Today our topic is pillars of life and career architecture. And so as the title suggests, we will be talking about, building a life and career that you love.And so the first question I have for everyone is, do you have a life and career that you love? And if the answer to that is no, if there are aspects of your life and your career that you don't love, I think the big question becomes who is responsible for that? For not having the life and career that you want? Who's responsible? And I in the chats, and, and I already see the correct answer. This is a terrific audience. I love this. And I see people saying I am, and that is the truth. If there is something happening in your life or your career that you don't love, you are 100% responsible.

And there are conversations that need to be had about accountability in certain circumstances, but the truth of the matter is if there's something in your life or in your career that you don't love, you are 100% responsible. Not your parents, not your boss, not your family or friends and not, a colleague. And so it's really important that we take that 100% responsibility and accountability. And we do know that oftentimes in life, there are unfortunate circumstances that happen. And I think we can learn a lot from people who I recently attended an event where a man, he's a motivational speaker. He was sharing about how, so he's disabled. He was born with deformities, and he said, both his parents abandoned him, both of them. And he had to create a new meaning for his life, because his life could have been destined to suffering forever, based on the bad decisions of his parents, but he made a decision to give his life a new meaning, and his meaning is to now go around and help other people realize that they can make their lives a masterpiece.

And so I think that's what we're talking about today is how do we create lives and careers that we love. So I will start out with a quote from a wonderful woman named Paola Prestini, And what Paola has said is, you are a very specific combination of past, present, and dream. The only way to fulfill your highest potential is to take the risks associated with those dreams. And Paola is one of the women that I interviewed for my forthcoming book titled, Brilliance Beyond Borders, 5 Traits of Remarkable Immigrant Women Leaders. And so today we will talk about what are some of the pillars that you can use to create a life, and career that you love. And if you are in a career that you love, that's fantastic. Some of these pillars will help you reinforce that career that you love.

And if there are aspects in life that are not going quite as you would love them to, and this is the beauty of life, we're often growing and tweaking. These pillars will also help you to address those. And so the first is to define your purpose and your legacy. So define your purpose and legacy. So, one of my favourite books is 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell. And I've often shared that I read it at a time where I was in the low points in my career and the law of legacy really stood out to me because Maxwell said, what would you like people to say at your funeral? And he shared that that's one of the most profound questions we can ask ourselves as leaders, because that's where we really tap into what it is we are meant to do on this earth. And reflecting on that is a really important step as a leader, because then you can be more purposeful in your, life and career.

And one of the helpful, and I think often when people hear about purpose, sometimes they find it challenging or confusing. And so one of the, most helpful frameworks that I've heard, I heard it from Sarah Blakely, who's the CEO and the founder of Spanx. And she had said, purpose is the intersection of what you enjoy, what you're good at, and how you want to serve the world. So if you think about those three things and where they intersect, if you cultivate those three things, you will be closer to how, you want to serve the world. The second pillar. So first pillar, define your purpose and your legacy. The second pillar is define your values. What is important to you? So often similar to purpose and legacy, a lot of people don't even think about what's important to them.

So what are your values and is your life aligned with your values? And so examples of values include growth, freedom, leadership, success, adventure. There could also be negative values like guilt and failure and apathy and suffering, but it's really important to define them so that you're aware of the things that are most important to you in life. So the 3rd pillar is to choose your mentors wisely. And because this is a conference of women, I often love to highlight that sometimes as women, we limit our scope of mentors. We look for mentors that are exactly like us, that look like us, that may be wives or moms, that can relate to every single challenge that we have. My recommendation is to think broadly about mentors. Think about mentors that you can learn from. Think about mentors that compliment you. Think about having a diverse range of mentors.

It's really important to think through how you can partner with people that are where you want to go to some extent, but they may not look like you. They may not be, exactly like you. So that's what I would recommend is identify mentors and then model them. But I would also say that, in this online world that we live in, well, look at us, we're at a virtual conference. There is no there is no presentation, so it's all verbal. So take good notes. Take good notes. And I'm happy to share bullet points as well with Anna and the organizers. If folks would find that helpful, I'm happy to share that separately as well. So, in terms of choosing mentors, wisely, in this virtual world, you may not even get to meet some of these mentors.

