Reaching this milestone episode made me contemplate deeply about the things that have kept me going with the show. Embracing “Idam na mama”, a Sanskrit mantra that means “this is not mine”, sums up all the different mindset shifts that have occurred to keep me podcasting until now.

Thank you for being on this journey with me so far. I’m deeply grateful to you for listening. I hope this episode helps you keep creating beautiful, meaningful, uplifting content in the world.

Listen on the embedded player below, or on your preferred podcast player. If reading is your jam, then scroll down for the transcript. Enjoy! 🙂

“When you’re not worried about validation, when you’re not worried about the outcome, when you’re being humble, when you’re not feeling attached to the results, then you aren’t worrying about where this is leading. You just put in the work.”

Susmitha Veganosaurus – The Feel Good Factor Podcast

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Transcript: Shifting your mindset for work and creativity with the “Idam na mama” mantra

(gently edited for a better reading experience)

Hi, you’re listening to episode one hundred of The Feel Good Factor podcast! Yay!

This is a cause for celebration, of course. But when I was thinking of what I should be talking about in today’s episode, I realised that there are so many important things that have led to this episode. And I feel like, even though I need to celebrate it and feel joyful for it, and of course be extremely grateful about it, I also need to acknowledge these factors that have made me arrive at this point.

What I’ve heard a lot of veteran podcasters say is that until you reach the 100th episode mark, you need to consider yourself a newbie podcaster. In general, a lot of new podcasts are started by people with a lot of enthusiasm and passion and stuff. I mean, we have all these ideas, so we want to share it with the world and we just start podcasting.

But very, very few of them actually keep going, because it’s a lot of hard work, and it does take a lot of commitment. A lot more than we expect when we start off (like most things).

It’s comparatively a very small percentage of people who actually keep going after maybe twenty or thirty episodes, a lot of podcasts dwindle away

I do follow a lot of veteran podcasters. People who’ve been doing this for many, many years, from before podcasting became a thing even. And of course, they were the inspiration for me to start my own show.

When I see what they’ve accomplished, how far they’ve gotten, and how well they continue to grow, my hundred episodes is nothing. It’s a tiny little baby step. That’s all it is in the podcasting journey.

But it feels huge to me! It feels like “wow”, you know, “I’ve come this far”. And this has also proved to me that, yeah, if I’ve come this far, that means I’m likely here for the long haul. I’m going to keep going with my podcasting journey even though in the middle I thought I was giving up.

I “Podfaded” for a while and I thought, “oh it’s over”. But no, it’s not. I’ve come this far, and I definitely will keep going. What I have learned is the first 100th episode mark, when you cross that, it’s like you’ve taken a big step

Yeah, it’s a baby step, but it’s also a big step forward, because I’ve crossed that boundary from a two digit episode into a three digit one.

And yeah, like I was saying, you know it’s a great cause for celebration and gratitude. But more than the celebration, these past few days, I’ve been contemplating a lot on what it is that made me come this far.

Why is it that I’ve been able to reach this mark, do this for all these years, publish all these episodes?

Even though there are so many other things that I have started and I’ve kind of moved away from them over the years, what is it that has kept me going with the podcast?

There’s a well-known mantra in Sanskrit, it goes “Idam na mama”. “Idam na mama” translates literally to “this is not mine”. It’s been used since ancient times by a lot of sages after conducting a big ceremony, especially “yagyas” (fire ceremonies), and large “poojas” which take days together to go on.

After conducting all of it, at the end, the sage, the priest, whoever has done it, has conducted it, ends with this mantra saying, “Idom na mama”.

So what is the significance of “Idam na nama”?

It’s three simple words that are very powerful. They’re a sign of surrendering, a sign of letting your ego dissolve, letting go of doership and allowing yourself to just be. And this particular mindset doesn’t have to be restricted to any kind of religious ritual. It’s something that we can use in every part of our lives.

Whenever we do any kind of work, whether it’s a small project, or a big one, it’s a business that we’ve built, or just this one little blog post that we published, one dish that we’ve cooked, whatever it is we do, at the end, when we say “Idam na mama” and surrender it, it gives you a huge sense of relief.

It means that, “I am not the doer. I didn’t do it. This is not mine. I’m just a channel, I’m a conduit, and there is a higher energy at play here”

And it doesn’t matter whether you’re religious your spiritual, what you believe in what you don’t, all you have to know is that there is something here that is bigger than you.

There is something bigger than the “I” that we all associate ourselves with. It’s that big energy which is working through you. You’re allowing this energy to flow through you, you’re surrendering yourself to it.

