We recently connected with Denise Berger and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Denise, so happy to have you on the platform and I think our readers are in for a treat because you’ve got such an interesting story and so much insight and wisdom. So, let’s start with a topic that is relevant to everyone, regardless of industry etc. What do you do for self-care and how has it impacted you?
Self-care for me has been a journey over time that has had a profound impact on my overall effectiveness, without necessarily realizing it every step of the way. n my formative years, I was an active individual, deeply valuing physical strength and agility. I strived to be the person who could seamlessly participate in various physical activities, with the boys and girls, alike. Those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s will remember the Presidential Physical Fitness Award. I was the kid who would practice ahead of the test so I could win the honor! In college, while others complained about mandatory gym credits, my roommate and I took advantage of squash, racquetball, golf, skiing and step aerobics classes (again, product of the 80s). Several days a week, we would go to the “strength training” room too. My college roommate and I laugh to this day that we were among the few girls who ever set foot in this part of the gym because back then it was exclusively packed with football and ice hockey players!
Today, I maintain this commitment to my physical health by engaging in a variety of activities, such as walking, swimming, stretching, cycling, pilates, yoga and calisthenics. My routine doesn’t necessarily involve hours of working out each day, but I make sure to allocate at least 30 minutes for physical activity. It also doesn’t require me to go to a gym. Much of what I can do can be done for free, which gives me some peace of mind that I am not dependent upon paying for a facility. (We learned this during covid, didn’t we!) This daily routine not only keeps me physically fit but also clears my mind, stimulates my brain, and mitigates the effects of prolonged sedentary work. Without this daily physical activity, I know I would not be as resilient in the face of daily or life stressors. I have learned so much about the mutual reciprocity between the mind-body connection along the way. Pushing myself too much, beyond my capacity, because my mind says I can do it, sometimes has had negative consequences on my body. Listening too much to the opposite mindset – hey, you don’t have to stretch today – doesn’t serve me well either, if it becomes a habit. So, it is a dance.
What I didn’t think about or care about in college is what I drank or ate. Hot dogs cooked in a crock pot and frozen macaroni & cheese cooked in the microwave were our staples. After college, I started to find a path toward nutrition, making small modifications at first. I was a bit forced to accelerate my thinking around diet when I developed an unexplainable allergy and the doctors had me eliminate virtually everything from my diet. It took two years and my own awareness of my body to finally find the culprit of my allergy – Tylenol! To this day, when I tell doctors that I am allergic to it, they question me with a “really? Are you sure?” kind of look because it is so unusual. Later in my life, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and learned the link between food, supplements and inflammation. I learned more about the effects that sugar has on our bodies, explaining why I would be hungry an hour after eating an entire bagel back in my 20s. I’ve now transitioned from a diet of convenience foods to a more balanced and health-conscious approach. I don’t go crazy with nutritional discipline though. My approach is to strike a balance between health-conscious eating and the occasional indulgence, especially on weekends, out with friends. I am a believer in combining health and joy, and sometimes the two are not synonymous, but rather ebb and flow.
The pivotal moment in my self-care journey came when I started focusing on my mental well-being. This entailed seeking therapy to process past trauma having grown up with a corrupt father and addressing post-partum depression. After my first child was born, I was both so happy with my family and our little baby. He gave me such joy; and at the same time, I would find myself on the subway coming home from work, pinching my eyes shut so I wouldn’t burst out into unexplainable tears. I finally accepted medication. It changed a lot of these symptoms for me. It cleared the mind, like a fog lifting and I was able to show up again as myself. That is the best way I can explain it. While medication does play a role in my self-care, I’ve always been selective about its use, leaning towards an East-meets-West approach to my health.
Meanwhile, my professional life, especially as a woman executive in corporate America, presented its own set of challenges. I loved my job and the global team that I ran. I loved the clients with whom I traveled and the global exposure to socio-political and economic influences affecting our work. Alas, in the 1990s and 2000s, the glass ceiling, gender biases, and setbacks related to motherhood were constant companions. Many of us working women felt tokenized. Many of us would laugh about “who was the flavor of the month” that all the men rallied around as the dynamic woman leader, only to be cast aside and dismissed a month later. I had an opportunity to move my family to Hong Kong or Singapore. The company flew us there, we checked out places to live, schools, and the offices. All things were going well and suddenly the opportunity vanished. Why, I asked? I would come to find out that leadership thought it would be too hard for me to do the job and travel to other Asian countries, when needed, because I had little children. (They never bothered to ask me if I had this concern.) I have always suspected, though, that they thought they could move us on smaller expat package than what they would give to a man and his family, because when I started inquiring about parity in the offer, the lead went dry.
