Inspire Someone Today
Inspire Someone Today
E140 | Bet on Yourself | Priyamvada
Join us for a compelling episode where we dive into the intertwined realms of mental health, well-being, and personal development. Discover the transformative power of self-talk and how it shapes our day-to-day experiences. In our engaging discussion with expert Priyamvada, we explore how to turn the tide on negativity and build resilience amid life's little frustrations. By recognizing the role that daily stressors play in our mental health, we outline practical, actionable strategies to foster confidence and well-being. Our conversation emphasizes the importance of nutrition, movement, and self-compassion—key elements in attaining a balanced life.
In this episode, you’ll gain insight into how shifting our mindset and habits can lead us to achieve our goals, both personal and professional. If you're ready to take control of your mental well-being, this episode serves as a motivating reminder that the power of change lies within you. Don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave us a review!
Have you purchased the copy of Inspire Someone Today, yet - Give it a go geni.us/istbook
Available on all podcast platforms, including, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify
Well, I would like to say that, as human beings, it is very, very common that you will start to talk negative to yourself every day. It's bound to happen. One small thing goes wrong in your life and that spirals into something out of control. You know, you have one bad meeting, you're frustrated and then your partner calls you and says listen, the tap is not working at home. And then that adds to the frustration. And then you want to go home and fix the tap. Then you're stuck in traffic and there you go more frustration.
Speaker 1:By the time you come home, you know your kid jumps onto you and he's like, oh my God, you know, daddy or mommy, this is not done and he complains about something. So all you're seeing is that aspect of your life which is not working, and this is very common. This doesn't have to be some very stressful situation, this doesn't have to be out of proportion, but these are everyday, little little things that add on to your negativity, to your frustration, and therefore, the first thing you need to know about stress or about frustration or about negativity, is that you can't avoid it. The more you stress yourself mentally and physically in a good way, right the more you get used to handling physically in a good way right, the more you get used to handling the other stresses that are coming in your life.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Inspire Someone Today podcast, a show where we dive into the stories and insights that has the power to create ripples of inspiration in your life. I'm your host, shrikant, and I'm thrilled to be with you on this journey of inspiration in your life. I am your host, shrikanth, and I am thrilled to be with you on this journey of inspiration. My Inspire Someone Today. Listeners, welcome back on yet another episode of Inspire Someone Today. This is fifth year in a row we are doing something special for Women's Day. We celebrate Women's Day by getting four women inspirers on our show, so we have one such inspirer joining us for this month's Women's Day celebration. And, by the way, the theme of this year's Women's Day is Accelerate Action. And who better can talk about accelerate action than somebody who calls herself, who speaks sweet and has name herself, who speaks sweet and her name stands for, who speaks sweet and lovely words. It's an absolute joy to have Priyamvada on this episode of Inspire Summer today. Priya, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, shrikant, and congratulations on five years. That's massive to keep running something for five years, my God. Congratulations on that, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. So, priya, you have been named as the number one mental well-being coach in Netherlands. Along with that, I see this as a very interesting trifecta of well-being, personal development and growth mindset. So can't wait but to kind of talk to you about all of these elements during our conversation today. First up, I'll start off with this how does well-being play a foundation role in building one's confidence?
Speaker 1:So I would say to that well-being is the foundation for anything, be it confidence, be it doing well in your work life, being doing well in your personal life. It is the foundation, it's the base on which you build everything else. Now, tomorrow, your goal might be to become an athlete. You've heard athletes talking about mental well-being. You hear them all the time say I practice visualization, I have a mental health coach. Tomorrow, your goal is to become climb the corporate ladder, for example. You think you'll be able to do it? If you're not fit, you think you'll be able to handle the workload, the mental workload that comes as you climb the corporate ladder. No, you won't be able to do it.
Speaker 1:Tomorrow, you want to be a fictional writer. You know for you to sit down, for you to focus, for you to put those words out 500,000 words out, day in and day out, to make edits, to go back, to change chapters. You think you'll be able to do that without mental well-being? No, so I am a big advocate of well-being as the foundation for anything you want to do in life, no matter what your goal, no matter which sphere to do in life. No matter what your goal, no matter which sphere personal, professional, your hobbies, your passion. Without you feeling good, without you feeling that confidence, without you being able to tackle the challenges that come with your ambition, you'll not be able to go beyond a certain point.
Speaker 1:And in every, no matter what ambition you pick, right Like I gave you examples of being a writer, climbing the professional ladder, athlete that point will come. That point will come where things will start getting hard. That point will come because that is a point that tests you how much do you actually want this? And at that point, if you get frustrated which you will and then you give up, that's when you stop feeling confident. That's when you stop feeling I can't do this, it's too hard for me. And the more you give up on things, the more you lose confidence, the more you're telling yourself and your brain this is not for you. Remember the last time you tried something and you reached this point and it didn't work out. So why are you doing it again? It's okay. I strongly feel and I strongly say that your well-being is the foundation for anything you want to do in life.
