From Boardroom to Boundless - The Journey to Nomadic Leadership and Authentic Living - Jenny Lincoln : 142

Jenny is a story weaving sorceress and a wise nomadic sage , and I will also add that she's an insightful speaker . Being uncomfortable creates wonderful new beginnings . This is one of the many nuggets in Jenny's story today . Once a high power executive , jenny now embraced a life led by her heart and play .

In this episode , she shares her powerful story of breaking free from the corporate world , discovering her true self and becoming a wise nomadic leader yes , a nomad . You know how curious I am about the nomadic lifestyle . It was so insightful to spend time with Jenny . We could have talked for hours .

She's the visionary behind Human Nav , demonstrates the courage to disrupt comfort zones , embrace change and live a life of purpose and heart . Let's enjoy her story . Welcome Jenny to the show . Thank you , daniela , I'm really pleased to be here . Thanks for the invite . Yes , I'm excited to have a nomad in the podcast .

So , jenny , why do you want to share your story ?

And so you know , I've had this whole rediscovery of kind of moving from fear and anger and seriousness to being led by my heart . And you know , I think the other thing that my story illustrates is the power of everything that happens around us and also within us , like our emotions .

Everything is feedback , and so you know we're actually being supported and being given all sorts of wonderful information to guide us . We have this amazing guidance , internal guidance system . So they're the two things that I really want to share through my story and give some liberation and freedom to everyone that's listening .

I'm definitely an empath and back then I felt everything , every single thing , that I was born into a really commercial family which didn't do emotions and feelings . They were considered to be a weakness , also a family where it was very masculine , very male-dominated , and women were seen as feeble spirits kind of .

And so I made a vow very early in my life to not be stomped upon or treated like a doormat , like I saw some of the female generations getting done in my family . So I kind of chose to be the aggressor myself . So I took on that serious power welding role at a pretty early age .

That conditioning , and certainly the conditioning that I had during my school years , led me to the desire to work in corporate , because I think I saw that one . I wanted to model myself on my father because he was powerful .

And secondly , I think corporate gave me a structure where I could continue all those defense mechanisms without me having to be consciously doing it all the time . So I think I was drawn to that environment because of that .

Well , I'm not accepted as that version of me , but I get rewards for being a different version of me , so I will move hell and high water to be that version . It's interesting that like probably 40 to 50 years of my life , I was seeking approval for my father , even though he wasn't still alive .

I was seeking approval outside of me and trying to comply with being the good girl , being tough and strong and capable and business orientated and all of that . And it really wasn't until I went off and started to become a nomad that I reconnected with my heart and I realized the power of open-hearted and intuitive leadership .

And so now that's kind of where I've gone and that's my true essence . I think everyone has that true essence .

When I was back in those days , all I wanted to do was be a business exec and so I thought what's the point ? I'm not going to waste my time doing all these silly subjects that I'm not going to use . Of course , that bites you in the end when you go to leave school and do your final exams and you don't get very good grades .

So I repeated my final year so I could get grades to go and do my business degree . So that taught me a powerful lesson around , I suppose discipline and doing what I had to do . So I did both .

I definitely did arc up and play rebel , and it's really interesting because I went from six or seven years of not really failing to when I got into business and started doing my business degree . I got straight high distinctions . It was all about what was relevant and what I wanted to be . So that's a powerful lesson about . You know you need to .

Whatever you're doing needs to marry up with your sense of purpose at the time . And also my parents were going through a divorce and that was my way of getting attention . You know to be the disruptor , but it's interesting that that was an early sign of something that's innate within me I am a disruptor and I'm a purposeful disruptor .

Now I disrupt for change and for evolution and so my clients hire me as a disruptor . But not stomping down corridors back in school and making you know noise . Different type of disruption meaningful , purposeful disruption .

When I was a destructive disruptor , it came for the purpose . It was , if you look at the purpose of it , one I was seeking attention , and so I was motivated by things outside of me . I was seeking attention and so I was motivated by things outside of me .

