We recently connected with Mrinal Gokhale and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Mrinal, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?
My short answer is that building confidence included learning about how I’m wired, along with my likes, dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses. Let’s start with the career aspect.
Years ago, an article I read stated that people often want a career involving helping others or “making a difference” because they want to feel purposeful. That struck me, and I learned over time that I am worth more than a career and that I have more than a job going for me. I don’t need to do what I love full-time to feel purposeful (although I respect those who do). I studied marketing and journalism in college. I found that while I enjoyed it, I would get bored at jobs easily and felt like I had to put on an extroverted front to succeed. After a few years, the right therapy, career coaching, and coursework helped me examine myself from a more honest, mature lens compared to my early twenties. I then decided I wanted to be in a career that helped me live “comfortably” but that I also enjoy to an extent. I realized too that I needed to be somewhere that let me embrace that I have more logical than emotional intelligence. I eventually fell into a business analyst role and have remained one since. I find that I’m embracing my analytical mindset, and using some skills I had prior, while also getting a healthy challenge in people skills and project management.
My side hustle is being an author, which extends into public speaking. During the pandemic, I took a free memoir writing class. In months, I self-published an anthology about South Asian mental health. Much to my surprise, I met an overwhelming amount of people excited to tell their stories for my book, and getting to know them and writing it made me more prideful to be Indian for several reasons: it taught me that identities like neurodivergent, disabled, mentally ill, and similar terms can co-exist with being South Asian and that’s okay, which is contrary to what model minority myth would promote to me growing up. Then began my self-marketing journey, in which I learned more about marketing than any college class or job. I have grown my social media following immensely since 2021, creating content about my book and my journey with overall wellness. It’s rewarding to be contacted to speak and to receive emails from pleased readers. I still feel speechless when comparing my first podcast interview to a more recent one. I never thought I’d like public speaking, and I thought that my being a ‘one-sided conversationalist” as others called it- was a death sentence until I became an author and started publicly speaking.
Health and fitness is the third area of my life in which I’m prideful. I was always picked last in gym class, lacked coordination, and never found team sports, running, or gym equipment rewarding. But I have embraced dance as exercise and passion where I don’t need to be the “best” at it to find it fulfilling. I’ve done hip hop, Polynesian, and belly dance lessons since high school because I always got a rush when watching dancers on TV or live. Dance became my way of staying active throughout the pandemic, and continues to help me embrace my sensuality and mindfully burn calories. In 2018, I began martial arts and quickly became confident that I’d be able to defend myself in an unsafe situation. I also have been in weight training for about a year, which I started hoping to build stability and reduce back pain that results from working a desk job, going on long drives, and my hypermobility syndrome. I quickly went on to participate in a competition, deadlifting 115 pounds, which is almost equal to my body weight. I would have never imagined that I, a 4’11 female, would be competent at lifting. I find the technical details fascinating from proper form to breathwork and am grateful that I found the right trainer for my needs. It has motivated me to want to teach others, particularly neurodivergent and/or hypermobile folks. And I’m currently looking into ways to do just that!
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am an author, public speaker, wellness content creator, and writing and editing consultant. My work focuses heavily on South Asian mental health and embracing neurodiversity. Though I don’t work in healthcare, I speak from a lived experience perspective. I have spoken on podcasts, magazines, workshops, and panels.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
- Gain self-awareness of your passions, likes, dislikes, and non-negotiables. This goes for everything from work and side hustles, hobbies, lifestyle preferences, and relationships (business to friendship to romantic alike). Pursue different avenues to do so, whether through therapy, coaching, self-study, or a combination.
- Don’t let anything you take on be anything more than a “healthy challenge.” I’ve been told as an Aries moon, I crave competition and hate being told that I can’t do something. I think there is a fine line between self-improvement and self-acceptance, and understanding that if something exhausts you excessively, it may not be for you.
- I have a sticker that reads “Progress over Perfection” on my planner to remind me not to get thrown off by minor setbacks, and that it doesn’t matter how you go about doing something so long as the result is the same.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I want to collaborate with BIPOC and South Asian wellness content creators, podcasters, healthcare professionals, and entrepreneurs, and aspiring authors for consulting services, interviews, panel discussions, readings, and Instagram lives.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://linktr.ee/mgokale
- Instagram: mrinalg_
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrinal-gokhale-14a19b46/
