Speaking Small

I’ve come to realise that most of us grow up mastering the art of speaking small. Not because we lack ambition, but because somewhere in childhood we learned a quiet rule: don’t say anything that might make you look foolish later. So we talk in safe units… half-dreams, modest targets, things we’re already confident of achieving. It feels practical, but over time that habit quietly becomes a ceiling. We end up describing our lives, not shaping them.

Entrepreneurship shook that out of me. It was the first world I entered where people didn’t just dream bigger — they spoke bigger. They talked about goals as if they were already sitting on the table. Not as a performance, not as bravado, but as a way of telling their mind, their team, and the world: this is where we are heading, come catch up.

Think of Kennedy announcing the moonshot. He didn’t say, “We hope… we wish… we’ll try.” He spoke with a strange kind of finality, as if the universe had already signed the contract. And that tone — that certainty — pulled an entire nation into a higher orbit. Leaders, no matter the field, carry this same quality. They don’t wait to feel confident before they speak; the speaking itself creates the confidence.

Over time I realised something uncomfortable: the moment you declare a goal out loud, you place yourself in a vulnerable position. And maybe that’s the point. Because once you say it — truly say it — your mind starts rearranging itself. Ideas appear that never showed up before. The path you couldn’t see suddenly starts revealing itself, one small light at a time. You didn’t get the confidence first; you got the words first. And the confidence followed.

I’ve watched this transformation happen in real people around me. The day someone says, “I’m doing doubling my revenue this month,” the room shifts. There’s surprise, maybe even disbelief — but something else too. A new expectation forms, both in them and around them. Others start assuming it’s possible. The person saying it stands a little taller, even if they’re terrified inside. It’s not arrogance; it’s courage wearing a thin coat.

And then, of course, there are the reminders that sometimes children hold the wisdom we keep misplacing. A 14-year-old I know recently made a vision board filled with goals written in the past tense — Got the internship. Scored the A’s. Held my first art exhibition. Not “I hope to,” not “maybe someday.” It was all stated as though life had already handed it to her. There was no hesitation in her language, no fear of being wrong. Just a clean, bold claim on her future.

It struck me: adults hesitate because we’ve lived long enough to collect disappointments. Children haven’t yet learned to be afraid of their own voice. And maybe that’s what we’re really recovering when we learn to speak our goals again — a return to that uncomplicated courage.

So if you ever find yourself stuck, unclear, or quietly shrinking your dreams, ask just one thing: What am I afraid to say out loud? Because more often than not, the missing link isn’t strategy. It’s speech. The future doesn’t always begin with a plan. Sometimes it begins with a sentence — spoken boldly, before you’re ready, before you know how — and everything else learns to follow.

All ears...

It’s funny how we grow up believing that the smartest person in the room is the one who speaks the most. The one with the strongest opinions, the quickest answers, the loudest certainty. But anyone who has spent real time observing people eventually discovers the opposite: the real power is in listening.

There’s a reason God gave us one mouth and two ears. Maybe it was a hint. Maybe He was telling us that understanding should always come before speaking. But most of us spend our lives doing the reverse — talking twice as much, listening half as much, and wondering why our conversations feel shallow and our connections feel fragile.

Entrepreneurs, especially the ones who build trust easily, learn a different rhythm. They ask one open-ended question — “How’s life going?” — and then they do something most people can’t: they stay quiet. And in that quiet, people start to unfold. They talk about stress, fears, hopes, the small private battles they’ve been carrying alone. They reveal insights you could never have discovered by talking. They hand you the roadmap to understanding them… without you having to push.

And here’s the paradox: the more they talk, the more they think you are wise. Not because you dazzled them with knowledge, but because you made space for their truth. Listening gives them the rare experience of feeling seen — and people remember the ones who make them feel that way.

In a world full of noise, silence becomes your advantage. The person who listens isn’t quieter; they’re sharper, more aware, more trusted. Sometimes the most intelligent thing you can do is simply let someone else speak

“The person who listens holds the real power — not because they know more, but because they understand more.”

Being an Entrepreneur

Sometimes I meet wellness coaches who introduce themselves with a quiet apology in their voice. “I’m just getting started,” they say. Or, “I’m still learning the protocols.” And I smile, because I know what they don’t yet see: this work was never about becoming a wellness coach. It was always about becoming an entrepreneur who happens to operate in the domain of wellness.

That shift sounds small on paper, but it changes everything. A wellness coach looks at a client and sees problems to fix — weight, sleep, skin, energy. An entrepreneur sees something different: an outcome to be created. A path to design. A set of skills to refine. Where others say, “This is what I know,” an entrepreneur quietly asks, “What do I need to learn?” There’s a hunger in that question… a kind of restlessness that pushes you to upgrade yourself long before anyone asks you to.

But here’s the part we often miss: entrepreneurship is not built on knowledge alone. It’s built on identity. And identity grows through the less glamorous skills — how you speak to people, how you make them feel, how deeply you listen before offering a single piece of advice. These are the muscles most coaches forget to build. They chase every new nutrition book, every new protocol, every new supplement strategy, hoping it will magically make them successful. It won’t. Not on its own.

