How YOU can be a high-performing leader w/ Nilesh Satguru

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Welcome to episode 56 of the Mindful & Driven podcast! It's all about how to not lose sight of what really matters whilst chasing your dreams.

Episode 56’s guest is Dr. Nilesh Satguru. He's a high-performance coach, medical doctor, and speaker. In his coaching, he blends the science he's learned from his medical career with compassion to teach people how to be the best they can possibly be. Also, the kindness they can be and most compassionate to others.

Like many of us, he put so much pressure on himself when he was younger and went through all the right steps to become a doctor. But he realized that pressure was crippling him and he rediscovered compassion, which makes him who he is today and he's able to help CEOs, executives, and high performers across a huge range of different industries. It was a really insightful conversation.

I hope you enjoy listening! I'd love it if you could subscribe, leave me a review and follow me on social channels. 

• You can find all my work and socials here: http://amardeep.co
• Download my free Anti-Burnout Toolkit here: http://antiburnout.mindfuldriven.com
• United for Global Mental Health: https://unitedgmh.org/mental-health-support
• Nilesh’s Website: https://www.drsatguru.com/
• Follow him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsatguru/
• Follow him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-nilesh-satguru-954b44157/

 Keynotes:

• Introduction (0:00) 
• The BS belief (2:30)
• Empathy, sympathy, and compassion (4:35)
• We all suffer as humans (8:45)
• Lifestyle medicine (12:36)
• A non-judgemental, and open guide (15:24)
• We all have fears and the journey of self-improvement (18:05)
• More on clarity (22:38)
• Decision-making (24:45)
• Your work is your greatest vehicle for your personal growth (28:37)
• Serving people in the most impactful way  (32:41) 
• “Choose compassion, focus on connection.” - Nilesh (35:38)

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Intro Music:

"Himalayas" by Mona Wonderlick — bit.ly/youtube-monawonderlick

Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Free download: bit.ly/himalayas-download

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[00:00:00] Nilesh: I went and studied with Rangan Chatterjee, many of you know Rangan. They started to look into something called lifestyle medicine, and that absolutely fascinated me. My eyes were just opened. My eyes were open to the effects it has on our immune system to how it's the pathway to joy, to how it motivates you, how it prevents anxiety and depression. We miss the essence of what it is to be alive, to be joyful, free and to feel loved, because guess what? We all want to be our best. Your best may not look like the cultural expectations of what society says. We're all going on this journey, wherever it is that we're going, you know, your work is your greatest vehicle for your personal growth. You know, if I was to die tomorrow, would I be proud of myself for what I've been, what I'm doing, how I'm trying to serve others, how I'm trying to help? 

[00:00:49] Amardeep: Welcome to Mindful and Driven podcast, where we help you to decide what's really important whilst chasing your dreams. Today's guest is Doctor Nilesh Satguru. He's a high performance coach, medical doctor, and speaker. In his coaching, he blends the science he's learned from his medical career with compassion to teach people how to be the best they can possibly be, but also the kindness they can be too, and the most compassionate to others. Like many of us, he put so much pressure on himself when he was younger and went through all the right steps, became a doctor, but he realized that that pressure was crippling him and he rediscovered compassion which makes him who he is today and he's able to help CEOs, executives, and high performers across a huge range of different industries. It was a really insightful conversation. Let's go into the show. 

[00:01:40] Welcome to Mindful and Driven podcast, nilesh. It's a pleasure to have you here.  

[00:01:43] Nilesh: Thanks so much for having me Amardeep.  

[00:01:45] Amardeep: So how we met is we went to the same event by a previous guest Simon Ong, his book launch, and we didn't actually talk about [unintelligible] there, but then we've been following each other on Instagram for a while and you reached out to me and we met after that and it's like, great. Like I love the way you think about the world and especially marrying the science from your career as a doctor with also your life experiences and the things you've struggled with in your own life. And like, along that journey, what's some common advice you've listened to, or you've heard that you disagree with and you think people are getting the wrong idea? 