The obvious difference as a constructive disruptor is that I disrupt to grow , and that comes initially within me , right , so I will consciously disrupt something and shake something up in my environment when I see it's an old version of myself and it's no longer serving me , and so that helps shake things up . So I think that's one really important factor .

And I think the second one is being a constructive disruptor is more about building and reinvention , whereas when I was in a destructive disruptor , I was doing real damage , not just to myself but the people around me .

Sometimes we won't initiate the change , we won't initiate the reinvention , we won't initiate taking a new path or pivot , and so what happens is it's that whole thing of uncomfortable ends create wonderful new beginnings , and so I think I started to see the connection that there's a certain element of where you need to be your own disruptor and then there's actually

powerful ways to do that in business . Let me give you an example . Back when online was starting , I was working in the print media back in Australia and the first thing that online did was it threatened .

All of our print classifieds , all the ads for car sales , home sales , real estate sales and for jobs , employment , all used to be in print , you know , in your newspapers , and that's the only way you could find a job , find a car or find a home right , and with online , all of that got threatened . That's billions of dollars across so many companies .

One of the valuable lessons I learned in business then was that if we had done that well , we would have cannibalized our own business . We would have disrupt our own business purposefully , with strategic intention , rather than it being hunted by all these new startups in online .

But our executive team was too scared , it was fear-based and it decided that it said no , online's not a real threat . We're not going to lose billions of dollars and you know , within 18 months we lost billions of dollars . So sometimes you've got to follow some of the Hindu you know . Have you heard of Shiva the destroyer ? No , he's .

You know one of the deities . You sometimes have to do some destruction to clear the space , just like a storm . Sometimes we need to clear off the dead wood from trees . We need to clear all the space out so that we can have rebirth and new growth .

And actually I had an episode that I posted recently and the lady she's a voiceover she might things have changed , but the way she put it is like when people need a voice , they are going to say , well , I have the luxury to have a real human .

If you cannot afford it , then you are using artificial intelligence , and then you go for that diamond , she said , and I thought , oh my God , that's just like the perfect way of seeing progress , because it's always like that . You can avoid it , you can complain if you're old , and oh my God , things were better before and the truth is that we're getting old .

Everything always gets moved forward . That's pretty interesting that you see it that way too .

I agree . I think AI is a wonderful opportunity in so many different ways . And , yes , it just means that everything's going to change form and we're going to say goodbye to some things , old forms and old ways . And you know , as humans , we get attached , we like to attach to things , and you know one of the universal laws is the law of impermanence .

Things come together and then they fall apart , and so this is a normal part of evolution , but we fight it tooth and nail as humans , because we don't like to let things go .

When I look at AI , I look at the opportunity for us to be more human , which I know sounds paradoxical because we're using AI , but what we do is that we can allow AI to do the patent work , the jobs that don't necessarily require the human touch . That means , like your other guests you were talking about , she can position herself in a premium situation .

I'm all about behavior and the human experience For me . I rub my hands together and I think , wow , we can move away from being so task driven and spend more time in the richness of being humans and dealing with the human element , you know , and the human experience .

For me , it's a powerful shift from the doing , which many of us hide behind I've been guilty of that to the being space . Who you be , and that's really important , I think as role models and leaders in communities and business , in families , as matriarchs and patriarchs .

It was after this brutal experience and when our leadership team turned around and said , you know , made up all the excuses and said no , it's not going to happen and all that sort of stuff , and our share price plummeted and all that I ended up having to run a project that ripped out about $100 million , included retrenchment of a lot of people .

After that I thought , you know what ? I can't do this anymore . I need to retrain as something . So that's when I retrained in basic psych and became a behavioralist and a coach and a profiler and all of that . So I started . So I moved away from finance and strategy . So someone said to me , what's accounting got to do with the work you do now ?

