Communications – Shilpa's

Mother’s Day is Over… What Now?

To be a mother is a choice, and it’s a choice she makes every time she puts herself aside to see the smiles of her own. She knows they came through her but not for her and yet she lives for them.

What kind of mom are you? The hyper one, or the over dramatic one or are you the famous helicopter mom, oh wait are you the one who is always busy and then you do find time to judge or maybe you are the kind gentle soul who puts everyone before you. It doesn’t matter because today the world celebrates you, The Mom. You get showered and pampered with gifts and hugs galore. Today you are a queen, and the CODES are all correct.

CODES, yes CODES. There are CODES to keep a mom happy and I stumbled upon them while researching on neuroscience. Why neuroscience is a subject for another blogpost, for now, let us focus on the CODES for a happy Mom.

Interestingly enough, most of human behavior comes down to 5 neurochemicals – Cortisol, Oxytocin, Dopamine, Endorphins and Serotonin; collectively and lovingly called CODES.

Cortisol – Your Mom and you don’t want excess of Cortisol. This is a hormone that’s released when the body is stressed.

Oxytocin – lovingly called the cuddle hormone is released with a hug, a kiss and all the goody warm feelings. So yes, both you and your mom need plenty of this.

Dopamine – This is your reward for discovering something new. It could be cooking a new recipe, listening to a new song, and so forth. And yes, we need this too. Discovering keeps life interesting and moving forward.

Endorphins – Endorphins get released after you exercise/or any physical activity. That high you get after running the 5K, yes that’s endorphin high, the good kind of high. We all need the activity to keep our hands and legs moving without aches and pains.

Serotonin – Is the reward for helping others, feeling good about yourself, making a positive impact on another’s life. Generally every time we make an effort to stay in touch with others and get a positive result, we get rewarded with Serotonin. So yes, call your mom often, a text, a phone call, a card, a FaceTime video – anything, just keep in touch with the fellow human beings and most importantly your mom.

She doesn’t need stress, so don’t do anything that is against her values. You can disagree with her, but give her the hug she deserves. Encourage your mom and yourself to try new things. Challenge your inner self and take a step towards a path unknown. The charisma of the unknown will yearn for more and keep you moving forward towards a healthier physical self and finally stay in touch folks, and I mean actually pick up the phone and call your mom, call your friends, call anyone you wish to be in touch with. If they say, they are too busy and forgot to call you, that’s ok, let them be busy because you got your CODES going for yourself and hopefully they will find their CODES too.

Tomorrow we will share stories of what we did on Mother’s day and how special it was. As we share our glories, let us not forget the mother who struggles with infertility or the single mom who worries about tomorrow.

Let us hope they will find their CODES and embrace and celebrate themselves. Let us also hope that our loved ones will remember their CODES and help us bask in the warmth of today.

Today was Happy Mother’s Day. Let the remaining 364 days be Happy You Day.

The Recess is Over – The Blog Lives

Those who know me, know that I like to reflect and reflect a lot. I strongly believe that we are a product of our own experiences and life gives us plenty of experiences. Life as perfect as it is, is very imperfect too. The imperfections are critical for change. When the imperfections go away, life will become stagnant, until then it is imperative that we enjoy life’s fallibility and learn from it. You don’t need an extra ordinary moment to learn. Our daily interaction with fellow humans, nature and ourselves is a learning experience every moment of the day.

45 years is a long time to be on this planet. I have always enjoyed adding a year to my age for it is a privilege denied to many. Today I am thankful that I woke up to see the love and blessings surrounding me. The past years have been rather interesting. They have tested my patience, my thinking and more importantly my belief in myself. I was one of those who lead a simple daily blessed life. No curve balls, no nothing.. life chugs along just fine, until one final year, life looks at you and says, “Ok, you have had too much good, it is time to throw in some bumps.” Try as hard as I did, I was beginning to lose until one final day, when the human core in me wakes up and says ‘Enough! Bring it on” and just like that, you turn on the will power switch and life backs off and I realized I am me and I am ok.

45 years old and sane on planet Earth. That is an achievement in itself 🙂

My top 5 lessons of 45 years on this planet:

1. Be Unfuckwithable: This is very important. You just have to be one, there is no other option.

2. Belive in Pronoia: It is true. There is power in belief. Believe and the universe will work with you.

3. Travel: In this daily mundane life, we (including me) almost always forget we the humans were designed to be wanderers. And here we are living a stagnant life behind a computer screen. Some of you might have read about my trip to Alaska what most of you don’t know is that this trip was a necessity to start breathing again. When life beats you down, the only way to get up is do something that you have never done before and Alaska was just that. A frontier unlike any other and staying true to it’s promise Alaska allowed me to breathe again. Travel because you want to see the wonderful natural creations, travel so you can be the pirate of your favorite childhood story book, travel so life does not escape you.

4. Relationships need more than love to survive: Love hurts, it’s true. Relationships need constant nurturing. Mother-child, husband-wife, brother-sister and any other relationship needs continuous nurturing. Relationships, ebb and flow through the ocean of life, creating their troughs and crests. The crest may be tall and high and yet we look at the trough and forget the crest. We need to train our brain to focus on the crests and ignore the troughs. The flow of life will minimize the trough.