[00:02:17] Nilesh: Yeah. Thank you so much for this question. And it's such a pleasure to be here. I've got so much gratitude to speak on this podcast. And hello to all the guests. So one piece of advice, I think the life changing thing for me has been going on the path of compassion. And it's this misnomer, misperception, this bullshit belief that compassion is weak and that it's a sign of pity or it's unambitious or it's lazy. And actually there's a huge amount of personal experience of coaching stories and also of scientific evidence that that says otherwise.  

[00:03:03] Amardeep: And can you go into that a bit more, where did you used to believe that compassion was weak in the past? And did you change your mind over time?  

[00:03:09] Nilesh: Well the truth is, I didn't think I really knew what compassion was and it's really funny saying that because I trained for 15 years, I mean, 15 years I've been in the medical profession, and we spoke about sympathy. We spoke about empathy. We didn't really speak about compassion. And I was reminiscing about this the other day. How did I get into compassion? Well, through a lot of personal struggles with my son, becoming a father, feeling ashamed like I was a bad father because he had developmental and behavioral challenges, and I think I found some of the Dalai Lama's books very serendipitously and I read about compassionate and my eyes were just opened. My eyes were open to the effects it has on our immune system to how it's the pathway to joy, to how it motivates you, how it prevents anxiety and depression. Now I'm not going to present it as a panacea. I don't believe anything is. And that's why I quite specifically, my niche is compassion and high performance, because it's the marriage of these two concepts. But yeah, I don't believe I fully knew what it was. And then when I started to discover it, even as I started to read about it, my belief that it was weak probably stopped me from fully embracing the path of compassion.  

[00:04:31] Amardeep: I read about this recently. I think there was a big story in BBC the other day, where I think it's in particular for midwives and how they talk to patients with struggling with fertility. And there's some medical terms being used, for example, like incompetent cervix or, failed pregnancy or things like that, and they use these terms in front of their patients, and they weren't necessarily considering that's that's the proper term for it. Right? That's the medical term, but the effect it had on the patients, because it made it feel like it was their fault, rather than it saying, like, this is something that's happened to you, that we can then fix, we can then work through, it was more like your cervix isn't competent, which obviously for somebody whose in a very vulnerable state, it's not very, like something you want to hear. And do you feel like in your medical career, especially in the early stages, that kind of scientific kind of cold way of looking at things was encouraged as well, where you don't necessarily, I know for example, where this idea that if you get too compassionate to your patients, then if something goes wrong, then it's obviously harder to then deal with because you've got that bond and you take a bit more personally. So do you think maybe, you didn't practice compassion as much before because you needed that almost a defense mechanism.  

[00:05:46] Nilesh: Well, I think now it's really important Amardeep, to discuss the differences between empathy and, compassion, because I definitely, for a lot of my career, even after I started to learn about compassion, what I was actually doing was sympathy and empathy. So sympathy is when you are physically moved by other people's suffering. We can go into more detail, but essentially you're physically moved. You see somebody drowning in the lake, you jump in, in the lake with them and you wave your arms up in the air. You're struggling with that. And certainly I've been in that situation as a doctor, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's very touching. Empathy is intuitive awareness. Okay. So really interesting. It requires effortful thinking. It requires imagination. It's what makes us human. It uses an area of our brain called the inter cortex. So you actually put yourself in other people's shoes. And the interesting thing about empathy is that it doesn't always have to be about suffering. So marketers for example, are very good empathizes. It's not always about suffering. Compassion is showing an awareness of someone's suffering. Showing an agreement with the meaning of their circumstances and then taking action to relieve their suffering. So the big difference here with compassion is that you are doing something about someone suffering, so it takes away this hopelessness, this feeling of being moved by the situation. It taps into our innate helper's high. So actually we know from brain studies and I can go into more detail about this, but we've all known that feeling when you've seen someone suffering and you've just listened and it's felt amazing to help that person just for the pure joy of helping them not expecting anything in return. That's a key bit. So to kind of relay back to when I was a doctor, two things that I was doing differently was number one, I was actually and this is, you know, being completely open, I think it's important for me to be vulnerable and share these things, but I would say a lot of my early career in medicine, I was expecting to receive something from the patient, whether it was, oh my god, you're the best doctor ever, or thank you so much, or I still had that expectation. And the second thing was was that I, sometimes I wasn't taking action to relieve their specific suffering. I was taking action on what the textbook said, and this is, this is a really important point. And I know people listening to us to be like, oh yeah, my doctor didn't listen to me. Didn't hear me. Didn't really take into account what was going on. And I hope that makes sense.  

