Semal Luthra reveals how to reclaim your inner authority

This March, Pulse wants to celebrate a couple of exceptional women who are trailblazers in their respective fields. As an entrepreneur and the Co-founder of Home Tree Coworking, the host of the Inner Reset Programme, Semal Luthra aims to help individuals who’ve lost their sense of self to regain their freedom and inner authority so they can overcome obstacles in their daily life. We sat down with Luthra to discuss about her journey so far and what she has in store for the future.

For anyone who doesn’t know you or what you stand for, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I’m Semal Mastani, and I’m originally from Mumbai, India. I spent a lot of my adult life in the UK, and later the US for my MBA, and finally moved to Sri Lanka approximately four years ago. That’s about the time I started Home Tree Coworking, Sri Lanka’s first mindfulness coworking space. I’ve had a lot of exposure from living in several countries and my educational background. When I was working as a consultant in the UK, I became quite jaded by the work I was doing while simultaneously getting tired of the 9 to 5 corporate grind. I wanted to bring more meaning into what I was doing. Mindfulness and spirituality have always been a big part of my life ever since I was 15. I had been going through a tough time and had delved into internal healing processes and have been exploring it ever since.

I had set these goals for myself about working for a big consultancy, and after accomplishing them I began to realise that something was still amiss, I wasn’t happy. I decided to take a step back and ask myself if this was what I wanted. I found that I had a passion for incorporating consciousness into the way people work, from there I was able to start Home Tree. The “Inner Reset programme” was born from this need to help people find a better way to not just survive, but thrive. With global cases of depression, anxiety and other mental health-related disorders on the rise, I wanted to bring out stories of people who have transformed dark situations in their life to not only come out stronger but be beacons of light to the world.

What sparked your passion to be an entrepreneur and to start advocating for people’s confidence and personal growth?

I feel like I’ve always wanted to have my business, and it came about very organically. At one stage I was very tired of working for someone else, and I was quite deep in my spiritual practice so I wanted to be specific about what I spend my time and energy on. My values didn’t align with what the corporate world represented and how it was allocating its resources. Despite earning a lot and ticking all the boxes that I had set for myself, I realised that I didn’t want to waste my life and passion on something I didn’t quite believe in.

What made you want to start The Inner Reset programme? Tell us about its inception.

One of the biggest blessings I’ve had is being able to explore the world of consciousness and spirituality from a young age. It’s about building that relationship with yourself and working on your inner world – the one in your head and body, and how you’re feeling at each moment. Spirituality to me is your relationship with yourself. My relationship with myself was the most important thing in my life. In my experience, most of our issues usually boil down to our relationship with ourselves. This resonates with what I said earlier about me living up to my goals and yet feeling as if something was amiss. I, like most people, was living up to the expectations that other people had set for me, so I wasn’t truly living for myself. Through my journey of self-acceptance, I wanted to share my story and stories like mine to help inspire others to do the same.

I realised that in other countries that I’ve worked in there is a bigger appetite for initiatives like this. However, in Sri Lanka it’s still a relatively new concept, and people haven’t understood the importance of working while incorporating mindfulness into their routines. While I was working with several young people I realised that their mental wellbeing was a massive struggle for them. They either didn’t know how to express themselves or were too scared. In cases where people were willing to open up, they didn’t have a proper outlet, and people they could to reach out to, that felt safe.

For those of us who don’t know much about the Inner Reset Programme, tell us a bit about it and what it hopes to accomplish.

The programme is a three-phase programme. The first phase is a series of talks from different people who’ve faced issues and overcome them. Phase two consists of opening up spaces for women and young people to heal and talk about their experiences without judgement. Phase three is building a community of people who’ve gone through a journey of facing their inner demons while working towards their goals. I’d love to have a room full of people who are passionate about what they’re doing. It opens up a lot of new possibilities for a lot of new things to happen. We’re hoping this will facilitate these individuals to procreate their initiatives. It’ll ultimately be a hotbed for innovations to develop, and we’d let them go off and pursue their interests. It’ll be a new way of developing ways to co-create, co-work and co-live together.

Tell us a bit about your journey and how you got to this position. What were some of your most memorable accomplishments and what were some of your biggest obstacles?

Personally, one of the biggest challenges I’ve had to face has been a fear of being exposed and seen, I’ve always been more of an introvert. To come out with my story wasn’t easy and it took a lot of inner work and courage. I was also very scared of how people who knew me would judge me. How I overcame that was to just accept myself exactly as I was and be okay with being judged. I had to prioritise the vision of the programme and realise that it was less about me as a person, but about the message we wanted to spread.

This isn’t an accomplishment per se, but it’s something beautiful. We’ve had a great flow of operation with the programme. Along this journey, I’ve met so many supportive people who have not only helped me but helped the initiative grow. At times when I’ve felt unsure, others have believed in us and encouraged me to continue the project.

What was the societal norm that you had to try the hardest to recorrect, not only in others but also in yourself?

Something I had to break through was the belief that nothing can be changed from the outside, but can only be changed from within, and that everything happens for a reason. I know that it’s easier said than done, so it’s what I’m working on the most. We love to blame others and play the victim, so the whole mission is to not give your power away and to make a change within yourself and reach a space of acceptance, so that an external factor can’t take that away from you. Implementing this however is quite hard. It’s more about learning form a situation instead of being upset about it.

What are three pieces of advice you could give to other women who are on a self-growth journey?

First off, it starts with acceptance – with accepting yourself exactly as you are. We often want others to accept us and we crave their praise, that’s often when we feel validated. We only see our flaws and judge ourselves for the smallest things. So, learn to become your own best friend.

Second is something Einstein said. A lot of how we react to life is through our base positioning, and at the very core, we have to think of ways to counter life and situations. That’s one position, and the other is that whatever happens is for my benefit. These perspectives change how we respond to situations. With a negative outlook on life, you begin to waste energy in the worst-case scenario. When you position yourself positively, you’re able to learn from a situation instead.

The third would be that there’s no one path to personal growth or self actualisation. Buddha said that there are 80,000 paths to enlightenment. It’s about doing things you enjoy. Start to explore yourself and your inner world and see what brings you joy. Give yourself the time to grow that little ember of passion you’ve found and nurture it.

Finally, for those of us curious about what’s in store for The Inner Reset programme and your journey, how can we follow your work?

We have a YouTube channel and an Instagram page where we share updates and news about workshops and other upcoming events!

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