VYSHNAVI: I found meditation to be really helpful while I was going through this phase of not being very productive. And meditation was not something that I had to learn or– it wasn’t my first time practicing meditation here. I had done it before, and I have been doing it since I was a kid back at home.

The thing is I never stuck with it or I never found time to get it in my schedule in my day. And my parents keep telling me that if you say you don’t have time to meditate, that is when you actually need to meditate. And so I decided to give that a shot. I mean, it wasn’t very long. It was just 10 minutes or 15 minutes a day. And that was really helpful to me.

So when I meditate, it basically clears up my head. I do have a lot of thoughts coming in and– it’s just like so many thoughts. But I just take a backseat and try not to pursue them or act upon them, which is nice. So I basically observe them from a third-person point of view. OK, so this is going on in my head. OK, that’s fine. It’s good to notice the different thoughts and not act upon them or not pursue them.

That way, you just see what’s going on, but it’s not going to affect you in any way. You kind of stay detached from those thoughts, which is nice. And that did help me get a better perspective, like a different– a shift in my perspective about what is more important or– OK this is not something worth getting stressed about.

I mean, these are just thoughts, and they’re going to go away. If it’s a sad thought that I had– which I had when I was not being very productive– I just take a backseat while I’m meditating, and I observe. And I’m like, yeah, it’s just a sad thought. I guess it’s going to go away. So that doesn’t define me. It’s just a thought. And if I give it more time or if I not think about it, then it’s going to go away eventually.