Celestine

Before the plan came the pull

I was fourteen. Seventh visit to the zoo — same elephants, same gift shop, same drive home. Somewhere between boredom and wonder at a world much larger, I asked my father if he'd send me abroad for university one day. I didn't think he'd say yes. He said he would if I scored 5 As out of 7 in my final school exams. For two years, I sat surrounded by piles of past maths papers, redoing every problem until it was right. I got my 5As. He kept his word.

Say the thing before you know how

I've gone back to that pact more than once since. Say the thing you want, even before you know how. Let the plan follow.

Somewhere in my thirties, I said, almost as a joke, that one day I'd live in Brazil. I kept saying it to different people, over different years, mostly forgetting I'd said it at all.

Six years later, a referral came through: a telemedicine pilot in Rio de Janeiro, bringing eLearning and real-time diagnosis to remote, indigenous communities. Someone had remembered. I started as a volunteer from Spain. Six months in, they offered me two years in Rio.

I hadn't planned any of it. I'd just kept saying what I wanted, out loud, to whoever was listening. The life I'm living today isn't something I planned. It's something I discovered.

At home in the in-between

My personal experiences have taught me to be comfortable in the space before things were settled.

That's shown up differently in my career. Leadership sets the strategy. But the space between a strategy and the people living through it is rarely straightforward: acquisitions, restructures, rapid growth that can outpace the plan meant to guide it. My work has been staying resourceful in that gap, adapting the plan into something people could actually work through in real time.

I watched what happens when the plan is still being written while people keep working through the uncertainty. The quiet identity questions nobody says out loud in a meeting. The steadiness some people find while others struggle. Adapting to what's actually happening, not just what was planned, has been the throughline: in my own life, and in the work I've done with others.

Life as a series of creative adventures

I wasn't collecting a resume. I was just curious. Brazilian drums. A graffiti wall I had no business helping to paint, in Salvador de Bahia. A jujitsu class I only meant to watch. A chocolate factory in Iceland, straight out of a storybook, that taught me the language faster than any class could.

What I draw from

I'd filed Martha Beck's Wayfinder Life Coach Training away as something for later. Then a financial award turned up. I applied without much expectation, and got it. I went for myself. I came out wanting to practise coaching. I still draw on that training, along with somatic work, emotional agility, and narrative work. One foot stays grounded in the practicalities of the world. The other keeps reaching for what I haven't tried yet. I keep questioning. I keep letting go of what I think I know.

I'd filed Martha Beck's Wayfinder Life Coach Training away as something for later. Then a financial award turned up. I applied without much expectation, and got it. I went for myself. I came out wanting to practise coaching. I draw on that training, along with somatic work, emotional agility, and narrative work. One foot stays grounded in the practicalities of the world. The other keeps reaching for what I haven't tried yet. I keep questioning and keep letting go of what I think I know.

You don't need the plan

Just the next step

Celestine Chia

atelier@lumiere.paris

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