Pick something you would do for free, and then find a way to monetise it!

This mantra has been one of the most important inspirations for me in deciding to train as a wellness coach. It's been 3 months since I was invited to join the Good life community, a Fitness and wellness community run by one of my childhood friends.

The main goal of the community is to help people in need of a lifestyle change make certain atomic changes to their mundane routines to ensure their life is worth living.

Most of the diseases we come across today, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, stress, and depression, can largely be attributed to a difficult and constricted lifestyle. A lifestyle driven by stressful jobs, lack of knowledge on the role of nutrition and nutritional medicine and the role of exercising regularly.  While I had recently joined the Good Life community, I had briefly read up about the fact that India has become the diabetes capital of the world. Further delving deep into this narrative will draw a picture which  shows you that it's indeed the southern states in India such as Kerala and Goa which are leading  the charts for such chronic diseases.

You can only imagine the added burden on the persons with disabilities (PWDs) who are further debilitated due to issues of mobility, accessibility, and general awareness of culinary habits in these parts of our country. In one of my previous blog I mentioned about the former professional athlete, Javeno Mclean from Manchester in the United Kingdom. Mclean had opened a specially designed gym, “J7'' , a fitness center for the persons suffering from dementia and disabilities. Access to this gym is exclusively ƒor the PWD’s and has no gym fees.

But what if the PWD’s took on the initiative of becoming wellness coaches themselves?

What kind of prospects are we looking at-

The first thing that struck me when I joined the Good Life Community was that  my coach never asked me for a CV, he never even asked me how much I knew about nutrition or how much knowledge I had about sales and marketing.

All he asked me was, What was my wellness goal, and was there a deeper reason for it?

Finding out my “Why?”

All that I told him was that I was getting worried about the excessive weight I had put on in my stint in Delhi while pursuing my masters in political science at Delhi University due to erratic timelines.

Another deeper reason was to help my mom regain her health and wellness due to her hectic work-life balance, disrupted by the longevity of travel on Mumbai local trains. Traveling 90 minutes one way daily on foot amidst the crowded trains, barely being able to enter them and stand upright, was beginning to take a toll on her wellness. She often told me she wanted to live as long as her mother, which was close to 77 years. 

But her job and travel would sap the life out of her after she would reach home  at around 7:30 in the evenings, barely allowing her any free and fresh time for herself. In my capacity as her son/wellness coach, I began to alter her desire of wanting to live for as long as her mother into how she would rather have lived for as long as her mother.  Would she want to hobble her way there to that age, or would she rather try to make certain atomic shifts to improve the quality of her life?

That's where my journey as her wellness coach began.

All through this journey, not more than 3 or 4 members of the community knew about my low vision and, in fact, the way we operate with the given support system Persons with low vision and hearing impairments can surely find their way through, make a difference in the lives of their near and dear ones, and gradually find a way to make a living through it.

Author of this article:

Joshua Lobo is a research scholar in the domain of Political science with a Masters Degree from Delhi University. He aspires to be a research enterpreneur in the field of Public Policy, comparative politics and constitutionalism. He is a Person with low vision Disability (90% blindness RodCone distrophe) and is currently an Intern.

He writes about finding inclusive and enabling policy solutions for the marginalized sections of society.

Stay tuned to discover what happened next and what happened after I found out my why and what happened when my coach showed me the How!