Alisha Leytem: Hello everyone! Welcome back to another episode of Unlock Your Well-Being. I’m your host Alisha and today I have a really special, exciting guest that I am super excited to talk to and have a conversation with today. We met through Michael, my husband on LinkedIn a couple of years ago. If this is your first time joining us on the show you know we talked about LinkedIn and the connections that we make over there all the time and this is just another great one that we've been able to connect with. She's doing some really amazing things in the DEI industry and world and I am just excited to introduce her, her work, and her perspective to everyone here on the show. So I'm going to share a little bit more about her and we will introduce her.
Meet Sejal Thakkar!
Alisha Leytem: Her name is Sejal. Sejal Thakkar is on a mission to educate and empower people to create a world where everyone is treated with dignity and respect. Sejal is a former employment law attorney, a 2X TEDx speaker, and the Founder and Chief Civility Officer at TrainXtra, a woman/minority- owned training consulting firm, where she helps leaders create positive, safe, and respectful workplaces through customized training and coaching. Sejal is also the Chief Culture Officer of Nobody Studios, a venture capital firm that aims to create 100 compelling companies, guiding them from ideation to full-scale company validation. She is responsible for cultivating a people-first culture at Nobody Studios. Welcome to the show Sejal!
Sejal Thakkar: Thank you Alisha! So great to see you and I really am excited about our conversation today.
Alisha Leytem: I feel like you have such a really unique and interesting background with your story. Your background and story from what I understand, has really given you this platform and inspiration for the work that you do today. So can you tell us a bit more about your story from lawyer to now.
Sejal Thakkar: I started practicing employment law in California in 2003. For a number of years I did litigation. I was a defense attorney and I represented leaders, managers, in cases that dealt primarily with harassment and discrimination. I did that for a number of years and very early in my journey, I realized that I was more of a conflict resolution person versus being a litigator. So I always had a passion for training. So I kind of did it as a side hustle for a number of years. Kind of did a training on the side.
Then after my son was born I did more of that on the side and then finally started my own company TrainXtra in 2017. I say hey, this is really where I want to make a difference and if I am going to go for it, let’s just do it. Luckily I just passed my 5 year anniversary and I'm still standing so yay!
Alisha Leytem: That five-year mark is a big deal. We always hear “if you can at least get through those first five years, you're likely going to stay afloat and continue to thrive” because it takes time.
Sejal Thakkar: Absolutely. It takes time and then COVID happens. I was literally at the point where I had done these major conferences, these major speaking gigs, I was on the top of the mountain about to take off and then COVID came in and I went straight down. I was doing everything in person, so I wasn’t set up for the virtual world like a lot of people. That was definitely a challenging time, but I got through it and here I am.
Sejal’s TEDx Talk
Alisha Leytem: Is that when you did your TED talks? Was it right before 2020?
Sejal Thakkar: Afterwards actually. So the first TEDx I did was last year and then I did another one this year. For the first TEDx the video is already out for that one. It was called The Pain, Power, and Paradox of Bias. Then the second one is called How to Harness the Power of Exclusion and go from Longing to Belonging. The video isn’t out for that one yet, so stay tuned. It’ll be out pretty soon.
Alisha Leytem: We will definitely put the one that is out in the show notes for people to check out. That's a really big deal to have a TEDx talk. Tell us about how that experience was.
Sejal Thakkar: It was a humbling experience because, you know we were talking about LinkedIn and I have had so many things come from LinkedIn, but I hosted just a two minute video on unconscious bias, which is an area that I am very passionate about. One of my connections reached out to me and said “Hey you really need to get on a TEDx talk.”
This is when all the BLM stuff was going on. I was really advocating hard for all of that stuff. so she was like the time is perfect for this conversation right now. I remember telling her “are you joking right now?” This is a pandemic, I am trying to pay my bills, I am trying to keep my business afloat. The TEDx talk is on my bucket list, but it’s on the back burner for now. The more I thought about it, this was the perfect time, so I just went for it.
It was a really great experience for me because the talk is very personal to me, it’s about my back history, about what I’ve gone through personally. So it was really an opportunity with the world, my own background, my own lens at how I view the world and how it impacts the work I am doing. And also educated people on the important topic of unconscious bias.
