The reason your career might stagnate and

What you can do about it TODAY

3.1 billion people suffer from headache disorders

This is a horrendous statistic. And then WHO continues, headache disorders impose a burden on individuals that can include substantial personal suffering, impaired quality of life and financial cost.

I had been researching this for a while and realized that

YOUR BODY DEFINES YOUR REALITY

Yeah, right?

The simple truth is that when your body is impaired, nothing makes you happy. The magic pill does not exist, and you can use paracetamol for so long.

Your body experiences also define the path you choose.

Emotions and feelings live in your body, not in your mind.

And lets be honest, they play a major role in your short and long-term decisions.

Remember the movie “Eyes wide shut”?

The same confusion the protagonists had about their personal situation, we sometimes experience about our business and career decisions.

Your career stagnates because of the inner conflict between your parts, or your different roles.

By mid-age, you typically have accumulated substantial life experience, and suddenly, you realize that you no longer want to do things in the way you have done before, but at the same time you don’t know yet how to do them differently.

Adding to this, that many become parents or have high-demanding careers, you are on the path to burnout or long-lasting stress!

My name is Elena Shirokaya. 

In my 41 years, I lived in 5 countries, I fluently speak four languages. I am a mom of three.

For 12 years, I worked for a well-known European Private Equity investment office. I invested a 9-digit figure in USD and was responsible for the investment portfolio 5x of that. I worked with and performed due diligence on 50+ management teams.

In the past 2 years, I went through a radical transformation.

In 2022, I gave birth to my third child. When the baby was 4 months old, I came back from the maternity leave.

I had to lead multimillion deals, while also caring for the baby through the nights.

The lack of sleep and the weight of responsibility took tall on my body.

I lost the taste of life!

I lost access to my senses and felt exhausted!

In that moment, I decided to make a drastic change.

I left the corporate career to dedicate some time to myself and my family.

Most importantly, I wanted to stop comparing myself with others. I wanted to find my own voice.

I asked myself, what will help me to -

  • Work out the feeling of guilt, trying to be a perfect mom and professional;

  • Get my energy, and the taste for life back.

I had dived into somatic psychology and body movement/ dance therapy. I had 200+ hours of specialised professional training, and numerous hours of dedicated practice.


I had my doubts if this is the right way –

  • I was afraid to damage my system even more, but at the same time I badly needed to feel depth of life and better understanding of myself;

  • I was afraid to end up in ‘another’ leadership coaching experience, where I would be given standard scripts that do not work for me;

  • That coaches and psychologists need to figure out their stuff first.

I worked with different modalities, and 2 of them were most efficient and natural - the Internal Family Systems (IFS) and the body movement/dance therapy.

IFS is centred around somatic awareness and individual’s authenticity, or Self. It supports you in understanding your different roles, or parts, and provides instruments for resolving the internal conflicts.

While body movement techniques help release the tension and activate your own sources of energy, and your own voice. It increases your body awareness, and improves the dialogue between your body and mind.


No matter what modality you choose for your transformation journey,

NO NEED FOR DRASTIC CHANGES!

This might make you feel unsafe and uncomfortable, no need to add more stress to your system!

For this reason, I built the course for professionals, where I share the tools and techniques to support your own internal energy activation.

I guide you to getting back your CALM and PIECE first, so that YOU can make a body and mind-informed decision from your calm and confident state.

I support you in your work with negative emotions, and we make them your friends. This helps you develop a deep and nurturing relationship with yourself and accumulate energy to relate with others.

Here is what you can do today to take your own career and life out of stagnation

  1. Re-establish a contact with your body.

    We have a stigma against negative emotions. However, they are our friends, not enemies. Being self unaware, makes it difficult to truly work with the negative emotions, since they live in the body, not your mind. So to deeply manage yourself to effectively work with others, you need to connect with your body and learn how to work with the negative so as positive emotions, as opposed to supressing them.

  2. Get to know your internal roles or parts. Listen to what they have to say.

    In your day to day, you use different parts or skills. They are like your internal software, which you activate depending on the role you play. Over time, you might start noticing conflicting feelings and wishes, as you enter various new stages of life - parenting, leadership roles, entrepreneurship etc.

    Understanding the needs of your parts or roles, and developing the ability of listening to them, helps you to release the inner chatter, and have clarity about what you want to do.

  3. Get to know your authentic self.

    Many people are in a search for true meaning of life. This is when you realise that being like others makes no sense, but you are yet to figure out what your own leadership style is.

    You will be able to get your answers, once you establish a connection with your authentic self. It is not any of your roles. It is your internal leader that helps you navigate the waters. Re-activating this connection helps you to establish your inner compass in business and career.

I use this method in my coaching work, and you can learn more by accessing 40-minutes self-paced online course, or the 5-weeks guided coaching sessions:

Each career path is unique, and life gets easier when you lead it from your own unique space, without comparing to others.

My big idea is to support smooth transformations for women leaders who are on the crossroads of their career or personal life.  Please do feel free to get in touch if you have questions.