Take me to the ocean and put me on a beach….

I’m in love with the tropics! There’s something about the tropical air that undoes me. I’m basically a gypsy at heart and the tropical weather is perfect for me. True, it’s too hot…too humid…too sticky but the lifestyle it provides…fantastic! Gorgeous sunsets….open verandas…limitless ocean…vast sky…and a sense of loss of all time and space!

Sunset at Arambol beach, Goa

Just BEING in the tropics makes me feel so content as if I’m home and it has always been my home, as long as I can remember. While, it wasn’t until the ripe age of 25 that I first set my foot in Mumbai, it immediately resonated with me in that it was both noisy and quiet, fast and slow, tranquil and aggravating, abundantly rich and shockingly poor, pampering and disturbing all at the same time!

But what I love the most about the tropics is the weather. As a girl who’s always suffered from seasonal depression and grew up hating the northern winters, the warmth of the tropics is relieving and comforting. No matter if it’s raining, cloudy or sunny, the temperature remains nice and warm! And the glow, the humid air gives to your skin is surreal.

Then there’s something special and calming about the sound of the sea lapping at the shoreline. The vibe at the beach is always so chilled out, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in Bangkok, Goa, the Caribbean or the Central America – it’s all the same. Things move at an ultra laid-back pace and no one seems to be in a hurry for anything. There is happiness all around and life feels relaxed and stress-free.

Even though, I’m a workaholic through and through, the stress and pace of last two months had me completely clamoring for an escape. So while a long family holiday looked unrealistic, Manish and me relented and accepted an invitation to visit Goa for a ‘three-day personal and professional development event’ called the LifePlugin Summit held at Riva Beach Resort – a luxury resort nestled in one of the quieter and peaceful beaches of Goa – Mandrem. And boy, that was the best decision!

A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you’ve been taking. ~Earl Wilson

So true!

I just so love, love the train journey!

All packed and ready, early in the morning we raced to the Station to board the Morning Shatabdi Express at 7:00 AM. By 11:30 PM, we had reached New Delhi Railway Station and from there we embarked on the Aero Metro to finish the rest of the journey to the Domestic Airport for our flight scheduled at 4:30 PM to Goa.

There’s something so overwhelmingly comforting about coffee and waiting at the airports!

There’s so much coffee in the world but too little time to savor it all in!!

We finally landed our destination at 6:30 PM, just about 12 hours starting from the beginning of our journey in the morning – so it took us about one full day to reach our hotel in the night at 9:00 PM! The tropical vibe was evident right from the Dabolim airport and all through the cab ride to our Hotel at Mandrem beach.

Riva Beach Resort, Mandrem: Venue for the summit

Not just in the physical surroundings, but in the way of living too – life at the tropics couldn’t be further off than our quick paced workaholic life in the city! The long travel hours had us craving for a rich meal and we satiated our appetites with a hearty and healthy dinner prepared by the hotel chefs. But the main attraction of the dinner was the carrot ginger soup that the chef made fresh right before us and it elevated our entire meal experience!

Carrot-ginger soup

The next morning had us all excited and assembled at the right time for the summit to experience a journey of self-exploration and purpose. After registrations we were each given a sheet of paper with a couple of questions to be answered. All those answered sheets were then collected, shuffled, and compiled again with similar sounding answers from various participants. We were then asked to find our teams on the basis of these curated answers.

Met some of the coolest, most passionate and epic people on the planet:

Tribe: Met some of the coolest, most passionate, epic people on the planet!

It was really amazing to learn how to actually hack your life to exploit its full potential and achieve stuff you never deemed possible before and all this in way of creative team activities, powerful & playful workshops and brutally honest talks!

Pumped up from the talks and eager to drink in more newer experiences in life, Saturday night had us casino hopping at a lively offshore casino – Deltin Royale located at Noah’s Ark on Dayanand Bandodkar Road in Panjim city – roughly an hour drive from our place and we covered all this distance on the bike all through darkness packed strange roads in the night – cheap thrill! (not recommended though!)

It was my first time dining & playing in a casino and I was surprised how stimulating it was! We spent the whole night eating & drinking, drinking & gaming, gaming & eating, losing & winning, winning & losing with no sense of time and space. The whole experience was surreal. My two key takeaways from the visit: 1.) In a casino, there is no such thing as time! 2.) Losing money is as easy as winning money.

On the whole, it was a fun experience. I can’t even remember how many wins and losses we made through the night. All the secret tips on how to win collected from both the seasoned players and Google failed us in real time gaming. While, we couldn’t make any monetary gain and finally lost all money in the end, we treasure the fact we have a night’s worth of stories to tell and moments to remember, making it the whole deal a priceless experience!

Now as I lay back home resting in my bed, enveloped in the colors of my family and work life, I see the color of my experiences in Goa fading away and dulled, minute by minute and day by day. Have I actually brought anything back home with me? While, the suitcase and the luggage is the same, what has returned through the Arrivals gate is a very different person indeed!

My anxieties and stresses have been cleansed, I feel purged, restored and fully charged to take on the world with a new vigor and vibe. Even though, I’m happy to be back home with my kids and family, I feel that sometimes in life you actually need to unplug, slow down and then hold yourself up taking a stock of your circumstances to feel fully charged and plug-in the life again.

And for me nothing can undone me like a trip to the beach. Thanks LifePlugin for few of the most wonderful days of my life. My six key take-offs from the event:

1. You are not alone. There are others who think and feel the same way as you. And the best way to remain happy and motivated is to be with your tribe.
2. The power of a morning routine to kick start your day and ultimately your life can never be overemphasized.
3. To really achieve your goals and realize your true potential you have to get out of your comfort zone and deliberately do things that make you uncomfortable.
4. We operate on an autopilot mode more often than we think. Most decisions of our life are taken on this autopilot mode. No wonder, we get the same results every time, no matter how differently we do or approach something.
5. The mind-body connection stuff is real! Meaning what we think, feel, and believe can actually affect our bodies for the positive or the negative. In other words, our minds can affect how healthy our bodies are.
6. And finally, one of the most overlooked superpowers in life is the power of belief. Simply by changing your beliefs you can change anything and everything in your life.

Few more clicks from the trip and summit:

Manish and me chilling at the beach

For all those who don’t know about or are interested to know about LifePlugin, here’s a brief:

LifePlugin Summit is an invite-only, curated community of exceptional people who come together every year to explore key topics in personal transformation through techniques of “LIFE DESIGN”

Our philosophy is simple; powerful learning & Aha moments come when we immerse ourselves in a specific environment with like-minded people, stir some emotions, have a lot of fun and create lasting memories.

If you are someone who takes great interest in your personal development and professional development, this is a greater opportunity to meet like minded people who are entrepreneurs, experts, artists, leaders, innovators, people who can’t be put in a box and together have a blast in Goa.