01Feb 2018 by aryask@gmail.com

Friends are fuel

gratitude, mindfulness, patience, self-awareness
Recently, I’ve found myself in a bind with my work-life situation in China. Without going into details, I’ll say that it’s been tough, like dragging my soul around. Difficult to wake up in the winter mornings. Then as I'm keeping afloat during the day, my heart would reignite into joy and drown the despair. It’s been a series of ups and downs and I've set hope aside for now. Hope and expectation have fueled the roller coaster. Some say there are greater forces at play and some say it's just a part of growing up. Whatever it is, I've kept a steady habit of stepping back and just being grateful. My friends have been enormously helpful with their pleasant words and gestures. Without friends, my NowHere project would just be…
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16Nov 2017 by aryask@gmail.com

Inside out: 4 ways to lead positive change with self-awareness

mindfulness, purpose, self-awareness, storytelling
Getting past speech impediment and low self-esteem didn’t happen overnight. As a teenager, I remember listening to the radio feeling puzzled by how people could enunciate words so well and be so easy and confident. How was their voice so clear and mine so muffled? The root of the struggle was that I held too many distractions and so I would easily get overwhelmed, and lengthy episodes of depression followed. By quieting the mind through meditation, I learned to give up buggy beliefs and things began to clear up. A friend told me, "when we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change." It was a good look in the mirror and poetry was an outlet for me. It's where I found my voice. I no…
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07Sep 2017 by aryask@gmail.com
Without a head

Without a head

empathy, mindfulness, self-awareness
The first night I fell with a high fever, vomiting through trembling teeth. My head was caved in from the high altitude I could feel death looming in and out of my veins. The next morning, I stayed in bed while the others wandered the town. I was extremely glad to have a comfortable bed with the hostel manager looking after me. He was lighthearted and I didn’t have the energy to say much. His Chinese name translated to “without a head”. His WeChat id had the tagline “always stay naive.” It was Spring and the three of us had taken a 13hour bus ride to Seda for a taste of Tibetan culture. Seda, also known as Sertar, is a Tibetan county west of Sichuan in China. At nearly 4,000…
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01May 2017 by aryask@gmail.com

Meeting rage with vitality

empathy, mindfulness, patience
Henry is in his alpha state of vitality and has been crushing it all morning. He's feeling good and focused. He gets into his car and slowly backs out of the driveway. He can’t see the incoming cars so he goes extra slow. A white van passes. He brakes, and slowly begins again. A second car comes and gives Henry a fury honk, quite lengthy and pointless really. Henry gently brakes and turns to look at the driver and it was a dumb cunt. Just as rage swells up, Henry’s alpha is still near and offers a vision of empathy. With a slight turn of awareness, he steps outside of himself and sees through the eyes of the girl thinking, “Maybe she thinks I was trying to get in her way. What’s in her way?…
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03Apr 2017 by aryask@gmail.com

14 ways to treasure time

mindfulness
Life is busy, continuously commanding attention from all sides. Amid the fierce conditions of work and life in general, how can one maintain a steady flow toward a simple aim and not be “too busy” to treasure time? How can we learn to not overcrowd our attention with unessential things? Learning to take a break is invaluable to add more joy and focus. Things can be overwhelming at times but things are also manageable with a mindful break routine. Taking a break doesn’t degrade your work ethic. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Bill Gates talks time, “You control your time and just sitting and thinking may be a much higher priority than a normal CEO might realize. It’s not a proxy of your seriousness that you haven’t filled every…
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