[CTQ Smartcast] Personal Value Systems and Lessons in Designing Your Life, With Sheetal Rao

Sheetal Rao is the founder and managing partner at InnoQuest Consulting, she also started the Inspired Living Community in 2020.

In the Smartcast, hosted by CTQ’s co-founder BV Harish Kumar, we spoke about personal value systems and how one can design their own life. We also discussed the role of positivity and how founders can ensure the wellbeing of everyone in their organisation, including themselves.

 
 

Prefer an audio version of the Smartcast? Listen below.

 
 
 

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(Read the shownotes below or skip to the transcript)

SOME OF THE THINGS WE SPOKE ABOUT

  • How can one design their lives?

  • How can one efficiently juggle between multiple projects?

  • How have things changed post Lupus?

  • How does positivity play a role in the long-term growth of a person?

  • Role of habits and hobbies in staying positive

  • How should founders think about the well-being of their employees and themselves?

  • The inspiration behind starting the Inspired Living Community

AND

  • The future relevance of career counselling, business books and live music concerts.

LINKS TO BOOKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SMARTCAST

BOOKS

RESOURCES FOR POSITIVITY

If you enjoyed this Smartcast, you will also like How To Become A Learning Machine? With Tom Vanderbilt

TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE

00:00:00

Harish: Sheetal Rao is the founder and managing partner at InnoQuest Consulting. She's also the founder of the Inspired Living Community. Koushik Krishnan recommended that we should do a CTQ Smartcast with this multifaceted personality. So, we spoke to her first to decide the theme of the conversation. We could have done this on her corporate experience or the most remote first organisation she runs or her music. We eventually decided to speak about her personal value system and lessons in designing your life. Sheetal’s personal life journey of overcoming lupus has been an inspiration. We spoke about the role of positivity in her life and practical tips to become more positive. We also spoke about learning and how founders can ensure the wellbeing of everyone in their organisation, including themselves. So, if you're looking for a story of inspiration and positivity for yourself, or to share with a colleague, or a loved one, you have to listen to this one.

00:01:16

Harish: Welcome Sheetal. Welcome to the CTQ Smartcast.

00:01:19

Sheetal: Thank you so much. It’s such a pleasure to be here actually.

00:01:23

Harish: So, yeah, let's start with the curve ball right upfront? So, what do you know about designing your life that most of us don’t?

00:01:31

Sheetal:  Well, that’s an interesting question, to be honest. I don't think there's anything that I know, which is like pathbreaking per se, but I think I'm a good student of life. So, what I've always believed in is that your life is first created in your mind before it actually becomes a reality. And your thoughts are actually things that become reality and it's nothing to do with things like voodoo or magic. It's all a game of your subconscious mind. So, I think, the experiences that we are blessed with are basically given to us because we are meant to learn something out of faith. And as I said, life is a great teacher, but how most of us end up being bad students. And I think that's where I would say that perhaps I’ve learned my lessons well, and that's how I've designed my life.

00:02:14

Harish: Okay. That's a great answer, Sheetal. You have thrown the question back at me. You've not given a very clear, cut and dry answer. But left the audience thinking about what it is that they have not been doing.

00:02:31

Sheetal: But we are humans, we are born to think, aren’t we?

00:02:36

Harish: Yeah. So just trying to unpack what you've talked about, right. When we talk about the fact that you have designed your life, you know, just looking at your profile, you've been a strategic manager for a number of years, working in various domains. Then started InnoQuest Consulting and the Inspired Living Community. You're also a content publisher, a writer, and a musician. So, tell us about your journey, how do you manage to find time for multiple projects and do justice to each one of them?

