We recently connected with Ajayi Pickering-Haynes and have shared our conversation below.
Ajayi, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.
I appreciate this question, because I think it’s easy for us to name and re-call what our parents didn’t do right. It’s easy to name the gaps they gave us, yet so much of our journey, resilience, and path can also be found in the gifts they gave us. And as I reflect on my childhood and upbringing it’s become clearer to me how my parents laid the foundation for my personal growth. When I was coming up in school, I was different from my peers in a few ways. One being that I came from a household of vegetarians, from parents who did not eat meat. Not eating meat was a lot less common back then. And although I’m no longer vegetarian, my parents gifted me with an understanding of how valuable health and wellness was.
From young, the first pillar of personal growth that I like to coin as a personal growth strategist was being planted – take exceptional care of yourself. I’ll say that again, take exceptional care of yourself.
This value wasn’t only demonstrated in our lifestyle. It was also practiced through my mom’s commitment in taking us to the doctor, dentist, and even to a therapist when my sister needed someone to talk to during highschool.
Valuing health and wellness was the foundation for our academic excellence, goals, dreams, hobbies, and lament into adulthood. It fueled our self-worth, bolstered our value, and gave us high self-esteem. It was part of who we are, a part of our character. And as a writer and thought leader of personal growth it’s become clearer to me based on the science and my own lived experience that achieving your goals, creating the life you want, and living in your purpose starts with taking exceptional care of yourself. And my parents taught me that.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
It’s such a pleasure to introduce myself and be in community with Canvas Rebel readers. My name is Ajayi (Ah-jai-yee) Pickering-Haynes and my story began on the beautiful island of St. Thomas. As a child, my curiosity, sensitivity, and creativity has marked my journey into entrepreneurship, public health, and self-help writing.
In my business, The Public Health, Writing, & Innovation (PHWI) Lab, LLC. I help individuals and organizations use and apply science-backed personal growth tools to create the lives they’ve dreamed of. The lab’s work is built on my academic, creative, and industry experiences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, as a writer, and with my over 6 years of health equity experience. My business blends science, self-help writing, narrative storytelling, lived experiences, behavior change research, and public health to help people build new beliefs and change the ways in which they see themselves . I also collaborate with other creatives (graphic designers, videographers, editors, etc) to activate organization’s ability to tell riveting and compelling stories around their community impact that lead to deeper donor and funder support. To experience a daily dose of science-backed personal growth tools to help elevate your life you can stay connected with my work on Tiktok at @ajayitheauthor.
As the Principal Consultant and Creator of PHWI, in partnership with Danielle Germaine of careertoolkitsbydee, I’ve created the Mindset GroupChat on Substack, a raw, vulnerable and informal space that’s beyond the conventional structure of a newsletter, empowering people with the tools needed to shift their mindset in different dimensions of their life. To become a part of this exclusive free community, we welcome you to be in good company here – https://themindsetgroupchat.substack.com/.
My work has also helped people adopt the Displaced to Realigned philosophy, an original framework I developed in my book Displaced to Realigned: The Proven Skills Pitch Strategy to Land the Right Role with Intention. Displaced to Realigned is inheriting the empowering concept that what’s removed from our life is making way, room, and space for the people, places, and things that truly align with us. This book is a guidebook and manifesto for individuals navigating the turbulent waters of the job market. If you are at wit’s end and in need of a signature strategy to help you create a compelling skills sales pitch that captures the attention of potential employers, grab your copy here (https://www.amazon.com/Displaced-Realigned-Proven-Strategy-Intention-ebook/dp/B0D7NHSCQJ) to learn more about The Skills Sales Pitch Formula.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
When you’re a child the most common question you get asked is “what do you want to be when you grow up?” With questions like these, we are taught subconsciously and culturally that the markers of success are all external. Accomplishment and attainment lie in what other people can see, and what that might suggest about who you are as a person.
In 2023, I experienced a job layoff. The layoff became a blessing in disguise, one that caused me to re-assess what a successful, fulfilling, and abundant life looks like for me. During this period, my therapist encouraged me to make a list of gifts. Making a list of my blessings had not only signaled to me how abundant my life was in spite of not having a full-time job, but it was also rewiring my definition of success. I was re-defining success in writing and creating again, in beholding beauty on long sunny walks in the park, and in the stillness and presence those 4 months had gifted me with.
I began to understand that for so many of us – the dreamers, creatives, entrepreneurs, and multi-hyphenates – that success looks different. This reckoning had signaled to me that success does not only look like one thing. It had underscored how critical it is for every single one of us to define success on our own terms. Clock it – DEFINE SUCCESS ON YOUR OWN TERMS. Following society’s conventional goalposts, timelines, and metrics without assessing their alignment with your own values, magnetic desires, goals, dreams, and joys is a surefire way to feel behind, mis-aligned, unfulfilled, and burnt out.
I hope this lesson encourages us all to start asking our youth who they want to be as opposed to what they want to be. The former re-envisions and expands conventional ideas of success as an element of an abundant life that goes beyond what we do for work.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding aspect of being a writer and processing my life experiences through creating art is how much I learn about myself. It’s a place and space where I get to be a forever student of myself and a student of life. Every time I create I get closer to me. Writing builds the connection and intimacy I have with myself, which I believe is the most important and seminal bond we’ll ever have in this lifetime. At a time when there’s so much noise in the world, anything that gets you to the truth of who you are is a sacred practice.
To me, the very act of creating is spiritual, a spiritual practice that gives us meaning, purpose, and connection. And who are we as individuals and as a human race without meaning, purpose, and connection? Writing has revealed to me just how special, exceptional, resilient, complicated, magnetic, deep, smart, and how much of a work in progress I am. It’s revealed to me how special, exceptional, resilient, complicated, magnetic, deep, smart, and how much of a work in progress we all are. And I believe these revelations that my writing, self-discovery, and self-exploration continue to unearth bring me closer to the most authentic version of myself.
You can become part of the movement and community I’ve created to see yourself in all these ways with The Mindset Groupchat on themindsetgroupchat.substack.com/.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ajayitheauthor.com/
- Instagram: ajayitheauthor
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajayi-pickering-haynes/
Image Credits
Thaddaeus Watkins of Distinct Images LLC