Ilhiana Rojas – Friendship and Fun = Elements of Well-Being
After working with Fortune 500 Companies for 20+ years, an awareness kicked in that work was no longer fun. As a result, our C2C guest, llhiana Rojas, transitioned into Executive and Leadership Coaching full-time.
In her transition, Ilhiana observed that she needed to develop relationships outside of work. She started with her own life and then realized her clients needed this advice as well.
So, where should leaders start? The trick is to find common denominators and mutual interests. Identify your passions and connections of things that interest you or activities that you love to do. Ilhiana set off to meet engineers, women, folks who support STEM education, new mentors and friends that could provide a broad variety of support.
In my book, FIVE ALIVE, the chapter on FRIENDS, provides specific tips for developing and improving your relationships and friendships. Check it out!
Fun is also an integral element of well-being.
For a rewarding life, there has to be a level of enjoying people, activities and experiences. Enjoyment comes from shared moments, shared stories and not feeling alone; that is, finding moments of joy.
Fun is not independent of your other values; yet it means enjoying things to the fullest. How? Consider reducing your entertainment threshold, identify things that provide comfort, joy, and that make you happy.
As executives, we may feel alone because we have a created a “bubble” of people like ourselves. Invest time to building diverse networks and relationships. Why? They will be catalysts for new learning, open-mindedness, and new ideas. We often create affinity groups of people like us because it’s comfortable and easy. It may take a bit more time, be a bit less comfortable, but the payoff is better at the end to surround yourself with people that are outside your bubble and will challenge your mindset. And, isn’t that what leadership is all about – challenges?
Finally, we ask others to think about the longer term.
What does it look like?
What do you WANT it to look like?
What am I going to be doing?
Who will I be with?
What does my day look like in 30 years?
What is your vision of where you want to be in 10-20-30 years?
You can’t flip the switch overnight, for example, the day of retirement. You need to start building and crafting it now, so that you don’t reach the cliff, but rather experience a subtle transition to your new chapter that included Friendships and Fun.