Reading: How to Be Your Whole Self with Shaillee Chopra

Shaillee Chopra was a high-flying mother, wife and healthcare strategist. But on a flight home from meetings in Saudi Arabia, she had what she thought was a heart attack. It turned out to be a panic attack and it turned her life upside down. “I’d dealt with depression all my life—since I was three. And I overcompensated by achievement,” she tells Lesley.

Using psychotherapy, prayer, medication, exercise, meditation, and yoga, Chopra has “learned to be more compassionate” with herself, and the importance of being your whole self in everything you do, including work. Chopra speaks nationally and internationally about raising awareness of mental illness and how it impacts policy changes at the corporate level. “Why can’t we be vulnerable?” she asks.

Shaillee’s Top Tips for Reinvention
1. Create the space for yourself
Even if it’s just thirty minutes where you listen within. Trust me: your inner self is so much wiser than you give it credit for. It could be taking a walk, reading, or music — whatever the space is that silences the noise for you so you can go within and listen to yourself.  And if you create the space and really listen, hopefully you won’t have to get to a smack-down intervention like what happened to me.

2. Come up with an opportunity map
Write down what those values are. For me, it’s vulnerable. It’s real. It’s authentic. It’s unabashedly, unashamedly owning all parts of me, including the parts that are not perfect. Write them down. Because those become your guiding posts on how you want to show up in life. Write down what you want your life’s mission to be.

3. Be unafraid of failure
It’s okay not to know what you’re doing. Just know you’re going to try, and at every iteration you become smarter, stronger. Even when you’re imperfect and flailing, trust that you’re not alone. I still don’t know exactly my path, but I’m very clear on how I want to show up.

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