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Reskill, Reinvent, Reignite

At 24 years old, I graduated as an architect with flying colours, rearing to go. At 50, I was certified as a life and wellness coach, once again rearing to go. What happened in those 26 years in between? What caused this transformation? What I did was to reskill, reinvent, and reignite.
Reinvent: Carve Out ‘Me Time’
When I turned 40, I realised that something was missing from my life. I had a thriving architecture practice and I was juggling all my roles—as wife, mother, daughter-in-law, daughter, entrepreneur, and businesswoman—to the best of my ability, but all instances of ‘me time’ had completely disappeared. Realising this, I slowly but meticulously started to carve out little times here and there for myself. I made time for lunch with friends, lent support to someone who was hurting, and started travelling with friends.

Reskill and Reinvent
At 45, I realised that I needed to completely reinvent myself. I was a successful architect, but I was also obese, unfit, and unwell. I decided at this point that I needed to get healthy—I lost 14 kg and took up long-distance running and high-altitude trekking. (Please refer to my earlier blog posts: How do you eat an elephant? and When we can, we don’t; when we have to, we can’t).

On Turning 50 and Beyond
When I was 40, I joked to my daughter that I would no longer be an architect at 50. As I inched closer to 50, I realised that my 40-year-old self was right—my time as an architect was drawing to a close. I needed to move on. So two months before my 50th birthday, I shut down my practice.
I then went on to complete a coaching course and, within a year, I was certified as a life and wellness coach. JJA Architects had officially closed its doors and Fit the Soul was born. I had managed to reskill, reinvent, and reignite.

Fit the Soul became successful and, in a few years, had expanded to Bangalore and Trivandrum. We started to work on helping women break the glass ceiling through seminars, corporate leadership programmes, and boot camps in colleges.
And then COVID hit…
Naturally, all the programmes that we had planned for after March 2020 fell through. It was time, once more, to reskill, reinvent, and reignite. Fit the Soul had to go completely digital. After a brief pause to consider our approach, all our programmes resumed in completely new avatars, as webinars, blog posts, and online training programmes.