10 Things That You May Not Know About Me

Okay, let's get off this topic of digital coaching for a while. You know, this particular podcast I'm just going to share my likes and interests in other aspects of my life besides digital coaching. So I plan to cover some things on, you know, what kind of music I like, food, family, travel, spirituality, gaming, movies, composing music, the kind of friends that I have, gadgets. So I'm just going to give you my view on the other stuff that I like besides just digital coaching and what we do over here. So you get to see the other side of me and it's going to be a chill podcast. We get to know each other on a more deeper level besides the core topic that I normally talk about in this podcast and according to me, I feel all of them are important because I learn from various different places. So yeah, just tune in and enjoy this episode as I share with you some others some other things that you may not know about me. Let's get in.

Hey, thank you for tuning into this podcast. Siddharth Rajshekhar here. Once again I want to thank you for being around here and I thought this episode I will just share some stuff which is off topic, off the main topic which is digital coaching and building businesses online and stuff like that and things that really drive me because I think it's important that you also get to know where I'm getting my influences coming from. And I have varied influences coming from, you know, various backgrounds and all of those dots connect with what I do over here. And yeah, I'll also make a connection in some way towards the end on how I'm able to apply learnings from other places into the business. But I'll keep that towards the end. So first I'm going to talk about music, what kind of music I love and what all have been my influences from childhood days. So for me music has been an integral part of my upbringing. You know, my mom, my father and brother, all three are guitarists. I'm the only keyboardist. I've been playing keyboard since the age of 10. I still remember the first keyboard that I got as a gift from my uncle. I still cherish that moment so much and I got fully into it. Meaning I I took keyboard classes. I did not give any exams or grades, but I completed two grades of the assigned the books and stuff during my younger days and I was not so much into playing notation music. That means I would not prefer looking at a set of notes and play I'd like to play by ear. So I used to play a lot of chords and most of the. My influences, my childhood days, childhood days have been around Western rock music. You know, right from good old Michael learns to rock, Bryan Adams. And then you go even a little before that also like Pink Floyd and the Beatles and all of that stuff in my mom and dad used to play guitar and we used to jam at home together. So I. I remember mom and dad used to play guitar, my brother also used to play and I used to play together and rest of the family members used to come together and sing and stuff. Even though I come from a typical Tam Bram family, South Indian. But since I was brought up in a convent school, I had a good influence of Western music right from younger days. And during my school days I used to sing in the school choir. So I started singing in my third standard, if I'm not mistaken, third or fourth standard all the way till when I left Bishop Cotton's. That's where I studied. So I had a huge, what do you say? Influence in music from my childhood days and with all those initial phases. And then when I failed my 12th, I went into sound engineering. Because during school days I was in a school band. We were the number one school band in ICSE back in the day. I still remember we won the first prize and I was the keyboardist of that band. Over 40 schools from all over India had participated. And I was a part of that band that we used to do a lot of gospel rock. And I used to play keyboard gene for gospel, rock music and stuff. So that led into the sound engineering industry. So when I got into the sound engineering world, even though I had influences of Western music, rock music, I got a good dose of electronic music because electronic music was just beginning at that point of time. And some of you may or may not know this, since I come from a spiritual background, I also play Indian percussion instrument. Indian North, North Indian percussion. Like in South India, you have something called the Mridanga, the North Indian Mridanga, which is normally played in West Bengal. I learned that from when I was 10 years old. And I used to play and I still play even at home and for any kind of bhajans and stuff like that at home. So that is another side to my music influences. So there has been on one side like rock music, western music, on the other side, core Indian spiritual music. And I love both of them equally. So. And I think I found a lot of my inner peace through spiritual music. And I also find I get ideas from Western music. I like both. I like both worlds. So when I came into the sound engineering world. In 2001, I got a good dose of electronic music. I did a research in house music. That was one of my projects when I was doing my sound engineering. And I actually researched a lot about the evolution of electronic music and how it started to take different shapes and forms over the years. And there's a website called DI fm. You guys can go and check it out later. DI fm, it's an FM radio, but you can actually go there and see how many different styles of electronic music there is in the world today. And you'll be surprised. There are so many sub niches and micro niches within music itself and within electronic music itself. So right now I love playing and listening to progressive house music whenever I'm doing my webinars and other sessions. When I'm working on stuff, love listening to Apple Radio. I just tune into the spa channel over there. A lot of meditative music, Reiki healing, that kind of music. I like to keep that running in the background when I'm working. So depending on what I'm doing, the mood keeps changing when it comes to music. So music has been like a common theme right through my life right from the beginning. And it's such an important, such a huge and important role for me. And since I learned music, I also learned that music is, you know, it activates both the sides of the brain. So there's creativity and there's logical, there's creative creativity and logic in music. So I have to really thank music for bringing out those skill sets in me. So I can get really creative if I want. I can get super logical and I also have numbers so I can bounce around both these zones thanks to the background in music. Next, let's come to food. Not too much of a foodie, like a typical foodie, but right from my childhood days, we've been vegetarians, but I've had my stint in, you know, in non veg and stuff during school and college days. Then once I got deeper into spirituality, our entire family got completely into sattvic food. So at home I don't. We don't cook onion and garlic and stuff. And whatever food that we make, we actually offer it. So we have like an altar at home and we offer the food and then we consume that. So we believe that food has energy and, you know, we like to bless the food and eat it. And that's been the practice for years, you know, from when I can, more than 10, 15 years, ever since I got married also that's been like the practice at home. Whatever we eat Is blessed. And then we have that. And so as far as diet is concerned, I am both me, my wife, my kids, everyone, My parents, my in laws, the entire family, we are sattvic diet. You know, there's no onion, no garlic, you're strictly vegetarian. No eggs also, even in cakes, we don't have eggs. And that's been the lifestyle. And whenever we go out, whenever I go traveling and stuff, for me, I'm always able to find, you know, Jain food and manage. So people may think, okay, how can you manage without all of this stuff? Of course, now in a post Covid world, Everyone is eating at home. But while I used to do the travels, I did not have any problem. And this has been my, you know, something that I adopted as a practice From, I think 2006, on a more serious level. So it's been quite a long time since I got into this. This kind of diet at home. And besides that one is a spiritual side. But I've also been the way that I.

