Ep15: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome: How Meditation & Mindset Transformed My Career | Vaishali Dialani |Mindset Reinvented

Jack: As Oprah Winfrey has said, the greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude. Today we have a very special guest, Vaishali Dialani. Vaishali is a customer experience professional out of Dubai who has elevated the bar in emerging technology with a very high level of customer service. She is known for her expertise in human-centered design systems and has led marketing initiatives across industries such as advertising, education, manufacturing, healthcare, and fintech. In 2022, Vaishali was recognized as CXA's Emerging Leader in the Middle East, due to her commitment to continuous learning and professional development.

Today, Vaishali is going to share her insights on overcoming imposter syndrome, building a growth mindset, and how meditation helps her balance all aspects of her life. She's also going to discuss gaining the strength to take her career path in the direction it's in, including some risks, which led to her personal and professional growth. I am thrilled that you're here. Welcome to the show. Let's dive right in.

Vaishali: Thank you so much for such a lovely introduction. I am super excited to have this chat with you. It's much different than what I've done otherwise, especially focused on podcasts. This is really getting to know me in the weeds of who I am and what led me to where I am. So I'm very excited to have this conversation with you today.

Jack: I'm just as excited, and we welcome you. So, Vaishali, I read that you have done a lot in personal growth and getting yourself to where you are. As we both know, life is a journey. We have never arrived. We will never arrive. But you shared some imposter syndrome challenges that you went through. Can you share a little bit about that and how you pushed through it?

Vaishali: You know, sometimes you don't even know that you're embedding or having imposter syndrome until much later. When you're feeling it, you can be anxious, you can have these friends of your mind who are almost like ego. You have a lot of fear inside of you. You feel lonely and there's anxiousness, like, "Am I doing it right?" You're always overthinking about every single thing because you want to be as perfect as possible. But you're tricking your mind. And I think that's what it was for me.

This journey started post-Covid for me, to be very honest with you. I was very comfortable after I came back from the UK after completing my MBA, and I was settling into my life back in Dubai. I was rehired by my previous company. Everything was going well, but something after Covid really changed for me. When life started going back to normal, I realized I was not ready for that normal. I wanted to be someone different.

I started looking at what everyone else was doing. Content creation kind of emerged after Covid. You see a lot of mid-career professionals really grew during that stage. I was about 5 or 6 years into the customer engagement and customer service space, but I wanted to do something different, and no one had done that yet in Dubai. So I had this vision in my head and I'm questioning myself, "Are you crazy? Do you think you can actually win an award? Do you think you can write blogs? Do you think you can share who you are on social media without feeling judged?" So a lot of these questions came biting into me.

That's when I started actually talking to those thought leaders and having those chats and conversations. LinkedIn became my best friend. I would reach out to somebody who inspired me with their career trajectory and ask them, "What led you here?" Just being very curious in my journey. And very surprisingly, my curiosity calmed my imposter syndrome. When I learned about others' journeys, I realized we all go through imposter syndrome. Let's be honest, this phase will come where we feel imposter syndrome because our environment is changing. We're playing new roles in life, not just professionally, but even personally.

So embracing where you are really helped me. I realized I can embrace where I am now, but I know where I want to go, and those are some baby steps I just have to take without feeling too overwhelmed.

Jack: You said something really key, and that is the word curiosity. Because when we're stuck in our own minds and in that bubble, we are really stuck with what is known as a fixed mindset. I refer to it as a single focused lens versus an adaptive lens. The only way that you can have an adaptive lens is through curiosity and learning from other people and their perspectives. So I find that spot on in your approach. You recognized that you were stuck in somewhat of a fixed mindset at that time, right?

Vaishali: Yeah, 100%. We don't even realize when we're in a fixed mindset because we don't talk to others. That recognition and self-awareness kind of comes when you sit down with yourself in a calmer state of mind, and almost have this out-of-body experience where you talk to yourself and say, "Is this okay? Are you thinking the right way?" It's almost like taking therapy from your own self. It sounds crazy, but it actually really helps me.

And I think that's why meditation comes in for me. When you sit down with yourself and ask your inner self, "What are you looking for? Where do you want to go? Who can I connect with?" You know, you spoke about growth mindset and one of my favorite books is called "Mindset" by Dr. Carol Dweck. It's a phenomenal book where she talks about fixed mindset versus growth mindset. It's an eye-opening book that I'd highly recommend for anyone to read because you understand that the only person who can help you is you. You can take all the advice in the world, you can listen to everybody, but if you don't choose to change your mindset, nobody can help you.

