Dubai: A dark night. That’s how 50-year-old Business Coach Dhiren Harchandani describes one of the lowest points in his life. His father-in-law passed away, he felt a complete disconnect with his own self, and missed the birth of his first child, “chasing a business deal”.“To anyone looking at me from the outside, I checked all the boxes of success, because we view success from a very narrow prism of status and material objects. But this success was coming at a huge cost to my relationships, parenting, health, self-esteem and confidence,” the Indian business coach told Emirates 24|7.“I was coming to the office at 8.30am and falling asleep. I really had low energy, everything was really strange. I felt like a foreigner in my own body,” he said.After a battery of tests threw up a diagnosis for hyperthyroidism, Harchandani knew this was one challenge he could not get past. Something had to change.That something was running.From one painful kilometre to marathonsWhen a friend suggested he participate in a three-kilometre fun run, Harchandani took it on as a challenge, and decided to run a kilometre to find out where his fitness levels were at.“I felt like I was going to die,” he said.But there was something else that the run gave him – a sense of finally coming back into his own body. He did successfully complete the fun run in 2016, and eventually discovered the joy it brought to him.From there, he progressed to five and then 10. In the same year, he even decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.Bullied as a child for carrying an asthma inhaler, Dhiren Harchandani later proved to himself what his body was capable of by reaching the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. Photo credit: SuppliedFor a person who grew up with asthma, being able to summit the peak was a massive achievement.“The fear was – what if I get up there and something happens? But everything went really well. In fact, I was one of the strongest climbers,” he said.Since then, Harchandani has joined a running community in Dubai – Inner Fight – and completed triathlons and marathons across the world.His next challenge is qualifying for the Boston Marathon.How running turned his life aroundWhile running began as a release, it quickly became the anchor around which he reorganised his entire life. To be ready for early morning training, he could no longer stay up until midnight or later. He began sleeping at around 9.30pm and waking at 4am to reach the track.It also became a filter, removing people and priorities that were not adding value to his life.“You have to be really tough and say no,” he said. “It allowed me to focus on what was essential.”Looking back, he says that running allowed him to plug all the holes in the boat, that for him was sinking.Lessons learnt along the wayRunning has also taught Harchandani some essential life lessons – like putting yourself first is not selfish, but the best way to show up for the people who matter the most, or something as simple as ‘if you believe you can do it … you can’.“I’m not a morning person, I can’t possibly run 5k … these are all stories that we tell ourselves,” Harchandani said.“The biggest lesson I have learned is to believe in yourself and your own ability to do things. Change is possible,” he said.And while running allows Harchandani to disconnect from the noise, by not taking calls during runs or not socialising past a certain time of night, it has also somehow allowed him to connect better – with himself and the people around him.The Dubai community that shows upDubai, he says, has been the background to almost every significant moment in his life – both the high points as well as the low ones.He met and married his wife here, raised his two sons in the city, started his first business and experienced some of his greatest highs and most painful losses here.“It hasn’t all been rainbows and unicorns,” he said. “But everything in my adult life has happened here.”After completing two decades in the city, he believes it offers something he hasn’t witnessed anywhere else – a safe space where everyone can find a place.Having lived in the Philippines, where his parents moved when he was just one year old, to living in the UK, United States and India, he says visiting the UAE on short trips always gave him a sense that big things were happening in the country.“Also, I don’t think there’s any other place that is as supportive as Dubai,” he said.“Safety is paramount and in spite of everything that’s happened this year, I still feel super safe. I think it really comes down to the leadership,” he said.That safety gives people the luxury to then focus on things that really matter to them.“When you’re not constantly looking over your shoulder, worried about whether your phone is in your front pocket or back pocket, your energy can focus on the things that matter,” he said.That safety has naturally given way to one of the most diverse communities Harchandani says he has experienced.“Where else can you say you have a friend who is Ukrainian, and another who is Malayan, and then someone who’s from Singapore. That’s just not normal anywhere else,” he added.Angels along the trackDhiren Harchandani 3But the biggest draw for Harchandani is the community that Dubai allows you to be part of.“I’m a Harvard Business School alumnus and we have an HBS community here, there’s one for Stanford, too. Then you have the sports communities, whatever you love you’ll find a community for it here, and if not, you can create it, because that’s what the city enables,” he said.“For me, what truly makes Dubai special is that there’s something for everyone. You don’t have to be of a certain socioeconomic or ethnic background to belong,” he said.This community is something he experiences every day.Last week, as he went about his run along Kite Beach at 6 in the morning, he came across a woman waving a drink at him, offering it to him.“Normally, people who are standing on the tracks to offer drinks are part of a particular running community, so I told her ‘I’m not from your community’,” he said.Her warm response is something Harchandani says epitomises the Dubai community spirit. “She said: ‘You don’t have to be part of the community. You are part of the community – you’re in Dubai.’”She handed him the drink and even asked whether he needed another.Harchandani later posted a reel about the encounter, describing the woman as an ‘angel’ with an unforgettable presence and energy, something he’s often seen happen not just in Dubai, but in marathons across the world, where strangers sometimes appear seemingly out of nowhere to help runners before disappearing into the crowd without seeking recognition.“I call them angels. They do it simply to help. They don’t want name, fame or recognition,” he said.But the woman handing out drinks that morning at Kite Beach had a powerful story of her own, and a reason for being at Kite Beach.Who was she, and what brought her to the running track that morning? Read her story in our next Dubai-it special.
