Footprints from Formative
Years
Having
no idea what significance it would hold, in 2002 an incident occurred that made
me the person who I am today. Four years after that, in 2006, I faced a
personal crisis, which accelerated my transformation into the person I am
today.
That
crisis created the opportunity for me to restart my Spiritual Journey in this
life. I began by enrolling myself in a Diploma of Life Coaching from The
Coaching Institute in Melbourne (Australia). I was very clear about the need for
it. I didn't do it to become a professional coach. It was purely to equip
myself to handle the crisis I was facing.
But as-if fate had something else in mind. I was required to offer pro-bono sessions to complete my diploma. Although I was doing it for personal reasons, it was a 3 years course and I thought to myself that I have already given this much time, why not complete this formality and get the certificate too.So, I began offering pro-bono sessions. It turned out that those who received it benefited a lot. They started referring me to others and one day I decided to make this my full-time profession.
In the last 15 years, I have helped
- hundreds of people to launch their
startups, as a Business Coach
- hundreds of SMEs to scale their business
to new heights, as a Business Coach
- hundreds of Leaders to become Invisible
Leaders, as a Leadership Coach
- thousands of people with their complex
relationship challenges, as a Relationship Coach
I
feel very lucky to have many mentors and gurus that helped me on this journey
of Self Mastery. Some of them helped me to gain new perspectives and others
helped me to drop the old perspectives. With their help, guidance and support,
I enhanced my Emotional Intelligence and Mindfulness.
I
walk the path first. I live it myself and when I achieve what I want through
this path, I share it with others.
Embarking onto the Entrepreneurial Journey
The
Entrepreneurial Bug bit me when I was about 10 years old. I was very fond of
comic books, especially ‘Chacha Chowdhury’ ones. But I didn't have much money
to buy or rent them. So, I saved up some money from my pocket money (and money
received from relatives visiting us, a common practice in North India) and
bought a few comic books. Then I started renting them out to my friends.
Whatever money I earned from this activity; I used it to buy more comic books.
When the comic books get old, I would sell them at a cheaper price to whoever
wanted to buy them. In a few months, I had a very good collection of comic
books and a thriving business.
Even
when I started my career in the IT Industry, I was clear that one day I will
have my own consulting business. I wanted to learn about the IT Industry by
first working in it because the Industry was booming in those days. And I also
started a small consulting business after a few years of experience in the
industry.
My
consulting experience has helped me greatly in setting up my coaching business.
One valuable lesson I learned from the Consulting Industry is… Most Consulting
Firms are seen as "just body shops" by the clients. The clients judge
the capabilities of a consulting firm by the quality of the consultant they
provide. If they like the consultant, then they want the same consultant again
and again. The firm fails to establish that they have a pool of consultants of
equal caliber; that even if they send a different consultant, the client will
get the same results. But clients get attached to the consultant so much that
they don't recognize this value proposition. And in the end, it just becomes a
personal transaction.
From
the very beginning, I was conscious that I don't want my company to become
centered around me or on any coach. We work as a team on a challenge. So, if
one coach is unavailable, then we assign a different coach but this doesn't
impact the continuity with the client. All coaches in our team are equally
capable.
This
principle has helped me to establish our coaching practice around the
challenges we solve instead of becoming synonymous with my name only. This not
only gives me personal freedom but also helps us to scale easily without any
resistance from the clients. They know that whoever will be assigned to them
can help them achieve their goals regardless of my personal involvement or not.
Embedding Emotional Intelligence Into Your Life
Emotional
intelligence is the intelligence that is required to handle one's own emotions
and those of others. We need to deal with people all the time. Even if we work
as freelancers, independent consultants or contractors, solopreneurs, and so
on, we still need to deal with people, not only in our professional life but
also personally. So, basically, there is no bypassing people. And that being
the case, it is imperative and inevitable that someone will push our buttons
and we will push other people's buttons. So, you see, it's not even a question
of if and when. This is happening; it happened in the past, and it will happen
in the future. And hence, I emphasize a lot on the importance of enhancing
emotional intelligence. You see, emotional intelligence is very practical in
nature. There is not much to learn as such. It has five components, namely
2. Self-regulation
3. Empathy
4. Motivation
5. Social Skills
These are pretty
self-explanatory terms. We can think of them as core competencies. So, when we
work on developing these 5 components, then we indirectly improve our emotional
intelligence. And I say that emotional intelligence is practical in nature
because all those five components can only be developed by practice and not
just by learning about them. Among the 5 components, it all starts with
self-awareness. To improve self-awareness, I believe that mindfulness is the
best way. So, as we observe more, we become more emotionally intelligent, and
that's why I say it is practical in nature. And as we become more emotionally
intelligent, we handle our emotions better, other people's emotions better, we
create harmonious relationships with others, and we experience more balance in
life. All this leads to more happiness. And since every person on this planet
ultimately wants happiness, I believe that the path of emotional intelligence
and mindfulness can lead us there.
