At BrilliantRead Media, we always strive to bring meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community. As part of this endeavour, we invited Dr. Kanchan Kabra for an exclusive interview with us. Dr. Kanchan is an Entrepreneur, Leader, Coach, Mentor, NLP Trainer, Influencer and Change Enabler. Let’s learn more about her incredible journey, her background, and her advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Dr. Kanchan:
Talk us through your background and your journey, please;
I’m from a small town of Maharashtra Parli-V. My background hails from the northeastern state of Assam in a tea garden as I was brought up there, and graduated with English Hons. from Guwahati University.
I belong to Marwadi conservative family and got married in 2001 at an age of 21, to a software engineer my husband Mr.Manoj Kabra. I was a learner at heart, though I didn’t ever have any promising career but I always aspired to add a difference around me.
When my elder son was supposed to go to school, I saw the lacunas in the primary education system around me, it intrigued me to enhance the basic education system in English Medium Schools, which were very few just 1 or 2 in our area.”
So instead of complaining about the place and people around me I choose to take the charge. I tried to learn all new tools and techniques to make learning an enjoyable experience for kids and applied them as a Coordinator in the school, I trained the teachers and created a promising and competitive environment at par with the standards of any reputed English medium schools in big cities.
Life was going steadily when suddenly I lost my father the biggest source of inspiration to me, and this incident just tore me apart. I went through depression -I kept crying feeling worthless, I considered everyone around against me.
Honestly, I created, ‘Hell out of Heaven’ and when our brain works against us no one can console us so that was what I was facing. I had a burning desire to transform my life and here Universe helped me through books like ‘Power of Subconscious Mind – by Joseph Murphy’ & ‘The Magic – by Rhonda Byrne which really just switched the torch in the darkness where I was leading myself.
Then to come out of it I was persuaded to restart my education. I was never a committed student previously but to heal and to add value to my life, to create individuality for myself, to carve an identity in our orthodox community where education after 10 years of marriage was near to impossible I took the challenge. There were a lot of hurdles, my kids were young, I was suffering from multiple ailments, but the strong support of my husband and my family just kept me going.”
I took admission in MA, completed it, gave PhD entrance and persuaded my Doctorate degree and received PhD after 6 years of consistent effort and dedication. Since 2010 till 2019 when I started from PG to my pH D, there were many who tried to pull me back but here I learnt to,’ Disregard with respect’. I never allowed anybody’s opinion to become my belief.
As I said, I never had a great career but I carved a different identity for myself, as my town is a small place and when I got an opportunity to work as an assistant professor of English, I tried my best to add value to the life of the poor students coming from farms.
I taught them Spoken English for 31 days as a research project. This literally added to the confidence of students, their attendance in classes increased, the students started focusing on working in corporates which was a far-off dream for them as they never went beyond their farms.
Everything was ok, now but again I had to choose to leave everything and come to Kota for the education of kids. Since 2019 I again struggled to find out what I really wanted to do.
Being a learner at heart I started studying psychology, I enrolled for various courses through online platforms about Neuro Linguistic Programing NLP i.e rewiring our subconscious brain with my mentor Ram Verma Sir and then Life Coach journey with Shilpa Singh.”
I realised the one thing which I consistently did was adding value to myself and the people around me, whichever field they belong to and this is my passion for helping people out, motivating them, to give them the vision to see the positive aspects of life.
The life lesson which I learnt, as I faced most of the time when things don’t happen according to our plans then we need to align ourselves to God’s master plan and give our best to see better things unfolding for us.
How did you discover your passion as a ‘Coach’?
I never knew the definition of a coach, but yes I was coaching- I coached primary teachers to be extraordinary educators, I coached farmer’s kids to deam big come out of their comfort zones be first-generation learners, I coached myself to face all odds and keep going consistently, dedicatedly even if the expected results were not seen initially.
My focus never changed. I am determined to make a difference for me and others. I think that’s what a coach does tries to bring out the best in you, persuade you, motivate you and mentor you to be the best version of yourself.
How do you manage to keep going despite the challenges? What drives you?
Every challenge I face and overcome adds a feather of wisdom to my Hat of life. If one aspires to swim against the flow, challenges are inevitable but every challenge added to my strength I always see them as my test paper, so I am always ready with my formulas to apply in my exams to score high.
The thing that really drives me is, my purpose always needs to be bigger than my plans. The purpose gives meaning to my plans so keeping the purpose above everything just never lets me down no matter what comes my way but my plans manifest.
‘Your purpose should be bigger than your life’ – is my driving force.
Who do you believe has been the biggest source of motivation in your daily life?
The biggest source of inspiration for me was my Father as since childhood I saw people just forgetting all their pains, suffering and sorrow when he was around.
They just adored him, he could comfort anyone from a crying child to an ailing elder. People always wanted to be around him, and he is my source of inspiration.
Every new day motivates me with a new opportunity to live big, make this day better than the previous one, to help others support them, heal them and add value to myself and the people around me.
What are some of the strategies that you believe has helped you grow as a person?
There are a few:
> Being empathetic towards others
> Always being resourceful
> Response with responsibility
> Disregard with respect the limiting beliefs
> What is happening at this moment is inevitable for the moment.
> Always be a learner at heart
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
I will say it straight that there are many factors but if you really have to have the key elements then to me these are the ones:
(a) Accepting & Loving and believing in oneself.
(b) Taking critic’s comments sportily and working on them
(c) Be creative, consistent, focused, dedicated and committed
(d) Be grateful for Everything
(e) Have unconditional love for everyone.
(f) Value other’s time
(g) Resourcefulness
(h) Curiosity
(i) Positive Attitude
(j) Taking massive action (execution) with consistency and belief
What advice would you give to our readers?
The only piece of advice I would give to my readers is let’s always keep our purpose bigger than our plans.
My purpose was always to add value to my life and to the life of others and this unfolded and manifested my plan to become a Life Coach at an age of 40+.
Always be grateful for whatever comes to our way though often it might not be what we wanted – If something happens as per our wish let’s see it as the Grace of God and if it doesn’t happen our way let’s accept it as the Wish of God and make best out of it.
Last but not least, what about your journey makes it satisfying/exciting?
The journey which I really started since 2010 as I would say with all ups and downs made me really change my perspective towards life.
Today I see every day as a first day of my remaining life, so I am always excited about every activity I do as if I am doing it the first time..with full vigour, commitment and opportunity to learn. When this day ends I have the satisfaction that I really gave my 100%, even if there are days that are low in energy but it never demotivates me.
So, Life is not about analysis it’s just an event every day for me, and this is what I want people to experience – to choose to be always hopeful and joyful.
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