Alpa Kapadia Teli Leadership & Life Coach
There needs to be a huge change in the way we interact with the world, and for this to happen we need to understand a sneaky tendency of the mind, which is – If I give you 10 beautiful compliments followed by one negative comment, your mind will only cling to the negative comment. It’s funny how our mind works. Due to this we often find ourselves focusing on what’s lacking in our lives. We are mainly focusing on things we don’t have in our life
The usual human behavior is the gap finder behavior. We all do it. We are trained and conditioned to look for the gap, the weakest link, our weakness and we try to improve on it. This disease of always finding fault affects our relationships, our parenting and the happiness quotient in our lives quite adversely. Truth is, it is a bad strategy to live life. No matter what you have, there will always be something you don’t. We pride ourselves on being self-critical and being able to give ourselves a good critique, before anyone else does. We think it’s a very intellectual and mature thing to find faults; we call it attention to detail! Yes it is intellectual, but intelligence is linked to our minds and from the mind, we can only get transactional results.
If you want transformation, you need to drop to the heart space. It is here, that we celebrate our strengths and have gratitude for our gifts. The environment in this space is a fertile ground for transformation.
If we can change our focus to look at our strengths, to see what we are good at, what we enjoy doing and then create a life around those strengths, we will be truly able to live a fuller and content life. Personally, when I coach clients, or even when it’s about me, I see that 90% -95% lives of most people are completely fine. They however choose to magnify the remaining 5-10% which is not acceptable in owing to that fact that we let that spill over our entire lives. When we focus on what we don’t have, it makes us feel inadequate and small which is not the right thing to do. When we shift our focus to what is actually working, it puts us in an empowered state and gives us the confidence that we are strong, and powerful. It reminds us of all that we have accomplished in life and leaves us inspired to raise ourselves again.
But, how does one know what are our strengths? I have a great exercise for you.
Ask yourself these questions.
1) The last 4-5 times someone has complimented you on something you do so naturally and effortlessly and so well, what have they been complimenting you on?
2) What are those things that when you do, you get a sense of deep joy and satisfaction? Cooking, helping others, facilitating, solving math problems. etc.
3) What are the ways of being that give you immense joy, pleasure, happiness, adventure, content, etc.
This will not give you an exhaustive list, but it will give you an idea of what your strengths are. Focus on those, do more of those and you will see that your life will start blossoming, and also the unhappiness, fear, and insecurities slowly loosen their grip over you. You will be pulled to become the best version of yourself lovingly and gracefully. The way to live life is not by being pushed by your fears but by being pulled by your vision.
About the Author
Alpa, is a certified leadership and life coach (ACC, ICF Certified, by Peter Reding, MCC, USA, Life Fulfilment Coaching Model), trainer and motivational speaker. She “ignites the spark” in talented and successful executives and entrepreneurs, by helping them discover and achieve their highest potential. Her 13 years of experience in the Training and Leadership Development domain, designing and delivering training programs for Godrej and from being an Art of Living and Meditation Instructor, add a unique dimension to her coaching and keynote speeches.
After heading learning and development at Godrej, Corporate HR, and doing performance and potential assessments and talent management and development planning for few years, she decided she wanted to be part of the solution and not the problem and she quit her corporate job to follow her passion, that is “To help people unlock their latent potential, and to help them live better quality lives, by reconnecting them to their life purpose and values”.
Her passion and calling is working with women, to help and support them to break their own internal barriers and thus go on to shatter the proverbial “glass ceiling” at the work place. Most of her clients are women by her own choice. She specializes in grooming women for leadership roles and women who have re-joined the workplace post a break and those women who are going through a major change in role professionally or personally. Alpa supports clients from all sectors at a Mid-Senior Leadership Level. Her clients include high potential leaders from companies like Piramal, Godrej, Schneider electric, RBS, QED Capital, IL&FS among others. She also coaches CEOs of SME’s and start-ups.
She is a human resource thought leader and has written many articles on personal development and growth in organizations. She is a pioneer in the field of holistic coaching, as she uses tools that help her clients’ progress in all areas of their lives. She is the creator of the product “Creating a Coaching culture”, which has been launched and is being offered by “Believe in yourself”. The product is a first of its kind in India and has a unique concept and pedagogy and is a powerful intervention for building coaching skills in an organic way for all its participants.
Alpa has a widespread online presence. She hosts a closed Facebook group called Radiant Women Rise for women across the world, which have a higher purpose and want to breakthrough their societal conditioning and gain momentum around their dreams. She loves writing and reads one book a week. She enjoys traveling and consciously parenting her two kids. She rejuvenates by being with nature and refuels her soul by dancing and meditation.
