“Tras el vivir y el soñar, está lo que más importa: el despertar.”*

Antonio Machado, Seville-born poet, playwright and flamenco aficionado

(* Beyond living and dreaming, what matters most is waking up).

I was sitting at the dining table eating a light lunch in the apartment I was renting in Sevilla, where I had been living for three months. It was an ordinary moment. I was just on a break between flamenco dance classes when this thought popped into my head.

Here I am. No job, no permanent home, no romantic partner. And I’ve never been happier in my life.

It was a surprising thought, but not a huge a-ha. It felt more like an obvious truth making itself conscious for the first time. A flash of insight, born out of the accumulation of many tiny moments. I was peaceful, in a state of relaxed wonder. I didn’t have any of those things. And yet, nothing was missing. Everything was perfect.

I was in Sevilla because I was studying flamenco full-time during a sabbatical year. Three months earlier, it had felt natural — even necessary— to travel the six hours by train and three hours by bus to Sevilla. The Spanish border was closed due to the pandemic, except for essential travel. The bus was full, and everyone was a bit anxious when we stopped at the border. The Border Patrol entered the bus and checked the passports of every bus passenger to my front, back and side - except mine. I was ready to explain why learning to dance flamenco was essential, but I was relieved to go unnoticed. It was a good start.

A few months back — while still walking on crutches and healing a fractured foot— I decided to enroll in a well-known flamenco arts school. I had been studying flamenco for about 10 years in the US, and it had been an old dream of mine to study in Spain. My doctor had assured me I would be recovered by the time class would start, so I registered thinking this would be so much fun. It was not until I was in school getting my butt kicked four hours a day that I realized this was the Harvard of Flamenco. A place famous for grooming the next generation of professional flamenco guitarists, singers and dancers. For the past 10 years, I had been squeezing in as much flamenco as possible into the crevasses of my life in San Francisco, and I was even performing regularly. But this was another league altogether. My feet had blisters, my knees hurt, and my shoes had holes from all the footwork. I was struggling to keep up.

But I had one thing going for me: cojones.

Turns

On Mondays and Wednesdays, the first class was dedicated to turns. Ninety minutes of piroutettes, deboules, vueltas de tacon, quebradas, singles, doubles, en dedans, en dehors, you name it. I recorded at least 15 different combos.

Turns are something you need to practice all the time, a use-it-or-lose-it situation. The women in my class (who were 10 –15 years my junior) had been working on turns for the last year. I hadn’t been dancing for a year, and a string of recent falls had left me with a fear for anything requiring balance. Whenever I attempted a turn, my whole body would go weak and I felt helpless in the throes of disequilibrium.

I was determined to conquer this fear. Over the next few months, I worked with 3 teachers and practiced by myself after class. The good news was, I discovered what I was doing wrong. The bad news was, the list was long:

a) “your shoulders are too tense, your chest too collapsed”

b) “you don’t have enough leg muscle”

c) “, your releve’ is too low, your passe’ too far back”

d) “your hands fold in a weird way at the wrist”

e) “your head isn’t turning fast enough”

f) “you’re not engaging your core”

g) “you’re not breathing”

After months of practice, my body miraculously produced a double turn. It felt like a gift from the divine. It was warm butter, it was pure honey dripping from a ripe fig! I was freedom incarnate. I know why the Dervishes whirl.

I left Sevilla months ago, and I continue to practice turns by myself, working on a) through g). I miss the support of a teacher and other students in the room. At the same time, I feel the comfort of the daily routine, the walk to the studio, the warm up rituals, the particular song I use for each exercise. I seek that perfect moment, and in the seeking I have found joy.

La Calo’

Living in the Sevilla city center is like living inside a 16th century history museum. Building doors are my favorite architectural element, made of thick old wood with metal studs sprinkled all over, like polka dots on a flamenco skirt. Behind the massive doors of those buildings were the traditional Andalucian patios with beautiful tiles and indoor gardens.

