Ep535: Nidhi Mohan Kamal – Happiness Is an Inner Game, Love Yourself

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community. We know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives to reduce risk in your life. Go to my worst investment ever.com today and take the risk reduction assessment I created from the lessons I've learned from more than 500 guests. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy and I'm here with featured guests Nidhi Mohan Kemal Nitti Are you ready to join the mission?

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 00:43
Absolutely. So excited to do this.

Andrew Stotz 00:47
Yeah, and I am very excited to have you on and let me introduce you to the audience. Nidhi is the director of NID son wellness, a chain of wealth a weight loss clinics, with branches in Delhi and two other cities in India. She's a food scientist and a Food and Chemical Engineering degree and has a food engineering chemical degree, and a specialization in nutrition and sports specific nutrition. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, she knows her stuff. She's also a certified Ashtanga Yoga, vinyasa yoga trainer, and a Certified Strength fitness trainer with a specialization in rehab and resistance. You can find her writing and videos on blogs are about food, fitness and nutrition. She is also the brand ambassador of Puma, do you in India and was part of the Guinness World Record plank Nitti. Take a minute and tell us what value you bring to this world.

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 01:50
I've been on a mission for the last 13 years to improve health of people. It that journey has evolved. Of course, I have evolved during that process. My approach is evolving continuously. But without the passion, the essence of it still remains my goal is to improve people's life, make it better, started off with just health and how they look. But now it's more like spiritual health, mental health, and the overall health. So now I think the approach has evolved, but the essence remains the same.

Andrew Stotz 02:25
And I know that all of my listeners want to improve their health. And they're all that in fact, I have a little mantra that I use the say, you know is that I'm healthy, wealthy, and attractive. When I say attractive, I mean that I attract good things and good people. And I say that mantra and talk about the things that I want to do. But when I described about healthy, I said, my energy overflows. Like that's why I want to be healthy for the energy I can bring to life. But maybe you can just tell us about the typical person that you've worked with in the past, kind of the challenges that they face and the benefits that they get. And I know for a lot of listeners, you know that any tell us about any resources that you may have Instagram or YouTube or places that they can also follow you and learn more from you.

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 03:21
Yeah, so I am there on YouTube. And I have an Instagram page as well. I do share all these short form long form video content which which elaborates about the concepts that I believe in, you will find a lot of resources on being vegan, quick, vegan recipes, workouts, yoga flows, yoga for joint health, and even some, you know, traditional fitness training kind of workouts as well.

Andrew Stotz 03:50
And maybe for the audience, I want to tell you about my number one fan, she's my mother. She's 83. And she's listening to this podcast right now. In fact, she's in the other room at my house here in Thailand. And you know, it's a challenge as you get older, right? I mean, if you first of all, if you didn't take care of yourself, well, when you're younger, you're going to pay the price when you get older. But also as you get older, it's just a challenge to start and I would like for you just to kind of maybe give some advice not necessarily for older or younger, but just for people that know Nitti um, I know I'm out of shape. I'm not happy with you know, way I feel the way I look maybe the pandemic got me down and all of that and I want to start and you know, I see your videos and you know your work. I mean, you're at the top of the game. How do I start as a beginner and maybe you could just give a tip for that.

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 04:45
Okay, I think the biggest trap that's kind of floating around these days and also with the younger generation is YOLO. So for everything that they want to do, whether it's food choices, they make habit choices. They make, there's always this concept of you live one. So just just live it and be happy in the moment doesn't matter what happens tomorrow. And that's kind of like setting yourself up for disaster because that doesn't work, when it comes to is, you know, investment, even in health. It's the compounding effect, right? So it's those little things that you're going to do on an everyday basis, it's consistency, you have to plan to live 100 years, to live a healthy life, at least when you go grow older. So that's something that you need to keep in mind. So these conscious choices, those little things that are going to compound over time, cannot happen without discipline, and you need to throw your Lord of the window. I mean, fit with your health and fitness. YOLO kind of will never work.

