We recently connected with Meera Sharma and have shared our conversation below.
Meera, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
As someone who can be quite the introvert, I’ve learned to channel my inner sass which has helped me develop my confidence. If you’re wondering what sass is, to me, it’s being self-assured, spirited, and strong – it’s the un-breakable confidence to live the life you’ve dreamed of and believing in yourself that you can achieve your dreams. I’m so passionate about this that I’ve created a whole platform (The School of Sass) and have a weekly radio show, The Sass Life, where I encourage women to channel their inner sass and develop and maintain their confidence. And you can develop your confidence – it really is like a muscle because the more you use it, the more it grows.
I’ve developed my confidence over the years by channeling my inner sass and pushing myself out of my comfort zone. The more you do this, you’ll see that things that you were apprehensive about are actually not a) that daunting once you’ve done it and b) you’ll develop a new skill you didn’t realize you had. All this builds your confidence because you realize that you can do things you’ve set your mind to do.
Another way I’ve developed my confidence is by changing how I view failure – rather than viewing it as a negative thing, I think it’s a chance to learn. If something doesn’t go how it was meant to go, I think ‘well at least I tried it,’ and then I think what do I need to change before I try again? Failure just means you’re trying things and not staying stagnant.
Also, confidence can get stronger with age – once I turned 30 I stopped caring what people thought of me and just did the things that made me happy. Don’t let people’s opinions rent space in your head or stop you from doing the things you want to do. Half the time people are caught up in their own life so they don’t even think twice about what you’re doing. So do what you want to do – set up that social account, start that side hustle, apply for that job!
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I came to the limelight on series 11 of ITV’s dating show Take Me Out, since then I’ve been using numerous mediums to encourage discussions around identity, representation, and staying motivated! I’ve written for the likes of The Independent, Metro, gal-dem, as well as appearing on BBC Radio, and Channel 4 to name a few!
I’m a firm believer that you can achieve your goals and dreams but at the same time I do acknowledge we can all have a down day, which is exactly when we need someone to cheer us on. This inspired me to publish The Little Book of Sass, featuring ‘sasspirational’ quotes to perk people up when they need it the most.
On the back of this, I created my platform The School of Sass to educate everyone on the skills to channel their inner sass, aka be self-assured, spirited, and strong enough to live the life they’ve imagined. As part of my platform, I offer mindset coaching as I’m a certified life coach, have various books, and a radio show.
My weekly radio show, The Sass Life, airs on Dash Radio. It launched in June 2021 and it gives a new meaning to Monday motivation! Every week I speak to notable women who are experts in their fields to learn how they’ve channeled their inner sass to create the life of their dreams. It’s great as I have creative control and have interviewed inspiring women such as Sydney Cummings, Maya Vander, Charithra Chandran, and Diipa Buller Khosla to name a few.
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?
The three qualities that have been most impactful are being tenacious, not being afraid to try new things, and not being afraid of failure.
For those early in their journey, I would say they can develop these skills by changing how they view failure. Rather than viewing failure as a negative thing, view it as a chance to learn something new. Why? Well, if something doesn’t work out you will have learned something new about yourself and how you handled it. And by something not working you can identify what went wrong and then pivot and try again. Once you start to change your mindset around failure then you’ll happily try new things and ideas you have as you won’t be afraid of failure.
This in turn will make you more tenancious as you won’t be so quick to give up on things. You’ll keep trying until you achieve what you set out to achieve.
It’s also important to remember that rejection is redirection. Trust the universe and process and don’t give up just because something isn’t happening overnight. Good things take time.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
If you’re feeling overwhelmed then I would recommend you start by writing down all the things you have going on at the moment. Then highlight the items you need to get done first. From here, break the items down into smaller achievable goals. Be realistic and schedule them into your daily happenings – we all have things going on in our life, work, family commitments etc, so look at your schedule and see when you can add in the things you need to do. Then every morning create a Ta-da list and write out the things you’re planning on getting done for the day. As you do them, cross them off your list – this will make you feel good when you visually see what you’ve done.
I would also look at the list of things I have to do and cut out what I don’t need to do or can leave till a later date. Say no to things – remember there’s nothing wrong with not doing everything and saying no.
Another thing I do when I feel really overwhelmed is to go out for a walk – fresh air will do you wonders and you’ll then feel refreshed to get through the ta-da list you’ve created!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://theschoolofsass.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theschoolofsass
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MeeraSharmaOfficial/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MeeraSharm
- Other: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1368370758/goal-planner-printable-and-digital-pdf?click_key=ad951d5fc586ca819db4b5073c359e2b0c5a2102%3A1368370758&click_sum=42279921&ref=shop_home_active_1