Speaker 2:That's a great start and I have a lot of questions coming out of this. So, opening the comment from you, one piece I would kind of also kind of call out is a lot of this also starts with a lot of self-talk either positive self-talk or negative self-talk. More often than not it is the negative self-talk. Either positive self-talk or negative self-talk. More often than not it is the negative self-talk absolutely you're right, yeah the the where and how of it. How can one kind of overcome that negative self-talk?
Speaker 1:you gave a reason, saying that you try out something, and your mind constantly keeps telling you, reminding you of all the things that didn't go well rather than all the things that went right yes, oh, that is a great question, shrikan, and I think that's a question that is so relevant to the times we live in, where we are constantly bombarded with information and most of that is negative, so it is only obvious that we go into that mindset. Well, I would like to say that, as human beings, it is very, very common that you will start to talk negative to yourself every day. It's bound to happen. One small thing goes wrong in your life and that spirals into something out of control. You know, you have one bad meeting, you're frustrated, and then your partner calls you and says listen, the tap is not working at home, and then that adds to the frustration, and then you want to go home and fix the tab. Then you're stuck in traffic and there you go more frustration. By the time you come home, you know, your kid jumps onto you and he's like oh my god, you know, daddy or mommy, this is not done and he complains about something. So all you're seeing is that aspect of your life which is not working, and this is very common. This doesn't have to be some very stressful situation, this doesn't have to be out of proportion, but these are everyday, little, little things that add on to your negativity, to your frustration, and therefore, the first thing you need to know about stress, or about frustration or about negativity, is that you can't avoid it. It is there. It is going to be there in small ways. In big ways, it's going to be there. The only thing you can do, therefore, is learn how to manage it, learn how to respond to it, and that can differ from person to person.
Speaker 1:The way you respond to stress will be very different from the way I respond to stress, and therefore, you know for people to come out and say do deep breathing, go out for walks, journal, all of this will work. You'll have to pick something that works for you. What is it that works for you? What is it that you're interested in? And I mentioned walks, and I mentioned journaling and I mentioned deep breathing, because all of this seems like things that, more often than not, it sounds like some magic, like some voodoo thing that everybody talks about but nobody is doing, which is where the first thing comes about, which is your self-awareness. What is it that triggers you? What is it that frustrates you? Does your partner frustrate you more than your manager? Does your child's behavior frustrate you more than your job. Does you not being able to accomplish a personal goal like writing a book frustrating you more than something else? What is it that triggers you? Now? This will come. This self-awareness will come if you give yourself moments of stillness, moments of not doing anything, just nothing.
Speaker 1:Because again it goes back to the world we live in, where we are constantly feeding ourselves information. We live in a passive information consumption economy, right? Whether it's social media, whether it's the news you're always reading, you're always scrolling your emails, your WhatsApp. There's constant connectivity externally, but there is no connection internal. So you don't stop, you don't pause. You're always running.
Speaker 1:There's always a mental checklist. I have to wake up at eight in the morning, I have to exercise, I have to go for this meeting, my boss wants the report at 11 o'clock, then at 12 o'clock I have to catch up. You already know mentally what you're doing for the day, what you're doing for the week, and therefore you don't stop. I say take 15 to 20 minutes out every day. It five minutes. If 15 to 20 minutes seem too much and do nothing, sit down in one place and just do nothing. If you want to deep breathe, deep breathe. If you want to verbally write down your. I mean, if you want to just vomit all your thoughts on a piece of paper, do that. If you want to just get away from all the gadgets, walk around the office, if not anywhere else, just take a walk around the office, climb the stairs up and down. If're in a high-rise building, in one of those corporates, get your mind away from things that it's always doing and that will bring about clarity.
Speaker 1:And it is not going to happen overnight. It's not that you do one week of journaling, one week of walking or one week of, let's say, five minutes of stillness every day and you will magically transform into a monk. No, that is not going to happen. This takes time to build. You will have many such aha moments when you give yourself time to sit down and think, because then you're giving your mind time to absorb all the information that you've been feeding it, all the junk that you've been feeding it. Give your mind time to say this is not good for me, this is good for me. This mind time to say this is not good for me, this is good for me, this is junk. This is good information, but not meant for right now. It will start putting information in little buckets and then you will not be overwhelmed and you will not be stressed. You'll have to do this over a period of time I would say at least 90 days to start feeling the effects of it at least 90 days.
Speaker 2:Those are fantastic reminders. There distraction and do nothing yes, do nothing and there is a reason why you have been the number one mental wellness coach. What got you to this point, how did you kind of get into this journey and what has given you those opportunities to rise to the top?