Jack: Execution. Execution. And what you just brought up is really important as well, which is your practice of meditation. My thoughts around that are because we as human beings have 60,000 plus thoughts a day running through our minds. The question is, are we controlling those thoughts or are those thoughts controlling us? Meditation allows us to sit back and really sink into the thoughts that are coming our way. Are they valid thoughts or are they thoughts that we should have no reason for them existing in our minds? Tell us about your meditation practice. What does that look like right now?

Vaishali: It's very interesting. I've actually never really spoken about it, so I'm very excited to talk about it because it's a very personal thing to me. I follow a spiritual path, and for me, the very exciting part about meditation is you don't have to do anything. It's about sitting with yourself in complete silence, where you can even hear air and not have any external sounds that might distract you. In this state of mind, you're just completely sitting with yourself in a calm state.

Just like you said, you allow thoughts to pass. The first 20-25 minutes are just about your thoughts. It sounds crazy. Even sitting with our own thoughts is so difficult because when I started, I was like, "I just need to get up. I can't listen to my own self anymore." You have so much worry about the future, stress about the past. There's so much that goes on in our minds that you have to allow yourself to say, "I will deal with you later." Let them pass through if you try to stop them.

As thoughts come to me, I don't stop them. I say I'll deal with them later. I talk to myself, and I think that's really helped me. When I meditate, I sit in a particular place comfortably and try to focus on the third eye. When you focus here, you are allowing yourself to centralize and position in a way where your mind knows which direction it's heading towards.

They say that the third eye is the best place to focus because it's scientifically proven to help. Another thing meditation really helps with is the frequency of your thoughts. Initially, the first 15 minutes you'll have like 15,000-20,000 thoughts. But then the frequency starts to decrease because your nervous system is impacted by the meditation and your calmer state of mind. So that's really helped me to just categorize and have a clear brain mindset, rather than a very foggy and cluttered one.

Jack: Love that. And that is really solid advice for controlling our thought patterns and breaking the patterns that we're operating on remote control for most of our lives. What would you say to somebody who's never practiced meditation or even somebody who thinks it's just quack science? What would you tell somebody who has some interest but is reserved and doesn't attempt to try it?

Vaishali: I have friends who are in the same boat. Whenever we have conversations, I always tell them one thing: just sit. Allow yourself to just sit. Most of the times, I'll be very honest with you, I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to sit for meditation." And then five minutes in, I think, "I'll just scroll for five minutes and I'll be done." And then 25 minutes pass and you don't even know. It's just choosing to make a conscious decision to sit. Start with five minutes. You will learn so much about yourself.

Another thing I personally feel very strongly about is that our generation has to unlearn a lot of things to learn new things, but that resistance to unlearn will reduce as you meditate because you're allowing yourself to really think through your patterns and help break those patterns in the process. So there's a lot happening behind the scenes of your thoughts that you don't even realize as you're meditating. So one tip I would definitely give is just sit down for five minutes. Start with five.

Jack: Yeah, that's really good advice. I would also add that if you're in an environment where you're unable to relax or you don't feel inspired, change it. For me, my go-to is the mountains and being in nature. Not all of us are near mountains, but there could be a garden nearby or just your backyard where you hear the birds chirping. You could sit out there maybe watching or looking at your pool. There are a lot of different options. So change your environment if you need to. I think it's very important.

Vaishali: Absolutely. Great suggestion.

Jack: I love this conversation, especially around meditation and mindset exercises. Let's shift a little bit because all of the work that you've done for yourself, going inward and really understanding your worth and value, has led you to reach early success in your career. You've revolutionized what you're doing inside of customer service. But I want to talk a little bit about some of the risks that are important to take, not just as an entrepreneur, but as an employee. Because ultimately, if you're taking calculated risks, it can help you be noticed and help you climb that ladder. Tell us about a time you took a significant career risk, and what gave you the strength to do it?

Vaishali: I think one definitely would be about two years ago, post-Covid. I was working remotely, and you know, the Middle East is a very in-person business dynamic. They want people to come into the office and work in person. I was about 25 and I realized that I don't want this. I really don't want it. I want to have the flexibility to choose my hours, to be able to manage work. I don't want my life to revolve around work. I want life to happen simultaneously and give it my 100% while being at work.

So, I was looking for a remote job for a very long time, but in the Middle East, it's almost impossible to find anything remote because of the dynamic and nature of business here. I was very comfortable where I was working. I love them to this day. They're one of the best co-founders in the business. I loved the place I was working before, but I wanted something remote. And sometimes, the calling really pushes you to take a risk you never imagined.

So I kept looking and hunting for almost two years. Nobody actually knows about this, but I would constantly talk to people, really put myself out there. And that for me was a huge risk. I'm like, if I'm willing to do that, it means my calling is so strong. So hear your calling. It will lead you to taking risks in life that you could have never imagined.