And I said , well , I've gone from balancing the books to balancing hearts and minds now . So that brutal experience was what gave me the focus and the desire to make a big change . Otherwise my attachment to all the mastery that I had developed logically didn't make sense .

And everyone that I went and saw in management you know , in all my leadership team and so many people said you're too old to like too old I was like 30s , you know to change your career and to get retrained and I thought , bugger that . So again it kind of fired me up . I jumped in and retrained .

I don't see myself stepping away and turning my back on all my finance and strategy work if it hadn't been for that brutal experience and also , in my upbringing , my family . You didn't quit , you know , and so that was perceived as quitting . But you know , I don't see it as quitting .

I see it as being reading yourself , reading the signs and realizing it's time to you know , take a totally different path and pivot , and sometimes that pivot takes you in exactly the opposite direction , which is what it took me .

You know my own sense of self and keeping other people's integrity and themselves intact is far more important to me . You know , leading through the lens of love with that soft strength of open-heartedness and intuitiveness to me I find that far more successful than being a ballbreaker , because it's like a soothing balm .

When you're a ballbreaker , half the time you're just pouring kerosene on the situation .

But if you do that with a heart-based approach , you can have those difficult conversations differently . You do them with empathy , like you were talking to , and understanding , and you also look at what have we got , what is the natural genius of this person and how can we utilize it .

And if we can't utilize it within our organization , within the restructuring , then how can we support that person to getting something just as good or better ? So I think it's a different approach to me . So the how is different and I think the outcome is different and the energy is very different .

I think one of the first things that needs to happen when you're changing anything in an organization is to sit people down and have a conversation , a difficult conversation around helping them to understand what their fear of loss is , because to me , the fear of loss is what underlines everything we say .

We have fear of uncertainty and we have fear of failure and all of that , but what's the bottom line under that ? The fear of failure is like oh , I'm going to look like a goose , you know . So that's losing face , losing ego , you know , losing money .

Everything comes back to loss , perceived loss , and so I think you know when you can have powerful conversations and get people to be open about and reflective about . Well , what am I thinking I'm going to lose with this restructuring ?

Okay , I might lose my influence , I might lose my job , I might lose my power , I might lose my car park , which is right next to the elevator . I might lose my title , and all of these things attach to how we define ourselves .

So I think there's a second piece that needs to be done , which is to show people they are more than just the things that they have and do . It's the whole , what I call the be do have model . They're a human being . We're not human doings , and yet we are so defined by what we do and what we have . I see you're smiling .

If I lost a job , when I have lost a job , it is hard because you feel really like a loser . Even when there was the pandemic , I knew that I was going to be laid off . I understood it , but then , when the day that I was tall which lasted two days anyway they called me back immediately but I was like not again , and you felt that lost .

And so I feel like it's not enough conversations about it in every level the job , because you think that you are the title . The husband because you think that you are a wife . You know your kids when they grow up and they want to do their own life .

You're also now not the mom anymore , you know , and so many things that you're attached to , even wanted or not wanted . People need to talk more about that subject .

If we could demonstrate that you are more than your words and actions and your thoughts and beliefs and even your value set , you know you are more than all of that . The essence of who you be is the most important thing . Things coming and then going is actually a natural part . You know us holding on to them .

We're actually working against the law of physics . You know us holding on to them , we're actually working against the law of physics . You know the universal laws , so of course it's going to we .

That's why humanity struggles , because we're trying to operate against a fundamental law and principle that things come together and then they fall apart , and we don't want them to . And so instead , instead of seeing them as loss , we see them as opportunity and evolution .

And if we can break some of the attachments we have , then that transition , which is the icky , sticky part that people get lost in and sometimes they need to come out of .

You know , I can of course understand it , but there is the emotions and as long as we're humans and we have emotions , this sense of lost is always going to be , there , is going to creep in between the logic and the intellectual understanding of it Totally .