Speaker 1:I would say, going through everything that you described in your question, right, there was a time in my life I would say about 10 years ago where I thought or I felt very strongly that the world is being unfair to me. I am very talented, I'm very hardworking, but I'm not getting those job opportunities. So I'll go out there and hate the world. Look at that person in my class who used to sit in the last bench and how come she got this? How come he got this? Okay, so then I bring in more negativity. I open social media. I scroll through somebody's having a fantastic, instagrammable holiday. I'm like what on earth? How are they making all that money? And I don't have it. There you go more negativity. I do something as I'm talking to a friend and then she talks about you know how? They just thought of buying this new car and then now she has this funky new car. I'm like great, I'm stuck with some 10 year old car.
Speaker 1:So more negative I had become this person who always compared myself to the other person or to others in life. I was always running, I wanted to keep running and I thought that is how you get successful in life, don, and I thought that is how you get successful in life. Don't stop. Keep running, be ambitious, have goals, have lofty goals. Climb the corporate ladder, make lots of money, buy that big house, then buy the bigger house, Then that bigger, bigger car. You can't stop. If you stop, then you fall behind. Is what I grew up with and is what I was doing too, and I was deeply, deeply, deeply unhappy in my life, which I didn't even recognize right. I had many, many days of waking up in the morning and just crying. I had many days of waking up in the morning and thinking I don't like my life, I hate it, I hate what I'm doing and I don't want to be doing this anymore. What's the point in working in Netherlands, like, what's the point in working in this sort of a place? I don't want this money, I don't want this, I don't want anything Right which, externally, all the people would be, you know, applauding for and saying, wow, you are so lucky, you live in the world's most beautiful country, you have this job and you have that. You know, I wasn't feeling any of it and that was, I think, a big, big turning point in my life where I said something's got to change. I don't know what it is. I don't know why I'm like this, but something's got to change.
Speaker 1:And then I read this book, being Supernatural by Dr Joe Dispenza, and he speaks a lot about how you know, everything starts in the mind and whether it's your physical ailments, your mental ailments, it all starts in the head and whatever's in the head translates, you know, physiologically outward in your life. I actually thought it was a bunch of you know whatever, but I said you know, I'm going to give this a shot. If he's talking so much about it, there might be some truth somewhere. I don't know. Let me give this a shot. And I started journaling. I started journaling and I did exactly one minute of journaling every day. Open the book, write three things I'm grateful for. Shut the book, I'm done. That's it. That's how I started Before I knew it.
Speaker 1:I think in about six months time I started writing longer notes. You know this happened at work today. This is what I liked about it. This is what I didn't like about it. And this is showing me that I'm someone who likes this kind of situation and I'm not comfortable with that. How do I deal with this? How do I stop that from triggering me? And all this started happening without me even realizing.
Speaker 1:I changed the way I ate. You know, I had read all along that if you just exercise for one hour, good for you you'll be. I was doing that and I was putting on kilos. How is that happening? Why is it that I'm exercising and still putting on kilos? And then I believed in that age-old theory of once you're 30, your metabolism slows, and all of that. So then I worked on my nutrition. I worked on understanding nutrition, studying nutrition, figuring out different ways of nutrition. I started journaling. I started exercising. I started lifting weights.
Speaker 1:I started saying no to a lot of things at work. I was this person who would work till 12 1 every night, wake up at 4 or 5 again, and anytime people asked me hi, priya, how are you doing? I would say, oh, I'm very busy. You know, I'm flying next month and I have this appointment and I took so much pride in that. I took so much pride in saying I was busy. I wanted to stop saying that.
Speaker 1:So I stopped looking at off. I removed office emails from my phone. I said my company will survive without me. I know that they're a billion dollar corporation. One person will not make any difference to them. I went off the chats, went off the phone, deleted all social media from the phone. My phone is very basic. If you look at it, there'll be no social apps at all whatsoever.
Speaker 1:Shut down your laptop, shut down gadgets at 5 pm. That's it. I'm going to do it. I don't know. I start my work early. I start my work at 8am. I'm very sincere, I'm focused, I work with my phone in the other room but shut down at five, five o'clock to eight o'clock. Spend time with the kids uninterrupted. I was not comfortable with the situation of my kids going ma ma, ma, ma, ma ma all the time and I'm saying, yeah, yeah, one minute more message. No, because I know they're going to come back and behave the same way with me later. So spend time with the kids, get away from gadgets and that's like I said journaling, lifting, walking slowly, slowly, slowly rebuilding my life. To the listeners I can say it took me five years, took it took me a good five years to get that mental toxins out of my head, but I'm in a much better place now. That's how, that's what got me to this.
Speaker 2:For you to kind of advise somebody, you got to do that first, and that is your leading example to say that, okay, while I am kind of telling everybody how to kind of focus on mental well-being, nutrition, all of it, but let me do it on myself first. And was that book a trigger, or did you do something else along the way for you to have this kind of awareness in different facets of your life?
