We’ve Got This

The following is an excerpt from We’ve Got This: Unlocking the Beauty of Belonging, by Ritu Bhasin, available now from Greenleaf Book Group.

CHAPTER ONE

UNLOCKING BELONGING

I’m sitting cross-legged on top of my thin yoga mat in the main hall of the South Indian ashram. My eyes are closed, and my hands are on each knee in gyan mudra. The sun is fully out, but because a breeze is coming through the hall’s open arched windows, the air is warm but tolerable, while the tiled floor is cool. Had I known we’d be sitting on the floor for hours each day, and that my butt would hate it this much, I would’ve paid the extra thirty bucks to bring a thicker mat with me.

We’re meditating. Aside from the sounds of the wind rustling in the trees, the pesky bugs buzzing around, and the guy breathing heavily beside me, there’s mostly silence in the room.

I’m supposed to be going deep within myself by tuning in to my breath. It’s 2009 and I’ve told myself I must unlock inner peace and make myself one with the cosmos before I turn forty, which means I have six and a half years to do this. But, instead, I’m fussing in my mind about the yellow t-shirt and white pants I’m wearing — the uniform I was handed when I checked into the ashram for the four-week yoga teacher training program.

It’s what the other few hundred yogis from around the world who are in the hall with me have on too.

I inhale. “If they expect us to wear this get-up every day, why only give us two sets?”

I exhale. “Why in the hell do they think white pants in a South Indian forest is a good idea?! Find me a woman who’s good to wear white pants for twenty-eight days in a row.”

Focus on your anahata chakra, Ritu.

Take your focus and your breath there.

You’ve got this.

Actually, I don’t. “How am I going to handwash everything for two flipping months?!”

My mind floats to my Mom making ten-year-old me handwash the lacy doily things we use as coasters on the living room coffee table. They’re extremely important because the furniture gods will zap you if you put any item directly on the wood. I’m despising every minute of hanging over the laundry room sink, while my Dad’s voice in the background tells me, in Punjabi, to be gentle. My Bhua Ji (Dad’s sister) made these, and my Dad transported them, with love, from India to Toronto when he first immigrated to the city.

Then I picture the brownish-burgundy pleather suitcases from my childhood.

Then my mind jumps to the expensive backpack I’ve brought with me on this solo adventure. As I think about how smug I felt walking into the ashram with it on, I tell myself the truth: I hate the thing. Its weight feels like it’s going to break my back. And it makes me wonder why so many people enjoy camping, backpacking, portaging…

Come back.

Come back.

Come back to your breath.

Okay, okay. I’m back. I beam the light from my ajna into my anahata, which is what I think I’m supposed to be doing, and take some deep, cleansing breaths. “It’s working, it’s working. I’m finding stillness and peace.”

But then my mind drifts to the thin mat under my butt. “Sometimes I can be so cheap. Why didn’t I just buy the thicker mat?!”

“I’m not cheap!” I remind myself, “I spent four bazillion dollars on the backpack and that purse two months ago.”

Good rebuttal.

Then why are you so worried about money all the time?!

My Dad’s face pops into my head. He’s wearing his favorite bright-red turban and grinning from ear to ear, showing off his perfect teeth, which he credits to the neem tree bark he used to chew on as a child growing up in India. I say hi to him quickly and then push myself to go back to connecting with my inner calm. I decide to use my go-to mantra to help me. “Satnam Waheguru, Satnam Waheguru, Satnam Waheguru.

I somehow manage to shut down the noise inside me for about seven breaths. Then it happens: the question I constantly grapple with in new situations pops into my mind.

“Who am I going to be while I’m here?”

Not this again.

Go back to breathing.

“No, seriously, who am I going to be? How do I fit in? What side do I show everyone?”

Change of plans.

These are good questions.

Let’s stay with them for a bit.

“I could try to charm them with Corporate Ritu. I’ll tell them about how I’ve taken a sabbatical from my law firm job to come here. And then I can slide in some details about the fancy work I do, the executive MBA I have coming up, and how proud my parents are of me…”

(Crickets.)

“Okay, how about I give them my sassy, thick-skinned, in-your-face, Badass Ritu?”

You’re in a yoga ashram.

Really?

“Right. I’ll explain how I’m here to study yoga but not actually become a teacher, and I’ll give them super chill, mellow vibes?”

You?!

As if.

“Party Girl Ritu? Funny Pants Ritu? Sweet, Soft Ritu?”

Hmmm.

“Well, what do I show them then?!”

You know what to do.

“No, I don’t.”

Yes, you do.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. “No, I really don’t.” And with that, the spiraling begins.

The reality is that I feel lost. I’m struggling with how to show up at the ashram because I don’t know who I am anymore. After years of curating my image, I feel so disconnected from myself. And given what I went through as a child, I’m also plagued by intense feelings of unworthiness. Not only do I feel like I don’t belong anywhere, I worry I’m only loved for what I do and not who I am. This is why I’ve created all these Ritu facades. The problem is, they’re not healing my hurt.