00:03:08

Sheetal: Well, you've suddenly made me feel like a juggler to say the least. So, to start with, I have always believed for the fact that, you know, life is not just meant to be lived, but it's meant to be experienced in its entirety. You're supposed to be living deeply passionately and with a lot of impact. And think about it, we are the only species who have been blessed with the ability to think and to choose and to be what we are. And others don't have that privilege. A dog cannot say tomorrow that I want to become a tiger or a doctor for that matter. But you know what? Interestingly, it took me 34 years and a whole lot of life experiences to actually come to understand that. So, I come from a very nomadic background, my dad was in the Army. So that gave me a lot of exposure through my growing up years. And music and art had always been a part of my existence. I was born with music and art ingrained in me. But yeah, life happened. Thereafter, career, marriage and then suddenly a whole host of things. I lost a baby. I got diagnosed with an autoimmune condition called lupus, and then one day I'm rushed to the hospital with a platelet count of 1000. And the doctor tells me on my face that I have just five years to live. And all of a sudden in that moment, career, promotions, changing jobs, having a better car, taking a vacation and all of these things really held no meaning. And I think at that juncture of my life, I really asked myself, is this who I really am? Is this truly my identity? Am I an outcome of the things that I own or the money that I have in my bank? And you get back to those quintessential basic questions. And that's where I think along the way, life really started presenting new opportunities to impact. I started working with a few NGOs. I started doing a lot of community work, pro bono counselling. I had my own journey and I started sharing it with people. And I realised that when you start talking, people sort of connect with you all the more it helps them in their journeys as well. And you open up emotionally. And I think that realisation eventually led me to starting off the Inspired Living Community. But yes, saying that, it took me another couple of years after I started having this realisation, for me to actually decide on putting my job and starting off my own HR consulting firm, which is InnoQuest Consulting, which I run with a close friend of mine who is now my business partner. So we realised that there was a major quality gap when it came to identifying talent and having worked on both sides of the table, decided to leverage our expertise. And we just about completed like seven years of being around. So, I think, what we really take a lot of pride in is that we have about 95% customer retention rate. And it's not about going back to what I was talking about, everybody has just 24 hours. And I think it's a game of choices at every stage of your life. You have to choose as to what you want to fill up your life with. To be honest, I'm a very boring person. I don't watch television. I don't watch web series. I don't enjoy shopping. So thankfully I don't spend a lot of time. So, I think I've made a very conscious choice in terms of what it is that I want to invest my time in. And sometimes I do feel like I'm doing multiple jobs because I run my consulting firm and evening times are the times that I actually spend on running my community. But yes, it does feel very exciting. Yeah, that's all I can say.

00:06:54

Harish: Yeah. That's fantastic Sheetal. I think the one thing that kept appearing repeatedly in what you spoke was that it is a very deliberate choice. When you make these choices in a deliberate manner, it's always a trade-off. You choose to take something and there is something that you are letting go off. As long as you are being deliberate about it, I think that is where happiness and being satisfied with what you are is.

00:07:24

Sheetal: Yeah. You need to be clear about your priorities. That's all that I would say, because at the end of it, we all have the same time and the moment that has gone past, it's not going to come back ever. So, whatever you choose to do in that moment actually defines what your next moment is going to look like. And the same goes for your thought process as well. If you're thinking a negative thought automatically or next thought, it's unlikely that it's going to be a positive one, right?

00:07:50

Harish: Yeah. So, when you compare how your life is, the 24 hours of Sheetal Rao today as against the 24 hours of Sheetal Rao, may be pre-2006, is that the timeframe we are talking about?

00:08:05

Sheetal: Lupus happened in 2008. So, yeah, it's roughly about that timeframe.

00:08:11

Harish: How would you compare that?

00:08:12

Sheetal: Forget about 2008. I would say that I was living that life until I quit my job in 2014, but yes, the good part is that because I was doing these interventions with NGOs. I was basically playing for a band, doing things like that. I'm still kind of filling up my life with a host of other things, which normally you wouldn't do in a corporate scenario. But saying that, I always felt that urge to do something which gave my life a lot more meaning than what I felt at that point of time. I still didn't feel like I was making an impact on people as much as I would have really liked to. So yes, when I made that choice, I knew what I was trading my lifestyle for. Because obviously you're starting with a venture of your own, you're plugging in more hours, but at the same time, you're making less money and all of that holds true, but saying that, are you happier? Because the baseline of every human being is that you need to be happy. You need to be positive. You need to be content with what you're doing. And that's basically what my life journey has been focused on.

00:09:23

Harish: And have there been any points in the last 8-10 years, both pre and post starting InnoQuest, when your personal choices had to be tweaked with respect to your professional choices? Was there any point where things were not in harmony, or you had to make some attempt to get your business partner or vendors or customers to think in a certain way?

