Many of us feel caught between the mixed messaging of “be yourself” in one breath and “change who you are” in the next breath. I struggled with this myself for years, and overcoming this challenge is what ultimately led me to write my book. While writing it, I developed a practical model called The Three Selves, that will help you to both navigate mixed messaging and to live more authentically even when it’s hard.

It’s an awesome tool to leverage, and I’m excited to tell you more about it!

Magic Happens When You Use The Three Selves

The Three Selves is a continuum that provides a more nuanced way of understanding authentic behavior. It shows that, rather than being either “authentic” or “inauthentic,” each of us possesses the following three selves: the Authentic Self, the Adapted Self, and the Performing Self.

Your Authentic Self

The Authentic Self is an expression of your core values, beliefs, needs, desires, thoughts, emotions, and traits — and how you would behave if you didn’t fear the consequences of your behavior. This is the truest reflection of who you are and, given this, being your Authentic Self feels amazing.

Think back to a time when you felt like you could really be yourself. Liberating, right? I feel like this when I’m having a deeply meaningful conversation with someone who I know isn’t judging me for what I’m sharing. When I’m putting the truth of who I am out into the world this way, I feel weightless.

Your Performing Self

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the Performing Self. This is who you are when you feel like you don’t have a choice but to conform or mask aspects of your true self. It’s the carefully constructed persona that you project to protect against what you fear will happen by being yourself.

I’m sure each one of us can think of a time when we’ve felt pushed to perform. This might mean changing the way you speak — for example, toning down your accent so that you’ll be taken more seriously. Or it could mean straightening your hair because you’ve been told your natural hair looks unprofessional. Or it could mean hiding your sexual orientation or desires from others — maybe even your own romantic partners — because you fear judgment. In any case, when you’re performing, it feels awful.

Your Adapted Self

Between these two ways of being lies the Adapted Self. This is the self that most of us have never contemplated, but that has the power to change our lives, and our perceptions of ourselves.

The Adapted Self is who you are when you make a choice to change an aspect of your behavior, in order to meet your own needs or others’ needs. When you adapt, you’re not driven by fear — you’re driven by an authentic desire to change your behavior. Because you’re making a choice willingly, it feels good to do.

Adapting can mean softening how you speak to a frustrating colleague because you don’t want to upset them. It can mean supporting your spouse in a hobby that bores you to tears because you know it’s meaningful to them. Or it can mean staying in a job you don’t love, but that pays well and has regular hours because you need stability to support your family. The Adapted Self still contains aspects of the Authentic Self, and because of this, it’s an empowering place to be.

Using the Three Selves to Live More Authentically

Recognizing who your Authentic Self is, where you struggle with Performing, and where you might be able to call on your Adapted Self, can have a great impact on your happiness. It can help you understand the choices you’re making, and guide you in making decisions that will better serve you.

Essentially, using The Three Selves will help you to live better. And you deserve that.

The post Want to Live More Authentically? You Must Use This Transformative Tool! appeared first on Ritu Bhasin.

These visions danced in my head when I first launched my business too. I’d taken the big leap to go out on my own after finishing my MBA, and I was ready to give entrepreneurship everything I had. I launched my leadership and diversity consulting firm in a truly glamorous fashion: on my couch, in my pajamas, trying to figure out how to create an invoice template in Excel on my brand-new laptop. It was quite humbling and equal parts exciting and terrifying.

Here I am, nearly ten years later, working from an office with a full team of employees and a roster of global clients. I may still wear clothing that could be pajamas to the office (if you’ve seen my Instagram stories, you’ll know what I mean!), but I also travel around the world delivering nearly 100 speaking engagements every year, work with dozens of renowned organizations and inspiring leaders. I have the unique privilege of feeling truly connected to the work I’m doing, and I wake up each day with the knowledge that my work makes a difference.

New entrepreneurs often wonder what helps a new business to succeed. I’ve done a lot of reflecting on the ingredients that have led to my success, and I’ve noted three strategies that have been critical to making my business work. If you can implement these strategies when launching your business, you’ll be well positioned for success.

1.  Start with a Truly Unique Product — One that Only You Can Deliver

Many people launching businesses want to replicate products or services that already exist in the marketplace, thinking they can do it better, for cheaper, or both. While this strategy works for some new entrepreneurs, it’s very tough to be a new entrant into an existing product or service market. You’re going to have to topple the big dogs, which is rarely easy to do.

The approach that I took when starting my business was inspired by the Blue Ocean Strategy — that is, selling an offering that nobody else could deliver. For me, this meant starting a diversity consulting firm focused on helping organizations in the Canadian legal profession to better recruit, retain, and advance women and people from diverse communities.

