Ask Soniya

  My Motivation Is Not Your Motivation Have you ever looked at someone and wondered, “How can they remain so motivated?” And then, quietly, you questioned yourself… “Why does this goal not excite me the way it excites everyone else?” Perhaps there is nothing wrong with you. Perhaps the answer is simply this: My motivation is not your motivation. We are all moved by different things. For someone, it is money. For another, it is fame. For some, it is love, respect, freedom or security. And for someone else, the biggest motivation may be proving to themselves that they can still do it. There is no single motivation that works for everyone. What makes one person wake up with excitement may mean absolutely nothing to another. That does not make either of them wrong. It simply makes them human. Motivation Changes as We Change What motivates me today may not motivate you. But there is another truth we often forget: What motivated me ten years ago may not motivate me today either. We keep ...

  Micro-Habits Over Extreme Routines: Small Steps Still Count Have you ever watched someone’s “perfect morning routine” and felt tired before the video even ended? Wake up at 5 a.m. Drink warm lemon water. Meditate for thirty minutes. Exercise for an hour. Take a cold shower. Read twenty pages. Prepare a healthy breakfast. Write in a gratitude journal. All this before the rest of the family wakes up! Such routines may work beautifully for some people. But for many of us—especially women already balancing children, work, household responsibilities and everyone else’s needs—they can become one more standard we feel guilty for not meeting. We are not always lacking discipline. Sometimes, we are simply exhausted. When Self-Improvement Becomes Another Pressure We begin a new routine with excitement. We buy a planner, download an app and promise ourselves that this time we will remain consistent. For two or three days, we follow everything perfectly. Then real life happens. A child falls...

  Gender Conditioning: Why Is a Woman Still Expected to Do It All? There is a scene repeated in countless homes every evening. A husband and wife return from work. Both are tired. Both have spent the day meeting deadlines, answering calls, solving problems and carrying responsibilities. Perhaps they even earn the same salary and hold equally demanding positions. But the moment they enter the house, equality quietly ends at the door. He changes his clothes, settles onto the sofa and turns on the television. She changes her clothes and walks straight into the kitchen. Before she has even had a glass of water, someone asks: “What is there for dinner?” No one asks whether she needs to sit down. No one wonders who will make her a cup of tea. Why? Because somewhere along the way, we decided that earning money may be a shared responsibility, but running a home is still a woman’s job. The Lessons We Never Realised We Were Teaching Gender conditioning does not suddenly begin after marriage...

  When Education Becomes Screen Time: Are We Protecting Our Children’s Future? A few days ago, I was reading news about schools reconsidering the amount of time young children spend on Chromebooks and other digital devices. It immediately made me pause. Our children wake up, get ready for school and enter classrooms where lessons, worksheets, reading exercises, assessments and even creative activities may now happen on a screen. They return home with online homework. After completing it, many relax by watching television, playing games or using a phone. We keep warning parents to control screen time—but what happens when screen time becomes compulsory in the name of education? How can a parent say, “Enough screen for today,” when the homework is waiting on a Chromebook? The world is beginning to ask questions This concern is not limited to one family, one school or one country. In September 2026, news from Virginia in the United States reported that some school districts were reduc...

I Matter Too Before you read this, I would request you to read my previous blog on generational trauma: Can We Unlearn What We Learnt from Our Mothers and Grandmothers? This post is not a separate conversation. It is the voice that rises after we finally recognise what generations of women have been silently carrying. We girls are introduced to forgetting ourselves so early that, after a while, it no longer feels like sacrifice. It feels normal. We watch the women before us eat after everyone else, rest after everyone else and think about themselves only after every other need in the house has been fulfilled. We learn to adjust before we even understand what adjustment means. We learn to lower our voices, swallow our disappointment and smile at decisions in which nobody thought it necessary to include us. And slowly, quietly, we become women who take a back seat in our own lives. The Invisible Training Begins Early A girl is often praised for being obedient, accommodating and mature b...

  Can We Unlearn What We Learned From Our Mothers and Grandmothers? “Don’t answer back.” “Learn to adjust.” “Keep the family together.” “Good women don’t complain.” “Think about what people will say.” Most women have heard some version of these sentences while growing up. Sometimes they were spoken gently. Sometimes they came as warnings. And sometimes no one needed to say them at all—we learned them simply by watching the women around us. We watched our mothers eat after everyone else had finished. We watched our grandmothers forgive without receiving an apology. We watched women hide their exhaustion, silence their anger and continue serving people who rarely stopped to ask, “But how are you?” Slowly, sacrifice became our definition of love. Silence became our definition of strength. And abandoning ourselves became our definition of being a “good woman.” But can we unlearn what we learned from our mothers and grandmothers? I believe we can. The harder question is: Are we ready to...