Alisha Leytem: That is the coolest story I've ever heard of how someone's gotten a TEDx gig. That’s the most authentic, and organic. You’re just being yourself and you’re sharing what's true to you and your heart and then someone reaches out to you. That’s definitely a divinely-guided experience. I want to learn more about your story of what you shared in the TEDx talk.
Sejal Thakkar: The talk really is about I call it The Pain, Paradox, and Power of Bias. So it’s broken down into 3 different parts. The pain part is really talking about my history. I am Indian. My parents are immigrants from India. I grew up in a town called Elmwood Park, which was predominantly italian. We were the only Indian family there. So I dealt with a lot of bully, discrimination, harrasment when I was growing up as a child in that town. So I talk about that history and how hard it was growing up.
In that part of the story I really wanted to raise awareness of the fact that children, but especially immigrant children that grow up here don't have a lot of support when they are going through these situations. You can’t really talk to your parents. My parents came here and they literally started working the day after they moved to the United States. The job was lined up and they were busy working. So It’s not really like they understand the struggles the kids are going through in school. They are trying to raise you as Indian as they possibly can because that’s what they know.
So really talking about what we can do to better support children, specifically immigrant children. Then I talk about how hard that whole situation was for me. Growing up like that and not having support, not having resources, and how that impacted my own wellness. And how to move forward from that as a teenager. It got to the point where I was starting to act out. I was angry a lot, and had a lot of resentment.
I talk about an incident in that TEDx talk. Somebody had left a note on my locker door saying “go back to your country” and it was such a painful experience for me because I was actually born here. But I was viewed because of the color of my skin and because of my parents and their accents as “some other.”
So I talk about that experience and it really was the turning point in my journey where I thought I have two options here. I am going down a really negative path and if I keep going down this path it's going to lead to getting into fights, getting suspended multiple times, getting disciplined, and maybe ending up in jail. It was not going to be a good path for me, it was going to be a dark path for me. Or do I use this situation to empower myself and how do I do that? So I talk about this in the “pain” section.
In the “paradox” part, I think it was really interesting. I think what makes this talk unique is that I started when I was a defense attorney. So now here I am a victim of other people's bias and racism and prejudice and now I am defending those same individuals. Who are now being accused of harassing or discriminating someone else.
So I had to see it from a whole different perspective and it taught me a lot. So I talk about that as a paradox of bias is that, until you actually see it from both sides you really don’t understand that ultimately we are all victims of bias.
Then the power of bias is really talking about conscious bias and unconscious bias. We work all the time and I know you and Michael do this work too, of working with companies and helping them fix the conscious bias in the organizations. One of the things I saw over and over again as an employment law attorney was nobody was talking about the unconscious bias and that’s impacting how we treat other people.
In the power of bias I am really trying to focus peoples attention to what unconscious bias is, the science behind it, why it's important to actually do something about our own unconscious biases. It starts with learning about them.
I share this strategy, I use the acronym H.A.T. I share this strategy with everyone to help them mitigate unconscious bias in their day to day lives. That’s kind of a little summary of what that talks about.
Alisha Leytem: Yeah I know thank you for sharing. That was amazing actually. I'm really interested to know how we can identify what our unconscious bias is. I'm assuming we all have it, which is why it’s unconscious, you’re not aware of it. How are we able to uncover what that is?
Sejal Thakkar: If you have a brain, you have bias. Everyone has bias. This is what really led me to doing that talk because when I started doing workshops on unconscious bias. The minute I would say that word “bias” people would shut down. They would zone out. Most people don’t want to think of themselves as biased. People don’t understand that unconscious bias is what we all have. Our brain processes so much information.
Howard came out with some research that said our brains process 11 million pieces of information every single second. So it creates all these shortcuts, so it takes all this information that's constantly coming at us and we are creating these shortcuts. Now you see someone and your brain is going to take a shortcut maybe because of some lived experience you’ve had, because of the media, family, or cultures.
Something is going to bring up this bias against that person unconsciously. So you’re not even aware that it’s happening. Then because you’re not aware of it you can now say and do things to people unintentionally that could be harmful.
Unconscious bias is normal. That’s one of the reasons as to why I did that talk, was to normalize this conversation and to get people to see that they are normal. The only time it’s harmful is when you don’t know about it. You have to do the work to identify your own biases because we’ve all had different lived experiences and different journeys. Our biases are going to be different from one another and no ones going to be immune to it. We are all victims of bias because of information that we are all being bombarded with. That’s a little bit about unconscious biases.