I finally got an opportunity through LinkedIn. The whole dynamic of my life completely started revolving around that new role I was exploring. But there were a lot of uncertainties because it was a contractor role. I wasn't sure what was going to work out. And I wanted to really travel the world, because if you're not traveling in your 20s, then you're never really traveling, you know? Because then life happens, you're married, and there are so many other responsibilities you have to take on.

So I quit my full-time job for a contractor role. I was too comfortable with my previous job. My calling didn't allow that. My inner voice, every time I would go to work, I'd be like, "I can't do it anymore. I just can't." And with God's grace, I was financially stable for at least a couple of months. I said, "I'm going to take that move, because if I don't take it, I will never know what's next."

I still remember the day I was going to resign. I told my dad I was going to tell them that day. And my dad said, "Don't do it." And I said, "I have to." I knew it in my heart and soul that it was the best decision for me at that moment. And there couldn't be anything better. I'm so grateful today to have a full-time role and things are working out great. There's so much on the other side. You can't even see it. You have to take that first step to climb up that mountain and then see what's next.

Jack: That's interesting because your passion was so strong that the influence of your dad, which is probably very significant in your life like most of us, you had to go up against that and follow your passion. That is a clear indication that you were perfectly aligned with what you were about to do.

Here's the continuation of the transcript:

Jack: That's interesting because your passion was so strong that the influence of your dad, which is probably very significant in your life, like most of us, you had to go up against that and follow your passion. That is a clear indication that you were perfectly aligned with what you were about to do.

Vaishali: Yeah. And, you know, my dad says that was the best decision you've ever made. No.

Jack: And he learned a lesson, too, didn't he?

Vaishali: Because that allowed so much flexibility. I was able to spend some time with my brother who was going through a personal life crisis or really, you know, travel the world around with my parents. They understood what my vision was. It's not always necessary that everyone will be on board every time you want to take a risk. But if you and if you really feel that that's the right thing for you, do it 100%. Do it. People will get on board later. You need to get on board with yourself first. You need to face yourself first in the mirror. You need to wake up and say, what am I making out of my life?

Jack: Amen. Amen. Because life is very short. It really, really is. And sometimes we get up in the morning, we take it for granted. We feel good. We're working towards a goal, but we have to remember that we're on borrowed time. And so if not now, when.

Vaishali: 100%.

Jack: Yeah. And let's talk about helping people kind of get clear with their goals. Because sometimes, as you know, we can get blocked. We can our minds can get blocked. And then we like we were talking about earlier how life can be just, you know, remote control. So you're very big on using vision boards. And, you know, I'm just going to I'm going to keep surprising you as we go through this podcast. You know that right. And so with your vision boards and I, I absolutely adore them too because you get your thoughts out of your head and you put them on a big board. You know, how cool is that? But how has that helped shape your goals, your future? And what would you tell someone who either wants to create one but hasn't? Or maybe this is their first exposure to a vision board?

Vaishali: So, you know, when post-Covid, especially when I was looking and exploring what I want to do next, the first and foremost thing I would say is get a coach and if you can afford it, and if you really think that's the right thing for you, do it sometimes to really push you through something. You cannot do it without someone who's guiding you in the right direction. So for me, that coach really helped me. And so I had a coach. I had her for a month, but that was the most life changing decision ever for that coach. Specifically for her. I evaluated almost 20 other coaches, so I was so particular about who I wanted to have as a coach. Does she understand what I'm looking for? Because, you know it's also a money making scheme. Let's be honest. You can find the best of the best people, but they might not be able to align with your vision. So once I had her on board, she guided me through what I want to put on that vision board. And first I had a very unrealistic image of what the vision board should look like, because I would watch all these YouTube videos and be like, oh, that's so cool, I definitely want that. But do I really want it? Does it align with the purpose of my future? Does it align to where I've envisioned myself? So while Pinterest and Instagram and all the social media cool stuff might really take over our like brain, for us, it's really important to see a what do you want to put on your vision board? And how is it aligning to the future that you want to create for yourself? So she really helped me get out of my own headspace.

So I created a vision board. And the interesting thing is, I don't many people say again, it's each each one to their own. I didn't really put up the massive vision board or out there in the universe, or like how affirmations and manifestations work. For me. That vision board was a clarity. I made it on Canva and I used Canva and I put all these interesting, nice things on it. and it's so amazing to see two years into it, almost 5 to 6 things have come true. And I don't think I it's not that something that I look at every day, but it's something that I've just put it out of my head and put it somewhere that I can go and look at every time I'm feeling low, or any time. It's like a great motivation and say, you know what? There are difficulties, there are failures. There were they are part of the process. We have to embrace it. But the the goal leader is bigger than you can ever imagine.

