Marika Nikkinen is a leader in inner guidance, self-leadership, and spiritual activation. After a series of hardships left her with poor mental and physical health, she decided to recover and find her own way in life. Connecting with her inner guidance, she found her strategies and she has since dedicated her career to helping her clients to unleash their inner power and to trust their inner guidance in life. With her company Conscious Leadership Coaching, she has been coaching organizations and leaders on value and purpose-based, conscious leadership in Europe and in Africa. Currently, she is focusing on working with her private clients worldwide and writing her first book on her journey and its learnings. Her mission: Every life matters.
Who is Marika?
I am an adventure and fun-loving human being, curious about the world, life, cultures, and people. I am a Finn, living in Stockholm, Sweden, with my husband and our two sons. I love to wander in nature, dance, laugh, cook and do martial arts and yoga. Our bodies and souls are meant to move. I am a combination of my inner child, responsible parent, and a wild spirit.
Professionally I have been in a massive transformation for years, breaking out from the traditional business career to pursue my soul path, my task in this world. I am a certified leadership and life coach, a chakrapath yoga teacher, and a lightworker. I help my clients connect with their authentic selves, listen to their intuition and inner guidance, and dare them to make their life choices based on who they really are and what they truly want.
What has brought you here?
I was diagnosed with burnout and depression in 2015. A few months later, my older son got sick with type 1. diabetes. It was a massive shock, and it took a year to balance the situation. After a year from that, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, and after nine months of palliative care, she passed away. I spend three years of my life thinking about whether I will survive or die in the grief, chronicle fatigue, panic disorder, or the hatred and anger I had inside of myself. I was mentally and physically in bad shape.
All that happened made me think about how I want to live my life and guided me to make choices to become healthier one day at a time. I chose the light over the darkness. I understood that all that happened was a sign that I needed to make changes in my life. A huge turning point was to sign in for Co-Active Coach training and pursue my dream of becoming a professional coach. It changed my life.
What are your driving forces in life?
They are curiosity, love, joy, and courage. I am not afraid of the things I love. I take on chances without overthinking. I see life as an adventure, where I get to choose what, when, where, and with whom.
All the people I have met, I have worked with, and of course, my friends and family have brought me where I am today. They are the source of my endless love.
What is your gift to the world?
My gift to the world is enabling connection. I am highly intuitive, sensing the emotions of the people around me. This helps me to guide my clients to connect with themselves and to explore their emotional field. When we work with our emotional energy, we can also begin sensing other people's energies and become more conscious about emotions overall. This enables creating deep, intimate connections.
Being the Connector hasn't always been easy, but I have learned to understand and manage my energy over the years. I used to absorb too much of others' feelings and ended up drained and exhausted. I was about to quit my work as a team coach and trainer before figuring out how to strengthen my energetic aura and make my boundaries clear and robust. There is a way for every empath and highly sensitive person to manage their energy balance, giving, and receiving.
What do you see is happening in the world?
We are too much divided and against each other. Fear has taken over us instead of love. I believe our world is on the verge of a vast spiritual awakening, and the level of consciousness is hugely expanding. All this will result in a more equal, human, balanced, and better world for all of us.
Who should work with you and why?
My ideal client is a person who is ready to explore their inner world and do the work with themselves. Coaching is work with emotions, and sometimes it might be hard at points to face the feelings within. But that's what moves us forward in our lives.
I work with clients who:
struggle with their life balance,
want to clarify and work towards their goals, and
are seeking spiritual growth.
Coaching changes lives, and I have never worked with clients who haven't made their way towards their goals or achieved them. It is a deep journey into ourselves. All I have experienced in life and, of course, my professional background makes me a great coach. I have never received as much gratitude and thanks from my clients as I have as a coach. It is an occupation with greater meaning, and I love it.
What's next for you?
I am concentrating on building my coaching business and writing my first book, with the working title "From Karma to Dharma - My Journey Recovering From Burnout - 12 Steps In Healing Yourself. " I will be writing my articles for Brainz Magazine on the topics included in the book, so stay tuned if you want to read more from me.
I also see myself living in a beautiful old villa on velvety green hills with a sea view somewhere in the Mediterranean in few years. I will continue writing, doing the coaching work, running workshops, and organizing well-being retreats for my clients who want to deepen the connection with themselves and have some more balance and clarity in their lives.
What are your top 3 tips on personal growth for our readers?
Inhale and exhale deeply; become present to yourself, to your emotions, to your energy. What are your body, mind, soul, and heart telling you? What do you need today to feel balanced?
You already got what you need. Explore your values; what are they guiding you for? Are you living your values? How could you live more of them?
You are already there. Visualize your goals and dreams. How does it feel to have achieved them? Where do you think it? How does it look, taste, feel, and smell like? Who are you with? Connect with this sensation daily.