We can all re-train our minds. There’s some ways that you can identify what those are. Then once you start to identify those, again there are strategies that you can put into place to minimize. We can’t fully ever eliminate it, but we can take steps to mitigate it.
Alisha Leytem: It’s like once you’re aware of the unconscious you're bringing it to your consciousness. Then you can do something about it and that is how you really begin to create changes. When someone is identifying it and bringing it to the surface level for themselves, how do you see people's unconscious bias negatively impacting workplaces or their relationships? What’s coming up with that?
Sejal Thakkar: Let me just comment that I think for the people listening to this podcast, it might be helpful for them to get a couple of tools. To help them identify what their own biases might be. Then I will talk about why it's important to do that work, so that you don't harm people unintentionally.
Unconscious bias is really spontaneous judgments we make about other people based on our own lived experience. Again totally normal. 90% of the decisions we make are habitual. They are unconscious decisions that we make, 90%. DSo that means we are on autopilot most of the time. So some tools that you could use, one too is very simple, unconscious bias is hidden from us, we are not aware of them until we do the work.
It comes out in the things we say and do to the people around us. One of the easiest tools is to ask people that you trust, that you know are going to truly care about your well-being and to simply just ask them really important decisions. Who do I spend my time with? Who do I hire? Who do I promote? Who do I put on certain projects? Who do I give time off too? When these important decisions are impacting people's lives. Do you think I am biased in any way?
Just ask that question. We are afraid to ask that question because nobody wants to think of themselves as biased, but again, it is normal. If you ask somebody who truly cares about you, they will tell you. Because it comes out, what we say, the tone of our voice, body language, facial features, gestures.
The other tool is called implicit association test. It was a tool that was created by psychologists at Harvard University, University of Virginia, and University of Washington. They came together to collaborate and create this tool. First of all, it's online and it's free. We love free! The last time I checked it had 14 different sections to it. Like race, gender, sexual orientation, so on.
If we just sit down and do one section at a time. It’s too much to do it all at once, it’ll be a mess and you’ll get a migraine. So don’t even try. Just do one at a time and I tell people to make a date for yourself every two weeks to just take one section, think about it, reflect, and come back and take another one. You will continue to learn and you have to continue to do this work because it’s an ongoing process.
This tool is fantastic because it identifies your natural tendencies. Which ways you lean. It doesn’t mean you are a bad person, it just means some situations you tend to lean in that direction. Bias in and by itself could be positive or negative. A lot of people think bias can just be negative.
You can understand this as a mother. I have a son, you have a daughter. So if someone looks like our children, it's natural for us to be favorably towards that person. So that;s a positive bias versus the opposite. When I was being bullied by those kids in school. They were italian. So to this day when I meet someone who’s Italian my heart starts to race, my hands get sweaty because it reminds me of that experience that I went through.
Now that gives me this unfavorable bias towards this person because I know that bias. I make sure to check that at the door and say woah, this person has nothing to do with what you went through. So just keep that in mind as you go forward. When you take this tool it tells you which ways you lean, so when you're making important decisions you can check yourself and say hey I have a natural tendency to lean in this direction, so make sure that I have logical analysis to support and objective facts to support the decisions I’m making. Not just relying on these spontaneous judgments or impressions that could be wrong.
Majority of the time they are wrong. That’s the scary part when you are starting to do this work. You start to realize a lot of unconscious biases are actually the exact opposite of what we currently believe. These biases are hidden, but it holds this trigger. So as soon as you see that Italian person, or as soon as you see that person that looks like your child, you’re not going to even remember that. The bias isn’t going to come forward.
Now in the case of going back to your question, and how it comes up. If you don’t know about it then you might say or do things at work, or anywhere, that are called microaggressions. So now you might be making comments, you might be getting certain looks, your tone might change when you interact with this person, not intentionally. Without you even knowing it because you have some bias against that person that you’re unaware of. It’s very harmful and again we are all victims to these biases.
We look at our society, gender bias. I think that’s a very easy example because we’ve all seen examples of gender bias every day. That’s something none of us can escape. This just happened to me last week.
I was on a call with four other people and I was the only female on that call. When it came time to take notes, somebody just volunteered me to do it. That’s gender bias. Why are we just assuming that? I suck at taking notes. I said straight up, “I don’t take notes, that’s not what I’m good at.” I was comfortable enough with this group of people to say “yeah, no I am not going to do that because I am not good at it. I’d be happy to record it for us if you’d like.”