My apartment building had a beautiful wooden door. The lock was a little stuck, so you had to get the key in just so and give it the right twist for the heavy mechanism to surrender. I always held my breath a little, afraid that this might be the time when I was going to get locked out. A nice exhale right before turning the key always did the trick, though. And then I was rewarded by the cool entrance lobby, protected from the June heat which was starting to announce “la calo’ ”. This is what Sevillanos call the heat that hits the city from late June to September. It’s a heat so strong that needs its own name. Any other time of the year, you would say “el calor”, a male gender word. During the summer, heat changes gender from male to female. La calo’ . The powerful feminine, making us all go inside, disrobe and cool down.

Magenta Pants

Walking was my main means of transportation in Sevilla. Every morning, I would walk the 30 minutes from the Alfalfa neighborhood where I lived to the school in Triana. I loved that walk. I watched the world wake up, people starting their day with cafe y tostada in the plaza cafe, others going to church, or opening their businesses… The highlight was crossing the Triana bridge. First, admiring the giant buganvilia and jacaranda tree at the foot of the bridge, glistening in the sun. Then checking out the rowers gliding down the dark waters of the Guadalquivir, dancers in their own right. And then, at exactly 9:50am, I would cross paths with a woman wearing the same magenta pants every day, always talking on the phone and rushing to what I assumed was her job at a boutique downtown. She reminded me of myself, so often rushing to cross to the other side of my life.

After morning class, I would go to the Mercado De Triana for lunch at Obrador La Osa, a small home made food stall owned by a tiny, rosy-cheeked woman called Lola. While I waited for my food, she would encouraged me to put my smartphone away and browse one of the children’s books on the counter instead.

On the way back to school, I would stop by the bakery and buy some crunchy bread for the next day. On that same street was my favorite bodega, La Antigua Abaceria. As soon as pandemic restrictions relaxed, this place would fill up for dinner around 10:30 PM. It was tiny, jamones hanging from the ceiling, wood paneling everywhere, old photos of flamenco dancers and toreros, and one guy taking care of everything. It enveloped me in good cheer. I can still taste the cured cod topped with thick orange slices, fennel and lots of olive oil.

And so it was, for weeks and weeks. I was surrounded by beauty. I spent most of my day moving at a pace that felt my own. I owned my time, how I spent it, and whom I spent it with.

Why does it take exiting life as we know it in order to experience it fully? Maybe it’s the human condition. We can get so used to things that we don’t even notice them anymore, regardless of whether they’re joyful of painful. Stepping away and slowing down the movie of my life helped me luxuriate in the details. I had enough time to really notice and take them in. I still believe that purposeful work, romantic love, and a nice home contribute to happiness. During my time in Sevilla, I discovered that movement, beauty and unstructured time are even more fundamental. They help me experience life more fully.

Never Alone

Having moved a few times in my life, I am used to making new friends. It takes initiative and persistence. I tried that in Sevilla but it didn’t work as well as in the past. I would invite people to get together and they would cancel last minute. I would meet friends of friends, really interesting and creative people, but that pull for regular contact wouldn’t kick in. I joined my classmates at the café around the corner where students would hang out after class, but the conversation would gravitate often around gossip.

I decided to stop trying. There was loneliness for a while. Especially because Sevilla is such a gregarious city. Even in the pandemic, the streets are filled with couples and groups having drinks or sharing meals at cafes and restaurants. Eating by myself felt like I was breaking the law. I commented this with a local who agreed that this is almost an aberration in Sevillian culture. So weird that it is used as an idiom to describe a not-so-friendly person (“ese come la tapa solo”).

I got so used to my own company that at a certain point I started feeling like there was someone always there. An easy going companionship. I was, in fact, never alone.

As soon as I stopped trying to make friends, slowly people started approaching me. I was blessed with three good friends, with whom I would regularly go out to dinner, see flamenco shows and have meaningful conversations.

An Ongoing Dance

People often ask me what I got out of my sabbatical in Spain. Was it worth leaving it all behind? Am I a new person? Or are the old habits back?

Of course, they are. After all, they fit me so well, after years of indenting themselves into my flesh. What I do notice is that I am more attuned and present.

Let me illustrate. A few weeks ago, I went to the doctor’s office. I’m sitting in the waiting room when I feel pulled to look to my right. I see an older lady leaning against the wall by the restroom door. My first reaction is, “oh, it’s nothing, just someone waiting for their turn”. And usually, I would leave it at that. But something felt off this time. Without thinking, I got up and walked up to her. I asked, are you ok. ”No, I am a bit dizzy, my husband is in the waiting room, can you help me get back?”. We walked back together. Had I been on my phone as usual when killing time, or dismissed my hunch as I do often, I would have missed this opportunity to help.

