‘Count Your Blessings. Always.’

Puja GOSWAMI-KULKARNI responds to ThinkWellness360 questionnaire.

Your view on beauty?

Beauty, I’ve always reckoned, is a bespoke expression that each of us carries in their heart, mind and soul. It’s expressed, also perceived, not just in the humdrum of our daily lives, but also through the clarity of our actions. It celebrates details, not frills alone — the whole, not just the sum of the parts. Beauty is innate to everyday living — of what you may come across and express with a good thought, or simple smile. Beauty is not skin deep. It is the essence of our soul-deep radiance — it does not just shine, but it also gives you a feeling and/or a sense of vibration at different frequencies. The love you feel for the people around you, or meet every day; the strangers that elicit a smile, for no reason. They all add up cumulatively to making you to stop and stare and feel enriched with those little, happy moments that you’d hold onto during tough times — while appreciating the simple abundance of life, not just things.

Your ‘take’ on fitness?

Fitness is a holistic, balanced approach to living well and staying well — it could be yoga, weight training, especially for women to keeping their bone health at its optimal level, or a simple walk in nature that ‘jazzes-up’ your heartbeat, albeit gently, while revving-up your mind to music. When you combine this natural facet with a well-balanced diet, giving no room to extremes, or fads, while enjoying every season’s bounty, along with good thoughts, ideas and interactions, it helps you to sleep well. A good night’s sleep, as we all know, is therapeutic — it also ‘ups’ your wellness quotient and keeps illness at bay.

Your view of health and wellness? 

It’s imperative for us all to focus on our mind-body’s all-round development with life skills at every step of the way. Maintaining a good, receptive attitude to evolving every day, while being humble, grateful, and accepting of others, whatever their position in life, more so in our ever-changing world, will help us, no less, to get through turbulent times — as it happened during the COVID-19 ‘horribilis.’

Your ‘take’ on work-life balance?

We spend just too much time with work, especially during our youthful years, thinking that this is our life, although it isn’t true. You need to give ample thought to good self-care — although this is a concept I learned a ‘tad late’ in life. Also, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, as the famed cliché goes, ought not to be one’s motto. I have absorbed the significance of small things, the stories we make, or tell, and the people that you need the most. I’m truly blessed and grateful for it and more.

Your mantra to beat stress?

Eat, love, breathe, pray, and laugh without a count — the good things will return to you manifold. Believe in yourself; also, the greater force behind you. On a bad day, I just latch on to a few positive quotes, music, and voila — they always cheer me up. That it’s all going to be fine. My ikigai, the motivating force, is my family I was born into and the family I chose — including my beautiful friends. I count my blessings every day and they return to me in surplus profusion. I am, as yet, I firmly believe, ‘work in progress’ and I’m happy with the label, or what I see, also do. This is my secret, nay simple, tenet to beating stress, or nipping it in its bud, as it were.

PUJA GOSWAMI-KULKARNI is a finance management professional with several successful businesses to her credit. She’s always challenged stereotypes, what with the so-called ‘devil’ in the details. Aside from her over two decades of experience, across many facets of products and services encompassing various industries, where her passion for ‘perfection’ remains unchanged, Puja is also the founder-partner at BigSwitch India, a renewable energy company keyed to returning the planet back to our children. She juggles, as she puts it, a happy marriage, while raising her twins — two boys who are sometimes just ‘three-much’ to handle. She lives in Mumbai, India.