Find your strength with Dana. Dana Mitra is a faculty coach, career, coach, and leadership coach. She specializes in coaching academics, women leaders, and professionals making career changes. She coaches on purpose, balance and productivity.

Dress for the Part: Aligning my image with my ideals

I’m stepping way out of my comfort zone. I’m taking a class on “style.” I get squirmy and squishy when I think about shopping and fashion. As much as I love wearing something confident, the hate the idea of shopping. I hate being in stores. My eyes glaze over. My head aches.

My inner critic always comes shopping with me. My friend has named her “Nerdy Middle Schooler.” That critic is so noisy she’s even embarrassed that I am writing this blog. How could I share my insecurities with others?

When I go shopping, my critic tells me it looks wrong. Frumpy. Who am I to spend money on my clothes? How vain? You’ll just spill something and ruin it anyway. I’m so clumsy. And someone might notice. Might not like it. It might be too bold.

I’ve always covered that fear with, “I want to be noticed for who I am, not what I am wearing. ”

When I listen to my inner critic, I tend to imitate what others wear, whether people we often. Rather than figuring out the puzzle, I mimic.

I am learning that I can choose to have what I wear reflect who I am on the inside. And then perhaps people are more able to know the good stuff on the inside.

When I’m feeling brave. When I’m standing in my power, I can dress boldly. We are a hoop nose ring instead of a teeny tiny stud. Wear big crazy earrings that might not work but might be fabulous. Bold colors, curvy shapes.

I’m attaching a TED Talk explaining this concept of Inside/Out Congruity.

 

Shine on mural. Dana Mitra is a faculty coach, career, coach, and leadership coach. She specializes in coaching academics, women leaders, and professionals making career changes. She coaches on purpose, balance and productivity.Dana Mitra is a member of the International Coaching Federation.

Slowing Down.

Every year I spend a week in the woods. I live in a tent and I cook for my children’s summer camp. I unplug from my technology and steep myself in a much camp magic as possible.

I especially the singing at the fire circles. This song spoke right to me this year, sung over and over in a round:

Humble yourself in the arm of the wild
You’ve got to lay down low and… [repeat]

And we will lift each other up.
Higher and higher.
We will lift each other up.

Camp offers me the gift of slowing down. Noticing a bug walking across the roof of my tent. Sampling the blackberries along the trail. Staring into a fire.

The slower I get, the more I know. The more wisdom seeps up into me. The more grounded I am. The greater I am in touch with my truth. My intuition. The part of knowing that comes from deep within my belly and tells my monkey mind to hush up and surrender. To “be still and know.”

I’m back I’m the frenetic life of the day to day. But I keep trying to hum that melody and remember to notice. To wonder. To be thankful. And to get still and to listen deep within myself.

Ready for transformation? Contact dana@coachingbydana.com