To view this newsletter in the browser, click here                 Issue #122       A newsletter from Creativegarh to help you live a life of passion, purpose and meaning.         Life is not a journey of outgrowing others.                     It's a pilgrimage of outgrowing yourself.           As much as we are conditioned for one-upmanship—being better than the best, always coming first, never settling for second best, achieving success at any cost, slaying the competition, burying the detractors, wiping out the naysayers, and proving it to your critics—life is not a journey of outgrowing others. It's a pilgrimage of outgrowing yourself.           You outgrow your own conditioning and the patterns it brings forth in your life. The only way to change a pattern is to respond differently—not just once, but every time, until you build a new habit and your new response becomes the default answer. However, in the process, be very aware that this new response should not become yet another code of conditioning that stops the flow of life and the new experiences it brings.           You outgrow your own healing and choose to walk the path that calls out to you at that moment in time, knowing well that healing is not a destination but a journey of becoming who you were before you were told who you should be.           You have to outgrow the trails you have taken in the past. At times, you must move out of the shadows and allow the light to show you a new detour; sometimes, you have to stick to the narrow trails, waiting to take the demons by surprise.           You must outgrow all the masks you wear—each one of them. The masks that keep you safe, the ones that earn you love, the ones that give you a sense of belonging, the ones that help you manipulate your way into cold hearts, and the ones that allow you to sulk so you can be held and heard. You need to remove them and burn them all.           You have to outgrow your fears: the fear of being cast in someone else's mould, of living dreams dreamt for you by others, of losing yourself in the search for validation, of living someone else’s truth, of being forced to buy into the ideas the world is selling—even when you know you do not need them; the fear of losing your playfulness in the seriousness of life thrust upon you; the fear of being the villain in someone else's story; and the fear of being left out in the cold because you missed the bus that everyone was hoping onto.           Outgrow your desires, outgrow the outcomes, outgrow the need to become.                 Turn everyday sacred rituals into your resistance busters.                     Resistance is an obsessive, obnoxious, oppressive demon, using you against you with only one raison d'etre - to keep you in your comfort zone, to protect your self-image, to keep you surviving, not thriving. And its cunning, conniving games are what dull, mundane stories of victimised lives are made of, told year after year on dinner tables that have also taken on the energy of regret and have lost their willingness to serve with delight.           But when you, the oppressed, become the oppressor, resistance packs its tail under its legs and grudgingly scurries off to kill someone else's spirit. At least for the time being.           There's only one way to overcome resistance - to show up. And showing up also can be done in two ways. One is by jumping out of bed, blowing the war horn and inflicting a death blow on resistance by not letting it win. It works on most days but requires every ounce of effort, every single minute.           The second way is rather soft, poetic, romantic and death to the resistance through slow poison. It's about showing up and turning it into a series of rituals.           Turn the simple act of waking up in the morning into a sacred ritual - a gratitude prayer, two minutes of anulom vilom, and a flying kiss to yourself in the bathroom mirror. Make your ritual of morning journaling sacred. Switch on the light, sit on the couch with your feet tucked under the throw, sharpen your pencil, open the journal, run your hand over the blank page, feel the texture, put pencil to paper. Make the simple process of writing so sacred with little rituals that it becomes your offering to the divine.           Turn making your cup of tea into a sacred art form. Notice the bubbles as the water boils, take in the smell as the pestle massages the ginger in the mortar into submission and allows it to live its purpose. Be present to the tea leaves in the pot as you stir every ounce of flavour out of it. As the cup touches your lips, make it a beautiful ritual to thank the leaf, the farmer, the factory worker, the lorry driver, the cloud of rain - everyone and everything that has made the sip a reality.           Make watching the sunrise instead of a reel a ritual. Make tending to the plants in the balcony a ritual. Make doing the dishes a ritual. Make driving to work a ritual. Make listening to the podcast in the car a ritual. Make greeting your colleagues a ritual. Make making a deck a ritual. Make your ideas a ritual. Make taking your ideas to the world a ritual. Break down one ritual into many small ones - call them ritualings.           Little ritualings shred the confidence of resistance to bits. They bring resistance to its knees. Because if there is one thing that resistance can't stand is discipline - consciously showing up with presence in everything in life.           And little habits help you create big lives. An unreasonable life is thousands of reasonable baby steps. Make all thousand a ritual so that they become new little, conscious acts of discipline.       Our upcoming retreats                         CG Teens, Mumbai Registrations Open 21st to 22nd December     This non-residential 2-day retreat is designed to help teenagers reconnect with their authenticity and inner guidance system to create a joyful life.   More details     Reignite conversation     Kasauli Registrations Open 4th to 10th January     The stunning vistas and holistic experiences at Kasauli create the perfect space for self-discovery, and ensure this retreat is a transformative and unforgettable experience!   More details     Reignite conversation     Andretta Registrations Open 16th to 22th March     To reconnect to your inner child at a beautiful hillside retreat with 14+ soulful individuals will make this a life-transforming experience. See you at Andretta!   More details     Reignite conversation           This week, let's revisit     Kasauli March 2023                         Experience a life full of purpose                     The purpose of my life is to create a sensory experience by curating food.   Smita Roy Sakleshpur August, 2022         My purpose in life is to create & amplify infinite impact through the power of storytelling.   Raagul Ram Nainital May, 2022               For a daily dose of Creativegarh and our retreats, follow us here:                           Nirali Manchanda         Kausar Sultana         Tanya Bhattacharya               View Our Collabs for Joy                   creativegarh.com             You are receiving this newsletter because either you have subscribed to it through our website, interacted with us by filling an invite form or because you have asked us to put you on the database. If you would not like to receive any more newsletters from us, please click here to unsubscribe.