[00:08:33] Amardeep: Yeah, it definitely does. And do you feel like once you learn more compassion and you started working with them more yourself, that obviously it bled into all areas of your life, not just your work and being a doctor, also your relationships and with your like kids and helping them to grow and develop and even your friendships, like where do you think like, compassion has really helped you in strengthening some of your relationships? 

[00:09:00] Nilesh: Yeah. Well, there's one story in particular and I mentioned my son already, and I mentioned this. So I'll go into a little bit more detail, but it was back in, it's been, 2019, 2018, and we'd known for a while that my son, Freddy was a little bit different. He would scream unexpectedly. He wouldn't make eye contact. He was slightly delayed in his social development. And as time went on, it progressed with inattention, with behavioral troubles. And I remember one day in particular, I took my son out to the park and it was the winter in the UK. It was cold and it was muddy and it was raining. And he, as he, as he does, he wanted to kind of run across the field when we were about to go home. And without really understanding him, I picked him up and he got really upset and he ran, he ran off and he fell and slid in the mud and he was covered in mud. So I picked him up out of the mud and I took him into the car and he was screaming. If anyone has a child who's not neurotypical, they'll know what I mean by this. I mean, he screamed for quite some time. And I got back home after that and I just sat and I cried in my kitchen. I just didn't know what to do. I thought, God, I'm the only person who's suffering with this. And do you know what was really crazy about this is what I was thinking about was, was me, how am I going to cope? How am I going to have a child with these kinds of struggles? How, and then also it was my perspective of what are we going to do if he doesn't cope at school? All of these things. And I had this kind of, if you like transcendental out of body experience, when I realized, but surely I'm not the only one who's experiencing this. And in that moment I found compassion because that's at the, that sits in the essence of compassion that we all have challenges, we all suffer as humans, and maybe our circumstances are slightly different, but every one of us has experienced guilt, blame, shame, grief, fear, sadness, loss, and so through that, I then started to take action and I started to read up. Okay, what are the other children parents' doing with children who have these struggles? I started to employ the strategy. I started to read more books. I started to learn about the brain and become fascinated with the brain. And goodness me, he improved so much over the course of around a few years. He's at mainstream school. He's doing well now. So that relationship got significantly better because of the commitment to compassion and essentially personal growth. You know, this is the power, this is the power. This is what we all are here for. When I'm, when I'm coaching people, you know, they say Nilesh, I want to make 20,000 pounds a month, or I want my business to grow by this much. And I say, okay. And then what's next? And they say, well, then I'll be able to go on a holiday. Okay. And why do you want to do that? Well, then I can actually spend some time with my family. I said, how about you do that now? . I think we missed the point and I was one of those people as well, that we missed the essence of what it is to be alive, to be joyful, free, and to feel loved. So this is how Compassion's affected my relationships and as well, there are a lot of stories I've got in my coaching clients' relationships as well.  

[00:12:19] Amardeep: What made you start the coaching side of things? Was it because of the effect that you like compassion had in your own life? Where did that kind of start from that new business? 

