At some point, nearly all of us will experience a period of radical professional change. Some of us will seek it out; for others it will feel like an unwelcome intrusion into an otherwise stable career. Either way, we have choices about how we respond to it when it comes.
We recently caught up with yoga entrepreneur Leah Zaccaria, who put herself through the fire of change to completely reinvent herself. In her quest to live a life of purpose, the Seattle-based yogi shed her high-paying accounting job, her husband, and her home. In the process, she built a radically new life and career. Since then, she has founded two yoga studios, met a new life partner, and formed a new community of people.
Even if your personal reinvention is less drastic, we think there are lessons from her experience that apply.
Listen to the Whispers
Where do the seeds of change come from? The Cherokee have a saying: “Pay attention to the whispers so you won’t have to hear the screams.” Often the best ideas for big changes come from unexpected places—it’s just a matter of tuning in. Great leaders recognize the weak signals or subtle signs that point to big changes to come. Leah reflects on a time she listened to the whispers: “About the time my daughter was five years old, I started having a sense that ‘this isn’t right.’” Leah realized that her life no longer matched her vision for it.
Up until that point in her life and career, Leah had followed traditional measures of success. After graduating with a degree in business and accounting, she joined a public accounting firm, married, bought a house, put lots of stuff in it, and had a baby. “I did what everybody else thought looked successful,” she says. Leah easily could have fallen into a trap of complacency; instead, her restlessness sparked a period of experimentation and renewal.
Test the Future
Feeling the need for change, Leah started playing with future possibilities. She explored her interests and developed new capabilities. She first tried exercise and dieting and lost some weight and discovered an inner strength. “I felt empowered because I broke through my own limitations,” she recalls.
However, it was another interest that led Leah to radically reinvent herself. “I remember sitting on a bench with my aunt at a yoga studio,” she says, “and having an aha moment right then and there: Yoga is saving my life. Yoga is waking me up. I’m not happy and I want to change, and I’m done with this.” In that moment of clarity Leah made an important leap, conquering her inner resistance to change and making a firm commitment. That clarity and resolve set her up to take bigger steps.
Practice Planned Opportunism
Creating the future you want is a lot easier if you are ready to capitalize on the opportunities that come your way. Simply put, we can practice “planned opportunism.” When Leah made the commitment to change, she primed herself to new opportunities she may otherwise have overlooked. She recalls: “There was this coworker, Ryan, who has his office next to mine. One day, he said, ‘Leah, let’s go look at this space on Queen Anne.’ He knew my love for yoga and had seen a space close to where he lived that he thought might be good to serve as a yoga studio. We went out there, and I was like, ‘This is it, this is it! I’ve got to do it!’ Of course I was scared, yet I had this strong sense of, ‘I have to do this.’” Only a few months later, Leah opened her first yoga studio. But success was not instant.
Manage the Present, Shed the Past
Creating the future takes time. That’s why leaders continue to manage the present while building toward the big nonlinear changes of the future. When it’s time to make the leap, they take action and decisively drop what’s no longer serving their purpose. Initially Leah stayed with her accounting job while starting up the yoga studio to make it all work. “I was working 60 hours a week and running a studio, so I wasn’t getting very much sleep, but it was good for me,” she says.
Soon after, she knew she had to make a bold move to fully commit to her new future. Within two years, Leah shed the safety of her accounting job and made the switch complete. Such drastic change is not easy.
Nourish Your Roots—Stay Connected to Your Purpose
“Be yourself,” Leah says. “Quit being the person people think you’re supposed to be. Find a way to dig deep into your courageous self to be who you are. Whatever that means as far as exploring your emotions, your identity, and your profession, find one version of you that you are always and everywhere.”
Leah’s sense of clarity for her purpose was sparked when she was 16 years old. “I was always a passionate person,” she says. “One day I was at a party where I met this sage, a very energetic person called Christine. She and I get talking and then she stops, looks me in the eyes, and says—tears streaming down her face—‘You are going to help a lot of people in this life. You are going to make a big difference.’ That stuck with me forever.” It was this sense of purpose that would carry Leah through the storms of change.
Be Resilient
Navigating change and facing obstacles brings us face-to-face with our fears. Leah reflects on one incident that triggered her anxiety, when her investors threatened to shut her down: “I was probably up against the most fear I’ve ever had,” she says. “I had spent two years cultivating this community, and it had become successful very fast, within six months, and I was facing the prospect of losing it all.”
She connected with her sense of purpose and dug deep, cultivating a tremendous sense of resilience. “I was feeling so intentional and strong that I wasn’t going to let fear just take over. I was thinking, ‘OK, guys, if you want to try to shut me down, shut me down.’ And I knew it was a negotiation tactic, so I was able to say to myself, ‘This is not real.’” By naming her fears and facing them head-on, Leah gained confidence. For most of us, letting go of the safety and security of the past gives us great trepidation. Calling out our concerns explicitly, as Leah did, can help us act decisively.
By letting go of her fears, Leah grew tremendously. “I learned that no matter what, I was going to be OK,” she says. “Even if they shut me down, I’ve grown so much, I have been through so much, and my life has changed completely. I left my husband and went from a big house to couch hopping and staying in the basement of someone I met on Craigslist, of all things. I saw that I already had lost everything and I was fine.”
See the Endless Cycle of Renewal
The cycle of renewal never ends. Leah’s growth spurred her to open a second yoga studio—and it wasn’t for the money. “I have no desire to make millions of dollars—it’s not about that,” she says. “It’s about growth for me. Honestly, I didn’t need to open a second studio. I had one, and it was highly successful. I was making as much money as I had as an accountant. But I know that if you don’t grow, you stand still, and that doesn’t work for me. I am here to grow and to help others grow. I want to inspire people to be better, to dig deep into their courageous self.”
Consider the current moment in your own life, team, or organization. Where are you in the cycle of renewal: selectively forgetting the past, actively preserving the present, or boldly creating the future? What sage advice would Leah give you to move you ahead on your journey?
Wherever you are now, once you’re on the path of growth, you can continually move through the seasons of transformation and renewal.