Conscious Self-Leadership with Indira Kennedy

And the thing about forgiveness is that when we forgive, we actually wipe the slate clean. So it's not only we can start again with that person and with ourselves, because we have forgiven.

Hey there friends. Welcome to Happiness Squad. This is the podcast dedicated to helping you unlock your full potential by mastering the art of and signs of happiness. We bring on the best leading experts on these topics to help you unlock your true potential and live with more joy, health, love and meaning in your life. Your host is no other than the star combo of Ashish Kothari and Anil Ramjiani who are both on a mission to provide you with an unfair advantage to be the masters of your experience and leaders in your industry. Get ready to be moved, challenged and enlightened on this podcast. It may change your life. Thanks for being here and joining the squad.

Hey Happiness Squad. It's great to have you with Ashish and I as we host guests who are industry leaders helping individuals and organizations to unlock inner happiness and flourishing. Do you still seek a still mind and wise heart? Our next guest explains the power that you can unlock within you. Meet Indira Kennedy, a pioneer of conscious leadership and multi award winner for her commitment to inspiring and informing the next wave of more awakened and empowered leadership. Since 2003, Indira has been actively inspiring people globally with her passion and practical knowledge of ways to elevate our own consciousness and how to apply these principles for more awakened empowerment of people and purpose in the workplace. Do you know this is a beautiful episode because Indira has shared so many thought provoking and insightful and moments since I've known her on my previous podcast Live Breathe, Believe. During this conversation, Ashish Inder and I delve into the journey that led her on her mission to unlock the five realities. How you can expand your self perception and fulfill your life purpose. Let me share them with you. Remembrance, radiance, resonance, resolution and ritual. Get ready to understand their significance and personal growth, leadership and flourishing. We hope that these tips and practices that we share can help you open up your consciousness. It was truly eye opening for me. Join Ashish and I as we welcome Indira to the Happiness Squad podcast. Ashish, Indira, it is an absolute pleasure to have the two of you together. Indira, welcome. We've come from such a long way back when we first met during lockdown. I met Ashish during lockdown as well and the three of us are here together today. How are you?

Really well thanks and hello and hello to Ashish. Meeting you for the first time, it's wonderful.

It is. It is such a pleasure to Meet you, Indira. I'm so excited for this conversation and I'm really excited for our listeners because, you know, you come with 20 years of unbelievable experience. You've launched an amazing book and I can't wait to get into that. And it's a topic that is so near and dear to our hearts.

Lovely. That sounds great.

Nice one. And so Indra, our favorite question that we love to start out with with each of our guests is how has your definition of happiness evolved over time through your research and work in conscious and self leadership?

Oh gosh, that's a lovely question because ultimately it is all about happiness, isn't it? It's evolved, I think, from being aware of the external and looking for things out in the world that essentially make me happy to a more deeper understanding that I know that joy is within me at all times and it gets covered up by other things and my expectations and how I interpret what's going on in life. I still look for external things. The other thing is that I also keep remembering of late that when I was a child and to sort of early adulthood, I was naturally joyful. And I keep remembering that. So it was just playful and meaningful. And so there's still, I think that's where I sort of also have a. I've got a yogic understanding that I choose to believe that I am joyful. Bliss does exist. There's also that understanding of how to be playful and truly enjoy. And that's what I look for now at both levels really. And then the external world as you and I've spoken about in other times together in the is more about how is my external world an expression of my joy. So the things that are in my life are an expression of my joy.

Beautiful. I want to dig a little bit into your book upcoming book the five Realities of Conscious Self Leadership. But they also touch on a really important topic in that book or in your own, I think it might have been remind me and that I'm sorry if I mess this up. You also wrote another book called Love in Action, correct? Was that a different book that the.

Same book changed the title?

Same book, changed the title. So I think this is good because I was about to ask you that question, but I think they're both beautiful titles. We had Shauna, who actually Shapiro a couple of weeks ago and she had a book that launched at two different titles in two different parts of the world because one title she thought people said and that title literally was Good Morning, I love you. And then the second title was more of A, you know, business title. And I feel there's a little bit of that duality here as well. And I would, you know, maybe we can get into that a little bit. But if you may, maybe I can talk about both the titles because the content is the same and I think it touches on one of the most important element of what's needed in our world right now. So do I have your permission to share both titles?

