Shivani Gupta – CEO of AskShivani, former engineer now engineering women leaders across the globe. She is a mother, author of almost 9 empowering books, and most importantly an inspirational mentor. In this podcast, we dwell into heart-touching stories leading to greater epiphany as well as stories of amazing mentors leading to her success. Shivani’s deep passion for mentoring despite several failures, is a story that depicts the true power of mentoring in one’s life.
Charlie 0:00
Hello, and welcome to The Mentor Evolution Podcast. I’m Charlie Ellis, your host, and I’m here to uncover the stories behind Australia’s great industry minds. So you the listener can know their story.
Charlie 0:38
Hello, and welcome to The Mentor Evolution Podcast. I’m here with Shivani, the owner, founder, CEO of the inspiring company AskShivani. She has mentored 1200 women from all different backgrounds and ways of life over the past 18 years. She speaks at events, provides personal courses, and even as our own podcast, which is available on her website, Spotify and iTunes. How are you going, Shivani?
Shivani 1:02
I’m really good, Charlie. How are you?
Charlie 1:04
I’m fantastic, thank you. It’s good to finally have a conversation. I’ve been emailing a little bit over the past couple of weeks. It’s finally great to actually see you.
Shivani 1:16
Yes. It is.
Charlie 1:18
What we’re going to do to start is we have a little segment just to get the juices flowing. It’s called ‘Inside the Mentor’s Studio.’ Have you ever watched James Lipton’s ‘Inside the Actor’s Studio?’
Shivani 1:28
I have, not for a long time. But yes.
Charlie 1:31
Yes, so we’re just going to ask a few unnecessary questions just to get started. So Shivani, what is your favorite word?
Shivani 1:40
Love.
Charlie 1:42
Fantastic. And what is your least favorite word?
Shivani 1:46
Hopeless.
Charlie 1:47
Oh, good. I’ve heard my mom say that a lot. What sound or noise do you love?
Shivani 1:54
I love soft, gentle music.
Charlie 1:58
Nice. Nice. What sound or noise do you hate?
Shivani 2:02
Scratching of anything.
Charlie 2:04
We’re learning a lot. What profession other than your own, would you like to attempt?
Shivani 2:11
Like go back and become like an architect and stylist and designer, if I could have my time over again. Or a psychologist. There’s so many things I could have done.
Charlie 2:20
That’s a good answer. Which one? Architect is the most favourite?
Shivani 2:25
I love. I don’t like designing buildings from but I love transforming buildings. I love the idea that you could take something really old and rundown and then transform it. So I don’t do all of the actual renovations myself but I love project managing sort of transformation of buildings.
Charlie 2:46
Yeah, that’s such a, that’s a fantastic skill to be able to see that, see bit of beauty in something. What was your background before Ask Shivani?
Shivani 2:54
I started off my career as an engineer. I really liked being an engineer, but I didn’t love it. And I wanted to get into management and leadership. So I did some more study, did an MBA at uni. And that started to skyrocket my career pretty quickly because I had some so-called people skills. I’ve always really enjoyed working with people more than I did process. And, and then I moved into sales and marketing and went and ended up running sort of leadership teams in a variety of different organizations, mainly manufacturing, and mining. And then found myself in a really big global role with BHP Billiton, which was great, and not so great. There was just no balance. And there was no time for me to do the things that I wanted, not that I really knew what I wanted. And so I quit all of that, that was 17 years ago. I quit that and started up my own business, which is now known as AskShivani.
Charlie 3:52
Wow. So you’d say a lot, did you learn a lot of lessons while you’re going through the early process, just after university?
Shivani 3:59
So many. One was that even though I had a piece of paper, I practically knew very little. So I think learning things, practically learning things with your hands in a, you know, sleeves rolled up, whether it’s a project, whether it’s managing people, none of that is possible unless you actually learn how to work with people really well. And just the art of communicating with people is probably the best thing I think I’ve ever learned. And probably will learn because that comes in handy. Not only whatever work you’re doing, you know, with like you interviewing me for this podcast, Charlie. So you’ve obviously got great communication skills. And it’s a skill that we need for the rest of our life really, you know, whether it’s with your family, whether it’s with friends. So that’s probably the number one thing I think I learned through that space that I try and constantly learn about and evolve in.