And then there’s my fixation with being happy-happy and perfect all the time. And with always wanting to achieve. I suppose this should be expected since I feel like both a success and a failure, especially in my parents’ eyes. I don’t know which one is more accurate, but it’s like I’m trapped in a cage.

And with all the hateful messages that’ve come my way, I’m so confused about my cultural identities. Am I Canadian? Punjabi? Indian? South Asian? Sikh? A Brown girl? A citizen of the world? “Who the hell am I?!” loops nonstop in my head.

And it’s not just that I don’t know who I am or feel like I don’t belong anywhere, I can’t stand the life I’ve created for myself. As I sit here on the ashram floor, I can’t help but think about how much I hate my job, my main friend crew, and the grip my parents have on me. Plus, I feel so ashamed about being in my early thirties with no boyfriend prospects in sight, fully aware of my plummeting value on the Indian bride market — not that I’ve dated a Brown guy since I was fifteen anyway.

This is so much.

Too much.

And I find it perplexing that I both loved the book Eat, Pray, Love and instantly feel enraged when people immediately exclaim, “Like Eat, Pray, Love?” when I tell them I’m going back to my motherland to study an ancient way of life from my culture. I also worry the other yogis will think I’m an angry, radical activist type if I open up about how sick I am of how oppression — and especially white supremacy and patriarchy, including their intersection — permeates every aspect of our global society, even here in this South Indian ashram where it seems White men are running it. On top of which, the concept of a yoga teacher’s certificate is a colonial construct, which makes me question why, if I know this, I even chose to come here in the first place.

Pause, girl.

I wish I could escape my life.

Really, stop.

Take some deep breaths.

It’s in that precise moment that it dawns on me why they gave us the yellow t-shirt and white pants to wear.

THE PATH TO BELONGING

The path to belonging is beautiful.

The path to belonging is hard.

Both are true.

And it serves us to hold both truths at once.

Because experiencing belonging isn’t a smooth, straight path for many of us; it’s a ride along a winding road that’s filled with highs and lows and peaks and bumps. But once we’ve felt the beauty of belonging, we know how important it is.

Belonging is the profound feeling of being accepted and honored for who you are, especially for what makes you different, by your own self and by the people you choose to be bonded with. It’s about fulfilling your instinctive human need to be affirmed for your authenticity. To belong, first and foremost, you must know, embrace, and be who you are deep inside you. Simply put, you must experience belonging with yourself. This is what will empower you to claim the belonging you deserve with others. They must receive and accept you for your true self.

And here’s another critical point: belonging isn’t a “nice to have,” it’s a “must have” to feel safe, healthy, and joyful. As humans, it’s part of our survival. We long for belonging. We’re wired to crave acceptance in intimate relationships and interactions with others, whether this is with our elders, siblings, relatives, lovers, friends, leaders, teammates, or classmates, and even random strangers. We both need and want to be seen and respected for who we are across all our identities.

But we also want to feel connected to a greater whole. We deeply desire being part of a community or communities. We want union with others that’s rooted in shared purpose, meaning, and respect. But this can never be at the expense of being who we are. Belonging with others only happens when we’re being embraced for our authenticity, particularly our differences.

“Belonging is the profound feeling of being accepted and honored for who you are, especially for what makes you different, by your own self and by the people you choose to be bonded with.”

This is why when you experience belonging, it feels glorious. Your body and mind let you know you’re feeling safe and at ease, so you can relax, melt into the moment, and be yourself. Your soul swells with love, warmth, and gratitude because you’re being seen. You burst with radiant light and you come alive — because belonging is beautiful.

It’s also why the inverse is true: when you feel unwanted, both by your own self and by others, it can feel heartbreaking. Your body will reveal it’s holding fear, hurt, and loneliness. Your spirit will struggle — because being rejected is hard.

In my early thirties, I was just beginning to understand how my bumpy, curvy path to belonging was filling my life with angst. Up until then, given all I’d been through, I was consistently behaving as what I call my “Performing Self ” — which, in my book The Authenticity Principle, I define as the self you show up as when you feel like you don’t have a choice but to conform or hide who you are because otherwise you believe people will reject, hate, or judge you.

Both knowingly and unknowingly, you use your Performing Self as a mask to cloak the pain that lives inside you and to protect you from the hurt that comes from being othered — which is what happens when others treat you poorly or reject you because you don’t behave how they want you to. It’s like life is a giant stage and we’re actors putting out our best theatre: we bury who we actually want to love, we stay in relationships that don’t honor us, we take on jobs we hate, we hold back in giving our opinions, we contort our voices and accents, we dress in ways we don’t want to, and so much more. But the pressure to be someone we’re not hurts our soul. It strikes at our ability to belong and it smothers our spark — the powerful flame of greatness that lives inside all of us.

