Shownotes
Raja Vaidya
Guest Bio:
The DEI Black Belt and Singing Scientist - Raja Vaidya is the world's authority on “Invisible Disabilities. “ He is an International Inspirational Keynote Speaker, Peak Performance Consultant, and Triple Talent - Science for the Mind, Karate for the Body, and Music for the Soul. Over the past 5 years he has provided coaching on Mindset, Speaking, Confidence, and 4 Energies fulfillment that has helped thousands to face their FEAR. His launch of VictoryMindsetAcademy.com yielded a 100% success rate in guiding clients to face fears and overcome their Self Limiting Beliefs. How? During 40 years of Martial Arts teaching he discovered a pattern in students moving from white belt Mind-SET to black belt Mind-SHIFT that he translates into business, life, and relationships. Now he is a Barnes & Noble International best selling author, 3x TEDx speaker, Area Director for Toastmasters International, Nominated for Virtual Speakers Hall of Fame 2024, and Won 3rd place in Ultimate Speaker Philadelphia. He is in multiple Black Belt Halls of Fame, starred in the 2 martial arts movies "The Martialist". 2 of his books were displayed on the NY Times Square billboard. His next personal books “UN-Box ME Today” share his 5 pillars of success, and “Hug a Bully” delves into how to break the cycle of bullying. As a leader in cancer research for over 26 years his multiple transformative “Speaker confidence workshop” to over 2000 fortune 100 pharma execs earned him a coveted “INSPIRE” award for raising team culture. All this despite a lifelong stutter which he saved for last to show you that F.E.A.R. stands for FACE EVERYTHING and RISE. He shows by example that his “INVISIBLE Disability” can increase your company’s revenue by 28% or more.. Are you ready for your Black Belt MIND-SHIFT?
A gift from our guest:
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See Raja's Talk here: https://youtu.be/qBRA3Car2t8?si=bGnzsjcqcH3tDfNZ
Raja Vadia, an accomplished expert in personal development and martial arts, shares profound insights on overcoming fear and self-limiting beliefs. Throughout the podcast, he emphasizes the importance of establishing clear goals—what he calls a 'finish line'—as a fundamental step toward achieving personal success. Vadia recounts his own journey from a stuttering child to an international keynote speaker, highlighting the pivotal moments that shaped his mindset.
With a rich background in martial arts, he draws parallels between the discipline required in karate and the determination needed in everyday life. Vadia's unique perspective on invisible disabilities offers listeners hope and practical strategies for fostering resilience in children and adults alike. He advocates for a structured approach to facing fears, suggesting that parents can play a critical role in helping their children build confidence by encouraging them to plan and prepare for their daily challenges. The conversation flows seamlessly, peppered with anecdotes that illustrate Vadia's points, making for an inspiring and relatable discussion.
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Transcripts
Today I have the pleasure of introducing Raja Vaidya, the DEI black belt and singing specialist is the world's authority on invisible disabilities. He is an international inspirational keynote speaker, peak performance consultant and triple talent.
Science for the mind, Karate for the body and music for the soul.
Over the past five years he has provided coaching on mindset, speaking confidence and 4 energies fulfillment that has helped thousands to face their fear. He launched his VictoryMindsAcademy.com yielded a 100% success rate in guiding clients to face their fears and overcome their self limiting beliefs.
How during 40 years of martial arts teaching he discovered a pattern in students moving from white belt mindset to black belt mind shift that he translated into business life and relationships. Now he is a Barnes and Noble international bestseller. Author 3 x Ted 3 times Ted Speaker, Tedx Speaker, Area Director for Toastmaster International.
tual speakers hall of fame in:Two of his books were displayed on the New York Times Square billboard. His next personal books, Unbox Me Today shared his five pillars of success and a Hug A Bully delves into how to break the cycle of bullying.
confidence workshops to over:That is an incredibly full bio. There is so much there. How does one person find time for all of that? It is a pleasure to have you on our show today. Thank you so much for being here.
Raja Vaidya:Thank you so much Herb and Kristina and I got to say, like, I've been looking forward to this. It's been years now. We've been. I remember you all been on my show, I think almost two years ago and how much my show has expanded now.