Absolutely. And I can definitely tell you why I changed them and what I think about that. Yes, yes.

Yeah, I'd love to get into that. So Indira is launching a book. One of the titles of the book or the title is gonna launch with the five realities of Conscious Self Leadership. It was also originally called Love in Action. And I love that word love, by the way. This is so common. My original book was called From Fear to Freedom and we changed it to Hardwired for Happiness. Different name, same content. But I think your book touches on such a beautiful concept of something is so needed in our work right now, in our communities and in our world. And there seems to be so much of a scarcity of it, which is love, love for self and love for the other. And you highlight such beautiful practices in this. So without much kind of further elaboration on this, I'll ask you directly that question. Talk to us a little bit, Indra, both about your book. You know, what was behind the title change, but more importantly, walk us into the five realities that you invite your readers and our listeners to think about.

Thank you. I'd love to do that. So I called it Love in Action. Because ultimately, if we're talking conscious leadership, that's what we need to be doing, is putting our love into action and allowing others to do the same. My spiritual healing training says we're here for one reason and that is to learn love. And that's what we chose to do. So for me, that's the baseline. If I'm questioning anything, I will come back to how is this an expression of love or is this loving at all? And so I worked a lot in philanthropy with not for Profits, and I saw love being put into amazing action. So it's bringing that to what's our higher purpose. When I went searching, there were quite a few books called Love in Action. And also I was starting to get a bit concerned about the intellectual property side of things, so. But what had come out of the conversations that Anil and I had was a little statement I had on one of my pages on the website is still Mind Wise Heart. And we really locked onto that. So there's two books because it was growing into one really big book. And the first part is still Mind Wise Heart and that is the five realities of conscious self leadership and how to expand your self perception and fulfill your life purpose. And then the second book is the eight elements of self Mastery. And they are very much about the eight practices that we need to be bringing into our lives if we want to truly be conscious and be conscious leaders. And that's how to become a conscious leader and change the world. So today we'll probably focus more on at least start with the five realities. But that came to me, really. It was given to me. It's something that just kept arising and it was related to me thinking about my work and what I understand relating to who we are as spiritual beings and how we're made up as spiritual beings. And that was following the chakra system, which you may or may not be aware of, is an eastern view of what goes on in the body. And I realized that most of us are living one reality, but my understanding is that there's five. And so I started to write about that whenever I felt inspired and felt like there was a download coming and I would sit and write and that's where. And the eight elements also came as a result of that.

Beautiful. So walk us through a little bit of those five realities.

Okay, so the first one is remembrance. So there's five Rs and the first one is remembrance. And that's to do with our physical, emotional and mental levels of our being, our mental thinking levels, which are the first three, three chakras from the base chakra moving up towards the navel. And what I noticed was that most of us are spinning wheels, trying to get work, life, balance and balancing the physical, emotional and mental. And we need to remember who we are first up, that we are spiritual beings with a higher purpose. We are here to learn love. And we need to remember that we are physical beings, we are human beings and we need to look after ourselves at all three levels. What we were ignoring was and or lacking information and knowledge about was how do I get to my spiritual self. So those three levels are really more about our soul lessons, what's going on for us as people with a soul. And we're working on shining that soul and completing that soul. But there's more to us than that that we can bring online.

Indra, I don't know if you saw last week my dear ex colleagues at McKinsey and you know, Barbara, Jackie and others released their Quite seminal piece of research based on a survey that the McKinsey Health Institute did across 30 countries. And they really think about, well, being around four elements, physical, mental, social and spiritual. And it was really, really clear from that research that, you know, an area that we are really from a wellbeing point of view or from a health point of view, struggling actually as a world today, is on the spiritual health and described spiritual health as extent to which we integrate meaning into our lives. So it was 58% people reported healthy on this dimension, whereas for many of the others like physical it was 70%. For mental it was 67, for social it was 64. We have, I think for sure the point that you're touching on is we have in the modern world with so much of the focus on self and you and you know, there is an element of us and its connection and interbeing nature of the world that we are forgetting, that we have forgotten. I think it's a really important element that you highlight to be able to integrate that, to be able to see it and to be able to know that I, the person who's experiencing the body, the mind, the emotions, what is the nature of that I and how that I and what that I wants is the same as what's in you and what's in everything else out there.

