97. On Feeling More Alive Choosing Ambition on Your Terms with Neha Mandhani

Overview

“I feel very ambitious even though on the outside my ambition may look very different, but it feels like ambition on my terms.” Yes! That sounds like Sustainable Ambition—ambition that’s rooted in you and on your terms.

Today I’m joined by Neha Mandhani, a certified executive leadership coach, for an open, honest conversation on what it’s like to listen and honor oneself, to move through the discomfort of choosing self-authorship, and to step out of the norm onto a path that aligns to your integrity and purpose. Neha is someone who has explored her multiple passions and interests and experimented her way to where she is now. While Neha may feel more alive today than ever, her journey has not been without its fears. She embraces those fears and keeps moving forward, encouraging you and her coaching clients to do the same.

You may hear yourself in Neha’s story. And for that reason, I appreciate her parting wisdom for you all—“How is your relationship with yourself? How well are you leading yourself?” What insight might you take from this conversation to get into action and make a positive shift towards stepping into ambition on your terms?

I’m so appreciative of you sharing your story with us, Neha. Thank you for your insights and inspiration!

More About Our Guest

Neha Mandhani is a certified executive leadership coach who works with people first leaders and organizations committed to investing in their people. She is also deeply passionate about supporting mothers on their leadership journeys both at work and at home and runs several communities for mothers. She spent 15 years in the corporate world, while honoring her dreams and callings on the margins, writing at 6 am on a Sunday morning or coaching a client when her kids were in bed. She’s now stepped out on her own, having designed a life to make more space to do work that she feels was hers to do and a life that feels in integrity with her purpose.

Topics Covered

  • Neha shares how her childhood experiences—both her environment and her parents— shaped her personal philosophies and her desire to do service work. This is true for all of us—we’re shaped by our personal experiences. If you reflect, what can you glean about your beliefs that were rooted early in life?

  • Neha’s experience in her first job is like what so many of us experience and yet are often afraid to admit—it wasn’t the right fit for her. She knew it early on, realizing the business model didn’t align with her values. If you are standing in a similar place, be compassionate towards yourself, as Neha wishes she had done for herself. And then follow her lead, get into experimentation and explore your interests. Be on a quest for what else is possible.

  • Throughout this interview, Neha is transparent about her personal experience. She admits in this case how stepping into experimentation was unsettling and how even now she, again like many of us, can get tripped up in the comparison trip, defining our success by external markers. She also acknowledges throughout how fear comes up for her and how she moves through that fear, a topic she likes to cover with her coaching clients. It’s scary to step into self-authorship. How can we create and accept support to do so?

  • On her life-work journey, Neha acknowledges how important honoring her many passions and interests —writing, coach training, coaching—has been for sustaining herself.

  • One thing that I pull through in listening to Neha closely is how she listens for cues and honors how she is feeling in her body. This bodily, somatic awareness is powerful and helpful. For example, she listens for what path is calling her. We weren’t able to dig into the topic in the episode, but I want to call attention to its importance.

  • An important message I hear in what Neha shares and is important to Sustainable Ambition is our need to broaden our views of ambition. Neha is of Indian descent and an immigrant to the United States. She shares how she didn’t feel discriminated against in her career, and yet with more space and time can see the micro-traumas she experienced. In hearing this, it can raise our collective awareness and call us to be more conscious to our biases and how we limit people’s ambitions and potential.

  • What has Neha learned on the other side of crafting her life more in integrity with her purpose? That she’s following her ambition on her terms, and she feels more alive.

  • Neha’s parting wisdom and invitation is to recognize that leadership starts with you. She asks:

    • “How is your relationship with yourself? How well are you leading yourself? I would really encourage and invite people both to sit with that question and really think about what it looks like in practice…. If you want to be a better leader out in the world doing whatever it is you do, you gotta start with yourself first.”

Resources Mentioned

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97. On Feeling More Alive Choosing Ambition on Your Terms with Neha Mandhani

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2023Kathy OnetoRight Effort, Right Ambition, Right Time