Nidhika Bahl, India’s Top Success Coach and author of the Amazon Bestseller – The Queen of the Comeback: 7 Ways for Anyone to Bounce Back from Life’s Obstacles, is obsessed with helping others discover the truths she has learned on her personal journey to success. Through her own battle with clinical depression and attainment of success, she draws on her experiences to reach out to others who may be struggling with the same problems.
In The Queen of the Comeback, she offers practical advice for self-discovery and effective strategies for mastering emotions, building relationships, handling finances, and enhancing life. Her writing has become a handbook for those who want to take control of their lives. Critics have embraced the book’s simple yet powerful approach.
We got a chance to speak to her about her incredible comeback story, mental health challenges and secrets to success. Here are the excerpts:
How did your personal battle with clinical depression inspire you to initiate your journey to becoming India’s Top Success Coach?
When I was fighting clinical depression, like most other people, I was in the typical “Why Me” victim mode. I spent most of my time finding people to blame for the situation I found myself in. Somewhere in the fourth year of my fight against depression, I was introduced to the world of motivational CDs and self-help books. I completely got hooked on to reading. In fact, I spent an entire year just sitting at home, and reading personal development books. I read close to 300 books, almost a book a day because I was desperately seeking answers to my situation in life.
One day I came across a book called Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer. I loved the contents of the book and I had a huge urge to look up Joyce on Google. What came up in the search was a YouTube recording of one of Joyce’s women conference. I started watching the video hoping that something she might say in the video, would give me the answer that I was seeking. Half the video went by and there was nothing! I was disappointed! Nevertheless, I kept pushing myself to keep on listening. Somewhere around the 40-minute mark, one lady in the audience raised her hand to ask Joyce a question. To my surprise, she asked Joyce the exact “Why Me” question that had been playing in my mind for more than three years. I jumped on my seat eagerly waiting for Joyce’s response. And then Joyce said something that changed the entire course of my life! She said to the lady, “You hurt, you heal, you help.”
She went on to explain to that lady that you are facing these challenges because you are the chosen one. God has put you in this situation because he has complete faith in your ability to bounce back from any adversity in life, and when you do, you can be his channel to help others do the same.
Those words from Joyce’s mouth changed the trajectory of my life and made me the person that I am today. I have never met Joyce and she definitely has no clue that I exist. But, six words from her mouth – “You hurt, you heal, you help,” changed my entire life. This is when I began my quest for personal leadership, empowerment and intentional living.
What do you think is the reason why so many people are suffering from mental health challenges today?
The biggest challenge is that parents, as well as the schools, primarily focus on developing a child’s IQ rather than the EQ, which is often neglected. Children are not necessarily trained to express emotions or deal with challenges and failures. The nuclear family system makes the whole situation even worse. If both parents are working, the child’s self-image and emotional strength are pretty much left to the housemaid to develop.
What would your advice be to a person going through a rough time in their life?
“Do not hesitate to seek help!” You see for the slightest of illness, aches and pains we run to the general physician for medication. We immediately nurse the smallest of injuries. But unfortunately, we often ignore emotional hurts and leave them unattended for long periods of time since they are not visible to others and us. And one of the major causes of depression is unexpressed emotion.
What role does our mindset play in the attainment of success?
The quality of our thoughts determines the quality of our life. Empowering thoughts stimulate us to move in a positive direction while disempowering thoughts create inertia and force us to stay stuck! Which means,
If we wish to change our physical reality, we must begin by changing how we think. The good news is that our mind is fully equipped and willing to adopt any changes that we may bring about in our thinking patterns. A simple change in perspective can make a world of difference.
What goes on in your mind during one-to-one interactions with your clients?
While working with my clients, I am always looking for clues in their words and body language to identify the one single shift in their thinking i.e. the Mental-Switch that will help them accelerate and achieve in the next 3 years, which they would have otherwise taken 20 years to accomplish. My goal is to help them believe that they don’t have to settle. They don’t have to accept the life they have, even if it’s good. They can want and have abundant, magnificent and outstanding. Life on their terms!
What makes you unique and sets you apart from your contemporaries?
Most people think change is hard and if it does happen fast, it won’t last. Now that’s true most of the times, except when you actually change the priorities of your nervous system.
When you rewire yourself thoroughly, it lasts! And when people witness these changes being facilitated in my sessions, they automatically want to send in their friends and family members for similar breakthroughs.
What is your secret sauce to achieving massive success?
Making small deposits in your personal growth and development on a daily basis.
Ever wondered why Albert Einstein called compound interest the eighth wonder of the world? It is not just because it can make us millions of bucks. It is because when applied to life, it can create wonders in our life. Each one of us has 24 hours in a day. What we do in those 24 hours determines our life. If we want to turn our life around, we have to be deliberate about what we want to include in those 24 hours. Just by making the right choices and making them over and over again, we can make the compounding work in our favour and create our own success. I believe ‘overnight success’ is an alluring lie. Success doesn’t happen in a night, it takes thousands of nights that no one ever writes about. It is the compound effect of daily deliberate action that is boring, simple, insignificant and monotonous. The truth is, what we do ‘Today’ matters. What we do ‘Everyday’ matters. Successful people just do the things that may seem very insignificant in the act of doing them and they do them consistently until the compound effect kicks in.
What do you do to grow yourself on a daily basis?
I read. A Lot! Books are my favourite tool to engage in life-long learning. In fact, a study of 1,200 successful and wealthy people found that they all had reading as a pastime. So I guess I am on track!
I am also a huge promoter of the habit of reading. That’s the very reason why I created the Success Mastery Mastermind (https://nidhikabahl.com/facebook-forum/) – a platform where I transform the world’s best non-fiction books into easy consumable reads, one chapter at a time. The chapter summary is followed by engaging questions that are designed to make the readers think, on how they could apply the information in the book to their personal situation. Each book is followed up with a live video chat, that allows the readers to engage with me and each other at a much deeper level. And at the end of the month, we meet offline, to connect, collaborate and exchange business ideas with each other. The key focus of this group is to inspire, support, coach, expand mindset and associations so that we can each grow and turn our wildly ambitious dreams into reality.
What advice would you give to someone starting out on their entrepreneurial journey?
Fall in love with the process, not the outcome.
I am sure you have heard about the Chinese Bamboo tree whose seed goes dormant when planted. No amount of attention to the seed is able to awaken it from its sleep. However, careful care and nurture are required during this dormancy. Even though no visible signs of life are noticeable for five years, at the end of that time something extraordinary occurs. Suddenly the seed sprouts and grows into a mature tree more than ninety feet high in one growing season. Unbelievable! Isn’t it? Now, imagine if, in those five years of dormancy, the farmer got frustrated seeing no results and decided not to nurture and take care of the seed. What would happen? Would there ever be a Chinese bamboo tree? Of course not!
When we sow an act we too are playing the role of a farmer and expecting a harvest. The only challenge is we expect to harvest the results almost instantly. We overestimate what’s possible short term. And when we realize it is going to take longer than what we had imagined, we get frustrated and sometimes self-sabotage our own results. That’s why so many people give up on their goals and dreams in the first few months.
But if you don’t want to be one of them, focus on establishing habits; focus on cultivation like the Chinese bamboo tree farmer; focus on the process rather than the end result. Being process-driven is what’s going to keep you going when the initial motivation fades. Simply commit yourself to the process and know that the results will follow.
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