Most New Year's resolutions are quite mundane—lose weight, quit smoking, better job, smoother relationship, etc. However, there are people who look beyond the ordinary. And one of them is the Bandra-based Khushboo Thakker, a therapist and counsellor, who has decided on a path less travelled.
She has planned a 30-day gratitude challenge on Facebook and WhatsApp. Starting from January 1, she will pick one thing to be grateful about everyday with her 85 clients. They will exchange daily exercises, images and words of gratitude. The topics will be chosen by everybody involved.
"We will begin the new year by thanking our parents. We always find something to complain about, and when we make resolutions, we wait for things to happen. By showing gratitude, we are being grateful for what we have. We should be thankful for every small thing that goes right, instead of focusing on the 100 things that go wrong," said 31-year-old Thakker, who added that in her six-year-old career, she had seen many miracles through gratitude.
She said she would personally start the challenge by thanking the year 2014.
In 2015, Pooja Dewoolkar, 21, will learn the local language of Dang district in Gujarat. In Lacchakadi, a tribal village in south Gujarat for her one-year rural fellowship programme, Dewoolkar is trying to create means of alternative livelihood for the local bamboo artisans.
"I have been here for four months now and both the locals and I face communication problems. Dangi language is a mixture of Konkani, Marathi and Gujarati, and though I speak Marathi, I cannot understand most of what they say. So, I decided that if I have to go ahead with completing my goal I will have to learn the language. The students at a local school whom I teach English have agreed to teach me their language in return," she said.
Nishchay, a 29-year-old media professional, who has been single since the last four months, too has a different kind of plan for 2015. He wants to date a woman of some other nationality. "It'll be a different experience. I can learn about a different culture and lifestyle," he said.
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