I am happy that I gave myself a chance to be free and live the flamenco dream in Sevilla. I’m glad I didn’t let guilt fool me into believing that it was selfish to do so. No-one got hurt. In fact, I think everyone benefitted.

Waking Up In Sevilla was originally published in A Clearing In The Forest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A friend of mine once said that it’s easier to leave your country than to come back. The bureaucracy can be overwhelming and irritating. As prodigal daughters and sons, we long to be welcomed back with open arms. However, it’s as if our native land opened the door and, with a blank stare, asked:

“Sorry, who did you say you are again?”

“Are you kidding me? C’mon, I went away for a while but I’m not a foreigner!”

Today, however, was different. Something magical happened. A 20 minute phone call with a representative from the Portuguese IRS that was so genuine and heartfelt that we both teared up.

I called because I needed some tax info. Portugal has a state of the art e-government system. Most of your tax stuff is handled online. Say you just paid your kids’ school tuition. Your tax return is automatically populated, without you having to move a finger. This seamless integration helps the country prevent tax evasion, and it makes the lives of citizens easier and less dependent on expensive tax services. It’s like TurboTax, only better and free. Since I haven’t lived in the country for decades, I don’t have access to an online account. Going to an actual IRS office during the pandemic was out of the question, so the only other option was to call them. It was unlikely I would get anywhere, but hey, why not try.

The lady who picked up my call asked for my tax identification number and pulled up my records.

“Ana Lucia. You have the same name as my daughter”, she said.

“Really? What a coincidence!”. I didn’t know if I should be more surprised by that synchronicity, or by the fact that she even brought it up.

“It’s a lovely name, quite uncommon, but my daughter doesn’t like it very much”, sighed the Portuguese IRS.

“Oh, I totally understand. I like my name now, but when I was growing up kids at school would make fun of it [this is all because of Sister Lucia, one of the three shepherd children who reportedly saw Our Lady in Fatima in the early 1900s, spurring a fervent devotion by millions. During my childhood, sadly, the name Lucia was a synonym for “A-Not-Particularly-Attractive-Nun”, making my chances of being popular in school exactly zero].

The Portuguese IRS revealed that her daughter had had the same name-shaming experience. And from that moment on, we became friends. I found out that she was from the same Northern Portugal town as my dad. She also had extended family living in the US, and asked me what it was like to live there. She wanted to know if it was really true that people need health insurance to get healthcare, because she saw it in the movies and thought it was really strange. We talked about how how the US compares to Portugal, I told her my opinion- that in the US one can get better work opportunities, better consumer products and customer service, but that in Portugal life is more wholesome and interconnected. That’s why, I shared, I was considering repatriation so that I could be closer to my parents.

“You are right to do it”, said the Portuguese IRS. “I lost my mom not too long ago, and there is not one day I don’t cry because I miss her. Oh, I’m starting to cry right now just talking about her.”

I was so moved that I also teared up. “I love my parents very much too. I will be so sad the day that they are gone. I’m so grateful that I have been spending more time with them during this pandemic. Everyday moments like having lunch or helping them around the house feel so precious because I was away for so long. I’m fortunate that I can enjoy them while they are alive and well”.

Let’s pause for a second. Imagine that. You’re on the phone with the IRS, and you are both tearing up talking about how much you love your parents.

I got the tax information I needed, and we ended our call, thanking each other for the nice conversation and chuckling about life’s quirky connections.

The day the IRS and I had a heart connection (yes, really) was originally published in A Clearing In The Forest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Just when I was starting my sabbatical, I broke my foot. Strangely, it was just what I needed.