When I launched my business, most Canadian organizations weren’t focused on diversity programming — and the legal profession certainly wasn’t, despite being very homogeneous. I had a background as a lawyer, had worked in human resources in the legal profession for nearly a decade, had experience creating and executing diversity programming within a law firm, and had a passion for social justice. I also knew I had a gift for public speaking — especially for delivering messages about diversity in a way that was accessible — and for building relationships. There was no one else in Canada doing this type of work strictly in the legal profession and I was uniquely positioned to do it.

What’s fabulous about being very targeted about what you offer is that once you have success with your initial product or service, you can expand what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to. For example, my firm now works across sectors around the world and offers a range of diversity services.

If you’re looking to tap into your own unique business idea, take the time to do some self-inquiry. Determine your top skills, what differentiates you from others in your field, what problem you can solve, and what your passion is. Where these elements intersect, you will probably find your best idea.

2.  Build Your Relationships and Your Reputation (aka Your Market)

It’s key to build strategic contacts and relationships, in addition to building your reputation and your brand, before you open your doors.

It’s not enough to know what you’re going to be selling — you need to know who you’re going to be selling it to. It’s really important to be crystal clear about who will buy from you. To assist you with selling your offering, and especially to get immediate take-up, it’s a HUGE help to sell to your pre-existing business contacts. They already know who you are, they’re more likely to say yes and be early adopters, and you can ask them for testimonials or referrals once you’ve worked with them.

When I launched my business, I’d been working in HR for a large, prestigious law firm for nearly a decade. In every facet of the job, I worked hard at building and maintaining strong relationships across the profession — with people who, it turned out, would later hire me as a consultant. Outside of the office, I attended conferences, making connections across the country and beyond, and did relevant volunteer work where I knew I would meet key people in the industry.

Of course, at the time I wasn’t doing these things because I wanted to convert these relationships into future clients — I had no idea that I would one day launch a business of my own. I was just being my Authentic Self, genuinely getting to know people, and having them get to know me. But because I was both active in my profession and sharing my Authentic Self, I was building a strong brand, which led directly to people buying my offerings later on.

My message for you is this: along the way, before you launch your business, be consistently excellent in all that you do. Do your best everywhere you go to develop your brand and reputation in all of your interactions and be authentic in how you build relationships. Plant the seeds now, and you’ll reap the benefits later.

3.  Build Your Strategy and Execution Muscles — You’ll Need Both

Once you have a unique offering to sell and know who you’ll be selling to, that’s when the real work begins. In order to bring your ideas to life, you’re going to need a laser-sharp strategy and the ability (and stamina) to execute a wide range of tasks.

Strategy is about vision — the bigger picture of what you want to create and have happen with your business. It’s about identifying all of the various parts that need to come together in order to successfully launch and then run your business. It requires extensively generating ideas, considering multiple options, doing cost-benefit analyses, and making decisions about key business priorities.

Execution is about taking the decisions you’ve made and putting them into effect. It means rolling up your sleeves, getting your hands dirty, and doing the actual work. It means creating the slide deck or pitch presentation, organizing the event, building the website, creating the outreach list, following up on the emails religiously, and taking out the garbage.

Strategy and execution are equally important. Strategy without execution results in inaction.

I focused on both strategy and execution, especially early on. It was just me and my laptop for a year before I hired my first team member. This amounted to countless hours doing it alone, doing literally every aspect of the work myself. But after building the right foundation on my own, I now have a full team to help me with both strategy and execution — all of which is key to scaling my business.

The common thread in these strategies is that if you want to position yourself for success in launching your business, you have a lot of work to do! But if you know in your core that you want to be an entrepreneur, these three strategies will help you succeed.

My final message is simple: if you want to be an entrepreneur, start laying the groundwork now. And make it happen! I’m so grateful that I decided to become an entrepreneur.

Good luck!

The post Want to Launch a Business? These 3 Strategies Will Help You Succeed appeared first on Ritu Bhasin.

In my work, I explain that mindfulness is all about tuning into the present moment to gain awareness of what you’re thinking, feeling, and sensing, in a non-judgmental way. You don’t need Lululemons, candles, incense, sitar music, or challenging yoga positions to make it happen — and frankly, most of us just won’t do those things on a regular basis. Because of its simplicity, mindfulness is available to everyone, and there are many different ways that you can access its benefits from wherever you happen to be.

I’ve evolved in how I embed mindfulness practices into my life because of my hectic lifestyle. Ten years ago when I first started to really dig into mindfulness, I had a very structured, time-intensive sadhana (practice) which meant getting up an hour early a few times a week to meditate, do yoga, and more. Nowadays, given that I run a business that requires me to travel multiple times a week, I prioritize techniques that are simple, quick, and that I can take with me anywhere. Here are a few of my favorite ways to incorporate mindfulness into daily life.