Absolutely. And I mean, I call that I the witness. This is the one who's watching. This is my great self with a capital S. And we all have that self within us and that's the all loving, unconditional, fully empowered self. So the interesting question around this for me is what is selfish? What is truly selfish? Because I think in our Western world especially, we get incredibly confused about what's okay for me and what should I be giving to others in the workplace. You know, I've worked in the NHS and the National Health Scheme and that's all about sacrifice in the end. And people burn out quickly, rapidly and various ways. So what I love about this and this system is, and it always has to come back to it's me first, it is about me first. And that's because I am evolving and I'm here to learn a lesson. So no matter how altruistic we are, if we truly honest with ourselves, we will still be giving because it feels good or there's something there for us. And that's fine, that's fine. As you say, we're integrated, interconnected and greatly dependent beings on each other. We're here to evolve together and so we have a contribution to make which is the other side of spirituality as well, is meaning and contribution, growth and contribution.

Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting for me is there is in fact, when we were researching this work around, where are we? What is the level of stress anxiety, burnout in the world? You know, know, call me foolish, but I had a story that this was just a problem with Fortune 500, private equity consultants. You know, those people who are kind of out there pushing themselves and those who actually do the work of service, they should be living their best lives. I mean, of course they're serving. And I realized that actually the stress anxiety burnout is higher in not for profits. It's higher in teachers and nurses and doctors. And because of this notion again of this loss, forgetting who we are and taking care of ourselves. Right. Service can only be done. You can't pour from an empty cup. And yet so many of us lose ourselves into this higher mission of serving others and not taking care of our own needs, putting away what brings us joy, putting ourselves behind, you know, whether we are working, whether we are just parents. There's so much demands on mothers and fathers who might not be working out there, but working in our homes. And they're constantly on the run, right between the multiple schedules, juggling. There is no space for them. There is no space for the other, the spouse. There's no space to really turn in and tune into how they are doing. Life becomes one big chore list to do, right? And it's so important to. It's not self expression exactly, loving yourself. And you know, it's interesting, it is such a Western concept. The Lama talked about this in one of his speeches, one of his talks where he said, in the Buddhist tradition, compassion always included the self. But in the Western tradition, the word compassion is always about with the other. And you can't do that with the other. So, like, he was always puzzled with like all the self harm because of this kind of broken concept of the other. We are fundamentally integrated with that, you know, with the other piece. So I love your memory and your remembrance of that.

Well, we're also very caught in a victim rescuer model in the workplace as well. And when we do that, we're disempowering the other person who has the right to find out how great they are and what their own resources are and what they're capable of. So we actually disempower by trying to rescue as well. And so our whole notion of support, what's the right way to support somebody, is quite skewed too. And that's what I love about coaching. I do executive coaching but for me, when I'm sitting with that person, even when they don't believe in themselves, I'm sitting there in absolute belief of them and that they have the knowledge and the power to work with it. They just need help to uncover it and get the mind out of the way and anything else that's in the way. But the other thing that takes us into the other realities and please jump in with your questions. But I'm thinking that what is also happening is that we are forgetting. What we're not remembering is that we have these other realities that we could be living in that would give us even greater satisfaction and greater fulfillment if we took the time and knew how to access them. And that's what's so special about that model for me for the five realities.

So speaking of them, I think that was beautiful in terms of remembrance and the one that kind of resonated with me was actually radiance, which is the second. So maybe you can tell us a bit more about that Indira.