And as of this morning, I just did episode 381. I'm doing episode 382 right after this. So it's just exploded. I mean it's just been so much fun along the way too. Just meeting great people like you.
Kristina:Awesome. Yeah.
And you know, thinking about that bio and everything that you have packed in there, you know you go from family and black belt and karate and all these different things and TEDx and everything is like wow, we are honored to have you here and have you give our families A little bit of wisdom. It's like, what can we do to help our children do what you did? How can we overcome that invisible disability like you were talking about?
How can we inspire that confidence? And you know just what, first of all though, what helped you get through some of this?
There's got to be key inside of you besides just the martial arts that kind of helped you get past.
Raja Vaidya:Absolutely. So here's two things that I've been doing recently that have been really been very helpful.
Number one is you have to make a finish line, you have to find a finish line and you have to tell people what that finish line is. Then step two is do whatever you can to achieve that finish line. Now this is more recent, but this applied also when I was younger too.
So for example, when I was 16 years old, I made it to the world championships in martial arts. I made a two year plan to go to the Olympics.
So three months after my 18th birthday, I had planned to go to the national east coast qualifying tournament. So for two years I was training five or six days a week, four or five hours.
And that is, I'm in high school, by the way, so that means we're in school. Then after school there's clubs. Then I have track or cross country. Then my mom would pick me up after school with like something in the car.
She'd bring like some Mac and cheese, peanut butter jelly sandwich or a hot dog or something. And I would eat that in the car on the way to karate.
And then my dad would pick me up in the evening at 9pm and he'd always complain that, like, Roger, why are you still training? Everybody else left, like, I'm the last one there. I said, because I want to win. And I just kept doing that. So I kept out training everybody.
And I had no special talent, especially in karate. I had no natural physical ability. But what I did do is I knew what I wanted and I made that finish line and I kept pushing towards it.
Now, part of what I learned along the way, and this applies to every child, no matter what age, is ask them, what do you want to do tomorrow? What did you plan to succeed tomorrow? Because if you don't plan to win, then you plan to fail. So I say this to my children daily.
Right now, for example, my daughter's in cheer, my son, he's in swim. I ask them, where's your backpack? Where are your goggles? Where's your towel?
Did you put them in one place so you can find it on the way without having to search for 10 minutes just before we have to leave. My daughter, I tell her the same thing now. She's more organized.
She always has her chair stuff in the exact same place, exact, you know, location, inside a plastic bag and a pouch. And everything's clean and organized and on a. And on a hanger. So she is like, like set to go.
So that's one of those things where if you want to win the day, you got to plan five minutes every evening. That's it. That's all it takes, like not even maybe two minutes.
Simple things like pick out what clothes you want to wear the next day so you don't have to rush and plan it in the morning when everything's so hectic and mom and dad have to go to work or something. Like right now. You'll laugh. But. But this is what I was.
So I was a little stressed out just getting to the show right now because I had had a call with one of my clients that ran late. She was supposed to call me this morning at 9. That didn't happen. She tried to call me at 10 when I was doing another live stream show morning.
And then I said, listen, you'll have to call me back another time later. I said, can you call me back in about an hour? Well, she just called me at 3pm just after I got out. Another speaker networking meeting.
And I'm on the way to pick up my daughter from school and come back and I'm in all this Halloween traffic, I guess, because everybody's driving really slow and there's so much traffic. Yeah. Rushed back and I ran up here maybe one minute before you guys got on. And I know, yeah, it's one of those things that you plan like, you know.
Kristina:Yeah, you plan for the best, but then you always have to have a plan, backup plan or plan B or, you know, whatever, because sometimes things happen.
Herb:Yeah, we had to rush here too because we had eye appointments and hers ran late and mine was after her, so mine started late. And then it's like we had like, oh, we gotta get going. And then there's like semi trucks and buses and yeah.
Crazy stuff in front of us and it's like pulling just at the nick of time.
Raja Vaidya:Yeah. And I'd like to allocate that also with the idea that, you know, you don't have to be perfect to win. I think a lot of us have this falsity.