Approach food is I don't like to binge on stuff. There are cheat days. But even at home, we don't really stock so much of, you know, deep fried items or a lot of sweets and stuff. We try to keep the palate as healthy as possible, even for the kids. And I like to start my day with a herbalife shake. I've been doing a herbalife shake since I think four years now. And it's been amazing. I don't really promote the business, but I love the products. So I do two shakes in a day. It's like a meal replacement. I do a combination of chocolate, mango, vanilla and a scoop of protein. And that's my morning breakfast. And I've noticed, you know, whenever I have regular breakfast, let's say like, you know, aloe parathas or dosas or idlis, Whenever I have that, it really drains my energy down as compared to having a shake. The shake, the energy is great. And the only heavy meal that I have is the lunch. Typical south Indian sambar, rasam, curry, that kind of lunch. And I have a shake in the evening and the night by 6, 37, 7ish. Try to wrap up dinner. And it's usually south indian tiffin items. That's what I normally have. So food wise, that's how our setup is. And it's been great. Yeah. Now, let's come to family side. The third aspect is family. And some of you may or may not know. Yeah. I'm a father of two boys. I found my wife in a spiritual retreat in 2007. 2007 end around that time in fact, 2007 I met her in Dubai. So she's from Dubai and she's also from our spiritual movement. So a common family friend connected us. In 2008 when I went to this place called Mayapur which is three hours from Kolkata, I gone with the youth group and then we had a 45 minute conversation and we decided that we're going to get married. So it was a pretty interesting way that we met. And ever since it's been an amazing journey. We got married in 2008, December. And yeah, it's been a pretty awesome journey. It's been a rollercoaster ride. But the best part is the spiritual focus in our relationship has kept us together and it's really been an amazing journey. And yeah, both the boys.

Who have been born to us are our main priority in life. And what we do is.

For their.

