We all carry the burden of feeling not enough. All of us. Once we lose connection to our worthiness and sense of enough, the striving for approval and belonging kicks in, and we long to find the reassurance that we are enough as we are, often in all the wrong places. The experience of feeling different or othered is seared in our memories and held in our bodies and a protective cluster of beliefs and behaviors take root to protect us from experiencing this pain again. But often the result of the...
Feb 11, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 46
Right now, so many of us are connected through the shared emotional reactions to tragic events we have witnessed and continue to experience. Like all traumas, vicarious and collective trauma cause a breach in connection or a betrayal of trust in Self and/or others. And with disconnection comes the risk of a break in a healthy community. We continue to witness fanatical devotion to a product, a person, or a place that is often fueled by charismatic leaders selling healing and community through ab...
Jan 28, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 45
Collective traumas and the weight of collective grief is real and rampant. There have been so many moments in just the last two years that we have all watched together that activate vicarious trauma and collective grief. The horrific milestones of COVID and COVID-related deaths, hate speech, successful attacks on our democracy, relationship ending debates about masks and vaccines, attacks on protestors, and waking up to being complacent and complicit to systemic racism. And in January, the world...
Jan 06, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 44
Rushing into the future can mean missing important data. Data, in this case, doesn’t mean points on a graph but really looking in the face of your experiences of the year. The good, the bad, the really hard, and the really exciting ones. This process helps us see patterns over the course of the year so we can see our growth and evaluate what we want to leave behind and what we want to bring with us into the new year. Rushing through the end of the year, avoiding reflection at all costs, making b...
Dec 31, 2021•38 min•Ep. 43
If you are a leader who embodies activism, you are moved by personal convictions that see beyond yourself and the bottom line. You boldly desire to make intentional change that will impact another person, your family, where you work, our planet. When activism is seen as a negative word, it supports the status quo. Making activism negative plays upon your fears being misunderstood or being seen as too much, too disruptive. And it is easy to respond to these fears by quickly defaulting into silenc...
Dec 17, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 42
What motivates your dreams is just as important as the dream itself. Maybe even more important. These dreams for your future inform your daily decisions and where you focus your time, energy, and resources, and they impact how you lead yourself and others. They fuel the drive that motivates you to get up each day as you do the important–and sometimes tedious–practices that build the future you want for yourself and the world. They support moving from a vision or idea to action, creating the real...
Dec 03, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 41
What drives you can make you or break you. We often look to our values, commitments, and operations as a map to how we do life and work. But there are things that get in the way of honoring our commitments to ourselves and those we serve - no matter what we have professed as our values and mission. The messages that tell us we are not enough. We have to do more or get more. We have to over-deliver and never disappoint. These shame-based messages get in the way of our ability to make our aspired ...
Nov 19, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 40
Leading with questions instead of leading with answers is a powerful practice. Sure, in times of crisis, steady, knowing leadership is calming and often necessary. But the pressure to have all the answers all the time limits creativity and possibility. Having the capacity to ask questions instead of offering all the answers is what brings out the best in you and those around you. When you move from a position of knowing to one of curiosity you build trust, both within yourself and in those aroun...
Nov 05, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 39
If you want to lead yourself well, you have to know yourself well. The tricky thing is, it can be surprisingly hard to really know yourself. We live in a world where we are told by others–on repeat–who we should be and who we are. We have gotten so good at being who we think we are supposed to be that we end up believing there is something intrinsically wrong with who we uniquely are. Especially when it comes to behaviors, personality traits and abilities associated with how your nervous system ...
Oct 22, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 38
When you are not honest with yourself, you end up living a disconnected life. You may feel connected to your life when you get the dopamine hits of likes and follows or public affirmations from colleagues. Though, let’s be honest, these external validations are never satisfying for long. If you live a life where your worthiness and safety are woven into the opinions of others, it makes sense why so many cling to a life that is unsustainable and out of alignment. And it often takes a big crisis t...
