How I Did It: 2020 was supposed to be #MyYear, then came the pandemic. How coaching helped.
Like many of you, I started off 2020 filled with incredible enthusiasm and motivation, anticipation for what this year would bring and all of the goals that I would achieve. I had taken a considerable amount of time to finally get my shit together, and January had me feeling like I was ready to take on the world. 2020 would be my year! I would finally be able to put into practice all that I had worked so hard on, I told myself. And then, COVID-19 happened.
See, in the fall of 2018, I left my job as a nonprofit CEO, moved from DC to Chicago with my family to be closer to our family here, and committed myself to healing from burnout and spending time to explore what would come next. Thanks to a lot of planning, support from my husband, and financial privilege, I was able to take a year off—for all of 2019—to figure out not just what my next career move would be but also to design my life so that it aligned with my priorities, my values, and my desires for a more fulfilling life.
In February, I started a coach training program with the goal of launching my executive and leadership coaching business later this year and a commitment to work no more than 20 hours a week on my coaching business. I would spend the rest of my “work week” continuing to develop my practice as a glass artist and provide strategic guidance and support as a committed board co-chair of the Chicago Abortion Fund. That would leave me with plenty of time to spend quality time with my loved ones, take more vacations, and give myself plenty of space to rest, provide radical care for myself and others, and sustain the energy to vision new and exciting things.
Dismay is an understatement to describe how I was feeling when shelter in place orders started rolling out; the economy tumbled and unemployment went up dramatically, and we're still in it. We all had to scramble to figure out new ways of being in community with each other. I felt like I’d had the wind knocked out of me and I had no idea how, or if I’d ever, get back up. Obviously, I am so very lucky to have support, my health, and a place to quarantine safely, but I couldn't help but feel set back in the dreams and radical revisioning of my life I'd been working towards. This is where my coach training was invaluable.
As I continued to practice coaching, train on a variety of tools, and engage in conversations about possibility, I realized that this moment could also serve as an invitation to imagine something new and different both in this era of COVID, and for what came after. Coaching can be such a critical resource for dreaming differently.
Before I go any further, I want to make clear that I am not shaming or pushing anyone to feel like they must have a game plan for how to navigate this now or after we’ve come through the other side. It's a pandemic, among a televised brutalization of Black lives by police. No one knows how we should or could handle this moment. Our feelings, whether of loss or grief, numbness, disappointment, and more are all real and necessary. If all you feel like doing right now is just surviving in this moment and mourning your lost opportunities, projects, and travels that were supposed to happen this year. You do not need to be productive, or pretend like you’re adapting just fine, or that this is just some small roadblock that you’ll work through. If your biggest priority right now is to just be, then that is where you need to be.
And, if like me, you’ve gone through the grief and loss and feel like you can now manage it and are ready to explore something different, coaching can provide the partnership, support, accountability, and container you need to explore something new.
Coaching is about manifesting what is possible; it's an opportunity to create a vision for yourself that is rooted in your desires, wants, and needs and then executing a plan to make that vision a reality. A simple but effective way to start thinking about your next steps is to begin using powerful questions to discern your vision.
So, as I started to think about how to work and live during a pandemic, I started by asking myself: “What is going on for me and happening in my life right now? What is working, and why? What isn’t working, and why?” This helped me assess my current circumstances, my satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with how my life looked, and weigh them against what it was I wanted to prioritise in accordance with my values. Now that I was clear about what my vision was, the next place to reflect was to ask myself: “What is getting in the way of me producing this?” The answers to this obviously had a lot of responses that included things that were out of my control. And, there were a lot of responses that were within my control. Focusing on the things I could control, I asked myself, “If these blocks were removed, what would be possible?” And what I found was that I could still work to build my business but that my plan to do it would have to be responsive to how I and others were operating in this moment, including being real about what resources and support I needed, or needed more of, to execute my adapted plan.
The life vision that I’ve created for myself has come about because of some incredible work that I’ve done through both coaching and therapy. It never felt possible to have the things I’ve laid out above, and while I’m having to make some changes thanks to COVID (networking looks very different without events and happy hours!), I’m still committed to building and launching my coaching business this year. I’ve been able to see the possibility of working and living exactly how I want through the work I’ve done with coaches and it’s what inspired me to pursue coaching as a profession.
There is nothing extraordinary about the work that I did to get to where I am. What was special was the opportunity coaching provided through space and partnership to explore what it meant to dream differently, create a plan around it, and put it into action. If I can create something for myself that honors exactly who I am, you can too.
Chitra Panjabi is an ontologically-trained executive and leadership coach in the process of certification. She works with women, and in particular women of color, leaders and leaders-in-training who want to level up their leadership while finding balance, maintaining boundaries, and thriving despite the BS they may face (professionally and personally) for being who they are. You can reach her at chitrapanjabi.com and coach@chitrapanjabi.com.