Neeta Bhushan is an international speaker, author and an advocate for emotional confidence. Her goal is to build a global community of progressive thinkers, doers, forward driving movers-and-shakers who are committed to integrating empathy-based solutions in their lives – at home, in the office, and beyond.
Have you always been someone who is highly motivated in your life and an overachiever?
As a daughter of Filipino-Indian immigrants, it was ingrained in her DNA to overachieve and to overdo so she could be validated and loved by people around her. As a kid, she learned that in order to gain validation and acceptance she had to overdo everything. As human beings, we all desire to be accepted and loved and Neeta had this believe ingrained earlier in her life that she could only be accepted by people around her if she overachieves in everything through excessive effort.
What was your childhood like?
As a child, her parents had these unrealistic expectations from Neeta to ace every time in her exams no matter what, to get straight A’s every time. Her mom got sick when she was 10 and she passed away when Neeta was only 16 years old. Her mom’s sickness affected her as a child. It was a disaster for her. She learned very early in her life how to make tea and cook food. She was supposed to entertain guests coming to her home. She got her first job at a tender age of 14. She had to grow faster than other kids. She was in charge of two younger brothers. A year after she lost her mother, her younger brother passed away as well.
How did you manage to deal with those two traumatic events?
She became a part of family therapy and individual therapy. Normally, there is a concept among Asian families not to get in therapy because they find it ineffective. But for Neeta and her family, there was a lot to process regarding the passing away of two family members in a year so they went in therapy. Only when Neeta was somehow able to get grip on her life and process through the grief, she was struck with another tragedy; her father passed away. Her father was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and only had nine months to live. There was a lot of anger and pain for Neeta and she believes she used that pain to utilize as fuel to achieve many things in her twenties. She managed to graduate from dental school and build a million-dollar cosmetic dentistry practice.
Neeta believes she learned many important life lessons and came across many challenges before she turned thirty but none of it was as important and life-changing as the lesson she learned after meeting her now ex-husband. This is when she felt her own life was in danger.
What do you mean by “your own life was in danger”?
She fell in love, got married. She had a first-class dream wedding but she was in an abusive marriage and her husband threatened to take her life. Neeta learned a lot about her life and how she had been living her life up to that point. She realized she was living for everyone else but not for her own self. She realized she had to get out of this toxic relation and live for herself.
What awakens your heart?
When she found her gifts a couple of years ago, recognizing how she ignites inspiration and transformation in other people whether it’s through her talks or business workshops, she realized she had been doing it for a long time whether as a dentist or as a teller at a bank or working in retail in a mall. The ability to inspire other people and transform their lives is her greatest gift, her greatest joy and that is what awakens her heart.
You talked about three different mindsets while going through a tragedy. One was the victim mindset. What are the other two?
The other two are survivor and thriver. Survivor is the idea that you have gone through something traumatic and radical. You are still trying to figure out what exactly happened. You are still referring back to that victim state. It means you have not completely healed from the tragedy. With thriver, you are so committed to growth, that you are flourishing after the tragedy. It means you have learned your lessons and you are utilizing those lessons to propel yourself in the forward direction.
How do you teach emotional grit? Is it something that can be taught?
She uses grit as an acronym and she uses it for quite a few reasons. GRIT stands for Grow, Reveal, Innovate and Transform. The idea is that unless we are not aware of our own surroundings and our own decisions, we cannot make better decisions. If we are hit with some challenge or adversity, we can either be resentful or we can learn the lesson in it and change our perspective in such situations.
Can you talk a little bit about your book and what your practice looks now?
Her book titled ‘Emotional GRIT’ was launched about a year ago and became a best-seller. She has been working with a lot of incredible leaders and entrepreneurs using the same practices she talks about in her book.
Do you have an action that can help people going through trauma feel more resilient?
If you are going through something, think about all those life lessons, take a notepad and write down all those instances that you considered a failure in your life. It could be anything from failed relationships to betrayal from friends or failures in business or jobs. It could be anything that has kept you stuck in a particular domain. Write down the learning lessons, what exactly did you learn from these incidents? You need to look at things you could have done better and from there you can start to see your journey.
How can we connect with you?
You can find her on Facebook via the following link
https://www.facebook.com/neetabhushan1111/
You can also find her on Instagram via the following link
https://www.instagram.com/neetabhushan/?hl=en
Her website’s URL is
https://www.neetabhushan.com
You can know more about her courses, workshops and retreats from her website.