Jack: And and it's such a, a little shift. That's not a major shift in how you approach it, But you you did it. You you you got your, your vision out on, in front of you, on, on a, on a canvas and looking at it. And it's something that anybody can do. You know, it's not difficult to do it. And it has such a profound effect on it. Now, some, some, some of us might even still have blinders on eventually. And it just becomes part of the decor. And so we need to be able to be mindful of what it is and make a commitment to to look at it again.

Vaishali: And, you know, you made a very good point. It's also about what's realistic sometimes I've heard this and, you know, I've read a lot about it, is we have these unrealistic things on our vision board that you're not going to make it possible. Like, and then you look at it and you're more demotivated, like, where is my life? I'm not reached anywhere. So keep smaller goals, keep medium sized goals, keep larger visions. So you have that drive to continue feeling like you're achieving a sense of achievement and reward needs to be there.

Jack: Absolutely. 100%. And I would imagine, given your roles, you've contributed to industry publications, you've spoken at some conferences. I would imagine you use that vision board to prepare yourself mentally for it. And that's really the question. if it's beyond that and it's probably beyond that. But how did you prepare mentally for these publicly facing roles?

Vaishali: Oh, it's so challenging. I have to be honest. It is so, so, so challenging because that's why I think a lot of imposter syndrome comes, right. You might get through it through one phase, but then the next thing, like you have something else and something else comes across and you're like, oh my God, can I do it all over again? Again, and this time for the bigger crowd. And, you know, so I've had I've been blessed with the opportunities of, you know, speaking in Europe speaking in Spain and Dublin this time of the year. It was hard. It takes a lot of you. There's a lot of inner work that needs to go to put your face out there and say, you know what? I know my stuff and I know that I'm delivering the right thing, and I'm being honest and truthful about everything that I'm talking here, because you need to be backed by facts, you need to be backed by truth. And your authenticity really, really shows. So if you ask me about how I prepare myself for it, I think it takes a lot of inner work to say, how do I want to put myself out there? Who is the real Vaishali? And by the end of that presentation, am I still the same person that people want perceiving of me? Because sometimes perception can be so different and everyone. And then the reality. Right? So people can look at me on LinkedIn and say, oh my God, she talks at so many products etc. etc. but when you meet her in person, she's like, oh my God, she doesn't want to talk to anybody. So keeping that authenticity at every different touchpoint, just for like you do for a customer experience, you do it with yourself first because you're kind of designing those experiences for people.

Jack: Just just gold. Just really gold. What you're what you're sharing here today. And I am I'm quite impressed with, with you and the things that you've accomplished. And, you know, I want to give you the opportunity to. In closing. we're just at the top of the hour, and I'd love to have you back on. By the way, we can dive into some more topics if you're open to it, but absolutely. What would you like to in closing, what would you like to share with the friends of the show about anything? Could be about you. It could be about maybe some more tips for them to take away from And then most importantly, how can they reach you?

Vaishali: So this is one thing that's very close to my heart. And I always say this to everybody, and I actually have it as a tattoo, over here, which I really is a core value of what I believe in. And so this is the birds represent fly and this is faith. So I always believe is fly with full faith in whatever you do. So it's continue doing your hard work and believe that the universe or the higher power is taking care of you in anything, in every phase of your life. But you got to put in that work. results don't show up without your hard work. But there is grace in every failure. There is grace in every reward. There's always grace. But keep doing your hard work in everything.

Jack: I love that for Charlie, I love that how how can, how can our friends reach you?

Vaishali: They all can reach me on they. They all can reach me. Definitely reach me on LinkedIn. It's virtually Delaney.

Jack: Okay. And we're going to include your social media links in the show notes as well, for for folks to be able to reach you, which I thank you for, for sharing your time with us, your insights with us today. Your story is a powerful reminder that we, we all, can achieve what's in our hearts and really great things in our lives. If we go inward and understand who we are and what value that we plan on sharing with, with the world, and it starts with us. you know, and so, so I again, I thank you for, for coming today to the show. And friends, if you've been inspired by this message, please share the show with others and pay it forward, because you never know what someone needs to hear right now to give them that edge that can provide a breakthrough in their lives. so again, we'll put the links to virtually in our show notes. And guys, don't forget to visit our website at Mindset reinvented.com. If you have not opted in and signed up to get notified of our newest episodes, do it while it's on the top of your mind, because we've got a lineup of guests that you're not going to want to miss. So until then, keeping your true self, keep living your best life and we'll see you soon. Bye for now.