It’s all around us. It’s in everyone’s best interest to do this type of work so we can collectively change the direction in which we are going.
Alisha Leytem: Very powerful explanation of that. I too experience gender bias quite a bit as a woman owning a business in this industry that we are in. We see it all the time. I see it really heightened even when you compare it more to my husband's business. It’s like a white male in that world, and I’m a female. So I think that how you explained that is really powerful.
I think that I can absolutely see the resistance that people have to doing anything about it because it's uncomfortable. It puts you in a very vulnerable state and it makes you think that you’re doing something wrong. I think that as you keep saying “it's not your fault” and “you didn't do anything wrong.” That's kind of addressing that for us. Listen you can be vulnerable and know that you are going to see some things, but that vulnerability is where the growth is going to happen. We kind of have to really lean into that part of it.
Not doing it and pretending it’s not there makes things so much easier. We think if it gets uncomfortable we can just avoid it and I don’t have to deal with it and it makes things easier for me. But that’s not how everything around us is, like growing our teams and ourselves. Which is what we ultimately want, to get better, but if we aren’t willing to kind of go there with that then it won’t be helpful.
I really love that first tip you gave us, which is asking someone close to you. I think that kind of creates that safe place to do it for the first time. I can think of the first person I would ask and it is scary, but now it’s at least safe and I can dip my toes into this and ask this person what that is. That kind of helps me release some resistance around doing that.
Sejal Thakkar: The other thing too is self awareness. Increasing your own self awareness. Our brain starts making judgments about people the minute we see them. We see someone walking down the street, we haven’t even talked to this person yet and we are going to start making all these initial impressions of them.
There’s some research out there that says our brain makes a lot of judgments about somebody within the first 7 seconds of seeing that person. Then once those initial impressions that you made about that person are true or not, you spend the rest of the time after you meet them trying to look for evidence to confirm those initial impressions.
So they say some of the first things we notice about somebody is their race, their age, and their gender. We take those characteristics or we see that visually, we start making assumptions about that, and then we start connecting that to other characteristics. How much education does that person have? What’s their social status? How much money do they have? You’ve made all those impressions about that stuff and you haven’t even talked to that person. So the chances of you being wrong are pretty high.
You haven’t even talked to that person and you’re already looking for evidence to confirm those assumptions. So it’s really important to do that. Do some research to increase your self awareness. Now when you see someone, pay attention to these extreme reactions that you are feeling for this person whether it's positive or negative. Just start noticing because that’s defining your unconscious bias. This is like my super power of simplifying concepts down for everyone to understand it.
In some ways if you think of conscious bias and unconscious bias, it’s a matter of speed. If you just slow things down in our reaction time and think, why am I having a strong reaction towards this person? Where is this coming from? Then asking yourself those hard questions because it requires you to go inside and really figure out why you are making those judgements about that person, they haven’t done anything to me.
So when we start doing this inner work, that’s when the light bulbs start going off and you think, oh now I get it. So you can use all these tools, but even simply increasing your self awareness in certain situations and say I am seeing a habit here. Think if I see a person like this, I feel this way and think why is that. Because not everyone who looks like that or acts like that is a certain way.
It's a much easier way for our brain to lump people together because it takes too much energy for it to individually assess every person for it. Now it’s going to say, for example, everyone that is tall is going to make a good CEO. That’s why when you look at fortune 500 companies and you look at their CEO’s a majority of them are over 6 feet tall. There’s all this research out there that says the taller you are the better leader you are. You see that less than 5% of women are CEOs of the fortune 500. Why is that? That’s biased! Because apparently women can’t be good CEOs, that's the perception out there.
And we all know that’s complete bullshit. The point being these biases play out, so we don’t do this work where it's going to continue to perpetuate them. It’s an uncomfortable conversation, I agree with you on that, but we need to have them and we need to do it more often.
Alisha Leytem: Uncomfortable doesn't mean let’s avoid it, it’s like calling it out. It’s understanding that it’s uncomfortable, but that’s why it's so important. Thank god for people like you and the work that you’re doing and that you’re speaking out about it and doing it. Do you get a lot of resistance to doing it because I can totally feel how that would be like “well we don’t really need that right now” because of that discomfort that we are talking about it?
