“In November of last year, I nearly died of Covid,” recalled Leonaura Rhodes. “And I had a night where I laid in bed, not sure if I would wake up the next morning. I thought about my family and all the things I was grateful for, and then I got to thinking about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.”
Up to this point, the Norwalk-based Rhodes had already enjoyed a diverse work experience. As a physician in her native Great Britain, she had a 27-year career specializing in public health, neuroscience and developmental pediatrics.
When she moved to the U.S. in 2009, she trained as a neurotherapist while starting a new career as a medical writer, motivational speaker and life coach with clients ranging from the corporate world to stay-at-home moms. She also authored the well-received book “Beyond Soccer Mom: Strategies for a Fabulous Balanced Life.”
After surviving Covid, Rhodes decided that she “needed to get back to my roots, which was helping people get healthier and happier ”” with an audacious goal of improving the lives of at least a million people through better access to health information and helping them live their best lives.”
Part of Rhodes”™ strategy to reach her goal includes the newly published e-book “Life By Design: 3 Steps To Transform Your Life!” She explained that the goal of the e-book was to enable people to rise above the quotidian and create an extraordinary life on their terms. The three steps she provides include designing the next stage of one”™s life, the discovery of one”™s current identity and the game plan needed to build a powerful vision for the future.
“I decided to write the book ”˜Life By Design”™ to help people figure out who they are now, because we”™ve often changed as a person from our younger self,” she said.
“We are often living our life with an old script, an old kind of way of living that is outdated and not so relevant to who we are today. And if you kind of think back to who you were even five years ago, you”™re probably a very different version of yourself.”
But that is not to say that one cannot carry over past lessons into new pursuits. Rhodes stated that her experience as a public health doctor when she was responsible for coordinating research studies was beneficial in diagnosing the professional and personal obstacles that her clients face in their self-identification journeys.
If Covid had a silver lining, she observed, it comes in the opportunity to create a better normal rather than adjust to the new normal created by the pandemic or try to recreate the old normal disrupted by the health crisis.
“I think we have an amazing opportunity,” she said. “Having been through the pandemic and learned lessons from it, we can create a new life and a new world for ourselves and our loved ones and our businesses and our communities. That is way better than the old one.”
Since recovering from Covid, Rhodes has conducted corporate wellness seminars and individual coaching sessions for business professionals, and in doing so she has found many executives struggling with the seismic shifts in the workplace environment.
She has also launched a four-week course that goes along with “Life By Design” and with courses in stress management and mental fitness that are aimed at the general public.
As for her health, Rhodes acknowledged that some people are a bit surprised to learn that she came down with Covid, adding that she is doing her part to raise public awareness of the dangers brought by the pandemic.
“I”™m a very healthy person, I really look after myself, and I was unlucky to get Covid,” she said. “And it was really awful. I posted a Facebook video while I was in the hospital to increase awareness of how bad this could be for somebody. I wanted people to know that this wasn”™t just the media making a big deal out of something that wasn”™t that significant.”