Speaker 1:The book was a starting point, for sure. And then, like I said, all the practices that I still follow. These may seem very small and they may seem insignificant in the larger aspects of life, but this is what will keep you going. So, when I go for walks and when I go for my runs, when I train for my marathons, I don't do it with music, I don't do it with, I don't take my phone along. I say let those thoughts come. However they come, let them come to me. Let me know who I am. Let me feel that pain in my legs. You know, when I'm training for the marathon, let me feel that mental block. Let me I start having conversations with myself. After a point of time, you know, I say okay, I can't do this anymore, my legs are hurting. And so I would say give, which is what I first said. Right, give yourself that stillness, give yourself time away from consuming all the time Lifting.
Speaker 1:What does lifting do to you? It's putting stress on your muscles. It's breaking them and then rebuilding them when you sleep. It rebuilds. That stress, apart from releasing all the good hormones, is also preparing you for more stress in life. That stress is telling you hey, remember, you did that 100 kg deadlift. This is nothing. When I run marathons, when I train for marathons, it's me, it's my mind telling me hey, remember, you crossed that finish line, you crossed that 42 kilometers. You can do this. This office stress is nothing. That kid stress school admission is nothing. The more you stress yourself mentally and physically in a good way, right the more you get used to handling the other stresses that are coming in your life and slowly you will reach a point where any of those things that happen at work or at home you'll say I can handle this. This is not a big deal, because you're doing that every day.
Speaker 1:Last but not the least I would say is what you eat. What you eat largely, largely. You know we all talk about how to improve motivation, how to improve focus, how to improve productivity. Look, there's an Eisenhower matrix, there is this matrix. There is somebody else, something else. Some big business guru has said big talk, eat right, eat right, eat. Eat 30% of your plate veggies, 30% proteins, the rest from carbs.
Speaker 1:As you grow older, you don't need that kind of energy. You are not jumping around like your children all the time, like your toddler all the time, so you don't need that much sugar? What are you going to do with it? You need proteins, you need fiber. The more healthy you eat, the more you feel good about yourself. And then you're focusing because you're not having sugar crashes. And when you're focused, you get more productive. When you get more productive and you accomplish something, you already feel good about yourself. You get more confident, you get more motivated to do things. And they say success begets success. Right, so eat right.
Speaker 1:Stop eating meals from outside. Stop telling yourself all the time I am too busy to cook. No, you're not. That's a lie. You're telling yourself Eat outside. Sure, yeah, do that. That's not, it's not a crime, but 80%, 85% of your meals should be cooked at home. Eat more veggies. Eat, you know, natural food. Eat less processed food. You will start feeling the difference. And that first question you asked about like you know, how do you build confidence? It all comes from these basics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's the center of it. If you want to fix everything around you, eat right. Start with that yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Start with that. You know I'm sure you love. A lot of people love desserts, right, could be a cake or could be ice cream, anything. No matter how much you love it is, you cannot have it beyond a certain amount. Your favorite dessert, whatever it might be, you have a lot of it. How are you going to feel? You're going to feel something's not right. That's exactly what junk food or just exactly what processed food is doing to you over a period of time. You don't realize it because you've now made your body used to it, but once you start eating healthy, you will not be able to go back. You love the focus and energy that comes with eating nutrient-dense food.
Speaker 2:So we focus so much on what it takes or how did you kind of start your journey? What are some of the good practices to do? And in your work, when you interact with a lot many people, one challenge a lot many people have is to kind of understanding well-being and how to prioritize well-being. So what are some of those common challenges that you have seen and what do you recommend people if they're struggling to prioritize?
Speaker 1:I think you answered that question yourself, shrikanth, by saying struggling to prioritize. I see a lot of people put off well-being as something that they will do when they hit a certain point in life. Let me get that promotion and then I will start going to gym. Once I am 35, I'll start eating healthy and now I will going to gym. Once I am 35, I'll start eating healthy and now I will go to gym.
Speaker 1:Or something terrible has to happen in their life, like suddenly they put on weight or they get a report that says your cholesterol is gone up or your blood pressure is gone up. Then it's a wake-up call. That wake-up call your body would have been giving you for good five to seven years. You know you will be tired, you will be sluggish, you'll seven years. You know you will be tired, you'll be sluggish, you'll not be able, you'll be irritated, you will not be able to focus on your work. But you'll ignore all those signs. As my manager is bad Could be. I'm not saying that's not the situation, but you will attribute something external to it instead of you know looking inwards. Exactly so for anyone who's struggling to prioritize, I would say start really, really small, like make it a priority and say I will do this for 21 days, come what may. That's the reason new year resolutions fail, because suddenly people feel that new year is coming. So I'm going to become this new me, I'm going to start going to. You know, I'll be in the gym, I'll work out and that won't last more than three weeks. This is exactly the reason why gyms world over will have 10,000 members but three treadmills, because they know nobody's going to turn up. 10,000 for three is a very different ratio, but nobody's going to turn up to use it right. Start, really, really small. It's exactly how I started training for marathons 42 kilometers, I didn't get up and run that in one day I was panting to run two kilometers.
