What's on my Mind

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  • Be Yourself. At Your Own Risk.

    Be Yourself. At Your Own Risk.

    Everyone encourages authenticity. It’s one of those things people enthusiastically support until someone actually tries it.

    At work, authenticity is a leadership quality. There are workshops about bringing your whole self to work, which is ambitious considering most people struggle to bring a functioning brain to Monday morning meetings. Tell someone their presentation could have been an email, and suddenly there’s a conversation about communication skills. So people say “Interesting perspective” while holding an entirely different meeting inside their heads.

    At home, authenticity requires parental clearance. A fully grown adult with a job, a toddler and a mortgage mentions needing space. Within days, the parents are concerned. “Are you unhappy? Is everything okay?” Your authentic self enjoys breathing room. The family has initiated mental health investigation, complete with follow-up calls.

    With friends, authenticity can get awkward. You may admit that juggling work, parenting and relationship is exhausting. A friend responds, “I’m just lucky that my partner is supportive!” You’re thinking “Wonderful. Congratulations on your excellent domestic infrastructure.” Your authentic self has several responses. The socially acceptable self smiles and orders another coffee.

    On LinkedIn, authenticity is encouraged, preferably with professional photographs and three leadership lessons. A terrible Tuesday must become “Five Things Adversity Taught Me About Resilience” by Thursday. Being genuinely vulnerable risks judgment. Being polished risks becoming indistinguishable from everyone else.

    The trouble with authenticity is that it comes with consequences. Someone might disagree, take offence or decide that the original version was better left unpublished.

    So people edit themselves. A little at work, a little at home, a little with friends. Some editing is necessary. Nobody needs unrestricted access to every thought that crosses someone else’s mind.

    But how much editing is too much? Being yourself might cost you someone’s approval. Pretending might earn you plenty of it.

    The awkward part is deciding whose approval matters more: theirs or your own.

    And neither comes with a money-back guarantee.

  • Respect : Terms Apply

    Respect : Terms Apply

    Respect has a surprisingly short memory.

    At work, someone can be competent for years. Then say something foolish in a meeting. Write one foolish email. Lose their usual composure once. Suddenly, a few people start looking at them differently. Years of good decisions become supporting documentation. One foolish email becomes the executive summary.

    Family has a different version. Try something they have never tried. Start a business. Leave something secure. Choose a life that makes little sense from where they are standing.

    The concern is often genuine. But people who have never taken a particular risk can become surprisingly certain about how that risk will turn out. Perhaps familiarity makes this harder too. It is difficult to reinvent yourself around people who still remember your original version.

    Then there are strangers. They know almost nothing about the work, the decisions, what happened before the visible moment, or what it took to get there. This does not appear to reduce their confidence.

    Celebrities get a premium subscription.

    Miss one penalty. Give one bad interview. Release one bad film. Millions of people immediately discover they could manage a football team, choose better scripts, handle fame more gracefully and possibly perform at Wembley.

    There is something strange about how easily a moment becomes a person.

    One foolish email becomes incompetence. One failed attempt becomes poor judgment. One public mistake somehow gets promoted above years of evidence to the contrary.

    Maybe that is why disrespect can sting so much. It isn’t always the criticism itself. It is watching someone reduce everything they know about you to the one thing they know you would rather forget.

    Respect may take years to earn.

    Its memory, unfortunately, can be considerably shorter.

    Maybe the lesson after all is not to expect permanent respect. It is to know yourself well enough that its withdrawal doesn’t rewrite you.

  • Pending Approval

    Pending Approval

    Everyone wants freedom. Preferably after everyone else approves it.

    At work, approval begins innocently. “Good job.” Lovely. Then one day there is no “good job.” Nothing has actually happened, but internally, an investigation has begun. Was the work bad? Was the meeting bad? Was the email too direct? Should there have been a smiley? Corporate confidence can sometimes be surprisingly dependent on punctuation.

    Then there is family. In many Indian families, adulthood does not necessarily end the approval process. It simply expands the range of topics under review: career, marriage, children, house, whether the child is wearing enough clothes. Sometimes the reviewer is a relative whose exact position on the family tree requires specialist software. Still, their feedback is available.

    Then comes parenting. You are working, managing a toddler and trying to convince yourself that quality matters more than quantity. Then the toddler starts asking for the sitter more than you. Suddenly this is no longer childcare. This is market share. There is a competitor in the house, and she is winning. Nothing tests the theory that “a good parent doesn’t need constant validation” quite like being rejected by someone who still needs help putting on socks.

