About your Coach
Certified Life Coach & Certified CBT practitioner in Hyderabad
About Me
I'm Mehnaz Amjad, a believer by heart, a simpleton to the core, and an ardent nature lover and follower of simplicity in all endeavors.
It was a cold foggy morning in October 1983, when two and a half year toddler entered the Montessori School of Children at Tarapoorwala, & precisely two decades later in Oct 2003, successfully completed her MBA from OU Osmania University.
There were no gaps ever in my entire student life, and everything worked in a perfectly linear path, but the same linear path derailed later, at many junctures in my life, and contributed to my immense personal growth.
Family background
Hailing from a family of academicians, now retired, both my parents were professors in the faculty of arts, & I was the first woman, in my family to pursue management studies and work in a corporate establishment.
Corporate life
If at one end, I was fortunate enough to have worked with the top executive leadership, on the other end, it was a very challenging journey, an experience filled with, dealing with office politics, toxic bosses, favoritism, racism, gender bias, to being laid off twice despite the best performances delivered.
The naive and introverted me, was at the receiving end of numerous battles fought between leaders with me as a pawn used mercilessly in the game of power, and for many years, I stayed caught up, between my need for earning my livelihood and the workplace issues, as I lack any knowhow about finding a way out of the conundrum.
Deeply into a vicious circle of stress and confusion, the trauma of being humiliated in the garb of performance appraisal shook me to the core, but unfortunately, not only I lacked good leaders but a support system that I could seek help from.
Almost ten years into my working life, I never knew a profession called Coaching existed on planet Earth, and that I could have easily saved myself from a lot of pain and agony by having sought the help of a coach, which I eventually did but only after a ten year of toil and hardship.
The number of accolades, medals, certifications and back-to-back promotions I've received in my professional life may contradict my experience of the corporate world, but I credit my work success to my indomitable spirit and my sincere contribution towards every project and role I undertook and gave my best to it.
The turning point
Dec 2013 was the year when I lost my uncle, his untimely demise had a deeply profound effect on my mind, and body already suffering from bouts of extreme anxiety and vertigo, in addition, I was unemployed, in debt, and frantically in search of a job, after a long hiatus, my job search landed me on the beautiful landscape of Scandinavian countries, but as the wise say, appearances are deceptive, so was the role and the job.
An extremely complicated project was delivered successfully despite all odds, but as a result, led me, to, lose my job exactly the day after its successful launch, and the reality is, this is how corporate works!
On a personal front, in a span of seven years, from the year 2015 to 2022, I lost all my uncles and aunts both from the paternal and maternal sides respectively, including my father.
I could not fathom this complicated experience, should I call this phase, a coincidence of several unfortunate events or a grave tragedy? I think I'm still in search of a better explanation and an answer to it.
The constant experience of dealing with death at such close quarters brought in a transformational change in me, especially impacting my mindset.
Amidst the search for meaning in the finality of life, I ended up learning the right way of appreciating life, end of so many stories, and chapters taught me the very meaning of being present, finding joy in little precious moments, and a deep connection with my creator, along with life skills of acceptance, surrender, and submission.
Entrepreneur turned into a caregiver
After having lost my job despite my best performances, I finally, decided to stop wasting my efforts and energy on people and organizations that no longer serve me and bid goodbye to the corporate world, with a firm determination to contribute from the expertise, accumulated through my work experience, and thus established Guide and Advice, in Sept 2017.
While I was still buried deep in the completion of my Life Coaching certification from ICF, my father suffered his first heart attack, due to his poor health he had to quit his job, which left him more depressed, lonely, and completely sick of his own dependent life, as his caregiver, with my coaching business in its nascent stage, I suddenly found myself into a world of extreme overwhelm, hardship with the responsibilities beyond my capacity to bear.
Four years later into the coaching business, my father's demise on 12th May 2021, left me with a legacy of lessons in resilience, a deeper understanding of the human mind, emotions, grief, trauma, and its first-hand experience of dealing with it in the most effective way.
My Clients
In the most challenging phase of life, my clients were my strengths, (& continue to be) they not only enrolled for my coaching but gave me permission and access to the most sacred areas of their lives, allowing me to partake in the transformational journies, which I undertook with so many of them.
In pursuit of excellence and with an intention to add more value to my client's life, I became a serious student studying the human mind, neuroscience, and brain (mental ) health at a professional and very deep level.
A Mysterious connection
Even though I have never seen her, I have an uncanny resemblance to my grandmother in appearance and a few surreal experiences, especially at times I've visited palaces and places of the bygone era, my grandmother holds her lineage from a royal family. I do not believe in rebirth but some part of my genes seems to hold a lot of trauma and unexplained connections of her still alive in me, which keep manifesting in my life on various occasions.
This is another piece I've been trying to find answers to.
Present and counting .....
The power of coaching is quite underestimated, not many are aware that it can empower you in unimaginable ways.
If it can make an introverted, shy, grief-stricken, traumatized, lacking self-awareness, confused, emotionally broken individual like me, overcome the odds of life, find success and my purpose with clarity and direction, and live the life that I always wanted.