I’ve noticed over the years that I become wrong-footed and accident-prone when things are not quite right around me (…). It’s as if my body turns in on itself trying to signal that something is wrong, trying to get my attention. I’ll take a tremendous digger. Or fall down some stairs. Or my knees and elbows will trade places while I’m trying to get out of the car. It can be spectacular, these falls, these bruises and blunders (…)

In I Will Always Inhabit the Water by Lidia Yuknavitch

A friend of mine took a spectacular fall recently. He broke a few ribs and was really bruised. In commiseration, I told him that there was a good chance this accident was related to his divorce. In my experience, major life transitions are ripe for injury. I fell three times during my divorce. A few months into it, I slipped on the fringes of my flamenco shawl during a dance rehearsal and broke my left wrist. A few months later, I stepped on the long plastic tail of my dry cleaning bag, dove into the neighbor’s gate and got nine stiches on my forehead. By the third time, I had gotten the hang of it, so when I tripped in the parking lot at work I just scraped my knee.

Fast forward a couple of years to November 2020. On the very day that I officially quit my coaching job to take a sabbatical year, I broke my right foot. It happened during a Krav Maga class where I was learning self-defense. There was nothing dangerous about this class. My trainer and sparring partner were both very attentive and competent. I just happened to lose my balance and roll my ankle. At the hospital, I asked the orthopedist if I should be worried, “I’ve had so many accidents. What if I have balance issues? Osteoporosis?” His response: “No. You just have bad luck”.

Why transitions carry a higher risk of injury

An important life transition is triggered by anything that fundamentally changes life as we know it. It can be something that we initiate (like I did by taking this year off) or we are thrown into it by the unfoldment of life itself (for example, we get married, we lose someone we love, we get laid off). As Lidia Yuknavitch so beautifully describes it, injuries that happen in these key moments in our lives are not just bad luck. They typically occur when we (consciously or not) ignore, avoid or are not able to process the intense emotions that we are experiencing.

For example, things can feel out of control in these situations. One of the not-so-helpful ways I avoid this uncomfortable feeling is to go into my head, where I spend a long time planning my next steps and having imaginary conversations. This gives me the illusion that I am solving the problem, but it also makes my body tense up and I end up moving through life like a ghost. This is what happened when I broke my wrist. I was traveling across the dance floor with a six foot piano shawl while lost in thought about the end of my relationship. A silly slip was all it took to fall like a block of cement.

But transitions can also be really fun and thrilling. When I leave things behind that used to drain me, I get flooded with excitement an I feel like a champagne bottle just waiting to pop. A friend of mine is experiencing something similar right now. He is on sabbatical as well and has moved overseas to pursue his art. He is elated — and also very jittery, dropping his keys all the time, little accidents like that. He didn’t really connect two and two together until he attended a Stanford University webinar called The Science of Stress, Calm and Sleep, where neuroscientist Andrew Huberm showed the diagram below. My friend realized that he was in the “red zone”, and needed to find his way back to a healthier, sustainable state of arousal.

I believe that my most recent foot fracture was a case of feeling lonely and lost, and trying very hard not to. This sabbatical was meant for me to pause, reset and reimagine the next chapter of my life. Like in all transitions, there is a messy middle. I had left an “old me” behind in California but I still didn’t know who the “new me” was. I was also taken aback by how big of a cultural shock it was to be back in my home country after 20 years away. One thing is to visit for a week where everything is a celebration. The other is to stay long enough that you start noticing how everything — including yourself — has changed. I was out of sync with the pace of life. I struggled to communicate in my native language. Had become “too American”? My old friends were kind and welcoming, but I felt disconnected. I wanted their support, and I didn’t know how to ask for it. I felt unmoored. No wonder I lost my footing.

Injuries can change your life for the better.

I had a goal for my sabbatical, and it was to study flamenco in Spain. I had been dancing for years in California, but Spain is the motherland. When I broke my foot in November, I was scheduled to start training at a professional dance school in February in Sevilla. I worried that I wouldn’t make it. But my doctor sent me home with crutches, an orthopedic boot, and a glimmer of hope: “Do as I say and you will heal in eight weeks. You will go to Spain.”