    Then there is leadership. Managers are told not to seek popularity. Excellent advice. Until someone on the team looks slightly unhappy after a decision. Suddenly the brain would like to conduct an anonymous engagement survey. Immediately. Preferably with one question: “Do you still think I am a good boss?”

    Then there is social media. You post something. Five likes. No new followers. Fine. It was never about the numbers anyway. Two hours later, you are commenting thoughtfully on strangers’ posts, liking things you only partially read and calling it “building a community.” Apparently approval-seeking sounds much healthier when you give it a marketing strategy.

    The strange thing about approval is that every individual request seems reasonable. A little from the boss. A little from family. A little from the child. A little from the team. A little from the internet. Until life starts looking like a company with five supervisory boards, all asking for slightly different things.

    Perhaps approval was never the problem. Perhaps giving everyone voting rights was.

  • The Evolution of FOMO

    The Evolution of FOMO

    FOMO probably has its roots somewhere in a forest.

    Imagine a group of early humans standing around when suddenly everyone starts running. You look around. Nobody explains anything.

    You have two options: run with them, or stay where you are and discover whether they were escaping a tiger.

    Evolution probably decided this was a terrible moment for individualism. So it gave us FOMO: “You are missing something. Move.”

    It was a useful survival mechanism. The tiger was real. The danger was real. The consequences of missing the group could be real.

    Thousands of years later, the tiger is gone. The mechanism remains. And now it has Wi-Fi.

    FOMO at work is very sophisticated. Someone gets invited to a meeting you weren’t invited to, and suddenly you need to know what happened. You didn’t want the meeting. You didn’t even know the meeting existed. But now three people have discussed something without you and apparently your career is in danger.

    FOMO on weekends is equally rational. You planned to stay home, drink coffee and do absolutely nothing. Then you see someone having brunch in beautiful sunlight. Suddenly your peaceful Saturday feels like a failed life choice.

    Social media took FOMO and gave it industrial-scale distribution. You can now discover that someone is travelling, getting promoted, buying a house, running a marathon, falling in love, launching a company and making sourdough. All without leaving the sofa.

    FOMO becomes particularly creative when you start a parallel business. Someone launches a newsletter. You should have started one. Someone creates a course. Perhaps you should create a course. Someone builds an app. Maybe the app is your calling.

    Someone changes their LinkedIn headline.

    You panic.

    Meanwhile, you have spent three hours choosing a font.

    And then there is parenting.

    Your child is happily playing with a cardboard box.You see another child doing ballet, swimming, Dutch, chess and something called “creative STEM exploration.”

    You look at your child.

    Your child looks at the cardboard box.

    You think: “Are we failing?”

    The child continues playing with the cardboard box.

    The cardboard box is winning.

    Perhaps that is the strange thing about FOMO. The brain was designed to keep us from missing the tiger. Somehow, we taught it to worry about missing brunch, meetings, business ideas and Dutch lessons.

    But perhaps FOMO is asking us to solve an impossible problem: how to live every life we could have lived.

    We can’t.

    Every choice quietly closes a thousand doors. Every life contains roads we will never take, places we will never see, people we will never become, and versions of ourselves that will remain imaginary.

    That isn’t the tragedy of being alive.

    It is the price of becoming someone.

    Perhaps peace begins when we stop asking, “What am I missing?”

    And start asking, “What am I here for?”

    ~ Megha.

    Author @ myhandwrites

  • The Trouble With Pressure

    The Trouble With Pressure

    I’LL JUST GET THROUGH THIS WEEK.

    Work pressure is a bit like tyre pressure. Too little and you don’t get very far. Too much and eventually someone starts checking whether you’re about to explode. So we keep adjusting it. One more deadline. One more meeting. One more “quick thing.” One more email sent at 11:47 p.m. Eventually, being permanently inflated starts looking suspiciously like competence.

    WHY IS THE BANANA BROKEN?

    Parenthood comes with its own pressure. More like a hot-air balloon. You keep adding air and hoping everyone stays airborne. Breakfast. Shoes. Nursery. Lost teddy. Forgotten water bottle. A child crying because the banana has been cut incorrectly. Somehow you are responsible for keeping another human emotionally stable while you haven’t had coffee yet. And still, every morning, you launch.

