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 Rajni Julka for an exclusive interview with us. Rajni is a Leader, Entrepreneur, Speaker, Mentor, Educationalist, Consultant, 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 Rajni:
Could you please talk us through your background and your journey?
My professional journey so far has helped me cross-pollinate ideas across education sectors as a Global Ed-Tech Content Strategist, Business Excellence for Project Planning, Course Development and Operations, Principal & HOD and also as a “Thoughts Architect” with my venture “Your Soul Soup.
My Schooling is from St. Josephs, Delhi and After my Masters in Cytogenetics, I started my career with Cambridge High, Delhi as Lecturer. Though I cleared SSB Airforce in last year of my masters, but my passion towards life and youth developed my interest to be in education.”
My Career trajectory includes being HOD with one of the associates at DPS and later with Sanjivani International School, Mumbai. With the hunger of learning and my contribution to the growth in Education, gave me the opportunity to be the “Youngest Principal of India” with the Narayana Group of Schools at the age of 31 years.
This journey scaled my learning with various certifications and thereafter I moved to the edtech side of education and served TATA Interactive Systems (TATA Class Edge) as Sr. Manager- Academic Delivery Manager working with content and training & Development sides for the PAN India team.
My Willingness to go deeper with education and keep myself abreast with time and advancement, helped me upgrade myself with time becoming a strong strategist for Content and Training & Development leading further to an opportunity with spearheading as L&D Head with a startup Evobi Automation in the Silicon Valley, Banga-lore, India, owning product designing and business growth mandates.
Currently, I am leading the PAN India Content Operations Vertical for the business of IIHT Technologies (Techademy Campus) Group. “Along with I am pursuing 1-Year Advanced Management Programme in Corporate Leadership from IIM, Indore that will be completed by November 2023. These opportunities helped me span a wide variety of domains from strategy to operations.
I am also working as “Thoughts Architect” under my banner “Your Soul Soup” that brings help life to acquire, inspire, empower and transform through “Thoughts Re-designing” and raising Conscious-ness leading to actualize, realize and reflect to find self. We do have defined programs/talk shows/podcasts/Stories/Interviews etc with collaborations.”
My Signature Strength is the unique blend of strong industry and academia experience with excellent strategic planning & execution, bringing the divine element of thought coaching. Winning attitude that inspires teams to go above & beyond.
How did you discover your passion?
At 8 years old, I discovered my passion in my imaginative paintings and wait for observations. Actually, most weekends you would find me curled up in my painting diary hiding even under the bed or behind the staircase with it.
At 15 years old, I was accelerated into knowing myself and how we were made. I started relating nature, its duality and nurturing behaviour with self. My art teacher encouraged me and found a unique me who is a passionate progressive thinker.
At 18 years old, I was passionate towards technology and learning computers. While doing so, I started teaching computer basics and found young students’ curiosity and development enhanced my learning and development.
For the next five years, I studied Genetics and fall in love with the miracle and mystery of the divine as how we are nothing yet everything. The universe in itself. It helped me to see things differently with a problem-solving attitude and a higher level of manifestation.
Over these years, I also went through love and I found that all the love and heartbreak inspired something creative in me. I have notebooks full of scribbles and quotes that connect you to yourself. You can say until 2009 I was in self-discovery and up-levelling self-year after year.
Through iterative planning intertwined with continuous shifts in execution. Over the last 20 years, I have taken up numerous projects in my areas of interest. Among those, I would simply give up on the activities I didn’t feel like pursuing the long term. I was having a deep conversation with myself and became more reliable with my intuition. Living in divine guidance is a unique feeling. This is often a key lead in discovering my skills and passions.
I realized that, as a child, I was born soulful and with time my acquaintances, friends, circle all started calling me “Soulful Child”. I had loved soul writing, Sufi elements and my writings, talk and deliveries is a unique blend of practical approach and divine interventions raising each day for a better self. In due course of time, these initiatives helped me identify the areas of my core passion – Writing & Facilitating.