Charlie 4:53
Are you an author as well, aren’t you?
Shivani 4:55
I am, I’ve co-authored four books and I’ve written for myself and currently, just out of the ninth, which was going to take a little bit longer than I did, I think.
Charlie 5:05
Oh my god. What’s the ninth one gonna be about? Are you allowed to give any information?
Shivani 5:09
I don’t have a working title yet, Charlie. So I can’t tell you but a lot of it is good to go back to talking about confidence, I think and where do we lose that confidence? And how do we regain it?
Charlie 5:21
So what, during the lessons you’re learning, when you’ve just come out of university, you’re in your professional life. Was there a moment that led you to think, but was there a singular moment that led you to go “Right, I need to work for myself, I need the time from us. I don’t want to, I want to have and make a life and lifestyle. I want to be able to do the things that I want to do.” Was their specific moment that led you to carry that through to start AskShivani?
Shivani 5:49
Absolutely. It’s crystal clear, even today 17 years later. I had delayed a trip to Nepal a number of times because work got in the way. And then I decided to go and I went “Right, this is it. This is my time I’m gonna go.” And it ended up being, a lot of people had canceled their trip, there was a lot going on around the world. And I, for some reason ended up being the only person on this trip, trekking through Nepal, for a month. And so I mean it wasn’t, you know, Everest.
Charlie 6:23
Was it with family and your friends?
Shivani 6:25
No, it was me by myself. I went by myself. And it was my first solo trip like that. So I loved traveling overseas, I got to travel a lot for work. But it was my first solo trip. And what I didn’t know, having grown up in India till I was 11 but moved to Australia, I expected Nepal to be very similar to Australia. I thought that the poverty would be very similar, the people would be very similar and they weren’t. So I’m on a trip for a month, I’ve got a cook, and a Sherpa, and a guide. And we would just basically stopped in different villages and I had breaks and then we would walk for seven to eight hours a day. You know nothing like now, nothing like you know, base camp or anything like that, but just these beautiful, beautiful sceneries. And I remember this one day, I had a little backpack and I was carrying these little sugar, bit of those barley sugar lollies which are like, you know, a cent each. And every village I would go into, these beautiful kids would run up to me and I unpacked my backpack, and I’ll give them a lolly. And this one particular day, I remember this boy ran out, he was so beautiful. He was about four years of age. And he came up, he couldn’t speak any English, I couldn’t speak any Nepali. And so I unpacked my backpack and I gave him a lolly. And he was, you know, bowed his head and very grateful for this little lolly. And then his little sister ran up who was maybe a year younger than him really beautiful, beautiful wide teeth, gorgeous face. So I almost went to unpack my backpack again to give her another lolly. But she didn’t ask me for a lolly. And what her brother did was bite his lolly in half and he gave her half the lolly. And then his half of the lolly, he just sucked on it a little bit, put it back in the wrapper and put it back into his pocket. And they both sat there smiling at me as if I’d given them a million dollars. And I just remember sitting there, bawling my eyes out, I just cried and cried for the rest of the day. Because what I realized in that moment was that they had something that I didn’t have, like I had all this money. I had this big corporate job, I had the car, I had the house, I had a pretty terrible relationship but on the surface, it looked amazing. You know, I had all these things to the outside world, which marked success, but I just didn’t have that level of contentment that they had. And in that moment, I remember I could not stop thinking about quitting and starting up my business. And when I came back from that trip, I quit my job and I quit my relationship. So it was a very profound experience, to experience that and you know, and find that find that spot.