Speaker 1:When I started training I would do run, walk, run, walk, run, walk. Then it became run more, walk less. Then it became let me do 5k races. I did that for six months. Then I said okay, I'm ready to graduate to 10k races. My first 10k race went horrible. It's like no, no problem, I'll do 20, 10k, more races, you know. Then do the 10k races.
Speaker 1:Nobody is asking you to build Rome in a day. You don't have to. Nothing will happen overnight. Nothing worthwhile will come overnight. So if 30 minutes of exercise is a problem for you, five minutes you can do, right. If anybody can do, fine. If you're telling me you don't have five minutes, then something is terribly, terribly wrong with your life. I refuse to believe that.
Speaker 1:For those who say I don't have time to cook meals at home, I have had such days where I feel, oh my God, I have meetings all day long. Now how do I eat my? You know, I always eat a bowl of veggies before I have my main meal, because the fiber lines up your gut in a good way and then you won't have sugar highs because the carbs that you eat that come from rice or pasta or roti or whatever. The vegetables absorb it for you. So I just cut veggies, I put them in a steamer, they steam for 10 minutes, I add salt and pepper and I have it. I am not looking for a Michelin star fancy salad on my lunch plate every day, but I know I have to eat my veggies right.
Speaker 1:So how you can prioritize is by keeping it very simple. Break it down to the most basic level. It is doable. You can't journal. You don't know how to journal. You don't know how to write. No problem, you can think of three things that went nice for you today. Put that down in any piece of paper anywhere, Like one, before you sleep. You're scrolling your phone. With that phone, take one piece of paper. Uh, I had a great meeting with my manager. I had a good conversation with my mom. I don't know I got my nails painted today and my nails look pretty done. How long did it take you? 30 seconds, so lack of time is always a lie. It's always a lie if you do small, small things and once you start feeling the good effects of it, you will automatically gravitate to doing more of it. Start small is is my yes is my mantra start one wonderful.
Speaker 2:And playing all of these cases, you had a very heightened level of self-awareness. You were kind of working towards some of these elements, and many of our listeners listening to this conversation are corporate athletes, as I would want to say. Right. So from that standpoint, how can workplaces and leaders support mental well-being in a professional setup, in the lack of self-awareness, what can we do in organizations, or what can leaders do in organizations to create some sense of mental well-being awareness?
Speaker 1:Sure musicians, to create some sense of mental well-being awareness, sure? Well, for that I would say. You know, it's great to give your employees gym memberships and access to all these apps, but if you're going to put them in in with the wrong kind of workload, then none of that really makes any sense. For prioritizing employee well-beings, I think empathy is really, really important, very important to understand things from the other person's perspective. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:I was once leading a team of eight people, and eight people with very diverse, different backgrounds and age groups. Somebody is a 45-year-old woman, somebody is a 55-year-old man, somebody is an immigrant, somebody is a 25 year old college kid who just graduated and doesn't know what to do with life. So they all come with different goals, they all come with different ambitions, but my job as a leader is to unite them to one goal. I can't say you all do whatever you want to do, because my company has given me one goal, my team has one specific goal, goal and everybody has to be aligned with that, and therefore it becomes very important for me to treat them as individuals with individual problems. Maybe the 55 year old man is worried about sending his kids to college. How is he going to finance that? The 25 year old person is nursing a heartbreak from a girlfriend, right? Very different problems. Now I can't say forget all of it. Focus on work. When I do one-on-ones or when managers do one-on-ones, make sure that not all one-on-ones are about companies and goals and results and kpis. Discover the human behind that, behind the, the person delivering the results. Right, uh, so shrikant. Uh, what was your goal? Why did you? Why is your sales? Why are your sales numbers not up? You were supposed to do three million. You're still at two and a half million. This is not acceptable. You know you should put in more efforts. I see you talking on the phone. No, she can't. Is going to feel like my manager doesn't know anything. You know she can't. Is going to be more demotivated to not do things. Hey, she can't. What's happening? How's life? Hey, I. I remember you telling me you were going to take your parents on a pilgrimage last month. How did that go? Where did you go? Or really, how did that happen? Or that must have been.
Speaker 1:Connect to the person, connect to the human being, because everybody is first a human. Then they become directors, vice presidents, ceos or whatever they become. Understand that, understand their motivations, understand their goals, because we all work in the same way and that is what's in it for me, not what's in it for you. What happens in workplaces is everything is driven from. This is important for the company, this is important for the organization, this is important for the team. Nobody says what's important for you.
Speaker 1:Check with your team. Hey, where do you want to be? What do you want to do? Do you want to grow in this role? Are you looking at opportunities in another role? How do I support you? What are the tools I can give you? If somebody tells you you know, I am happy where I am and I encountered this a lot in my life. I don't want to grow, I want to be a senior manager and I'm comfortable here. So how do you support that person? Somebody says, hey, I want to be a VP in like 45 years. How do you support that person? Understand the human being behind every person. Forget their designations. That is a title. It doesn't tell you anything about who they are. That's the easiest. That's the best way to support well-being at a workplace.