Sejal Thakkar: I say that I’ve done things to change that resistance right? When I first started doing it, I was getting a lot of resistance, that’s why I realized I wanted to do that TEDx talk. In my experience, in order to get people to do what I am saying, we can’t move towards inclusion, which is really the goal. How do we create cultures of inclusion and belonging for everyone in the workplace? That’s what I am trying to do.
If I can get them to take that first step of the process we can do the rest of the work. Some other things that I’ve done, for example my workshops, I replace the word bias with belief. When I say unconscious beliefs because the word bias in and of itself has a negative connotation, let's just get rid of it together and call it beliefs. How we frame something.
I think science helps because neuroscience has come a long way. Even in the last decade we’ve learned a lot more about the brain. I am not an expert on it, but I have done my work on it enough to say we know a lot about how our brain works and how we can use it to our advantage. So I always put some science into my workshops so people understand how the brain works. Because once I can get them into that then we can talk about how to identify it and put strategies in place. There’s always going to be resistance.
I see stuff all the time about how unconscious bias doesn't work. No, it does work. I am saying a vacuum doesn’t work, nothing is going to work in a vacuum. I am saying with all these resources behind it, of course. But it does work because it raises awareness on this topic. Sometimes people say “you’re giving everybody a hall pass,” you’re saying “oh it’s normal.” I say you’re missing the point.
It’s not about letting anyone off the hook, it's not about that at all. Accountability is still very important and people should always be held accountable for their actions. At the same time I think we are too quick right now to cancel culture. I don’t like that approach at all either.
I posted about this on LinkedIn just last week. I put a pool out there that said “should we cancel people or not?” It got lots of comments and direction on it. It was just eye opening to read what people were saying. The good news is it seemed like at least more people were leaning more towards the side of let’s not cancel people. People should be allowed to voice their opinions of course, but let's make sure we keep giving this information out there, so people can understand how this impacts their behavior.
You and I do this work for organizations. We can’ change how people think, but we change the behavior that we are going to accept, allow, and tolerate within the organization. I could talk to you about this for hours!
The Media and “Cancel Culture”
Alisha Leytem: I am loving it! A couple things I wanted to touch on what you said. One is, I hadn’t heard that people are saying “oh the unconscious bias training doesn't work.” This is interesting and somewhat comical because I have been hearing the same things about wellness and mindfulness programs. It works when you work it and you embody it. I think sometimes it’s easy because it’s not the “sexy” thing.
The bottom line essentially, and what we really all want is the thing we know we need to do, but what we really want is the thing that looks more fun and that’s going to get us to wherever we think we are going. I think that’s super interesting. Also tell me more about cancel culture because I think it’s becoming very dangerous.
Sejal Thakkar: It’s very dangerous. It’s gotten to the point where people are bringing up sayings from peoples past and again it's not about letting anyone off the hook, that’s not what we are saying. People don’t really understand what’s going along with cancel culture.
Let me start off by saying people should be accountable for their actions. We aren’t letting anyone off the hook. That’s not what cancel culture is, but cancel culture is not allowing people to speak their true opinions, their thoughts, or their perspective on things. No matter how much we hate those perspectives, unless it’s like hate speech, which again there is certain types of speech that are criminal.
Then we follow the legal process and that person should be punished for their behavior or whatever needs to happen because of these comments. If we don’t allow people to express their opinions in a way that we are not going to be able to move those people forward.
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Sejal Thakkar: They are just going to continue engaging in harmful behavior, harmful thoughts, and processes and there is nothing we can do to help that individual. I think with the Black Lives Matter movement, it’s not the first time we’ve seen this happen. This isn’t the first time that this has happened, it’s been going on for 400 years. But what this did is it brought up these issues to the top and because of that people have gone all the way to the other street. We want to cancel everybody. Fire this person, don’t hire that person for your company, it’s like woah.
This is not the intention of cancel culture. That’s not what we should be doing. That’s not helping anybody. This is going to divide people even more rather than bring them together. That’s why I posted about it because I read an article about a woman that made a racist comment back in the day. She was properly disciplined for it and for her comments, but then everybody started gaming up on her, bullying her online, and she got fired from her position.
This was something that happened years ago, and so that kind of behavior doesn’t help anybody. Because here I am telling people we are humans and we are going to make mistakes sometimes. We are going to fumble sometimes, but let's have these conversations. Then the people actually doing this work are going to be punished or shown retaliation. Then when we all mess up, that doesn’t help them.