00:09:56

Sheetal: I think I should say that I was kind of pretty blessed in that sense. I have a business partner who totally understands my need for doing as many things as possible at the same time and she's completely supportive of that. I think one of the biggest things which comes to you through the journey of entrepreneurship is, sometimes you get so sucked into it, especially through the first couple of years that you realise that you're ending up spending more time than you would have even in a corporate job. And it did come to a point after about two years that I consciously had to take that step back and say that if I'm working, I'm going to be working as much time, because if I'm continuously spending my time just doing consulting, because trust me in an entrepreneurship journey, your work never stops. You can be working round the clock and you would still have as much piled up on you because obviously when you're running a small enterprise, you sometimes are the CEO, you are the Ramu Kaka, you are the IT person. You are like, everything rolled up in one. So, at those times it can get very overwhelming. Plus the fact that you have financial pressures on you as well, because you've spent 14 years of your career getting a salary every month and all of a sudden you realise that every month looks very different from the other. So yes, it did take a lot of getting used to, but now that I look back, I realise that the time when I actually decided to take that pause was possibly the best decision because I know for sure that I was able to build that rigour into my routine. I changed my day cycle completely in that sense. I have always been someone who would sleep late in the night, like 1-1:30 in the night and wake up at 8 or 9 in the morning. And all of a sudden today it's like the other way around. I kind of sleep off by 10:30, 11 o'clock. I wake up at 5:30, 6 only because those morning hours are like my golden hours. That's the time that I get a chance to work on so much more. You have to make a lot of conscious decisions as an entrepreneur, that you do not want to compromise on your family time, you would still want to go meet up with friends because you don't want to lose out on your social circle. So you have to make those little pockets of positivity for yourself, because that's for yourself, that's something that you're doing for your own happiness. That's how important it is.

00:12:22

Harish: Yeah, that's a nice segue to the next question that I had for you, Sheetal. So how, according to you, positivity plays a role in the long-term growth of a person?

00:12:33

Sheetal: Well positivity perhaps is the most crucial pivot for the growth of an individual because essentially positive people are like the happy people. Right? So, mind you, when I talk about positivity, I'm not talking about toxic positivity. It doesn't mean that you went through a terrible situation, and you are trying to be positive. You're giving yourself those false assurances and you're trying to create an aura that everything is fine. Basically, that's toxic positivity, because you are kind of negating what you should genuinely feel. Positivity is mostly about making a conscious choice about how you want to react to a situation. It's about processing whatever is happening and being okay with the fact that things will always not be predictable. I mean imagine we are human beings with say about 70,000 thoughts going off in our heads. If we start holding onto everything, I guess we're going to go crazy by the end of it. Positive people have or lower risk of heart disease. They are able to handle stress a lot better. They have stronger immunity. They're able to manage pain. Their threshold for pain is a lot better than the others. And invariably, they end up living much longer than other people. That's like, I think there are enough reasons to stay positive, right? Besides that, when you basically have a heightened sense of positivity, what also happens is that your attention span gets better. You're more inclusive. You are able to accept diversity. You're willing to take chances. You're willing to take risks and as business owners, a lot of us end up missing opportunities because we are so focused on the negatives, but the minute you stop doing that, you will notice a lot more opportunities coming your way and your brain will start thinking all the more and you will be able to open up newer possibilities as well. I mean, we scientifically call it like cognitive reframing, but yes, you have to think the other way around, you have to look at what is the positive that can come out of that negative situation as well.

00:14:42

Harish: So, to take this to the next level, are there any concrete ways in which you can teach yourself to become more positive, like maybe a gratitude journal or anything like that, which can get you to do it in a concrete way?

00:14:59

Sheetal: There are a whole lot of things, and I cannot negate the importance of self-love at this stage. So, the two important things that I would want to highlight in the positivity journey is basically self-love and gratitude. A lot of people think that self-love is selfish, but you know what? Till the point that you are not happy with yourself, you will never be able to spread that happiness or joy to anybody else around you. You have to fill your vessel first before you give happiness. It's the same, like what happens in an aircraft, right? They usually say that if your aircraft is crashing first, put the oxygen on yourself before you start pushing life or pumping life into somebody else. It's the same with life that you have to first take care of yourself. You've got to make sure that you are on a journey which gives you that contentment before you start thinking about everybody else. And trust me the minute you start doing that, the second part of it automatically takes shape. You give more love, you start exuding it and that kind of passes on. How often have you heard somebody say that, oh my God, this person is like a positive pill! So, you just have to be around this person to be able to get that vibe. And that really comes in from how you treat yourself. Gratitude, I think this pandemic has been like an eye opener for so many people, I would say. I think every morning just waking up to feel alive, to be able to breathe, to have food on your table, to have a bed to sleep in, to have a family that you're surrounded by, which gives you so much love. I mean, trust me, even if you buy a Mercedes tomorrow, I think the joy will stay for like a couple of weeks perhaps, but you would never get bored of the family that is giving you so much love, or the friends, the things that actually are the most precious for your life are free of cost and we don't pay so much attention to it. But I think now we do after the pandemic. Besides that, of course, as you rightly said, a gratitude journal definitely helps. I have one that I maintain, where in fact every day I write at least three things that I'm grateful for from the previous day. Likewise, you also can practice affirmations. Again, it comes off from a concept of law of attraction, which a lot of people consider voodoo. But to be very honest, the law of attraction is nothing, but rewiring your subconscious mind to believe that something that you want will happen and where the subconscious comes into play is, you can actually go ahead and target or focus all your actions on that particular goal that you have. So, while you are writing your affirmations, all that you're doing is telling your subconscious mind, this is what I need to focus on. So even if I'm someone who used to enjoy watching movies a decade back, I would've considered it to be like a waste of time. Today, when I look at my list of things that are my goals or my affirmations or the life that I'm creating, automatically that seems frivolous. So, I don't even get attracted to something which does not add value to my life anymore.