Mindful Breathing

There is a ton of research telling us about the benefits of intentional breathing. Just paying attention to your inhales and exhales can have a calming effect, and learning how to “belly breathe” (diaphragmatic breathing, something I learned in my yoga teacher training — it’s such a gift!) is a powerful tool for managing stress and anxiety.

What I love about mindful breathing is that it’s free, can be practiced anytime and anywhere, and you’re already breathing, so you might as well do it the best way possible. It really is a “must do” — mindful breathing is clutch. It’s the one thing that I focus on as much as possible throughout the day in order to be mindful.

Try this simple exercise with your breath: take a slow, full inhale through your nose, pushing your belly out and filling your lungs to the bottom. On your exhale, pull your belly all the way in, causing the air right from the bottom of your lungs to be pushed up through your mid-chest to your upper chest, and then out.

Incorporating this simple breathing exercise into your day alone will help you to become more present!

Sitting

Sitting with good posture is critical because it impacts how you breathe. Essentially, the better you sit, the better you will be able to engage in deep breathing both consciously and unconsciously. Many of us spend most of our time sitting — whether we’re at work or on the couch Netflixing (ha!). If this applies to you, it’s especially beneficial for you to be mindful of how your body is positioned while you’re sitting.

Ideally, you want to sit with your spine straight and your shoulders relaxed with your feet flat on the floor. I find that either sitting on or against a cushion in my chair keeps me aware of my posture. (I was gifted a cushion from REALthings, and I’m loving it!)

Essential Oils

A few years ago, a girlfriend of mine gave me a bottle of “stress relief” roll-on lavender-scented oil to help me manage stress. Who knew that it would be life changing?!

Some studies have shown a range of benefits to using essential oils for aromatherapy, including relief from stress and better sleep. I’ve found that when I apply lavender oil throughout the day under my nose (and sometimes even right on my nostrils), not only do I smell great (ha!), but I also get the benefits of aromatherapy. Most importantly, it causes me to breathe more deeply (because I love the smell), so I receive the benefits of deep breathing more often. When I do this, I start to relax and generally feel better.

Simple Meditation

Like many, I find it hard to take 20-30 minutes each day to meditate. But one of the key lessons I’ve learned in practicing mindfulness is that it isn’t all or nothing. We do the best we can. For me what works is to meditate each morning when I first wake up — and I do it for 1-11 minutes depending on how I feel and how much time I have (and let’s just say, if I’ve been out partying the night before and I’m running late, it likely ain’t gonna happen!). Usually, I end up meditating for about 3-5 minutes.

My current practice is super simple, and I have deliberately designed it as such. I need something that works for me, and this does: I sit up in bed cross-legged with a straight spine, set the timer for as many minutes as I can devote to it, close my eyes, and repeat my mantra (I use satnam, which in the Sikh faith means “there is only one constant”). When the timer goes off, I spend a minute or two expressing my thanks, gratitude, and intention for the day (all done in my head, to myself).

This is my personal practice, but it can be as simple as closing your eyes and observing your breath for 2 minutes. The key point here is to experiment and find what works for you.

Expressions of Gratitude

Much has been written about the importance of gratitude — not just for cultivating joy in life, but also to help focus on present awareness. Pausing to reflect on what you are grateful for will push your thoughts to your present surroundings and experiences, which is so important for experiencing appreciation and interrupting fear. I express gratitude every morning when I meditate, and throughout the day when I am reminded to do so.

It’s helpful to embed your day with triggers that will remind you to take a moment to be grateful. For me, whenever I look at the clock and it says 11:11 or 1:11, I use this as a reminder to take a pause and express gratitude for what I’m thankful for in the moment. (Funnily enough, as I was typing just now the clock read 11:11 and I gave an expression of gratitude!)

Mindful Eating

We all carry symptoms of stress in our physical bodies. Through my own self-reflection work I’ve come to see that I carry most of my stress in my stomach/GI tract (I’ve had a lifetime of digestive issues, argh!). This is because when the body experiences stress, it goes into fight or flight mode — and one of the effects of being in this state is disrupted digestion. One way to ensure that our bodies are able to digest our food properly (and to enjoy our meals — which is critical for me as a foodie who loves to “throw down” with food) is to practice mindful eating.

I don’t care how wonky this might sound to some, because it works for me! When I’m eating, I pause to look at my food, sense its energy, express my gratitude for the meal, set my intention to digest it properly, and then I chew each bite slowly before swallowing. Eating mindfully is beneficial for our bodies (particularly our digestion), our minds, and our relationship with food.

Not every mindfulness technique will work for everyone, but if you can find just one that works for you, you’re on your way to unlocking all that mindfulness has to offer.

My takeaway question for you is, what will you do to engage in a mindfulness practice after today?

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