I really hope people understand that if we want a long-term, sustainable change then we need to get motivated to do this work. Rather than shutting them down and getting them to resist the process, we need them to buy into the process. I just think the whole cancel culture thing doesn’t work at all.
Alisha Leytem: I couldn’t agree more with the fact that it feels kind of divided and it's dividing people more. It’s making people feel like it;’s just better not to say anything at all in fear of being canceled. Because not only if you say something that is harmful that's one thing. It’s another thing to say something that someone doesn’t like your opinion of and then people can rally behind that. It’s kind of like okay I would rather just not say anything. Then to your point, well what happens when people aren’t saying anything, then we aren’t able to move the conversation forward at all.
In order to do that we have to dig in and do this work. It’s going to be messy and it’s not going to be perfect. I think that that’s where there is this really big miss right now. Then two, in pop culture some people and some companies are being canceled for some things and some aren’t for other things. Who gets to decide what this is and when.
Sejal Thakkar: The media. The sad part of reality is the media. The media gets to decide and that’s the part that I think people aren’t getting is that the media will blow things up to suit their own agenda. So we are literally just pawns in what they want to accomplish and people don’t realize that politics, media, and the news are all reliable.
Now social media is bad too. It’s so easy for people to get manipulated as a joke. I just shut myself off from all of that and not be a pawn in these peoples games. It’s the bullying that happens. Cyber-bullying people who voice their opinions when they should be allowed to voice their opinions. Even on controversial topics.
People should be able to voice their opinion, right? Not if it’s hateful or anything that is illegal. People should be able to give a strong opinion and should be able to voice it even if people don’t like it. Now you’ll see hundreds of people ganging up on that person. I remember during the black lives matter movement I made a comment on Twitter and it was not meant to be submissive, but somebody read it that way and people took it out of control.
When you see examples like that happening these people could destroy your career in a day if this continues. That’s when I left Twitter. I decided I am not going to be on a platform where I can’t safely voice my perspectives.
You see the stuff I do on LinkedIn. I purposely challenge limits. I feel as though that my sole existence is to challenge people's thinking and change the status quo. So I have to delicately push those boundaries, so they start getting pushed farther apart. I am pretty controversial out there at times because I want to create some discussion around it.
People will comment because they know that’s a safe place where they can comment on my feed and they aren’t going to get attacked or bullied. Unless they say something completely ridiculous. Then I will just delete and block them because we just don’t have energy for that. But it’s interesting to see how people are slowly starting.
On LinkedIn it’s a bigger difference than Facebook or Twitter, but at least on LinkedIn I feel like I am at least feeling like there is more safety in voicing your opinions. Again I think it is based on the topic too.
The other day I saw something about the whole abortion issue and it was just this crazy dialogue going on. We need somebody to step in there and mediate and I thought if I could get in there right now it was going to be an all day event.
Alisha Leytem: It's an extremely divisive issue right now. I completely agree with the media's role in this. I think more and more people are starting to see it. I have said this many years ago when I started my well-being journey and teaching people. If you want one thing that you can do to find more peace in your day is to turn off the news.
That triggers people into thinking how will I know what's going on? I say “listen, you will know what’s going on, people will tell you what’s going on.” I stopped watching the news 10+ years ago and I remember the difference in how I felt. I used to start my day with having the news on the Today Show as you’re getting ready.
What’s scary about that is the news likes to share scary stories. Violence, things that are wrong in the world. So you are starting the day by putting that into your subconscious. So then throughout your whole day you are starting this energy from anxiety and fear. Then that follows you through the rest of your day. So you can do the opposite.
Honestly if the only thing you do is turn it off, you will feel immensely better. You literally just have to turn it off.
Sejal Thakkar: I stopped watching the news too! It would stress me out to where I couldn’t sleep at night. I am an empath, so it affects me. I did the same thing and believe people will tell you what you need to know. Even with LinkedIn I have to be very careful about where I focus my energy, my efforts, and where I am getting my information because so much of the information out there it's hard to tell what's true and what’s not true. It’s easy to take that information and start generalizing that negatively to people you know.
We saw that with COVID. All of a sudden COVID news spread fast. It was like wait a second this has nothing to do with the way it originated. Now innocent lives are being destroyed. So that truly is a perfect example of how the media will screw up people’s lives if you let it.