00:18:25

Harish: Right. So, any role of habits and hobbies. Would you consider the part of her life devoted to music as something which has also contributed to this and any other hobbies that also contribute to this whole, you know, being more positive?

00:18:45

Sheetal: Yes. For me, my music has always been like a fallback all along through my journey of life. And when you invest your time doing things which genuinely add joy to your life and think about it when I'm doing music, I don't need company. When I'm sitting in creating a piece of art, I don't need company. I'm just with myself. So finally, at the end of it, all the things that you're talking about end up being a part of your self-love practice itself, right? Because you're focusing on yourself, you're spending it doing things. You know, some people probably enjoy travelling. Some people would enjoy spending time with pets or whatever be to things that genuinely fill up or fuel you as a human being, I think those become an important part of your self-love practice. And great that you pointed out the part about habits, because I think one of my favourite books, which changed my whole perspective, was Atomic Habits by James Clear, I'm sure you would have read it. And I think there are certain things in that book which really stuck to me like glue. Like there was this one part which said that – If you just get better by 1% every day, you'd almost be 36-37% better than what you will by the end of the year. How profound can that be! We don't even pay attention to that 1%. So, for me, transitioning from my evening routine to a morning routine, was that change by the way. So, of course, habits definitely play a very crucial role in the whole process.

00:20:22

Harish: That's the power of compounding that you're talking about.

00:20:26

Sheetal: Yes, absolutely.

00:20:29

Harish: So, in the context of start-ups, how should founders be thinking about the well-being of both themselves and they also have this unenviable position of being able to impact and affect the lives of others working in the fledgling start-up as well, right? So, how should they be thinking about the well-being of people, both for themselves and for people that they're working with?

00:21:01

Sheetal: So as someone running a business, what I will say is that your employees and your customers being happy is like a non-negotiable, especially if you are looking at being profitable. Yes, if you want to be amongst that percentage of people who start off businesses and shut their business in the first three years, I'm afraid this may not apply to you. But statistically it's been proven that, um, you know, one negative experience, it will take you at least 12 positive experiences for you to compensate for it, at least as far as the customer is concerned. And besides that, of course, it plays a huge role in your profit margins as well. Your profitability has been shown to increase by a whopping 25%, if it all, you are able to keep happy customers. Likewise, even as far as your employees are concerned, I think happy employees are shown to be like 13% work productive. And these are just statistics or numbers that I'm throwing across to you. But these are proven by different research which have been done. I think as a business owner or as an entrepreneur, what becomes important is – are you being driven by a purpose? See a lot of people I've come across who would just start off a venture because they're enamoured by the whole idea of entrepreneurship. It doesn't matter whether you're selling Vada Pav or you're probably setting up a venture which is basically a tech firm. But the point is, if you have a strong reason, you know that you will basically deal with everything that it brings along. So when you want happy employees, I think the first thing that you need to do is to make sure that your purpose is percolating down to every employee who works with you. It's like being a parent. You have created an organisation and you are mentally, emotionally aligned with whatever it brings forth for you. Whether it's good times, when you probably have bagged the new customer or bad times, probably you have a zero-bank balance all of a sudden. And these are possibilities. But if your why is very strong, you'll be able to spread it across to your employees as well. So, I think every employee in your organisation needs to be clear about why you are doing and what you're doing. What's the reason behind that organisation's existence? What's the difference that you are actually looking at making to the world around you? Like even for an organisation like mine, to be very honest, you pick a stone, and you throw it and you'll probably find HR consulting firms. So what is it that makes our customers keep coming back to us? What's our differentiator? Now that's something I think everybody within my organisation will be clear about. Are you looking at solving a problem? Okay. Are you doing it because you love doing what you're doing and you're passionate about it? So that bigger picture, if your employees are also clear about and they know how to watch the role that they are playing in your journey, they will suddenly become as involved as you are. The same holds true for. For your customers as well, your customers will be able to see your commitments. Trust me, you cannot pretend to be passionate about something, which your customers will not be able to see through. In effect, if you're committed to being of service to your customers, that field itself gets translated in every action that you do. Are you going the extra mile? Are you kind of making your customer feel, not as like, usually they say right that customers are kings; no customers are not kings, customers are humans! Don’t treat them like organisations. I know for sure that I have conversations with customers, like I'm speaking to a friend, and I think they completely appreciate it. And that's how it is. We don't have anything to sort of retain for, right. They know that it's human on the other side. In fact, I can probably share the personal experience. So, I'm not sure if I shared this with you through our conversations, I have been running or remote setup for the last seven years. We don't have an office. And we take a lot of pride in it because we've been working remotely. We have recruited people from all across the country. You know, our teams are small, but we handpick people for our teams. Because they need to fit in with our culture, with our work, our work ethics and so on and so forth. So, I remember somebody telling me at the start, when we started running this model that, I don't think you should really tell your clients about the fact that you don't have an office. I actually smirked. I said, listen, I don't have an office, not because we can't set up one, but because we don't feel the need to. And it's been seven years now. Of course, in hindsight, I look back and joke that we preempted COVID was coming along. So we didn't. But I think one of our clients is aware. It has never come in the way of our delivery. Our teams are available 24x7 whenever our customers want assistance. We don't compromise on quality and stuff. And I think we've done pretty well for ourselves. We've had 95% customer retention rates. We have repeat customers coming in and I think we couldn't have asked for more. And I think that that in effect is if I would have, if I would have lied to my customer, somewhere I would've carried the guilt within myself, right? So, yeah, that's basically what it is, It is as simple as that.

