We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nari Kaur. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nari below.
Nari, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about how you went about setting up your own practice and if you have any advice for professionals who might be considering starting their own?
SkyHigh Coaching was founded by myself Nari Kaur, being an academic by nature – with x3 graduations to date and an MBA being my most recent, I am also a qualified Master Mental Fitness Coach & NLP Practitioner and I come with a wealth of experience in the corporate world in Aerospace Defence, Submarines and Rail industries. Being a high achiever from a young age and a go-getter I always found myself in places of leadership both in my profession and in my passions/hobbies. In these environments I often noticed the missing link between people and their potential – that being their confidence and their ability to believe in their own success.
Academic qualifications are very helpful, but without the mental toolkit containing an array of interpersonal skills there will somewhere be limits to one’s ability and success. This is where the idea for my consultancy, Skyhigh Coaching was initiated. The idea being to fill in the gaps, essentially assisting people in all areas of personal development, building confidence, improving emotional intelligence and generally improving soft skills necessary for success in today’s ever changing world.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I run an Empowerment & Leadership Coaching business focused on all areas of personal development, including confidence, resilience and leadership. We help people to build and develop soft skills necessary to elevate in both professional and personal capacities. Our mission is to assist our clients to elevate in their lives based on their unique needs by utilizing mindset work to shift their belief system and enhance self efficacy so they can achieve their goals with ease.
I am also the founder and host of a Podcast called Ladies Who Lead – This is a key driver in spreading knowledge in all thing’s empowerment designed to inspire women to play the leading role in their own lives. We teach and support women with confidence, self-esteem, resilience, assertiveness, balancing the divine feminine and masculine and lifestyle coaching as well as emotional intelligence, taming the inner critic, peak performance coaching and an array of other interpersonal skills for success.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I have faced the challenge of transition from full-time corporate consultancy work to implementing my Coaching business into my work and lifestyle. This included various personal and professional barriers that I faced however, the transition was a combination of going from practical to purpose-driven work that is more fulfilling for me in the long term – hence I was willing to take the leap.
This process and transition required me to recreate my identity and go against other people’s expectations of me based on passion and intuition-led work. Going back and forth between corporate consultancy to my passion of working with and helping people in lifestyle wellness and mental fitness for performance was a somewhat challenging journey. I have been embedded in large scale UK and worldwide defence projects, making me highly institutionalised and industry driven, however following my bigger picture view of what I desired for my long term goals and aligning with them with my actions required a strong mental attitude as well as consistency and commitment to the cause. I am naturally passionate about my goals, but to create anything of significance it required a heavy investment in my own learning, development and training. It has been a long journey of gaining the relevant accreditations and building credible experience that I have navigated alongside a full time role for the best part of 6 years. Managing priorities and creating a healthy balance was a struggle at times but staying focused on the end goal is what kept me motivated..
From my own experience of change and development I would advise others to believe in themselves and their ability to grow into the person they want to see themselves as in the future. Put in the effort and be committed to your goals – don’t try to rush titles or possessions as the thing that will matter the most in the end will be your journey which will give you greater satisfaction than the accomplishment itself.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I grew up in a predominantly patriarchal home where I had a lot of love and support but where gender roles were somewhat predefined. My mother was a nurturer and my father an ambitious entrepreneur who had multiple successful businesses in parallel. I was always a fun loving and confident child who loved to push the boundaries and enjoyed expanding my comfort zone – in sports, arts and academia alike.
My mother has been my ultimate source of inspiration as she is all heart albeit submissive in her nature and she left so many things unsaid just so she wouldn’t challenge the status quo or upset anyone by disagreeing but more often than not her thoughts and intuition was always correct, My mothers work ethic was second to none, and her commitment to working in partnership with my father saw them much deserved success – my mothers authenticity often in the face of difficult people and circumstances taught me a beautiful example of resilience. This gave me the inspiration and the power to change the narrative of people holding themselves back by encouraging others to speak up for what they believe in and to follow a life of passion and purpose regardless of the obvious adversity that we all face often in the way of personal and professional challenges. Whilst there is an obvious benefit in silence, I was always a person who challenged and questioned things to expand my awareness and understanding of what mattered to me, even in the face of obstacles and people disagreeing or trying to shun my intrigued nature. Essentially this is how I would describe what growth means to me, I believe that learning is a lifelong experience – the more you learn, the more you realize that there is so much you don’t yet know, hence the ammunition to keep learning and growing in character and depth as an individual.
My motivation to keep pushing despite challenges along the way was to keep being myself and honor my own efforts and hard work. I have always been a high achiever which requires commitment of time and resources, and so if I ever felt myself succumbing to any form of struggle, I quickly refreshed my vision and returned to my default pattern of hard work and resilience. Seeing obstacles as a natural part of the journey rather than a failure helped me to take the lessons learnt and grow even further as a result.
What I would say to others would be, ‘Believe in yourself’ – you may not have or be where you want to be but the difference between thinking about and actually achieving it is in the internal belief we hold about ourselves. ‘Work hard and stay consistent’, – even a small step in the right direction every day can make a huge difference to your success on your chosen path. ‘Use your voice to spread your message and don’t dull your light for anything or anyone that attempts to hold you back or stall your growth. Make sure your actions are aligned with your message and be purposeful in everything you do. Have a passion and go for it’.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://narikaur.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nari_kaur_skyhigh_coaching/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/skyhighcoach
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/narinder-riyat-b3a62811/?originalSubdomain=uk
- Twitter: Twitter: https://twitter.com/riyatn
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSzDijhbGZbU2ts0dZRAoeQ
- Other: Brochure: https://narikaur.mykajabi.com/pl/2147520181 Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6nCvse3A0V4PyofAHM5BvU
Image Credits
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