Holding Aspirational Goals Lightly | Kunal Gupta

08/23/23 • 45 min

Kunal Gupta is a master of non-attachment in a busy world. The serial entrepreneur who founded and led one of Canada's top digital advertising companies manages to maintain a monk-like detachment from his results.

But he wasn’t always this way.

Like many tech innovators, Gupta pushed hard to reach the career milestones he’d set out to achieve. Eventually, he had the job, the apartment, and the social life he’d always wanted, but something was still missing.

“I didn’t feel that sense of satisfaction, that sense of success that I was expecting to feel,” he says.

That’s when he began to reexamine his inner compass. He changed jobs and left downtown Toronto for Portugal, where he now starts his business meetings with a meditation practice. Though he still works in the tech sphere, Gupta has reframed the experiences he sees as successful.

So, what are the metrics Gupta is using now to evaluate his success?

In this episode, we'll speak about:

• Why Gupta felt lost when he reached his own pinnacle of personal and professional achievement and how he discovered a new version of success

• The metrics Gupta now uses to evaluate his own success (these are good!)

• How personal awareness helps him make the right choices in daily life... and how we can each increase our own awareness

• What quality is most important to Gupta today and how he is accessing it for himself

***Gupta also leads us through a brief meditation at the start of the episode

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CREDITS
The song in this podcast is called Night Drive, by the amazing Singer-Songwriter Caroline Marie Brooks, part of the beloved Canadian music trio Good Lovelies.
Photo for the podcast cover art by Jennifer Squires.
Editing by Katie Jensen of Vocal Fry.

But he wasn’t always this way.

“I didn’t feel that sense of satisfaction, that sense of success that I was expecting to feel,” he says.

So, what are the metrics Gupta is using now to evaluate his success?

In this episode, we'll speak about:

• Why Gupta felt lost when he reached his own pinnacle of personal and professional achievement and how he discovered a new version of success

• The metrics Gupta now uses to evaluate his own success (these are good!)

• How personal awareness helps him make the right choices in daily life... and how we can each increase our own awareness

• What quality is most important to Gupta today and how he is accessing it for himself

***Gupta also leads us through a brief meditation at the start of the episode

Previous Episode

Embodying Our Most Authentic Self | Caroline Marie Brooks

Caroline Marie Brooks is a Juno Award-winning singer-songwriter. Her livelihood depends on her ability to navigate an industry that measures artistic success in hard numbers—album streams, social media likes, concert tickets. Those same external indicators can also become a preoccupation and disable the artist's spirit.

It’s a trap Brooks herself used to fall into, before she began to define her own criteria for success.

“I will no longer open Spotify and say, ‘wow that song got a million streams, that’s a good song.’ I don’t live like that anymore,” she says.

Do you get sucked into the external validation trap? Does your mood change based on how many compliments you receive or how many likes you get after posting on social media?

Brooks reveals key lessons she has learned to keep that desire for external validation in check and focus on more authentic benchmarks for success. She also discusses how motherhood has shaped her vision of ambition, and shares tips for those who struggle with journaling—a practice she swears by.

In this episode, Caroline Marie Brooks shares:

• How she learned to truly be herself and why authenticity is so important in her career

• When discomfort can be a good thing, and how to tell the difference between good gut feelings and bad gut feelings

• Why she needs to spend time away

• The importance of being financially responsible as a creative/entrepreneur

• The key practices that helps her stay centred and connected with herself

Next Episode

Freedom From the Shoulds | Amanda Munday

Amanda Munday is finally free. For much of her adult life, the bestselling author, advocate for universal childcare and regular contributor to major media outlets, such as Forbes and The Globe and Mail, was living a lie.

Her life as CEO of a child-friendly coworking space and parent to two young kids in a heteronormative marriage was a constant cycle of stress, despair and burnout. “This hustle and ‘grit and bear it’ for the sake of some big goal—it ate away at me,” she says.

Then, it all unravelled. Munday separated from her husband, came out as queer, and closed her brick and mortar business due to the pandemic. Now, she’s redefining success in a way that is closer to her truth.

So, how did Munday’s transformation happen? What do freedom and success look like for her today?

In this episode, Munday shares:

• How chasing the “shoulds” from her traditional upbringing led to a nervous breakdown

• The radical path she is on to live in alignment with her truth

• Why our mainstream definition of success is unsustainable and needs to evolve

• What needs to shift in our economy and society for success to feel more sustainable—and how the next generation of young workers will lead that charge

• Her personal antidote to burnout and how she prioritizes it above all else