[00:12:28] Nilesh: Yeah, it's a great question. So, you know, I'd love to say like there's some kind of Hollywood one moment, but the reality is that I was very, you know, I followed the status quo for life and I went to university, I studied hard, I followed the rules, I became a doctor, my parents were really proud. I managed to somehow get my dream job right out of becoming a GP where I bought into a practice. But then quickly, I realized that it wasn't what it, what I had envisaged. And I couldn't help people in the way that I wanted with my medical training. About four and five people, they had problems that were stress related, related to the mind. So I started to delve deeper and I started to look into something called lifestyle medicine. And that absolutely fascinates me. I went and studied with Rangan Chatterjee, many of, you know Rangan and that was amazing, but in learning about lifestyle medicine, again, it led me deeper and deeper into the mind and how we only engage with difficult habits because of our own internal resistance to what is, so alongside that I was leaving my GP partnership and I was being coached. And this is often the way why, how people find coaching. I was being coached through the leadership academy, an HS leadership academy. Serendipitously, she reached out and said, my amazing coach and said, look, you seem really interested in coaching. Would you like to train? And that's how I started on my path to coaching. Of course, it's been a much longer path than that to get to what I'm doing now, but I would highly recommend it. If anyone's thinking about it, I would highly recommend getting a coach, if you have any dreams, hopes, and desires that you are going towards and just learning more about the industry. 

[00:14:28] Amardeep: Hi everyone. I hope you're enjoying the episode so far. I want to take a quick break to ask you to check in with yourself. There's many people struggling with balance and it's nothing to be ashamed about. It's tips that my guests might share can hopefully help you along the way, but if you already feel overwhelmed or burnt out, it's probably best that you ask somebody for help too. For some, this might be a friend or family member, while others might feel like they have nobody they can talk to. If you're one of these people, check out the link in the show notes, it's for United for Global Mental Health. They've got health plans all across the world, with people willing to listen on the other side. It's important to let somebody know how you're feeling. Now, back to the show. 

[00:15:04] What, like in your coaching training, surprised you of things that you thought maybe you were doing that wrong earlier in your life? Cause obviously part of coaching is all about asking the right questions rather than telling people what to do. Was there any other things like that, which really surprised you that were really effective in helping people that maybe you hadn't learned in the past and you hadn't been using those techniques when you were younger?  

[00:15:28] Nilesh: The first is the lamp post metaphor, which is there's so much value and it's actually very difficult to do, but people don't need to be fixed, they need to be understood. And one of the most powerful ways you can help someone to be understood is to be a non-judgmental open guide for them. And some people listen to that and go, well, that sounds really easy. It's really not because you have to come completely out of your own head and be completely present with the person at hand, put away all of your past limiting beliefs, which is why actually I believe anyone who wants to be a coach, it's essential that you get a coach and that you go very deep into your own work. You can't be fully present with someone if you are relating all of their stories to yourself. Some of that's natural as a human, but the more you you practice. So that's the first lamp post metaphor. The second thing is coaching, you're right, it isn't about the answers, but it's about helping people see something that they can't see. And this is such a beautiful moment when it occurs and often it occurs outside of the session. But my role as a coach is not to be a guru, but it's to be a guide, to guide people, to unleash the veil of what they believe to be true and to see a new path. And then the third one, which I struggled with for a long time is to challenge them. People only want to be challenged when they are in a compassionate space, when they feel connected and listened to and heard. But people love to be challenged because guess what? We all want to be our best. Now your best may not look like the cultural expectations of what society says. Your best may be raising, you know, a farm with chickens and a family of like four amazing kids. That would be, if that's your best, that's beautiful. That's amazing. And in fact, some of my clients have been like that and that's a wonderful thing. But we all look for our innate potential. And again, compassion helps you do that because once you fully accept yourself, as Carl Rogers says, then you can truly change.  

[00:17:41] Amardeep: So did you get coaching yourself before you started coaching other people? And what did they open up in you? What did you learn about yourself from that coaching?  

