What are some unexpected places or people I got great writing advice, or inspiration from, and how did it help me in my writing?

One, was a book called Write for Your Lives by Joseph Sestito, a practicing Buddhist.

I started my blog in 2010, and I read this book in 2014.

Before reading it, I used to fret excessively about each post, especially when I was getting ready to publish it on my blog.

Joseph Sestito’s book helped me free myself from that.

I think about this book, every time I start to fret about my writing.

Thank you, Write for Your Lives.

Minoo Jha

· 2y

What are the downsides to a person being a striver?

Hollow victories. I speak from personal experience. Once upon a time there was a girl. She looked around her and decided she needed to be certain things in order to feel worthwhile. “I need to be stylish” she said to herself. “I need to be thin.” “I need to be funny.” “I need to be clever.” “I need to be thrilling.” “I need to be original.” “I need to be successful.” “I need to be rich.” The girl threw herself hither and tither in many different directions in order to be all of these things. She tried many different diets and exercise programs. She read joke books. She studied the dictionary and practiced IQ tests. She thought of clever things to say. She worked hard to improve her skills. She changed jobs and rose up the ladder. She read relationship books and parenting books. She developed her tastes in music and literature and the good things in life. She left no stone unturned. But whatever the girl did, satisfaction and fulfillment was just out of her reach. When she asked herself, “am I stylish enough?” the answer was no. When she asked herself, “am I successful enough?” the answer was no. When she asked herself, “am I rich enough?” the answer was no. When she asked herself, “am I a good enough mother and a good enough spouse?” the answer was no. The girl found that in spite of how far she had come and all she had achieved, there were many things missing from her life. Happiness was missing - she was easily dejected. Fulfillment was missing - her victories felt empty. Self-control was missing - she would lose it at the drop of a hat. Peace was missing - she felt stressed and anxious most of the time. Energy was missing - she didn't have enthusiasm or passion for anything. Security was missing - she felt dread and anxiety when she thought about the future. Above, all she felt trapped in an endless cycle of keeping up - with the job, with the bills, with the house, with being a good mother, a good employee, a good spouse, and above all, her image. Then one day, the girl woke up. She realized she had been borrowing other people's ideas of a worthwhile life. She realized energy, peace, equanimity, self-control and security was what she wanted most and it would not come from pursuing wealth, approval, status or conformity. She realized being at peace and living a harmonious life was more important than being stylish, rich, clever or successful, or fitting in with the crowd. She decided to go her own way. Immediately, a weight was lifted off of her. She was free to do all the things she wanted to do without any false ideal or standard to conform to. She could go to work and focus on doing a good job, not getting ahead. She could have a conversation with people and not worry about whether she was coming across as uninformed or uncultured. She could meet people and not fret about her appearance. She could be who she was and make the decisions she wanted to and not worry about being judged. She could focus on meaning and authenticity rather than impression and image in all her interactions. That girl was me. Do you want to be like that? Raise your hand, if you do. How do you do that? You do that by waking up from trying to be Ms. Perfect living the “perfect life”. Perfection is the enemy of our peace, our equanimity, and our tranquility. If we let it raise its head, it can make us feel miserable about everything we do and all areas of our life. And it will keep our wheels stuck in the sand. If I aimed for perfection every time I sat down to write an article on my blog, it would never get off the ground. I would ask myself - “Is this funny enough?” “Is this clever enough?” “Is this thrilling enough?” “Is this special enough?” “Is this original enough?” “Does it have enough witticisms?” Of course, the answer would be no. I am not good with jokes. My thoughts are rarely original. And I can't come up with a witticism to save my life. So I would spend oodles of time trying to compensate by perfecting a sentence here, or a phrase there. And all I would be doing by that is spinning my wheels, indulging in what Joseph Sestito, author of Write for Your Lives, calls “self-cherishing”. Self-cherishing is focusing on the impression we want to make rather than the ideas we want to communicate. The downside of being a striver is that you can become so focused on striving, you can forget what it is you are striving for. At bottom, what we all want is a worthwhile life. But each of us needs to separately think what that means to us. Because borrowing your idea of a worthwhile life may leave me feeling unfulfilled and empty. And borrowing my idea of a worthwhile life may leave you feeling unfulfilled and empty. If everyone is buying houses, is buying a house essential to a worthwhile life? Only you can answer that for yourself. The answer was no for me. If everyone is buying fancy cars, does it mean buying fancy cars is essential to a worthwhile life? Only you can answer that for yourself. The answer was no for me. If everyone has a partner, does it mean having a partner is essential to a worthwhile life? Only you can answer that for yourself. The answer was no for me. So my advice to strivers is to know what it is you are truly striving for. Craft a personal definition of success