    MY WATCH SAYS I’M DOING IT WRONG.

    Then there is health pressure. Sleep eight hours. Exercise. Eat vegetables. Drink water. Reduce stress. Get enough sunlight. Your phone reminds you to stand. Your watch judges your sleep. Your app congratulates you for walking 8,000 steps, but quietly lets you know that 10,000 would have been more appropriate. At this point, you’re not sure whether you’re looking after your body or managing it.

    WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK?

    Social pressure is particularly impressive because nobody actually hired us for this job. Yet somehow we know the requirements. Have a good career. Be a good parent. Look healthy. Travel. Have hobbies. Be successful, but not annoyingly successful. Be happy, but not suspiciously happy. And whatever you do, make it look effortless. There is apparently a performance review happening somewhere. We just haven’t found the manager.

    SO… WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE?

    And then, just when you thought being alive was enough, someone asks about your purpose. You need a calling. A mission. A five-year plan. Ideally something that sounds good on LinkedIn. We are expected to know what we want to do with our one precious life while occasionally forgetting why we walked into the kitchen.

    Maybe pressure isn’t always about how much we can handle.

    Maybe sometimes it is about how many things we have quietly decided we are supposed to handle.

    And perhaps the first pressure valve is simply admitting:

    Some of this is ridiculous!

    ~ Megha.

    myhandwrites.com

  • The Shame Department

    The Shame Department

    Shame has an extraordinary memory.

    You can forget your mother’s birthday, your Wi-Fi password and why you walked into the kitchen. But shame remembers the exact sentence you said at a dinner party in 2018 that nobody else remembers.

    Nobody.

    Shame does.

    It probably has it backed up to the cloud.

    Shame also has impeccable timing.

    You can be having a perfectly good day when it suddenly walks into your brain wearing a tiny security badge.

    Shame : “ Excuse me. We have an incident from 2024.”

    Me : I don’t work here anymore.

    Shame : “That is not relevant.”

    Shame doesn’t care much for your achievements either.

    You could get promoted, buy a house, raise a child and finally learn how to fold a fitted sheet. Shame will still be interested in that one time you said “you too” when the waiter told you to enjoy your meal.

    Somewhere in your brain, this has been classified as a national emergency.

    Then shame gets creative.

    It takes something you did and turns it into something you are.

    You lied once. Now you’re a liar.

    You behaved selfishly. Congratulations. Your new job title is Selfish Person.

    You embarrassed yourself. Apparently this wasn’t an incident. It was a branding exercise.

    Shame has the remarkable ability to turn a thirty-second event into a lifelong personality assessment.

    And it doesn’t believe in character references.

    If a friend told you about something embarrassing they did ten years ago, you’d probably say, “You were young. You didn’t know better. You’ve changed.”

    But when it’s your own story, suddenly you’re the judge, jury and deeply disappointed HR department.

    No mitigating circumstances.

    No appeal.

    Just a lifetime sentence handed to someone who has already served the crime.

    Maybe that’s the strangest thing about shame.

    It keeps prosecuting people who no longer exist.

    The person who said that thing is gone.

    The person who made that decision has learned a few things.

    The person who behaved badly has accumulated several software updates since then.

    And yet shame keeps opening the same case like it’s waiting for a different verdict.

    Perhaps we should stop giving it shelf space.

    It can keep the receipts.

    It can keep the screenshots.

    It can even keep the embarrassing footage.

    But maybe it can put everything in a box, label it “Past Me,” and move it to the basement.

    Somewhere between the Christmas decorations and that mysterious charger nobody knows what it belongs to.

    Out of sight. Not erased.

    Just no longer running the house.

  • Symptoms of Being Alive

    Symptoms of Being Alive

    I have spent the better part of my adult life trying to figure out whether something is wrong with me.

    It turns out I may simply have an unusually comprehensive collection of symptoms of being alive.

    25: Cancer

    At 25, I became afraid of cancer.

    There was a breast lump.

    It wasn’t cancerous, which was excellent news.

    It was also the beginning of my annual relationship with the healthcare system.

    “Come back next year.”

    There is something oddly reassuring about being told you’re fine, followed immediately by an appointment to make sure you’re still fine.

    For the next few years, I discovered that waiting for a medical check-up is a special kind of hobby.

    You spend eleven months forgetting about your body and one month remembering every sensation it has ever produced.

    A headache becomes suspicious.

