Mental health and Motivation

My cousin and lifelong friend, Ben Rekhi, shows a very vulnerable side of himself in a podcast on mental health and motivation. Ben is a Hollywood filmmaker, writer and producer. Filmmaking is a creative endeavor and there are a lot of parallels to a tech startup founder. Startups and Filmmaking are both high stress and hits driven. Both have hints of self-doubt, anxiety, fear of failure, dealing with divas (customers or actors), fundraising, and more. I understand too well the pressures and anxiety associated with leaving a cushy, high paying position in an established company to pursue a passion and be a trailblazer. It can really feel like a lonely place, and that loneliness can harbor anxiety and depression. Ben has been a great role model to both my kids, and in this interview they asked him some really tough questions about mental health, lifestyle, support, and more. I don't think I could have done so well under this pressure. Ben is eloquent and on point. I would encourage you all to watch this podcast

The Interview with Ben Rekhi Dr. Rachna Rekhi, MD, FAAP, DipABLM , Maya (11) and Neal (9) is on Youtube and I would highly recommend you to watch it. And a few takeaways that I got out of this are..

• We are in a mental health crisis. It hits us especially hard in startup culture where the pressure is high and its lonely on the top.
• Mental health discussions are getting increasingly prevalent in various professional and personal development forums. The stigma is slowly melting away.
• Motivation is a key factor in maintaining mental health and overall well-being.
• There are resources available, but the first step is recognizing when things aren't working for us anymore so that we can move us to address it.
• There are many ways to address mental health. Lean on whatever is available to you.
• Health and wellness topics are important for maintaining a balanced lifestyle.
• There are 6 pillars of a healthy lifestyle, and they are all interconnected. Starting out by focusing on one pillar can influence the others and lead to a path of physical and mental wellness. Please watch the full video as it highlights the 6 pillars of healthy lifestyle.

This topic doesn't get talked about as much in startups because we are supposed to know everything, be strong for everyone, be a general, and have no doubts. It takes a strong person to acknowledge and seek help. If you don't take care of yourself you won't be able to scale your startup. If you don't focus on your health, everything else will suffer.

Ben Rekhi Anand Chandrasekaran Bipul Sinha Malhar Patil Bhavish Aggarwal Christopher Fong Sara Zare Kirthiga Reddy Ashish Kashyap Shourya Agarwal Shikhin Garg Raju Reddy BV Jagadeesh Kanwal Rekhi John Dougery Vinay Goel Deep Nishar Alok Kejriwal Surojit Chatterjee Navneet Loiwal Navneet Singh Chris Loughlin Kathleen Irvin Rob Wilkins Maura O'Neill Dipty Desai, Ph.D. Shaheen Khosla Sukhinder Singh Cassidy Shruti Gandhi Kamo Asatryan DJ Patil Dheeraj Pandey Elad Gil Elizabeth Yin Jeff Dean Vibhu Mittal Lalit Sarna Lalitesh Katragadda Alok Goel vidya madhavan Zal Bilimoria Swapnil S. Snehal Shinde Sridhar Ramaswamy Rachna Khosla Keith Rabois Martin Migoya MR Rangaswami Nikesh Arora Oded Hermoni Orkut Buyukkokten Prashant F.