Alisha Leytem: It can be a very scary, dangerous place to go down. I second with you. You will know what’s going on. People will absolutely tell you, I promise. It will still happen and you will still have a little bit of peace.
I feel like this loops back to what you are talking about is the unconscious and all the information that you are consuming all day long. The media and the news is just more noise. This is actually something that I talk about in my book towards the very end. One of the obstacles to well-being is not turning off the noise, knowing what the noise is in your everyday life, and how to turn it down. You can’t turn it off, but you turn it down so you can be more focused as to where you are putting your energy towards.
I think about the work that you’re doing. If people can learn to turn down the noise in their lives then they will have more energy. To be able to devote to this inner work and now you aren’t spending your day trying to process and hold onto this negativity and this scary information that you’re getting of everything happening in the world.
Also we are not meant to know every single thing that is happening in the world. One of my mentors said this at the peak of the pandemic. Our nervous systems are not meant to know every single thing that is happening horribly in the world. It’s crippling. We can’t energetically handle that shit.
Because of the internet we have access to be able to know everything that's happening in the world. You have to be super intentional of where you’re turning it off, so that you are not taking everything in. It can get really slippery. You can very easily turn it on and get sucked right back in. You have to consciously pull it back.
Sejal Thakkar: I will just add one thing to that. That is the trauma. When you have the media replying the same thing over and over again, like the George Floyd situation. If you are watching that you will be traumatized every single time you watch that. When you are replaying that clip it feels like your heart is going to stop.
The media is playing it over and over again. Think about the trauma that you’re experiencing. If nothing else, protect yourself and shut that off, so that you don’t get traumatized. Be selfish in your own self care. In those situations be selfish. Say I can’t watch that because it traumatizes me.
I had a mentor who said the opposite thing about watching the news. She was baffled that I didn't watch the news. I told her if there is something that I need to know I will find out. I had to explain to her that the way I am wired these incidents just traumatize me so I am protecting myself.
For example, when the whole Ukraine thing started I was so impacted by that situation. I was posting about it everyday, I was watching the news on it because I couldn’t believe it. I realized I needed to step back and protect myself a little bit because I was so into it. The pain was hitting me and I was feeling the trauma from all the way here. These children and families and what they were going through was terrible. I had to literally shut down for a whole week, so I could regain my perspective.
It’s really hard for some of us to watch that stuff. So if you’re one of those people where you’re stressing out and you’re finding yourself being distracted or being able to sleep, it’s a good time to take that step back and protect yourself.
Alisha Leytem: I’m glad you shared that story about the Ukraine war sucking you in because even if you are intentional with it, it can still happen. These stories are real and they can hit you right in the heart. It’s happening with my right now with the 4 murders of those college students out in Idaho. It is sucking me in. For me it just felt super personal because the couple that was killed reminds me a lot of how Michael and I were when we met in college. It just hits you sometimes and it’s like holy shit that sucks you in.
In the past couple of weeks it’s just been consuming. This is an example of yes, this happens, it does. I am definitely still going to be following it, but has it impacted my well-being? Absolutely. I need to take a step back and once you’re able to bring that self awareness to times like that. Not only is this negatively impacting me now, it's impacting even my family just because of the way that it's impacting me.
So this kind of just comes back to everything we’ve been talking about. When you’re super impacted by things whether you’re conscious or unconscious of it, it’s going to impact everyone else around you. The work that you do on yourself not only you, which is important, but it’s also helping others.
How Sejal Unlocks her own Well-Being
Alisha Leytem: Tell me with all that you have to deal with and go through. Because it’s probably a lot of energy to share this all the time. How do you maintain your own sense of well-being during it?
Sejal Thakkar: I really appreciate you asking that question. I’ve started posting how hard my work is for me on my LinkedIn profile recently, and I’ve started posting about it even more. I think it’s important for us to talk about how our careers are forming us. I am dealing with the work that I am doing and I am hearing people’s stories, their personal experiences, and that secondary trauma and this impacts me.
I just had another conversation with a DEI consultant and it was the first time we were talking, but it felt like we had known each other for a long time. She was sharing with me what she was going through and right then I told her “what are you doing to take care of yourself?” You have to take care of yourself.
For me I do a lot of walking, and a lot of nature and nurture. I made a commitment to do 15,000 steps everyday. Even when I was talking to Michael I was walking on my balcony as we were talking. I do that because that’s where I get to process all of my emotions and my feelings. When I walk and talk my brain seems to work better. I am thinking when I am walking I know how to process things better.
