Healing Yourself Allows You to Build Strong Relationships

Damianne President: [01:46] So as listeners heard from your bio, you call yourself healing hype girl. Where does that come from, and what does that mean? 

Nisha Mody: [01:55] Something that’s been really critical on my journey is healing from a lot of my childhood wounds that have pervaded a lot of my life and I think a lot of us have wounds that could use some healing. Sometimes I think about the word healing, and I try to remind myself that it’s not like there’s an end; it’s a constant journey and it’s a way to look at things.

 I call myself hype girl because I’m just all about it. I want to really introduce different healing modalities and different frameworks to people. I want to really encourage people. I feel like that’s just what happens naturally for me. I just want to hype it up; it’s with consent, like you want to feel hyped up or that you’re inviting that in. So, I just want to put more of that out there for more people to know about these different ways of healing and to feel that it is for them; it is for everybody and I think that it’s really helpful to normalize it.

Damianne President: [02:50] Yes, definitely. So what started your healing journey? How did you embark on this healing hype…? 

Nisha Mody: [02:59] Yeah. Yeah, so I feel like I was always very interested in my life about people and relationships.  I thought in high school I wanted to major in philosophy. I just wanted to understand how people thought, like the history of thinking. I didn’t end up doing that, but I just always had it in me to want to help people. I was very much a mediator in my family, which was also kind of problematic because I was put as a mediator even as a child. But I was always the person my friends went to and stuff.

I feel like that’s something a lot of people who are socialized as women talk about like, they’re the person who all their friends go to. I try to re remember that, but also realize like who I am at my core, I’ve always had this wonder and curiosity. 

And I think the healing part itself came to a head for me when at the end of 2012, my father died unexpectedly. We were all on vacation in India and he got sick and passed away within eight or 10 days. At the time, I was married and after that trip, I got home and the loss of my father brought a lot of changes in dynamic in my immediate family and with my husband at the time. I started realizing things about him and then most importantly, realizing things about myself.

I started realizing How much I changed in order to align with him. I realized that in our relationship, I forced our compatibility. I think in relationships, there’s always a certain compromise. There’s always a part of us we might lose, but then there’s also parts we gain, but I kind of felt like it was one sided. And this was proven to me when, you know, I’d asked him for a separation toward the end of 2013, but I said let’s try couples therapy because I did want to make sure that if I were to make this decision, I kind of did everything I could, and I wasn’t doing this without a professional opinion or trying something different. 

But after a few sessions, I realized that, you know, I wasn’t feeling the relationship and it wasn’t something I wanted to continue further. And when I told him during therapy I wanted a divorce, he said we’ve only been trying for three months, which was basically the period of when we separated and we had tried therapy. I immediately responded to him saying I’ve been trying for eight years, which was from the beginning of when we met. I said this to him and he just had this shocked look on his face, realizing that he’d been trying for three months; I’ve been trying this whole time. 

And it just proved to me that I was making such effort to change, to adjust my energy to him and not realizing that I was not getting anything in return. There was no reciprocity there. And, you know, that turned into also maybe realizing how did this all happen in the first place? Why did I adjust myself to him so much? And that’s something within the South Asian community I think women hear a lot, like you have to adjust, you have to adjust, to the point where that word just makes me cringe, you know? I realized that actually, you know, a lot of people talk about “daddy issue”. I don’t really like that term a lot; I think it’s kind of problematic, but for me there were things with my father that are there, but my mother wound with my mom is very, very deep.

 I realized how much I grew up having to be subservient to her, having to adjust myself, having to mask myself constantly because of her wounds and the way she projected her frustrations and anger upon my brother and I, and especially upon me being that mediator, being that person that she parentified. When I say printafication, I’m talking about how she put me so much in a parent role, even as a child. And so therefore, I felt this need to save people including my now ex-husband. I felt like it was my role in my job, but I started my healing journey realizing I needed to really look at all of this and look deep inside about what my relationship with myself was. 