Oct 08, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 37
We are seeing conflict move so quickly to chaos these days. Anger, entitlement and self-preservation can kick into overdrive when you feel devalued. We forget about relationships and fight to be right, no matter the cost. Civility is pushed aside more and more as we navigate our differences. The wounds of relational trauma, betrayal, neglect, poverty, racism are playing out in so many spaces of public gatherings and personal relationships. But now is not the time to throw our hands up and walk a...
Sep 24, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 36
We all grew up being told who was the creative one, who was the smart one, and who was the sporty one. There was no space for anyone to hold a multiplicity of skills and interests. Of course, none of us hold just one identity, skill or interest. So an identity crisis–or multiple identity crises–are inevitable. But an identity crisis can be a powerful turning point in your life and work. On one hand, you can keep doing what you’ve been doing—what you’re supposed to do. Or you can take a big risk ...
Sep 10, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 35
Leadership and discomfort are inextricably connected. So much personal and professional development teaches us to figure out the problem and quickly move on. But true resilience and growth require more than just the decision to “let it go.” Leading well requires tolerating the discomfort of being seen, not just at your filtered best, but really being seen in your strengths and also when you make a bad decision and navigate the fall-out, respond defensively to criticism, and struggle with your co...
Aug 27, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 34
Everyone gets angry. And most people have learned to hide their anger–often at great costs. There is a LOT of baggage we carry around the emotion of anger. These burdens come from our faith traditions, culture, family of origin, work, school and inform your relationship with anger today. We are constantly navigating the many rules of what is ok and what is not ok when it comes to expressing, let alone feeling, anger. In the process, anger can slowly start to consume us. Anger overwhelms and it f...
Aug 13, 2021•58 min•Ep. 33
We love to be right. So much so, that we often trade being right for being in relationship. Without relationships, we cannot experience meaningful change because the change we desire is rooted in relationships, not the certainty of being right. But dang, the expediency and certainty of being right sure are seductive. Pursuing being right cultivates the tunnel vision of perfectionism which runs rampant over our curiosity and creativity–the very ingredients needed for us to have a sustained impact...
Jul 30, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 32
How you lead yourself impacts how you lead others. And how you lead yourself and others has a ripple effect in all the spaces you live and work. It really is that simple. And that important. Unaddressed pain from difficult life experiences and traumas rob us of our capacity for connection. Unaddressed burdens of trauma impact how you make decisions on everything from parenting to public policy. Both individual and collective traumas perpetuate disconnection in all the spaces we live and work in....
Jul 16, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 31
The commitment to being an engaged citizen is a commitment to being an engaged leader. When you make the choice to invest your energy into staying informed about social and political issues, you are investing in your leadership. I’m hearing more and more from leaders who are prioritizing leading with justice, equity, and community care in mind. So if the kind of leader you truly want to be means being an engaged citizen, one who is informed about the social and political issues facing the people...
Jul 02, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 30
Everybody’s carrying a burden that’s weighing them down. If you dare to care, it is inevitable you will end up carrying the burdens from grief, betrayal, and rejection. And these burdens are often unseen. These invisible struggles fuel loneliness, shame, and despair. Eventually, the unaddressed burdens we carry start to impact our ability to live and lead in ways that are important to us. They take their toll on the quality of our work, our relationships, and our well-being. Yet, instead of tran...
Jun 18, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 29
Toxic cultures–at home, school, work, in faith communities–make it incredibly hard to do the right thing. Choosing to risk your reputation or livelihood when you want to move from being a bystander to standing up for what is right is a bind too many face when they want to say ‘no more’ to abuses of power. Yes, we need to move beyond being passive bystanders and be better allies. Yet I want to acknowledge that the stakes are high in moving from bystander into the spotlight. It is challenging to s...
Jun 04, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 28
We watch leaders crash & burn all the time. We watch with morbid fascination as leaders fall out of grace because their unaddressed pain led them on an unsustainable path of poor choices–even dangerous and deadly choices–to avoid feeling the vulnerability of rejection. Those times when you experienced the pain of rejection leave their mark because rejection hurts. Like, physically hurts. Neuroscience teaches that this kind of emotional pain is processed similarly to physical pain. The burden...
