Creativity is not a nice to have - it’s a must have - now, during this 4th industrial revolution - and for the future of work. Natalie is the creativity whisperer to the C-Suite. Her dynamic, accessible and engaging approach has changed lives and impacted executives and leaders across Fortune 500 companies, cultural institutions, and countless individuals. Creativity is the source of all innovation, but how can we cultivate it? Natalie Nixon defines creativity as our ability to toggle between wo...
Jun 19, 2023•37 min•Season 5Ep. 137
If you only had one thing to tell your younger self, what would it be? On today's micro episode, Chad and Shelley discuss their one thing. It's been on their mind this month as they've been having powerful coaching and podcast conversations, as well as challenging ones with their kids and touring college campuses. Time Stamps: The relationship is about aspiring to live in your big self. 1:42 What we wish we’d known when we were younger. 2:56 Enduring struggle doesn’t make you more important. 4:1...
Jun 16, 2023•11 min•Season 5Ep. 136
Scott Simon is a happiness entrepreneur and founder of the Scare Your Soul courage movement and the author of the book Scare Your Soul: 7 Powerful Principles to Harness Fear and Lead Your Most Courageous Life . He is dedicated to creating, curating, and leading opportunities for people around the world to be happier, empowered and courageous in their own lives. Scott founded the movement in 2015, organically growing it from one Facebook post to a global movement with volunteer ambassadors worldw...
Jun 12, 2023•40 min•Season 5Ep. 135
Dr. Jerome Wagner is a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, supervisor, consultant in private practice, and emeritus faculty member in the Department of Psychology and Institute of Pastoral Studies at Loyola University, Chicago. On today's episode, Jerry helps us see that the true self is something that we already have and already are and maybe we don’t really have to go out and "find it," and for all the ways in which we’re different and unique and one of a kind, paradoxically, we’re also ve...
Jun 09, 2023•50 min•Season 5Ep. 134
Dr. Tasha Eurich is an organizational psychologist, researcher, and New York Times bestselling author. Recognized as the world’s top communication and organizational culture thinker, and #1 self-awareness coach, Tasha is Principal of The Eurich Group, where she uses science to help successful executives achieve dramatic personal and organizational change. As a coach, consultant, and speaker, Tasha has worked directly with tens of thousands of leaders and spoken live to hundreds of thousands more...
Jun 05, 2023•33 min•Season 5Ep. 133
Giving up is ego work. Giving up carries a different energy completely. It is fueled by a fear and a holding on. It produces tension and when we can no longer carry it, we feel the need to give up. Giving up is submitting to lower energy. It’s a feeling of self-abnegation, self-diminishment. Surrender is leveling up. Giving up is downshifting. We give up on ego work. We surrender to soul work. Surrender is a way of accepting the terms of life with a learner’s mind. There is acceptance. There is ...
Jun 02, 2023•12 min•Season 5Ep. 132
Sally Clarke is an author, speaker, researcher and burnout expert and Co-Director at Human Leaders. A former finance lawyer, she works with leaders and organizations around the globe to embed wellbeing at work so people and business thrive. Sally's latest book, ‘Relight Your Spark’ guides individuals on how to heal and evolve after burnout. Her book Relight Your Spark, is a practical guide to all things burnout, affordably priced, and also details her personal journey with burnout. Like so many ...
May 29, 2023•33 min•Season 5Ep. 131
There’s growing evidence that signals sent from our internal organs to the brain play a major role in regulating emotions and fending off anxiety and depression. Interoception may be less well known than the “outward facing” senses such as sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell, but it has enormous consequences for your wellbeing. Scientists have shown that our sensitivity to interoceptive signals can determine our capacity to regulate our emotions, and our subsequent susceptibility to mental he...
May 26, 2023•15 min•Season 5Ep. 130
We need to be open to a third force — another way of having an experience — so that we can defuse the psychic bomb of our personal history. This script is why we repeat dramas throughout our lives. When you introduce a third force — or a new way to do the script — you can finally step out of it. This is also why self-confrontation is critical to healing and growth. We cannot set up camp only in self-compassion. That’s only one path of the work. We have to create a tension to give us material to ...
May 24, 2023•14 min•Season 5Ep. 129
Today, we learn from Enneagram type Seven, Milton Stewart, and the inner and outer work he's doing. Milton is the founder of Kaizen Careers, Coaching and Consulting. He facilitates the Enneagram and is on a mission to help people feel seen. Milton is one of the very few African-American male Enneagram teachers in the world. He hosts and produces the Do It For The Gram podcast, which teaches the Enneagram from a practical standpoint. He is also an International Enneagram Association Global Board ...