Sure. Well as I said, the first three chakras, the physical, emotional, mental, are all about our soul aspects and we need to get to who we are as a spiritual self and the heart is the bridge and this is the reality of radiance. So what is it that we are radiating and that's where love sits in our hearts. Are we radiating love? What sort of energy are we radiating? It's where we self heal. It's also where forgiveness sits. So radiance is are we truly radiating the light that we are? What are we emanating and are we spending time because interesting too Ashish that you mentioned that that third one was social on the 4Qs. I would say for me it would be the emotional because it will include social and relationship. But what happens to our feelings? What happens to. And so much of mental health is about not connecting with our feelings anymore. So the spiritual side can be religious beliefs but for me it's our ethics and values and what's our inner truth, what's our mission purpose and. And what will genuinely and our creativity. What are we here to express and that comes through the heart so our higher self can speak to us through our hearts. That's where our truths lie and we get confused and don't know quite what to do and live reactively when we're not anchored in the wisdom of our hearts.

That's something Indra we've spoken about before which I always struggled with. Right. Because there's go with your gut or go with your mind. And I know one of the famous phrases you actually reminded me is I'm not my body and I'm not my mind, but it comes to a wise heart. And so maybe just for our listeners, help us understand, when you say listening to the wisdom in our heart, what does that entail?

I think if we think back to probably when we were young, we were told about having a conscience, having a clear conscience, not having a guilty conscience about things. And for me that's where the wisdom sits, is are we doing the right thing? Are we truly doing what's beneficial for everybody concerned? Are we living our values and what we're prepared to stand by? Because that's what grounds us. And ultimately I believe our inner truths are what we will judge our life by. So we, whether we're aware or not, we might be running around trying to get through everything. The dissatisfaction is coming from a place of I'm not living my values, I'm potentially violating my own values and I can't do that to myself. And you know, we know people die for their values, they will sacrifice their own life for their values. So for me, that's the soul speaking and we need to take notice because it will be trying to speak to us all the time, guide us and lead us in the right direction that we cut off, we're cutting ourselves off from that. But it starts with love being the bridge to those other realities that I'll talk about as well.

Yeah. In your book you write, Indira, we are born to learn two things. Learn to love and learn to forgive. And it is so true. And I might even say, if I might, as I reflect on that question, one, it rings true. Well, what also rings true is as I think about children, children are love and children forgive, they don't hold on. But somehow as adults, as we grow up, as we grow our armors, we stop loving and we stop forgiving. We hold onto resentments over years. We think about love as just, you know, love in a romantic love or a different, you know, we love the core essence of love, which is love for you and me. And it's as both individuals that are to some extent the same but really are all also looking for the same. Right. We are all kind of united. There's so much common, so love for everyone. We actually had a recording yesterday with Nick Shaw and he had a beautiful poem that he had written on love inspired by the love he received from the community in the wake of his nine year old son's death. In a tragic skiing accident. So talk to us a little bit. My point was I think it's almost maybe we need to relearn love and forgiveness because we are born as children with an unbelievable capacity to love and an unbelievable capacity to forgive. We like have an argument and tomorrow we kind of move on. But I've seen, and even as my own son is now a teenager, I can see that changing where I think you have to be a lot more careful now because he remembers almost and say, hey, you did X. And it starts to shape them. So talk to us about this notion of relearning love and relearning forgiveness.

Well, love never leaves because we are love. We are made of that energy we call love. And for me, and I've just been speaking with a psychiatrist about this that I met at a conference last week, some really interesting things from him around the mind. But also that we get so lost because we have had so much put on top of that love. And it goes into self protection and fear of annihilation is really what that is. Our deepest fear is that we will die. And so we will build up all sorts of defense mechanisms to cope, coping strategies, and then we need to. And I have to say that in doing this work and practicing many of the attributes of yoga, believe me, it all comes up. It comes up to be cleared away so we don't get out of doing the work in a sense. And we have to be really courageous. You know, we have to be spiritual warriors in that sense because we do have to confront our own demons. And some of us are more damaged, more wounded than others. But we all carry some kind of wound. Somewhere there will be a wound that we will hit. And it's important we don't fall into that wound and then forget that we are in fact love. And the thing about forgiveness is that when we forgive, we actually wipe the slate clean. So it's not only we can start again with that person and with ourselves, because we have forgiven.

