Today we’d like to introduce you to Niema Golphin.
Hi Niema, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My journey into mindfulness started from a very personal place. After spending nearly two decades in education, I know firsthand how demanding the work can be. Between the responsibilities of teaching, being a single mom, running a side business, and simply trying to manage the everyday demands of life, I found myself constantly pouring into everything and everyone around me. I realized I needed to find a better way to manage my own stress, anxiety, and emotions while still showing up for the people who depended on me.
That’s when I began exploring mindfulness and meditation. What started as a personal practice became something that genuinely changed how I navigated my everyday life. I began learning how to recognize my emotions instead of immediately reacting to them, how to be more present, and how to give myself permission to pause when life felt overwhelming. It didn’t make life’s challenges disappear, but it changed how I responded to them.
As I began experiencing the benefits for myself, I started thinking about my students. I wondered what it would look like if we taught children these same skills early in life. What if we gave them the tools to understand their emotions, manage frustration, and navigate difficult moments before those challenges became bigger? So I started introducing simple mindfulness practices into my work with students. What began with students eventually grew into sharing these strategies with teachers, school leaders, and entire school communities.
That journey led me to create Minding Me Meditation, a Philadelphia-based wellness and educational organization focused on making mindfulness and emotional regulation practical, accessible, and relevant to everyday life. Today, I facilitate workshops, professional learning experiences, and school-based programming that help children and adults develop the tools to better manage their emotions, navigate stress, and strengthen their overall well-being.
What makes this journey meaningful to me is that I didn’t start this work because I had everything figured out. I started because I was trying to figure out how to better manage my own life. And somewhere along the way, something I needed for myself became something I could share with others.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. One of the biggest challenges has been transitioning from managing Minding Me as a side business while working full-time in education to stepping away from the security of a steady paycheck and becoming a full-time entrepreneur. Those are two very different experiences, and I don’t think I fully understood what that transition would require until I was in it.
I’ve experienced the excitement of securing contracts and growing my team, but I’ve also experienced losing contracts and having to let go of people I hired because I could no longer afford to keep them. There were times when I chose not to pay myself just to make sure the people working with me were compensated. Those are the parts of entrepreneurship that people don’t always talk about. You can have a great idea, a meaningful mission, and a service that people genuinely need, but without sufficient capital to support marketing, operations, and the periods between contracts, sustaining a business can be incredibly challenging.
This journey has taught me a lot about myself, particularly my capacity, my limitations, and what it really takes to lead and manage a business. I’ve had to learn how to make difficult decisions, adjust my expectations, and sometimes rethink what growth and success should look like. I’m also learning that just because I have the ability to do something doesn’t always mean I have the capacity to take it on.
One of my biggest realizations is that entrepreneurship isn’t necessarily about reaching some final destination where everything suddenly falls into place. It’s an ongoing process of learning, adjusting, and figuring things out as you go. I’m still in that process, and I’m becoming more comfortable admitting that. I don’t have it all figured out, and I think we need to normalize that part of entrepreneurship, especially for those of us who are building businesses later in life after spending years in an entirely different career. I’m learning to appreciate the journey for what it’s teaching me, not just what I hope to accomplish at the end of it.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Through Minding Me Meditation, I specialize in mindfulness-based emotional regulation, helping children and adults better understand their emotions, manage stress, and develop practical tools to navigate everyday life. My work started in schools, providing mindfulness programming for students, professional development for educators, and wellness experiences for school communities. While education will always be a part of what I do, I’m now expanding my work into businesses and organizations, helping employees and leaders learn how to manage life while doing life.
One of the things I love most about my work is facilitation. I enjoy creating spaces where people can have real conversations, reflect on their own experiences, and walk away with something they can actually use. I’m especially passionate about teaching people how the brain works and helping them understand that while we can’t always control what happens around us, we can develop greater awareness of our thoughts, emotions, and responses. I want people to recognize that they have more influence over how they navigate their mental and emotional well-being than they may realize. My workshops aren’t designed for people to simply sit and listen. We’re going to talk, reflect, practice, and hopefully leave thinking a little differently about how we show up in our everyday lives.
Something people may not know about me is that I’m also an author. Writing has become another way for me to connect with people beyond the workshops and share more of the person behind the business. Through my writing, I explore the real-life experiences, challenges, and lessons that have shaped me. I want people to see that mindfulness isn’t just something we practice when we’re sitting quietly with our eyes closed. It’s something we can apply to how we lead, work, parent, build relationships, and make decisions. My writing allows me to connect the mindfulness lifestyle to the realities of everyday life, including the challenges of entrepreneurship.
When I think about what I’m most proud of, it isn’t necessarily the number of people I’ve reached. It’s the possibility of how many people those individuals will go on to impact. When I teach an educator a strategy to regulate their emotions, that can change how they respond to a classroom full of children. When I help someone develop healthier ways to manage stress, that can influence how they show up for their family, their coworkers, and their community. To me, that’s where the real impact happens. I’m most proud of helping people who, in turn, help other people.
I think what sets me apart is my ability to connect with people through storytelling, honesty, and transparency. I don’t stand in front of a room pretending that because I teach mindfulness, I have everything figured out. I still get overwhelmed. I still have moments when my emotions get the best of me. And yes, sometimes I have to remind myself to use the very strategies I teach! I think people connect with that because it’s real. We’re all navigating the ups and downs of life, constantly learning, evolving, and discovering who we are along the way. I don’t see myself as someone who has mastered mindfulness. I see myself as someone who practices it, lives it, and creates opportunities for others to explore what it can look like in their own lives.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
My favorite childhood memory is meeting my best friend on the first day of ninth grade. I’m 43 years old now, and we’ve been best friends ever since. Looking back, I don’t think either of us could have imagined how much that one day would change our lives.
I grew up without both of my parents present, and I think a part of me was always searching for a connection that felt safe, consistent, and unconditional. Meeting her gave me something I didn’t even realize I needed so deeply. Someone I could grow with, be myself around, and experience the kind of love and loyalty that doesn’t come with conditions.
We’ve literally grown up together. We’ve watched each other navigate different seasons of life, from being teenage girls trying to figure out who we were to becoming grown women navigating careers, relationships, motherhood, and everything in between. Today, she’s the godmother of my son, which makes our relationship even more special.
When I think about my childhood, there are a lot of memories I could choose from, but that one stands out because it wasn’t just a moment. It was the beginning of a relationship that would help shape the rest of my life. She became the family I got to choose, and all these years later, that friendship remains one of the greatest gifts of my life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://mindingmemeditation.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niema-golphin-9aa54618/