May 22, 2023•34 min•Season 5Ep. 128
The concept of trust has been coming up a lot for us lately. Chad's been asked to do a training on it recently, especially when it comes to trying to build a team through the "storming" stage of development. And for Shelley, it's been a piece of the personal growth work she's been doing at this time in her own life. Trust comes easier for some people than others. Some are naturally inclined to distrust, and some to trust. We always encourage you to do your own growth around these ideas, but it's...
May 19, 2023•8 min•Season 5Ep. 127
When Ginger first hopped into a five-day class on the Enneagram in the '90s, she accidentally enrolled in the advanced group. But she didn’t let jumping in over her head stop her curiosity. Before those five days were over she had a vision from a blimp that she had to do this. Her website The Enneagram in Business is an ever-expanding trove of information for personal and professional applications. She offers certification trainings in the Enneagram, a wide-ranging database of resources, and has...
May 17, 2023•42 min•Season 5Ep. 126
A Harvard-trained physician, clinical cardiologist, and certified mindfulness meditation teacher with 20 years of clinical experience, Dr. Jonathan Fisher survived burnout and rediscovered his joy at work the hard way. He is now committed to ending workplace burnout and optimizing peak performance in healthcare and the corporate world. His mission is to empower leaders and teams to experience more joy, meaning, and connection in their lives, and to reach their full potential. We have a terrific ...
May 15, 2023•51 min•Season 5Ep. 125
Why would Chad and Shelley say that radical responsibility is a major commitment? Why would it be one of the foundations for beginning to make huge shifts in your learning and personal growth? Tune into today's episode and find out why taking complete responsibility for the conditions you create in your life is all on you and your choices. What could go wrong? Time Stamps: 1:04--What exactly do mean by what it means to take radical responsibility? 3:10--This is counter-cultural. We immediately a...
May 12, 2023•12 min•Season 5Ep. 124
Big Self Show hosts, Chad and Shelley get together to explore their takeaways from Chad's conversation with Rob Cross and Karen Dillon and their new book, The Microstress Effect. Shelley emphasizes the important role that our own personality plays in creating the ongoing conditions of our stress. She opens up about a couple of ways her own personality has dictated the terms of her ongoing stress patterns. Time Stamps: 1:18--Most of the stress we experience is psychologically based 3:04--Shelley ...
May 10, 2023•11 min•Season 5Ep. 123
Welcome to Season 5 of the Big Self Show, episode 122! We kick off this season with an exploration from a brand new release, The Microstress Effect, by Rob Cross and Karen Dillon. Conventional wisdom for coping with stress has often focused on finding ways to "steel" yourself to endure, through such practices as mindfulness and meditation. And recent research has highlighted the importance of relationships to our physical and mental well-being. We have probably heard that loneliness has been lin...
May 08, 2023•32 min•Season 5Ep. 122
Today we share a wide-ranging conversation with Parker Palmer. From acts of rebellion to the hidden wholeness of the world to the integration of the inner and outer life, as well as teaching and leadership, this conversation is rich in wisdom and hope. We have followed Parker Palmer’s work for literally decades, and are both thrilled and honored to have him on our podcast. This opportunity to get a chance to meet him and reflect with him on the condition of the world right now was a real gift. W...
Feb 16, 2023•1 hr 5 min•Season 4Ep. 121
This work largely comes from Chad's recently released book, Shock Point: The Enneagram in Burnout and Stress . We invite you to check it out anywhere books are sold through the global online marketplace. We’re covering this information as a part of the Big Self Podcast for three reasons: (1) Towards the larger goal of increasing self-awareness. If you are able to assimilate this information in your head as knowledge, it’s going to be more possible for you to incorporate your dispositions into yo...
Feb 09, 2023•52 min•Season 4Ep. 120
While there are nine distinctive ways that personalities show up in the world, there are also by contrast, very similar ways that all people look when their ego isn't in charge. With steady practice in Self-Observation, Self-Inquiry, and Self-Development, you will see a healthier response to your day-to-day responses. These are the six ways a healthy ego looks like in relationships. Time Stamps: 5:56--Three stages of observation learning 12:32--The six ways beginning with #1 16:22--The second wa...
Feb 02, 2023•38 min•Season 4Ep. 119
We may learn about the false self, we may learn how to hide features of false self from others so that we seem genuine, but hiding and merely learning about are not the same thing as authentic transformation. And that's the challenging subject matter we tackle on today's episode. The way of the false self is invested in your outer identity and what you possess, whereas the way of the true self is invested in who you are and what you can share . It’s not by efforting that I come to know my true s...
