my energy, than this period has been about conserving it. Funnily enough, this has lined up with how I look at my finances too. In the past, it was all about ‘how can I earn more to do the things that I want’. Now it’s interrogating more deeply ‘do I really need this?’ I’m seeing that sometimes, the best solution is simply release the desire. If I don’t feel the need to have some grand exotic adventure, then I don’t need to find the money to pay for it. Blindly following all of our desires is falling into both a moralist and capitalist trap.

I wrote about feeling more hopeful in the last few weeks. This feeling hasn’t dissipated even with this sudden drop in energy, but I think has come with a bit more grounded expectations. I’m unlikely to suddenly have things massively improve, that’s rarely how life works. But things will start to feel easier.

I need to be grateful for the lessons of this period. I am better at erring on the side of caution, rather than throwing myself into new activities. This will be a vital lesson for the next stage of my life.

The understated value of being discreet

Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

We live in a world where the measuring stick is how vocal and loud you are. If you’re not making noise people seem to think that you aren’t doing anything.

Social media serves to blast out our everyday acts. We announce our new job on a LinkedIn post, then share our breakfast on an Instagram story. We then tweet our thoughts whenever we get the chance, not because we want to share something useful, but rather to demonstrate we have something useful to say.

Somewhere along the way, many of us have seemingly forgotten the value of discretion. If making noise is taking the big battering ram, being discreet is the subtle art of sowing the seeds in the background.

We use a hammer to hit nails into the wall. But if we only ever use a hammer, all we will ever see is a nail. Hammering a screw in usually causes more damage than good. The more delicate work of a screwdriver would be far more effective.

One thing I miss about being a civil servant is that there is a far better understanding around discretion. We knew that our work was not meant to be about getting personal headlines. After all, much of what we did would not get noticed (unless something went wrong). But deeper within the culture, there was a greater appreciation and value set upon working the system through subtle sleights of hands. Building relationships across departments and ministerial offices was what got things actually done. These sorts of approaches were far more valued skill than they were on the outside.

I would sometimes see external hires struggle. The most visible ones were the big shot directors coming in from the private sector. Their operating script was to push things through with a sense of energy and force. But in the tangled webs of the civil service, they would quickly get caught up by the complex processes and need for approvals. Some learnt to adapt. For others, it never really worked out.

Coming into the advocacy world, I feel like everything is about noise. There is such a need to justify action to colleagues and funders that it becomes a game of doing more rather than having impact. I remember writing reports around how we created so many social media posts, and how great it was. But it quickly turns into a game – just have a look at most corporate and NGO posts and it becomes obvious how boring and unengaging they are.

When I look at publications in the climate sector in Brussels, I often want to tear my hair out. Most reports are just unreadable. Often great research will go unread, wasting tens, if not hundreds of thousands of euros. This all stems from people not willing to do the softer, more discrete work. Being scared to ‘step on people’s toes’, technical experts are left to run free with incomprehensible jargon.

I always valued one-to-one discussions far more than big team meetings. It was here that you could actually get to the truth of the matter. Openness and honesty can cut through a problem like a butter through knife. Instead, what often happens is a problem drags for months upon end.

Part of the blame can be laid at the system, but equally responsibility needs to be placed upon people working within the sector. Behaviour is so often driven by ego and saviour complexes. I found it insane how everyone around me seemed to be running around like headless chickens looking for the next thing to tweet about. I often felt like an alien. I made sure to give time and space to develop relationships and understand people. But this was not the metric, even if it actually was far more effective. No, the metric was to talk about how busy you constantly were, and making out how important the work you were doing was.

I dream of a day where I can work somewhere which focusses on impact, rather than noise.

Searching for a spark of hope in life

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

Tough times are tough. It’s why they name them so.

The current moment feels like a tougher time. Global war, political division and increasing financial hardship for many. These are not simple things to navigate.

I’ve had a particularly rough period in my life. I’ve had several years of seismic, volatile change. This has included periods where I’ve barely functioned. At one point last year, I struggled to get out of bed. And even then, I was only doing the bare minimum to keep myself alive.

Yet with time to reflect, I realise that the darkest periods were not necessarily the hardest ones. There were extremely tough periods that were physically or emotionally more demanding, yet I had the will to work through them. But the darkest moments ones where I had lost hope for things to get better. When the desire left my eyes, it became extremely difficult to do the most basic of things. At one point I wondered whether the rest of my existence would be this barely-functioning corpse. I started to wonder, what would be the point in continuing to live?

Things have felt different recently. I’ve started to be hopeful that things will improve. I’m seeing some signs of improvement, even if they are slow. Different facets of my life are starting to stabilise. Most importantly, I’m feeling calmer. Even if my energy levels are still quite chaotic, they are still much better than they were about a year ago.

I’ve gone through a particularly tough period according to the astrological chart. Whilst we all go through difficulty, I had several sets of very testing times back to back. The good news though is that this is meant to end in November. From then, this particularly testing period is meant to move towards one with more opportunity and connection.

Is believing in astrology delusion? Perhaps so. But I do not do so without some level of discernment. I don’t follow what it says out of a blind fanaticism, but because it seems to have explained my existence better to me than any person or science has otherwise.

I think the difference between delusion and hope is that delusion is devoid of any practical or realistic reason to believe in something. Hope, on the other hand, has some level of grounding. We can see a possibility for improvement, even if we aren’t sure it might happen.

I’ve come to increasingly appreciate the role of art and fiction. In the past, I would want my entertainment to have a form of education. I would exclusively read non-fiction books. My TV watching habits gravitated to reality, even if I allowed myself the more trashy. For me, fiction was a form of escaping the realities of the world.

But recently, I’ve been seeing the way in which the fantastical can make us dream bigger. It is far more playful and vivid than non-fiction. There is a reason that the Lord of the Rings resonates after so many years compared to a history tome of World War Two. It evokes a sense of spirit and emotion that transcends our daily reality. By transporting us out of our normal world, we are less stuck in seeing things the same-old way.

Right now, there is a distinct lack of hope in the world. I see little of it in the people around me. People falling into the grind, or fearing the worst out of a negative news cycle.

But hope is always there. Bad times are followed by good ones. Things do eventually improve, even if it can take some time.

But ultimately, it is our own choice: do we choose to look for hope?