And whatever work that you do, whatever things that you’ve managed to achieve, it’s not you who’s done it. It’s this higher energy – the divine, the universe, the cosmic force, whatever you’d like to call it. It’s this energy that has worked through you.

Therefore, first of all, there is no attachment because, “this is not mine”. You don’t have to hold on to it. You don’t have to control it, right?

The second thing is…

You don’t have to have any expectations of an outcome, a specific outcome

So when you do something, you don’t think, “okay, I now expect this particular thing to get this particular result,” because, “this is not mine. I’ve done my job, I’ve done my duty to the best of my abilities, I’ve surrendered and gone with the flow. Now beyond this. This is not mine, Idam na mama”.

There is also the aspect of humility. Instead of thinking, “I did this. I achieved it. I’m so great”… I mean, come on, we all go through this, right? We all have this sense of a pride in our own work. That’s okay. It’s natural, this does happen to all of us. But we do need to learn a sense of humility, because…

Humility makes us realise that there are greater forces at play, it’s not you who’s doing things

And when you’re humble, you don’t think that you know everything. You actually become more open to learning, to seeing the world in different ways, to exploring, and playing, or going out of your normal way of thinking. All of it you can break free from when you embrace humility.

When you’re humble you say, “this beautiful work has been birthed through me. But I am not the one who created it. I let it get created through me. I surrendered, and I allowed it to be created through me.”

“And I’m grateful that this universe, this higher energy, chose me as the conduit for this. I’m also grateful to myself for knowing that I can be a conduit, and allowing this energy to flow through me.” These are all beautiful, empowering feelings that you have. These are feelings of love and joy.

Another thing that we all expect, and it’s been there for ages I suppose through all of human history, except that it’s gotten way worse in our current social media age of likes and followers and all those vanity metrics…

When we say “Idam na mama”, and surrender whatever work we’ve done, we don’t look for validation

Or even if we have the natural tendency to go back to looking for validation, we don’t give it as much value as we would give it before. And that’s very, very freeing because when you don’t look for validation, then it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if two people comment on your post, or if you have some five listens on your podcast episode. None of that matters.

What matters is that this work got created, and it’s out there in the world. And what people say or don’t say is not what gives it its value. Its value is it being created at all in the first place, it existing at all in the first place. Its value is in the joy and fulfilment, and upliftment, and feeling of flow that it has given you while you were creating it.

Whether it’s a post that you were writing, a photograph that you’ve clicked, a meal that you’ve made, you have already got the value out of it, before you surrendered it and put it out into the world.

And the most important thing of all is that you learn to play the long game

Every time you do something and you say “Idam na mama” and let it go, “this is not mine”, what you’re doing is, you’re building a foundation for something bigger. You may not even know what it is that you’re a part of, but you’re building this foundation.

When you’re not worried about validation, when you’re not worried about the outcome, when you’re being humble, when you’re not feeling attached to the results, then you aren’t worrying about where this is leading. You just put in the work.

And you don’t go all over the place, especially because when you’re looking at outside results, outcomes, validations, when you’re always constantly looking at that, then you don’t always stick to your path. You go here there.

“Oh, this is popular right now. This is trending right now. This is what the algorithm is supporting on Instagram. And this is what I do.” You aren’t being always true to yourself because you feel like you’re forced to do things a certain way, or focus on certain things. Talk about certain topics because it’s popular, because that’s what the people are asking for, because that is what’s getting you the most likes.

Being free from it means you stick to whatever it is you’re doing. You stick to your path, and then you keep going at it, chugging along, going forward.

You keep doing your work

In my case with this podcast, one episode after another, just keep going at it. It doesn’t matter if there are spikes or drops in the number of listens. It doesn’t matter if… As much as I love I love getting DMs, and emails, and messages from all of you, if you haven’t written to me or haven’t reached out to me about a certain episode in a long time, it’s okay.

Because the bigger reason for doing it is to keep doing, it is to keep building this foundation and growing on this path. The lack of engagement, the lack of validation, the lack of any certain outcome doesn’t stop me from continuing on.

You’re not dependent and that comes from this feeling, this deep feeling of surrender, “Idam na nama, this is not mine”

Every time there’s a creative flow, there’s a message, there’s this thought that comes into me, I just sit down and get to work. I’m doing my duty, and beyond that, whatever happens, you know, it’s up to you, the Great Creator, the energy that’s flowing through me, the bigger cosmic force.

