Dear Reader,

Everything is always changing.

Welcome, to this online heart space where growth and acceptance give each other a hug, and self improvement and self love walk hand in hand.

I’m so glad this site found you! Started as a community for go getters working on themselves, if you enjoy a good story and a great cuppa then you’ll feel right at home here.

The Blog

I hope, that this blog can become that space that you can turn to and return to, while you’re going through metamorphosis. Growing, but needing to love yourself as you are. Evolving, but also accepting all parts of you. Sometimes a conflicting journey, made so much easier with well travelled companions along the way. Welcome, to the adventure 🙂

The Articles are a blend of stories, academic research, and personal doing/experimenting, that gives me a story to tell and a lesson to learn!

You’ll find three main categories on this blog – 

1. Stepping into Better – all things improvement, personal experiences and actionable advice on bettering oneself, health, wealth and ways to think right, feel light and live bright! 
2. Beautifully Human – personal essays, stories, memoirs, and real, raw and honest storytelling about navigating the highs and lows of being beautifully human. 
3. All Things Awesome – as we improve our living experience, let’s not forget to live! This section covers travel adventures, creative experiences, books, food, and all things awesome that make life more meaningful and fun. 

I’d love for you to come on the journey as I do my best to live a better life, and be wiser, braver, and happier, step by imperfect step.

Remember to heed Bruce Lee’s advice – take what works, leave what doesn’t and add what is uniquely your own!

get to know me

These are a few of my favorite things…

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WHERE THE WORDS COME FROM

I started this blog, because I needed it. 

Despite the many amazing things I had worked on and created in my life, I reached a pivotal turning point when I realised that the most important thing I could create was my wiser, braver, happier and more connected self!  

A rather lengthy phase in life marked by several massive life changes, confusion, stuckness, and rediscovering myself led to an innate resolve to be the co-author of my life, and architect of my future, no matter what was going on externally. 

I wanted to learn what I wish they taught me in school  – to become my own best guide and friend, and to think right, feel light, and live bright! And so began my Stepping into Better Adventure! 

Elevation though, comes with a lot of isolation, and I knew that if I had had a like minded group of humans growing through what they were going through, while still finding joy in everyday living, the journey for me would have been so much more fulfilling and so much less lonely. 

My love for self improvement, passion for peoples stories, and the joy I get from writing, all led me to you – to share my learnings and the joy and wisdom I’ll continue to pick up along the way. 

“You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Think of me as your companion on your journey to being better, your guide on the side, that friendly observer of people and habits, that companion on your journey to growth and discovery, and the girl next door who shares with you learnings from the people she’s privileged to know and meet.

I’ve always said that

One person’s recipe, could be someone else’s meal 🥙

One person’s music, could help someone feel 🎶

One person’s writing, could help someone heal ✍️

yours truly, kanika

I’m hungry to connect and inspire and I hope you step into my world, and stay a while, for what’s to come. 

Sign up for my monthly newsletter, and stay in touch with me! I’d love to hear your story too.

The ‘longer’ backstory

Below are the stepping stones that brought me to you…

First, let me start with the ‘official’ bio. 

The ‘official’ Bio

Training and Facilitation

I’m the Cofounder and Director of a boutique learning company called Outperform, through which, for over a decade, my team and I have been training and coaching established and emerging leaders to improve their communication, behavioural and leadership skills so they can build trust, and have greater impact.  As a result of our work together, people have been able to get secondments, promotions, and lead teams to success. Participants and clients have often said that our work together helped them become not only better communicators and leaders but also better people. 

Explore Facilitation and Training Workshops.

Law

Post my bachelors in Law, and an intensive internship under a top divorce lawyer in Mumbai, I went on to do my Masters in International Business Law from Kings College London. I worked on a case at the Supreme Court of London under Kings Counsel Toby Landau, and then returned to India after my Dad had to be admitted for an emergency bypass in London, when he came to visit me. I briefly worked at one of the top corporate law firms in India, taught contract law as a part time professor with a law school, helped an international health company set up base in India, and then discovered my next best thing- the field of Learning and Development. And so came Outperform, as I fell in love with the potential to improve people’s skills and thereby, their lives.  

