This post is an excerpt from my interview with Henna Inam. This excerpt sheds light on overcoming mid-life crises, self-reflections daily questions practice, self-limiting loops, practicing self-compassion during tough times and bringing soul to work.
You can check out my full interview with Henna here Henna Inam — Wired for Disruption, Lessons from Ashram, 5 Shifts in Agility, 10 Powerful Questions to Ask Yourself, and More (#120)
Let’s begin..
Mid-life crisis:
One of the things that I realized while growing up and this goes back to my midlife crisis is that I was so adaptive. The reason I wrote my book wired for authenticity is that I really had struggled, even in my corporate career. I worked in corporate America for Proctor and Gamble, then for Novartis. I was an Asian woman, mostly in meetings with white men. As I grew up through the organization, I was in various C-level roles. I was always adapting and it was sort of the same thing as in my childhood growing up I was always adapting and until I had my midlife crisis and I thought about this has been a really great adventure – but who am I? what do I want? What’s really important?
I think that the advice I would have is for people to dig deep inside, to find their deepest inspirations, to find their most brilliant strengths, and to find a need, that calls to them, there are so many needs right now, whether it’s a need To help people become the best versions of themselves, the people that you lead, or whether it’s a need to find innovative solutions because you are a brilliant thinker and scientist or, whether it’s a need to, create something new, in terms of experiences for people. Our job is to find that fire that’s inside of us that ignites us so that we can step into the most powerful and inspired.
Daily questions practice
This is something that has been written about and talked about by Marshall Goldsmith, who is a leading CEO coach. So I have an Excel spreadsheet and it has my list of 10 questions and I have an accountability partner. We call each other at 7:00 AM every day and she’s got her list and we basically say, how do I rate myself? I rate myself from 0 to 10 – did I do it or did I not do it? 10 is – yes I did it.
- Did I exercise today – either walk 10,000 steps or work out for at least a half-hour?
- Self-care is sort of the key component to maintaining our own energy and is such an important part of any impact that we’re going to have externally. The question is – did I drink 64 ounces of water?
- Did I make healthy food choices? And for me, it’s protein and veggies and anti-inflammatory foods.
- Did I eat mindfully with appreciative attention?
- Did I meditate and connect with my wisest self for 15 minutes today?
- Did I journal the three things that I’m grateful for?
- Did I write my top three priorities and progress them for the day?
- Did I do my best to practice courage today in situations that called for it?
- Did I appreciate the good in others?
- Did I take my daily vitamin supplements and Apple cider vinegar?
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