How was I parenting myself? I never even thought about that. I just thought about other people and how to make them happy and what they needed, which is exactly what my mom did to this day. I think she’s healing, but, you know, I think it’s still very hard for her to focus on herself and realize what her own needs are. And I realized that I can break the cycles by doing it with myself. I can help her as much as I can, but  I also realized to constantly push my mom or anybody to do certain things is me forcing my will upon them and that’s not Okay.

And that’s another reason I feel like I’m a hype girl. I’m all about encouraging, but I’m not trying to force someone. If they’re not ready, they’re not ready. There was a time where I was, and I think we all have our time when, you know, sometimes we just start to get it.

Damianne President: [07:36] If you don’t mind my asking, did you have an arranged marriage? Was that part of the character of your relationship here?

Nisha Mody: [07:44] Sure. No, we did not. I met him online. He is Indian and I did want to marry an Indian person. My parents immigrated from India and not just that he was Gujarati, which is a specific state that we both are from. My parents, in many ways, they would’ve been happy to introduce me to people, but they thankfully never would have forced me to marry anybody. They were more progressive in that sense.

 Since then I’ve been with non South Asian people and my mom has no issue with it.  As more and more people in my community have married outside of the community, it’s become more normalized.

 In some cultures, people get the messaging of making their husbands happy as being the most important task. I have definitely had conversations with Asian friends and friends from other cultures who have been told or have internalized this idea. Nisha shares her experience with this messaging.  

Nisha Mody: [08:38] I learned what I saw. I learned someone who didn’t prioritize themselves. I learned someone who constantly adjusted themselves to people, but then didn’t know how to deal with it when they realized that it wasn’t good for them. So I think it’s a really interesting mix of what we’re consciously told what we see and how that affects our subconscious thoughts and how we start operating on that. It’s only when we become more aware of these patterns and that’s what happened for me that I was like a big light bulb came on. It was like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? And I think that combined with how I’d always kind of been really interested in self-help, which now I don’t feel like people call it self-help as much, but just kind of with that world of understanding ourselves. Also, I feel like I’ve been able to take it one step further to also realize how did colonization, British colonized India, how did that affect the ways patriarchy existed within my community? How did that  create also a stratification of certain classes?

 It was for so long, hundreds of years, the British colonized India. So what were the ancestors before that in my lineage like. I don’t know and I’ve been trying to explore that more and more because this all comes from somewhere, this idea of some type of supremacy, whether it’s racial supremacy or gender supremacy or anything like that.

 That’s a long answer to your question, but I did not have an arranged marriage. I did want to marry within my community, though that didn’t end up working out for me. But it taught me a lot about myself, nonetheless, and I always say I don’t regret any of it because I feel like it was my path and where I am now, I’m so proud of.

Damianne President: [10:18] I’m familiar with the concept because several people have mentioned it in previous episodes, for example, I spoke with the lady Claudia Ira Gan, and she talked about how she had to heal herself and recognize how her mother and her grandmother had passed on certain wounds to her or certain trauma. But I haven’t heard the term mother wound before. Could you help us understand what that term means?

Nisha Mody: [10:48] Sure. So really what the mother wound is are those traumas that our mothers have passed down to us through their lineage. I talk a lot about intergenerational trauma. So that could be being parentified by your mother or being emotionally manipulated by your mother. It could mean a lot of things and I think people have different journeys with it and people have different experiences with their mother, in terms of maybe their mother having them act like the mediator in the family. It could also be that the mother abandons their child.

I also think it’s an especially specific relationship. It can be with the mother and the daughter because of the gender similarities, the expectation that a mother puts on her daughter in terms of what she quote unquote should be doing or not be doing or should be behaving. So I think the mother wound is something that is passed down based on the mother’s experiences and how they’ve been wounded. It’s essentially unresolved trauma; it’s trauma that they’ve received.

My mom has three sisters and they’re all very different but my mom is the oldest, and I feel like she’s very stereotypical in that way. She’s kind of like a little bossier and very controlling, and so I was very controlled. So that’s also part of my mother wound, her control and her critique against myself and my brother as well and how much I internalized the critique. I still have to consciously make boundaries with her so that I don’t internalize it too much. 