Speaker 2:That's a fantastic way to to support start with the human and then everything else will follow from there on yes yes, wonderful, so close the interval with this, and you are a big proponent of personal development. I'll just pick one element of this is this lifelong learner, which is always kind of associated with personal development. Yes, what are your favorite ways of learning? What are your favorite ways of learning and growing?
Speaker 1:My favorite ways of learning and growing is doing something that I would have told myself five years ago that I'll do, but I haven't gotten to it yet. There'll always be some aspect of my life like that. For example, I would say for a long time it was I'm going to learn how to play the guitar. And then when I was in college it was once I get a job, I learn how to play the guitar. Then I got a job. It became, you know, once I get to this position and learn how to play the guitar. Then I got to the position I had kids and then it became once the kids grow up, I learn the guitar. And then I finally realized three years ago that that has become a moving goal. So only two either I want to learn the guitar or I don't want to learn the guitar. I'm fooling myself by saying you know that I'm going to learn the guitar. So I found a guitar teacher. I said I'm learning the guitar, that's it. Here's the thing. My son also learns with me and he's so much better at learning. That's also because he's very good at grasping what the teacher is saying. I'll admit I'm a little slow, but that's the thing about learning. It humbles you. A. B. It keeps your brain fresh. C it tells you you can't be good at everything. So it kind of chops your ego, which is really really good for mental health, which is also good for self-awareness. You realize, the more you know, more you realize, the more you don't know. So it's like that. So I pick things that I have been putting off and I work on it. So, be it learning the guitar, be it learning a new language right now.
Speaker 1:So I spent two years going to a Dutch school because I live in the Netherlands, so I learned how to write. I learned how to read, but my spoken how to read, but my spoken Dutch is terrible, it's terrible. So now I am practicing that everywhere I go with everybody, no matter how horrible I sound. The moment I speak a few Dutch words, the Dutch automatically say, ah, okay, english for you, and they switch. But I'm like no, no, no, dutch for me. You're going to speak to me in Dutch and I'm going to speak to you in Dutch for me. You're going to speak to me in Dutch. I'm going to speak to you in Dutch. Keep your brain fresh.
Speaker 1:I find reading is good, but I also find it very passive. It's like consuming social media You're scrolling, information is coming to you, but you're not acting on it. It's the same thing with reading you keep reading, but if you don't do anything then it becomes passive consumption. So I try to go out there and I try to. You know, I try to learn things that have always interested me. Anything. It could be creative, it could be professional.
Speaker 1:Last year I spent time learning how to be a UI designer. I took a short course on it. I was very frustrated. I was like this is not me. I cannot be so detail-oriented. This is really really annoying me, but that's what my brain needed. My brain needed to be made uncomfortable in ways that it was not used to. I'm used to the Excel spreadsheets, you know, but I'm not used to this design element. So my brain was saying what nonsense, stop doing this. But I was like no, no, no, it's just a short course. Like you know, it's just a six month thing. Try it, learn it, have fun while doing it. So that's my mantra.
Speaker 2:Definitely there are elements where you have been experimenting quite a lot of things, quite a lot of things, yes, and the question that I have for you is how do I identify the right source of information, right source of resources For what you go for books, for what you go for college, for what you go for mentors? So is there any trick behind it as to how to identify resources? Like, for example, you mentioned about nutrition? I'm sure you have done tons of research about it. How do you go about identifying the right resources for some of these life-long learning processes?
Speaker 1:I say the right resources depends on what gives you the joy of learning. Are you the kind of person who likes to speak to people, have mentors and soak in their knowledge and their experience? Are you the kind of person who likes to go attend an offline class and draw energy from people around in the class? Are you an introvert who prefers to learn but likes to go attend offline class and draw energy from people around in the class? Are you an introvert who prefers to learn but likes to do it at your own pace online, without anyone else looking at what you're doing? It depends on what suits you. It depends on how you like to learn. We all have different ways of learning, right? There are extroverts who draw energy from socializing from other people, so they do a lot of networking events offline. There are introverts who don't like that very much, but they don't mind one conversation here and there. So pick something based on what you enjoy.
Speaker 1:For me, like I said, it has to be something new. It has to be something that makes me very uncomfortable, because I know I have gotten comfortable. I know I need to break that. I need to get out of that mold of feeling good about myself. Start anything, but do it in a way that brings you joy when you're learning it. Just because someone said you know, I went to this pottery class, I met somebody over there and I started da-da-da, doesn't mean it'll suit you, doesn't mean you will enjoy going to a pottery class, but it is possible that you will enjoy how to learn painting through an offline course on udemy or something. So pick something that suits your way of learning.
Speaker 2:That's the easiest way to do it pick your learning style and pick your source of learning. Yes, yes. So winding up this particular segment of well-being and mental health and personal development, one element is, I'm sure, to your journey, you had your share of challenges, your share of setbacks. Is there anything that you would want to highlight? What were some of them and how did you overcome them?
