#152 To Change Your Life, Listen to the Whispers of Truth

Transcript of Interview

Find Your Voice, Change Your Life Podcast

Podcast Host: Dr. Doreen Downing

Free Guide to Fearless Speaking: Doreen7steps.com

Episode # 152 Dr. Kalpana Sundar

“To Change Your Life, Listen to the Whispers of Truth”

(00:00) Doreen Downing: Hi, this is Dr. Doreen Downing, host of the Find Your Voice, Change Your Life podcast. I get to introduce wonderful new people that I’ve just met. Actually, I had a conversation with our guest today, just briefly, but I’m fascinated by what she’s going to say about her voice.

It seems like something literally had happened to her voice, her larynx, and so it wasn’t just some—well, there might be some roots about some underlying family or cultural influences, but to have somebody actually literally lose their voice. We’ll find out more. 

Hello, Kalpana. 

(00:42) Kalpana Sundar: Hello, how are you? Thank you, Dr. Downing, for having me here. 

(00:46) Doreen Downing: Yes, and I’m going to read a bio. You sent one, and it had a lot of big words, but I’ll try and make it through. And you’ll know which ones they are, but— 

Dr. Kalpana Sundar, a multifaceted powerhouse, is very experienced, not only in medicine, entrepreneurship, and personal development, she’s also a board-certified expert in otolaryngology. Please say it for me. 

(01:21) Kalpana Sundar: Otolaryngology, which is ear, nose, and throat. 

(01:25) Doreen Downing: Okay, ENT. Thank you. And facial plastic surgery. Dr. Sundar founded a thriving ENT practice and medical spa in her early battle with thyroid cancer which fueled her passion for balancing professional and personal life.

And through her books, Beauty Unbound and Transformational Talks, she empowers women to take on leadership roles, particularly in entrepreneurship. In addition to speaking on leadership and entrepreneurship, Dr. Sundar hosts her own TV show, Gloves Off and consults with aesthetic providers to enhance their business and personal lives and living vibrantly, and those who are watching can already see how vibrant she is. 

Living vibrantly in San Diego, she enjoys travel, fashion, and martial arts. I have so many questions I can ask about those three topics, but today we’re going to focus on your voice and how—what is the history of that. But even though it was something around an actual kind of, I was going to say assault on your body, there still is a history that people in my audience like to know, like, who are you, where did you come from, where did you grow up, and what was your family like, and was that all nice and easy, or were there some challenges early on as you went into school, and things like that. Just anything you want to share with us, I appreciate. Thank you. 

(03:10) Kalpana Sundar: Well, happily, happily. I was actually born in India and came to the U.S. when I was about 10 months old. I grew up in an Indian culture, and for those people who don’t know what that’s like, if you don’t know any Indian people or have any Indian friends, I’d like to tell you it’s a very restrictive culture, so our voices start to get stifled in our culture, especially for a woman. I would say definitely less so for a man, but there’s still a lot that happens to men, so I’m not going to discount that, but for women in particular. 

I grew up with two Indian parents and I was the first born and then I was the first one growing up in the United States, which added, I believe, a lot of stress for my parents. They wanted to keep up this traditional Indian kind of parenting and all these Indian values, and now they were here in America, and it’s very difficult to do that, especially if you have a very independent-thinking, rebellious child as your first one.

That already started the process of being forced to stifle my voice because every time I spoke up, I was met with resistance, disapproval, et cetera, et cetera. Early on, I already knew that that was not the way to go. I would have my, I would say, my tiny rebellions that they wouldn’t find out about, but I would, in front of their face, I would act like I was going to be doing everything they stated. 

For the most part, there were some things I didn’t agree to. For example, when they wanted to send me to India and get an arranged marriage, I put my foot down and I said, “No,” but all the other things I think I didn’t even realize, it was their voice and their dreams that I was fulfilling.