I love a good challenge. I take it on like a forcado takes on a bull (which I actually have done, but that’s another story). After eight weeks, not only was my foot healed but I was also stronger and happier. Before my injury I could barely do five push ups. Now I was doing 15, and my dance footwork had never sounded better. Those feelings of being lost, lonely? Gone. In fact, I hadn’t felt this joyful in a long time. In the book Antifragile, Nassim Taleb describes things and people that actually need adversity in order to thrive. This was the first time I experienced what he was talking about. Looking back, there were five things that made all the difference for me:

Single-minded Focus. I had one goal - to be in Spain on Thursday, February 4. In my mind’s eye, I could see the date on calendar. I visualized myself attending class, walking around in Sevilla, eating tapas at restaurants. I upped my meditation time so that I could ride the emotional ups and downs without getting sucked into them. I found Tonglen meditation especially powerful to contact the pain of others and put mine into perspective.

Daily Movement. Once I stop moving, strength leaves my body like rats leave a sinking ship. I had to stay fit to keep up with four hours of dance training per day. So I moved my body every single day. I discovered a seated version of gaga (created by Ohad Naharin, the choreographer of the Israeli Batsheva dance company) that is all about finding pleasure and ease in movement. YouTubers were my coaches, especially Caroline Jordan who created these amazing hurt foot workout videos. As soon as I was out of my boot, my Krav Maga trainer designed an intense training program to build back my muscle mass. It was such hard work. But it left me feeling like a Viking warrior.

Loving Support. Walking with crutches and not being allowed to set my foot on the floor meant that something as simple as getting a glass of water from the kitchen was now a multi-step project. I crawled a lot. I was dependent on my family and close friends who fed me, drove me around, shopped for me, cleaned my place, and cheered me up. Friends from afar checked in and showered me with affection through technology. Letting people know that I was hurt and needed help not only brought me closer to them but also helped me discern my most important relationships.

Pleasure. When I’m working hard on an area of my life, I need to let go and celebrate in others. I decided to let myself eat all the things that I love. I celebrated the end of each day with dark chocolate. I took online singing classes from a flamenco school in Granada so that I could stay connected to my art. I discovered the amazing podcast Song Exploder, and watched a bootleg video of a Prince concert in Berlin that made me weep like a baby. I embroidered a pillow for my future home. Anything that I could do to experience beauty, inspiration and joi de vivre.

Deep Rest. I find it hard to rest. The first weeks of my sabbatical were a frenzy of activity, reconnecting with people, looking for a place to live, settling in... If it weren’t for this injury, I don’t think I would have actually stopped. I rested deeply. I moved slow. There was nowhere to go, nothing to accomplish. My sense of time shifted. I discovered that most phone calls and texts don’t really require my immediate attention. It the pandemic lockdown of the privileged on steroids. The day I was able to walk down the street by myself for the first time felt like a rebirth. Everything I used to take for granted was now fresh and bright-colored, every interaction an opportunity for connection.

As I am writing this, I’m in my small apartment in Sevilla. I’ve been here for some time now. I’ve been enjoying my training so much that I am staying a few extra months. I am very lucky that I can take this time for myself. I sense a subtle shift in my attitude towards life. I used to love reading Agatha Christie as a kid. And life feels very much like that now, a mystery being solved one clue at a time. This time, the ground feels solid even though the future is unclear. This time, I feel unbreakable.

I’m offering complimentary 1 hour coaching sessions- no strings attached!

I’m currently on sabbatical (read my blog!) following two decades of coaching leaders in large organizations- but I want to keep connecting with the people who inspire me the most! So I am offering complimentary coaching to leaders who do not usually have access to executive coaching (for example, change agents without direct reports, small business owners, non-profit leaders and mid-career professionals going through transition). Schedule your session here.

How to Get Back Up When You Fall Down was originally published in A Clearing In The Forest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Warning: this post is heavily biased by love

One of the blessings of being in Portugal during the pandemic this past summer is that I got to do one of my favorite things: hang out with my mom at the beach café, catching up on life over espresso. Through one of those conversations I learned something new about my childhood: I was never potty-trained (bear with me, I promise there is a point to this). My mother described how I, as a two year-old, decided from one day to the next to stop wearing diapers and graduate to the next level- without any nudging, cajoling, or training. This is still a scientific curiosity to my mother, a pediatric nephrologist with a 35-year career in all things kidney, bladder and… bed-wetting.