I started loving my voice with my first podcast in 2020. It was essentially about arriving at a just to explore what really resonated with my personality and life choices – What we call today Reskill & Upskill.
Now, when people ask me that once dreaded question, “What do you want to do with your life?”, I don’t feel like rolling my eyes and slinking away. EMPOWER & TRANSFORM as many lives as I can in this life.
The question animates me. I have endless things to tell you. But the first thing I will say is: “I am writing a book…soon to release.”
How do you manage to keep going despite the challenges? What drives you?
Empowering and challenging the myths, stereotypes about life journeys to have self-awareness and courage to do their own therapy. Motivation thrives on conscious and unconscious factors – It’s a hunger to make that difference knowing I am born different.
I am an abundant giver – Flawless in sharing optimism and nurturing. For me “Optimism is the sister of Happiness”. I believe life is precious and capable of transformation. It is important to understand people are shaped by their experiences and circumstances BUT there is always a new perspective and way to see it.
At Your Soul Soup, we envision a world where one can realize their inner potential and raise themselves above the norms. My self-written quote is – “Value the Value, and the Value will Value You.”
Who do you believe has been the biggest source of motivation in your daily life?
The Biggest Source of Motivation are Your Own Thoughts as this always triggered my steps towards life. I have seen how my mother worked hard for two of us, how we struggled for a better future when my father parted ways. My mother sacrificed that motivate me the most. She supports me in all the time and even at times of failure she is a motivator because she always believes in me.
My life changed when I started supporting and doing with her. In the process, it resonated with my purpose and as a life unique on this earth. This has led to help me flourish and be around men-tors and family that the universe defined for me. I am blessed to have a soul family to always guided me and helped me become what I am today. It was my values and roots that kept me connected and inspired by such people in my life.
I always lived as, “You thrive when you are part of an upbeat, supportive environment that gets you “in the zone” that you need to be in so that you succeed.”
What are some of the strategies that you believe have helped you grow as a person?
Growing as a person may also look like showing self-compassion, learning to set boundaries, or exploring a new activity. Getting along with myself is important for how, what and why I do to grow as a person that revolves around these key attributes.
> Knowing my personal values and making choices that align with that is a great first start.
> Being in competition with self-creating own path.
> Always being helpful and resourceful
> Taking extreme ownership and responsibility for my actions – Belongingness
> Ability to take risks & venture into uncharted territories.
Whatever change I attempt, I remember to go with my speed and aspirations of life considering “Sukoon (peace) & Serenity” aligned.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
Passion, vision, preparation, courage, perseverance and integrity — to set them on to their individual paths to success. In short, it is satisfaction and inner happiness I look for when success is considered.
How considerate one is towards life and its want varies with an eye to set priorities differently. Like, I love to spend time with myself and my loved ones, it recharges me. I don’t think at all that the help given can add value in life, especially Youth and one who seeks life within.
Focus with a positive attitude Always expect the best possible outcome for what you do. Your thoughts are like magnets; you attract what you think. Set powerful “Thoughts” – a approach for my life.
What advice would you give to our readers?
Be yourself and write from the heart – but remember the audience is other people. Don’t try to second guess what people want and be expedient. Let your actions and words tell the story, the way real life does. Ask, Help, Believe, Trust and connect self to the divine.
Last but not least, what about your journey makes it satisfying/exciting?
Travelling helps us feel like our best self because we are more willing to receive the world’s many lessons, no matter their shape or size. My journey has been like the fourth law of behav-ior change — make it satisfying — increases the odds that a behaviour will be repeated next time. Crave for new experiences. Seeing an abstract side of life, showed me how self-reflec-tion and emotions are central to the process of meaning making.
Rewire your brain seeing beyond the situation and what is best in it. Show gratitude (“Shu-karana”) in what you do and get. The way to improve these qualities is not by wishing you were a more disciplined person, but by creating a more disciplined environment.
It’s good to avoid temptations than to resist it. Maintaining a Zen attitude in a life filled with interruption takes too much energy, overpowering it helps. Make the cues of your good habits obvious and the cues of your bad habits invisible. And most important be selfless!
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.
