Yashodhara Lal's Blog

Late at night: 

 'I'm never playing tennis again - I fell sick after that game in the sun two weeks ago,' I announced to Vijay. 'My yoga mentor said I'm a Pitta personality and the sun just boils my system. Sorry, but you'll just have to play with Shirish and the others..' 

'Okay,' agreed Vijay, unperturbed.

'Because it's a little hard on the knees too,' I overexplain, miffed that he won't miss playing with me. 'As a yoga student and teacher, I have to think about sustainability. I don't want to in...

 'Are you sure?' Vijay said. 'Just for one day - flying in the morning and then back late night? It will get really hectic for you.' 

'I'm sure!' I said, 'It's Sanjay's FIRST poetry reading ever.' Sanjay is a very dear friend, who lives in Hyderabad.  'I want to be able to surprise him. I'll just show up and be like...SURPRISE! It will be wonderful.' 

'Alright then,' Vijay said, sounding amused.

'Yeah.' I said, 'Besides,  Peanut is coming too!' 

'Really? ...but she has exams!' 

'Oh, that's okay. She ...

One of the things that I am pretty clear about is that my children will not grow up as confused and mystified about sex as I was when I was a kid. 

Back in the day, as many of us will perhaps recall, the way to handle difficult but necessary conversations about puberty, growing up, sex, etc was to deliberately and studiously ignore them. Cannot blame anyone for it, it was just how the times were. But things are different these days.

'Wow.' Peanut's voice was dripping with sarcasm, one evening a co...

'It's storming!' my ten-year old son Pickle shouted from the balcony.

'Mom!' his twin Papad piped up hopefully, 'Can we go outside?'

I peered out. There was a strong whistling wind, and the rain had started to come down hard. I bit my lip, feeling my own child-like impulse to run out and play with my children. And then, a combination of intuition and sense came together and I said firmly 'Maybe after a while, it looks like it's going to be a bad storm.'

The twins groaned and Papad muttered bad-natu...

(This article was originally published by SAJTA, the South Asian Journal of Transactional Analysts, in July 2020. This is my first article to the journal and I'm thrilled to have had it published. Hopefully there will be more in my journey into the fascinating world of psychotherapy).
Abstract

The Permission Wheel, developed in the 1980s by Gysa Jaoui, is a visual representation of the various limits and permissions in a person’s life. This article seeks to explore the tool, its potency, and the p...

(Crossposted from my coaching blog allsomeness.in)


In the last year, the word 'Integrity' has become extremely important to me. Broadly defined as the consistency between what you say and what you do. It is really surprising that what seems like a basic value is the most broken when it comes to everyday living, as I learnt for myself when I began to see how often I actually said one thing and did another.
'I'll call you tomorrow' being the most common little lie, just as an example.
Trying to live...

(Crossposted from Allsomeness.in - yes, I've launched my coaching venture, check it out!)
Last week, I was invited to hold a session on Wellbeing for a creative organization- we had over a 150 people attend, and it ended up being really productive and even a lot of fun. The founder was personally keen on equipping the entire team with some tools for coping with the current situation – speaking to their Culture team, we discussed how everyone seems to be under stress - with adjusting to working fr...

1. Virtual classes for 3 children. They're great and result in a lot of learning. 

Papad (Indignant): 'You won't believe what the kids in my class keep doing while teacher is teaching! Someone has a dog in their lap! Someone is eating popcorn during storytime! Someone...'
Me : didn't I see YOU eating popcorn?
Papad (casually) : ya, that one was me.


Pickle (Sighing) : 'Such a tough day. We learned SO much stuff.'
Me : what did you learn?
Pickle : I learned a lot about - what's that - oh ya...

Last month, I quit. I quit not just my job - I quit my corporate career.

I have seventeen years in that world, and have been through a range of great organizations - from Unilever ( yes, the 'CEO factory'), Hindustan Times Media Limited, Micromax, Genpact, Dyson, Yum Brands, Micromax. Genpact was the only non-marketing stint I had, leading CSR and Gender diversity - before I went back into the marketing game for the last three years.

I turned forty last month, and just feel so ready to move on....

Dear Lord, has it been almost a year since I updated this thing?

Jeez. I guess I've had a lot going on.

Oh, who am I kidding. I'm just busy with work, and then updating silly things on Facebook these days. It's like something I read in Deep Work by Cal Newport, about a guy who said he could be writing 10,000 emails in a year that didn't eventually matter, or end up with a bestselling novel. Ironically, I couldn't deep enough into Deep Work. Must try and finish it...tomorrow!

Okay, but speaking o...