They're like, man, only if I could do that perfect run or the perfect exam or that perfect study session or that perfect friend group where everything Mixes perfectly. That'll never happen. So let's, so let's first dispel that myth about perfection. No, none of us are perfect. I'm certainly not.
And I realized over the years like one of the biggest obstacles to growth and to learning is ego. And definitely I've had my share of that over the years. And I realize as I'm getting older, man, I've just let that go.
And you realize more, you know what? It's not about me. You know the one thing I've done in the past 10 years, my students, they used to call me Mastervadia.
And then now after 40 years, now I'm a grandmaster in Tang Soo do. And I've even like, I don't need it. So I tell, I tell the children's class call me Mr. Vadya and I tell the adult class call me Raja.
Because it's not about the title. Because that doesn't help you. It only, you know, it feels kind of self aggrandizing to me.
So for me I always say, listen my, my success is not the title. It is about how good you do. It is about the people that I uplift all around me.
So by letting go of the ego now as children, children don't have what I call ego, but they do have, sometimes they have false confidence or they're trying to do something to show off or show up in a way that makes them feel more confident. But there's a handbook that I gave out to my karate students called the difference, you know, how to build self esteem in children.
As part of my lagbedia martial arts. When my school was open, now I had my school, I was head instructor for my teacher for 25 years.
Then I opened up my own school for seven years and due to two really bad car accidents, one of them near death, I finally had to close my karate school because I injured my neck. And so now I still teach at my teacher school and I, and I do a self defense workshops for charity.
But I'm not going to reopen my school again because I understand what my limitations are. So I shifted into online coaching. So as a result I had to find that, you know what, I have all this knowledge, how can I start to impact others.
And by doing so and now starting to interview and to give other people a stage, I've been able to really create more impact and find other ways to help my clients and my students win even more. Because I'm showing by example. Like I could have said, you know what, I give up. I'm Just going to write books and I'll hide behind the books.
But that's what I've been doing. And that's what I think you were like, alluding to earlier. What are some things I can do to become more successful?
Well, first thing is realize being perfect, and that's okay. But for me, what with my speech impediment, I've been hiding most of my life. I did karate, so I didn't have to talk.
I got into singing, so I didn't have to talk. And I don't know if you know this, but people who have a. That, who have a. Who have a stutter, don't, don't, don't, don't. When they sing.
So I can come up and on stage, you know, and I just do that all day.
Kristina:Wow.
Herb:But yeah, so I, I actually damaged my brain. And so I learned a lot about brain science. And so I know that singing actually uses a different part of brain than speech does.
And so that's why a lot of people who stutter. Don't actually stutter when they're singing is because it uses a different part of the brain.
Just people who have Tourette syndrome that actually uses a different part of the brain that is associated with sharp, sudden fears. And so their, Their. Their speech isn't part of their normal brain. It's actually a sub function of the brain that causes. So yeah.
Raja Vaidya:Just really aware. That was also threats as well. Interesting.
Herb:Yeah.
Raja Vaidya:Right.
Herb:And. And you know, I just kind of want to point it out because I think it's funny and I say stuff if it's funny or true.
When you were talking about, like, planning and how your kids set their. Their st of time. You know, Christina used to have a problem with what do I wear in the morning? And I would say pick it out the night before. And.
And she did it like once or twice, and it worked great. And then she would like, stop and it's like, what am I gonna wear?
So sometimes even when you have these tools and you know it, like you said, you're not perfect. There's a lot of things that, That I know to do to work around some of the brain issues I have from the traumatic brain injury I suffered.
Raja Vaidya:Yeah.
Herb:And even though you have these tools and you know what to do, it's not always easy to keep implementing them over and over again.
Raja Vaidya:Yeah.
Herb:And so you don't have to be perfect, but what you do is you start and then you start to build those habits, and then it becomes a thing that you miss once in a While instead of have to force yourself to do all of the time.
Raja Vaidya:Yeah. Social media has shown us that we have to be perfect.
