Mind, Life & Reflections

by Payal Jain

From birth to death we all go through series of emotions, breakthroughs and transformations that upholds our way of 'being in the world' by means of our perceptions and reflections whittling our mind and soul.

'MIND, LIFE & REFLECTIONS' explore these lessons penetrating the emotions we feel through the perceptions of our mind about the experiences of life and how the same reflect on us shadowing or revealing our true self giving meaning to our existence.

'MIND, LIFE & REFLECTIONS' is a book on self-discovery kindling the thought and lighting fire within. It continuously unleashes the dormant energy within to recognise self-worth and take a step forward, unhindered, and untamed to rise to your full potential while taking you through your own life journey.

“Simplicity of life is in living happy and helping others to live happy. It is there, where joy comes from. Brilliant writing.”
- Manish Sisodia, Deputy Chief Minister Delhi

“Peace of mind, contentment, grace, the inner awareness of simple abundance, remind yourself to be grateful of the simple things. Life journey and the lessons beautifully expressed!”
- Anup Jalota, Singer

“Payal asks the questions we didn't even know could be asked and guides you to find answers within you. This book unravels you and binds you in a better shape. A brilliant read.”
- The Bookoholics

219 pages, Paperback

First published January 4, 2019

Reviews

[Kidliomag · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mind ,Life and reflexion as name suggest book is about balancing our life between heart and mind.beautifully written and narration style is awesome.i like most of the poetry which are beyond good it tells you how a lady give birth of child and nurture with love and blood.
Some lines that i liked most
Spread your wings out,you were meant to be free
Listen carefully your inner voice and heed to the plea
Stop fitting into slots and explore the you unlimited
Removing all labels walking away from Rigid.

[Aparna Preethi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh, man! This book is seriously something. There are very few books which will be quite relatable with you as we read. And poetry is, real rare. But this book has been an exception. Falling under the category of most loved books of mine. Glad I have got a chance to read this.

The poem and prose spread in this book brings out the crisp of life. Each phase of life is penned with deep emotion, with words that will find a pathway to travel down the soul. I have put my heart and mind into the pages and the experience has been overwhelming. From giving birth to the age of realizing the true wealth, from pain to happiness, the collection is all you want to read and dwell. The book has made me feel oddly satisfied.

[Sudarshan Jagtap · Rating 4 out of 5]

As said, in the title and portrayed in the cover of book, the entire book is written about life, peace of mind, grateful things, etc. The book includes poems which covers various topics relating our day to day lives. Language used is simple and easy to understand. One can read this book to find more and more about small things about our lives and rediscover our innerselves.

[Sayan Basak · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE TITLE-

It has been said over the ages that it’s important that what thoughts you are feeding into your mind because your thoughts create your belief and experiences. You have positive thoughts and you have negative ones too. Nurture your mind with positive thoughts: kindness, empathy, compassion, peace, love, joy, humility, generosity, etc. The more you feed your mind with positive thoughts, the more you can attract great things into your life. Progressing into life, Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could. Concluding with reflection, When an incidental colour or a random fragrance takes possession of our imagination, we can unexpectedly blossom into a new entity as it gives us wings and enlightens our horizon, just like canary birds that feel stimulated and start singing as soon as they sense the radiance of the sun through the reflection of the skylight. I feel the title of the book is apt since it amalgamates all the three subsets of life, mind and reflection into a single set called living.

REVIEW OF THE BOOK-

The book beautifully recreates three aspects of living to showcase us the art of surviving. I remember John Lennon once said that there are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. Reconsidering life, there will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. Coming to mind, the plot illustrates yet there are moments when the walls of the mind grow thin; when nothing is unabsorbed, and I could fancy that we might blow so vast a bubble that the sun might set and rise in it and we might take the blue of midday and the black of midnight and be cast off and escape from here and now. There is nothing so disobedient as an undisciplined mind, and there is nothing so obedient as a disciplined mind. The author gives a different perspective of reflection through his book. Water is the most versatile of all elements. It isn't afraid to burn in fire or fade into the sky, it doesn't hesitate to shatter against sharp rocks in rainfall or drown into the dark shroud of the earth. It exists beyond all beginnings and ends. On the surface nothing will shift, but deep in underground silence, water will hide and with soft fingers coax a new channel for itself, until stone gives in and slowly settles around the secret space. Death is water's close companion, and neither of them can be separated from us, for we are made of the versatilitiy of water and the closeness of death. Water doesn't belong to us, be we belong to water: when it has passed through our fingers and pores and bodies, nothing separates us from earth.
To Sum up, I would really like to congratulate the author for describing such an emotional perspective with the soft touch of philosophy. Reflection comes between us and every other person and object in the world. An object or a person can be reflected in so many different ways. Yet the heart of an object or the essence of the heart can never be reflected. All faith and creativity is the hunger to cross over this frontier, it is the desire for pure and total encounter and belonging. Love is an affair between a reflection and its object
You can order the book at
https://www.amazon.in/Mind-Life-Refle...