I remember one day when I was very young and my father was ill and I said to him, “Oh dad, I’m going to help you. One day I’ll be a doctor.” I remember how his face lit up and it was like Pavlov’s dog’s response. I said, “Oh God, I want that.” Then I upped the ante, and then I said, “Dad, I’m going to be a cardiovascular surgeon.”

More of his face lit up. “Okay, I’m on the right track with this.” So, yes, I fulfilled it. I didn’t become a cardiovascular surgeon, but I became an ear, nose, and throat surgeon, and yes, they were very proud. The first child who’s a doctor and a surgeon has made them very happy.

I didn’t realize how much my voice had been stifled my whole life. I got married. I stifled my voice again. It wasn’t until I was maybe in my forties. I started to realize that and there was a particular incident, but I can go into that or not go into that. 

(06:11) Doreen Downing: Oh yes. We’ll certainly get there. I had a question. Why did they move to the United States? 

(06:18) Kalpana Sundar: My father wasn’t happy with what was happening in India and he wanted a better life for us. I’m very grateful because it was very courageous back in 1969 to come to another country, not knowing the language, not knowing the culture. It was just so different. So, I’m so grateful for him for doing that because I wouldn’t be where I am today. 

(06:37) Doreen Downing: Oh yes. I get it. That says something about his spirit that he passed on, as much as it sounds like they wanted to maintain the cultural protocols and norms, it feels like he also stepped out of it and did something as dramatic as leave the country. Good and what was his profession? 

(07:00) Kalpana Sundar: He’s an engineer, or was, I mean, he’s retired now. 

(07:02) Doreen Downing: So, he did find a job here and— 

(07:05) Kalpana Sundar: Within 10 days, he had a job. Yes. He got himself situated and then my mom and I came over 10 months later. He wanted to get settled and once he was settled enough, I think, is when we came over. I don’t remember, but— 

(07:22) Doreen Downing: Well, this is fascinating. As I listen to you, as I listen to most of my guests early, I begin to form the dots like there’s some things that were planted way back then that show up now, and the influence of parents is always one of the areas that I go, “Hmm, what did you get to learn from your parents?”

In a way you said you were rebellious, but that’s a big rebellion on his part to leave the country. 

(07:52) Kalpana Sundar: He wonders where I get it from and recently, I pointed out that, “It’s you, dad. I’m just like you.” 

(07:58) Doreen Downing: That’s what I saw instantly, now that you— Yes, this is part of my fun in getting to know you and to hear your story and to begin to go, “Oh, what about this? What about that?” And it makes sense. Thank you. I get it. 

And I also get the kind of the feel of the fingers around you, the Indian-ness of how you’re supposed to be, and the dualistic— One face is hello, and the other face is, “I’m doing what I’m doing.” The two aspects of you, and we’ll probably hear more about that in some way because it does feel like it’s kind of a pattern that was set early on. Does that ring at all? Like the sense? 

(08:47) Kalpana Sundar: Very much so. Very much so. It was definitely a pattern because it was met with a lot of resistance whenever you went against the grain. You just learned that it was easier and you took the path of least resistance. I did that for many years until I couldn’t do it anymore.

(09:04) Doreen Downing: Yes. I’m not calling it a split in terms of personality, but in my situation, my mom moved to a more affluent neighborhood. She was a single mom, and with my sister and I moved us to a place near a university up here in Northern California. So, I went to school, grammar school, with other kids that were also from that neighborhood, but where we had come from was a lower class neighborhood. We would go back and visit my grandparents and my cousins, and they were drinkers and drug addicts and some of them have gone to jail. 

These two parts of me, like who I really am, are partly in terms of my own personal discovery, in my own personal journey. So, for you to integrate both sides seems like something we can lean into. Let’s talk about that as you’ve started to find that you were not somebody that wanted to have a life of restriction. 