Powerful
Lessons From My Mentors
I'm very fortunate to have had many mentors
and gurus in my life. My very first guru was my physics teacher in school, Gaur
Sir. I was very good at physics. In my 10th board exams, I got less than
expected marks in Physics. Gaur Sir was so confident that this marking was
incorrect that he personally went to the CBSE headquarters to get my papers
re-evaluated. He came to my house after the result and asked one question,
"Paper acha hua tha na?" I said yes. That's all he needed to know. He
went there and insisted that my answers be re-evaluated, and there was in fact
an error in marking. I got much higher grades than before. Before that, I never
had anyone believe in me so much. Not even my parents. Not even me. Although I
knew that I could have gotten higher marks, I didn't have the confidence to
stand up to it like that. Gaur Sir gave me a valuable life lesson that to date
I haven't forgotten.
I
also consider Sharon Pearson (owner of The Coaching Institute, Melbourne) as
one of my mentors. She not only taught me about life coaching, but also about
life, people, and relationships in ways that I never knew existed.
She
told me something that I say a lot to people now. When I meet someone who is
struggling with a relationship challenge and they tell me that they have tried
so many things, I ask them, "Have you spoken to a professional?" They
not only say NO but also look at me in a strange way as if they are saying,
"Why?" I'm smart enough to figure this out!This reminds me of what
Sharon used to say, "I have coached thousands of people and have seen
thousands of versions of relationships. You have only dealt with a few specific
scenarios that are specific to your life. Let's say you have experienced 10
relationships up till now. Let's say some of your friends, relatives, etc. also
approach you for relationship-related advice. So, let's say you have experience
with 25 versions of relationships. I have experience of a few thousand over the
last few decades. If you are unable to resolve your challenge from the 25
versions of experience you have, then why not get a second opinion from someone
with more experience?
"In
the last 15 years as a professional coach, I have come across clients going
through challenges that made it quite clear why this path selected me! My
clients included a woman who was forced to go through multiple abortions by her
family in desire of a male child; a lesbian couple struggling to find their
place and purpose in society; a man who was the victim of domestic violence; a
bed-ridden, handicapped man wanting to tell his wife to have a sexual
relationship with another man but couldn't; a rape victim who wanted to meet
and forgive the offender; a woman in an extramarital affair but also equally in
love with her husband; a man with wife and kids and also gay inside; a young
girl who had phobias from anything that could shake when she was inside, like
lifts or cars; a 36-year-old man who was addicted to Coca-cola from the age of
2 and was facing multiple health issues including early age diabetes; These are
a few of the many extreme cases. And then there are clients with regular
relationship challenges that include abuse, domestic violence, infidelity,
outside interference, childhood traumas, childhood abuse, depression, suicidal
tendencies, etc.
In
the early days of my coaching profession, my clients' stories used to affect me
a lot. Sometimes I would feel as helpless as they were. I knew that this was
not sustainable. I must look after myself and shield myself to help my clients
better. That's when I found Osho. I instantly resonated with Tantra's
philosophy, as if I'd already been practicing it for the past several lives.
Knowledge and practice of Tantra felt effortless to me. Many times, I knew
intuitively what Osho was going to say before he said it. I found my shield.
Many
years later, I found my second Guru, Mooji. By the grace of Mooji, in 2019, I
realized "Who I am." That's when my spiritual name,
"Akarma," came to me during one of my meditations. With the help of
Osho and Mooji, my spiritual journey unfolds every day, and I feel so lucky
every day to be doing what I'm doing.
Wuji International and
Its Irreplaceable Values
For nearly 10 years I helped entrepreneurs as a Business Coach. I helped Startups and SMEs through a 5-day business program called Business Inception Camp (BIC).
Then as my alumni grew, they started asking what's next? What's after BIC?
After much thinking I concluded that after sharpening their Entrepreneurial skills, I need to sharpen their Leadership skills. Hence, I started creating the next level of BIC on the theme of Leadership. That's how the framework of Invisible Leadership was born.
But after I finished designing Invisible Leadership, I realized that it solves those problems of leadership that most Startups and SMEs don't face yet. That's when I launched Wuji International and started offering this program to the Corporates. This Good to Great Leadership Program was welcomed by Senior Leaders of Industries by open arms.
Laser Coaching is an advance-level coaching practice to bring paradigm shift in lesser number of sessions in comparison to traditional coaching methods. Our core philosophy while coaching someone is to develop Emotional Intelligence via Mindfulness.
We believe that people in general are good and want to do the right thing. They sometimes make decisions that may be considered bad or wrong because we judge those decisions by the result they produced. However, the person never intended to make a bad or wrong decision. They experienced a certain “lack of choices” and they just chose the best option out of the available ones.
Our job is to expand their perceptions so that they have more choices. And we do this through Laser Coaching.