    A twitch becomes interesting.

    You start wondering whether that thing you felt three weeks ago was actually there.

    The human imagination is an impressive diagnostic machine.

    Unfortunately, it has no off switch.

    28: Marriage

    At 28, I got married.

    I married an ambitious person.

    He was an Aries.

    I was a Cancer.

    At the time, this seemed romantic.

    In retrospect, perhaps we should have consulted a specialist.

    Marriage introduced me to another fascinating branch of medicine: diagnosing people who have not asked to be diagnosed.

    You notice things.

    You observe patterns.

    You read an article at 11:47 p.m.

    Suddenly, everything makes sense.

    You send the article to the person in question.

    They don’t respond.

    So naturally, you send another.

    Eventually you realise you have completed an entire medical residency without leaving the house.

    The patient, unfortunately, remains unconvinced.

    31: Fitness

    At 31, I decided I needed to get fitter.

    I discovered HIIT.

    HIIT is a beautiful concept.

    Take a perfectly functioning human being and briefly convince them they are being hunted.

    I was less enthusiastic about the boring parts of fitness — nutrition, recovery and gradual progression.

    My hip eventually provided the feedback.

    There was a diagnosis.

    Then surgery.

    Then nine months with a walker.

    Nine months is enough time to develop strong opinions about accessibility.

    Before that, I had never noticed how many places assume everyone can walk.

    Stairs.

    Curbs.

    Public transport.

    Some chairs.

    The walker, meanwhile, was wonderfully uncomplicated.

    It had one job.

    It did it every day.

    I began to understand why people like reliable friends.

    The 30s: Burnout

    Then came burnout.

    Once is unfortunate.

    Twice is a pattern.

    Three times is when you start wondering whether your life is trying to communicate.

    I had plenty of theories.

    Work.

    Ambition.

    Stress.

    Expectations.

    Relationships.

    Life.

    Possibly the fact that I approached adulthood as though it were an achievement unlocked by doing more.

    There is something comforting about having an explanation. If you know what caused something, you can imagine that fixing the cause will fix everything else.

    Humans are very good at this.

    Give us a complicated situation and we will immediately look for a culprit.

    Preferably one with a name.

    35: Parenting

    At 35, I had a child.

    Apparently, I was approaching the age where people start discussing having a “healthy baby” with the seriousness of a financial forecast.

    The baby arrived healthy. And with an imagination that seems to have no budget.

    His memory is also alarmingly good.

    Watching him remember things I have completely forgotten has occasionally made me question whether I was ever as intelligent as I thought I was.

    Parenthood made me incredibly efficient.

    It also made me incredibly tired.

    Apparently, those two things can coexist quite comfortably.

    38: A New Theory

    Then, at 38, things got strange.

    Strange enough that someone close to me noticed. There were conversations, professional advice, and a theory about what might be going on.

    A serious one.

    I won’t name it. Not because I’m being mysterious, but because I’ve finally learned that some things are better kept between a person and their doctor.

    Besides, the internet has enough diagnoses already.

    Mention one, and someone will appear with a checklist.

    “You have six of the symptoms.”

    Excellent.

    I also have six symptoms of being alive.

    At some point, I began wondering whether we have become slightly too enthusiastic about labels.

    We are uncomfortable with “I don’t know.”

    We prefer a word. A word makes uncertainty look organised.

    And perhaps that is what this chapter is teaching me: not everything needs to be named immediately.

    Maybe there will be a diagnosis. Maybe there won’t.

    For now, I’m learning to sit with the uncertainty. It is uncomfortable.

    But perhaps that, too, is a symptom of being alive.

  • Dear Destiny, Stop showing me Ads

    Dear Destiny, Stop showing me Ads

    Destiny is supposed to be written in the stars.

    Apparently, mine is also written in my cookies.

    We like to think our desires are deeply personal. Then an advertisement appears and suddenly we discover that we have always wanted a kitchen island, a six-pack, a silent retreat in Bali and a personality that says “I drink vodka but remain emotionally available.”

    Conveniently, the algorithm knows this before we do.

    It shows us a life we never knew we were destined for. We see it once. Then twice. Then seven times, because apparently destiny requires retargeting.

    Eventually, the desire starts feeling familiar.

    Familiar becomes possible.

    Possible becomes necessary.

    Necessary becomes: “I deserve this.”

    And suddenly we are making life decisions around something that arrived between two videos of a cat falling off a sofa.

