This episode is a rebroadcast of a conversation originally released in August 2023. I'm bringing it back because the themes feel even more relevant today.

My guest is Neelu Kaur, author of Be Your Own Cheerleader, speaker, and organizational psychologist. Neelu works closely with South Asian and Asian women who are navigating burnout, self-advocacy, and cultural expectations in corporate America.

In this conversation, we explore the tension many high performers feel between a collectivist "we" mindset and a workplace culture that rewards individual visibility. Neelu introduces her "I-We speedometer" framework, offering a practical way to move between collaboration and self-promotion without losing your sense of self.

We also get into:

• Why the "your work will speak for itself" mantra often falls short
• How cultural conditioning can shape burnout and perfectionism
• Practical concepts like fit for purpose, reverse classroom, and time confetti
• How tools from NLP, yoga, and Ayurveda can help change not just how we communicate with others, but how we speak to ourselves
• What it really means to become your own cheerleader - at work and at home

This is a conversation about speaking up with integrity, managing energy in a nonstop work culture, and untethering from inherited templates that no longer serve us. Hope you enjoy it.

To learn more about how you can "Be Your Own Cheerleader," visit ⁠neelukaur.com⁠ or connect with Neelu on ⁠Instagram ⁠or ⁠LinkedIn⁠. Her book is also available on ⁠Amazon⁠.

Connect with Nikhil to learn more about ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Untether Your Life⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and other projects:

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⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

This episode is Part 2 of my conversation with Shyambo, founder of The Brighter Mindset.

This week, we explore how practices labeled as biohacks (i.e., cold plunges) can double as powerful tools for spiritual discipline. Shyambo shares why challenging comfort through the body can translate into patience, clarity, and emotional steadiness in everyday life.

We also unpack a powerful analogy about mental health: if your "basement is flooded," you can’t just keep scooping water out; you have to plug the hole. In other words, cultivating a calmer mind requires being intentional about content we watch, conversations we engage in, and calories we consume.

In this episode, we cover:

Cold exposure as a practice for training the mind, not just the body

• Challenging the five senses to build resilience and self-control
• Why constant comfort can quietly run our lives
• The "plug the hole" metaphor - and how unfiltered inputs overwhelm the mind
• How curating sensory inputs can shift emotional tone and mental clarity

To explore more of Shyambo's work, please visit ⁠thebrightermindset.com⁠, or check him out on ⁠Instagram⁠. You can also sign up for his 2026 Sedona Immersive Wellness Retreat ⁠here⁠.

To connect with Nikhil and learn more about Untether Your Life and related projects:

⁠Instagram⁠ | ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠Website

This episode explores how spiritual mentorship, emotional equanimity, and intentional social media use can transform an anxious, approval-seeking mind into what my guest calls a brighter mindset. On a day honoring Guru Nanak’s birth and the guru tradition, it felt especially fitting to sit down with Shyambo, a spiritual mentor, founder of The Brighter Mindset, and content creator whose work has reached over 10 million people.

Shyambo shares how his life was shaped by his guru, Pramukh Swami Maharaj, and how trying to "perform" wisdom online led him into depression, imposter syndrome, and a deep misalignment between his outer persona and inner reality.

He opens up about his time in a mindfulness-based recovery program in Sedona, the shift from chasing likes to praying before every post, and why practices like prapti (nothing left to attain), emotional equanimity, and samp (unity) have changed the way he relates to success, comparison, and conflict – especially during tense cultural and political moments.

In Part 1, we touch on:

• What a guru really is, and how modeling a teacher’s inner state is different from just consuming their ideas.
• Shyambo's journey from pre-med tennis kid to spiritual mentor, and how early bullying and cultural barriers shaped his inner search.
• How social media became a "casino of validation" for him – and what finally forced him to step away.
• The role of mindfulness-based recovery in helping him separate ego from service.
• Why he now prays before every post, and how that single intention protects him from FOMO and metrics obsession.
• The concepts of prapti, emotional equanimity, and samp (unity) as antidotes to comparison, division, and reactivity in a post-election landscape.

Note: This is Part One of a two-part series. Part Two airs next week.

To explore more of Shyambo's work, please visit thebrightermindset.com, or check him out on Instagram. You can also sign up for his 2026 Sedona Immersive Wellness Retreat here.

To connect with Nikhil and learn more about Untether Your Life and related projects:

Instagram | LinkedIn | Website