Why self-love is a leadership issue, not just a personal one
Pooja Ruprell describes herself as someone who is always looking to create value for self and others in unique ways. It is a deceptively simple statement — and the word order is deliberate. Self first, then others. Not because she is selfish, but because she has spent years observing what happens when that order is reversed.
Pooja Ruprell is available to speak at your corporate event through engage4more. If her philosophy resonates with your team or event brief, browse her profile and check availability on our Pooja Ruprell speaker page.
In 10 years of speaking at corporate events, Pooja has consistently encountered the same pattern in high-achieving professional women: extraordinary capability deployed in service of everyone around them, with very little left over for themselves. The performance is real, the results are genuine, and the cost is invisible until it is not. Burnout, imposter syndrome, the quiet erosion of confidence that comes from perpetually measuring your worth against other people’s standards rather than your own.
Her two books — Love Begins with Me, a Buddhist memoir, and Passion, Perseverance, Prayer — and her television appearances have all returned to the same thesis: the capacity to give, to lead, to create, and to contribute is not diminished by self-love. It is generated by it. You cannot pour from an empty vessel. And the specific discipline of keeping that vessel full is not narcissism — it is the foundational professional skill that most leadership development programs entirely miss.
Below are three principles from Pooja’s work, in her own words, on how to begin building that foundation.
1. The Happy Principle: everyone deserves the red-carpet treatment
A few years ago, I attended a Buddhist meeting at a friend’s place. As I pushed open the door to enter her home, her little dog, Happy, came running to welcome me. He jumped around, getting in my way as I walked towards the others already gathered. As I sat down, Happy looked up at me with the most beautiful, love-filled eyes. His tongue came out, trying to lick me and express the emotion brimming within him. I bent down so he could kiss my cheek, allowing myself to bask in the warmth of his unceasing, unconditional affection.
A few minutes later, another person walked in and off went Happy again. Joyfully jumping about, he repeated his special welcome dance. Every time someone knocked, he was right there to greet them. There was no discrimination. Black, white, brown, tall, short or fat — it did not matter one bit to him. If you walked into his home, you got the red-carpet treatment. ‘You matter to me,’ was his consistent message. What was most amazing about Happy was that even if the people entering his home were clearly not dog lovers, Happy still went ahead and welcomed them. His exuberance was a little restrained if he sensed they did not enjoy his attention, but he did not deviate from his endeavours to spread love. Happy depicted godliness with the sparkle in his eyes and his prancing feet.
I spent most of the meeting basking in the feeling of warmth evoked by that grand five-star welcome. As much as I mattered to that little dog, I felt the love rising within me too. I yearned to hug him, play with him, and tickle him, with the intention of making him feel as good as he had made me feel.
Each of us wants nothing more than to feel loved and appreciated. While all of us probably agree with this statement, most of us forget to honour the people in our lives. This planet and its entire population would benefit immensely if we followed the Happy Principle and found our unique way of communicating a simple message to everyone who crosses our path: You matter. As Mother Teresa observed, the hunger for love and appreciation in this world is as real and as urgent as the hunger for food.
What the Happy Principle means at work
The professional implication of this principle is not soft. Organisations where people feel that they matter — to their manager, to their team, to the mission — consistently outperform those where they do not. Employee recognition is not a morale initiative. It is an operational strategy. Pooja’s Happy Principle gives this well-documented finding a human and memorable frame: every person who walks through your door deserves the red-carpet treatment, regardless of rank, output, or relationship history with you.
2. The harder discipline: responding to difficulty with grace
The truly evolved approach to love does not reserve itself for easy relationships. The more demanding version — which is also the more transformative one — is to respond to anger with patience, to greed with generosity, and to provocation with equanimity. People who have genuinely internalised love as a value do not experience revenge or retaliation as natural impulses. They look for what is worth responding to in another person, even when that person is being their worst self.
This is not passivity. It is the specific discipline of choosing your response rather than having it chosen for you by the other person’s behaviour. Truly evolved people exist in the realm of love; the more they are provoked, the more lovingly they respond. Their purpose, as they understand it, is to spread light where they see clouds — and to stay as far as possible from judging, criticising, or diminishing others.