(10:10) Kalpana Sundar: Yes, so I was feeling it right around probably in the late 30s early 40s. I was starting to wake into the fact that maybe this wasn’t the life that I definitely wanted for myself. There were parts of it that definitely fit and I would say none of it I really regret. It has shaped who I am. 

But there was a real part of me that craved freedom and this unboundedness, which is why my book is called Unbound, My Beauty Unbound. I wanted to live this life of absolute freedom, and I didn’t have that in medicine. Clearly, even if I was in my own practice, there were some real confines around that career. Number one, by taking up the majority of my life in mind space. That was a big one. And I realized that there was no location freedom. I couldn’t do that from anywhere in the world. 

I have this dream of just picking up and going wherever, whenever I see it fit. I mean, obviously I’m not going to shirk my responsibilities, but I’m just saying certain professions don’t lend themselves to that and others do. I wanted to meet different kinds of people. I wanted to be all over the world. I wanted to be doing business all over the world. And I just knew this about me. 

Yet I was married to a person that didn’t understand that it was really one of this safe, confined life and I just was ready to break out of this box that I was stuck in. That was around when this big transformation occurred. I knew it was happening. I didn’t actually set the balls in motion, probably for another eight years because these things have to be handled delicately. 

(11:42) Doreen Downing: Yes. Well, in following you along your journey and seeing the sense of how the pattern, how we pick, how people pick the same thing that keeps them safe and in the familiar setting. That’s what it sounds like your relationship was. Did you have children with him? 

(12:01) Kalpana Sundar: Yes, I have two children, adults now. 

(12:04) Doreen Downing: I never had children. How was having children then in terms of being in that situation with somebody who is a little more, like you said, settled and— 

(12:18) Kalpana Sundar: Well, back then it wasn’t such a discrepancy because I think we had identified our roles and I just stuck to it, but right around the 40-ish age mark where I started to see things differently, we started having more trouble. So, the children also sense the discord and honestly, my oldest, when we got divorced, said, “You know, you do what makes you happy, mom. Don’t stick around in this for us.” 

(12:41) Doreen Downing: I’ve heard that. 

(12:44) Kalpana Sundar: He was about 19 at the time. My younger one was 16. He was most concerned about having to go from home to home. That was his big concern. Not that we were getting a divorce, but how it affected him. So, both of them are well-adjusted. I truly believe that. The consequence of children due to divorce is not from the divorce. It’s from the parents being hateful towards each other. We had about a pretty amicable split, really.

Because of that, my children are really fine with that. We don’t speak negatively about each other. I don’t have to speak with him much, but when, and if I do, it’s pleasant. We’re not in each other’s lives, but if we have to talk about the children, we have a pleasant conversation. I think that’s the huge thing that I learned.

I didn’t want to get it. I needed to get a divorce, but I didn’t want to because of the children, and I realized that this is it. We’re going to do this amicably. He also agreed to that. I don’t know if I’ve heard of a more amicable story than ours. 

(13:42) Doreen Downing: Good. They call it conscious— 

(13:44) Kalpana Sundar: conscious uncoupling. Yes. I read the book and that’s exactly what we did. I forget who is the author of that book, but that’s exactly what we did. Somebody had recommended that book. They were getting a divorce. I read it. After reading it, I said, “Okay, now I want to get a divorce because I want to do it this way.”

(14:00) Doreen Downing: Speaking of books, you mentioned yours. Did you write that later on or early— 

(14:06) Kalpana Sundar: Yes, that book was just published about two years ago. 

(14:09) Doreen Downing: Oh, we’ll talk about that in a moment. I love the title. You’re talking about 40, as if it’s like, “Oh, it’s a turning point.” 

(14:21) Kalpana Sundar: I believe that was when I started to get some ideas that the way I was living my life wasn’t authentic to me. I didn’t really put any of these balls in motion until close to 50. My divorce is at 48, and then I left my medical practice at 50. I didn’t do everything, even though I had a sense that I did not want my life looking this way exactly, but again, I had children. There were things we—my ex-husband was involved in the business. There was a lot I had to organize smoothly. I was already planning my transition out of things for seven to ten years. 