Second unexpected place was my advertising career, and the writing advice I got from reading books by advertising greats such as David Ogilvy, and learning through the experience of being a practicing advertising copywriter, what combination of words and images works, and what doesn’t.

One of the first things to go was my “Shashi Tharoor big words” habit, a habit I thought made me sound stylish, articulate, and well-bred, which I later understood was also related to the Mangalorean Catholic culture, I was born into.

Minoo Jha

· 7y

What are some unique things about your culture?

Hi, You asked, What are some unique things about your culture? I am a Mangalorean Catholic. Mangalorean Catholics pride themselves on their vocabulary and if they have to choose between a big word and a small word, they always choose the big word. I wrote a post on my blog about this. Reprinting it below in full for your amusement. The Mangalorean & The Big Words When my daughter was younger (10 years younger than she is now), she made the observation that Mangaloreans (yours truly included) use extra big words when they speak. So I thought it might be fun to do a “How Would a Mangalorean Say?” post (with a little bit of exaggeration here and there for added flavor). Here goes... Normal Person: My kids play together while I work. Mangalorean: The offspring entertain each other while I attend to my business affairs. Normal Person: Be back soon after changing my clothes. Mangalorean: I will return presently in more suitable attire. Normal Person: Can I say something? Mangalorean: Can I interject with an opinion? Normal Person: Did you see any animals while walking? Mangalorean: Did you encounter any wildlife on your trails? Normal Person: I have to use the bathroom. Mangalorean: I need to utilize the facilities. Normal Person: Can you help me? Mangalorean: Can you provide me with the necessary assistance? Normal Person: I am thinking of visiting India. Mangalorean: I am contemplating a visit to the motherland. Normal Person: I would like to climb Mt Everest one day. Mangalorean: I am desirous of scaling the heights of Mt. Everest. Normal Person: That was a great meal. Mangalorean: That was a gastronomical delight. Normal Person: Can I get back to you? Mangalorean: Can I formulate an appropriate response? P.S. If you know someone (Mangalorean or not) who talks like that and have examples of your own to share, send them on to me for my collection and possible future publishing on my blog...thanks. P.S. After publishing this post, I was afraid to attend an NCMA event. What if they threw "sannas" at me?

I realized this after attending and volunteering at numerous Bay Area events hosted by my community.

A third unexpected place was from learning to meditate.

The book that helped me learn to meditate was a book written by 2 neuroscientists, called How God Changes Your Brain.

This book helped me become a low maintenance person.

In a few months of reading How God Changes Your Brain, and learning to meditate, I also started my blog.

Meditation helped me give up the self absorption and self indulgence, which had blocked the flow of ideas and words for 14 years.

Yes, I got back to writing after a break of 14 years!

Minoo Jha

· 7y

Why does taking a break from learning an activity seemingly make you better when you come back to it?

