Tellwell’s April Author of the Month
Neena Paul, author of LIV: Life In Virtue, shares insights into the inspiration behind her book and its emphasis on reconnecting with oneself. As the founder of ONE LIVE LOVE LIFE, a platform for mental health and wellness, she shares strategies for fostering connections among individuals seeking support. Additionally, she explores practical insights from her book on discovering and living according to one’s purpose, drawing from personal experiences, and a journey of self-discovery.
Embrace a deeper connection with yourself and the world around you.
Whatever I teach today comes more from the practical experience of life that I have had over the past three decades. Trust me, life hasn’t been easy for me. Challenges have been there and what I have learned all along is to look up and look straight into the eyes of the challenge and see what that is teaching me.
Neena Paul
Can you tell us about the inspiration behind your book, LIV: Life In Virtue, and what motivated you to write it?
LIV: Life in Virtue is my second book after the first one, called DIL: Deeply in Love. It is an enhanced effort on my part to help my readers connect with themselves. There is a world outside of us where we live in and there’s a universe inside of us to which we have to connect to. Only if we are connected to ourselves can we be in a position to connect with the outside world. This is what I have been emphasizing all along in my writings.
LIV: Life in Virtue talks of the basics traits called the virtues which are present in every society at any given point of time. They are the core values with which we grow up, whether it is within the community, the family, or the society at large, and it is very important to connect with the basic values and traits of who you were when you were growing up. Over a period of time we forget these, and disconnect from life.
In LIV, I attempt to once again make my readers aware of those virtues and basic values and ethics they were taught when growing up to help them understand who they are and what their purpose is.
Each one is unique, and I am just trying to help my readers find their uniqueness through all my writings.
Your book emphasizes the interconnectedness of all living things. Could you elaborate on how you perceive this interconnectedness and why you believe it’s essential for individuals to understand and embrace it?
The moment we look at the world around us, what we see is a part of our own selves. We are not different from the world, and that is what connectedness means.
The moment as an individual you start looking at yourself as separate from the world—and when I say “the world,” it can be your family members and society in general—you have a disconnect. You are a part of the family as much as you’re a part of society, and this connectedness can be felt if you’re connected within your own self first.
Let’s take the example of plants. I feel that nature and the universe have their own way of giving us examples; there is so much to learn from nature, birds, animals, trees. The whole world, everything around us, is teaching us something; all we need is an eye to see it and a mind to perceive it.
You just put a small seed in the soil and it thrives through the soil breaking its way up for its growth. It grows into a small shrub, which grows into a tree. The tree bears fruit and, come fall, all those leaves fall down once again, going back into the soil from where they came. So life is a circle. Anything that comes to this world has to go back into it, so everything is perishable here; unfortunately, we as human beings consider our lives to be the ultimate, wherein we never feel or fear the fact that it is just a small period of time that we are here on this earth, and there’s so much to do and accomplish while we are here.
Connectedness for me is more the feeling of belonging to the universe as a whole. Like I always say, there is a world outside of us and there’s a universe inside of us. We are a part of the whole, and you are complete by yourself, so that completeness of you gives the feeling of being connected with the world around you. If you’re not complete within you, if that complete being is not there, then it will be very difficult for you to connect with the world outside.
As the founder of ONE LIVE LOVE LIFE, a global platform for mental health and wellness, what specific strategies or initiatives do you employ to facilitate connections among individuals seeking to enhance their lives?
The platform was created by me towards the end of COVID, the time when all individuals felt the need to have someone to talk to, or someone just to be there for them, because everyone across the world was experiencing loss and misery. People didn’t have anyone to talk to, and that was the time the idea came in, because the people I was coaching and giving consulting to were losing their near and dear ones, and every day there was something sad coming up. That is what made me realize that there aren’t individuals that you are connected to—you can talk to somebody you know, and you can share your agony and pain with someone. They can talk to their coach on the platform and share their challenges, and together they are in a position to come to a solution.
There are a lot of success stories, so people are feeling that connection. When they talk, they feel connected to themselves. When they discuss things with me or other coaches on the platform, or talk about strategies and initiatives that we employ to facilitate the connections among individuals, what is most important is to give a feeling of safe space and confidence.
In LIV: Life In Virtue, you explore concepts such as “reason” and “purpose” in life. Can you share some practical insights from your book on how individuals can discover and live according to their purpose?
I talk of reason to purpose in my first book, and I do carry on the concept of understanding the reason to purpose in my second. I emphasize the fact that if there is any challenge or any situation, anything you are feeling at a given point of time in your life, there is a reason you’re feeling that way.
Most of the people in the world actually just settle on the reason, they don’t question it. They continue to stay in that state of misery and become a victim to whatever the situation is. My approach is this: the moment there is something challenging in your life, it is important for you to see the reason it is happening, and this is what has helped me help people change their lives. This ideology of moving from reason to purpose, and coaching people how to analyze it in their own lives, has led to a lot of people telling me that their life has become much better now.
Once they start questioning the situation or the challenge and looking at the purpose, at what it is teaching them, they see there is a reason behind it. Like I said earlier, most of the people get stuck in what is happening.
Life is happening for you, it is not happening to you. That’s the first thing! The moment you look at it from the perspective of what is happening for you, the next question is, what is it teaching you? So there is a purpose behind every episode or every challenge that is coming your way: it is teaching you something.
In your Previous book, you mention a pivotal moment where you experienced a shift in perspective, realizing the emptiness behind fame and social acclaim. Can you delve deeper into how this realization influenced your understanding of love and purpose in life?
I mention the challenges I had in my own life. Apart from being very successful in my career and having all the fame and acclaim, there was a feeling of emptiness inside, because to that point of ultimate success and fame somewhere inside I got disconnected from myself. The moment I realized that was when I decided to pass on the role to someone else and move on, and that moving on was the realization that actually influenced me.
Whatever I teach today comes from the practical experience of life that I have had over the past three decades. Trust me, life hasn’t been easy for me. Challenges have been there, and what I have learned all along is to look straight into the eyes of the challenge and see what it was teaching me. Those were life-changing moments for me.
It was time for me to go out and help those people who were struggling, and that gave me the purpose of my life. I am so grateful to the Lord and the universe that every single day I am putting in the effort to live that purpose of life, helping people globally in whatever situation and whatever capacity I can.
The universe blesses you—the more you give, the more you get, and that feeling is one of fulfillment, It filled the void that I was feeling earlier, even when I had the fame and the acclaim.
Follow Neena on GoodReads, Facebook, and Instagram.
You can also visit the official Live Love Life website.
