We recently connected with Maia Wise and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Maia, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
As a child my Nana always told me stories about her life or someone she knew and the overall lesson was about control. I never understood the what she meant until I became an adult, naturally. We are not in control of life, we have no control over what happens to us. After her sudden passing, I learned it is about how we respond to “lifequakes” which makes us resilient. Resilience isnt about what happens to us, it is about what happens the moment after. I like to think I get my resilience from her and the constant messages she taught me about life.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am a psychotherapist and a yoga instructor, One of my biggest goals in life is to show others the power that they have within. Whether that is helping others change their stuck mindset to a mindset of growth or finding freedom in their bodies through movement. What is most exciting about my work is giving individuals a space to be their vulnerable selves and listening with an empathetic ear. My absolute favorite part of my work is providing psychoeducation surrounding why they are experiencing what they are experiencing. An example would be how perfectionism and an intolerance of uncertainty maintain cripping anxiety. I also have a youtube channel that has free beginner yoga classes and they are all 20 minutes or less.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Flexibility, consistency and Intentionality and three qualities that stick out in my journey. Intentionality is likely the most important because knowing your why or your mission, is so important because without that how will you remain consistent? Knowing your mission is the gas that drives the car, without that where are you going? Maintaining mental flexibility is also important because life has thrown so many curve balls at me, from sickness to relationship losses, mental flexibility allows me to give myself grace for being a human. COnsistency has been a skill that I have had difficulty with, when I think of consistency I think daily and that is not necessarily true. I had to relearn what it meant to be consistent and sometimes that means 3 days out of the week rather than 7. All three of these qualities have to be shaped to your own uniqueness, what works for me may not work for others.
We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?
I am all about balance, if you only do things youre good at or have strengths in you have now created an imbalance. Its easier said than done though, trying to improve in areas that I am weaker often illuminates my negative self-talk or inner critic. I use that as a time to challenge those negative thoughts and maintain neutrality. Investing in areas of growth or weaknesses sky rockets your confidence. We have to start looking at ourselves like students of life. As a kid in the classroom you never looked at yourself as a failure if you got a question wrong that your teacher asked, you were learning. Life challenges us in so many different ways and if we label ourselves as failures or not good enough we will never grow or become a well rounded version of ourselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.movewithmaia.com
- Instagram: @movewithmaia_
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmNTJCNO0wLQA4PbBMhhQwQ