[00:17:49] Nilesh: Wow. Yes. So I've invested dozens of thousands in coaching. I'm somebody who over time, the number one thing it changed is I became someone who started to live with more integrity. And I think that that's really important to say, because if we're being truthful with ourselves, that most of us and me too, I was living as a reactive pinball to life. I was not conscious of how my thoughts, words and actions led to my results. So the most important thing it taught me was to practice and live with integrity. It also taught me how scared I was about a lot of things, and I still am fearful of things. Of course. I mean, anyone who says that they aren't is I believe is not woken up to their truth. We all have fears. But when I went through coaching and the multiple times I've gone through it, it's been about changing my relationship with what I'm resisting. You know, I think that people have a real, another kind of BS belief that joy is a diagnosis of inclusion. We want our lives to be joyful, right? Everyone would agree with that. Joyful, loving, free, but actually joy is the absence of any resistance. Let's think about this for a minute. When you get on holiday, I say, and you know, you get on that sun lounge, you're there on holiday. What's that first thing you do? Ah, you sigh. You release. There's no resistance to anything that's going on. You don't want anything to be different. So coaching really helped me change my relationship to that to see, okay, what am I resisting here? How can I release? How can I lean into it? Embrace it. And you know, what a powerful skill, because the resistance comes, you know, and as you climb the ladder, it's still, it comes thick and fast, right? Even more. So if you can change the way you relate to yourself, you're on an amazing journey.  

[00:20:00] Amardeep: Looking at that now, because you obviously made quite, [unintelligible] changes to your own life in the last few years, what's something you're working on now? Like how are you trying to improve yourself now? Cause obviously the journey of self-improvement never really stops. Even with your coaching and you're helping other people, what are you working on internally? What's the different targets you've set yourself or areas where you want to improve? 

[00:20:24] Nilesh: Ah, thank you so much for asking this because like I say, I'm somebody who really, I think it's absolutely paramount that I practice what I preach. So, first thing I've recently changed is I blocked out a whole one day a week, purely for personal growth in white space. And you being a solopreneur, you know, like how difficult that is. This is where I could be doing all the other things like working on my website, increasing revenue, but never forget, I never forget this analogy. There's no point you riding a bike with a half blown up tire when you could be spending the time blowing up the tire and going much with, with less danger and much quicker. And so I make a lot of time to read, to do courses, to go deep within myself, but the specific things is at the moment, energy. I'm working my energy in quite a lot of detail. I'm working on my clarity as well in quite a lot of detail. I mean, clarity's a funny one. I think clarity, I remember when I was looking to get an engagement ring for my, for my now wife and I started to read about diamonds and, you know, there's four things that a diamond is graded by the clarity, the cut, et cetera, the carrot and the one grade in difference in clarity, the value of the diamond goes up exponentially. And I believe that's an amazing metaphor for life. It's true. Those that have real clarity in their message, clarity in who they are, they are people that that can impact more people. So, yeah. Clarity and energy are things that I'm particularly working on at the moment. 

[00:22:08] Amardeep: I love what you said about clarity, cause it's something that I'm working on myself right now. So the day we're recording, it's actually the one year anniversary of me leaving my job and becoming a full-time creator, entrepreneur, whatever you want to call what I do now, and I gave myself this first year to experiment, to do lots of different things. And I have definitely done lots of different things, which is a bit too much often. And now I'm really focused on is that clarity of like, what exactly do I want to do? And how can I remove some of the different things that are distractions. Maybe I do enjoy doing them, but the way I'd say it as well is like, let's say you enjoy dancing. If you do 12 different types of dance in the same day, you're going to be exhausted. Even though individually, if you did one a day, you'd enjoy it. And I think that's the stage I'm at right now is that I enjoy all of the things that I'm doing, but there's just too many of them. And they're then bleeding into each other where I can't be present in what I'm doing. And that clarity is something which I think is so important as you mentioned, because if partly I think is that it's insecurity, it's ego of letting go of the things which is hard because it's tied up in you. Right. Of if you do everything, then you can say that you do everything called because then you can give that feedback to yourself. Oh, I did all of this this week, but actually in reality, it might be better to cut some of that stuff and say, I did this and I'm really proud of what I did. The quality of what I did is really like exceptional and I'm really happy with this. And I found sometimes by taking on too many things, I'm then starting to be less proud of my work. I was like, actually I need to take a step back. And it's been, so obviously in the last few months you've stopped being a practicing doctor and you've gone full time into coaching and to try to help people in a different way. How difficult was that decision for you to step away from doing both things at the same time? 