Hi friends. We hope you're enjoying the tips discussed in this episode. If you're on the career treadmill, seeking the next promotion, experiencing stress and anxiety, or reach the top of your career and wondering if the sacrifices to get there were worth it. Ashish and I have been there and we're ready to support you. The Happiness Squad rewire program is designed to integrate the nine hardwired for happiness practices into your day. Within five minutes form proven habits to experience more success, resilience, satisfaction and creativity. You won't be alone in your journey Check out the rewire link in the show notes. Make happiness your competitive edge to achieve your goals. Now back to the episode. I want to jump in on that one because as in the hardware for happiness practices we talk about, you can love, you can love and forgive. But just because you forgive doesn't mean you necessarily forget. And I think, Indira, what you just mentioned of like forgiveness is wiping the slate clean, which may not be the same as forgetting. I just want to make sure, for my sake, as a listener and as someone who appreciates what each of you are saying, how am I able to forgive, wipe the slate clean? What do I do when I hold on to that and I'm unable to forget, whether it be forget that pain, forget that harm, or forget that love, like, what am I meant to do in that space?

I don't think we do need to forget because we do need to remember that person's potentially still stuck in a whole lot of unloving stuff. Isn't being loving towards you at the time. And therefore, you know, tough love and spirituality is tough love at times is to be able to stand in there saying, I know that you're not being who you really are at your core right now. You're being something else that's creating difficulty for me. I can forgive you because I can see you are lost to who you really are right now. But I won't forget that I need to be careful or that you've actually been prepared to do this thing. I've just gone through something like that just for myself around some private issues too.

Tell me, tell us about that. Id.

Well, I won't tell you exactly because it wouldn't be fair to the person involved. But I did find that with a change in family situation that I got really triggered. Emotions came up that I did not expect and I found myself in a mix of anger and grief. And they were the two words I could label this feeling. Energy. It's just energy, movement, but as. And it was keeping me from being able to really focus on anything else. So what I did was I got hold of my journal and I took myself away from my apartment and decided I needed to process this. And because all sorts of things were coming up, including really old memories and I was building a justification for why this person was not a good person and also questioning how I was feeling and was I being fair and was I being reasonable and am I just being petty and you know, like I was questioning myself at the same time. But the point is that that emotion was coming up and a Whole lot of thoughts. And so what I did was I decided I would just capture them in my journal without judging them in any way or trying to shape them in any way. I just kept writing and ultimately I got to, you know, that sort of downward laddering thing where I got to see what my truth was about it. And ultimately I had fear that I could not have control over what someone would want to do to me. And I realized how much power I was giving to that person.

Yeah, there's so much there. I think you covered quite a bit there, Indra. So I think this notion of just noticing what you're saying. Right. So Anel, by the way, just to answer your question and kind of weave in kind of where Indra is, because I'm so in agreement with and so masterfully navigating Indira, these difficult emotions, these difficult moments, these triggering moments, these moments that we would rather not have, but we have. So let's talk about them. Forgiveness is not forgetfulness. Sometimes when there are things that are really harsh things that happen to us, we can't forget them. You cannot. Like, we cannot wipe the memory clean and we should not forget them, especially if there was a real injustice dealt. Forgiveness is an act we give to us and to the other as a choice to move on from it and to not let an incident in the past continue to hurt us. Because the hurt the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth time is us hurting ourselves by reliving the incident. The incident has happened. We cannot change this. It's in the past. It's the second, third, fourth, fifth and the 20th arrow when that we wound ourselves by reliving it. And so when we forgive, we choose to break away from that cycle and saying, I want to free myself. Right? And we do need to recontract sometimes with the other person and make sure that that doesn't happen again. In some cases, we need to completely break away and choose to let go of that relationship. You know, especially if there was, you know, an extreme case, whether it was sexual trauma or something else, you might choose to let, you know, forego that relationship and not be in that again. So again, forgiveness is not about forgetfulness. Having said that, even when we choose to forgive, look, we're not all, you know, we're not all Buddhas. Those things can come up as Indra described, even in her situation. But in those moments, I think her thoughts she shared are beautiful. Number one is recognize what's happening when we just recognize what is happening to the thoughts that are coming up, the emotions. Beautiful. She named the two emotions. So, friends, name your emotion. Name them. She said for her, it was anger and it was grief or sadness. Right. Anger and grief. Noticing the emotions is really important and naming them second, she said, I started having all these stories about the other person and stories about myself, and there's not one stories. And they keep coming. Don't try and suppress them, just write them. Write them. Because when you write them, you are making them visible that you can then make something you're subject to, an object that. That you can analyze. We've talked about this on our podcast before. If you write down the beliefs, the assessments, the stories about myself and the other, and they're on a page, you can go back and say, are they true? Trust me, they will appear very true in the moment, but they might not be true. And even if there was something that was done, you can remind yourself that, hey, I chose to close that chapter. I chose to forgive and to move on so we can start to pay attention to the other parts of it. But it is important to be able to navigate that by making our thoughts and our feelings subjects from being subjects to objects that we can actually analyze.