The perfect Thanksgiving turkey, the perfect Christmas tree, the perfect birthday party with streamers and I'll have 500 balloons and this and, and like a three layer cake. It's, it's, it's like someone's getting married when they're five years old. It's like, no, you don't need all that.
You know, I remember growing up, buy a cake for MacMay, order some pizza. The friends, my friends come over, we have cake, have pizza, and then we go outside and play. Like we had a great birthday party. We had so much fun.
So much fun. And you know, it was never a perfect party. You know, one year it snowed. One year it was like super hot. Who knows?
But, but you know, that idea of being imperfect and be, and allowing yourself to be. There's a great book called Atomic Habits by James Clear.
And if you haven't read that or if the audience has not, I highly recommend it if you want to start to create those habits. Because one thing I talk about like, I'm a master of like nlp, so like I use something called neuro linguistic programming.
That's what Tony Robbins made famous through his coaching as well. And he learned that from Erickson back in the 50s.
So this is something not new, but every couple of, every couple of decades it gets prominence again because of whoever is wielding it like a sword. And so one of the things I talk about is about the words that you use every day become your reality.
Because what happens is your words become your thoughts, your thoughts become your beliefs, beliefs become your actions and your actions become your success. Now you can skip all those steps, that's okay. But if you try to think about it logically.
Now remember we have our neocortex and then we have our limbic system and we have our, like, we have our Elizabeth brain which is really where our subconscious is going to lie. So if we're thinking everything prefrontal cortex, then it doesn't make sense. No, no, no, no, no. If we. Why do words affect what we do?
It makes no, makes no difference.
Actually it does because emotionally what happens is your brain on a subconscious level where your habits are really formed and how they can be officially broken. You need some sort of emotional tie in.
So my advice to you, from my experience and also from reading so many books on habit breaking and NLP and through and being an internationally certified coach, I teach about you gotta be three feet from Gold. Meaning that suppose you want to run a marathon and you've only ever run two or three miles in your life, you know, okay, that's fine.
Well, when you start, well, I can start anytime. I can wait three months.
But first step is you gotta sign up for the marathon so that you have a deadline, you have a goal, you have a finish line to get to. Second thing is start thinking, why do you really want it? Why do you care? I say, well, I don't know, I just want to do it. Okay, that's fine.
That's one way. Or you want to say, you know what, my dad's in the hospital and he just turned 80 and we're not sure if he's going to, he's going to lift 81.
I'd love for him to see me do that. That is what I'm talking about. Gold. What is the emotional connection that you want to do?
For example, like you take a child who's a teenager, 13, 14, 15 years old. They're early high school age now. They're thinking about colleges, they're thinking about SATs.
My son just came to me, he has to, I have to pay for his AP exam that they expect him because he took an AP class in computer science. He's going to take an AP exam on it this year. And so now that gives him a finish line. It gives them something to start to focus on and start to pay.
I start to pay attention, pay, start to pay attention to.
Some of these kids don't know how to speak in front of an audience, in front of an interview session, you know, so part of the things that I would teach them is come to a fundraiser with me, go hand out hot dogs and collect dollar bills. It's like all of a sudden now you're talking to people, you're getting practice, face to face, back and forth.
And then they hear the pitter patter of what I call banter. Like, as you all know, you know, marriage. I've been married for 21 years now. Marriage is a roller coaster ride. It is not sweet bliss.
It is a roller coaster and it's, it's got its depth and it's got its passions and that's what makes it worth it. And, but throughout it, it takes work and we evolve as partners.
So now as you're evolving as a student, you also have to learn different skills to get to the next echelon of where you're going. So think about a wave that's coming in from the ocean. At the bottom you have the Adult arms. And at the top you have the crest.
That water is exactly the same, isn't it? But why is it at the bottom of the wave has such low energy? At the top of the wave, it has so much extra energy.
It's because energy has been transferred to it. It's been reshaped and it's been moved. And you all have that power, that energy that you can use to transform your lives.
And it's all about starting out with that choice. So when you were saying about, I'm not sure if I can. What's my outfit for the next morning? Well, here's the thing. Think about this.