It’s up to that where things need to go, what direction things will lead. And it keeps you flexible, because you feel this nudge to shift things move a certain way from the inside. You know, from your inner higher self, not from the outside. And then you shift and flow very easily, very flexible, because you felt the call to do so.

The most beautiful part is that the more you surrender, the more you let go, the right kind of messages, the right kind of connections develop on their own

There were times in the initial years of my podcasting journey where, obviously I started with so much of enthusiasm. And I wanted the whole world to listen to my podcast! I would just keep promoting it everywhere, telling everybody about it.

This is a podcaster thing, it’s also vegan thing. It’s like the vegan joke where they say, “How do you know someone’s vegan? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.” It’s a cliche. It doesn’t always happen, but it’s a it’s a cliche for a reason. It’s the same thing with podcasters. “How do you know someone’s a podcaster? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.” laughs

So I would tell every person who would ask me what I was doing with my life. I would tell them about my podcast. I would promote it everywhere. And of course in the initial stage, for the first twenty-thirty episodes, there was a lot of enthusiasm.

People were responding, people were telling me, “oh, this is great! I connected with this specific message, and this is how it applied to my life”, and all these things. And it was so great to keep going with that.

But at some point of time it does dwindle, you don’t keep getting the messages. You don’t keep getting the enthusiastic response from people that you do at the beginning. That always happens with anything new, right? Anything new, the novelty attracts all of us. And then after a point of time, we’re not as attracted to it as we used to be.

So there are fewer people who end up being long term listeners compared to the number of people you started off with

There were times when I felt like, “is there even a point of doing this? Why am I even recording and posting episodes? Who’s even listening? Nobody’s saying anything.” And just when I’d feel that way, I’d get a message from somebody! You know, the universe would take care of it.

The Universal would ensure I got a message from somebody. Somebody would remember some old podcast episode, not even the most recent one. They’d be like, “I listened to this again after so many days. Oh my god, you know, it really resonated with me. This is how it made an impact in my life.” And then all my doubts would get washed away!

I’m like, “no, there’s nothing like I have to keep creating only new content and the old one is forgotten after all this work, blah, blah, blah.” All these doubts kept getting washed away.

Of course, as I learned about the mantra of surrender, of saying, “this is not mine”, and letting it go, as I kept doing that more and more, I didn’t feel the need for these messages from the universe. I just kept going anyway. Whether I got the messages or not I kept going anyway. But it’s a lot of fun when that happens, right? It’s a lot of fun.

The universe is always taking care of you

You need it, and you’re meant to be on this path, then you will find signs. Not you’ll find… it will come to you! The sign will come to you again and again. Signs will come to you to show you that, “you know what, keep doing this. Just because you aren’t getting immediate results, or you can’t see where this is leading, you can’t see the big picture, doesn’t mean that it isn’t significant, the work that you’re doing. So just keep going at it. Keep doing it. Don’t be disheartened.” And it’s so it’s beautiful when you know that the universe is supporting you.

Julia Cameron has written this book called The Artist’s Way. And in that there’s this one affirmation… I mean, she’s shared a lot of affirmations, but this one particular affirmation, it really meant a lot to me. It goes…

“The Great Creator has gifted me with creativity, my gift back is to use it”

Isn’t that beautiful? When you have these ideas, when you have these skills, these talents, these things that have been gifted to you… You know, which you have the innate attraction to, these innate abilities, use them. Whatever they are, it is your duty to use them. Who are you not to use them?

The reason you got this… Whether you were born with it, or you picked them up. You know, you’ve had all the privileges, or the support system, or things have fallen into place in such a way that you’ve managed to pick up these talents, and skills, and these creative ways of thinking and doing things.

When all of this has come to you, has been given to you, then it is your duty to keep using them and putting out beauty, and meaning, and joy into the world

Use your talents, skills to light up the world in whatever best way you can. And do it without attachment. And with a lot of humility. Do it with complete surrender. Then just release it out into the world with, “Idam na mama”.

I hope what I’ve shared meant something to you. And I hope you start your own thing too, or you continue to do whatever it is you’re doing. If it’s something positive, meaningful, joyful, something that is going to add to the good energy in the world, you know, make people feel better in some way, help somebody, something conscious, if you’re doing something like that, keep going at it.

It doesn’t matter what kind of validation you may or may not get from outside. It doesn’t matter if you can’t yet see where this is leading, keep building that strong foundation. Keep chugging at it. And yeah, it pays off. It means something. It is significant.

And thank you for creating whatever it is you’re creating to make the world a better place

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Transcribed using Otter