Hi, Why does taking a break from learning an activity seemingly make you better when you come back to it? It totally does. It apparently has something to do with allowing the subconscious to contribute to the process. Nowhere is this truer than in being able to generate ideas. I know from experience. Read on… Picture Courtesy: EssJay (Flickr) Each one of us is an ideas machine. The combination of our experience, our circumstances, all the things we have seen, heard, read and been exposed to, our unique genetic make-up, our education, our knowledge, and our skills, gives us the potential to produce a unique idea. Actually, to produce an unlimited quantity of unique ideas. Every advertising creative knows this. As idea after idea is rejected for the campaign we are working on, we are able to come up with yet another idea; and then yet another idea - until we arrive at the one idea everyone believes will work – the one which will go to print or production. Every serial inventor or entrepreneur – (Ray Kurzweil, Elon Musk, Reed Hoffman, or any of the other people who have founded multiple companies, or come up with multiple products) knows this. Once you come up with an idea for a second invention or start a second company, you know you have the power to do it again. So if each one of us is an idea-generating machine, why do we get stuck and what will get us unstuck? I thought about this a lot during the 14 years, when I did not and could not write. My first career was in writing. After writing a few freelance pieces for the local newspaper, and one or two magazines (this was back in India), I was discovered by a friend of one of my siblings. She got me my first copywriting job in an ad agency (Thank you Mela). For the rest of time, I was in India, I was a copywriter, and made a living out of writing for the Indian affiliates of J Walter Thompson, Bozell, and Saatchi and Saatchi. I even set up my own creative shop. Then I came to the US. I was not able to break into advertising. So I took up a sales admin job at Palm, and then, by sheer accident, ended up becoming their Commissions Analyst. Whether it was the fact of dealing purely with numbers in my new role, or the stress of raising a young child, I stopped writing. It bothered me. Where had that person gone? I would get an idea for a story or article, and I would pick up a pen. I would write a couple of lines, but the motivation and inspiration would completely dry up. I would stare at the blank paper hopelessly. People would say to me, “Minoo, you used to be so good at writing, you really should get back into writing.” I would nod my head and say “I know,” but inside my head, I would think, “those days are over for me. Maybe my previous career was just luck.” And then it happened. On December 27, 2010, I created a blog on Google Blogger, and published my first post on it. Why after 14 years of not being able to write, was I suddenly able? What had happened? Do you want to guess? The title of this post gives a clue. I had been given the accidental gift of a creative pause. Here’s the story…. I gave up my last full-time employment in June of 2010. I did the Xactly Administrators Course 2 months later, and signed a contract with Solution Partners to join their Xactly Implementation Team. But other than doing an FRD (Functional Requirements Document) for a project which got put on hold, I did not do any other work, and was to remain professionally idle for the next 7 months. I now realize this idleness was the gift of gifts. Because the next thing I knew, I had learned to meditate. Just like that. I read a book (my post Connected Minds tells the story) and followed the meditation technique from the book. I never looked back. Meditation became a daily activity in my life, starting from that time. The next thing I knew, I was blogging. On December 27, 2010, I published my first post 4 Decisions I Wish I Had Made Earlier. Even while writing it, I wondered “Is this a flash in the pan? What if I can’t keep it up?” It felt awkward and clumsy to write after all that time. But the impulse was there and I followed it. This time the inspiration didn’t dry up after the first two lines. And the inspiration didn’t dry up after the first post; or the first few posts; or the first few months; or the first year. Just like with my meditation, I never looked back. Blogging became a regular activity in my life starting from that time. From my experience, I can confidently say we are all idea-generating machines. And the only thing holding us back from being the idea-generating machines we are meant to be, may be a creative pause. In fact, we may need regular creative pauses. Because when we are caught up in the humdrum and buzz of routine life, and all its mundane demands, it’s hard to get the idea machine going. See, ideas are not like horses you can go after with a lasso (John Wayne style). They are just neurons, firing, and lighting up, and colliding against other neurons in your brain. And for whatever reason (another wonder of nature), they need you to relax - go fishing, take a walk in the park (Newton), jump into a shower or a bath-tub (Archimedes), open a hymn book in church (Arthur Fry of Post-it Notes fame). This suggests we should welcome creative pauses in our lives, even intentionally create them. Want to come up with a new business idea? Go on a nature hike. Want to write a book? Seclude yourself in a quiet place with nothing but your thoughts. Want to create something new? Go fishing. Your thoughts are not to be underestimated. Thoughts did not let down all the inventors and entrepreneurs and authors and artists through history. Why would you think they would let you down? So take a walk. Go fishing. Go on a hike. Become unemployed. Go to prison. Get sick. “Minoo, what are you talking about – become unemployed, go to prison, get sick? Have you gone insane?” No, I am serious. Any stretch of completely unstructured time, in which you are alone with your thoughts, can turn on the idea-generating machine. Remember, it was precisely because I was unemployed, and had oodles of time on my hands, the muse came back. I might never have rediscovered my creativity, were I not twiddling my thumbs for 7 straight months. It helped that I had an emergency cushion and lived a simple life. If you have an emergency cushion and can live simply, a spell of unemployment can be just the ticket to get your idea-machine going. Let’s not forget J K Rowling was a single mother on welfare when she wrote the first Harry Potter book. What ideas can be conceived in a prison cell? Anything. After all, you are alone with your thoughts. Chuck Colson, were he alive, would testify. During his 8 month sentence in a federal prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, he came up with the idea for his nationally famous Prison Ministry. I also mention getting sick. Does that sound weird? It is not weird at all. Many famous books and ideas originated in someone’s head when they were on their sick bed. My post The Gift of Time mentions one such. Interestingly, this post you are reading, was written by me from my sickbed. I had a full blown migraine yesterday and had to take to bed. But as I was lying down, resting off the headache, thoughts would come to me, so I would get up, scribble them down, and fall back into bed. I wrote almost 60% of this post from my sickbed yesterday. Could migraines be a gift from the universe? Hmmm… I repeat, any stretch of completely unstructured time, in which you are alone with your thoughts, can turn on the idea-generating machine. So I hope you will welcome these pauses when you get them, and even intentionally create them. Don’t be anything less than the idea-generating powerhouse you were meant to be. Begin the process of regular creative pauses and experience the thrill of continuous creation.

