Alice Shikina of Oakland on Life, Lessons & Legacy

We recently had the chance to connect with Alice Shikina and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Alice, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re thrilled to learn more about your journey, values and what you are currently working on. Let’s start with an ice breaker: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
Four days a week, I row with a team. I wake up at 4:45 AM. I am at the boathouse by 5:20 AM. We are on the water and rowing by 5:45 AM. It is the best way to start the day. During the colder months, we are rowing mainly in the dark, but we get to see the sunrise over the water towards the end of practice. During the summer, it is starting to get light when we are on the water. It is very serene and meditative. I love this activity first thing in my day.

We row for about 90 minutes and by 7:30 AM, I am finished and go home to take a shower and nap before I start my day.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am a mediator, public speaker and negotiation trainer. My company is Shikina Mediation and Arbitration. I mediate divorces, workplace conflicts and family disputes. I also offer communication and conflict resolution coaching for organizations and their employees. I am a passionate presenter and I enjoy speaking about conflict resolution, negotiation or communication topics.

Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What was your earliest memory of feeling powerful?
I would say that my earliest memory of feeling powerful was when I acted in my first play at age 13. I realized I was able to make people laugh, cry and feel emotion through my acting.

What did suffering teach you that success never could?
I think the scariest experience I have ever had is when I was signed up for my first ever Muay Thai kickboxing tournament. I was almost 40 years old and had only recently started to train. I had never participated in any kind of contact sport until a few months prior. The training I was put through was grueling and exhausting. I would also put it under the category of suffering. But I realized that I was training my mind to be strong and resilient.

A more recent experience of struggling financially taught me to stay emotionally strong. After almost two years of financially struggling as an entrepreneur, I felt I was reaching a breaking point. I was trying to grow my business, yet struggling. It did not seem to be due to anything within my control, but just the regular ebb and flow of being an entrepreneur. By going through this experience, I learned how to be extremely mindful of how I spent money and I also am very grateful when going through a time of abundance. It has allowed me to see that I need to plan for fallow times when things are going well.

So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. Whom do you admire for their character, not their power?
I really admire my mother. She has one of the most positive outlooks in life. She is always looking at things from a wonderful and positive perspective. No matter what kind of hardship she faces, she never sees herself as a victim and she is never hopeless or depressed. She has had a lot of difficult moments in life, but she comes out of each of them strong and better as a human.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What do you understand deeply that most people don’t?
My job as a mediator and a negotiation coach has taught me that people frequently try to prove that they are right, when that is not the actual goal. The actual goal is whatever they are trying to acheive, but people fail to reach their goals, because they are derailed by the desire to prove something. Proving who is right and who is wrong is not the point in conversations. Trying to get to an end result that everyone feels good about is the real goal in any conversation.

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Image Credits
Stuart Locklear

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