This did, however, make me reflect on the promise I made to myself after 9/11 (See LA Voyage article) that I would not let work and life tip out of balance. After Hong Kong, I noticed that the politics at the organization were out of control, making the organizational culture very stressful. At the same time, we moved across the country for my husband’s work and I made the very difficult decision to take a step back and work part-time. Luckily, I had a great mentor who was the Chief Diversity Officer and I got to work under her for a while.
Ironically, years later, I would end up noticing that the work-life balance can tip too much the other way too and I found myself idle of work and craving more of it. I have always embraced technology and was an early adopter of shared platforms, collaboration, and flexible work arrangements, long before remote work became a norm. As technology has continued to advance, I have discovered a work-life integration that suits me. It doesn’t bother me that they flow into each other, but I also have my own boundaries. I have notifications turned off except for only the utmost important meeting. I have ring tones set for texts only from family members. I will often work on an email and set it to send on Monday morning, if I choose to work on it over the weekend. I have always believed in the value of intrinsic motivation and for everyone to build their self-awareness and emotional intelligence to know when and how they get their work done optimally.
Life has a funny way of laying out a proverbial yellow brick road, and in this spirit, all of these experiences led me to explore holistic care – from acupuncture for genetic degeneration in my neck, to reflexology for lower back pain, to fascial release for vitality, to the transformative power of mindfulness, and even an ozone-oxygen injection in a herniated disc in my lower back that literally saved me from a laborious and complicated surgery to fuse 3 vertebrae (which doesn’t even guarantee that I would be rid of excruciating pain that I experienced in 2022) – a story for another day. As for mindfulness, I went kicking and screaming into practicing it at first, thinking that only way to become more mindful was through meditation. I tried meditation, and although I enjoy it when I am in a yoga class, I am not a meditator. All I hear when I am quiet and focus on my breath is my arrhythmic heart beat, which seems to hasten during the breath work! But I studied more, learned about Positive Intelligence, and the gift of all the different ways we can practice active mindfulness, which is more my speed. Having an interest in continuous learning, I dove into understanding more about the power of the mind and our thoughts to heal the body. I leaned into the power of play as a valuable tool to be in a creative and flow state. I teach and coach leaders about the gift that a person can give themselves by knowing their purpose, their vision for the world and their values, and I enjoy bringing insights about our brain into my coursework. Connecting research on the brain, our thoughts, our mindset, and how we have agency over our thoughts has been wildly instructive in my self-care endeavors and was defining for me in bringing mindfulness into my everyday life. Understanding the profound connection between our thoughts and how we can create new neural pathways in our brain by changing our thinking patterns was instrumental in my journey towards mindfulness.
As an educator and leadership coach, I am now a Certifified Positive Intelligence Coach to help bring awareness to others and guide them toward their own practice of mental acuity and resilience. equipping myself with practical tools for mindfulness on the go. This practice has proven invaluable, especially in navigating the unpredictability of recent times. It empowers me to face change and adversity with agility, greater resilience, mental acuity, and equanimity. And, embedded in the framework is the acceptance of our imperfection, the shades of grey in life, that both/and can be true, and the importance of understanding complexity and context in everything.
Finally, my self-care has also been about pursuing what fills my cup. For me, my cup gets filled in two ways: 1) when I am making strides to leave the world a little better than how I entered it and 2) when I am being playful and fun-loving. I am most happy when I see evidence that I am leaving a legacy (in whatever small way) that my kids can be proud of and that inspires others to build their legacy toward a collective higher purpose. I get a kick out of being part of positive, meaningful change – whether it is helping a non-profit with their path to impact and knowing from them that my time with them mattered, or teaching young aspiring leaders who want to change the world for the better and receiving a letter of appreciation from even one of them years later that our time in the classroom mattered, or coaching young adults in the early days of career building and hearing from them that the coaching I did with them more self-confidence that amplified their potential, or giving guidance to an organization to improve their effectiveness and hearing that my recommendations improved their bottom line. Life is short and precious. I feel it is important to make sure that where I spend my time matters and produces desirable outcomes. As for fun, anyone who knows me, knows I look a good game, an adventure, travel, and exploration! The best is when I get to combine travel with work and doing good, like I did when I went on a humanitarian trip to Nepal in 2018.
While I don’t always get self-care right, I’ve learned that self-acceptance and continuous growth are essential. I still have times when I don’t show up as the best version of myself. I still have moments when I am hard on myself or feel dejected. Maybe I didn’t get enough sleep the night before. Maybe I disappointed myself. Maybe I get upset at the state of the world. Maybe I can’t do it all, all the time. Maybe I want to be doing more, but can’t for whatever reason. I do know, however, that I am more resilient, reflective than I was and that I can recover from a set-back quicker than I could yesterday, and the day before. So, self-care to me is multifaceted – making informed and conscious choices for my body and my being, and finding balance, integration of a full sensory experience, and acceptance of my own imperfection in a world that often leans towards chaos and demands our best selves to show up all the time.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I love to help people reach their full potential. I envision a world led by ethical, responsible, adaptive, inclusive leaders* who have a strong sense of purpose to cultivate a thriving society for all.