I have a lot of mentors and people that I followed for a really long time that I don't know. I follow them online. I've read their books. I've modeled things that they've done, that they found to be effective. So I highly recommend that you, surround yourselves with a diversity of mentors. Mentors that you've met, mentors that you haven't met, mentors that look like you and those that don't. The 4th thing is to communicate effectively. So regardless of your field, regardless of the area, where you find yourself, it's really critical that as women, we learn to communicate effectively because that's a a critical influencing skill. And specifically I've written and spoken a lot about executive presence. And I love the concept of executive presence because it's one of those concepts that's thrown around a lot. It's also highly misunderstood. Very often people talk about Executive Presence and people would say, it's the it factor. It's gravitas.

It's, and these are all, great, but the problem with them is they don't give you practical tools on how to develop it. And some of you may be familiar with Indra Nooyi, of course, who's the former CEO of Pepsi, originally from India. Indra Nooyi had said in a 2016 LinkedIn interview that if you want to be a leader, but you can't communicate effectively, forget it. And my own experience, as a business leader is I don't have empirical evidence to support this, but I suspect that a lot of women leaders are denied opportunities to move up the ranks based on, concerns around executive presence because they haven't been able to master the art of communicating effectively.

And I, define Executive Presence as the art of presenting oneself in a manner that's professional, competent, and confident, and commands the highest levels of respect and engagement. So I think any amount of time that's spent investing in sharpening the skill of executive presence is time very well spent. So I highly recommend that, we invest the time in learning and I will say, some of the critical areas that I found in my own experience around building executive presence. The first I would say is embrace your unique value, embrace all of the things that are unique about you, that you bring to the table, own them, embrace them, and really be aware of them. The second thing is to be self aware, be aware of your strengths, be aware of your weaknesses, but also be aware of how you're presenting yourself. Another thing I would recommend is to manage your speed. So some people speak really fast. Some people speak really slowly.

I think it's, again, recognizing where you are in that scale. And if you need to, modulate your your speech in order to be more effective. Next, is breathing. Often, depending on the circumstances, women or just people who haven't, spent the time mastering the art of speaking effectively, don't take those pauses to breathe and take up room really that helps, make you more effective. And then the last piece I would also, remind folks is using your voice effectively. So you can use your voice depending on what you seek to communicate. You can modulate, your voice, in order to be more effective. So the final area that I will share in terms of creating a life and career that you love is examining the key areas of life. So reviewing the seven key areas of life. So all of these really do need to be working together in order for you to feel, feel fulfilled.

So the first health and physical emotion and meaning finances, relationships, work, career, and mission celebration and contribution and spiritual. And I think often sometimes, especially as career women, we spend a lot of time working on something or we're driving for that next job, or we're focused on accomplishing a mission. And then the personal relationships suffer, whether it's your relationship with a spouse or with children. And so I think it's very important to think about life through all of these key areas of life. So there's a really powerful book that is called the 12 week year. I don't know if there's anyone here who's read that book. If you have tell us in the chats, It's called The 12 Week Year. Get More Done in 12 Weeks Than Others Get Done in 12 Months.

It's a very powerful book by an author named Brian P Moran, m o r a n. I see Anita has read it. So the fundamental premise of this book is that people, and we tend to postpone our goals based on, an annual schedule. So we would say I have a whole year. So in January, we all know this, we set these ambitious goals in January and then we say, I have until December. And that leads to a lot of procrastination and it leads to, limited effectiveness. So we end up not accomplishing as much as we can. So Brian recommends collapsing our 12 month goals into 3 month chunks. So it's for 12 weeks.

So for each 12 week period, you identify what areas you want to focus on, and you set targets and goals for each of those areas. So for those areas that I listed health, physical, emotions, finances, relationships, spiritual, work, career, celebrating, giving back, you identify specific goals that you want to accomplish for a 12 week period. So you literally collapse all the goals from the year into 12 weeks. I would say 2020 is also an important example of this because depending on what goals you set out in January, even now as we are in June, a lot of those have evolved. And so it's a really terrific example of why that 12 month time frame often requires re evaluation. So the title of the book, once again, for, folks taking notes, it's the 12 week year, the 12 week year, and the subtitle is get more done in 12 weeks than others will in 12 months and perfect.

Your CEO posted it's terrific. I love it. And he also talks about setting weekly goals. So you set you, you collapse your goals into, 12 weeks and then you, every week you identify specific, steps that you will take in order to accomplish those goals. And so if you are able to collapse your goals into a 12 week period, you will find, and this is the most powerful outcome, you'll find that you are much more intentional with your life. Because the problem is we tend to find that you come to the end of the day and you've been really busy, but you've been spending your time on other people's requests, other people's demands, and other people's expectations. But when you start from a place of intention and you set your goals accordingly, you have that ability to control and navigate, the outcomes that you want. And, and I think the worst thing is you look at your day at the end of the day, and you realize you did not accomplish anything that has to do with your legacy, your purpose, or your reason for being in this world.

