Yesterday’s conversation with my parents reminded me of my mission.

What happened yesterday was truly remarkable and really brings to light my mission in getting you the result you want.

Indian parents get a bad rap. I gave my Indian parents a very bad rap growing up.

To my friends, I would say, 

They’ll never understand me. They only want to make themselves happy. They’re so Indian and I am here in America. They brought me here so why wouldn’t they want me to be American. They’ll never change.  

After yesterday’s conversation with them..

To my friends, I said,

My parents are the absolute best. They are so progressive. They only want the best for me.

They’re Indian, and they’ve been living here for many years, and they have changed so much. I wish they would record their thoughts on video so that the rest of the world could hear the way they think. They are a wonderful example of how to be supportive parents to their Indian professional children.

The change in how I speak with my friends about my parents did not come about overnight.

I recognize now the steps that were taken to get to this point.

First of all, I’ve had the opportunity of time.

I needed to experience all that wasn’t working in my relationship with my parents. I was in resistance of that for a long time. I had to go through that. I argued constantly about how they were wrong. I convinced myself and my friends that they were wrong, and that I was right. I was defiant. I rebelled.  

When it came to my parents, I I thought they would never understand me, so I felt misunderstood, I rebelled and resisted, and turns out, the result was that I never understood me. Over and over the same patterns presented themselves. I thought the same things. I felt misunderstood. I kept rebelling and resisting. I did things undercover, didn’t talk to them, didn’t come clean with them, kept claiming only I was right, and this went on for years.

Even as I was becoming a physician, practicing as a physician, I kept that thought process with me. They will never understand me. I kept thinking that way and kept feeling misunderstood. I kept rebelling and resisting. I didn’t tell them a lot of things about my personal life. I lived two separate lives. I lived one for my parents, and one for myself and friends. In that life, I found myself engaged, to a guy, who checked off all the boxes, and who just wasn’t right for me. I brought the same mentality to my relationship. HE Will never understand me, I felt misunderstood, I rebelled and resisted, and lived a life separate from what he knew about me, told my parents that he and I were going to get married, and yet, the person inside of me had still not been discovered, by me. I was making choices to be myself undercover and to be the person they wanted on the outside.

The result, again, was that I didn’t understand me.

I thought, they didn’t understand me.

The truth was, I didn’t understand me.

Several years later, in a relationship that would later become a marriage, almost nothing changed.

Things had to hit rock bottom.

Burn out in my work as a physician. Burn out in my personal health and fertility journey. Burning out in my marriage. Having a strained relationship with my parents, still holding grudges, still making them wrong for the way they were, still arguing, still rebelling, resisting. And yet, with the SAME RECURRING MINDSET that they didn’t understand me, the SAME RECURRING RESULT kept coming. I didn’t understand me.

As they say, it can only go up from here.

I joined communities online of like-minded, women physicians. Except I didn’t know they were like minded, because I didn’t understand me. To me, they were expressing their thoughts in their social media posts in this online community. I was reading their thoughts, and started to hear new things from them, and started to learn that I was in agreement with many of their thoughts. I started to borrow their thoughts and beliefs. Many of these women physicians were non-Indian. Part of me thought, I agree with them, they’re not Indian, so perhaps it’s best to think as a non-Indian. Though I gained confidence in their ways of thinking, and adopted new ways of thinking, it left behind a huge part of me. It left behind a part of me that is super Indian.    

I grew up in Houston, Texas. And I grew up around a huge, loud, Punjabi family. Tons of cousins. Tons of in your face uncles and aunts. Celebrations around every occasion. Eating and drinking at every celebration. Loving every minute of it.  

When I hit rock bottom, I had been gaining confidence in other people’s ways of thinking.  I started to notice that some of these physicians were establishing their mindsets through coaching. I had no idea what coaching was. I didn’t know that self-help, self development, or mindset coaching was even a thing.

Since I was at rock-bottom in my health and fertility, I knew I needed to make a change. My change began with my health. I decided to hire coaches who were physicians who happened to be coaching around weight loss and health.

This is when things truly begin to shift.

It’s now four years later.  

I am understood. I feel heard, understood, and have developed a mindset of unconditional self-love. I show up with compassion for me, my parents and others. The result I live over and over again is that I have understood me, and nothing is more important.

I have felt open, curious, and inquisitive. I’ve had detailed discussions with my parents about who they are, what their life has been like, and how they feel about their current life, living in America now for a longer time than they ever lived in India. We have such interesting conversations. We are supportive of each other.  

The pride in myself has never been stronger. The love for my parents has never been stronger. The support I have for them, and the support they have for me has never been better. I may not have them around forever, and I can truly say, that I am now living in harmony with my aging Indian parents, even though we live thousands of miles from one another, even when we don’t see one another, even through a global pandemic.

Yesterday, my parents and I discussed a sensitive topic. I was able to speak in my complete truth with them. I even cursed at one point. I didn’t curse at them. I cursed to make a point. I felt the power during this conversation to discuss anything I wanted with them. I had complete trust that they understood me, that I felt proud of who I was, had so much love for them.  I spoke my truth, and they heard my truth. At the end of that conversation, I declared out loud, to my friends, that I have the best parents.

What I realized this morning is that my parents were always this way. They always understood me. They always wanted what was best for me. They were always selfless and sacrificial for me.  They were and still are my Indian parents. And they do understand me.

I had to understand me first.

I want to help us understand ourselves.

I want us to be proud of ourselves.

I want us to be proud of our choices in life.

I want us to be loving of who our parents are.

I want us to be proud of our choices, proud of ourselves, loving of our parents, even if they want a different lifestyle for us than the one we chose for ourselves. 

And from here, I want us all to have connection with our parents.

I want that connection to strengthen over time. 

I want us to have conversations with our parents about who they are, about what they think, about how they feel, about why they do what they do, and why they did what they did, to be Indian, to raise us as Indians and as Indian-Americans, and to give us everything that they could give us, and to support us every step of the way. 

I want that for all of us, before it’s too late. 

As a result of all of this, I want us to have amazing, inquisitive, connecting conversations with them, whether in person or on the phone, every time we Indian professionals get a chance, in this borrowed time, to speak with these amazing humans who brought us into this world and have a huge role in who we are today.

Yesterday’s conversation with my parents reminded me of my mission.

If any of this resonates with you, and you want to know what it’s like to build pride and love for who while experiencing connection with your parents, spending an amazing time with them in person or on the phone with them, then come see what it’s like to work with me, and let’s get started.