In that spirit, I help individuals, teams, and organizations achieve growth with purpose by bringing together my practice-based, hands-on experience running a Fortune 500 global business group, leadership development expertise, and academic research-based knowledge and wisdom.
– I am an educator: I share my knowledge – accumulated from over 15 years of global business experience and my best-practices contemporary organizational development models, to build curriculum, shepherd classroom learning, and inspire and mentor tomorrow’s leaders to realize their full potential.
– I am a collaborator: I work with leaders on organizational culture, social responsibility initiatives, organizational vision/mission/values development, strategy, and developing multi-stakeholder regenerative partnerships.
– I am an optimizer: I balance iteration and discovery with deduction to look for ways to streamline operations, making them optimally efficient and effective, while building organizational, team and individual agility.
– I am a connector: I connect people to each other, to ideas, and to learning opportunities that help them individually and collectively develop higher levels of conscious involvement in society.
– I am a facilitator: I promote emotional intelligence through higher states of resilience and mental acuity.
– I am a certified Positive Intelligence coach and enjoy bringing small groups of young adults together to teach them about resilience and mentor them as they navigate the demands of life and leadership in their 20s and early 30s.
To this end, in January, I will be launching pods of up to 5 young adults each. Resiliency, Confidence & Leadership for Young Adults is a 6-month program. The first 8 weeks, we meet once a week, thereafter, every other week for 2 months, and thereafter, once a month. In between live zoom meetings with the pod members, there are lessons to be learned, experiences to be had, and growth to share. Look for the details after December 8th on my website: alikiconsulting.com.
All participants at the end will receive a graduation gift from my other business – a line of handcrafted friendship cord bracelets: alikidesigns.com.
* If you have a pulse, you can be this kind of leader.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Ironically, two of the qualities are opposites of each other.
- Tenacity. Don’t be so soft that you give up the second you face adversity. We learn the most when we are challenged. The world is tough. Build grit and perseverance. Being fragile or coddled doesn’t help you in the long run to survive and thrive.
- Flexibility. Don’t be so fixated on something that you aren’t agile to the situation around you. Practicing discernment about when it is time to let go of the proverbial bone is just as important as knowing when to power through. And this decision isn’t always straight-forward, but you will know if you look deep within you and ask yourself what could be the gift or opportunity if you hold on versus releasing. In golf, they say, don’t grip the club so tight everything is tense and too rigid to create a fluid swing. Bridges used to be designed to stand firm with fixed supports. Today, bridges are designed for resilience to stress and their strength is in their flexibility. If you are so tenacious and fixed in your mindset, your beliefs, your position, consider what you are missing out on. What broadening life experiences could be around the corner if you released a little control, if you adopted a growth mindset.
- Relational Intelligence. Hands-down, I would love it if the lessons I teach on this at a graduate level become obsolete because it has already been learned at young ages. I think of Relational Intelligence as the combination of emotional intelligence, social intelligence, cultural intelligence, moral intelligence, positive intelligence and human-centered design intelligence. This is the foundation for better collaboration, innovation, and raising our consciousness, on an individual basis as well as collectively.
- Quality, caring and trustworthy relationships. Cultivated over time where you can show up as your authentic self, and so do they. And as Simon Sinek says, trust is built with someone who has the power to use your vulnerabilities against you… but wouldn’t. Great relationships in life are like super premium fuel!
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
The most impactful thing from my parents has to be my Greek heritage. My mom was born and raised in Greece. Her whole family still lives in Greece; only she moved away – when she married by father. My mom was disciplined and made sure I learned Greek at a young age. I was also fortunate to visit Greece every summer to see family, and then we ended up living there for a couple years when I was in 4th and 5th grades. Once I had my own family, we have been very fortunate to go back to Greece every summer together. There have been several outcomes from this experience. I think growing up Greek taught me about cultural awareness, even before I know what it was. It made me passionate about travel and knowing other cultures, and caring about different societies. On a professional level, it launched me into a global career. It made me interested to teach cultural intelligence to others. It sparked curiosity for me about diversity, equity and inclusion, and building my understanding of allying and of bridging differences. On a personal level, it brings me a lot of joy to watch my kids connect with their roots. I am proud that I am half Greek, and even more proud that my mom centered my connection to Greece as I was growing up. My passion for work in the global arena was absolutely born from this.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://alikiconsulting.com/ https://alikidesigns.com/
- Instagram: @alikiconsulting @alikidesigns
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dberger-alikiconsulting/