How do we get that closer to three feet from gold? Well, if I'm late again, if I'm late three times, my boss gonna fire me.
Well, that's a good reason to, you know, say five minutes in the morning, right?
What if you're going to the supermarket or right now I have a cancellation and then I rebook someone for the same time slot just before this and I'm making up their banner and sending it out, emailing as I'm on the phone with my other client, rushing out the door to pick up my daughter. How come all that stuff could have fallen apart but it didn't? Right? Because I have an emotional tie in. Right.
My emotional tie in is I want to keep my word. It's very important to me, Very important to me, my integrity. And not just as a black belt, but as just a human being.
So for me, when I say I'm going to come to my interview, I'm going to be there no matter what. Unless I, like, you know, got a car accident or I'm in the hospital or something, I'm going to be there.
And I expect the same thing for the guests that show up on my show. And so like, and also be open to the possibilities of new things. Take a look behind me and you'll see a pretty cool scene there.
You probably see there you see me.
Kristina:Yeah, the TedX. I love it.
Raja Vaidya:Yeah. So that was me August 31st of this year and they finally got the videos to TEDx corporate.
We just signed our like, release form, just took two months and now finally, after another month, maybe they'll release it officially on YouTube. And this should go viral because my talk was how to speak when you can't talk. And you're hearing me right now.
I'm using a lot of different strategies to try to speak fluently and keep my pacing, including pauses, doing a lift between unvoiced consonants, trying to allied my vowels. So there's two layers of thought going on right here. Now. Once again, all that could be falling apart. But why do I care so much? Why do I.
Because I'm three feet from gold. I said I'm going to get 400 interviews by December 21st this year and do my 400th interview live in two and a half years.
And going on this stage in TEDx because of a Toastmasters meeting. I gave a practice speech. Somebody there heard me.
And two days later I got an email from an event planner at the Pfizer world headquarters in Manhattan. They wanted me to give my keynote there in front of 200 executives.
Kristina:Nice.
Raja Vaidya:Just came off of that. And if you see my background here, this is me doing that event and what an amazing journey this has all been.
And when I came out there, I was nervous, really nervous. But guess what I did. I came out. I came out singing. I came out singing. And then because of that, now everybody saw me the way that I want to be seen.
I'm on stage because I'm staying three feet from gold.
I'm staying close to where it is that I want to the impression I want to show because I'm being in alignment with a lot of spirituality and like woo woo kind of people, they'll talk about, oh, being aligned, aligned with your spirit, your soul and everything. And you know, to a piece of that I agree with. And you know, as a scientist, I can't prove or disprove. It's okay. But that's not the point.
The point is I can be in alignment with what it is that I want to do and keep my energy focused forward on the goal and be the tip of the spear.
Kristina:And so if we were to help a family who has a child who stutters, you know what it is, that goal setting, like you were just talking.
But is there something else that they could do that would maybe help ease their child when they're having those really hard times or things like that? What, what kind of happened with you? Like you were saying, you were kind of lining up your words, but that kind of a training kind of thing, right?
What can we do to make our kids feel more confident? Because that's part of your message as well. Feeling that confidence to move yourself forward.
Raja Vaidya:Certainly well understand this, number one, you are not alone. That alone will help them feel better. Because I think a lot of the anxiety I felt when I was younger was because I thought I was the only one.
And I realized there was actually another person. There were two people who Started. And I remember going to a speech therapist one time and somebody was waiting in the waiting room.
I said, oh, you, you have a speech problem too. I kind of said, like, under my breath, cool. I mean, I didn't mean cool, but I meant like, oh, thank God I'm not alone. Right?
And that alone gave me a little bit of hope. Second thing is, as parents, we got to be patient with our children.
And if they are struggling with speaking and they have speech disfluency issues, it's okay. Understand, like, okay, well, I'll tell you what, Tell me what you need to do.
But still, you got to do your dishes, you still got to do your homework. You still get. You don't give them leeway to do, to dismiss other things. You want to treat them as normally as possible.
Because a lot of times when you say, oh, well, you know, take five minutes. Oh, you don't have time for your homework now. You don't have time for, no, no, no, no. The real world is not fair.