Andrew Stotz 05:47
It's interesting, you know, if you think about your parents, or your grandparents or your great grandparents, they live in a world of scarcity, they lived in a world of difficulty and struggle. And, you know, the idea of invest now, put in the time now, to get that benefit in the future is something that's, you know, for a lot of young people, they got a lot in their hands right now. And I'm trying to think about it in a simple way. I guess one of the things that I one of the habits that I built many years ago, is I came up with the habit of walking out my door at 5am. That's it, my habit was just walk out the damn door at 5am. Now, I have never, you know, I'm not a big guy that loves exercise. But after doing that, starting that maybe 10 years ago, every morning that I walk out that door at 5am, I never just turn around and walk back in once I'm out the door, my mindsets turned. And then I walk to the park, or I walk to the gym, or I get on my bicycle or whatever that thing is, and I go do it. And that the compounding effect aspect is massive. And I just wonder if, given your experience, if you wanted to, if you wanted to tell someone, okay, you've already given great advice. The first advice is said plan to live, like you plan like you're gonna live for 100 years 100, you've talked about the compound effect of doing small habits, and that that will build up over time. You've talked about the concept that you know, don't just think of today, think of the long term, the question I have for you is you know, with, you know, a stronger with all kinds of different things strength and stuff. If you were to tell someone, if you could build just a small habit in your life of this one particular thing, it could be a squat, it could be a sun salutation, it could be a walk, whatever that thing is, what would it be?

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 07:44
If I'd say that it's not related to any of those things, but it's something that you know, just kick starts your holiday is the moment you wake up, make your bed that is so basic and so foundational. And it's so life changing, because the process of closure, this is done. First thing in the morning, you you know your activity that started the previous day is closed, and now I have a brand new day to look forward to that changes everything, the moment you're going to make your bed, then you're going to be like, Oh, I can't go back to bed now. So I got to do something more than that, then you know, automatically you will get up and do your walk or your exercise or take your dog out whatever that is. But I think that is for me that that tops the game the days that I don't even like even if I know that I'm in a service five star hotel, I would still wake up in my bed. And I'm sure the people who come for housekeeping after we like, wow, what just happened? Why is this person crazy? But I think that's very life changing for me. And I think it just sets the right tone for your day. So you're more than 10 for the whole day.

Andrew Stotz 08:56
So Mom was right all the time when she said make your bed. All right. So ladies and gentlemen, make your bed try it. Try that keystone habit that's going to really make a difference for the start in your day. fantastic advice. And now it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it then tell us your story.

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 09:23
Um, yeah, if I talk about financial blunders, of course, I would have done a lot of them. But let's just talk about so I'm going to make this about my spiritual growth over years. And I think the biggest spiritual growth for me came not from yoga, not from anything else, but it came from relationships. Right. And I think I've had my share of like, a series of bad relationships. And every time something bad happened, there was a very good takeaway from it. Sometimes it took me a while to understand it, but I think my biggest spiritual growth has been, you know, people who came in and walked out of my life. So I think I've made blunders there. And, yeah, that's a story that I would love to share with people. Because I think a lot of people don't understand that the sum total of your life, I mean, of course, eating while taking care of yourself, all those things are important. But, you know, human beings are emotional beings. So the biggest impact that is going to be in their lives is you know, whatever's happening around them, especially emotionally. And that usually comes from interpersonal relationships. And the more intimate the relationship is, the bigger the impact is. So I think there's a huge impact that relationships have on your spiritual health and your spiritual growth, especially your emotional health. So yeah, that's, that's, that's one series of bad investments that I've made.

Andrew Stotz 10:52
So let's, let's go into that in a little, little, kind of a fun way, a different way. I'd like you to talk about the first day, and the last day of those relationships now, like, what was it going on in your head, when you said, this is God, this is great. This is I think, because of this, this, this, I want to get into this. And at the end, what was the feeling? What was the situation? And you know, we don't need to hear all the details in between, but let's just hear about why you went in and why you went out? How did you feel?

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 11:28
Okay, so, um, I'm not going to name people. So I'm going to start with the last long, whatever relationship I had, the first day I met this person, there were a lot of points of connection, you know, how you if you're a spiritual being like me with your, your, you know, your orchestrate that, oh, the whole universe was working towards it, this is this is a, this is the, this is the fine print, I was reading a lot into the fine print. So this person had similar interests, similar hobbies, felt like similar value system was into yoga, wanted to try out new things was into traveling, it felt like okay, this could be interesting, let's just try. So, the very superficial way we look at things, you know, similar backgrounds, similar, not similar backgrounds, very different backgrounds, because this person was a different ethnicity or together. But, you know, you look at the interests, the hobbies, very superficial surface, the surface things and you're like, Oh, this is it, it marks a lot of ticks in my box. And, you know, my checklist is done. Cut to that, maybe one half, two years later. The realizations that, you know, it's what I was left with was a lot of delusion, about what I thought and what is not being able to see things clearly. And, you know, looking at it from the lens of what I wanted to be, I do not consider things that are actually important, which is, you know, consistency, kindness, gratitude, a willing to stick around, what do you call grit, and do a person might display that in one set of their life they might not having throughout, say, Are these wisdom and I think, I don't know if this is the right point to share that. But I think things like these, when they happen, they give you an insight to what's really going on with you. Because, you know, from a spiritual angle at how I see is that, you know, they say that you find a part of you in everyone, and the people that you don't like, are actually things that you don't like about yourself. So I mean, I really took in a deep dive into my own spiritual health in what's going on with me. What are, you know, my fears? What are the things that I need to work on? But, but yeah, it broke me to a point where I was like, Okay, I, I need to change my patterns, I need to look into myself. And I mean, I didn't want to just blame it on the person or blame it on the universe or say, God is not fair or whatever. But I wanted to take a deep dive and be like, Why did this happen? So what from a spiritual point what it why did I attract this and what is it that I need to learn from this?