Charlie 9:05
What an incredible story. I mean, memories like that they do truly force you to pick yourself back up and go for it. I remember I was talking to a friend the other day and they were talking about a podcast that Ash Barty did before she won Wimbledon the other week. And she was talking about how every time she goes out and plays, she dedicates the performance to someone that she loves and someone that she cares about. And I think stuff like that having those memories and things like that you do sort of dedicate things that you do in your professional life to how you felt at a previous time. You’re doing it almost for yourself and that time period because you truly learn lesson and you need to hold those morals of that you thought at that time.
Shivani 9:52
Absolutely. The Yogi’s call it the Sankalpa, like you set an intention before yoga class. And it’s the same thing it’s like what am I here for? What’s the intention of this whole thing? Because otherwise, it’s just a thing.
Charlie 10:05
Exactly. To do that kind of check. It’s quite a spiritual feeling, a bit of a connection to the landscape and the culture. Do you find mentoring quite a spiritual experience when you mentor people?
Shivani 10:17
I do. Yeah, I do. I always feel like for me, it’s a chemical reaction. You know, there’s this beautiful saying, and I forget who says it, Charlie, but there’s a beautiful saying that when you mentor people, it’s like a chemical reaction where both those substances are never the same. And so I find that when I am mentoring people, I find that every, every conversation shifts something in me, because often my mentees are the people I’m mentoring reflect something I need to do myself. I mean, it’s uncanny, but it won’t matter. Like I could mentor 10 people on a weekend, every single one of them, they say something that they’re working on, and I’m like, “Now I know why I’m mentoring this person,” because I am meant to be working on that a little bit. And I’ve had a variety of mentors for me, that have been mentored. So I’m a very big fan of being mentored as well. I’ve had mentors for over 20 years, different mentors for different things and reasons. And you know, the same thing, every mentoring that I’ve had at that moment in time has really helped transform me as a result.
Charlie 11:18
And different things that you don’t expect to learn from different situations like, you know, you’re most mentored in a way by them, the little kids, just what they did you go “Oh that’s amazing man.”
Shivani 11:19
Absolutely. That’s true.
Charlie 11:29
So going through all those years of traveling corporate life and then starting your own business, do you have a most fond professional memory?
Shivani 11:40
Um, there have been many I mean, you know, again, superficially, I could say, well it was that Telstra Business Women’s Award, or it was that award, or it was when I, you know, got to a particular salary status. I think for me, the parts that I remember, if somebody says, what’s your most fondest memories, like you just have, Charlie, often it’s the people, it’s often the conversations, or it’s somebody that, you know, said something to me, I remember when I came back from Nepal, my boss, who was the vice president, really amazing. I’m still in contact with him all these years later. In fact, I’ll send them a LinkedIn, “Happy birthday,” the other day, a couple of weeks ago. I came back and I said, “Look, I don’t think I can do this job anymore. I know that the opportunities are amazing. I know, the money’s amazing. I just can’t, it’s not going to fulfill me.” And he just said “Do you want to take three months off and then think about it?” You know, like, I remember that conversation, because, and he was my first client, you know, so when I did quit in the end, and started up my own consultancy, he was my first client. And so I go, that’s pretty extraordinary to have an amazing boss, who really not only was a mentor in my job, but became a mentor for me, starting up my own business. And so it’s the people I remember, it’s the conversations I remember that I go, “Yeah, that was a turning point,” in terms of what occurred.
Charlie 12:59
Definitely. And that’s such a powerful thing to have a boss that thinks about your emotions, your feelings, and what he knows that you need, like you say, three months off, to go and be yourself and understand what you want. And because he knows you’re never going to get the best out of someone, if the person in question doesn’t understand what they want.
Shivani 13:19
Yeah.
Charlie 13:20
And did you feel like you wanted to be anything when you were younger? Was there any profession?
