Pressing Pause and Zooming Out - Event Recap WIN X Inside Out Incubator
As we continue to weather the storm and navigate our new reality, finding a sense of normality may seem like an impossible challenge. Our work and personal lives are intertwined more than ever before. With months of uncertainty stretching out before us, it is all the more essential to take the time to recenter ourselves.
In our second global virtual community event, WIN partnered with Inside Out Incubator, co-founded by leadership coaches Alicia Jabbar and Gina Restani. On a Tuesday in April, members from our global WIN community came together to come up for air, be present with each other, and find a sense of clarity.
Gina Restani, co-founder of Inside Out Incubator, leading our community through a partner exercise.
Here are our top 3 learnings from the event:
1. Your life is composed of separate, but interconnected parts of a whole.
To guide our discussions, Alicia and Gina presented a framework called the “Wheel of Life.” The wheel is a pie chart divided into 8 slices, representing Work, Friends, Significant Other/Romance, Fun & Recreation, Health, Money, Family, and Physical Environment/Home. One or more, or perhaps even all, of these slices of our lives have been impacted as the world reacts to COVID-19.
We all have different priorities in life, and these priorities shift depending on our life stage, the people around us, and our ambitions and dreams. In these times when so much feels out of our control, it can be a supportive exercise to stop and consider each slice of your life.
For example, how do you feel about shifting to working remotely while simultaneously caring for your young child? How do you feel about only seeing your friends and family members over FaceTime and Zoom calls? How are you interacting with your environment differently?
We’ve spent so much time adjusting to these changes that we may not have had time to reflect and process. Findings in the Harvard Business Review found that increased internal self-awareness is associated with higher job and relationship satisfaction, personal and social control, and happiness, while simultaneously reducing the feelings of anxiety, stress, and depression likely running rampant these days. Here’s an invitation to take a moment to pause and reflect.
2. Remember you have the power to rewrite the rules you live by.
Our circumstances may trap us into thinking that we have no control over our lives, or perhaps worse, we have somehow turned the blame inward. Too much self-reflection that circles around questions like “Why is this happening to me?” can lead us to easy answers that feed into our innate confirmation bias, regardless of their accuracy, and can overly draw our attention to our limitations and events that are not in our control.
During our session, we discussed the slices of our Wheels of Life with the intention to understand and reframe our current struggles. As we worked to rewrite the rules that we use to guide our work and personal lives, the breakout rooms provided a safe space to speak openly about our challenges with another member of the WIN community.
The greatest takeaway from our discussions was the power of the pause to reframe, reorient and move forward in alignment with what’s possible right now.
The greatest takeaway from our discussions was the power of the pause to reframe, reorient and move forward in alignment with what’s possible right now. While so much of the world is out of our control, we have the ability to determine the lens through which we view our lives.
Alicia Jabbar, co-founder of Inside Out Incubator, facilitating a discussion around “The Wheel Of Life”.
3. Lean on your community in these challenging times.
This global event was held at 9 AM in San Francisco, 12 PM in New York City, and 5 PM in London, with attendees tuning in from their homes in far more cities than the official locations of our WIN chapters. As we came together, physically distanced but socially gathered for this workshop, it became clear how the community is crucial to our ability to connect and grow together, so that we can steward innovation now and in the future.
The WIN community not only discussed our Wheels of Life, but we also traded gems of advice, cheered each other on, and shared song recommendations. We were able to cross oceans and international borders to meet WIN members we would’ve never run into at an in-person event.
As we look forward to the future, don’t hesitate to reach out to those in your own personal community. As we strive to establish a greater sense of clarity around our transformed lives, we don’t have to do this work alone.
More from our friends at Inside Out:
Inside Out has crystallized their work with thousands of women into a brand new 7-week virtual course called The Rebellious Leader starting next week, May 20th. If you are a woman who is not exactly where you want to be in your career, and getting to the next level is proving to be difficult, this program is for you. In this course, you will work closely with Gina, Alicia, and a small group of women to take control of your career with a renewed sense of direction. Space is limited. Find out more here. Video with more information here.
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