(14:59) Doreen Downing: Well, this is important. Kalpana. That is really an important message to listeners today. Just because it’s not happening tomorrow, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t slowly navigating your way to what it is you truly want, what’s calling you, basically, what your true spirit is leading you. So, I’m glad that you put it in that frame that it took a few years, but it— 

(15:28) Kalpana Sundar: I think whenever we make a change we have to look at the priorities and identify what needs to come first. In that moment, I needed to make sure my practice was stable without his influence. I started understanding what he was doing.

Second, I wanted to make sure my children were okay. Then I moved on to divorce. Then I moved on to leaving my medical practice because you can’t make all these big changes at once. The whole process took, I would say, at least a decade, if not more. I don’t remember when I started to make the arrangements or start really looking at it that way.

(16:02) Doreen Downing: Yes. In my case, I got married for the first time when I was 60. 

(16:09) Kalpana Sundar: Wow. I was 24. 

(16:13) Doreen Downing: Yes, I’m right with you around when the time is right, what you want will happen, and I have to tell you, it’s just like, I’m still a newlywed. I love it. I’m glad I had my life, and my travels, and my book, and my business, and got myself all together and ready for the right person, so that’s my journey. 

(16:35) Kalpana Sundar: It doesn’t come in this preordained time frame like people think. I mean, I don’t know. If I didn’t have that mindset of “this is what you do,” I might not have gotten married at that age. I’m glad I did because now I have these beautiful children, but what I’m saying is now that I’m single, I am very much looking for the right fit. If it takes a year, if it takes five, it takes five more, I mean, I’d like it to happen sooner, but you know, it’ll happen when it’s supposed to. 

(17:03) Doreen Downing: I had a book on my shelf. “You Can’t Hurry Love.” I have to tell you that’s something that just really was always on every time I went into my office, there was the book, so it was like a mantra. There was a book sitting on a shelf reminding me that, yes, I’m not there at 40, I’m not there at 45, I’m not there at 50, oh my gosh, and then I meet him in my 50s and we got married later. This is always fun to share some of what goes on for me, but also relate to you.

I’m going to take a quick break and I want to come back to—Well, I guess we’ve got to 50 now where all the big changes started to take place. So, we’ll be right back.

Hi, we’re back now with Dr. Kalpana Sundar, and I want to say that, so far, it’s been a pleasure getting to know Kalpana, who’s started out in an Indian family, and even though she was in the United States, there were all sorts of ways in which, I guess, maybe, stereotypically, we know what that means, that there are restrictions on women, especially young girls, don’t have a voice.

So, she’s really traveled through life to find herself and today we get to hear more of the story. We’re back, and we’ve gotten through divorce, and we’ve gotten through looks like leaving your medical practice, and your children are almost grown, and then what? 

(18:46) Kalpana Sundar: So that was when I started to realize that I had all kinds of freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to be authentic. I wasn’t confined in this role of being a wife in a certain way that I had sort of inadvertently created because I didn’t know better, and then this role of being this surgeon. They were all masks and part of my ego. 

Slowly, but surely, after leaving my medical practice, we’re moving, probably one of my largest egoic identity factors. It was an identity crisis for sure, but once I let go of that, it just felt good to understand who I was at the core. When I started to understand that I was more able to speak freely, speak my truth, not care if it offends somebody. I’ve learned how to do it in a way that’s not offensive and not pointing fingers or accusatory, but it comes from a place of my truth, and people know the difference when something is being spoken from your truth versus to hurt them or be obnoxious or something. 

I know that when it comes from that space, I can say anything I want. I think that’s my big lesson. That’s the big lesson that I’ve learned, and I practice that every day. I say a lot of things that are uncomfortable to people because it’s the truth and I need to say it, but anybody who is supposed to be in my life understands that and they respect me for it. If they don’t, they don’t belong in my life and I want the same thing from other people as well. This is not just one-sided. 