Pleasure, for their upbringing, for really giving an amazing future for them. And I never understood the value of parenting until I became a parent myself. Still remember when my first son was born.

The first one month was pretty intense and just like any child that's born, you know, both ways, sleepless nights and I remember I just broke down crying and I just told my dad and mom, you know, thank you for being the best parents. I really value parenting now, now that I know that, now that I'm experiencing that journey myself. So it was a very moving experience that I had when the first child came out. And the second one also has been a phenomenal experience seeing how these two guys are growing in front of our eyes. First one is eight at this point. Second one is he's just turned three years old. And besides that, family wise, we spend a lot of time together, we do a lot of spiritual activities together. And both my parents and in laws, we also connect on that together. So for me, family has always been the number one priority. When I'm not working, I'm always spending more time with family or spending time with the kids and teaching them. My original, I would say vision was to homeschool my kids. And I think I'm getting an opportunity to do that right now. So even though there's other ways. So for example, my first son is learning Vedic maths, he's learning guitar, he's learning keyboards, I'm teaching him keyboards. Then he's learning sound engineering, I'm teaching him other stuff. So whatever I can pick up and give him in terms of what I know or give him the exposure, that's the Way that I wanted to. The vision that I wanted to build up, bring up my family more like keeping them in the front, the kids in the focus and teaching them. So homeschooling has been always in my, at the back of my mind. So from an education standpoint, both, both of them are in the Montessori method. I plan to keep them in that until they are 10, 12. I think now Montessori even goes up to that age. Then after that definitely start to groom them towards entrepreneurship. So the vision is very different. Not planning to go to the conventional education system unless they really need it, unless they want to specialize in some skills where they have to go to university. So keeping it really open and not too rigid on that point. Number three and number four is travel. When it comes to travel, I'm not that much of a travel buff. Like many of my other friends, both my wife and I, we, if you are in Chennai, that's awesome. You know, we've really not traveled like that much but we love traveling to spiritual places. Recently we went to, we did a trip to Srirangam and to Madurai. I was born in Madurai. Some of you may not know this, but I actually went back on a tour to find my roots. Went back to the place where my grandfather lived, my mother's mother, he's no more right now. But he was a doctor in Madurai so went there, got to see the old Meenakshi temple. My grandfather used to be a doctor and he had a clinic right outside the Madhuri Meenakshi temple. And apparently he was a very.

He was a very giving person and gave a lot of free treatment to a lot of people and very charitable man. So I normally talk about my dad's dad, my grandpa who influenced me. But my other side, grandpa also has been an equal influence on me that I don't talk about much. But he's been an amazing person who lived an awesome life. So my mother's side, grandpa, grandpa.

He has four daughters, my mom is his third one. So I think from a life planning perspective I've seen him be impeccable. Like he built a beautiful mansion of a house in Madurai. I went and saw that house. Then he came, relocated to Mysore and lived an amazing life. Like very fulfilling life. Getting all his four daughters married. And when he left, seven grandkids of his. And when he left this world, I think he had sorted out everything for everyone. So a very well planned life I should say. And who was ambitious at the time when he needed to be ambitious and then took his leg off the gas pedal when all his duties were completed. In that way, I really appreciate the way that he has planned his life. So when it comes to coming back to travel, my wife and I, we love to travel to different places with spiritual places, especially places that are having spiritual significance. We both have a common interest towards that. So my dad was born in Srirangam, my mom was born in Madurai, I was born in Madurai. So we did a whole trip, we did a trip last year where we spent a whole week going and looking at these old places. Not just the main cities or the towns, but even outside. And it was an amazing experience. So we really look forward to those kind of trips and exploring new places, connecting ourselves.

With God in those different places of energy and just being in that zone. So that's what excites us from a traveling perspective. Both my wife and I, we are not really adventure travelers. We are more of maybe cultural travelers. I should say that. Yeah. Which brings me to the fifth point, which is spirituality. So got into spirituality at a young age. I'm talking about say 10 years old. My dad used to be an alcoholic and my mom went to an astrologer and asked, is this person really going to stop? You know.