RATINGS-

Overall I would like to rate the book 42 on a scale of 50.
4 stars out of 5
1. Originality of the plot and sub plots- 9/10
2. Net emotions in the story- 8/10
3. Usage of words and phrases-8/10
4. The title, cover and the illustration-8/10
5. The net impact on the readers- 9/10



Reviewed by-
Sayan Basak
Kolkata

[Shreyan Laha · Rating 4 out of 5]

To begin with the topic, I do not generally review books which are part short stories and part poems and this book showed me where I missed out on, in all these years. Sure, I loved reading a lot of stuff (novels and novellas, strictly) but this book – I must say – is one of its kind! It contains poems, its graphical representations followed by a non-fiction essays, in order. The non-fiction essays are carefully crafted and lets the reader flow through a myriad information tidbits. The fact that the author sticks to the topic with all these information (unlike other books where the author goes on and off topic every now and then) is stupendous. All of these topics, needless to say, are on the premise of mind, life and its reflections upon the same. Some of the nuances were pretty basic (for which I deduct one star!), something which we come across in our day to day lives without pondering upon such subjects while some were informational, loaded with facts that we had never heard of – thought provoking. Last but not the least, the writing style of this book has been stellar!

Flow - 10/10
Rhyming - 9/10
Writing Style - 10/10
Craftsmanship - 7/10
Cover - 8/10

It would have been 44/50 but since Goodreads allows only 5 point stars, 4/5 for me.

[Deepali Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book gives you a positive vibe since the very cover page is full of colours and makes you realise there is so much within one. The title has also been chosen wisely so as to put in a the variety that has been in the book. The book is basically the human anatomy of mind and life broken down into various chapters which begins with a poem , an art piece and then about the topic by the author with various quotes which have been explained. With personal experiences to really relatable topics and places where we go wrong this book is an great read. The book just flows in range of the topics and as well as in the narration too. The poems and art work after every chapter makes you ponder and think quite a lot. It is an overall book with solutions and a friend which will help you. The topics are guilt, regret, love, insecurities, how to get backup and many other things that we go through in the day
A book around positivity taken by a different approach.
Really loved reading it.

[Murali Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surely one of the different novel I had read so far. I've read motivational novels but most of them do suggest their opinion directly but this novel, "Mind, Life & Reflections by Payal Jain", made me to realises on my own over various situations we all come across.

The artwork before each chapter is something an extra advantage for redaers to look after but I would tell the author's narrative is the complete strength which made me stick with the novel until I read the last page. The poems and way of describing through it is something new I felt. Language and vocabularies are simple and lucid.

Overall, Mind, Life & Reflections is completely a new journey and would suggest for everyone to enjoy some uneven and interesting story of different phases of mankind.

[Sourav Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I liked the most about this book, is, it's narrative style. The book contains poems and after that it has its narration. The best part is that every poem and it's description are relatable. From childhood to adulthood every stage, love and all the other things described properly.
The the unique storytelling process made this book more engaging towards the readers.
The cover is really beautiful and eye-catching.
The language is lucid.

[Shalini singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

🦋 'MIND, LIFE & REFLECTIONS' explore these lessons penetrating the emotions we feel through the perceptions of our mind about the experiences of life and how the same reflect on us shadowing or revealing our true self giving meaning to our existence. 
What I found amazing in this book was though it is a self help, it is mildly addictive with some great writing for every age group. People on a path to rediscover themselves should get into the groove. What are you waiting for?

[Manali · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is life a detox for your soul. Me likey!!!