00:26:44

Harish: Yeah. So, on the remote first approach, I think we are both talking to each other. It's nice speaking to the choir. So I'm seeing a lot of parallels between what you're talking about with respect to designing your individual life, with being very deliberate about designing and how you want to build up a company. The figuring out the purpose of the company, answering your own why and then staying true to that. Percolating it through the company, percolating it through your daily schedule, that is what it boils down to. I don't know if you are seeing it, but I can see these parallels and analogies standing out very starkly.

00:27:44

Sheetal: Absolutely, I am so glad. I keep seeing it all the time. What are organisations? Organisations are just human beings put together under one roof. I mean now, it's not even under one roof. So, we humans have this tendency of complicating things. I think we give it big jargon. We talk about certifications. Finally at the end of it, everything just boils down to what is the human to human connection. How passionate are you about what you do? Are you putting in a hundred percent? So, we say this to our teams and I'm sure you do as well to your teams. For us, we know that, okay, fine. We will work like 9-9.5 hours, but we give up a hundred percent in those nine hours. We don't ask our teams to put in extra hours, unless of course it's an emergency and there is a dire need for it. We prefer not to get them to work on weekends. I think in the last seven years, there's just been like two occasions where we would have probably called them. That was again, as I said, an exception. But everybody knows that in our organisation, if somebody is going on leave means yes, they are on leave. Let them feel like they're on a holiday. Right. These small little things go a long way. Would you want to be disturbed if you're on a holiday, unless it's like an emergency? If you wouldn't want to, why would you expect somebody from your team to be available for you?

00:29:10

Harish: I think that's a simple thumb rule to follow everywhere, right? So, you know, stretching this analogy further, we hear about organisations yearning to be these continuous learning organisations. Is it true for individuals as well? And how should they be thinking about continuous learning?

00:29:38

Sheetal: So, let me just go back to what I just said a little while back. When we see that organisations are committed to learning, aren't we at the end of it, talking about human beings. Yeah. So why would it be any different when you're talking about individuals? Because at the end of it when organisations are growing, we're also talking about individuals growing as well, right? Individuals put themselves through a process of learning. And you always need to bring on board people who are committed to their own growth. And it doesn't matter whether the person is committed to growing in the area in which the person is working. It would be that the person is doing X but is interested in Y and is learning something new. And we, human beings, are wired to learn. That's our natural default context. And if you actually look back in time, you can see how we have evolved over the years. As apes we used to first walk on all fours, then we learnt to walk on two and then we learn to hunt and we learn to make fire, we learned to do agriculture, we learned how to cook and fast forward to today, you will see automobiles, we have technology, we have cinema and so much more. So, if the human being essentially would have stopped learning or saying that, or I do want to learn, I'm happy with what I'm doing right now, I'm sure we wouldn't have seen so much advancement happening. So, if you think that you are someone who's out there to make a difference, you can't afford not to learn for sure.

00:31:04

Harish: And one other aspect that you talked about is how things are changing now, right? So, one aspect that comes to mind is that, in today's age, finding your own voice in the digital world is becoming very important. So how do you build your social capital? How do you build that personal brand of yours? Is it A, important and B if yes, how should people think about it? And this is not just for founders or entrepreneurs. This could be true for everyone. So what’s your take on it?