I agree . So I think the third piece is looking at our emotions differently , and so , for me , I see our emotions as our energetic emailing system . You know , we're hooked Again , we have an attachment to the positive ones and we try and delete the negative ones or we send them to trash . You know , we never read them .

I prefer to think of emotions as treble and bass . We all everyone loves music , and when we have treble and bass , we get this beautiful synthesis of sound .

And to me , emotions the the treble and and bass aspects of emotions , instead of positive and negative , are powerful streams of information , and being authentic with your emotions and then knowing how to be with them and then knowing how to unpack them so that you can get the messages , is really powerful , and I think we need to look at that in a different way

to how we've looked at it before .

You did all this changing and you went into coaching and counseling . And then what happened ? You did all this changing and you went into coaching and counseling , and then what happened ?

And everyone talks about the caterpillar to the butterfly , but no one talks about the process of transmutation that that caterpillar goes through it when it crawls into the cocoon becomes a pile of goo , it loses form , it loses shape right , it becomes a little puddle of green icky goo and it has what I call a mush moment .

And and I believe we constantly have mush moments , which is our process of transmutation . And for me , my depression was actually a deliverance . I entered at this cold , hard , steely , steely , egoic left brain , highly successful business exec , but I came out with an open heart . I was transparent again .

I'd found my love , my playfulness and all of a sudden I had access to all this powerful intuitiveness because I'd let go of all this other stuff , and so that was a really powerful state .

That was a really important part of my transformation , and so I would love for people to maybe look at some of the gnarly experiences we go through and we judge as being bad experiences or we're broken or something like that , and maybe see them as bridges . Maybe they're bridges to a different part of us , you know .

And so depression was definitely a bridge for me not an enjoyable one , regardless to say I could never have been the truth of who I am now without going through that .

And so I think sometimes , if we just have a different frame of reference , a different perspective I always say freedom is one perspective away If we could look at depression and other things like that as a process of metamorphosis or transmutation , then maybe we could look at it differently , maybe we could have greater gratitude and acceptance towards it , which would

lessen our struggle , right , and we could put our energy into going into what I call the cocoon room , treat ourselves with soft eyes and love and gentleness , which we need , rather than cursing ourselves and going , oh , how the hell am I going to get out of this ? I should be better , I should be this , I should be that .

We should on ourselves all the time .

But then when you're stuck in the process , that is difficult . That is when people quit . Nobody shares those moments where you're saying you're gooey and you didn't know what's happening and so you were feeling depressed because yeah , it was an emptiness .

I feel that being in this dark , gnarly space of depression , it was the only way that I could find my open heart . I just deconstructed myself . What made it worse was nothing that used to light me up , lit me up . I had a perfectly beautiful life . I had a beautiful partner who I loved dearly . She was so supportive . I had great friends .

I had a beautiful house . I lived by the beach . I had a fantastic life . But I was just a cesspool of everything , everything dark and gnarly . That made me detach from everything because I withdrew . But I withdrew with lots of judgment and beat myself up and berated myself to the point where I really wanted to take my own life .

And then I remember laying on the floor , because I spent a lot of time laying on the floor of my home office and I was crying out and I just you know , god , buddha , allah , someone , someone tell me what to do , because I'm done . I'm done , I've made my peace . I can't do this anymore . It's just horrendous , it's horrific .

I cannot because it's so incongruous , because you have this wonderful life but you just can't relate to it . But that is the breaking down of your value set , it's the breaking down of everything that you have constructed yourself into , down of everything that you have constructed yourself into .

And as I laid on that floor , I was like the sun was coming through my window and I was just enjoying that and then , all of a sudden , the shaft of life well , I like just it went across my face , but then it played down to my heart space and all of a sudden I just went oh , wow and wow .

And my intuition said , jenny , all you have to do is just breathe . That is your sole purpose right here , right now , just breathe . And I thought , is that enough ? And my intuition said , yes , it is Just breathe . And it was like . That was kind of like I don't know . That was my reboot .