Speaker 1:So I think for me, setbacks was I wouldn't really call it setback, but the challenge was the dichotomy that I faced between who I was and who I want to be, Because I grew up with the notion of what success looks like. I grew up with the notion of what a good girl is or what a good woman is, and I was doing things, or I wanted to do things that would not really break it but that would contradict it. So to take a break from corporate career would mean I have to pause or I have to stop. But my definition of success, or what I grew up learning, said that I have to keep going, that I have to get to that position and be earning that kind of money. So my biggest challenge was, I think, to break that, to break the learning that I had to learn something new, to form my own opinion and to know that it's also okay. It is not wrong, because, as somebody who's grown up in a very traditional South Indian household, my biggest challenge was to not stick to the definition of what I've learned.
Speaker 1:Even today, a lot of people in my family are against me running marathons because it comes with A who's going to take care of kids. B you're ruining your health by running so much. C it's bad for your knees, especially because you're a woman, you should not do it. D if you have so much time, why don't you just sit at home, which maybe 15 years ago all would have made absolute sense to me.
Speaker 1:10 years ago, I was at a point saying, wait, but I want to run. So is it really bad for my knees? Um, I want to do this, but does that make me a bad mom? So that conflict, that internal conflict that I had to overcome, I think, was my biggest challenge. And then, once I got to the other side, I could see that there's nothing wrong with it, that I could run a marathon and continue to be a great mom. I think I'm a fantastic mom, that I could run marathons and somehow my knees are fine. That's what I don't want to jinx it. I have a lot of races this year. So that, I think, was my biggest challenge to be or not to be and that is the question to be or not to be.
Speaker 2:I think through that you have given a very wonderful concept for all of our listeners and myself to kind of take is for anything you want to do, you always start off with a very confused state of mind yeah and you try to change that. You tend to become a rebel or you are perceived to be a rebel yes and when you kind of get to that point, you're at peace.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely yes, yes there is one piece that kept coming to my mind as you were talking about. Some of this stuff was one of the guests on earlier episode. He made this reference. He says in a rat race, even if you were to come first, you're still a rat yes, absolutely yeah the first of the part of the question. Priya coming to you is three habits that are non-negotiable for your well-being eating right, eating nutrients, dense food, as I would like to call it.
Speaker 1:Working out or movement in some of the other form, and having movements of stillness every day incorporated into my life.
Speaker 2:Good start. Three women who you look up for inspiration.
Speaker 1:I would say Catherine Graham, the former editor of Washington Post, Simon Biles, the US gymnast, and the Williams sisters.
Speaker 2:Great going super. Three actions everyone should take to prioritize themselves.
Speaker 1:Know that, even when you say no, that the world still revolves around the sun and is only going to have 24 days and nothing is going to change. So, delegate, learn to say no and ask yourself is this action going to make me or the ones in the immediate circle of my life happy? If not, it's not worth it.
Speaker 2:Four questions there, three micro experiments to build consistent habits.
Speaker 1:Micro experiments, I would say habit stacking. For sure, attach one habit you want to build to the other habit Start. Really, really tiny Human beings get a huge dopamine hit when they see themselves taking off a task. So make a calendar and start striking off on the days that you finish the task. At the end of 30 days, when you see that you've done it all, or even at the end of 10 days, when you see you've done it all, it gives you a major kick. So those three things, I would say yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, here we are with the last of the part of the round question. Priya, what are three projects that is there in your horizon that you would want to do, or three things on your bucket list?
Speaker 1:Bucket list. I want to run a marathon in the Antarctica. I want to finish a marathon in all other five continents of this planet. This year I'm doing Australia, next year I'm going to do South America and then maybe after that I'm going to run a do Antarctica. So that's definitely on my bucket list. Then I have to write a book. Then I have to write a book. I want to write a book with all my experiences I have a summary of it and I'm in talks with a lot of agents with all my experience about being a South Asian woman and still breaking that mold and doing different things. I feel even if one person can be inspired from that, it'll be great for me. Those are two definite projects on my list. At the moment I am not having, I'm not working towards the third one fair enough.
Speaker 2:okay, that's curtains on the path of the round moving along. At the beginning, we said that we are celebrating Women's Day on our platform all of this month and the theme is accelerate action. If we were to call out basis your experience you have experienced working with a lot of retail brands If you were to kind of share your learnings and memories of working in those retail brands with an element of accelerate action, what is?
Speaker 2:that accelerate action that you is, that accelerate action that you would want to kind of share with me and my listeners.
Speaker 1:I would definitely put make your work visible on top of the list, and by that I don't mean, you know, hold the megaphone and blow your own trumpet, but if there are opportunities, or create opportunities where you can talk about the work that you've done, not just within your team but also outside your team, because, for example, I would say, let's say, somebody in your team is facing a certain problem and you have a solution to that, or you have faced that problem before and therefore you have a solution to that, don't wait for your manager or for the leader to step in and say why don't you do this, why don't you try that? Say, hey, she can't, for lack of a better example. I, you know, I faced this last week and this is how I tackle the problem. I've documented it and I have saved it in this folder. I could share it with you and when I use the solution, these were the results I got. So when you speak about it in your team meeting in a room full of you know, your team or your manager, you're letting everybody know in a way that you're somebody who's solution oriented. You know you're somebody who came across a problem and didn't run to your manager, but you did it, you solved it and you now even have results to show for it.