[00:24:08] Nilesh: I'm actually going to ask you a question first, cause I think it's really important. I want to ask you and I will answer this, but how do you decide, Amardeep, what to drop? Do you have a process, a decision making process that you go through that helps you, you know, make that decision, that cut?  

[00:24:29] Amardeep: So something I've been working on recently. So one thing I have is using Notion. You can do it on paper. I just have a single brain space and I've got all the different things that I'm working on. And I put a number of brains next to them of how much of my mental energy it takes up. And I then, so say for example, I'm working on a course right now. That course at the moment is five brains, because I know that that's going to move, massively move the needle because once that course comes out, I can send that to the different people I work with. The people I've interviewed in the past, and it enables that scalable income and allows me to help more people, which doesn't have such a big effect on my time, because so much of my work at the moment is very much, I need to give effort to it, so I want to look at those ways of how can I help more people without putting in more effort each time. So that's something which I think is really important. At the same time. I've got other things which, maybe have a high number of brains set out five, like let's say it's three out of five brains, but then, okay. It's like, why am I spending that much time with that? I don't like that doesn't matter to me in the long term, it doesn't align with my goals. So I'm looking at each thing on this list and assessing it based on, do I want to be doing this in year's time or is it just something I'm doing now, because I feel like I need to? So that's one question I'll ask myself is, do I still want to be doing this in the future?  

[00:25:50] Nilesh: Yeah. Yeah.  

[00:25:51] Amardeep: Or am I just doing it because it's there, because I've won that contract or I've won that client. Am I just doing it? Because it's already my calendar. The other one is whether or not it aligns with the other things, because if, for example, I'm doing a course and I'm doing a coaching that's related to that course, then that combined energy is actually one stream, one river. So I've used this example before about people often focus on, for example, passive income, but having many different streams. In reality, if you can focus on the river that feeds those streams, that's usually the better idea. So you can have, if you get really good at one particular area that will then feed those streams. If you focus on the streams at the end, then your brain is in a million different places, which is very hard to take. So I'm looking at, I want to focus on this area and this area. So if I've got two main rivers and they will connect to each other. If I'm doing something, which is totally unrelated, how much energy is that taking away from me? And do I enjoy that enough to keep it there?  

[00:26:56] Nilesh: Yes.  

[00:26:56] Amardeep: For example, with dance, I love to dance. Me dancing, isn't affecting my ability to coach or my abilities to do other things. It's a totally different skill set. It's totally different type of energy, but let's say for example, I'm writing articles for somebody which doesn't really align my goals. It's taking, it's siphoning off something from that river, away from my goals, away from what I want.  

[00:27:21] Nilesh: Yeah.  

[00:27:23] Amardeep: So those are, I think, the two main questions I ask myself, well, three main things is how much energy is it taking out of me? Is it aligned with the main pillars of what I want to do? Is it related to that subject? And then the third thing is what was my third thing? It was, if it's related, if it's something in a year's time I want to still be doing? Or is it just transient? And the transient ones, some of them are hard to let go because they pay money or they're fulfilling some underlying need that I have, but they're often just short term. So getting, being able to get rid of that is quite a difficult thing, but I've realized that's what I need to do for the sake of my own mental health and mental wellbeing.  