00:31:46

Sheetal: Okay. So, I have two views on this. The first is that yes, of course. I mean, you have social media, you have technology, right available to you at the click of a mouse button. There are two kinds of people, one who would probably choose to use it to troll or to pass a negative remark on someone so on and so forth. At the same time, you could have people who are probably using it for the right reasons. For some, there may not be any reason for that matter, it could be to stay in touch with my friends. Organisations, I'd probably say that it is non-negotiable. As an organisation, it's imperative that you're out there, you're able to communicate with your target market. You're able to reach out to them. You're able to create a brand value, communicate your vision, your value statement, etc., to the population who is your target market. Where I probably have a little bit of a resentment with the way organisations do it is how it is when it comes to their CSR activities. Because a lot of times I've realised that the CSR activity is more of a tick in the box for most organisations rather than for them to really do it because it resonates with their values per se. But otherwise, of course, being in the digital space, being online, being able to connect with your target audience, irrespective of whether you're a small business owner or if you're running an enterprise or a large organisation becomes non-negotiable. When it comes to individuals, I strongly feel that social media is a very powerful tool. You just have to choose how you want to use it? For example, in my case, I had been counselling people through their life journeys for almost, I think 2012 onwards. But from 2012 until now, when I started with the community between the pandemic and what was the trigger for me to start the community. Basically, I read somewhere that the statistics, as far as depression levels were concerned, were as high as 63% through the pandemic. The question that came to me was if not now, when? And that's when I started, otherwise I'm a very camera-shy person. You would probably laugh at me, if I were to say that, but yes, I procrastinated this plan for a good three years before I could actually get myself to come and face the camera. And the minute I gave it a meaning or a purpose that I wanted to make a difference to people's lives, I think my reason for being present on social media changed completely. So, you can really pick and choose. I know such amazing people who are running their enterprises with a heart and with a soul, which is like ingrained in social media, whether it's about running NGOs. It's such a powerful tool, it just gives you access to the whole world. You're not confined by boundaries anymore. You don't have to go door to door and say that this is what I'm trying to do. I've been able to spread my voice. In the community at the moment, like the last 15 months we have what, 2,300 people at the moment, I don't know, 80% of those 2,300 people, even if I assume the 20% of them are basically my friends. Where is it that I would have gotten that reach, had it not been for the internet, for the social media per se. So, you just have to be very conscious about what's the message that you're conveying. If I go in and put a nasty comment on somebody's post, I'm actually spoiling my reputation, not theirs. Somebody will say that this person is frustrated, probably had a fight with his wife or husband or whosoever. So yeah, that's my take on this,

00:35:36

Harish: Right. Yeah. In fact, had it not been for social media, we wouldn't have known about each other. So, coming to the Inspired Living Community, you spoke about how things change when you actually could, think of the role that it would play in the world, right? What purpose would it serve? And that's what sort of enabled and empowered you to do away with your whole camera-shy nature and you said I'm going to do this. So, tell me more about the Inspired Living Community, how did you get started with it, what are you doing with it and what role does the community play in your life?

00:36:19

Sheetal: So, to say the least, the community kept me sane through the pandemic. So, there is a quick little story to it. I am essentially a very restless person. I constantly have this need to do something. And of course, pre-pandemic, I had a very active social life. I used to kind of get involved in a lot of things and stuff. And all of a sudden with the pandemic, everything just came to a standstill. So the first two months I was actually sitting and I realised that I was actually getting frustrated. I just got into the whole rant that when the pandemic will end. I love these pauses. So, the minute I feel that I'm going out of control or there's something which is not right, you just have to kind of take a pause and take a step back. And if something struck me there, I always would complain that I don't have time for anything more than what I'm doing already. And all of a sudden here, the universe has given me an opportunity to do the things that I've always wanted to do and the time as well, and here I am sitting and complaining about the pandemic coming in and the fact that our lifestyles have changed. I also started thinking, because I always looked at myself as someone who has a very positive view of looking at things. That's been my brand for like a long time. And if somebody who's as positive as I usually am, can go to a situation where I'm suddenly on a rant, I'm not sure what's happening out there. And that's where I seriously started contemplating on starting up this community. So the whole ethos or the purpose of this community is basically to create a safe space where people can feel encouraged, empowered, and inspired. So when that started off, it started off as a place where I would come show up every week and talk about things that I have experienced. It could be journeys, it could be something that I've read or it could be something that I've experienced and shared because I just realised that there's a whole lot of power in storytelling. When you share experiences, journeys, or your learnings, people are able to connect with it a lot more than giving them a whole scripture or a book to read. But one thing led to another. Slowly I started inviting people to come and share their journeys or experiences. And before I knew it, we were having two sessions every week, one of my own and one with a guest coming in and we have shared journeys of grit and determination, we have seen in journeys where people have overcome health issues and come out of it absolutely strong and hosted stories of people who have done some path breaking stuff in the sense who have broken stereotypes, and things which you would probably not even want to talk out in the open, whether it's about emotions and the beauty is that people realise that it's a safe space and they would come and open themselves. Be vulnerable and the community is like a closely knit community at this point in time. And I think just that feeling of bonding, because suddenly I see people from the community have become friends with each other and they're kind of exchanging notes, getting connected on Facebook, meeting up, which is like so beautiful, right? That's what we humans are born to do. Isn't it? I think that's what it is, where it goes next from here. Of course, I understand that Facebook is a relatively smaller platform in that sense. And if I have to kind of pick the message outside and of course I'll have to kind of explore other platforms as well. So yes, the Inspired Living Community will soon be on Clubhouse and on Instagram. And of course, there is a page on Instagram, but I haven't been so active out there, but yes, 2022 definitely is going to be a different story for the Inspired Living Community. The idea is to just impact as many people as we can. That's how it is.