When I reached the ashram, I thought I needed my Performing Self to shield myself from others’ scrutiny, feel less messed up, and attract love. I was performing across all areas of my life, but the most insidious way was probably my fixation on constantly being positive, perfect, and in achievement mode. If I could keep projecting sunshine, getting a ten out of ten on everything I did, and winning accolades, then maybe I’d finally belong. I learned to act out positivity-perfection-achievement so well that it became a special part of my Performing Self — I might as well have tattooed “PPA” on my chest.

In fact, I’d become so used to “acting” Ritu instead of being Ritu, I didn’t know who I was. And this is why I didn’t know how to take my Performing Self mask off when I first got to the ashram. Stripped of my personas by the yellow t-shirt and white pants, I had no idea which “Ritu” signaled the most positivity-perfection-achievement, who I could then use to gain acceptance.

But that’s not all. As I sat on the ashram floor, reeling from the realization I was struggling to find belonging and joy in life, I was also startled by how hard life was. Up to this point, I thought life was only supposed to be beautiful. I wasn’t expecting unending curves and bumps. No one had ever sat me down and said:

Listen, my beloved Ritu, life is a blessing. But it can also be really tough, especially when you feel you don’t belong. You’ll deal with all kinds of rejection and oppressive garbage. You’ll feel confused about how you were raised. You’ll rail against and resist who you are. You’ll feel like a yo-yo because of how people treat you, and your heart will hurt from often breaking. And, my darling Brown girl born of working-class immigrant Punjabi Sikh parents, there will also be lots of hate. The thing is, life isn’t a magical path of nonstop happiness, nor is happiness a permanent state. Instead, happiness is about experiencing as many moments of joy as possible by finding belonging as your true self. Fear not though, you’re going to develop incredible wisdom that’ll help you to understand and make this happen. Keep working on healing, anchoring to who you are, and focusing on the fiery spark that’s inside you. This’ll lead you to release your greatness into the world. Finally, Sweet, Soft Ritu, your life will also be filled with beautiful belonging. And you’re worthy of it.

This was the “someone should’ve told me” letter I desperately needed from my childhood into my thirties. I got bits and pieces of it over time, but it took a three-month sabbatical from work, going halfway around the world, and donning a uniform to get to a place where I could give myself this message. Being pushed to spend hours, days, and weeks on deeply connecting with myself was the catalyst I needed for transformation. It unlocked a cascade of life-altering lessons and experiences that carried on for years.

And this is what ultimately led me to take off so much of my Performing Self mask and my PPA armor and replace them with what I call core wisdom.

Core wisdom is the knowing you hold within you that helps you to rise above, heal from, and protect against the hurtful things coming your way that strike at your ability to belong. Your core wisdom pushes you to tune in to and care for your body and mind, tend to your wounds, interrupt negative self-talk, become more resilient, connect to who you are, stand in your power, speak your truth, and so much more. This knowing becomes a faithful anchor in your life, which you then rely on for every decision you make going forward. It’s what’ll help you to recognize you’re experiencing belonging and identify how to create more of these moments, including by drawing on the practices I’ll share with you in these pages.

It’s my core wisdom that helped me to finally understand the power of choice — that I can choose to shift my mindset, behavior, and actions to live a better life. My core wisdom has moved me from constantly feeling unlovable to feeling beautiful about my authentic self. My core wisdom has led me to embrace the mix of identities that make up who I am instead of putting myself into a box. It’s guided me to finally let go of most of the pressure to project perma-positivity when I don’t feel that way. It’s pushed me to make a dent in my need to be perfect. And it’s even helped me to chip away at my fixation on achievement.

My core wisdom is carrying me along the up-and-down path of life, and I want it to do the same for you. While it can take a lot of hard work to feel its magic, the core wisdom you’ll develop through the takeaways and practices in this book will help you to live your best life and not just cope during your time on this planet. You don’t need to spend weeks at an ashram or wear anything yellow to heal from the hurtful experiences that come your way. Instead, you can do this anywhere, and the small steps you immediately take to grow your core wisdom will help you experience greater belonging along your life’s journey.

This is what I want for you. And I know you’ve got this.

OUR JOURNEY AHEAD

As the eldest daughter born into a Punjabi immigrant-run household, I was assigned a role that’s automatically given in my culture to those who are blessed to be the first child: the second mom or third parent. Given that I came into this world already very bossy and assertive, I happily took on the esteemed role, much to my sister’s and brother’s horror. I don’t blame them. It’s an obnoxious combo and one that’s repeatedly bitten me in the tail.

