It’s a warm turquoise blue sky day in March the diamond encrusted snow crunching underfoot is the only noise penetrating the crisp silence of these heavenly un-crowded slopes. Suddenly everything makes sense. I always feel an intense connection with life when I am up in the mountains, especially in the winter. It is a connection that always makes me feel intensely grateful, intensely alive, and intensely hopeful. I think this is why have I always refused to give up trying to learn to ski. For a few moments as the lift drags me higher and higher up the mountain, the pure, white uncomplicated snow reminds me that everything however complicated it may seem does make sense. I get this elated feeling until I get to the top that is, when I look down to see my inner demons peering up at me over the edge challenging and goading me.  But this year, I finally get it. After years of trying, I finally get it. I finally believe that I know how to ski. I probably knew how to ski after the first or second lesson, but somehow skiing became inextricably associated with the things in [...]

As I ploughed through self help book after self help book trying to sort the wheat from the chaff on the personal growth shelves, I started to believe that my writing debut would be a book of self help in a minute for busy bankers looking for answers. With his book :59 Seconds, professor Richard Wiseman beat me by a second. The cover title nailed my journey to date in a second. The last few years have been moving from a place of thinking too much (a common trait among those of us with very long thin analytical fingers) and changing very little, to a place of Intuition and as professor Wiseman put it “Think a little; change a lot.” This book, a scientific approach to personal growth, is a one-stop shop of what I think are many of the main topics in the personal development industry, including creativity, relationships, sales (or persuasion as he entitles that chapter), Happiness, Stress, personality, parenting, attraction, motivation and decision making. Perfect for helping those New Years’ resolutions stick, whatever they may be. It is centred, grounded and it is very readable. I had I read it as my first book, [...]

What is it with me and croissants, more specifically the ones at Gails, my local coffee shop? They seem to bring out the addict in me. Or perhaps the “need” I had for a croissant this morning has more to do with the fact I am denying myself something that I enjoy.  So far, I have had a 50/50 success rate living the clean & lean life even though it has only actually been six days. But I am surprisingly happy with my one coffee and fruit salad starts to the day and I didn’t really feel that “giving up” croissants is a hardship. So I was a little surprised with myself when this sunny Saturday morning, I ordered my fruit salad—on James Duigan’s list of things that are better than croissant—but then had a rebellion: the demise of the croissant top (I don’t eat muffins) will have to wait. I felt compelled to sit in the sun and savour the lightest, fluffiest, creamiest croissant. A particularly attractive crispy coated croissant was saying to me at the counter: “I am really delicious, don’t you miss me?” And with that all of a sudden, my willpower went AWOL. It [...]

The more I enjoy my bike, the more I zip back in my mind to the days of when I was fit and healthy. While I am not that unfit or that unhealthy, I have noticed my midriff expanding and I have hit 11 stone, which I have never been in my life. I have also never dieted but I have been severely underweight at least three times. Not through food abuse, but simply Stress, which is why I associate being too thin, with being unhappy and depressed. Now I understand how belief systems operate, I know that this can be changed. Right now I am happy, but that does not take away the fact that something is happening to my body that does not feel right. The expanded bloated feeling around my waist is not a healthy feeling and it is one that I want to get to the bottom of. So I am embarking on Operation Clean & Lean to see if a programme of clean, lean and healthy living is what it takes. I have set up a programme that does not attempt to “lose” weight but creates positive attainable goals by taking [...]

I have never dieted in my life and I am also not a fan of cookery books, preferring to copy recipes I have seen others make. But if I have learned anything in these last few transformative years is that if what one has always done is no longer working it is time to change. I was always of the small portion, lots of exercise brigade and for a long time this worked. I was only ever skinny, if I was depressed, so being slightly rounder immediately meant I was happy. My day to day metric is whether or not I can fit into my clothes. Part of the reason I do not like the idea of dieting is that I have never met anyone who has followed a diet that a) made intuitive sense and b) kept them slim over a sustain period of time. I like to copy successful role models and in the weight loss world no-one I know found a formula that works. As I turned 40 or a year or so later, I realised that I was putting on weight and my waist was expanding. At first I attributed it [...]

I have finally made peace with the colour pink. I think we could even call it the start of a long and loving friendship. Today I wore a deep pink t-shirt to the office that had been bought for the gym. It had never been out in public.  And I even dared to veer from my usual Ferrari red and now sport hot pink toes, Watermelon, I think the nail varnish was called. The idea of wearing pink proudly for a day all started innocently last night as I sat with The Angel sipping cosmopolitans. I happened to wonder out aloud why it was that I was happy to drink pink drinks in public and delight in the pinkness of Jaipur—The Pink City—but never wear anything that remotely resembled the colour of the delicious cosmo or the walls of one of Rajasthan’s most beautiful cities.  In the spirit of facing my dark (pink) side I decided that it could do no harm to try pink on for size for a day. There is after all a very gorgeous chunky pink cashmere sitting unloved in my wardrobe waiting to be worn. If not by me, I know my god-daughter’s [...]

It is Mother’s Day in the UK tomorrow and so today, I was in Bath enjoying the sunshine for a weekend dedicated mum. As we meandered slowly up and down the small boutique filled lanes of this gorgeous town, mum suddenly disappeared. I finally found her again 10 minutes later emerging from a crystal shop with a rose quartz crystal tea light holder that she gave to me as a gift. When I joked that it was the day of The Mother tomorrow and I was supposed to be buying her the presents, she said without hesitation “You can’t be a mother without children, so this is my present to you to say thank you.” As I swallowed the deep wave of emotion, I felt that this little object was right metaphor for what I believe can only be described as unconditional love. I had just been telling mum how I love my adventures into the properties of various Crystals that I am being drawn to; but in that moment I knew very little about the true properties of rose quartz. This was largely because until recently I have had an aversion to anything pink, especially [...]

This week I roared at mum. I roared at people in the office and I have roared at a colleague in the US. Admittedly the latter pushed all my buttons when I was deep on deadline, but that is no excuse to let rip. In the last few years I have learned to leave (over) reacting alone and would have typically ignored his email interference until I had time to reply appropriately, or it became irrelevant. But it was only when I was getting ready to roar at my best friend about her 40th birthday trip I could ill afford after yet more taxes and my recent car breakdown that I realised I needed to stop and take a look at why I was roaring before some real damage was done. When my US colleague told me he had not seen me this stressed in four years, I knew something was out of whack. While I may have a valid reason to be cross, roaring is so unnecessary, even if being half Italian gives me a get out of jail free card. Most of my friends laugh off my moments of hot temper as genetic, but I have to [...]

Biologically, stress causes the release of hormones, typically cortisol and adrenaline in humans, when the body is under threat. Events, such as dangers, exams, divorce, as well as chemicals, such as caffeine, which provoke stress are called stressors.

As I walked to my course this morning, I spotted a car sticker that made me smile. It said: Happiness is being Italian. I am what the Malagasy call a métisse: a half and half. There are many other names that have been used to describe my cappuccino colour, some good, some bad, but all labelling the outside. Who knows, maybe this is why for so long I have rejected the darker half of my heritage?  I am half Indian and half Italian and have spent most of my life in West London refusing to acknowledge quite literally, my dark side. In fact, for a long time when someone asked me which half of me was Italian, I used to answer with irritation “my top half”. I personally don’t think there is anything sinister about it, to me it was always simple: it is hard to feel part of a culture that you are not brought up around. As the product of a single Italian parent I spent at least 13 summers growing up in Italy and the first language I spoke for the first five years of my life was Italian. In 1993, I ran away [...]