FOOD
“Food is a passion. Food is love” - Hector Elizondo
Food is the world’s common ground centre. Regardless of race, ethnicity, and culture, food brings people together and provides an opportunity to connect with people. Working as a team allows for a sense of belonging to form and develop skills and turn a weakness into strengths. Food creates reasons to take chances and make new supportive families with common interests and goals.
Every day, food plays a huge role in our lives and is affecting us immensely. Food provides our bodies with energy for activity, growth, and all the functions of the body. We need a wide variety of different foods to provide the right amounts of nutrients for good health.
Food is Love. Offering others food to show them that we care is an essential social skill to learn. Food is a versatile gift that everyone can accept, understand and appreciate. When people are gathering, food welcomes and puts people at ease. Because we break all language barriers, it doesn’t matter where you are, and if there are food and music, there is an opportunity for connection and understanding.
Origin of Rajita’s passion for food
Rajita, while moving to England, she was inspired by a professional stewardess on the flight. Rajita committed to self, living a healthier lifestyle. The day she landed in London, she started living by her commitment. She quickly realized eating healthy food was the best decision she could make. At the same time, she got a job in the food industry as a customer service assistant. She learned French cuisine from chefs who worked with her, and within six months, she was promoted to chef.
When Rajita moved to Kingston, ON, Canada, she enrolled in a Culinary management course at St Lawrence College. In this course, Rajita was inspired by her Professors by seeing their passion for food and their creativity. Rajita never knew that food could have so much depth within it. Because of this, Rajita became more interested in food creation and presentation.
Rajita’s passion for food developed when she started working with a drug addiction rehabilitation centre. She created food-orientated presentations in this setting, which allowed Rajita to be creative and present her style. When serving clients, seeing her clients’ smiles ensured camaraderie and friendship is felt by all during every meal. Being appreciated by clients and staff empowered Rajita to continue connecting with people through her food and love.
Rajita Passion for food expanded to a new level by volunteering extensively in the Kingston community, teaching cooking classes to children, students, and adults. Her eighteen years of global experience working in the hospitality industry provides Rajita a solid foundation. She has learned to be mindful, embrace creativity, and push for mastery by working in the food industry.
DANCE
“Dance is the hidden language of the soul of the body”
Dancing is a great way to stay fit for people of all ages, shapes, sizes. It has a wide range of benefits, including improving your heart and lungs’ condition and increasing your muscular strength, endurance, and motor fitness, raising the heart rate, which causes the release of feel-good endorphins into the bloodstream. It also helps to reduce stress.
Dance provides an opportunity for everyone to feel and empowered. Dance brings people together. Our world is full of diversities, but the language of dance is universal, and our body is the tool that unifies all people from all walks of life because we are sharing a common form of art. “The love of dance”.
Origin of Rajita’s passion for dance
At the age of 32, Rajita attended Bollywood dance classes in England. She instantly liked dance because the intensity perfectly matched Rajita’s high-energy needs while dancing. During her journey to become healthy, Rajita went through different experiments with her diet and her workout habits. She experienced tremendous weight loss, 20 pounds exactly within six months by dancing.
Thus, Rajita took this knowledge when she moved to the USA and procured a great opportunity. This new opportunity gave Rajita a chance to give a presentation the incorporated an interactive and experiential dance workshop on the health benefits of dance to groups of doctors and staff members at the Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Jersey. As a result, Rajita received an Honorarium award from the hospital.
In 2014 Rajita started to work as a Chef at a drug addiction rehabilitation centre, in Kingston Ontario, Canada. In this role, Rajita started playing Bollywood music while cooking her food in the kitchen. Clients who were assigned to work with Rajita in the kitchen like the music, and slowly Rajita began to teach them Bollywood dance steps, fostering a love of dance.
To inspire and motivate participation, Rajita had to show genuine joy within the dance. This joy evolved into a commitment to teaching dance to others. Rajita began to feel very happy when she saw her challenged clients having fun and smiling by dancing out of their comfort zone. Clients continuously began to ask Rajita to teach dance classes regularly because they felt dance is the best therapy and stress relief for them. She took the encouragement of her clients and staff, and she became a fitness instructor. She started teaching dance at YMCA. She got many opportunities to conduct dance workshops at St. Lawrence College, Queens University, Loyola College, Secondary schools, rehab centers, after-school programs, and various organizations in the Kingston community.
As a result, Rajita’s Joy was infectious to her participants, and they began to dance. Rajita continued to share her passion and empower her audience to feel like getting up and leaving the comfort zone starting to dance.
MOTIVATE
“In life you need either inspiration or desperation” - Tony Robbins
Motivation is a concept easily defined by an equal contribution of hope and optimism within an individual. It is described further as a general willingness to do something and take action. The level of hope and optimism will fuel a person’s personal motivation to any pursuit of life. She was incorporating lived experience examples while speaking helps to inspire those who may or may not relate. To be empowered as a facilitator, Rajita applies different learning and communication styles to motivate them through her speech, food, and dance.
In life, we are tested with different situations that test our limits and put us in an uncomfortable position. Either we can rise to the occasion or stay the same. When we are motivated in life, it is easier to bear the inconvenience of action than the pain of remaining the same. Instead of complacency, humans should try to better themselves every day instead of regressing. Rajita knows that “our choices and decisions shape our destiny” for better or for worse. In general, why comes in two flavors, inspiration or desperation. Humans tend to react instead of an act at the moment (desperation), or humans will act following their goals and push through to better themselves falling in line with vision and values(inspiration).
Rajita wants to make a difference in the world by acknowledging those two facts, which will benefit others.
Origin of Rajita’s passion for Motivational speaking
Rajita found her true calling by attending a Tony Robbins motivational seminar in the UK. Something spoke inside her to become a motivational speaker. Rajita believed one day, she will be able to inspire and empower people from all walks of life. Ever since Rajita has learned to trust her intuition, she has been making life-changing decisions because of the belief in her goals, dreams, and visions for her future.
During the past sixteen years working in four different countries (India, UK, USA, Canada), Rajita led her life by instinct and listening to the inner voice. That inner voice was passion. This passion led her to the right place at the right time. Food, dance, and motivation talks are Rajita’s honest passions.
Rajita says that nothing is going to stop you from reaching your goal. It will start with motivation, and motivation starts with passion. Rajita is passionate about inspiring and guiding people to discover their greatness and recognize the excellence in others. Whatever the challenges we face, Rajita shows audiences that when we discover our true potential and ignite enthusiasm for what we do, we will bring growth to self, workplaces, and community.