Andrew Stotz 14:26
And can you remember that kind of final days like that when it kind of hit you? You know, because it's such a hard thing in relationships because you've invested so much time. You've got some level of comfort with each other. But then there's this moment that you Where were you at the moment that you realize, I got to get out of this or this is going to end?

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 14:56
We actually on a trip together and Probably one of the most beautiful places that I've seen. And I, I, I traveled a lot, right? So traveled around 30 countries. So for me, the benchmark of oh my god, this is the most beautiful thing I've seen in life is, you know, it's very hard to get. So yeah, I was there. And although I was enjoying that experience, it hit me that I wish I had come here alone, I would have enjoyed it more. Because I didn't, I didn't want the trauma. I was not, you know, it's, you're not feeling appreciated, or even seen in a moment. And I was like, I have just ignored the fact that I've not been seen here in a really long time. And the fact that I wanted to be alone, rather than be with this person was, you know, it was eye opening, because then why are we even in the same space? Is it just out of habit or whatever? And, and that's it, like, I took a decision then and there. I'm like, Okay, this is it. And I want to talk about it. Because, you know, there's no point of you having a conversation, because my feelings are telling me everything. Yeah, for

Andrew Stotz 16:07
the listeners out there, you know, think about how you feel in that relationship? Do you want to go through the other one refine prior to that one and say, first day, last day.

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 16:20
I think I don't even connect to that person from, you know, probably like six years ago, because, again, I had, again, a very superficial idea of how life is and I got deeper with time. But I do think that over time, I've realized, and again, it's easier to say things outside of relationship, you can heal in, you can heal about relationships outside of relationships, you can definitely learn your lessons. I think the biggest takeaway for me was the fact that love his intention. It's not. Because I need to clarify this, because if anyone is listening, and they're going through a bad phase, and they could be thinking like, oh, I also feel the same way. And I should give up on my partner, you should not but understand that love is very intentional, in the sense that it's not. It's not romantic dinners and walks and whatever, it's those little things. It's sticking around and I, how I resonated is, you know how I look at my dog. There are days that we have our difficulties, there are days when things are destroyed in the house and there days that I'm like, I just cannot handle this dog. And I mean, I take my time off, and I wake up next morning, and I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna put in effort. I love you no matter what. I'm gonna give this another try. And since it's a dog, and they, you know, they're faithful, and they don't run away, and they don't have options, and they don't have any apps to swipe on find more people.

Andrew Stotz 17:46
They know owner looking for new? Like, right. Yeah, so

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 17:53
it's easier with them. But that's, you know, like, the biggest example of me like were intentional outcomes from and I think the biggest learning is that, you know, that kind of potential love resonated to yourself is that it needs to come from you as well. Because when we go through these hard things, when we go through these bad phases in life are these people who trigger us in different ways. It's very natural for a person to think or judge themselves with the same criteria that okay, something might be wrong, something seriously wrong with me, or, you know, some people blame it on the like, I am really bad luck. But how I look at it is that you need to, again, have that kind of intention of yourself waking up every day that it's okay, I love you, if even if nobody else does, if there's some work that needs to be done, I'm here to do the work so that there's a lot of non judgement for self that needs to come in. And that's been my biggest spiritual learning through.

Andrew Stotz 18:56
Yeah, I mean, I'm getting tears in my eyes, because I'm thinking about, you know, the challenges. My mother came to Thailand, six years ago, I brought her here when my father passed away, and her condition was pretty, you know, rough and she was sent had a stroke and all that. And through getting rid of a lot of the medicines and getting more healthy eating and more healthy lifestyle and, you know, sleep, which was huge for her recovery. She really has recovered, but it's still hard. It's hard for her, it's hard for me, but what you've just told me is, you know, reaffirm the love and be intentional. And that just you know, touches me so let's now go through if you could just kind of summarize for the listeners out there. They've heard your story, but really get down to what lessons did you learn?