00:40:16

Harish: Great. Any stories that you can quickly narrate from your work in this community?

00:40:24

Sheetal: There are so many of them. I think we have done almost like about 113 stories in one year, so you can pretty much imagine. Of course, every journey has been unique and every journey has been a learning experience because every time that I host somebody in the community, I feel that I go back a lot more evolved than I am. So, two stories, one which resonated with me and the other one possibly was the one that I had been wanting to. One was basically we hosted Vivaan who actually is a trans man. So, he is basically going through a journey where he was born a girl and he's now transitioning into a guy. He's almost there, in fact, recently he released a book as well and I realised that it can be so tough for somebody to be there. I mean, of course I have friends who are a part of the LGBTQ community, but just to have someone come and share their journey and be so open about it. I was so filled with gratitude at that time, to be very honest. And the second, I think I'm going to highlight because it's something which I resonate with. I remember my mother; she was a homemaker for a good part of her life. My father was in the Army, so it'd be two years. We would pack and move across. So, I recall, either she would be a teacher somewhere or else, she would probably take a sabbatical. When she was about 42 or 43, we got her enrolled in a fashion designing college. And she went on not just to complete the course, but she was a topper in her class and her batchmates were all 18-20 years old. I think at that point of time, I talk so proudly about my mother, basically going ahead and doing it. And of course, I'm still very proud of her. She went on to start off a boutique for some time. Now I'm going to be 44 very soon. So given that I know how much hesitation I have even now, when I start off with something new, like say for example, technology turned out to be very intimidating for me. Figuring out especially when I started off with the Inspired Living Community, just to understand the nuances of how to integrate Zoom with Facebook and so on. And that was really the time that I actually realised what it takes for somebody to start a new journey at a stage like this because now I'm exactly at that stage of my life that my mother was many decades back. So we hosted this lady, Anu Mishra. She runs this page on Instagram called Lipstick and the City, and she has a huge, massive fan following. And guess what! She started her journey on Instagram when she was 45 or 46. In a matter of three years, she's one of the top Instagrammers in her space, as far as the fashion space is concerned. So for me, it was very special to talk about it because I really wanted to give people stories where they could realise or understand that it's never too late to do anything. The only limitation that you have is just you, yourself, the limitations that you create for yourself, irrespective of whether you like 60, my father is like 70, he's glued on to online courses most of the time. He's learning something or the other. The drums that you see behind me are his. I mean he joined the class about a year and a half back. So that's how it is. So, these two stories are very close to my heart.

00:44:28

Harish: And how can people join the community?

00:44:34

Sheetal: Yes, it's a Facebook community. That's where we host these stories. I can share the link, but if you just go and search for the Inspired Living Community and you see my face out there, that's the one.

00:44:55

Harish: That’s good. So, coming to the end of this conversation, Sheetal. Any books, people, podcasts that have influenced you, inspired you in your journey?

00:45:07

Sheetal: I am not a movie fan per se. There are probably very few podcasts, but yeah, I can definitely talk about a few, which have really influenced me. I think I have already shared Atomic Habits by James Clear. I absolutely loved reading this book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware. It's basically written by the sleepy Brawny where, she basically interviewed people who are at the fag end of their lives. And they speak about what are the things that really matter at that stage. And I think they're just five things. It's a beautiful book. I love the works of Dr Joe Dispenza. He's written books like Becoming Supernatural and Your are the Placebo. It's a very fine blend of science mixed with, exactly not spirituality, I would say, but I know we are putting it all together to make it easy for people to understand as well. But he's phenomenal. Besides that, a book called Way of The Peaceful Warrior. It's a movie as well. You can actually watch that. A short one, but I think it is very profound in terms of helping people understand their own potential and exploring it.