May 21, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 27
It is time to stop living a divided life. When your life is divided between home and work, personal and professional, you're vulnerable to all sorts of relationship troubles and everyday friction. When you separate yourself from your values and see your business and life divided instead of integrated and unified by your purpose and values, you will break from the pressure of it all. You feel out of alignment with what matters most–your health, your values, your most important relationships–and f...
May 07, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 26
Boundary barriers become leadership barriers. What gets in the way of setting and maintaining boundaries gets in the way of leading well. Our polarized culture, along with so many demands on our time and energy, make it so important to get clear on what gets in the way of setting and maintaining boundaries…and what they are protecting. Do you know what your boundaries are protecting? You have to know why you are laboring through the work of setting and maintaining boundaries. Without this clarit...
Apr 23, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 25
Our capacities are at an all-time low. Between the pandemic and politics and injustice–not to mention our already overflowing lives and schedules–we have access to far fewer resources for staying calm, beating back anxiety, or holding space for others. It’s in times like these that leaders like you need to know what trips you up--so you can take better care of yourself and continue to lead those who depend on you. Knowing what trips you up requires a lot of curiosity and deep respect for feeling...
Apr 09, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 24
Too often, we exile the parts of us that hold complex emotions and difficult parts of our story at the expense of our wholeness. And not respecting our own wholeness in favor of living a compartmentalized life is perpetuated in the spaces we live and lead. So, we hide away the things that we’ve been taught to believe are not acceptable—and what we hide is often rooted from the soul of what makes us unique and feel most alive. Making space to lead complexity means signing up to navigate emotions,...
Mar 19, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 23
Never underestimate the power of your decisions. Especially the little decisions you make each day. How you go about making decisions offers so much data about you and what you believe about yourself and the world around you. Many of us second-guess our decisions because we're unsure of ourselves in the first place. Maybe you underestimate your ability to do hard things or give added weight to the judgement others might pass when they learn about your decision. Most often, I suspect you second-g...
Mar 05, 2021•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 22
Caring about those you lead means caring about the harm you may unknowingly be doing. Many of us who fit western standards of beauty and live in conventionally abled bodies don't understand how our choices can cause pain. We've internalized ableism and fat-phobia to the point where we can't even grasp how our words & deeds cause harm. In particular, in the last year, and perhaps for a while longer, many of you have come to terms with the way you operate in the world and cause pain or harm in...
Feb 19, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 21
There is nothing safe about catalyzing the much needed changes we need in our world today. Speaking your truth feels loaded right now. I’m not talking about speaking your truth as a way to say whatever you feel whenever and wherever. I’m talking about the deep knowing inside of you that is you without the armor, the spin. The you that doesn’t absorb the projections onto you from the world. The pull to dim what you know to be true as a protective response is real. Sitting on the fence is a protec...
Feb 05, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 20
The quickest way to crash and burn your business and life is to place your worthiness and safety with the opinions of others. This may sound like a captain-obvious statement but the pull to care what others think is something fierce. And it is sneaky. The competitive drive is no stranger to many of you. In fact, it is often the norm. Honoring your boundaries around healthy competition is hard in a world that constantly tells us we’re not enough. It does not help that our own self-talk attacks ou...
Jan 22, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 19
We might want change now—but change is almost always met with resistance. And resistance to change is, at its core, protective. Yet, this well-intentioned approach can end up hurting instead of helping especially when the desire to protect is at the expense of the well-being of others. When we look at the industries that focus around our image, it gets even messier. I am late to the fashion, make-up, skincare party—and I have loved playing around with style and products that make me feel good. I...
Jan 08, 2021•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 18
Community over competition is indeed a well-worn hashtag. The cynical can dismiss it. Those beat up by year after year of injustice understandably call BS. But in practice, leading with the lens of community over competition is subversive and culture-shifting. Community over competition requires deep life-long work to unburden the load we carry of scarcity and comparison. In a highly connected, dopamine infused world, where billions of dollars are spent to cultivate Not Enoughness, we buy, vote,...
Dec 25, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 17
