At BrilliantRead Media, our aim is to bring to our community some of the unique and compelling stories from the start-up ecosystem. As part of this endeavour, we invited yet another Business Leader and Entrepreneur Pragyan Misra for an exclusive interview with us. Pragyan is a Thought Leader, Coach, Mentor, Entrepreneur and Award Winning Business Leader. She is a Life and Leadership Coach at Liberated Mind. Let’s learn more about her inspirational journey and her advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Pragyan:
We are aware of your contributions to the ecosystem; talk us through your background and your journey as a women coach, please;
I am a thought leader and transformational coach, who has a passion to grow people by empowering the mindset. I help identify their uniqueness, help them remove any roadblocks, create a better sense of balance so they can achieve happiness and success.
I always had a purpose in life, to be happy in the journey of my growth through the failures and successes. I am glad to have made a successful career and be a homemaker as well. Through life’s challenges, I realized that work is an integral part of my life and prioritization is the key to have a balance in life.”
Being a working mother, I add a lot of skills and capabilities that enhanced me as an individual. My career and life put me through many ups and downs, and it took courage, unlearning, learning, perseverance and doing away with limiting beliefs to be successful and happy in whatever I do.
My transformation as a coach/mentor is an outcome of my personal & professional life experiences and challenges.
The love and respect that I received from people encouraged me to create my own transformation journey as a Life & Leadership Coach which culminated in “Liberated Mind” (Empower, Liberate, Transform. SELF)”
Please share with us a unique challenge you faced in your early career?
This is a story, which happened very early in my career in IT, where I had just 2 years of experience in Java/J2EE technology. I had to quit my job and relocate to US post marriage.
I tried different possibilities to apply for a job in US and was not successful. I kept myself engaged through online reading. It was not an easy phase, as for me I always wanted to be a working woman and was an important goal of my life.
When I returned to India after a year or so, I started with my job search again. It was not easy as the technology had advanced and I was lacking hands-on experience. I would have knocked every door of opportunity and faced many failures, finally after 6 months, I could secure a role as a developer starting fresh.
While the journey was frustrating many times and emotionally daunting, I had many learnings – it did test my patience, my perseverance, it did provide me with experience on how to face interviews, how to be more prepared, how to keep up with the technology through learning, and last but not the least helped develop confidence in me that I have no fear of going through a similar situation again.”
I am very thankful for the experience which made me a much stronger and better individual.
How did you discover your passion?
Over 20 years of experience, I have been fortunate to be part of many development programs within my organizations as well as outside. There were many courses that I have done like the leadership courses, NLP Master Practitioner Coach, ICF-ACC etc and I would appreciate the trainers who have had a strong influence in helping me learn and grow.
I also am very grateful to a few of my coaches/mentors and line managers throughout my career who showed me the value of investing in the selfless growth of others. And the most influential people are my parents who have been teachers in their own respective fields.
My father is a retired professor in Mathematics and my mother is a trained Hindustani classical music teacher and both have invested their knowledge and understanding to develop students to excel in their areas.
I have been very grateful to have been part of such an ecosystem that for me it became my passion, always important that when I grow, I help others grow.”
With so much going on, how do you start the day to keep your passion alive?
My own internal dialogue drives me to do something new, every day. To build that kind of energy early in the day, I have a practice of visualizing my work outcomes and connecting them with my long-term choices.
Also, I make sure that my professional activities and behaviour are a true expression of my self. That eliminates any dissonance between who I am and what I am doing on daily basis.”
I always believe that one has all the resources to achieve what they want to, so I ensure that I keep focusing on the resources that I have which can help me focus on my passion.
And also to reflect, some days the energy might be down, it is ok to pause and start again.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
The Mantra that works for me are the below 5 points –
1 – Believing in yourself(your goal) – Your strengths will help you progress
2 – Discipline – Create a daily habit and start now!
3 – Inspect and adapt – helps you reflect on any development areas, or changing your path
4 – Learn from failures – celebrate success, unlearn and learn through the journey, be grateful.
5 – Your mind and body are the most powerful things that you possess, take care of it.
We know that you are continuously engaged in helping others achieve their goals. Why do you do that?
Firstly, I am a strong believer that through sharing knowledge and experiences, story-telling, we continue to evolve into a better society as we transform into empowering mindsets.
Secondly, If I can impact and influence even one life to bring in a balance, I am making this world a better place. Adding value to someone’s life is immensely gratifying for me.
For this reason, I keep interacting with students, young entrepreneurs, professionals, homemakers, who can benefit from the life possibilities and who can uncover their potential to do away with limiting beliefs that might be stopping them from creating a better place to live.
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
They are at the best phase of an exploratory life. It is not an advice, rather I am glad to share that they are in a phase where they are so well-placed too –
a) Experience new learnings
b) Explore opportunities and learn from failures
c) Apply their knowledge and experiment, pivot if needed
d) Create a supportive ecosystem (family friends, colleagues all have a strong influence in your life/goals)
e) Experience more of life, find joy in whatever you do (Life is limitless 😊)
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