So part of the mother wound is also healing from it. And for me, that’s been creating a lot of boundaries around how much I’m physically around my mother, how much I speak to her, how much when she speaks to me, how much I respond to what she says. Oftentimes, my mother has opened up to me in many ways and then I’ll reveal something to her, very personal and very vulnerable. And then I’ve noticed the next day she’ll kind of use it against me. And so that’s another way that I’ve been wounded. And so I have to be very careful about anything I say to her sometimes, or I have to have a very protective bubble around me when I’m around her, so that I don’t take on that energy that she has, that she hasn’t healed.

Damianne President: [12:56] That sounds very difficult to have a close relationship with. someone when you have to watch what you’re saying all the time. 

Nisha Mody: [13:03] Yeah. I often felt like I was walking on eggshells with her and I noticed that I developed friendships with people who I felt that with. And it was weird because we often repeat unresolved relationships that have harmed us. We seek that energy out, I think, if we haven’t resolved to that.

So I have a couple of friends who I have eventually not continued friendships with because I realized I was walking on eggshells around them. I was seeking this unhealthy bond from them that I also had for my mom, because I hadn’t yet been aware of what it was. So that’s what happened with my ex-husband too; I sought that out from him. The seeds were planted by my mom until I became aware of how it was harming me, I was just repeating that pattern.

Damianne President: [13:46] So interesting how discomfort can become so familiar.  We can get comfortable, I guess, in painful situations, but it’s even more interesting how we can actually seek out similar or I don’t know if we seek it out or if we somehow get trapped in similar sorts of situations that do not support us or help us in any way. It’s so interesting to think about how that happens. 

Nisha Mody: [14:12] It really, yeah, it really is. I think what it is is that when those relationships come to us, those red flags, we don’t see them as red flags. We see this as entrance points like, oh, let me go more instead of being like, oh, I’m just going to keep my distance from this person or not respond in a way where I feel responsible for them.

In that sense, maybe it’s not an attraction, but we’re entering their sphere of energy in a way. And so now when I detect that, I now step away from it more, or I start creating certain boundaries because I realized, okay, I used to do that. And another thing I wanted to mention about these patterns that’s really interesting is that when we do come to that realization entering safe relationships can also be scary because we’re not used to them. And this happened for me because with my current partner, who is a very safe person, he is someone who doesn’t need things from me to the point where sometimes I feel uncomfortable still, even though I’m like but I’m supposed to help you. What can I do for you? 

I mean, in partnerships, I think it’s good that you do things for each other. I think that’s very normal, but in the beginning of our relationship, I realized that he wouldn’t . Yell at me about certain things that I was used to being yelled at. And I almost wanted to be yelled at because I didn’t know what to do with him not being upset with me.

And so that’s a discomfort too, but that’s a discomfort we really have to sit with and get used to and realize that it’s a change of pattern and it’s that our body is so used to protecting us in that way that’s unhealthy, that this is a new type of protection and that it’s actually safe. It’s just like a really funny mind game in a way, in our body too. And I think that’s really important to talk about is how our body is so used to responding in a certain way because of anxiety or because of other trauma that we’ve had. And we have to kind of retrain what our body feels safe, which is something that I really work on with my clients, looking at how our nervous system responds because our body always sends us things before our mind does.

Damianne President: [16:12] There is the attachment style theory, which connects with a lot of what you’re saying. It’s so interesting because now I’m reflecting on my own life, and this is not the first time I’ve heard about this before, but I seem to do a very good job of making friends who keep some distance and, you know, friends that I kind of have to do a lot of the work for, that I have the one who suggests we meet. And there’s always either that physical distance between us and often it’s even an indication of an emotional distance as like I can remember the friend that I cultivated in my first year of university who would always leave a seat between us in the lecture hall that I never quite understood why even.

Like you said, I can now catch myself when I’m doing this, when I’m being the good friend, you know, and try really hard in a friendship, even though there isn’t reciprocity. It takes a lot of intentionality and thought to be able to do that. How do you find it? Is it natural for you now to spot when you might be falling into those less than helpful behaviors?