And you have to treat them in the real world. And so I would say treat them as, as one standard. Give them the opportunity if they need it, and be patient to listen.
But also remind them that you're capable, you can do anything you want. And I think that's powerful because there's a difference between self esteem and confidence, which I share in my booklet.
And that self esteem is what is your inner feeling about you versus that outer feeling.
So right now, if you see a cat facing the mirror, right, the cat looks like a cat, but internally the cat is super confident and feels like a lion, feels like a big cat. But you could have a child that feels the opposite way, that the lion feels like a tiny cat.
And if you've ever watched the go on YouTube, Google and search for Lambert L A M B E R T. It was a. It was a children's cartoon and I loved it. Lambert the lion feeling like that growing up, and every kid can probably feel that way.
It's like, oh, yeah, because of the way you treat people or how where your location is, you feel that lack of self esteem and you try to push the confidence. But there's ways to do it in ways you can't. I would say go find a skill, make a skill and give them pats on the back all the time.
Say, wow, I can't believe you're so artistic. I can't believe you're on time all the time. Wow, you. You already brush your teeth. Good for you. Smart kid.
And all of a sudden you Realize by stacking those small wins, they're not going to tell you, but they are building that self esteem and that's how you build child.
Kristina:I love that. I love that. Because that's one thing that is a term that I've heard recently is like, it's presumed competence. Right.
And for me, when I was a teacher in the classroom, it was raised up to the expectations. Right. So I would never assume that a child couldn't do the assignment.
I always assumed that the child could do the assignment until they showed me that they were having trouble. And then I'd swoop in and give them the confidence or give them the support they needed to do it.
But I always presumed that they could until they showed me that they couldn't. So, yeah, it's so important that we're really boosting our kids up.
Like you said, give them those compliments and show them or believe in them until they need a little bit of help.
Herb:Yeah. One simple trick that I also brought about was because I knew about nlp, is you, you change the scale.
So a lot of people talk about how hard something is. It's like, wow, you did that. And it was really hard. Well, I started putting stuff on the easy scale.
So it's instead of, oh, yeah, that was, that was super hard. It was like, wow, that was really not easy because then you're focusing on the ease of the action whether. And you're moving towards it being easier.
So instead of like, oh, wow, that was really hard, or hey, this is going to be really hard, like, wow, that's not easy now.
Raja Vaidya:Yeah.
Herb:And so you put things on an easy scale. And that, that helped me get through a lot of things because there's a lot of things that I started that were really super not easy.
And then over time they became easier and easier, especially because I would be focusing on making them easier instead of overcoming something that was hard.
Raja Vaidya:Yeah. And you can trick your mind too. I used to hate push ups. Be honest, I was terrible at them. I used to hate jumping rope in karate.
And so you know what I started doing? I started to trick my own mind, say, you know what? I like push ups.
And I did that because there was another black but there that used to used to enjoy making me do push ups. So I showed him, every time he'd come up and then I'd say, you know, he would say, you know, oh, you got to do push ups now.
And that's my next meeting. Hold on one second. Right. And so I would tell them that I was like, Oh, I like push ups now and then. He got tired of telling me to do push ups. Right.
Kristina:I love it.
Raja Vaidya:I know, exactly.
Kristina:So, yes, you know, children, you know, fake out your parents. I like brushing my teeth. Brushing my teeth is the most fun thing in the world to do.
Raja Vaidya:Yeah. Hang on one second. Yeah. Yep.
Kristina:Awesome. So, you know, this has been a great conversation.
I love the way that you're presenting the confidence and the mind tricks and everything and just, you know, assuming that confidence. But like you said, building self esteem as well. Yeah. Raja, this has been great.
Was there anything that we haven't covered that you wanted to cover today? Anything?
Raja Vaidya:Oh, I could talk for hours, but. Right, yeah.
No, the main thing, I just want to remind everybody is that don't go from the coaching habit of or the psychiatrist angle that thinking that you're broken and we need to fix you, instead, realize you are amazing and you can get even better just by doing things. That's it. You're already amazing. And I think that's really what I can tell.