Yes. And to be careful not to give them too much power by looking at them too closely again, because what we focus on is what we get, and it's better to look at the alternative. So at that point, I was then looking at, what do I want instead? And I was also looking at, where's the love in this situation? So what's the compassion I need to have for myself and the other person? And ultimately, because I was not ready to forgive, I waited. It took a day and a half, but the next morning, I was able to sit down. And through my healing, I have a forgiveness process. And I did that for her, and I did it for me.

Could you walk us through what that forgiveness process is, Indira?

So it's a really useful process. So you put your hands up with palms facing just comfortably, elbows by side, and you imagine you're holding a golden circle of light, just a circle. And you place the person in that circle. And then you have. You imagine. And don't worry if you're not too visual, because it will happen, but you just need to know the steps. And then you imagine a golden cord that extends from your heart to theirs and attaches you to that person. And what we say is, we have words and we look at the person and we say, I don't know why you did what you did. I don't know why you said what you said, but I forgive you. And you see a golden pair of scissors come in and cut the cord between you, and I release you in my love. And we keep repeating that until the person actually disappears. They fade away, or you can even see a bit of cloud come in and cover them over. I sometimes find that cord is so tough, it's so thick to cut through. And it's, can I cut this cord? But so we do the. I don't know why you did what you did. I don't know why you said what you said, but I forgive you. And the scissors come in, cut the cord, and I release you in my love. And you must send the love. When we do that for ourselves, we do the same thing, except. And we have the cords, we put ourselves in the circle and we have the golden cord that goes between us and us. And then we put a little placard around our neck that says what it is I need to forgive myself for. And if we can't think of a word, just put fear. Because everything else comes down to fear. So I put my grief and anger or my resentment or my self righteousness or whatever it was that needed to go on that placard. In fact, I think I just put theta. And you say different words. Similar, but different. And you say, I do know why I did what I did. I do know why I said what I said. And I forgive myself and I release my. And this time, instead of cutting the cord because you don't want to cut the cord between you and you, the scissors come in and they cut the strings of the placard around your neck and let it fall. So I release my fear, and I release my fear or my grief or my anger, resentment, in my love. And we keep doing that until we in the circle have gone. So it's. I do know why I did what I did. I do know why I said what I said, and I forgive myself and I release this fear in my love. And I can tell you that's one of the most emotional things I can ever do because love comes pouring out.

I love that. Indra, maybe we can if. Is this one of the practices in your book? If not, maybe we can get a little something that we can get from you that we can share.

Okay. I don't think it's in my book as a practice. I'll have to check, but I don't think I have. That's a spiritual healing technique that I was taught.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

We have to take responsibility for ourselves. We don't have to take responsibility for the other person, that's up to them. And we don't know why they did what they did, and we don't know why they said what they said. We don't at a deep, deep level. We've got no idea what they were actually doing when they did or said that thing.