Technically, I also got the title “Bhenji,” which basically means respected sister and is mostly used by younger siblings with their elder sisters. I say technically only because, in moving to Canada, my parents wanted to be “modern” immigrants. Much to my disappointment, they said “nope” to using traditional titles within our family, so my sister and brother have never called me Bhenji.

But it doesn’t matter. Because, in my heart, I’m Bhenji to them and to everyone else on this planet and always will be. I was born to be Ritu Bhenji, because all I’ve ever wanted is the opportunity to provide my advice to anyone who might need it. Telling people what to do? I’m on it, and I do it well. Want my feedback? Prepare yourself for a three-hour monologue. Don’t want my feedback? All good, I may give it to you anyway.

It won’t be shocking then to hear me say I’ve designed a career for myself where I get paid to be Ritu Bhenji for a living. I’ve now presented to hundreds of thousands of people around the world, and I’ve coached over a thousand professionals. Through my work, I’ve had a front-row seat to understanding why some people get ahead, why others don’t, what the barriers are, and what to do about it. Given my struggle to belong, these experiences have helped me, but they’ve also offered up lots of thoughts that the Bhenji in me wants to impart. And that is why I wrote this book.

In these pages, I share what I’ve learned about hurting, healing, and belonging, for anyone who’s felt othered but who now wants to come alive, rise, and thrive. For your journey ahead, I’m going to flag important lessons, takeaways, and reflection questions to help you unlock limitless experiences of belonging in your life, even in difficult moments.

• In Hurting, I’ll talk about what causes us to feel unlovable and like we don’t belong, and why it’s important to reflect on what happened to you as a child to better understand why and how you’re showing up now as an adult.
• In Healing, I’ll dig into the incredible power of using core wisdom to release the pain you’re holding, embrace who you are, and become more resilient, so that you become more settled and joyful.
• In Belonging, I’ll take you through how you can tap into your authenticity, stand in your power, use your voice, experience greater acceptance, and live your best.

Much of this work is tough to do. It has been for me. It’s highlighted the hardest relationship to navigate: the one I have with myself. It’s meant exploring the impact of being vilified by others. It’s revealed that facing oppression makes a hard life even harder. Not to mention, it’s taken unyielding commitment, vulnerability, self-compassion, and patience.

Given all of this, I get why some of us don’t want to do this work. But my deep hope is that, because you’re looking to heal and shine, you will do it. I want you to unravel the beliefs you’re holding that lead you to feel like you’re inferior, unworthy, and unlovable, and replace these negative narratives with the truth, which is that you are intelligent, beautiful, remarkable, resilient, competent, accomplished, loving, kind, and creative.

I want you to uncover and unleash the greatness that you already embody and hold within you. I’m about you being you — your best, healthiest, and most anchored you — and radiating that light in all that you do. I want you to step into your power in every moment so that you can feel in your bones you are revolutionary.

This is my hope for you.

When I was young, and in the thick of feeling despair from all the darkness I was experiencing, if you’d asked me if I knew that one day I’d grow up to be a fiery lioness, I would’ve looked at you blankly and then gone back to reading my thesaurus, which I did for fun back then.

If you’d shared with me that, as part of my journey to claim belonging, I’d learn to love myself, my identities, my personality, and my body, I wouldn’t have accepted this as the truth.

If you’d explained to me that after years of feeling ugly, I’d finally start to feel beautiful in my skin, both inside and out, I would’ve rejected that.

If you’d told me that my mere presence is revolutionary given all the barriers that I’ve overcome and continue to be in my way, the significance of this would’ve gone over my head.

But if you’d let me know that when I was older, I’d commit my life to working hard to both heal my pain and bring down hate, I would’ve believed you. Because, somewhere deep down within me, I always knew how I was being treated was wrong. All the loathing, isolation, and disrespect — I knew it was unjust. A tiny spark inside me told me I deserved better. And it also said, “So does everyone else who’s been hurting just like you.”

And this is why belonging matters.

Whether it’s a slower process of growing your core wisdom or a dramatic shift that fundamentally moves you to change the way you’re living, what’s most important is you choose to live life differently so that you can heal. And thrive. And be anchored to your authentic self, feel gorgeous inside and out, build an amazing community of beloveds around you, and, in the end, have more moments of joy. This is what belonging is all about.

And I’m excited and filled with hope about what lies ahead for our growing community. This moment in time can be a massive turning point. We can choose to reframe how we look at our beautiful, wild, difficult, and unpredictable journey to claiming belonging,especially when hurtful stuff continues to come at us.We can choose to re-commit to falling in love with ourselves and to experiencing belonging as much as possible. We can choose to bring this spirit into how we treat others. We can choose to be there for each other when we need it most.

Ultimately, my hope is that my story deeply resonates with you. And I have a feeling it will. I say this because I know in my heart that my story is your story. It’s the human story of desiring belonging.

I’ve got this. You’ve got this. We’ve got this.