The whole family life during my initial years was a lot of fear, insecurity because I would see my dad like Jekyll and Hyde, right? In the daytime he would be an amazing person. The nighttime he would change and there's been a lot of sleepless nights. So I grew up in that environment. And because my mom introduced spirituality or got more deep into it at that phase, I could see my father transform in front of my eyes. In three to four years he completely gave up the drink and he got serious into spirituality. And that's what helped me gain more faith in spirituality. So from the age of 10, I've been connected to reading scripture. Even though I come, you know, come from a typical Tambram background, I had an equal inclination and respect for Christianity and Islam, you know, because I brought up, I was brought up in a convent school. I had friends from all backgrounds and we would exchange open minded discussions we would have on various cultures without being fanatic about things. And I would be open to accepting and receiving ideas and trying to correlate all of that stuff. So yeah, spirituality.

It was a good starting phase in my life. And then when I got into college, that was a detour for a few years. I didn't want, I didn't have an inclination towards spirituality, but went into the whole music game. And then in.

2005, I came back. You know, it's like after a three to four year break from spirituality, from a core spiritual practice, I got back to it. I found my guru, my spiritual master. In 2006, I surrendered to a spiritual master and I took initiation. So I made a commitment to carrying forward his teachings when I was 23 years old. Yeah, I think I was 23 or 24 years old. So that was in 2006, I would have been 23. Yeah, so that was when I made a commitment to, to the process of living my life on a more spiritual life basis. And ever since that's always been the common theme. So let's shift gears now. The sixth point I want to talk about is gaming. You know, gaming has been there right from my childhood days. I still remember the first SEGA games that we had as kids, me and my younger brother, our younger brother and we used to play a lot of Super Nintendo Mario and slowly evolved. You know, we went through the entire drill, Prince of persia, Doom Wolf 3D right from those computer PC games all the way up to everything that came after that. So we just loved gaming. And I think gaming has played a huge, huge impact on me personally from my childhood to now in terms of problem solving and reflexes and all of that stuff. So I just love gaming. And even now after my son was born, my first one when he was three years old, we've been gaming together since then. Now he's eight years old. So for the last five years we have literally finished every single LEGO game that you can think of. LEGO Batman, LEGO Harry Potter, everything. We have completed all of that together and we normally like to play two player games and it's such an amazing bonding experience. So gaming has had a huge impact in my life. And even now we have got the Nintendo Switch, we have the PS4 and yeah, we know the boundaries. Sometimes you can get completely consumed into that. There are phases. And the recent game that I loved a lot, which we took at least six to seven months to finish was Zelda Breath of the Wild. If you guys haven't checked it out, check it out. It's a Nintendo Switch game which is amazing. See and I like to pick games that are more. Which has a really positive and uplifting feel and I've seen that in Nintendo games and I know there are games on PS4 or even Sony Xbox that they're much more on the darker side. You know, it does not really feel positive. You know, a lot of like for example, gta I don't. I really don't like that game. You know, it's all about just going on the streets, killing everyone. It's different. Whereas, you know, Zelda is like a quest. You know, it's like going and achieving and saving the world and things like that. So those kind of games really inspire me a lot, and I've been influenced by that. So if you guys want to check out Breath of the Wild, go check it out. Next, let's come to movies. The movies that have influenced me the most. Let's get back in time. One of my favorite movies as a young boy was Batman. Okay. I still remember the Michael Keaton Batman movies. That was awesome. You know, the batcar, it had a sense of mystery, and it was a different world now. I mean, then it has evolved now with the whole commercialization of all these superheroes and stuff. It's changed. But, yes, Batman was my big influence. And then when the movie the Matrix came out, that was a big influence on me. In fact, I went through all the three movies, the trilogy, multiple times because there's always some philosophy behind it. And I'm a big fan of Christopher Nolan as well. So every single Christopher Nolan movie, I've. No, I just love that I've gone into it. Yes. The typical Harry Potter's Lord of the Rings. You know, all these are the big hits that I've always liked, but Chris Nolan specifically, I like the movie, the Prestige. Some of you have not seen it. It's about magic, Memento. I mean, that was. It was a little bit of a dark movie, but it really opened me up. You know, it just. It is a different experience watching that for the first time. It's the original version of Gajini. Okay. Ghajni came later on, and.

