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Women In Wellness: Shikha Rastogi of Loving Our Fears Podcast On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing

An Interview With Candice Georgiadis

Positive thinking could become a trap — Because of the power of internet, so many of us have come to understand that positive thinking is the fix for all our troubles. As I started down my own path, I remember I would force myself to think positive. And even though having a positive mindset is always helpful, however, make sure you are not using positivity to run away from feeling your negative feelings.

As a part of my series about women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Shikha Rastogi.

Shikha Rastogi is a Master Certified Life Coach who specializes in Self-Love coaching. She is also the host of Loving Our Fears Podcast. Her mission is to empower Empaths, Highly Sensitive People (HSP), and women through Self-Love so that they can finally step into their own power to transform lives beginning with their own.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?

Sure. My sibling and I were raised in India in a two-parent household. My mother was a homemaker and father worked outside of the home. Like kids in most families, I do not ever remember having a conversation with my parents around thoughts, emotions and mental health and the importance of feeling our feelings regardless of the fact that we call some of them ‘negative feelings’. I remember growing up only to find myself unable to deal with life’s challenges in my 20’s and 30’s. I especially remember the year 2007 as I was exhausted of dealing with life’s challenges back-to-back! I did not have the skillset, the mindset, or the wisdom to know how to navigate those difficult times. One day it occurred to me that if I kept going the way I was I would not stay alive for very long! And that is when I started down my spiritual path. In 2008 I picked up my first self-help book — A New Earth Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose by Eckhart Tolle and I still remember reading the first page of the book as if the book were written in a foreign language! Since 2008, I picked up several books, but it was not until 2013 when I started reading Dying to be me by Anita Moorjani that I understood the missing link in my own spiritual journey! Anita’s book taught me exactly what was missing in my own life — Self-Love! And that is when I began the Self-Love part of my spiritual journey and started to come home to myself!

As I began coming home to myself, I felt the urge to share my own life learnings and my own story of healing with the rest of the world, to inspire others. So, in 2016 I created a blog “Life A Shift in Perspective” where I would look at prevalent beliefs in our societies and would identify the fearful thinking behind these beliefs. I also started offering mindset group coaching, would present on topics like how to love yourself and how to let go of your fears etc. I would also teach how to meditate. Then in 2021, I started “Loving Our Fears” podcast because of everything humanity collectively was going through as a result of the pandemic. And in early 2022 I got my life coaching certifications, evolved my coaching business to create the Self-Love niche and also launched my business website.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?

My entire career leading up to this point is an interesting story however I remember when I started my career as an Analyst it was very challenging to find work in the US as an immigrant. Ironically, after all the struggles I faced to create a career in Project Management, my heart is no longer in this career that I struggled so much to build over time. As I write this today, I am in the process of switching paths to move over to the healing world so that I could use my natural gifts of teaching and coaching and spreading awareness around self-love and wellness. The key takeaway so far for me has been that when you create your plans around your career or your life in general, keep in mind that most of us create these plans based on what others are doing in the society or the kind of jobs that are available or we choose jobs that would generate the most income for us. We rarely take inventory of our desires and natural talents and then create careers from that place. So, my greatest lesson so far has been to allow and trust this amazingly powerful Universe to lead the way and take me and my career to that place that is perfect for ME!

Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I launched my Self-Love coaching business, I had this fire inside me to help people heal based on my own idea of healing. However, the mistake I made was to assume that each one of us is looking for the same level of healing which I personally experienced. But as I started meeting clients to understand their stories and goals, I not only realized that each client who came to me had a different idea, a different need for healing but also that they are all on different levels of consciousness which makes then understand healing differently. I realized that not all clients wanted to heal the way I thought about healing. I realized that it’s not about how I think a client ‘should be healed’. Rather it’s about what the client wants out of the coaching sessions. That realization changed the way I approached my first meeting with a client because I started focusing more on what my client goals are instead of creating and imposing my own definition of healing on them.

Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?

Over the last two and a half years of this pandemic it has become glaringly obvious that in order to live a happier and more peaceful life you have to make health and wellness a priority in your life. And Health and wellness not only includes physical health but also mental and emotional wellness of a human being. As a Self-Love coach I am helping people review, renew, and upgrade their mindsets so that they can learn to view themselves, their life situations, and others from a perspective of love, kindness, and compassion. I am helping people evolve and transform by taking responsibility for their own life and lifestyles. I am helping people understand this deep and profound mind-body connection where our thoughts create our realities, and we have the power within us to shift our realities just by shifting our thinking and the beliefs behind that thinking! I am helping people come home to themselves through the power of self-love and self-compassion so that they can extend the same out into the world.

Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.

My top 5 tips for ‘lifestyle tweaks’ that you can start today are:

