At Pausetive, we believe mental wellness begins long before a crisis. This page shares our journey. From the vision that drives us to the turning points that shaped our philosophy.
We plan to establish at least one Mental Empowerment Center in every district of Maharashtra by 2030.
These centers will shift the agenda from:
In the current mental health landscape, interventions primarily begin only after issues have escalated—through therapy, counselling, or crisis management. While these are essential, they are inherently reactive—similar to locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.
This reactive model often fails to address the growing, silent psychological stress that individuals—especially adolescents and young adults—experience until it reaches a breaking point.
Our goal is to change this paradigm. We are building Mental Empowerment Centers—spaces designed not for treating mental illness, but for fostering resilience, achieving goals, and sustaining progress.
These centers will proactively strengthen emotional intelligence, self-awareness, focus, and belief systems, preventing issues from developing into mental health disorders. Just like physical fitness can reduce the risk of lifestyle diseases, mental fitness can lessen the burden on healthcare, help individuals better handle stress and uncertainty, and promote long-term psychological wellbeing.
This journey began with one founder: Sanjiv. While consulting with firms across industries—Banking, Logistics, Chemicals, Electrical—he noticed a recurring pattern.
Graduates from top institutions like IITs and IIMs began their careers with promise but soon plateaued. Others struggled for years before finding their stride. Some sacrificed personal relationships for professional success, while others remained unfulfilled despite material achievements.
Only a handful managed to consistently grow, adapt, and evolve over time.
Sanjiv’s first tool in unraveling this puzzle was Systems Thinking. To truly understand the complexity of achievers’ challenges, he took a five-year sabbatical (2002–2007) to study the dynamic nature of emotions and beliefs.
He realized that while we have mastered objective systems—leading to airplanes and space travel—we continue to struggle with subjective experiences like emotions, beliefs, and biases.
This exploration laid the groundwork for what would later become Pausetive’s core philosophy. It also led to the publication of his book, The Five Great Myths of Career Building, by Macmillan.
In 2007, Sanjiv joined a Tier 1 software company as Head of Learning and Development (North). Tasked with launching leadership development programs, he soon recognized how central emotions are to effective leadership.
While leadership theories often reference emotional intelligence—values, purpose, meaning—most programs failed to meaningfully incorporate these emotional elements.
By 2012, even though Sanjiv understood the importance of emotions, he lacked clarity on how to use them constructively. This prompted his next career pivot.
He relocated to Bengaluru—a city with over 500 Montessori schools and a strong culture of emotional pedagogy.
Montessori education, pioneered by Dr. Maria Montessori, is one of the few systems that intentionally incorporates emotions into learning.
Intrigued, Sanjiv formally trained in the Montessori method, seeking practical understanding of emotional processing as a learning tool.
Meanwhile, emerging neuroscience research began framing emotions as useful data in decision-making. This shift reinforced the role of “mind skills” as essential in leadership and professional growth.
This phase marked the beginning of Sanjiv’s collaboration with Mahesh.
They applied emotional awareness and systems thinking to career guidance in high schools and vocational training in partnership with a major NGO.
Their work led to the realization that beliefs are key to mental fitness. Unlike emotional responses—which are automatic and reactive—beliefs enable us to pause, imagine alternatives, and make conscious choices.
However, not all beliefs are beneficial. Dysfunctional beliefs can misguide decisions, so they must be questioned and verified before being put into practice.
Beliefs, emotions, and attention operate largely at the unconscious level. To respond rather than react, we must pause these processes long enough to bring them into awareness.
This insight crystallized in 2021, during a training session the founders conducted at a large orphanage in Ahmednagar, India. It was here that the idea of “Pause” was born—leading to the name Pausetive.
But pausing alone isn’t sufficient. Once these unconscious patterns surface, they must be integrated with deliberate, conscious thinking. Systems Thinking became the bridge for this integration.