Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with Nithya Karia

Nithya Karia shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Hi Nithya, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
The first 90 minutes of my day always include meditation, exercise, and a cup of tea. The meditation grounds me. The tea brings me immense joy. And exercising gives me a sense of accomplishment (doing something hard always does) and momentum. All three ground me and help me set the tone and pace for my day. Meeting my needs sets me up to be happily available for everyone else in my day. There’s a huge difference giving from a full cup rather than running on empty.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I always think this is the toughest question to answer! I’m a world schooling mother, an author and coach, and an eternal student of life. Everything I do stems from my lifelong desire to make people feel good. I do it from the outside-in as a fashion designer and from the inside-out as an author and Human Design guide. I share my lessons from the trenches with my readers and clients so they can learn how to navigate themselves to a life that feels good to them. I think we all know that there’s no one size fits all solution, but we don’t always know how to find what suits us. And that’s really what I help people do. Find and hear their own inner compass and give them tools and courage to follow it.

I’m thrilled to be sharing my debut book, High Vibe Habits, with the world. It’s meant to be another opportunity for people to be able to guide themselves with my support through stories, data, and exercises to evolve the head and heart. Each of us needs awareness, permission, information, and accountability and High Vibe Habits offers all of these.

Human Design has been my most recent evolution offering clients an opportunity to learn about themselves through a system that equal parts mystical and practical. Each client experiences the most beautiful reintroduction to themselves by showing them how they’re designed, how they best operate in the world, and how to make the best for them decisions.

Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What relationship most shaped how you see yourself?
There are five women who have seen all my evolutions and have loved me, challenged me and encouraged me through it all. It’s knowing I have them at my back that has given me the courage to refind myself. Motherhood has been the single most impactful role of my life because it changed my relationship with myself. At first I needed someone else to “fight” for to have enough courage to grow as a person. Now, I love myself enough to take on the work just for me.

What fear has held you back the most in your life?
The fear of not being good enough plagued me for a very long time. Early on I felt a lot of safety in perfection and performing at a high standard. My eounghness depended on someone else’s words, my job title, my paycheck. I’d say the biggest lesson I’ve had to learn is that my work was never in overcoming who I was (which is where I used to spend all my energy), but in acknowledging, allowing, and nurturing who I already was so I could show up fully as myself. I’ve found more success, joy, and fulfillment by focusing on what I am and what I have to offer instead of what I’m not.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Is the public version of you the real you?
100% yes. I can’t say it’s always been easy. Like any young person I think I experimented a lot growing up with who I might be, but I’ve always been able to tell pretty quickly. It’s always been obvious to me because of how unnatural it felt when I wasn’t myself. I think it’s a very overused term these days, but authenticity has always been an important value to me. I find it grounding and the only real way I trust myself. I think “be yourself” is great advice though I think it can be tricky if you’re disconnected to your inner voice to know who “you” really are. And on top of that, I think it can take a lot of courage to be yourself because what makes us unique can also be isolating if you haven’t found your people.

Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. If you knew you had 10 years left, what would you stop doing immediately?
Worrying!! I’m not sure if it’s worry or lingering fear of imperfection that creates some stress in my life when things don’t go according to plan.

I have a motto I started with my kids last year when we thought we’d lost the key to our Airbnb in Sri Lanka. “No big deals.” I say it often now to remind myself that there are so few things in life to really get upset about. The rest has a solution (not always one we like, but it’s still there). I’m proud of how far I’ve come but I think knowing the finiteness of my time would encourage me to release any last remnants of worry.

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