Shivani 13:24
Yeah, absolutely. My father is a really amazing mentor in my life. My dad is the youngest of nine and came from a fairly, sort of family growing up in India. And if you ask him today, he’s 75 years old now. And if you ask him today, and he said, you know, “Satish, why did you move to Australia?” He’ll say, “For Shivani, because she deserved the same choices as her brothers and her uncles and her cousins.” And so from a very early age, you know, I’m the first woman in my lineage to work even though I have some amazing women behind me, but none of them have worked. None of them have had careers or businesses. And so, you know, I don’t look at working as an obligation I look at as a privilege, you know, so for me, being able to work for myself, and finally not reporting to other people. And yes, I mean, I’ve got clients to report to and other people, I’m responsible for my family. But, you know, it was a really, really big moment, knowing and, you know, I always liked the idea of business. So I’d always find businesses fascinating. And even now, like, I’ll go to somewhere and I’ll go, “Why isn’t there a coffee van here? Or why aren’t people doing this?” Find these gaps in the marketplace. But I think when I was really young, it was this, you know, it was this dream, but you could actually work for yourself because almost none of my family members, they’re all doctors and engineers and have these really stable jobs. So people thought certainly, even some of my close family members, thought I was absolutely mad giving up a corporate life and starting up my own business and now starting AskShivani. But I kind of knew I had to and that’s the hard thing when you come from a different culture where you have people that, you know, they’re not saying don’t do it, because they don’t believe in me or don’t care for me, but they’re like, “Are you mad, like giving up this whole stability that you’ve worked so hard for?” But yeah, so when I was very young, I really felt that working was a privilege and working for myself it’s just such a privilege to go, “Wow, I can earn a living, doing what I love, doing stuff that doesn’t feel like a day’s work.” And I can kind of, you know, help people around the planet. It’s pretty cool.
Charlie 15:39
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And did your father push you as you’re going through the process of starting AskShivani? Did he give support?
Shivani 15:47
No, he never said, look, you need to do that. But he would often share his experiences around. But you know, there are some challenges working for people. And you know, he loves it. Anytime I’m posting something at work like he’s often the first person that’ll reply. But he’d be like, “This is great. You know, what an awesome mentor,” and I’m like, “Dad, stop it.” You know, so I am in my forties so I’m like “Dad, stop it.” But you know, he’s absolutely my number one fan. And it’s beautiful to have that, you know, and I wouldn’t have called him my mentor, till I’ve got older, but I realized that’s what he was, you know, he would sit there listen, like a really good mentor does. And he would give shared experiences and provide guidance, rather than tell you what to do. And that’s kind of that ultimate, ultimate parenting route really.
Charlie 16:38
Yeah. 100%. I remember the first time I did music in high school, like it was the first time my mom and dad come and watch me actually do some music one night. And it was all great the first time it was like, “Oh, fantastic.” Second night, didn’t do so well. And they told me and it just felt, yeah, having that rapport where you can be honest with each other, and but also know they’re your biggest fan, but they’re there to push you rather than to just be your biggest fan. It’s nice to know that they’re there for all the hard parts as well. And what’s been your favorite failure?
Shivani 17:14
Oh, god, there’s been quite a few, Charlie. In terms of failing, there’s been lots and lots of failings. I always think that you make a monumental failure every decade, absolutely massive failure. And it seems to almost be in alignment, you know, with birthdays, but I have failed lots of things in business, I’ve tried a number of different things. You know, I’ve tried writing certain books that I thought were gonna do really well, and they didn’t. I started an online program five years ago, but just didn’t have that right that far. I bought a business that I try to fix that failed. I’ve, you know, failed at relationships. I failed as a parent, it feels like almost every day. So one of my really good mentors always said that if you can reframe failures into learnings, that that is what becomes key. So that really has helped me that conversation was maybe 15 years ago now. And so I try and reframe what the world would call a failure, not in a way to sugarcoat it, but to really look at what the learnings came out of it. So when the business that I bought, for example, and I bought it, it was losing a lot of money. I fixed it, and it started to go in the right direction. But really, then it started to compete with other businesses I was running, my kids were really little at the time. So it wasn’t that I couldn’t run it. I was running at the expense of my time. And I was sort of working 60-70 hour weeks that way, for six or nine months. And so I made a list of learnings with a mentor at the time of what did I learn from taking that on. And I made a list of 21 learnings. And that is how many years ago was that, I was coming up to seven years ago. And I look at those learnings every month. They’re in my diary. And I review those learnings every month. So when I do fail at something, I’ll try and make a list of learnings. And then if they’re really monumental like this particular one was, then I diarized those learnings and review them every month or every quarter or every year, to go okay, “Don’t forget those learnings, don’t keep making the same mistakes.” And it was just a learning and if you can look at it that would be awesome. I recently heard Bronnie Ware, who is an Australian author. Now her book ‘Five Regrets of the Dying’ has been translated into 32 countries. And she’s spoken, she’s one of my favorite authors, Australian authors and I’d love to hear her live and share a car with her and have a really deep conversation with her. And she said if you can frame regrets differently as you know as learnings or mistakes. That’s a big thing rather than saying I regretted it. I made that mistake and it’s okay I made that mistake, this was my learning and you get out of that. And I loved her reframe. And I’ve been reframing failures into learnings for about 15 years now. And I find that really helps me because then it’s like, okay well, it wasn’t like you deliberately went into it, knowing it was going to be a disaster. But you went into it with a positive mindset. It didn’t work, it is a disaster. Now, let’s learn from it, look at that as training and then move on.
