Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Anita Bangale. They and their team shared their story with us below:
Dr. Anita Bangale is an emergency physician serving The Woodlands and Houston communities. She was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and graduated as valedictorian from Fort Worth Country Day. She then went on to study Psychology at Rice University and medicine at Saba University School of Medicine. Anita moved to Washington, D.C. and completed her emergency medicine residency at George Washington University and served as Chief Resident in her final year. Dr. Bangale has served as a clinical instructor at George Washington University, teaching courses in emergency medicine scribing and ultrasound. She has also been a speaker for several international emergency medicine seminars and won the coveted first place in a national case presentation competition at the American College of Emergency Physicians conference. In 2021, Anita had the honor of speaking at TEDx Breckenridge. In her talk, she showed how her curious toddler helped refocus her energy back to providing compassionate care in the setting of the pandemic, and how “de-armoring” to show up as our most unscripted human self helps us reconnect with each other and ourselves. In 2022, she delivered a TEDx talk in Raleigh on social prescription – showing the invigorating power of investing energy in our hobbies and communities.
Dr. Bangale has served on the frontlines for nearly 15 years. Locally, she has served as Medical Director of the Emergency Department at St. Luke’s Hospital at The Vintage and has emphasized department wellness during the COVID-19 pandemic. She currently works as a physician at Methodist Hospital, where she creates true partnerships with her patients. In the ER, she focuses on effective communication and prioritizes working under pressure with compassion and empathy.
Dr. Bangale is also a certified life coach and founder and creator of Diya Coaching. She works with individuals and small groups in person and online. Anita aims to spread joy by improving mindset and believes in the magnificent, ignitable power of each person’s inner light.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
During the peak of the Covid pandemic, I could tell that I was struggling with symptoms of burnout. On one hand, I took tremendous pride in being able to care for anyone and everyone in the emergency department, day or night. On the other hand, the stress and strain of working overnights impacted my ability to serve my family, community and self in the way I wanted to. I still loved caring for patients and still relished the dopamine hit of working in the ER, but I knew that something had to change in order for me to sustain my career as an emergency physician. So, I got curious and asked myself, why–why was I continuing to practice medicine? My answer was that I loved working in teams, and I love being able to think on my feet. I realized I could still do that while taking a step back in terms of the number of hours spent working as a physician. Ultimately, I realized that I was staying at the hospital to satisfy what I thought other people expected of me. I had trained so hard for so many years to serve in this capacity, and it took me a lot of thinking to try and understand that I could continue to help people as a coach. And once I realized that the pattern, I was setting up for myself by staying full-time in the ER was actually more harmful than beneficial, that gave me solid permission to create a shift and start my coaching practice. I’m still able to continue taking care of patients in the emergency department and work with teams of incredible nurses, but I’m able to do it in a way that sustainable in a way that multiplies my energy to want to do more.
We’ve been impressed with Diya Coaching with Anita Bangale, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
As a coach, I aim to provide support through posing thought-provoking questions and motivating you to step beyond your comfort zone. First, we work together to identify barriers and establish focused goals. From there, we collaborate on the actions to help us get to our goals. My mission is to empower each client to embrace their most authentic life—filled with confidence, passion, and purpose.
Diya Life Coaching is centered around engaging in truth-seeking conversations. The primary objective is to help you unlock the best version of yourself, enabling you to lead a life brimming with confidence, authenticity, and purpose. Serving as a guide, I assist clients in navigating their personal journeys towards maximizing joy and crafting an extraordinary life based on their own definition of joy and success. This means I serve as a reflective mirror to help unearth core beliefs. Through the use of powerful and probing questions, we collaboratively move forward. In a nutshell, this means I help you become version 2.0 of yourself.
My coaching aspirations revolve around empowering individuals to become so self-assured that they no longer hinder their own progress.
STEP 1
AWARENESS OF LIMITING BELIEFS
In the initial sessions, the coaching process aims to reveal the limiting beliefs that impede your goal attainment. Once identified, we can work on dismantling these restrictive patterns, with a focus on understanding your self-perception and worldview.
STEP 2
REFLECTION TO OVERCOME BELIEFS
Subsequent sessions involve collaborative efforts to develop strategies that help you overcome these limiting beliefs, fostering breakthroughs. These strategies transform into habitual patterns that can positively influence various aspects of your life.
STEP 3
REINFORCE PATTERNS TO ACHIEVE GOALS
The remaining sessions concentrate on reinforcing the newly established patterns and utilizing them to achieve the goals set at the program’s inception. As you accomplish milestones, we celebrate your successes and contemplate the next level of achievements. By the conclusion of our time together, you will possess the resources needed to perform at your best!
A lot of the work we focus on is how to be intentional. This means that first off, we have to know what our intentions are. If we don’t, we find ourselves acting in accordance with other people’s expectations or society’s intentions, which can leave us feeling unfulfilled or lost. But if we take time to find our core values and live in alignment with them, then we’re able to stay more focused and grounded.
I do think this is much easier said than done and that’s why I think coaching can be quite powerful. It’s a way to bring your deeper intentions and values to the surface—so it’s abundantly clear who you want to be and how you want to live. Coaching and being intentional has helped me make more deliberate, sometimes uncomfortable choices, but through that process, I’ve learned that we can stay more focused and committed to becoming version 2.0 of ourselves.
When I look at my own life and my clients’ lives, I realize that everyone pretty much wants the same thing: balance and connection. I used to feel that people crave joy, but I realize that it’s actually balance and connection that pave the road to joy. So, if we can create the infrastructure in our lives to establish balance and form deep connections within our communities, joy will naturally follow. I think when life becomes imbalanced, our relationships become stressed, we lose homeostasis, and that’s when we struggle. So, the key is to dig deep into hobbies and people – social prescription, essentially.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
I think developing strong communication skills is an investment that yields dividends. Whether in personal relationships, professional pursuits, or societal interactions, I believe excellent communication has served as one of the most fundamental elements of success for me. It’s definitely still a work in progress. Communication goes beyond merely speaking; emotional intelligence is a big part of it because it encompasses understanding and managing emotions, which are vital for success.
I think active listening and writing are just as significant as how we verbally communicate. Growing up, I never enjoyed writing and never considered myself to be a strong writer, but over the years with practice, writing is now something I find enjoyable and actually cathartic. Writing is also one of the few activities that forces us to get our chaotic thoughts out of our head and define them on paper–to really understand the jumble of ideas whirling inside. And I believe when we can express our vision and goals more clearly–to ourselves and others–then that is how those elusive goals are more likely to become our reality.
I also think excellent communication means holding space to let others think, act and be themselves. In my work in the emergency department and as a coach, I’ve observed that the desire to feel heard is universal. Active listening helps us empower each other to express concerns, understand opposing viewpoints and create solutions and resolutions.
Communication also helps foster collaboration and I’m learning that success almost always involves collaboration, whether in the workplace, community projects, or personal relationships.
Pricing:
- Individual coaching sessions $150-$250 per session
- Coaching packages starting at $750
- Student coaching packages starting at $500
Contact Info:
- Website: www.anitabangale.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anita_bangale_
Image Credits
Christa Elyce