Nocturnal enuresis (science’s name for bed-wetting) affects 5–10% of 7-year-old children in the US, and about 5% of children over 10 years old. Some wet their bed well into their teenage years. This is a hardship for families. It’s not just that the body is not behaving as expected. Everyone’s sleep is affected. There is stigma and shame. The good news is that there is a pretty good drug to manage enuresis which many physicians (including mom) prescribe. The bad news is that the drug alone doesn‘t work for many kids. So my mother developed her own method, and her success rate is so high that most of her colleagues refer their patients to her. Her secret sauce? Agile coaching. She never learned how to do it, never even heard of it — she just naturally good at it. Here is how my mother changes kids’ lives:

[But wait. A proper introduction before we move on. Meet my mother, Helena.

When she was 8 months old, she sailed from Portugal to Mozambique with her three brothers and my grandmother to join my grandfather, a carpenter and one of the many poor and politically “inconvenient” people working in the Portuguese colonies. At age 10, she enrolled in a catholic boarding school in Maputo (then Lourenço Marques), a precious opportunity for education but a lonely and strict existence. She was the first in her family to graduate from high school and college. When the Portuguese dictatorship ended in the 1970s, chaos ensued. She and another 1.5 million people were displaced and sought safety and a future in Portugal. She became a physician. She was the first woman in her department to do research abroad, while her husband stayed in Portugal working full time and caring for nine year-old moi. Helena helped thousands of children with chronic illness grow up and thrive, and trained hundreds of doctors to do the same. She is published internationally. She ran a hospital, and built one, too. She is an advisor for the government. And she bakes a kickass chocolate chiffon.]

I believe that my mother’s ability to thrive in the face of adversity taught her how to help others do the same. Here is her simple and powerful approach.

1. Empathize, empathize, empathize

The first thing my mom does when a new enuresis family walks into her office is to reassure them. “This is not a disease. This is a solvable problem”. Meaning, there is nothing wrong with you. By relaxing the grip of fear and shame, she creates a safe environment for healing to begin (something I am learning more about through Dr. Stephen Porges’s polyvagal theory).

She spends a full hour in that first appointment vs. the typical 15 minutes. With no off-the-shelf solution and no way to predict the outcome, Helena knows that this is a complex problem with a unique solution that will emerge as the treatment unfolds. She’s never heard of the Cynefin framework, but she sure knows how to apply it.

Finally, most of her time is spent talking with the child. It’s not uncommon for pediatricians to examine a child and then turn around to explain things to parents. My mother uses dialogue to get to know the child and their experience, beyond what’s going on with the body. Like a good agile coach, Helena values kids and interactions over protocols and pills.

2. Paint a picture of the future that matters to them.

More often than not it’s the parents who seek help, exhausted from sleepless nights and piles of laundry. Their kids don’t see a problem at all. In those cases, mom brings things into a new perspective. “You like sleepovers, right? What would it be like to go on a sleepovers without being afraid of having an accident?”; or, “what is something you wish you could do that you can’t because you wet your bed?” And so on. Kids catch on real quick.

What I like about this approach is that it calls on their creative self, what they love to do and who they really are, rather than speaking to their fear and need for approval from parents, friends. Helena is not only helping kids to stop wetting their bed- she is helping them develop as human beings.

3. Make people accountable for their own journey.

Before any treatment begins, there is an agreement. Helena asks every child who they think is going to solve the problem. Every one of them invariably responds “I am”. She defines her role, too: “you know best what works for you, and I’m just here to guide you”.

One cool tool she offers is a booklet for tracking bed-wetting events. Parents are not allowed to touch said booklet. It’s the child’s job to fill it in every day and tally the numbers weekly. Kids love it. They create their own tracking systems, like using the logo of their favorite football club to mark dry nights and the one of their archrival for wet ones. Others use their smartphones, and even start water intake journals. They quickly start noticing patterns and come up with their own explanations for what’s happening. They are learning to learn, a critical competency any good coach wants to transfer to their client.

This story reminded me of what my mentor and expert agile coach Len Lagestee once taught me: never touch the work of the team you are coaching. Give them tools, frameworks, encouragement, but hands off their slides, prototypes, etc. In my pre-agile days, I used to focus on getting the team “there” as fast as possible. I avoided tangents at all costs. And if a helping hand would move things along, then so be it. But when I decided to surrender to the wisdom of a team’s own process, magic happened. Tangents became rainbows leading to learning and innovation treasures. That simple principle of not touching a team’s work brought to life one of my favorite coaching adages: I am your sherpa, but this is your mountain to climb.