Charlie 20:23
Do you find that a lot of people that you’ve mentored struggle to reframe disasters into mistakes?
Shivani 20:29
Yeah, it depends on their upbringing and their personality. But, you know, most people are very harsh on themselves, you know, they call themselves lots of names. They go, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe I didn’t see that.” But you know, and then the question is always, well, if you knew what you know, now, you know, that benefit of hindsight, would you step into that? And they go, “No, of course, I wouldn’t.” Then you go, “But we didn’t have that, right.” Because if you knew that, you wouldn’t do that. So you’re not stupid. You know, you have to really differentiate between you’re not stupid or silly, because look at all the other amazing things that you’ve achieved in your life. It’s just the fact that right now, when you look at that particular area, you weren’t wise enough, you didn’t either tap into your intuition, or you didn’t get enough data or for whatever reason, so it’s better to look at why it happened. And then you do that better next time.
Charlie 21:20
Exactly. You’re smart enough to get there into that position. So you can’t doubt yourself. And much like England, in the Euros final the other week.
Shivani 21:29
Yeah. I’m sorry. You’re English, that would be hurting. My husband was going to England. And he came up and I said, how was it? It was just terrible.
Charlie 21:43
My girlfriend’s Italian. So I was watching at her house with the family. Oh, my god, that was a tense few days after that. But what can you do? Hey, it’s just a mistake.
Shivani 21:54
Out of your circle of influence. You’re just watching, right? You’re a spectator.
Charlie 21:57
Yeah, that’s right. And what’s the biggest surprise you’ve had in the last few months? And why was a bit of a surprise?
Shivani 22:08
I have always, Charlie, had an office. I’ve always prided myself on having a really nice office. I like nice things. not expensive things. But I like nice things. I like aesthetically beautiful things. And once COVID hit, obviously, we all started working from home. I know you’re currently in lockdown as we’re recording this. And so I did not think I would love working from home because I love people and interactions. And I love working from home. That’s been a really big surprise to me. And I’m not sure I could ever now by back to the way that I’ve spent my other rest of my career because I really know that somehow I think I just assumed that the quality of the work would be better being face to face. And one of the things, I’m realizing is these beautiful monks. So this to me in India, they said, you know, so much of the world spend so much time working on the valves on the exterior, but they don’t spend enough time on the alexia, which is inside. And I thought “That is so true, right?” So your office is just the valves and working from anywhere, it’s the quality of your work. And I thought it would really affect my clients, I thought it would really affect the quality of my mentoring. And to be honest, it’s deepened it, it’s actually gone the other way. And so I’m loving working from home and I’m not going back to a big office again.
Charlie 23:33
Fantastic, nice. I quite like working from home as well. It’s a bit different for me, but you know, I can see in the background looks quite nice, few plants and everything like that. Yeah. And how do you continue to learn and stay on top of things within your role that you’ve got?