That was my reboot and from that moment onwards I place my focus and my energy in my heart space . And so when I'm revolving up here and I'm the little mouse on the running in the wheel . I just re-anchor back into my heart space and I go . I'm love , I'm love , loving , lovable and loved .

I go back to there and my heart recalibrates because , you know , our heart is an intelligence center and it's our primary energy source and it's our harmonizer . It gets to recalibrate our whole body and our mind can't recalibrate our mind . You know , any instrument has to be recalibrated from outside of itself , so to speak the mind .

You just get more stuck in it . So we need the heart to help recalibrate it ,

you know . Coming back to the point you were saying , these messy moments are so important , we need to talk about them . These mush moments are so powerful because they are how we rewire ourselves . I totally rewired my operating system . It was like going from Windows to Mac or Mac to Windows . I went from fear and anger to love and compassion .

That was my truth . But I had built such big armory , effectively blew myself up from the inside out . We can do that , I think , in a more supportive and a more managed way .

You don't have to go to that same extreme If we look at some of these catalystic things that are happening within us and around us , and we see them as opportunity for metamorphosis and we look at them with love in our heart , even though at times you don't feel that you have a heart or that love could even exist .

But if you could work with people that know that , have been there , done that and hold that space for you until you find the truth of you , that's what we need more of .

And then , you know , I used to box and kick box and one of my friends was a real estate agent and he said to me do you know how much you can rent for your property for ? And I went no , how much , tell me . And he told me I went God , why am I living in it ? It was permission to go traveling , packed up the house .

Three months into that , my partner and I , after 21 years she was my soulmate , I was hers and we both looked at each other . And this is where you know love isn't true love . You know when I mean like unconditionality , that sort of love . It's not all unicorns and rainbows .

You have to make some tough decisions and we kind of woke up and realized , you know what , maybe we're not partners for each other going forward , we realized that we needed to grow beyond the confines of our relationship .

We couldn't recalibrate in relationship and so , you know , she's still my best friend , we spend time together , but we're not each other's partners anymore . And that was a really tough decision , but we made that through the lens of love . You know , it was freaking hard .

There's no way we could have left each other . Do you know what I mean ? It kind of had to happen in that situation .

You know , when you lead from the lens of love and come from an open heart , then you can have those sorts of decisions and things are a little easier .

I think it's never like breakups and loss and all that is not easy , but you would know yourself , with a successful relationship at 30 years with your husband , that when you come to the table open rather than defensive , it's a better conversation , isn't it ? Yeah ?

Oh , my god , I would never create that sort of document now , it would overwhelm me . So the logistics we we set ourselves a really short timeframe and just powered through it . So that was good and because it was meant to be and it was aligned , everything just unfolded .

The universe I have a saying you go first and the universe follows . The universe really supported us with our exit out into our new life . And the funny you say about comfy beds I have one of those beautiful memory foam pillows . I had headaches for 18 months as my neck and head had to get used to not having the beautiful support that it had had .

I laugh , but it was awful , it was actually painful .

I think my body was physically recalibrating or becoming agile in a different way . You know , when you were a kid , did you remember getting growing pains ? I think as adults , we have these growing pains , but they're different . I think that's part of the discomfort that we experience all the time when we step into something new .

You know , there were some really severe growing pains , becoming unattached , but I felt them as that they were liberating , and I felt the freedom aspect of them , the fact that I had nothing to take responsibility of anymore . I didn't like we'd set off with 20 kilos of stuff . I now travel with 10 . I only own 10 kilos of stuff . So what's that ? 22 pounds .

But you , very soon you start letting go of your emotional baggage too , because you think , well , I want to just have , you know , my little physical bag and then still carry you , you know , the whole suite of Louis Vuitton emotional baggage as well .

