Nishant Garg

My Thoughts on Entrepreneurship and Building Connections

Playing a long game: It’s a belief that building a Tech startup is always hard. It’s true. And, it’s an eliminating belief too. Life works in duality. On the other hand, it’s easy if we take our time to build something without grinding and hustling mentality. Working long hours isn’t the solution. Founders and team who understand the philosophy of ‘slowing down’ succeed in the long game because they have high degree of emotional and mental endurance over the long haul.

Courage and Confidence: Working on a Tech startup is damn hard. Isn’t starting something new is hard? It’s hard! The confidence level is low and we require courage to keep showing up. I started podcast in 2020 knowing nothing — it was hard, and now I’ve 200+ episodes and it’s less hard.

On creativity: People force themselves for creative solutions when they feel tired and hence push more and more, and eventually nothing happens. Why not take a break and replenish yourself to fill your energy tank?

Founders with diverse experience: You can build a company at any age. Startup founders with diverse prior experience in different industries, even as an employee, who have built different kinds of designs and products are more likely to succeed in their startup venture. They already have gained many skills along their career such as how to build teams, how to leverage existing network, etc etc.

What You Want Wants You and Accessing the Internal Feelings

Hey Friends, I hope you’re well. I wrote these musings while getting high on coffee in the morning and thinking life. These cover anger, letting go, being okay with whatever arises, and communicating your needs.

Let’s begin:

“Anger is a powerful emotion. It’s human to feel anger and rage and our responsibility is to express it in a healthy way. If you heard that “good people” or “spiritually good people” don’t get angry, that’s called ‘bypassing’. If we ‘disown’ that part of our psyche that gets angry, that ‘part’ will ‘act-out’ in different weird ways. It’s human to feel anger and rage.”

“I don’t know who needs to hear this. If you are having a bad day or a bad week, everything will be alright soon. Light always follows darkness. If your week is not so productive, it’s completely ok because you will be back with much clarity and grit.

If you feel slow in achieving your desires, remember the story of tortoise and hare. You may be slow today, but you might run tomorrow, and then you may get slow again. This is life and life has its own rhythm.”

“When you don’t hold your fist too tight and try letting go, you will realize that things that really belong to you will show up at the right time. No amount of pushing will matter for things that don’t belong to us. How do we know what’s for us? Tough one. Just keep doing your best and putting one step at a time and practice a little bit of letting go and surrender.”

Light Always Follows Darkness

Hey Friends, I am excited to share some of my favorite contemplations from my favorite teachers.

Abraham Hicks: “If something you want is slow to come to you, it can only be for one reason: You are spending more time focused upon its absence than you are about its presence.”

Yung Pueblo: “You can not build a deep connection with someone who’s disconnected from themselves.”

From article: You Don’t Deserve Better – “So no, you don’t deserve better, and you don’t get a pony. Get a coach. A therapist. Find a support group. Read a book. Something! The harsh truth is that your relationships are not going to improve until you do something about it. Cancel the self-pity party and the I-Deserve-Betterpalooza. Shut down the excuse factory and put down the blame-thrower. It’s time to heal!”

Victim Mindset is Not Fixed and Keystone of Resilience

Your heart can be absolutely shattered and in sorrow, and you can continue on, you can grow, you can learn, you can find love in life. It’s a beautiful paradox of resilience of being both broken and whole at the same time, sad and hopeful, and devastated and generous. We are astonishing in our ability as human beings to hold profound experience that are seeming opposites at the same time.
Maria Sirois

This post is a selected excerpt from my interview with Maria Sirois. You can check the full interview at Dr. Maria Sirois — Overcoming Victim Mentality, Happiness in the Darkest Times, Finding Meaning in the Suffering, Lessons Learned from the Hospice Facility, and More (#129)

[Maria explaining about one of her victim experiences and how it felt to her, how she overcame it, and practical practices]

Maria: I felt powerless. I felt small. I felt like I could at any moment be tossed another terrible thing that might bring me to my knees.

Holding a victim mentality is a very disempowering feeling. And I have great compassion for those of us who, like me, are kind of wired that way.

The opposite is also beautifully true, which is that letting go of the victim mentality and really taking ownership of one’s self and one’s choices. There’s tremendous goodness that grows from that. So. I think what I most want people to know is that the victim’s stance or mindset is not fixed.

It’s not true. It’s simply one quality or one perception of experience that can be changed and can be changed at any age. I had an awakening at the age of 29 when a trusted mentor of mine had a number of conversations with me about it.

The choices I was making were to always focus on the negative, to lead from painful thoughts, to be captivated by worry, and to notice the bad in a moment or the bad in another person. And I was quite capable of noticing the good, but I tended to lead from the bad. When he reflected that back to me, I felt like I had been presented with a very painful, but clear mirror of who I was.

That was the moment I was 29 years old — I decided I didn’t want to be that woman and so I spent quite a bit of time with him and with other mentors, and a therapist, and really discussing how you change your mindset from a predominantly negative pessimistic.