Shivani 23:56
Yeah, learning is probably one of my top three passions that I speak about learning is my number three passion. So I’m a big one for being a lifelong learner. It’s really important to me, I’m part of an organization called Entrepreneurs Organization or EO which basically is a learning organization. I listen to a lot of podcasts, I read a lot of books, I probably pump out 45-50 books a year. I’m always doing courses, I’m kind of constantly have this thirst for learning. And for me, it’s really important to keep my mind very active, irrespective of the work that I’m doing. And, you know, I love having conversations with people who are experts in what they do and asking them how do they do that and you know, constantly learning from that as well. So, I just feel like that there’s so much I want to, you know, consume and learn before I pass that there isn’t enough time really. So I always make some time each day, I read every day. And you know, if you give me a spare hour, I’ll always make a pot of tea and get the latest book I’ve ordered on there, I still prefer reading books. There’s some books that aren’t available. So I read them online, but I do prefer having a hard book and breaking the spine and sitting there and underlining and being really nerdy with it. So yeah.
Charlie 25:24
Nice. Well, hence all the traveling as well. I mean, traveling is such a massive part of learning, learning different cultures. What’s one of the favorite country’s, favorite experiences you’ve had?
Shivani 25:35
Oh my goodness. That is such a hard question to answer. Such a hard question.
Charlie 25:41
Has to be your favorite, pick a good one.
Shivani 25:44
Well, probably Italy, from an experiential perspective. I love the way Italians live. And I love the way they eat. I love the way that the families all sit around tables, and everybody reaches over each other and either talking constantly over each other. So it’s the opposite. I mean, you know, you just said that you were English, and you’re English, and you’ve got an Italian girlfriend. So you will see that with different mealtimes. And so I just love how they just live life. They live in their piazzas, and they talk, and they connect, you know, and so there’s something about that country I really resonate with. But then I have so many other little experiences, you know, different parts of Asia, different parts of India, where I volunteered for a number of years, but there’s so many different, I mean, travel is one of my favorite things to do. So, at the moment through COVID. We are traveling around the world in our kitchen. Our 12 year old has designed a two week rotating roster of Turkish, Mexican, Indian, Italian. Italian dishes are great, had few times in quarantine. And we because we were meant to go overseas through COVID and that didn’t happen. So we’re trying to have a culinary, pretty basic, simple but experience through food and traveling through our kitchen every night. Last night was Mexican, tonight is Turkish.
Charlie 27:06
Wow. Well, that’s all part of it. It’s all part of it, isn’t it? The last lockdown we did, we did a competition for, we each drew a culture or cooked like a food out of the hat. And I got Lebanese and we all did a night, we did like a come down with me it’s quite good. It’s great to learn about different cultures through the food and everything, says a lot about the people. If you had an extra million dollars of budget, how would you spend it and why?
Shivani 27:38
Always a good question, isn’t it? Well, if I had a million dollars, I have a real passion for getting young girls in rural countries and villages educated. I just feel that they deserve the same choices as the boys and the men. And so about 20% of that would go into a couple of charities that I’m involved in to educate girls and villagers, and to give them an opportunity to be equal and have some opportunities for getting work. Over the years, I’ve got better at saving. So I’d probably save about 65-70% of us. And then I think the other 10%, I’ll blow traveling backward. You know, I know that I can’t travel but we don’t get that excited about, well I haven’t got that excited about it. So my kids always go, “Why can’t we go business class or we never go in business class.” My friends, we are going to do more travel because we’re not going to business class. So we would, yeah, we would just schedule in a hyper, you know, use 100-150 grand of that to create family experiences, which is really important for us often through travel. Yeah, well, last weekend, we just stayed in our own city. And we booked a hotel in our own city for two nights, which is so nice. But so they said, “Where are we going?” And we said, “We’re going into the Sofitel,” and they’re like, “Why are we going away few kilometers from home?” They’re 11 and 12. And I said, because we’re gonna have an experience because we can’t go overseas. So we booked an escape room and we booked 10 pin bowling and we went to the movies, and we went out for dinner with our masks on. And it was awesome. And so we just decided that we were going to have an experience in our own city because we couldn’t go anywhere.