Yeah. I always think about, you know, when in a situation where somebody is angry or somebody does something, it's exactly right. We don't know what they're going through, what is happening. You know, we just don't know also what has made them the way they are. There is always when we take action, that quote, unquote hurts. It might be out of ignorance or if it is out of vengeance or something that is. There is a lot of hurt there. Right. And we can still feel compassion. I really liked your practice, Indira, the one that helps me a lot in these moments. And it's a slower practice, but it's a powerful practice. We have it in our rewire program as well, is the practice of the Loving Kindness meditation from the Buddhist tradition where when we can hold. And it addresses forgiveness indirectly because what you're sending out is love and compassion, love and compassion for self and for others. By repeating the words, may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be free of suffering, may you be at peace. And when we do that for ourselves, to somebody we love, to a friend, to somebody who's neutral, and then to somebody who has hurt us that we are trying to forgive, we connect back to the first remembrance that we are all spiritual beings, we are all after the same thing, and we don't know the realities, but we can still be compassionate and we can send that wish for them to be happy, to be healthy, to be free of suffering, to be at peace. And as we do that, as you said, Indra, we don't control what they do, but we can control how we can keep opening up and be love.

It's while we're in that. While we're in that fear, and it will be fear for them that has generated that behavior as well. We're not in our hearts, you know, we're not coming from that space of, as you say, that opening up to who we are and having compassion for the path they've chosen to take in that moment, to get whatever lesson they're getting. And that's none of our business either, but somehow we are connected with that. So that's why I waited, because I knew at that point I couldn't forgive in all honesty. And I. So I kept processing Me until I got to the point where I could do that with a loving heart and have compassion and use and wish them well. You know, we've got such a competitive society that wants to, on the one hand, you know, chop us off at the legs or build everybody up and then topple them off the pedestal. So we're never quite sure where we're safe to be because we want to do wonderful things and make great contributions. But what might people do to us then? Or if we're really not, we're lazy or we're struggling somehow, that's not enough, you know, that competitive spirit when it's, we're all here to do what we're here to do, and that's such an. An individual thing. So why do we not wish people well and celebrate when someone is successful and celebrate when they're wealthy because they can give so much more. That's all love now.

That's the power of love. And this is something that, you know, I again, listening to each of you, this has been helpful for me because there is still some of that forgiveness and that opportunity for me with someone that's close to me in my life that I'm also working that through. So for the listeners, I think it's a real interesting practice for you to pause, to reflect, and to re listen to what Ashish Ninderev just shared, because it's something I'm definitely going to do. Indra, I am conscious of time, and I'm mindful. We're two out of five Rs down. I'm just going to say for the sake of our listeners that the remaining three realities are resonance, resolution, and ritual. And what I want to ask you, Indra, is which of those three would you like to just spend a few minutes with Ashish and I discussing with our listeners as we then soon wrap up?

So just quickly. So the next one is resonance, and that is about creativity, intuition, and what are we resonating with? This is where our authentic self lies. Are we being resonant? Is what we say resonant with what we do? Or is what we feel resonant with what we're saying is going on? And are we resonating? Are we allowing that greater conscious energy to speak through us? And are we resonating with the vibration of that? So there's a resonance of vibration that comes with that? So when we're speaking, are we in that and then resolution, is that being resolved to do what we're here to do, resolving with our deaths? There's a lot of levels to resolution, being able to resolve and make resolutions and, and stay with them. But there's an overall resolution that sits there. And then ritual is the practices we need to put in place on a daily basis that holds our life together. So all of those things can come into being and we can elevate ourselves and we can elevate the world that we're in and do good for everyone and for ourselves. So I think out of those three, I would really like to see more of us working on resonance because I think we ignore our intuition. We're not so great at being resonant in terms of. In the workplace of what we're really thinking and what we're prepared to say. We're not necessarily being resonant with the culture that we want to create. And so that expression, the self expression, expression, the ability to speak and allow spirit to speak through us as well, allow that conscious energy to be us, you know, find a way through us and be a medium for that energy, which for me is my role. That's my job when it comes to me as a person. And then I've got things to do in the world, but how do I know what those are? So if I'm more aligned and I do my meditation and I allow my mind to be still and get out of all of the stuff and find the truth within me, I will be resonant and I can be a conscious leader. That's what being a conscious leader is, because I'm conscious of. Did I line up? Is, am I really speaking my truth? Am I allowing someone else to speak theirs and not be triggered by them and slap, you know, shut it all down. That's really part of what resonance is about.