I am standing here doing this podcast with you, but I look out this beautiful window with the bay and the clouds and there's hummingbirds flying by. Surrounding myself in nature forces me to stop and express my gratitude. When I am out on a hike and noticing nature and how it works that’s what seems to really refill me.
The other thing I do is I spend as much time as I can with my son. He’s 10 and I try to see the world through his eyes as often as I can. Just really get down on his level and put everything else aside as often as I can. I am getting better and better at it. It’s hard when we are high performing professionals. We are used to doing a lot.
Especially as females, as mothers, we are juggling so much on our plates. So it’s easy for us to think we can handle it all. The best decision I made is whenever I have him near me I have my set times that I will work, but the phone, the computer, everything goes away. For the next two hours I am just going to focus on him and get down with him and play.
That really has helped so much. That time of just seeing the world through his eyes, his curiosity, his questions, what he’s focusing on, what he’s noticing, and what he’s observing. All of that stuff is real in my own process and own journey. I might be getting some secondary trauma from the work I am doing. Those are some of the things that really seem to work for me and what I am doing.
The other thing that I do too is I’ve dedicated time to meditating. You were so wonderful when you came to Nobody Studios and did our mediation with this the other day. I’ve started meditation once a week formally, but I meditate all the time when I walk. Just sitting down and meditating I am trying to do that more and more, but it is pretty hard to schedule. So I try to do it when I walk.
That formal sitting down and actually making time for it, I’ve been doing that for over a year and it has helped so much. It has really, really made a difference in my well-being. I would love to do it more, but there is just so much on my plate. That’s the thing about mediation, you can do it anywhere. You don’t need to sit down. When I walk I am meditating during that time, but there is something to be said about making that special designated time to just sit and think.
I like to walk and think, but sitting and thinking there is something else to that. When I am sitting and thinking I'm focused more on my breathing and my diaphragm. I am getting more benefits when I do it that way, but also when I am walking. I think you could do a combination that’s best. Figuring out what works best for you and figuring out the right timings.
One last thing I just thought about is gratitude. Starting off every morning with my gratitude mantra and laying in bed and listing out all the things I am grateful for. When I start getting nervous, anxious or overwhelmed. I think I’ve got a million things I’ve got to do and I feel that pressure piling on. I just stop and begin to think of what I am grateful for. Sometimes it takes a few things and sometimes it takes a hundred things before I finally start breaking out of that mode. Gratitude for me is now the quickest way for me to manage my well-being.
Alisha Leytem: All such good tips. I am also a very big proponent of walking mediation. Especially as like you said, mothers, juggling a lot, that formal mediation is a lot harder to squeeze in. I think that you found a really powerful and beautiful way to do these practices that you need to do, especially with the work you are doing. Finding that sense of balance and handling your own life and taking on the energies of everyone else.
This has been such a cool conversation. Thank you for coming on! Tell us more about where we can find you, what you have going on, and how we can connect with you.
Sejal Thakkar: I work with companies all across the globe, so I do international stuff too. I do virtual workshops and I do in person. If you are looking for workshops on stability, diversity and inclusion, unconscious bias, microaggressions, how to be a good ally, any of those topics. You can look up more on my website at TrainXtra.com. If you go to my website there is information on all my workshops there.
The other place you can find me is, as I mentioned earlier, I do some work for Nobody Studios. I am consulting for them as their Chief Culture Officer and we are doing some really exciting stuff in the culture space, in the well-being space, and a lot of different areas. So you can look up what we are doing there at NobodyStudios.com.
Alisha Leytem: We will have all the links in the show notes for everyone, so they can check out more. Of course we will have your LinkedIn profile on there because you are really fun and active to follow on LinkedIn. We all have to follow her there.
Sejal Thakkar: I just passed the 30,000 mark. I have 30,000 followers as of 2 days ago!
Alisha Leytem: Congratulations! 30k! You need to get the balloons you know that people get.
Sejal Thakkar: 5 years of hard work. Organically grown and really just showing up everyday and being consistent. Everything that you and Michael are doing is awesome too. It does work, but it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes some time.
Alisha Leytem: You’ve earned it and congrats. Thank you so much for coming on this has been really insightful and I appreciate you Sejal. Thanks guys!
