Whenever mental health comes into discussion, Rahul Maharaj’s name stands out among most of the people working to create an enabling environment for every soul on earth. He doesn’t use scientific or experimental research-based methods as most. Nonetheless, his contribution involves finding a unique way to empathize with people suffering from internal pain and heal them.
However, he didn’t learn it out of nowhere. The services Rahul is rendering for mental health nowadays are what he wished he had in his childhood. That is what makes him the most suitable person for the job; he knows how it feels when self-inflicted isolation is triggered by unpleasant events. He is fully aware of how depression gnaws at your ability to think straight., like stabbing someone right in the chest and twisting the knife all the way to the brain – that’s the pain he didn’t want anyone else to feel.
While in Trinidad and Tobago, he was a child who was often abused by his stepfather and bullied by other people. From childhood to his teenage years, his life amounted to incessant miseries. If the abuse and bullying weren’t enough, poverty filled the rest of the gaps in making life a living hell for him. After his parents’ divorce and falling into the hands of an abusive father, Rahul moved in with his grandparents who then catered to his needs and raised him to be a curious and ambitious individual with big dreams.
His ultimate dream was to move to the US. That dream finally came to fruition in the year 2000, just two years after his graduation. A new place, a different society, and the American culture lured him off the technology track and got him into a construction company where he worked for 11 years straight. After that, he switched to financial services and worked as a financial advisor where he learned almost everything about business wheeling and dealing.
However, things got tight for Rahul when one of the tenants refused to pay him for 10 months and he had to switch to a daycare business in 2014. The business didn’t bear fruitful results, leaving Rahul with another depressing phase of his life.
“I have no hesitation to say it that I was suicidal at the time. Things were really tightening and I saw no way out. But then, I learned one of the most important lessons in my life: patience is the key to a successful business career,” shares Rahul. After three years, Rahul saw his daycare business gathering immense success.
Now, Rahul has established himself as a renowned mental health speaker with a show of his own named Your Life Experiences With Rah where he invites people who have fought depression and anxiety in their lives and achieved all of their primary goals despite such adverse situations. The show is still alive and kicking and is considered a source of inspiration for many worldwide.
Rahul may not have spent ages in a lab, conducting scientific research to solve a question pertaining to mental health, but he, for sure, has been successful in creating an enabling environment where people can come and vent their unexpressed feelings, even if it’s just on a show.