00:46:30

Harish: And I read somewhere, you also have Dr Seuss books among your favourites.

00:46:33

Sheetal: Oh yes, I do. Simple and beautiful. I think he just kind of magically eases out. It gives you answers to almost every question that you have in your mind. That's pretty good.

00:46:51

Harish: Yeah. And any resources that you would recommend for anyone, interesting to learn more about positivity.

00:46:59

Sheetal: I think positivity is everybody's new baby these days. If everybody has their eyes on talking or positivity. You can just Google it up and you'll find like a zillion resources. There are a couple of sites which are really good, for example, there's a site called the Happy Brain Science. They have a beautiful blog as well. Then you have Action for Happiness, which is nice as well. Some amazing books, I think one of my favourites is a book called The Science of Happiness. It just makes you understand how to understand what really makes a person happy. But I would just want to say that if you want to find the best resource for positivity, what you really need to do is take a pause and look within yourself. I think it really needs to start from there because to the point that you do not commit to yourself, that you're going to change your life, I'm afraid, no matter how many resources you refer to, or how many books you read, how many research reports that you gobble up, I'm afraid nothing's going to help.

00:48:16

Harish: On that note, we have come to the fag end of this conversation, but we're not going to let you go without, your hot takes on certain things, right? So, I'm going to give you some terms or something and I want you to give your hot take on the future relevance of that. So, the first one, what do you think is a future career counselling?

00:48:41

Sheetal: Career counselling will never go out of trend for sure, because as long as you have humans on this planet, you will basically have jobs. And, from what I know of, I think it takes you a good 30 years before you actually realise where you want to be in life. So, I think that's really the right juncture where career counselling actually helps. So, it's not going anywhere for sure.

00:49:02

Harish: And you've also written about career designing. So is that how you see the role of career counselling evolving?

00:49:11

Sheetal: So, I think especially people like us who are actually in the space of careers or in the space of helping people with their careers play a very pivotal role because what happens is that the competition is only getting tougher. There are like as many more people around you who are looking for jobs every year. So, what are those nuances which actually differentiate you from the other person? How is it that you can actually showcase your portfolio better? Because after a while being on a job portal will not find you that job. It's almost like you really have to start treating yourself like a product and brand yourself in the space that you're operating in and who are the best people who can actually help you do that. People who are in that industry itself. So that's where the whole idea of career designing really comes in.

00:50:12

Harish: Thinking about it as being the CEO of you. Next one. What is the future of business books?

00:50:19

Sheetal: As long as you can implement it, perfect. But you really need to be cautious about what books you are digging into because every book will have a different vibe so to say. For example, for me, I quite resonate with this particular book called The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. And very interestingly, the guy has a very radical approach towards how he runs his businesses.  But saying that when I read something, which is a little more heavy-duty than that, somewhere along the way I lose track of it. So, for me, it's that comfort, which is very important. As I said, I'm an avid reader, but I pick what I want to read. I pick and choose what I want to read. And if I do not enjoy what I'm reading, then I just leave it at that.

00:51:23

Harish: Okay. What do you think is the future relevance of live music concerts?

00:51:30

Sheetal: That's a tricky one. It will break my heart, if I were to see that it's not going to happen in the future, or everything will go virtual but trust me as someone who is a diehard fan of live music, I don't think it's ever going away. There is a certain beauty that is attached to people playing live. That level of imperfection, which comes along with it, adds up to a whole beauty or the rawness of it. And I don’t think that live music is going anywhere. It's here to stay for sure.

00:52:16

Harish: You think things are going to change, you know, go into the metaverse or things like that?

00:52:22

Sheetal: That doesn’t have the charm. I don't think it will. That's what I'm saying. As much as I appreciate technology and what it can do and the capabilities that it has, it's a different joy. Personally, I'm choosing my answer here. That's how I would want the future to be. So, I'm creating the future for myself.

00:52:48

Harish: On that note, Sheetal, I think that has been the theme of this entire conversation, right. I mean choosing what you want in your future. So, we will keep it at that. We will not probe into the future of live music concerts. But thanks. This was a fantastic conversation. Really enjoyed it.

00:53:07

Sheetal: My pleasure. I enjoyed it just as much. I hope it helps your audiences well and look forward to having conversation with you.

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