Speaker 1:Talk about your work as much as possible. Make yourself as visible as possible. If there is, go to another team. Let's say you're in marketing. Go to design, for example, or go to something unrelated and tell the team lead over there. I want to do a 20 minute talk on effects of marketing, on something you know, and I just want to have an interaction with your team. I just want it to be for 15 minutes. We could do it casually, over coffee.
Speaker 1:Let people know how much you know. Don't wait for opportunities to come knocking to you. Don't sit back and say I'm going to do the hard work, I'm going to let my hard work do all the talking. Unless you're in a startup, wherein you're in a small room and there are 10 people and everybody can see what everybody's doing. If you're in large organizations, there are thousands and thousands of employees. Put yourself out there. Don't say no to yourself before someone else says no to you. At the most, what can happen? People are going to say I've already done that, or people are going to say, no, it's not going to work, or people will say, hey, that's a great idea. You never know unless you share so definite, definite mantra to grow would be make yourself visible.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's a powerful rally cry there. Make yourself visible. Close on heels of that. It's not about visibility, but this is something that has seen a lot in the corporate world. This impacts both the male colleagues and female colleagues, but more so the female colleagues. This is the thing around burnout. Burnout is so common, especially for women balancing careers between home careers and families yeah what are some of those early signs and any tips on how women can proactively manage this?
Speaker 1:you know, at the beginning I spoke about taking care of yourself. I think that holds true for everyone, especially for women, because and I say especially for women because I've grown up in a generation where it was glorified for women to do it all for women to. You know, you have to. Of course, working was not such a big deal then, but then it became oh, you have to work, but you also have to take care of the kids. Pick a job where you are not required to travel. It's okay if your partner travels. Pick a job that's light on your day. It's okay if your partner has a heavy day. So when you grow up with these kinds of conditionings and you have to break them all, you automatically think you're doing something wrong. But I would say, especially for women don't have more than three to four priorities a day after you do your well-being, or once you have those well-being set in your calendars, like 30 minutes exercise, eating right and blah, blah, blah don't have more than three or four priorities per day, because if you have more than that, then you really won't be able to do it all. Second, stop believing in the notion that you can do it all, because you cannot do it all. Nobody can do it all, and least of all you. It's okay if somebody on Instagram has the perfect house. It's okay if somebody's kids come with absolute gorgeous looking meals in their lunchbox. It's okay if there is a mother who's organizing every community event in school, it's fine. Maybe it's not. You Pick those three things that you are. Pick those three things that bring you joy, and forget about the rest.
Speaker 1:If you're the kind of mother who gets great joy in playing a sport with your kid, do that. They will value it. You will spend time with them. They will like you. You're not going to be that screaming mother who's all the time stressed it works for everyone. If you're the kind of mother who's not into baking, don't bake. Don't bake to make somebody else happy. You're to be stressed. You're going to take that frustration out on somebody else and the cookies will turn out bad. So nobody is winning at the end of the day. So believe that you can't do it all. Prioritize, definitely, definitely well-being. Start with well-being, build everything from there.
Speaker 2:And folks. This is coming from lived experiences. This is not somebody talking from the rooftop with the world. This is lived experiences.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So what's next for Priya? How is 2025 stacked up for Priya?
Speaker 1:I wish I could share my goals publicly, but I think 2025 is looking good. I'm excited. I do this exercise every year where, at the beginning of the year, I write a letter to the future self of me at the end of the year saying, hey, congratulations, you know you did all of this. And I write the feelings that come with having accomplished that goal and I read it on December 31st.
Speaker 2:That's really interesting.
Speaker 1:Yes, to see how far I've come and I think'll prove 95% of my goals. Since 2020. I've been able to achieve 95% of them, so I'm very, very excited. The year has just started. Maybe on December 31st we can talk again and I can open that letter for you, but I'm quite excited about what this year, about my goals for this year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe you can give a sneak to you of the 2024 letter.
Speaker 1:Yes, I didn't know that would be asked. But sure, next time we catch up I'll give you a sneak peek into my letter.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. Yeah, this has been a good conversation, fun conversation. Thank you so much for sharing all of those insights. This show is all about creating ripples of inspiration. Before we sign off, what's your Inspire Someone Today message for all of our listeners.
Speaker 1:Bet on yourself.
Speaker 2:Couldn't have been a better message than that folks Bet on yourself, because nobody else will but you. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Inspire Someone Today. This is Srikant, your host, signing off. Until next time, continue to carry the ripples of inspiration, stay inspired, keep spreading the light.