Nisha Mody: [17:16] It’s become a lot easier, but you’re right. Initially it’s a change of behavior. We’re literally rewiring our brain and body and that takes effort, right? It takes a lot of emotional and mental labor.  I think it’s really important for us to take care of ourselves during those times, to do things for ourselves so that we know that we’re being reciprocal to ourselves, right? Like I’m doing all this work so how can I also on the flip side comfort myself, whether that’s by having a warm tea, whether that’s talking to a friend who is already safe, whether that’s snuggling with your pet or in bed and just like enjoying it, and knowing that it’s not isolating, that it’s giving yourself comfort, watching your favorite TV show, whatever it is. 

Doing those things really helped me understand that I can provide for myself too, and I can also reach out to people who are safe that do nourish me, and that’s what I deserve. And that helped me retrain myself and allow for that labor to feel not less of labor, but for me to feel like it doesn’t have to be only hard work. I can also really nourish myself and nourish my body.

Movement also really helps for me, taking walks, being in nature, looking at flowers, I love flowers. Now that I live in Southern California, there’s so many beautiful flowers everywhere. So the environment has really helped me. So yeah, it’s gotten much easier, but it did take work and it still does. I think it’s a lifelong journey. 

I think like any pattern you can fall back into things too, and that’s okay. I think it’s really helpful for us to not shame ourselves because shame is probably what gets us into these places in the first place, and just like accepting that, you know, it’s okay. It’ll happen; it’s not like, you know, linear just up. We’ll have these moments and giving ourselves grace and even laughing at ourselves, I think it helps sometimes; we’re human after all. 

Damianne President: [19:40] What has surprised you on this journey? What have you learned about yourself or about other people that you did not know before?

Nisha Mody: [19:50] Wow. That’s such a good question. I think what I’ve learned about myself is that raising my voice, talking things out, and not having to figure everything out on my own, whether that’s like this, having a conversation with you or whether that’s calling a friend or talking to my partner and just saying whatever’s on my mind, or journaling, that really has helped me.

In the morning, I just journal whatever’s on my mind and it’s a release. For me releasing my voice has been so powerful. It’s been healing from within, but part of my healing process has also been using my voice in different ways, whether that’s on my podcast, whether that’s being on other podcasts, whether that’s saying something in an Instagram story or drawing, expressing myself in some way.

I call that surprising because sometimes I’ve always been like, I have to figure everything out.  That’s how I was raised, to be that mediator. Like, okay, I have to figure out this whole situation with this whole dynamic. I also think it’s how we’re raised in a colonized world where everything is very individual; it’s very competitive. 

Capitalism, you know, you’re supposed to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and figure everything out yourself, but you don’t have to. You can ask for help, you can express yourself, going to therapy. Expressing myself in that way, I cannot tell you how many times I felt “fine” and I go into therapy thinking I don’t have much to talk about, and so much comes out and I’m like crying. And so clearly there was a lot in me. 

There’s so much within us that I think it’s so important to express and feel vulnerable, to share. And of course, I want to caveat, I always caveat vulnerability by having a space where you could feel safe to do that because not all spaces are safe to feel vulnerable. And cultivating that community is really, really important.

Damianne President: [21:29] I was listening to a podcast. I really wished that I remembered which one. If I do, I’ll add it to the show notes. I heard somebody say guilt is when you think that you’ve done something bad, but shame is when you think that you’re bad, and I was like, oh wow, no wonder that is such a heavy thing to carry, shame.

Nisha Mody: [21:51] Yeah. 

Damianne President: [21:53] You mentioned a few minutes ago about how we can call on people to help us on the healing journey. Who do you take on your healing journey with you?

Nisha Mody: [22:03] Yeah, that’s a great question. So I am so blessed with so many dear friends. I was just messaging one of my best friends, I say from high school, but I met her in like fifth grade and we had an instant connection. I was just messaging about this time she was on my back porch and We had this instant connection and that was like it for us, you know? And she lives in London and we’re still so close. We don’t even have to talk to each other all the time; that connection is there. 

So I definitely have great friends and I think that’s really important because I think oftentimes we romanticize romantic partnerships as like that person’s supposed to do and be everything for us. And while they are a source of intimacy, our friends are sources of intimacy, our community is a source of intimacy, and we cannot ask for everything from one person; to me, that’s logical. One person cannot be everything for us. So I try to find that within my community in terms of friendships, also within other south Asian people that I know, because I know that there are certain commonalities and experiences we have. I also think it’s important that once again, I can call on certain South Asian friends to talk about.