Theatre and Films

I’ve always believed that to have a happy and balanced life, it’s one for the kitchen, and one for the soul. The Arts are a huge part of who I am today.

At the age of 9, I acted in a musical theatre production Written and Directed by my father called Angelina, where we toured across India and performed over a 3 year period over 27 sold out , house-full shows. This was my first tryst with theatre and since then, I’ve played the lead in several Musical and Non-Musical Plays. Fiddler on the Roof (I played Tevye 🙂 All girls school!) and Chicago (I played Catherine Zeta Jones) were my favourite roles to play!

I also danced professionally with a company for over 6 years (think 6 am rehearsals every morning!) and acted in two Feature Films and 1 short film.

Project Papa

With no background or education in filmmaking, I went on to write, direct, and act in my feature film called Project Papa. People thought I was crazy, but I marched along with a nervous gulp in my throat and glint in my eye, staying steadfast on the goal with the the victory in my soul. Deep down, I really wanted to get it onto Netflix (this was back in the day before Netflix even entered India). The movie went on to win awards at International film festivals, had a theatre release across 7 cities in India, and then finally got picked up by Netflix and was streaming worldwide (127 countries) from June 2020 to June 2023. I learnt that the will must be stronger than the skill. To know more about the movie, and where you can watch it, click here.

Coaching

I’ve always been coach-ish, enabling and encouraging others around me to think, feel, and be better. As a personal development junkie, I was drawn to coaching to formalise these skills, especially at a time when I truly needed to enable myself to think, feel and be better. Beyond my work in the corporate space, I’m an internationally trained life and mindset coach continually developing my coaching skills.

Now, let’s move on to the ‘Human’ bio. 

• I’ve lived with both abundance and lack 
• I’ve been betrayed, hurt, and ghosted 
• I’ve struggled with both my body, and my mind. Anxiety became a comfort blanket, fear my constant companion, and weight my constant complain
• For many years, I chose self abandonment over self connection
• The world has seen me as a confident girl of many dreams but I’ve often hidden in my shadows and felt unworthy to be seen
• The pandemic, motherhood, shifting homes and many life changes stacked upon each other made me lose myself completely and question everything about myself that I once knew to be true
• I’m a recovering people pleaser getting better at saying NO, and realising that it’s a full sentence
• I realised that none of my achievements would make me happy or worthy. This work was internal
• In my darkest days, I wrote a book called “Love the Crap Out of You” which was about my journey to self love. It’s on my desk, still to be published. I’ve been holding it close
• I’ve lived for years with the nagging frustration that I was living way below my potential
• I went through 3 years of massive indecision, confusion, lack of self trust, and immense self doubt. I would often ask my friends, family and the whole neighbourhood whether I should plan my trip for 4 days or 3 days, because I couldn’t make a simple decision myself

She’s holding back, she’s hiding, but what I can’t decide

Why won’t she be the queen I know she is, the queen I see inside?🎶

Lion king

But I do believe I can rewrite my story.

Life is short. It’s bizarrely fragile. I’m aware that this time on earth is a gift, and the onus is upon me to live my best life – a life that creates impact, spreads joy, gives hope, and speaks love. 

And so here I am. Letting go of my tired stories that helped me hide for so long, to share my gift of constant growth, teaching, learning, knowledge, poetry and of words, with you. 

Thank you, Dear God, for giving this gift to me

This gift of words that I know the world was meant to see

Not for my own glory, and not for my own praise,

But to heal a hurting heart, and a sinking soul to raise

Kanika batra

Read the poem, The gift

I hope we get to know each other! Hit comment on this post and let’s stay connected…

Much Love,

Kanika

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