Inception was a big one. I also like the Batman, Dark Knight, Dark Knight Rises, the entire. The series that Christopher Nolan rolled out. And what else? I think these are some of the movies that I've had the biggest impact on. Me. Yeah. And Interstellar. Yeah. So Interstellar, Inception, the movie, the Matrix, all of these. Like, they are right on the top of my list. I've not really binged watched movies like some of you might have finished Game of Thrones. Just to let you know, I've never seen even the first episode, even till now. I've not done Game of Thrones. I've not been into TV shows. Just selected a few movies and really gone into it. And. And, yeah, as far as my upbringing is concerned, Sound of Music has been, you know, like the Family movie for us, the Sound of Music. If you've not seen it, you got to watch that. It's an amazing family movie, you know, musical and beautiful story. I used to watch a lot of war movies with my dad in my younger days like Guns of Navarone, the Great Escape and Battle of the Bulge. And there's so many of these World War II movies which I really used to like back in the day and now it's very selective. You know, even now there's so many options on Netflix, so many options on Amazon prime and Apple movies. I just pick and choose what I want and don't binge watch that much on movies. Have a few classics I just keep going back to. But yeah, that's how that does the kind of movies that I like. Number eight, let's come to composing music. This is another stuff that I like to do besides digital coaching. I love making music. I've been making music since the age of 18. I learned my sound engineering and some of you may or may not know this. I've actually while I was studying sound engineering, I've played keyboards and been a part of at least 180 or 190 songs in all genres. You know, rock, pop, English, Bollywood. Because I used to be a session artist for my batch members since I used to play keyboards. And I've played keyboards for literally not just my batchmates, but my juniors and seniors during my sound engineering days. So I spent a lot of time making music and composing music. And then later on when I got into making houzz music in 2003, if I'm not mistaken, that was mp3.com that time it was a big thing. Now I don't think that site is as active as before. Mp3.com My friend and I, he used to be a DJ too. We put together a track which hit the number one spot in the world for a span of a week on mp3.com that was a big under the progressive trance category of music. That was a big deal in those days. Just 19 year old kid hitting the charts. Of course we did not make any money out of it, but it was just we got the traction during those days.

Later on, you know, made a lot of house music, lot of chill out music. And when I, when spirituality came into my life at that point I decided to bring in that flavor into my music composition. So in 2008, 2009, I launched an album called Illuminize. I L L U M I N I Z E Illuminize I go with A different name for that category and style of music. You can find me online. And my wife and I, we put together a 12 song album which we took some ancient Vedic texts and put that into modern musical form. I wanted our Indian ancient Vedic texts to be represented in a palatable way for the international audience. So I composed modern tunes with Indian lyrics in it and with Sanskrit and Bengali and other lyrics. But no one can make out it was just like lounge music. So after that my wife and I have been working on tracks. We composed quite a few tracks. Even now we are working on some tracks which is more spiritual. So she's also good at putting together tunes. I'm more of the, you know, putting to playing all the keyboards and mixing it and mastering it and launching it. So I use a tool called tunecore.com to actually publish all my music tracks on Apple and Amazon and other places. So yeah, composing music has been a huge part of my life and it continues to, to do so. And I'm going to start spending more time in this, in this area. So every weekend we want to make more music and that's what has brought us together. My wife and I, we are going to do work on more stuff. Number nine is friends. I've had varied friends. I've been truly blessed to have some of the best friends. School, college days.