The Full Body Yes(with an example)

In my interview with Scott Shute, I asked about the concept of Full Body Yes and how he beautifully explained the 4 stage process in it with an example. Scott Shute sits at the intersection of ancient wisdom traditions and the business world. He currently leads Mindfulness and Compassion programs at LinkedIn. After twenty five years of customer-oriented leadership roles, he found his dream job, where he gets to utilize his entire skill set and embrace his passions. In this work he explores the possibility of human potential, helping employees become the very best version of themselves.

Here it begins:

There is a four-part teaching arc that we go through.

1) The first stage is to really Know Yourself. You need to understand your own story, like understanding your body, why do I get upset, what do I act like when I get upset or happy or whatever it is, and understanding the external systems — who am I trained to please? When I make these decisions, who am I making these decisions for? And having a deep appreciation for your own story.

2) The second part is to Love Yourself, to see yourself as more than this body and this emotion, but to start to recognize that deepest part of yourself. And it’s that voice, that voice from that deepest part of you that we’re trying to listen to. This is where the message of the Full Body Yes comes from. But it’s that part of ourselves that we don’t access all that often.

Trust Within and Listening to Life

Hey Friends, I am sharing some of my favorite and interesting quotes on intuition, trust, and how to listen to life.

Life is guiding us in every moment when we get to do and who we get to become. It’s simple and not easy. There are many contemplative practices to learn to listen to life a.k.a. intuition. It’s a skillset to develop and worthwhile.

I have used these quotes as meditative and they guide me in different directions. Interestingly, I learn and get new guidance every time I read them as I evolve from one stage in life to another stage.

I hope you enjoy these quotes which help you in slowing down and guide you to listen to your life.

“Can you embrace the notion that your intuitive voices and life are not always going to be clear? Can you trust that you’re not always in control, driving the car of your life, but simply a passenger looking out the windows? And can you trust you will be okay regardless of what happens? In ambiguity, we often learn our deepest lessons.” –Source: Molly Carroll: book Trust Within

Dr. Jacinta M. Jiménez—How Burnout Manifests and How to Prevent it

“when you stress, you must rest”

In this interview post, I sat down with Dr. Jacinta M. Jiménez (also known as “Dr. J”) an award-winning Psychologist and Board-Certified Leadership Coach with a 15+ year career dedicated to the betterment of leaders. She has worked with individuals in top organizations in Silicon Valley and throughout the world.

We discuss:

1)Difference between stress and burnout?

2)Manifestation of burnout in three components

3)Six mismatches that lead to distress

-Overwork

-Conflict of Values

-Fairless

-Lack of Reward

-Social support

– Control

4)Micro-moments of replenishment

And, now the interview begins:

Danielle Sunberg — Atlas of Being: From Briefcase to Backpack, One Former Lawyer’s Exploration of the Human Way

I’m thrilled to share my friend Danielle’s book Atlas of Being: From Briefcase to Backpack, One Former Lawyer’s Exploration of the Human Way. In this post below, there is a short preface that will give you a quick introduction to the book.

She, her husband Ted, and I met 2 years ago first time at a mutual friend’s home and we have been in touch since then.

Feel free to connect with her on social media she also offers a coaching program which you can find on her website.

Danielle Sunberg is a wellness entrepreneur, transformational coach, author, international keynote speaker, and mother. A former Big Law attorney, Danielle worked as a corporate litigator at an award-winning law firm in Washington D.C. After successfully defending her client against a $6 billion judgment, Danielle was diagnosed with depression. She left the firm to travel the world to discover what truly inspired her, training with some of the most preeminent mentors in conscious living and studying as a Reiki Master. In 2019, Danielle founded a cannabis wellness brand dedicated to connecting people to their innate wellness that was acquired in December 2021. As a coach to elite entrepreneurs and leaders, Danielle guides people who have achieved success yet yearn for something more out of life. Her new book, Atlas of Being: From Briefcase to Backpack, One Former Lawyer’s Exploration of the Human Way, is a #1 New Release.

Connect with Danielle: Website | Instagram

Book: Atlas of Being: From Briefcase to Backpack, One Former Lawyer’s Exploration of the Human Way, is a #1 New Release.

Below is a preface from the book:

“As a young lawyer, I sat at the defendant’s table in the federal courthouse day after day, listening to witness examinations and flipping through binders of depositions to confirm matching testimony. I was nothing if not vigilant. Our client was a movie investor facing a six billion dollar claim in a class action lawsuit over the movie’s advertisement, and I was going to make sure I lived up to every penny he paid his legal team not to lose his hard-earned fortune.

My life had unfolded along an expected professional path. I pored over my laptop fifteen hours a day, squeezed into pencil skirts, and crammed my feet into high heels. I would have welcomed the pain from pointe shoes, but I begrudged it from my stilettos. I had chosen to be an attorney; it provided financial stability, commanded respect, offered prestige . . . and was utterly devoid of satisfaction.