This sounds idealistic. In practice, it is the most powerful conflict resolution strategy available. When someone responds to anger with genuine curiosity — ‘what is this person actually trying to say?’ — the dynamic of the interaction changes immediately. Pooja is not describing a saint’s behaviour. She is describing a skill, cultivated through practice, that most people are capable of and most people do not develop.
If we learn to love unconditionally, the rest automatically follows. But loving unconditionally from the heart requires us to ignore our noisy and frequently destructive mind and approach everyone from the heart — the place where our purest intentions reside. Living from the heart is a gift. When we let the light in our heart shine forth, it becomes part of something much larger than our individual situation.
What this means in a corporate context
The capacity to de-escalate a difficult conversation, to maintain composure when challenged, and to continue engaging constructively with a difficult colleague or client is one of the most in-demand and least-developed leadership skills in corporate India. Pooja’s framing gives this skill a philosophical basis that is more durable than a conflict-resolution technique: it is not a tactic, it is a way of being that must be built over time.
3. Be a channel of love: the compounding effect of giving
There is a specific quality to giving that is not transactional. When you send love, kindness, attention, or recognition outward without keeping an account of what you are owed in return — not because you are naive about reciprocity but because the giving itself is the practice — something changes in you as well as in the people around you.
As you send out love, you will receive unconditional, infinite and ever-flowing love in return. If you want something, all you need to do is give love abundantly. Like a snowball that gathers momentum and grows larger when pushed down a hill, your gifts will multiply as you send them out, soon having nowhere else to go but come back to you.
Love can accomplish what you may otherwise find impossible to achieve. Imprint this on your heart and follow this advice. Your life will turn marvellously topsy-turvy, and you will never be the same again.
The professional application
The compounding effect of genuine generosity — with recognition, with time, with credit, with attention — is one of the most consistent findings in research on high-performing teams. The leaders who give credit freely, who amplify their team’s successes, who invest attention in people without expectation of immediate return, build the kind of loyalty and discretionary effort that no incentive structure can manufacture. Pooja’s principle is not merely spiritual. It describes the mechanics of how trust is built and how it compounds.
Why Pooja Ruprell belongs on a corporate stage
What distinguishes Pooja from most speakers in the self-love and personal development category is that her philosophy is not abstract. It is drawn from lived experience — Buddhist practice, the writing of two books, television work, and more than a decade of speaking to corporate audiences, predominantly women, about the specific challenge of maintaining self-worth under professional pressure. Her sessions work particularly well at International Women’s Day events, leadership programs for women, and annual days where the organisation wants to address the whole person, not just the professional.
At engage4more, we assess every speaker against the STRIVE framework’s Monday Morning Rule: does your team walk away with something they can actually use the next day? Pooja’s sessions consistently produce specific personal commitments from the audience — not just emotional resonance but a named, concrete intention to change something about how they treat themselves or the people around them. Browse her speaking videos, session formats, and availability on her speaker profile page.
Considering Pooja Ruprell for your next Women’s Day event, leadership offsite, or annual day? Browse her full profile, session videos, and availability on her speaker page. Contact engage4more directly for a transparent fee quote within 3 hours. Since 2010, 5,000+ events across India.
Frequently asked questions about Pooja Ruprell
Who is Pooja Ruprell?
Pooja Ruprell is a Mumbai-based keynote speaker, author, and leadership coach with over 10 years of speaking experience. She is the author of Love Begins with Me (a Buddhist memoir on self-love) and Passion, Perseverance, Prayer, and has appeared on several Indian television programs. Her speaking focuses on self-love as a leadership foundation, women’s empowerment, personal resilience, and authentic leadership. She is available to book for corporate events across India through engage4more.
What does Pooja Ruprell speak about at corporate events?
Pooja speaks on self-love and self-worth as a leadership foundation, women’s empowerment and resilience, the relationship between personal authenticity and professional performance, and how to give generously without depleting yourself. Her sessions work particularly well at International Women’s Day events, leadership programs for women, and annual days where the brief is personal growth alongside professional development.
What is the Happy Principle that Pooja Ruprell teaches?
The Happy Principle is drawn from Pooja’s own observation of a dog named Happy who greeted every person who entered the room with exactly the same joyful, unconditional welcome — regardless of who they were or how they responded to him. Pooja uses this as a frame for the professional practice of ensuring that every person who crosses your path feels genuinely seen and valued. It is, she argues, both a spiritual practice and one of the most underrated leadership skills in the corporate world.
