We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Diarra Imani a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Diarra , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear from you about what you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry and why it matters.

My industry is wellness – no matter the byproduct or outcome of my business I am focused on doing it well and feeling well. Corporate America gets wellness wrong in all the ways! Corporate sectors think of wellness as a trend. Truly the wellness of any corporation or entity is the conductor of success. When people feel well they do well. When people do well, corporations thrive and families thrive. My ideals of wellness aren’t the newly understood capitalistic display of wellness. You don’t have to buy all of the aromatherapy and essential oils you see, you don’t have to wait to start your journey until you can purchase a too-expensive yoga mat it starts at home, in the body – the temple, the mind. This is my mission: to induce each moment with breath and hold our minds in reverence. We should feel incredible about the ideas and downloads we receive. We should be encouraged to manifest from the creative energy that is in all of us. In the sectors that rely on Corporate America to be successful there aren’t any true moments made for peace or pause and that is the biggest error of wellness that I’ve seen in corporate America.

Diarra , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Diarra Imani and I am a mother and home-maker, an educator, a certified yoga instructor and wellness workshop facilitator. My crafts include a plentiful range of artistic mediums: paint, poetry and storytelling, dance, yoga and movement, meditations, and education. I help my clients to solve problems from a creative and holistic place. They are inspired to ask themselves, “what is working well? What could be working better? What no longer serves me in this condition?”

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

As an entrepreneur I had to unlearn the value/worth/cost analysis. We entrepreneurs are product-oriented, output-centered serving a capitalistic structure. It’s so easy to become trapped in that wheel and it used to impact my sense of SELF worth! If I didn’t hit my goal, I’m not good at what I do. If I didn’t convince this investor of my good idea – the idea isn’t worthy of investment. After so many years of that battle it becomes traumatic and we callous our minds and hearts impacting our creative abilities. I had to unlearn that mode of thought and being. Instead I base my schedule off of my own flow – ideation – rumination – creation , edit and repeat. I am grateful to have learned to prioritize the flow of my own work cadence or else I would feel worthless, unsuccessful, inferior and inept. I know that sometimes I need to be still and ruminate on an idea, I need to let the concept live in my mind, I need to chew on it and parse it out. Sometimes it’s time to activate and move on the idea, get the tools and get to it! But you have to be brave enough to sit still, be faithful to your vision, be consistent be consistent be consistent. Because if you can envision the end, then it’s just the beginning. Trust that.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Graduating college. Leaving my Master’s track program. Meeting my partner and his children. Having a baby. Life is all about transitions, change, and mastering the skill of adaptability. When I graduated college and then left my Master’s track program (because the institution had inadequate resources for it’s students)I remember feeling drained. I accomplished a lot … and then the rest of the world was calling. I had to decide what I really wanted to do with what I knew. How can I impart this knowledge into my own business? I figured out how to build community partnerships. I visited a few community centers that I knew housed the youth and I gave them a pitch, told them about my study and my circumstance that I needed a place to teach all that I had and most of them said okay great! Then I had to learn, the hard way, how to charge and that was a huge pivot. I invested in myself as a business leader. I took classes and seminars, attended trainings and studied what I could from literature and the internet. Often times, this is where business leaders get lost we think the investment has to be in monetary form when sometimes its in the mindset pivot, the way you spend “free time”, the crowd you keep around you etc.. Another pivot came when I was forming my family. I met my love in a grocery store and we haven’t looked back. We’ve continued to build our business, stay flexible, maintain our forward-thinking strategic way of being and not without challenge! I am an artist first as I mentioned so this phase of my business, career AND life was a necessary development of my mindset. Learn to be on time (early actually), prioritize the priority, stay organized, create effective channels of communication, stay in close proximity to investors and peers that are going up up up! These pivots all came when I had no choice but to learn them. When bills were flowing and babies needed mommy and I had a full-time contract while also planning my way into the next phase. The pivots are all around us in life and we are capable of pulling through them. We can attain everything we want but we must do what is needed to receive that. Waking up earlier so you can have that morning meeting with yourself or with your business partner(s), eating healthier so that you have the energy to sustain, being direct so your peers understand your mission and journey. The pivots are all around us. Be agile.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.DiarraImani.com
• Instagram: @DiarraImani
• Facebook: Diarra Imani
• Linkedin: Diarra Imani
• Youtube: Meet Diarra Imani

Image Credits
Jaquan Brockman Josh Franzos Kitoko Clargois Teron Allen