(20:27) Doreen Downing: I would like to feed back to people who aren’t watching us on a video but are just listening to you. I already get that there’s a resonance in your voice and a clarity that they’re getting, but what you did when you said, “Speak truth,” you put your hand on your chest, on your heart. I was going to ask how do you know what your truth is? How do you learn to listen to your truth? 

(20:52) Kalpana Sundar: Well, I believe that our truth doesn’t exist in our brain. It exists in our heart. I believe that leaving medicine, because it’s so cerebral and brain-oriented, we’re never connected with our heart. I’ve obviously done a lot of spiritual practices and grounding and meditation and a lot of different things to know what that voice is that’s telling me the truth. It’s a quiet whisper. I think that it’s a quiet whisper. When I’m not specifically thinking about anything, it comes to me.

Obviously, it’s not a thought that’s creeping up in my head. Those thoughts are formulated. This is not formulated. It comes straight through. It’s quiet. There’s not a lot of noise around it. There’s not a lot of confusion. There’s no confusion around it. It’s direct. When you speak from that place, it hits the person that I’m speaking it to in the same way that it’s coming and hitting me with truth. There’s a frequency of truth and also authenticity. That’s how I know. 

(21:55) Doreen Downing: Oh, I’d love to do a whole episode on just that one. I did—talking about the authenticity and the vibration and the frequency, and how that resonates. That’s what I just said a second ago about your voice. There’s a resonance in it and a clarity, so that—I bet today you’re reaching lots and lots of folks. When I started, we mentioned throat cancer. Say something about that. 

(22:20) Kalpana Sundar: That’s obviously the huge turning point. I was just starting my ENT practice. I had finished my residency, excited to start my life as a surgeon and start my own practice. I felt a lump on my throat, in my neck, one day when I was just doing charts. Ear, nose, and throat physicians, we do like to feel our neck. I felt something, and I said, “Oh, that’s not good.” Immediately I went through the process. I knew what needed to be done. I had a biopsy. It came back cancer. I knew I needed to have the surgery.

I had a trusted colleague that did the surgery for me, but one of the complications after surgery is that there are a couple of things that could happen. The nerve could become injured during the surgery, and in my case, there was a tumor on the nerve. I’m pointing to the right side of my neck, but it was on the left side. 

But the tumor was on the nerve. He had to scrape the tumor off the nerve with a scalpel. And I’m a colleague of his, so I can’t even imagine what he was feeling during this operation. I feel bad for him. He managed to get as much tumor as he put off the nerve without damaging the nerve, and he was worried that he still damaged the nerve, but my voice was weak after the surgery for probably a year.

I started singing after that. I could feel that my voice was weak. Things were just a little off, but eventually it all came back. But the clincher was that there’s another complication that can happen from the surgery, that your calcium glands, the parathyroid glands that produce calcium can become stunned and then your calcium can drop.

My calcium dropped and I was being watched in the hospital. I argued with my surgeon and I said, “Listen. I’m an ear, nose, and throat surgeon just like you. I know what to watch for so I can go home. I’ll go get the labs in the morning and I’m sure everything will be fine.” Against his better judgment, he let me go.

So, this is the note to all you people listening. Don’t argue with your doctor. Even if you are a doctor, it’s not the best idea. I woke up the next morning and I had symptoms of very severe hypocalcemia, which lead to your muscles becoming like tetanus, and I was rushing to the emergency room. I almost died.

I laughed, but it wasn’t funny. So, I knew that I had a second chance at that moment. I didn’t really do anything about it at that moment, to be honest with you. I just went back to work. I went to run my business. I had to. I had a business I had to get going. I needed to make money. I needed to take care of my family.