I have coaching friends. I have people in these different circles, like these different pods that I can reach out to and ask for help or say what’s going on. And it’s just such a beautiful energy exchange for me. So I think we can have different types of communities, like I have a lot of internet friends now because of the coaching work that I do, because of what I do on Instagram, which is really nice and it’s heartwarming. Some of them I’ve met in real life, others, you know, we just talk online and I think that’s really, really important that we have different types of people in different types of communities that we can reach out to. 

Damianne President: [23:41] I kind of have a bias with digital connections too, that I don’t like the term real life versus online life, because I feel like real life is about the strength of the relationships. It’s about the content of the relationships, not just the location or the situation of people. And so I’ve met quite a few people online first and then met them in the physical world and been able to build some sort of connection with them. And even the people that I’ve never met in the physical world, they’ve added value to my life. And so I feel like it diminishes something when we say Oh my real life versus my online life, but as just my little aside. 

Nisha Mody: [24:25] You’re totally right. I mean, it is real life. Here we are talking in real life; it’s not fake, so I appreciate that. Yeah

Damianne President: [24:32] A few minutes ago, you talked about the word deserving and that made me sit up because I think as women, as people, so often we try to think of what do we deserve. And I think that sometimes can be really dangerous because it kind of ties to the idea of you’re valuable just as you are. And so I wanted to kind of move into talking about self acceptance and what does it mean for us to take up space in the world and where do we get our value from?

Nisha Mody: [25:06] Oh, I feel like I talk to my clients about this all the time that we are worth everything and we were born worthy. First of all, we grew up in a world where capitalism has told us that we have to earn our worth, as well as colonization. As people of color, I think white supremacy has told us that too, like we have to even push ourselves even more to be able to be on par, so there’s this systemic influence as well. And then it becomes very, very internalized when in fact we are so worthy, you know, and I think it’s really important for us to look at that shame that we have, to sit with that shame because oftentimes shame or these like quote unquote bad feelings, which I don’t like calling things good or bad, kind of what you were saying, what shame is I am bad.

We are not bad or good. We just are. And I think accepting ourselves is just so important. When we can accept ourselves, there’s literally a weight lifted off our shoulders that we are Okay as we are, like what, oh, I am, like there’s not something missing for me. And when we can get to that point, I think it’s expansive. There’s this idea of scarcity that there’s not enough out there and I have to rush to get it, as opposed to, well, the world is actually expensive. There’s an abundance to it. And when I accept myself and also meet myself where I’m at, like maybe I’m in a bad place this week, or this week I’ve been kind of emotional.

Maybe I’m in an emotional place, like, okay, I’m going to cry then. I’m going to cry and be okay with it. I’m going to be sad, like this morning, I just kind of woke up sad. That happens sometimes. And I was like, Ugh, why do I feel this way? You know, I was kind of annoyed, but then I was like, you know what, Nisha, you’re sad. It’s Okay. And I just put my hand over my heart and I just felt, tried to almost complete that feeling, let that cycle continue and accept that feeling. And when we can accept those feelings within us, we can accept ourselves more. 

Some people think like, oh, I’m not organized, or I’m not focused or whatever, but instead, why don’t you accept the beautiful things that happen when maybe you are unfocused? Like for me, I also have trouble with focus, but I’m able to do so many things and come up with so many ideas because of that. So how are we faulting ourselves or shaming ourselves for where we are at instead of letting that be part of our journey and expecting ourselves to be, you know, like a million yards away when we can just meet ourselves where we are and accept ourselves where we’re at and see where that takes us. It’s such a relief. It’s such a weight off your shoulders when you could just be like, oh, I am Okay as I am, cool, instead of letting the world think that you need X, Y, or Z.

 I’m not saying other things can make you feel better. I have cats; they make me feel so much better, but at the same time I think we also have to understand that where we are in our current situation is okay. Things happen. This is life; it’s not perfect and it never will be. Being able to meet ourselves where we’re at is so critical to healing and to realizing that there is more out there and that more isn’t because of our lack; it’s because of curiosity and exploration.