    We buy the house. Book the holiday. Change the wardrobe. Download the productivity app that promises to help us finally become the person who has time to use the productivity app.

    Years later, we look back at the path and see a coherent story.

    “It was meant to be.”

    Perhaps.

    Or perhaps destiny has simply become very good at disguising a sales funnel.

    The strange part is that advertising doesn’t have to tell us what to think. It only has to become familiar enough that we eventually mistake recognition for desire.

    And then we call the desire our own.

    So perhaps the philosophical question isn’t whether advertising can influence our choices.

    It is – If someone can influence what we want without us noticing, how much of what we call destiny is actually just a very successful advertisement we forgot seeing?

    Perhaps, destiny isn’t written in the stars, but served to us because we once Googled something at 2 a.m.

    If this my destiny, I am indeed doomed.👿

    Dear Destiny,

    You have clearly missed my delivery window. You may as well find peace with another customer.

    May you rest in peace.

    Amen,

    Megha.

  • How was my August (2026)

    How was my August (2026)


    I was on Summer Vacation

    Last month was weirdly the most depressing and most interesting period of my life. If I could describe the feeling, it almost felt like virtual reality. (Déjà vu).


    I was on Summer Vacation.


    Well to start with I was in India for a vacation with my toddler (who is now almost 3). Did I tell you I had a son? He’s a charming boy, a genius – who knows how to press all my buttons.

    I imagined taking him on vacation to India with my partner so he meets his grandparents. I hoped this would give me some time off. Some time to relax.
    But hell broke loose when we reached there.


    For starters, he needed the level of attention I could never manage even in the Netherlands. You see, I have a sitter in the Netherlands and he enjoys playing with her so much. I’ve outsourced care at home for my sanity. Set a system that works for him and me. Chose to not put him in daycare (Those institutions are meant to break the soul of kids in my opinion. I wish more parents read the work of Gabor Mate).


    Anyhow, on our vacation in India, my son wanted to play all day. I wanted to rest. All others in the house who could play with him were either working or in school. Within only two days of the vacation, I was missing our dear sitter and wished to go back to Netherlands and end that energy draining vacation.

    To top my frustration, my dad got hospitalised. He thought he was having a heart attack. Turns out he had low sugar. I spent all night chatgpting his symptoms. I realised I could have as well been a doctor. ( and a very good one). Anyhow he turned out all fine so that was a relief.

    On my vacation, I was excited about an office assignment that just fell on my plate. I finally felt it was my gateway to promotion. (If that was in the pipeline?!). I spent a night copiloting and chatgpting to excel the assignment. I ended up learning corporate politics and how power works. Realised I didn’t know much about the banking industry actually. (after 15 years of working). Anyhow, few hours spent in the night and I got excellent outcome ready for the assignment. I patted myself on my back that night and slept well.

    The next few days I spent pondering what was I actually doing and why was I working.. what if promotion never happens in my existing setup.. who could I replace in my organisation.. why was I paid so low? . (What is the purpose of this life? Purpose should actually not exist in NLP model. Gawd! I was enlightened and very creative the rest of the period.).

    Fast forward a week or so, vacation ended finally and I was back to the Netherlands and heaved a sigh of relief to be back to my normal routine. (At home and work)

    Office here I come

    After arriving back in the netherlands, work was on my mind.

    I had an excellent case ready for promotion (or replacing someone in another position) , just climb the ladder in any god damn case.

    But somehow things started turning awry. Like really really weird. I can’t even explain the next series of events I encountered. They haunted me for the rest of the month.

    My laptop felt like it was hacked (malfunctioning), I was working, networking, tried medication to sleep, felt like I was on the edge of burnout but was not, I became super creative and then found out I was put on bench at work.

    My manager thinks I am burned out. (Does she even know what burn out is? I have a goddamn website to explain it. Someone should make her read it).

    Outcome and Personal

    I am now on forced leave at work.

    I am actually liking the fact that I can write and can do things I always wanted to do. Planning to set up a company for my new brand OutoftheBurn.

    Personal life sucks. Separation has been on my mind. Has been on my mind for last seven years or so. (Right after my first burnout in 2018). With a kid involved now, this is super difficult. I am riding the waves, Solo!. (And venting on every forum I’ve ever known).

