If you’re like me, and so many people I work with, people are relying on you to bring your A game every single day. To the sales pitch. To the team meeting. To your family. To your community. The problem is that these days—unlike our pre-Covid lives—there are no natural transitions and breaks in the day. We don’t have the car ride to work.

It's the perfect storm for burnout, friends. In this episode, I share one of the most powerful practices for avoiding burnout, and why I think it's time each of us cultivated a proper Transition Ritual.

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?”

That is a quote from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden and it speaks to something that has become quite top-of-mind for us these days: empathy.

The concept of empathy is finally enjoying some well-deserved attention in the zeitgeist right now. We are seeing the limits of a black/white, right/wrong view of the world. We crave connection and understanding not through judgement and confrontation, but through the lens of understanding … through the lens of empathy.

My guest today is Maria Ross, author of The Empathy Edge: Harnessing the Value of Compassion as an Engine for Success, a Playbook for Brands, Leaders and Teams. In it, Maria shares some fantastic stories from executives, changemakers, and leaders of all stripes proving that empathy is not only good for us at a personal level, but that it is also great for business.

The Empathy Edge is full of practical tips, insights, and opportunities to exercise empathy, and I am thrilled to bring you this conversation with Maria Ross.

Have you ever met someone and just known you were going to become friends?

That’s exactly what happened to me when I met my guest today, the amazing JD Schramm. JD and I met when I was doing the speaker coaching for the TEDxStanford program, and immediately connected. JD founded the Mastery in Communication Initiative at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where he’s served as a lecturer in Organizational Behavior for 13 years. JD has given not one but TWO TED Talks, which have nearly 2 million views. And earlier this year, before Covid hit, he launched a new book into the world called Communicate with Mastery: Speak with Conviction and Write for Impact.

The book is so helpful, so practical, and so filled with great stories, I wanted to bring him on to talk about it.

A few years ago, I was in a 1:1 coaching session with a very bright young woman who came to our session with a very specific communication problem: She felt she lacked “presence” in the room.

Jane and I worked on lots of different ways to show up in the room … ways to signal her power, her strength, her intelligence. Ways of replacing the negative thought patterns she was telling herself about herself and about the people with whom she was meeting. But one of the pieces of advice I gave her made her do a double take.

I asked her: what do you to bring pleasure and joy into your life? In this episode, I make my case for the connection between "presence" and our commitment to cultivating pleasure and joy in our lives.

It seems every week, I hear of a new round of layoffs, and more talented people losing their livelihoods. It's tempting to feel helpless, hopeless, and at the mercy of circumstances way beyond our control. But my guest today has the kind of perspective and advice we need now more than ever ... the value of changing the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Meet Nick Onken, a photographer who has shot celebrities like Justin Bieber, Usher, Gerard Butler, Jessica Alba, and entrepreneurs like Tony Robbins, Jay Shetty, Todd Herman, Latham Thomas, Gabby Bernstein, and Lewis Howes. But he’s also a … wait for it… hat maker AND podcast host. If you need a shot of inspiration, Nick has so much to say about creativity and staying in flow, despite what may or may not be happening all around you.

At the beginning of this Coronavirus nightmare, as we sat isolated in our houses glued to screens, we craved laughter. We craved moments of humanity, of humor. My guest today gave us just that. You are about to meet Deion Broxton, a reporter with NBC affiliate KMTV, who became an overnight celebrity when a clip of his went viral for an unintentional moment captured on film … the moment when he faced down a herd of bison. The video has been viewed over 11 million times … And it is hilarious. But I wondered what the backstory was. Not just the bison backstory, but Deion’s backstory. But I wondered what the backstory was. Not just the bison backstory, but Deion’s backstory. Tune in, and meet the man behind the moment.

Remember that Bruce Willis film, The Sixth Sense? Spoiler alert: I feel just like his character felt at the film's end, when he realizes he's a ghost. Only in my case, I realize I'm unconsciously living in and benefitting from a racist societal construct. In this episode, I'm sharing the steps I'm taking, and resources I'm utilizing to evolve as a human being, and to become a part of the solution, vs. staying comfortably inside of the problem.

I rarely exclude any audience type from this podcastLINK.

Friends, this pandemic is offering us the opportunity of a lifetime: To re-examine our relationship with our own thoughts … our own minds.