We were lucky to catch up with Nisha Mody recently and have shared our conversation below.

Nisha, appreciate you joining us today. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

I left my 9-5 job in July 2021 to become a full time life coach. For my whole adulthood, I had security with jobs and benefits, and now I was taking the leap. I can say that I am much happier as a business owner. However, I did have some hesitation given that I am single, had to build up clientele, and there was no certainty with what I was doing. If I stayed at my job just 8 more months, I would also have been vested in the pension and I would have been able to save more money for the uncertainty ahead of me. It might have seemed like an impulsive decision, but when my body is telling me something, I like to listen. My job wasn’t terrible. I had wonderful co-workers and was doing valuable work. But whenever I thought about staying, my body felt heavy and dark. It felt like I was betraying it. There were people telling me to just wait it out, and while I knew what I wanted to do, it brought up a lot of self-doubt.

In the last 9 months, which is the length of time I could have stayed to get more benefits, I have cultivated incredible relationships, supported so many people, and my heart is so full. Is there still uncertainty? Yes. Have amazing opportunities I didn’t even plan for come my way? Most definitely! I have come to see that believing in myself also means believing my body and knowing that regardless of the outcome, I will find my way.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a Feminist Healing Coach and I provide one-on-one and group coaching from an anti-oppressive lens. When I talk about healing, it isn’t about fixing. I always tell my clients that we are not broken. To me, healing is a returning to ourselves. Social conditions including colonization, meritocracy, racism, and patriarchy subtly (and not so subtly) convince us that we cannot trust ourselves. It says that we need to buy this thing or keep trying to get more, more more, to fee worthy. I work with my clients to pause and think about where this comes from as well as access the worth that in inherently in all of us. I also provide workshops, programs, and healing circles to organizations around the topics of trauma-informed care, nervous system regulation, boundaries, intergenerational trauma and healing, values, and relating.

What sets me apart from others is that I’ve had multiple careers as a consultant, recruiter, voiceover artist, speech therapist, and librarian. I used to feel like a failure for not being able to “figure out” what I wanted to do. And then I realized that the common thread in all my careers was my values, skills, and personality – the common thread was ME. A career doesn’t define who I am. In fact, it’s the other way around. I get to make an imprint on a career, organization, and the people in it. Looking back, I realized that the relationships and impact I had in these organizations was more significant than I thought. We might not see it right away, but we are always planting seeds for others and ourselves. In a way, how I came to life coaching is because of all the previous professional and personal experiences I had. The death of my father and my divorce happened within a year of each other, and this was a huge wake up call to tend to my wounds. I’m so proud that I didn’t settle and kept searching for what fulfilled me.

What also sets me apart is that I practice life coaching from a lens of anti-oppression. I feel like many life coaches bypass inequity and social conditions that affect individuals differently. I refuse to dismiss the reality we live in. I support clients to question how their lack of self-worth, anxiety, fear, and burnout are the very symptoms of these social conditions.

I’m so proud of my clients and their willingness to self-reflect, care for themselves, and support others as well. I believe that self-care cannot exist without collective care as we live in an interdependent society. This is why I love what I do because when we all do the work, question the “shoulds”, and peel back layers, it heals the world. This is what I want people to know – you have more choices than you think, your worth isn’t dependent on your productivity or attaining a specific goal, and when you tend to your own feelings and the relationships with yourself, transformational shifts are possible.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

My father died unexpectedly and I got divorced from my abusive ex-husband within a year of each other. I essentially lost the two most significant male figures in my life. While the death of my father was tragic and life-changing, deciding to end my marriage was liberating.

Many people have told me that I was so strong to leave. And I often respond with “I was too scared to stay”. I was too scared to keep minimizing myself. I was too scared to keep adjusting my voice just to assimilate. I was too scared to reject what else could be out there for me. Some would say that fear isn’t a reason to make a decision, but I disagree. Fear brings awareness that there might be an issue. And, for me, I knew that this relationship required me to be a different person when I was with my then-husband. That wasn’t fair to either of us. Fear saved me. This is also why I focus on feeling our feelings and not labeling them as “bad” or “good” but as information that helps us know when we are safe…or not.

I also want to share that we can’t talk about resilience without talking about trauma. Resilience is often glorified as a linear “bouncing back”, but it is also frequently a result of systemic oppression. Trauma lives in our bodies, so even if someone is resilient, there is a lot to tend to. This is not romantic. I prefer to think about resilience in the context of joy – it doesn’t ignore what happened before. In fact, it cherishes and remembers all of it.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I didn’t want to start my business in fight or flight, worrying about paying my bills. I made sure that I had one year’s worth of salary to support me. This is not something that’s easy to save up. It was a result of having a roommate in my condo, which is a privilege in Los Angeles. I also had recently gotten a promotion and have investments from a previous job. Again, so much of this is privilege, and it’s unfortunately that so many people with beautiful dreams are constantly in survival mode because they don’t have the capital. I’m so grateful I did because staying in my previous job would have affected my mental health significantly because I no longer had a desire to pursue it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nishaland.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healinghypegirl/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nishahmody/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/modynisha/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/nishamody
• Other: TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@healinghypegirl

Image Credits
George Davison