2010 was a year of many remarkable new things for me.

I read How God Changes Your Brain, and learned to meditate that year.

I became a freelancer in my commissions administration field that year.

Before that year ran out, I had started a blog.

2010 was also the year I made a new, lasting, and much treasured friendship.

Here’s how it went down…

I was living in an apartment, and I went to get my mail.

At the mailbox, I ran into another tenant, who I had never met before, and who was also getting her mail.

I noticed she was dressed to go for a walk, and I said to her, “ You look like you are going for a walk.” “Yes, care to join me?” she replied.

“I have to hop onto a meeting on my computer in 15 minutes, so I can’t today, but I would like to join you when you walk next,” I said.

“Sure. I walk every day,” she said, “I go up the hill. What is your name and where do you live?”

My apartment was right in front of the mailboxes, and I pointed it out.

“I will call you from down here, tomorrow, when I am going on my walk”, she said.

I expected this to be a grand promise on which nothing would be delivered, as is sometimes the case, when people make plans to do something with you.

But she kept her word, and sure enough, the next day, I heard a voice calling me from outside my apartment window - “Minoo. Minoo”.

That was the beginning of a walking companionship that continues till this day, and which morphed into a cruising companionship, a going to the movies companionship, a going to the Sphere in Las Vegas to see Wizard of Oz companionship, and so much more.

And 5 years, I started going to Sunday service, with this friend.

And voila….

Going to Sunday service became another new and unexpected source of inspiration for my writing.

I have had before service inspirations, during service inspirations, and after service inspirations.

My friend is an usher, and we go to church 30 minutes before the service starts.

As a result, I am typically, just one of 5 people, in the sanctuary, when we get to church.

The 30 minutes before service, when hardly any of the congregation is around, has proved to be a fertile field for both ideas and thoughts.

I will be sitting, sometimes with a book, and almost whatever the book, ideas and thoughts, worth remembering, cross my mind.

If I have a paper and pen in my bag, I take them out, and write the ideas down.

