My What If Year with Alisha Fernandez Miranda

It’s a New Year with new resolutions and goals, but how about making 2023 your What If Year? Zibby Books debut author, Alisha Fernandez Miranda joins me for a conversation all about her upcoming memoir, My What If Year. Alisha chronicles the four internships she took on right as the pandemic hit…from Broadway to the art world, to fitness and finally to an incredible inn in Scotland.

Alisha was the CEO of her own consulting firm that worked with philanthropic and social impact spaces, but as she saw 40 approaching, she was wondering if this was all she was destined to do…what if? What if she became an intern and worked in places she had no experience in? What if she started over? What if she made a change?

My What If Year by Alisha Fernandez Miranda

Approaching 40, being a mom of twins, a wife and successful CEO suddenly made Alisha question, “what if?”…what if she could start over on her career path? What if she could try jobs she only dreamed of doing? What if she could approach a new job as an intern to learn all she could while also armed with the knowledge and experience she’s gained over the past 40 years?

Thanks to the encouragement of friends and support from her husband, Alisha embarked on a series of internships starting in 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic. She was an intern on and off Broadway just as the country was shutting down and borders were closing. Having to cut that internship short to fly home to London to be with her family, she didn’t want her intern journey to end there. Alisha’s debut memoir follows her as she enters the art world, takes a series of fitness classes online to compare them and then work at an inn in Skye, Scotland…I now want to visit the Kinloch Lodge!

Pivot And Change Don’t Have To Be Immediate

Instant gratification is something we all crave but everyone knows that change doesn’t happen overnight. We might see an author become a bestseller or an entrepreneur become a millionaire or an influencer gain a million followers, but none of it was instant. Pivots and changes require time and patience. Throughout Alisha’s intern journey, she had to practice patience, especially when there were stops along the way due to a global pandemic. There were internships that never panned out, children who had to be homeschooled, an entire industry went dark in the first time in history…Broadway. The lesson Alisha learned along the way was that just as it was ok to ask questions, it’s ok to wait until the right thing comes along.

Trying New Things & Getting Out Of Your Comfort Zone

Alisha was very familiar with being in charge and organized. She wasn’t familiar with what happens behind the scenes of a Broadway musical or how art is bought and sold or how an inn was run with a restaurant. There were new terms and new ways of doing things that had to be learned. Alisha met these challenges in two ways…first by taking action and doing what she knew how to do, even if that just meant filling a water jug. Second, she wasn’t afraid to ask questions. As young interns, we often are afraid to ask questions because we want to be seen as knowing what we’re doing right out the gate. With age and maturity though, comes the the comfort of being ok with not knowing it all, with the yearn to learn more and to soak in as much new knowledge and information that we can.

Being Ok In Asking Questions & Not Knowing It All

I’ll never look the same at a package of Raisnet’s thanks to Alisha and her art internship. I appreciated how Alisha did try to look up terms and use my friend, Google as much as possible, but I also appreciated the great lesson of simply asking for help. Alisha wasn’t afraid of failing or dropping a dish or two.

The point is that we all need to get comfortable in asking “what if?”. What if we chased a dream job? What if we interned and tried our hand at new skills? What if we took that class to learn a new language? What if we took a day off to simply read a new book? What if we did one thing we really wanted? What if that one thing turned into multiple things?

What is your “what if” for 2023? Send me an email because I want to know!