You could look at the end of your week and have that same emotion. You could look at the end of your month and have that same emotion, or even look at the end of your life and say, wow. I spent so much time on things that had nothing to do with my purpose. And so I think the, the, the bottom line here is that it you can and you should go ahead and design the life, and career that you want. Is it, what what would you want the structure to look like? Do you want it to look like a castle? Do you want it to look like a cottage, a townhouse? You get to choose and you get to decide, how exactly you want your life, to be.

So with that, I would also provide a reminder that whatever you build you get to live in. So going back to the beginning of our conversation is who is ultimately responsible if there's something that's not working the way you want it to. And ultimately, I think we all acknowledge that it's us. So with that, I will go ahead and take questions. I'm not sure how we're doing on time and if anyone had specific questions we could dig into very quickly or if we still have, more time. Oh, how did I pick mentors? How do I pick mentors? Oh, my goodness. That's such a great question. So one of the things as I mentioned earlier is I seek diversity in my mentor, in my mentors.

So I've had a lot of men or male mentors, people, I tended to pick people that I thought I could learn from. So at different stages of my career, if there was someone who was really successful in the division at work, I once picked someone who was very, I would say people were scared of him because they thought he wasn't a very social and friendly person, and I picked him because I thought I could learn from him.

And I've also picked and developed mentoring relationships, based on informal conversations with women. And, but I think what I try to do is to think very broadly about the sources and I pick, but I also acknowledge that sometimes it doesn't work out as planned. So sometimes you may start a relationship with someone and it doesn't quite evolve into a really deep mentoring relationship, and that's fine as well. But I think that's why it's important to think broadly about mentorship. Don't think that there has to be, because I've seen sometimes people say I really want X person to mentor me and if they mentored me, my life would be perfect. And of course, I think what we should be thinking about is developing a variety of relationships that we can rely on over time. Any other questions?

So I think in terms of transitioning from clinical medicine to tech, that's such a great question. I think there's so much overlap as well between technology and medicine. Right? I think in terms of figuring out, it may also depend on, you know, where you are and if there are specific fields within technology that you're interested in. I highly recommend networking. Meeting people formally and formally virtually. I know now we're all online, so through LinkedIn. I think it's very important. So I would think you're in a position of a career transition. Right? You're pivoting. So that's a very important, time for you to figure out, how to, and I think from a technology standpoint, it all really depends. I mean, there's such, it's such a broad field, but I would say seek out people in the industry you're interested in, where there is that overlap, if to the extent you're interested, because I think it's great to leverage our prior experience.

Sometimes we think if, if you decide you don't want to do clinical medicine anymore, that you need to abandon that part of your career. And I don't think you need to, I think you could find ways of bridging. So maybe what are some of the areas where you can, move into the medical space within, where technology is a huge theme and how you can help advance, technology in the medical space. I would definitely recommend seeking out people based on their industry and location on LinkedIn, reaching out to people, building relationships, I think, and connecting with people. I think most people are very, I would say open to connecting and building relationships over time. So that's what I would recommend and attend a lot of virtual conferences. I think one of the beautiful things, of course, and you're here.

So I would say network with attendees, network with people who seem to be in a space or any speakers who have spoke, who have, presented today, who seem to be in areas that you're interested in. I would follow-up with them and build relationships. It's really important to do that. How do I approach my mentor so as to learn from them as much as possible? I think it all depends, with certain mentors, I met with them on a regular basis about on a monthly basis and I generally would bring specific questions with to them. And today I have different sorts of mentors and mentors I talked to, for a variety of, we tackle a variety of questions, together. So I do think that mentorship is always important because there's always another level. And so, I, with some of my mentors, we just meet as needed. So if there's a specific question that I have, I put time on their calendars. We meet. We tackle it. We meet for coffee. Sometimes it's a virtual coffee now.

Now we're doing a lot of virtual coffees, but I I really think that mentors are great for decision points. So I've heard some people recommend, if you have, so for example, for Sanaa, I hope I said your name right, who's thinking about transitioning. One of the recommendations I've heard is speak to at least 5 people. So when you start thinking that way, it opens you up and you say, oh, I want to speak to 5 people about this transition and get their insights. That's a great way to think about it. So that's one of the way I approach mentors. Another way is if they've read something, they've written something, read their books, read their journals, if they've written journals, depending on who they are, but oftentimes I, try to maintain a line of communication with the mentors and some mentors, by the way, are better at simply emailing.

