How do you figure out what you are grateful for? “Simple. Keep a gratitude planner,” smiles Sneha Murali, co-founder of an e-commerce startup The Positive Store (@thepositivestore on Instagram), which designs planners and journals. She shares the story of how a consultant who works with one of the big firms in Bengaluru had to just flip through the pages of his journal and read his own notes — ‘My parents are alive, I have a job, I get my essentials ’ — to keep him going through the pandemic.
“He was looking for a change of job and his ultimate goal was to move to the US. Now, he is all set to pack his bags to the UK in another two months. The 90-day planner where one makes note of things one is grateful for, set goals, and a to-do list helps focus the energies and it can work wonders,” declares Sneha.
Planners and journals designed by the team
Staying positive is a choice and may lead to miracles, is the dictum that drives Sneha and her teammates — Manoj Chenthamarakshan and Indrani Ravi — who jointly run the start-up from Coimbatore. They are a team of neuro-linguistic experts (trained in the NLP programme certified by the International Coaching Federation) and positive psychologists whose planners and journals have impacted 35,000 people in the last three years. While a chunk of the products go to Mumbai, followed by Bengaluru, Delhi and Chennai, they have now started international shipments to the US and Dubai.
Manoj, a Computer Science graduate, says it was his own journey of self-discovery that led him to start the initiative. “While on a 15-day trip to Uttarkhand and Shimla, I met people from varied professions. There was an IT guy whose actual passion was astronomy. He organised a star gazing session for us which was fascinating. There was another person whose goal was to up his bank account savings to ₹1 crore. It set me thinking and that is how I stumbled upon NLP.”
Sneha, who worked with finance and accounting at E&Y in Bengaluru, was working on a (yet to be be published) book titled Millennial Mistakes when “COVID-19 happened and here I am running an e-commerce start up.” The third member, Indrani Ravi, now the creative head, has a degree in travel and tourism. “This was an opportunity to showcase my skills and learn planning in a better way,” she adds.
“When was the last time we implemented takeaways from self-help books and stuck to our habits?” asks Sneha and adds, “I got tired of being guilty, and the adrenaline rush from motivational videos didn’t last. We came up with an interactive planner — a spin-off from self help books that actually tracks your routine. The template lets you personalise. You can choose your state of mind as energetic/joyous/calm or write something new. We insist on a 30-day cycle without breaking the chain to make it a habit.”
Colouring posters
From a 90-day gratitude planner, which is a best seller, they have added six new products including yearly planners, journals, colouring posters, and a habit tracker calendar which people in medical profession, especially dieticians, and also those who take up weight-loss programmes, find useful.
Manoj explains what they set out to achieve. “Let’s say there is an IT person who is not passionate about his job but wants to be happy and appreciate beautiful things at work. That is when he needs a planner. It is also about having good health and happy relationships.”
Sneha shares another transformational story, of a 45-year-old lawyer from Chennai who coped with divorce by writing down her goals. “She shared how she became kinder and mindful. The self help expert Brian Tracy, after 40 years of research gave a simple formula, ‘write your goals daily’. By reminding on a daily basis, you move from ‘blame frame’ mode towards an ‘outcome frame’.”
