Bhakti Mathur’s Journey: From Banking to Books, Coaching, and Bibliotherapy, Finding Meaning in Midlife Reboots

Why You Should Read This

If you’ve ever felt the tug to reinvent yourself, or wondered how to weave multiple passions into a meaningful life, this conversation is for you. Bhakti Mathur, a former private banker turned children’s author, executive coach, bibliotherapist, and yoga teacher, shows that transformation doesn’t have to be a cliff-jump. It can be an intentional, compassionate shift powered by self-awareness, craft, and small experiments. You’ll take away practical tools for career transitions, confidence, communication, parenting through stories, and finding calm in a results-obsessed world.

Meet Bhakti

After 22 successful years in private banking (and two young kids along the way), Bhakti felt her drivers shifting. The corner office and quarterly targets that once energised her no longer defined success. While still in banking, she began writing children’s picture books, eventually creating the beloved Amma, Tell Me… series to bring Indian festivals and mythology to life for young readers.

A revelatory coaching session, where she wasn’t told what to do but guided to her own answers, sparked a second calling. She trained as an ICF-certified executive coach, added yoga teacher training, and studied bibliotherapy (using reading as a tool for insight and healing). Today, she works at the intersection of these disciplines, helping clients grow through self-awareness, movement, and the power of stories.

Living in Hong Kong, she writes for the South China Morning Post on health and fitness, teaches yoga and pranayama, coaches senior leaders, and continues to author children’s books.

Key Takeaways

1) The Thread Binding Coaching, Yoga, and Bibliotherapy: Self-Awareness

These practices may look different, but together they help you notice what’s happening inside and choose what to do next. Coaching helps you articulate goals and decisions, yoga anchors you in the present and in action, and bibliotherapy offers language, perspective, and catharsis through stories and ideas.

Try this: Before a big presentation, do a few grounding poses and breathwork, read a chapter or watch a short talk on the skill you’re building (e.g., difficult conversations), and write one sentence that captures your goal for the moment.

2) Bibliotherapy, Simply Explained, and How It Works

Bibliotherapy uses reading to help people navigate life. Bhakti sends clients a two-part questionnaire: (1) What’s happening in your life (e.g., empty nest, anxiety, loss, a job shift), and (2) Your reading profile (authors, genres, formative books). She then curates 7–8 titles: some that mirror the client’s situation through characters (to create “I’m not alone” recognition at a safe distance) and some that lovingly stretch their comfort zone. She often includes poetry for its distilled emotional clarity.

Bonus reading she loves: Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse) and Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl), two books she re-reads every year.

3) Career Transitions: Don’t Leap—Layer

What holds people back? Impostor syndrome, over-focus on outcomes, and pressure to perform. The antidote: return attention to the work you can control today. Don’t quit everything to “find your passion.” Instead, test possible futures on evenings and weekends. Enroll in a class, volunteer with an NGO, take on a small project—then listen to the data your experience gives you.

Recommended reads:

• From Strength to Strength (Arthur Brooks) for finding meaning in the second half of life.
• Working Identity (Herminia Ibarra) for experimenting your way into a new professional self.

Also Read: Quiet Rebellions- Vineet Panchhi on Life, Art & Authenticity

4) Communication & Confidence: The Most Common Coaching Themes

Senior leaders often struggle with confidence (yes, even after promotions) and with communicating hard things. A simple but powerful exercise Bhakti uses: write your goal in one sentence. When you put it on paper, it sharpens. Clients frequently discover they were aiming at the wrong target—or an outcome, not a behaviour.

5) Parenting Through Stories (and Why It Works)

Values land better when shown, not preached. Mythology offers vivid models and consequences kids remember: Hanuman’s courage and friendship, Krishna’s playfulness and strategy. The Amma, Tell Me… series was born from Bhakti’s desire for child-friendly festival books she couldn’t find when her kids were little. Stories become a non-preachy way to talk about kindness, effort, consequences, and identity.

6) Mindfulness in a Results-Obsessed World

Yoga taught Bhakti to be present, to try (and fail) without shame, and to stop comparing. Coaching honed deep, judgment-free listening that now shapes her relationships. Reading widened her empathy and toolset. Together, they form a practical antidote to anxiety about outcomes: return to the work, to breath, to the next right action.

7) Redefining Success

In her 20s and 30s, success meant earnings, promotions, and targets. Today it’s the joy of meaningful work, a relaxed pranayama session that changes a client’s day, an unhurried family meal, a long walk, a quiet hour of writing (often between 12–4 pm). Success evolves, and it should.

A Quote to Carry With You

“What’s important is that we find meaning, because only when we find meaning does life become a more joyful experience.”

Quick Glimpses (Rapid-Fire)

• Best time to write/reflect: 12–4 pm (post-yoga, pre-school run, quiet house, clear mind).
• What her kids taught her: “I can be impatient.”
• Most-used coaching tool: Have clients write their goal in one sentence.
• Always in her bag: A journal.
• How friends describe her: Disciplined.

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