5. YOU can make a difference: As alone as we are, we have the power to make a difference. I never thought I did, until recently. Our simple acts of kindness can become big acts of fortitude for another.

This blog has been my sanity for many occasions. To stay sane, I had promised myself that I will bring the blog back on my birthday, so here it is. The blog lives.

Life I believe is full of Imperfections. It is these little daily imperfections that culminate at the end of a day to make a perfectly beautiful life. That’s how my world is. It’s filled with shades of bright vibrant reds to melancholy yet calming blues.

How is your world?

The Matrix of Technology.

Today’s post is inspired by a recent article on WSJ Are Smart Gadgets Making Us Dumb? And what better day to write about technology than on the Pi day. Today is 3.14!

My opinion, I like technology that makes it simple, but not effortless. There are many definitions of technology, but I am sure we all agree that the purpose of technology is to make things more efficient, safer and productive and not necessarily brainless.

It all started with the Arpanet, moving on to the Internet, then we had the GPS wave, smart phones and today we have everything from hats that measure your IQ to sleeping bra’s that can help detect early breast cancers. Technology has without a doubt changed the world we live in. We are connected to something or someone every waking and sleeping second. The information era has allowed us to move from acquaintances and friends to 2nd level and 3rd level connections. Connectivity and social presence is a part of one’s net worth now.

How much technology do we need though? That’s something to think about. Do we really need a refrigerator that tells us our food is going stale or a trash can that decides how much food was wasted or recycled and then update the FB status to announce to the world and maybe even award or punish us real time. Maybe the innovators and early adopters do, for being a part of the moment. To me, its not much value added, it in fact, if anything makes me think less.

By no means am I trying to undermine the importance and value addition technology has made to our lives. The immense progress in health care has saved many lives and allowed for a more secure and faster communication with the doctor that saves time by avoiding going to the hospital for routine questions, bringing down the global barriers of communication has allowed schools in rural areas access to resources and education like never before and many of us know and understand the convenience of Amazon Prime. This and much more would not have happened without technology.

At the same time, I do believe every gadget is not necessarily a smart tool. I was at the ever popular mom store Bed Bath and Beyond, and saw something called a Banana Slicer, it’s basically a chopping contraption with a USP stating chopping food is not every one’s forte and this makes it easy. To each his own, but I think time, effort and money could have been better used. The same is true for many technological advancements. Came across an article that talked about Porta Potties, that collect data on how long a person spent and whether the person was standing or sitting. I am still trying to identify industries that have extensive use of such data.

Which brings me to the other baffling question about technology, Who does what with all this Data?

Privacy issues prevent companies from releasing any or all data even to those who created the data. There is enough research out there to show how easy it is for a knowledgeable person to blend the offline and online data to find traits and information about any person. The famous FB like button is close to omni-present and a simple like has the capacity of releasing a lot of important information. I agree sharing this information can help improve functionality in many industries. However, there needs to be a mechanism so the ultimate owner of the data is the consumer and not the company that has it.

The guru’s predict a world where everything will be connected, can you imagine the amount of binary numbers flowing through the grid? We all will have our own e-identity prints. And after a century, what happens to this data. The generation then, might use it in place of history books OR they might simply say its redundant and chuck it away into a cyberspace trash bin, thus deleting our e-identities or existence.

I love this image. Googled it 🙂
It’s scary and thought provoking at the same time

I know what you’re thinking, I am a laggard when it comes to technology. It’s quite the contrary. I love the fact that I can now communicate faster with my parents half a world away, I don’t have to hold a map and drive at the same time, I can research any topic under the sun and most importantly technology allows me to work from home. I like technology but within reason.

We come back to the same question, How much is enough? Do we really need to be connected all the time. Do I really want my tea kettle telling me that the grid is over loaded, so maybe I should wait for a little bit for that cup of tea, or do I really want the weighing machine to be connected to my FB account, so it updates my status as a way of motivating me. While all these idea’s and concepts seem “cool,”it is important to note that they take away from the very necessary element of my existence; human interaction and prevents me from using the very skills that make me human. Human beings are social animals. We “need” interaction, there is a reason we learned how to walk on two legs from four. We, including myself am guilting of texting while in the presence of friends or family. Why are we so eager to update our social status or tag a photo? It is this need of social connectivity that is leading the current generation of innovations.

On researching further on the “Why” or causes of these innovations, interestingly, I read many an article stating that the visionaries of future see this world broken in many places. There are inefficiencies that they believe technology can help improve. They also see how eager we are to announce to the world, where we ate, where we shop and more. The combination is our world where we are constantly clicking and swiping.

Remember the 1900’s when he first gasoline powered cars were introduced and it was predicted that the bicycle is now a thing of the past. 1900’s to today; 2013, it’s not been that long and as one world, we are all trying very hard to move towards mass transportation, walk more, and if possible even bike to everywhere.

I see something similar happening with technology. Soon in our life times, I believe we will see the day when one smart country will announce an e-free national day. A day when they go back to doing it all with paper and pen and many a smart entrepreuners’ will teach the world how to write and talk again.

Like life, the cycle of technology will come a full circle too.

It has to happen, for if it doesn’t “The Matrix” will move from fiction into the reality zone.

Happy Birthday Mr. Einstein.