    <Dear GOD! I might as well start believing in you if this crazy phase of my personal life just got over. I know I deserve better.>

     

    August Book suggestions


    In August, I did read some books.
    For anyone in new role or job, I would highly recommend First 90 days by Michael D. Watkins. I’ve read it halfway and found it very interesting.


    For anyone exploring burnout, I would recommend the book Discover your mental strength from Michael Kortekaas. He has been training police forces in the Netherlands for almost all his career and teaches mental resilience for the profession that is most demanding.

    I’m not done reading both books but I will post a review as soon as I finish them.
    Below are also some books I would recommend if you are planning a career to become a CRO or CEO eventually. (These popped up from my research in August and I’ll pick them up on one of the days. )

    Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman

    The Fifth Discipline — Peter M. Senge

    The Fearless Organization — Amy C. Edmondson

    Good Strategy/Bad Strategy — Richard Rumelt

    Leadership Pipeline — Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter & James Noel

    The Effective Executive — Peter F. Drucker

    Team of Teams — Stanley McChrystal

    Principles — Ray Dalio

    The Culture Code — Daniel Coyle

     

    What Else is on my mind?


    I’ve been thinking of three quotes lately. They have been a lot on my mind.

    One person can change the world, not by being powerful, but by making something different possible.
    — Author unknown


    A hallucination becomes dangerous not when we see what isn’t there, but when we stop questioning what we see.
    ~ Unknown Author


    What you seek is seeking you.
    ~Rumi


    Signing off. Until I see you next time. (Wake me up when September ends!)
    ~ Love Megha.

     

     

  • 0% Alcohol living

    0% Alcohol living

    In 2018, I was in Belgium. I remember going to the beer festival for the very first time. At the heart of the city center in Bruges was this small ground with hundreds of tents and locally brewed beers on sale. There were more than 200 variety to choose from. Sour beer, fresh hops, IPAs, Lager, Pilsner and what not. Me and my partner waited in a queue for more than an hour to purchase the tokens for the fest. I didn’t know how many tokens to buy until we were actually short of them. That’s how we knew – we had enough. We tasted a dozen that day.
    I was a social drinker back then and loved exploring. I wanted to even take up a brewing course.

    Following years were not the same.

    In 2020, I suffered an injury.
    My hip bone was damaged. I spent a month in extreme pain, thinking it was a sprain. Following up revealed that I might need a hip replacement. I was 31 back then and it scared the sh*t out of me.

    It didn’t come to that. (Fortunately!)

    An interim treatment worked. I spent six months on walker and it took a year of physiotherapy to resume my day to day activities. During that period, I was bound to stay away from alcohol. Alcohol free lifestyle happened to me.

    My first few months of zero alcohol living did not come easy. After a tiring work week, I felt the desire to have a drink. I craved social drinking on weekends. I couldn’t eat pizza without a beer. I missed wine while eating pasta or meat. All that was fun, was stripped away. My plight grew stronger when I met family and friends in social setting. Everyone drank. Everyone laughed. Everyone was light headed while I was wide awake and sharp, struggling to let go my consciousness.
    It was hard to remain comfortable in my own skin.

    So,I was pushed to find alternatives. To break free from the associations I created in my mind; dissociate socialising from alcohol. Cola became my companion soon. It was a great replacement for some time. (Of course after a while, you’ve got to leave it coz you get addicted to it.) I tried mocktails, juices, sparkling water, coffee, tea and everything that was categorised under non-alcoholic beverage section.

    After close to ten months of this new lifestyle, I discovered I was no longer craving for wine or beer with food. My craving to eat junk food also reduced. I could sit in a pub full of people drinking, and still enjoy a normal conversation. I lost more than eight kilos merely by cutting down alcohol. I felt this new energy inside me.

    Alcohol free living also did wonders to my emotional health. I realised when I didn’t drink after a stressful day, I was left open to introspect, to think what caused the stress in first place. Not numbing those thoughts was the best choice I made for myself.
    It pushed me to accept my reality, act on it and change my environment.
    I’ve found myself in a much happier place since then. So, I decided to sustain the lifestyle ever since.

    It has now been more than two years since I went on no alcohol regime. I’ve learned to be comfortable in my own skin while I consciously choose to stay alcohol free. It gives me a sense of control over my well being. I still love the smell of hop every time I sit in a pub. Guess that’s why they invented the 0% beer. (for people like me. 🙂 )

    © Copyright 2022. Megha Gupta. All rights reserved.