[00:28:04] Nilesh: I think for me, the purpose of your life is to live a life of purpose. That was Robert Byrne that said that, and it's so incredibly true. We're all going on this journey, wherever it is that we're going. You know, your work is your greatest vehicle for your personal growth. Every step that you take teaches you more about yourself. And what I mean by that is, if you are going on a journey, let's say for me, it was medicine, and I felt like I wasn't learning as much about myself as I would do by going on the journey of coaching, and the other thing for me was that the world doesn't need, so again a lovely Howard Thurman quote. Don't ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive. Because the world needs people who have come alive. And this is so true. So when I was making that decision to go on sabbatical for medicine, there were a few questions that went through my mind, the first one, and this is going to be a very powerful one, especially if you have a close relationship with your parents or loved ones, was I read in a book and it said, what would you do differently if your father was dead? Incidentally, two months later, two months later, my dad did die quite unexpectedly. Well, he was chronically unwell, but it was unexpected. And the first thing that came to mind was I would go on sabbatical for medicine, which showed me that I was, it was one of these kinds of attachments that I had because I didn't want to feel like I was letting down my father who had always wanted to be a doctor himself and was so proud that I had become a doctor, but it wasn't making me come alive. It wasn't, I still loved medicine, but the desire to impact people in the coaching world was so much higher. That was the first thing. The second thing was about what would I love? What would I absolutely love? Now, I think people get a bit confused with this word love. And me too, you know, for me love, isn't just, oh, this everything is amazing, everything's perfect. You know, I love my kids and they're difficult sometimes, you know. But I accept them and I want them to grow and I want us to grow together. So love is acceptance and growth. It's unconditional acceptance and growth. Was I prepared to unconditionally accept medicine? Was I prepared to do that? No. I mean, the answer was that coaching was giving me more of that unconditional acceptance and growth. And so that was the other reason. Last of all it came down to values and my four values was compassion, openness, growth, and challenge. And I believe that going on this journey again, I like to kind of live from the end. You know, if I was to die tomorrow, would I be proud of myself or what I've been, what I'm doing, how I'm trying to serve others, how I'm trying to help? Yes. Would I have been disappointed in myself if I'd stayed in medicine and I probably would, because life is so precious and our time here is limited. And so, you know, it's a paradox that we have. We say, you know, when, when I'm 40, I'll start that mission. When I, when I'm, you know, got a few more dollars in the bank or pounds in the bank, I'll go on that dream holiday. I'll spend more time with my spouse and my loved one. But people forget that there's such uncertainty about the future. And you know, when you really live into that, you like for me, my eyes have been opened and I think, well, you don't really know what can happen tomorrow, so it's important you live today so that you amaze yourself and you're proud of what you do.  

[00:31:59] Amardeep: Looking forwards now, what are your goals or what are you trying to work towards with the coaching and what you're working on now? Cause am I right in thinking as well, your wife is working with you too.  

[00:32:09] Nilesh: Yeah.  

[00:32:09] Amardeep: You've become a little bit of a family business.  

[00:32:11] Nilesh: Yes. Yeah. So my wife's, it's absolutely amazing that that's happened because I never would've, again, we just don't know what happens in the future and we're doing, we're, there's been incredible growth in the way that we interact with each other as well, which has been amazing. Yeah. So with the coaching, I've got kind of three main wings as many coaches do. On one side, it's the coaching, elevating entrepreneurs beyond their best. And really it's impacting people who are looking to serve others, looking to go inwards so that they can give outwards, and that can be a leader, an executive, an entrepreneur, a creative. So it's a broad range of people, but they're all willing and committed to going in so they can serve out. And I'm really, really enjoying it. I mean, for me, it's about coaching people that I believe are inspiring. And that's very important to me. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they have loads of external success. It just means that they are somebody who's on that path of personal growth. So that's the coaching wing and I've got my one-on-one clients, which I'm connecting deeper with at the moment. And really I've got really enjoying having these long one year contracts, amazing relationships with them. The other two areas are speaking, which I'll be developing a bit more as the time goes on and writing. Now with these things, as many of you guys will know, listening to the pod, I've decided to make my primary focus of interest coaching for the time being. Cause I believe it's where, there's the, I'm able to deliver the most transformation to someone and provide the most value. And so, although I have these streams going on in the background, just like you were talking about Amardeep, I'm on purpose, I'm not focusing as much on the others. So that I can, you know, build that element a little bit more. It's probably important to say the biggest mistake I've made in my entrepreneurial career so far is trying to run before I can walk. And believing the business was older than it, than it was. I've run two group programs who've been successful and brilliant. I've had one-on-one clients, you know, I've had some really wonderful things happen, but also I've overcommitted, which I know that you can relate to. I've been overly optimistic, which is, you know, is definitely something that that's possible in entrepreneurship. And so I'm paring back now and I'm just sticking to, like, you spoke about just a few goals, but trying to go really deep with them so that I can serve people in the most impactful way, help them become compassionate high performers, basically. 