You email them a question, they respond by email and they love that, right? You don't have to meet because a lot of people are very busy. And so sometimes email may be fine. Some mentors can address things by text, and then you can decide to set up a call. But it's figuring out what works for them. What's their ideal form of, of mentoring as well. And I've also, I've written an article as well for Forbes on this subject. So I'm happy to share that with organizers as well. If folks will find that helpful, because I, I think I'm such a fan of mentoring and it's been for me a critical piece of my career. And it's something that I'm very passionate about, passionate about doing my company and also externally as well because I think it's so important to create more leaders.

Oh, so that's great. I said your name, Raishtuna. Oh, for someone who is shy. So again, I've also written an article on networking because I I love this topic of people who are shy. So I'm married to someone who's an introvert, so I can relate to the pains of being an introvert. I'm an extrovert in case you can't tell. So my husband's an introvert. So I've learned so much about the psychology of being an introvert. The things I say is I recommend there's a book called Quiet. It was written by a woman who talks about, I think the subtitle is, something about engaging in a world where people won't stop. Right? So when people, where people won't stop talking. So I think it's a very, it's a great resource.

I think the important thing about if you're more of an introvert, the important way to think about networking is think about it from a purposeful perspective. Think about it from the fact that you're reaching out to people to purposely engage either, and often their mutual points of, interaction where they're learning from you and you're learning from them. And so I think it's very important to have your purpose really clarified because if people think in order to network, they need to be someone else. Or in order to network, you need to, worry about being, worry about awkwardness. So I highly recommend thinking about it from a purposeful standpoint. And I also recommend, in the virtual space, I think, again, it depends on the person and it depends on the context, but oh, yes. That's it. The Power of Introverse in a World That Can't Stop Talking. That's right. So it's a great book.

I think for anyone who's an introvert, I think that's a great book. And and generally for networking, for me, I will say what's been the most, effective in terms of networking is being purposeful. So to share a personal story that I also shared in my networking article, when I had first, joined a company and I was in a more junior role and I was working really hard, especially because we had some people leave, I was so focused on doing the job. And the year that I was up for promotion, I was told that I needed to identify a senior person in a different division who was 2 layers up, 2 levels up. And I had to think carefully because I'd been spending so much time on getting the work done. So I was working with peers and people who were peers or below and had very little interaction with people who were 2 levels up.

And that was when it really dawned on me that it was really important to build those networks. And it's important to build them when you don't need them, because when you need them, they would already be there. And for me, that was really challenging. I eventually came up with a name and the person was supportive, but I think it was harder than it needed to be. That was really for me a very direct lesson about the power of networking. And I stopped thinking about networking as something that's aside from the job. I've started to think about it and I tell my direct reports and my entire team that it's essential to the job because it helps you develop the relationships that make you more effective in your role. And it also ensures that you can, also, not just build relationships. It helps you accomplish things in the role.

And then when it comes time for promotions, that's how you also learn how to navigate your industry and also navigating your company specifically. Because there are often a lot of unwritten rules that you learn from networking, from building relationships with people in other groups, from building relationships with more senior people that you just wouldn't know. You don't see what you don't see. And so as you build relationships with others, you enrich your knowledge of what's important and how you can set your priorities. Any other questions? Yes. I would love to connect with everyone, so please connect with me on LinkedIn, or on my websites. I'm, you can find me anywhere using my first and last name. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and my website to dig to dig in a little, a little deeper on any of the subjects we talked about has the opportunity to do so.

Any other questions? Thank you, Sanaa. I really enjoyed the interaction. Yes. I will share the link to the articles and I will share, I will share the link to the so executive presence. I'll share the article on networking as well. And I will yeah. I'll share all the resources to support you and please feel free to reach out if I can help in any way. Okay. Well, thank you everyone. I think I will go ahead and sign off. Please reach out. Thank you, Anita. Thank you, everyone. I loved all of your energies. I loved hearing from you. I would love to support you. As you as I said, I'm passionate about creating more leaders in the world, passionate about helping people identify their genius and live their genius.

So I am really, really looking forward to supporting you all in whatever way I can. Thank you, Adako. Thank you for joining as well. Alright. Bye, everyone. Enjoy the rest of your presentations, and thank you.