Damianne President: [28:15] As we think about self acceptance and you’ve been going on this healing journey, you’ve been doing coaching work as well for yourself and with other people. What still surprises you about self acceptance? What trips you up sometimes, and you have to be very intentional and deliberate about?

Nisha Mody: [28:35] I think as much as I think we’re better together and as much as I think we should lift others as we climb and I believe in community and collectivism, we still live in a world that’s very competitive so I still see what other people are doing, and I’m like, oh, I want to do that. Oh, well they’re doing this’ maybe I should do that. And I often forget myself.

And I think another thing about self-acceptance that’s hard is oftentimes when we’re not accepting ourselves, we’re very disconnected from our bodies and from who we are in our values and our skills and our personality traits. And once I return to myself and I ground myself, whether that’s by meditation or standing in nature, or sometimes I write things down, like my qualities that I like about myself and I read them to remind myself because it’s so often that we forget ourselves. 

So I think I’m still surprised by the fact that even though I have all these values, I can get off track and sometimes it’s actually with and because of the people who are doing similar work as me. It’s not their fault, right? It’s still that feeling of lack within myself because I’m human and because I grew up in this world that is so hyper competitive and so hyper individualistic.

The key to being in alignment with yourself [29:43]

I’m all about slowing down and paying attention, but I sometimes put a lot of pressure on myself. I’m like, there’s not enough time, there’s so much going on in the world that’s so bad. I have to do this. I have to do that. And so even though I’m all about slowing down, I sometimes feel this need to rush and hurry and like everything is urgent.

 Even though everything is urgent, that’s exactly why we have to slow down. So this idea that the resolution to urgency is actually slowing down is something that is, I think, this beautiful contradiction and it’s so surprising, like it makes me laugh all the time at it and at myself.

I think it’s funny how the people who inspire me, I also start feeling less than because of them, like when you put other people on a pedestal, that means you’re below, but you’re not. We are all in this world and in this life to do so many different things.

 What does Nisha want? What fulfills her soul? And that’s when I can return to myself and be like, oh, that to me is self-acceptance like, what do I need? Maybe that person needs that and that’s great, but I don’t need to be that way. And that for me puts them on the same level or just puts them in a different place. That’s where they are. 

I also try to see myself as like, instead of  on this flat, linear kind of path, like we’re in this sphere and we are. The world is a globe; it’s a round object. And all the planets are around. So we’re within the sphere in different spots. When you spin that around, there is no superiority; there is no inferiority. It’s just we’re in a different place.

Damianne President: [31:13] People are multifaceted and different in different instances and susceptible to changing and growing and being different on different days. We’re fallible and that still doesn’t make us any less than we were at any other moment.

Nisha Mody: [31:29] Yeah. And we are all capable of harming others. It’s not so much that we harm someone, it’s like, okay, what are we going to do about it now? How are we going to be accountable to ourselves and to others? And I think that if we think about that, as opposed to this person’s bad, and I know, trust me, I’ve totally thought what’s ”wrong”…

Damianne President: [31:46] We all fall into it, yep. 

Nisha Mody: [31:48] We all fall into it.

Damianne President: [31:49] Do you have a challenge, do you have an action that you would like to invite people to take toward living the life that they want? 

Nisha Mody: [31:58] Yes, I do. I challenge everyone to start small. Start doing something small every day that might change your life. I tell everybody this story. For me, I decided that I was going to start flossing everyday, because I was really bad about flossing my teeth. And I realized that for my dental health, I need to floss.

 It was something that was for my health, but also just to change a behavior, and it’s a very simple behavior. Every night, you know, just floss. And so when I realized I could do that every day, I realized I could do something else. So then I started meditating every day for 5 minutes.

I did a 30 day challenge for myself, but I also did on Instagram so that accountability helped. So  accountability, having a buddy to do something with anything, small try to challenge yourself to do that.

 That has turned into a whole morning routine for me. Then I started journaling. I meditate. Sometimes I’ll do movement in the morning, not every day and that’s okay; I don’t shame myself. But just start very small with one little habit. Know that sometimes you just have to take action and once you take action, then sometimes more will come; it’s more expensive.