4. Start simple, iterate over time.

Back when Helena was a PhD student and computers had floppy disk drives, she learned to code so that she could run statistical models for research. Maybe that’s where her talent for “debugging” comes from. In her treatment method, mom helps kids replace unhelpful habits with new ones that support their goals. First order of business is to ask a child to walk her through a typical day to uncover areas for intervention (a pediatrician’s version of user journey mapping.).

Helena: “What is the first thing you do in the morning?”

Patient: “I eat breakfast.”

Helena: “From now on, the first thing you’ll do is pee. Then eat breakfast.”

She meets them where they are by giving them a simple practice to start strengthening bladder self-control. As this habit sinks in, she releases version 1.1: now pee at least 5 times per day. And so on. (Early and continuous delivery! Yes!)

5. Celebrate progress, not victory

Every week, parents are supposed to reward kids for progress made. As soon as they start seeing positive results, many parents think they’re done and stop rewarding. “This is a big no-no”, mom explains, and shares stories of kids complaining to her that their parents are not playing by the rules.

I smile as I remember a questions I frequently hear in organizational transformation: how long do we need to keep rewarding people for just doing their job?! Here’s how my mother knows her job is done: when kids forget to take their pills and the next day they wake up to a dry bed. That’s when the new way is in their DNA. And the kids are smiling, victorious.

My pediatrician mother opened my eyes to the fact that coaching is not a profession. It’s a human skill. All of us, in some way or at some point in our lives, need to help a fellow human get unstuck and emerge stronger. It’s a hard job, but there is really just one thing you need to do. As Helena summed up nicely, “you just have to engage the kids”. I couldn’t have said it better.

What is your secret sauce for coaching others? Is there something that comes naturally to you that helps bring others closer to their best self? Please share in the comments, I’d love to learn about it!

Complimentary 1:1 Coaching Sessions

I’m currently on sabbatical (read my blog!) following two decades of coaching leaders in large organizations- but I want to keep connecting with the people who inspire me the most! So I am offering complimentary coaching to leaders who do not usually have access to executive coaching (for example, change agents without direct reports, small business owners, non-profit leaders and mid-career professionals going through transition). Schedule your session here.

Coach Like A Pediatrician was originally published in A Clearing In The Forest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There is an ancient tradition in Judaism called the shmita, or sabbath year. It’s the seventh and final year of the agricultural cycle, when any and all productive activity is forbidden in that field. The intent is to give the land an opportunity to rest.

Shortly after the pandemic arrived, I decided to stop working, leave San Francisco and take a year off. This was not an impulsive decision. In fact, my Jerry McGuire fantasy simmered and brewed over a long time. The pandemic just lowered the water line and revealed the rocks that were already there.

Immigration fatigue

I was coming to my 20th anniversary as an immigrant. I left my home country (Portugal) because I felt a call to adventure and a desire to vindicate the suffering of my parents and grandparents. I wanted to one day be able to shout at the top of my lungs “look, poverty and war didn’t kill us- we made it!”

I built and rebuilt my life in different places. It was exhilarating, and also exhausting. As a foreigner, many things that locals take for granted require extra energy: communicating in a foreign language 24/7. Learning the history and pop culture so that you can relate to people. Getting auto insurance with no driving record. Figuring out where the trash goes. I got used to it eventually, but even a privileged immigrant like myself wakes up some days with a dull ache in the soul, one that whispers ”I’ve assimilated so much that I don’t even know who I really am anymore.” A yearning to stop efforting and just be home. Van Morrison sang it beautifully in I’m Not Feeling It Any More. The man knew.