If I don’t have a pen and paper, I just enter the ideas and thoughts on my iphone Notes app.

Many a blog post has emerged this way - during silent idle time in the church sanctuary.

One was written one 4th of July. It was prompted by someone passing me with a stars and stripes tie.

So many delightful and uncanny things have happened during Sunday service.

Sometimes I will have thoughts and ideas before service, and then, when the pastor gives his sermon, his thoughts and ideas are similar to the thoughts I had just before service started.

Like we have had a telepathic moment.

On occasion, I have published a blog post in the morning, and gone to service to find the pastor’s sermon filled with many of the same thoughts and ideas that were in my post, sometimes, even the same quote, or same references, and metaphors.

For example, on the same day, the pastor gave a sermon in which he made multiple references to the Garden of Eden serpent. I had published a post about a serpent that morning.

I like to think of these as telepathic moments created by being in a meditative field with others.

Shortly after I started meditating, the idea for one of my favorite posts came out of a telepathic moment with a close friend - my 3 Benches post. Read it and you will understand why it qualifies to be one of my favorite writings.

So now you know that church and Sunday service is another one of my unexpected places, to get thoughts and writing ideas from.

I will round off this list of unexpected sources for writing thoughts and ideas, with a fifth and last unexpected source for writing thoughts and ideas - IMDB, the movie site.

It is where I stumbled upon some truly delightful Big Bang Theory conversations between Sheldon and Penny.

I developed my “Find a Penny” series of blog posts, based on those conversations.

So there you have it - 5 unexpected sources of writing advice and inspiration from someone who loves writing, and who has been writing weekly on this blog, starting Dec 27, 2010.

Why might the idea that "life happens outside your comfort zone" not always be the best approach to living a fulfilling life?

One, because you may take unnecessary risks.

Minoo Jha

· 3y

What are the consequences of having too much ambition? How can one tell if they have too much ambition?

Pursuing something just because of vanity. Pursuing something just because of pride. Pursuing something just because you can’t stand for someone else to get something or enjoy something, unless you have the same thing yourself. Pursuing something to the point of burnout. Pursuing something in spite of diminishing marginal returns. Pursuing something purely because of sunk cost. Pursuing something just because you want to prove something to someone (a parent, a spouse, a friend, a sibling) and your ego can’t let go. In ambition, as in everything in life, you should stay on the safe path. Stay on the safe path my friend…

Two, because pride, ego, vanity, and stubbornness, may be involved.

Those things (pride, ego, vanity, stubbornness) can have a shrinking effect on your life.

The goal of life is to expand your life, not shrink it.

When you give in to pride, ego, vanity, stubbornness, or defensiveness, you are likely to make things difficult for yourself, and to lose rather than to gain, in the areas that are impacted.

You can lose relationships.

You can lose money.

You can lose your health.

You can lose your job.

You can lose your reputation.

What's more, other people, such as family members, can suffer losses, because of something you may do, when you let pride, vanity, stubbornness, or defensiveness, get the better of you.

Family members can lose valuable relationships, money, health, job, reputation, privileges, too.

It doesn't take much to create a rift, whether between family members, friends, coworkers, or countries.

Safeguarding your relationships, money, health, and career, involves not just keeping pride, ego, vanity, stubbornness, and defensiveness, out of the way, but also exercising discipline and judgement, resisting temptation, and giving attention to the things that need attention.

If you spend too much time outside your comfort zone, what’s inside your comfort zone might get neglected, and you may not realize the threats to the things inside your comfort zone, including the threats brought on by your own behavior.

What's neglected can be lost.

If you cherish what’s inside your comfort zone (your relationships, your comforting routines, your activities, your assets, the physical and non-physical things you are blessed to have), invest the time, thought, and energy to nurture and protect each of those things.

They should take precedence over all the exciting things, that exist outside your comfort zone.

What are you doing to nurture the things, that are inside your comfort zone, and that you value?

I will leave you with that question today.