 I know we’re not always in the mood to do something and that’s okay, so just taking that small action, it’s really good for our nervous system and it’s good for our body. And, um, it’s not too overwhelming for us. Sometimes I think overwhelm is what gets us to just stop. And it happens to me all the time. And when that happens, I just break things down into small steps.

 The other day, I’m like, I gotta put my whole podcast episode together, oh my gosh. It’s like, you know what, I’m just going to listen to the first interview. I did, let me just listen. And so I started that and then, you know, within a couple of days I was done before I knew it. That overwhelm is almost more emotional energy than actually doing the thing. But I do say start small so that it doesn’t feel like too much on our bodies and our minds.

 So that’s my challenge to everyone to take the overwhelm and make it a really small thing that you can do to shift your life just a little bit every day. 

Damianne President: [33:54] I really like that and I also like to say that once you’ve done that small thing, then take a moment and celebrate because then you’re also building those positive pathways in your brain. That celebration piece, which BJ Fogg talks about, helps make a habit stick over time as well.

Nisha Mody: [34:12] Yeah, just giving yourself that reward. Thank you so much for adding that. I appreciate that very much. 

Damianne President: [34:18] Before we move to our fast five, the last five questions of the episode, tell us where people can connect with you. I read a little bit about it in the bio, but tell us what you’re doing, how people can support your work, where we can find you. 

Nisha Mody: [34:33] Yeah, so you can go to my website, http://www.nishaland.com. You can learn more about me, find ways to work with me. I do one-on-one coaching. I’m going to be offering soon more of a healing assessment just to get people started if they’re stuck, to kind of see where they’re at and where they should move forward. I’ll be updating my website with that information soon. I’m also planning to do a group coaching program so you can get on the waitlist there for that.

 I really recommend just getting on my email list, which you can connect with on my website too. Um, and on Instagram you can find me @healinghypegirl. I’m on Tik Tok @healinghypegirl as well. I’m on Twitter @nishamody, which is my name, first and last name. The last thing I have is I have a healing and justice newsletter called The Healing Hype. It’s thehealinghype.com. And I offer my own reflections; it’s kind of a blog of sorts.

 You can get it for free for a couple posts a month and there’s also a paid version. In there I offer meditations that are usually along with the times; I offer inspiration notes. And all workshops that I lead are exclusively by me, which I’ll do probably five or six a year, are included in that too and you can always access those later. I offer that through there as well as an advice column, if you want to become a member. So that’s information provided directly for me. I love doing meditations.  I feel like it’s so helpful just to ground ourselves so I like to offer that. And I also have some free meditations on my website.

Damianne President: [36:04] Thank you for sharing all of that. And the links will be in the show notes as well.

Now we’re going to go to our fast five, which are five questions that you can answer with up to one sentence. 

Nisha Mody: [36:16] Okay. 

Damianne President: [36:17] So what lights you up? It can be this moment, this week, this month. 

Nisha Mody: [36:22] This moment. I love having conversations with people. 

Damianne President: [36:26] What do you do every day or dream of doing every day to live the life that you want?

Nisha Mody: [36:32] I dream of connecting with myself and with others. 

Damianne President: [36:36] Do you have a phrase or a pep talk that you give yourself for motivation?

Nisha Mody: [36:42] I think about safety and how safety is the absence of a threat and the presence of a connection. 

Damianne President: [36:49] Where do you live and if you’re having guests, what’s the first thing you show them, or the first place that you take them to. This is totally selfish. This is for me because I love traveling.

Nisha Mody: [36:59] Yeah. I live in Tongvaland. That’s the native people of the Los Angeles region, so today called Los Angeles. Gosh, I just love taking people around my neighborhood to show them all the flowers and vegetation cause I just love flowers and the succulents here so much. 

Damianne President: [37:18] You have been given the gift of time with some time affluence. So that means you have a free day and you can do anything you want. What are you doing on this day?

Nisha Mody: [37:27] Hmm. I am reading on the beach. I am playing with my cats. I’d love to have some really good sex and do some journaling and writing, which I love dearly.