Jan 26, 2023•53 min•Season 4Ep. 118
Traumatic events happen to the best of us. Some are more ordinary than others, like car accidents or losing a job, and others are bigger. Whether big T or little t, traumas are crisis’ that happen to all of us, it’s not some rare thing. Resilience is about using the crisis or the suffering to grow and launch yourself into a whole new beginning. Beyond just recovering from setbacks, resilience helps us navigate all life challenges, and end up the better for them. Resilience is a mindset that enab...
Jan 19, 2023•43 min•Season 4Ep. 117
Each Enneagram personality type have their own superpowers--their ways and means of functioning in the world--that gets them through life, helps them to survive. But these very unconscious characteristics can also create their own versions of stress. They are patterns that we usually don't even fully understand. We also don't know how to break free of them and to make them more conscious, observable, and understandable. Today, we dive deep into what Fives, Sixes, and Sevens (the head types) do t...
Dec 22, 2022•58 min•Season 4Ep. 116
Each Enneagram personality type have their own superpowers--their ways and means of functioning in the world--that gets them through life, helps them to survive. But these very unconscious characteristics can also create their own versions of stress. They are patterns that we usually don't even fully understand. We also don't know how to break free of them and to make them more conscious, observable, and understandable. Today, we dive deep into what Twos, Threes, and Fours (the heart types) do t...
Dec 15, 2022•51 min•Season 4Ep. 115
Each Enneagram personality type have their own superpowers--their ways and means of functioning in the world--that gets them through life, helps them to survive. But these very unconscious characteristics can also create their own versions of stress. They are patterns that we usually don't even fully understand. We also don't know how to break free of them and to make them more conscious, observable, and understandable. Today, we dive deep into what Eights, Nines, and Ones (the body types) do to...
Dec 08, 2022•1 hr 12 min•Season 4Ep. 114
For many of us, the inner voice is generally loving and encouraging, maybe not enthusiastic, but in your corner, calmly evaluating. In fact, a good internal dialog should function more like a reasonable judge. Or like Lester Bangs tells his young protege William Miller in Almost Famous : “I know you think those guys are your friends. You wanna be a true friend to them? Be honest, and unmerciful.” In other words, sometimes you need a good truth-telling even if it’s not what you want to hear. With...
Dec 01, 2022•41 min•Season 4Ep. 113
Everybody procrastinates, but not everyone is a procrastinator. And contrary to popular belief, procrastinating has little to do with laziness. It’s far more complicated than simply being a matter of time management. Chronic procrastination doesn’t discriminate based on gender, race or age; we’re all susceptible. So, to provide a brief definition. Procrastination is the voluntary, unnecessary delay of an important task, despite knowing you’ll be worse off for doing so. And then here’s why it can...
Nov 24, 2022•49 min•Season 4Ep. 112
The futurist Alvin Toffler famously said, “The illiterate of the future are not those who can’t read or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” In their book Language and the Pursuit of Leadership Excellence , Chalmers Brothers and Vinay Kumar describe sixteen “enemies of learning.” They adopted them as first described by Julio Olalla, the noted coach, writer and teacher, and founder of The Newfield Network. These enemies include attitudes, assessments, and mindsets that, when f...
Nov 17, 2022•44 min•Season 4Ep. 111
The idea of this episode came out of a recent media sensation from a study done in Florida, and it showed some gentle shifts in the personalities of the 7,000 people it studied. The headlines are all over the place. (Links provided in our show notes and links.) On today’s episode we break down the latest findings, if they even matter for our understanding of personality, and why we want you to get a little clearer on what all this chatter is about when it comes to our personalities. First of all...
Nov 10, 2022•41 min•Season 4Ep. 110
We have put “play” as one of our Big Self pillars from the very beginning, but I don’t think we’ve done a single episode on it. We do talk about creativity and gratitude. But that’s not quite the same thing. For one thing, it’s hard to really define what we even mean by play. In fact it’s so elusive to really define for adults, even after I had decided we definitely need to do an episode on play , I started wondering if this is really something our audience needs or wants. We’re talking about se...
Nov 03, 2022•37 min•Season 4Ep. 109
"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor." –Thoreau Some of us are dabblers, some of us are obsessives, and some of us are hackers. Which one are you? They’re basically just different approaches many people take to learning. The dabbler loves when things are new. Just loves the shiny new object and everything about starting something. The obsessive is focused on getting results as fast as possible. The hacker gets good e...
Oct 27, 2022•37 min•Season 4Ep. 108