Charlie 29:27
That’s such a good idea. I wanted to do an escape room for ages. Those things, I love stuff like that.
Shivani 29:32
Yeah, I’ve never done that. Yeah. And we survived by seven seconds. So that was a great eye five moment, we felt like we just won survivor or something.
Charlie 29:40
So yeah, and that is why you started AskShivani. So you have moments like that, so you have a lifestyle like that.
Shivani 29:44
Yeah. Exactly.
Charlie 29:47
Turkish food every night. And say you were talking to a driven student, let’s imagine what would be one piece of advice that you’d give to them to help them in their career? What’s one thing you just say as a bit of advice generally going forward for the future?
Shivani 30:08
I’d say just, you know, look at reframe, as we were speaking about failures or learnings, if you really love it, awesome, go deep. And so if you love your career, become a master at it. Don’t just be average at it, don’t be six or seven out of 10. Like really master it. And if you really dislike it or hate it, then get out. Like get out and find something else that you’re passionate about. But to me, I think, doing things six or seven out of 10 is such a waste of life, right? I mean, you can’t master everything. But I always say to people pick the top three things that you’re going to master that for the year, and just really get deep into it. And so people go, yeah, this person is at the top of their game. And because you really love doing what you do.
Charlie 30:55
And it is such an important part of life going through, so you don’t feel like a day at work is a massive chore. If you want to go to work, feel happy. And if you could teach everyone in the world one concept, what would have the biggest positive impact on humanity in your opinion?
Shivani 31:15
In my view, again, really good question, a really big question, Charlie would be, if we could almost love ourselves. And really know that we are worth something. And really have that self belief around our self love and self worth, then I think it would attack a lot of problems at once, you know, there’s a lot of anxiety around not being good enough. There’s a lot of our behaviors that are linked in around not, you know, being enough. And if we could just feel enough, which is really about self worth, and feeling that love for yourself, just as you are not what you’re in the future, not where you’re in the past. But just as you are in any given present moment. That’s probably the one thing that I’d want people to shift, that would shift humanity, I believe.
Charlie 32:08
Fantastic answer. So I’m going to wrap up with this last question here. Okay, where does your self worth come from?
Shivani 32:18
My self worth, and there’s no pun intended, it’s honestly like an injection, I know we’re all getting vaccinated at the moment. But to me self worth is, it’s to me getting vaccinated, like I need doses of it. And some of those doses come from, you know, great conversations, a lot of it comes from reading and listening to experts around the world, about the area of mastery for me. And so, you know, my self worth comes, and it comes from telling myself that I’m enough, really, so one of my exercises is looking in the mirror and saying, you know, I love myself, eye-to-eyeball contact, and I talk about that in some of my mentoring with people that have, you know, low sort of self esteem around that and low self worth around that is to be able to just say that and say, you know, “I am who I am,” and just to love yourself the way that you are. So I give myself regular doses of that. But you know, it’s never at one state, like, you know, your self worth goes up, something happens, you know, then something amazing happens, you feel great that something happens. So it’s a constant state of fluctuation, so you actually have to be aware of managing it. And so you have to have your own tips and strategies and admire the simple stuff, you know, read something positive, listen to a positive piece of music, get into that state, and get in front of a mirror and say, “Hey, I love you. You’re okay. You’re doing great.” If the kids are hard, if the relationship’s hard, business’s hard, staffs are hard, if money’s hard, you know, it’s okay. Like you’re doing great. You’re enough just as you are. So don’t let the external stuff affect your up and down.
Charlie 34:10
That’s right. You believe in yourself. That’s right. Well, fantastic. That was a fantastic talk, Shivani. Thank you so much for that.
Shivani 34:17
You’re welcome.
Charlie 34:18
Yeah, so that was The Mentor Evolution episode four, I believe. Thank you very much for coming on, Shivani. It’s great speaking to you.
Shivani 34:26
Same here, Charlie.