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 19:52
I think the biggest lesson is that I think we should never look for somebody out there to kind of fill us So save us how I approach love now is that I have to, I have a container. And whatever I feel when I'm with someone is coming from me. So I have to, you know, all that love is coming out of me. So I have to fill up my cup first, I have to fill it up myself. And if there is good inside, if there is if I filled up My Cup with love and affection and compassion and non judgment for myself, that's what I will bring to the table for someone else to and the idea that it needs to come from someone else, the moment you lose that idea, it's just so beautiful because now you know the the intentionality in relationship is not just with the person that I'm going to date. It's with everyone, it's with friends. Also, I've realized that I've started to speak a lot of truth, I hold my truth very nicely. I'm assertive about things that I need to say there's no polish or whatever. I don't want to put up a game or whatever I think when you are very assertive with yourself, and then you speak to someone passionately and also compassionately. I think that adds I think a lot of problems in our lives are just sugarcoating things. So I think I stopped doing that. And that's, that's a blessing. Because if something has come academic a story, okay, that story resonated with me for a long time. So this is, I think I heard it in one of the Buddhist meditation retreats. So think of it this way, you know, you have a knife, which is a sharp knife, it can cut a human skin. Now there are two people using the same knife. One is a doctor who uses it as a scalpel to fix people's ailments, and the other ones, Thief, you know, they're the intention is to loot and kill people, right? So on a particular day, if two people use the same knife, the doctor uses it on a patient, the patient dies in the table, the man is dead, same weapon, same outcome. And there's another person who's a thief uses the same knife kills a man loot, same, same weapon, same outcome, those two are very different situations. Because the intention was the main thing. So I think now my biggest takeaway is whenever I'm in a relationship with anyone, you know, it's friendship, parents, pets, whatever, what is my intention? So that's the biggest check that I do with myself? Is my intention good? Is it coming from a space of good for them? And me? Or is it coming from my ego, my selfishness. So once I can get that out a picture, then everything is going to be good, no matter what the outcome. So the outcome can be horribly wrong, it could be something that I didn't expect. But if my intention was good, it's good.

Andrew Stotz 22:54
Yeah, that's maybe I'll share a few things that I take away from listening to you. You know, in the world of finance, we have something somewhat similar in the investment world, which is a mandate. If some, if a client or an investor gives me a million dollars to manage, we agree upon a mandate, you know, I want this to be moderate risk. I want this to be this or that. And that's the mandate. Now, as long as I follow the mandate, I'm okay. But if I, if I lose money, if I make a bad decision, it's gonna happen, you're never going to win on every bet. And the client knows that too. But where you cross the line is when you say, okay, they're low risk, I'm not doing that well with their money, I think I'm going to take that money and put it in a high risk bet. Now you're breaking your mandate. And so stay true to your mandate, you know, in the world of finance is one thing. The second thing is, you know, what you've shared today helps all of us to think about when you see someone that's very fit, someone that's very healthy, someone that's living that life, remember, it's actually about both the outer and more importantly, the inner journey. And that is a lesson that you've taught us is that inner journey. And the third one is the idea that I'm thinking about is that you manifest in your life, like things that come to you come to you, because of the way that you are, and that's a little bit. Now, I'll explain it through a little story in that when I was a boss at an investment bank, and my staff used to come to me and they said, Can you talk I said, I'm too busy. I can't, I can't right now. I'm busy. I'm busy. I'm busy. And I was always basically saying that I was busy, and I was stressed and all this. This was many years ago. And then I realize what kind of person am I? I'm the kind of person that you come to and he says, I'm busy stressed. He's always stressed can't get ahold of him. You know? I thought is that the person I want to be? And I thought, No. And that's when I started a little mantra. And that is, all my words are positive. And I repeated that mantra every morning, for months, and over and over and over. And a couple of years later, I'd forgotten all about that. And somebody I was telling someone about that. And they said, that's the reason why I never hear anything negative come out of your mouth. Even somebody that's know me now for 20 years said to me last night, I've never heard you swear. And another person said, I never heard you gossip about another person, I never heard you talk bad about another person. And so set your intention of what you want. Set it strongly and repeat it to yourself and keep reminding yourself, and then you will become and what comes to you also will be awesome. So that's someone what I take away anything that you would add to that?