[00:34:47] Amardeep: So if there's one mindset shift you think people listening today should make, that would make a really positive difference to them, you could only pick one, what would it be?  

[00:34:55] Nilesh: Choose compassion, focus on connection. It's mantra I've been saying to myself for a very, very long time. There's one mindset shift, it's to choose compassion for yourself, for others, for the world. Why? Because, you know, when you really pay attention to your emotions, you'll realize that more often than not that we are in a state, that's one of challenge, suffering. If you can learn to master that, if you can choose compassion for yourself in those moments and compassion for others, it's the pathway to joy and then connection. Now, I love speaking about the science. I, hopefully it won't bore anyone, but I really love speaking about the science of connection cause it's truly amazing. So an 80 year study from Robert Waldinger that's come out of Harvard shows us that, that having good quality relationships is a thing that relates most to longevity of health and happiness, but our instincts and society and culture tells us more and more, more bigger, bigger, bigger, earning more, booking our calendars full, not taking the time, the truth is, the reason why it's important to learn how to be productive. Is so that you can spend time on things that take time. You know, you can't rush a bath time with your child or a date night with your partner or, you know, finding the right partner. You can't rush those things. So choosing connection is the thing that's going to make you healthiest and happiest. and we also know from Martin Seligman and Ed Diener that the top 10%, the top 10% of happiest people in the world, again, have the closest social relationships. So if you're struggling, if you're in a difficult time, if you're feeling overwhelmed, stressed, burnt out, choose compassion for yourself, for others, and just focus on openly connecting with people, and through doing that, you know, I believe that that's the most powerful mindset shift you can make.  

[00:36:59] Amardeep: I've really enjoyed talking to you today, Nilesh. Where can people listening, maybe who aren't familiar with your work yet? Where can they hear more about you and more about what you're up to?  

[00:37:08] Nilesh: Thank you, Amardeep. It's been a real pleasure to speak to you too. It's been been awesome. I've enjoyed it a lot. So you can find me on Instagram. I'm most active on Instagram @drsatguru. That's D R S A T G U R U. Also, www.drsatguru.com. Very simple and straightforward. Yeah. I would love to hear from people. I'd love to connect. As I said, do drop me a message at the, share with me about your hopes and dreams. I'll ask you about your hopes and dreams, and don't forget to choose compassion and focus on connection.  

[00:37:39] Amardeep: So the final question I ask everybody. So the end of the podcast on a positive note is what's one small thing that's brought you joy recently? 

[00:37:49] Nilesh: Oh my gosh. Really simple things. I believe the best things in life are free. Absolutely true. Just literally playing in the garden with my kids the other day where, you know, I was just being silly with them in the garden, running up and down and just, it was a beautiful day, and being very present in that moment. It's so simple and straightforward and yeah. How many times in the past would I not have been present in that situation? Oh my gosh. So many times. That's one thing that brought me joy. 

[00:38:25] Amardeep: If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, I’d love it If you could leave me a five star review, it really helps get the message out further. Wherever you're listening, it would be awesome If you could subscribe and share in your social media channels. If you want to see more of my work and advice, you can find all of the links in the show notes.  

Thank you again for listening and I hope you have a lovely day.