That's beautiful. Do you know, and this is where I think when you say resonance, I hear that word so much, it's thrown around so often, right? Oh, what you said resonates with me. Oh, what I hear resonates. And it's like, well, does it really, you know, and what level is it really, truly resonating? And what are you going to do with that? And you know, is it just something that it's surface or is there depth to it? You know, Indira, I'm really grateful that you shared that. And I'm mindful and conscious that we haven't had a chance to discuss the eight elements during this conversation. I think it would serve it justice to bring you back to discuss those eight elements at a later stage. And for those that are interested in the eight elements during lockdown on My Live, Breathe, Believe podcast I did previous to my partnership with Ashish. We went through all eight. And I encourage for those that are interested, but I do feel it's a great opportunity for us to understand not only how you're bringing these five realities to our listeners, but also how the eight elements link with it and how you bring it to life in your own life and how you see it coming to life in those that you're teaching and coaching along the way.

It's fine to leave the eight elements because I think what has been missing for me and what people perhaps don't understand when you say, oh, you need to journal or you need to be doing creative visualizations or setting intentions, is the five realities kind of give you the why and when you know what it is you're trying to do. Those elements become so much more powerful because you know the power of them. And what is it I'm trying to do with these here?

You know, it's interesting you say because again, I just the other day I was speaking to my sister about meditation and we had a debate, a beautiful debate, around how long do you need to meditate for? Is it five minutes, 10 minutes? Minimum of 30 minutes. And it was interesting is I feel that people do sometimes take medication, they take vitamins, they do practices without actually understanding the why and why really understanding the meaning behind it. So when you actually practice it and do it, there's substance to your practice, there's meaning behind it, so you truly appreciate what you unlock as you do it. And so I do agree. I love that. So we've set up the why with you today and in the future we can talk about that, the what and the how with the eight elements. And I think they're beautiful. In conjunction with the nine hardwired for happiness practices that Ash has put together, I just feel that it's an invitation to our listeners to check these out and to understand the why. I mean, each of you have done that work, and I feel that this just an opportunity for folks to benefit on the back of that work to fully appreciate and apply it into their lives. So, Indra, as we wrap up, there are a few questions that I just want to ask you. It's part of something that Ashish and I do to help our listeners get to know our guests better. But do you have a favorite song that you listen to when you want to turn your frown upside down?

Do you know what came to mind was Happy Pharrell's happy song that. Yes, absolutely. Love it. And I have to Say in terms of spiritual work, the mantras chants are absolutely my happy song. That is absolutely what shifts my energy when I can't do anything else. If I can't meditate, I chant love that.

Love that. What would you say is your favorite activity to do to lift you up?

Be on the water. I absolutely love the water. Be in it, on it, whatever. Just water please.

This is the Aussie speaking. F. This is the Aussie speaking.

This is the Aussie near the tens in greatest much that you know, it's.

No, no, no, that doesn't count.

That doesn't count. Yeah, a friend took me paddleboarding recently and I. We were only. We'd only just got out on the water and I just threw up my hands and yay. She laughed and laughed. It was like, yes, I'm on the water.

Reconnecting with nature. Reconnecting yourself. No, it. And then the last question is, what's your favorite book that you would recommend to our listeners? Not yours or Ashish's, but maybe a book that inspired you.

It's been many, many years, but it just has to be. I have so many books but it has to be Power versus Force by Dr. David Hawkins. An absolutely remarkable book and it was life changing for me in terms of truly understanding the power of energy and vibration and why we must and choose our words so carefully. It's got the most incredible list of vocabulary for higher level frequency of through our words, through our language and also these words that are the opposite and pull energy down, act, suck energy out of our system. So yeah, power versus course. It's a brilliant book.

Love it. Language is powerful good. Ashish, I'm going to say thank you to both of you. Really appreciate your time. Indira, to reconnect after all this time, to have you and Ashish together to me is just absolutely amazing. So thank you.

Thank you. This has been lovely. It's always more. There's always more.

Yes. This was such a wonderful, so wonderful connecting. Indra, thank you for all the amazing work you're doing and yeah, I so appreciated having you.

Good to get to know your work as well. And Neil always likewise.

Well, hey, still mind and a wise heart.

Have an amazing day.

Thank you. Yes. Bye.

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