I'm not been a person who has many friends, but the few have been like really deep friends, like deep connection. When I was in school days, I had a couple of friends, Jovin and Noel. Like we were three of us. We were like the Three Musketeers. Notorious. We used to do all kinds of crazy stuff in school. Then after we parted ways after school then I went into sound engineering. So we had a gang of like five, six of us. And all of them are now doing pretty well. They're in different parts of India, all in the music industry. I used to live in an apartment where all of us used to live together and exchanged amazing ideas. So in fact, this group when I was in the sound engineering days, all of us had different backgrounds, different styles in music and even different worldviews. Okay. So one guy called Swapnil from Mumbai. Typical Mumbaikar. Metalhead. Okay. Then we had another guy called Vishal. He was a rocker and he used to be an IT engineer. Then I had another guy who was living with us, his name is Julian. He was into like 70s music. Okay. And he also listed his living with us and he was like the grandpa of the group. And then we had another guy called Manny. Some of you may have heard of him, DJ Manny. Right now he's doing pretty well here. So he's been in the house music space. We studied together. He was my junior in sound engineering days and yeah, so he was also living with us. So you know, when all of us came together, even Tanser also, you know he's also one of a good friend of mine From Chennai who's DJ also runs a company now called the inventory.in so they he, you know, distributes provide your gear and stuff. So all of us, we are from varied backgrounds and we were like really thick together, very open minded and I think that exposure allowed me to respect people for their backgrounds, respect people for their views and still be together, live together. And we lived together for two, three years and it was amazing. It was a great experience. So when it comes to friends and now I'm still in touch with them and my close friends right now are all friends from our training and coaching circuit. So like Suren, Rajiv, Talreja, Pooja, I mean we are all like really close. We catch up once in a while and we discuss new ways besides business and stuff. We talk about other things as well. So even as I evolved as a person coming into the training and coaching world, you know, I also, even the friends evolved. So it's not that I don't connect back with them but it's like I've moved on from that phase to the next phase. Like even in my college days I was the youngest guy in our group and all my friends were seniors so I never really spent that much time with people from my own batch. I'm talking about when I was doing my 11th and 12th and even that was an amazing gang. That gang was a completely different set of folks from Mangalore, all Mangaloreans. You know it was a pretty interesting face during my college days. So when I look at my the different journeys I've every time I've got a good, every time I've come across an amazing set of people. It was not too many people but we were able to build deep connection and relationships and that's how friendships have been for me. Number 10. The last point is on gadgets. So I've been a gadget freak right from my younger days. So my first gadget was probably my keyboard that I got my uncle got for me. And then once I got into sound engineering I started accumulating various different gadgets like sound cards, microphones, cables, different kinds of gear always lying around at home and whatever money I used to make, what Was a little bit money I used to make. I used to put that back into buying more gadgets and gear. Been a huge Apple fan right from my I think I'll tell you which year I think from 2003 onwards I've been a big Apple fan. I first got my PowerBook or something I think MacBook or PowerBook back in the day, long back, ever since, never moved, never moved. You know, once I got into the Mac I never went back to Windows. So. And since I'm a musician, Mac has been rock solid for creating music. So I've always been comfortable with the, with the Mac system and the Apple ecosystem. Still remember getting my first iPhone3G and then, you know, upgrading my way up to the latest one right now. So been a big Apple freak more than overall gadgets. So Apple on one side and technology, audio technology on the other side. And so at home I have.

A Dyna Audio speakers. Those are my studio monitors. I'm using a Beyerdynamic headphone right now as I'm recording this. Those are my geeky stuff. I'm using a Lewitt microphone, an Audient sound card. I also have an Evo 4 sound card. And yeah, I've got my Sony A7 M3 camera. That's that I use for all my webinars. So I like to pick up gadgets. Right now there are not too many gadgets. I have like maybe five, six of them, but it's the best. I don't need to keep upgrading unless there's really a need. So besides that, I have a lot of gadgety stuff that I do with software when it comes to making music. Lot of plugins, effects processors, plugins, samples. So I keep playing around with that in my free time. So besides me doing webinars and doing other things, I like to spend time in.

Exploring music and exploring this side of it. So I just hope you like this podcast because this is all the stuff that I like other than digital coaching. So I've covered music, food, family, travel, spirituality, gaming, movies, composing music, friends and gadgets. If there's anything more, I'll let you know in my future episodes. Okay, cheers. God bless. If you like this podcast, subscribe to this on on Apple or on Spotify and you know, share your comments below. All the best. Take care.

Sa.