Meet Pritika Kharkwal

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Pritika Kharkwal a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Pritika, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

A huge blessing in my life has been being a part of various diverse organizations such as Peer Health Exchange, Step Up, Digital Wellness Lab, MENTOR, Art of Living Foundation and Harvard Making Caring Common Project at Harvard Graduate School of Education. As a result, I have heard so many personal stories and experiences of young people around me. I heard stories of loneliness, kids who felt bullied and not supported by those around them, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and more. These stories touched my heart and fed into my passion and purpose.
I wanted to take action.
When I searched the web to find youth self help books by youth, I was surprised to find there were close to none! I wanted to fill this gap and add youth voices into self help literature, so I embarked on this book writing journey with the support of mentors Dr Emma Seppala (Yale University faculty member, Best Selling Author and psychologist) and Professor Ronnie Newman (Director at the Art of Living Foundation and Faculty of Nova Southeastern University Lifelong Learning Institute).

I enjoyed book writing because it allowed me to continue advocacy work…. Rather than just amplifying my voice to advocate for social issues, I was now advocating through literature!!

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

My book, It’s Time to Start Looking In, one of the first youth self help books by a youth, is a happiness guide seeking to ultimately encourage young readers and all readers alike, so we as a society can work to refocus their priorities on what matters most at the end of the day: Our own health and wellbeing because after all only when we do good for ourselves, can we do good for the world around us.
My book has gotten wonderful response from the community, with various nonprofits supporting (including Peer Health Exchange, Youth180 and MENTOR) and interest from local libraries and bookstores at retreat centers.

I was also recently featured on NBC News: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/north-texas-teen-self-help-book-mental-health/3616621/

I cannot wait to continue reaching the greater community with the power of advocacy-driven literature.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1. Resilience and Perseverance- I stayed strong and was patient and persevering despite any circumstances around me.

2. Intrinsic Motivation- The only reason I was able to succeed in this book writing journey was because I had a strong sense of why, as author Simon Sinek calls it, and purpose in mind. I was intrinsically motivated to keep on moving forward!!

3. Creativity! I truly expressed my creative personal voice in this book to personalize it for the readers and truly connect with the wide audience!!

My biggest advice: Just take the first step and keep going despite any challenges along the way.. You will only succeed if you have the courage to keep on going!!

What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?

Through this book writing journey I have grown a lot because I have gone through a reflective journey of self realization and self discovery. This was an independent project I was doing so everything was done from scratch– from ideation to finding mentors, to conducting exclusive interviews to getting genuine testimonials from NY Times best selling authors and other experts to marketing to publication. Hence along the way I got a lot of no’s and reached dead ends but with that also came yes’s and new opportunities. So my biggest area of growth was gaining even more resilience than what I had started off with.

I learned to face every phase of the journey with a smile on my face and if any obstacles come along the way just “dust myself off” and keep moving.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

NBC 5 for a few images

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