Because clients don’t follow information. They follow energy. They follow presence. They follow the person who makes them feel understood, not assessed. The one who asks, “How’s life going?” and actually waits for the answer. Leadership, in many ways, is the emotional atmosphere you create around you — the feeling people carry after a conversation with you.

And that’s why mindset and people skills are not optional extras; they’re the quiet foundation of a thriving coaching practice. The books on leadership, influence, and human connection — those are not for corporate managers. They are for anyone who wants to guide another human being through change. Without that growth, you stay stuck in the identity you started with: employee, student, housewife, technician. You may know the perfect detox, but you won’t know how to lead a person through their own resistance.

The real shift happens the day you stop saying, “I am a wellness coach,” and start feeling, “I run a business that transforms lives.” One is a role. The other is a responsibility. One limits you to information. The other demands that you grow — in confidence, in character, in your capacity to hold people’s stories without rushing to fix them.

And maybe that’s the secret nobody tells you at the beginning: entrepreneurship in wellness isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about becoming the kind of person people trust enough to ask their questions. When that identity clicks, everything else starts to move. The protocols matter, of course. But the person delivering them matters more.

Here are some mandatory books for everyone to go through: How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie, How to have power and confidence in dealing with people by Les Giblin, 25 ways to win with people by John Maxwell

Acceptance (verb)

The first time I read this concept was in the book “The Servant” by James Hunter. Love as a noun is very limited in its purpose in our lives. Because either it exists for someone or something or it doesn’t. And it seems that we can’t do anything about it. How about using it as a verb instead? Love could be something that we “do” or choose to do instead of something that happens “to” us. And that changes everything in our lives and in the lives of people who come in contact with us. Because now we have a choice and it’s no longer a compulsion.

I feel it’s the same thing about “acceptance”. What if we start using it like a verb? Would we be able to give the biggest gift to anyone and everyone in our lives. Because we expect this gift from everyone around us. We want them to accept us as we are - in all our strengths and limitations, weaknesses and shortcomings. But we expect that they change according to how we want them to be. What would happen inside us if we could start accepting everyone as they are…everything around us as it is? Maybe that’s when we will be able to truly change it…something to really think about…

Dinosaur Gupta

I don’t think dinosaurs sensed that they were about to vanish as a race. If the thought had crossed their mind, they would have done something about it. I think they kept thinking it’s becoming more and more uncomfortable and something doesn’t seem right, never to guess that the doomsday was coming. A rare one here and there might have felt it deep in his gut that something was definitely not right but then the others who were overconfident of their size, their power, their dominance might have shrugged him off. The weather kept changing and before they knew it crossed the limit which was their death knell. And they fried inside out. The same is true for us humans as well. We get used to our successes. Our ego. Our momentum from the past. We ignore the warning signs. We ignore the nagging feeling that it’s not going the way it should. Because we don’t “want” it to change. And before we know, we’re history.

PS - so is there a way to avoid it? Yes! Don’t be afraid of changing. Period.

Mentorship : 270 degrees

The thing about mentorship is that it covers your blind spots. We can all see the 270 degrees behind us, but the rest is always a blind spot for us which we want someone to watch out for us. And that is what mentorship does. It’s like walking through a minefield. If you can just walk in the footsteps of someone who has walked before you, there’s a high chance you won’t blow yourself up. Most people have spiritual mentors, financial mentors, mentors at work and so on. But the problem is that most of the time their lives themselves are out of balance. They are so passionate about the one thing they are good at that you run a real risk of duplicating their life along with all of it’s imbalances. 

When choosing a mentor, it’s important to begin with the end in mind. Who is there around you whose package of life is something that you would like to have? Who is there who can think about your “well being” in all areas of life instead of just a one dimensional path? Unfortunately, most people treat life as separate boxes and try to make sure they don’t mix together. The work package is separate, the relationship package separate, the spiritual life package separate, the health package separate. They work on 1 or 2 of them but ignore the rest which doesn’t work since they affect each other greatly. Massive success in one at the cost of other almost always leads to pain and grief in the long run. 

I was very fortunate to find a mentor whose life was in balance on all fronts - wealthy on the money side, conscious of health and habits, solid marriage - basically they had the fruit on the tree, and were living a life I didn’t mind living in. That is an appropriate choice of mentor. Everyone else can only be a coach - they can coach us on certain skills or areas of life. A football coach will be worthy of following on the field but might not be worthy of following off the field. And that differentiation is very important. When we start confusing a coach with a mentor, we might unknowingly start picking up habits and attitudes which might be difficult to change in the long run. 

But what if a mentor is not in physical reach for whatever reasons? Chase them, become worthy of their mentorship and earn it. And if none of it works, keep following them and keep catching the nuggets from wherever they are. It’s a worthwhile chase for a great life. The joys of being mentored by someone and the feeling of security knowing that someone like that is looking out for you itself is worth it.