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 25:56
No, I think you summed it up perfectly.

Andrew Stotz 25:59
So now let's think about young people like you and me. We're going in, in fact, I'm still single. So I really need this advice. So you know, I'm going into a meet somebody and I'm caught in the superficial. She's amazing, or he's amazing, or whatever that is, for the listeners out there. What one action would you recommend that they take, so that they don't get caught up in that superficial and end up losing a couple of years in going the wrong direction?

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 26:35
Since I'm also on the path, so I can't really say assertively, this is gonna work, but I think slow is the fast. It gets slow. And, you know, always remember that love is intentional. It's not the spark. It's not what you felt the first day, or it's not all those things. It's like it's the bigger things in life, you know, do they have? Would they be consistent? Would they be able to invest in you consistently and let the compounding work for them? So all those things that are important, I think now I, for me, the superficial is like just the big and you know, it's okay, now that we are on the table, I'm going to, I'm going to see how kindly we're going to see how consistent you are, I'm gonna see what is your value system? What's your relationship with God? Or, you know, when I say God, I mean, any part of that you believe in the higher power, whatever you want to call it, right? Whatever name you put to it. So for me, those things are more important. We all will come with baggage. We always come in with trauma. But how

Andrew Stotz 27:47
is with my baggage? Yeah. We all arrived with our baggage, you can't you can't help it. Okay, so that's awesome. I just taking no I wrote down slows fast. Because I think the things that you just said, You are not revealed in the first period of time, it takes time to see their level of commitment or intentionality. Alright, what is a resource about anything that you'd recommend for our listeners?

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 28:15
Oh, are you talking relationships?

Andrew Stotz 28:17
Well, I guess I'm talking about anything that you know, like, it could even be like your YouTubes or something that you're, you know, something that you put in your life, it could be anything.

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 28:28
I do share a lot of stuff online. As I said, it's there on Instagram, it's there on YouTube, I do like to keep a check on my spirituality, otherwise offline as well. But as you know, I can see there are several books behind you. So I have not here in this room number place. But I think books is something that I always reach out to. That is definitely one very good resource. I think any kind of content that you consume, also becomes a part of you. So you have to be very conscious in terms of what you consume. As you said, you don't do cost. If you don't talk shit. You don't talk swear word. So all those things have to be coming down intentionally in what you consume. Since we are living in this digital age where everything's coming to us so fast. I think one has to be very conscious of what goes in. So anything that you think doesn't serve your highest self or your purpose in life, just avoid.

Andrew Stotz 29:29
Last question, what is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 29:35
Balance something that we've all struggled with, especially with the pandemic things working like moving everything moving online, and then things opening up and then things moving offline. So I think it's been like a roller coaster ride of whether I'm working from home Do I travel when I travel? So balance is, you know, something that I feel that I've lost because I don't know I always every couple of months, I find myself in this space where I'm like, I don't know which direction things are heading. And then things take a different turn. The whole of pandemic I was trying to, like live, like, take things one day at a time, not plan ahead. But now I feel that as the world opens up, we'd have to go back into the planning mode and start thinking about where things are going. For me, balancing my personal life and professional life is the biggest thing that happened cards, of course, you have those minor goals, like so and so thing and health and so and so thing and finances, but I think, overall, you know, for me, the biggest thing is like balance,

Andrew Stotz 30:41
I'm sure for a lot of listeners out there. And you've just explained kind of the journey that we've all gone through over the last couple years. So for everybody out there, focus, you know, on balances, fantastic. So listeners, there you have it another story of lawns to keep you winning. If you haven't yet taken the risk reduction assessment, I challenge you to go to my worst investment ever.com right now and start building wealth the easy way by reducing risk. As we conclude Nidhi I want to thank you again for coming and joining our mission. And on behalf of East Arts Academy, I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Nidhi Mohan Kamal 31:26
Of course, I think the only thing I'll say to everyone is work on yourself. Love yourself. It's whether it's your body, whether it's your mind, nothing is gonna come easy. If I were talking about intentional love coming from someone else. I think there's a huge chunk of intentional love that needs to come from you for you. Invest in yourself. Invest in your knowledge, invest in your spirituality, invest in your health. The biggest investment that you will make in your life is not the bank account. It's you. So keep that as a number one priority. Plan deliver 100 plan to live 100 Happy fulfilled spiritually emotionally balanced years. Fantastic compounding works here as well. So little things every single day.

Andrew Stotz 32:17
Fantastic. Well, that's a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our wealth and our health. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying thank you for joining our mission. And I'll see you on the upside