  1. Watch your intake — Many years ago, I made a conscious choice to stop listening to and watching every kind of news because of all the fear it would generate in my mind. Although I do not think you need to completely eliminate news from your life, however, I would recommend start paying attention to how a certain piece of news is making you feel. If you feel anxious that is your cue to find news or talks that inspire and empower you instead of making you feel disempowered and fearful. The biggest reason to watch what your intake is because what you feed your mind is the fuel it uses to create thoughts and if you feed your mind fear it will have an avalanche of negative thoughts which will end up showing up in your body as feelings of anxiety.
  2. Slow down — Everywhere you look and everyone you talk to is living such busy lives these days. It appears as though we have lost our sense of where exactly we are going and why! And this living very busy lives without a purpose has been taking a toll on our overall well-being. So, one of the best things you can do for yourself today is to clean up your calendar and cancel things/events/people who do not serve your well-being anymore. It is easier said than done yet until you do this ‘busy-ness cleanup’ similar to a spring cleanup, you will not know how already beautiful your current life is. And when you are grateful for what and who you have in your life today is when you connect with that happiness that you were so busy trying to chase through your next goal.
  3. Prioritize — If you are active on social media, you may have already realized that one of the most effective tools for avoiding being stressed and burned out is to ruthlessly prioritize. Prioritizing makes you focus on things that are truly important so that you do not get overwhelmed trying to do it all! However, ours is a generation totally lost in the chaos of wanting to do it all and having it all. As a result, our minds think of everything as important but because our ability to prioritize hinges on our ability to decipher what matters more to us so even though we may be well aware that we need to prioritize, we are just not capable. So, starting today as you clean up your calendar, start thinking in of the things/events/people that take space on your calendar and assign priorities to them. You can define your own priority levels but the ones that I love are — Can’t live without, Won’t die without it and My energy deserves better!
  4. Boundaries — Many of us already realize that setting up boundaries is one of the most important steps that helps us avoid frustrations with the people we love and work with. However, even with this knowledge, so many of us find it very hard to create these boundaries because we may be people pleasers and may not want to displease others by saying no, or, we may feel guilty for taking care of our own needs, or, we may be afraid of the consequences if we set up boundaries. No matter what the reason is for your inability to set up boundaries, at the root of it all is your own fears. So, the very first step towards creating any boundary is to identify and acknowledge our fears and how this fear feels in your body. The second step is to write down everything about this fear. The third step is to read what you have written a few times and see through the lies in these fearful statements. The fourth step is to begin taking small steps and create just one boundary which makes you the least fearful. The fifth step is to stay the course with this boundary even if your fear tells you to stop. Once you are successful in creating and staying the course with your first boundary, try creating the next one by choosing the one which makes you feel a little more afraid.
  5. Forgive yourself — This is the most important step because as you get started on creating boundaries, slowing down, and identifying your priorities, you will fail many times. And that is when you will need to lean back on compassion, kindness, and love for yourself. That is when you will have to remember to forgive yourself, move past your failure and then try again. Remember you are unlearning old and outdated beliefs and making space for the new and empowering beliefs and that takes lots of practice, patience, and time!

If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?

Now that so many of us are in the early stages of awakening, we are waking up to the fact that there is more to life than what meets the eye. Hence so many of us are looking to others, other teachers, gurus, guides, experts etc. to lead the way for them. We are looking to find ways to ‘improve ourselves’ by working very hard on ourselves. However, what I know through my own spiritual journey which began with self-improvement many years ago is that you can work very hard on improving yourself and it won’t make any difference until you take the time to know yourself through your own eyes, through this veil of other people’s opinions. So, the movement I would like to start is the Self-Love movement which simply means learning to love the imperfect human that we all are and then doing whatever it is that is needed to let go of the parts that don’t align with what we truly want from life and who we truly are! I want to lead people back to themselves so that they can learn to connect with their own wisdom, courage, and resilience instead of relying on gurus and experts!

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

  1. Wellness is much deeper than just physical and mental health — When I began my own spiritual journey, I understood that mental health is as important as physical health. However, what I didn’t realize is that underneath mental health lies emotional well-being which really is the foundation for our mental health. And I understood that as I started to peel the layers of my own beliefs, thoughts, and emotions.
  2. It is not Self-improvement rather self-awareness and self-acceptance what we are all seeking in this world — So many of us who are on an evolution path seem to have been caught up in the self-improvement mindset and I was one of them. Although improving yourself is important however even more important is to be true to ourselves and what we are feeling right in this moment. What is more important is knowing the self that we are working so hard on improving.
  3. Positive thinking could become a trap — Because of the power of internet, so many of us have come to understand that positive thinking is the fix for all our troubles. As I started down my own path, I remember I would force myself to think positive. And even though having a positive mindset is always helpful, however, make sure you are not using positivity to run away from feeling your negative feelings.
  4. Patience, compassion & kindness — I remember when I would be unable to force positivity on myself, I would get very frustrated and angry with myself. What I learned later is that the most important thing you could practice, even more important than positive thinking is learning how to be kind and compassionate towards my own self. This really is the foundation for change within myself as well as in the world because if I am kind towards myself, I will want to extend that kindness out to others. And that’s how you change the world and not by forcing yourself to be kind to others first.
  5. Forgive yourself — This is an extension of number 4 above. If you are able to learn to forgive yourself for the mistakes you made, the things you did or didn’t do, the people you hurt, the failures you experienced, the goals you didn’t meet, the rejections you faced is when you will experience the peace that so many of us are searching for in this world.

Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?

Mental Health — A few years ago, when we would think about wellness we would automatically think about well-being of the body or physical health. However, over the last couple of decades mental health has also become part of wellness. Even though including mental health within the realms of overall well-being is crucial, however, it is time that we go deeper than that. It is time we begin to explore what is behind mental health and what causes someone to experience great or not so great mental health. It is time we being to explore the beliefs/thoughts/actions connection with mental health. It is time we being to focus on emotional wellness too which is what determines our mental health. It is time we begin to understand what being human is in the context of emotions and the role these emotions especially the negative emotions play in creating what we call mental health. A Deeper View into Mental Health is the cause that is closest to my heart.

What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?

https://www.instagram.com/shikha_self_love_coach/

Thank you for these fantastic insights! We wish you continued success and good health.

Women In Wellness: Shikha Rastogi of Loving Our Fears Podcast On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.