27: Wellbeing+ mantras with Maya Sadasivan NLP Master Practitioner and ICF-PCC Executive Coach

Shownotes My guest for the 27th episode of the podcast is Maya Sadasivan, a friend I have known for over three decades. A fortnight ago when I mooted the idea of creating a space for women in our network she didn't hesitate for a second. She stepped in, offering to facilitate the WellBeing+sessions, carving out time from her intensely busy work schedule. We recorded the WellBeing+ Mantra session on the weekend and here it is.... The episode is packed with great advice from this leadership coach and mentor about why it is important for individuals to start with their personal wellbeing; simple strategies for coping with uncertainty; identifying certainties; psychological safety; creating mind space and time space.......... Listen to the full episode on Apple, Spotify or Google Podcasts Passages from the episode 👉🏾 Thank you Maya for being a guest on The Elephant in the Room podcast 👉🏾 So The Purpose Room held well-being plus drop-in session yesterday. And we did that in response to the current situation in India. We wanted to provide our small community with a safe space to talk about things that matter to them at this point and talk about how they were coping. So the idea was to create a supportive environment for them. From the session, my three big takeaways were that it's okay for all of us not to be okay. And what the past year has done specifically if you look at India as a country, is that it has brought conversations about mental health to the forefront and into our living rooms, because there's such a stigma around anything to do with mental health. This doesn't mean the stigma has gone away, but that it is more acceptable to talk about issues that people are facing. And the second was that leaders and coaches need downtime too, and it's okay to unplug and not try to save the world. We're constantly in that mode where we react and respond and we want to do something, take some action. So probably the idea is to step back and look at yourself and see how you're feeling. 👉🏾 The third point from the young people in the room, I learnt that organisations need to do more to be supportive. Because a lot of the people feel that they're not supported, they didn't have the confidence to voice their challenges to managers. The issues that we need to think about is around psychological safety, whether line managers are sensitised around the needs of employees working from home.The blurring of boundaries between personal and professional, the never-ending day. And the reality is like a lot of people in India, live in a flat. There'll be generations of people living in that house and they may have caring responsibilities or may not have caring responsibilities. Isolation has been a big issue for them and you were there yesterday providing great insights and counsel to the people in the room, on how they could cope or how they could deal with those situations. To start with what were your takeaways from the session yesterday? 👉🏾 Sudha, one of the strongest takeaways for me was the realisation that we, as people, we as human beings are fundamentally instinctively supportive. I think in today's times more than understanding, the value is for accepting, are we being unconditionally accepted with all our worries, our apprehensions, our uncertainties, and when we voice it, is there an acceptance that it's okay to feel so? The second takeaway for me was, as one of the participants mentioned, in spite of our hectic schedule in spite of our activity driven world and life, this one hour which wasn't easy, but we all still grabbed because it was so important to stand and stare, to be still to centre ourselves and to be mindful. And, you know, the most beautiful thing Sudha, no one is really looking for or expecting solutions, answers. They were just looking for a space where they could hold each other's hands, centre themselves. And at the end, the energy shift was so high, we kind of...