We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nazra Peterson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nazra , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

I feel that like many, the pandemic, particularly quarantine was a huge turning point for me. After years of working a traditional corporate/office job, I knew that it wasn’t for me. I learned a lot along the way, from being a team player to being a team leader and those lessons were invaluable. But there came a point where waking up in the morning didn’t feel exciting and the end of a long week didn’t feel at all rewarding, despite how much I accomplished at work.

The responsible “adulting” tasks that I did were more out of survival than passion. I knew something was off, but I couldn’t quite figure out my next move. It was frustrating. I was always on the go, but didn’t feel accomplished or fulfilled in my life. I realized that me being busy was more of an act of distraction from a fulfilling life experience that was actually in alignment with the highest version of myself.

After being in quarantine for months, I had just the right amount of seclusion that I needed to realize how truly unhappy I had become. I didn’t even recognize myself. I had become anxious and depressed in a way that almost felt like it came out of nowhere.

I ended up taking a leave of absence from my old job at the time and pursued a passion and career as both a Massage Therapist and a Life-Coach. This was a complete and total game changer for me.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

One of the things that was sort of beat into my head as a kid was that television was bad. My mother used to call television, “the boob tube”. She would always tell me to shut it off and read a book.

Granted, a lot of shows can be pretty mindless but I also learned for myself that not all television content is created equally. I was never a huge fan of reading growing up, but I learned to gravitate towards books that actually appealed to me on a deeper level.

Little did I know, years ago when I first watched Rhonda Byrne’s, “The Secret” that it would be my gateway movie to reading books like, “The Power of Now”, by Eckhart Tolle or “The Science of Mind” by Dr. Ernest Holmes. From there, I would continue to follow the likes to Wayne Dyer or Dr. Daniel Amen on PBS and eventually, Dr. Joe Dispenza, a Neuroscientist and book author whose teachings completely changed my life.

It was my newfound passion of personal development that eventually would lead me down the path that eventually sparked my passion for helping people through my massage technique and life coaching.

As a Life-Coach, I have a few specialties with my practice. One, is I love coaching my clients about the mind and body connection and how we are not victims to our biological programing. I help my clients develop and incorporate daily mindfulness practices into their lives and help them create a new life for themselves. I also show them how to maintain lasting change by building trust within themselves.

Also, because I understand the importance of self-trust, I am able to coach people in relationships. For those who are single, I address single shaming and how it can lead to relationship addiction. This is particularly important because so many people enter into relationships for unhealthy reasons, including but not limited to, trying to avoid the stigma surrounding what many people perceive “being single” to mean. There is a very wide-spread belief that if you are single that it means something is wrong with you or that you are broken somehow and that if only you were in a relationship, that you would then be “okay”.

While I think it’s amazing to be in a healthy romantic relationship, if a relationship is unhealthy and born simply out of a fear of dying alone or just not fitting in with their friends who are coupled, we have entered into what could potentially be a very unhealthy emotional agreement.

Mindset shifting is a big part of what I do and so I like to focus on niches that I don’t feel are as commonly addressed as others.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Wow! There are so much I can point to. Like most people, I encountered my fair share of childhood trauma which resulted in me making very different decisions at times when I entered adulthood. My parents both suffered from depression and anxiety which led them to very dark places at times that resulted in me being repeatedly bullied at times, growing up.

Because my family “didn’t believe in therapy”, they turned a blind eye to mental health and swept things under the rug, pretty much indefinitely.

After my parents divorce, I lived with my mother and my grandparents (on mom’s side). The hardship of abuse that my mother and I suffered during my parents marriage impacted my relationship with my mom greatly. Despite my best efforts, I ended up having an estranged relationship to my mother.

For many years, it was very hard for me to accept. I had to work on myself for years and live without the support of a parental figure for a lot of my life. Being an only child really taught me how to be more independent and self-reliant years before most of my peers. I had to accept that it was not my responsibility to save our relationship and that any healthy relationship should be a two-way street.

I never wanted to walk through this life without a healthy, happy relationship with my mom, but that outcome was not solely up to me. Learning how to renegotiate my life without her was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, yet it was an integral part of my healing.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

Traditional education is amazing, but at the end of the day, unless you have applied what you’ve learned in your own life, there is a big part of you that will feel disconnected from those you are intending to help.

I’ve known many people who have followed a lot of the same teachers or speakers that I have, but while they were able to memorize certain quotes, they never took the time to integrate that information into real life situations so that they could be a living, breathing testimony to what they have learned.

It’s not important to be perfect, but it is essential to be able to hold yourself accountable and acknowledge your individual imperfections and dedicate your life to learning from your life experiences.

In doing so, you allow yourself to relate to others and also connect to your clients and audience in a way that is raw and authentic.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.heartmindfitnesstraining.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heartmindfitnesstraining/