You realize pretty quickly when you keep showing up in different countries and the same attitude or perspective follows you and you go oh , I can't leave that behind . That's interesting .

You know that you need something and it just shows up that you don't , and then you can let it go . So it's really . You'll become more minimalist in your mental and emotional capacity as well . So it's very , it's really good . It helps you become more agile there .

The most important change for me was getting out of my head and into my heart , because when I'm in my head I was revolving and I don't want to make the head out to be the bad guy . It's a really important intelligence center . It's , you know I always say it's our command center . Our heart is our harmonizer and source of energy .

And then for me the intuition is you're in a GPS , but I think what happens is we tend to use our mind as the GPS , and so I think this connectivity that we can have with different dimensions and with energy happens when you get out of your mind because it defies logic , or get out of your left brain in particular because it's logical .

There's a good book by this lady , jill Bolt Taylor , called my Stroke of Insight . She's a neurologist and she had a left brain bleed stroke . She explains in her book that when her left brain was flooded she couldn't see where she began and end and where the bed began and end .

No one had construct , no one had outlines , no one had the table is the table , the bed is the bed . You are you , I am me . It was just a blur of color .

So it shows you that our left brains are actually putting the shape and the detail around everything you know , and so this kind of supports this whole quantum theory that everything's just moving molecules . But if we , if we saw that , we'd probably freak out . You'd think something's wrong with us and we're having a meltdown , you know so .

So I think it's this art of getting out of your head , and I know people call it mindfulness , but for me every mindfulness approach actually gets you into your heart space . So to me it's actually heartfulness .

So when you get out of your head and into your heart and then you open yourself to being guided by your intuition , you break down your limiting beliefs around those sorts of connections . Yeah , we also have a lot of limiting beliefs around our subconscious mind and our conscious mind .

So I've got rid of all the kind of limiting beliefs around oh , that's lost into the ether , or I can't recall things in an instant or any of that . So you know , we can restructure our minds in that way and open up the access to our multi-sensing dimensions , because that's how we're made , that's our full potency .

You know , I think it's just trying lots of different things and finding what speaks to you yes , I understand , and so Jenny's .

Turning 60 was a bit of a really difficult thing for me uh , as it is , I think , for a lot of people , this whole aging equation thing . And one of my best friends said to me you know , some people don't get to turn 60 . It's a gift . And I went , wow , that was like a slap in the face .

That was a really good , like wake-up call and I thought , oh , you know , I'm just in a different part of my life . I'm in what I call my sage age . So that's when I decided you know what I'm going to be the sage from the stage . So , yeah , so that's what I do .

I have talks around leading through the lens of love and emotional fitness , you know , being able to read your emotional emails and how to you know be authentic with your emotions and use them as part of your guidance .

I do talks around unlocking , you know , the power of introverts , because I think introverts are forced to act like extroverts and they're measured in that way . So I think we're doing a lot of damage to our introverts . Yes , and you know I do things around courage camp and rising from rejection .

And you know , at the end of the day , my big body of knowledge is called HumNav , that's H-U-M-N-A-V . Humnav is the human navigation practice and that's about you tapping into your internal guidance and using all these wonderful support programs that we have .

She's my speaking coach and she's actually a Broadway director and producer , and so it's it's about performance and she lives in New York , so that's why every second month I'm in New York and so , yeah , I've been doing a lot of , you know , conscious and purposeful work around that and finding gigs and getting back onto the stage , starting to work with different

communities and different companies to help help , having the conversations that we've been talking about , emotional fitness and courage camp and facing , you know , first aid for failure and facing your fears and all these sorts of things , and that will be under the hum nav , umbrella , umbrella . Okay , I see it as a university eventually . Wow , so we'll see .

I don't know how that's going to happen , but you know it'll happen some way , yes , and you should add the lost conversation , yes .

This will allow the ordinary magic to go further . Join me next time for another story conversation . Thank you for listening . Hasta pronto you . Thank you .