Everybody is with this rainbow of humanity that we have, everybody is smart in something different.
Kristina:Yeah, exactly. And be proud of what you are good at. Right.
You can always work towards those things that are a little bit more difficult for you, but you always be proud of what you can do and what your strengths are.
And that's one of the things we talk a lot about with parents is really look at your child's strengths and make sure you're building on those, especially with the communication and things like that. Exactly.
Herb:Is that, is that the advice you have for overcoming fear as well? Because you know, you, you your black belt in the fear and you have the inspire and face everything and rise.
What are some tips you have for like breaking. So some children are just like in this fear mode and they're really shut down and they're like afraid of everything.
How do we start bringing them out of that? What are some tools to start with to help your kids not be as fearful or as afraid?
Raja Vaidya:Okay. And this will be the last thing I talk about because we have to move on to the next one. But I want to share this.
When I started my own show, for example, speaking in karate or like speaking live was very scary for me. But I started that two years ago because of a networking group, and I kept taking toastmasters to practice my speaking skills and get better.
But notice how first thing is I found someplace where I can belong. And I think that really starts there is like, where do you belong? And every child needs that place.
I Think we would have a lot less school shootings if, if, if, if people wouldn't feel lonely because there's a lot of students out there that feel like they're alone and they're misunderstood. And it's true, which is unfortunate. But if we can find a way to reach them by saying like, you know, do you feel this way?
Like at my children's like elementary school, they had something called the, I called the, called the a buddy bench and actually bought that for the school. Any child could sit there.
And they had trained mentors like one in each class that say, if you see a kid on the buddy bench that seems like they don't belong, they don't want to say, I want to play, but they don't know how to do it. You see someone there, invite them to play, and all of a sudden we've invited them to belong to a group.
Now, whether that's on the football team or in the band, whether that's swim team or track, or it's cheerleading or whether it's karate or whether it's music or where do you belong? And if you don't know where you belong yet.
I think our job as parents is to allow our children the opportunity to try multiple things until they find that right fit. And I think that's where we can give them the most help and understanding is that I want you to figure out what it is that you really love to doing.
What is your passion?
Because I know growing up as an Asian in the first generation in America, you know, my parents always thought, oh, you have to be a doctor or you have to become a first, first chair violinist or you have to, you know something. You know, now I fit some of those stereotypes. I wasn't, I was a straight A student, I got into gifted.
But I had to fight for that because when I was seven years old, they thought that I was mentally retarded due to my speech impediment. They thought that I. Because I used to get into 30 second blocks and I couldn't talk. Yeah, it was that bad. Wow.
And so when I tell people that they don't believe me now, they say, oh no, Roger, you talk fine now. I say, oh, thank you. I'm still working on it every day. Kind of like an alcoholic that's sober 10 years. I'm working on it every day. Yeah, right.
So it's not a handicap that goes away. So this invisible disability is with me every single day of my life, every hour, every minute, minute that I'm speaking.
So sometimes I get away with it for a couple of minutes and speak fluently. Sometimes I don't. And, you know, so the last thing I'll leave you with is just simply that, you know, let's go back to that phrase.
So one tagline I use for my students, my coaching, my academy, I talk about Victory Mindset Academy and how we can create that black belt mind shift. But in the end, it's, I always end it with believe it and become it.
Kristina:There you go.
Raja Vaidya:And if you can believe it, you can definitely become it.
Kristina:Oh, that's awesome. Thank you so very, very much. Raja, this has been wonderful. Thank you for your inspiration, for your words of wisdom.
And parents, take up these ideas and make sure you're implementing them with your children in your home, with yourself. Right? Be that role model that will really help your children shine as well. Thank you, Raja, for being here. And audience, my pleasure. Listening.
Herb:Yep. Thank you, Raja. It's been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for sharing your time and thank you for being here. Thank you.
Raja Vaidya:Thanks so much. Have a fantastic day.
Kristina:All right, have a wonderful rest of your day. And audience, we'll talk to you later. Bye for now.
Raja Vaidya:Bye for now.