But 10 years later, I started to feel something in my throat. I would wake up in the night with a panic attack. That’s when I started to go seek a therapist, find out what it was, and I found out that it was unprocessed trauma from nearly dying and thyroid cancer that I just swept under the rug, and moved along in my life.

(25:15) Doreen Downing: Oh, that’s another message to our folks today. Sweep it under the rug and it will—it’s always there. Our life is, and our experience is always tucked away somewhere, and it just can erupt much later. Oh, well, thank you for saying that and pointing to that. That’s Ooh, I’m kind of taking it in about the unprocessed trauma and how it really wasn’t unprocessed from long, long time ago, it was only several years later, but still, I’m glad that somebody saw it and you treated it and look at you today. Yes, I mean, your voice is lyrical. 

(25:59) Kalpana Sundar: Well, I do believe that. I’ve always been told since I was young that I had a voice for the radio. I’ve just been told that since I was about 10 years old and I was like, “I don’t know what these people mean.” Frankly, I didn’t even like my voice because it’s deeper than most women’s. It was different, and I thought, “Oh, I don’t know.” I just— I didn’t really like myself for a long time.

It’s funny how years go by and you start to realize that your uniqueness, your authenticity is really the best thing that you have, but it took me, I don’t know, 50 years to realize it. 

(26:35) Doreen Downing: Okay. The book because that sounds like we’re close to that. Tell me about the book. 

(26:39) Kalpana Sundar: The book is called Beauty Unbound. I actually have a copy right here behind me. This is the cover. You can find it on Amazon or barnesandnoble.com. It’s going in and out because I’m a zoom background. I forgot about that. But what I love about the cover is it’s me in a leather jacket. 

It’s just in ripped jeans because I’m just doing my own thing and it really is about my journey from living this boxed in life that was prescribed for me and I was just trying to do everything everybody wanted to me, unleashing my full potential, unleashing my voice. 

There’s a lot in there about my voice, actually, too, which is why when you and I met, it resonated so beautifully. I just knew that there was a life that felt free and unbound that was more beautiful than the one that I was living, even though it seems beautiful to everybody else. Obviously, the doctor, the things, and the material, it all seems great to everybody, but what I really craved was freedom. 

(27:41) Doreen Downing: Ah, there you go. Freedom. Wonderful. Well, we’re coming to the end and I want to make sure that people who want to get closer to you or work with you or— What is the best way to contact you, talk about what you’re doing nowadays, because I know it has something to do with businesses, doesn’t it?

(27:58) Kalpana Sundar: Yes, I’m involved in several different businesses and I do a lot of medical consulting, but I also serve as a coach for aesthetic providers to help them improve their productivity, their med spas, and their profitability. If anybody out there is in that niche, but honestly, I’m always up to something new, so find me at my website. It’s drkalpanasundar.com—that’s my website—or you could find me on YouTube and Instagram under drkalpana.unbound. 

(28:32) Doreen Downing: Well, I think that the “Unbound” is something I’d like to leave us with, but there’s one more opportunity I feel here before we leave to listen into what our experience has been today and what you want to leave listeners with. What might that be? I know it’s usually a pause, just the, “Ah.” 

(28:56) Kalpana Sundar: I would say, for anyone who desires a different life than the one they live, it’s all possible. It just takes courage, and I feel that that courage has to come from a place of you’re going to make that fear really small and make your why really, really important.

That’s what I had to do. I had to really minimize my fear and make that why I wanted to do this much bigger, and that gave me the courage to move forward to the next chapter. 

(29:30) Doreen Downing: I knew there was something more. Thank you. That is so profound and so wise. And I’m sure that it rings with such deep truth, not only from your experience, but I think it’s going to wake up a lot of people. Thank you. Thank you so much. 

(29:48) Kalpana Sundar: Well, thank you. It’s been an absolute pleasure. I’m so glad that we connected and met. 

(29:52) Doreen Downing: Yes, me too.