Wow! It’s been a whirlwind of JOY! My husband and I had the great honor of gathering friends and family for our Chicago wedding a few weeks ago. Bringing our loved ones together, not only as guests, but as participants, was both powerful and memorable in ways that can’t be quantified.

This has me reflecting a lot on the power of togetherness and serendipity—both personally and professionally—as this month also marks the one-year anniversary of officially launching my firm, Nina B. Winston Consulting.

✨ Serendipity

While it was extremely joyful for us to reconnect with everyone, we also found great pleasure in creating and discovering new ties and re-establishing longtime connections among our guests. These unplanned happenings made for some of the most rewarding moments during our celebration.

✨ Connecting Face to Face

When I look back on my work over the past year, being with my clients in-person, as much as possible, made a tangible difference. This gave me the opportunity to have both planned and unplanned time with them, allowing room to explore other possibilities. Of course, there are moments when a virtual meeting is the simplest way to connect, but on bigger discussions, presentations and simply listening and learning from each other, the power of my business has been built on face-to-face interaction as much as possible.

✨ Creating Whitespace in Your World

If you’re overprogrammed, over-orchestrated and over-Zoomed, you lack the whitespace needed for these discoveries. Sometimes it is the most unexpected situations that create the greatest progress or help me break into a new area of my work. Slowing down to let these moments happen in our personal and professional lives is essential.

My advice is to create whitespace in your personal and professional life, whether it’s time for reading or research, or unplanned time with your client. This allows room for deeper exploration and those serendipitous moments at work and play, which will always delight.

Photo: The Georgia O’Keeffe Home and Studio in Abiquiú, New Mexico. August 2022.