Transformation fatigue

In the last three years, I was at the top of my game professionally. I was working in my dream job as a transformation leader and coach in a large biotech company in California. I was helping to guide thousands of people towards a future state where our company would become more agile and human-centric. It was exciting, meaningful work. I built a new coaching team to bring transformation to life on the ground. We were like the sherpas that help people summit big mountains. We were a human fruit salad of professional and personal backgrounds, ages, races, identities, bound by a common goal to cause good trouble and leave no-one behind. In the beginning, people were a bit suspicious, they either didn’t know what coaches did or they had had some really bad experiences in the past (I couldn’t blame them. Bad coaches are the belly fat of organizations). But this time, things were different. Much like the lone nut who started a dance party in the park, our coaches were humble and enthusiastic. They started small experiments, used outrageous moves, and a lot of empathy and love. They taught people new ways to solve complex problems and thrive in uncertainty. They challenged and helped leaders to let go of control and become more visionary and wise. We found enough “crazy” people willing to join us and a movement was born. Bureaucracy and hierarchy started to dissolve. Employees were more creative, autonomous. Leaders were more inspired and authentic. Patients were being heard and served faster, better.

As with any transformation, this was painful, and one of the hardest jobs of my career. A lot was changing at once. I said goodbye to many dear colleagues. As we scaled the transformation, demand for our work grew, our team grew — and I was miserable. I love creating something out of nothing with a small team and giving it the legs to walk but being a people manager and a department head just brings out the worst in me. So I turned down the promotion I had worked so hard for and became a member of the team. And for a year, I truly enjoyed it. I worked with over 120 leaders on their personal transformation (“corporate soulwork”, as one of them put it). I was inspired by the beautiful new sparkle I saw in their eyes. I wondered where mine was.

Divorce fatigue

While all of this was happening at work, I separated from and divorced my husband. Also a decision that took me years to make and gather the courage to act on. I loved my ex-husband deeply, and I think he would agree as well that I was devoted to our relationship. I had made a commitment and I believed that only weak people quit. If this marriage was not working, that could only mean that I was not strong, resourceful or attractive enough. But after a long time planting seeds in a soil that was dead, I ran out of solutions. The only thing left to do was to accept reality, which turned out to be the most loving thing I could do for both of us. Our mediator put it nicely when he said “I wish society would see divorce not as a failure but as part of the natural cycle of life and death in relationship.” When my marriage ended, other dreams died to. My ideal of a lifelong partnership. My house that I never renovated. My children who never arrived. I was filled with loss.

“Only that which can destroy itself is truly alive”

I love this quote by Carl Jung. Here was my life’s second call for adventure. Sure, I needed to rest, but I did not need a vacation — I needed a rebirth. The person I had become had many strong opinions about what a woman my age, in my circumstances, should do and be. Only this time there was another voice, a strong underground current, a sense of inevitability for what had to happen. I had no partner, no children, no mortgage. I had a golden ticket in my hand, and I was going to use it.

How to break through the fear of stopping

When I’m about to do something important in my life, that’s when I feel the most fear. I am destroying my career. People will think that I am lazy, crazy. I will feel lonely. I will be bored. I will be financially ruined. And on, and on. I am blessed with a great brain but it can get stuck in this kind of obsessive, negative loop that paralyzes me. One way I’ve learned to snap out of it is to redistribute my energy to other places (see my simple drawing below).

• I ask my heart (not my brain) “what do I want?”
• Then I check in with my gut (or go for a walk) to decide my first move
• Only then do I crunch the numbers, research, etc to make it happen

In this case, my heart wanted an unrushed life, more vitality, beauty and connection. My body had been ready for years to take a break, so it was more like opening the barn door and letting trot out. Then I organized my finances and drew up all sorts of Plan B’s to prevent career and emotional catastrophe. I agreed with my management to take 3 months of unpaid leave, and after that we would discuss different options to return to work (starting small was very helpful because I was too scared to quit my job right during the pandemic and I was also still quite emotionally attached to my team). I sold everything I didn’t need and put the rest in storage, just in case this went longer than 3 months. And I got on a flight to Portugal to be with my family and friends.

A few months have past. Since then, I had a mild case of covid and a breast cancer scare. A close friend died. All things that further validated my decision to slow down and connect more with what is healthy and gives my life meaning. Oh, I did end up quitting my job and a 15 year career with the company. Just thinking about returning to work made my chest tighten. I have been resting and am starting to feel energy to do things again, such as writing this post. In the words of Martha Postlethwait, I created a clearing in the dense forest of my life. Adventures big and small have been bringing some clarity about what might be next for me. I’ll write more about those soon.

Knowing When to Stop was originally published in A Clearing In The Forest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.